Beginnings: The Tests of Youth

by Typothetical

Of friendship and betrayal, of love and laughter, of war and growing up. The Marauders' story – from the very beginning. Canon-compliant.

40. 4-6 or 'Stupid Little Insults'

A/N: JK Rowling owns everything you recognize. I own nothing.

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Chapter 40 - 4.6 or "Stupid Little Insults"

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"But Professor," Sirius Black argued, seemingly immune to the irritated sighs of some of his classmates, "Jennings wrote that the red cap is most likely evolved from goblin ancestors, and even if Scamander didn't agree—"

Professor Idurus stood in the front of a classroom full of fourth-year Ravenclaws and Gryffindors, his hip leaning against his desk and—based on the expression on his face—his patience being tested. "Even if that's the case, Mr. Black, I don't see how that affects the methods which one must use to banish a red cap…"

"Of course it does," said Sirius, and those interested in the back and forth had turned in their seats to get a look at him as he debated the professor. The rest of the class had taken to idly doodling on their parchment or staring vaguely out the window. This was the third lesson in a row that had featured Sirius's and James Potter's sudden ardor for the subject of dark creatures, and while their questions and participation had certainly seemed to intrigue Professor Idurus for the most part, a number of the students had grown tired of the slow pace at which the lessons had started progressing.

Gin Leigh was not one of them. She found the in-depth discussion interesting, frankly, and supposed if nothing else, Sirius and James were indirectly helping them all learn the material far better than a textbook could.

Nevertheless, their behavior was odd. She couldn't deny that. The unexpected questions had started during a lecture in late October, when Sirius had asked so many questions regarding hinkypunk sleep cycles that Professor Idurus had been forced to postpone the start of their lesson on red caps until the following Tuesday. Gin, like many of her classmates, had expected some sort of strange, hinkypunk-related prank to follow, but none had. In that Tuesday's lesson, James Potter had raised his hand in the air more than in the entirety of his Hogwarts tenure, asking question after question about the varying charms one could use to banish a red cap.

"What are the two of you playing at?" Gin had heard Remus Lupin hiss toward them as they exited the classroom that day.

"And why won't you tell us what you're doing?" chirped Peter Pettigrew from just behind them.

"Nothing to worry your curious little heads about," James had responded with easy cheer.

"We've simply decided to take a greater interest in our coursework," offered Sirius with an uninterested shrug. "Nothing nefarious."

Nefarious or not, their greater interest had continued into the current lesson, which happened to fall on Halloween. The lesson had started with James inadvertently setting Idurus off on a tangent about his experience ridding a Muggle palace of an infestation of red caps, which had turned out to be a rather interesting story, and had devolved into a debate between Sirius and Idurus on theoretical banishing techniques.

"…because Jennings supposed if there is a distant genetic relation to goblins," Sirius was saying, "it could explain the imbalance between a red cap's physical magic—namely the magical protection in their skin—and their decided lack of magical talent. Now compare that to the latent theory that they're evolved from elves, say…"

It seemed the only thing that could put an end to the discourse was the sound of the bell, and when it reverberated throughout the classroom, several daydreaming students nearly fell out of their chairs.

"Hold on now, hold on," called Idurus over the sudden cacophony of pupils hurriedly packing away their things. He raised both palms in the air, and waited until everyone had settled back down for the most part before continuing. "For next lesson, please make sure to read ahead the chapter on grindylows. We're running a bit behind schedule, I'm afraid, but I'll bring along a specimen to observe."

As she made her way into the corridor for break, Gin could not help but notice the strangely satisfied look on both James and Sirius's faces and she wondered, again, what they were up to. She considered the possibility of asking Sirius about his sudden interest in creature-related academia the next time they met up, but thought better of it. The pair of them did very little talking these days, as it were, and anyhow, she supposed it was no business of hers.

After all, she was trying to keep her head down.

Keeping her head down had worked well enough for her all term, though she would not claim she had been immune to the whispers and snide comments that had been trailing after her ever since the train ride on the first of September. It hadn't surprised her, the bitter cattiness from the girls, nor the wolf-whistles from the boys. She hadn't expected, though, the sudden uptick in date overtures made by a few forward lads she had never had the merest conversation with previously. She had declined their offers without a second thought, uninterested and fighting down the uneasiness that told her they were only sniffing around because she had now garnered herself a reputation.

Well. She had stubbornly decided while curled up in her solitary compartment on the Hogwarts Express that she would not change her behavior based solely on what others thought of her. They could hiss and whoop and talk lurid rubbish about her until they ran out of insults…Gin Leigh knew what she was, and she was not a slag. No matter what the notes that kept appearing in her school bag said.

The notes were undoubtedly the work of one of the Slytherins, as she always unearthed them in the hours that followed Potions lessons. Despite the gulf that had developed between Gin and the other Gryffindor girls, she could not imagine one of them behaving so cruelly, nor so unoriginally. Anyway, every time she found a slip of parchment with those four thick letters sprawled across it, she chucked it in the bin and—like the whispers and giggles and sordid talk—refused to let the stupid notes bother her.

That afternoon, though, her restraint was tested. She had just taken her seat in the Herbology greenhouse when Professor Sprout assigned them all partners to repot Bouncing Bulbs. When Gin's and Lily's names were called together, Lily shared a brief look with Adin before relocating herself to Gin's table. Gin gave her a small smile, which was returned, albeit rather more tightly. Lily hadn't been outright cold to Gin ever since the incident on the train, for which Gin was grateful, if slightly confused. In fact, all of the other Gryffindor girls seemed perfectly content to ignore her presence when possible, Lily included.

That was all right by her, Gin had thought on more than one occasion over the prior two months. If the alternative was having to spill every secret, every desire, every detail of every escapade—if they wanted her to blab to the entire dorm every time she kissed a boy or broke a nail—she wasn't interested in them, either.

She had been perfectly content without friends before starting Hogwarts; there was no reason she should have to change her entire personality to accommodate friendships now.

"Keep a firm grip, Stebbins," came Professor Sprout's voice from across the greenhouse, and Gin glanced up from her work table just in time to see Elliott Stebbins lose his grip on his bulb, which proceeded to bounce wildly into the side of Raeanne Muller's head. A number of giggles rippled across the greenhouse by those who had witnessed the blunder, and were only exacerbated when Sprout added in an authoritarian tone, "Remember, all of you—a firm grip isn't just recommended, it's a necessity."

From the table next to theirs, Gin could have sworn she heard Otto Archmond whisper, "You tell 'em, Professor" to Karina Cotswold, who let out a stifled laugh. Nevertheless, Gin didn't dare glance their way.

"Stop a moment, Gin," said Lily, grabbing lightly at Gin's wrist to put a halt to her shoveling soil into their shared pot. She gestured toward the textbook that lay open on the table next to her. "It says to move the bulb and then to add the soil on top."

"Oh. Right." Gin's wrist was released and Lily went back to digging out the specified bulb. "Sorry."

Realizing that such a misstep was a rather good indication that she should reference her own textbook, Gin removed her dragon hide gloves and pulled her bag from the soil-sprinkled ground to unearth the necessary text. It took a moment to eradicate it from where it was lodged behind The Standard Book of Spells: Year Four, but eventually she found the correct page and peered down at the instructions. It was only after she had replaced her gloves and turned back to their pot that Lily's voice made her pause.

"What's that?"

With a dreadful sense of realization, Gin saw the small slip of parchment that must have emerged from her bag along with her book. For an awful moment, she thought perhaps it was one of the notes that Sirius liked to slip her, but then she looked more closely. The four letters glared up at the two of them, the ink dark and thick and the letters as useless as the many times she had seen them in the two months previously: S-L-A-G.

She made a grab for the parchment but Lily reached for it before she did, plucking up the obnoxious little note and staring at it as if it had contained a lengthy paragraph instead of its one bitter insult. A crease appeared between her brows. She looked up at Gin. "Was this in your bag?"

Gin considered denying it. Claiming it had just appeared randomly, perhaps had been left in the greenhouse by the class before theirs. But she realized the foolishness of such a statement before she could utter it, so instead she gave a disinterested shrug, swiped the paper from Lily's fingers, and tossed it back into her bag.

"Don't worry about it," she said evenly before moving her bag back to the ground and refocusing her attention on the Bouncing Bulb. She attempted to thoroughly ignore the other girl by concentrating solely on digging her hands back into the dried dirt to cup the bottom of the bulb, but Lily had not moved an inch.

"Gin—" For the second time in as many minutes, Lily reached out to put a stop to the movement of Gin's wrist. Her voice was strained. "Did someone leave that in your bag?"

"What does it matter?" Gin murmured, refusing to meet her eye. "I'll just bin it like always—"

"Like always?" said Lily, clearly appalled, and Gin realized her mistake at once. "Someone's left you notes like this before?"

"What does it matter?" Gin repeated, pulling her wrist from Lily's grasp and facing her gaze. "It's what everyone thinks, isn't it?" She swallowed hard, looked around, but their classmates were so focused on wrestling the stubborn bulbs into their pots that no one else was paying the pair of them any attention at all.

"I don't think that," said Lily at once.

With some force, Gin turned back to the table, dug her hands once again into the soil, and pulled the squirming bulb free with a mighty tug. "Don't you?"

"N-no." She could feel Lily's discomfort lingering in the space between them, but as Gin struggled to grip the wriggling bulb, Lily leaned over and secured it between their grasps. With a squelch from the bulb and a relieved sigh from Gin, they succeeded in transferring it into the larger pot. Several minutes of awkward silence passed while they worked to cover the relocated plant in more fertile soil, and Gin thought perhaps the subject had been thankfully dropped when Lily said, lowly and almost defiantly, "I don't think you're a slag."

Gin did not look at her. "Okay."

"And I don't think everyone thinks that."

