Author's Note: I just wanted to say… That I love you guys. I very likely might have given up on this story by now, given that it is wandering around pretending it's not lost, except for the unfailing, unceasing support that you guys have given me. And it really does mean a lot. Swiftlystarlit, sirval, and Eltea, you're the reason there is a Chapter Thirteen here, and the reason there will be a Chapter Fourteen. And after that, who knows…?

(becomes the Scarecrow and sings)
I could forget all about college
And never gain more knowledge
Write chapters spic and span
I could go on ten years or more
And make my typing hands sore
If I only had a plan
(goes to bow, trips, and falls flat on face)

And… I don't actually like this chapter very much. Maybe you will.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lucky

Noelle Elizabeth Cook had been accurately Sorted into Ravenclaw. That meant a few things. First, it meant that she was a few rungs higher on the IQ ladder than most of her peers. Second, it meant that she did very well in school. And third, it meant that she was quite aware that Sirius Black really wasn't into her.

But knowing that she didn't have much of a chance with him didn't smother the flame that he lit within the depths of her heart or the nervousness he planted in the pit of her stomach. It didn't erase the images of him printed like woodcuts in her mind—stroking his chin with his quill as a professor lectured; jabbing the air with his fork at the dinner table to punctuate a point he had made; swiping a lock of midnight hair impatiently behind his ear; striding through the halls with his back straight and his shoulders set and his robes billowing behind him…

It was the powerlessness that was the worst. He didn't want her, and there was nothing that she could do to alter that state of affairs. She could brush her hair 'til it shone sleeker than a cat's fur; she could hitch her skirt up past her knees; she could make her face up, make it down, make it perfect; look deep into his lovely gray eyes and nod and slowly smile; and Sirius Black, like the stones of the Colosseum, like the Pyramids at Giza, like the axis of the world, would not be moved. When Sirius Black had decided upon something, he decided for good.

He was like that—intent. Intent, and clever, and funny; smarter than most people realized; kind to people like Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew; collected and composed and courageous. He was everything.

And he was gorgeous.

It just wasn't fair that people like that could exist—and could so summarily reject you. It wasn't right.

She'd liked boys before, boys with dazzling grins or breathtaking eyes or seemingly endless thick, luscious hair, but none of them had been like Sirius. Or, rather, Sirius was like all of them at once, and the combination of those things was too much to bear. The other boys had interested her. Sirius enthralled her. When he walked into a room, the room became him—became limited to him. Nothing else existed in his presence. Nothing dared to try. His radiance was unprecedented and unparalleled, and not even Noelle Cook, for whom school had been a lark and O.W.L.s had been a laugh, could persuade herself to tear her eyes away from this wonder of wonders.

He had an incredible power over her, and it scared her sometimes. There was a small comfort to be had in the fact that he didn't want to use it, because he didn't care about her in the slightest.

Well, maybe he would notice if she went and died, but he probably wouldn't be too upset about it, or anything.

She and Lily were walking to a late lunch when James came bounding along the corridor going the other direction. He stopped, pushed his glasses up his nose, and offered them his big, goofy grin.

"Hi, Noelle," he said. The edges of his grin twitched upward and outward a little as he added, "Hi, Lily."

Lily smiled back, shyly it seemed. "Hi, James," she replied.

"Going to lunch?" he asked.

Lily nodded.

"Cool," he commented.

Noelle wondered how long this was going to go on.

"Well, gotta' run," James said then, mercifully. "See you ladies later." And off he went, less than gracefully.

Lily watched the way he'd left, presumably not realizing that she was doing so. Noelle half expected a dainty sigh.

"So you like him now?" she inquired, as if it was necessary.

Lily looked up suddenly and then smiled guiltily. "Um," she said. A vibrant blush seeped through her cheeks. "Yeah," she admitted.

Noelle glanced down the corridor. She thought she could still hear James's galloping footsteps traversing it. "He's liked you forever," she noted.

The blush on Lily's face widened, but so did her smile. "He hasn't," she demurred.

They were standing in the middle of the hall, talking, when there was a meal awaiting them not far away. Noelle didn't have much of an appetite anymore, but it was better than loitering around here, looking like an idiot. Glaring at her feet, she intimidated them into walking again, and Lily followed after, lost in her daydreams.

In the throbbing of her pulse in her ears, Noelle Cook heard a single word, repeated over and over like a benediction:

Lucky.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

James was late. He was late to a meeting that he had set up, at a time that he had arranged, in a place that he had selected. His book-bag knocked against his side in rhythm with his panting as he loped along, knowing as he did what bad form it was to be late to your own appointment.

Finally, he burst into the common room. Peter and Sirius looked at him disdainfully.

