Chapter Sixteen

Puzzle Piece Hearts

What was it called again? I stretched my icy fingers and rubbed my palms together.

Ah, right. Frostbite. I could already feel it in my limbs, and oh for the love of sparkly magical Merlin was it called frostbite for a reason.

I didn't know if it was possible, but London seemed to be the Arctic compared to Hogwarts. Sure, it was snowing at Hogwarts, too, but now I couldn't even shiver in the chill because I was becoming a human icicle.

Maybe I was being a bit dramatic.

"Sirius," I said, yanking on his wrist, "can we pretty please go into this shop? I'm going to die. Die I tell you."

Maybe a bit dramatic, but that didn't change the fact that it was cold.

Sirius was dazing off at the spectacle of the Christmas lights in the midst of the black night, and it took two shoves for me to get his attention.

"Oh, fine, fine," said Sirius.

I cheered quietly, hopping along and pulling him after me. "You know what I just realized? Your name's like an oxymoron."

"A what?"

"Oxymoron. Okay, well, Sirius is a star, right? You said it was the brightest star in Canis Major."

"I did."

"And your last name is Black."

"Yeah? What's an oxymoron? That sounds insulting."

"It's not insulting! It's brilliance! It's like - contradictory. I think. But anyways, your first name is a star, and your last name is the dark." I stared at him for a moment, waiting for him to comprehend the sheer beauty. But he just stared at me, so I elaborated. "You're the night sky!"

"Oh." He looked contemplative. "Hm. That is pretty wicked," he agreed.

I pat him on the back, nodding my head. "I do bring out the best in you."

Wait, wait, back up, London? When did that happen?

This morning, actually, thank you for asking.

Oh, right, yes, that needs a bit more explanation. Well, Sirius and I (as well as Lily and James, though they were off somewhere else at the moment) happened to be at Hogwarts that morning. The conversation I had with James turned all of my Christmas plans around. It went a little something like:

"Oh, Gracie, I forgot to tell you, you're spending the holiday with me and Lily and Sirius." And then he tried to get up.

"Wait, what are you talking about?"

"You're coming to my house." He blinked.

"Why?"

"Lily kept hinting that I should invite you. So I took the hint and invited you. Well, er—I meant to, but I forgot. So I'm telling you now."

"James! You moron! The train leaves in an hour! I haven't packed anything."

"The house elves have got it."

"Oh."

"Okay." He got up again, then paused to see if I'd pull him back again, but I was didn't say anything more and he took off.

I decided that the male gender was generally very thick headed.

"Gracie? Are we going inside or are we just going to stand here?"

"Don't blame me for stalling now, Sirius."

"Well, who else do I blame? Oh, ghost Bertha! Shame on you for holding us up!" And he proceeded to swat at the air like he was hitting something.

"Did you bring your imaginary friends along with us?" I stuck my tongue out at him, catching falling snow in the process. We'd long ago ditched Lily and James; they'd been so preoccupied in each other that we snuck off thinking they wouldn't notice. So far it seemed as if they hadn't.

"Bertha isn't imaginary. Are you, Bertha?" He stared at nothing. "See. Did you hear that?"

"Yeah, I did actually." He raised his eyebrows with disbelief and I continued, unaffected. "She asked if your gran knows you're wearing her cloak."

He laughed and scooped down, pelting a ball of snow at me in retaliation. It smacked me on the shoulder and I hissed, sending him into more hysterical laughter with every ball of snow after that.

I gathered my own snow balls, and we stood in front of each other, circling like we were apart of a wizard's duel.

"Put the snow down, Gracie," Sirius warned slowly.

"I will when you do."

"It doesn't have to be like this. Just put the snow down and we can talk about this like adults." I didn't point out that we weren't actually adults.

I looked at him, took a deep breath, and dropped the snowball from my right hand.

"Thank you," Sirius said, dropping his own and wiping his gloved hands together. "I'm glad we can be civilized about this."

"Me too."

And we began to walk in the direction of the little shop that we were supposed to go into earlier, but Sirius had forgotten something. I still had a snowball in my left hand.

I draped an arm around his waist to pull him close and then used my free hand to shove the snow down his back.

Sirius cursed loudly and I laughed as he hopped up and down, trying desperately to get the cold snow out of his shirt. He wriggled and writhed and shrieked and cursed and I laughed so hard that I didn't notice when he scooped up more snow and shoved it in my face.

