Author's Note: Well, it finally happened. I am just as shocked that it took this long for me to update as you probably are that you're finally getting a new chapter. Although it may seem like it, I have never intended to abandon this story, which is pretty dear to my heart and usually features at least once daily in my imaginings (e.g., hearing a song and thinking how it sounds like it was written specifically to describe some plot point I know it coming, or a few lines of dialogue or an idea for a scene randomly coming to me on the train so that I have to rush to my office to jot it down before I forget).
At least for now the creative juices are flowing and I have an outline of all of the stories in the series and a really detailed outline of the chapters in this particular story. I also have some time off this month and hope to actually get some writing done.
I hope that this is worth the wait! I have deferred the third section I planned to put in this chapter until the beginning of the next chapter just so I could get something out to you guys as soon as possible!
Although Sirius had harbored great hopes for his sleepover with Rabastan, things hadn't gone at all to plan. There had been party guests stumbling around and snogging in corners and trying to talk to their host until the wee hours of the morning. When Sirius and Rabastan had finally been able to get away and go upstairs, they had apparently fallen asleep almost as soon as they'd hit the mattress. Sirius had vague, fuzzy memories of Rab's mouth on his and the feeling of the older boy's bare skin under his hands, but his trousers were still firmly on and twisted uncomfortably around his legs from sleep, so he doubted that they'd gotten up to anything really interesting.
"Hey, Sleeping Beauty," said Rabastan as he stepped out of the bathroom. He let his fingers trail across the bottom of Sirius's sock-clad foot as he crossed in front of the bed towards his wardrobe. "I can tell you're awake."
Sirius felt like something had died in his mouth and its brother was stomping around between his ears, but he reluctantly cracked open one of his eyes and lowered the self-cooling sheet just enough that he could peer over the edge. The hot late summer air immediately assaulted him, but it was worth it. Rabastan's towel was hanging low and precarious on his hips, and water was still dripping from his hair and onto his broad shoulders.
Sirius rolled over and pulled the sheet down further so he could get a better look at the other boy bending over to step into his trousers.
Rabastan shot him an amused grin as he stood straight and began shrugging a shirt up his arms. "It's nearly two o'clock, you know."
"Bugger!"
Sirius was startled into sitting upright. His mother was definitely going to skin him alive.
Rabastan looked up from buttoning his shirt, mouth already open to respond. Whatever he had been about to say was lost behind a startled laugh.
"I can't believe your mother lets you leave the house with that hair."
Sirius's hand flew to his hair, which he could feel was flattened to one side of his head and sticking nearly straight out on the other side. He ran his fingers through it as gently as he could.
"Well," he informed the other boy, mimicking Walburga's high voice, "Sirius has to be allowed his little rebellions."
There was no way Rabastan could have suppressed his grin, the special one that he reserved only for Sirius. He stepped up to the foot of the bed and used one large hand around Sirius's ankle to tug him forward. Sirius's body slid easily along the silk sheets until he was close enough to wrap his hands around Rabastan's biceps, and Rabastan's hand came up to Sirius's hair. Sirius grimaced as the other boy's fingers got caught in one of the remaining tangles, and Rabastan winced back in sympathy.
"I love this particular rebellion," he said and pressed a kiss of apology to the side of Sirius's head, "but don't you think that being sorted into Gryffindor and having secret lessons with your ex-dueling instructor and maybe kissing a man and sleeping in his bed are rebellions enough for your family to handle?"
Sirius barked out a laugh. "I'm sure it would be more than enough if my family knew about any of it, especially you."
They sought each other's mouths and pressed their lips together for a lazy kiss, then another. But when Sirius let his hands trail over Rabastan's shoulders to his chest and swept his tongue across Rabastan's plump lower lip, the former Slytherin pulled back.
"You have to go," he told Sirius firmly, if reluctantly. "You should've gone home last night."
"I won't see you for months. I, I…" Sirius trailed off uncertainly for a moment before steeling his resolve and drawing on the courage he'd been assured many times over that he was supposed to have as a Gryffindor. "I thought we'd do more than snog before I went back to school."
A groan escaped from somewhere in Rabastan's chest. "I'm not going to shag you when we've only got a few minutes."
Sirius frowned and pinched Rabastan's side until he hissed and tried to jerk away.
