A/N: Amy's POV, this chapter is dedicated to new reader/reviewer, sarahmichellegellarfan1. Enjoy!

-C

Marlene and Lily were sitting on the floor of the kitchen, each with a pint of ice cream in hand, and I with a pint in mine. We had our spoons at the ready and we were looking at each other, waiting for someone else to go first.

"You're sure Sirius doesn't mind?" Marlene asked nervously. "I mean, he does buy the ice cream."

I snorted.

"I make him buy the ice cream. He prefers chocolate."

Lily looked at her pint, nibbling on her lip.

"What if I don't fit in my wedding dress?" she said nervously.

Marlene and I both rolled our eyes. We knew that Lily was excited with all the preparations, that she was getting caught up in wedding fever, but this was getting a bit absurd.

"Lily," Marlene said reasonably, "one pint of ice cream is not going to turn you into a tub of lard."

"And even if it did," I added, ignoring Marlene's hiss, "you're a witch, and you could use a few of your famous altering charms to make your dress fit again. Just shut up and eat the ice cream."

And to avoid further argument on either of their parts I dug in my spoon and began hungrily gobbling the pint of ice cream. They followed suit moments after I began to eat, the cold and delicious indulgence slipping easily down my throat.

We'd already done many of the girly-night sorts of things. We'd done our nails – fingers and toes – and waxed our legs. We used new masks for our faces and hair that the publicity people at the Cannons wanted Marlene to try out to make her more photo-friendly (they were vultures, all of them). We'd flipped through magazines and gossiped, although most of the magazines were bridal ones and most of the gossip was about James and Sirius.

"Did you see Remus at the meeting?" Marlene said in a low voice. "I thought he was going to kill himself right there, in front of everyone."

I shifted uncomfortably, using my spoon to loosen the softening ice cream.

"Don't exaggerate, Marlene," Lily said sternly. "He was simply more upset than usual. And he had a right to be, I suppose, but I think Sirius talked him down."

"But what happened?" Marlene demanded. "I mean, I didn't feel like talking to him at the meeting. Who knows what trigger I might have set off accidentally? And you guys left before I could ask."

Lily proceeded to tell us about the Howler Sarah had sent back with her last letter, and Remus's desperate, depressed response to it all.

"I hate that she's doing this to him," I said sadly, "but at the same time, he's basically forcing himself to keep being spurned by continuing to try to make her change her mind."

We all nodded.

It was just one ugly mess of a cycle.

"What do you suggest we do about him, Lily?" Marlene asked through a mouthful of ice cream. "I mean, we can't let him go on like this. We're his friends!"

It was getting harder and harder to think of ways to help Remus, and Lily's stance that propping him up and letting him continue how he was would only hurt him had begun to grow on me. I knew it was hard for the boys to think they were doing anything but abandoning him if they did that, but all we had done thus far was enable him. I couldn't watch the downward spiral anymore.

"We're going to have to make a plan for some serious tough love," I said decisively, running my spoon along the top of the softening ice cream. "But the question is how to do it just enough to snap him out of it and not so much that we break his spirit entirely?"

"I think you should do it, Amy," Lily said thoughtfully, tapping her navy blue fingernails against the tile of Sirius's kitchen floor. Well, Sirius's and my kitchen floor. I may not have paid for any of it, but Sirius and I referred to everything as ours, not his.

"Why me?" I said, trying very hard not to sound like I was whining.

But I was absolutely whining and we all knew it.

"Because he seems to take better to your intervention than anyone else's," Lily said, not realizing the implications of what he was saying.

Because I knew that he didn't mind me giving tough love as much because he still had a crush on me, and I also knew that Sirius would have very mixed feelings about my being the representative to bring him out of his darkness. I had mixed feelings about it myself.

"I'll think about it," I finally agreed, suddenly feeling no joy in my half-eaten pint of ice cream. I licked my spoon completely clean, capped the pint with the spoon still in my mouth, and got to my feet. The girls gave me questioning looks and I said, "I'll finish it later. I'm sort of full."

I tossed the spoon in the sink and they took the opportunity to admit that they, too, were full, and we marked our pints and stuck them back in the freezer.

"So," Lily said, tossing her hair. "What do we do now?"

"We could rearrange all of Sirius's stuff," Marlene said with a grin.

I took a step back as they both turned to me, smiling Marauder-like smiles.

They made good pleas, of course. For one thing, he'd done the same to us many times. Well, them. Sirius had never actually pranked me.

