… Alternatively, the Mysterious Case of Sirius Black's Secret Admirer. (It wouldn't let me put the full title as the chapter name, lol)

This fic is written for the November Assignment for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as well as for a host of other challenges for the same forum. Prompts will be at the end of the work.

Assignment #9: Care of Magical Creatures: Top Five Dragons

Task #1: Write about someone trying to be sneaky.

Disclaimer: J.K Rowling is not a goddess, but her writing is magical, and I can never compare. So, she keeps the characters, the places and her own created world, while I borrow them all every now and then like the pathetic human I am. The plot is all mine though!

Warnings/tags: none.

Genre: Romance, humour, fluff.

Word Count: 3221 words

Summary: Sirius has a secret admirer—who will it turn out to be? University!AU featuring an oblivious Sirius, jealous Remus, snarky Peter and James, the king of all matchmakers.

Have fun!

"I got another one!"

Sirius looks up from his letter, waving the paper around his head excitedly. "Jamie, Rem, Pettigrew, look!"

"Huh," James says, trying to peek at the still-moving letter, "Already? Didn't the previous one come in just yesterday?"

"It did!" Sirius affirms with a hard shake of his head, "I'm going to see what it says."

Sirius bends down to read his letter, his finger slowly tracing the words. When James tries to peek again, Sirius glares him away, hunching over bodily to protect his letter from prying eyes.

"Ahhh!" he nearly shrieks when he gets to the end, "Guys, they want to meet me tonight!"

Peter Pettigrew, used to Sirius' dramatics, finally looks up from his book. "I'm trying to study."

Sirius frowns, but decides not to antagonise his roommate—for once. "Can you go study somewhere else, Pettigrew? This is important."

"I'd like to think my finals are a tad more important than your second grade secret admirer, Black," Pettigrew says dryly. "And no, I can't. Everywhere in the library is full."

"Ah, well," Sirius retorts, smiling cheerily, "you are studying civil engineering, Pettigrew, so you'll have to get used to background noise sometime. Might as well start now."

"You're an arsehole, Black."

"Aww, Pete," Sirius responds with a big fake grin, ""It's okay if you don't like me. Not everyone has good taste."

Pettigrew levels him an icy glare, and his fat head drops back down to his equally fat book. Sirius ignores him—his roommate has been a pain in the arse since the start of the year, and their sniping is nothing new.

"What were we talking about, again?" Sirius asks his two friends, turning back around.

Remus, sitting on Sirius' wobbly desk chair, looks up at him with one hand cupping his cheek. "Your second grade secret admirer," he says wryly, sounding oddly mutinous. Sirius looks him over, but there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with his friend.

"Yes, the letter writer!" Sirius glances quickly at his letter again, grinning broadly when the words stay the same. "They want to 'rendezvous at midnight under the soft glow of the stars'. Doesn't it sound romantic?"

"It sounds terrible," is Remus' flat response.

James frowns. "Hey now, I think it's brilliant! Whoever wrote that letter sounds really smart and charming, Sirius. A real poetic soul."

Remus presses his mouth into a flat line, seemingly holding in a snort. "James thinks it's good. Hence, it's terrible."

"Well, the writing is a little cliché," Sirius agrees, watching James pout, "but you can't deny that this is all very exciting."

Remus huffs. "So, where is this secret admirer of yours meeting you?"

"I don't know," Sirius shrugs.

Remus' brow furrows. "You don't know where you both are going to meet? Did they tell you that they'd find you themselves or something? How're they even sure that you won't just stay in your dorm for the night?"

"Uh, no," Sirius clarifies, "That's what they told me to answer in the letter. If someone asks. Because it's supposed to be a secret."

Remus huffs again. "Oh, a secret," he mutters quietly, hardly discernible to Sirius' ears. James, oddly, looks very pleased.

"What are you grinning for, you loon?" Remus snaps at James when he notices.

James' grin falls. "Nothing," he replies a little awkwardly, "It all just sounds so mysterious. I do love a good mystery."

