Previously in the Darklyverse: France refused to intervene in the Death Eaters' growing reign of terror (CH24), Marlene caught wind of Dumbledore's underground anti-Voldemort organization (CH12), Emmeline blamed Sirius for her parents' deaths (CH24), and James and Sirius hatched a plan for the upcoming Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff game (CH21).

Disclaimer: OC Mildred LeProut is co-owned by me, Wendy Brune, and StoryGirl02.

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February 12th, 1977: Sirius Black

"To nobody's surprise, Slytherin creamed Ravenclaw in last month's game, two-hundred-twenty to twenty, so Hufflepuff will be looking to score two hundred points today to pull ahead of Slytherin and at least one-hundred-fifty more than us to top this season's rankings. If we catch the Snitch, we've got nothing to worry about, but if we don't, we'd better have already scored more goals than Hufflepuff," barks Gideon. Sirius is waiting for the start of the match alongside the rest of the Gryffindor Quidditch team in the locker room as Gideon carries on, still clearly unsatisfied with the strategy for today's game.

Gideon continues shouting directions: "Hufflepuff's Chasers are the strongest they have been in years, and even if Meghan Keeping throws them off, we're still going to have a time of it trying to stay ahead in the scoring. Potter, I want you to catch the Snitch as fast as possible, all right? I swear to god, no funny business with Chasing and Seeking both in this game—it was your idea to switch positions, and we are depending on you to follow that through today. Black, Moon, keep the Bludgers well away from Potter, all right? Try and hit Hufflepuff's Chasers, help keep us in possession of the Quaffle—but no fouls, or else they will score penalties and this whole charade will backfire. The rest of you—I hope you know what you're doing." They don't, but neither will Hufflepuff when they realize that Gryffindor has changed around half its lineup for today's game—at least, that's the assumption to which they've pinned their hopes today.

He's cut off by the commentator as she begins to introduce the teams. "That's our cue," says Meghan—for all the pressure that they've placed on her to hold her own against Hufflepuff's Chasers, she's looking remarkably confident, even excited—and Sirius swings his leg over his broomstick and hurtles out onto the field.

"And first come the Gryffindors, Captained by Chaser Gideon Prewett! The Gryffindors have changed their lineup for this game, replacing Keeper Fabian Prewett with Meghan McCormack, the team's usual Seeker who was injured and unable to play against Slytherin last November. Like in that game, Chaser James Potter as taken over her Seeking post, and reserve Chaser Ryan Robins has filled his place, in turn. Rumor has it that this unexpected and radical change is a tactic to throw off Hufflepuff's talented Chasers—question is, will the risk pay off? Here they come, led by Captain and Chaser Elisabeth Clearwater. Slytherin only narrowly defeated Hufflepuff in last year's Quidditch Cup, and Hufflepuff's sudden ascension was largely credited to Clearwater's admission onto the team. This year, Clearwater was selected for Hufflepuff's Captaincy over seventh years Kirley McCormack and Hestia Jones, and the Hufflepuffs were favorites for this year's Cup until their surprising loss to Ravenclaw in the second game of the season. Compensating for it will be a Herculean task—we'll find out today whether Clearwater's team is up to the challenge."

Madam Hooch directs the Captains to shake hands, and Sirius watches as Gideon grips Elisabeth's fingers with a curt, closed-lipped nod. The numbers are so far in Gryffindor's favor this season, but no one on Sirius's team is naïve enough to underestimate the Hufflepuff team, and the pressure is on to see whether his and James's plan will pay off.

Sure enough, Hufflepuff is first in possession as Hestia Jones snatches up the Quaffle and heads straight for the goalposts. Sirius tears after the nearest Bludger and beats it in her direction, half spaced out, half following the commentary: Gryffindor saves. Gryffindor saves. Hufflepuff scores…

"…And Prewett has called a time-out as Kirley McCormack scores another goal, bringing the game's total to sixty points to forty for Hufflepuff—not bad against this team of Chasers but still a concern for the Gryffindor team in the event that Hufflepuff catches the Snitch." By the time Sirius reaches the ground, Gideon is already ranting to half the team in a harsh whisper, and Sirius braces himself for the talking-to that's sure to come.