Fair was fair, they told me, and somehow I found myself participating in a feeble, pointless attempt to prank my boyfriend. I stopped them at shrinking his underwear. It was enough that they'd put all his socks with the wrong pairs. I didn't want to have to beg him not to get them back. It was exhausting enough just to deal with him when I wasn't trying to convince him of something.

Sirius must have come back after I'd already gone to bed once the girls left, because when I woke up the following morning he was there, pressing his lips to my cheek gently, stretching from sleep.

"Good morning, beautiful," he sighed, pressing a more heated kiss to my jaw.

"Did you have fun last night?" I asked, smiling.

"I have more fun with you," he teased, tickling me slightly under the covers. I squirmed a bit, but he was never cruel about it. He only tickled long enough for me to squirm before moving his hands to other pursuits.

"I should warn you that the girls were insistent about pranking you," I sighed as he kissed his way down to my breasts. He just laughed.

"How sweet of them," he said. "I take you don't want me to retaliate?"

"It wouldn't even be worth it," I snorted. "It wasn't a very good prank."

"As you wish, my love," he sighed, pressing a quick kiss to my collarbone before smiling up at me. "Do you know what today is?"

I frowned, thinking. We didn't have an anniversary. Our anniversary was Valentine's Day. Was there something important about the day of the week?

Sirius laughed.

"It's September first, darling," he said, kissing my chest again. "In about half an hour, we were catching our last train to a year at Hogwarts last year."

I raised my eyebrows, realizing he was right. We were officially done with school, and it hadn't hit so strongly as it did in that moment. His kisses, the sun peeking through the blinds, the sense that it would be lunchtime sooner that I wanted to think about….

"What do you want to do to celebrate, then?" I asked, fairly sure I already knew his answer.

He gave me his most lascivious grin and then bent his head back to my collarbone, placing a very hot open-mouthed kiss right at the hollow of my throat. I bit back a sigh as he traced his hands up from thighs to the hem of my nightgown.

"You don't need this," he growled, breaking his lips from my body long enough to pull the nightgown off me. He sat up, letting the covers fall off us, my body laid mostly bare before him as he pulled off his shirt, leaving the pair of us in only our underwear.

I could feel my heartbeat in my throat as his eyes raked my skin. Knowing from habit what he would ask next, I sat up off the pillows. His lips curled into a smirk and he lifted a hand to quickly, deftly unclasp my bra. I let it slide off my shoulders and he tossed it aside carelessly, pushing me back on the pillows and immediately taking my right breast in his mouth like a starving man.

After a few times of sex I'd worked up enough courage to tell him that his teeth were being too hard on my sensitive nipples, and he'd gotten it right every time since.

The feel of his hair between my fingers was just a subconscious trigger for pleasure by this point, and I ran my fingers lazily through his hair as he moved to the left breast. His fingers were at the sides of my panties, thumbs hooked at the sides, pulling them slowly down my legs. When he pulled away from my breasts I kicked the panties away, giving him time to scramble out of his boxers.

Just as his hair between my fingers turned me on, the sight of him on his knees above me, naked and eyes full of lust, was all it took to make me want him inside me.

The magazines Sarah and I had read were right. After two weeks of shagging every couple of days, I no longer felt discomfort or pain when he entered me, and a week after that of shagging every night and we'd figured out how to make it so that I came every time from penetration alone. It hadn't been easy and had taken a lot of initial communication, but Sirius never needed to be told something twice when it came to sex.

I was lucky in that way, I mused as he continued kissing and touching me to ready me. He rarely asked me to orally pleasure him, which he quickly learned I not only didn't enjoy but wasn't very good at, and he knew dozens of ways to work me into a frenzy so that sex was pleasurable for both of us. Lily didn't often complain about James, but she had, on occasion, mentioned that he wasn't the most adept lover, although not for lack of trying. Sirius was just a natural, I supposed.

We spent the whole of the remainder of the morning in bed, and by the time two in the afternoon rolled around we were collapsed, tired and sated and covered in our commingled sweat. I was lying on top of him for a while, my head rested on his chest as his fingers lazily massaged my scalp.

"That was so much better than going back to school," he sighed, and I just smiled against his skin.

Going to Hogwarts had always been one of my favorite parts of the year, but I had to concede that he was right. This definitely topped it.

I rolled off him and curled up so that we were on our sides, facing each other. His hand moved to my waist, pulling me against him so that our skin was pressed together and our legs tangled. Sirius engaged me in a lazy, happy kiss and I returned it. This was the best part of living together, moments like this when we didn't have to worry about who might come in, about how long we could stay together…. Moments when I could just be with Sirius and relish in his presence.