"Sirius! I am sick of this!" I cried, wiping my face clean, struggling for breath amidst my giggle-laughter. "We were supposed to be civilized!"

He held his hands up as a sign of surrender. "It's over, it's done. I've gotten my vengeance."

A gust of wind overcame us then, slapping us both with sheets of snow. I covered my face with my arms to attempt to block it from freezing me any worse, but it was a worthless attempt.

"It's Bertha!"

"You didn't say she was a bloody evil ghost, Sirius!"

"Well, I forgot. She can be charming, you know—oh, hell, let's go inside already!"

He had good timing, too; it seemed as if the snowstorm was only getting worse and we were ages away from shelter. At least the storm made it appear that way.

"I'll race you," I called to him, dashing off, but he ran up beside me defiantly.

"I'll win this time," he called back, "and no cheating, Grace Hachette!"

"I don't cheat!"

"You always do! That's the only way you ever beat me at anything!"

"Shut up, Sirius!"

Running proved hard to do when I was laughing, but I just couldn't stop. It wasn't even necessarily funny anymore, but the entire situation was just ridiculous and we were making ourselves look stupid. It seemed as if that was our usual plan of action, actually, which was why I always felt like I was bursting my lungs whenever I was around him.

Luckily I never had.

Except I was in danger of doing so at the moment. Sirius was much faster than I was, as much as I hated admitting, and the fact that I was even remotely maintaining his pace was absolute torture on my body.

He gained more speed and made a mad bolt for the door, swinging it open and tumbling inside. I wasn't doing a very fantastic job of maintaining my own speed and before I could stop myself, the momentum sent me crashing full force into Sirius.

I shrieked and he caught me, laughing, and I apologized quickly and pulled myself away, moving to close the door behind me.

"What are you doing that for?" Moving away, he meant. He pulled me back to him. "You're warm. Don't leave."

I turned my face up to his. "What are you doing, Sirius?" He only smiled. "You're mental."

"Am not," he disagreed.

We locked gazes for a long moment, and internally I noted how oddly perfect we fit together. Definitely odd, that was the only way I could describe it. My head rested against his shoulder, his against my forehead. My back was turned in and fit against his, opposite but complementary, like puzzle pieces. His arms tied around my waist, mine bent against his chest, giving us the only bit of distance.

And it dawned on me that this from the outside did not look like a very friendly embrace. And this was Sirius. A friend. The two obviously didn't match. It was the only thing that didn't fit together, really.

I couldn't bring myself to break away from this, though.

Now, I didn't know much about kissing, so I couldn't say I just knew he was going to kiss me. But we were looking at each other, and his eyes grew soft, the teasing and playfulness and laughter, all of it, gone. There was this new emotion, one I couldn't quite reach out and grasp.

I didn't know much about kissing, but I did know one thing for sure, and that was that my stomach was flipping and turning and my nerves were going insane and I was either going to do something really stupid or pass out and I couldn't calm myself down. And I knew that that had to mean something about this was different; it wasn't like this was the first time I'd ever hugged Sirius, after all. This wasn't anything like the other day when we were supposed to be shoveling snow and he'd asked me to cuddle with him (as much as that'd made me want to laugh.)

This almost felt like he had claimed me as his own, almost like he wanted me here, almost like he never wanted me to leave.

He would say things like that sometimes, but he meant it as a joke. This didn't seem like a joke.

It was fairly safe to say I wasn't cold anymore. I felt like my skin was on fire, like maybe I might just close my eyes and fall asleep against Sirius's chest, but his arms shifted around my sides and he moved his face right there, in the perfect, taunting spot, where his lips were just right there next to mine, and I was more acutely awake and aware than I had ever been in my life.

There were no words, no verbal confirmation, only a blazing heat between the two of us, and I knew right in that moment for sure that I was going to kiss Sirius.

Well.

I would have, if James bound-to-ruin-every-bloody-moment-in-the-history-of-moments Potter hadn't decided to prance in and scream at the top of his lungs that he'd finally found us at last.

That was where the potential kiss fell to the ground and disappeared. Might as well have been trampled by a herd of hippogriffs and then rolled in by children and then melted and dried up by the god forsaken sun.

It hadn't occurred to me until Sirius and I had jumped five meters apart (well, maybe it wasn't that much, but it felt like it compared to how we'd been just the moment before) that I could have just kissed him anyway and then run away out of the shop shamelessly.

