Chapter Sixteen
December the Eighteenth, Nineteen Hundred Seventy-Seven
Lily flinched at the sound of a crash in the boys' dormitories upstairs - it could not very well have come from the girls' rooms because everyone knew that the spiral staircase leading to the rooms turned into a slide if a boy tried to ascend. It was only fortunate that Remus and Peter had gone home for the holidays already, as Peter Pettigrew may very well have soiled himself out of fright at the noise coming from upstairs.
"Another row?" James asked, not looking up from the essay he was working on; instead of sitting properly at a desk, he had the parchment propped up on the back of a textbook.
"Yes, Davie's up there. They've been fighting a lot lately," Lily pointed out in a rather melancholy tone, leaning against James and skimming over her own textbook for Potions class. "The whole week, ever since what happened at Hogsmeade, all Sirius does is lose his temper -- you know, he got upset over Davie eating too many sweet potatoes at dinner the other night. And Davie -- well, you can't get mad at her without her retaliating. You don't think it was a mistake to get them together in the first place?"
"Why would you say that?"
Lily jumped at the sound of another crash from upstairs, then glanced at James pointedly.
"Oh, I don't know," she added sarcastically. "But I really hope whatever that was, wasn't something of yours."
Just then, Davie came running out of the room, straight down the spiral staircase - she was quite red in the face and clearly had just been crying. Lily got up to try and get an explanation from the girl but she simply waved her arm dismissively towards the staircase she had descended, and stormed right out of the common room, muttering incoherently to herself. Sirius, meanwhile stalked slowly down the stairs and flopped irately into the couch across from James, crossing his legs and pulling a chocolate frog from a bowl that was placed on the side table.
"You're not going after her?" Lily asked, quite concerned at the state her best friend was in. Regardless of the fact that she spent most of her time with James, the last thing she wanted was for anyone to say she had been neglecting her best friend, especially when she had been a big part of the reason she was dating the boy she was quite obvious very angry with at the moment.
"What for? So she can chuck another lamp at me?" Sirius asked, crossing his arms and propping his feet up onto the table that was set between the couches. "I'm Sirius Black, I pine after no woman --"
"What were you fighting over this time?" Lily asked in an almost maternal tone, returning to her seat next to James and across from Sirius. "Sirius, what were you --"
"You can't blame me," he said sourly, looking away defiantly - and Lily briefly thought that if she had been this boy's mother, she might have tossed him out as well, he was that difficult. "I told her I was going to go with her to talk to McGonagall about that stupid Auror training bit --"
"The one in Bulgaria --"
"That's the one." Sirius affirmed, jabbing a finger towards Lily. "I honestly think it's a terrible idea, we all know that she's always wanted to be a teacher - but that's not what we were fighting over. Not once did I tell her the whole time how stupid I think the whole idea is! I simply insisted on accompanying her to McGonagall's office to make sure no one gave her any trouble, and she goes on asking about why I care so much and that I never insisted on escorting any of my previous lady friends anywhere --"
"And you said?" Lily asked, gesturing for Sirius to go on.
"What does it matter what I said? She obviously refused, because she's being bloody stubborn, just like she was being in Hogsmeade, and look what happened to her. You know, if I was this protective over any other girl, they'd be swooning. Swooning! But Davie? She's always like this, always acts like she needs to prove summat --"
"So you're going to break up with her?" James asked, raising his eyebrows and glancing at his best friend, who looked back at James as though he had just sprouted another head.
"You're barmy, mate, why would I break up with her?"
"Well, you're completely brassed off with her from the looks of it," James persisted. "Can't stand a single thing she does."
"Because she's being so bleeding difficult!" Sirius said, giving the table between them a slight kick before he stood up, storming back up to his room. James, meanwhile, shook his head as he looked back at Lily.
"You know what this means, don't you?" he asked with a heaving sigh.
"They're in love." Lily said, shaking her head breathlessly. "Completely, stubbornly, arse-over-elbows in love."
***
Davie had walked back into the common room nearly an hour later, up the stairs, and into the dormitory - their roommate, Mary Macdonald, had not gone home for the holidays but appeared to have gone out with yet another boy, as she was conspicuously absent. At the time, James and Sirius had already gone out - James had received a rather curious owl saying that someone could help them catch whoever had attacked them in Hogsmeade and that they were to meet in the Forest. Lily had fervently warned against it, but the boys had gone off anyway -- James had insisted that Sirius simply needed to get his mind off of things, even if it meant getting into a bit of a scrap.
"Davie."
"Mm."
"Davie."
"Mm."
Lily gave a harrumph, walked over to Davie's bed, and yanked the parchment she had been writing her essay on, causing the dark-haired girl to leave a long, thin streak of ink across the bottom. Davie looked up at her best friend, looking quite scandalized.
