Sirius was in the library browsing through a vacated and quiet section to see if he could find something useful for an essay he had to write for Potions. He had picked up a volume to look at when he felt someone's hands move around his waist.
"Hey, Sophia," he said casually.
"It's not Sophia," said a disgusted voice behind him.
He almost dropped the book. When he spun around he found himself face-to-face with Victoria Knightley.
"Hi, Vic," he said flatly.
"I heard you've been seen all over the place with that awful vixen Stabbard," she said angrily. "It seems that it's true."
"What's it to you?"
"What's it to me?" she said in disbelief. "What am I to you, I think that's the question."
He shrugged. "Not much, it looks like."
Her jaw dropped in horror just as Sophia appeared as if on cue, apparently having been somewhere close enough to recognize Sirius's voice from a few aisles away. "Hey," she said calmly. "What's going on?"
As she started to step closer to them Victoria just groaned and stormed off, but not before purposefully walking too close to Sophia as she passed her so that her leg made her trip.
"Hey!" Sirius yelled after her as he caught Sophia before she fell to the floor. She quickly got to her feet again and lunged after Victoria angrily, but Sirius held her back.
"What did you do that for?!" he called.
Victoria turned back around and said, "How can you be so interested in her? For the sake of Merlin, she's a Slytherin!"
"I don't care," Sirius said, stepping in front of Victoria to look at her dangerously. "She's still my girl and I'm still going to hex you so bad you won't know what hit you if you can't be nice to her."
She took a sharp intake of breath and looked for a moment like she was going to explode into annoying, loud tears. But instead she just turned again and stomped away. She was not even close to being out of earshot before Sophia and Sirius broke out into laughter.
"Be a little easy on her," Sophia said. "She obviously just can't get over you. Who the hell was that, anyway?"
"Victoria Knightley," he sighed. "Fifth year. Killer legs, but what an obnoxious nag."
She laughed again. "Did you at least let her down easy?"
"No, I never really broke it off," he said. "I just kind of forgot about her once I met you, I guess."
She looked surprised. "Well, no wonder she's mad."
"She wasn't my girlfriend or anything!" Sirius defended himself. "It should have been enough for me to stop talking to her. Most people would get the point."
Sophia smirked and didn't say anything. Sirius picked up the book off the ground which he had dropped before catching her fall. He put it back on the bookshelf in between two random books where it didn't belong and looked back at her. She was reading the spines of the books for something that looked interesting, or at least making it appear that that was what her attention was focused on.
"Hey," he said, putting a finger under her chin and turning her head up towards him. "You know I'm never going to treat you that way, right?"
She didn't answer, but just looked at his face for a moment in a way that made Sirius feel a tug in his chest, and then kissed him slowly. It was the kind of kiss that made him lose track of how much time went by so that when he finally opened his eyes again he was surprised to find light all around them coming through the castle windows.
Sophia kept her arms circled around his neck, leaning back against the bookshelf. "Do you promise every girl that?"
"Of course not," he said back right away.
Seeing his look of surprise, she said, "It's not that I care; I just wondered if you were ever with anybody before who you...well...thought you'd actually be with a long time."
He took her face in both of his hands and looked straight in her eyes. "Look, Sophie, I don't know about these things. I don't think about them much. But all I know is this is different."
She accepted that answer with a soft smile. "But in any case it's not quite fair to promise someone that you'll never hurt them like that," she said quietly. "You never know what could happen. Sometimes you can't even help the way things go wrong."
"I know nothing will go wrong."
"How?"
"Well, it's not like I've ever really hurt anybody before," he answered.
She looked at him very skeptically. "How do you know?"
He thought about that for a moment. "Because...none of the girls I've been with ever knew me well enough to really love me."
Her brow lifted in surprise at the simplicity of his answer. She thought for a few seconds and then said, "Getting rejected still isn't very fun."
"Rejection is a humbling experience," he defended.
"Maybe you should be rejected some time, then."
He shrugged. "Maybe I should be."
She took hold of his tie to pull him forward to kiss him again, and then after a couple seconds she pulled away. "I can't be doing this! If I don't work on an assignment I have for Transfiguration I'm going to be killing my grade in that class."
"Sorry," he said, even though he hadn't meant for them to run into each other. "My friends are around here somewhere if you want to work with us."
"I'll think about it. First I have to find a book on Animagi."