"We were beginning to think you'd flushed yourself down the toilet," Sirius sniffed.

"We were just speculating which one," Peter contributed.

"My money was the one down the hall," Sirius explained airily, "but Peter insisted that it was someplace flashier, like the one two floors down."

"So which was it?" Peter inquired.

As if he hadn't heard the exchange at all, James sat down primly. It was only then that he discovered Remus sitting nearby on the floor. He had a book out and open on the table, but his gaze was on the black pawn he was rolling between his thumb and his forefinger.

"How are you, Remus?" James asked, pointedly ignoring the others.

Remus looked up at him, and James was hard-pressed to puzzle out whether there was more disapproval or disappointment in his eyes. "You guys really shouldn't do this," he said.

"Moony, my boy," Sirius remarked, "if we don't ruffle Snivellus's greasy feathers every once in a while, he'll get complacent. It's for his own good." It escaped none of them that Sirius had used the nickname—the implication being that the four of them were a single body, and that a limb of that body should not revolt against the wishes of its counterparts.

Remus looked at Sirius, melted annoyance doled into the mixture of emotions present on his face. "Maybe Severus is an easy target," he countered levelly, "but he has powerful friends. If he goes to them, they won't forget the insult. And they'll make good on it."

There was silence for what felt like an excruciatingly long time. Later James reflected that it had probably been about ten seconds, perhaps fifteen at the absolute most, but it felt like it was an eternity that Remus and Sirius looked at each other, calmly, neither moving, neither conceding an inch.

To James's astonishment, Sirius broke the eye contact first.

"Fine," he sighed. "We'll just go bandy words with him, then. No real fun."

Remus set the pawn down on the open page. "Thank you," he said.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Remus was staring morosely at a different book when Lily came down to plan out some Prefect activities for him and James. James, for his part, sat up significantly straighter the moment she entered the room. Remus couldn't help smiling a little at that.

They had a few minutes of peaceful duty-fulfillment before Lily began the strafing of their fragile township.

"Severus was telling me you were saying some unkind things to him," she remarked with a deadly air of false indifference.

Looking only at James's face, one might have concluded that he had been stabbed. Just when it seemed he couldn't bring himself to speak, he blurted out, "Why are you friends with that creep, anyway?"

Copper eyebrows rose slowly, and beneath them Lily's eyes were frosty, though her gaze stayed solidly on the parchment upon which she was writing. "He isn't a creep, James Potter," she replied coolly and quietly, "and we were friends as kids. I wouldn't know anything about the wizarding world if he hadn't showed it to me."

James trained his eyes on his shoe, which was scuffing uselessly against the rug. "Okay," he muttered, likely in lieu of saying nothing at all.

Even though Lily continued to focus on the parchment, her hand stopped moving. "We've… grown apart… a little. Over the years."

"It's hard to bridge the House gap," Remus put in softly.

Two pairs of eyes darted to him abruptly, their owners likely having forgotten that he existed. Helplessly he shrugged.

"It's kind of ingrained, isn't it," he explained, "that we're supposed to hate the Slytherins?"

Lily looked again to her parchment, and James looked again to his feet. Silence reigned.

"I just don't want anyone to get hurt," Lily said eventually. "It seems like—it seems like it's getting worse every day, and I just don't want anyone to get hurt."

Remus's mind flashed to a black mark seared on marble-white skin. Too late, he thought.

"I understand," he replied.

"It's such a stupid world," James mumbled.

"No choice," Lily responded.

James looked at the wall. "Yeah," he agreed.

It was plain enough to Remus that they needed a moment to work things out. He stood. "I'm going to go take a bath," he announced. "Fill me in later, all right?"

At the affirmations, he went upstairs to gather his things, returned to the common room, and then departed from it.

He reached the Prefect bathroom on the fourth floor once again just as Noelle Cook happened to emerge from within. She was toying with a section of her wet hair, twirling it in her fingers, and she started to smile at him absently and then stopped. Her bright blue eyes attended something over his shoulder, and, slowly, Remus turned.

He didn't recognize the face, but he recognized the badge. Silver and green were pretty unequivocal, as those things went.

Without thinking, he stepped in front of Noelle.

"Half-bloods," the broad, bulky boy remarked almost airily as he very melodramatically cracked his knuckles, "who support blood traitors. My favorite kind."

Feeling sweat prickle on his forehead, Remus groped in his pocket for his wand. The Slytherin had already drawn his own by the time Remus's fingertips grazed polished wood.

Remus couldn't remember a time he had extended his wand faster. But then, he couldn't remember much of anything, because his mind was consumed by a rampant, ravenous terror. Not for the first time, he wished that the Disarming spell wasn't five syllables long.

