A/N: A note that the town of Corrington is entirely fictional. Also, smoking is bad, very bad, and I do not condone it for teenagers (but, you know, they were rebellious teenagers in the 70's in Britain and they probably smoked). Thank you to my ever-kind reviewers, who give me inspiration always!
This chapter should probably have been titled "Fourteen-Year-Olds Are the WORST." Hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: Everything you recognize and Harry Potter are owned by J.K. Rowling and not by me in case you were wondering or very confused.
Chapter 37 - 4.3 or "A Day on the Train"
She was fourteen years old, had successfully completed three full years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, had learned how to brew Shrinking Solutions and how to transfigure a pincushion into a hedgehog, and yet Ginuine Leigh still had not learned how to properly socialize with other girls.
There always seemed to be a lot of giggling, for one, and secret-telling, for another. Having never had a friend outside of her own mother prior to going to Hogwarts, Gin had never really become accustomed to the norms and conventions of peer friendships, especially when they involved such foreign concepts as talking—wrestling her own thoughts and feelings into words. And so she sat in a compartment on the Hogwarts Express, thinking of all that had happened over the summer, and how she might be able to avoid an inquisition from the girls surrounding her, and the way she might explain any bits she decided to share.
Originally she had only been sitting with Lily, Adin, and Mary, but about ten minutes into the journey Emily Cagle and Cassandra Nguyen had joined them with the only topic of conversation anyone had spoken about since: Sirius Black.
Gin liked these girls. She did. Adin could be a bit tiring at times, but she had always been a friend to Gin, and while she didn't know the Ravenclaws too well, she had partnered with them in Defense lessons before and they had always been perfectly amicable. Still, though, she shifted uncomfortably in her seat, wondering when the questioning would inevitably turn her way, and what exactly she was willing to divulge.
"…and you know, my parents are friendly with the Potters," said Adin, who had made this point three times already, "and they told them that the Blacks came and got Sirius that night, they didn't even wait until everyone was back from Spain."
Emily was perched on the edge of the train seat, clearly energized by the discussion. "But wait, do we know if that was something to do with Karina and Sirius, because we know they went off together, but we don't know what happened…"
"Don't think so," replied Adin. "We think it has something to do with Bellatrix Black—Sirius's cousin, you know—because she was talking to the Potters at my parents' party, and after that the Potters left with Sirius and James, and I was there, obviously, and saw them, and no one looked very happy."
Gin did not wish to hear them talking about Sirius, and she certainly had no wish to discuss Sirius and Karina. Spending much of the summer with Karina Cotswold had left Gin's normally stoic and compartmentalized emotions in a confused—and rather bitter—jumble. And Gin was not sure what she wanted to say to these girls about her summer, or about Karina, or about what she knew about Karina and Sirius.
She did not wish to tell them about Karina's first night in Corrington, when Gin's small room had been rearranged to fit a camp bed for Karina, her book collection packed away to make space for Karina's clothes. Karina had spilled out a rather wide array of makeup onto Gin's reading table and had watched her in the mirror as she lined her eyes with what looked like charcoal.
"So, what do people do here?"
"What do they do?" Gin had repeated from her cross-legged perch on her bed, where she sat watching Karina's reflection in the mirror.
"You know…for fun."
"Oh." She pondered this. "Well there's a cinema—"
"And people hang round there?"
"Erm, well, they go there to see films. And there are some nice cafes near it that my mum and I will go to sometimes. And there are some paths that go along the river just past the port, and those are good to walk on when it's nice out…"
Karina had turned around to face her straight on now. One of her eyes was ringed in black, the other she had not yet attended to. "I meant what do people do without their parents, Gin."
"Oh." She had never really considered Corrington from this perspective and she had to think for a few moments before answering. "There's a park behind the primary school where people go, and I think I've heard that kids go to the shipyard after dark, but I'm not certain."
"Perfect." Karina turned back around and began tracing the charcoal pencil around her clean eye. "We'll try both."
"We will?"
Karina nodded. "The Muggles here are bound to be more interesting than the ones at home. If my dad's going to make me stay here all summer, I plan to take full advantage, at least."
Evidently satisfied by the state of her eyelids, Karina capped the makeup pencil and swiveled around on the chair to begin digging through the bag at her feet. Curious, Gin watched as she unearthed what appeared to be a red top made of some sort of stretchy fabric and then without a second's hesitation, stripped off the cotton shirt she had been wearing. Gin was used to changing in front of other girls, having been raised by a supremely immodest mother and then having shared a room with four other young witches while away at school; still, Karina's brazenness surprised her.
"Are you going to wear that?" Karina asked as she pulled the red fabric into place around her stomach.
Gin glanced down at her own simple top and jeans and nodded. "We're going out now?"
"Yep," said Karina, now standing up and shaking her dark hair out between her fingers. She grabbed a jacket from the back of the chair and proceeded to zip it up over the clingy top, hiding the red material entirely from view. "Our parents haven't seen each other in more than three days. They're probably dying for a fuck, and I'd rather not be in the next room over."
The expression on her pale face was one of a challenge, and Gin had understood imperceptibly that Karina was testing her at that moment, to see if she was up to it, to see if she could handle foul language and improper discussion or if she would shy away, blush, or scold her. Gin, though, held her gaze for a moment before giving her a casual shrug and rising from the bed to join the other girl by the door.
"All right," Gin said. As she grabbed her own jacket off the back of the door, she had felt as if something were shifting under her and did not quite understand what it was. "No one wants to hear that, anyway."
Karina gave her a brief, calculating smile. "Ready to show me the mean streets of Corrington?"
"Ready to discover them," answered Gin.
The mean streets of Corrington, however, had proven to be wholly uninteresting for the first several evenings of the Cotswolds' stay, and it wasn't until Gin and Karina had sneaked through a gap in the fencing at the shipyard several nights later and discovered a large gathering of teenagers lounging in and around a group of abandoned shipping containers that the girls had found what they were looking for.
But Gin could not tell her friends on the train about it all. She could not tell them about how suddenly the summer nights were filled with boys who offered them beer and cigarettes and lingering glances and even more lingering touches. She did not tell them about how Karina started going off with a Muggle called Lenny, who Gin knew as the stock boy at the local greengrocer, or how she herself started seeing a boy called Carl, had let him kiss her as she lay in a patch of scratchy grass on a hillside overlooking the river, had listened to Karina's advice to not let him get his hands under her clothes until at least the second or third date.
"I know you haven't got any experience with this sort of thing," Karina had told her, looping her arm through Gin's as they walked home in the dark one night. "But boys don't want a girl who's too easy you know, or they'll take what they want and then lose interest."
She wasn't sure what made her tell Karina Cotswold that night that she had snogged Sirius Black on more than one occasion while at school, but she had. Karina had not believed her at first, but then laughed it off with a snide, "Well, who's the experienced one now, eh?"
Gin could not tell her friends this, nor could she tell them about the times her mother had pulled her aside as they worked in their little shop, had told her she was concerned, had asked if it had been a mistake to invite the Cotswolds for the summer. But her mother had also once told her to stop sneaking off with Sirius because he was a pureblood, and then she had immediately taken up with the pureblooded Desmond Cotswold, so Gin was not particularly interested in her mother's concern right then. Her mother, after all, was a hypocrite.
And one night at the shipyard, only a week after Gin had confided in Karina about Sirius, Gin had been talking to a Muggle she had attended primary with when she saw Karina and Carl emerge together from one of the shadowy corners, whispering and holding hands.
"It's not as if he's your boyfriend," Karina had said later, rolling her eyes. "I guess he just got bored of you. You can always find another boy, there's plenty of them who can't stop staring at you. Don't act as if you don't notice."