I glanced at Sirius. Oh, well, I thought, forcing myself to look away quickly. Moment lost.

James finished expelling his grand escapade about finding us and then paused, looking absolutely lost, gaze flitting between the two of us. "Did I interrupt something?"

He meant it as a joke, but the answer was yes, yes, most definitely yes, and neither of us gave him an answer at all.

My heart was hammering in my chest, protesting. I was glad it was locked up in my chest or it might have gone up and choked James for me. Crazy heart. Oh, Merlin, I was beginning to doubt that I could walk straight, my whole body was trembling.

Neither James nor Sirius noticed, though, thankfully, and I gathered a subtle breath while wrapping my arms around myself and glancing around the store.

The four of us had taken this trip as a detour to pick up last minute Christmas gifts, but, oddly enough, Sirius and I hadn't gotten anything done.

Lily burst into the room, rushing over to me. "Gracie, come here! I found a bunch of scarves that I absolutely know you'll love!"

She grabbed me, and I allowed myself a last glance at Sirius as I was being pulled out of the room. He smiled, but his lips were tight, brows raised, looking strained.

And so I was swept away.

"What are they going to think of me? They can't decide they don't like me and kick me out, right? That would be cruel." Lily was being loud, ranting and talking and spewing in a single continuous breath. "I mean, they like Sirius, don't they? So I'm not too far of a stretch. They'll like me, won't they? What do you think? James?"

He laughed, nodding his head. "I'm certain they'll adore you."

She seemed to calm down, if only by a little bit, but it was a considerable difference. A silence lapsed for a few moments, and the two walked, hands swinging together between them, a contemplative silence.

They'd somewhat left Sirius and me again, as we were walking behind the two of them and they were absorbed in their own conversation, but I didn't mind and I didn't reckon Sirius did, either.

Except that we weren't talking.

We certainly weren't ignoring each other—no, I didn't think that would ever work, we just couldn't downright ignore each other—but our silence was a lot different than Lily and James's. Much more awkward, much more uncertain.

I didn't even know what had happened between Sirius and me. What it meant, what it could mean, all of it, any of it.

And then Lily started talking again, and I realized I still had no idea what Sirius and I were supposed to do, lagging behind the two of them. What had we done in situations like this before? My mind was gone and I vaguely felt like burying myself in the snow and telling them to pick me up next Christmas.

Sirius, though, broke the silence between us, whispering, "How much do you want to bet James's parents say, 'So this is the girl you've been going off about nonstop every summer for seven years!' when they see her?"

I turned to him, smiling. "A galleon. He probably gave them a full lecture about not mentioning his obsession in front of her."

"You're on. You forget I'm the one that already knows his parents."

"Well, you forget that I'm the smart one of this group."

He snorted. "Yeah, I did forget."

I shoved him in the side. "Git. Don't make me bring the snow into this."

He laughed loudly, shielding his face. "I love you, Gracie! Don't kill me! You can't kill someone who's just said 'I love you!'"

"Fine. I won't kill you."

"Good." He moved in step beside me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders, distinctly friendly, like he always would.

"Not yet, at least."

"Gotta wait till I'm twenty-five," he reminded me.

"The day after your birthday," I recalled, nodding. "Got the appointment set up already."

And maybe he'd just been joking, and maybe I hadn't gotten a kiss, but hey. You couldn't have everything you wanted. The world wasn't a magical wish-granting genie. But he loved me, and that was pretty good.

A/N: This is so terribly short and I hate it but I didn't want to include anything else or it would have been super duper long. And I just wanted to get an update out. So that's my excuse. And also, I was really tempted to just be like... MWAH! KISS! But I decided to torture everyone. MWAHAHA. No, I was really mad about it. I was like, JAMES POTTER, WHAT ARE YOU DOING, DID YOUR MOTHER NOT TEACH YOU MANNERS? But don't blame him, he didn't know what was going on. He's clueless!

Oh, and thank you all for the reviews and favorite and alerts, you all make my day :) Thanks so much for reading and don't forget to leave some feedback before you go! I'll never know how I'm doing if you don't!

OKAY BYE LOVELY READERS!

By the way, sorry if I confused anyone with my sarcasm in the author's note last time, teehee. That is the most I will clarify. No spoilers for you ;)