Something has been bothering Lily all day. Guinevere knows it.
She just doesn't know what "it" is.
For starters, Lily was the first in their dorm to wake up today. She's never the first to wake up. That title is usually held by Guinevere. But when Guinevere woke at the crack of dawn to get ready for breakfast, Lily was already dressed and in the process of shoving a piece of paper under her pillow.
That, in of itself, was enough to set off Guinevere's suspicions.
They ate breakfast together in complete silence. Marlene and Alice tried to engage Lily in conversation, but all she gave them was one-word answers. James attempted to tease her into a response, but she only rolled her eyes. Even Remus, who was looking worse for wear, attempted to get her to catch him up on what they missed in Transfiguration, but to no avail.
For the first time, Lily and Guinevere walk together to potions class in complete silence. Guinevere wants to ask Lily what's wrong, but she's not sure how to ask her without upsetting her further.
Words have always been Lily's specialty, not Guinevere's.
When they sit down at their desk, there's still a good few minutes before class is set to begin and they'll have to switch seats for partner work. If Guinevere wants to find out what's wrong with Lily, now is the time.
Guinevere kicks her feet back and forth like a nervous child, trying to think of something to say.
"So… What's got your wand in a knot?"
Somehow, her mouth acted faster than her brain.
Lily gives her a glare that's enough to reduce even the bravest of wizards to blubbering cowards. After years of friendship, Guinevere isn't afraid to say it still makes her flinch.
"I didn't… well, what I meant was… you know, I'm just worried about you and you weren't talking this morning, not that there's anything wro—"
"My sister sent me a wedding invitation yesterday."
Guinevere swallows the rest of her aimless words.
She spent a week at the Evans household last summer. While she was there, she got to know and love Mr. and Mrs. Evans as if they were a second set of parents. They were lovely, inviting people who welcomed her with open arms. But one person in the household that Guinevere didn't take to was Petunia Evans.
Lily's sister was standoffish from the moment Guinevere walked through the front door to the day she left. She even had the audacity to lob a few insults at Guinevere during her time there. She took shots at everything from her accent to her clothes to, of course, her magic. They were well hidden behind a veil of fake politeness.
Those are the types of insults Guinevere hates the most.
"Do you not like her fiancé?"
Lily scoffs.
"I've never even met him," she spits. "But that's not the point. She sent me an invitation. Just an invitation."
Guinevere struggles to understand Lily's anger. She has no siblings of her own to base her judgments off of. Are siblings supposed to get some sort of special invitation? Was Petunia's fiancé supposed to ask Lily for permission first?
"What wrong with the invitation?"
Lily bites down on her lower lip and looks down at the table in front of them. It's an obvious attempt to hold back tears, but Guinevere pretends not to notice.
"It means she already has her bridesmaids picked out, Guin."
Oh.
Oh.
As understanding dawns on Guinevere, she feels righteous anger towards Petunia rise in her chest. That selfish, horse-faced, backstabbing little—
"Don't worry yourself over it," Lily insists. "I should have known she wouldn't want me to be a part of her wedding. It's just…"
Lily wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her robes in a valiant effort to be discrete, but Guinevere can still tell that tears are forming in her eyes. Again, she pretends not to notice. Lily isn't the type who wants her vulnerability to be acknowledged.
"You thought she'd at least want you to be a bridesmaid," Guinevere supplies for her. Lily nods stiffly.
Guinevere starts reaching over to wrap her arm around her friend, but retracts it. She has no idea how to comfort Lily. What words could possibly make this better? She desperately wishes that she could somehow fix this for her, but that's impossible. And it devastates her.
Lily's pain is her pain.
As soon as Slughorn announces that it's time to get in their pairs, Lily slides out of her seat and makes her way to the back of the class. Guinevere can't help but feel some pity for Cordelia Jenkins. There's no way that Lily will be putting up with her nonsense.
Sirius takes his place next to Guinevere and gives her a small smile. He was noticeably absent from breakfast that morning. And the morning before.
Not that Guinevere was worried or anything.
Without even having to ask her first, Sirius lights the fire under the cauldron. He knows by now how skittish she is when it comes to fire. The partnership that they've cultivated in this class is completely seamless. They're a well oiled machine.
As he pulls his hand away, Guinevere sees a flash of red pass her by. Without thought, she grabs his wrist. He's too stunned to resist when she turns his hand over.
His knuckles are all covered in fresh scabs.
"What the hell did you do to your hand?"
Sirius yanks his arm away.
"Nothing. Can you add the Ashwinder egg to the cauldron?"
Guinevere does as he says. She doesn't let the subject drop, though, and continues to press him as she adds in the horseradish.
"That is not nothing," she deadpans. "Did you punch a wall or something? You should really take proper care of that, you know."
He growls in frustration and slams down the squill bulb he was attempting to juice.
"It's nothing," he repeats. "Can you please mind your own business for once in your life?"
His accusation stings more than she expected it to. The ones that have truth behind them always hurt the most, it seems.
She grabs the Murtlap and begins chopping at it. They haven't even finished the previous step in the potion yet; she just wants something to occupy her attention.
