A/N: Hai. I'm back. It's been busy today, so I'm feeling pretty productive right now :) Enjoy!


The moment Rachel walked into the common room, she immediately fell onto a large couch. "I am so tired," she groaned.

"But you have to come to dinner," Lily said.

"No, no I don't," replied Rachel as she curled up into a ball on the soft couch and pulled a fluffy blanket over her.

"But… it's dinner! There's food!" Lily exclaimed, in attempt to make her friend come downstairs to dinner with her.

"I have my own stash," Rachel replied. "Now leave me to sleep."

"Just leave her," Dorcas said. "She's tired and drunk."

"Anything new?" Marlene asked jokingly, but Rachel's eyes were already closed and she had drifted off to sleep.


"Wakey, wakey," she heard a voice mutter. Rachel felt her shoulder being softly shaken. She grumbled and moved her shoulder.

"Oh, come on," the person whispered. Rachel didn't reply. She had to go back to sleep. "Oh, for Merlin's sake, Fredricks!"

Rachel's eyes snapped open and the first thing she saw was a pair of grey eyes dangerously close to her. She got so scared that she yelped and rolled off the couch. Her back hit the floor painfully. How many more times was she going to fall like that in the whole year?

"Bloody hell!" she shouted. She opened her eyes to see who her assailant was.

Black. Fuck life.

"What the hell!" she shouted. "I was sleeping!"

"Yes, you were sleeping," Sirius remarked. "And I woke you up, because you were sleeping on my couch."

"Your couch?" Rachel demanded. She scoffed. "Fuck off."

"Stingy, always stingy," Sirius said. "You usually come off as a nice person."

"You never come off as a nice person," Rachel commented. "Especially when you wake me from my slumber."

"Didn't mean to stir the dragon," Sirius smirked.

Rachel rolled her eyes. How long could she last?

She suddenly noticed that she was still sitting on the floor, Sirius being troublingly close to her. She tried not to jump; he would sense her discomfort, and he loved that.

As calmly as she could, Rachel stood up confidently and put her hands on her hips. Sirius got up as well and he ended up standing so close to her that she could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath.

She loathed smokers. That alone was enough for her to gain back her common sense and not be bothered by his presence.

No matter how closely he stood to her.

Really, she could ignore his fairly perfect features. She could.

She raised her chin confidently, turned around, and walked away. Maybe she'd be able to get some sleep in her own bed.


"Up!" Marlene exclaimed, forcefully pulling away the curtains to Rachel's four-poster bed. "Come on! Don't be a lazy-bum!"

Rachel groaned and rolled over so she was facing away from Marlene and the terrible light. She hated whoever came up with the idea of early classes.

"Oh, don't be like that," Marlene ordered. "Come on! Up and at 'em!"

Rachel rolled hey eyes and swung her legs over her bed so she was sitting upright and facing Marlene.

"Why do you always insist on brutally waking me up?" Rachel asked tiredly. "You are the only friend that pulls aside my curtains, yells at me to get up, and forces me out of bed in the morning. Why?"

"Because you're my friend and I look after you," Marlene said. "Obviously."

With that, she walked off, leaving Rachel to sit there and mull over what her friend had told her. After five minutes, she came to a conclusion.

She really didn't deserve her friends.


"What is the main ingredient in… Ms. Fredricks?"

Rachel jumped in her chair and woke from her sleep. Slughorn was looking at her pointedly. Rachel felt her face heat up and heard the Slytherins from across the room snickering at her.

"Awake now?" he asked.

Rachel nodded meekly and quietly replied, "Yes sir."

Slughorn continued on with the class and then instructed them to make a simple Wideye potion, muttering pointedly to Rachel that 'some might need it'.

Nevertheless, Rachel quickly paired off with Lily, and Mary with Alice and they all began working on their potions. Rachel hoped that Lily would do the hard part, meaning the whole potion, because Rachel could really muck it up.

As Rachel began crushing some lavender, as Lily had instructed, and Lily threw in ingredients at an unbelievable speed, Rachel's eyes wandered around the classroom. Not too far away, she spotter James and Sirius tossing in any ingredients they could find, just for the fun of it.

Lily quickly reached over and stopped Rachel from squishing the lavender anymore. She had a panicked look in her eyes as she said, "One extra squish and the potion could go terribly wrong."

"Okay," Rachel said with a small smile. "Calm down. The world isn't blowing up."

