Maybe there was something in his head that made him hyper-aware of the way James behaved.

Paranoia? Exhaustion from the lack of a peaceful weekend for the entire semester? Trauma from James's last Hospital visit? A combination of all three? Most likely. So he very hurriedly whispered goodnight and very dearly clung to Eilidh's hand.

"You promised we could talk," Sirius said, by way of an excuse. They had skipped lunch because of Josie's crisis and he had promised her the truth. He should start tallying up the lies he was telling and figure out a way to make amends.

"Oh," Eilidh said, her eyes searching, "right." She knew this wasn't about the conversation they had missed, that could be put off till morning. "I'll be up in a minut-" she turned to say to the girls who had already disappeared up the stairs. She gave a wry little smile, sat down on the pillow next to the fireplace, and stretched her fingers out towards the head of the dying embers.

Sirius had already pushed James onto the couch without an explanation. He was now staring sleepily at the coffee table. He took a deep breath and looked at Sirius.

"What?" he asked.

Sirius didn't know where to begin. How do you approach someone about the way their acting when you know you're paranoid, exhausted, and traumatized?

"Where'd you go when you disappeared with Josie?" Eilidh asked, conversationally. He looked at her and thought maybe he wasn't all that paranoid.

"To the park," James yawned. "To look at the ice sculptures. Pretty but not as cool as magical ones."

"Magical ones?" Sirius asked. He had never heard of magical ice sculptures though he supposed someone had to have enchanted one at some point.

"Yeah, in Godric's Hollow," James said.

"Tinworth," Eilidh corrected.

James took a moment to think about it. "That makes sense," he said. "It's where my mum grew up. She's always talking about moving back there." He cringed a little as if the thought of moving to Tinworth physically pained him. "What's in Godric's Hollow then?"

"The Halloween festival," Eilidh said.

"I have never heard of any of these things," Sirius commented.

"Mate," James turned to look at him, wearing very serious expression. "When's the last time you actually celebrated any holiday with your family?"

Sirius's cheeks warmed. He glanced over at Eilidh and was met with slightly widened eyes, frowned brow, and parted lips. The last thing he needed was his girlfriend pitying him. "Mate, we're Black's," he said, fully aware of how much of a cock he sounded like but it was better than the real answer. James opened his mouth to speak again so Sirius rushed to change the topic. "Anyway, why'd you get all jumpy when you came back from the ice sculptures?"

"I didn't." James finally turned away. "Did you know that Josie liked me?"

Eilidh blinked in surprise and tilted her head a bit. "No?"

"Yeah, I don't know. It's weird," James shrugged.

"So, what happened?" Eilidh asked, edging a little closer.

"She just," James made an odd gesture in an attempt to wave it off. "She just told me she liked me."

"And what did you say?" Eilidh asked.

"I said I have a date tomorrow. And Quidditch. And she was drunk and all," he made another weird gesture. "You know. Dealing with stuff."

"Okay," Eilidh said. Sirius had yet to decipher what her okay's meant but they always seemed to have a double meaning.

"I tried not to hurt her," James said.

"A little rejection might be good for her," she shrugged. James nodded, yawned again, and stretched.

"You going to Quidditch tomorrow?" he asked Sirius.

Sirius didn't answer but he could tell by his groan that James knew he wasn't.

"Good night you two. Try not to get pregnant," was James's parting remark.

"I don't want to talk about Quidditch," Sirius said quickly and allowed himself to fall into the couch cushions. Eilidh sighed and climbed up on the couch with him. "I don't want to talk about holidays either."

He heard her teeth click together. She took a long deep breath. His stomach clenched.

"Are we ever going to talk about anything serious?" she asked. She brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. The movement, however small, released the tension in his stomach.

"We talk about serious shit all the time," Sirius said. "Just last night in the shack, remember?" He flipped over and rested his head in her lap.

"I learn more about you from James than I do from you," Eilidh said.

What on earth could James be telling her? He knew way too much about him. He was a good enough friend not to tell her anything too embarrassing. On purpose.

