Sorry, it's been forever. One day I'll get this entire story posted, because it's all been written! All I can say is I hope that you enjoy!
Late July 1978
Tianzi Mountains, Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, China
At daybreak, Remus and Blanche had returned red-cheeked from laughter and lightly covered in mud. As Remus was one of the few willing to adventure through the forest grounds that Blanche spent all her days in, they had been spending a considerable amount of time together. Sirius trusted both of them without a doubt, but he had been a bit hurt by Blanche over the course of the trip. She had hardly touched him once and spent all of her days without him.
Blanche's clothes were also wet, as they'd clearly gone swimming. Sirius didn't find the swimming troublesome, but he still voiced concern bitterly.
"You shouldn't swim in these waters. There's grindylows," Sirius spoke coldly.
"And merpeople," Blanche added. "But I know where they swim, and its not in the big waterfalls."
"What big waterfalls?" Sirius asked.
"There are hundreds around here," Blanche said, wrapping herself in a towel whilst casting him a stern look. "If you bothered to explore with me, you'd know."
"I've explored!"
"No you haven't. The only person who has thus far is Remus. The lot of you spend your time playing Quidditch in the clouds."
Sirius scowled at this, staring into the levitating fire that crackled before him. He studied the moving pictures on the inflamed copy of the Daily Prophet withering away into the fires. "It's dangerous down where you go," he retorted sourly.
"No it's not. It's incredible here. But it's not like you would know," she shrugged, reaching for the canteen thrown across her bed. The cabin was extremely narrow; the first floor consisted of six beds stacked on top of one another and a single bathroom that didn't even have a mirror. A central staircase led to an open-air floor above that held a strange gathering of chairs, a long table that was lopsided, and an ever-expanding trunk full of antique games, lamps, books, rugs, and more.
During the group's time there, they had all gone off to have their own fun. Remus and James played Quidditch from noon 'til night most days, although sometimes Remus spent the day with Blanche. When they weren't playing Quidditch, they were playing Aingingein (but with a balloon in lieu of the traditional pig's bladder), playing wizard's chess, and flying to the tea pagoda about two miles south. Lily sometimes accompanied them, but typically spent most of her days learning Mandarin at the tea pagoda with the owner's sixteen year-old daughter, Ling. Sirius and Peter lounged around together, both finding immense boredom in the location. When they weren't complaining about how bored they were, they were playing Quidditch with Remus and James or flying across the landscape, weaving between mountains and clouds. Blanche had been alone most days, tucked into the vegetation, creating her spells, and tracking the Demiguise whose trail she swore she was on.
"Fine. If you swear this hellhole is as safe and incredible as you say, why don't I go out with you on your journeys with you tomorrow?" He asked sharply.
"I don't know. I'm not sure if I'd like my day spoiled by a whimpering brat," she spat.
"I'm not a whimpering brat!" He exclaimed, standing up and letting the smouldering newspaper drop to the ground.
"Whimpered the brat," she sighed, climbing up the ladder to get on her bed at the top. "But if you want to come, I'll tug you along. Just as long as you don't whine like a petulant child the whole time."
Sirius ground his teeth as he heard Remus laugh. He'd crawled into her bed to sleep beside her a few nights during this trip, but that night he really didn't feel like sleeping in her bed.
Sirius was out on the ground by early morning, grunting as he followed Blanche over the mangy trails sprawling across the forest floor. He'd already been distressed by the precarious trip down, which had involved traversing treetops and climbing down thick trunks seeping questionable, ruby-red sap.
"I'm getting bitten," he slapped at a mosquito.
"They come out in the morning—when it's hottest. They'll go away by midday, when the wind starts up."
"Why didn't we come down then?" He asked, bitterly remembering their wake-up at dawn.
"Because then we would have wasted half the day," she explained with exasperation, as though the answer to that question was achingly obvious. He did recall she left before sun-up and returned far past sundown most days, with her feet thickly coated in dirt and grass sticking to her clothes.
"Do you really need that much time? We've been here a month," he said.