"And you two!" Gideon erupts as James and Sirius approach the huddle. "Bet you're not feeling so confident about your little ploy now, are you? Meghan's good, but how could you expect her to hold her own against Clearwater's team on no Keeping experience? Scare tactics don't work against the Hufflepuffs, they're too good—"

"Is there a point to this tirade?" James interrupts lazily. "Because if you don't mind wrapping this up, I've got a Snitch to catch."

Gideon's eyes flash, but he otherwise doesn't address James's insolence, to Sirius's relief. "Not until we get ahead of Hufflepuff you don't," he dictates. "Do not let Hufflepuff get possession of the Quaffle. We'll score three more goals, then you'll do your bloody best to end this game before we fall behind again, all right? If you see the Snitch and there's any chance that Hufflepuff might catch it, you put your energy into protecting it from capture, not racing for it. Until we're in the lead, we can't afford that risk."

They disband and ascend back into the air. Given Gideon' adamancy against giving Hufflepuff a single penalty today, there's not much Sirius can do to keep his team in possession—Hufflepuff is too good for most legal Beating stunts to work against them. So he drifts away from the center of the pitch, whacking the occasional Bludger but otherwise ignoring the action of the game entirely.

He should have known that he'd be off his game today. Quidditch used to be Sirius's preferred catharsis, the best way for him to take out his frustration against his family, his lot in life, the war. Now, he has half a mind to give up on this game entirely. What does it matter, honestly, whether Gryffindor edges out Hufflepuff for the Quidditch Cup? Winning a trophy isn't going to coax his brother away from the Death Eaters any more than whacking a Beater's bat will avenge any of the deaths or disappearances of the last decade. The harder Sirius has practiced for the last two months, the more helpless he's felt in the grander scheme of things.

But that's all about to change, isn't it?

Gryffindor scores.

If Regulus Black is old enough at fifteen to join the outskirts of his precious Dark Lord's regime, then surely Sirius is within reason at seventeen to want to fight back. Never mind that Dumbledore won't allow students into his little secret society or that the wizarding world sees him as little more than a child—from here on out, he's taking matters into his own hands. They all are.

Gryffindor scores again. One more goal, and then James will be free to—

An eruption of cheers and gasps from the crowd interrupts his train of thought, and the commentator declares, "Fenwick catches the Snitch in a sudden turn of events, and Hufflepuff wins, bringing this match's final score to two hundred and ten points to sixty! That leaves Hufflepuff in the lead for the Quidditch Cup, ten points ahead of Gryffindor and twenty ahead of Slytherin. How this will play out in the final two games of the season is anyone's guess…"

Gideon is furious, even more so when Sirius storms out halfway through the post-match team meeting—but frankly, he doesn't want to hear it, especially considering that much of the blame for Gryffindor's loss falls to Gideon's own shoulders as team Captain and a Chaser to boot. Maybe he shouldn't be, but he's caught by surprise when James follows him out of the locker room and catches up to him at the other end of the pitch minutes later. "Padfoot, what were you thinking?" he demands with a hint of exasperation. "You know that Gid's not completely wrong to blame us for this, and walking out on him is just going to make things worse—"

"Dammit, James, this is not about the game!" he roars. He hasn't called James by his first name when they're alone and away from prying ears in over a year, not since the Marauders started using nicknames and roaming the grounds at the full moon every month, so it startles James, no less because of the venom in Sirius's voice. "You think I give a shit about a Quidditch match with everything that's going on? You heard what Lily said, France's refusal to intervene in the war is a huge step backwards for us—more and more people are disappearing, hardly a week passes anymore without someone getting a letter from the Ministry at breakfast—what the hell do we think we're doing, running around cavorting with a werewolf and pulling pranks and worrying ourselves sick over Quidditch when… when…"

"Lower your voice; you're going to expose Moony," says James urgently. The pitch is almost deserted by now, but he's clearly worried that the few lingering stragglers in the stands will overhear him.

