Sirius was not at dinner.

As rare as it was for Sirius to skip a meal, the seventeen-year-old boy was a no-show. In fact, he remained conspicuously absent for the remainder of the evening, not even so much as showing his face in the Common Room.

A small part of Marlene couldn't help but feel the slightest bit relieved about all of this. Lately, whenever she and Sirius had interacted with each other, there had always been some type of confrontation and things hadn't turned out well.

But on the other hand, she was slightly concerned about his continuing absence. He wasn't…avoiding her…was he? Because as difficult as things had been between them lately, he was still the most important thing in her life, and she had no idea what she would do without him. He must be avoiding her, there was no other rational explanation that she could think of.

Marlene knew she had to fix that; Sirius was too important to her for things to turn out any other way. And so she resolved to speak with him the next morning, when he was sure to show up for breakfast in the Great Hall (He was a teenage boy after all, he need to eat sometime).

Sirius was not at breakfast.

Marlene knew there was no way she could have missed him. She had woken up incredibly early (exponentially early by her personal standards, in fact—the birds hadn't even been making their usual racket when she woke up) so she knew that he hadn't eaten quickly and then ducked out in order to continue avoiding her. There had to be an explanation for this, a reason why Sirius was nowhere to be found. And it turned out that the Marauders had the answer.

"Sirius is gone," James stated succinctly, once he, Remus, and Peter had joined Marlene at the Gryffindor table. The three of them had also made it to breakfast at an earlier than normal hour, which was why the rest of their year-mates still had yet to make an appearance. Judging from their haggard appearances, Marlene doubted the three of them had even gone to sleep the night before. Indeed, no sooner had he taken a seat, then Peter had folded his arms on the table and laid his head on them, fast asleep already.

"Gone?" Marlene repeated incredulously. "How can he be gone?"

"He never came back to the dormitory last night," Remus replied. "And we've looked everywhere we can think of for him."

"But are you sure?" Marlene pressed. "You're absolutely positive that he's gone? Are you sure you looked everywhere?"

James nodded, and for the first time Marlene noticed how uncharacteristically somber he was at that moment. "We checked the Marauder's Map, too. He didn't show up anywhere on it."

James and Remus exchanged an uneasy glance before continuing.

"Marlene," Remus began uneasily, "What happened between you and Sirius? I know things haven't been the greatest all around since Joscelind came into the picture…but things have really gotten bad between you and Sirius, and the two of you used to be inseparable."

"I told Sirius the truth," Marlene said simply.

"About…?" Remus prompted.

"How I feel about him," Marlene replied cryptically.

Remus continued to look at her blankly, and Marlene refocused her attention on James.

"You didn't tell him?" She questioned.

James shrugged. "Max, Marcas, and I agreed it wasn't really our place to tell anyone."

"Tell anyone what?" Remus asked, completely lost by this point in the conversation. "What don't I know?"

"Oh trust me," James muttered, "You know."

Remus looked helplessly at Marlene.

"I've recently come to the realization that I care about Sirius as more than a friend," Marlene informed him.

"Oh, yeah, I already knew that," Remus said with a shrug. "It's been obvious for as long as I've known both of you, since we were eleven."

"Unfortunately, this realization came about due to Joscelind's sudden entrance into our lives," Marlene continued, ignoring Remus' contribution to what appeared to be the popular opinion of every single person she knew. "So I decided that I needed to get revenge, which is where Regulus came into play. We weren't really dating; it was all a ruse to get Sirius' attention. However, it didn't exactly turn out the way I planned, because Sirius was more than a little upset about my 'dating' his younger brother. And yesterday morning at practice we finally came to blows, as you know, and, well…I said some things that I regret."

Remus nodded, he had been filled in on what had occurred at the Gryffindor Quidditch practice the previous day. But as for everything else she had said…well, the events of the past few weeks were all starting to suddenly make sense.

"And then there's the conversation Sirius and I had yesterday afternoon," Marlene said wearily. "Basically, he wanted me to apologize for what I implied about him and Regulus. And I did," She hastened to add. "But then things got a bit out of control again, because I had also said a few questionable things about Joscelind, that he fully expected me to take back, which I refused to do. I wasn't about to take back the truth. And, well…then I tried to get Sirius to see that Joscelind is no good for him, which he refused to do. Oh, and I may or may not have told him that I love him."

The last sentence she said rather quickly, as if hoping that James and Remus wouldn't catch it, which they did.

"What did he say?" Remus asked, looking very much as if he didn't want to know the answer.

"He didn't believe me," Marlene replied, at the same time frowning and mentally willing her eyes not to start filling with tears. "He didn't believe anything I said, not about how I feel or about how Joscelind is clearly using him and cheating on him."

That last bit caught their attention.

"What?" James demanded.

"Joscelind is cheating on him," Marlene answered simply. "I had a letter from Milo earlier this week, and he mentioned that he hadn't known that Sirius and Joscelind had broken up. After responding that they hadn't, he told me about how…friendly dear Jos and one of the beaters had gotten with each other."