"Maybe you should have done it last night."
"I wasn't going to fuck you while you were too drunk to walk up the stairs by yourself!" exclaimed Rabastan. An indignant frown curled down the sides of his mouth, and that expression made Sirius's blood boil more than anything else.
"You've been making up excuses all summer!" Sirius wrenched himself from the other boy's grasp and scrambled off the bed to put more space between them. "I'm beginning to think that you just don't want me!"
Sirius had already found his shirt and shoved his arms into the sleeves by the time Rabastan got his wits about him and caught him by the wrist to keep him from leaving the room.
"I want to. I want you," he told Sirius, his voice low and urgent and full of his fear that Sirius would really leave. "It's been torture being around you all summer. But you can still… I'm not…" He let out a frustrated sigh. "Look, it's one thing for you to kiss me, but if you have sex with me then there's no deciding that you want to take it back."
Sirius whipped around to glare at him. "Why would I want to take it back?"
Rabastan met Sirius's eyes only briefly before looking down and away.
"You are going to grow up and marry some pure-blood girl—preferably not my sister—and have pure-blood babies and take your place in the Wizengamot some day. You're not going to be like me and get all but disowned."
"But—" began Sirius, but Rabastan cut him off.
"Let me finish! Maybe you can have everything you're supposed to have and fuck me on the side, and maybe that would make you happy. Or maybe you would be miserable sneaking around with me. But you're fifteen bloody years old, and nobody can expect you to know now what will make you happy then. And, and I want you, but I, I can't... Sirius, I don't know that I can…" he trailed off miserably and ran a large hand over his face.
It was overwhelming. Sirius had never given any real, serious thought to their future. He was suddenly, acutely aware of the difference between being fifteen and being nineteen. And Rabastan hadn't said anything about how much this was bothering him! He was like a damned starfish, happily sacrificing bits and pieces of himself all along as a defense mechanism against greater injuries, and that made Sirius somehow even angrier.
"You…" Sirius licked his lips and swallowed to try to alleviate the lump that had lodged itself in his throat. "You knew all of this before you kissed me the first time."
"Yeah," agreed Rabastan, eyes still downcast.
"Then why?"
Rabastan sighed deeply and ran his hands through his ash-brown hair. "I'm not a good person, Siri."
Sirius tried to suppress his burst of laughter, and it came out as a snort instead.
"I wanted you and you wanted me back, so I kissed you," continued Rabastan, as if Sirius hadn't made a sound. "I should have known better than to do it."
"I didn't want you, not like that at least. I'd never thought of looking at another boy that way until you kissed me," Sirius informed him, then immediately regretted it.
Rabastan stared at him with wide eyes, his expression stricken. He let go of Sirius's wrist as if it had burned him. Sirius snorted again and struck his hand out like a snake to capture Rab's wrist.
"Now I do want you, you enormous idiot. If you wanted to protect me from tasting the forbidden fruit or whatever the hell you're trying to do, then you should have thought about that before. Now you don't get to make that decision for me." He inhaled deeply and let out the breath slowly, which calmed him considerably so he could continue. "I don't know what will happen later, but I know that I want you now."
There was utter silence except for their breathing. Sirius let his eyes roam over Rabastan's heavy brow and perfectly average nose, down to the natural pout of his lips and his strong chin and broad, rounded jawline. His inspection was interrupted by Rabastan's mouth stretching into a wry grin that just barely revealed his dimples.
"You're right. I'm just being an asshole."
Sirius wasn't entirely sure that was what he'd meant, much less what he'd said, but he forgot whatever objections he'd been about to voice when Rabastan pulled him closer and leaned down for a kiss. Rabastan smelled of dittany and the soap he always used and something that reminded Sirius of Hogwarts dungeon where he practiced Dark magic, and Rabastan apparently hadn't felt the need to shave that morning because his stubble scratched against Sirius's lips and cheek in a way that he was pretty sure he shouldn't have found as arousing as he did.
Rabastan pulled back from the kiss far too soon.
"You should have been home hours ago."
Sirius scowled and looped an arm around Rabastan's waist, enjoying the feeling of Rabastan's shirt rubbing against his own bare chest.
"I know," he acknowledged reluctantly, "but at this point I'm toast whether I stay another five minutes or another hour."