"Well," Gin said after a beat during which she kept her grip firmly on the pot that seemed to be trying to hop frantically off the table, "I don't much care what people think. Particularly Slytherins that can't come up with a more creative insult."

"It's a Slytherin, then, doing it?" Lily asked, and then, as an aside almost to herself, "Of course it's a Slytherin."

"Well I usually find them after Potions and I don't think it's Professor Slughorn leaving them for me." Gin's voice was clipped in a way that surprised even herself.

Lily's gaze was knowing, and her tone metallic. "Which Slytherin?"

Gin hesitated. "I don't know, do I?"

"But you suspect."

She wasn't sure what terrible instinct allowed her to let her guard down at that moment. "Zelda Carmichael," she murmured. "She sits at the table behind me, anyway. Now, can we drop it Lily? Please?"

They met one another's gazes securely, almost petulantly. "Sure," Lily answered, but before Gin had a chance to determine the answer's merit, the pot that they had meticulously packed between them plunged itself fully off the dirt-strewn table and shattered on the mottled stone of the greenhouse floor.

"Well…" Lily muttered with a resigned sigh as Professor Sprout started toward them, no doubt in admonishment. "…shit."

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Much to her consternation, the conversation with Lily seemed to unmoor Gin from whatever stubborn rope had tethered her to some sense of stability throughout the term, and she found herself at the Halloween feast that evening, horrified by her own emotions. She had managed a spot next to Raeanne and Goomer. The pair had never been anything but decent to her, though they also never went out of their way to engage her in much conversation, and she picked at her food silently as she listened to them discuss the recently released summer tour dates for the band The Unforgivables.

"…but they're playing London on the 29th and it's perfect, just perfect, if we can convince our parents to let us stay in the city before catching the train on the first."

"You think your parents are the better option to write to first, or mine?" asked Goomer, pausing through a mouthful of chicken to think it over. "Only my mum would probably be more keen if we're staying with Dennis—"

"Yes, yes, because your mum loves Dennis, always has, and I'm just dying to see his new flat. Maybe we can convince your mum by letting her be the one to drop us in London…"

Gin shifted her attention away from the conversation. Something about the ease with which Raeanne and Goomer spoke to one another, their intimate knowledge of one another's families and lives outside of Hogwarts, always stirred something in her that she wasn't prepared to examine at the moment.

To her left, a group of seventh years was discussing something to do with Quidditch, and Gin tuned them out by focusing on her steak and kidney pie until Jeremiah Peakes's boisterous voice caught her attention.

"—I tell you, Potter said he and Black have sussed it out!"

"I don't believe it," replied one of the other boys, spearing a roasted potato onto his fork and then pointing it accusingly at Peakes. "Fourth years! They're trying to weasel into the late-night bits of the Quidditch parties or I'll eat my broomstick."

Peakes scoffed. "Who gives a toss if fourth years are there if it means McGonagall won't show up at ten o'clock to send us all to bed and vanish our firewhisky to boot?"

"I say we let any fourth year in that wants to be there if it means we beat Slytherin this weekend," chimed in a different boy from the other side of the table.

"Especially since there's no threat of McGonagall finding out and having our balls," said Peakes.

"You're still just sore about the time she put an end to the victory party right as you were about to sneak Penny Greengrass up the boys' staircase," laughed the first friend through bits of potato.

"A missed chance I lament to this day. Though not as much as you lament getting sick all over Didina Murphy's shoes after the Ravenclaw match last year…"

Gin did not want to listen anymore, and fought to turn her focus back to her own meal and not to any specific conversation surrounding her. It wasn't so much what anyone was saying as the joy so manifest in the act of conversing itself. The laughter, the understanding, the connection, the friendship—the Great Hall was alight with it all. Glancing up at the staff table, she noted that even Professor Dumbledore seemed enthralled in conversation with Professor Lumpkin, chuckling as he sipped lightly at his goblet.

With a terrible arresting sadness, Gin realized in that moment that she was lonely.

Perhaps she had been since the start of term and she had simply been too stubborn to acknowledge it, or perhaps it was her conversation with Lily that afternoon that had for some reason dislodged this mutinous feeling from the depths of her tamped down emotions, but her own isolation—particularly in the midst of a thousand chattering students—suddenly seemed to swallow her.

Any appetite now thoroughly vanquished, she put her fork on her plate and turned her gaze to the sky. The brightness of the moon—full if she recalled her star chart correctly—was obscured, white light made murky by the eddying clouds. She breathed deeply, sucking a cool stream of air through pursed lips, and fought steadily against this new, mortifying personal revelation. She barely noticed when the puddings appeared. Perhaps the staff had learned its lesson, as there were no dancing skeletons this year, nor any other notable entertainment. When the topic of chatter around her turned toward the events of the previous Halloween, she recalled the camaraderie she had felt with the other Gryffindor girls during the food fight and ensuing prank on the boys, and had to work solely on extinguishing her own emotional firestorm.

Her efforts succeeded well enough as the feast concluded and the students surged toward the entrance hall, sated with sweets and the joyous festivities. She was even able to block it all out as she got ready for bed that night, thinking with distinct relief as she pulled the curtains around her four-poster closed that perhaps all she needed was a good night's sleep to shake her from this strange onslaught of emotion.

She was wrong. She barely slept that night, choosing in the wee hours of the morning to descend the spiral staircase into the common room to try to distract herself with a novel, but even Charles Dickens failed to hold her attention. After an hour or so, she found herself curled up on her favorite window seat, half-hidden behind a stone bust of Godric Gryffindor, watching as a hoary frost formed on the tower windows, its tendrils thickening and snaking outward as dawn approached.

The mood did not leave her the following morning, and she discovered herself feeling suddenly rather hopeless. She had never minded solitude before, had craved it more often than not, in fact. But apparently now when the friendliest interactions she'd had all term were the lustful advances of the boy she would sneak off to kiss every so often, her general contentedness had failed her. And she wasn't sure what to do about it.

The frost that had descended upon the castle had not let up, and Gin pulled her cloak up over her chin as she trudged down to her Care of Magical Creatures lesson on Friday. While the lessons were usually held near the various creature enclosures and paddocks alongside the far bank of the lake, there was a barn-like classroom that Professor Kettleburn deigned to use when the weather was too poor for outdoor tutorials. With some relief, Gin noticed the door to the classroom was ajar, and she tapped the icy frost off her shoes as she entered the warmth of the little wooden structure.

The class was an almost equal mix of the houses, and each of the Gryffindors, Slytherins, Ravenclaws, and Hufflepuffs who arrived after her seemed equally as grateful to take their seats sheltered from the elements that afternoon. Unfortunately, Professor Kettleburn had different ideas.

"Come, come," he said brusquely to them all as he limped into the makeshift classroom a moment after the bell rang. "Cloaks on, now. We've a practical lesson today!"

"In this cold?" said Zelda Carmichael with the air of someone who had not attended a school in northern Scotland for more than three years.

"Cold?" Professor Kettleburn retorted, beckoning them all on. "What cold? It hasn't even started snowing properly, my girl. Leave your bags, just take your warm things. I've a great surprise for you all today!"

There was nothing of it. A fair bit of mutinous muttering could be heard as they all refastened their cloaks and pulled their hats down over their ears. At least they wouldn't be trudging through knee-deep snow, Gin thought morosely as she followed Lily and Emily Cagle back out into the cold. She ducked her head against the wind, looking up only when they had started to skirt the curve of the lakeshore and Lily's voice rang out.

"Professor? I've forgotten my mittens in my bag. Can I run back to grab them, please?"

"Swift footed, Miss Evans," answered Kettleburn, who, alas, limped along on one good foot. "Catch us up quickly, you won't want to miss this."

Lily dashed back toward the classroom, and only reappeared once the class had made it to the edge of the forest where, tethered to a creaky pine, stood a unicorn foal, pure gold and shining beacon-bright in the dreary morning cold.

"Didn't want to bring her too far from her mother," Kettleburn told them, as much of the class let out excited murmurs. "She's only a few months old, far as I can tell. Go on, now, one at a time and you can give her some sugar cubes. She'll thank you for it."

Five minutes later, as Gin stepped forward and took her turn to allow the unicorn to nuzzle free a sugar cube from her open palm, she felt a surge of genuine glee the likes of which she hadn't felt in some time. Her moment of happiness was short-lived, though, as the next second a low voice from the congregated class reached her ears.

"You know what they say about unicorns," came Evan Rosier's smooth drawl from somewhere behind her. "Guess Black hasn't gotten it in yet, eh?"

There was a rumble of tittering laughter from their classmates, but Gin gritted her teeth and refused to turn around or acknowledge that she had even heard the barb. (Professor Kettleburn, who was standing on the other side of the foal and who many years prior had lost an ear to an erumpent explosion, certainly didn't hear it either.) Keeping her gaze on the fuzzy maw of the unicorn as it nudged into her hand for a second sugar cube, Gin allowed the gentle beauty of the foal to serve as an apt tonic to her doleful mood. After all, it was not as if Rosier's joke was dissimilar to the many she had heard before.

It was only after she had returned to her place in the group, chin high and face impassive, that she noticed Evan Rosier clawing at his own tongue and garnering a bit of attention from the students around him.

"Nggghh," he said, seemingly trying to work his jaw free in a rather undignified manner. "Nyhnnng!"

Apparently, somebody had jinxed the boy's tongue to stick to the roof of his own mouth.

Gin did not laugh, or react in any noticeable way. In fact, she kept her stubborn gaze locked on the unicorn foal even as Kettleburn finally noticed the disruption and sent Rosier off to the hospital wing to get his tongue unglued. She did not meet anyone's eye, nor speak to a single one of her classmates until an hour later when she took her seat in the Potions dungeon.