"Erm," he took a moment to think about what he could tell her. He really didn't want to talk about his family or Quidditch. "Did you know I'm actually the 'bookworm' of the group? Everyone always thinks it's Remus but he doesn't read more than he has to, you know for class or whatever research we might be doing."

"I meant personal stuff," Eilidh said. "I just don't want to have to learn about you from James, I want to hear it from you."

"Of course. But James is my friend -"

"I'm your friend too! That's what I'm talking about. I feel like you shut me out and that you hide things from me. I realise that you have a different relationship with me than you do with your friends but…" she trailed off.

"I just meant that James has been my friend for four years, so, you know, of course, he knows a lot about me," Sirius said.

Eilidh nodded and started picking at the skin around her thumb.

"Eilidh," he reached up to take one of her hands and took a deep breath. "I hate Quidditch. I hate playing on a Quidditch team, I mean. It's just if you don't play as hard or care as much as James and Creswell then you get punished. I have enough obligations and punishments in my life without keeping something that I only joined to make my mother happy."

"So, why don't you just quit?" she asked. There wasn't a hint of anger, or frustration, or even disapproval in her voice. It was nice.

"I have," Sirius said.

"They don't know that," Eilidh said.

"At this point, they'd have to be pretty stupid not to," he laughed. She smiled humorlessly. He suppressed a groan. "What?"

"Nothing. I'm - I am proud of you for quitting when it wasn't making you happy. You shouldn't do things just for other people's sake," Eilidh said.

"But?" he urged her to continue. He liked this diplomatic Eilidh. Even though she was arguing against him.

"But," she sighed and carried on reluctantly. "Maybe you should have told them when you first decided. That way they would have had all this time to replace you and they wouldn't have hung onto the hope that you'd show up and be there for them."

"See, now you're making me feel bad," Sirius half-joked and ignored the small twinge of guilt that appeared.

"I'm sorry. I did say I was proud of you," she reminded.

"I know," he kissed her hand. It was a small and simple show of affection that at one time, seemingly worlds away, would have been preceded by a string of self-doubt and second guesses but he hadn't even thought about it before he had done it. Could it be possible that everything in their relationship be so easy? He decided to try it.

"We're making a map," he said bluntly. It went completely against his plan; he was going to ease her way into it, prepare her before showing her what they had done. It was a gamble, or a test he supposed, to see how she would react to their more reckless schemes.

"A what?" she asked.

"A map. Of Hogwarts. That shows where everyone is and where the staircases move to and all the secret passages we find. Everything really," Sirius said. He waited, counting the seconds with every stroke of his finger along her lifeline.

"Erm, what if -"

"The Slytherins get it? We thought of that and that's why we wanted to break into McGonagall's office. In first year we charmed this parchment so we could vanish the ink until James or I got it and said the password to make it reappear. She confiscated it and told us that those kind of spells are dangerous and some are illegal so we never did it again and now we can't remember what the spell was. So -"

"You're going to break in and find it so you can copy the magic," she said. Sirius nodded. He tried to read her emotions beyond just stunned but he couldn't. "You're making a map of Hogwarts that shows everything that moves, all the secret passageways, everything, in a billion-year-old castle?"

"Yes," he said.

"That's going to take a lot of time," she said, which wasn't at all what he was expecting.

"We get bored easily," he shrugged.

"You're absolutely brilliant," she grinned. "Mental but brilliant. Please be careful."

"Always," he promised, smiling. He was both incredibly pleased because he seemed to have impressed her and relieved because she wasn't angry at all.

"But what does that have to do with Mandrakes?" she asked.

His heart dropped down to his stomach. She couldn't find out about that plan. First, because James was right about it being dangerous for her. Second, because he wasn't sure what James would do if he found out that she was catching on. He didn't think he was really done with the oblivating thing. Out of habit, he tried to think of a lie. Mandrake tea helps you think. Mandrake root powder makes you untraceable. But that's what started this mess in the first place. Things could be as easy as taking a breath for them if he just stopped lying.