"Davie, aren't you worried?" Lily said, shaking the parchment in her hand at Davie. "Even if you're angry with him, Sirius is still your boyfriend. You really feel comfortable letting them just stroll out into the Forbidden Forest?"
"Well, I want him to let me do what I want without him interfering, so I can't be a hypocrite, can I?" Davie replied nonchalantly.
"Don't you think you're being a bit hard on him --"
"This is my fault?" Davie asked in outrage, sounding very much like Sirius had in the common room when they'd confronted him; they were quite a bit more compatible than they even knew, and they were equally infuriating. "You know, you're lucky! James has told you he loved you --"
"Is that what this is about?" Lily asked in exasperation, tossing her hands up and shaking her head. "That's all you're on about?"
Davie looked down at her hands, a bit embarrassed, and nodded almost imperceptibly, and Lily sighed, sitting down at the foot of her friend's bed.
"Come on, we're going to go out after them," Lily said resolutely. "Before they go and do something stupid - and you know they will," Lily added. "They might get themselves eaten out in the forest or something." Getting up to move towards the door, Lily slipped into her shoes before Davie stopped her.
"We can't go into the corridors, Pringle is out prowling again, remember?" Davie said, getting up quickly and getting into her shoes as well, grabbing her wand from the bedside table and slipping it into the pocket of her robes. She glanced over at the window -- it was rather high, but…
Lily's eyes widened -- she had grown accustomed to leaving the tower past curfew on occasion. It simply could not be avoided when you were James Potter's girlfriend. However, she had never, never tried leaving out of the dormitory window. It was simply unheard of for the Head Girl to be caught in such questionable behavior. However, Davie did have a point in pointing out that they wouldn't be able to catch up to the boys if they happened to get caught in the corridors. It was certainly quite a reversal to have Davie coming up with the ideas instead of following along, but she had been doing so considerably more often lately. One good thing that came out of dating Sirius, as it turned out, was that Davie was growing a bit more of a spine.
"I'll get you down first," Davie said, pulling her wand back out and nodding towards the window, opening it with a flick of her wrist. "Come on, Lily, hurry up -- I've been practicing."
Lily gingerly walked over to the window, and -- surprisingly, the way down to the ground, even at Davie's hands, was rather smooth. She had been practicing her charmswork, even more than Lily had expected, to the point that she was rather good.
When they had both arrived safely on the ground, they ducked around a bit to avoid being noticed by Hagrid before reaching the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Then they glanced at one another nervously - they'd heard many a horror story about what sorts of things lived in the forest surrounding the school, and had never felt compelled to venture inwards before.
"Stay close -- we might get eaten or something if we split up," Davie nodded. The two girls walked into the treeline side by side. They stalked around through fallen branches and thick underbrush, with only the light at the end of their wands to illuminate their way.
"I don't think this is working," Lily said quietly. "The forest is huge, we may never find them --"
"EXPELLIARMUS!"
From somewhere in the distance, someone had yelled a disarming spell, and the pair of outraged yells that followed caused Lily and Davie to look at one another in fear before bursting into a run towards the source of the sound - the boys were unarmed and being attacked.
"--think you're such bleeding heroes, don't you -- think you're so great -- you don't know -- never will --"
"Going to kill us, Snape? Going to --"
"Relashio!"
Davie nearly choked at the sound of Sirius' familiar laugh, followed by Snape's spell and a loud bang - the two girls could do nothing except run faster.
"You think," Snape continued, "you think you're such a hero, Potter, you're wrong -- and no one sees through you -- Flagrate!"
The girls finally saw a burst of light, not too far - a burst of fire that had no doubt come from Snape's wand. The burst lasted for a good few seconds, moving and whipping around a bit, before the sound of footsteps signaled that Snape had fled. Noting that the flame had not gone out but rather intensified, the girls decided against pursuing Snape and hurried towards the fire as well.
"They don't have wands -- Aguamenti!" Lily said, sounding incredibly fearful as the found themselves facing a wall of fire; the boys must have been encircled by the flames Snape had conjured. Lily was overcome with disbelief that someone she had once considered her best friend had fallen this far. "AGUAMENTI!" she repeated, whipping her wand at the flames again, but the single jet of water was hardly enough to actually make a large dent in the size of the flames.