"Yes. Everyday I get closer to my Demiguise," she responded quietly, climbing over a tall root. Sirius rolled his eyes at the sound of the creature she'd been tracking. Several weeks ago she'd mentioned it and everyone had laughed—even him; since then, she hadn't spoke a word about it. Perhaps he'd have thought her enthusiasm adorable back at Hogwarts, but her habit for scholarship outside of school had been on his nerves lately. He wanted her attention alone, but these days it had been painfully shared between himself and the creatures of the forest. And as a result of that devastating split, Sirius blamed them—the creatures.
"How do you even know these things exist out here?" He asked her. She stopped and took off her rucksack, untying it and pulling out a small drawstring bag. She opened it and pulled out three long white hairs. "That could be anything," he argued. Then she lay the hairs in his open palms and waited for a moment. Soon enough, the hairs had disappeared in his hands.
"See?" She asked in wonder.
"Did they float away?" He asked with a frown and furrowed brow.
"No, you imbecile," she scoffed. "They're still there. They've just turned invisible," she told him, peeling off one of the hairs in her palm then picking it up. Sure enough, the hair was again, long and pale. As it adjusted to its surroundings, it went invisible again.
"Oh," Sirius' lips parted in an awe he quickly tried to cover. "But even if it's here, how would you catch it?"
"I'm not going to catch it, you bloody dunce. I just want to see it and maybe sit with it."
"You want to sit with it?" He chuckled, handing back the remaining hairs.
"Sure. Anything it wants. Just to see it will be enough," she shrugged, binding up the burlap pouch and pushing it back into her bag. She quickly continued out on her habitual journey, jumping across trickling streams and vaulting over poisonous plants as though she were walking through the park.
Sirius had never really had the same scholarly mind as did Blanche. Learning came extremely easily to him—he would have been Head Boy if he didn't have a few handfuls of detentions and misbehaviour files working against him. However, his effort was always halfway-there. Blanche, on the other hand, found pleasure in study. She'd brewed potions on her own in school, done extra work for Flitwick for fun, spent several weekends tending to the plants in the greenhouses, led tutorials for younger students in Defence Against the Dark Arts, and tutored in Transfiguration only because McGonagall had asked. She loved this stuff.
However, Sirius did have some academic interests. He'd loved duelling—even though Blanche always beat him. He'd also always loved Transfiguration classes, even though it all seemed elementary after his Animagus transformation. He'd also snuck into the restricted area of the library more times than he could count. The only person he'd ever told this to was Blanche, as everyone else would suspect he was dabbling in the Dark Arts his family had been notorious for. Blanche had always understood, though, coming from a Dark family herself.
Eventually, Sirius and Blanche came to an open area where water cascaded downward from nearby cliffs and seemed to descend into nothing but mist sailing through rocks. Sirius had been hesitant at first to enter the dark, damp crevices between the rocks that Blanche walked into so easily, but he was glad he did by the time he'd made it through.
Underneath an overhang of rock was a shallow cavern lit with magical bundles of fire. The ground was made of dark sand and knotted with large rocks. Blanche had somehow lugged a chest into the cave, and she withdrew several pieces of parchment from it. Her last hidden object was a leather-bound journal, whose papers were falling from the string binding. She opened the journal and gestured for him to come look.
Across the pages were crowded, cursive notes embedded in sketches. He caught sight of several unfamiliar plants and creatures, including several drawings of the Demiguise she was allegedly tracking.
"What's this?" He asked, but he felt as though he already knew the answer.
"This is what we'll be doing today," she explained. "Two days ago, I left out some carrots and cabbage in a region of trees that I have discovered to be most suitable for Demiguise conditions. Yesterday I went, and Franklin left the vegetables untouched—"
"Franklin?" Sirius repeated.
"The Demiguise," she said quietly, with a touch of embarrassment. After a moment, however, she reverted to her typical pride. "I've decided to try something different today. The cabbage and carrots are a standard element in Franklin's diet, and liken vegetables and fruits must not be very difficult to find. So, I've decided upon something else."
"What's that?" Sirius asked.
"Chocolate," she smiled widely, pulling a wrapped bar from her rucksack. "I don't imagine it's healthy, but only a little will hopefully lure him. The trouble is finding the right tree…" she sighed, looking at her bar.
"Fine, we'll do that," he nodded, then looked down at her journal. He'd earlier noticed lines of hardly legible script written in a deep red; it wouldn't have been peculiar if the rest of the notes were written in several colours, but all was black aside from these lines of red. "What's this?"
