Chapter 38: Confession
Ariadne woke to Sirius's warm body next to her, his face buried in his pillow and their arms loosely touching. She carefully extricated herself from the bedclothes and hoped to make a clean, discreet escape from the dormitory before anyone had the chance to comment on her presence.
Of course, the Marauders were the last people who would allow that to happen.
"Good morning, Morrigan!"
James Potter's face peeped through the curtains around Sirius's bed, beaming in his sunshiny way. Sirius merely grunted in response. It seemed like this was more or less a normal routine for them.
"I see the concepts of privacy and personal space have yet to penetrate the abode of the seventh-year Gryffindor boys," commented Ariadne dryly.
"Piss off, Potter," muttered Sirius into his pillow, his voice husky with sleep. "You can stay, Morrigan," he added, now rolling onto his side.
Ariadne had been a bit preoccupied to properly take this in the night before, but Sirius slept only in loose pajama bottoms, leaving this rest of his body bare. As he rose out of his bed and stretched slightly to pull open the curtains of his four-poster, she couldn't help but notice the way his torso flexed and moved, and the way his low waistband hugged his hips.
"Sleep well last night, Morrigan?" asked James innocently. "Or, you know, not so well, because you had other things to do…"
Ariadne merely rolled her eyes at James, but internally breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed she would be able to play off her spending the night in the dormitory as merely a post-masquerade, dancing-and-alcohol-fueled tryst with Sirius, rather than disclose that something much more intimate had happened.
"I think you're the only one who slept well last night, James," replied Remus wearily from the far end of the room. He did, indeed, look tired, even more so than normal.
"Regardless of how you slept last night, get a shower and a cup of tea, because we have a lot of work to do," said Sirius in a surprisingly brisk voice, given that he had been sound asleep only moments earlier.
"I can't trace the source of the doubling enchantment, Black, I've already told you that," said Ariadne.
"That's not what I mean. I don't see much purpose in trying to hunt down the lackey messenger. They weren't a real threat. Though last night was a…regrettable incursion into our masquerade party, we already have plans in motion to combat Voldemort's influence within the castle. We just need to keep our eyes on the bigger picture."
"Are you referring to the half-baked scheme to impersonate Clarice and infiltrate Yaxley's gang? Because the Polyjuice Potion isn't ready yet, and I don't know if you noticed, but neither Clarice nor Yaxley or any Hogwarts student we've identified as a follower of You-Know-Who carried out last night's plot."
"First of all, the Polyjuice Potion will be ready within a week if we keep working on it," Sirius shot her a significant look, "and second, you don't know that Clarice and Yaxley weren't involved. It would be foolish for them to use people we already know are followers as the faces of their terror plot, of course they used strangers. It also makes their following seem larger than it really is. Remember, this was a tactic designed to create fear and doubt. We can't let them achieve that."
"Sometimes a little doubt is a good thing, especially when it results from a failure that we should learn from," responded Ariadne, with a slight emphasis on "failure" and "learn."
"What happened last night wasn't your fault, Ariadne," interjected Remus gently.
Ariadne almost turned and snapped at Remus, but caught herself, remembering that he didn't deserve any of the blame. She instead turned to the person who did.
"Maybe you're right. Maybe it wasn't entirely my fault. Maybe the person who convinced me not to tell the professors and promised me we would look out for the slightest sign of something wrong shares in some of the blame, too."
"Morrigan, we did everything we could have done. You said it yourself, you can't trace a doubling enchantment that only lasts for 20 seconds. The bottom line is, no one was hurt last night and Hogwarts is fine," said Sirius bracingly.
"No, it isn't! Someone entered the castle last night who shouldn't have been there, and we had no idea. Doubling enchantments only have a range of a couple miles at most. They would have had to have been within the grounds to create the body double. And while all of this was happening, we were drinking and dancing the night away in our infantile costumes."
"You were letting yourself be seventeen-year-old witch at a Halloween party, Morrigan. Which is what you are, even though I've practically had to coerce you to act like it," said Sirius exasperatedly.
"What happened to 'we've taken on Dark wizards by ourselves before, and we can do it again'"? said Ariadne, mocking his self-important tone.
"We have!"
"So which is it, Sirius? Are we teenagers, or defenders of Hogwarts against the forces of darkness? Because you can't seem to decide, and it keeps screwing us up."
"It's both. You're the only one who seems to see a fundamental incompatibility between the two," said Sirius.
"I'm not sure I can keep mixing together your high-blown ideas about protecting the school with parties and masquerades. Maybe we should only work together."
"Is that why you came to my bed last night when you couldn't sleep?"
Ariadne tensed. She couldn't believe Sirius would blow open their secret like that in front of a now-gaping James and a terse-looking Remus. In just a slip and her dressing gown, she felt naked.
"I don't see the relevance of that to our current discussion," replied Ariadne brusquely.
"We couldn't go back to being strangers working on a Transfiguration project, Morrigan, not now," said Sirius, his voice now husky.
"And why is that?"
Sirius strode over to where Ariadne was standing in a few quick steps, and bringing her face to his, kissed her deeply and meltingly. When he pulled away, he looked into her eyes and said quietly, "Because I love you, Ariadne Morrigan."
Ariadne's mind went blank.