Sophia wanted to get the book she needed for her Potions essay and get out of the library as soon as possible. Luckily, everyone was at dinner in the Great Hall right now so there were very few people in the library to stare at her or ask her about the scene she'd made in here the night before. And she knew she wouldn't run into anyone else that she really didn't want to see.

She didn't know, however, that Sirius was sitting at one of the library tables this very moment watching her. He had gotten a tip-off about where she was from Monty, who either fancied Sophia or was just an unusually observant person; Sirius wasn't sure which. He had told Sirius that he had seen her going into the library just as most of the students were leaving it to go eat dinner. Now he had been sitting there obscuring his face by pretending to read a book for five minutes.

Sophia didn't even notice him there when she came out of the aisles and walked right by his table to go to a different section of the library. But she didn't get all the way past him before he dropped the book, revealing himself, and grabbed her wrist to stop her.

"I need to talk to you," he said to her horrified face.

"You get the hell away from me," she said quietly but very dangerously, like in a growl, as she vigorously tried to pull away.

"Please. I know what happened. I just need you to listen to me for one moment."

"If you actually think you can talk me into forgiving you now, that's really sad."

"No, that isn't why I'm here. This is for him, not me."

That made her stop struggling, but she was still looking away toward the library doors.

"Please," Sirius said. "Sit down."

He wasn't giving her much of a choice; his hand holding her wrist was pulling her arm down until she finally sat in another chair at the table that faced his.

"So," Sophia said, "I should have known Severus would tell you what he had done so he could take credit for me never speaking to you again."

"No. I found out from someone else, actually. While you and your old mate are talking again, you can thank him for single-handedly screwing up Remus's only chances he's had with a girl as long as I've known him."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, a look of genuine confusion on her face.

"Madelin Wood. She knows."

There was a pause of silence. This was clearly news to Sophia.

"I didn't tell her anything," she said.

"She had the notes you and Snape were writing to each other."

"...Oh," she said, after thinking for a moment. "I...left it there. I wasn't thinking about it. I don't know how she ended up with that, but I didn't tell her."

Sirius looked at her for a long moment. Then he said in a softer voice than he had been using before, "Yeah. I never thought you did."

She turned her eyes away from his, looking very uncomfortable for a second. "What do you want?"

He premeditated what he was going to say for a moment. When he started speaking, it was slowly and cautiously. "It is my fault that you know about Remus," he said. "And I need to have your promise that you won't tell anyone."

"And why should I promise that?" she questioned right away. The idea of spreading the truth to anyone else seemed to have become more appealing to her now that he was asking her not to do it.

"Because none of this is Remus's fault, and he wouldn't deserve that. He's never done anything to Snape. His hands are completely clean of it."

"That's not what Severus made it sound like."

"Yes, without a doubt I'm sure he dirtied up the story to make all of us look like cold-blooded killers. But the whole thing was my doing."

"Why should I even trust anything you say?"

"God dammit!" he said suddenly. "James went down there and stopped him, he told you that. He saved his life! Does it sound like he was in on it?"

"Severus said he just got scared at the last minute."

"Scared? Nobody even remotely scared would have gone down that tunnel knowing what he knew was there. It was lucky for Snape James even found out what I had done because he's the only one who would have been crazy enough to go help him."

"You're lying. I don't believe you," Sophia said, and then immediately her expression changed as she realized she had been shouting the same thing at Snape. Then she shook herself out of thinking about that and said, "I don't care how you want me to look at it. It's still a horrible thing you did to him, and horrible the way you and your friends have always treated him. I don't want to hear how you would explain yourselves." She got up from the table and started to leave.

"No. Sophie-" He grabbed her wrist again. "Please. I'm not denying anything he said I did or trying to make excuses for myself, but the others did nothing to deserve the effects of this. You just have to trust what I tell you."

She was silent for a moment, letting him hold her wrist. Then she said quietly, "I did trust you. Now I know what a big mistake that was."

She turned to pull away, but he said, "Wait," and pulled her closer to him, fighting the passionate struggle she returned. He wrapped his arms around her waist to keep her held there, leaning his face against her abdomen in a very pleading, pathetic position. This shocked her so much that her anger departed for now and she just stood there frozen in place, looking down at his head.

