A/N: This one will be the last chapter for a little while because I won't have my computer for a week or so. Please, leave me a review if you can!
ALL THE THREADS OF FATE.
PART I:
CRUEL SUMMER.
IV.
The following morning, I went downstairs earlier than I usually would after a night with my friends. They liked to sleep in, and these were the only instances where I wished I were the same. They tended to get up around half past ten, and I would lie and pretend to sleep until then, too.
This day, however, I rose and made my way down to the kitchen at quarter to ten, hoping to leave the house without being spotted, but still not too early that it would show how much last night had affected me. Quarter to ten in the morning also meant Uncle was at work and I would not have to face him right away.
Wearing the same clothes as the day before, platform heels dangling from my fingers, I walked downstairs only to pause at the sounds coming from the kitchen that could only mean my friends were awake. Not only that, but they'd been awake for a while and were already having breakfast.
They were all sat at the very table Regina had sulked at the night before, the surface covered in plates and cutlery, cups of tea and glasses of apple juice. Lily and Remus were facing the glass doors to the gardens, which left James and Marlene on the opposite side. Sirius was sat right in between them.
Judging by the glare Marlene sent me as soon as she noticed me, I would hazard a guess and say that had not been a coincidence.
She hmph'd and looked away first, leaning over and passing Remus the milk with a completely different countenance to the one that had received me.
The frosty welcome had not gone unnoticed by Remus, though, and soon he was twisting in his seat, mousy brown hair dishevelled and face still mussed with sleep. Lily followed suit, and any attempts at slipping away quietly I may have entertained were rendered useless.
"Mer!" Lily greeted as she struggled to swallow her mouthful of tea in her haste to say hello.
"Good morning, Miss Merry!" Poppy chirped from the stove.
"Meredith," Remus gestured to the empty chair beside him with an easy nod and a small quirk to his lips. "Are you joining us?"
I considered it. After all, if I had really wanted to go unnoticed—why had I dallied by the door?
The answer to that was currently sitting between Marlene and James, doing an excellent job at ignoring my very existence.
It had taken Sirius Black eight months to gather the perfect words to express how much he despised me. The words had cut me deeper than I had expected, and I had scolded myself last night for even giving him the benefit of the doubt at all this summer. Despite the tears, and the fact that I had let him rob me of sleep, something that escaped me constantly, I had still… Merlin, save me… worried that maybe Uncle would kick him out of the house.
Yet here he remained. Staring down at his full English like it was an astronomical chart he needed deciphering before lunch. No matter how many times we had argued, he had never looked this dejected afterwards. Let alone the day after. His hands were on his lap, shoulders slumped only just, and a strand of hair fell over his face without him noticing.
He just… stared at his bangers, eggs, and toast like it was the only spot in the kitchen he was allowed to make eye-contact with.
My eyes darted back to Remus. He noticed how he and Lily were the only ones saying hello. How the air was growing tenser and tenser. How Marlene was scraping her fork and knife a little harsher than necessary when cutting fried eggs.
The screeching of the china filled the silence.
Lily frowned, shooting them a puzzled look that was also a question. One that went unanswered. Remus grumbled under his breath and, in a way that was impossible to miss, kicked James' chair under the table.
My cousin yelped in protest, but otherwise did not look my way. In fact, his narrowed eyes and mocking smile were directed at Remus and only at Remus, an action that made it painstakingly obvious that he was doing everything he could to not look at me. He whispered something at Sirius.
Sirius' jaw tensed, but he did not reply. Marlene scoffed, a light, constrained sound, two slices of the knife away from scratching the plate permanently.
"Would Miss Merry be wanting eggs?" Poppy asked.
"I'm not hungry, thank you."
My stomach was in such tight knots I doubted I'd eat anything today.
James grimaced into his apple juice. Sirius did not move. Did not blink.
"You sure?" Remus asked.
His expression was open and welcoming in a way that conveyed he'd been told what had happened, and while Remus's willingness to speak to me was touching, it was not the attention I desired.
Look at me, I pleaded silently at James. Please, just look up at me.
"Is Merry Potter still sad since yesterday—?" Poppy asked at the same time Lily exclaimed:
"Okay, what's happening?"