Rabastan laughed and pressed another quick kiss to his lips. "I'm still not going to shag you when we're pressed for time, but…"
He sealed their mouths together again before Sirius could ask "but what?" Not that Sirius minded, really. He was a bit curious when Rabastan started walking backwards and pulling Sirius along with him, but not enough to do anything about it. He was wildly curious when the larger man spun them around, but by the time he broke his mouth away from Rabastan's to ask what he was up to, Sirius's knees had hit the edge of the mattress and, after a little push, he had toppled over backwards onto it.
He let out an undignified squawk of surprise, which was quickly replaced with amazed silence when Rabastan crawled onto the bed over the top of his legs. Rabastan gave him an inscrutable look and, without further preamble, leaned down and pressed his tongue into Sirius's navel.
Sirius's body jackknifed off the bed almost entirely involuntarily.
"Rab," he said, for lack of any other idea what to say. "Rab."
"Hmm," Rabastan hummed in response.
Sirius found himself staring down into sapphire blue eyes as Rabastan licked his way down his stomach, until he settled on a spot near Sirius's hipbone and sucked hard.
It was so unexpected and felt so foreign that it took Sirius a moment to realize that Rabastan's hand was busy working open the fastenings of his trousers. Then it was the only thing Sirius could focus on. He watched in stunned silence as Rabastan undid the last button and, after a sharp tug and an impatient look from the other boy, lifted his hips to allow Rab to tug the material down.
He felt the balmy air against his skin, then a moment later he felt Rabastan's hot, damp breath.
"Ra-Rabastan," he repeated. At any other time, he would have been horrified at the crack of his voice. Then Rabastan wrapped his hand firmly around him, and Sirius let his head collapse back onto the mattress and groaned out, "Oh, Merlin…"
"Sirius."
The Slytherin sounded like he'd taken a long flight through rough air. The tone of this voice drew Sirius's attention from where he'd had his head thrown back and his eyes closed. He lifted up enough to stare down the length of his own body. The sight of Rabastan's face inches away from his erection drew another helpless groan from Sirius's throat.
Rabastan smiled knowingly. "This okay, baby?"
Sirius's first thought was Of course it's okay are you insane stop talking and bloody do it already! Somewhere in his mind, though—somewhere beyond the overwhelming throb of arousal and the mild indignation at being called "baby"—he thought it was sweet that Rabastan Lestrange of all (murderously insane) people was making certain he had permission to suck his cock. So he managed to gasp out, "Y-yeah."
The feeling of Rabastan's smooth lips pressing a kiss against his tip was the absolute best thing he had ever felt in his life. For about six seconds, and then the wet heat inside Rabastan's mouth and the rough, broad flat of his tongue was the best thing Sirius had ever experienced, and after that he mercifully stopped thinking coherently enough to keep score. He was torn between throwing his head back again or craning his neck forward so he could get a better view. He didn't know what to do with his hands. They fluttered ineffectively against the sheets and began to reach towards Rabastan, but he wasn't sure if he was supposed to touch and was it always this awkward, sex wasn't supposed to be awkward was it?
There was the most amazing vibration from Rabastan's mouth, which Sirius realized, after several moments, was laughter.
Rabastan took one of Sirius's hands in his own and guided it towards his own head. His hair was still wet. Sirius found that amusing for some reason that he couldn't have articulated if his life had depended on it. At first he ran his fingers through Rabastan's hair and cradled the side of his—Merlin, was Rabastan his lover now?—of his lover's head. But Rabastan moaned and produced another brilliant vibration when Sirius gave an experimental tug, and Sirius took that as permission to weave his fingers through the strands and pull them more enthusiastically.
Maybe he would look back later and be embarrassed that he'd finished so quickly, but in that moment Sirius only felt a sense of deep satisfaction.
When he was finished, he allowed his arched body to relax back against the soft mattress and realized that he had been yanking on Rabastan's hair the entire time. He tried to let go, but the bracelet that Rabastan had given him for his birthday in second year had slithered its way into a fantastic tangle in the damp strands. Fortunately, Rab didn't seem to mind.
Sirius watched in mute fascination as Rabastan used his hand to finish himself off. The older boy released across the fine fabric of Sirius's wrinkled trousers, muffling his hoarse moan in the sweat-dampened crease between Sirius's hip and thigh.