Remus rolls his eyes. "I'm going to go study myself," he mutters to them, standing up from his seat. The rolling chair creaks as he gets up, the sound just as cranky as the testy twitch in his right eye. Sirius and James stare at him, but he doesn't offer an explanation for his abrupt decision to leave.

"You two can gush over your mysterious secret admirer together. I've got finals hanging over my head," Remus says quickly, ignoring their looks. "See you in class; don't be late!"

"Yes, thank you, Lupin," Pettigrew pipes up from his corner at the far end of his own bed, "Leave me alone with these idiots." He still doesn't look up from his book.

Remus' lips twitch, but he doesn't reply as he leaves through the door. Sirius and James blink, exchanging confused looks.

"Well," Sirius says, "is it just me, or was that a little bit hasty?"

James' leg jigs up and down, making Sirius' bed bounce. "I'd say it's not just you, mate."

At the other end of the dorm room, Pettigrew sighs.

.oOo.

"Ma, no!" Pettigrew bites into his phone angrily. "You don't know what I've been through; after finals are done, I just want a break."

Sirius checks himself over in the bathroom's full length mirror, watching Pettigrew's reflection through the open door with gleeful amusement as his irritated roommate paces up and down between their two beds, phone clutched tightly to his ear.

"No, I don't want you to set me up for my birthday… no, I don't care how lovely her hair is!"

Sirius tugs down his white t-shirt and straightens his navy blue jacket, pulling the ends of his sleeves down so that they are even. Tucking away a few errant strands of his hair, he looks at his reflection and gives himself a pleased nod.

"Oh heavens, Ma, I don't want to hear about her legs! Ma… Ma, I'd better not come home to find the neighbour's daughter at the dinner table again!"

Pettigrew's overly large slippers slap against the uncarpeted floor, the high-pitched sound even louder as Sirius walks out of their tiny attached bathroom. Sirius flashes him an amused grin, and Pettigrew glowers in response, stilling in place as he listens to what his mother says at the other end of the line.

"You can't—don't tell Mary! Absolutely not, Ma!" he squeaks into the phone as Sirius grabs his dorm keys, and the slapping of the slippers starts up again.

Chuckling to himself, Sirius leaves the room. He walks down the staircase leisurely, waving at a couple of people he knows as he passes by their floors. When he's down the stairs and out the door to the building, the pleasantly cool breeze of the night hits him like a breath of fresh air.

Hands in his pockets, he strolls down the lawn, making his way across to the clock tower at the very center of their campus. The letter had told him to meet them there under the arch at the bottom of the tower at eleven thirty, not midnight, and Sirius cannot deny that the thrill of mystery adds so much more to the excitement he feels.

The center of campus is dark, the only lights coming from the dorm buildings surrounding the area. Picking his way through the paved path, he reaches the silent arch of the tower, standing right under the soothing safety of the stone. He settles in to wait.

He doesn't know how long he stands waiting—five minutes, maybe ten—when he hears a soft whisper carrying through the night.

"I don't know if I should do this," the voice hisses from somewhere behind him.

"Come on, it'll be fine," a second voice whispers, "He wouldn't tell me a thing. Don't you wanna know who it is?"

Sirius frowns, uncrossing his arms from his chest. Those voices, somehow, sound really familiar.

"This isn't right," the first voice says again, "we shouldn't…"

"We should," the second voice insists. Sirius peers around the stone of the arch, trying to see who the voices belong to, but he can't make out more than two vague shapes in the darkness.

"Come on," one of the two says, "go wait under there, I'll get the keys."

"What do you—don't you have the keys already?"

"Uh, no, I forgot. I'll go get them now."

"James!" The first voice gets louder, and is immediately shushed by the second one.

James? Sirius mouths to himself. Did the other voice belong to Remus, then? What were they doing here?

Sirius hears the sounds of light footsteps stomping toward him, and has a mere second to wonder if he should find someplace to hide as the sounds of angry muttering come closer, before the other person rounds the arch and nearly crashes into him. The muttering instantly stops.