"—would Merry Potter prefer some more of the butterfly pea?"
Sirius risked a glance at me out of the corner of his eye. There and gone again.
I was having difficulty swallowing.
"Nothing." Marlene piped in when it became clear no one else wanted to answer Lily. "Meredith's just going home. Right?"
At that, she looked me dead in the eye. A challenge and a dismissal all in one. Any other instance I would have risen to the challenge and likely won, but…
"Yes."
"You don't have to…" Remus tried.
Sirius looked up at that, staring at Remus with a stoic expression and an emotion swirling behind the grey of his eyes I didn't want to examine. Betrayal, probably.
It was James' turn to kick Remus's chair. He still did not look at me.
Promising to see them later, I hastened out of the kitchen and toward the front door.
Despite having promised to, I did not see any of my friends later.
In fact, I did not see any of them at all until the last week of August, when Fabian and I ran into them at The Leaky Cauldron.
After I got home only to find out Aunt and Uncle had told my parents, and that they all—well, not all, my mother was more vexed by my having gotten caught than anything else—expected Sirius and I to apologise to one another by the end of the week, any desire I had to hang out with my friends again sort of went out the window.
So, I didn't. I spent my days with Fabian and my evenings with the twins.
On Monday, I had lunch with Fabian and his parents, and ran around the gardens under the dim light of enchanted will-o'-the-wisps with the twins all evening. We procured little pouches of paint and attempted to hit each other with them. Freyr won; I came second. On the Wednesday night, Cressida joined us. She got paint up her nose and our parents forbade us play it again. Heaven forbid their precious girl be upset.
On Tuesday, Fabian and I went down to Wizarding Brighton. We had brunch at a tiny bistro overlooking the water, with enchanted cutlery that billowed like the very waves so close to us, and teeny fish swimming in the air around us in a spectacle that matched the underwater theme of the establishment. We shopped and took in the street performers, and by the time he dropped me off at home I'd forgotten all about Marlene and James taking Sirius's side in all this.
My parents took my siblings and me to Diagon Alley on Wednesday to buy any necessary supplies for our return to school on the Monday. Usually, we would have gone with the rest of my family, but I had plans on the Sunday and wouldn't be able to make it. At least, I figured that was the reason. I didn't want to consider the possibility that Aunt and Uncle had thought it best we not go together.
When Hogwarts: a Gossip arrived on early Thursday morning, wrapped in pink and tied with a white lace ribbon, I did not bother opening it. The magazine landed in the rubbish bin as soon as Glitter handed it to me.
I did open Dorcas' request to come over on Friday now that she and her family had come back up to Muggle Ealing. Her parents owned a beautiful pink-facaded and blue-roofed Georgian townhouse there, despite both of them being Magic. She, James, Sirius, and I were the only ones of our group who lived in the city, with her in Ealing and the rest of us in different areas of Inner London, so for as long as our first year at Hogwarts, we would hang out with each other without as much a fuss required as with everyone else, especially when we were younger and our friends' parents weren't too keen on unsupervised Floo Travel. Understandable, considering some of the places my siblings and I had ended up in without adult supervision.
Saying no would have been a bizarre occurrence, and unjust considering how much she had helped me with Mr Inoue, so I agreed for her to visit. Besides, she hadn't been present on Saturday, so she likely had no idea of what had happened.
We spent the day walking around Hyde Park with ice cream cones in hand and soaking up the late August sunshine, listening to new records sprawled on my bedroom floor, trying to varnish tiny flowers onto our nails—at no point did I drop our friends' names into the conversation, and neither did she.
On Saturday, I agreed to meet Fabian at the Leaky Cauldron during his lunch break.
What was supposed to be a sweet afternoon became a tense forty-five minutes as we walked in only to find my friends. Sat together with dirty dishes piled up and pushed to the edge of a long table, several empty glasses scattered around their full ones as proof of how long they'd already been there.
I halted. And made direct eye contact with Regina.
"Look who's finally showing her face again!"
She smiled, and it opened up her face like a sunbeam slipping past two dark clouds.
Everyone followed.