"You know, if it wasn't for the seriousness of the situation," James began thoughtfully, "I might comment on how it seems to be hit or miss when it comes to Joscelind Wadcock's feelings for beaters. I mean, she clearly hates you , Mars, while we all thought she liked Sirius, and now she's with this new guy who's also a beater."

"And yet you said it anyway," Remus said with more than a hint of sarcasm to his tone. "How incredibly thoughtful of you. But moving on, Sirius is still missing. What are we going to do about it?"

"We can't tell the professors," Marlene answered immediately. "McGonagall alone would give him detention for the rest of the year for leaving school grounds without permission."

"And then he would win our competition for who can get the most detentions…" James stated thoughtfully.

Marlene and Remus merely gave him a look.

"Right," James said quickly. "A time and a place, I know—I'm just a bit sleep-deprived, that's all. We shouldn't tell anyone that he's gone," He paused, before continuing slowly, unsure if anyone would agree to his plan, "We could cover for him, until he gets back from…well, from wherever the hell he decided to disappear to."

Marlene nodded, "We'll tell our professors that he's sick or something, and if they say they're going to check to see if he's in the Hospital Wing we'll say he's refusing to get out of bed and go or something."

"So, in short, he's just going to owe us all big time," Remus summed up with a slight nod. "I can deal with that."

Let's hear the applause

Come on show me how much better you are

After giving a near-constant stream of excuses the entire morning, Marlene was less than surprised to find that Sirius did not make an appearance in the Great Hall for lunch. By this point she was starting to worry. She had seen that what she had said had had an effect on Sirius, but Marlene hadn't thought she'd had enough of an effect to warrant this severe of a reaction. Where could Sirius possibly be that he was trying so hard to avoid her?

After lunch, Marlene chose to spend her afternoon break out by the lake, rather than in the library or the common room. James and Remus had obviously told the rest of their friends what had gone down between Sirius and Marlene, and she found that after four straight hours of it, she could no longer take the constant stream of pitying looks being directed at her. So it was off to the blissfully deserted grounds that she dragged all of her schoolwork.

Marlene found that she quite liked the solitude of the grounds. It was rather refreshing after all of the anxiety she'd been putting herself through recently. Perhaps she would just stay on the shore of the lake forever, refusing to budge for anything. As long as the weather stayed nice and her summoning charms were strong, she couldn't really foresee any problems arising.

But you would miss Sirius too much, Marlene told herself silently, before giving a rather unladylike snort. Yeah, because he's been around so much lately, and the two of us have been getting along wonderfully.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts; negativity would get her nowhere in all of this, even if it seemed liked the only option at the moment.

I'll always love him, though. We've been through too much together for me to ever stop caring about Sirius.

"I'll always love you," Marlene said, speaking aloud now, as if doing so would be an even greater affirmation of the truth.

"What?" A voice asked from behind her.

Marlene jumped at the unexpected sound of the voice, though she contained her shriek of surprise. She recognized that voice…

Moving slowly, unsure of whether or not she had actually heard someone speaking behind her, Marlene turned around. Standing slightly behind her, looking very forlorn with his hands thrust into his pockets and a downcast expression upon his face, was Sirius.

"Er…nothing," Marlene hastened to respond. Then, "Sirius, where have you been?"

"Around," Sirius replied vaguely, hesitating for a brief moment before taking a few steps forward and sitting beside Marlene, though he remained a good foot to her right. "I had…stuff to do."

Marlene nodded understandingly though, in truth, she still didn't have the faintest idea of where he could have possibly gone.

"Marlene," Sirius began tentatively, "Were you telling the truth earlier?"

"About what?" Marlene asked.

"About how you feel about me," Sirius said slowly, as if he was dreading hearing the answer.

"Of course I was," Marlene answered immediately.

"Even after the way I treated you?" Sirius asked, but continued on before waiting for a reply. "Because the way I treated you—all of you, was completely uncalled for. My friends are the most important people in my life; you're the only family I have left. And I let Joscelind get in the way of all of that. I should never have let having a girlfriend come in between me and my friends."

"And I am sorry about using Regulus to get back at you," Marlene put in swiftly when he didn't continue. "You should know that I had to really talk him into going along with my plan. Regulus never wanted to do anything to hurt you, Sirius; he misses you."

Sirius was shaking his head before she had finished speaking, however.

"It isn't going to work out between us," Sirius stated. "Between me and Reg. Even though he knows it and I'm pretty sure he doesn't like it, dear old mum has him wrapped around her finger. And until he recognizes that he needs to get away from her and all of her rubbish influences, there's nothing I can do for him. But hey," He gave Marlene a weak smile here, "I've got you and the Marauders, who needs a little brother? I can always commandeer one of yours."

"Do you though?" Marlene questioned. "Do you really have us still? What about Joscelind?"

Sirius didn't answer immediately, and instead stared out across the lake, a pensive expression upon his face.

"We're through," Sirius finally stated. "That's where I've been. I went to go see her last night and…you were right, Marlene. She's been cheating on me practically the whole time we've been together. Joscelind and I are done."

See you deserve some applause

Cause you're so much better