"There is no way we're going to get this done by the time it's due," Sirius announced grumpily after we spent nearly two hours working on our Muggle Studies project. "I think we should just give up now and take the bad mark."

"No," I refused stubbornly. "We need to get at least an E on this. We just need to focus and get this done."

He groaned, setting his head on the desk in front of him with a pathetic whine, "Do we have to? Can't we just make a Third Year do it or something?"

I gave him a reproachful look. Generally I would have agreed with him but since Evans started dishing out her ridiculous rules left and right I knew that I couldn't do it. Rule number 18 on her list of rules strictly applied to this situation: Bribing or threatening other students is forbidden. Being the Head Girl meant that she had the power to monitor me and I couldn't risk her finding out that I broke some of her rules. I mean, her rules were ridiculous and overbearing (for example, rule number 28 was "Wearing your hair down in lessons is forbidden") but they had to be obeyed hell or high water.

He whimpered pathetically, "But it's such a waste of time! This is the most ridiculous, stupid, pointless assignment in the world!"

"You're the one who decided you wanted to do the report on motorbikes," I reminded him. "If you'd just followed everyone else's example and chose an easy topic then we'd be done right now."

"Oi, don't put this just on me! You're the one who agreed to it!" he pointed out defensively.

"Yes because I was sent by your then girlfriend to test if you were cheating and I couldn't do that if we were squabbling over something stupid," I bluntly told him.

He mumbled some unintelligibly before letting out a deep sigh, "Can't we just take a little break? You know, for the rest of the day?"

I shook my head at his laziness, "We don't have time to take the rest of the day off. We're already behind as is. We need to get this done, love. We need to just bunker down, grit your teeth and let's just it over with."

"I've heard that before," he huffed, unimpressed.

"I'm sure you have. You know, from every woman that you've ever taken to bed."

"Clara!" he exclaimed in disbelief. "That's not true and you know it!"

"Oh do I?" I inquired, focusing on the textbook in front of me.

"That was definitely not what you said before we went to bed," he pointed out.

"First of all, that was a desk," I reminded him brusquely. "Second of all – Well to be honest, I don't remember what I said that night but I do remember that you cut me off so I couldn't say what everything I was going to. Maybe I was going to say it but you cut me off before I could." It was a lie. That was probably of the last things I was going to tell him that night but I didn't need to tell him that.

"You don't remember that night?" he questioned dubiously.

"Of course I remember that night," I rolled my eyes. "I was just a little too busy dealing with guilt and anxiety to remember every word I said."

"But you do remember all the non-speaking, more physical parts, don't you?" he inquired hopefully, looking up at me like an optimistic child.

"Vaguely." That was a complete lie. I had very detailed memories of shagging him and I remember every physical part of that night. My mind replayed the events of that night every night for weeks, making sure that I couldn't forget if I wanted to.

"'Vaguely'?" he scoffed. "Just vaguely? Unbelievable! Honestly, I've never –!"

"Oh just quit your whining, get your arse over here and refresh my memory," I interrupted him impatiently.

He picked his head up from the table and grinned, "I was hoping you'd say that." He was on his feet in record time, nearly knocking over the desk as he rounded on me. He tipped me backwards with eager exuberance, pushing me onto the covered desk. My back ached from the textbooks underneath me digging into my back but my lust silenced it.

My fingers gripped into his shoulder blades, trying to pull him closer to me. His mouth fiercely crashed into mine. His mouth aggressively bruised mine, his teeth carnally tugging at my lips.

My alarm clock began to shrilly ring, causing me to sit straight up in my bed. It'd just been a dream. I turned off the alarm, looking around the room. Everyone else was still blissfully asleep, not having to wake at the bloody crack of dawn like I did. Rule number thirty on Evans' Rules, was that I had to wake up at seven every weekday and since it was only Tuesday that applied to this morning too.

