YOU DON'T NEED TO FREAK OUT GAPSTER IT'S OKAY HERE'S THE BLOODY UPDATE OMFG BLAH.

And thank you Forever Siriusly Sirius, I always get extra excited when you review because your reviews are epic!

Anyway, on with the story.

"All is fair in love and war,"

–John Lyly

Chapter Thirty-One:

Impulsive.

That's what they called me.

Impulsive. Reckless. Rash. Irresponsible. Wild.

And right about now I could see why they gave me such titles. Both Sirius and I were sitting on the bench in the Astronomy Tower, hands clasped in our laps, looking down at our shoes. There's a space between us. A gap that had never been there before today.

"So…" Sirius said.

"So…" I mumbled.

"You kissed me…" he stated blankly, refusing to look at me and trying to hide the fact.

I sighed, "Yes. Obviously,"

"I have a girlfriend…"

"I know,"

He turned to me then, anger scrawled across his face, "So then why the hell did you kiss me!" Sirius snapped, and it hurt, right there in my chest.

"You asked me too!" I argued.

He ran his hands through his hear, "I didn't think it was me! I thought it's be Remus or James or Peter–"

I laughed bitterly, "Peter? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Okay, maybe not Peter, but you know what I mean!" he frowned, folding his arms across his chest, "You don't do that, Riley! You don't kiss me!"

"Oh and why is that? You said it yourself that you didn't love Ariana and you can't fucking deny that you kissed me back before pushing me away,"

Sirius remained silent, fuming in absolute anger.

I stood up, "So why can't I kiss you? How does it make you feel?"

"I feel nothing! Nothing at all!" he protested, standing up to meet me. Our faces were not far away from each other but the two of us were to consumed with anger at each other to particularly notice or care.

I looked into his deep grey eyes and whispered, "You keep telling yourself that, because I know you felt something, even though you deny it… I know you did, I can see it in your eyes,"

Then I turned and left, leaving my friend to his indecision.

I didn't feel like crying.

Most girls would burst into bouts of tears after such a harsh rejection from somebody so close to them, but all I felt was fury swealing up from the pits of my heart, of course sadness and grief were mixed in there somewhere alongside the rage, but I was confused at the moment to properly see it.

In need of desperate distraction, I headed back towards my dorm room and unearthed the bundle of newspaper clippings. Laying them out on my bed, I began reading through them looking for connections between the people but I began to realise there were none, or well, no obvious ones I could pick up through the text.

The murders were random, not targeting anything in particular. Both adults and children, Ministry workers and shop owners, high classed and low classed – I couldn't find anything to link them together, but of course there had to be something the victims all had in common.

Packing up my mess and tying the newspapers back together before hiding them in my trunk again, I decided to take down a few names of the more… violent… killings, and head towards the library.

As I made my way through the halls of Hogwarts, memories of Sirius and I haunting me. Places where we hid from teachers, pranks we pulled, where we used to hang out… every memory was like a weight in my heart. Stones sinking further and further downwards.

With a sigh, I pushed open the doors to the library and headed in. The light was dim, everything was hushed to a still quiet and the air smell of musty books and mould. A likely combination.

"Excuse me," I tapped Irma Pince the librarian on the shoulder.

The woman jumped slightly and turned to face me, "Huh? Oh hello!"

I smiled cheerily in quite a fake manner, "I have a History of Magic class assignment on heritage… I'm muggleborn but I know my great grandmother was a witch, so I was wondering if I could have a look in the past school year books to learn more about her…"

"Yeah, sure kid. Walk straight down, turn left, left again and it's the eights isle on the right, quarter way down. Don't leave marks on the pages or I'll have your head on the chopping block, absolutely no ripping or tearing either!" she said strictly and I felt myself shrink a little under her intense gaze.

They're just stupid books, I thought to myself and restrained from rolling my eyes.

"Okay, thanks," I smiled again and left the crabby women to her re-shelving.

Eventually I found the right spot, trailing my fingers along the spins of the books as I walked along. On my list I had scrawled;

Caitlin Borthwick aged 24

Samuel Carter aged 38

Dr David Tenth aged 41

They were people, completely unrelated people, who all died at the hands of the killing curse. They had never met one another, as far as I knew, and had nothing sinister in their lives that could have driven them to be murdered in such a violent fashion.

Eventually I came across the 1969 Year Book and began flicking through the pages. I found her in a photo of the Toad Choir, singing in the back row. She was a tall and stocky Hufflepuff with mousey brown hair tied back and a grin on her face. Clearly somebody who enjoyed life, not somebody who deserved to be killed in her London apartment and found a few days later by her younger brother.

