Chapter 26

"Well that was fun." Rebby said as we all sat back down at our table. Sirius and Becca had rushed from the room making goo-goo eyes at each other, leaving Rebby, Caleb, Rach, Remus, James and myself in the Great Hall. After Rebby and James relinquished the instruments to their rightful owners, we danced for a bit, and then decided to take a break and sit back down.

"I wonder what else will happen tonight." Rach commented "I mean, first the garden thing, then the singing thing, what else could happen?"

"I don't know, but what exactly did you talk with Remus about in the gardens? Hmm?" I asked inquisitively. I had a pretty good idea what it was, but it was quite possible I was wrong. Not likely, but possible.

"Um, well…" Rach exchanged a look with Remus. "Erm… not now, maybe later, ok?"

"I knew it! He told you didn't he?" Rebby burst out.

"Hey now, I knew it first!"

"How do you know you knew it first?"

"Because I'm the clever one, remember?"

"Oh, right… well I knew it second! I don't think Becca even gave it a thought, she's been all psyched out over the singing thing and the dance thing and the Sirius thing…"

"This is true."

"Wait, you guys already knew about it?"

"Yes, Lily found him out and refused to lie to us about it, us being me and Becca, she left telling you up to Remus, didn't want to ruin the relationship."

"Huh… ok…well… punch anyone?" Rach blinked, then stood up and walked off to fill up her punch glass.

"Hey, Lily? Mind taking a walk with me in the gardens?"

"I am your date; a walk in the gardens is kind of a must at a dance isn't it? But don't get any funny ideas." I stood and gave him a playful glare, the kind that says 'I'm serious in a lighthearted way'. I mean, I like James, I really do, but I don't know… something just isn't right about it…

"Okay, sounds good to me." James smirked and took my arm as we walked towards the door that led to the gardens. We walked silently through the beautiful rows of bushes with rose vines growing through them and fairies giggling and letting off their blue, yellow, and green glows. When we came to a bench at the back of the garden we sat down.

I looked up at the night sky and gasped. "It's so beautiful." I said. The stars were shining so brilliantly you could actually see the Milky Way. Combine it with the low glow of the fairies and the view of the night sky was spectacular.

"Yeah, beautiful…" I looked at James only to see that he wasn't staring up at the sky, by directly into my eyes. Gulp.

"Um, so, anything you wanted to talk about?" I asked nervously.

"Well, actually, yeah, kind of." James fiddled around in his coat, trying to find something. "We never really talked about Christmas presents for each other, whether we were going to do that or not, but I thought I should give you something, and, well… here." James had finally found what he was looking for in his inside jacket pocket. He pulled out and handed to me a small, red crushed velvet bag.

"Um, but James, I didn't get you anything… I mean… you really didn't have to…" I tried to give it back to him, but he pushed my hand away gently.

"Just… just open it, please?" James asked, almost pleaded.

"Okay… I guess…" I tugged at the little red silk draw strings on the bag until they came loose, letting the bag fall open. Out of the bag I drew a long black velvet box. A box like this could only hold one thing: jewelry. "James, really, you shouldn't have…"

"Go on, open it up." He urged.

I sighed and gently flipped an old looking little locking mechanism open, then lifted the lid of the box. Inside was a necklace. It was an oval shaped pendant made in the same style as the Victorian cameos: an oval of gold with intricate design serving as a frame for an oval of smooth, flat black stone. Set in relief from the black stone was a lily made from white stone, one petal tilting to the right, the stem curving slightly to the left making the flower bend elegantly to that side. It was beautiful, but I couldn't keep it. A gift like this, when I still wasn't sure if I really liked him, or if I just have a crush on him… well, it's not fair to him for me to keep it.

"James… it's beautiful, gorgeous really…"

"You like it then?" I nodded hesitantly "I knew you would! Wait… if you like it, then why aren't you smiling?"

"I… I love it James, but..."

"'But' what?"

"But I can't keep it… it's not that I don't like it or that I don't like you… I just don't know if I like you enough for this kind of gift… it was probably really expensive and… it just wouldn't be fair to accept it when I'm still not sure if what I'm feeling for you isn't more than, I don't know, a crush or something…" I suddenly realized I was babbling and James was completely silent.

