Chapter Fifteen

Might As Well Be Dynamite

The disheveled Professor Slughorn appeared before the two of us. "Black and Hachette?" For the record, he didn't seem too astonished. "Get to your feet." We shuffled uncomfortably to standing positions. "What is the meaning of all of this? Neither of you were invited—and so you decided to wreak havoc on a perfectly orderly event?"

I poked my hand up in the air. "Um, Professor, I actually was invited, if you must know—Remus asked me to come along with him—"

Sirius jabbed me in the ribs and looked at me as if he was trying to say I was only going to get myself killed if I kept talking. I closed my mouth.

"Gracie?"

Oh, Merlin. Kill me now. With a bloody broomstick for all I care. Just somebody do it, please. Of course Lily just had to hang along after the party had scattered. Of course! Of all the luck!

"Sirius?" she continued, and her emerald gaze scanned over us, scrutinizing. "What are...?" And then it seemed to dawn on her and she gasped. "This was you?"

James appeared promptly beside her, looking chipper with his hands in his pockets, seemingly already put the pieces together. "Oh, hey mates. Fancy seeing you two here."

Lily shot him a deathly glare.

"Right," he corrected quickly, "I can't believe you two. Shame, shame. Naughty children."

Lily blew out a furious breath and slapped his arm.

"Sorry!" he yelped. "Stopping! I'm stopping!"

Sirius was hiding his snigger with a discrete turn of his head. He regained control quickly, however, when Professor Slughorn spoke again.

"Detention until Christmas break," he said, sighing with evident exasperation. I didn't reckon he'd like to spend any more time with us than necessary, but I suppose he figured this was necessary. Sirius relaxed, processing that as Christmas break was only a week away, the deal wasn't so bad after all. Until Slughorn spoke again. "And then week after we get back. No questions asked."

Sirius slouched.

Slughorn turned to the righteous Gryffindor Head Boy and Girl, and rubbed the spot in between his eyebrows. "As for the House points, I will leave that up to your discretion," he told Lily and James.

With the furious look on Lily's face, I sensed her wrath would be relentless. One thousand points off and no less. We'd be the first class of all Hogwarts history to reach negative House points. Then everyone would hate Sirius and me and we would never have friends again. And when we graduated school and were out in the real world, they'd see us on the streets and run in the opposite direction. 'You were the ones that made us go in House point DEBT! THE HORROR! THE SHAME!'

Lovely. Sirius always had fantastic plans, didn't he?

And then Slughorn walked away without another word. He waved his wand around lazily, and the room pulled itself back together. Sirius took this as his moment to escape and bolted from the room, only taking a moment to pull me along after him.

"She's deadly," Sirius whispered to me as soon as we were in the safety of the empty corridor. "She's like a dungbomb. Only worse. Much worse. She's potent. Poisonous! And she's about to go off."

The sound of distant footsteps followed us and Sirius quickened his pace.

"She's like BOOM!"

"And then we'll be like..."

"Like...?"

"SPLAT!" And I shoved him hard in the side for effect, laughing manically and rushing off as he fought to catch back up with me.

"Ow, dammit, Gracie, you're too strong for a girl."

"I'm sorry. Are you hurt?" I asked, mock frowning. He opened his mouth to respond but I cut him off. "Well, you can thank yourself for getting us in this mess in the first place!"

"Hey! You're the one that didn't run when I told you to!"

I turned and stared hard at him, and he raised his brows, waiting for my retort. I growled and looked away. "Fine. Maybe it's both our fault then."

I heard him take a long inhale. "I suppose a compromise will work."

"That's as much as I'm compromising with you on that one."

"Fine," he grumbled, "but I want to live to be at least... let's say twenty-five. That's reasonable, right?"

I tossed my head instead of answering.

"I'd like to see twenty-five. So let's just not get murdered by Lily too early, all right? Tell her to wait until I'm twenty-five."

"GRACIE! SIRIUS! GET BACK HERE!"

I groaned. "Never say her name when she's angry. Look what you did. You summoned her."

"Twenty-five!" he shouted, throwing his hands on top of his head. "I'm only seventeen, Gracie! I'm too young!"

I turned back and glanced at Lily's frantic figure rushing towards us. "LILY, COME BACK IN SEVEN YEARS!"

"Isn't it eight? Seven, plus three, plus five, equals twenty-five—"

"NEVER MIND! EIGHT YEARS!"

"Thanks, bud," Sirius said, giving my shoulder a pat, and I waved him away. "I knew you cared more than you let on."

"Pfft." I grinned at him. "I think you're being too presumptuous now. I'd like to see twenty-five too, you know."