I rolled out of bed, my body groaning at the lack of sleep. I tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes and accept that this was the start of yet another long day. Busy sixteen hour days were beginning to wear me down and there wasn't an end to them in sight. Evans must have loved all this power. She'd been after me since our First Year and now she was exercising power over me that she couldn't have ever dreamed of. Note to self: Next time you fall in love with a guy make sure that it doesn't give your enemy total power over you.

I staggered into the bathroom, feeling like I'd been ran over by a herd of Hippogriffs. Did Hippogriffs even live in herds? Were they packs of Hippogriffs? Clans? Tribe? Did animals, other than humans, even live in tribes anyways?

I turned on the shower's cold water on full blast. My body was still tingling from my slightly disappointing dream. Why did my stupid alarm clock have to interrupt it anyways? And why did it have to be a dream? It would have been much more satisfying if it were real. I blamed Sirius. What was going on with him anyways? This was a bloke who didn't know how to survive celibacy and now he was suddenly against sex? What was wrong with him anyways? He'd never been one to argue with sex before. All of a sudden he wanted celibacy when he had a girlfriend that wanted sex but when he had a girlfriend who was anti-sex that was all he wanted? The man was obviously confused.

I brushed my teeth, giving my body a few more minutes to prepare itself for the cold. Cold showers were becoming an increasingly common practice for me but my body still hated the cold. I stepped into the frigid water, shivering at the instant cold. This was becoming quite a common habit for me since I started dating Sirius. My body wasn't accustomed to the celibate lifestyle. It just didn't seem to understand why I had Sirius but I couldn't shag the bloke silly.

I often pondered why he had suddenly changed his position on sex out of the blue but I didn't like to dwell on it. When I dwelled on it my brain began to wander to all the possibilities and it generally ended on some sort of question of self-worth. I had enough on my plate already and I didn't need to actively question whether I was attractive enough for him anymore.

I turned off the water, my body covered in goose bumps from the cold. I wrapped myself in a Gryffindor colored towel, knowing that it wouldn't be long until my roommates began to wake up and want the bathroom to get ready for the day.

I knew what was waiting for me outside. Evans would have already set the daily rules update on my bedside table. With her current pattern of making more and more ridiculous rules I was likely to find a piece of parchment that said something ridiculous like I wasn't allowed to wear the color blue on Mondays or something else of that nature. Some of her earliest rules made sense, though they were still overbearing, but these new rules were neurotic at best. I mean, rule number nine "Drinking alcohol, smoking and doing any recreational drugs is forbidden" kind of made sense. Rule number twenty nine "Wearing high heels is forbidden", however, was a bit ridiculous.

I tried to take Evans' control over my life in stride. She couldn't control my life forever and I just had to wait it out. Eventually this control game of hers wouldn't be as fun anymore and she'd let me be. Or at least I hoped she would. If her rules kept getting more and more outlandish then she was going to star trying to regulate when I breathed.

Evans couldn't have control of Potter forever. I doubted that she needed to control him in order to make him want to break Sirius and I up though. He hated me almost as much as she did. I don't know if he ever quite got over the fact that I "broke up" Ali and Sirius. Of course, that disastrous relationship was doomed almost from the start so even if I hadn't been involved it would have eventually went down in flames. I just fanned the flames a little bit.

I stepped out of the bathroom, clenching my bath towel. Changing in front of my roommates never bothered me before and now that I was supposed to be matey with them I guess it shouldn't have bothered me now. It wasn't like after nearly seven years of living with them that being seen naked by them, or even seeing them naked, really even fazed me anymore. It was just a common occurrence now and I didn't bat an eyelash at it.

I was right about Evans' daily rules update. When I arrived back at my bed there was a little piece of parchment with crisp, neat handwriting that I'd learned to recognize as belonging to Evans. In purple ink the new additions to her growing list of rules for me to follow looked almost ironically cheerful. The purple ink and the careful script might have looked almost friendly if they weren't telling me more unreasonable rules that were going to govern my life. It'd be more fitting if it was in looming black ink and horrific chicken scratch, like the notes that the professors would write on their blackboards.

