The others never spoke about it at all that night or the next morning, but things between him and Lily were a little unstable. She talked like everything was fine but would never look him in the eye so that he'd feel a mixture of guilt and anger at her for making him feel bad about it, all the while knowing that that wasn't really her intention.
Remus hated the feeling of embarrassment that came up in his stomach when Madelin asked him about the rumors she'd been hearing about Sirius. He knew that as Sirius's friend he should have some explanation for his actions and be able to defend him in some way, but the truth was Sirius was being a little bit of a conundrum lately.
"I don't want you to think I like Severus Snape," she said after she had brought up the subject when they were talking in the library that afternoon. "I don't know anything about him but I've heard he's not very nice."
"Understatement," Remus said with a nod.
"But is it true Sirius was trying to really hurt him when he couldn't even fight back?" she asked tentatively. "Some people who saw it said it was...
Remus's eyebrows contracted conflictedly. "The thing you have to understand about Sirius...You have to know him really well to know him at all. He isn't a very open person and without understanding him inside out, I guess he just seems very angry. But he grew up in a horrible environment. His mother, I imagine, never even hugged him except maybe when he was very young."
"That's terrible," she said, her face innocently sad.
"Yeah. Well, his family is mostly made up of people like Snape. You know, and all the Slytherins he hangs around with. So when Snape and his friends are around being...well, being the way they are, sometimes it just hits a sensitive nerve and Sirius takes everything out on him."
He knew these words very well because they were the ones he always said to himself to explain why Sirius had played the prank on Snape that night last year, almost making Remus a murderer. But something felt a little wrong about saying them out loud to Madelin, having to explain his friend's actions to her when she hardly knew him.
These very unfamiliar thoughts dissolved when he saw a sad expression come onto her face. "I don't think he likes me," she said.
Remus wasn't expecting that, and his brow rose.
"No," he said, taking her hand. "He likes you. He just has this problem with trusting people. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't act like I completely understand it, because he's actually been acting kind of odd."
She smiled. Remus found himself smiling back just because the way she smiled made her look so nice. Her hair was braided into two long tails draping down her chest and the soft golden rays coming through the window behind him made her eyes look a little sparkly. She really could look quite pretty in the right kind of light.
Madelin glanced to the side at a step stool that was right by them for reaching books on the top shelf. Still holding his hand, she stepped onto it, making her high enough to be able to put her arms around his shoulders. Which was what she did. He hugged her back and they stood for a while with her head head resting on his shoulder. It felt very warm and comfortable.
Remus knew if he didn't kiss her now he probably wouldn't get another good chance to for a while. He probably didn't need to ask, but even so he said, "Maddie?"
She pulled back a little so she could look at his face and said, "Yes?"
He brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face. "Can I...?"
"Moony!"
Remus rolled his eyes, which made Madelin start giggling. They loosened their grips on each other, turning to see Sirius walking down the aisle toward them. The interruption was awkward, but not nearly as awkward as it would have been just a minute ago when they were in the middle of talking about him.
"How's it going?" Sirius said. "You want to see something cool? You ever seen a shrinking paperweight?"
Remus laughed as he picked Madelin up from the stool and put her back down on the floor. "No." He glanced at Madelin, who exchanged a laughing expression with him.
"Well, check this out." He reached in his bag and drew his hand out again, holding it out in front of them like he would if he wanted Madelin to give him her hand.
"So where is it?" Remus asked.
"Right there," he said, pointing into his palm.
"Is there really something that small there?" Madelin asked, peering closely at his hand.
Sirius started laughing, but not unkindly. "I'm just joking. It's right here." He reached into his bag again and took out a small glass sphere. "You know, something really must be a bad gift when it won't even make good extra packing material. I took this from my house to hold my record player in place in my suitcase, but of course it shrank to a fourth of its size on my way over."
Madelin laughed.
"Anyway," he said, "the real reason I'm here is to find Sophia. Have you seen her around?"
"No," Remus answered.
Sirius looked at Madelin, who shook her head.
"Oh well. Here, you can hold onto this for me," he said, handing the paperweight to Madelin. "If you ever need a gift for somebody you don't like."
She laughed again as he walked away, and then she looked up at Remus.
"See? He doesn't bite," he said.
Sirius had not seen Sophia ever since he had run into her yesterday in the library and was wondering if she was all right. After looking there as well as in all of the hallways and the Great Hall, he finally went outside into the courtyard and found her sitting on a bench reading a book, surrounded by other students who were playing in the snow. He didn't reach her before he saw her put the book away and start walking back inside, so he had to run to catch up with her.
"Hey. Babe," he said, grabbing her arm to make her stop. "Wait up."
As soon as she turned around to see him he felt her hand stinging his cheek as it flew across his face.
"Ow!" he yelled, seeing several students stopping to watch them out of the corner of his eye. "What was that for?"
"How could you attack Severus like that?!" she shouted back at once. "What the hell did you think you were
Sirius looked at her for a second in complete confusion. "What...you...?"
"I was there, I saw the whole thing!"
"Okay, but what does it matter to you?"
"That's beside the point! He was completely defenseless against you! You could have really hurt him!"
"What do you care?" he asked. "I thought you hated my cousins and that whole lot. Is Snape your buddy now or something?"
She looked uncomfortable when he said that. He didn't like what he read from her expression.
"Wait...don't tell me..." he begged, searching her face for an answer.
She sighed. "Severus and I used to be friends."
"What?"
"But now you don't even have him," he finished.
"I have friends at home," she replied almost defensively. "It doesn't matter. I don't need him."