He sat up and took both her hands in his. There were tiny flecks of gold in her eyes that he never noticed before.

"Eilidh," he said, as serious as he could muster. She instantly sobered and tensed. "I need you to promise that you'll never ask about that again."

"Why?" she whispered. Why was a good question and yet another he couldn't answer.

"Just promise me that you'll never ask about it, that you'll go completely deaf to the word Mandrake," he implored.

He could tell that she wanted to do this for him but everything in her was pushing her to say no, to keep asking questions. There had to be something he could do, something else they could do with Mandrakes that would ease her suspicion.

"Eilidh, trust me." He was asking a lot, he knew he was, especially right after they had a conversation about how he never opened up to her but this was a lot bigger than holidays and missed practices. He also knew that there was no way she would say no. She was too much like James, she relied too much on friendship and put too much on trust.

"Okay. Only if you'll promise you'll be careful," she said, earnestly. She squeezed his hands.

"Always," he grinned.

"No, no arrogant 'I'm always careful' because you're not -"

"I promise I'll be careful. We know what we're doing, love," he said.

Eilidh nodded, curled into his side, and yawned. "Enough with the serious talk. Tell me what you've been doing instead of going to Quidditch?"

"Usually reading. Usually in my dormitory now that it's cold," he said.

"Boring," she groaned.

"You sound like James," he chuckled.

"Oh, this should be good," she giggled and adjusted herself so she could look up at him. "When did you know that you and James would be friends? Like real friends not - you know what I mean."

It was in first year, back when Bellatrix was still in school and Narcissa had just been made a prefect and Andromeda was still pretending she was a Black. Back when he was more Black than he was now. It wasn't a good year, not just because of his family but because James and he weren't instantaneous friends. At first, it seemed like they might be, they got along excellently on the train, by some cosmic force they were put in the same house, they both had an aptitude for pranks, they could talk Quidditch till they were blue in the face. But eventually his family caught up with him and he said something stupid and James, being the ardently chivalrous boy he is, took offence to it and got physical. No one won that fight. They were both hesitant in their movements yet they were both so angry that they couldn't stop. They both ended up in the Hospital wing with minor injuries.

James had taken whatever Sirius had said as a betrayal and refused to speak to him. He had never felt more alone in his entire life than at that point. Sure, he was used to being the odd one out, the weird one, the one that didn't quite fit, but at least he had Regulus and secretly Andromeda. But Regulus was at home and Andy thought it was too much of a risk to misbehave at Hogwarts.

Bellatrix loved to mock the fact that he was alone, said that if he had just shown a little loyalty to his family he wouldn't be such a freak. And he, being a prideful little berk, would tell her off. That never ended well, not even when they were little.

And James one day found out about it and they had a very long and meaningful conversation about what words were okay and what weren't. James decided that just because they weren't friends, that didn't mean that Sirius had to be alone. So he sat with them in the Great Hall and in class. Then one day, near the end of October, James looked over his shoulder and told Bellatrix that she was an idiot.

It was funny actually, to see a scrawny little eleven-year-old tell Bellatrix, who was celebrated as a prodigy, that she was an idiot and that she was better off keeping her mouth shut before everyone else realized how stupid she really was. Her face had turned red and Sirius swore he saw steam coming out of her ears. Sirius, of course, knew what was coming so he stood up, stepped in front of James and shouted "Too bad you can't pretend you're not ugly!" and prepared himself for the blow.

"Luckily for me, Andy was nearby or else I'd be dead because I swear she was going to kill me," Sirius laughed. "Anyway, I looked back at James and he's got this weird look on his face, he's all bright-eyed, you know how he gets. No one's ever looked at me like that before. And I figure that if he can put up with my bullshit and my family and still keep his sanity, I have to be friends with him because if I'm not, I'll probably lose it and end up like Bellatrix."

"You realised that you had to be friends with him because he loved you enough to have your back even when he was mad at you," she corrected.

"That's what I said," Sirius said. "What about you? Why are you friends with Lily?"

"Because she's the only one that wasn't afraid of me," Eilidh answered.