It was perhaps then that Gin had decided that she didn't care much for Karina Cotswold, a feeling which was heightened when Karina returned from her journey to Spain only to boast about how she had fooled around with Sirius Black in the Quidditch stadium. But by then their parents' romance had nearly evaporated, and it wasn't another two days before the Cotswolds had returned to their country house and Gin was left with her small bedroom to herself once more and a maelstrom of sour emotions the likes of which she had never before endured.
Not that anyone would know it, of course, as she had kept her expression perfectly passive throughout the deluge of gossip on the train. As a result of nervous parents taking their children back to Hogwarts personally, there were a number of empty compartments on the Hogwarts Express, and for a moment Gin considered isolating herself in one of them for the remainder of the ride, but something was holding her there. She felt a pull she couldn't quite describe, a vicious urge to tell these girls something, though not everything, certainly…
"—but Karina's always been like that, hasn't she, Cassandra?" asked Emily in what could only be a rhetorical fashion, because she didn't pause to let Cassandra answer. "I mean she kissed Otto Archmond last year right after he had come back from Hogsmeade with Florence, remember?"
"Still though, it's Sirius Black," said Adin, eyes widened with importance. "He's never been with anyone—"
"That we know of," Cassandra amended.
"—though Merlin knows he could probably snog any girl he wants," continued Adin as if there had been no interruption. "And he chose Karina."
"Do we know if they only snogged?" asked Emily. "I mean—you know—they could have done any number of things."
"Gin," said Cassandra, and Gin's insides clinched at the address, "wasn't Karina staying with you? Did she say anything about it?"
It only took a beat for Gin to make her decision. Five sets of curious eyes were watching her as she said, "They didn't only snog."
When she didn't elaborate, it was Lily, surprisingly, who urged her on. "Well? Did Karina say what they did do?"
"Let's just say it's a good thing she had toughened up her knees with all her Muggle boys over the summer," Gin said, feeling a strange sort of power at being the one to divulge this information about Karina. "That way they didn't get sore when she got on them for Sirius."
"You're joking."
"No way!"
"Oh Merlin, she—"
"Yeah," Gin affirmed when Adin didn't continue. Despite the resentment churning within her, Gin kept her tone impassive as she added, "That's all she told me. Hard to say much more, though, when she already had her mouth back around one of her Muggle boys' knobs."
"What?"
"You're joking!"
"You can't be serious."
Gin shrugged. She wasn't sure what exactly had come over her. "She's a slag," she said simply. "And that's not something you can hide from someone you're sharing a room with, I guess."
Cassandra and Emily both laughed at the rude insult as both Adin and Mary looked particularly fascinated by the turn in the conversation. It was Lily who responded with a quiet, "Wow." Then, with a concerned frown, "Was it awful, having her stay with you then?"
"It was all right for a bit," Gin told her honestly. Then, not wanting to elaborate on Karina anymore, added, "My mum chucked her dad just a few weeks ago, though, so at least they won't be there at Christmas."
"What a little slag," said Emily, seemingly in shock at this news. "I mean Karina, obviously, not your mum, Gin."
"Oh I wish I had been able to go to Spain like everybody else," Cassandra pouted. "So much drama happened there…"
"Just think," sighed Emily. "I mean, if I had gone to the Cup instead of to Sweden to visit family, I could have been the one to sneak off with Sirius in the Quidditch stadium." At the looks from the others, she added quickly, "I mean I obviously wouldn't have gone that far with him…"
"Well now we know his type," added Adin with a touch of bitterness. "Too much makeup and slutty clothes."
"At least you were there, Adin, and got to see some of it unfold even! Your summer was so much more interesting than mine," said Cassandra, as if this were a great tragedy. "My parents made me stay home and read my school books cover to cover."
"That'll be helpful, though," chirped Mary, who though enthralled by the back-and-forth gossip, had not said much for the duration. "You won't have to study as much if you've already read all the material!"
Cassandra gave her a sly grin. "True. More time for a boyfriend!"
"Speaking of boyfriends," said Emily, as if she had just remembered something, "Lily, are you still going out with Andrew Adamsly?"
Lily had been sitting against the window, watching the discussion with varying levels of interest. She was still dressed in her Muggle attire, and wore her hair longer than Gin had ever remembered it, down her back in a way that made her look decidedly more mature.
Lily blushed at Emily's question but smiled brightly at the thought. "Yes. He's still my boyfriend. I met him twice over the summer in Diagon Alley, but that's all I could manage."
"Do your parents know about him?" asked Cassandra.
"Merlin no." Lily looked horrified by the very notion. "I told them I was meeting Adin both times. They'd never let me off alone with him if they knew I had a boyfriend."
"Especially if they knew how much you two snog!" Adin teased in a sing-song voice.
"Adin!" Lily scolded as the other girls giggled.
"What?" Adin raised her palms innocently. "You're allowed to snog your boyfriend, Lily. And we won't tell anyone. We're all friends here after all."
Lily seemed to ponder this, then conceded. "You're right. But next time let me tell, would you?"
"Is he a good kisser?" asked Emily.
Lily's face took on a dreamy expression that looked decidedly unlike her. "The best," she said, to more giggles.
"Why aren't you off snogging him in an empty compartment somewhere, then? There sure do seem to be more of them than usual today, at any rate."
"Because I'd rather spend a day on the train talking to my gossipy mates!" Lily paused for a beat and then gave them a sheepish grin. "And because his mum is taking him directly to the castle."
"I think a lot of parents are doing that again," said Mary. "Raeanne and Goomer aren't on the train either."
"My dad wanted to take us himself." Adin rolled her eyes. "I'd just as soon jump off the Astronomy tower than arrive at Hogwarts as my dad's Side-Along."
"Me too," said Emily. "And what do they think's going to happen? You-Know-Who's going to attack the train or something?"
"Oh don't be ridiculous." Cassandra waved her hand at the idea. "No one would attack the Hogwarts Express. And my dad says they're bound to catch him soon. I'm sure the train'll be full again at Christmas."
"But did you hear about those witches who disappeared in Bristol?" Mary asked. "I mean, they're saying You-Know-Who was behind that too."
Adin reached over to pat Mary's knee. "Well let's not talk about all that now, it's too depressing." And then, with only the briefest of pauses for decency's sake, she said, "Did everyone see Zelda Carmichael's new haircut? She looks like she was on the wand end of a Hacking Hex!"
And as talk turned toward another corner of gossip, Gin sat back and let her thoughts wander. She felt as she had on Karina's first night in Corrington, when they had first set out to explore together: as if something were shifting under her feet and she was simply being carried along by its momentum. It was an unsettling impression, one of a vague powerlessness. But even though what she had said of Karina had been rude at best, and cruel at worst, there was a catharsis to it, and Gin decided to allow herself, for the first time in months, to relax.
The things he had missed over the previous three weeks had been obvious to him: his friends, of course, and the fresh air, and the freedom to wander, and everything to do with Hogwarts and his life outside of the hell within Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.
But he hadn't realized how much he had missed cigarettes until the smoke from his first, cherished drag was drifting out the window of the Hogwarts Express. He took his time with the second drag, treasuring the lightness of the paper between his lips, the feel of the smoke in his mouth. The train was picking up speed now, and when he exhaled out the open window, the smoke vanished into the blurring landscape within a second.
"Good as new," James said. Sirius looked up at him in time to catch the square mirror that had just been tossed his way, followed immediately by the small rubber Duplicator.
Sirius flipped the mirror over in his fingers, as though checking for defects. "Cheers."