He told her that he'd be with the others at the study tables if she wanted to see him later. After they parted he found James, Peter, Lily, and Remus at a table in the middle of the library and his good mood was a little dampened by the fact that four tables next to them were completely inhabited by his least favorite Slytherin students. Most of them were being very loud about cheering for whoever they wanted to win a game of Wizard Chess being played by Launce Avery and Lucius Malfoy. Sirius's brother Regulus was sitting with a group of other young students who had piles of their gold sitting on a table that they seemed to be betting on the winner with.
"There you are," James said when Sirius sat down next to him.
"Hey," he said. "You got a dent put in this essay yet?"
"Yes, actually," said James. "I found a great book on the magical properties of herbs, since about ten of the ingredients in an energizing potion are herbs."
"Great. I never would have thought to look in the Herbology section. Have you-?"
"Hey, Regulus!" Bellatrix's haggardly cruel voice rang out above the rest of the talking coming from her group of friends. "Your brother's over there, you can tell him what your mother has been saying about him ever since he left."
This was apparently an already-used joke between them, and she had obviously been talking so that Sirius could hear her. He rolled his eyes and called, "That prat over there isn't my brother anymore, Bella, and I really don't give a rat's fat arse what she's been saying about me."
"Well, that's good," Regulus said, "because what she's been saying is absolutely nothing. She seems to have forgotten that you exist."
The Slytherins laughed.
"All the better for me," Sirius muttered, but James was giving him a sort of sympathetic look.
"In fact," Regulus elaborated, "before I left to go back to school I believe I noticed a couple holes burned into our lovely tapestry. Looks like Mum took care of all that remained in our family of you and that lousy Mudblood lover."
"Don't talk about Andy that way, you little piece of scum!" Sirius snapped, as a few students seated close stiffened their shoulders in reaction to the word Regulus had used. "You're too young to even know what you're talking about."
Pondering his next move on the chess board but obviously listening, Malfoy gave a slimy laugh and asked, "Who is Andy?"
"My older sister, Andromeda," said Narcissa, who was sitting beside him. "Ran off and married some Mudblood as proud as she pleased. It was completely shameful."
"If you all can't stop using that word around this lady," Remus said suddenly, glancing at Lily, "I might have to dig around in my bag and find what I did with my prefect badge and use it for once."
"Oooh," many of the Slytherins said, pretending to feel threatened.
"Remus, don't worry about it," Lily said quietly to him.
Suddenly Snape's voiced crawled out of nowhere; he had been sitting near the Black sisters and just smirking the whole time.
"Ah, poor Sirius," he said. "His mummy doesn't love him anymore. The only woman foolish enough to care a thing for him is a half-breed like Evans."
As the crowd around Snape laughed, Sirius flinched and clenched his fists. One beat later, Narcissa screamed as the book lying open on her lap burst into flames. Malfoy immediately pulled out his wand and extinguished it with a spell, and then the group just started laughing again as he brushed the ashes off of her skirt and tried to calm her down.
Sirius's friends were all looking at him tensely now, and Peter was sitting very still with his hands flat on the table as if afraid he would accidentally destroy something else any moment.
"Hey, mate," James said, putting a calming hand on Sirius's shoulder. "Dont get too wound up. It just amuses them more."
Remus started to stand up and Lily grabbed his wrist. "Please don't..."
"I'm just going to go get Madam Pince," he told her. "They're being too loud in here anyway."
She nodded and let go of him so he could walk to the front of the library.
"That's not entirely accurate, Severus," Bellatrix finally said in response to Snape's comment. "There's that hag who's dating him now."
"Oh, right, Bella," said Rodolphus Lestrange. "Sirius and Sophia. How befitting. They certainly deserve each other."
As Sirius drummed his fingernails on the table agitatedly, Lily suddenly lifted her face and James saw her looking at Snape as if searching for his reaction to the mention of Sophia, but he was remaining completely unreadable as always.
"Yeah, who do you think is worse, Dolph?" Bellatrix asked her boyfriend. "A traitor to his family or a traitor to her house?"
"Oh, hard to say," Lestrange said.
"It just goes to show how that lot seem to have the intention of creating the most dishonorable marriages possible in the future," Snape said. "A relative of Sirius's has married some Muggle-born filth and now Potter seems to be on his way down the same path."
James's eyes flared dangerously for a moment, but even so he whispered to Sirius, "Don't start anything, Padfoot."
"You're telling me not to start anything?" he hissed back much more audibly.