Sirius nodded, pretending to understand. "Did you yell at them all the time too?"

"No!" she laughed. "It's because I'm a Nicnevin and everyone thinks Nicnevins turn themselves into werewolves."

Sirius vaguely remembered hearing something about that before. He didn't know of any idiot that actually believed it but apparently so.

Lily and Eilidh didn't become friends until second year. In first year she spent all of her time with her cousin Althea. It wasn't out of the ordinary for her family to seclude themselves to only each other, with all the rumours and prejudices surrounding them it was easier that way. Then second year came around and Althea had O.W.L's to prepare for and friends who were annoyed with her for spending so much time with her much younger cousin. So, having no more cousins at her disposal, she attempted to make friends. The girls at first seemed curious about her yet incredibly hesitant. It was Lily who had the guts to just ask her if she was a werewolf or not. And that was it. From there, their friendship blossomed into the cataclysmic disaster that it was in the present.

"It's not getting any better?" Sirius asked.

"It's better than it was," Eilidh allowed. "We're always just inches away from tearing each other's throats out and, so we're trying to not fight in front of anyone else so we don't put them into the middle of it, and I don't know if that's helping or just making it worse."

"As long as you're finding time to talk about it, I don't see how that could make it worse," Sirius mused.

They sat there, with Sirius's arm draped over her shoulders, and Eilidh curled into his side, just remembering simpler times and wondering where they'd be if the war wasn't tearing everything apart. Maybe Snape wouldn't feel the need to choose a side and then maybe James and Lily could be friends and all nine of them could be there, camped out in the Common Room, trading stories about their pasts and talking about all the things they could do together. They had constructed their own utopia and had allowed the illusion of it to take them over so thoroughly that both slept with ease for the first time in a very long time.

***Thank you Love Fiction 2018 :D

****Kubra Potter, I don't even know if you're going to read this because you wrote a review for chapter 13 but thank you! I absolutely adore Remus, he has such depth to him.

*****Jane Turnleaf, again I don't know if you'll be reading this but of course I read your review, your opinions are important to me. Thank you :) The subject of Peter's blood status has been debated to no end for years. Rowling has never put in her input but she has said is that "Muggleborns are not allowed (to be a Death Eater) except in rare circumstances." She said this in regards to Snape's blood status, him being half and the purebloods believing that was just as bad as being Muggle-born. In my opinion, it never seemed like Peter was ever truly accepted as a real Death Eater, even though he was basically the reason Voldemort was able to return to power. Voldemort never showed him any gratitude, he even went to the lengths of making Peter Snape's "assistant" when he had to have known what that meant for him. I think Voldemort giving Peter the dark mark was just a means to an end for him, a way to get inside information in the beginning, and eventually return to power at the start of the second war, in the same way, Peter used the dark mark for his own survival. It could also be the reason no one suspected Peter of being Voldemort's spy, after all, why would Death Eaters' allow a muggle born to join their ranks? This is just my opinion, I do understand why people believe Peter was either half or pure (his mother receiving his Order of Merlin after his "death" and several other reasons.) I hope our differences in opinion won't hinder your enjoyment of the story.

***THIS is what their stupid date was supposed to be like! but I just can't get it right! AGH.

Anyway, hi. I don't have any news but I hoped you liked this chapter and if you didn't, constructive criticism is always welcome. :)

OH! I do have a question though! There's been a Tumblr post that's been floating around (as they do) about James possibly having a hand in Snape's potions' book annotations. While I don't want to take away from Snape's character, it doesn't make sense to me for James to be a complete dunce at Potions considering who his father was. I don't think he's as brilliant as Snape was at it, but he had to pick up a few tips/shortcuts from his dad. And it would be a very Slytherin like thing to make note of an overheard conversation even if it was from your enemy if it benefits you. Just let me know what you guys think. Does the theory take away from Snape's brilliance and therefore his character? because that is something I'd very much like to avoid. If J.K. did only one thing right, it was the complexity of Snape's character.

Thanks for reading. Welcome newcomers.

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Until next time,

XO.