I'm eating cornbread. How do you eat cornbread? Is there a proper way to do it? I douse it with maple syrup, personally (Yes, I am Canadian)

As I am sure you know by now, I don't own the lovely characters in this story.

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Sirius regarded the couple sitting on the love seat in front of him with anticipation, desperation, bouncing on the balls of his feet to keep from exploding. He'd waited a day before telling them, he hoped it wasn't in vain.

"Wow," James said in awe, finally breaking the silence. His jaw slacked as he stared vacantly up at his fellow marauder.

Lily followed with, "um, yeah." She opened and closed her mouth, trying to find words. "Are you sure?"

Exasperated, Sirius huffed. "Yes, I'm sure that Severus told me that The Dark Lord's minions found and tortured him to a bloody pulp. He got away just in time."

"But, but why?"

"I don't know," he lied. "Does it matter? He's alive, and they're not finished."

James straightened up. "You think they're going to come back and finish the job? That's sick, Merlin's pants, that's sick," he muttered.

"This isn't a risk we can take. Severus assumed the worst, The Dark Lord is dangerous," Sirius explained.

James shook his head and wrapped an arm around Lily's shoulders reassuringly.

"I hate to think of how Sev got into this mess..." Lily said, leaning into her boyfriend's embrace.

They sat in silence for a while, thinking. Sirius hated the idea of holding back information from his best mate, but what other option did he have? James and Severus were so close to becoming friends, in some sense of the word. He feared that knowing the truth behind Severus' injuries, that he was a former lackey-in-training to The Dark Lord, would create an even bigger rift between them than there had been before, one that would condemn them to hatred forever. Honestly, he wasn't in the right of mind to be picking sides.

At some point, James stood up and kissed Lily on the head before heading upstairs, his sock clad footsteps faded into the dungeon of pink.

"Do you have any ideas?" Lily asked.

Sirius shook his head, his head was so filled with ideas and possibilities, confussion, and fear for Severus' life that it all just melded together and became one big mess of nothingness.

"I think I'm going to try owling The Ministry..." She said, "it can't hurt, right?"

Sirius nodded, wondering why he hadn't had the idea himself. Maybe because it didn't often occur to him to actually seek the help of authority figures, what with all the trouble that usually resulted in detention back at Hogwarts. People who got other people in trouble were usually people he wanted to avoid.

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When Severus' mother called him from the bottom of the stairs, he expected that she was just checking up on him. She was much more antsy than before, ever since the accident. He thanked whomever it was that was watching over him that she hadn't pried too much about it. His mum might not know anything, but his father knew even less.

When he saw Sirius standing in his bedroom doorway, Severus gave a start.

"Your mum sent me up," he explained.

Severus' mouth formed an 'o' as Sirius closed the door behind himself. The Gryff sat down at the foot of the bed, and took in the room. It was messier than usual, piles of books littered every surface, there was a slight musk to the air, and a small portable cauldron sitting beside a pile of papers was simmering a mixture of herbs. Not the best circumstances for someone Severus liked to be seeing his room for the first time.

Severus brushed his hair out of his face, "so, are you here for any particular reason?" he asked.

Sirius smiled. "You said I'd see you tomorrow. It's tomorrow. I'm seeing you." His face turned red in a way that made Severus' stomach flip. "I mean, that is, I can see you. I mean... Hi."

"Hi," Severus replied. He gave the concoction in the cauldron one last counter clockwise stir before joining Sirius on the bed.

"I, um, I told James and Lily. About what happened. I didn't tell them anything bad, just the important bits."

"The important bits?"

"Yeah, um... We're trying to help." Sirius said, brushing a hand through his mess of a bed head that could only work on certain guys, Severus wasn't sure Sirius was one of those guys. "Lily's sent a letter to the Ministry, we don't know how long it'll take before they get back to us. James has an idea, apparently, not that he'll tell either of us."

Shifting closer to Sirius, Severus asked, "and where do you fit in to all of this?"

Sirius shrugged, turning to the Slytherin, "I don't know, I'm not really good at ideas, you tell me."

"How about moral support, you do have morals, don't you?"

"Do you?" Sirius asked, eyebrow raised.

Sirius' challenge led to a series of sweet kisses that trailed along started at his lips and lead to his ear lobe, down to his collar bone, and ended back where they started. The world melted away as Severus twirled a lock of Sirius' hair around his finger as the Gryffindor cradled his jaw, then wrapped his arms around Severus' shoulders and smiled against his lips. It was all so perfect, but perfection never lasts.

An awful stench filled Severus' nostrils, and he nearly recoiled. Opening his eyes, he moved away from Sirius. Looking past his shoulder, Severus saw smoke rising from the cauldron. Green goo bubbled over the sides, centimeters from ruining all of his work.

He stood suddenly, startling Sirius. Quickly moving to the other side of the room, "bloody dunderheaded... Stop you poor excuse for a copper kettle!" He went went between lowering the heat and stirring the mixture in all directions in a mad attempt to calm the beast.

"Do you usually yell at your work?" Sirius asked, looking at the scene with vague amusement.

"I give up, this isn't working." Severus muttered, "give me your wand."

"Why?"

"Because mine's been snapped into several tiny pieces, and I need to clean this up before it gets any worse."

"Oh," Sirius said. "Right." He took his wand, got up, and held it out at an arms length in front of Severus. "Here."

Severus quickly cleaned up the green mess and gave Sirius' wand back before recording his findings in a small dragon hide journal.

"Severus," Sirius said, the name rolling off of his tongue. "What are we?"

"Hm?"

"You and me, what are we?" he repeated.

Severus turned to face Sirius, whose eye's refused to meet his. It was interesting to see this shyer side of him after all these years. "What do you want us to be?"

"Together. Seeing each other."

Severus let out a breath he'd unwittingly held in anticipation. Remembering what Sirius had said earlier, he said, "I'm seeing you."

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I kind of feel like these guys are the calm in the storm they created...