James, who was still standing on the seat as he dug through his trunk situated on the luggage rack, didn't acknowledge the response. Instead, he rummaged for another second before pulling out a familiar pile of magazines and dropping them one-by-one into Sirius's lap.
"Didn't want your mum confiscating your Muggle magazines, either," he said, hopping down into the seat next to Sirius. "And I saved some of your Muggle clothes too, I imagine you noticed."
Of course, Sirius would not tell James that he had not had access to his trunk while locked in the dark attic of Number Twelve since they had last parted. Peter, who was sitting across from them both, had been unbearably awkward toward him since their reunion a half-hour prior, and Sirius had no interest in elevating his discomfort or pity by regaling them with stories of the last few weeks. Indeed, he wished he could forget everything that had happened to him since the Quidditch World Cup.
"Thanks," he said casually enough. He took another drag and examined the gleaming motorbike on the cover of the top magazine just for something to do before adding, "The clothes would have been harder to replace than the mags at this point though."
"But the mags are something we can all enjoy." James reached over and pulled out one of the magazines with a bikini-clad woman on the front of it and dropped it over the motorbike cover.
Sirius glanced at the magazine for a second before tossing it into Peter's lap. "Here you go, Peter, something for you to look at so you can stop staring at me like I'm the bloody Grim."
Peter reddened and averted his gaze, but Sirius hadn't even had a chance to take another drag before Peter said, as though unable to contain himself, "Were your parents horribly angry? What'd they do? Did they take your wand? Only James said his letters to you came back unopened, so we reckoned you weren't able to unlock your window to receive them—"
"Been talking about me, have you?" Sirius snapped.
"Course we have," James said easily. "Was a bit of a rough send-off, wasn't it? But Merlin, Peter, think you could let him finish his cigarette before you start the inquisition?"
Peter mumbled an embarrassed apology that Sirius did not care to hear. The truth was that he had managed to keep his wand, having successfully fooled his parents into only confiscating his fake wand, but even having his wand in hand had not proven entirely beneficial. The attic room had no windows which he could magic open, and as his parents had placed a Caterwauling Charm on the landing outside the door, Sirius had no means to escape his enclosure. The wand had provided him light, of course, and the ability to practice his Animagi Form spells, but after days on end with nothing else to do, even the idea of turning into an animal had lost its allure. Transfiguring himself into a panther would not allow him to evade his father's punishment night after night.
James's casual response calmed Sirius somewhat, and he took his time on his cigarette before tossing the butt out the window and leaning back gingerly against the seat. His back still smarted from his father's last visit, but he had learned long ago the way that even pressure could help alleviate some of the pain.
"Heard from Remus?" Sirius asked James, so thankful for his best friend at the moment he thought the feeling might choke him.
"Few days ago. His dad was going to take him up to the castle yesterday so he'd have time to rest before tonight."
Sirius nodded and fidgeted with the packet of cigarettes sitting next to him. "Rubbish luck, the moon falling on the first of September."
James stretched out his legs and used one foot to nudge Peter over so he had room to rest his heels on the seat in front of him. "Absolute shit luck," he agreed. "You can imagine how worried Remus was over missing the first lessons of the year. Told him we'd take notes for him, but it's not as if we ever seem to learn anything new in the first day or two, anyhow."
Peter, who now had his body wedged against the door of the compartment to allow room for James's shoes, piped up. "He seemed pleased to be able to—" He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "—you know—back at school though, and not at his parents' house. I don't think his mum's very good at Healing spells."
"That's because his mum's a Muggle, you idiot," Sirius snorted, before adding as an aside, "Good taste in music though."
"Remus told us not to visit him in the hospital wing during this stay," James told him. "Seemed to think it'd draw attention to his absence."
Unable to help himself, Sirius tapped another cigarette out of the packet. "And since when have we listened to the things Remus tells us?"
James grinned. "I told him we'd see him in the hospital wing after lessons tomorrow. And if you're going to smoke another one of those you could at least give me one, you ungrateful lump."
As Sirius passed him a cigarette, James stood and moved next to the still-open window, bracing himself against the glass as the movement of the train caused him to sway. Sirius stood and fished the Muggle lighter from his pocket and flicked the dancing flame to life, offering it to James before lighting his own.
"Maybe we should learn a spell to use," said Peter, watching them both exhale the smoke through the window. "Instead of having to do it the Muggle way."
"I happen to like the Muggle way," Sirius said, unnecessarily sharp.
Peter recoiled at his tone, but continued in a smaller voice. "I only mean, it'd make sense, wouldn't it?"
Annoyed, Sirius did not answer him, but instead took another long drag, rolling the smoke in his mouth before asking James, "How many packets have you got, anyway?"
"Three more. It's all I was able to nick without the Muggles getting suspicious." James nearly stuck his entire head out the window to exhale, grinning as the wind bathed his face, and Sirius knew, because he knew James, that his friend was undoubtedly comparing the sensation to that of flying on a broomstick. "So we best not go through them too quickly, eh?"
Shrugging, Sirius nudged James out of the way so he could exhale again. He was not particularly worried about it. He enjoyed cigarettes, but it's not as if he needed them. Regardless, he said, "There's got to be a place we could get them in Hogsmeade."
"There is," said a girl's sudden voice from behind them, and both James and Sirius whipped around to find Didina Murphy leaning against the now-open door of their compartment and watching them with unfettered amusement on her face. "Paper shop down the street past the Hog's Head. But they don't sell to students."
"Murphy!" Sirius greeted, trying to ignore the way Peter had slid across the seat and pulled his feet off the floor like a complete lunatic at the girl's arrival. "Appreciate the intel. To what do we owe the pleasure?"
"I was sent by my mates to tell you lot that your smoke is blowing straight out your compartment window and into ours." She nodded her head in the direction of the compartment next to theirs, the last one on the train. "Rather unpleasant, and not at all as stealthy as you geniuses had believed. But now I'm wondering if this is your new tactic to run us out of our favorite compartment, Black."
Indeed, Sirius and Didina Murphy had battled every train ride for the past two years over the very last compartment on the Hogwarts Express; mainly, it had been an excuse for Sirius to talk to the girl. She was two years older than them and absolutely stunning, at that. Today though, when he had boarded the train and noticed she had beaten him to the prized compartment, he had simply occupied the next one up. He hadn't the energy nor the patience that morning to flirt.
Now, he couldn't help but appreciate her Muggle skirt, and he wasn't sad she had made the unexpected appearance in their compartment. As James tossed his half-gone butt out the window, Sirius very purposefully blew another stream of smoke out into the brisk wind and said, "Wouldn't it have been simpler to, I don't know, close your window, then?"
"We did," she said easily. "But I was still sent in here as an envoy to tell you to knock it off. It's a nasty habit, after all, and we wouldn't want the prefects coming down our end of the train, would we?" Then with a brief glance into the corridor, she slipped fully into their compartment and slid the door shut behind her. Sirius sincerely hoped that the click of the door had prevented her from hearing the squeak that had escaped Peter's lips upon her entry.
She slid into the seat next to Sirius and reached for the packet of cigarettes in his fingers, tapping one out and grinning at him and James. "Prefects," she continued as she lifted her wand to light the cigarette, "don't do anything but cause headaches, after all."
She slid her focus to the cigarette between her fingers for a brief second, which allowed Sirius and James time to exchange meaningful—if confused and slightly panicked—glances. James then had the presence of mind to give the subtlest of nudges to Peter, who still had his feet pulled up in front of him like some sort of deformed crab. Round eyes locked on their gorgeous intruder, Peter slowly lowered his feet back to the floor of the train.
"Can't say we've ever given much thought to prefects," said Sirius. "Certainly haven't ever got a headache because of one."
