Chapter Eleven: Cleaning Supplies Are a Bit of a Mood Killer

You know that feeling you get when you're hovering just between wakefulness and slumber, totally relaxed and calm but just conscious enough to be aware of how peaceful everything is—and suddenly your stomach drops like you've just tripped over the edge of a cliff?

Well, I had that.

I jerked abruptly, disoriented and flinging my arms as if to grasp onto anything to keep myself from falling—then almost immediately realized what had happened, sighed, and sunk back into the mattress in sleepy relief.

Unfortunately, Sirius had been sleeping sprawled over me with his head on my stomach when I'd suddenly awoken, and besides succeeding in startling ten years off his life, I also managed to soundly elbow him in the windpipe during my wild flailing.

"I'm sorry!" I moaned, reaching out to him as we both shot bolt- upright in bed. I fumbled for Sirius' wand, lighting it when I finally found it under his pillow, and peered into his strained face. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"Gack!" he choked in succinct reply. He heaved once, clutching his abused throat and turning steadily purple in the face, then gave a loud, gut-deep cough that sounded like a dying goose.

"Shit. Shit. Sirius, are you all right?" I demanded in panic, rising onto my knees and scrambling over the bed-sheets to straddle his thighs so I could feel for myself whether he was even breathing anymore. I dropped the wand, my shaking fingers racing over his jaw to check for a pulse. "Oh my God, oh God, I've killed you, haven't I?"

Blessedly, his throat chose that moment to open again, and he sucked in a rattling, wheezing breath, then cursed hoarsely. "Fucking hell!"

I slumped toward him in relief, hugging him tightly and sighing, "Oh thank God."

"The hell happened?" he croaked, reaching up with his free hand to grab my shoulder—more so he didn't topple over, I rather thought, than for assurance as to my well-being. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, I just had a spastic thing, I'm fine. Can you breathe properly, or do you have to go to the hospital wing?" I asked in concern.

He cursed again, but shook his head and dropped back onto the pillow, rolling over onto his side, his hand still wrapped gently around his throat, as if to guard it from me so I couldn't cause any more damage.

There was faith, for you.

I lay down beside him, pulling his hand away to press my lips gently to his bruised Adam's apple. "I'm sorry," I implored again. "I'll make you smoothies and gelatin and things if you can't eat proper food anymore."

He scowled at me, then burrowed his face into his pillow, rolling over onto his stomach sulkily.

"Oh, come on," I said with exasperated contrition. "It was an accident, and I already apologized. Stop being a baby."

His response was muffled and extremely rude.

I glared at the back of his head, my remorse dissolving with every second. Sadly, I was now wide-awake, and he seemed to have every intention of falling back asleep. If there was one thing I hated more than not getting enough sleep, it was people being able to sleep while I couldn't. I was touchy that way.

Without a word, I rose to my knees again, swinging one leg over him so that I straddled his sheet-shrouded thighs again, only this time with him lying face down. It was quite a comfortable place to sit, actually.

He tensed immediately, but didn't verbally acknowledge the fact, offensively or otherwise.

I dipped my head to the back of his neck, nipping gently and then soothing the bite with my tongue. I heard his breath hitch, but still he never moved an inch. Brushing aside his hair, more disheveled than usual, I blew lightly on the damp spot. He shivered, goose-flesh erupting all down the bare skin of his neck and back.

I continued these ministrations to the sides of his neck, behind his ears, and along his shoulder blades, the skin smoothly sloping from bone to muscle, while I let the hand I wasn't using for support slide down his leg, pulling down the bed-sheets and stroking teasingly up the smooth inside of his thigh.

His breathing thickened, and the hand that rested on the pillow next to his cheek curled into the pillowcase, clenching it tightly.

My hand moved higher, fingers still feather-light and teasing, until they reached his (rather lovely, I feel I should point out) arse, and slipped an inch or two forward. I leaned forward, my mouth brushing his ear, and whispered laughingly, "Forgive me yet?"