"Remus," Sirius corrects.

James doesn't push it. "I don't like it any more than you do, Sirius, but what more are we supposed to do? We can't exactly mobilize the student body to act—Marlene says Dumbledore won't let anybody join the opposition until they're out of Hogwarts, she's lucky he even told her about its existence, and it's not like we can run some kind of underground resistance on our own. We've got no resources, no information to go on, nothing, as long as we're in school."

Growling, Sirius responds, "Nobody ever did anything noteworthy by sitting on their arses talking about how powerless they were."

"Like that's not exactly what this conversation is about," points out James.

Sirius shoots him a look. "You and Lily are the ones always talking about how the war's not going to end until our generation intervenes; do you honestly believe that that's going to happen if we don't at least try to take action now? The sooner the better—"

"Our generation," says James softly. "You're right, you're exactly—"

"What?"

"Nothing. Listen, I'll—I have to talk to Lily. Do you know where she'd be right now, by any chance?" he asks, eyes alight.

Doubly frustrated with James's insistence on brainstorming with Lily over Sirius, he answers, "She skipped the match to get to the Ministry on time for her internship—don't you belong there, too, now that the game's over?"

"Shit, that's right, Gid called that meeting and I forgot—we'll talk more about this later, all right? As soon as I can talk to Lily—do we still have that thing with the girls tomorrow night? We'll do it then, we can use all the heads in on this that we can get, and I'm sure they'll all want to help—"

"Help with what?" Sirius demands, but James is already taking off in a run towards the castle, shouting something over his shoulder about explaining it all as soon as he talks to Lily.

He doesn't even have time to growl with irritation before a voice behind him calls out, "You played brilliantly out there today, you know, whether or not the scoreboards reflected it."

Finally, a reminder of something that's going right in his life. "Marlene," he greets her, his lips curling up into a smile that she returns after kissing him swiftly on the lips. "Thanks, but I was rubbish, don't deny it."

"Maybe so, but we're not too far behind Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw will be an easier win for us than Slytherin will be for Hufflepuff," Marlene reasons. "Anyway, it's on Jay's shoulders that we lost. If he'd been paying closer attention to the Snitch…"

"I reckon he got cocky after we won against Slytherin last fall. It was a long shot, anyway; Hufflepuff's favorites for the Cup this year," says Sirius. It's remarkable the effect Marlene has had on him in the past few weeks, how quickly just the sight of her can cool his rage and calm him down.

As if to prove the point, she asks him, "So what was that about with James?"

"The usual row," he admits, sighing. "I reckon we'll all go mad in the end if we can't find some way to fight back between now and graduation. He seemed to be onto something but insisted on finding Lily before he'd let me in on it."

"You know how he gets," says Marlene bracingly. "Lily does the same thing, putting James ahead of the rest of us all the time… used to, anyway. I feel like she's been distant lately, I dunno…"

They enter the castle, both lost in thought. Breaking the silence, Marlene says after a minute, "You know Valentine's Day is on Monday, right?"

"Shit. That," curses Sirius, much to Marlene's amusement. "I didn't realize it would be that important to you."

"God, Sirius, it's not like I'm going to Avada Kedavra you if you don't plan something elaborate," she chuckles. "I just figured, after everything that's happened…"

She doesn't need to explain. Their relationship is complicated at best, recovering from dysfunction at worst—he doesn't blame her for hoping that they can use the holiday to make it up to each other, trite though the occasion may be. "Tell you what," he says. "I've got Muggle Studies at half past two, but after I get out, we can snog for a bit in my dormitory and then sneak down to the kitchens for a late dinner and to talk, all right? The house-elves can probably set us up a candlelit table or something."

"Snogging. Romantic," snickers Marlene, but she ultimately concedes, "That does sound nice, though. Sirius Black, using his words instead of his tongue to woo a girl for once. Can you imagine?"

"Shut it before I change my mind," he teases, bumping shoulders with her playfully.