They lay there for several more precious minutes. Sirius stopped trying to disentangle the silver snake from Rabastan's hair in favor of contentedly running his fingertips across the other boy's scalp, and Rabastan wound his heavy arm around Sirius's legs. Finally, and too soon for Sirius's tastes, Rabastan broke the silence.
"I'll come visit you on Hogsmeade weekends if I can."
Sirius's irritation at the ruined moment quickly transformed into glee. He grinned, although Rabastan probably couldn't see it from where his face was half buried in Sirius's stomach.
"I could sneak back down to the village after Filch checks me back in, then spend the night with you and maybe some of the day on Sunday," he thought aloud, his mind swirling with possibilities.
Rabastan heaved himself up with what seemed to take great effort and planted his hand right next to Sirius's head so that he could look him in the eye.
"Don't get ahead of yourself, Siri. I don't know how long I'll be able to get away. Now that all the kiddies are back in school, I'll get sent after bigger game." The question must have been obvious on Sirius's face, because Rab added, "But I promise I'll get at least some time away. I'll miss you."
Sirius was satisfied enough with that to stop pressing for more.
It would have been the easiest thing in the world to lie there and go back to sleep, but Sirius did have to go home eventually. Somehow Rabastan managed to untangle them from each other and get Sirius out of bed and dressed. His clothes were still a disaster even after a handful of charms, but at least they removed the semen.
It seemed that the rest of the house hadn't risen much earlier than the two of them had, because when they went downstairs they found everyone in the dining room eating breakfast foods, some more enthusiastically than others. Sirius wasn't at all surprised to see Bella or Rodolphus, of course (It was their house.), and he wasn't entirely surprised to see Cissy delicately eating a piece of toast with a knife and fork. Evan Rosier seemed just as shocked to see Sirius as Sirius was to see him.
"What're you doing here?" Rosier blurted, then immediately flushed to his roots. "I, I mean, I didn't, uh… know you were here."
"Yes," inserted Bellatrix, shooting Sirius a look that he couldn't immediately decipher, "I didn't know you were here. Aunt Walburga is probably beside herself."
Rabastan scoffed and threw a heavy arm across Sirius's shoulders. "Well, I could hardly have sent him home to his mother in the condition he was in last night, could I? He could barely stand."
Sirius doubted that was an accurate description, but as he couldn't actually remember anything about it, he was hardly in a position to argue.
Bellatrix turned her strange look away from Sirius's face to glare instead at Rabastan's arm around his shoulders. She followed the length of it with her eyes, an expression on her face as if Sirius had decided to drape himself in kelpie entrails or the peeled skin of Mudbloods or something, until finally she was glaring unabashedly at Rabastan's face.
"If I had known that he would be spending the night," she said with carefully measured syllables, "then I would have told Malfoy that he couldn't stay. Then Sirius could have stayed in his own room."
Narcissa did not raise her eyes from her plate. Sirius watched Rodolphus and Rabastan share a look across the table and then quickly avert their eyes. Everybody knew good and well that Lucius hadn't stayed in his room the night before, even if propriety demanded that he be given his own bed and that everybody pretend like they didn't know he hadn't slept in it.
"Well, no matter now," Bellatrix continued into the awkward silence. "Come on, Sirius, you had better get home before Aunt Walburga comes to retrieve you herself. I, for one, don't want to face her."
"Maybe you should let him eat first," snapped Rabastan.
He earned himself a quelling look from his brother and an intensely curious look from Rosier, who had been watching the proceedings from beneath his long bangs. Sirius opened his mouth to confirm that he was, in fact, hungry, but Bellatrix cut him off.
"Nonsense," she said in a melodic, conciliatory tone that would have lulled only an utter moron or someone who had never met her before. "I'm sure that my aunt has prepared all sorts of things for the boys' last day at home."
Bellatrix had been doing her level best all summer to prevent Sirius and Rabastan from being alone together, and it had been really beginning to irritate Sirius long before that moment. On this occasion, she seemed determined to make up for her lack of oversight the night before by separating them now. Sirius would have told her to bugger off, but by now Rosier had come out from behind his hair and was watching the proceedings with open curiosity, so Sirius was forced to press formal kisses to his cousins' cheeks and receive nothing more than a hearty slap on the back and a meaningful look from Rabastan before he was driven towards the Floo.