"Lily…" he looked down at his hands and when he looked back up at me he was completely serious, not even a sign of laughter or the twitch of a smile "Lily, I understand what your saying, I understand your reservations, but I still think you should keep that necklace."

"Why? Why are you so adamant?"

"Because… I didn't just buy that necklace in a store; I didn't even pick it out for you. That necklace…" James seemed to be struggling with the words to say what he wanted to me. It was a very serious moment, I know, and all I could think of should have been what James could possibly be talking about, but for some reason the thought 'he looks so cute when he scrunches up his eyebrows like that' popped into my head. Way to go brain, you couldn't think that when he isn't being serious for once? "Lily, you know my grandparents are dead, right?"

"Um, yes…"

"Well, my grandmother, my father's mother, before she died she told me a story, every night she tucked me she would tell me this story. It was about a beautiful princess with long red hair and bright green eyes who lived in a great castle. The princess met a knight in the castle and fell in love, but she wouldn't admit it. One day the knight told the princess he loved her, but the princess didn't believe him. The next day he told her he would be leaving the castle for a while and left her a token, a necklace, to remind her of him while he was away. The knight set out courageously to fight a dragon terrorizing a nearby village, but he never came back. The princess was very sad and finally realized that she loved the knight. After a year passed, everyone had given up that the knight must be dead, but not the princess. She hoped year after year that he would come home so she could tell him how she felt. Everyday she prayed for his safe return, and everyday she wore the necklace. Sadly, according to my grandmother's version of the story, the knight never returned."

"That's so sad, but I still don't understand why…"

"Let me finish." James pleaded "My grandmother told me the story this way when I was younger, but just before she died, the year before I first came to Hogwarts, she told me the story again, but in a different way. This time when she told the story it wasn't a fairy tale of knights and princesses, but simply a love story between a young girl and a young boy. When she finished telling me the story she said that it wasn't just some made up tale, it had really happened. She told me it was a family legend. You see, the knight or the young man in the story was one of my ancestors. He and the princess or young girl actually did live in a castle together and did fall in love and it did end tragically. The castle was Hogwarts, the young man went to school here and ran off to help fight off a wild dragon that was attacking Hogsmeade along with many of the other male students. A lot of the students died, and a few were either eaten or burned beyond recognition by the dragon, so when the young man came up missing no one but the young girl thought there was any possibility he was alive. And the young man had given her a necklace, this very same necklace as my grandmother tells it. But that's where the similarities in the legend and the fairy tale end. You see, the young man and the young woman were reunited after this incident, a year later they found one another. They were married and had a child, a boy, but then were killed unexpectedly. The necklace and its story were passed on through the child and the young man's family. The tragedy is there, but so is a thread of hope, the child…" James sighed "Now comes the part where that necklace belongs to you. Apparently the way the young couple was able to find one another again after all that had happened was the necklace. The young man had bought it and placed a charm on it so that he would know where the young girl was when ever she was in danger. The way the charm works, the person who places the charm gives it to someone and the first person to put the necklace on is automatically linked to the person who placed the charm so that they may know when the necklace wearer is in trouble. The only thing is, when the young man placed the charm he also placed a lock on the necklace. Only someone whom he truly loved and whom truly loved him could wear the necklace. If any other were to put the necklace on they would find that the clasp wouldn't work and the necklace would continually fall off."

"Where are you going with this?" I asked him hesitantly. I had a feeling where he was going with this story, and I didn't like it very much.

"My grandmother told me that they necklace would only work for certain people in the family. It had worked for her and my grandfather, but not for my own parents or for my great grand parents. She told me that she knew it would work or me though. She never told me why or how she knew it, just that she did." James had been twiddling his thumbs, watching himself spin them round and round while he talked, but now he looked up at me again with those serious eyes. "I found out a couple of years ago why she was so convinced of her statement that I would be the next in our line that the necklace worked for: she was a Seer. But the gift affected her in an odd way. Instead of dreams or visions and stuff like most Seers get, she would touch an object, a really old object usually, something with a lot of emotion attached to it, and be able to see where it had been and sometimes where it would go in the future. Apparently that princess in the story, her description wasn't something passed down with the story, it was what my grandmother saw when she touched the necklace. She saw the young girl, the original owner of the necklace, and she saw the necklaces next owner. She based her description of the princess on both of them apparently: long red hair, bright green eyes, beautiful." He paused and let a smile fall into place on his face. My heart skipped a beat. "Sounds like you."

