A/N: A bit of delay getting this one out, but I'm so grateful for the response WTRMaR (that's a terrible acronym - we'll go with Two Wrongs) has been getting. Thank you buckets and buckets! Without further ado:

Lyra's head was aching, the space behind her eyes pulling inward in a way that gave her the impression that something might soon snap. She was sat in the shower, the water gliding down her bare skin as the steam clouded her vision further. The time had seemed to pass in a such a fashion that some moments stretched on and others passed in each instance that she leaned her head against the shower wall and blinked.

A knock on the door had been heard in decreasing frequency until it had stopped altogether, and Lyra assumed that it must be Lily in an attempt to find out what exactly had transpired between Lyra and Sirius at the Three Broomsticks. The door to the bathroom was locked, but not in a way that would have pretended Lily from casting a simple Alohomora and entering.

After the rise and fall of several civilizations, Lyra gripped the wall's shelf and pulled herself to a standing position. She stopped the flow of the water, both from the plumbing and her eyes, and wrapped herself in a fluffy, dark red towel. There was another tentative knock on the door.

"Come in."

Lily poked her head around the edge of the door, her eyes wide with concern. Lyra moved toward the floor-length mirror on the wall of the room to assess the damage. She was bright red around the nose and eyelids, and in all honesty, she would not have been surprised if someone looking at her assumed that she had been the recipient of a particularly nasty Stinging Jinx. Lily stood behind her.

"What's happened?" she said, her voice hardly above a whisper.

"It's stupid," said Lyra.

"Given the involvement that Sirius Black has in the situation, I've no doubt there was a load of stupidity involved." Lily combed her fingers through Lyra's hair. "But I've also no doubt the stupidity came entirely from his end of things."

Lyra imagined herself telling Lily everything. The tutoring, the night spent in the boys' dorm, her realization in the pub. Lily would be upset at first, she knew. It was a horrible thing to be lied to by the people who had appeared to be friends. Lily would likely refuse to speak to James again. For a fleeting moment, the thought brought a smile to Lyra's face. And yet she knew that James was not the real culprit here. He was blinded by love, or at least by infatuation, which was more often that not a more deadly affliction.

Lyra looked at Lily through the mirror. She was pulling the tangled mess that was Lyra's hair into a plait, her fingers working nimbly and gently. Here Lily was comforting her after all of her dishonesty. It was obvious what she needed to do.

"There's a bit of a backstory."

And so Lyra told her the secret to her recent success in Transfiguration, how she had denied James' request that she put in a good word with Lily, of each and every time she had been with Sirius, and what had caused her to rush back from Hogsmeade.

"Those absolute wankers!" Lily fumed.

Lyra blanched, though whether it was because of Lily's oversight of Lyra's guilt in the entire situation or the unexpected language, she wasn't sure.

"Lily, I need you to believe me when I say that I know James did not have any malicious intent. I'm certain his friends orchestrated the whole thing to help him."

"And he let them!"

"He may be in the top of our class," Lyra said, "but he's utterly thick when it comes to matters of the heart. Whether or not he was the cause of it, I don't blame him, and I don't want you to either."

Lily's face matched her hair. "You were treated like rubbish!"

"Not by him! Please, can we just forget any of this ever happened? Where're Marley and Emme?"

"I left them at the pub. I didn't tell them anything in case you didn't want to draw attention to it."

"Good," said Lyra. "We'll say I was feeling ill and decided to come back. We'll go on as usual with the exception that I'm going to do what I should've done from the beginning and stay away from all of the seventh year Gryffindor boys."

"Don't you think – "

"No. Whatever it is, no. I've never been embarrassed so badly in my life, and the only way to get over it is to distance myself from the causal factors."

Lily sighed, but she didn't argue.

"Now," said Lyra, "let's figure out what to do about my face, shall we?"

Soon enough it was Monday morning. Lyra had kept herself locked up in Gryffindor tower for much of the remainder of the weekend, and neither Marlene nor Emmeline questioned her story of illness.

And yet time did as time did best and kept going, so when it came time for the first time that Lyra would be seeing James and Sirius since the Incident, she could only sigh and trudge on to her seat. She set up her cauldron, and Lily set hers up in the next space over. They both pointedly ignored the pleading look that James kept shooting over his shoulder from his work station.

Professor Slughorn's class dragged on as usual as he stressed the importance of the proper size of lacewing flies for the potion they were to be brewing and set them to work. Lyra was sure her potion was too bright a pink as she glanced over at Lily's work, but it seemed to be mellowing in colour as it simmered. She had four more minutes to wait until stirring again and adding another set of ingredients.