He pulled out of the kiss and pressed his lips to my forehead as my fingers traced his skin absently.

I loved running my fingers along Sirius's skin, and he sighed contentedly as my fingers moved from his chest to his neck, massaging gently. His head bent forward and his lips danced lazily at my own neck.

"I love you," he murmured. "I love you so, so much."

"I love you too," I said, smiling at the soft feel of his lips on my skin.

I was surprised when he raised his head, smiling at me, his eyes suddenly proud.

"Got you something last night when we were out," he said, grinning. "Remus helped me pick it out. I think it cheered him up."

"Really?" I said hopefully. Anything that cheered Remus was already good, and if Sirius got a second – more tasteful – opinion, he was less likely to get me something awful. It had only happened a couple of times, but I always dreaded gifts that might be terrible. "Am I allowed to ask what it is, or are you saving it for some special occasion?"

He smiled and sat up.

"I'm saving it for now. Wait right here, beautiful, and I'll go get it."

I watched him get out of bed, watched the way his body looked as he left the room. It was incredibly sexy, the way that he never bothered to cover up when we were alone. It probably turned him on, knowing I was watching his naked body move. I could never get over how incredibly perfect every part of him looked.

Waiting didn't take long, but gave me enough time to prop myself up on the pillows and stretch my body in a way I knew he liked. Sure enough, when he came back in with a small bag his eyes widened and he froze in his tracks.

"Merlin," he said shakily. "I look away for seconds and I swear you get more beautiful."

I grinned, sitting up a bit more as he sat down beside me on the bed, setting the bag between us and brushing a bit of hair behind my ear.

"Carulio's?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at the bag. "Isn't that the really expensive jewelry place in the Wizarding alley of the Jewelry Quarter up in Birmingham? You made a detour to Birmingham for a gift?"

"Nothing else would have been good enough," he said firmly, eyes glowing as he watched me lift the bag from the bed and put it on my lap.

Even the bag felt expensive, and I marveled at how light it was. I parted the bag to see, amongst the silk scarf-like material that surrounded the box inside, a shining black box, small and mostly square with rounded edges.

My heart began to pound.

He did not get me what I thought he got me. There was no way he had done that. And at Carulio's, of all places.

My hand shook as it reached into the bag, pulling out the little, smooth box.

"Sirius," I breathed, feeling the silky box in my hands.

"Open it," he said in my ear, watching my face carefully.

My mouth and throat had gone terrible dry, and I fumbled with the box for a moment as my numb fingers tried to open it, but then I managed to pull it open and was shocked at the shining ring inside.

I had seen this ring in a bridal catalogue the night before. Four carat diamond, 14K white gold band, and of the highest Carulio quality. Marlene had salivated over the picture of it, because it was the most expensive ring in the wizarding world.

85,000 Galleons.

I knew Sirius's finances well enough to know that he had been saving for it since I agreed to move in with him. I knew that the pressure of being from an old wizarding family and not being able to give me the family ring would be difficult for him, but I didn't know he'd go to these lengths to compensate.

Still, I had to admit to myself, it was just about the most perfect ring. The band was thick, which I liked because it wouldn't slip as easily. The diamond was big, but didn't look gaudy with the band. And it was a simple solitaire, which was all I wanted.

I stared down at the ring, careful to steady my breathing in hopes of steadying my racing heart, but it seemed to no avail. Sirius was watching me still, trying to gauge my reaction. I wondered what Remus had said when Sirius announced that he wanted to get me the most expensive ring in the wizarding world.

He probably didn't have much in the way of objection to the price once he saw the ring, though. It was perfect.

"Amy," Sirius said softly as I continued to stare at the ring. "Amy, look at me."

I did, looking up into his swirling, beautiful, desperate gray eyes. My heart swelled as I saw how nervous he was.

"Amy," he said, clearing his throat slightly. "I…I know I was a bit of an idiot in school. I didn't see you right in front of me, and I wasted a lot of time. Maybe this is too soon, but I don't want to sit around and wait for the right time. There's already so much time we've lost, and I…I…"

Thinking wasn't needed in that moment. I reached forward and touched his cheek, feeling a tear on it.

Things had changed since he started going to Order meetings. He might have been saving for a while, but the purchase now and the proposal couldn't be a coincidence. He didn't tell me what went on at the meetings and I didn't ask. I didn't want to know.

But I knew he could die. Why waste time when death loomed around every corner?

"I love you," he sighed. "Will you-"

"Of course," I whispered, pressing my lips to his firmly. He relaxed into the kiss, pulling me closer.

I was going to marry Sirius Black.