"Is it true?" asked Mary, who had resigned herself to sharing a brewing table with Gin that term but very rarely spoke to her. "Lily said you got to study a baby unicorn today with Kettleburn?"

Surprised, Gin could not help but return the other girl's timid smile, remembering the tickling of the foal's breath as it grazed her hand. "We got to feed her and everything. She was beautiful."

"I always knew I should've taken Care of Magical Creatures instead of Divination," sighed Mary, turning her attention back toward flattening out her thick roll of notes. Apparently that was all she had to say on the matter, but Gin didn't press it. It was more than Mary usually said to her during lessons these days, anyhow.

Madam Pomfrey had evidently been able to sort out Evan Rosier, for the Slytherin slid through the door of the dungeon and took his seat in conjunction with the bell. Gin watched him for a beat, but the boy looked as haughty and unaffected as he always did. Apparently, having his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth in the middle of Care of Magical Creatures was not embarrassing enough to take Evan Rosier down a notch.

As Professor Slughorn began his lecture, Gin attempted to keep her mind from wandering, but Potions never seemed to capture her attention a great deal.

"…a tricky concoction to brew. We've studied the ample ways one can modify a Pepperup Potion, as I'm sure you all remember, but brewing from scratch takes a steadier hand…"

What had she ever done to Evan Rosier, anyway, to make him say nasty things about her? She wondered briefly who had cast the jinx upon him, but refused to dwell on it. Someone was just having a laugh, undoubtedly. It seemed the kind of thing that Sirius or James would do, though neither of them took Care of Magical Creatures…

"…to affect the steam emitting from the drinker's ears. It may seem counterintuitive, now, but it's an important component of the potion's healing powers…"

She spun her quill between her fingers, her thoughts drifting to the upcoming weekend. There would be a Quidditch match the following day. Gryffindor versus Slytherin. It seemed all anyone could talk about. She hadn't decided whether or not she cared to attend. Perhaps if the weather turned a bit warmer, she supposed.

Slughorn was still droning on, and Gin forced herself to try and pay attention. "…sure to add the fluxweed only after the flame has been reduced, otherwise you'll end up with a potion too thick for the standard head cold—"

And then, suddenly, a great, high-pitched shriek came from somewhere behind Gin, and Slughorn was obliged to stop talking at once as the class, as a whole, looked wildly around to discover its source. Steadying herself—for she had nearly toppled off her stool in surprise at the cry—Gin swiveled around to look directly at the table behind her. Zelda Carmichael sat stock-still, gripping her quill as though trying to pulverize it in her hand, her face, hair and robes covered in an array of splattered black ink spots. After a moment of curious silence, she dropped the quill as if burned, pulled her hands up to inspect the ink stains on them and gave a funny little whimper of disgrace. Next to her, Lelita Aubrey slid her stool over as if to distance herself from the inky mess.

"Miss Carmichael!" Slughorn called, moving around the front row to approach the table. It was only when Gin ducked out of the way to avoid getting hit by his great protruding belly that she noticed the very familiar scrap of parchment on Carmichael's table—embellished with four very familiar letters—that its author had the sense of mind to sweep into her pocket at once. "What in—did you have a mishap with your ink pot my dear?"

"N-no, Professor!" The girl seemed to be trying in vain to rub the ink off of her face with her similarly splotched fingers. "It was my quill…someone must have jinxed it!"

"Well, I…I mean to say, I'm not sure who would do such a thing, but allow me…" Slughorn pulled his wand from the depths of his robes and gave it a dramatic flourish. "Evanesco!" The class watched expectantly as…absolutely nothing happened. Carmichael's skin, hair, and robes remained splattered with ink.

Frowning slightly, Slughorn rubbed at his balding pate in an embarrassed sort of way, seemed to gather himself, and tried again. "Scourgify!"

Again, the ink spots did not vanish, but from her position behind Slughorn's outstretched arm, Gin noticed that they did seem to be mutating, from shapeless flecks across the girl's skin to what appeared to be…letters.

Slughorn seemed to be noticing the tiny transformations as well, because the hand atop his head froze in its ministrations and he said loudly, "Oh! Well!" and then moved forward more as if to block her from view of the rest of her curious classmates. "Hospital wing, Miss Carmichael! Er, right away, I'd say. Yes, yes, no time to wait."

There was now snickering from those with the most unobstructed view—Wilkes and Mulciber at the table next to hers—and as Zelda Carmichael was ushered from her chair by Slughorn, Gin was able to catch a glimpse of a few of the letters now staining her face: S-L-A…

"Sally on now, my dear," Slughorn said, patting the girl awkwardly on the shoulder as she made toward the door, her pouty features flushed with mortification. He seemed to be thoroughly out of his element. "A cheeky jinx on that quill, to be sure. Best if you just bin it, I imagine. Miss Aubrey will bring your things along…"

He continued attempting to block the view of her until she reached the corridor, and after eventually closing the dungeon door and returning to his spot at the front of the room, Slughorn still looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Right, yes, as I was saying, the fluxweed reduction…er, flame reduction, that is…"

The murmurs and giggles and perplexed whispers from the rest of the class continued hissing around the classroom throughout the remainder of his lecture, and it was with obvious impatience that he turned the class over ten minutes later to start on their brews.

"Did you see what the letters said?" Mary whispered to Gin as the pair of them worked on chopping their daisy roots. "All I could see was an A and a G…"

"I didn't see either," Gin mumbled, though, of course, this was not entirely the truth. Throughout the rest of the lesson, her eyes continued to flicker up to the front of the dungeon, where Lily worked seamlessly at her cauldron, and Gin did not fail to notice the self-satisfied smirk on the other girl's face.

After the bell rang to signal the end of the lesson, Gin took her time cleaning her cauldron and tidying up her workspace, lingering behind the majority of her classmates as they exited the room. She felt unsettled and wanted nothing more than to ignore any thoughts of Zelda Carmichael, her rude little notes, or really anything having to do with the word 'slag.'

But that wish was not meant to be.

As she turned the corner toward the staircase that would lead her out of the dungeons, she found her path suddenly blocked by none other than Zelda Carmichael herself. Lelita Aubrey loitered on the step above her with her arms crossed like some kind of hired muscle, and Darlene Burke looked faintly curious as she leaned casually against the banister.

"You bitch," Carmichael spat. She stood on the steps, her skin and hair now entirely free of any ink spots, and glared down with what Gin supposed was her fiercest scowl. It was not particularly intimidating, but Gin had no interest in a hallway altercation with anyone, much less a trio of Slytherin girls.

"Can you move?" Gin said in a disinterested tone. "You're blocking the stairs."

"You're joking, right?" Carmichael stepped off the bottom step now so that they were eye-to-eye, though she still impeded Gin's path. "That's all you have to say to me after your clever little prank?"

Gin met her gaze. "I haven't got anything to say to you at all. And it wasn't my prank, incidentally."

"Of course it was," scoffed Carmichael with a haughty toss of her hair. "You probably got it directly from Black's playbook of stupid schoolyard jokes. Who else would go out of their way to—"

"Guilty conscience, Carmichael?" said someone from behind Gin. She turned to find Lily and—surprisingly—Adin emerging from the Potions corridor. The confident look on the former's face confirmed all of Gin's previous suspicions about Lily's role in all of this. "Why else would you be accusing Gin of such a thing, hmm?"

The Slytherin seemed to be putting two and two together, and when comprehension dawned it was evident on her face. "You." She hurled the word at Lily as if it were an indignity. "Of course it was you, Evans. How dare you call me a—"

"I didn't call you a thing," Lily cut in. "Seems to me that your quill might have been jinxed with some sort of reflexive charm, so that the ink mirrored whatever you had been writing just previously. Too bad for you that you weren't taking diligent notes today, I suppose."

Carmichael gaped at her, pouty lips opening and closing several times before she came up with an affronted response. "I'll tell Slughorn," she said. "I'll tell him it was you that jinxed my quill!"

Lily simply quirked her head, and Gin had to admire how utterly relaxed she looked. "I only recognized the jinx, it doesn't mean I'm the one that cast it. Maybe you need to stop accusing people of things you clearly have no idea about."

"Speaking of," said Adin, with an excited lilt to her voice that generally foretold gossip. "I have it on good authority that you and Orson Rowle were caught by Filch just last week snogging in an empty classroom on the third floor. Hadn't you and Avery just broken up the week before, Zelda? Seems a bit rich for you to be calling anyone a slag."

Carmichael's jaw fell open, even as her eyes narrowed at the trio of Gryffindors. Gin looked back and forth between them, feeling suddenly exhausted by the theatrics of it all. She had barely spoken to Lily or Adin all term, and yet here they were, coming to her defense in the middle of the corridor against accusations that Gin had decidedly little interest in.

"You take that back," cried Lelita Aubrey in an overly dramatic voice, fishing her wand out of her pocket and brandishing it at them all, but she was not a very imposing figure, and none of Adin, Lily or Gin moved toward their own wands in the slightest.

Darlene Burke seemed entirely unimpressed with the ordeal and rolled her eyes as she moved to push Aubrey's wand arm back down. "Let's go," she told her friends, the authoritarian coolness of her voice laced with something like vague amusement. "We're not going to duel them like a bunch of boorish boys. Come on, Zelda."

And when Burke turned on her heel and climbed the staircase without another glance at any of them, both Carmichael and Aubrey—shooting final, venomous glares at the Gryffindors—followed without argument. Feeling desperately awkward, Gin turned to the two girls she now found herself alone with. They were watching her expectantly.

"There was no need for you to do all that," she said to them.

Lily's expression betrayed nothing but disbelief. "Yes," she said slowly, "there was." When Gin said nothing in response, Lily added, "But I shouldn't have had to."

"And Rosier?" Gin asked, knowing the answer already.

"Somebody had to shut that wanker up," Lily said. "Why won't you defend yourself, Gin?"

