Yay! Only eleven days later. I hope, after I return from Australia next week, that I shall be able to update regularly once a week. Thank you, as ever, for your great patience and for your reviews.
"The course of true love ne'er did run smooth." - William Shakespeare
Perhaps my worst fears were realised in the early days of my relationship with Sirius Black. In my wildest dreams, I had imagined our interactions. In my mind I had snapshot ideas of our time together; curling up in the Common Room in front of the fire together; laughing as we studied in the library; gazing into each others' eyes over long romantic dinners in Hogsmeade; relaxing on the lawn in front of the castle in the sunshine, my head on his chest and his hand in my hair.
Our relationship danced more to the tune of my wildest nightmares. I was painfully shy around him, incapable of relaxation, and every morning, braving the stairs down to the Common Room felt as if I was braving a walk to the gallows. Most of my time was spent with a sick, fluttery feeling in my stomach, which was only intensified in Sirius's presence. Every night after dinner, I found some excuse for escaping up to the dormitory, where I would remain for the evening, my conscience persuading me in vain to go down to the Common Room to join him.
Around our friends, I barely spoke, and on the rare occasions I was alone with him, I found the quickest means to escape, rather than endure the awkward silence I sustained through my inability to utter a word in his proximity. How different I must have seemed to his charismatic girlfriends of the past. How I remember watching them chat and laugh and flirt, wishing I was in their place. This knowledge only furthered the paralysis of my tongue.
Frustratingly, I could perceive that my ineptitude was putting a strain on Sirius. I had not seen him laugh, or even crack a smile, since the night that I agreed to be his girlfriend, and he walked around with a permanent frown etched between his eyebrows. My behaviour was the cause, I know, and still I found it impossible to overcome my timidity, and confront him with my anxieties.
Precisely eight days after I that night in the Common Room, I was concealing myself once more up in the dormitory, fervently studying for a Transfiguration test that I had the next day, in an endeavour to distract myself from my feelings of guilt over being such a coward to hole up in the dormitory, hiding from the very boyfriend that I should be spending time with.
There was a knock on the poster of my four-poster bed, and the curtain was drawn back to admit Lily, who made a small noise of exasperation when she saw me, forced to write on my bed rather than a desk, because I had not the courage to be near to my boyfriend.
"Rose," she sighed, "I know this is difficult for you, but this hiding and avoiding of Sirius has to stop. Otherwise..." She paused, wondering how truthful to be with me. "Otherwise... your relationship will end before it has even begun. Honestly, there's nothing to be afraid of. Sirius really likes you."
"I know, Lily, I know." I wailed. "I know how utterly ridiculous I am being, and how much I'm hurting Sirius, but I can't seem to muster up the nerve to go down there and talk to him. I'm just so afraid that he'll change his mind if I do something stupid that he'll break up with me. I'm so nervous in his presence that I can't seem to jumble my disordered thoughts into anything coherent to say to him. The awkward silences are truly egregious."
She reached forward and wrapped her arms around me, as I clung onto her. She sighed once more.
"Rose. Oh, Rose, I know that this is hard for you, I can understand that. I really can – it was the same for me with James. But if you continue to hide up here, afraid to do anything in case Sirius breaks up with you, he will end your relationship because, well... at the moment it doesn't even exist anyway. You are always so good at giving others advice. What would you say to me, if I was in your situation? Divorce yourself from your feelings, and think of what you would tell me?"
"Um..." I considered this for a moment. I took a deep breath and lent back against my pillows. "I'd tell you to talk to Sirius, and let him know why you were acting so weirdly, and ask him to help you acclimatise to the new change in your life."
She regarded me for a moment, her eyes unswerving in their gaze.
"Then you know what you must do."
I nodded. I leant back into my pillows for one moment, enjoying the security and comfort that they gave to me. Mustering any courage that I had, I hauled myself off the bed. Standing up, I smoothed down my hair and clothes. Then I turned to Lily, fixing her with my eyes and stating distinctly: "Te morituri salutamus."
She chuckled, ruefully. "I don't think it will be quite that bad, Rose."
"Let's hope not." I replied.
Squaring my shoulders, I walked out of the dormitory, down the stairs, and into the Common Room, trying to divorce my mind from the hives that were breaking out on my skin at the thought of what I was about to do. And they say that men have problems with relationships. I think Freud or Jung could have written a whole book on my psychological issues with my present relationship.
There was an obvious sense of deja vu, as I walked over the fireplace where he was sitting, bent over a book as the rest of our friends chatted happily around him. There was a lull in conversation as I approached, and then everyone commenced their conversations once more, attempting to look as if they were paying no heed to my imminent talk with Sirius. I tapped him on the shoulder, and he jumped, looking startled. When he saw me, his face fixed into an inscrutable mask.
"Um... hi. I was wondering, if we could... well... you know – talk?" Well done Rose. Slow clap. You managed to butcher a very simple sentence. And make it sound oddly ominous. Oh dear.