I wanted to jump up and run away, to scream that he was making it all up and he was being stupid, but I couldn't. I was glued to the bench. I couldn't even speak. Finally I managed to say something, but it wasn't what I had planned on saying during my moments of paralyzation. Instead of telling him he was crazy or something to that effect, I said "May I try it?"

James's smile grew wider so that it reached his eyes. "Of course. That was kind of the point." James lifted the box from my lap and pulled the necklace from it, gently. "Lean forward a bit, so I can reach." I felt my body move without my brain giving it permission and leant towards him close enough to kiss. He deftly took the necklace and placed it around my neck, the clasped it in the back, his eyes never once leaving my own.

"So how do we know if it works?" I whispered.

"We'll find out soon enough." He replied. Then, being that we were in a romantic garden during the Christmas Ball and he was telling me a romantic legend and giving me a very touching gift, we kissed, and the whole world melted away. The world melted away and I felt free and relaxed for the first time in days.

"Well, that brings our numbers down to four." I said to the three people sitting at our table drinking punch and eating cookies.

"When did Sirius and Becca disappear?" Remus asked.

"More importantly, where did they disappear to?" Rach added.

"They left after Becca's singing debut, but where to I haven't a clue."

"Rebby, you're rhyming." Caleb said, giving me an amused look.

"So… dancing?" Remus suggested.

"More cookies?" Rach added.

"Another disappearing act?" Caleb said, standing from the table and holding his hand out to me. Oh boy.

"Erm, yeah, sure." I looked at Remus and Rach as I stood "See you guys later I guess?"

"I think we'll actually head on up to the commons. Maybe we'll see you there in a bit?" Remus asked.

"Yeah, maybe…" I replied absent mindedly. Caleb had put his jacket back on and was leading me out of the Great Hall, into the gardens and I was too busy staring at his beautiful backside to pay much attention to what the other two were saying.

He led me into the gardens, and then wrapped his arm around my shoulders we meandered through the paths. We walked in silence, occasionally pointing out the stars or some flowers. It was a comfortable silence; we didn't have anything to say, so we didn't jumble the air with useless talk. Instead, we just walked in the warm night air.

When were in the back part of the garden in one of the darker areas when we heard someone talking, narrating really. "Hey, isn't that James?" I asked. Caleb shrugged and stalked forward, peeking around the corner. He pulled his head back and nodded at me. It was James talking. I crept forward as well and looked. James stopped talking and the two of them kissed.

We both snuck away from that part of the gardens trying to contain our laughter. I don't know why it was so funny, but it was. We stood a couple of paths over and laughed until we just couldn't anymore. Caleb found a bench nearby and sat down, leaning back and looking up at the stars. I sat down and leaned into his side as he wrapped an arm around me again and I joined him in looking at the stars.

We sat there for a while, gazing into space, before I realized he wasn't looking at the stars anymore, he was looking at me. Looking at me and smiling softly. Oh boy.

Our eyes connected and I couldn't even blink. I was stuck. His big blue eyes were pulling me in, dragging me closer and closer and closer until… we bumped noses.

"Ow." I laughed a little.

"S-sorry… want to try that again?" he asked, laughing a little as well.

"Yeah." we leaned in again, this time with out the eye lock or the nose bump, and kissed. All I can say is… wow.

"Becca, where are we going?" she was leading me through parts of the castle I'd never been to before. The passages were old, dark, and the air was moist.

"I told you already, it's a surprise!" Becca smiled over her shoulder at me.

"Good surprise or bad surprise?"

"You'll see! Now keep up!" she walked faster now nearly leaving me behind, though I'm not sure how seeing as she was the one in 4 inch heels.