Emotion—terrible, piercing emotion—welled up within Gin at the question, at the idea that these girls were maybe, maybe on her side after all, at the suffocating loneliness she had been catapulted into and at the abrupt clarity that told her it was all so brutally unnecessary.

Suddenly mortified by the entire situation, she looked at the flagstone pattern of the ground when she muttered a quick, "Thanks. I just… Well, thanks."

And without once looking back at the two roommates who had come to her defense, she hurried up the stairs, wanting nothing more than blessed solitude to regain her even keel.

---

Gin did not face the other girls for the rest of the evening, nabbing a quick supper in the kitchens and then hiding herself securely behind her bed curtains until the following day when she decided, with a small pang of apprehension, to attend the Quidditch match.

The day had bloomed dazzlingly bright, with crisp sunshine that melted away any remnants of frost from the grounds by lunchtime. Not entirely certain of her decision to once again ensconce herself in a crowd of happy, chattering students, Gin opted at the last minute to bring a book to the pitch with her. Her mother had gifted her The Count of Monte Cristo for her birthday in September and in a fit of unexamined bitterness, Gin had not yet started it. But Dickens had lost his luster for her as of late, and she supposed she simply wanted the comfort of a paperback in which to bury her nose, if things in the stadium became too much for her.

Nevertheless, she soon found herself sitting in the Gryffindor stands as the red and green-clad Quidditch teams trotted out onto the pitch. She had found a nice spot between a group of second years and an empty seat that allowed her extra room to maneuver, and she was thinking idly that perhaps the delicious sunshine would be the balm to her recent woes when she realized that there seemed to be some sort of disturbance down on the pitch. She squinted, trying to get a better look at what had caused the obvious frustration and smattered boos that had started emanating from the Gryffindor supporters around her.

It appeared that the pair of Captains were embroiled in a heated argument with Madam Hooch. James Potter was also there, one hand gripping his broomstick while the other gestured wildly toward the assembled Slytherin team.

"First match of the season and Slytherin's already causing trouble," came the magically magnified voice of Davey Gudgeon from the commentator's box. "Seems they've made some changes to their line-up without registering them ahead of the match. Unsporting, one might call it. Another might call it proper cheating—"

At this announcement, the clamor of enraged shouting from the Gryffindors drowned out Davey's next words. Gin was trying to get a closer view of the action on the pitch—both the Gryffindor Captain Walker and Potter looked about ready to start throwing hexes or, perhaps, punches at Slytherin Captain Lestrange—when she felt a tap on the shoulder. Looking up, she found a freckly blond boy with rose-flushed cheeks standing awkwardly along the stairs.

"Mind if I sit here?" he asked her, indicating the empty seat next to her. "Only my mates were one short a few rows down and I lost the wager." He gestured to a group of rowdy fifth years in the stands below them, all of whom were booing the action on the pitch.

Gin shrugged and nodded, tucking in her elbows to allow him more room, slightly disappointed to have to cede her extra space.

"—appears as if Madam Hooch is allowing it," Davey was saying. "Injury to one of their Chasers, Lestrange is arguing, and the rulebooks don't prevent pre-match substitutions due to injury. Still a slimy, underhanded tactic, but what more can we expect from the Snakes, eh?"

The boos were coming from all sides now, as the Slytherin supporters very clearly didn't appreciate being disparaged and the Gryffindors all seemed to agree that the last minute substitution shouldn't be allowed. Down on the pitch, Madam Hooch had somehow restored a semblance of order, and the teams were mounting their brooms, preparing for the toss.

"—Adamsly, O'Shea, Walker, Potter, and new Chaser Raeanne Muller," Davey recited. Gin craned her neck to get a look at where Raeanne stood, her grip tight on her broomstick, her expression one of forced calmness. With a guilty lurch of her gut, Gin realized that she probably should have wished her roommate good luck before her first match, at the very least. "—seems as if with the injury—and I use that term in the loosest sense—to Nott, Captain Rabastan Lestrange has shifted over to play Chaser, with third-year Regulus Black filling in as Seeker."

With a shrill holler of Madam Hooch's whistle and a toss of the Quaffle, the match began. Instead of following the arc and subsequent capture of the Quaffle, however, Gin's gaze turned toward the slight, dark-haired figure who had moved to circle above the pitch like a bird of prey. She had never given much thought before to Regulus Black. Sirius never spoke of him, really. He looked very much like his brother, and though she didn't know enough about Quidditch to be an apt judge of skill, his flying seemed effortless, his broomstick looping with ease around a streaking Bludger. With a flicker of anxious curiosity, Gin turned to peer around the Gryffindor stands. Sirius was sitting in the top row next to an exhausted-looking Remus Lupin. His mouth was drawn in a tight line and his eyes, too, seemed to be fixed above the main action on the pitch. She stared at him for a lingering moment, before an excited crescendo in Davey's commentary pulled her attention back around.

"—Muller dropping down to switch Potter out…Walker lobs it to Muller who feigns it back before slipping to Potter…Potter's only got the Slytherin Keeper to beat…Potter shoots left…Potter scores! Masterful play by the set of Gryffindor Chasers, and we're ten-nil Lions…"

It was only when the fervor of shouting and applause quieted that Gin realized the blond boy next to her was talking, and as there was no one seated to his other side, she could only assume he was talking to her.

"Not sure what all the pre-match fuss was about. Lestrange is a bloody good Seeker. Him moving over to Chaser has got to be a good thing for Gryffindor, I'd imagine."

Gin had no response to this. For one, she had never met this boy before, but more importantly, her knowledge of Rabastan Lestrange's Quidditch skills was nonexistent. "Oh," she said. "Right, yeah."

The boy looked at her, flushed red, and then turned his attention back to the pitch.

"…nice Beater work there from Adamsly to prevent Bole from scoring," Gudgeon was saying, and Gin tried to refocus on the match. "Gryffindor back in possession as Potter leads the formation, drops the Quaffle back to Walker—oof, tough Bludger there from Slytherin Beater Wilkes, and Lestrange grabs the Quaffle, only one man to beat, Lestrange shoots…Lestrange scores! Damn. And we're all tied up. Looks like we may be in for a long one, folks…"

He wasn't wrong. After an hour, the score was 90-50 Gryffindor, with no sign of the Snitch. Growing restless, Gin pulled her book out of her pocket and cracked it open. She had only made it to page two, though, when she felt another light tap on the shoulder.

"Sorry," said the blond boy next to her. "I asked if you like Dumas?"

It took her a moment to understand what he was asking her, but then he gestured toward the book in her lap and raised his eyebrows, clearly awaiting an answer from her.

"Oh!" There was a great roar of cheers from the crimson-clad fans surrounding her as James Potter scored another goal. "I'm not sure yet. I'm only just starting it."

The boy did not seem to notice that he had missed an exciting moment on the pitch, as he kept his eyes entirely on her and smiled a rather endearing smile. "I read The Three Musketeers last summer. It was wonderful."

"Really?" In Gin's three years at Hogwarts, she had found no one who showed much interest in literature. Only Mary enjoyed reading Muggle books, but Mary's tastes leaned almost entirely toward romance, which Gin was not particularly keen on.

"It took me a while," admitted the boy with a bit of a guilty grimace. "It's long as sin, but it was worth it. Though not nearly as long as Monte Cristo, by the looks of it."

"That's…" Gin paused. She wasn't sure what to say in response to this abrupt conversation. "…good to know," she finished lamely.

The boy either didn't pick up on her awkwardness or didn't care, as he plowed conversationally ahead, undeterred. "But I've heard that Monte Cristo's supposed to be even better. You'll have to let me know what you think."

"Right," said Gin. "Okay, I will."

"I'm Sturgis, by the way. Sturgis Podmore."

"Gin Leigh."

"Sorry," he said again, and for the first time since he had tapped her on the shoulder, he glanced back out toward the pitch for a second before turning back to her. He was still smiling, though the blush beneath his freckles was so fierce he looked as if he had a sunburn. "I'm distracting you from your book. I'll leave you alone, now."

Gin offered him a small smile in return, relieved that he had given her permission to escape the conversation by means of Dumas. "All right," she told him. "I'll, er, let you know what I think when I'm finished."

And though Sturgis Podmore was true to his word and didn't speak to her again, Gin found it difficult suddenly to concentrate on the novel. He had been perfectly nice, and she had barely said anything to him at all. She wondered desperately if she had been inadvertently rude to the boy; her mother always told her she should try to be a friendlier conversationalist after all. And then her thoughts turned back to the confrontation in the corridor after Potions the previous day; should she have said more to Lily and Adin? Should she have apologized? Should she have been more outwardly grateful?

The answer, she realized with a dull thud of regret, was yes. She should have tried harder with them, should have provided a more meaningful thank you, just as she should have thought to wish Raeanne Muller good luck before her first Quidditch match.

Thoroughly sobered by these realizations, her discomfited thoughts were interrupted by a growing roar of the crowd and Davey Gudgeon's excited cries, which could only mean one thing…

"…O'Shea and Black, hurdling toward the Snitch—Black's got the angle—come on, Susanna!—Black dives as the Snitch drops closer…he's in the lead now with O'Shea on his tail—go, Susanna, go!—he'll get there first barring a—YES! YES! Black swerves to avoid a perfectly aimed Bludger from Peakes and O'Shea's got a clear path and—Yes! O'Shea's got the Snitch! Ha! Take that, you cheating snakes! Gryffindor wins 250-50!"