Staring absentmindedly into her cauldron, she almost missed the flash of movement in the corner of her vision. She glanced down in time to see a twice folded bit of parchment land on the edge of the table she was working on and bounce onto the ground. She bent down and picked it up before searching the rest of the room for its source.

James was nudging his head toward the paper in her hands with an earnest look on his face. Lyra rolled her eyes and considered tossing the parchment into her potion to destroy it, but she didn't want to fail the assignment. To her right, Lily was too immersed in her textbook to have noticed the exchange. Reluctantly, Lyra unfolded it and read.

Can we talk after class? Please. Two minutes.

Lyra's eyebrows came together. This went against her plans to forget about what had happened. Unfortunately, leaving James to his antics might mean that she would never have the chance to move on and forget. She looked back at him and nodded. This time, she thought, Lily is coming with me.

Class ended before long. Lyra wasn't necessarily confident in the vial she had handed to Slughorn, but Lily had assured her it wasn't too far off what it was supposed to look like. As they cleaned up their work stations, Lyra showed Lily the note from James, and they prepared to meet him in the corridor together.

He was leaning against the stone wall across from the Potions classroom when they found him. Fortunately, he was alone, his friends having apparently decided it was alright to leave him, even without an ulterior motive. As the girls approached, James kept his eyes on trained on Lyra and pushed himself from the wall.

"I'm sorry," he said, a pink tinge grazing his cheeks. "I let things go too far."

Lily made a noise that sounded like the beginning of a retort, and James finally looked at her, though only to raise a hand as a request for that they hold their comments until the end.

"Sirius told me what you said in the pub, about feeling like you were being used and tossed aside like rubbish, and I swear to Merlin that had I known you were being hurt, I would've put an end to it immediately." He ran a hand through his hair a couple of times. "Not that it's any excuse." He sighed. "It shouldn't have happened in the first place, regardless of how anyone thought you'd take it."

"That's right," Lily confirmed.

Lyra still did not say anything, so James continued.

"I just – I really am so sorry, Lyra. If there's anything I can do to make it up to you in the slightest, I won't hesitate. Whatever it is: Honeydukes sweets, a spot on the Quidditch team, meals delivered directly to your room… I'll tutor you in Transfiguration until you're a bloody Animagus if that's what it takes."

Lyra looked into his hazel eyes and was reminded of her dogs at home whenever they had done something they knew was wrong. She couldn't stay mad at him when all he had wanted was a chance with Lily. It wasn't his fault he saw how amazing she was, and it certainly wasn't his fault that nobody, Sirius included, saw anything worthwhile in her. She stared harder into those guilty eyes and nodded her head.

"I forgive you, James."

"I think I might go with Sirius again."

Lyra spat her mouthful of water back into the goblet from whence it came. Across the table, Lily dropped her fork with a clatter onto her plate, and Emmeline nearly chocked on a bite of roasted potatoes. From beside Lyra, Marlene simply looked at the three of them, nonplussed.

"I had my fun last month, and the upper hand is mine," she told them as Lily repeatedly smacked the coughing Emmeline on the back. "Now that the term is really underway, I could use a source of tension relief, and what better way?"

"You get into a row every single time you speak to each other," Lyra protested.

Marlene only shrugged. "It'll get him off your tail, at least."

Lyra shook her head. "I've already told you that he isn't interested in –"

Marlene did not allow her to finish her statement, and instead called down the table, "Oi! Black!" And when he looked over with a grimace and an eyebrow raised, she continued, "I won't bite, just come 'ere!"

Lyra looked at her with wide eyes. "What'd you do that for!"

"Just proving a point, babes, don't worry."

"Marley," Lily said, "is this really necessary?"

"Is there a reason everyone's so bothered?" asked Marlene, face screwing up.

"After getting over the initial shock, I'm not sure I've ever been less bothered," Emmeline told them and went back to cutting up the contents of her plate.

"What's all the fuss?" Sirius said, taking the seat next to Marlene, one leg on either side of the bench.

"I need a favour," Marlene said, batting her long lashes.

Sirius leaned back and tilted her head toward her. "From me?"

Marlene rolled her eyes and pushed herself up from the table. "Yes. Now stay here for a mo' and wait for me to come back."

"You're mental."

"Please, Sirius?"

They stared at each other for a few seconds before he swung his leg over the bench he was sitting on and faced the table. He snatched a slice of bread from a basket on the table and tore a piece off with his teeth.

"Hurry up, then."

Marlene smiled with a bit too much smugness and winked at the girls before turning on her heel and walking from the Great Hall.