She pushes back, laughing loudly, and they chase each other up one, two, three stories before the nearest staircase to the fourth floor starts to move. "Bugger," says Marlene to herself, and they set off down the corridor in search of the nearest immobile flight of stairs. "Hey, as long as half our class is at the Ministry for internships for the rest of the day, what do you think we should find Em and Lupe and—oh!"

Tripping spectacularly, she tumbles forward and breaks her fall with the heel of her left hand. "God, Marlene!" says Sirius, reaching down to lend her a hand up. He can't help but notice that she doesn't seem to be lying flat on the ground; there's nothing but floor beneath her, but it's almost as if something invisible is resting beneath her feet, propping them up. Whatever is there smells horrid, too, like bread and feet and spoiled milk rolled into one.

Wincing a bit, she struggles into a sitting position, rooting through her robe pocket for her wand. "Look at those splinters… Tergeo. Episkey," she says, healing her hand instantly. "That'll probably be sore for a few days… god."

"You'll be all right, though?" he asks, some of his concern dissipating at her nod and convincing smile. "Any idea what it was that tripped you? For a second there, it looked like…"

"Like something invisible were lying right there?" she finishes the thought for him, indicating the spot where she'd fallen. Sirius nods. "I thought so, too. It reeks, whatever it is… reckon it might be under a Disillusionment Charm?"

He feels around on the floor until his hand hits something solid, then whacks it with his wand while muttering the countercharm. To his shock, the spell reveals the motionless, facedown figure of a girl whom he assumes has been Stunned until he rolls her over, revealing her wide-open eyes. "Somebody put a Full Body-Bind on her," says Sirius. He wonders whether the awful stench is due to spellwork, too, or whether it's her natural scent—glancing at Marlene, he can tell she's thinking the same thing and probably feeling guilty for commenting on it as well.

"Finite," Marlene says shakily to reverse the curse. For a moment, the girl just blinks rapidly up at Sirius, hardly stirring; then she looks wildly around her and scrambles to her feet.

"I'm so sorry," is the first thing she says, addressing Marlene. "Was it you who tripped over me? Are you all right?"

Clearly not having expected this reaction, Marlene just gapes for a moment before answering, "I'm fine, thanks. You don't have to—I mean, you have nothing to apologize for; I don't suppose you lay down willingly in the middle of a corridor and put a Disillusionment Charm and a Full Body-Bind Curse on yourself. Who did—how did this happen to you?"

"Oh, I don't know; could have been anyone," the girl replies, sounding so unconcerned that it worries Sirius. He can't seem to shake the feeling that he knows her from somewhere—at the very least, he thinks he recognizes her voice. "This sort of thing seems to happen quite a lot. You get used to it."

"Was it a Slytherin?" says Marlene, unconvinced and sounding angrier by the second. "I swear to god, if it some little bugger giving you shit about being Muggle-born—"

"Oh, no, no, no, nothing like that," she assures them, smiling weakly. "I'm a half-blood, anyway."

"Then why—?" But Marlene cuts herself short, consciously connecting what Sirius does an instant later: the girl doesn't need dirty blood to be an easy target for bullying. In addition to the stench, she's a good thirty kilos overweight, her baggy robes doing little to conceal the pockets of fat that weigh down her torso, and her face somewhat resembles a rat's, even obscured by acne and framed by a greasy, blonde bob cut. If he were a few years younger, Sirius realizes with a sickening jolt, she'd probably be the butt of his own pranks.

He must be mistaken; they can't have met before, Sirius decides, because surely he'd have remembered how she looks in excruciating detail. But there's something about her voice that… unless… "You're the Quidditch commentator, aren't you?" says Sirius, cutting the uncomfortable silence short.

Blushing a bit, she nods. "I'm surprised you made the connection," she admits. "Most people don't; apparently my voice sounds a lot different when it's magnified, and people are paying more attention to the game than to me, so they usually don't recognize me by sight. I'm sorry, I'm rambling—" He tries to tell her it's all right, but she talks over his attempt at an interruption to introduce herself. "At any rate, I'm Mildred, Mildred LeProut, but you can call me Millie. And are you two Sirius Black and Marlene McKinnon?"