"GRACE MARIE HACHETTE! SIRIUS..." Silence fell through the echoing corridor for a moment, and both Sirius and I paused absentmindedly while waiting for her to finish. "...BLACK!"

"She does bring up a good point, you know," I told him and we commenced our speed walking.

"What?"

"No one knows your middle name."

"I don't have one." He shrugged.

"I think it should be 'Lee.' I christen you as 'Lee.'"

"Why? That's almost as plain as Marie." He shuddered. "Can't have that now."

"Shut up. I'm trying to give you a wicked name and there you go, being an ungrateful wench."

"Wench?" Sirius inhaled and laughed at the same time, sounding something distinctly like choking. "I am not getting pretty images in my head."

"Wretch. I meant wretch."

"Well, I suppose that is a nicer mental image than myself as an obese, middle-aged woman pining over her husband away at sea," he noted, then looked down at the front of his shirt, and cupped an imaginary chest. "Not to mention the voluptuous bosom."

I gasped and was then taken over by hysterical laughter from the look on his face. "Sirius! That is gross!" I cried in between breaths. "What are you even saying? Merlin... No, never mind, I didn't mean for you to tell me! I'm not speaking to you anymore!"

"Oh, now that's a shame," he teased, trailing alongside me, moving on close to my side. "You never did tell me why Lee was so special, after all. I'll have to live my whole life without knowing."

I rolled my head back towards the ceiling and neglected to give him an answer, shaking with constrained mirth.

"I'll probably die," he went on, "and I can not die before I'm twenty-five. It is unacceptable."

"Really? I'll have to make sure we arrange your death for right afterwards, then. Perhaps on your birthday, or is that coming on a little too strong? Perhaps the night after might work better for you."

"You're so thoughtful. You really must care more than you let on." I caught him shoot me a wink and I just turned away, blushing furiously.

I decided then that that was likely not a good sign. Not a good sign for what? For... well, it wasn't a good sign. Oh, hell, my brain had disconnected.

And then I decided to swerve the subject back to a more comfortable landscape. "Sound it out."

"What? Sound what out? Did I miss something?"

"Why Lee is so special," I supplied patiently.

"Oh, right," he said, blinking momentarily, as if he'd gotten off track and forgotten what it was we'd been talking about in the first place. "Sirius Lee Black. Is that it?" I nodded. "Sirius Lee Black... Sirius Lee Black..." His eyes dawned with recognition, and he smirked. "You are terribly clever. Though, I think it might fit better as Sirius Lee White..." He held up his forearm as proof.

We arrived at Gryffindor Tower, and I held my hands up. "It's not my fault you were born into the wrong nationality."

He chuckled quietly, sounding a bit resigned as we both turned to glance upon the Fat Lady. She was looking at her nails, evidently occupied, and I had to clear my throat to get her to look up and actually, you know, do her job.

"Oh, hello." She looked a bit perturbed but as we were still well before curfew, she really couldn't argue. "Password?"

"Ello, dearie," Sirius greeted warmly. "If you happen to see an explosive looking red head, I would advise you not to let her in. The fate of our school depends on you, sweet Lady."

She straightened slightly in her seat, sighing blissfully and batting her eyelashes, the sort of flattered look that spread across her face whenever Sirius flirted with her. He did it often, of course. Then the Fat Lady narrowed her brows and her mouth went firm. "But surely you don't mean your friend Miss Evans?"

"I certainly mean my friend Miss Evans," he assured her, leaning in a bit too close to the portrait.

I walked up promptly and rolled my eyes. "The password's Finnimbrum."

Again, she looked a little startled, but she relinquished and the portrait swung open.

Sirius shot me a look, amused, a bit drunk off of air, really.

"Don't get your spirits too high. We do have detention tonight," I reminded him, and he groaned loudly, falling onto a sofa in the common room. The common room was fairly crowded, which I found a bit odd for so late in the night, and I ended up having to squeeze next to Sirius to get a seat at all. The bare skin of my arm brushed against his and I wondered why I felt such a jolt at the slight contact. It was beginning to feel like torture but a glance at his face said he hadn't noticed at all.

"What would I do without you?"

"I'm afraid you say that too often."

"Well, I interchange between sincerity and sarcasm, so you should give me credit for my ability to keep things refreshing."

"I most certainly do not doubt your ability." For some reason, that sounded very off to me, and truth be told, I had no idea what I was saying. I hoped I hadn't thrown some kind of creepy innuendo in there. I observed the look on his face, and he didn't seem overly affected. Perhaps I was just getting paranoid.