Sirius began, "What I did. . .It was wrong. I know." She could feel his warm breath moving the fabric of her shirt as he talked. This sudden closeness made her very uncomfortable. "It was just. . .something he'd done lately that had made me so angry. Him and my cousin. I can hardly remember it now. But it doesn't matter. It's no excuse. I've been denying my responsibility for it because it was just too horrible a thing to admit to being at fault for. I thought that if I just kept thinking that he had it coming to him, that he brought it on himself, then it would be okay. Because if it was my responsibility then that would mean I would have been at fault if anything had happened to him. For so long I've just tried not to think about that. And I do wish I had never done it, because of what it keeps costing me. I can't be rid of it. I am losing so much now because of it." As he said this his hands moved wantingly around her waist, holding her to him even tighter, seemingly without him meaning to do it. If he could see her face then, he would see the same sadness he felt then dwelling lamentingly in her eyes as she stood there almost looking like she wanted to touch him back. Something at that moment made it feel hauntingly wrong for her arms to be hanging at her sides instead of clutching his head to her and touching his hair, holding him back.

"Please," he begged finally. "I can't handle having anything else on my hands. If you just won't tell anybody, I'll do anything."

She stared into the air in silence for a moment before finally saying something to that. "I just want to forget about all of this. Both of you. If you really want me to do what you ask, I want you to promise you'll never bother me with any of this again. That you'll never speak to me again."

He hesitated, his hold on her not loosening at all despite what he was about to agree to. "...All right."

And so they stayed this way for a few more seconds. Then Sophia swallowed and said quietly, "I felt this stupid kind of happiness when he started writing me that note. After all, he hadn't talked to me for years. It made me think of how things used to be and what he was like back then. And then to realize that he was only doing it because he saw a way to get back at you." Then she said it, the passionate mixture of different feelings that came out making it sound heartbreakingly true. "I hate you."

Sirius's grip on her became weightless, but he didn't make a sound. Now staying in this position was only serving as a good way for him to not have to look her in the face.

"How hypocritical you are," she said. "Between you and Severus, I can't even say who's worse. You and your goddamn cousins and brother, you're just like a bunch of children, being so aggressive and spiteful to each other. For all I'm concerned you lot can battle it out until you kill each other."

Then she reached her hands up to his shoulders and shoved him away from her, quickly turning her back on him before either of them could see the other's face. She started to walk away but stopped when Sirius said something, his voice unrecognizably soft and quiet.

"I didn't tell you," he said. "I didn't know how to say it, when you asked me if I'd ever felt the same way before about anybody. But I know now it had to have been more real with you, because every other girl I ever took into the Room of Requirement didn't remember it afterwards. They would remember what happened, but they'd think it had happened somewhere else."

He paused to give her a moment to say something if she didn't want to hear this, but she just stood still and silent. He went on, "We always knew the room was unplottable on maps, but I didn't expect that it would be able to make itself impossible for others to remember for my convenience. If it hadn't worked that way, I never would have brought as many people there. We couldn't have everyone I took there telling their friends and ruining the secret. But you. . .you were different. You remembered everything afterwards. I thought. . .well, maybe it doesn't make any difference to you, but I just thought you should know that."

Sophia stood there facing away from him, not moving. The nearly empty library was completely silent, and in that moment the silence was unbearable, filling the air in between them with everything they could say to each other but never would.

Then, finally, she walked away from him, both of them knowing right then that he probably could have trusted her not to tell anyone about Remus anyway. After all, she didn't have any friends at Hogwarts to tell. But it was somehow easier than breaking up with each other the normal way.

James was lying on his back across the couch in the common room, his head resting on one end and his feet up on the other. Lily was lying across him laying her head on his chest tiredly as he held her around her shoulders with one arm and used the other to hold up a book he was reading. They didn't move when Sirius came in through the portrait hole, but when James saw it was him he folded over the corner of the page he was on and set the book down on Lily's back, where it sat rising and falling as she breathed.

Sirius came up to the couch and said in a tired voice, "Hey, mate." He stopped, looking at Lily, who was lying still with her eyes closed, and lowered his voice. "Is she asleep?"

"No," Lily murmured, but she didn't open her eyes. James smiled and brushed some of her hair out of her face.

"I have a message for you. And you," Sirius said, poking her head with his finger. "Professor McGonnagall wants you to meet with all the prefects tomorrow to establish some actual rules on point deduction. There have been some. . .well. . .liberal differences between prefects as far as how many points certain rule-breaking is worth."

