Love you for reviewing! I'm trying to get the rest of this up before school starts, because then I won't have any time. So, chapters will be comming much quicker now.

p.s thanks for the advice on writers block. It DID help!

Chapter 16: The difficulties of involvement

Pacing, Emily decided, was a complete waste of time. The most it did was provide the appearance of actually doing something productive while one was trying to think of something productive to do. And despite all her best efforts she couldn't seem to stop.

No matter how many times she walked around the same spot on the floor in front of her bed, the situation she found herself in was a dreary one.

Why had no one ever told her that single handedly returning chivalry to its rightful place in society would come with so many complications?

Needless to say, when Remus knocked on the door, it was with a disheartened voice that Emily answered him,

"Come in."

He entered, obviously bearing his own burden. He attempted to smile at her as usual but his eyes seemed dazed.

"Hi Emily."

After he said this he looked away from her rather quickly, as if he did not trust himself to completely meet her eyes. She registered that he had been acting strangely around her all day. Every time he stole the smallest glance in her direction, he looked away again as if he had committed some great sin.

"I'm afraid I won't be up tonight." He said as moved past her to place her plate on the nightstand. "And, don't be too worried if you don't hear the others come in before you go to bed."

"Why not?" She asked with genuine curiosity. She knew that the full moon would take Remus for the night, but why should it affect the others?

"We've got our last exam tomorrow. Studying should keep us up." He said unconvincingly.

"Oh." She said, hoping it sounded light and unconcerned.

Suddenly Remus let out a now familiar grunt and clutched his stomach, doubling over in pain.

"Are you all right?" She asked quickly. She rushed over to him, glad that the cloak did at last not constrict her.

He nodded, but continued breathing heavily as he put his hand on her shoulder to steady himself. When the pain apparently subsided he straightened up again and took his hand away from her, almost as though ashamed of himself.

"Thank you." He said quietly, still refusing to look at her, before moving to the door. She followed him. He wasn't going to get away without saying good night. Though it became clear that he was going to try. Well then, she would just have to remind him.

"Good night Remus." She said, stopping him by placing her hand lightly on his back, just as he was about to leave.

He turned around quickly to look her fully in the eyes for the first time that night. His own eyes were still dazed and confused, but there was something else there too. Something like a strange hunger seemed to linger behind them when he looked at her. The look sent an odd shiver down her spine.

"Good night Emily." He said quietly. He slowly reached down, took her hand in his, and kissed it. He did this with a sense of chaste reverence, but Emily noticed that the same sort of hunger she had seen in his eyes seemed to linger in the kiss he had placed on her hand.

Remus must have noticed this too. He quickly let go of her hand and almost apologetically shifted his gaze downward before walking swiftly out of the room.

This did nothing to calm her confusion. Nor did it do much to help her situation besides enforcing the fact that she was involved in more ways than one. After all, if Sirius's plan succeeded as he hoped it would, then Remus would be responsible for the death of another student. She was sure he would be expelled for that, even if it wasn't his fault. She couldn't possibly let that happen. But that brought her thoughts back around to where she had started. How on earth was she going to stop Sirius from telling?

Before long she realized that staring at the doorway where Remus had left was getting her nowhere. With her hand still trembling from his kiss, she closed the door and began the useless occupation of pacing once again.

In fact she was so caught up in the process of pacing that she did not hear the door click open once again.

"Well, I see your leg is better." Sirius's sudden voice not only made her jump, but also caused her to, reactively, do something that she otherwise would never, ever, in a million years have done.

"Sirius, You can't do it!"

Surprising even herself, she'd said the first thing that came to her head.

"Can't do what?" Sirius asked apparently bewildered. Yet somehow he managed to make even this harmless question sound quite suggestive...Emily reprimanded herself very quickly.

She would have to explain everything to him, there was no backing out of it now. Why on earth had she taken the direct approach?

"You can't tell Snape about Remus, or how to get past the weeping willow, or whooping willow, or whatever the damn thing is called." As she had spoken all of this very quickly, Emily saw fit to take this small interval to breath.

"Wait...how did you know about that?" Sirius asked looking fixedly at her with those brilliant, penetrating eyes...Oh, sod it! Why did he have to do this to her?

"Never mind that!" She said. Emily really did not want to have to explain herself, even if she knew it was inevitable. She had very little time.

"The point is..." But she stopped speaking when she noticed that Sirius wasn't paying a bit of attention. Instead he was starring at the invisibility cloak and she could tell that he was putting the whole thing together in his mind.

Suddenly he let out a low cynical laugh, that reminded her all too much of a bark.

"I should've known that we couldn't leave you alone with the cloak. See, I was right, you're not nearly as innocent as you make out to be." He said picking the cloak up from the bed and gracefully slinging it over his arm.

Emily did her best to ignore the slight on her innocence and continued with her already carefully planned speech.

"...The point is, this whole thing will result in nothing but chaos." she continued.