"Just notes," she shrugged, trying to close the book. Before she could, however, Sirius' hand was bookmarked between the pages.
"I came here to see how you spend your days," he argued. "I'd like to see everything you've been working on."
Eventually she relented, trying to translate her gnarled script before giving up. Instead of explaining verbally, she took her wand from the waistband of her shorts and pointed it toward the water through the rocks. With an elegant whisking motion, she opened her mouth and said something Sirius had never before heard: "Anflumen."
The water came in a thick stream, curving around them in an unnatural path. As they sat in a lowered ring of rock and sand, the water would have come gushing toward them. However, this coil obeyed the direction of Blanche's wand; it made a loop around them both, then twisted and overlapped in knots around them before heading back out between the rocks.
"I've never heard or seen that. Have you been studying some ancient spellbooks?" He asked.
"No," she shook her head. Then she pointed her wand to a new object: the largest rock within the sand-set floor. "Sinponderia," she said. Sirius' brow dropped as nothing happened.
"What?"
"I reckon you should try and move that rock," she said as a smile slipped at the corner of her lips.
"I can't, it's too heavy—"
"Stop mewling and try," she rolled her eyes. He stood up and walked toward it, putting his hands around it and trying to remove it from its spot with an initial tug. But to his surprise, it sprung loose. He had overestimated how light it would be, and now it flung upward toward his face like a beachball. But before it could hit him, he slapped it away with a hand and it was flying in the opposite trajectory. When it hit the ground, it emitted a loud thud as though it were suddenly ten times the weight Sirius had experienced.
"Is it me?" Sirius asked himself aloud, clenching and unclenching his fists. He walked up to the stone second-largest in size, but couldn't move it a millimetre. He walked over to the original rock and picked it up, still stunned by its feather-like weight.
"It's not you," she laughed. "It's the stone. The stone was my target."
As Sirius walked back to the massive stone and picked it up leisurely, he enquired: "How come I've never heard of these spells? What's this book you've been reading from?"
"You've never heard of them because no one knows them," she grinned.
"Well, surely someone must… You can't be the only one with this mysterious book."
"You're right—I'm not. But this book doesn't teach you new spells, it teaches you how to make spells."
Sirius hesitated in thought before throwing the deceptively lightweight rock to the wall, where it crunched down with a thunk. "So, these spells… Are yours?" He asked tentatively. She'd made hundreds of playful curses and hexes and jinxes before, but this was entirely different. Never had she ever completely crafted a spell by her own hand. Very few witches and wizards attempted that art because it was notoriously risky. As he'd learned at school, a homemade spell was, almost always, either a dud or a threat—turning to nothing or a curse in a moment's notice. To successfully craft a spell was an extremely rare feat; the risks outweighed the benefit, as he had been taught.
"Yes," she answered quickly, overjoyed by the look of awe on his face. "Would you try one? I'd quite like to see how others perform them. He nodded after a moment's thought and she pointed to one on the page. He tried to decipher her confusing script.
"Elidiara?" He tried, taking his wand out.
"El-EE-dee-AH-ra," she pronounced. "Now point it at one of the rocks."
Sirius tried with the correctly pronounced spell, but the rock at which he pointed only budged an inch then sat still.
"No, no… You need to make a jab of the wand—like so," she covered his hand in his and pushed forward with a defined pulse. He nodded then tried again.
"Elidiara," he attempted, and this time a few fragments of the rock broke loose and tumbled down off the top.
"Sort of," she pursed her lips. She pointed at the rock and made an elegant prod into the air. "Elidiara!" She cast, and the rock instantly flattened to the width of a piece of parchment. A cloud of dust and gravel flew from the ground where the rock collapsed, and when Blanche went to pick up the rock's remains, it broke apart in her hands. What remained was a rock half the size it originally was in diameter and so flat he could hardly see it at some angles.
"Wow," Sirius' eyes bulged without approval, but several thoughts loomed near his initial amazement. Could this be used on a sentient creature? He thought to himself. Has she tried it on anything aside from rocks?