James laughed. "Yeah, right. This is about Lily only taking ten points from me for playing on the thin ice over the lake and taking twenty from Simon Kinkaid for doing the same thing. Isn't it?"

This made Lily open her eyes and look up. "I told you! When you take off more than ten points for anything you have to turn in a written statement for it. I wasn't about to write up a note about how my stupid boyfriend, the Head Boy, was setting a horrible example for the young students just because Peter thought it was so funny-"

Sirius started laughing very hard.

"Or, you know, you could just admit you were being biased and that me and the boys have successfully had a bad influence on you," said James with a smile.

Lily rolled her eyes and laid her head back down on his chest.

"Well, actually, I think Professor McGonnagal still doesn't know about that," Sirius said. "Nobody would tell on you guys. They love that you're Head Boy, at least, because you don't tell on them for anything," he added to James, who laughed.

James sat up enough to look around the room. There were a couple other students studying quietly in corners. James had to be discreet about what he was about to ask.

"So, uh. . .Is anybody going to be telling on Remus?" he asked him seriously, his joking mood toned down, but without sounding too suspicious.

Sirius's face changed in a way that made it clear that when he had been laughing before, it had not really reflected how he was feeling. He was truly the best actor James knew.

"I took care of it," he said. Despite the deceptively casual way he said it, James could see just from looking at him that he was in a lot of pain. And without even having to ask, he knew that everything between him and Sophia was over.

He gave Sirius a very sorry look, and Sirius just shook his head. He turned and walked away to go up to the dormitories.

James picked up his book and threw it on the ground. Wrapping both arms snugly around Lily, he said in a quiet voice only she could hear, "Great. Now we can be thoroughly depressed."

She smirked unhappily. "It really makes me sad. I don't know what to think of this whole thing. Sirius and Remus are good people, they're both worth loving. But in reality, what kind of relationships would they have been in after a while without Madelin and Sophia knowing these things they found out? I mean, they'd just have to know."

"But they both found out in the completely wrong way. What if it could have been in different circumstances?"

Lily was quiet, thinking about this for a moment. Then she said, "I don't know. I can't really be the voice of experience with this; you're the only person I've ever been serious with. But maybe two people can have certain differences that just cannot be overcome. Sirius has a limited point of view because of the way he grew up, and maybe Sophia does too, which could make it impossible for them to ever understand each other and for her to forgive him for some of the things he's done. Maybe it's possible for two people to just be incapable of seeing eye to eye on some really important things. You know...even if they really love each other."

Those words caught James's curiosity. "Do you really think that they...that she...?"

"Did you not see how your best friend looked when he just walked through here? I think it was pretty serious, yes."

"But they had already been having problems, hadn't they? For all we know it was already as good as over between them. Maybe Sirius is just feeling the unpleasant pang of closure."

She looked troubled. "No...I don't think so. If it was already over at that point, then why would Sophia have been so upset to find out what Snape told her?"

James hadn't thought about that. Changing the subject to voice something that was bothering him, he said, "But Madelin...I don't get it. Doesn't she know after dating Remus that whole time that he's a good guy? It doesn't make any sense to me. In fact, it makes me kind of mad."

"I don't understand it either," Lily said. "I suppose he did lie to her. She has every right to feel deceived. How can she know how much of what she thought she knew about him was a lie?"

"He didn't have any choice-!"

"Yes, I know, of course I'm not blaming him. It kind of makes me mad, too."

James's eyebrows raised. "It does?"

"Yes. It's not fair and it's not right. But I think there was something more to it. She spent lots of time with Remus; she knew him. Now she is so terrified of him that she won't even tell her friends anything? That just seems like blind and irrational fear. Something's not right about it."

She started to feel tired again and closed her eyes. James felt her breathing slow down to a relaxed pace again. He did not pick up his book to read again, but just rubbed Lily's back slowly and stared into the fire. At one point he heard the portrait hole slide open and did not look up to see who had come in. But he didn't have to, for a moment later someone started to play a soft song on the piano in the opposite corner of the room. The sound immediately took James back to when Remus used to play all the time. But something about his playing was different now. It sounded like it was expressing something that couldn't be put into words, rather than replacing Remus's words that he was too quiet and reclusive to speak. And it sounded very sad.