"Hey, Merry!" James, pushing his glasses up his nose with the heel of his hand as he tipped his butterbeer tankard my way.
"Hullo!" Peter, looking a little red from his visit to Cornwall.
"You want to take a seat?" Remus, nodding to his side of the table.
"Oh, totally! You should both join us."
That was Lily, scooching down the bench at the same time Remus slid further to the right until there was enough space between them for Fabian and me to fit.
"I don't mind," Fabian said to me after I'd hesitated a moment too long.
His hand on my lower back propelled me forward until I found myself sat beside Lily.
This was… not at all what I had expected.
"I really like your nails," Regina commented, leaning over Sirius's shoulder to get a better look.
Sirius did not even pause in his conversation with Peter and James about which The Sphynx album was best: Bog Reverie or Date Night with Erebus. It was as if I wasn't even here. That was best, I thought.
"Thank you," my fingers drummed against the wooden table, showcasing the blue and pink flowers painted onto my nails. "They were a pain not to smudge."
"I can imagine." Lily hummed. She peered closer. "Is it a stencil, you used?"
"Yeah, they sell them at Ghoulie's." Regina added.
I sent Fabian a nod as he gestured going up to the bar to order, before replying:
"Just a fine brush, actually."
"No! I could never." Regina gasped. She stood up, tapping Sirius's side lightly with her hip. He barely moved over but she was able to squeeze onto his other side, closer to us. "My hands would shake something awful."
"Do y'know what?" Lily leaned on her forearms. "I'm worse with the stencil. Get overconfident, dead messy."
"You're a witch, Flower." Remus chuckled.
"Muggleborn and living in a house surrounded by muggles, unlike some people." She countered. "I don't get away with shit."
Remus gave a relenting shrug.
"I like doing it the muggle way, though," Regina said. "It's more fun, I find it."
Lily's displeased frown at the comment was there and gone in a flash. Fabian rejoined us, pressing a kiss to my crown before he started a conversation with Remus about Hippogriff polo. Not because Remus liked Hippogriff polo in particular, but more because Fabian was one of those lads who defaulted to sports talk when hanging out with early acquaintances that also happened to be male. I appreciated the effort all the same.
Remus was interested, though. Or at least polite enough to engage. Hippogriff polo soon blended into thestral racing—a sport I personally despised—while James and Sirius began retelling their first time unwrapping a Harpy's Teeth album, and their collective unpreparedness towards the vinyl being spelled to bite the owner upon first usage. Peter laughed so hard butterbeer came out of his nose in frothy rivulets Regina was quick to angle out the way of.
While the boys were having a proper good time, the girls and I floundered for a topic all three of us were interested in. Once we'd exhausted my manicure, it became obvious we had no other topics to converse. Well, Lily and I did. Regina was a bit of a puzzle.
She dated Sirius, so I figured we'd at least share some musical interests. Since I listened to a wide range of genres, there were plenty bands I loved that Sirius did, too. Lily loved The Sphynx. Regina had recognised Honeycomb Moon, but she only knew that one and Ghost.
All three of us had wildly different fashion tastes. She only read non-fiction. She didn't want to talk about school, being the last week of summer hols and all.
Conversation stalled before it could begin, until Fabian's lunch arrived. And mine.
He'd ordered the week's special, proudly presented on a board by the door and above the bar: Mediterranean-inspired ox liver and sausage stew, served with some seasonal vegetables and fresh bread. If you ordered it as a two course, you got an extra side of chips, and a non-alcoholic drink of your choosing all for two galleons and ten sickles. For an added ten sickles the drink could be alcoholic.
A nice meal for a good price if liver stew was your thing. It was Fabian's, judging by how he wasted no time digging in. It was not mine. A nonissue, except a bowl of it landed in front of me.
I stared at the bowl of stew. Steam curled up into my nostrils and I decided whoever had smelled liver and chosen to eat it must have been very, very hungry or ridden with self-hatred. The fat from the sausage was not helping the smell any. A combination my brain had trouble coming to terms with because the bloody thing did look tasty. It just didn't smell it.