I felt like a femme fatale or some rubbish, just like in the cinema. Really though, my imagination was going to get me in trouble one day.

And I pressed down on the warm, sensitive skin there, causing him to cry out and arch back, gasping breathlessly.

"Oh fuck, Tia... unnh, yeah..." he groaned in a low, strangled tone when I began applying and taking away the pressure in a slow, steady rhythm, and I swear to God it was the sexiest sound I'd ever heard.

"Turn over," I ordered, my voice suddenly strained with need. My head was spinning already, and he hadn't even touched me. This was absolutely mad; we were mad.

He obliged, flipping over onto his back with alarming speed, and reached up to grip the back of my neck, crashing his lips against my mouth, body pressing tightly against mine, eliciting another ripping, gasping groan from him.

Sirius rolled again so that I was underneath him, and I reflexively opened my legs to him, hooking an ankle over his arse and fisting my hands in all that dark, rumpled, sexy hair of his to keep his mouth on mine. I really hoped I didn't look as much like a starved lamprey as I felt.

From that point on it was a blur of sensation and lovely, aching flashes of—ohgodohgod, yes, more of that—heat, our breathing tattered, our hands shaking and desperately eager, our hearts hammering in our chests, plastered against each other; soft melding into hardness, curves fitting oddly perfectly with masculine lines. And I could have sworn I was going to explode.

Too breathless and cloudy-minded to speak, my ears too full of the roar of rushing, pounding blood to hear.

I didn't even realize what had happened until I experienced a feeling of blooming fullness, and it was all at once too much, too soon and too bloody good to think about anything else. We had stopped kissing, our mouths centimeters apart as we panted; my searing lungs trying to keep up with my heart, working triple-time (when had I fallen into such disreputable physical condition? I was going to have to start exercising more—if I didn't have a coronary before this was over, and I wasn't sure I'd have minded if I did); breathing in each other's broken breath as we moved together, and I was quite all right with that; with all of it.

God. God, was it always like this?

I wasn't a virgin, but I may as well have been, the way Sirius was making me feel, and all that he had taught me already; was teaching me even now. Hardly an innocent, I was finding myself nonetheless blown away by what I was capable of feeling—and by what I was finding myself wanting to do back to him.

The one time I'd let a boy get this far, I'd been barely sixteen, and it had been... boring, in a word. I had been desperately curious, impatient and feeling more than a little rebellious against my parents, by whom I was sick of being treated like a child (yeah, okay, the traditional clichéd motives—there is a reason all teenage girls have a sort of connection, you know. And anyway, I was allowed to have my plebian moments once in awhile, wasn't I?) What had resulted was approximately four-and-a-half minutes of bewildering hands and mouth and not-quite-naked boy, and rather a lot of pain, and finally an eagerness for him to finish up already so I could go take a nap or do my Arithmancy homework (for which I could remember I'd received less-than-perfect marks because of him, breaking my concentration that way. Tosser.)

But already with the few things I'd done with Sirius in the past week, I'd felt ten times more than I'd ever done with Ewan "Look—no hands!" Flaherty. And now... and now...

Blimey O'Reilly's snakeskin trousers. Where had that come from? Oh. Oh. G-spot. Hello, G-spot!

Sirius had begun to cry out, softly at first, his voice rising until he was now thrusting without rhythm and all but howling, his fingers scrabbling desperately for some kind of hand-hold as I could see he started to lose control.

I clumsily gripped his hands with my own, arching up to meet him stroke for stroke, the most bizarre noises coming from my mouth without my meaning them to. I would have been embarrassed, if I hadn't felt so—

And then it was like time stopped. I hung suspended above the chasm, body tight as a bow, as my eyes flew wide with shock to stare unblinking into Sirius' intense, burning grey gaze, my lips parted wordlessly—before everything shattered into a pulsing, devastating implosion of breath-stealing pleasure.

"Oh fuck, oh God—Sirius!"

I watched in a distant sort of bafflement as his fathomless eyes went opaque, then shuttered closed and, throwing back his head with a grace I had to marvel at, he screamed out my name in a volume to rival my own.

