Meant to Be (A Marauders AU)

Chapter 2

   James Potter dropped his Invisibility Cloak, and it turned out that he wasn't alone.

"Black too? What are you two doing here?" Pitch asked, her eyebrows raising when she saw who was with Potter.

"Well, we had a suspicion that Remus wasn't going to bed early like he said, so... we followed him," Potter answered, a small trace of pride in his voice.

"Looks like we were right too. So, you guys a secret thing?" Black asked, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. Pitch rolled her eyes.

"Sorry to burst your bubble, but no, we are not any kind of thing. Remus and I are friends," she responded, before chuckling quietly. "So you didn't trust your best mate and had to follow him, and you still guessed the reason he lied incorrectly."

   Potter and Black looked a little sheepish at that last comment, glancing down at their feet. Pitch then realised something... how much had they heard between her and Remus?

"How much of my conversation with Remus did you hear?" she asked coolly, hiding the worry that she felt. The two sneaks looked at each other before answering together.

"Everything."

   Pitch felt like her world had collapsed. She figured that, by morning, the entire school would know, and she would be mocked relentlessly. Hogwarts had been her only sanctuary, and now that was over.

   Trying to hide the rare tears that were filling her stormy eyes, she turned and bolted out of the Library as fast as her legs could carry her. She could hear the footsteps of Black and Potter as they chased after her, but she couldn't stop; her tears had slipped past her eyelids and were now streaming down her cheeks.

   At the portrait of the Fat Lady, she pushed violently past Remus, knocking him to the side.

"Pitch! What's wrong?" he shouted as the crying girl started striding up the steps to the girls' dormitory, skipping two at a time.

"Ask th-them!" she yelled back, her strained voice catching on the last syllable as she pointed at the portrait behind her, before disappearing into the girls' dormitory.

   James and Sirius arrived just then, only to be confronted by their best friend.

"What did you do?" Remus asked sternly. Potter and Black explained everything to Remus, who seemed to get angrier and more upset with each sentence.

"You what?!" he roared, before stomping upstairs to the boys' dormitory without waiting for a response.

"Great, now we've upset two people," James groaned, sitting down and resting his head in his hands. After a few minutes, Sirius sat down next to him and nudged his arm.

"What, Pads..." James asked in a clipped tone. He wasn't really in the mood for conversation.

"An apology letter for Pitch," Sirius replied, handing his mate a piece of parchment. "Just read it."

   James sighed, not bothering to argue, and he looked down at Sirius' untidy scrawl.

Pitch,
Sorry for upsetting you like we did, and for listening to your private conversation with Remus. It was wrong of us.
Sorry again,
Sirius Black and James Potter.

"I think it's alright... it'll do, anyway," James said after reading it. He folded the parchment into a plane and charmed it so that it would fly into the girls' dormitory, where Pitch was lying on her bed.

   She'd put a Silencing Charm on her bed so nobody would hear, and for the first time in what felt like forever, she let herself cry. Her body shook with sobs as she wept into her pillow.