"Which is exactly why I'm doing it!" Sirius said cheerfully, beginning to search around the drawers, apparently looking for something. Emily ignored him and kept on with her speech."

"First of all, if you end up going through with this you'll land Remus in trouble, not to mention yourself and James and Peter..."

"Oh no I won't." Sirius interrupted. "If it works out right no one will be able to tie any of us back to what happened. And besides the headmaster knows that Remus can't help himself when he transforms. Everyone will think it was some freak accident."

That was his problem. He was so arrogant that he thought somehow he was going to get away with everything he did. It was going to catch up with him one of these days. She was sure of it. For now, she continued as if he had not spoken.

"Second it's simply morally unethical. No matter how much you dislike him, you can't cause someone's death with out paying some sort of price!"

"You want to talk about unethical?" Sirius interrupted once again. "How about when Snape hexes the Gryfendor first years with their backs turned? Or how he'd sooner see all of us dead or expelled before graduation? What I'm doing's self-defense. Getting to him before he gets to me."

How Sirius Black, who cursed Snape to oblivion nearly twice a week for no reason at all could talk about self defense was far beyond Emily's comprehension. But it was becoming apparent that Sirius simply wouldn't listen to reason. All right then, she would have to do this the hard way.

"And thirdly..." She continued rather slowly this time.

"Is that a word?" Sirius asked stifiling a snigger.

To be honest Emily wasn't certain if thirdly was a word. But she wasn't going to let him know that.

"Thirdly." She continued defiantly. "I'll...I'll go to the head master and tell him the whole story, if you go through with it." This was the largest threat she could think of, and she could tell that it had worked.

"You wouldn't do that." Sirius said warily, though with out real conviction.

"Oh, wouldn't I?" Emily said in a dignified tone. "And what's more, I wouldn't even hesitate. You would deserve every bit of what you got." She smirked as she could see him searching his brain for a way out of the situation.

"No, I know you wouldn't do that." He said in a stronger voice this time. Emily could tell that some type of plan was forming in his head. Whatever it was she didn't like it.

He took one step towards her.

"Oh real-really?" Emily stumbled over her words as she took a step back

"Yeah." Sirius answered and he took another step towards her. Emily took another step back wards, realizing that if they continued to do this they would both eventually run into the bed. The thought made her blush. Sirius smirked when he saw the color in her cheeks

"I know you Emily." Her stomach did several more back flips at the mention of her name. "You're too loyal to go running off to a teacher. No matter what you say." Sirius was grinning in his seductive way as he took another step.

"I-I am?" She asked taking her last step backwards. Inevitably, she ran into the end of Remus's bed. She put her hand on the mattress to steady herself as Sirius took one more step towards her.

"Yes you are." Sirius whispered, now merely inches away. "Especially after this." Before Emily could say anything to retort, Sirius leaned over and kissed her full on the mouth.

She had barely enough time to register what had happened before she realized, to her utter horror, that she was kissing him back. Was her subconscious really that attracted to him?

Emily had just decided that the question of her subconscious no longer seemed all that important when he slowly pulled away from her.

She didn't want him to. Did she?

"I thought so." He said

What in the world did that mean?

"Now, If you'll excuse me." He pulled himself away from the bed and walked over to his nightstand. After picking up a very old looking piece of parchment, he began to leave the room, but not before looking back to grin at Emily who was now starring wide eyed at him.

"'Night love." He said as he backed into the door frame. Emily opened her mouth to answer but found that words failed her, as she watched him give one last snigger before walking out the door...

What was that?

Emily sat on the end of the bed, attempting to process what had just happened.

Sirius Black had kissed her. That was certain. Why? This was also fairly easy to answer, he'd done it out of desperation. He apparently thought that by kissing her he would distract her from her mission of trying to stop him telling Snape about Remus. She was ashamed to admit that he was, thus far, succeeding.

What in the world was wrong with her? Why did this have to happen now? She had been so certain of what was supposed to happen according to the "novelesque" pattern of her predicament, now Sirius Black had to come along and complicate matters again. Now she wasn't sure of anything.

Or was she? Emily quickly forced her mind back to the actual kiss. It had been her first true kiss. That was supposed to mean something wasn't it?

She had always imagined that when she recived her first real kiss, something like fire works would explode inside her. That trumpets would sound and her heart would quicken to two or three times it's normal rate. And most important of all, that there would be a moment, one moment, when the rest of the world would fade away completely and she would feel as though it were just the two of them, standing there, in perfect harmony.

Yet looking back on the kiss with Sirius, none of what she had expected happened at all.

Of course she had been shocked when he first kissed her, and the kiss did bring about all the normal physical reactions. But she could recall no fire works and no trumpets. Afterward, she could almost remember waiting for that one moment to come, but it never did.

But that meant...perhaps the romance wasn't a choice at all. Perhaps she had always loved Remus and nothing Sirius did could change that.

This revelation brought Emily to a new sense of purpose. She knew now what she had to do...

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