A glass of cranberry juice floated down onto the table, followed by a slice of tiger bread and a small bowl of chips. Fabian had the same, except he'd opted for a tankard of bitter.
This must have been a misunderstanding.
"Go on," Fabian nudged me with his shoulder. "It's so good. You've got to dig in while it's still hot."
Oh.
He grinned at me, wiggling his eyebrows at the stew with an eagerness that made me smile regardless. I picked up my spoon. Satisfied, he tore a piece of his bread and dunk it into the bowl before returning to his conversation with Remus.
Regina had joined the boys' conversation, leaning against Sirius as she played with his hair with one hand. Lily, however, was glancing from my lunch to Fabian and again, her face a befuddled question.
"Are you dropping Earth Magic this year?" I asked.
"Maybe. I haven't decided." Lily answered, giving me a look that let me know she knew what I was doing. "I want head girl next year, so keeping it would do me good but it's so boring."
"You don't want to be one with the blessed soil?" I teased, pronouncing it blessed for good measure.
Merlin, even the carrots tasted like meat. I swallowed the urge to gag.
"More like I don't want to keep reading about the power of rocks and standing barefoot in the middle of the Forbidden Forest." Lily snorted.
She slid the bowl of chips closer to me. It was so casual a motion Fabian didn't register it, neither did he catch the moment I slowly replaced the stew for the chips. Sweet Morgaina, I wanted some spinach.
"Crystals," I stifled a laugh. "Not rocks."
"They don't work no matter what I do." Lily retorted. "I'll call them crystals when they act like it."
She did this little flick with her head, all what're you going to do about it? that had me swallowing the argument that they seemed to work splendidly for Adelaide, who'd purchased them from the same shop Lily had. Based on her reaction to Regina's insensitive comment and all the not-so-quiet whispers swirling around the country about blood purity, I didn't want her thinking her inability to work with crystals had something to do with her muggle heritage.
We continued in small conversation for a moment, with me picking at my chips. Around the table conversation flowed, all of us too happy to pretend like my boyfriend hadn't messed up a food order so spectacularly the whole table had side-eyed him like he'd lost the plot. Well, not the whole table—Regina hadn't the slightest, and Sirius was still adamant to continue his conversation with Peter and James that was seeming more and more one-sided the longer the afternoon stretched. It had something to do with James' indiscreet attempts at catching my eye and Peter's obvious drooling over my untouched liver stew. I was doing an excellent job of ignoring both of them.
"Oi, Mer!" Peter psst'd at me.
Oh, bloody…
Without breaking my conversation with Lily, I slid the bowl of stew around Fabian and towards Peter, praying he'd be so enraptured in his conversation with Remus he wouldn't notice. Unfortunately, stealth weakened the bowl's velocity and it stopped right by Remus's elbow. He was gracious enough to edge it back until it reached its final destination, but it required quite the stretch, a movement Fabian would definitely clock unless something else distracted him. Remus's intense eye contact and Lily's sudden sneeze attack were, sadly, not enough.
"What's wrong with your meal?" Fabian asked, swivelling on the bench so he could face me.
"Nothing, I'm not really hungry."
It was a lie, but I was often not hungry, so I figured he wouldn't see it as strange. He looked so earnest about lunch, I didn't want to make him feel bad for forgetting I didn't eat meat. Peter would eat the stew, Fabian wouldn't have wasted his money, and I'd eat something when I got home.
"You said you were starving." He frowned.
Concern clouded his pretty blue eyes. He pushed his own bowl away so he could lean closer on the table. I chewed on a chip, slowly. I was starving. My stomach was two breaths away from gnawing on itself, that's how empty it was. I kept hoping if I ate the meagre bowl of chips really slowly that I would trick it into thinking I'd had a full meal. Maybe dessert would be quite large.
I shrugged.
"Is it the liver?" he asked. "I know it's a little out there, but it is delicious."
"It doesn't smell delicious," I said through a gritted-teethed smile.
I didn't want to cause a scene. I didn't want to cause a scene in front of all my friends and Sirius bloody Black who'd spent the majority of an argument criticising my relationship with Fabian. This was added firepower he did not need.