Sirius stares at the brown eyes widening fearfully at the sight of him, then flicks his eyes down to where his own hands are clutching at Remus' upper arms, holding them both steady. He glances back and forth between Remus' face and his own hands dumbly, while Remus stands stock-still, staring at him in shock. The silence stretches between them, bordering on ridiculous.

"Si—Sirius," Remus finally stutters out nervously, "Wha—what are you doing here?"

Sirius blinks. "I should be asking you that," he replies, bemused.

"I, uh—" Remus flicks his eyes across the lawn, likely searching for James— "was just having a stroll. Lovely night, isn't it?"

Sirius blinks again, then chuckles in response. "Remus," he says belatedly, "you are a terrible liar."

Remus slumps in his arms, and Sirius finally remembers to let go. He takes a step back, feeling the coldness of the stone behind him seep into his spine.

Remus huffs out a resigned sigh. "Okay fine, the truth—James and I were planning to watch from one of the windows of the lower floors of the tower to see who you were meeting at midnight."

Sirius stares.

"It was James' idea!" Remus hastily follows up. "He talked me into it, I swear!"

Sirius tries to process the information, coming up with too many questions and no answers. "Why choose this place, though?" he decides to ask. "You can't really see anybody's faces from up there, even through the lower windows. And how were you even planning on getting in? They have it locked, remember?"

Remus bites his lips, worrying it between his teeth. "James had the whole thing planned out even before he got me to agree to go with him. He even had the binoculars with him."

"Binoculars," Sirius mumbles incredulously to himself, and even in the dark he can see Remus' resulting blush.

"Er, yeah," Remus stammers, chuckling awkwardly before he continues. "And as for the entrance, James said that he could get us in. In his words, 'he knows a guy.' He just left to get the key, in fact; he said that he'd forgotten to pick it up."

Sirius frowns hard. Nothing Remus has said makes sense. "James forgot the key? The most important part of your plan? That doesn't sound like him."

Remus tilts his head sideways. "Yeah, you're right," he breathes, lost in thought, "That doesn't sound like him."

"And why did he bring you here, at this time?" Sirius continues—he's on a roll now. "He could have very well known that you both could have just followed me to wherever I went at midnight; that would have been so much easier."

"It's like he knew you'd be here," Remus sums up with startling realisation. "And when he just left abruptly… the key was an excuse for leaving. It had to be."

"How did he know where I was, though?" Sirius wonders aloud. "I didn't tell a soul—no one but me and the letter-writer knew…"

"Unless…" Remus starts, and his eyes widen to the size of saucers. Sirius' eyes enlarge to match his.

"James wrote the letters!" they exclaim in unison.

"But why? What's his purpose?" Sirius questions, "Why did he go to these lengths?"

"Well, he obviously wanted us to be here at the same time, for some reason," Remus states, and his expression turns confused. "But I don't know why."

"Because you two are idiots," a voice pipes up from… right in front of Sirius. They both startle, looking around blindly, but the person attached to the sudden voice is nowhere to be seen.

"Did someone…" Remus whispers to him worriedly. Sirius nods hastily, feeling just as perturbed.

"See? Idiots," the voice starts up again, and Sirius is in his right mind again—enough to recognise the voice as one belonging to James. "And you're idiots who have been dancing around each other for years, and it is painful to watch."

Remus spins around with a jerk, looking at the stone wall behind him. "James?" he questions incredulously.

"I think he's hiding behind the wall," Sirius whispers to him a little loudly, and judging by Remus' look, a little unnecessarily. "You think?" Remus' glare tells him silently, and he gives him a sheepish smile in response.

"How did you get there?" Sirius asks to the empty air before him. "I didn't even hear you! Remus, did you hear him?" Remus shakes his head. "Have you been there this whole time?"

"Not the point," James answers huffily.

"James, what in the world are you doing?" Remus calls out to the wall, and James' disembodied voice responds again.

"Well, like I said, you two are being idiots and I've had enough, so I'm getting you both together."