"Sirius," Lily said warningly. "Calm down." She could tell he was starting to get pushed over the edge, but even she couldn't see that under the table he was gripping the top of his wand tightly, ready to pull it out of his pocket at any moment.
"It's quite repulsive to think about," Malfoy said openly. "Couples like them and the worthless offspring they're bound to produce."
"That will only be if none of our friends we're reading about in the paper go after her kind and get them killed them first," Snape laughed.
James saw Sirius's wand fly out but was too reluctant to stop him now. Even as Lily yelled at him not to do anything, he shot up out of his chair, pointed his wand directly at Snape and shouted, "Impedimenta!"
Snape flew backwards out of his chair and was slammed against a book shelf standing ten feet away, groaning as he fell to the floor with a painful-sounding thump. His wand, which he had drawn quickly right after Sirius drew his, fell from his hand, and before he could pick it up Sirius had fallen on him and hit him very hard across the face.
"Sirius!" cried Lily, standing up from her seat.
Every single student rose from the tables and moved closer to the area where Sirius and Snape were rolling around on the floor fighting each other. Snape was only strong enough to put up a fight for a few seconds, though, and it wasn't long before Sirius had him pinned in one place with his hands around his neck.
"No!" Lily screamed.
Her shouts were joined by James yelling, "Hey! Stop it!" But their words were practically drowned out by all the other students' calls and cheers, and Sirius heard none of it. He just kept swearing at Snape and tightening his grip around his neck. He had forgotten about more subtle ways to fight with a wand; Snape was so weak and helpless that this way was so much more satisfying. The whole time Snape kept choking for air and trying to stretch his hand out for his wand, which lay on the floor just a few inches out of his reach, and clawing at Sirius's fingers with his other hand in a feeble attempt to make him let go.
"Come on, Severus!" shouted Avery while the other Slytherins also cheered for him uselessly. "Fight back!"
"Kick him! Get him!" yelled one of Regulus's friends.
"Leave him alone!" Lily shouted hopelessly, just as James grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to the side to run past her and then went after the two.
"Sirius!" he said, grabbing him around the chest and trying to pull him off. "Come on, Padfoot! Let go of him! Come on, there you go…"
It was only then that Sirius's grip finally loosened. He practically went completely slack and let James pull him away, still breathing in furious, gasping breaths. Snape was breathing even harder, though, regaining air as his face turned from a ghostly white back to his normal paleness. Then as soon as he had recovered he seized his wand and pointed it at Sirius-
"Expelliarmus!" Lily incanted with her wand now outstretched, her voice exhausted and weak-sounding but the spell working nevertheless. Snape's wand flew from his grip toward her. As soon as she caught it everyone's gazes started turning toward the two who had just come from the front of the library; Remus had returned with the librarian, Madam Pince, who looked furious enough to make Sirius's temper seem cool and controlled.
"I'll have that, thank you," she said in sharp, pointy words, grabbing Snape's wand from Lily's hand. "Both of you get up and come with me this instant. I'm taking you directly to the heads of your houses. Thank you, Mr. Lupin," she dismissed Remus, who looked very confused and lost, and then looked at the rest of the crowd. "All of you sit back down or leave, it's over now."
The last thing Sirius's friends felt like doing was sitting back down, but they couldn't follow him and Snape, so they slowly walked back toward their table where their books and bags were.
On the way Bellatrix grabbed a handful of Lily's hair and pulled it to stop her. "Don't waste your sympathy, dear," she said poisonously. "Don't you see? It just makes him hate you more."
James came to her side looking angry, forcefully bumping into her so that she let go of Lily and gave him an ugly look of annoyance. He took Lily's hand and pulled her away, handing her her things which he had picked up from the table for her. The Slytherins continued to jeer and laugh at them as they walked off toward the entrance of the library with Peter and Remus.
On the way out Lily stopped in her tracks as they passed an aisle of books where someone was standing hidden from the view of anyone near the tables, peeking through a wide opening in between two books on the shelf. It was Sophia, looking very disturbed. As soon as she saw she'd been spotted, she turned and walked away quickly, disappearing to another aisle.
James, who was still holding her hand and had stopped when she did, saw her looking at the now empty aisle. "What?"
"It was Sophia," Lily said with a worried tone. She looked up at him. "I think she saw everything."
James assumed a meaningful expression for a moment and then looked back at the space where Sophia had been. Then he just squeezed Lily's hand and said, "Come on."