While this exchange had been going on, Lyra and Lily had watched in silence. Emmeline was still working on her roasted potatoes. Now, Sirius looked at each of them.

"Is anyone going to tell me what's going on?"

Lily opened her mouth, eyes squinted, but it was Emmeline spoke.

"Not likely."

Sirius sighed. "I figured as much."

When Sirius had first come over, Lyra had not been expecting anything remarkable from him. She had not expected an apology. She had not expected things to go back to normal. If anything, she had been expecting him to avoid spending any prolonged amount of time in her company out of shame. As he sat there, muscles relaxed, bored expression on his face, she felt the flame of anger she had been harbouring flicker.

And for the next five minutes until Marlene's return, the four of them sat in silence. Lyra imagined that Emmeline might have described it as a comfortable silence, but she was clearly oblivious to the daggers being shot out of the eyes of her two remaining roommates at the bread-eating boy sitting with them.

Finally, Lily's eyes raised to just above Lyra's head.

"Don't stop the conversation on my account," Marlene chirped.

Both Lyra and Sirius turned to look at Marlene, though when Lyra set her eyes on Sirius' face she instantly recoiled and rotated back, staring at her hands. She heard Sirius get up from beside her.

"Oh, don't give me that look," said Marlene.

"The favour?" Sirius questioned.

"Yes," Marlene said. "Thank you."

There was a long pause. Lyra was now watching the scene vicariously through Lily's face expressions. She looked as confused as Lyra felt.

"Again, you're mental," Sirius said and paused for a beat. "So does half ten work for you?"

"I'll see you then," Marlene answered, a smile in her voice.

Marlene refused to explain anything until after dinner when they were all sat in their dormitory. As it goes, she had wanted to prove to Lyra that, yes, Sirius did think the latter fit, and given the chance, would flirt mercilessly with her. The obviously well-thought out way of testing this postulation was to leave Sirius and Lyra in a position in which they would be stuck together with Lily and Emmeline as witnesses to the whole interaction.

This was easy enough to understand, though neither Lyra nor Lily offered the other side of the story – the one in which Sirius had not spoken to Lyra since Hogsmeade, not even to apologize. For this reason, the two girls were surprised that he had stayed seated with them in Marlene's absence. When asked how she knew he would agree to wait for her to come back, Marlene had an explanation so ridiculous, that it was almost ingenious.

According to Marlene, she had known she would be able to convince him to stay because he would either want to for Lyra or not want to at all. In the case of the former, he would comply easily. In the case of the latter, his not wanting to stay would create a power struggle of sorts. This, Marlene insisted, was key.

Sirius, she had learned quickly during their time together, absolutely abhorred being in a position of subservience. Residual feelings from his time in an old, wealthy, pureblood family. A more recent complex of Gryffindor nobility. Call it what you will. In any case, there was only one way he would sit at that dinner table because an old fling had told him to. This was also the only way she would be able to go with him again. She needed to relinquish any dominance she had over him and ask him for a favour. In this way, she explained, he would know that he was in control of this particular situation and any future "situations." He would do her the favour, and he would be back on top.

"And if he had simply thought it a favour?" Lily asked once Marlene had finished her explanation.

"Had that been the case, then the underlying fact that the favour I had asked of him was to sit on a bench and wait for five minutes would have tipped him off."

"You're mental," Lily echoed Sirius' statement from dinner.

"And what's all this business about meeting with him tonight?" Lyra asked.

"Once he was sure of what I was doing, it was blaringly obvious that I'm interested in him again," she explained, as if to a child.

Lyra and Lily stared at her in wonder. Lyra was unsure she had understood exactly what had transpired, but it didn't matter. He had clearly not spared her a thought since Saturday, and she was not about to go on sparing any for him.

The conversation slowly shifted toward Lily and James, as the other girls had started to notice their more frequent (and less aggressive) interactions. Lyra sat on her bed with her Transfiguration textbook open in front of her. Her eyes roamed across the pages, but the words weren't sinking in.

Soon enough Marlene had left to meet Sirius, and the other three Gryffindor girls were starting to settle in for the night. As Lyra lay in her bed and looking out the window at the bright, starry sky, she wondered when it would be her turn. Lily had the love of James and Marlene had the lust of Sirius, but what did Lyra have? What did she want?

On Thursday evening, Lyra found herself standing in front of the large wooden doors that led into the library. It was only half six, and if she were expecting James to come, there was no reason to suggest he would be early, as he never had been before. Lyra was not, however, planning on meeting with him today.