"So you did write those letters?" Sirius asks for clarification, and Remus levels him another look.

"Of course I did!" James calls. "Who else would it be, tosser?"

"That does explain the horrific poetry," Remus mutters to himself, and Sirius cannot help a grin at that. Luckily, James doesn't hear the insult to his rhyming skills—Sirius must agree, though; some of those poems had been terrible.

"Now that you've witnessed my master plan," James continues, "Can you two get your shit together and confess your undying love for each other already?"

"James!" Remus exclaims softly, glancing quickly at Sirius. The blush starts rising up his cheeks again.

"Wait, is it true?" Sirius asks, "Do you really like me?"

"Sirius…"

"No, really?"

"Um, yes?" Remus says, unsure. He looks a little bashful. "I thought it was obvious."

Sirius snorts. "Nothing's ever obvious with you, Rem." Then the words catch up to him. "Wait, really?"

Remus bites his lip. "Right from the start, actually."

Sirius feels his smile widening, slowly taking over his face. "That sounds perfect," he says, grinning, "because I've liked you too. Right from the start."

"I—really?" Remus responds quickly. His eyes widen then, and he glances away. "Sorry, sorry. It's just—I didn't think you'd want to be more than friends with me. And you kept going out on all these dates with all these people, and then the admirer… I figured you thought of me just as a friend."

"Are you kidding? Remus, the only reason I didn't make a move was because I thought you were straight!"

Remus blinks. "Why would you think that? When have I ever shown interest in women?"

"When have you shown interest in men?" Sirius counters, and Remus' mouth clicks shut. "Face it, you've never shown interest in anyone here, Rem." He chuckles. "Made it more than a little hard for me to get a read on you."

"Well, I guess we're both idiots then," Remus finally says, looking a whole lot stunned.

"Finally!" a voice cries from behind the wall. Sirius blinks out of his happy daze, surprised to find that he had forgotten that James was present at all. "Now, somebody ask the other out, please, and get this soap opera over with."

"You're the one who set up this soap opera, James," Remus calls out dryly. "This is your fault."

"It's okay, calm down," Sirius chuckles. "I'll do it." He turns to Remus, taking a deep breath.

"So, Remus. Wanna do coffee sometime?"

The side of Remus' mouth twitches up. "It's finals week next week, Sirius. We don't have time for a coffee date."

Sirius's face falls. "Oh."

"We can make it a study date instead? We'll stop for a caffeine break anyway, so we'll have coffee."

Sirius grins again, his face lighting up. "As long as we take a rain check on the actual coffee date."

Remus laughs. "Of course," he says with a smirk. "We can do whatever you want once finals end."

"Perfect."

From behind the wall, James' voice cries, "Yes!" Then comes a thump and an "ow!" followed by a quick, "I'm okay!" Sirius shakes his head, and he sees Remus do the same.

"I'd come around and hug you or something," James says then, "but I think it might spoil the mood you've got going on." Sirius exchanges a wry look with Remus. "But congratulations, mates! I'm appointing myself best man at your wedding, by the way—and I'm definitely including this in my speech!"

Sirius rolls his eyes. "James, the mood," he reminds his best friend.

"Shit, yeah—" Sirius hears a grunt, followed by a loud curse. "I'm just—I'm just going to go back to the dorms and put these binoculars away. Can't let them break. You two just… do what you have to, yeah? Like, kiss or whatever."

There's the loud sound of stumbling, growing fainter and fainter in the distance, and then they're finally left alone for real.

"I can't believe he did all that," Remus shakes his head again fondly, but Sirius has a question for him.

"Hey, I never asked before—why did you agree to going with James in the first place? You would've known what a dumb plan it was, and it's not like either of us can ever change your mind if you don't want it to be changed."

Remus' eyes widen, and he quickly looks away, staring at the ground. "I, uh, may have been a little curious. About the mystery person. Just a little."

Sirius feels amusement growing, and he cannot hide the smile that builds. "So, you were jealous?"