He ran his hand through his hair in a tired motion, and then nodded.
"Yeah – okay."
"Umm... Heads' Common Room?"
He nodded once more, his face downcast. This did not bode well. I nodded, for some incalculable reason, and then slowly walked towards the Portrait Hole, aware of everybody's eyes on my back. The walk was silent, the awkward tension thickening between us, until I felt that it was choking me, grabbing my tongue and preventing me from breathing freely, much less speaking. Tension coiled in my stomach, my hands slick with salty sweat, as I coughed out the password and entered the Heads' Common Room.
Making my way towards a sofa, unable to look at Sirius to ascertain as to whether he was following, I lowered my shaking legs onto the cushions. I felt, rather than saw, Sirius sit down beside me as the cushions moved.
"I - " I could speak no more than that. The snake of tension in my stomach had wound itself around my windpipe, and I could only gape like a fish for a few moments before shutting my mouth. My mind was a roaring blank of anything to say.
A soft grunt caught in my ear, and my eyes raised themselves to catch such a sad expression on Sirius's face, mouth taut, nostrils flaring, and eyes held rigidly in their sockets, indicative of his disappointment in our relationship. Before I quite knew what I was doing, my body quite divorced from my mind, I had flung myself forward and gripped him around the torso in a tight hug. He stiffened at first in my grasp, and then I felt him relax.
With my head pressed into his chest, my tongue suddenly felt a lot looser than it had done in his presence in the past eight days.
"I'm so sorry that I'm such an idiot!" I wailed. "I know you've realised that I have been avoiding you where I can, and that I don't really speak to you, and that quite frankly, I deserve the title of the "Most horrendous girlfriend ever to exist", even worse than those ones in the gossip you here, who eat their ex's goldfish, and burn their houses down, and cheat on them with their best friends and so on and so forth, it's just that well... you see – you make me so nervous!" I rushed this last phrase out, all of the previous tension I had been feeling released with this confession.
There was a slight pause, and then I felt a rumble in his chest, next to my ear, as he asked in a perplexed tone: "Somebody ate their ex-boyfriend's goldfish? Who does that?"
"You know what, I don't know. It is just one of those stories that you hear, like the one where people strap dead Grannies to their cars. It never happens to an immediate member of your acquaintance. It's always a friend of a friend."
"Ah. Well, in any case, remiss though you may have been in your duties as my girlfriend, I'm not quite sure that I can compare you to somebody who would eat my goldfish. If I had one. Which I don't, so perhaps I should instead compare you to someone who would eat my owl."
"Yes," I replied, "but I think owls would be a little chewy. Not to mention how long it would take to pluck all of his feathers."
He leaned back on the sofa at his next words, his arms comfortably around my waist, my head still pressed against his collar bone, and his voice pleasantly reverberating close to my right ear.
"You'd be much better off if I had a pet frog, or the like, and then you could cook it like the French do."
"Do you know, I've never tried frog's legs. Have you?."
"Frequently. As a youngster, I was intrigued to try them, not having an adult aversion to eating amphibians, and then liked the taste so much that I do quite enjoy the odd plate of frog's legs from time to time."
"Lovely."
"No, really, you'll have to try some sometime. In fact, I'll take you to this great restaurant where they cook them in garlic butter, with sage." I could hear the slight question in his voice.
"I'd like that." I replied.
There was a slight pause. Then he broke it with a question:
"So I make you nervous, do I?"
The blush flushed my cheeks, but I was gently encouraged by the slight note of teasing in his voice.
"Yes," I averred mournfully, "I'm afraid you do. Which accounts for my odd behaviour. I know this sounds preposterous, and quite frankly quasi-insane, but every time I'm near you, my stomach begins to squirm like a toddler trying to escape his pram, and my skin feels all hot, as if it has broken out in hives. Then, my mind begins to work so fast, envisioning scenarios in which I completely humiliate myself in front of you, that I can't think of anything to say, and end up just sitting there mute, like some dumb animal. Which is why I prefer to hole up in the dormitory, rather than embarrass myself doing something utterly ridiculous. You have no idea what a trial it is to make my legs move down the stairs each morning."
"Mmmmm." He hummed in my ear. "That does account for it. I wasn't sure whether you were trying in some way to break up with me."
"No." I stated. "Not at all."
"Well. Is there anything I can do to alleviate this nervousness? Start dancing in an Egyptian style every time we meet? Laughter does much to assuage tension, you know."
I chuckled at his suggestion, then shook my head.
"It is much better that you know, now. At least you can understand what is going on. I shall try my utmost to overcome this. Do you know, that I think it gets a little better after I have spent a while in your presence? Like going into the sea. At first, it is really, really cold, and then after a while, you acclimatise, and it doesn't seem so cold anymore. Perhaps the remedy is to spend more time around you, and acclimatise myself to being in your atmosphere."
"That sounds like a very good idea to me indeed." He concurred, kissing my forehead as we snuggled together on the sofa.
Love EllieBaby xxx