At the back of the book there was a page for each graduating student that highlighted their achievements that year; I flicked through until I found her page. It had been defiled, the word MUDBLOOD scrawled across it in black ink. Probably some pretentious Slytherin's who believed they were better than all us muggleborn kids. Ugh. They disgusted me.

I shoved the book away, if those dicks had known when they defaced her page that she'd be murdered one day, would they still have done it?

Probably, I thought acidly, they would've found it funny… 'cleansing the wizard race' I heard a kid say the other day… idiot…

I jumped up suddenly, "Merlin, how could I be so thick?!"

"Prongs, I've got it!" I grinned, dumping a load of student records and newspapers onto his bed.

"Where'd you get these?" James asked in bewilderment.

I shrugged, "Stole them from the library while Pince wasn't looking, but that doesn't matter because I worked it out!"

He jumped up and looked over my shoulder, "Explain,"

"They're all muggleborn, every single one of them!" I opened up the books and pointed to the names, matching them to the newspaper clippings.

"Hmm, and what of this Voldemort guy…" James asked.

I sighed, pulling out a different book from the stack, "His real name is Tom Riddle and I found him here… he was a Slytherin, Prefect and Head Boy, so I did a little more digging and found this,"

Handing him a different newspaper he read out the title, "Mysterious Death of Tom Riddle Sr."

"That clipping is from a muggle newspaper; the old boot died of strange circumstances at Riddle House, Little Hangleton – no markings or anything. It was as if his heart just spontaneous stopped beating for no reason at all…"

James frowned, "So otherwise, the Killing Curse?"

"Precisely," I nodded, "He was quite a wealthy man too, and married to a witch Merope Gaunt for a very short while before leaving her with their unborn son for some reason. Their divorce was the talk of the town,"

"So what, Voldemort killed his father for walking out on them? Bad tempered much…" James questioned.

I shook my head, "These are the local hospital records from 1905," I handed him another few pages.

James flicked through the pages until he came to the part I highlighted, "Ms Merope Gaunt – died during childbirth," he read aloud, "He was an orphan?"

I nodded seriously, "Now I checked out all the orphanages in the area and found this one half an hour away…" I pulled out another file and placed in on the bed, "It's called Wool's Orphanage. I did a little digging and found this file,"

James grinned, "How'd you get all of this?"

"Laptop, portable internet stick and a friend back home who is good at hacking," I grinned, thinking of Indiana and her degree in IT.

James gave me a confused look, "A what?"

"Muggle machines… don't worry," I waved his questions off.

"So an angry wizard kid raised in a sad orphanage becomes a psycho killer who hates muggles and muggleborns?" James clarified with a furrow in his brow.

"Pretty much,"

He sighed, "Well that's… sad, I guess,"

"So are the families of the people he murdered," I pointed out plainly.

James tried to smile, but it failed on him, "True… at least we know what we're dealing with now, sorta,"

The door burst open and Sirius and Remus came walking in laughing, but they stopped dead in their tracks – Remus because of the mess we'd created, Sirius because of me.

"What the hell went off in here?" Remus asked with a open jaw at the books and papers lying everywhere.

James and I scrambles to pick everything up and stack them on his bed, throwing the covers over it.

"There, see, clean!" James beamed.

Sirius chuckled looking at James and ignoring me, "Suuuuure it is,"

I stood up and felt a grimace settle of my face, "Hello. How was your day?" I asked, gathering my things and shoving a bunch of lose papers into my bag.

He looked at me with dead eyes, "Alright, hung out with Adriana, you?"

I shrugged, feeling the tension rise in the room, "Nothing much, homework and stuff,"

"Okay then," he nodded stiffly.

"Okay then," I said with equal the amount of acid.

I think James and Remus realised it too as they seemed to be finding little things to do and were avoiding our cold eyes.

"Well. I'm leaving now. Goodbye, Black," I said bluntly, pushing past him and out the door.

"See you in potions, O'Conner," he spoke robotically, without turning around.

As I sprinted down the stairs back towards my dorm, clutching my books to my chest as if they were my lifeline, I shed one tear down my cheek.

It's amazing what one little kiss can do to my heart.

REFERENCES^^^

I hope you get them.

I'm sorry that my time is all mixed up and that Riley's got a laptop in the 70's but whatever I don't care this is FanFiction so I can break rules. Who knows, maybe The Doctor gave it to her?

Please review, they make my day!

ALLONS-Y