Jubilant shouting, stamping feet, whooping cries of admiration for the Gryffindor Quidditch team now swallowed the stands, and Gin stood and clapped along with the rest of her housemates, feeling uncharacteristically pleased by the outcome of the match. Sturgis Podmore was saying something to her, but she couldn't hear him properly over the din, so she simply smiled at him, and then with a niggling curiosity she once again turned to look back at the top row of the stands. Peter Pettigrew was bouncing up and down with abandon, and even a bedraggled Remus Lupin had cupped his hands around his mouth to amplify his celebratory cheers toward the pitch. Next to him, Sirius stood clapping heartily, but there was no smile on his face, and his gaze seemed focused not on the flying red mass made up of the reveling Gryffindor team, but on the slight figure of the Slytherin Seeker as he disembarked onto the pitch.

Gin watched him, not knowing entirely why her eyes were drawn to him, but as the gleeful sounds of the crowd started quieting again, she turned back toward Sturgis, who was once again talking to her over the noise.

"Well, I suppose this means there's going to be a party," he said, rocking backward on his heels in a slightly clumsy manner. "And from what I'm hearing, it's going to be a good one."

---

Gryffindors, it could be said, knew how to throw a party.

Gin had spent the rest of the afternoon in the library, avoiding some of the festivities and trying to make headway on a particularly nasty Transfiguration assignment. She had been struggling with the subject of late, and was a bit dejected at how little progress she had actually made when she climbed through the portrait hole late that evening and discovered the celebration—perhaps better described as a bacchanal—still raging.

The first thing that struck her was not the explosion of red and gold confetti that seemed to have taken place, but the music. Someone had donated a record player to the cause, and Gin was surprised to hear a familiar Bad Company song reverberating throughout the common room. In her experience, music at Hogwarts was fairly restricted to wizarding bands, and magical record players didn't often accommodate Muggle albums. The song selection, however, didn't seem to be offending anyone; on the contrary, a cadre of girls had evidently designated a space in front of the boys' staircase as a makeshift dance floor, and could be seen swaying and twisting to the beat.

Her eyes were drawn toward a rowdy group in front of the fire, who were clearly playing some variant on Exploding Snap, though it seemed to involve downing bottles of brown ale in one go. As she watched, Jeremiah Peakes cracked open a bottle, stood in the middle of the group, and proceeded to finish the entire bottle in approximately five seconds as the crowd around him chanted "Peakes! Peakes! Peakes!" Upon draining it, Peakes threw the empty bottle into the fire and roared, "Fuck the Snakes!" with his arms in the air triumphantly, much to the delight of his adoring fans.

A long table had been set up near the windows, groaning under the weight of the Hogwarts kitchen's finest sweets, along with a massive bowl of something that resembled punch. Gin made toward it, and plucked up an empty cup from the display, fully intending to ladle out a sizable portion of what on closer inspection she could now deduce was pumpkin juice.

"Fair warning," said an abrupt voice from behind her. She turned to find Sirius indicating the bowl on the table with a half-full cup of his own. "Peakes has poured more than one bottle of firewhisky into that juice and, well, it packs a punch."

"Thanks for the warning," she said, putting the cup back down and plucking up a much more dependable bottle of butterbeer instead. She and Karina had tried their hands at drinking Muggle beer over the summer, and while at first it was a thrill, Gin blamed one particular evening of sipping lager for the absolute lapse in judgment that led her to confiding in Karina about Sirius. She had no interest in partaking in such a loss of control again any time soon.

"Let me guess," he said, eyeing the bag that was still slung across her shoulders, "you've been off somewhere…reading."

"In the library," she told him, popping the cap off her butterbeer and taking a grateful sip before selecting a toffee bar from a nearby plate.

He gestured toward the room at large. "There's a party going on, you know."

"So I gathered."

"And yet you've spent the afternoon with your nose in a book."

"Yes, well, maybe I like the smell."

He grinned at her then, clearly amused. "I could have used your help, is all," he said, tilting his head toward the array on the table, "with the food."

She took a nibble of her toffee bar before responding. "I imagine you were able to find some willing assistance."

"Willing? Sure. You could say one of Peter's most notable attributes is a consistent willingness to raid the kitchens." He paused. "But he doesn't have the, ah, other attributes I was looking for tonight."

She couldn't help but laugh at his forwardness, and a tiny trickle of regret pooled within her at the missed opportunity in the kitchens. There was a familiar glint of mischief in his eye, but his shoulders held a rigidness that reminded her distinctly of the way he had acted on the train at the start of term. Fleetingly, she wondered if it had to do with his brother.

"Well, it's probably for the best," she started, debating if she had the nerve to finish the sentence. And then, "I wouldn't want to corrupt the poor house elves."

"Wouldn't be the first time," he told her, raising his eyebrows, and she was reminded forcefully of the time he had kissed her in the Hogwarts kitchens during second year, of the hundred or so elves that had been on hand to potentially witness that stolen moment, and something like embarrassment climbed into her cheeks. The intensity of his gaze was disarming, and it didn't waver even as he took a sip of his drink. Luckily for her, she was saved having to respond by the sudden appearance of a rather buoyant James Potter at Sirius's side.

"Mate," James said, punching Sirius in the shoulder for no apparent reason whatsoever. The cup in his hand, Gin noticed, was nearly empty. "Mate, I think I've got it. The Peter thing! I think I've got a solution to the Peter thing. We can—"

Sirius, suddenly alert, cut him off with a sharp, "James!"

"What?" said James, but then Sirius gave him a look that Gin could only describe as significant, and James seemed to notice her presence meant something just then, and he said, "Oh! All right there, Gin? Actually…this is brilliant. You're a girl. You can help!"

"Er," said Gin, looking from one boy to the next in confusion. Sirius scratched at the back of his head in a distinctly uncomfortable way. "Help with what, exactly?"

"Peter!" James answered, as if it were obvious. Then he seemed to realize that he was speaking louder than necessary, and lowered his voice to a stage whisper. "Look, we're trying to boost Peter's confidence a bit. Because, well, because he's a good mate and all. You know…just want to help a friend out."

Gin still had no concept of how this could possibly involve her. "Okay?"

James didn't seem to register her confusion. "So I was thinking, we get a girl to, I dunno, talk to him. Dance with him. Chat him up. Wait—can a girl chat a bloke up? Well, you know what I mean. It's not like we're trying to get anyone to snog him or anything, though—"

"Wait," Gin cut in, suddenly disturbed. "Are you asking me to go over there and flirt with Peter?"

He frowned at her before her words caught up to him and he realized what the implication had been, then his eyes widened comically behind his glasses and he shot a panicked look toward Sirius before raising one pacifying palm. "No, Merlin, no…not you. That'd be awkward. I mean, can you imagine?" Gin could not, but he didn't give her any time to get a word in before continuing. "But you're a girl, so you could tell us…how do we, you know, do that?"

"How do you find a girl to go…help make Peter feel better about himself?"

"Exactly," James said with an emphatic nod, clearly pleased that he had expressed his plan in such a comprehensible way.

Gin glanced at Sirius, who seemed to be trying to bite back a laugh. "I haven't the faintest idea," she told them, taking another bite from her toffee bar. She looked around and after a moment spotted Peter Pettigrew sitting at a table in the far corner of the common room with Remus and Goomer.

"Really?" asked James, as though surprised by Gin's lack of knowledge on the subject.

"Er, no?" She shifted under his gaze, thinking of the number of girls in the school who would do just about anything that James or Sirius asked of them. It wasn't a particularly comforting thought, but still, she added, "I suppose you could just ask someone. Someone that's not…me?"

Nodding somberly as though she had just imparted sage wisdom upon him, James said, "Right then. Brilliant." And then he turned on his heel and walked away through the crowd.

"Sod it," said Sirius, craning his neck to get a view of where James was heading. "He's completely—well, I'd better go stop him before he makes an arse of himself. See you."

He didn't even glance back at her as he pushed his way after James, and Gin was left alone to wonder momentarily what exactly the two of them were up to before she gave herself a quick shake and a reminder not to care. Finishing her toffee bar, she proceeded to surreptitiously bolt down a second before navigating her way through the crowd to the girls' staircase to drop her bag in the dorm. A part of her longed to stay up there, away from the commotion, but with a determination to try harder, she descended the staircase once again, only briefly doubling back to snatch David Copperfield off her nightstand. She wasn't certain she'd be able to concentrate enough to give Dumas her full attention tonight, but she needed the safety of a novel in her hand and Dickens could certainly provide that, she reasoned.

On her way back across the common room toward her favorite window seat though, she noticed Raeanne at a nearby table laughing over something with Susanna O'Shea, and found herself veering toward the pair. It was decidedly unlike her, but that, she supposed, was the whole point.

"Hi," she said, when she arrived, and both girls looked up at her, surprised.

"Hi," said Raeanne, whose cheeks were flushed, and Gin wondered if it was caused by the general excitement of the day or by the contents of the cup she was holding.

"I, er, wanted to say that you were brilliant today," Gin told her, fidgeting with the paperback in her hands, but trying to keep her expression earnest. She looked at Susanna. "Well, both of you, actually. Really, really brilliant."

Susanna beamed. "Thanks!"

Raeanne was gazing at her with a curious glint in her eye. "Yeah…thanks Gin." She gestured at an empty chair next to them. "Do you want to join us?"

This, Gin had not anticipated and she made sure to smile at them when she shook her head. "Oh, no thanks. I think I'll find a window seat and try to read a bit. But…yeah, just wanted to say good match."

And with that, she made a hurried retreat from the girls at the table, but had only managed to round the refreshments assortment when Sturgis Podmore stepped directly into her path, smiling broadly.

"Did you finish Dumas already?" he asked, indicating the book grasped between her fingers. "You'll make me feel like a proper twit for telling you how long it took me to finish The Three Musketeers."

Gin gave him a sheepish smile and held up the cover of the book for him to see. "Decided to go back to Dickens for the evening. Didn't want to be distracted from Dumas by all of…" She paused, glancing around at where the group by the fire was now levitating shots of liquor into each other's mouths, and waved a hand toward the merriment. "…this."