For the first time in his life, Sirius looked at Blanche with something of apprehension in his eyes. She had intimidated him before, but never to this degree. And his intimidation was always securely backed by his marvel at her extraordinary Wizarding ability. But this new feeling cast a dark shadow… He knew witches as powerful as she did turn Dark, as they saw their strength fortified by the Dark Arts. Sirius knew she'd never deliberately cross over, but maybe she would and not even realise it…
"What is it?" She asked him with a curious tilt of head, easily identifying the foreign look in his eyes.
"Nothing," he cleared his throat. "Are there any… Offensive spells? Spells of attack?"
Blanche's cheeks swam in a pale pink blush, as she shook her head. But Sirius had seen her lie before and he knew now that she was. He grabbed the book and fumbled through its pages, trying his hardest to decipher the words and seek out a Dark spell. After what had happened with Regulus, he felt as though it were his duty. A person whose loyalty was so deep in his heart, blood-body even, had turned before. The fact that it was Blanche couldn't ring a bell of retention in his mind. He had a duty.
"Sirius, stop it!" She exclaimed, trying to take the book from his hands. But he was stronger.
"Aguamenti Fervensio?" He mispronounced. "Sends jet of scalding water…"
"Sirius!"
"Caecovolos… permanently blinds target. Sagittus… sends arrow from wand to target. Delensio—erases all memories from target's mind permanently?" He exclaimed. "How did you test these? What did you do?!"
"Just ants! It's not like they didn't have memories anyway… They just couldn't remember where their anthill was!" She defended, the blush in her cheeks reddening. She suddenly became massively angry with him for indirectly accusing her of becoming dangerous with her spellmaking—like the fate of her father was a fate she'd incidentally stepped in. "Give it to me now!" She screamed.
"Tactus Cinere…" he muttered. "Everything target touches disintegrates…"
"Lyrasio Pacae!" Blanche cast loudly, anger surmounting the embarrassment. A faint yellow glow illuminated the tip of her wand, and she watched as the song it sang engulfed Sirius in its power. As the caster, Blanche could not hear it—but by the look on Sirius' face, he certainly could.
Sirius heard an ethereal song resonating against every crevice of the cave. He imagined this was the song of a siren, coaxing him into something much darker than it seemed. But he was overcome by the peacefulness and pleasure it planted within him, and as he wilted into the spell, he put down the book. He couldn't see anything wrong anymore—it was all tranquil. Blanche posed no threat, he forgot the scar left by his brother, and nothing hurt.
"Have this," he offered with a loopy smile. "I don't know why I'd take it…" he muttered, shaking his head.
As Blanche tentatively took back the book with one hand, her anger and embarrassment faded away. She put the book back in her chest and locked it before mumbling: "Finite."
The song died away slowly and soon it was just Sirius and Blanche again, without the torment of the book. But the peaceful energy sank in his eyes, and soon his true feelings arose.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" He asked lowly. "EXPELLIARMUS!" He shouted, gripping his wand warily and disarming her in his own defence. She looked at him with nothing to say, only a guilty look on her downwards-tilted lips. "Is this who you are?" He enquired darkly, looking at her with a sickened scowl.
"Who I am?" She repeated heatedly.
"Using your own spells against me? What am I, another one of your test subjects?"
"I don't have test subjects! You make me sound like some…mad…warlock!" She brushed it away.
"Maybe you are!" He exclaimed. "I don't even know how to defend against spells like this! Would you use any of your other spells against me? Would you blind me? Impale me with an arrow? ERASE ALL MY MEMORIES?" He remembered.
"Of course not!" She cried, bulbous tears summoned in the corners of her eyes. "I wouldn't ever do that to you."
"You sure? Because it doesn't seem like you have any misgivings about it!" He fought. Blanche was horrified more than she'd ever been at the look in his eyes—he looked disgusted, betrayed, livid, and—worst of all—scared.
Sirius let out a shaky breath before turning and leaving through the breaks in rock through which she'd led him there. He was splashed by the waterfall Blanche had showed him how to evade, but it didn't seem to matter. He proceeded onwards, doing anything to get away from her. In that moment, the love he had for her truly faltered. Ever since he'd first met her he'd wanted nothing more than to always be around her, but now he wasn't sure. For the first time in a very long time, he wanted to be as far from her as he could.