A moment later, he collapsed on top of me like oddly pleasant deadweight, not moving except for his heaving breaths which stirred our hair in forceful puffs (he needed to start jogging or something too, it seemed), mingling raven-black strands among caramel.

I felt boneless and glowing and replete, and decided I never wanted to move ever again. Too much effort. I was perfectly happy right where I was, and just as happy to stay there forever. Dead, obviously, from starvation, but happy. Dead happy.

What an unhealthy amount of times to use the word "happy."

And bloody hell, why was I still conscious? It seemed like such a silly thing, being awake.

Shut up now, brain.

"Fuck. Fuck, Tia. Sodding fuck," he panted, his voice ragged and raw in my ear. "So fucking good..."

Mmm. I stretched luxuriously under him, a ridiculous, beaming smile breaking out on my face. My sentiments exactly.

I heard the rest of the lads come in at around half-past one (it wasn't as if they were making much effort to be quiet.) Sirius and I had been sleeping—er... resting, anyway—and he poked his head out to inquire groggily after the progress of the photographs ("Stage Two of the operations is ready for action," James gravely announced, sounding a right berk, if you asked me) and to assure them I was perfectly fine and recovering nicely from my tragic case of excessive exposure to one of the beast family Snivellae (sadly nowhere near to being an extinct species).

They assumed I was safe and sound in my own bed (neither Sirius nor I chose to dispel them of this notion), patted themselves on the back for what they (and I, though silently) considered a job well-done, and went to their respective beds, sound asleep and snoring in a matter of minutes.

I decided it was a rather good time to leave, then, and once I was sure they were all deep in slumber, I dressed quickly and Sirius and I snuck down to the empty common room together (with considerable difficulty, as my legs were oddly unsteady and I nearly stumbled on the stairs twice, Sirius only just catching me both times.) We snogged at the bottom of the stairs to the girls' dorms and would have been in danger of a quick repeat of our upstairs activities, if a hapless house-elf hadn't come in at that exact moment, mop and bucket in hand.

Cleaning supplies are a bit of a mood killer, and anyway, I was fairly certain it hadn't been the house-elf (nor me) who'd uttered that girlish scream at the creature's sudden appearance. Sirius, actually blushing for the first time in years, hurried off pretty quickly after that—to go drown himself in a toilet, perhaps.

Breakfast the next morning was a properly grim event.

"Stage Two commences tonight at nine o'clock sharp," James began lowly, leaning forward in a conspiratorial manner so that the rest of us had to do the same in order to hear what he was saying. "Moony and I have requested to take over prefect rounds for tonight, and so we will be able to keep the halls clear of any pesky stragglers. We'll have the Marauder's map to keep an eye on which hallways need to be emptied, and kept empty, at which times. In addition, we have our mirrors, so communication shouldn't be a problem."

I nodded seriously, and Sirius picked up where James had left off.

"That leaves myself, Wormtail and Spencer for the actual initiation of Stage Two. We'll take it in shifts. Two of us will be hidden under the Cloak at all times, one concealing and enlarging each of the photographs by hand, the other watching the mirror in case Prongs or Moony needs us to abort the mission. The third party will be venturing out into the open when it has been cleared, and fixing the concealed photographs onto the chosen locations, each allowing for optimum viewing angles and potential. Now—Moony—run that back to me."

Remus blinked. "Why do I have to parrot everything you've just said? I'll be with James the whole time; only one of us has to remember all of it."

Sirius glared. "Is that how you see it, Moony? That a half-arsed job is all that's expected of you? What if something happens and Prongsie becomes MIA? Hmm? What then?"

I snorted into my tea, then accidentally breathed some of it up my nose and began to choke and gag in earnest, eyes watering at the pain of my scalded nasal-passages.

James and Sirius both turned their stern glares on me, quite brassed off that I'd ruined their dramatic atmosphere. Never mind that I was dying, or anything, never mind silly old Tia who couldn't breathe...