Then, as suddenly as this little adventure had started, it ended. Becca came to a complete and full stop in front of a large painting, 12" by 14" that covered a large section of the wall extending all the way from the floor to the ceiling. The painting was of the Lake at night from a thick luscious garden, a view Sirius had never seen before. Everything was life size in the painting, so it felt like he was actually in the garden among the wild green vines and thick grass, the bright flowers cooled by a blue summer moon. It must have been a view from someone's imagination, because Sirius couldn't remember ever having seen a garden on the large cliff that dropped off from the castles lake side.

"Ready?" Becca asked. Then with out waiting for a reply she pulled a pencil out of one of the folds in her dress and inserted it into a crevice to the right of the painting. The painting slid upwards into an invisible slot in the ceiling revealing a large, very old wooden door with black iron handle and fastenings. Becca put the pencil back in its little hiding place and from another spot pulled out a little black package of thin silver tools.

"What are those?" I asked her, eyeing the package curiously.

"Lock picks. I still haven't found the actual key to this door, though I think it's hidden in the wall here somewhere. I have a lot of cousins you know, most of them are male. For some reason little brothers find reading their sister's diary to be one of the most interesting things in the world. More than half of them can pick simple locks just so they can get into their sister's diary."

"And you learned to pick locks because?"

"I was bored and I wanted to break into the cookie jar."

"Um…" I tried to hold back my laughter at this. Who locks the cookie jar? Our nanny always had the house elves always just floated them to the top shelf.

"What? My mom was strict on sweets. She put them on the top shelf, but I was like a little monkey climbing up to get to them." Becca had selected a couple of the little instruments and inserted them in the door lock. "So she put an impervious spell on the jar and a muggle padlock spelled only to open the traditional way, with a key, much like this door is actually." Becca turned the two little instruments quickly and I heard a faint 'click' as the door unlocked. "Little did she know that the spell didn't block against lock picking tools." Becca began putting away the lock picking tools.

"And you did all that for cookies?" I asked incredulously.

"No. I learned how to pick locks out of boredom. The cookie thing was just a bonus." Becca slid the little black case back inside the fold in her dress.

"So, do you always carry pencils and lock picking stuff around with you?"

"Yes. I have a pocket knife, my wand, a muggle cell phone, and a small sketch book on me as well, and none of them are in my purse." She wiggled her eyebrows at me, like she was daring me to ask where those items were hidden, then reached for the door handle. "Ladies first." She said, opening the door and waving me through.

"Thank you sir!" I said in a high pitched girly voice, curtsying then ducking through the somewhat small doorway. I waited in a small stone passage on the other side of the door in the dark while Becca shut the door behind herself and pushed a little black switch down, I assume to lock and reseal the door. Then she turned and pushed past me, taking my hand in hers as she went, and led me down the passage. We had only walked for about two minutes when the passage tilted down a little and made large spiral curve. We walked for another couple of minutes before I saw a faint blue glow stretching around the curve of the wall.

"Here we are." Becca announced as we came around the final stretch in the curve and faced another door exactly like the first except that it had a small square window in it at eye level.

This door was unlocked and Becca pushed it open easily and stepped through. I followed her, stepping from the small stone passage onto soft grassy earth.

"What the…" I looked around. We were there, in the garden in the painting. Big wild vines and green plants and colorful flowers all around. There was a grass path cut in the shrubbery that led to the left. We followed it a couple of steps and the garden opened up to the same view of the Lake bathed in pale moonlight. "Becca, this is, wow..."

"I know, isn't it great? My great grandmother on my mother's side came to Hogwarts and found it one year. I found her old journals in the attic one year and was reading them and found a passage about this place and decided to find it myself." She looked around the place lovingly and then walked over to a large cushioned bench that almost passed as a couch.

"Is this where you're always disappearing to?"

"No. I try to come here once a week to maintain it, and it has a spectacular view during the full moon, but that's about it. Mostly when I disappear it's to another place hidden in the castle. Maybe I'll show you that place someday too. This place I just try to maintain though, in honor of my great grandmother. She was proposed to by my great grandfather here you know."