"What? No!" Remus scoffs, but Sirius can practically hear the embarrassment in his voice.

"You were totally jealous."

"Was not."

"Was too."

"Was not!"

"Was too."

"Sirius!" Remus pushes at his shoulder lightly, and somehow, they both end up laughing.

When they calm down, Sirius decides to speak up, "I won't lie though, I kinda like the idea that you were jealous over me."

Remus groans. "Subject change, please."

"Fine," Sirius huffs playfully. "I'll let it go this time. But only because I have other things on my mind."

"Like what?" Remus teasingly asks.

"Well, we did get blanket permission to do whatever we want."

Remus snorts.

"So," he grins, "how about we get to the… kissing or whatever?"

Remus rolls his eyes, but pulls him closer. "James is going to hold this over our heads forever."

"Totally worth it," Sirius responds, and leans in to close the distance.

November Writing Club

Character Appreciation (Doctor Who): First Doctor - Write about the start of something

Record Collection (Mayday Parade - A Lesson In Romantics): Champagne's For Celebrating (I'll Have a Martini): (phrase) make it right

Time Machine (November: Birthday of Bram Stroker): Sexual orientation: Non-heterosexual [BONUS]

Book Club (This Lie Will Kill You - Chelsea Pitcher): (action) frowning, (trait) deceptive, (action) sighing

Showtime (Funny Girl): The Swan: : (color) white

Amber's Attic: The friends who have kept me going: (trait) loyal

Elizabeth's Empire (Baking): Monkey bread: (relationship) best friends

Liza's Loves (Dungeons & Dragons): Circle of Stars - Full of Stars - Write about a character with the name of a star/constellation

Bex's Basement (Thorpe Park): Stealth: Write about someone being sneaky.

Lizzy's Loft (Unus Annus): (dialogue) "Don't tell [name]!"

Angel's Archives (Giving Thanks): (character) Tony Stark (MCU) alt. [(trait) sarcastic]

Scamander's Case (Trolls): (action) grunting

Film Festival (Howl's Moving Castle): (object) letter

Marvel Appreciation (Avengers A): A - Artificial Intelligence / [Adrenaline Rush]

Lyric Alley ("Harder to Love" by The Trews): I knew the risks I had to try

The Forecast Says: 26th. Snow: Loyal

EnTitled (Season 5): The One Where Ross Moves In - Write about getting a roommate

Autumn Seasonal Challenges:

Days of the Year & Religious Events: 5th October - Do Something Nice Day: Write about someone doing a good deed

National Pizza Month: Avocado: Unrequited Love

Sarcasm Month: "It's okay if you don't like me. Not everyone has good taste."

Native American History Month: Pine Leaf - Write about someone being taken in and adapting to their new life.

Get Organised Week: (item) Notebook

Pet Peeves Week: Sudden stoppers when walking - Write about bumping into someone

Chemistry Week: Rubidium: Resourceful

Games & Puzzles Week: Plot Point: Cheating (not in a relationship)

United Nations Day: Guyana: (object) Clock

Princess Day: Jasmine - Write about someone sneaking out

Colour Prompts: Navy Blue

Gemstones: Opal: Write about an empath or someone showing empathy

Tarot Reading: Six of Wands, upright: Write about someone receiving recognition for an accomplishment.

Honeydukes Hoarder (November Monthly):

Hard Candy: Loyal

Cliche Away (November Monthly): Cliches used:

Character A is in love with their best friend.

Character A keeps receiving love letters from an anonymous source.

Character C plays matchmaker for Characters A and B.

Characters A and B are roommates, and it's hate at first sight.

All Aboard (November Monthly):

Blue Train: Amused

November Fortnightlies:

Truth or Dare: Truth - Write for your OTP (if you have several, pick one)

Wings of Fire: Seawings - Prompt: Write about communicating without speaking aloud.

Hogwarts' Talent Show:

Beatboxing

AU: University!AU

Dialogue: "you don't know what I've been through"

Emotion: Anger

Item: Slippers

Word: Birthday