She smiled as she tilted her head back and expelled a pillar of smoke toward the ceiling. "Well I'd have thought you'd at least know how to vanish smoke. Don't boys all suss out Vanishing by second year or so?" Her eyes flickered to the Muggle magazine that had been lying forgotten on the seat next to Peter.
Sirius, for all his best intentions to be cool and collected, had been most unfortunately taking another puff of his dwindling cigarette when she said this, and swallowed down enough smoke at her suggestion that he began coughing rather clumsily. Peter let out another embarrassed squeak and turned the magazine over so that all they could see was the back cover advertisement for some sort of lager, but the damage had clearly been done.
Only James seemed to be outwardly unaffected by the comment, though the tips of his ears did turn rather pink. In one fluid movement, he extracted his wand from his pocket, waved it toward the smoke hovering above them, and said, "Evanesco fumus."
"Well done, Potter," Didina said, tapping her ash off so it floated to the ground next to Peter's shoe. "Full marks. Now just keep it up so my friends don't come looking for me, will you? Like I said, nasty habit. Not something I feel like explaining right now."
The last time he had sat smoking with a girl had been on the night of the World Cup, a night that—all things considered—Sirius had worked very hard to forget over the last few weeks. He did not want his mind correlating Didina, possibly the sexiest girl he had ever seen, with anything related to that night. With her tan skin, light eyes and long, dusty brown hair, she was rather the opposite of Karina Cotswold in looks, for which he was exceedingly grateful.
James was now spinning his wand between his fingers in a nervous sort of way, but otherwise seemed completely at ease when he asked, "So your friends don't approve?"
Didina shrugged the question off, apparently finding the conversation to not be worth her while. After expelling another breath of smoke toward the ceiling, she said, "Anyway, it's not the prefects you truly need to look out for, it's the trolley witch."
Sirius chuckled at this, assuming it was a joke, but Didina just looked back at him steadily as if there was nothing at all funny about the comment. "You're taking the piss," he said, flicking his spent butt out the window once again.
"I'm not. You may think she's sweet when she's handing you pasties, but try to pull anything on her and she'll turn into a right demon."
"Right," Sirius nodded, disbelieving. "We'll keep that in mind. Wouldn't want to cross the trolley witch."
"Don't believe me if you want," Didina told him. She gestured toward the smoke that now blurred the small compartment in entirety. "It's your heads she'll have."
James once again took it upon himself to vanish the smoke and frowned at the girl. "It's not even our smoke."
Didina grinned at him and stood up, stepping between James and Sirius's knees in order to take one last, forceful drag and then fluidly toss her cigarette out the window as well. "It is now," she said, crossing the compartment in two strides and sliding open the door once again. "Ta, boys."
And with that, she stepped out into the corridor and left the three rather gobsmacked boys alone once again.
It took them a moment to regain their senses. "Bloody hell," James muttered, lifting his glasses briefly to rub at his eyes as though he hadn't quite believed what they had shown him.
Peter seemed to be at a loss for words. He eventually closed his mouth and said, "That was—she was—I mean…"
When he said nothing else, James grinned at Sirius. "Perhaps we need to suss out a way to procure plenty of fags, if that's the type of company we get when we've got extras on us."
The comment once again reminded Sirius of Karina Cotswold, of her pale skin in the shadows of the World Cup stadium, of her fingers plucking the cigarette from between Sirius's lips and slipping it between her own. He briskly pushed the thought away and turned so that he could stretch his legs out on the seat next to him.
"Murphy's just a bird," he said, sliding down slowly so as to not aggravate his back. "A fucking fit one, sure, but just a bird nonetheless." He didn't much care if they thought it was strange that he was closing his eyes for a bit so early in the train ride. Even with the excitement of his friends and the jolt of tobacco in his veins, he had not slept much lately.
"I'm going to have a kip," he told them. Then he smiled, just a bit. "Wake me when the trolley witch comes round, if she's not so terrifying as to make you wet yourselves."
It felt like a very short time later that Sirius was woken rather abruptly by the compartment door once again sliding open, but with a quick glance around the compartment at the litany of sweets off the trolley littering the floor, he deduced that it had to be early afternoon and his friends had abstained from waking him as instructed. He scrubbed at his face quickly and sat up to make room for their newest interloper: Garrison Walker, a terse, muscular seventh-year and a Chaser on the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
And based on the badge gleaming against his black robes, the new Captain as well.
"Potter," Walker greeted, nodding at the other two briefly in greeting. "Join you for a minute?"
James, who had apparently been busy eating his way through a year's worth of cauldron cakes, gestured toward the now empty seat next to Sirius, though Walker had not waited for the invitation and had sat down anyway. "'Course, Walker," James said easily before his eyes caught on the badge and his slight smile faded to shock. "Blimey, or should I call you Captain?"
"Guess so," said Walker, tapping at the badge with his fingernail idly. "Bit of a surprise, eh?"
"Not at all," James lied easily. "Congrats, mate!"
"It's why I'm here. Looking for your help."
James's eyebrows shot up. "My help? With what?"
"The team. The Captaincy."
James leaned back against his seat and waited, clearly expecting Walker to expand upon the thought, but the older boy did not appear inclined to.
"Er, I'm not sure I follow."
Walker scratched at his jaw uncomfortably. "Look, I can get the team trained up, easy. Could do it in my sleep. But I'm no good at words and such. Strategy, you know."
After a moment for understanding to come, James seemed to inflate with pride or excitement, or more likely both. "And you think I can help?"
"Sure," Walker nodded.
"Not Peakes?"
Snorting, Walker scratched at the back of his head before saying, "Too busy partying. I want you, Potter."
"Strategy," James echoed, seemingly thinking it over. "Devising plays? Schemes?"
"That's right. You're good at that sort of thing. And then helping me teach the schemes to the team. Make sure people know what they're doing."
"Wait a tick," Sirius interrupted, feeling as if James was missing the obvious issue. "This sounds to me like you're having James do all the work while you walk around with that badge on, Walker."
"Don't mind him," James told Walker. "He's a git when he wakes up."
"Don't be a prat, James," Sirius said, rolling his eyes. "He's having you on while he gets the glory."
Walker crossed his beefy arms across his chest and frowned at Sirius. "I'm not. This is about the team. I couldn't give two doxy shits about glory. Beal captained us into the rubbish bin last year and I'm not about to let that happen. The Puffs are returning their whole side. We've got a lot of work to do. All of us."
Sirius shrugged and slumped against the window, wishing he hadn't said anything as he was now feeling a sudden surge of disinterest in the entire conversation. "If you say so."
"I'm in," pronounced James. "Anything for the team. When do we get started?"
"I've got an empty compartment up near the front and and some time before we get to Hogsmeade," said Walker, standing up. "Unless you've got other plans?"
James bounced to his feet with rather more vigor than was entirely necessary. "No plans, me. Let's go, Captain!" And then, as Walker slid open the compartment door and disappeared into the corridor, James turned swiftly around to give Sirius a quick cuff to the shoulder. "Don't be a twat," he whispered as Sirius swatted back at him. "We've got to get the team back on form and this is our chance. I'll be back in a bit."
Sirius just waved him off as James followed behind Walker. In an effort to busy himself enough that Peter wouldn't feel the need to fill the conversation vacuum created by James's absence, Sirius grabbed one of his motorbike magazines that had fallen to the floor. As he began flipping through it, though, Peter spoke.
"James is good at knowing about schemes and plays and stuff. I think him helping Walker out seems like a good idea."
Sirius made a sound of acknowledgement low in his throat, but otherwise said nothing else, his gaze fixed on the glossy pages in front of him.