"Dearest, did you even try it?" Fabian tilted his head, amusement colouring the question and glittering in his eyes.
Over his shoulder, James mouthed dearest at Peter, lips quivering. Peter snorted with laughter, covering it a beat too late with a fake cough. Sirius finally stopped his music-related monologue.
"No," because I don't eat meat, I silently added, and how the hell did you miss that? "I had some carrots with a bit of the sauce. It was, um, interesting."
Lily made a little noise in the back of her throat. Remus's shoulders jolted in a contained cringe as he angled his face away from us. Regina stared at her nails. Even she could sense this was starting down a path which only destination was an argument. Over food. Merlin, this was so embarrassing. Why did he have to be so stubborn? Who cared if I only ate chips?
"And some chips." Fabian noted. "That's not enough, Meredith. If you don't like the liver, at least have some of the sausage."
My cheeks warmed. Without my meaning to, I began picking at my cuticles, all too aware of the people around us yet incapable of looking away from him. I'd tried so hard not to hurt his feelings, yet he was patronising me. Or, well, it sounded like that. Like I was a little girl and it couldn't be helped that I didn't understand. I'd never liked being belittled, never thought it'd come from him, either.
Silence stretched. Fabian kept his eyes on me, waiting. I opened my mouth.
"Meredith doesn't eat meat."
The words were stolen from my mouth by the very last person I expected to come to my defence. There was a tense beat of silence, where everyone slowly turned to look at Sirius, as if they, too, needed confirmation that he'd been the one to say what we were all thinking. Sirius kept his grey eyes on Fabian, hands splayed on the table as if to stress his point. He'd sounded as exasperated as I was, but he'd done a better job of hiding it from his face. Not that he looked very friendly, either.
"Not since she was nine," he added in a tone that screamed you should have known that.
And then he granted Fabian a little nod, inched away and raised his tankard of what I assumed was butterbeer to his mouth. It covered the bottom half of his face. His eyes remained resolutely on Peter, who'd already claimed my liver stew as his.
Sirius had done all of that without sparing me a single glance.
"Really?"
The question reached me twofold. Fabian, utterly shocked, like the idea had never once occurred to him. And Regina, so delighted one would think I'd told her OWLs were cancelled this year.
My chest was going to explode. I felt like I'd swallowed a very bad, terrible, no good attempt at a temperature-regulating potion and it had turned to acidic poison in my stomach.
"Really."
Tearing myself from Sirius's frigid cold shoulder was a struggle. I focused on Regina, more curious at the moment about such positive a reaction than interested in the facial expression Fabian was unable to contain. The one that asked since when do you not eat meat? Even though Sirius had already provided the answer and I had never, not once, eaten meat in front of him. Even when he did.
"Neither do I!" Regina pointed to herself. "Well, I mean, eggs, yes, but I don't eat anything with a face."
"—with a face!" I finished alongside her, matching the huge grin that spread across her face.
It wasn't every day that I met a fellow vegetarian. It wasn't a very common diet in Wizarding society.
"My family breeds thestrals," Regina explained. "So it always felt kind of wrong to eat other creatures and animals. If we can't eat unicorns or phoenixes, why are certain other animals fair game?"
I couldn't believe my ears. In my shocked excitement, I also couldn't stop smiling. Not only was she describing exactly how I felt, but also…
"My family breeds thestrals." I blurted out, near giddy. "Well, Mum's side."
Sirius had to marry her. Or maybe we could absorb Regina permanently into our little group and edge him out. The boys would probably not be on board with that; no, marriage, it was.
"Of course, you're a Greengrass." Regina nodded, making a little flick with her hand as if she should have made the connection sooner.
I was, at least half. Officially, I was Meredith Potter-Greengrass, but it was a bit of a mouthful and my siblings and I all just got called 'Potter' at school. Mum didn't seem to care too much, after all her name was still ours where it mattered: official documents, registrations, and Gringotts. Sirius and I had once joked that if we married, my name would sound like a hundred-year-old dusty viscountess'. Meredith Black-Potter-Greengrass sounded like a nightmare to fit in correspondence. Not that Meredith Prewett-Potter-Greengrass worked any better.