As Bellatrix pushed him into the front drawing room and closed the door behind them, Sirius heard the thud of heavy boots across the small marble entry hall followed by a loud crack, and he knew that Rabastan must have Apparated away. He must have been just as angry as Sirius to have made so much noise, since normally he was quite good at Apparition.
"Siri…" began Bellatrix, still using the same saccharine tone as before.
He was having none of it.
"You had no right to do that!" he barked and spun to face her, eyes thunderous.
His cousin looked taken aback but was undeterred. "I had every right! You're under my roof! Whatever he's talked you into doing—"
"He hasn't talked me into anything, you psycho!" cried Sirius. "And even if he had, it isn't any of your business what I do behind closed doors!"
"You can't just—!"
"Not. Your. Business," he gritted out through clenched teeth.
Whether it was the look on his face or the tone of his voice, something seemed to bring Bellatrix up short. She considered him for long moments as he stood tall and furious across from her, then she reached out a cautious hand towards him.
"Now, Siri, I know that you're a bit perturbed, but you have to know that I only want what's best for you. For the family."
"Perturbed?" he echoed disbelievingly and batted her hand away. "Yeah, I'm plenty perturbed."
He didn't feel like he could say more without saying too much. With one last hard glare, he turned toward the fireplace and threw in a pinch of Floo powder with sharp, economical movements. Bellatrix was still calling his name when he began spinning past the grates.
The rest of the day didn't go much better. The first person he'd run into at Grimmauld Place had been Grandfather Arcturus. The old man had taken in his rumpled clothes and unrepentant attitude and looked to be on the verge of offering criticism thinly veiled as sage advice. Fortunately, he'd seemed to realize from Sirius's expression that his grandson was likely to turn on his heel and march right back to the Floo if he did.
Sirius thought that if the other members of the Wizengamot had known that all one had to do to make Arcturus Black shut up was to murder someone in cold blood in his upstairs drawing room, they probably would have queued around the block.
He did not get the same response from his mother, who upon seeing him (freshly washed and pressed) declared with a delicate sniff, "I see how it is. Your little friends merit more respect than your own mother."
"I'm sorry, Mother," he told her dutifully and not exactly insincerely.
"Your brother managed to come home at a perfectly reasonable time last night and have breakfast with me this morning," she went on. "I have no idea what you could possibly have been doing that was more important."
It took a lot of effort for Sirius to maintain a neutral expression, but he really did not feel up to anymore confrontations so he managed to sit there and let her talk without giving anything away of what he'd been up to. He'd gone from angry to orgasmic to angry in such quick succession that now all he felt was emotionally drained. And he'd been feeling so good too—not even just about getting blown to within an inch of his life, which had been fantastic of course, but also about the quiet moments afterward and the promise Rabastan had made about seeing each other during the school year.
Only half a day, he thought to himself, and then I'll be on the way to Hogwarts. His mother would forgive him once she'd had a bit of separation. And at Hogwarts he wouldn't have to deal with his entire family interfering with his personal life. The relative privacy might almost make up for the weeks he'd have to go without seeing Rabastan.
Sirius and his friends hadn't had to fight for a private compartment on the Hogwarts Express in years. The older students hadn't wanted to risk their retribution by making them leave a compartment they'd already claimed, and now, as fifth years, they were the ones ejecting ickle firsties out of the way.
James opened the compartment door with a bang, not bothering to knock. The kids inside all spun towards the door with startled expressions.
"Scram," James ordered them, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
One of the first years, a baby-faced boy who looked like he hadn't missed a meal in his life, bravely stood to face them. "We don't have to leave! We were here first!"
"Hey, kid, we gave you a chance to go quietly," said Sirius as he dropped his wand out of its arm holster.
He lifted the wand briefly to the boy's eye level, pausing for a moment to watch his eyes go wide and his ruddy cheeks drain to white, then Sirius pointed it up at the overhead bin. At his direction, the trunks zoomed off the rack and over his and his friends' heads, took a sharp left out the door, and took off down the corridor, dodging other students and bouncing off the walls as they went.