This did not seem to sway Peter, though. "Hopefully it doesn't take up too much more of his time, though. We did some practicing—after we got back home from the Cup, I mean—on our Transfiguration homework, you know, and he seemed like he was getting really close on the spells." He paused, looking for some sort of response from Sirius, before adding only somewhat hesitantly, "Were you able to practice the spells at all?"
"Yeah," Sirius told him honestly. "A bit, I guess."
"Remus and I only stayed for a week at James's house, but I think we made some progress."
"Hmm," Sirius replied, keeping his eyes on his magazine.
"Plus we got to go to the cinema, did James tell you? Well no, I guess he hasn't had a chance to, but—"
"Do you mind?" snapped Sirius, unable to stand it for another moment, and Peter recoiled as if struck. "I'm trying to read here."
Cheeks pink with embarrassment, Peter groped in his bag for his own reading material—an issue of The Adventures of Dino Danger—and said nothing else. Sirius lit another cigarette and smoked the entirety of it in peace, feeling not at all guilty. He didn't need Peter of all people regaling him with stories of all the fun his friends had partaken in while he was locked in the attic of Number Twelve.
He could recognize, in some far corner of his brain, that he was acting—as James had mentioned—like a twat, but he could not find the energy it would take to care. The past few weeks had been filled with nothing but time for him to think, to stew in his own bitterness and remorse. While he had expected his return to school to find him giddy with relief at being free from his parents' house, he found instead that he had not been quite able to shake off his angry mood. Despite his undeniable fondness for his friends, he had never felt more separate from them, nor had he ever felt more agitated by that figurative divide.
Aside from this, there was one task that he had not yet undertaken that was weighing heavily on both his conscience and his disposition—he knew he needed to seek out Regulus. He had not spoken to his brother since the Cup, had not even laid eyes on him until that morning when they were both ushered toward King's Cross by their mother. Sirius was not at all certain what retribution Regulus had faced for his part in Sirius's deception of their parents, and while he supposed it was minimal—Regulus was the favored son, after all—Sirius still felt the need to address it with his younger brother. For his own peace of mind, he needed to ensure that he had not brought his parents' ire down on Regulus to any extent worth feeling guilty about. Sirius could not bear to feel guilty on top of everything else right now.
Not quite ready to face that particular task, though, Sirius busied himself by rereading the Muggle magazine in its entirety. Despite having read it before, he found himself enjoying the short articles he hadn't yet committed to memory, including one on motorbikes' weight distributions and a detailed ranking of the ten best motorbikes on the market. He had only just finished reading up on a new type of tires the Muggles were testing when the door to the compartment slid open for the third time that day.
"Well, should have reckoned you lot'd be all the way back here."
Karina Cotswold was now leaning against the doorframe with the utmost confidence, a coquettish smile pulling at her lips, and Sirius thought that at the moment he would have preferred Severus Snape to have entered their compartment over her. He knew somewhere in his rational brain that he should not blame Karina for anything that had happened at the Cup. The meeting between the Potters and Bellatrix and the ensuing confrontation with his parents had nothing to do with his sneaking off in the Quidditch stadium with Karina Cotswold. But he also knew that the sight of the girl reminded him of everything he had royally bungled, and he thoroughly wished she had not sought him out just then.
There was a bit of an awkward silence, as Sirius had no particular inclination to even say hello to this girl, and Peter had no experience ever saying hello to any girl. Eventually, Sirius decided he had no option but to play cordial so he said, with a rather disinterested tone, "Hey, Cotswold."
Karina seemed to hesitate just for a moment, as if she had wanted to sit down in the seat next to Sirius but had thought better of it. "Do you sit all the way at the back of the train because it's farthest from the driver, or what?" she asked, flipping her dark hair over her shoulder.
"Actually, it's so fewer people will bother us," Sirius said sharply, his patience waning.
At this, Karina's teasing smile faltered for the briefest of moments. "Well," she said, and she reached over to fiddle with the handle of the door she was leaning against, "I don't mean to bother. Just wanted to see how the rest of your holiday was."
"It was great," Sirius lied, his tone flat.
"That's great. Mine was good too." She averted her gaze from Sirius's face to gaze around the compartment, as if searching for something else to comment on. Then, smile back in place, she said, "Did you hear that Fitz Fortescue made Head Boy? Haven't had a Hufflepuff Head since we've been here and—"
"Did you need something?" interrupted Sirius.
This seemed to throw her. She crossed her arms over her torso and frowned at him, clearly confused. "Need something? No, I don't need anything, I was just saying hello."
This was Sirius's cue to turn his attention back to his magazine. "Yeah, all right." He did not so much as glance back at her as he spoke. "See you round, then."
"Yeah, okay, see you round. Bye Pettigrew."
There was a resounding silence in the compartment after she had left and Sirius kept his eyes on the article in front of him, dreading the prospect of discussing any of it or, worse, having to contemplate any of it.
"Er," said Peter after a moment, clearly not taking the hint, "that was awkward."
Once again, Sirius responded with a disinterested noise in his throat.
"I mean," Peter pressed on, "she seemed, you know, interested in keeping on with you and all."
Sirius snorted at this, wishing for James. "Well I'm not interested in her."
"Oh." There was a pause as Peter's brow lowered in confusion. "B-but didn't you have a good time with her at the Cup?" When Sirius did not answer, he continued. "I mean, didn't you get under her clothes and all?"
Sirius sighed and looked up. "So what?" he said, in a tone more tired than annoyed. "You think she should be my girlfriend now or some rubbish like that?"
"She's pretty good-looking is all I'm saying," Peter shrugged.
"Well by all means she can be your girlfriend then. I haven't got any use for her, all right? Just drop it."
Despite his obvious befuddlement at Sirius's reaction toward the girl, Peter did indeed drop it. Sirius returned his attention to his magazine and Peter to his comic book, along with a heap of Licorice Wands he had purchased from the tea trolley which he proceeded to eat with uncommon patience over the course of the next hour. As he chewed, his jaw worked furiously and his gums smacked wetly against his lips in a way that made Sirius glance across the compartment in disgust on more than one occasion.
"Will you shut it with those things?" Sirius finally snapped, unable to listen to the slovenly sounds any longer. "Either eat them or don't but stop chewing them like a garden gnome with a sodding earthworm, will you?"
Peter tucked the remaining pack of Licorice Wands into his pocket. "Sorry," he muttered, not meeting Sirius's eye.
Sirius, though, knew that it wasn't Peter that was angering him, nor was it the chewing. If nothing else it was that Peter was not remotely interesting enough to distract Sirius from his thoughts, from the recollections of everything that had happened since he snuck off with Karina Cotswold that night, of the brutal torment he had suffered at the hands of his parents, and of the task that he knew he should have undertaken as soon as the train had pulled away from King's Cross that morning.
With a sudden determination to find Regulus and get the entire ordeal over with, Sirius stood up and slid open the compartment door. "I'll be back," he told Peter, unwilling to say anything else. The door snapped shut behind him before he could hear Peter's questioning response.
The train was emptier than usual, and Sirius noticed several vacant compartments as he stalked through the train cars toward where the Slytherins usually sat. He did not stop to speak to anyone or to socialize with the many friendly faces he saw; he simply didn't have the patience for small talk. His pace was such that he nearly walked right past Regulus's compartment, and he had to double-back a bit to slide open the door.
There were four boys in the compartment along with Regulus, all already donning their Slytherin-adorned school robes and playing an intense game of Exploding Snap on the one empty seat. When Sirius slid open the door with an indelicate thud, the pile of discarded cards exploded into a thick ball of smoke.