"Right." Sturgis laughed, and he seemed so authentically tickled by her comment that she couldn't help but smile as well. "But Copperfield's rubbish. You've got to go with Great Expectations if you're going Dickens."

Gin tried not to gape, feeling thoroughly ignited by this boy's knowledge of Muggle books. "I like Great Expectations, too," she told him. "Really, any Dickens."

"Excellent," he said, and he took a swig from the bottle in his hand as though gathering himself for something. "Look, this might be forward and, well, I wouldn't normally…" He faded off, licked his lips and then plowed onward. "Do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me? Only, you're really, very pretty and also, well, we could go to the Muggle bookshop together if you'd want. None of my mates have any interest at all, so I barely ever go in there. Or we could just get a butterbeer together, I mean, if you'd want. Sorry. I'm rambling. I do that when I'm nervous." He bit his bottom lip as though to keep it from moving, his eyes hopeful.

Gin's immediate reaction was to say no, just as she had to the other boys who had asked her out in September. But Sturgis Podmore stood before her biting his lip, and a tiny little voice in her head reminded her, again, to "Try harder," and before she could really consider it, she found herself smiling back at him.

"There's a Muggle bookshop in the village?" she asked, in lieu of a response.

"Oh—yes. Only, well, I don't think many students go there much. It's behind the apothecary. Hard to see. You have to go down some steps to reach the entrance and all." He was still watching her with earnest anticipation even as he said all this.

"I…" She hesitated only briefly. "Yes, I'll go with you."

"Excellent," said Sturgis again, expelling a relieved breath in a matter Gin found distinctly endearing. "Really excell—"

"Oi! Podmore!"

Both of the pair jumped at the call and turned toward the group of Gryffindors by the fire. Barrett Merriweather was waving a bottle of something or other in the air and beckoning Sturgis toward him. "Your turn in Snap! Nobody's beaten Peakes all night…it's all on you mate!"

Sturgis gave him a wave of acknowledgement before turning back to Gin. "Right, well, best be off then. Er, see you round and, well, looking forward to it."

Gin stared after him, a bit dazed at the sudden dismissal and wondering what she had just agreed to. Their brief interactions had informed her that, while overly friendly, the boy was a bit odd.

Well, she could relate, she supposed.

As she approached her favorite window seat a moment later, however, she was stopped in her tracks by an unexpected and rather bizarre sight: the stone bust of Gryffindor, which half-hid the seat from the view of much of the common room, was currently sporting a pair of very fuzzy, very pink earmuffs. She looked around curiously, but no one else seemed to be paying any attention whatsoever to the strange sight. Upon closer inspection, she realized that she recognized the earmuffs as one of the pairs that pupils were forced to wear while dealing with mandrakes in Herbology.

With a confused shake of her head, she eventually made her way around the bust and to the window seat, and for the next hour or so, she stayed curled up and tried to focus on her book and not on the many strange thoughts gnawing at her consciousness. The seat offered her a decent vantage point of some of the melee, including the food table just to her left, but was out of the way enough that her presence was not so obvious as to attract any attention as the party raged around her. It really was an ideal location for someone who wanted to keep out of the way but who, for instance, didn't want to hide alone in her dormitory like a hermit.

There was only one problem.

"You know," he said from above her, startling Gin from the pages of her novel, "someone might think you're trying to hide, what with sitting all the way over here in the shadow of old Godric and all."

Sirius was back, patting the earmuff-adorned head of the stone bust fondly. For a moment, Gin was taken aback. This was the second time that night he had sought her out. They never spoke to each other this much and certainly not in full view of their classmates. But then she realized that she didn't care one way or another.

"Someone might be right," she replied, peering around the bust to watch as Davey Gudgeon and Andrew Adamsly stood on a rickety study table, loudly singing the Hogwarts school song, arms thrown around one another and bodies swaying drunkenly. She turned back to Sirius. "I'm hiding from James in the event he asks me for any more advice."

Sirius perched on the window seat next to Gin's feet and surveyed the party around them. "I think I succeeded in distracting him from that one for the moment." He nodded toward one of the couches where Gin spotted James sitting very close to Susanna O'Shea, hands gesturing as he talked animatedly to the girl. "Though after watching Peter sequester himself in the corner all night, I'm starting to think maybe James had the right idea." He paused and eyed Gin. "Er, no offense to those of you who prefer to sequester."

"So what was the real reason behind James's plan for Peter?" she asked him, curious as to if he would actually answer her. He was certainly acting differently than usual tonight.

"Just as he said," replied Sirius without hesitation. "Trying to be a good mate and all that."

"Hmm." Gin closed her book now and tucked it against her stomach. She didn't believe him, but knew enough not to press, so instead she steered toward levity. "I thought perhaps it was something to do with your sudden passion for learning about dark creatures—or whatever scheme you're playing at in Idurus's lessons."

This made Sirius chuckle. "That's it exactly. We're trying to get some girl to talk to Peter so that he gets a little more confident and becomes a world-renowned expert in magical creatures. Then he can smuggle us a dragon. Or a manticore. Or a—"

"Caipora?"

"Don't need Peter for that. Our expertise in handling caipora is unparalleled."

"Expertise? You know I heard there's still a caipora or two that hasn't been apprehended from last Halloween."

"And I'm sure I could have them rounded up quick as a quintaped, but dear Filch hasn't asked for my assistance, has he? Far too prideful, the old berk."

"Right, pride is what's keeping him from asking for your help," deadpanned Gin. Sirius was fishing around in his pocket for something and didn't respond. "Hasn't got anything to do with the fact that you spend your nights plotting ways to make his life miserable."

From the confines of his robes, Sirius extracted a packet of cigarettes and what appeared to be a silver Muggle lighter. "I spend my nights thinking about far more exciting things than Filch," he said distractedly, focus on deft fingers as they cracked open the window next to them. Gin stared as he went to light a cigarette before pausing as if he had just remembered something. "You don't mind, do you?"

Gin shook her head as he flicked the flame to life and inhaled deeply. It's not as if it surprised her; she had tasted the cigarettes on his lips since the start of term. And she didn't mind, truly, but still she glanced around the stone bust of Gryffindor and said with a touch of nervousness, "They're against the rules though, aren't they?"

"So? Meeting me in the trophy room after curfew's against the rules too, and that hasn't stopped you before." He was gazing at her with a curious intensity, as if trying to size her up or, perhaps, read her thoughts. Raising an eyebrow, he offered her the open packet of Silk Cuts. "Want one?"

"No," she said, the cigarettes reminding her again of the past summer and her nights in Corrington with Karina. She gestured around the statue toward the rest of the Gryffindors. "And when we've been in the trophy room so brazenly breaking the rules, there's not usually a host of Gryffindor prefects in the room with us."

"Bah," Sirius scoffed, exhaling a slip of smoke through his teeth. "Any prefect who'd put a stop to this disappeared to their dormitory after shooing the lower years out. Besides—" He inclined his head and seemed to bite back a laugh when the table that Davey and Andrew had been perched upon gave an almighty crack and crumpled to the ground, the two boys crashing atop of it in fits of laughter. "—well, there's a Gryffindor prefect for you. Does Adamsly look as if he's in any fit state to assign me detention?"

Gin could not help it. She laughed too. They both watched in companionable silence as Lily hurried over to pull Andrew from the splintered wreckage of the former table. Andrew, looking delighted to see his rescuer, threw an arm around her as Lily led him to back to a table she had been sharing with Adin. Lily looked vaguely concerned about the state of her boyfriend, but when Adin said something to the pair of them, she laughed as though against her better judgment. Gin was not sure why, but the sight of the three of them at that table held her gaze, and it was with something like longing that she observed them from afar.

When she eventually turned back to Sirius, it was to find that he had been watching her. He seemed thoroughly unembarrassed by this fact, and ashed his cigarette out the cracked window before saying, "Look, do you want to—"

"I knew it," interrupted a girl's voice, and Gin looked up to discover sixth-year Didina Murphy standing next to the Gryffindor bust, an unreadable smile on her lips as she spoke to Sirius. "Silk Cuts. You sussed out a way to get ciggies from the Hogsmeade paper shop, didn't you?"

"Hello, Murphy," Sirius greeted, his attention immediately pivoting away from Gin. "And who's to say I haven't had these in my trunk since summer?"

Gin wondered if Didina was aware of the way Sirius's entire demeanor had shifted upon her appearance, the way he tilted his head and then leaned toward her almost imperceptibly. As it was, Didina only raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"You were smoking Bensons on the train. The paper shop only carries Silk Cuts."

"Strange coincidence, that."

"How'd you get them?"

"Ask me no secrets and I'll tell you no lies, Murphy."

"Aging potion?"

Sirius only grinned at her and took a long drag. It was then that Didina seemed to notice Gin's presence, and her focus wavered. "Sorry," she said, though the sincerity of the statement was arguable. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Just my evening smoke," Sirius told her easily. "Not to say it's unwelcome."

Didina just looked between the two of them and then offered Gin a slight smile. "I'm Didina, by the way."

"I'm Gin," she responded, nodding at the other girl and slightly surprised by the cordiality of the unnecessary introduction. Everyone knew Didina Murphy. She was impossible not to notice, though Gin had never spoken with the girl before.

"Right. Pleasure." Now she held out a delicate palm to Sirius. "Bum me one, then, Black?"

Sirius just grinned at her, clearly assessing the situation, and Gin could almost see the wheels turning in his head. "Just the one? I'd say this is getting to be routine, Murphy."

"Oh come on, Sirius," she said, and it did not pass Gin's notice the way she switched to his first name, nor the way she coyly pulled at her bottom lip with her teeth. "I'd owe you one."