I sat beside her on the bench, which was quite comfortable, and stared out at the Lake in the moonlight. I glanced over at her and took in her beauty in the moonlight as well. The garden was beautiful, the Lake was beautiful and she was beautiful, and I wanted to tell her this. However I am the kind of man who tends to have trouble expressing himself properly in words at times like these. Instead I utilized another method of expression and, instead of speaking my feelings aloud, I kissed her passionately and hoped she would understand the entire message I was trying to get across.

"So this is extremely comfortable." I said, nuzzling my head into Remus's chest. We had come back to Gryffindor Tower and sat down on the squishy couches in front of the fire place. We had talked for a while, and then at some point we had started kissing. After a brief make-out session we were interrupted by some fourth years coming in the portrait hole from the dance. After that Remus had just leant back and stared at the fire and I had curled up and leaned into him.

"Hmm?" Remus was thinking about something, off in another world. Probably thinking about his condition or something; he's always thinking about the big things.

"Nothing." I murmured, gazing off into the fire as well. Remus sighed. I wanted to think it was a happy sigh, a 'I'm so glad about the way my life is going' sigh, but it seemed a little too sad for that.

We snuggled like this in front of the fire for a good half hour before Rebby and Caleb came in, laughing like lunatics. Rebby stumbled coming through the portrait hole after Caleb. He caught her before she hit the ground and helped get her back onto her feet.

"Did we miss something?" I asked, smiling lightly.

"Please tell me Sirius didn't spike the punch again." Remus sighed, rubbing his forehead in irritation. He likes to get into trouble just as much as James and Sirius, but sometimes the things they did were just juvenile. When that happened Remus was more that a word of wisdom, he was like a baby sitter watching a dozen or so out of control 6 year olds.

"No-nope!" Rebby was having trouble controlling her laughter and speaking at the same time.

"No, we're laughing at Lily and James. We caught them making out in the gardens earlier!"

"Um… that sounds romantic, not funny." I said, blinking incomprehensively.

"Yeah, but we left and came back after, erm…" Caleb glanced over at Rebby awkwardly "well, we came back later and they were still making out, so we filled a balloon with confetti and charmed it to float over their heads and explode. The looks on their faces when that balloon popped…" Caleb was imagining the scene again, his eyes focused on something distant.

"They were so surprised Lily jumped a good three feet into the air and landed on the ground on her bum. James jumped too and knocked the bench over backwards. And the confetti was everywhere, all over them. It was so funny!" Rebby burst into laughter again, collapsing onto the arm of an armchair.

"'Scuze me." Caleb said, pushing past Rebby, scooping her up and sitting down in the armchair with her in his lap.

"Well that was unexpected." Rebby stopped laughing and looked at Caleb in surprise.

"I like to be surprising, keeps things interesting." He replied just as blandly.

"You two are…" I searched for the words.

"Perfect for one another?" Remus supplied.

"I was going to say odd, but that works too." Remus and I chuckled softly at the pair of them, Rebby sticking her tongue out at us and Caleb making a faux angry face.

"I can't believe someone would pull a prank on us like that! I bet it was Sirius he's always causing trouble!" Lily stormed into the Commons, covered in confetti, James following after her trying not to laugh. Whether he was trying not to laugh at the prank, Lily covered in confetti, or Lily's reaction, I don't know, but the combination of all three had me stifling chuckles as well.

"Anyways, did anything good happen after we broke off from the group?" James asked.

"Not really. Remus and I came up here and Rebby and Caleb went for a walk." I replied laughing as Lily narrowed her eyes at Rebby and Caleb int heir armchair.

"Wait, you two were in the gardens at he same time we were? Rebecca Antionette Miller, tell me the truth! Did you pull the prank on James and I?"

Rebby, at the use of her full name, hopped out of Caleb's lap. "Hey, Cay, thanks for asking me to the Ball, it was great fun, we should go out again some time, but right now," Rebby glanced over her shoulder at Lily, sliding off her shoes at the same time "I've gotta run!" Rebby sprinted off around the couches avoiding Lily and dashing up towards our dorm room. It took Lily a moment to realize that Rebby had just confessed, but once she connected the dots she kicked her shoes off as well and ran after her. We heard the two girls running up the stairs and across the landing, then a loud thump of a closing door and a duller thump of someone smacking into the door.

