When the next attack occurred in early October, Cade came to Dorcas. She said she was too devastated to do anything. He had been somewhat rude about the whole thing; complaining that it was her duty as his girlfriend, but Dorcas Meadowes didn't give in. She rarely did. He had stormed back to the Ravenclaw common room as she entered the portrait hole.

On the couch in the common room were Sirius and Emily Flagg. She was sitting on his lap facing him and covering his face with kisses. His arms were loosely thrown around her waist. She giggled; bouncing up and down on his lap. Sirius smiled weakly. She began to kiss his neck and Sirius caught sight of Dorcas. She smiled, rather sadly, and began to walk to the staircase. Sirius watched her; confused. Why wasn't she with Bradley? He put his hands on Emily's shoulders, signaling her to stop.

"One second," he said.

"Alright," she smiled seductively and giggled. "But hurry back."

Sirius nodded. He was really beginning to hate that giggle. He caught up with Dorcas at the bottom of the stairs.

"Why aren't you with Bradley?" he asked, his eyes expressing his concern.

"We had a row," she said quickly, not looking at him.

"But don't you…I mean, you…after an attack," he fumbled.

She shrugged. "I'll be alright." Then looking at her feet she mumbled. "Cade doesn't really help anyway."

Sirius suddenly stood up a little taller.

"I mean, things have been a lot worse lately." Dorcas said quickly. "I'm going to bed. I think Emily's waiting for you." She gestured to the girl on the couch, but Sirius didn't turn around. He was looking instead at that wrinkle in between Dorcas' eyebrows. She caught his gray gaze for a second and the wrinkle deepened. Then she ran up the stairs. Sirius watched her all the way up; wishing he could run after her, grab her around the waist and kiss her so hard that they would both weep the way they had their first time. But he couldn't for so many reasons; the least of which being that he would be thrown from the girls' staircase the minute he reached the middle of it.

"Sirius?" a rather squeaky voice called from the sofa.

He turned back to Emily who was still smiling that same seductive smile and leaning over the sofa so that her cleavage was in full view.

Sirius sighed. "Emily," he said. "I think we need to talk."

It was not Sirius' idea to prank the Ravenclaws. He personally wanted to go after the newest Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Professor Arden had run off with some Hufflepuff 7th year at the end of last year and her replacement was an unnaturally tall and skinny wizard who wore thick glasses and spoke with a lisp. Professor Steadman would have been the perfect target. Sirius also thought that since he had broken up with Emily, he deserved to make the decision. James, however, was insistent that they get the Ravenclaws since he had caught Myles Ackerley and Isabelle Stuart in the 3rd floor corridor three days before.

"Isn't this a little hypocritical?" Remus asked as James put the final touches on the rather realistic moving picture of the two in a rather compromising position. Sirius had been the one who had gotten Isabelle's face just right. It had taken hours. It covered the entire north wall of the Ravenclaw common room and occasionally sung some rather silly and graphic songs.

"What do you mean?" he asked, sticking his tongue out and twisting his wand to widen Myles' eyes just a bit more.

"I mean, aren't you…um…doing the same thing?" Remus blushed a bit.

James jumped; turning so fast that he let his wand slip and Myles' eyes now took up half of his face. He looked around rather sheepishly.

Sirius gave James a rather surprised look. "You mean, you and Evans haven't…"

"Just because you shag everyone Sirius," he said in a defensive tone, suddenly standing up a little taller.

"Really?" Sirius shrugged, his eyes growing. "I just thought that after three years of fantasizing, you'd be eager to find out whether or not you got it right."

"What Lily and I have is not about sex," he said; turning to fix his slip.

"It's always about sex," Sirius said flatly.

"No," James looked at him directly. "It's not."

"WHAT IN THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU DOING?"

The four of them turned to face the stairs. Standing there was a very tall, very angry Cade Bradley. He was storming down the stairs. Peter dove behind a sofa as he pulled out his wand. James and Sirius exchanged worried looks. Remus exhaled.

"Redecorating?" James smiled cheekily.

"You four are disgusting," he fumed, as he reached the bottom of the stairs. "But I guess since none of you are currently involved in that particular activity," he gestured at the picture, "you find it amusing to pull shit like this."

Sirius hated Cade Bradley. He had hated him since that day in the Great Hall last year. He had wanted to kill him since that day at Diagon Alley. So it wasn't surprising when he said this.