She put one foot in front of the other a few times and this was how she ended up in the library and passing her usual Thursday night table. Just because it was best that she and James discontinue their studying didn't mean she couldn't capitalize on the regular study time she was used to setting aside. With that in mind, she found herself a table in the back corner behind a particularly cluttered looking shelf, and faced the wall.

For a few minutes, her mind wandered to James and the other Gryffindor boys. She felt her cheeks grow hot as imagined what they must think of her. All she was to them was a mousy little tag-along to a fiery lioness. More likely, they didn't think of her at all. She shook her head to clear thought. She would channel all of the energy she was putting into analysing their motives into studying for her NEWTs… or at least into studying for her next in-class exams.

It was with this mind-set that she continued studying and lost herself in the essay she was writing for Potions. She lost herself, that is, until someone cleared his distinctly male throat behind her. Anyone but James, Lyra thought.

She turned in her seat and found Remus Lupin standing with a sheepish grin on his face. He gestured to the seat on the side of the table adjacent to her. She studied his eyes for a moment, looking for any trace of insincerity, and when she came up empty, she nodded.

He sat gingerly and asked, "How are your studies going?"

She glanced at the clock in the corner of the room and saw that it was just past seven. He knew that she had been planning to stand up James – and had done – if he made an appearance. She was hidden in her alcove such that she could neither see the doors to the library, nor could she be seen by anyone who walked through them.

"How did you know I was back here?"

He smiled gently. "You ought to know better than to assume I spend my spare time in the same manner as my friends. Many of the books in here captivate a far greater portion of my interest than tracking down girls in hiding from their tutors."

"I'm not hiding!"

"I never said you were." His grin widened, and Lyra had the sudden impulse to dissolve it. He was on the opposing side.

"My apologies," she said. "You're right. I have learned better than to assume I hold anyone's interest as more than a stepping stone."

Remus' expression was now serious as he said, rather slowly and with care to enunciate every word. "Don't for a moment let yourself be convinced, especially by the voice in your own mind, that you're not worthy of respect."

She made to argue, but he continued.

"Sirius made a mistake. 'Mistake' being an extremely forgiving way to phrase the so-called mission he took upon himself." A pink tinge touched his cheek. "I won't claim innocence. I saw no problem acting as a link between James and Lily before they were able to start a conversation on their own, but had I known the lengths to which Sirius was going to keep you occupied, I never would have condoned it." He looked away from Lyra. "As though that makes me any less to blame."

She looked at him, past thin scars that lined his face and into the green eyes, full to the brim with guilt. She placed a hand lightly on his arm, which rested atop her Potions book.

"I don't blame you, Remus."

He stared at her. "You don't?"

She shook her head. "I can see you meant no harm. And after James' apology, there's only one person left whose morals I question… Unless Peter Pettigrew was the mastermind operating on a level above all of us."

"Yes, the real mastermind, indeed," Remus said, his expression softening. "Do you mind if I ask what James apologized for? It's not as though he did anything beyond wishing aloud that Lily would give him the time of day."

Lyra furrowed her brow. "He just said that he was sorry he had let things go as far as they did. He never said a thing about it not being his fault."

"That is surprising," said Remus. "He's given Sirius a very hard time since finding out about everything. James didn't know a thing concerning what was happening, I'm sure of it."

"If he didn't know what was going on, then why would he apologize? Why would he shoulder the fault?"

"I wouldn't presume any underhanded tricks on his end. He understands that it was all for his benefit, even if he had no hand in orchestrating it. He feels downright awful." Remus leaned back in his chair, a pondering expression adorning his features. "Perhaps our James is growing up."

Lyra took that into consideration. She trusted Remus, and he trusted James. She was inclined to believe that Sirius was the one at the intentional heart of the whole thing. He also appeared to be the one who cared the least. Here I go again thinking about him, she thought and turned her attention back to the abandoned parchment in front of her.

"I'd better get back to this," she told Remus.

"Oh!" he said, removing his arms from atop her possessions. "Of course… Are you rather certain you haven't come across any girls in need of tutoring?"

She was quiet for a few seconds. "I think I heard rumour that there might be one at a table just around the corner this time next week." She gave him a slight smile.

He nodded. "Understandable. Be sure to tell her that I hope her maturity and kind-heartedness continue to rub off on anyone she happens to meet while here." He stood and held out a hand.

Lyra shook it. "She'll appreciate the sentiment."

A/N: I've been completely caught up in exams and assignments lately, and I didn't want to sacrifice (too much) quality or quantity on this one. If it's any consolation, I feel incredibly guilty each time I think about how long I'm taking to post. Here's to hoping the writing isn't suffer exceptionally as a result of my recent sleep deprivation. As alway: review, follow, fave. xx S