Remus pounded me on the back, still observing Sirius dubiously. "I don't honestly think that there's a possibility of that. James is Head Boy, he can get away with anything. Even if a teacher comes along, he can make up some excuse for us, and it doesn't even have to be a good one—his word is gold. That's how much influence he has. In fact, the only one who really can do anything about his being where he isn't supposed to be, besides the Headmaster, of course, is—"

He broke off abruptly, and all five of our heads swiveled round to stare down the length of the table at Lily Evans. She looked up from her breakfast at that moment, and jumped in a comically startled manner to find all of our gazes fixed on her.

Sirius was grave as he leaned forward again, gesturing for us to do the same.

"Can we trust her?" he whispered, looking around at the rest of us for our opinions.

"Yes," James answered immediately.

"What!" I balked, staring at him in offended outrage. "You'll trust her right off, but your own blood has to agree to a Secrecy Charm before you'll tell me a thing?"

"You forget, James isn't panting at your heels in lustful devotion," Remus reminded me.

I shuddered at the wholly unnecessary mental image that little bit of expressive dialogue had rewarded me with.

"Tia's right, you know," Sirius pointed out, and I beamed at him in gratitude. "What proof is there that Lily is trustworthy? The fact you are panting at her heels like a stupid puppy gives her even more reason to not want to have anything to do with us, considering she doesn't feel quite the same way about you, mate." His tone was apologetic, and just a little bit ironic.

"Understatement of the century!" Peter exclaimed, concealing his words inexpertly in a hacking cough, which wasn't, you know, easy.

It wasn't very effective either. James threw him a scathing look and said, "Sod off, Pete." Then he faced Sirius again. "Whether we can trust Evans or not, something still has to be done about her so that there's no chance of her cottoning on to what we've got planned. We either tell her about everything and beg her not to go running to Dumbledore in a Head-Girly way, or else we'll need a distraction, or… someone to keep her busy."

It was my turn to jump like an utter dork when four pairs of eyes swung round to stare at me.

"What? Me?" I demanded incredulously. "What the hell could I do?"

"It's perfect," Sirius breathed, a slightly manic gleam in his eye. "It's so mad, it is in fact genius. Just think about it."

I had a feeling I really didn't want to know what "it" was.

James was regarding me consideringly. "You know, Paddlebrains, that just might work." Then to me he said, "You and Evans are quite close, aren't you? I saw the two of you hanging out in the library together one night when I was checking out… er, a book."

We all stared at him in silence for a moment, and I could see that his patented Look of Injured Innocence was about to resurface, so I kicked Sirius under the table and he promptly began nodding emphatically to show James his full agreement on the matter—with a completely straight face, too. You had to admire control like that.

"We'll be a bit short-handed," James continued, mollified, "but I'm sure we can—"

"—work something out," Sirius finished for him, succeeding in creeping me out rather a lot.

I was blushing. I realized I couldn't exactly deny Lily and I being close, because then I'd have to explain to James why I'd been with her in the library, and I didn't want to do that. I'd not yet worked up the courage to tell anyone other than Sirius about the tutoring, and now hardly seemed like the best time.

"But I want to be part of the mission," I whined, using his and Sirius' own idiotic terminology as a last resort for getting them to see it my way.

"You will be," James said soothingly. "Look-outs and decoys are just as important as the actual militants."

I narrowed my eyes at him. There it was again, that bloody "decoy" rubbish. And it looked as if that role was being pawned off on me, yet again. If I hadn't been doing this as vengeance for Aubrey, I'd have told them to shove off.

Instead, I scowled round at all of them and said, "Bugger it. Fine, what do I have to do?"

Knowing what was in store for me later tonight, I took refuge in James' Head Boy's room (while I still could), which was thankfully empty and I was fairly certain it would remain that way, aside from my own presence, for the rest of the day—hence its attraction.