"From what I hear, you're not too active either."

Bradley stopped advancing and his eyes narrowed. "How in hell would you know?"

Sirius shrugged. "A little birdy told me."

Bradley glowered.

"This little birdy told me something else too." Sirius strutted forward to Bradley and said the second part under his breath. "That you don't give her what I did."

Bradley's nostrils flared, his mouth became a tight line, his fists clenched, his head lowered. Sirius was sure he was going to hit him and readied himself for the fight, but Bradley didn't hit him. Instead, after a second of anger, his lips curled up into an evil smile.

"You actually liked her, did you?" he laughed meanly. "She's never even mentioned you. In four months, she's never even mentioned you. What do you think about that? If you were so good, don't you think your name would slip in at least once?"

Sirius stepped back. Bradley was right; wouldn't she have mentioned him at least once? He scowled as not to look unsure to Bradley.

"No witty comeback, Black?" Bradley asked sarcastically.

Sirius was just about to fire a punch at Bradley's smirk when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned his head to see James.

"Come on Padfoot," he said; gesturing to the door. "We've got to go."

Remus had gotten rid of the pornographic joke and Peter had crawled out from behind the sofa. Both were standing by the exit. Sirius turned back to Bradley and scowled again. Then he turned reluctantly and left the room.

No one knew what to say to Sirius. He had never been like this. A lot of people were sure that there was nothing Sirius Black would want that he couldn't have. James' experience with Lily did come in handy a little, but he was snogging Lily in between advice. That sort of cancelled out anything positive Sirius could have garnered from it. Lily tried to tell Sirius that she would talk to Dorcas, but he didn't want that. He couldn't bear to have Dorcas know what he was feeling. It had just been sex to her. Bradley had made that clear. Awfully good sex. Alright, abso-bloody-lutely fantastic sex. But that was it. Dorcas had never actually cared about him. The pain he felt made him want to apologize to all those girls he had shagged emotionlessly.

Dorcas and Bradley seemed to pop up everywhere: on the way to Charms, in Charms, in front of the Gryffindor common room, next to the loos. Sirius saw the way Bradley tightened his grip on her every time he caught a glimpse of him. The threatening glare. But he didn't see the way Dorcas looked at him with that familiar wrinkle between her eyebrows.

"You should tell her," Lily had said in the common room one night.

Sirius shook his head, "Bad idea."

"Why?"

"She's already told me that she doesn't want a relationship with me," he looked at his feet.

"But she's been willing to have wild jungle sex with you?" James smirked

"It's just sex," Sirius said flatly, shrugging.

"You can't have good sex without serious emotions," Lily had said. James swallowed hard at this comment.

Sirius smirked a little and couldn't resist the bait. "What exactly do you know about sex, Evans?"

Lily turned bright red and took a few quick breaths. Her hand dropped from James' shoulder suddenly. "I…It's a scientific fact." She was suddenly very intrigued by the back of her hand.

"It's not true," he said; watching as Dorcas climbed through the portrait hole.

"Here's what I know, Sirius," James said. He had taken many deep breaths during Lily's sex talk but gained his strength back by grabbing onto the table very tightly. "I have never seen you happier than the days after she showed up, or more disappointed when she didn't."

"But what about her?" he asked, watching her back as she ascended the stairs.

"Do I have to remind you about the way she was last May?" Lily said.

"Gwendolyn told me she hasn't slept through the night since the year started," Remus added.

Sirius pondered Remus' comment. He hadn't been sleeping either.

There was an attack on Halloween. The Longbottoms were both accomplished Aurors and newlyweds. Their home in York was attacked in the early morning hours by three death eaters. Luckily the dark detectors that Frank had spent months installing worked and he and Alice were able to fight them off well enough to apparate to his mother's home. It was a tough blow. Frank Longbottom and Alice Morton had been Head Boy and Girl at Hogwarts five years earlier. All the 6th and 7th years remembered them.

Dorcas had given up on getting any relief from Cade. Instead, after the Halloween feast that night, she planned to go directly to her bedroom and begin her sleepless night early. On her way back to the Gryffindor common room, she caught sight of Sirius and wished for a moment that she wasn't dating Cade Bradley.