Sirius then started going off on a random tangent about Quidditch, ranging from the newest broomstick out there (and I'd forgotten the model even though he'd repeated it a thousand times because it just all sounded the same to me) to the fact that Ravenclaw had already fallen out of the standings for the Cup (I suspected he was still bitter about their defeat over Gryffindor.) He was so immersed in his conversation (as well as including me in it, though I just nodded along until I was eventually nodding myself to sleep) that neither of us noticed when two certain Heads of House authority sauntered through the door.

"Gracie! Sirius! Did you not hear me calling you all the way down the hallway?"

Sirius grabbed a pillow and suffocated his face into it, emitting a noise like a groan that escalated pitch within seconds. "LADY! YOU HAVE BETRAYED ME!" he screamed out into the corridor, though we both knew it was unlikely the Fat Lady could have heard him from inside the common room.

Lily appeared before the both of us, panting and livid. "I can't believe you two! You'd been perfectly behaved for months and then you go and pull this stunt and, of all places, at Slughorn's dinner party! Sirius, you didn't even have any business being there!"

"Well, Gracie invited me," he said, pouting his bottom lip.

I snapped my head around and looked at him like, why would you come up with such a stupid lie when the redhead was already ticking like that stupid poisonous dungbomb you were going off about earlier, but he only met my eyes for as long as me to communicate the 'why would you come up with' and then he was grinning broadly at Lily.

"She was supposed to be with Remus! Speaking of which, where did he go? Was he a part of this? Did you drag poor Peter along too?"

"Perhaps Remus had to use the toilet, I wouldn't know, thank you very much Miss Evans, but I do not keep track of him as he is not my pet."

"Sirius! This is not a game! If you think that you're being funny or that you can just do whatever it is—"

Her stream of words was cut off instantly; a rather messy haired Chaser appeared beside her and pressed his lips against hers, muting all sound. The whole room fell silent after Lily, but that only lasted a brief moment before the room erupted with wolf whistles and hollering. Sirius was going into a fit of hyperventilation, far too overly staged with periodic shrieks, and the entire thing was too much for me to handle. I doubled over laughing; it'd never occurred to me that that ought to be a good way to shut Lily up, though I was certainly not going to try it myself. And then I imagined her face when all this was over. Bright as her hair. Even brighter, maybe. Oh, Merlin, and James was certainly enjoying the attention. The girl he'd been chasing for a long seven years (well, the first four really didn't count, but including them made it sound all much more cute) was finally here, in the flesh, kissing him in the midst of the very crowded Gryffindor common room. He ought to be soaking up every second of the glory.

When he finally backed off to let the girl get some air (really, it'd felt like forever, and Lily hadn't even snapped away like I would have expected), the shade of her face did not disappoint. Enthusiastic clapping and loud cheers followed the whistles, and James just ran a hand through his hair timidly, a crooked smile lighting up his features. Lily wasn't looking much different, though she seemed to be trying to prove a point of how effective her circulatory system was. She blinked a bit, grinning and looking about as if to hide it, but it all was just so darned cute that even she couldn't deny it.

"Does this mean me and Gracie are off the hook, then?" Sirius chirped up hopefully.

Lily glared daggers at him but James just pulled her closer and she melted. I loved James. He had proved to be the perfect distraction.

"Well, now that we have had that very eye-opening near death experience, I think it's time we get to detention," I said, pulling myself up from the sofa. "You know, the two weeks' worth of detention we have. No much more punishment needed, you think, Sirius?"

"I have been a bad boy." He strode past me confidently, winking at Lily as he passed, but I followed after him and gave him a much deserved wack on the arm. "Ow! Just kidding. I'm well behaved, Lily!" he called over his shoulder.

"Let's go, before she really goes off," I muttered, gripping his arm and pulling him along. Unfortunately, he was not easy to move, but he gave in eventually and walked with me.

We walked most of the way to Slughorn's office in silence until I felt Sirius staring at me. I glanced back, waiting for him to say whatever it was he looked like he wanted to say, but he just raised his eyebrows expectantly, as if it was me that wanted to say something, so I looked away, thinking I'd read him wrong. But he was still staring at me, so I turned back to him, a bit exasperated. "What, Sirius?"

"Nothing," he murmured, looking forward. "Just thinking about how much time I spend with you. I'd reckon you're becoming quite some competition with James as my best mate."

It was only for a fraction of a second, but I felt it, a sinking feeling in my stomach, and it was impossible to ignore, even as quickly as it had passed. But I tried shrugging it off, honestly. "Really?" I asked, attempting to sound nonchalant.

He didn't notice anything. "Yeah, I just..." We stopped in front of Slughorn's door, looking at each other. "Noticed," he finished lamely.