"Well, sounds like Rebby managed to make it into the dorm safely. I have a feeling Lily's in a bit of pain at the moment though." I rolled my eyes and stood up, as reluctant as I was to leave Remus's side and my cozy spot on the couch. "I should probably go make sure she isn't lying unconscious on the floor or that she hasn't gotten up and killed Rebby now. Good night Remus, I had a wonderful time." I leaned down and gave him a light kiss on the cheek, but as I went to stand back up again he grabbed my hand and pulled me back to him. He kissed me passionately on the mouth and when he let go I managed to walk all the way up the stairs before I floated back down from cloud nine and realized where I was.

Merlin he's underestimated in the kissing category.

I walked to the dorm where Lily was sitting on the floor rubbing her tender nose trying to tell if it was broken. I forced Rebby to let us in and with a wave of my wand and a muttered "Episkey!" fixed Lily's broken nose.

After that we all sort of realized how tired we were and with out much adieu donned our pajamas and hopped into bed. I snuggled into my covers and tried to pretend I was still sitting on the couch in commons, snuggling into Remus's warm chest, gazing into the enchanting flames of the fireplace.

"Good morning sunshine." A hand gently shook me. I grumbled in my barely conscious state for them to leave me be.

A bright light hit my eyelids and I forced myself to summon enough awareness to roll over and pull my pillow over my head. The only problem was that when I laid my head down on my mattress instead of the pillow, it wasn't my mattress, it was grass.

'Grass? Why is there grass in my bed?' I tried to sweep the grass off my mattress and lay back own, but the grass wouldn't move. It was attached to the mattress. Growling lightly under my breath and extremely irritated at whoever had made my bed grow grass, I sat up and forced my eye lids open to examine the damage and try to fix it.

It was then that I noticed that the grass was growing in dirt. I followed the dirt to where the edge of my bed should have been. "What the…?" I looked up and around myself surveying the open sky above and the trees and plants all around myself. It was then of course that it donned on me that someone hadn't grown grass on my bed, I was outside.

Not that it really mattered. I shrugged my still half asleep shoulders and collapsed back onto my pillow. I shut my eyes and attempted sleep, but that only lasted for about thirty seconds. I sat up sharply for the second time that morning and looked around. 'I'm outside. Why am I outside? And why is the ground so soft?' Then my eyes fell on the man sitting next to me looking at with a bemused smirk on his face, head tilted slightly to the side, the corners of his eyes crinkling in silent laughter.

And then of course I fully woke up. My eyes widened as the memories of the night before flooded back and I realized I had spent the night with Sirius.

"Oops." I blinked. Sirius finally let loose the barking laughter he had obviously been holding in for quite some time. I focused a nice fierce glare in his direction. He stopped laughing immediately. "That's what I thought." I said, rolling my eyes. "Now how is it that we ended up staying out here all night?"

"I don't know, I guess we fell asleep while we were looking at the stars. I woke up and transfigured some rocks into pillows and made the ground soft." Sirius shrugged. This wasn't fazing him at all. Something tells me it's because he's spent the night with a girl before. Spent the night…

Spent the night?!

"HOLY CRAP! I spent the night with you! Oh no! Oh bad! Oh no!" I stumbled to my feet and looked around franticly for my shoes. That's when I realized I wasn't wearing my dress. I was wearing shorts and a tank top, but that didn't make any sense. I had never changed my clothes the night before. "Where's my dress? How did I get these clothes on?"

"Erm…" Sirius looked slightly startled.

"And… WHERE IS MY BRA?!" I was officially freaked out. Different clothes, no bra, slept outside, slept with Sirius. Where's my dress? Where's my shoe's? Did Sirius do this? Was it someone else? Couldn't be anyone else, no one knows about this place, no one but Sirius knows about it.

All things rushing through my head as I collected my dress and shoes, slid my bra on without taking off my tank, and shooed Sirius from his spot on the grass into the long curving tunnel. I was freaking out, spazzing about what had happened with out even being sure what had happened.