Lily rolled her eyes and took the mortar form Rachel to pour the contents in the cauldron. But right before she could dump the squished lavender, something flew in front of her face and fell in the cauldron with a small splash. Rachel and Lily quickly leaned forward to see a bezoar surfacing. Rachel looked up and around the room and her eyes landed on the likeliest of idiots.

Potter and Black. Of course they would've done that.

But before Rachel could storm over to them and give them a stern talking to, the potion began to bubble violently and then it just exploded, spreading potion goo all over the place, but mostly on Lily and Rachel.

"What the devil is going on here?" Slughorn exclaimed, approaching Lily and Rachel's table.

That was when James and Sirius broke out in unrestrained laughter.

Slughorn calmly turned to them and said, "Detention for the two of you and," he turned to Rachel and Lily, "the two of you. Tonight."

"But—but professor!" Lily exclaimed.

"Can we at least make up for the mark?" Rachel asked worriedly.

"All four of you can come in and retry the potion for marks, on your own time," Slughorn said. "Until then, you all have zeros."

Rachel was mostly scared that Lily was going to faint, so she gently put her hand on her shoulder and helped her sit down. Lily sat motionless and in a state of shock for the rest of the period.

Rachel, however, was in a large bout of anger. This would not do. And it was not their faults.

She was quickly planning revenge.


"This is ridiculous," Lily grumbled for the umpteenth time as her and Rachel walked to their detention, or their doom as it was more suitably called.

"We're just cleaning a few cauldrons," Rachel said, trying to calm her friend. "We can catch up this weekend. I'll do all the work even and you won't have to worry about a thing."

"But detention?" Lily hissed. "I don't get detention!"

"There's a first time for everything," Rachel reminded.

Lily shook her head and crossed her arms as they stopped in front of the dungeons. Rachel urged Lily forward and the two of them walked in.

Surprisingly enough, James and Sirius were already there. Professor Slughorn was patiently waiting for the two girls and when they arrived, he stuck out his hand and said, "Wands please. I don't want any escapees."

Lily and Rachel hesitantly gave their wands to Slughorn. "All right then!" he said, quite happily. "Just clean the cauldrons on the desk and the floors. Good evening, students!"

And with that, he walked off, leaving the four Gryffindors in the room.

Rachel shot Sirius a resentful glare before storming off to start cleaning cauldrons. Lily just walked to where Rachel was and started helping her friend out and stay unremarkably quiet. The other two, well… they somewhat cleaned the cauldrons.

A lot of the time, they were throwing sponges at each other and stupidly daring each other to lick the cauldrons.

It was very expected, in Rachel's opinion.

At one point throughout the detention, when Lily had gone to get more cleaning supplies for the floors and James was stealing from the potions cupboards, Rachel felt someone looming behind her. She turned her head to see none other but Sirius Black standing there. Really, she shouldn't have been surprised. So she rolled her eyes and went back to cleaning.

"Is there really nothing you want to say to me?" Sirius whispered to her. He was so close that she could feel his breath on her skin, only heating up her face more.

Rachel turned and stepped away from Sirius until she hit the table behind her and couldn't move any further. She was still close enough for her to notice all the things she noticed that morning after the Hogsmeade trip. In detail.

"Yeah, I do have something to ask you actually," Rachel started. "How's Gertrude?"

"She's fine, thanks for asking," Sirius replied with a smirk.

"Oh that's good. And have you decided on a family home?" Rachel asked mockingly.

"Somewhere on the seaside," Sirius replied, just as sarcastically. "Ireland, maybe."

Despite her efforts to hate him, she felt a small smile slip as she said, "And she probably wants, oh, a dozen kids?"

"At least," Sirius replied. By now, he was smiling. Not smirking, but actually smiling. It was something Rachel hadn't seen before and thought it suited him well.

But not well enough to make him attractive, oh no.

Rachel was just about to shoot another reply when all the light in the room, from the candles to the chandeliers, was mysteriously blown out. The immediate darkness was enough to make Rachel jump and stumble into someone else, who could only be Sirius.

He caught her before she could fall to the dungeon floor, but didn't let go of her. Sirius kept his arms securely around Rachel, as if he was scared he'd lose her in the darkness. Rachel softly patted his hands and pushed away his arm as she blindly searched the table for any defensive tool.

And that was when she felt her throat being restricted and her limbs started flailing.

She had no air, no wand, and no weapon. She was as defenceless as a drowning muggle.


CLIFFHANGER. Don't worry, next update is coming soon :)

-What do you think happened?
-Grammar/spelling?
-In case you haven't noticed, Sirchel is moving along... when do you think the next Sirchel moment will be?

Thanks for reading! xx