"Is your father Archibald Niké?" I asked, suddenly realising why her family name had been so familiar when we first met.
"That's Daddy!" Regina confirmed with a squeal. She slapped Sirius's arm with the back of her hand. "Siri, isn't this crazy?"
Lily nudged me with an elbow. 'Siri?' she mouthed. I giggled. If we were going to keep Regina around, we'd have to talk to her about better nicknames.
Sirius hummed, wrapping an arm around her. Whatever he said was lost to me as Fabian snapped out of his stupor and rejoined the conversation.
"Hold on. You're coming to my mum's tomorrow."
"I am…" I trailed off, unsure as to where he was going.
"It's Sunday. We're having Sunday roast, Mer."
Oh. Right, yes, that was a slight issue.
"I'll have the sides." I dismissed.
"You are not having the sides!" Fabian protested.
His ears were pink, eyebrows arched. I began to wonder why exactly something that didn't affect him in the slightest was getting him this worked up.
"Why not?" I raised an eyebrow of my own.
And here I'd been thinking the situation had been diffused. It turned out Sirius had only made it worse.
"Mum's cooking. If you'll only have the sides, she'll get offended." Fabian stressed. "Can't you just eat the beef? For one day?"
I worked really hard to keep what I thought about that from my face. My eyes stayed on his, knowing that if I looked away my face would betray me. Lily shuffled behind me, and to our right one of the boys slammed their butterbeer against the table a little harder than necessary, I couldn't see which one. There was a lull in conversation in the tables around us, as if even they had sensed the tense atmosphere brewing at our table.
"No." I managed.
"But—"
"This is not up for discussion, Fabian."
Fabian winced, blinking at me. His eyes hardened. I'd never snapped at him, had never spoken with such venomous finality. This was our first real fight ever and it was happening in front of all my friends.
Remus coughed once. Regina uttered an 'oof´ under her breath.
"You should go; you're going to be late." I tried to shave some of the hostility off my tone. It worked in halves.
Fabian cleared his throat and nodded. He rose without a word, ears still pink at the tips.
"I'll see you tomorrow, love. Just before noon." He dropped a kiss to the top of my head as goodbye, and then he was off.
Without a word to my friends. I wondered if he would actually show up tomorrow. Had I been too harsh? Too selfish? I didn't want to break my diet, didn't want to eat pork or beef or, Morgaina forbid, manticore. Nor did I want him to stop eating meat, either, if that was what he misunderstood when Sirius broke the news to him. Maybe I should have explained it better.
My friends were still not talking. Peter was polishing off the liver stew with slow spoonfuls. James' attempts at meeting my eye were almost comical. Sirius played with one of the leather cords he had tied around his wrist, picking at it with his nail.
"Thank you so much for that." I sneered.
Finally, finally, Sirius looked at me.
"You're welcome," was all he offered.
"I was being sarcastic, you—donut!" I hissed. As far as insults went, that one was a little weak. "Why would you intervene?"
"Here we go." Lily muttered under her breath, rubbing at her temple.
I shot her a glare, short-lived by Sirius's infuriating reply.
"Dear old carrot head looked two seconds away from shoving a spoonful of liver into your mouth." Sirius sneered at me, his tone so biting it serrated any goodwill his words would suggest. He leaned over with his whole torso, practically pushing Regina. It was so sudden she tilted in her seat. "Forgive me if I thought you'd be averse to that."
"Oh, 'you'd be averse to that'." I mocked, nose scrunching and lip curling. "What do you care?"
Sirius straightened, face morphing into an all-too-casual expression as he shrugged with one shoulder.
"I had no interest in being near the splash zone when you vommed."
"Yeah, we all appreciate that." Peter snickered, shoving a final spoonful of that blasted stew into his mouth.
I wanted to upend it on his head. Wanted to hurl myself across the table at Sirius and get him to display an emotion that wasn't anger or boredom.
"How would you know? You haven't spared me a single glance in a week."
I hadn't meant for it to come out so… wounded. But that was how it sounded; the words ripped out of me in a whoosh of resentment and pain I didn't want anyone knowing I harboured.