In a way, he's grateful for the unexpected recognition. He picked up enough French before he ran away from home to know that le prout translates to fart, but he's too taken aback to laugh at her expense. "How did you—?"

"I commentate your games," she reminds Sirius, "and besides, you have quite the reputation around here, between all those pranks you've done and being the first Black in Gryffindor in generations. And I heard that the two of you were together for good, so I just assumed…"

He's a bit unnerved that Millie follows school gossip closely enough to identify them both without ever having properly met, but he tries not to show it. "Well, we should probably be getting back to Gryffindor Tower," says Marlene awkwardly, "unless you're in—?"

It takes Millie a second to catch on. "Oh! No, I'm in Ravenclaw, actually, a Ravenclaw fourth year," she says.

"You're quite good, you know," says Sirius abruptly, garnering strange looks from Millie and Marlene both. "At commentating the games, I mean. All our mates think so."

"Oh!" says Millie. "Er, thank you. If that's all, I'll get going, then… it was nice meeting both of you," she adds, smiling bashfully as she buries her hands in her robe pockets and brushes past them.

For a moment, Sirius and Marlene just stare down the corridor at her retreating figure without a word. "That was awkward, wasn't it?" says Marlene eventually. Sirius just nods, not trusting himself to speak. "Come on, let's get back to the common room…"

It doesn't take him long, however, to forget all about the stench and the shame that embody Millie LeProut. As he and Marlene reach the Gryffindor common room and begin to take the stairs up to the boys' dormitory, Sirius hears Remus call out from an armchair by the hearth, "You might want to think twice before taking Marlene up to the dorm with you, Sirius. Emmeline's up there waiting for you."

He doubles back down the staircase, Marlene right behind him. "Did she say what she wanted to talk to me about?" he asks. Remus shakes his head, but there's a clenching sensation in Sirius's stomach telling him that he already knows the answer. Peter mentioned this last month, he recalls, something about wanting him and Emmeline to talk about the reasons why everything went wrong between them two years ago. Before now, he'd long accepted that he probably would never understand what prompted Emmeline to give up on her friends, on him, and although he should have expected for months now that Peter's interference was bound to drag up the past again, he isn't sure he's ready to face the conversation he knows is about to ensue.

"Wish me luck," he says with a sigh, and he kisses Marlene's cheek before he bounds up the stairs, ignoring her confusion as to what, exactly, she was supposed to wish him luck for.

Sure enough, Emmeline is sitting on Sirius's bed when he enters the room, her legs crossed and hanging over the edge. "Hi, Sirius," she says quietly, and he's relieved to hear that the usual note of bitter spite in her voice is gone today, replaced by a sense of exhaustion and defeat.

"Remus said you wanted to talk to me about something," he prompts, joining her at the foot of his bed.

She laughs, but it's a hollow sound, nothing like the great belly laughs they used to share—that was years ago, though, and Sirius would be crazy to think that he could bring back the old Emmeline in the blink of an eye. "Don't tell me you didn't see this coming," she tells him, and he's relieved that she doesn't push him any harder when he doesn't answer. Then, so softly it's almost imperceptible: "Your cousin killed my parents."

His head pounds; his insides turn to ice. "My—what? Your parents are—?"

"It was in fourth year," Emmeline says next, her voice wavering. "Remember when you found out your cousin Bellatrix and her husband were finally welcomed into You-Know-Who's innermost circle?" He does, but he doesn't understand what that had to do with— "Do you still remember the Ministry owl I got two days later?"

He doesn't, at first, but when he does, he's horrified. "We didn't recognize it for what it was," Sirius breathes. "You-Know-Who didn't really get started until this past year; it was mostly limited to just Muggle disappearances we'd read about in the Prophet back then… not enough students' families were getting hurt back then to know a Ministry owl when you saw one."

