As always, thanks for the great reviews and I hope you're still enjoying it! I'm writing more slowly now, cause I hit a bit of an... annoying spot, but never mind! It's all good! :)
Chapter Twenty-Two: Cold Water, Flying Sausages and Niggling Doubts
Sirius slept in the common room again that night. He didn't feel like going upstairs where Peter was, fraternising with the enemy, and so instead sat for hours by the ebbing fire, thinking in circles about what Adriana could be up to, and becoming quite obsessed with the mystery, though he wouldn't admit that. He didn't come up with anything new, and fell asleep in the early hours, long after everyone had gone up to bed.
In the morning, his fellow Marauders came down for breakfast to see him sprawled on the floor, having fallen off the sofa, still fast asleep. As usual, he wasn't woken by anything, including the dozens of people thundering down the stairs and around the common room.
"Oh God, shall we call in the undertaker?" Remus asked as he stood over Sirius' still body.
"No, let's do something more fun," James grinned wickedly as he conjured a bucket of water with his wand.
Lily came over to join them, and after kissing James good morning, looked curiously down at Sirius. "Did he sleep down here again?" she asked. Then she saw the bucket above his head. "No, James, you can't!"
"Can't I?" His wand tilted the bucket so it nearly spilled the freezing cold water. Lily grabbed his arm, trying to pull him away, but the pair cannoned into Remus and the bucket fell as though in slow motion, the water cascading down onto Sirius' head.
James, Lily and Remus stared at each other, aghast. Then: "RUN!" yelled Remus, grabbing his bag and belting for the portrait hole, James and Lily right on his heels. Behind them they heard the sounds of Sirius' rage as he charged around the common room with the bucket on his head.
Another month passed and things continued as normal. The work built up with rapidity, the Quidditch season was still doing well, James and Lily were going strong, as were Bethan and Marley and Peter and Adriana. As the remaining single Marauders, Sirius and Remus took it upon themselves to be principal troublemakers, meaning they were often tired, what with work and creeping around the castle at night under the Invisibility Cloak, looking for unsuspecting victims.
Sirius was still suspicious of Adriana, and tried to make Remus understand why. Whenever Peter was in the common room and Adriana wasn't, Sirius took note of it in his mind, assuming she would be with her Slytherin accomplices. He didn't voice his concerns too much, though, as no one seemed to share them, and after that sleepless night in the common room, which had ended with him getting soaked. He got his revenge on James by sending charmed sausages after him all day, unrelentingly hitting him on the back of the head until James retaliated in the middle of a Transfiguration lesson, by turning Sirius' hair back to the old pink, and then eating the sausages. Professor McGonagall was not very pleased with this interruption, and the two earned themselves detention.
The hefty workload and his duties as Marauder took priority for Sirius over his misgivings of Adriana, and as no one seemed to sympathise with his worries, and he still couldn't work out what she was up to, he tried to forget about them. Besides, James was much more keen on him doing extra Quidditch practise in all his spare time, as the final was a mere three months away. Gryffindor and Ravenclaw had the highest scores, and it looked as if they would be the two teams in the final. This meant that Sirius would probably be facing Marley Branson head-to-head, which he was both pleased and slightly worried about. In a perfect world, he would be able to prove to Bethan who the best man really was, but the truth was that Marley was not overly fond of Sirius, and no one would like to get on the wrong side of those muscles.
An opportunity for Sirius to investigate further into the Adriana situation came along one day in April. Spring was in full bloom, the Hogwarts grounds bursting with huge, colourful flowers, which sent their sweet aromas into the castle. Inside, the rays of sunshine did not quite reach the sixth years' faces, as their became increasingly difficult to penetrate the workload on top of them. All of them felt it was unfair and slave-driverish to receive such amounts when the NEWTs were over a year away, but their only choice they available to them was whether to complain out loud or stay silent when working.
"I dread to think what it'll be like next year," Sirius said to James after a particularly gruelling Transfiguration lesson, at the end of which they'd been given the largest amount of homework yet. "I'm thinking about just going to sleep for the whole year, then making some educated guesswork in the exams."
James snorted. "You wouldn't have to try to sleep for a year, Padfoot, you probably would anyway. You're the king of kipperooning."
Later on, in the afternoon no-man's land between the end of classes and the beginning of the evening's homework, Sirius spotted Peter sitting alone by the window, getting started earlier than usual on a pile of work that seemed to stretch to the common room ceiling.
Leaving the fire, Sirius made his way over to Peter, saying sympathetically, "I almost didn't see you there, Wormtail," as he peered over the pile of books and parchment before sitting in an empty chair.
"I've let it all build up on me," Peter muttered, looking at a list of essays, research and reading he had to do. "That's the trouble with having a girlfriend, they take first priority. You'd know if you had one, Padfoot."
Sirius let this (probably) unintentional slur slide, as his ears pricked in a dog-like fashion at the mention of Adriana. "How is the lovely girl?" he asked casually, trying to keep he irony from his voice. "I don't see her around... Any idea what she's up to?"
Despite the casual tone, Peter looked up sharply, his expression suspicious. "Why d'you ask that?" he demanded.
Sirius blinked. He wasn't used to such aggression from little Peter; obviously having a girlfriend had given him some assertiveness. "It's just unusual to see you without her," he answered, trying to keep a careless, laid-back tone. "We've all got so used to seeing you sucking each other's faces off in a corner, now you're in a corner alone with some books."
Peter went back to his list. "She's just in the library, I think," he grunted.
Sirius was quiet as he looked at the smaller boy, thinking that he wasn't as merry as he used to be in single life. Regardless of his distrust of Adriana, Sirius still cared for his friend, and sensed ill ease. "Anything wrong, Pete?" he asked carefully.
Peter grunted again, but after a moment looked up, the watery blue eyes unusually bright. "It's nothing, Sirius, it's just – she seems to be spending more time... elsewhere, than she used to. She must have friends in another house or something, or loads of work, like me."
Friends in another house? Sirius frowned. Would that house be Slytherin, perhaps? This was the second real clue he had that she was no good, but he knew he had to keep it casual, so as not to worry Peter. "Does she tell you what she's doing when she's... elsewhere?" he asked.
"She usually says she's either in the library, catching up with work, or in the Owlery, writing to her family. She's very close to them," Peter added as he extracted a Charms theory book from the large pile in front of him.
Sirius digested this. He had to find out Peter's attitude. "Do you believe her?"
"I'd like to. But I have this niggling doubt." Peter wrung his hands nervously under the desk, and his small eyes were darting about the room, as though he shouldn't be saying this. "She's obviously beautiful, Sirius, and sometimes I wonder – why did she choose me?" His eyes fixed finally, on the book in front of him.
So do I, Sirius thought, but he had to be more supportive than that out loud. "Well, she did choose you, and she seems happy when I see you together. We've all got a shitload of work at the moment, I'm sure she is at the library, like she says." Peter was looking so desperate that Sirius felt obliged to reassure him, even if he himself doubted what he was saying.
Peter seemed slightly more relaxed after this, and the two friends started the Transfiguration essay together. As they worked, Sirius thought over the new information. So – even Peter doesn't know where she is a lot of the time. He thinks she's cheating on him, evidently. Likely as this could be, Sirius suspected something worse, and he decided he'd have to confront her himself.
And I've just discovered that you can use that Horizonatal Rule thing when you want to split up your story! I may be slow, but... actually, I can't think of a second part to that line. Chapter 23 coming soon!