The compartment erupted into chaos at that. Between the kids' exclamations and James and Peter's laughter, Sirius almost didn't notice Remus arrive with Lily Evans in tow.
Remus took in the scene and turned to Sirius with an aggrieved sigh. "I guess this is about the trunks that nearly hit us in the corridor?"
Sirius shrugged and tucked his wand back into the holster strapped to his forearm. "Yeah."
"The train hasn't even left the station yet!" exclaimed Evans. She stood straighter so that Sirius couldn't help but see the scarlet badge pinned to her chest. "I can't believe you're already bullying people! I ought to take points or, or give you detention!"
She turned to Remus for support, but if she expected him to say anything then she was disappointed. He looked uncomfortably between his friends and Evans and opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. Sirius noticed that he wasn't wearing his prefect badge yet.
It was a close thing, but Sirius managed not to roll his eyes at the whole thing.
"Ah, stuff it, Evans. Like you said, we haven't left the station. We're not on Hogwarts time yet."
"That just means you're not allowed to do underage magic!" she insisted.
Sirius barked out a laugh. "How about you arrest me?"
James herded the first years out of the compartment then. His laugh settled into an anticipatory grin when he caught sight of Lily. "Ah, Evans, here you are!" he said in a tone of voice that had Sirius and Peter looking at him in pitying amusement and Remus rolling his eyes heavenward. "Did you have a good summer? You're looking especially lovely this year."
"Potter." Her eyes flashed and her expression hardened. "You're looking especially boorish this year." She turned to the first years then, before James could respond, and said in a much sweeter voice, "Come on. I'll help you find your things."
She set off down the corridor with a line of eleven year olds trailing after her like a row of ducklings. That wasn't nearly as comical as the look on James's face. He stared at her retreating back for a moment, then turned his gobsmacked expression towards Sirius as if to ask Did that really just happen?
"You know, that's really unnecessary," Peter pointed out, for lack of anyone coming up with anything better to say. "As long as their luggage is on the train, the house-elves will take it up to the school."
Sirius managed not to point out that Mudbloods weren't known for thinking through problems like proper witches and wizards would.
Remus turned a disgusted look on them. "What was really unnecessary was that you lot did that in the first place."
"Oh Merlin, are we going to have to put up with this sanctimonious prefect bullshit all year?" groaned James.
"For the next three years, mate," replied Sirius, "and Merlin help us if he makes head boy."
On this ocassion, even James didn't seem to think anything was suspicious about Peter's hateful glare in Remus's direction. (Sirius made a mental note that he was going to have to warn Peter again to not be so obvious about disliking his supposed friend.) In the face of all of his friends' hostility, Remus's shoulders drooped slightly, although by the time they had all settled into the purloined compartment he had regained some of his confidence and a good deal of indignation for good measure.
"You know," he spoke over James's attempt to explain a new, improbable Chaser formation he had dreamt up in the few days since he had last seen Sirius, "even if you still don't care about keeping your noses clean, you should at least consider that we have OWLs this year, and you'll need to take classes more seriously if you expect to do as well on them as on Hogwarts exams."
He seemed like he would have gone on, but he was drowned out by the collective groan of his friends.
Sirius kicked Remus's foot so that he had to scramble to catch the thick, fragile-looking book he had been balancing on his leg. He returned his friend's glare with an unrepentant smirk.
"We're going to have to spend all year pretending to care about the fucking OWLs when the professors talk about them, so if you please, Master Prefect, I'd much rather pretend to care about James's daft idea."
"If you're lucky," put in Peter, a grin lighting his full cheeks, "maybe you'll fall off your broom and break your neck before the exams."
Sirius laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Good man! Always seeing the silver lining!"
James seemed willing enough to laugh at this criticism of his Quidditch captaining skills, but he couldn't let it go without initiating a minor wrestling match in the middle of the compartment. For his part, Remus's prefect badge seemed to have sapped him of his good humor. He gathered up his books and edged his way around James and Sirius, claiming that he wanted to get to the prefects' compartment early before the meeting started.
Things improved marginally in the following weeks, with Remus seeming to decide that he'd rather turn a blind eye to his friends' antics than risk losing their friendship. Sirius rather doubted that James would actually abandon one of his friends over so little a thing as getting a prefect badge and developing a stick up his bum, but James didn't seem to realize that Remus was so insecure and Sirius found the situation too useful to try to fix it.