"Exp—"

"Sectumsempra."

Remus saw that coming from a ways away. "P-protego," he stammered, making a wide wave with his free arm. A fragile shield wisped into being in front of him and Noelle, crackling an opalescent blue.

The spell hit the barrier like a freight train, making a sound like a thunderclap. A manic shiver raced up Remus's spine. The last thing he needed was more thunder.

Perhaps that was the second-to-last thing he needed, after his shield flickering from existence like a light-bulb shorting out—for that, of course, was what it did. A burst of invisible force ensued like the shock wave from an explosion, shoving Remus off balance such that he stumbled backwards a step.

Lazily, the Slytherin smiled. He pointed his wand. "Sectumsempra," he repeated.

"Protego," Remus countered again, more strongly this time. This time, the shield quavered but held.

But the quaver was enough to make Remus take another step back.

Another curse; another shield; another step, and Remus found himself backed up against the wall, Noelle clinging to his arm, the Slytherin three paces away.

Noelle's delicate fingers dug into his bicep. "Do something!" she squeaked.

After fortifying himself with one last deep breath, Remus let the shield fall, brandished his wand, and shouted, "Reducto!"

The spell whisked the Slytherin out of the way, sending him tumbling to the rug, and Remus grabbed Noelle's wrist and ran.

He might as well have been running blind. He didn't know where he was going, didn't heed his vision, and couldn't control his feet. He simply ran, and Noelle tripped along behind him, her breathing quick, ragged, and light.

He staggered right into the painting of the Fat Lady, leaning on the wall for support, and, over the portrait's cry of surprise, choked out, "Nostrum."

It was only when he'd moved out of the way, waited for the portrait to swing open, and stepped inside for it to shut after him that he realized that his hand was still in Noelle Cook's.

He jerked his fingers free as if they were on fire. His face, as far as his nerve endings told him, really was.

Fortunately, it appeared that he was the only person who noticed that little detail. Everyone else in the room—that was, Peter, Sirius, James, Lily, and two Third Years huddling over some scrap of parchment—was staring at the escutcheon on Noelle's robes, which was blue and black in this sanctuary of red and gold.

"There was a Slytherin," Noelle gasped out. "Tried to kill us…"

"I think it was just maiming he had in mind," Remus noted.

Everyone stared at him.

It figured that he said something clever at a time like this, when no one would appreciate it. It just figured.

Sirius was on his feet in a moment, storm clouds massing on his brow, lightning sparking in his eyes. "This is Snape's doing, isn't it?" he spat.

James had both hands over his face, but his voice rang out like a bell nonetheless. "If it is, it's because we drove him to it."

Had he seen the way Lily was looking at him, James Potter might have realized that life really was worth living. Or perhaps he simply would have fainted clean away. Lily's eyes could do that to a guy, and when they were as soft and glowing as they were now…

Remus reeled his brain back in from where it had been floating near the ceiling. Sirius had jerked his wand free of his robes, apparently just to give him something to grip so tightly that his hand shook.

"Let's kill him," he seethed. "Let's kill the bastard."

"Sirius!" Lily protested.

"Well, shit, Evans!" he shouted back. "You want them running around assassinating people? I, for one, am not going to put up with that shit! I'd say it's about time to fight fire with fire!"

"And reduce us all to ashes," Lily rejoined, heatedly now. "Bloody brilliant, Sirius Black. Next let's all jump off a cliff."

Sirius was on his feet. "It's damn well better than sitting here taking it like you are!"

"And what are we supposed to do?" Lily cried. "Sink to their level?"

"What are you planning?" Sirius demanded. "You going to wait it out, Lily? You going to sit real nice and quiet and hope they pass over you? Is that it?"

Lily rose to it, figuratively and literally. Standing now, she pointed an accusatory finger at Sirius. "Like you have anything to worry about," she retorted. "All you've got to do is join up with Regulus and your parents again, and they'll take you right in!"

Instantaneously, Sirius's face became a terrible thing to behold, a thing contorted almost beyond recognition with rage. He took one step towards Lily, his fists clenched, his wand forgotten. "How dare you suggest—"

"Stop it!" James roared. Everything squealed to a halt. "Thank you," James went on, more quietly. "Now. Noelle, Remus and Sirius'll walk you back to your dorm. You guys had better head off before curfew."

Remus pushed the portrait hole open. Darkly, Sirius stomped out of it and started down the hall. Despite his ostensible obedience, the storm was still in his eyes, as vicious and remorseless as ever. Remus knew for a fact that he had seen the conception of something here—something sinister, it seemed. He just didn't know quite what it was.