Gin expected Sirius to cave immediately. She did not suppose many boys would say no to Didina Murphy when she was looking at them like that, after all. But Sirius just took another drag before turning to meet Gin's gaze, his grin now taking on a more mischievous slant, his eyebrow arching at her as though asking her a silent question which Gin could not quite decipher, and so she just looked back at him feeling like she was missing something entirely.

After a thoughtful beat, he said to Didina, "Actually, I have a proposition."

"Oh?"

He plucked up the packet of Silk Cuts and gave it a light—and somewhat taunting—shake. "And if you're amenable, the rest of this packet is yours."

Didina eyed him suspiciously. "And what's the catch?"

"No catch," Sirius said. He leaned out from the window seat to gesture toward the table on the far side of the common room, where Peter and Remus still sat, spectators lurking on the periphery of a party they were not yet comfortable enough to participate in. "See my mate over there? Peter?"

"Which one?" asked Didina, arching her back to get a better view.

"In the corner. The one with the eclairs," indicated Sirius.

"What about him?"

"Go chat him up."

A beat, and Didina whipped back around to evidently try to determine if Sirius was having her on. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Nothing untoward," Sirius amended, raising one hand in conciliatory harmlessness. "Spend a few minutes talking to him. Call him by his name. It'll make his bleeding year." He paused and then added, "Just don't tell him I put you up to it."

Didina laughed now, her eyes bouncing from Sirius to Gin to the unassuming half-full packet of cigarettes. "You're joking."

"I'm not," said Sirius. He held out the box of Silk Cuts and again shook it, the smile on his face growing brighter and more laughably innocent by the second. When Didina did not move to take them immediately, he added, "Oh come on, Murphy. It's my birthday. Do it as a favor."

"It's your birthday?" Didina repeated, laughing again as if she could not help herself. "You're full of it."

Sirius squinted at the tall grandfather clock near the notice board. "Well, technically not for another hour or so, I'll grant you. But it may as well be."

She stared at him for a moment, shaking her head as if she couldn't believe he could be so bold, but then with an amused snort, she snatched the cigarettes from his hand. "Happy bloody birthday," she said with a laugh, turning and making her way to the far side of the room.

Both Sirius and Gin watched as Didina slid herself into a chair at the table Remus and Peter were sharing, watched as she leaned in and said something to Peter with a teasing smile, watched as Peter seemed to choke on his half-eaten eclair. After his coughing had subsided, Didina took his palm between her hands and started running one gentle index finger across it, murmuring something to him all the while. Even from her vantage point across the common room, Gin could tell Peter was mesmerized. She turned back to observe Sirius as he puffed on the remains of his cigarette, his eyes still on the encounter he had engineered for reasons she could not deduce.

"You fancy her."

She had said it without thinking. Certainly without examining her own feelings about the matter. Sirius turned back toward her, eyebrows raised.

"Who? Murphy?" At Gin's nod, he flicked the dog-end of his cigarette out of the window and then leaned back, looking at her curiously. "Nah, I don't."

"Hmm. I don't believe you."

Sirius glanced back to where Didina was still cradling Peter's hand in her own. She seemed to be showing him something along his palm. Then he shrugged, as casual as ever. "She's hot, is all."

Despite herself, Gin could not prevent the slip of a laugh that escaped her. Feeling no real inclination to pursue that particular subject any further, she asked, "Is tomorrow really your birthday?"

There was something pained in the dark twist of his mouth as he replied, "It is."

When he added nothing more, Gin said, "Well don't sound too happy about it."

"Oh, I'm over the moon."

"Right. I can tell."

There was a pause, and he fidgeted uncharacteristically with his fingers, as though wishing he still had the safety of a cigarette perched between them. Then he said, "I'm ecstatic. See, turning fifteen means I'm exactly two years from being of age and free from—" He hesitated and then waved a hand as though gesturing at some invisible force. "—all of it."

Not entirely certain as to what he was referring, but assuming he was insinuating something to do with his family, she cocked her head at him. "What'll be so different about turning seventeen, then?"

He was staring hard at her now, as if wrestling with himself over something. "For starters, I can get into my Gringotts vault at seventeen, see. And I plan to get my own flat first chance I get."

The concept of having a vault full of gold waiting for her was as foreign to Gin as the concept of wanting to escape your family as soon as legally possible. She was surprised by his divulgence, by the entire conversation, by the fact that they had spoken more to each other this night than they had collectively since term had started.

"And then what?" she asked.

"After that? I'll never look back." He said it so seriously that she had no immediate response. But then something seemed to shift in him and he grinned at her and gestured toward the bust of Gryffindor. "You know, we've been sitting here for some time and you haven't mentioned what you think about Godric's latest choice of accessory."

The change of subject was clearly meant to guard whatever darker truth he had revealed to her moments before. She went along with it and craned her neck upward to once again observe the fuzzy pink earmuffs.

"Your doing, I presume?"

"Might've been. You know, hypothetically."

"And why would someone need a reason to hypothetically keep a stone statue's ears warm?" she asked, though recalling the conversation she had overheard at dinner on Halloween, she already suspected the answer.

"Someone might have discovered that there's a matching Gryffindor bust that resides in McGonagall's quarters. And that when she is so inclined—like, say, after a Gryffindor Quidditch victory—she can delegate the statue to listen in for any ensuing hijinks that she may want to uncharitably put a stop to."

Gin examined the back of the bust thoughtfully. "I see. And the earmuffs prevent the transference of any, er, hijinks, is it?"

"All hypothetical. Though I suppose the theory would explain why no one seems to give a piss that the fourth years are partaking to this extent. Hasn't always been so, you know."

"Mmm," nodded Gin. "I imagine they all know who to thank for that. Hypothetically."

Sirius opened his mouth to continue the ruse, but at that moment, they were interrupted once again, this time by the appearance of Remus Lupin.

"All right," Remus started, and Gin could not help but notice how terrible he looked up close. His skin was papery and void of color, his shoulders were slumped in unmistakable exhaustion, and there seemed to be a half-healed gash carved along his neck that disappeared into the collar of his robes. As he spoke to Sirius, though, his eyes held an indisputable glint of amusement. "Has the world gone sideways, or what? Oh—" He noticed Gin on the seat next to Sirius and fidgeted nervously. "—hi Gin."

Gin did not have a chance to respond, as a loud bark of laughter from Sirius cut her off. He had shifted to peer around Remus at where, now, Didina Murphy had seemingly pulled Peter to the makeshift dance floor and was swaying along to the music, her arms draped over his shoulders. From her vantage point across the room, Gin couldn't tell who seemed to be gaping more: Peter, or the nearby assorted girls who had stopped their dancing to watch the proceedings in astonishment. Probably the former, she supposed. She hoped for his sake that he wasn't drooling, at least.

"That cheeky witch," said Sirius, looking greatly entertained by the development.

"She just came up to him and said she wanted to read his palm." Remus paused and eyed Sirius suspiciously. "Do I want to know?"

"Nothing to know, mate," responded Sirius, the epitome of cheerful naivety, and not for the first time it struck Gin just how naturally lying came to him. "Looks as if Pete's able to pull better than any of us would expect, eh?"

"And apparently he's not the only one," said Remus, indicating with a subtle nod of his head toward one of the squashy red couches. Gin craned her neck and spotted James and Susanna O'Shea sitting in the same spots as before, though they were now tightly entwined and kissing rather passionately. As they watched, Jeremiah Peakes wolf-whistled toward them, and James came up for air long enough to throw the Beater a rude hand gesture before returning his attention to Susanna's lips.

"Well about bloody time," Sirius said. "Good on him."

Gin did not know Remus well, but even she could deduce the discomfort that was lingering around him at the idea of his friends' current entanglements. He rubbed at his neck as a dull flush crept across it, and Gin was slightly concerned that he would irritate his wound if he kept that up.

"Sideways," Remus murmured to himself, shaking his head in wonderment. Then, to Sirius, he said, "I'm off to bed. I just, er, wanted to warn you…" He paused, scratched the side of his nose, seemed to be determined to not look at Gin. "…James is—well, was, as I'm not sure how this—" He gave an absent wave toward the couple on the couch. "—might change his plans…"

"Unless his plans were to snog the face off O'Shea, I'd reckon they've changed," Sirius posed thoughtfully.

Remus nodded. "Right. But even so, you should know that he was planning something for midnight. For your birthday, I mean."

Sirius blinked at him. "You're joking."

"Not sure he was thinking straight," said Remus. "Peakes had just given him some of that levitating liquor, anyhow. But…well…whatever he was planning, I think there was to be, er, singing involved."

Gin could not quite deduce what expression crossed Sirius's face at this development—disbelief or, perhaps, abject horror—but a moment later it was gone underneath a dark laugh.

"Thanks for the warning. I reckon I owe you my life, mate."

"I've cleared my conscience then. Just don't let on to James it was me who blabbed." Remus once again glanced around at the two friends currently focused on their unexpected girls. Still looking distinctly uncomfortable, he turned back to the window seat. "Right. I'm off. Er, see you tomorrow."

And without another word, he shuffled across the common room, past Peter and Didina and their gawking spectators, and up the boys' staircase. It was only after watching his retreating form that Gin's eyes were drawn again to Lily and Adin, who were now seated alone at a study table and laughing heartily over something they were both looking at. She stared, trying to understand why she again felt the distinct need to go join them.

Then Sirius's voice cut through the cloud of discomfort that Gin had just been rather abruptly saturated by. "Let's get out of here."

Gin turned back to him, trying to catch her brain up to his words. "What?"

"Come on. The last thing I want is to be in the common room at the stroke of midnight. Didn't you hear Remus?" He paused for significance. "Singing, Gin."

A quick glimpse of the clock told her it was still only just gone eleven. It was tempting to agree immediately, but again her gaze was drawn to Lily and Adin and she realized it was time that she clear the air with them. Or to at least make an attempt at, well, something.