"Okay," I said quietly, and the eye contact really began to feel like eye contact; my eyes stung from looking at him so intensely, but I couldn't look away. I searched the grey depths for some sign that maybe I wasn't the only one going crazy, that maybe if he was feeling anywhere near as odd as I had been feeling lately, maybe it wasn't crazy at all. But I didn't find anything there, just eyes. Pretty eyes. But just eyes.

He shook the eye contact away, abruptly turning for the door. "Wanna go in now?"

I laughed. "Yeah. Seems like a good night to have a party with Slughorn."

Seeing Professor Slughorn for the second time that night was definitely not the most enjoyable part of my day, but he quickly found a job for us and had us outside, in the dark, shoveling snow with apparent "muggle contraptions" after confiscating our wands.

"It's just a snow shovel," I said, kicking the things with my foot. "Really. Some wizards are so naïve."

Sirius was balled up on the ground, rocking back and forth. "It's too cold. I'm going to proceed to happily die here and watch you do it all yourself."

I shot him a look. "Sirius, get up."

"No, no, you go ahead," he assured, waving a hand at me. "It's my dying wish."

I placed a hand on my hip. "I thought you weren't dying till twenty-five."

"There are exceptions to everything."

"Not to this. Get up," I said, holding out a hand to help him to his feet.

"Nope. Have fun."

"Sirius!"

"Fine," he agreed, albeit grudgingly. He took my hand in his and shifted as if to pull himself up, then a smirk flashed across his face for a brief second, and I knew I should have yanked my hand away then because I saw it coming, but it was too late, and instead of pulling himself up, he pulled me down with all the force he had.

I shrieked, landing with a thud beside him, "Sirius Black! You git!"

"Stop complaining and just bloody cuddle with me," he insisted, pulling me into his side tightly. Warmth shot all the way to my toes and I shivered uncontrollably.

I laughed, my breath misting in front of me. "Cuddle with you? You sound like a girl, Sirius."

"Exactly what I'm saying. I spend too much time with you. I need male bonding time," he sighed, but the smile found his face again, and he let me nestle myself under his arm. I wasn't really that cold at all, but this was a nice excuse. But oh God, he asked me to cuddle with him, of all things. Something was going on with his head. Cuddle. I giggled again at just the thought.

"What about all this shoveling we have to do?" I asked, poking him in the middle of his chest.

"We'll get to that once we're warm."

"But won't we just be cold again when we stand up?"

"Guess we won't be getting around to that shoveling then." He shrugged and I rolled my eyes, stomach too aflutter to really make much of a coherent argument.

This would just have to do for now. Not that I minded.

"Gracie," he spoke again, gently, as if he might disturb me, and I glanced up at him. "I don't really want you to be my best mate."

I laughed suddenly, nudging him teasingly. "Wow! And here I am, cuddling with you. Fine, you'll just have to ask James to cuddle with you then."

He smiled but exhaled, breath leaving his mouth like smoke. "No, shush, that's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?" My eyes rested on his face expectantly.

"I just mean—different. Well, you are different. Bloody hell, you're odd, Gracie. I don't know how to say this. I don't even know what I'm saying."

"Is this a proper time to feel insulted?"

He frowned and poked my chin, then looked me properly in the eyes for a long moment. "Let's just go get that shoveling finished, yeah?"

Sirius stood and brushed the snow off of his pants, working his way over to where we'd dumped the shovels. I stared after him, unmoving, processing the whole conversation and wondered vaguely if he had meant I should be insulted or if I shouldn't.

"Are you going to help me or not?"

I sighed and pulled myself to my feet. "So whiny, Sirius, honestly."

A/N: Oooh, tension in the air! ...Nah, just kidding. But if you must know, Sirius isn't interested in her in any way. Shape or form. Like him and Gracie don't end up together. Why are you even here? The summary lied to you. LIED!

Yeah yeah I know, it's too predictable. Sorry. And also if there are any very prominent grammar errors, I did check over it, but it's currently 4 AM (HOW THE HECK DID I NOT REALIZE) and I'm struggling to stay awake, so I apologize :)

Anyway for some reason I had a lot of fun reading this chapter. Stalled a bit to get it out (including watching the Vow and cutting my hair... which I really shouldn't do. My bangs are now too short. But never fear, it's not too awful.) BUT I DID MAKE PROGRESS TODAY. I planned out till chapter 31, and that's not even close to near finished.

I could use a wee bit of encouragement, if it's not too much trouble! :) I'm good with one line reviews or whatever, so long as I receive some kind of feedback... I'd just love to know how I'm doing. Also I realize the title for this chapter is terrible...I'll think of a new one. OR you can help me out and suggest one! Teehee. Anyway thanks so much guys.