They hadn't really kissed for a while now—hadn't acknowledged one another as two people who loved one another. James and Lily had noticed it and mentioned it, but both Sirius and Blanche shut down when they bothered with questions. Blanche was too focused on her studies to pay any attention to Sirius, and Sirius was mad at Blanche and not paying attention to her for this behaviour. This condition of their relationship certainly did not help the matters immediately at hand.
"Sirius!" She ran after him, dodging all of the forest trappings that had gotten him. He propelled onwards though, not having any particular direction except that it was away from her.
"Get away from me," he retorted angrily, heading into a thick patch of trees.
"I wouldn't use those on anyone! I just got curious, is all…" she muttered.
"There are lots of other wizards and witches who get 'curious,' you know," he spat back, not casting a look in her direction. "The lot of them end up becoming underlings to the Dark Lord!" He warned.
"You know I would never do that, Sirius!" She cried, hearing her voice splitting into pieces. "It's me! You know what I believe!"
"I thought I did," he shook his head.
"You know me!" She pled, reaching for his arm only to have it shaken off. He picked up his pace, and Blanche was having trouble keeping up. He had always been irritatingly fast.
"What you just did isn't something the person I know would do," he broke into a run. Blanche thought for a minute to stop—to give up as she always did and crawl back to the safety of her cavern. That was surely what he—what everyone would expect—for her to back away and give up. Even after what they'd shared back in those blissful months before graduation, when they hadn't closed one another out for a reason purely unknown—he still would expect her to retreat and cower. It was in her nature. But he was also in her nature, so she kept on running after him and pushed her lungs to their limits. She slung her rucksack off her back and left it open and spilling across the forest floors, and she kept running after him.
"Sirius, stop!" She screamed through her pants. With a leap, she yanked his arm back and halted him in his tracks. He fought her and tried to push her to the ground, but failed as she clung on like a barnacle to a rock. "IT'S ME!" She nearly shrieked.
Blanche looked him in the face with a desperate look, but he only looked at her with utter disgrace, and he seemed so much taller to her than he usually did. He was like a monolith of granite—unreachable and hard to the touch, his face carved in rock.
Blanche leapt up and kissed him through the hard shots of breath leaving her mouth and nose, hanging onto him round the neck and pulling him downwards to her height. He stumbled forward and gasped against her at the assault, falling slightly forwards onto her. It was perhaps the messiest kiss there'd ever been, but Blanche knew nothing else. Her studies, her spells, her wand that was still lying someplace in the cave, her rucksack thrown on the ground behind them, and all of her inhibitions were nothing; they really didn't hold a candle to him. She would have wiped away every piece of hard work just for him in that moment, because he had always been the one behind it all. He was what she loved the most, and she couldn't ever lose him like she almost just had.
Sirius was unreceptive to the kiss at first, but long-lasting love pushed him to instantly take her in his arms. He was just as breathless as her after the sprint through the forest floor, but it was nothing to keep him from kissing her wildly between wheezes and chokes for air. Their placement on the floor was troubling beneath them, and as Sirius tried to gain his step whilst responding to her frenzied lips he was pushing her backward. To prevent a fall his hands climbed over her waist and back, which were damp with sweat and humidity. But it was all worth it as she worked against him in a desperate and nearly hysteric passion to keep him. Their mouths entwined without register, and they seemed to share the same gasping lungs as they accidentally clashed teeth and choked on one another. In a burning attempt to pull her even closer, he fell forward and they both flew toward the ground.
"Ow!" She exclaimed, bent over a thick root in the ground. Sirius got his first full lungful and heaved above her. Blanche glanced at his pink cheeks and felt a true wave of lust wash over her—the first in a while, and it was like a tidal wave knocking against a tall rock—urging it into waters. She wanted to be as close to him as humanly possible and matched mouths weren't enough.
Blanche reached out and pulled him to her, slinging her arms around his neck. She pressed a kiss to his neck and felt his hurried pulse run beat beneath her lips. "I'm so sorry, Sirius."
Blanche planted kisses over his ears and across his cheeks, back to his mouth. He responded and initiated a long, swollen kiss. His hands climbed upward to hold her face gently, and he looked at her with a genuine pain. "What's happened to us, Blanche?"
