13. Heart eyes, leagues and contagion

6th year boy's dormitory, Hogwarts

Sirius' POV:

"Guys can we fucking move it? I don't wanna be late for breakfast," I yelled. I swear they were doing it on purpose.

"Since when do you care about being late?" James asked.

"I'm hungry," I retorted.

Remus scoffed. "He probably just wants to make heart-eyes at your sister."

I froze. "What?"

"Yeah, what?" James echoed tauntingly.

"Don't think I didn't miss it," Remus said. "You were staring at her the whole time."

"I wasn't," I said. I was. I couldn't fucking help it.

"You've been doing it all summer," James said.

I didn't know what to say and it made me feel trapped. They were cornering me.

Peter frowned at me. "Do you like her?"

I let out a breath through my mouth, not meeting anyone's eyes.

"Merlin," Remus said. "Do you even know her?"

"I do. I spent a lot of time with her over the summer. I had a lot of time on my hands."

"Why?" Remus asked curiously. I looked at him. He didn't know.

"I ran away from home."

"What?!"

"I figured you knew. Everyone else knows."

"I knew," Peter confirms.

"Well, I'm not exactly keyed into the wizarding world's gossip," Remus said.

"Sorry. I should've told you. I just didn't know how."

He huffed. "What happened?"

"Umm they sort of got sick of me never aligning with their beliefs, and they beat me up. So, I left," I said slowly.

They were all quiet.

I turned to James. "And I'm not into Emilia. I just did a really fucked up thing and she hasn't mentioned it and I don't really know what to do about it. That's why I was staring. I was trying to figure her out."

"What'd you do?" he asked.

I cringed, "I accidentally asked her out."

"Accidentally?" Remus asked, trying not to laugh.

I related the entire incident to them. By the end of it, Remus and Peter were fully laughing and James just looked mortified.

"Stop laughing and just fucking help me out here," I said, annoyed.

"We're only laughing because you're so fucking oblivious," Remus said.

When I looked confused, he continued, "Okay look. Shut up, Peter. Okay, when you asked her out, she didn't say anything right?" I nodded. "Well, if she'd said yes, would you have gone out with her?"

I thought about it. The answer seemed obvious.

"Yeah," I admitted. "I would've."

"Would you have enjoyed yourself?" Peter grinned mischievously, wiggling his eyebrows.

I said nothing, just looked down at my hands, mimicking Emilia's pose.

"So you like her," Remus concluded.

I really did like her, I thought to myself.

It felt exhilarating to finally admit it to myself. Why was I trying so hard to avoid this? It made no sense to me.

"I fucking called it, didn't I?" James said. "I mean when you were playing footsie under the table, there was no denying it."

The room erupted in laughter.

"When did we play footsie under the table?" I asked, indignantly.

"That night at dinner, after we went shopping."

My eyes widened. "I wasn't playing footsie. I tapped her foot, because your dad was calling her and she wasn't paying attention. You did too."

"No, I kicked her. If you would've done the same, I wouldn't have been concerned."

"So, to recap, you wanted me to kick your little sister."

He shrugged.

I threw my hands in the air dramatically. Turning to look at Remus and Peter, I asked, "See what I have to deal with?"

In the Great Hall, I spotted that Emilia was already at the table, talking to her friend (Sadie?) about something in The Daily Prophet. My heart started to beat out of my chest on sight of her.

"Oh, hi," I said, trying to act as casual as possible. Before she could reply-

"Oh, hi" said a mocking, high-pitched voice over my shoulder. James. I huffed in exasperation and meekly followed him, slightly embarrassed.

"Did you have to do that?" I whined, sitting down with my back to the Slytherin table. There was no way I was dealing with that anytime soon.

"Yeah. And Moony's talking to her too, so."

I whipped around to see that Moony was indeed talking to her, and she was smiling at him, doing the little nose- scrunch up thing she always does.

"What were you saying to her?" I asked him, rather aggressively, when he finally came to where we were sitting.

He held up his hands in surrender, "Just Prefect stuff. It's literally my job, seeing as she's new. And I can talk to her, you know."

"Never wanted to before right now," I murmured to myself.

"Actually, I know her pretty well," he said. "She's nice."

I frowned. When did that happen? I pushed ahead.

"Well, can you keep an eye on the other new Prefect? What's his name- umm," I made a show of trying to remember his name, when in fact I remembered it perfectly.

"Aaron Warner," Remus said.

"Yeah, him. He told her he liked her a couple weeks ago."

Before Remus could say anything, "Oh, now Marlene's talking to her," Peter informed me.

I turned her way again to see that Marlene was indeed talking to her, Lily and Dorcas in tow. I huffed.

When she passed me, a minute later, I called to her.

"What'd you say to her?" I asked, trying not to be aggressive as before.

"Why do you care?" she asked. She then fake gasped, really loudly, "Do you like her?" she teased.

"Can you keep your voice down?" I darted my eyes to Emilia; she didn't seem to have noticed.

She laughed and poked me, and then she and Peter started whisper- singing something about Emilia and I kissing. I felt my cheeks warm-up.

"Don't you think she's a little out of your league?" Evans asked me.

James perked up for the first time when he heard her voice, but didn't say anything. Which was odd because he never misses a chance to talk to Evans.

"She is," I tell her. And I meant it too.

The rest of the day went fine. First day of classes meant that there wasn't much teaching. Teachers just explained their course material. We had N.E.W.T.s next year so they mostly just harped on about that.

James had to hold Quidditch try-outs soon and he was mostly centred on that.

Remus was a little busy thinking about the full moon tomorrow.

My thoughts kept finding their way to Emilia.

At lunch, she came over to where we were sitting.

"Hey guys," she said, not quite meeting any of our eyes. I frowned. What was that about?

"Umm, Remus where are we supposed to meet? For the Prefect meeting. Lily told me the time but not the place," she said, fiddling with the strap of her bag.

"In the classroom on the third floor- by the painting of Madame Rodrigues," he replied.

She nodded, "Alright thanks." And then she left. Just like that. Ouch.

"I think whatever James has is contagious," Peter said. "Evans ignores him and now she's ignoring you."

Remus and James sniggered.

"He took a dig at you too, mate," I told James. He just shrugged. "And I'm not sure what the fuck that was," I continued, turning back to my food.

For the rest of the day and most of the next, I didn't run into Emilia at all. Remus told me she didn't really talk to Aaron, just smiled at him in greeting initially. I didn't see her at meal times either, which was weird.

She knew everybody I knew. We didn't talk before, but she'd admitted that was because she'd deliberately made that happen. So, if I can't see her now, that must also mean that she was deliberately avoiding me. But why? Had coming back to school made her rethink our friendship?

No, I was just overthinking this. It had barely been two days since start of term, it was fine. We'd just missed each other.

And sure enough, at dinner, she was sitting at the table, this time part of a bigger group, not just Sadie.

She saw me, I know she did. But she didn't say anything. She didn't even give me the acknowledgement smile that she must've given Aaron. Ugh.

I would talk to her later. Right now, I had to concentrate on the full moon.