I got through my homework in about an hour (ten minutes spent jotting down a few hasty diagrams for Ancient Runes—who cared if they were legible or not, since it was mostly funny squiggles and swirls that made no sense to me anyway?—; fifteen allotted to a joint effort of a Potions assignment on the Draught of Living Death and an Advanced Transfiguration essay that I'd already half-finished and only needed a few finishing touches; and the final thirty-five minutes gleefully working out the set of bonus Arithmancy problems Ackerman had given me as a special treat. He knew what a woman wanted, that one did.)

Thus without anything left to do—my cross-stitch was in my dorm room, tucked safely and clandestinely away in a box under my bed, and I didn't feel much like getting it and risking having to actually talk to someone—, I took a nice, long, restful nap, my first in quite some time.

I didn't wake until the middle of the afternoon, feeling refreshed and alert and more cheerful than I had in ages (well, I actually felt bleary-eyed and cotton-mouthed when I woke up, but after making good use of James' private toilet facilities, that was when all the rest happened. Wonderful thing, toothpaste.)

Settling back on James' bed, I still wasn't sure yet if I was ready for the company of my peers, then decided my break from certain irritations (i.e., blokes in general) hadn't gone on quite long enough.

Soon, though; in fact, I could already feel a lurking, unexplained and absurd desire to place myself in the midst of the dickheads that were male-kind.

Okay, so I wasn't as cheerful as I'd thought. Or forgiving, for all that. But I was also a decoy, and where in the contract did it say we had to be such a pleasant lot?

Rifling through my school-bag looking for something to keep me entertained, I spotted some vaguely familiar gold spiraling letters.

Sirius' book. Hm. I'd not cracked it yet—it might be interesting, and it had been rather thoughtful of him to go out of his way to get it for me.

Besides, I had decided after Friday night's tutorial that it would be my new personal vendetta against Lily Evans to do amazingly well in Charms just so that I could throw it back in her face and cry with righteous satisfaction, "See that, Evans? That's me not needing your help, which, you should know, was of no help whatsoever. However redundant that may sound. Because you're a cow and I'm not, so there."

Well. I was still working on my victory speech, obviously.

I opened 'Charm Casting Made Easy' and turned past the foreword to 'Chapter One: Swish and Flick.'

Crap. This wasn't going to be first-year all over again, was it? Because when Flitwick first told us about that Barrufio twat, I was so buggered about saying 'f' instead of 's' and ending up crushed beneath a bloody great bovine, that I nearly put James' eye out with my wand (and yes, it was an accident!). I could feel the repressed unpleasant childhood memories coming to the surface already.

But then I started reading. And bizarrely enough, I began to really take it in. I thought it might have something to do with the fact that it was like every word had come straight from Remus' detailed and precise library of notes (which had been my best and most productive teacher for near on seven years), or maybe it was just that I was determined to do well for once.

Whatever it was, I ended up getting through four chapters in only a couple of hours and by the time I'd begun my descent to the Great Hall for dinner, I felt like I'd really learned something.

Such a foreign experience, it was.

As I strode on, only making an absent, quasi-effort to keep from walking straight into people, I practiced several of my newly acquired wand techniques and enunciation pointers, murmuring under my breath as I went.

"Miss Spencer!" someone barked, "Magic in the hallways is strictly forbidden!"

I paused mid-flick and turned to see McGonagall glowering at me behind her spectacles from the other side of the throng of students passing through the second-floor corridor.

"I wasn't doing any magic!" I called back in indignation at being so unjustly accused.

"What do you call waving your wand about and muttering incantations? I suppose you were conducting an invisible orchestra?" she quipped scornfully, voice rising to be heard over the chatter of a gaggle of passing Hufflepuff sixth-years.

I sniffed and replied with greatest of dignity, "That is precisely what I was doing."

And I drifted away, waving my wand with grand, sweeping gestures, humming Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" (Spring, in case you were wondering) at the top of my lungs.

I met Remus, just in from one of his prefect things, at the top of the marble stairs. He was watching me curiously as I came up to him, staring at me like I was bonkers.

"You're quite bonkers, you know," he remarked conversationally.