She shook her head in response. "It's my fault. I've been horrible to you. I've been caught up in my own head out here. I don't know why—I just have."
"We do everything for a reason," he told her. He sat up and pulled her with him, keeping her pressed to his chest. He entangled a hand in her hair, pulling his fingers through the blue-black knots and smoothing the tufts down her back. "You spend all your time alone now—studying harder than you did in school, even. You've pushed me out, and Lily, too. What happened, Blanche? Why'd you do that? I deserve an answer."
Blanche raked through her mind—digging into the territory of unknown motive. This vast region provided reason for her most instinctive decisions and actions. She had to dive into the bottom to fetch an answer—what had happened? She'd processed her desires for independent study in the forests, but had never looked into them. For some reason, they had made the cost of growing distant from Sirius appear… necessary. Because there was something warring inside of her and she couldn't pull him into the crosshairs.
But it was about time she tried.
"It's what I do—relying on myself and keeping to myself—when I get scared…" she tried, feeling tears lace her lashes. "It's the only way I know how to prepare myself for what's coming. I miss you so much and everyone else, but I don't want to see it all go to ruin. Everything I've ever had before meeting you and Lily and James and Remus was spoilt—I was a disappointment to my father, a burden to my mother, a curse to Talbot… But to all of you I've only been something good—at least I think. My life felt easier and my problems only hung over me from the past. They were separated from me, for once. And now I'm about to plunge into the hard stuff with the Order and all that, and I'm trying to run away from it."
She was wailing and hiccoughing by the end of her jabbering, and Sirius hushed her and kissed away her tears. She lay her head exhaustedly against his chest as she was racked with her final sobs, feeling Sirius' hand smooth over her back.
"You can't run from me like that," she said breathily once her sobs had subsided. "I really thought I'd lost you there. You can't ever leave me."
"I was just looking for reasons to be furious with you," he excused his anger, shaking his head. He tentatively placed a kiss on the slope of her jaw. "I know you know I'd never leave you. I've worshipped your every word since I was thirteen years old. How would you expect me to suddenly get on without you, anyway?" He asked with a crooked smile.
"I don't know… You just would, I suppose," she sniffled.
"Need I remind you, that I have been partially without you this entire trip and I've nearly died of boredom a hundred times. I sleep during the day and hardly at all during the night, and I don't even have the heart to play Quidditch. Do you see what happens when I'm not close to you? I'm an honest wreck," he laughed quietly to himself.
Blanche felt her lips involuntarily slide into a smile and she extended her neck to kiss his mouth repeatedly. She then pressed her nose into his t-shirt, breathing in the wintery scent he maintained even throughout the sweltering summer. She heard rattling behind her as she worked her final sobs out of her, but didn't bother turning around.
"Blanche," Sirius whispered. He pulled at a strand of her hair and she looked up, but found his eyes wouldn't meet hers.
"What?"
"Look," he gestured behind her and she turned around, looking back.
Franklin the Demiguise was perched over her rucksack not far from them, greedily eating the chocolate bar Blanche had unwrapped. He was not much larger than a chimpanzee, and shared their long arms as he lunged himself across the ground and pulled himself up tree branches. Instead of brown or tawny or black, however, the Demiguise's coat was the colour of clouds peeling away after a rainstorm. He had a compressed face that was wrinkled like that of an elderly man, and his eyes covered half of his face; they were a blackish soil-brown.
"Why is it revealing itself?" Sirius asked he quietly, grey eyes trained on the creature.
"I reckon they like chocolate quite a bit… Odd, I've never read that anywhere—it was just a guess," she shrugged. "I also did something unexpected."
"Why would that matter?" He asked.
"Demiguises see the nearby future. However, no future is concrete and it can always change, so what Demiguises really see are the most likely future. I strayed from that, though."
"Oh," he muttered, watching the Demiguise. As Franklin finished the chocolate, he looked at them with wide, glistening eyes. Then he looked back at the rucksack and jumped into a nearby tree, surely disappearing forever. "Damn it—do you want to follow him?"
Blanche's eyes watched the trees move as Franklin ran away, and that was enough for her. Sirius was here now, and she was much more interested in that. She kissed him again.
"No, I don't," she shook her head.