Taking a shaky breath, she nods. "You must know the rumors… how You-Know-Who's followers are supposedly inducted into his top ranks with a murder mission of a wizarding family of their choosing. I'd been to your parents' house the summer after first year; you'd told me how badly you needed the company, and you must have thought that it wouldn't put me in any danger because I'm half-blood. But the way they must see it, one of my parents is a Mudblood, and the other is a blood traitor. Peter and James and Remus knew enough to stay well away from your family, but I didn't. Your family probably assumed I was the closest person to you, and even though you were still living at home back then, they'd already made up their minds that you were scum; even I could see that. So when your cousin had the opportunity to kill anyone she liked…"

Her voice is wobbling and she's staring at the ceiling, anything not to look at Sirius, and for a split second he wishes more than anything that they were fifteen again and they were still best mates because then maybe there'd be a chance she'd let him hug her or hold her hand or rub her back or something to show her she wasn't alone, but it's been a long two years and he doesn't know if he wants to close the distance that's festered between them, and he sure as hell doesn't believe for an instant that she'd let him. A lot can happen in two years—they're testament to that—so he lets her talk uninterrupted, but it's not enough to placate the piece of him that believes she's still the same person as she was at fifteen, just as loyal and just as fiery, too, not a nice person but not the shell of bitter remarks and empty laughs that she's become, either. Emmeline has never been nice, exactly—for that matter, neither has Sirius, it's part of the reason why they always used to understand each other so well—but there used to be a hell of a lot of life in her, enough that no matter how rough around the edges she could be, her vulnerable side was like nothing Sirius had ever seen. He knew that girl, and he loved that girl, and he'd forgotten just how badly it broke him to lose that girl—

He cusses, and loudly. "You thought I was responsible. I was responsible—"

"You weren't!" cries Emmeline, swiping desperately at her eyes. "I thought you were for the longest time, but you weren't, it was just easier to blame you than some faceless Death Eater, you have to understand—"

"Just because I didn't intend it doesn't mean I didn't inadvertently put them in danger," says Sirius, shell-shocked. "That's why you started giving me the cold shoulder—because you were grieving and it was because of me? And I didn't understand what had happened, and that's why…"

He stops himself from saying it just in time. "Why what?" she asks, to no avail. "Sirius—"

"That's why I slept with Marlene!" So much for having discretion about the whole thing. Emmeline doesn't answer him. "Because you and I had been such close mates, and we'd kissed a couple times, and when you cut me off—the other blokes weren't like you, and I thought maybe sex was what I needed to replace you, but it wasn't. But it was all I had, so I kept using her for it whenever she'd let me, and I…"

"Sirius, are you saying…?"

Almost too late, he realizes that she's coming closer, leaning in. "No," he says, more harshly than he intended—though, on second thought, that's probably for the best, Sirius decides as she pulls away sharply. "No, god no, that was years ago, it's different now, Marlene and I are better now—and don't you and Peter have some sort of something going on these days? How could you think—why would you want to—"

"I don't know!" Emmeline cries, the closest to a breakdown that he's seen her yet. "I don't know what I want, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know how I'm supposed to go back to the way things were after hating all of you for two years of my life—I just feel so alone, and I don't know what to do to regain anyone's trust, I shouldn't even have to, my parents died—"

She's outright sobbing now, and it pains part of him to see her so distraught, but something in him has clicked off so that he can't find the compassion it would take for him to console her. "And we all would have been there for you two years ago if you'd bothered to tell us," says Sirius coldly. "You shut me out, not the other way around, so don't go digging for any empathy from me now that you think it's convenient to play the pity card."

"What? Sirius, I—"

"Just go," he tells her. She doesn't move, just stares at him, open-mouthed and sniffling. "Go! Get out! Get the hell out of my dormitory!"

She flinches, and he almost feels guilty for shouting at her, but whether or not he's in the wrong, Sirius knows he's too far beyond reason to work things out with Emmeline here and now. She rubs her face clear of tear tracks one last time and flees the room, and the ringing silence she leaves behind seems to echo with recollections of a love that never quite was.