Davie, on the other hand, was nearly paralyzed at the sight of the flames - they were high, taller than all of them, and whipped and licked the air loudly. This, Davie thought fearfully, was what her parents must have felt like, this was what they must have seen. Simply flames everywhere, thick smoke…
"I'm going to go inside!" Davie said loudly, and she had to wave her hand to dispel Lily's protests towards the idea. "Keep working and I'll get the boys out --"
"Davie! Lily!" came James' voice from inside the circle of flames. "What are you --"
"Shut up, will you?!" Davie yelled over the roar of the crackling fire as she shed her outer robes in favor of the shirt and skirt underneath - she was certainly not as skilled a witch as Lily, but if Davie was good at anything, it was doing dangerous, reckless things. And whatever she had planned, Lily, could tell, was going to being as dangerous and reckless as it came. "You'll only inhale more smoke that way -- Impervius!"
Davie had tapped her wand onto her own head, inhaled deeply, then rolled into the clearing through the wall of flames before her mind could get the better of her gall. When she emerged on the other side, nearly, running into James in the process, she stood up, her hair slightly singed and her face lightly dusted with dark soot, pointing her wand at him --
"No!" James said loudly, holding his hand up haltingly. "Sirius first!"
Feeling a bit of a loop in her gut, Davie turned slightly on the ball of her foot and her eyes widened at the sight of Sirius bleeding from a cut on his head, slumped against a nearby tree.
"Impervius! Impervius!" Davie yelled, pointing first at Sirius, then and James. "Take him out, I'll work on the flames from this side -- Lily's waiting," Davie said, shielding her eyes from the embers that were crackling and flying around; she'd already been hit in the cheek, grazing and leaving a long, gash-like burn. "Go on!"
James nodded, grabbing his best friend and hoisting him over his shoulder, barging through the wall of flames. He gave a yell to signal that he had reached the other side. Davie, however, remained inside the ring of flames as they struggled to extinguish it.
It seemed to take nearly half an hour using the Aguamenti charm to put out the flames, but by the time they had died down and Lily and Davie could properly see one another, they were both looking exhausted and off-color, and Davie, especially, was covered in dark soot and cuts; the bottom hem of her skirt was singed.
Crisis having been finally averted, Lily ran immediately to James, throwing her arms around him and hugging him tightly.
"Oh," she said, looking quite on the verge of tears. "James Potter, I told you this wasn't going to turn out well! That's the last time I ever let you do anything like this, that's the end of it!"
Davie, meanwhile, knelt down next to Sirius who was now only just stirring. He shakily groped at the cut on his forehead before Davie gently swatted his hand away.
"Episkey," she said, pointing her wand at the cut on his head, which sewed itself up, leaving only the slowly drying blood on the surface. "I swear, if you ever -- ever scare me like that again, I might just kill you myself."
"Aren't you going to run after Snape and make sure he's alright? He may have given himself a hangnail while trying to kill us - why do you care that I've nearly cracked my head open?" Sirius groaned, wiping his head with his sleeve and propping himself up onto his forearms. Davie rolled her eyes slightly at the irony of everything suddenly being reversed. "You could've done worse than this, you know. You chucked a lamp at me --"
"I care," Davie interrupted, smirking slightly, "because I love you, you prat."
And suddenly, Sirius Black was very much conscious -- he sat up straighter, leaning his face close to Davie's and squinting at her as though her face were a textbook with terribly tiny print.
"Davie," he muttered. "I think I hit my head a bit hard back there, I could have sworn you just said --"
"I love you," she repeated with an impish grin. Lily and James, still in one another's arms, glanced at one another and gave a sigh of relief. "I love you, Sirius, and I was waiting for you to say it first, but since you nearly went and got yourself killed --"
"I love you." Sirius interrupted quickly, causing Davie to freeze mid-sentence. "Blimey, woman, I thought you'd have figured that out by now. If you'd just asked --"
"Well, I shouldn't have to ask, Sirius --"
"Do we need to argue?"
"Are we arguing?"
"I, ah --" Sirius said, scratching the back of his neck. "We weren't a moment ago, but --"
"Padfoot, would you just belt up and kiss the girl already?" James laughed, giving Lily's shoulders a squeeze; Lily had a hand over her mouth to cover the fact that despite what they had just gone through, she was snickering almost uncontrollably at the pair.
"If the lady insists," Sirius beamed, reaching out and tilting Davie's chin, pressing his lips to hers.
***
A/N's
And they've finally said it!
Padfoot'sPixie, well, Snape sure knows how to get back at someone, doesn't he? Not much of a sympathetic figure anymore now, I'm afraid. Thank you again for the review!
And xxCrazyxChickxx thank you for your long review! I'm glad you like the way I've been writing Davie, I wasn't sure how people would like her, to be honest. Hope you enjoy this chapter and the chapters to come!
Next chapter, we'll have some romantic fluff to make up for all the arguing Sirius and Davie have been doing, followed by a big development that involves this generation's "grown ups" so to speak. Stay tuned! Cheers!