"I didn't realise you wanted me looking at you," said Sirius, cool as a summer evening.
"I don't."
I scoffed, but it wasn't convincing in the slightest. My chest felt hot all over, I was incredibly aware of my own skin, of my face, everyone's eyes on me, the heavy silence around us hovering like a shroud in a tomb.
Sirius frowned. I held his stormy gaze for another moment before the grey became too much. I picked at the bowl of chips with trembling fingers. My pulse thundered in my toes.
"Okay, I think that's—" Lily floundered.
I was reminded of last week, how easily Sirius had gotten most of our friends on his side to the point where they had kicked me out. The future became stark clear in that moment. It would not be Sirius we edged out and replaced with Regina. It would be me. She was like the better Meredith. More put together without trying as hard. A preferable shade of blonde. Prettier eye-shape, all doe-eyed and sweet. Always said the right thing. I should have considered Sirius's influence before I shot our relationship to hell.
"Yeah," James cleared his throat loudly, bringing the focus towards him. "So, Hallowe'en, I'm thinking monster-themed."
"Ooh, am I invited?" Regina cooed. "Or is it Gryffindor only?"
"Even if it were, you're a Gryffindor by proxy now." Sirius teased.
He pulled her to him by wrapping his arm around her shoulders. Regina squealed when he pressed his face to the side of hers, dropping a kiss to her cheek. Peter aw'ed, teasingly puckering his lips in mock kisses and gooey noises.
"If you keep that up neither of you will be invited." James gagged.
Remus reached over, pushing off the table with one hand as leverage to smack Sirius over the back of his head. "Yeah, mate, none of us want to see that."
Neither Regina nor Sirius paid attention. Sirius merely flapped one hand over his head like Remus was an annoying mosquito and slipped his head lower until he reached Regina's neck. Then the whole scene turned pretty much into a more subdued version of what they'd done at the Quidditch match. Regina tilted her head for better access, her nails dug into his shoulders. From this angle, I couldn't really see what he was doing to her neck, but I could imagine it just fine.
Lily protested in disgust, turning away with a laugh that was as amused as it was uncomfortable. James gagged again, joining Peter in his chorusing of 'my eyes! My eyes!' they howled with laughter in between.
"Oi!" Remus scolded with such a stern tone I finally tore my eyes away from their passionate embrace. Remus's eyes were a little more yellow than hazel, like citrine, and the wrinkled skin between his eyebrows relayed how unamused he truly was. "Knock it off!"
He slapped Sirius over the head again, harder than before judging by Sirius's wince. The two lovebirds separated, flushed a bright carmine red and unapologetic. Sirius's mouth was a dark pink as he swiped his tongue over his bottom lip, hand rubbing at the spot Remus hit.
"Sorry!" Regina giggled.
She gathered her hair over the side Sirius had been attacking with his mouth, no doubt an effort to cover the love bite that would appear.
"Sod off." Sirius grumbled, swatting at Remus's hand. "Jealous prick."
"Oh, yeah, I'm deathly jealous." Remus snorted. Flinging one hand to his chest, and with a dramatic flair, he added, "please, Pads, leave her, choose me!"
Lily laughed, claiming she'd be flower girl at the wedding. Peter and James began to fake indignation that they hadn't been possible contenders for Remus's heart. They all eased into a playful conversation about why they'd be the better option, and my and Sirius's argument vanished into the background, forgotten by all.
Well, maybe not by all. My heart was still hammering inside my chest, refusing to rest. When Remus resettled in his seat, his hand went around my back to squeeze my shoulder once. He granted me a smile, warm in its reassurance.
I knew I would have to learn to live with Sirius, to settle into our strange acquaintance, if I were to come to terms with the truth. Still, as I watched my friends joke around, I couldn't help but be grateful. Remus was in my corner, and I suddenly wasn't as alone as before.
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OryxGreen: Yes, I definitely strived to add a bit more depth this turn around, so I'm glad you are enjoying those. The first time I always knew what was going on inside Sirius's head but struggled to hint at it, so I'm trying to sort of weave that into the narrative more subtly/obviously here. Hope you like this one, too, and thank you for reviewing!