Rule 31. You must have a chaperone while outside of the castle.

Rule 32. Your trunk, bed, drawers and bag are all subject to random searches for contraband.

Rule number thirty two surprised me. I'd thought that it was just common sense that Evans was going to search my belongings without a second thought. I suppose now that it was in writing she felt like she had it in her authority or some other rubbish. Rule number thirty one was a little more vexing. I never really got much alone time when I wasn't with Sirius or being monitored for "potential bad behavior" by Evans or Potter or having a chaperoned visit with Ali. When I did get a few minutes on my own I liked to spend some time out by the lake. I guess that was just another casualty in Evans' power trip.

I dressed according to Evans' Rules for classes. Rule number twenty six was "Wearing anything but your uniform to class is forbidden" and rule number seventeen stated that "All skirts must be knee length and all shirt buttons conservatively buttoned" so I didn't really have much leeway with what I got to wear during the weekdays. Since I wasn't allowed to wear my hair down in lessons and my high heels had been outlawed, decided what was I was going to wear each day was at least simpler.

I hated our school uniforms. They felt like they'd been designed by some old man with a fetish for school girls. It was like plaid vomit complete with woolen socks from hell. Dumbledore must have hated us or something. At least the blokes didn't have the ugly shoes that only Professor McGonagall would be caught wearing of her own free will.

I pulled on my Gryffindor colored tie over my head, heading towards the stairs and down to the Great Hall. I felt like some sort of carbon copy of every other girl in Hogwarts. The same outfit and the same non-special blond hair as several of the other girls. Part of me wished that I hadn't shed my cherry colored locks but even if I hadn't before then that just would have been one of Evans' Rules. It probably would have been the first one. It'd probably be something along the lines of "Having a non-natural hair color is forbidden" or something of that nature. I'd thought that going back to a boring, common hair color was a sign of growing up but now that every other part of my life was uniform I felt like I wanted my little bit of mindless rebellion back.

Sirius was waiting in the Common Room for me like he always did. He was leaned against the maroon sofa, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows with an expectant smile on his face. I could feel the beaming smile begin to spread across my face. This was why I was enduring through Evans' creative torture attempts. It was because he was worth it.

"Morning love," he greeted me with an affectionate yet disappointingly chaste kiss. "Sleep well?"

"Relatively," I lied easily. I suppose it wasn't necessarily a lie considering that I'd slept quite well until my sexually deprived mind started teasing me. "You?"

"Well enough," he replied, slipping his hand casually into mine. "Breakfast?"

I nodded unenthusiastically. Breakfast was by far my least favorite meal. It wasn't the food. I quite enjoyed breakfast food but just not the company that came with it. Breakfast was always the hardest because Potter and Evans were at their meanest. Potter was not a morning person in any definition and Evans used the excuse just be to be nasty. If I survived breakfast with a little bit of my neck still attached so I could grow my head back then it was a good day.

I looked at Sirius as we walked down to the Great Hall. What a naïve boy. Was he blind to everything that was happening around him or did he just ignore it. He never questioned my increasingly changing habits. He never once questioned why I addressed Evans and Potter by their first name (thanks to rule number eleven) or why I suddenly stopped swearing like a sailor (courtesy of rule number thirteen). I don't know if he just didn't notice or if he didn't care or if he thought it was part of my rehabilitation process. How could such a brilliant bloke be so blind?

I couldn't tell him. If I told him then he'd have to make a choice. He'd either have to tell Potter and Evans to get it together or he'd have to tell me to live with it. My gut knew that he was more likely to sway towards the first option. He was fiercely loyal, one of the many things I loved about him. Potter was like a brother to him and that made him very wary about fighting with him. I believed he loved me but I knew that Potter was in his life first and that wasn't something I was ever going to be able to contend with. I just had to grit my teeth and endure it until Evans and Potter lost interest or I really couldn't take anymore. That's what love is though, isn't it? Sacrifice and compromise, right?