Sirius watched, somewhat amused, as the five boys coughed and batted at the smoke before they seemed to recognize his presence in their doorway. Their expressions ranged from surprise to disdain as they realized who, exactly, had interrupted their game. Regulus, who was sitting closest to the door, somehow noticed Sirius last, and he did not try to hide the bewilderment on his face when he yelped, "Sirius!"
"Reg," acknowledged Sirius by way of greeting.
"What are you doing here?" sneered the boy sitting next to the window whose name Sirius could not recall.
Part of him wanted to provoke them, to duel all four of them at once just for a way to release some of the anger that had been boiling inside him for weeks. But he did not think a prudent way to relieve himself of his guilt regarding Regulus would be to hex all of his brother's friends. So instead, Sirius gritted his teeth together and gave the unnamed boy a large, sarcastic smile.
"I wanted in on your little game. Thought we could have a rollicking good time!"
The boy's eyes narrowed. "Blood traitors aren't welcome here."
All semblance of making nice dissolved at once. Sirius could feel his wand weighing heavily in his pocket, and his fingers itched at the prospect of grabbing it and hexing the boy into oblivion.
"Unlucky for you then," he replied with an icy look. "I go where I please."
At this, Regulus rose from his seat, catching Sirius's eye and nodding toward the corridor. "Just a minute," he muttered to his friends before the two brothers stepped fully into the corridor and he shut the compartment door tightly behind him.
"What are you doing here, Sirius?" he asked after turning toward his brother and crossing his arms over his chest defensively.
Sirius chanced a quick glance around at the nearby compartments, but they were all either empty or closed. They were alone. Then he offered Regulus a wry grin.
"Thought you could use a break from those tossers."
Regulus just blinked at him. "Did you come all the way up here to insult my friends?"
"No," said Sirius, "just an added perk."
"So what, you came up here to check up on me then? See how I fared?"
He hadn't realized he was so transparent. Sirius exhaled and looked at the ceiling of the train car instead of at his brother's face when he said, "Yeah…I guess I did."
"Well you wasted your time, then. I don't need you checking up on me. I don't need you being rude to my friends, or involving me in your schemes—"
"I shouldn't have. All right? That's what I came to say. I shouldn't have asked you to lie."
For a moment, Regulus's face registered shock. He clearly hadn't been expecting Sirius to admit any such regret. Then he seemed to come back to his senses and gave a shrug. "Whatever. It's not as if they were angry with me. That was all reserved for you."
"Yeah. All right." Sirius scratched uncomfortably at his head. "Reckoned so anyway."
Regulus, too, now looked around at the corridor in an awkward sort of way, as if he were rueing his participation in the conversation entirely. He sighed. "I would have sneaked you snacks," he said, his tone significantly less defensive. And then he added, his eyebrows pinched together, "Except, you know, the Caterwauling."
The sentiment surprised Sirius, but he just nodded. "Right yeah, not much you could do."
"Uncle Alphard tried, a few days after we got back. Mother chucked him out of the house."
Sirius thought back to the wails from the landing outside his door. "I heard the Charm go off. Reckoned it had been Kreacher that set it off, coming to taunt me. What was Alphard doing there?"
Regulus shrugged again, his features laced with discomfort. "He was in the city. Stopped in for dinner."
Sirius could picture the scene clearly, of his Uncle Alphard trying to talk his parents down, to help placate some of their anger, as he had done on so many occasions during Sirius's childhood. It had never worked, not once, but Alphard never seemed to give up hope that one day it might.
"Anyway," said Regulus, "if that's all, I was in the middle of a game…"
"Yeah, okay." Sirius felt there was more to say, but was disinclined to express the impulse. So instead, he gave Regulus a sardonic smile and added, "Make sure you beat that git by the window, eh?"
"His name's Darius and he's my best mate—"
"All the better. He'll forgive you when the cards burn off his eyebrows."
Regulus looked as if he were fighting himself over something. He turned as if to go back into his compartment, then paused and abruptly reached into his pocket and unearthed a small potion vial. "Here." He thrust the vial into Sirius's hand. "It's from Alphard. I wasn't planning on giving it to you, because, well…" He broke off, stepped backward, then continued, "But considering the circumstances…"
When he looked at it, Sirius at once recognized the deep blue tint of a pain relieving potion. He did not have a chance to even remark on it though before Regulus turned on his heel and reentered the compartment without another word to his brother.
Sirius fought the urge to toss the vial out the window. His back ached and scratched painfully against his robes, but such things were not usually acknowledged, even between the two brothers. For Regulus to recognize his need for the potion made Sirius feel more vulnerable than even apologizing to him had. He made his way swiftly out of the Slytherins' train car, wanting to distance himself from the entire situation, even if it meant returning to the sound of Peter's chewing.
It was only when he was in the next train car up that Sirius unfurled his fingers to look more closely at the vial. The seal was broken and only half the potion remained to lurch up the side of the glass as the train swayed around a bend. His stomach twisted with the unmistakable coil of guilt. It seemed as if at some point since Uncle Alphard's visit, Regulus had needed some relief from their father's punishment as well.
Unwilling to dwell on it, Sirius shoved the vial in his pocket and stalked back toward his compartment.
Once some of the gossiping had subsided in Gin's compartment, the morning passed swiftly enough. Shortly before the lunch trolley arrived, Emily and Cassandra excused themselves to visit with their Ravenclaw friends, and Gin, Mary, Adin and Lily had the opportunity to stretch their legs out a bit as they ate through an assortment of pumpkin pasties and chocolate frogs. Mary regaled them with stories of her time as a bridesmaid in her brother's July wedding, and Adin kept them entertained by detailing how she and Kaia had sneaked out of the house one summer night to go swimming with some Muggle boys, and Lily had peppered Gin with questions about her mum's shop and the booming trade they had done in Sun Protection Potion ingredients. It was a pleasant ride, and fairly unmemorable at that point.
It was only while she was returning to their compartment after a trip to the loo that things took a figurative turn.
She was sliding open the door to a carriage about halfway down the train when someone jerked it open simultaneously from the other side, and suddenly she found herself face to face with none other than Sirius Black.
"Oh," he said, a brief look of surprise melting from his face as he stepped back to allow her entrance into the car. "Hi."
She wasn't certain why seeing him so abruptly after two months had startled her so. Perhaps she had expected him to look different after his experiences at the World Cup, but other than a distinct tightness in his jaw, he looked the same as when she had last spoken with him in June.
"Hello," she replied, stepping around him. The door slid closed of its own accord. He continued looking at her as if expecting her to say more, so she commented on the mood she perceived in him and said simply, "You look cross."
He gave her a sharp look. "Thanks for noticing."
She wondered briefly what had upset him, but did not feel as if it was her place to ask. She wouldn't have wanted him to ask, if the situation had been reversed.
"Well," she said, unwilling to linger awkwardly. "Goodbye then."
She made to continue her passage up the train but he reached out to catch her wrist and she paused once more.
"Wait," he said, swallowing. Something softened in his face almost imperceptibly. "Chat with me for a few, eh? I'm not keen on going back to my compartment to listen to Peter prattle on about Dino Danger."
She had no reason to object, and she, too, was in no particular hurry to return to her compartment. "All right."
His eyes raked over her, lingering on her hand as he let go of her wrist. "You look strange."
"What?" she responded, so surprised by the comment that she did not even have a chance to realize she should be offended.
"Without a book in your hand, I mean."
"Oh, well I don't normally take them to the loo with me."
"I never see you without one."
"I can think of a few times when you've seen me without a book."
The air seemed to thicken around the two of them with her reference to the times they had snuck off together, but Sirius did not respond with any sort of insinuating comment or suggestive aside as she had expected him to, and instead only said, "Hm. Good point." The standard mischievous glint in his eye was notably absent, and Gin could not help but wonder what had prompted this unexpected version of him.