I finished the last canto, then bowed deeply with a hand-twirling flourish, and straightened up with a wide grin. "I had a nap," I announced, not without a certain amount of pride.

"Ah," he said briefly, brows rising. "That does clear things up a bit. I must say, much as it pains me, I did miss the mad and never quite lucid Tia we all know and love."

"Aw, you flatter," I said, linking my arm with his (actually it was more me resting my fingers genially on his wrist, as his elbows were impeded by his usual daunting arm-load of books). Then I admitted gravely, "Remus, there I something I must confess to you. Something possibly shocking, which will cause you to perhaps want to cut off your own ears when you hear it."

"I'll take my chances," he assured me. "Go on, then. I'm sure my ill-fated ears will one day forgive me."

"Sirius and I have engaged in wild and passionate acts of love. Together."

Remus' expression was wry. "Yes, I expected as much," he said blithely.

"I understand if y—wait, come again?"

"Well, it's not as if you remembered to use a Silencing Charm this time, did you? Your not-quite-muffled giggle upon Peter's declaration that he thought the hernia he'd nearly given himself carrying the real Narcissa back to the corridor outside her dorm wouldn't have been quite worth it if Filch hadn't happened by the same moment she woke up and tried to pin a detention on her for after-hours napping in hallways."

I giggled again at the memory. Then I remembered myself and said, "Well… but… how come none of you said anything, then, if you knew I was there? James, especially—I'm not sure he really likes the idea of us together."

"Well, it's not exactly any of our business, is it? But don't feel too badly about it, James is coping. He had to prepare himself a bit before he could go inside the dorm—that's why we were so late, he made us help him come up with lines so that he wouldn't end up putting his foot in his mouth in front of you and Sirius."

It explained the stupid "ready for action" comment, anyway—James would think something like that sounded unaffected and relaxed. Peter had probably encouraged him.

"But then… that means you knew before, doesn't it? Before you heard me last night, I mean."

"Oh, Sirius went and made sure if James was all right with the whole thing some time ago," Remus informed me. "Quite noble and considerate, I should say. Not like our dear Padfoot at all."

"How long is 'some time ago'?" I demanded, my stomach feeling all fluttery and unsettled, in a surprisingly pleasant way.

"Er… near the start of term, I believe. Not long after we came back from summer vacation. Why do you a—ouch! Now what's the matter?"

My genial hand on his wrist had clamped down rather tightly at this new revelation. I immediately let go upon his pained exclamation, however, and ran the rest of the way into the Great Hall and to Gryffindor table.

If Sirius had asked James about his feelings on the two of us being together at the beginning of term, then that meant he must have fancied me since…

Oh, God. Oh goddygodgod. I was going to cry or something.

I found James and Sirius and Peter in the midst of a pitted pea-flicking battle, complete with spoons for multiple-projectile capabilities.

"Tia!" Sirius said, looking pleased when I skidded to a stop at his side. He flipped James off, chucked a balled-up napkin at Peter, then began picking pea-mush from his own dark hair. He gazed up at me, fingers working busily to extricate a particularly well-masticated green clump. "Where've you been all day? Oh, and guess what? They're serving spaghetti Bolognese, look!" He looked pensive a moment, as he swept an alarming amount of peas from his lap, then studied me curiously. "You've some Italian heritage, haven't you?"

"No!" I breathed emphatically, staring at him in an entirely new, completely flattering light, then grabbed his wrist and said, "Come on, we've got to go."

"What?" he squawked (was he still a little sore from my accidental karate-chop demonstration on his windpipe?) in protest. "But… spaghetti! Spaghetti Bolognese! That makes it special!" He resisted my efforts to drag him from the table and demanded, "Why do we have to go?"

"Because I'm going to go down on you and I am not doing it in the middle of the Great Hall!"

James gagged on his very special meat sauce, Peter accidentally upended a basket of garlic bread and Sirius leapt up so quickly from his seat he nearly knocked me over.

"Fair enough," he said in a warbling sort of voice, gripped my hand and towed me away without further protest.