She hears Sirius groan in frustration.
"Guin, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—,"
"No, it's alright," she murmurs, pushing the chopped up part of the Murtlap into a small pile.
Sirius squeezes the juice out of the squill bulb and into the cauldron.
"No, it isn't," he insists. "I didn't mean that. I'm just a bit on edge lately. I talked to… someone a few days ago."
Guinevere grabs the bits of Murtlap and tosses it into the cauldron, swiftly turning back to face him.
"You talked to Regulus?!"
Sirius holds a finger up to his lips, a sign for her to shut up before someone in the class hears. She feels her ears heat up in embarrassment and decides to make herself useful and grind up the Occamy eggshell.
"How did it go?" she asks, keeping her voice low this time.
Sirius's mouth forms into a grim line as he heats up the cauldron before adding tincture of thyme.
"It's too late for him now, Guin. It's already happened."
Her hand almost slips while funneling in the ground Occamy shells.
"But… how? Did it happen here?"
The idea that something so sinister could go on in the place she considers a second home is… unnerving, to say the least.
Sirius snorts and starts to stir the concoction.
"No idea. He didn't stick around long enough for me to ask."
Guinevere adds a sprinkle of powdered common rue. She's doing the entire potion by memory, having not looked at her book once since they began making the liquid luck. For a brief moment, panic grips her heart as she wonders if that was the next step or the step after, but it fades as quickly as it came. She decides that if this one potion ends up bad, then it's not the end of the world.
As much as she loves Potions, her heart just isn't in it today.
"I'm sorry," she whispers.
He stiffens and doesn't respond, instead focusing on stirring. Guinevere wonders if maybe "sorry" was the wrong thing to say.
The two continue to work on the potion together in total silence. Guinevere doesn't mind it, though. The silence gives her an opportunity to focus on their work instead of his pain or Lily's pain or her own pain. Even without any words spoken, both parties seem to be in agreement about who does what job. They move fluidly, completely in synch with each other.
This should be considered a form of art, Guinevere decides.
They reach the last step considerably quicker than most pairs in the class. Since they've decided to be friends, this has become a continual thing. Not because they're any smarter than the other students in the class, Guinevere believes.
They just make a bloody good team.
"Meet me in my room before dinner," Sirius requests.
Guinevere stops in the middle of the figure eight shape she was waving her wand in.
She wants to ask him why, but she isn't willing to engage him in another conversation when they're so close to finishing this potion. She has Charms next and she has to track down Dorcas beforehand to get her book back.
"Sure."
It's rushed, said without really thinking. After all, she doesn't have any evening classes on Wednesdays. What's the harm of going to the boys' dormitory during the evening when she's already broken curfew and been in it at night?
Merlin, she hopes no one ever finds out she did that.
Clearing her throat, Guinevere twirls her wand in a figure eight and points down at the potion.
"Felixempra!"
After a nearly ten minute long battle to get Stevie Wonder to stop clawing at her robes, Guinevere finally manages to get the tabby to settle down. She had to transfigure her dresser into a scratching post, but at least his claws aren't buried in her leg anymore.
A little sweaty and covered in cat hair, Guinevere meets Sirius outside his dorm.
She'll be forever grateful that he didn't comment on her appearance.
He ushers her inside and, much to her surprise, sits down on his bed. She freezes.
The last time she was in here, they both remained standing. What is the etiquette in this situation? Should she sit down next to him? On his bed?
No, she decides. I don't want to get too comfortable.
After a few very drawn out seconds in which Sirius is stares at her as if she's ill, Guinevere plops herself down on the trunk at the end of his bed. He raises an eyebrow.
"You comfortable?"
Her cheeks burn with the embarrassment of it all as she nods back in response. It's probably obvious to him that it's not every day she's in a boy's room. Despite being in the same room some nights before, it all still feels new.
She tries to remind herself that there's no reason to be self-conscious. Sirius is a friend. Just a friend. This isn't like the numerous times she's been invited back to a boy's dorm after a date only for her to decline. There's no societal pressure for anything to happen here.
She swallows hard.
"So, what is it you invited me here for?" she asks, her voice rising an octave. Sirius seems to find this amusing.
If they weren't friends, she'd hex that grin right off his face.
"You know, something occurred to me last night."
"And what is that?"
His amused grin relaxes into a content smile. It puts her more at ease.
"I've told you so much more about my family than I've told anybody but James, but yours is still a mystery to me. I don't think that's very fair."
Guinevere raises an eyebrow.
"You invited me in here to ask me about my family?" she asks, not fully convinced of his motives.
He nods back at her with complete sincerity written on his face. If he has a hidden agenda, it doesn't show. It looks like he did ask her to visit him just so he could talk to her about her family.
Maybe Sirius really is as mad as she once thought.
"There's not much to tell," she admits. "I think I come from a pretty normal family. At least, compared to yours."
As soon as the words leave her mouth, she worries that she may have overstepped. Sirius's family is a sore spot, one that's no doubt been made even worse by what happened with Regulus. Before she can apologize, Sirius lets out a chuckle.