They both turned as the carriage door slid open behind him and two younger students stepped inside. Based on the combination of terror and excitement on their faces, Gin could only assume they were first years.
"Excuse me," said one of them in a very high-pitched voice, flattening himself against the door as he waited for Sirius to step aside for them. When Sirius barely spared them a look from the corner of his eye and didn't move in the slightest, Gin sighed and pulled him out of the way. After a few anxious glances at them, the younger students slipped along the wall and disappeared into a compartment at the end of the car.
"Well that was rude," Gin told him when he said nothing else.
"Ickle firsties interrupting our conversation like that? The height of rudeness, I agree."
She could not imagine he was being serious, but there was no joking to his tone whatsoever. She raised an eyebrow at him. "Not who I was referring to."
He looked severely disinterested in her rebuke. In fact, he ignored it completely and instead asked her, "All right summer?"
"No. It was rubbish actually." Gin could not help but look him over, trying to determine what he might be thinking. She wasn't certain how much she wanted to tell him, or how much she wanted him to tell her. "But I hear yours was rubbish too."
He gaze darkened for a moment. "Parts of it," he eventually said. "I ended up back in London which is never a lark. Yours?"
Part of her was surprised he was willing to reveal even that small token of personal divulgence. Again, the air seemed to tighten around them, and when Gin responded, her voice was less guarded than it had been previously.
"I spent most of it with Karina. So like I said, rubbish."
"Right. So you didn't get on, then?"
"Not entirely." She paused, and then deciding there was absolutely no reason to play coy, added, "She told me about the two of you, though."
He seemed thoroughly unsurprised and, again, patently disinterested in this. "Is that right?"
"Did you have fun?"
"What?"
"With Karina?"
For a second, the question seemed to almost rattle him. "I guess."
The next question out of her mouth was not any of her business, she supposed, but in a manner that was entirely unlike her, she said it anyway, suddenly desperately curious to know his answer. "Do you fancy her?"
Without pause, he answered, "No." He seemed less interested in the conversation than he did in trying to read Gin's expression.
"Okay," she said, believing him.
"I heard you got a Muggle boyfriend."
"Did Karina tell you that?"
"Yeah."
"Well I haven't got a Muggle boyfriend. I don't want any boyfriend."
"Ah. So I've heard."
They looked at one another for a moment, the air thick around them, and Gin made up her mind easily. There was an empty compartment directly behind them that drew her eyes. She was overcome by a rash urge to do only what she wanted to do—the same vicious drive that had flared when she had talked about Karina to the other girls that morning.
She nodded toward the compartment. "Do you want to go in there?"
He looked around at her indication and said nothing as he then slid the door open and allowed her to enter the quiet compartment ahead of him. Her heart seemed to be beating much more forcefully against her ribcage than was perfectly standard, and she waited until he had pulled the shades on the door's window closed before she cleared the gap between them.
She was surprised, somehow, by the ease at which their mouths pressed together, her tongue sliding past his lips. Why, oh why, had she ever told him she didn't want to kiss him anymore? Why had she ever thought to listen to her mother's hypocritical nonsense?
The brief thought of her mother ignited a spark of anger in the pit of Gin's stomach, but she doused it at once, focusing instead on Sirius and the way he was able to drive out all the other thoughts from her brain. It was only when she slid her hands over his shoulders to pull him closer to herself that a pained gasp broke the spell.
"What?" she asked, pulling away and looking at him in concern.
"Nothing. It's nothing." He did not give her a chance to respond or to think anymore about it, covering her lips with his once more and pulling her down to one of the seats with him.
She had always been able to compartmentalize, to smother emotions like petulant embers. But nothing made it easier to turn off her churning brain, to stop thinking, than kissing a boy. She had felt it with Sirius before, when they had sneaked off together, and had felt it over the summer with the Muggles. It was a rush, and all the noise and drama and her own consciousness were driven out of her, if only for a few moments. But it hadn't been like this with other boys, this fever. The turmoil of her thoughts was dissipating, was being absorbed by something more instinctual, so that she could focus on only Sirius and the way his lips felt against hers.
She knew they could get carried away with each other but she could not bring herself to care. And it was at the exact moment this thought went through her head that the door to the compartment sprang open with a snap.
"Florence are you in here—Oh! Sorry. I mean—wow—Sirius Black?"
They had separated and sprung simultaneously to their feet when the door had opened, but the damage had already been done. Gin might as well have fallen into a personal nightmare as she looked at the intruder—an older Hufflepuff she didn't know hovering closely behind none other than Bertha Jorkins.
"It is!" squealed the other girl, breaking into high-pitched giggles. "It's Sirius Black and…"
They both looked at Gin as if trying to place her before Bertha snapped her fingers in some sort of epiphany. "Another Gryffindor. Genuinely, that's her name!"
At this, they both erupted in laughter and Gin felt her insides roil with mortification.
"Do you mind?" snarled Sirius, striding forward to close the door on them, but Bertha held it open with her shoe, appearing almost giddy at the prospect of what she had stumbled upon.
"So is this like your girlfriend, Sirius?" She giggled again, licked her lips and then asked, "I thought you were with Karina, or—"
"What?" Sirius seemed so surprised by the accusation he paused in his attempt to close the door.
"I mean, everyone heard about what happened after the Cup and—"
"I don't even know who you are," Sirius told her, and Gin had never heard his tone so acidic, not even when he was fighting with the Slytherins. "Leave me the hell alone."
And with that, he succeeded in slamming the door in their laughing faces. "Bitch," he muttered under his breath as he scrubbed a hand across his forehead.
Gin stood frozen by the window, panic creeping up her throat where her heart had started to pulse. They could still hear the giggling from the corridor, but it was beginning to subside as the Hufflepuffs apparently continued on their way. When Gin spoke, her voice was a hoarse whisper. "That was Bertha Jorkins."
She could tell simply by his expression that Sirius was uninterested in the girl's name. And that he was quite obviously angry. "Who?" he snapped.
"Bertha Jorkins," Gin repeated. Some of her initial embarrassment was starting to fade, replaced by a deep sense of dread. "She—she's got the biggest mouth in Hogwarts."
"Whatever," grumbled Sirius. He seemed to debate something before moving toward her once more, but Gin put a hand out to stop his approach.
"Everyone'll know now," she told him.
"Well," he said, shoulders taut, "it was bound to happen sometime."
And with that, he kissed her again.
"Wait," she said, stepping back. "Wait, it's just—" Her mind seemed to slam shut and she could only just look at him, dismay mounting.
He sighed impatiently. "It's just what?"
"Everyone will know," she repeated.
"Yeah." Restlessness emanated from him in waves. "So?"
There was an intensity in his gaze that made her for a split-second uneasy, and Gin didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. With the exception of the time she had broken it off—a short and rather undramatic exchange in the Hogwarts library—the pair of them had never actually acknowledged their strange pairing. Now, though, with the imminent prospect of the entire school discovering that, at the very least, they had been passionately kissing in a secluded train compartment, Gin had no idea how to give voice to the turmoil that was eddying inside of her.
After waiting pointlessly for Gin to answer him, Sirius ran an agitated hand through his hair and turned away. It was his obvious irritation, more than anything, that propelled her to speak.
"It's just… I don't want—"
But he did not grant her the time now to clarify her thoughts, as he spun around on his heel and interrupted her as soon as she started talking. "You asked me in here." He gestured between the two of them with the flail of a hand. "Do you like this? Whatever this is?"
She did not need to contemplate it before she answered. "Yes."
"So what do you want from me? To take you to Hogsmeade?"