It was really early. When I had woken up the sun had only just begun to rise, meaning it was around 7 a.m. on a Sunday. It was a Sunday where everyone was either sleeping in or hurriedly finishing their packing for Christmas vacation. This was good as it meant by going the long way, using several little known short cuts, and putting a disillusionment charm on myself and Sirius allowed us to get back to Gryffindor Tower with out anyone seeing us. I verbally berated Sirius the entire way back to the Tower, only stopping when we were one corridor over to place the disillusionment charm. Sirius was somewhat stunned still, unsure of what was going on past the fact that he was getting beaten over the head by the very large and complicated words coming out of my mouth along with a long series of curse words so he was completely silent as I pushed him through the Portrait hole with one finger at his back. I steered him through the Commons, dodging Fanged Frisbees, First Years, and one fairly exhausted looking Seventh Year with black streaks down her face indicating she had been crying while wearing mascara. He didn't really realize what was going on and start to argue back until I had negotiated our way all the way up to the boy's dorm and taken the disillusionment charm off of him in his dorm room.

Can you say bad timing? I mean, he couldn't find his voice in one of the perfectly abandoned hallways we had walked through?

"Wait, you're accusing me of what?" Sirius finally said, and rather loudly may I add.

"Shuddup Sirius, I'm trying to sleep." Remus growled, rolling over behind his pulled curtains. I looked around the room, all the beds were full. Every single one of them was still in their beds. James and Matt had the curtains still partially open, so I could see the lumps under the covers. Remus had just growled at Sirius. Peter's curtains were pulled together properly, but his arm and leg hung off one side of the bed, the foot and hand barely exposed at the curtain's edge.

"Sirius, hush, go back to bed or something. Get dressed for Merlin's sake! We can talk, argue, whatever the hell you want to do, later, right now I have to sneak into my dorm room without waking five teenage girls, three of whom are light sleepers and two of whom are early risers!" I whispered urgently.

"Would you calm down and stop accusing me of things! I mean at least let me defend myself here!" Sirius obviously doesn't grasp the concept of quiet this early in the morning.

James stirred in his bed. I held my breath. He seemed to settle back down, but then just as I was about to tell Sirius to get back to bed again James rolled over and out of his bed. He made a bee-line for the restroom, mumbling "Morning" to Sirius on the way. At first I nearly had a heart attack, I was sure he would see me. Then I remembered I was still vaguely invisible and breathed a sigh of relief as the door snapped shut behind James.

"Sirius! For the last time get in bed!" I turned to leave the room but a hand reached out to stop me. Sirius had apparently guessed at where I was standing. I turned back and attempted to persuade him to let me go and to talk about it later, but it didn't work. Somehow we just ended up arguing about it right there, though I did manage to get him to lower his voice to a low whisper.

"For the last time I did not take advantage of you! I didn't change you clothes!" he whispered sharply.

I opened my mouth to whisper something back when I felt a spell hit my back and the disillusionment charm shiver then fall away. I whipped my head around only to see a stunned Remus and a bemused James standing behind me by the bathroom door.

"Oh shit."

"Becca you… and he… and your dress…and…" Remus looked slightly puzzled.

"For the record I thought it was some past floozy sneaking in for comfort and getting told to get a life." James smirked, hiding his wand behind his back.

"Wait, so you two actually…?" Remus's unfinished question hung in the air making it thick with tension. That's when it hit me that I didn't really know what had happened the night before. The last thing I remembered was staring up at the stars with Sirius and then waking up this morning. I couldn't have actually answered Remus's question even if I had wanted to. I felt my throat constrict and my breathing became fairly labored.

"Becca? Becca are you okay?" Sirius looked at me worriedly.

"Badbadbadbadbadbadbadbad…" I babbled, my breathing quickening. My breaths came faster and faster but I was sucking in less and less air each time.

I remember becoming lightheaded and dizzy. Objects in the room started to get fuzzy. A sense of weightlessness, of that moment before your stomach catches when you make a sudden dive on your broom. I slipped from my feet to the floor before everything became too hazy and blended together. I vaguely heard someone yell "BECCA!"

Then there was darkness.