She inwardly sighs with relief.
"Everyone has their own "normal"," he says. "Mine is just as different from yours as yours is from James's, or James's is from Lily's, or Lily's is from Marlene's. I want to hear about your "normal". I'm sure it's fascinating."
There's a genuine intrigue in his words that tugs at Guinevere's heart in a way that she isn't completely used to.
"Mum and Dad married right out of university," she begins, fiddling with the ends of her robes. "I came along a few years later, and Dad died a few years after that."
Sirius frowns deeply.
"I'm sorry to hear that."
Again with the gut-wrenching sincerity that makes her heart pound.
"It's fine," she insists. "I mean, he's my dad and I'll always have love for him, but I never knew him, you know? Mum remarried when I was five, and I've always called him Dad. So I never felt like I was missing much in the father figure department."
Her jaw twitches when she realizes that Sirius, even though he has a living father, most likely was missing much.
"You're a muggleborn, right?" he asks, seemingly not noticing her discomfort.
"And proud, yes. Mum and Dad are both writers. Bloody good ones, too. They were confused as all hell when McGonagall came to the door with my letter. They're still confused about our world sometimes, but they're learning. Shoulda seen me trying to explain to 'em what the houses mean. They still pronounce Gryffindor wrong."
He chuckles and leans against the post of his bed. Guinevere had been so wrapped up in what she was saying that she didn't notice him scoot further down the bed until he was at the edge.
"Did you know anything about the houses before you came here? I haven't met one witch or wizard who didn't at least have a preference before they got sorted, but I suppose not all muggleborns know what a travesty it would be to be a Slytherin."
She reaches over to give him a shove.
"I only knew what McGonagall told me when she visited with my letter. She seemed to forget the part about Slytherins in our year being slimy gits. Gryffindor was the absolute last house I expected to be in, but here I am. I still have no idea how it happened."
Sirius furrows his brow, staring down at her like she grew an extra head.
"You think you shouldn't be in Gryffindor?" he asks.
She gives a noncommittal shrug. It's something that haunts her every single year since her sorting, but she doesn't want him to know just how much it does.
It's a difficult thing, being among the most courageous people she knows all day, and feeling like she doesn't fit into the same mold.
"I'm not really all that brave," she states. "I don't like fights or confrontations or trouble of any kind. I like to keep my head down and my nose clean. That sounds more like Hufflepuff material to me."
Sirius slides off his bed and sits down on the trunk, forcing Guinevere to scoot over to make room. Their sides are pressed together, their knees bumping into each other. Guinevere knows she could move down farther on the trunk if she wanted to, but their close proximity doesn't cause her any discomfort.
Like when they were dancing, it feels so natural that it scares her.
"Guinevere, you are ridiculously brave."
She scoffs, looking down at her feet. A finger taps her on the chin and gently forces her head back to meet Sirius's eyes.
"I'm not joking," he asserts. "You're not reckless, so what? That doesn't mean you aren't brave. If someone were to insult me straight to my face, I'd probably hex them out of their wits. That's just who I am. I'm reckless, and I know it. It's not something I'm ashamed of, but it doesn't make me courageous. But you? You meet insults with kindness. Those pureblood loving prats are awful to you, but you don't pay them any mind. That takes real courage."
Guinevere gapes at him, not knowing quite what to say. But she doesn't have to say anything; he's still going.
"Not to mention that you're always the first person to admit that you're wrong and apologize. I don't know how you do it. I hate apologizing. It took me hours of working myself up to get me to apologize to you in the hospital wing that day. It takes a lot of courage to admit you're wrong."
She shakes her head, grabbing onto Sirius's hand and squeezing.
"Sirius…," she breathes.
"You stick your neck out for your friends," he continues. "You do it for James on the Quidditch pitch all the time. You even spied on my brother for me when you didn't even like me, just because you thought I had the right to know. You don't let yourself get pushed around either. After 1st year, whenever I teased you, you always gave back as good as you got. Courage can be silent sometimes, Guin."
Staring into his eyes in that moment, Guinevere is reminded of James.
Well, not of James specifically. Sirius looks nothing like James.
She's reminded of the spark in James's hazel eyes whenever he looked at Lily in those years he spent pining after her. He didn't look at her as if she hung the moon; he looked at her as if she was the moon. To him, she was something ethereal and otherworldly, but far out of reach. The castle could have crumbled around them and he wouldn't have noticed as long as Lily was around him.
Replace hazel eyes with grey and that's the same type of spark that she sees when she gazes at Sirius.
How long did Guinevere spend envying that gaze that Lily received? How long did she spend wishing that someone would look at her with that amount of admiration? Now here it is, staring back at her in the eyes of Sirius Black.
They're caught in silence. The only sound in the room is the faint noise of the common room right before dinner time. Guinevere lets out a breathy laugh when Sirius rests a hand on her cheek.
She's not sure why she laughed. Maybe it was nerves, maybe she was just feeling ticklish, but it gets Sirius to let out a laugh of his own.
Then, his lips are on hers.