"What?" Of all the questions he could have posed her, this was not one she had expected. "N—no, of course not."
"You just said a minute ago that you don't want a boyfriend."
"And I don't."
He stared at her as if waiting for her to come to some sort of realization, but when she said nothing he asked rather harshly, "So what's the bloody problem, then?"
"I just don't want everyone knowing my business," she told him honestly.
He gave a humorless chuckle. "Well take it from someone whose business everyone seems to always know—there's nothing you can do about it. You have to just do what you want."
The problem of course was that she had yet to determine what, exactly, that was. But Sirius didn't feel the need to wait around for an answer. "Let me know when you suss out what that is, yeah?" he said, sliding the compartment door open with a snap, disappearing down the corridor, and leaving Gin alone to steep in her own frustrated confusion.
Perhaps if she had been thinking more clearly, she would have composed herself and returned to her compartment to control the situation before it escalated into anything worse; but as it was, she sank back down onto the seat and watched out the window as the landscape became lusher and wilder. Despite her dread she felt calmed by the tracks clicking steadily beneath her on the train, by the commonness of the train's motion and the comfort she would be able to find in the grand castle she was speeding toward. She wasn't entirely sure how much time passed before she found her feet—and her courage—and made her way back toward her friends.
She discovered her first problem leaning lazily against the wall outside of the compartment she had shared with her friends before she had taken the ill-fated trip to the loo.
"Your mates aren't very pleased with you," said Karina, and the way she straightened and dusted off her robes as Gin approached confirmed that she had been waiting specifically for Gin's return. After a summer of seeing Karina in Muggle skirts and slinky tops, the sight of her in her school robes again was slightly jarring, like seeing a peacock without its tail feathers.
Gin stopped and glanced at the closed door of her compartment, but she was still too far away to see inside. "Why's that?"
"Bertha was down this end of the train earlier just about bursting to tell anyone who'd listen that she just found Sirius Black kissing 'that Genuinely' girl and, well, Adin and them, they seemed pretty surprised." Karina closed some of the distance between them until she was merely a step from Gin, who fought the desire to back away. "It was only when I told them it wasn't exactly the first time that they got rather indignant."
"Why would you—I told you that as a secret," Gin whispered, something like hurt spiking through her. "You said you wouldn't tell anybody."
"You're right. I said that because I thought we were friends." Karina's tone was venomous and Gin had to wonder what exactly had happened that had pushed her well beyond bitterness. "But it appears to me that you no longer have any friends, Gin."
"Friends don't sneak off to snog boys their friends like," Gin shot at her with a calmness that surprised even herself.
Karina's expression turned calculated. "I thought you didn't like Sirius Black?"
"Not Sirius." She swallowed heavily. "Carl."
"Carl? That goofy-looking Muggle?" Karina snorted. "I didn't know you liked him, I thought you were just—you know—having fun."
Gin wished very much that she had remained in the empty compartment for the rest of the train ride. She crossed her arms over her chest. "Right. Whatever. It doesn't matter now."
Karina raised one eyebrow as though vaguely amused, but something about the look was forced. "Well maybe next time you should speak up. Tell your friends what's going on." When Gin said nothing to this, Karina continued harshly. "You know what you are, Gin? You're a fake. You act like you don't care even when you so clearly do. Makes it hard for anyone to know where they stand with you."
Again, Gin said nothing. It felt as if her throat had been constricted by a slowly expanding balloon. She kept her face impassive as she continued to meet Karina's cold gaze. As though irritated by the lack of reaction, Karina scoffed and stepped around her toward the end of the corridor.
"Anyway, good luck with Adin Balini," she said over her shoulder. "And just know that once Sirius gets what he wants from you, he'll act like you don't even exist."
With a flick of her dark hair, Karina disappeared into the next train car and left Gin alone to take a deep breath, summon her resolve, and reenter the Gryffindor girls' compartment.
The barrage of angry questions from Adin that Gin encountered was hardly surprising. (Is it true? When did this start? Why didn't you tell us? How many times have you kissed him? Why didn't you tell us? Do you sneak off to kiss any other boys? Does he sneak off with any other girls? Why didn't you tell us?) Even as Adin's sense of dramatics crescendoed, Gin maintained her composure and provided what could only be considered as guarded answers.
It was only when the pitch of the interrogation started to falter that Gin found herself taken aback for the first time, and it was not Adin who shocked her, but Lily.
"Perhaps you should find a new compartment, Gin," Lily told her, her normally friendly gaze hard and cold.
She had expected the bitterness from Adin who wanted to be the first to know everything, and Mary who blushed if Sirius even looked at her, and certainly from the Ravenclaws and others who had almost certainly heard about it all by now—but she had not expected it from Lily who, after all, was never quick to judge and had never shown even a modicum of interest in Sirius Black. If Gin had been forced to guess, she would have assumed that of all the fourth-year girls at Hogwarts, Lily would be her most likely ally in this situation.
Silence pinched at Gin's throat, but an eerie sort of calmness had descended over her with the realization that Lily, too, would not understand. She looked back at the other girl impassively before shrugging and reaching up to grab her bag from the luggage rack. But before she could step between the others' legs to fully exit the compartment, Lily spoke again.
"You should have told us," she said, words sharp and eyebrows pressed together. Looking at her, Gin wondered if the patches of red blooming on her cheeks were simply the result of her anger or perhaps something less obvious than that. "The number of times we've—I mean, how could you just sit there and—" She did not seem able to fully express whatever it was she was trying to say, but then she changed tactics. "You're a hypocrite. You sat here this morning and called Karina a slag when you've been sneaking round doing the same thing."
"I didn't…I've never—" Gin felt a burgeoning need to defend herself against the accusation, but the other girls' indignant stares solidified something in her and she cut off, straightened her shoulders, and started again. "I don't have to explain myself to you," she told them. And then, not wanting to burn too many bridges, added, "See you at the feast," before swiftly leaving the compartment.
Hypocrite.
The word reverberated in her head as she found herself in an isolated compartment in the next car up. It wasn't that she was particularly hurt by the name-calling—no matter what Karina had done, Gin grudgingly acknowledged to herself that she shouldn't have spoken so cruelly about her—but she was struck by regret at having thought the same thing about her mother for months now. Her dear, flawed mother, who had dated a pureblood immediately after telling Gin not to do the same, but who Gin loved and could depend on more than she ever would consider depending on anyone else.
Growing up, Ginuine Leigh had always been quiet and curious. Out of necessity she had tamped down any inclinations of friendship toward the Muggle children with whom she had attended primary school and had found solace instead in books and, more importantly, in the close-knit relationship she held with her mother. And while Anna Leigh had maintained a constant rhythm of suitors for as long as Gin could remember, Gin had rarely found any reason to resent them, as her mother's attention and love were so totally consumed with her young daughter that the men never lasted for long.
And Gin could see it now, with a blaze of clarity. She had been wrong to speak of Karina as she had, but more vitally, she had been wrong to be angry at her mother, and to continually allow the opinions of others to make her question herself. "You just have to do what you want," Sirius had told her. Perhaps it was this statement or it was Lily's accusation that had prompted this new and lucid realization that Gin found as she sat alone in that compartment, digging through her bag for a quill and a spare bit of parchment. No matter what the catalyst was, though, Gin smiled to herself as she scratched down a note for Sirius on the slip of parchment.
"Tonight after the feast. Trophy room."
And with a newfound self-resolve and confidence that perhaps she had never known, when the Hogwarts Express pulled into Hogsmeade Station not long after, Gin ignored the whispers and stares she got, inconspicuously slipped the note into Sirius's pocket, and continued smiling as she climbed into a horseless carriage that would take her back to Hogwarts.