When she reached her bedroom and had climbed into bed, she really wished she wasn't dating Cade Bradley.

At around three in the morning, Sirius got tired of waiting for sleep. He climbed out of bed and accidentally kicked his trunk. Hard.

"Damn!" he yelled.

"Petey doesn't want the banana." He heard Peter murmur in his sleep. Confident that he hadn't woken anyone else, Sirius snuck out the door and began descending the stairs to the common room in his blue striped pajamas. As he drew closer, he heard something that heard like sobbing. Curious and unbearably hopeful, Sirius craned his neck to see who was sitting on the tattered armchair in the corner of the room.

Curled up in a pair of black and white pajamas, a thick curtain of hair covering her face, was Dorcas. Her body was jerking violently in retching sobs. She didn't look up when Sirius rushed down the stairs and over to her. He kneeled down in front of the chair and put a hand on her leg.

She immediately tensed up and began rubbing at her face furiously. When he caught a glimpse of her face, he saw that she must have been crying for a long time: her eyes were swollen and red, she was pale, and despite all of her effort to erase the evidence, tears still clung to her hair, her checks, and her eyelashes.

"Dorcas," he said softly, brushing the hair behind her ear.

"I am NOT crying," she said firmly and not looking at him, as a tear escaped from her eye. "I am not crying."

Sirius chuckled. "I can tell."

"Well," she said as he wiped away a tear with his thumb. "I'm not. I don't cry."

"Neither do I," he leaned his head so that he could look her in the eye. She avoided his glance for a second; breathing raggedly as the sobs subsided. Finally she looked at him. As she sat up, he placed his hands and then his head in her lap. She sat still for a while; remaining tense from the surprise of being caught and sniffing occasionally Eventually she laid her hands on top of his and he looked up at her. Her eyes were filling with tears again. Pure will power kept them from falling.

Her eyes grew with need, pain, and shame. His enveloped all of her: both mirroring the feelings back to her and offering her a comfort that she had longed for.

"Sirius," she said, sniffing again as her eyes glistened with newly formed tears. She swallowed. "Sirius, I… I need…"

"So do I," was the husky reply.

Letting go of her hands, he stood up, her eyes glued to his. As he leaned over, she raised her arms weakly and wrapped them around his extended neck. His long arms encircled her waist and she threw her legs around his middle crossing her ankles to lock him in. He lifted her easily without breaking the intense eye contact. More tears began to fall down her cheeks and, since his hands were holding her up, he kissed them away, eventually reaching her mouth. They kissed with a hunger that had been building for months; a hunger that countless attacks and countless sleepless nights had fed; a hunger that both Cade Bradley and Emily Flagg couldn't satisfy.

Their tongues tangled and their lips melted into each other and soon Sirius had pushed her up against the wall. She gasped as he began to kiss her neck. The gasps became sobs and he stopped; looking into her pain-filled eyes. He kissed her gently on the mouth and she smiled through her tears, pulling him closer to her by his pajamas and kissing him harder. Then she began to kiss his jaw, his neck, his collarbone. He could feel her hot tears falling on his skin and felt the lump rise in his throat. Closing his eyes, one tear dropped on to the Dorcas' crown. She stopped what she was doing and began to kiss all of his tears away, the way he had done for her. They kissed again and Sirius put her down; backing up a bit and unbuttoning his pajama top. She mirrored him. When her breasts were exposed, he stepped closer to caress her body, kneeling and placing his cheek against her stomach; closing his eyes and breathing in and out deliberately. She weaved her hands through his dark hair and he stood again; kissing her hard. She pulled down her bottoms and kicked off her knickers. He stood there for a second and looked at her completely for the first time. He had no idea that she was that beautiful. Quickly, his bottoms were off and her long legs were wrapped around his middle. When she gasped and moaned inches from his ear, Sirius felt the pleasure, the fullness that he had needed. Everything was right again.

When they were done, they didn't rush away like they always had before. He had set her down softly and kissed her on the hand and then gently caressed her tear-stained face. She had closed her eyes and smiled slightly, lost in his touch. Her hand found his and she held it tightly for a few seconds as they looked into each other's eyes. Then she had embraced him and a few seconds after falling into his arms, she laughed.

"What is it?" he asked his cheek against her hair.

"You have a problem with shagging Cade Bradley's girlfriends, don't you?"