Classes were more interesting than ever. However, there were also more assignments than ever, and the professors seemed convinced that there was no way they would ever have enough time to properly cover everything that would be on the OWLs. Sirius, who had been bored out of his skull for most of his lessons in earlier years, thought that maybe they should have started teaching the good stuff earlier instead of catering to the idiots who wouldn't have been able to keep up.
A lot of the fifth years were already walking around with shell-shocked expressions on their faces, and although Sirius himself hadn't ventured to the library yet that year, Remus said that most of their classmates seemed to be getting a head start on revising. Others had begun dropping electives. Sirius thought that was a stupid move, as he doubted that the panic about OWLs would last once the initial shock wore off.
"I think I'm going to drop Ancient Runes," announced Janice a few weeks into the term.
Sirius gave up squinting at the tiny handwritten text in his Charms book and looked over at her in surprise. The mildly warm summer was well into giving way to the cold of fall, and half of Janice's honey curls were clinging to her sweater while the other half blew freely in the wind coming in through the open windows of the clock tower.
"Why?" he settled on asking, rather than commenting on how silly he thought the whole idea of dropping electives was.
She sighed and closed her Transfiguration textbook with a snap, leaving her half-done essay sticking out from between the pages. "I've decided that I want to become a Healer. I spoke to Professor Flitwick about it last week, and he says that I don't need Ancient Runes for that."
"You've been thinking about it for a while," was all he could think to say.
"Yes." Janice smiled knowingly at him and scooted closer until they were pressed together from shoulder to knee. "I know your opinion about it, but I think that I will be loads better off if I focus on doing really well in the subjects I actually need."
Maybe other people would have been abashed at that little scold, but Sirius had been carefully cultivating his innate shamelessness for years and didn't even bat an eyelash. Instead, he pointed out, "You're a Ravenclaw."
She laughed and bumped his shoulder with hers. "That only means I don't mind having to study as much as I do to earn my grades."
"You could've fooled me," joked Sirius. "I remember spending hours in the library wondering if you ever did any homework at all."
They were long past the days when they felt the need to pretend that they needed some excuse to spend time together besides just wanting to make out. And funnily enough, now that they weren't shy about snogging whenever the mood struck them, they also spent a lot more time actually studying together. Sirius was sure that he would be required to look over her Transfiguration essay before she would declare it officially done.
She shifted onto her knees facing him and wrapped her small hand around the side of his neck, smiling. "My method worked, didn't it?"
From her kneeling position she was several inches taller than Sirius, who was slouching back against the wall, and the angle of their kiss reminded Sirius uncomfortably of kissing Rabastan. The comparison wasn't particularly favorable towards Janice, whose smooth skin and soft kisses didn't turn him on nearly as much as they used to do. They especially did not turn him on as much as Rabastan's stubble and the demanding press of his tongue. But Rabastan insisted that he needed to be known to date girls in order to deflect anyone from suspecting that he was interested in men, particularly since the nature of Rabastan's exile from his family was a not-very-well-kept secret and they were known to spend time together.
Sirius had grown to like Janice, and he didn't really want to answer anyone's (particularly her) questions about why he'd broken up with her or deal with finding another girl, so she was really the perfect unsuspecting candidate. That didn't make it any less discomfiting for him to go on acting as if everything was the same no matter how much things kept changing.
He was startled by the press of her hand against his bare skin and went still for a few moments as he processed that she had undone some of the buttons of his shirt while he'd been distracted. She seemed to take his hesitation as a good sign, if he were to judge by the smile he felt against his own lips and the way she insinuated her hand more firmly inside his shirt until he could feel the cool gold of the bracelet he'd given her a few days prior for her sixteenth birthday tickling along his chest.
This was a new development. One that he didn't really know how to handle. She seemed perfectly content when he slid his hand under her shirt to explore her trim waist and the dip of her lower back, but Sirius knew full well that hands beneath clothes soon led to touching more intimate parts and then to removing the clothes and then to… Well, his stomach clenched painfully and he just wasn't sure whether he would be able to take it that far with her when he knew that he was using her.
For the moment, he tried to block out any other thoughts and focus on the here and now.