She swallowed hard, wondering what had come over her that day, heart starting to pulse in her fingertips, and said, "I need to talk to someone. But I suppose I can meet you in a bit. Half eleven?"

"Oh all right," said Sirius. "Passageway I showed you near Flitwick's office. Remember it?"

Gin assured him that she did, in fact, remember the suggested passageway. And without knowing quite how she had done it, she had extricated herself from the safety of ear-muffed Gryffindor's shadow and made her way over to the table where her two roommates sat, giggling at an article in Witch Weekly that was spread out in front of them.

"Hello," said Gin, clutching David Copperfield against her stomach like a security blanket. The girls looked up at her with evident surprise on both of their faces. Lily recovered more quickly.

"Hi," she said with a touch of wariness. Gin shifted her weight, wondering if this had been a mistake, but the need to talk to them was like a lingering itch just below the surface of her skin, and the only way she knew how to scratch it was to tamp down her own hesitation and plod ahead.

"Mind if I sit?"

Adin quirked her head. "We were actually just about to turn in for the night."

It would have been easy to back down, to accept the dismissal and resign herself to the loneliness that had been crawling up her spine in recent days, and for the briefest moment, Gin nearly caved and turned away from them. But she was a Gryffindor, wasn't she, and it was with a small and specific type of nerve that she stood her ground.

"It'll only take a minute," she told them.

Lily watched her curiously and after a lengthy beat, she flipped closed the magazine they had been perusing and gestured at the empty chair in front of Gin. "You can sit," she said.

And so Gin did. But it was much harder to get the words out than she was expecting, now that she was here and sitting with them and they were looking at her with intent anticipation.

"I wanted to say, erm, thank you. For yesterday. With Zelda."

Lily just blinked at her while Adin said, "Yeah, you said that yesterday. And then you just ran away like we were infectious or something."

"I know," Gin said. "I'm sorry. I was…overwhelmed. And I meant it when I said you didn't need to do all that. I'm perfectly capable of ignoring Zelda's stupid little insults."

"Well maybe cruelty shouldn't just be ignored," said Lily, coolness wedged inside her voice.

Gin shifted in her seat, gripping David Copperfield against her body like a lifeline. "No, I know. It's only…I mean, it really wasn't a big deal."

"We once watched you jinx Wilkes in the middle of a Potions lesson," Lily said. "Right there in front of Slughorn and everything. All because he was being a prick to Mary."

"But that wasn't the same thing at all," Gin argued, wrong-footed by this abrupt anecdote. "Wilkes had called Mary the vilest word anyone could use—"

"—and Carmichael had been calling you a vile word for months," interrupted Lily. "Someone needed to step in at the very least."

Gin did not believe the two words to be on par with one another, but she did not have the energy to press the point. She swallowed. "Right. Thank you," she said again. "For sticking up for me." There was a pause and then, because she was entirely muddled when it came to everything that she had done wrong, she added, "I also wanted to tell you…Sturgis Podmore asked me to Hogsmeade."

A moment passed before Lily gave a disbelieving laugh and Adin said, "What?" as though she did not quite register what she had heard.

Gin wondered if she had said the wrong thing. She lowered her voice and glanced around them, but the Gryffindors who were left in the common room did not seem to be in any fit state to eavesdrop in on their conversation. "Sturgis Podmore? He asked me to Hogsmeade. And I…well, I said yes."

She wasn't sure what she wanted from them. Certainly not girly squeals or offers to do up her hair for the date. But she understood enough by now to know that Lily, at least, had felt slighted by Gin's lack of forthcomingness before, and so she supposed she was trying to make up for it.

"Well," said Adin, still looking slightly confused, though her innate need for gossip seemed to alight interest in her eyes nonetheless, "congratulations, I suppose?"

Apparently Gin had gone about this all wrong. "No, I don't need—I mean, I only meant…" She faded off, embarrassed by her inability to do even this right.

Lily, though, was gazing at her with a keen eye. "You could just say you're sorry, you know. For not telling us about Black."

Gin stared, struck momentarily dumb. Was she sorry? She still wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of revealing so many parts of herself to anyone, much less a handful of chattery girls, but she understood now that there was a balance to it all. "There's a difference between secrecy and privacy," Lily had told her once, and she only wished it hadn't taken months of creeping isolation to make her see the distinction.

"I'm sorry," she told them both. "I should have told you before. I only…" She took a deep breath, swallowed hard, pulled her book so tightly against herself that it might have disappeared between her ribs. "…I'm not very good at this. At…at talking about myself, I suppose."

Something seemed to have loosened in Lily's posture, and for the first time since Gin had sat down at their table, she offered a half-smile. "That's okay," she said. "Adin's good enough at it for all of us."

"Hey!" Adin protested, but at Lily's teasing look, she raised her hands in surrender. "All right, well, in my defense, I'm good at talking about anything, not just myself."

It was as if the tension that had been perched inside Gin's throat for the last three days had suddenly dislodged itself, and she allowed herself to join in as the other girls laughed.

"So," started Adin, eyeing Gin now with something like mischievousness, "Sturgis Podmore, huh?"

"I only just met him today." Gin glanced again around the common room, but the boy in question was nowhere to be seen. "It's not like I want him to be my boyfriend or anything. But he seemed…nice. He likes Muggle books, too."

"A match made in heaven," Adin said, nodding sagely.

"He's friends with Andrew. He is nice," Lily assured her.

"Where is Andrew, by the way?" Gin asked.

Lily rolled her eyes, but all things said, she didn't appear too annoyed. "He went to bed. He'd had three of whatever that ale is that Peakes brought in, and I'm not sure he'd ever really drank before—"

"He fell through a table," Adin told Gin in a conspiratorial voice.

Gin winced. "Yeah, I saw. Was he all right?"

"Oh he was fine," Lily said. "Just an idiot."

There was something energized to Adin when she wiggled her eyebrows up and down and asked Gin, "Did you try any of the drinks?"

"No," Gin said. With a simple shrug that she hoped concealed the unwelcome memory of the last time she drank alcohol, she added, "I don't think I'd care for them."

"Lily and I tried the pumpkin juice," Adin told her. "It was brilliant. I mean, absolutely vile, obviously, but brilliant. I'd never had firewhisky before, and neither had Lily. Merlin, I'm glad we're not lower years anymore and get to stay up for the good part of these parties. Plus, I mean, the earmuffs of course. I think everyone could partake more freely. Speaking of, Gin, did you see James and Susanna over there kissing? Can you believe it?"

Gin glanced at Lily, eyebrows raised, but Adin's characteristic rambling was so wonderfully welcome that she couldn't even pretend to be overwhelmed by it. Perhaps somehow, finally, she had been forgiven her oddness, her secrecy, her inability to let anyone else in.

Lily emitted a disgusted breath through her nose. "Typical Potter. Even just snogging someone he has to make sure everyone can see…"

"They sure make a cute couple, though," said Adin, ignoring Lily's eyeroll. "They'll be all anyone can talk about on Monday, you just wait."

"I can hardly contain my excitement," deadpanned Lily, and Gin could not help but grin.

It wasn't long after this that both Lily and Adin excused themselves to turn in for the night, for which Gin was relieved. Despite her newfound desire to try harder and to tell her roommates (friends?) what she was up to, the idea of getting into a discussion about her dalliances with Sirius right then was frankly exhausting. And their departure allowed her to slip out of the portrait hole unnoticed once 11:30 rolled around.

The Fat Lady was thankfully snoring against the side of her frame when Gin closed the portrait with a gentle click. She had never been out quite so late before, and she wasn't entirely sure the Fat Lady wouldn't give her a stern talking-to for her blatant rule breaking. Sure, she'd have to wake her upon her return to regain entrance into Gryffindor Tower but, well, that was a problem for later, she supposed.

The corridors were eerily silent as she crept along. She didn't dare light her wand, but luckily the gibbous moon allowed her enough light to see where she was going, and the passageway Sirius had selected wasn't far from the common room. Perhaps the location was purposefully proximate to the portrait hole, or perhaps it had just been the first place that had popped into his mind. Either way, she was grateful to arrive along the specific bare stretch of wall without incident, and as she tapped a quick pattern along the stones in front of her, a familiar sense of rebellious anticipation overcame her.

The secret passageway was dimly lit by flickering, orange torchlight that seemed unnaturally bright after the dimness of the corridor. Sirius was already there, leaning against the wall with his hands shoved in his pockets, and he straightened as the wall rearranged itself shut behind her.

"Hi," she said, because she never knew how to start or end these moments between them with anything but awkwardness.

He didn't return the greeting, but instead simply covered her lips with his own. And as she returned his fevered kisses, the events of the day seemed to unspool in her mind, and something like giddy relief overtook her. She was starting to become slightly breathless over it all when he pulled back enough to allow a stream of cool air to find its way into her lungs.

"I've been wanting to do that since I had to go to the kitchens with sodding Peter," he told her with unexpected candidness, but she had barely the chance to laugh at the reference before his mouth was upon hers again.

---

Sirius and Gin's trysts were not usually lengthy—stealing into the trophy room or behind the greenhouses or up to the Astronomy Tower for stolen moments of youthful rendezvous—but neither of them was hurried with one another that night, and by the time they had made their way back into the common room (after having been crisply reprimanded by a very groggy Fat Lady), the party had found its end. The only person left in the littered and rumpled room was James Potter, sprawled upon the couch by the fire, sound asleep with a smudge of pink lipstick along his mouth and red and gold confetti nested in his hair.

Sirius snickered at the sight of his friend and assured Gin that he would be able to get James up to their dormitory and that she could go to bed.

"Right," she said, with that same bit of awkwardness that had plagued her previously. "Well then, good night."

It was only after she had climbed into her four-poster and pulled the curtains shut around her that she realized she should have wished Sirius a happy fifteenth birthday.