"Well, that's a Slytherin talking if I ever heard one," he said nastily.
"Shut up!" she said, looking like she could gladly hit him again.
"Who are you?" he asked her. "You never told me you had a soft spot for greasy scumballs. Did you even hear how he was talking about Lily?"
"Yes, I did," she said. "And I think if you weren't such a blind and simple-minded git you might figure out why he would be having a go at her all the time."
"It couldn't be because she's a Muggle-born, could it?" he said sarcastically.
"Severus is a Halfblood!" she yelled. "Oh, you are so pathetic! You just can't accept that you might be wrong about someone. You have all these simple, black and white ways of seeing people, and if anything disproves your way of seeing things you just can't handle it. That's why you hesitated to approach me after the first time we talked, because you didn't want me to turn out to be something other than an ordinary Slytherin you can sort into your negative category."
"Wait a minute," he said with his voice softening a little, grabbing her arm again because she had been about to turn away. "That isn't true. This has nothing to do with me and you."
"Yes, it does," she said, pulling her arm away quickly. "Maybe you should think about it."
"Sophia! Come on!" he called after her as she walked off so fast that no one would ever guess she was trudging through deep snow in difficult heels.
He suddenly looked around and saw that he was being stared at by many wide-eyed first and second year students.
"Piss off!" he yelled, exploding his anger at the nearest possible victims, so that they all jerked their gazes away from his direction and went back to what they'd been doing.
"Galadriel, leave it alone," Lily said to her cat, who was very interested in the spinning Jefferson Airplane record on Sirius's turntable and kept trying to put her paw on it.
Lily, Remus, James, and Peter were sitting near the fireplace in the common room doing homework. James, who was sitting closest to the little table that the record player sat on, picked up Galadriel from the arm of his chair and put her in his lap. "You behave," he said.
"Speaking of behaving, where's Sirius?" asked Peter. "He's not still looking around for his girlfriend, is he?"
"No, he's right there," Remus said, who had just noticed Sirius coming in through the portrait hole looking very angry and seemingly ignorant of any of his surroundings, as he almost walked right past his friends.
"All right, Padfoot?" James called to stop him.
Sirius turned very abruptly and crossed his arms on the back of the couch most of them were sitting on. He stood there for a moment like he didn't know how to start explaining his thoughts.
"What happened to you?" James asked, able to tell very quickly that something was wrong.
"Did you and Sophia talk?" Lily helped.
"Talk?" he echoed. "If you'd call it that. We had a big row."
"Why?" Peter asked.
"Because she hates me now because of what happened yesterday. Turns out she and Snivellus are old friends."
"No!" James said in disbelief.
"Yeah. Apparently he ditched her for the cooler crowd a few years ago."
"That wasn't very nice. Why does she still care what happens to him?"
"I think it's more about the principle of the thing, James," Lily said.
Sirius stared at her. She was the only one who had showed no reaction when he told them about Sophia and Snape's past relationship.
After a moment James's eyes were on her as well, and she looked a little nervous and apologetic.
"Don't tell me you knew about it," Sirius said in a dangerously quiet voice.
She sighed. "I didn't know anything for certain. I just recalled seeing them with each other a lot a long time ago."
"So why in hell wouldn't you mention this to me?" Sirius demanded in a raising voice.
Lily paused for a second, as if considering whether or not to say her real feelings. "Because I knew you would react the way you are now," she said. "And I didn't want to stop you from pursuing something with her just because of something like that."
"So you think it's better that this is the way I found out?"
"I thought if it was really an important thing to know about her then she would have told you about it by now. Maybe she should have so that you would have hesitated before almost choking Snape to death."
"Yes, in your defense! Or did you not notice?"
"In my defense? I'm more offended by you pretending that's what it's all about than by anything Snape says about me." She was starting to look very sad; nothing that she said was shouted, just said plainly and truthfully.
James turned his eyes from her to Sirius, who had fallen silent. Sirius suddenly felt a pang of guilt. If he was going to get into fights with people for saying things about Lily he could at least give her the respect of that being his real reason, instead of practically claiming that as his excuse when it was not only comments they made about her that he was so sensitive to.
"I..." Sirius stammered awkwardly, not used to saying things like this. "I'm sorry."
Lily gave a small nod. "It's okay," she said sincerely. "But...if you really want to be a good friend, then next time I have to scream at you to stop doing something like I was yesterday, please just do what I ask."
"Okay," Sirius agreed very quickly, as if he almost expected her to start crying and would say anything at the moment to stop that from happening.
But Lily breathed in quickly and regained herself, and everyone was silent for an uncomfortable moment. James broke it by suggesting, "Game of Dud, anyone?"
Everyone let out a strange mixture of a groan and a laugh, as Sirius's new board game had become a bit of a joke between the five of them because they had played it several times and found it to be completely unfair and devoid of technique or strategy. Even so, they took a break in their work to get the game out from where they always kept it under one of the tables and ended up wasting an hour on the despicable thing, though they laughed the whole way through.
Sirius was able to have fun, but still felt very confused inside. The thing that was strange to him about this fight with Sophia was that even after all he had found out about her and after they'd yelled at each other furiously, he knew that if he went much longer without getting along with her he would miss her. He wasn't happy about some of the things he had said to her and felt bad whenever he thought about the possibility that he had really hurt her. Whether it really troubled her or not, Sophia didn't have many people at Hogwarts who cared about her, and to leave her the moment she proved to be a little different than what he'd seen in her from the beginning seemed tremendously unfair.
He didn't know what he was going to do, but he was too stressed out to worry about it tonight. Maybe she would be willing to talk tomorrow.