SHE'S ALL THAT ➭ SIRIUS BLACK ❨2❩ ✔︎

ACT FIVE, SCENE FOURTEEN

SAINT-VERAN, FRANCE

The one bad thing about the Fontaine estate in France was that it didn't have air conditioning, unlike the house in England.

So on their fifth night there, a sticky, humid evening at the end of June, all the windows were thrown open, and the residents of the estate had stripped down to the least amount of clothes possible in order to evade the sweltering heat.

Sage Fontaine laid in her king size bed, sweaty back pressed against the mattress, and stared up at the ceiling. It was well past midnight, but she couldn't sleep to save her life. It was just too hot.

"You're far too close to me." She grumbled, shifting towards the edge of the mattress. "Stop trying to cuddle. I'll get heat-stroke."

Sirius Black, practically a human furnace, groaned in response. "I'm not even touching you."

She huffed, trying and failing several times to get properly relaxed in the bed that had been unused for decades; the mattress was stiff and lumpy, and every movement she made caused it to squeak. It was simply too hot to get anywhere near comfortable.

"C'est des conneries." She muttered to herself, and she finally stopped her quest for comfort and rest.

She rolled out of bed, standing up straight, and stretched her aching back. "I'm going for a swim." She said quietly, reaching for her dressing gown made of emerald green silk and covering her bare skin with it.

Sirius looked at her curiously, his dark eyes harboring questions. "It's the middle of the night, Sage."

"And?" She met his gaze with the slightest bit of contempt. "You're right, it is the middle of the night. But the nearest house is about a mile away, and everyone in this house is asleep. So I'm going swimming in the stream out back—there's a large pool at the end of it that me and Julien used to swim in when the summers got too hot—and you're welcome to join me if you'd like."

He was quick to jump up and follow her, out of the bedroom and down the stairs and out the back door. He trailed her as she led the way to the stream, and before long, he could hear the rushing water.

Her ever-present elegance was imminent as she shrugged off her dressing gown and dove, as graceful and neat as a swan, into the lagoon without even a splash.

She stayed under the water for almost two whole minutes, and for a moment he grew worried that she wouldn't surface again, that she'd somehow drowned or hit her head on the bottom of the pool.

But then her head popped up over the surface of the water, and she was grinning as she pushed her hair out of her face.

"The water feels amazing." She told him. "It feels like heaven, Sirius."

Her smile encouraged him to follow her into the water, making a much larger splash than she had, which had her squealing in surprise.

He swam over to her. "So you really grew up here?" He asked, although it was a question she'd had to answer a dozen times since they'd arrived at the house. He was earnest, though, and very genuine about it, for he had a hard time equating the Sage that was in the various portraits around the house with the Sage that was in front of him.

"Yes, I did. Margot taught me to swim in this stream." Sage said, but the feeling wasn't there; she sounded as if she was deep in a memory.

Sirius cocked his head. "Margot? Who's Margot?"

She sighed and let out a quiet, mirthless laugh. "My sister. My older sister."

"You have a sister?" He exclaimed, words echoing in the quiet of the night. He'd known her for twenty three years, and known her well for eighteen, and not once did she mention anything about a sister. She'd talked about Julien, rarely, on occasion, with a fondness and lonelieness in her voice, but never about a sister.

Her eyes found the horizon as she began to explain: "She was four when I was born—my parents had her when they were seventeen. She was the one to teach me how to swim, how to read and write, how to ride a broom.

"She was...she was a squib, though. Didn't have a magical bone in her body. My mother couldn't deal with the shame of two prominent figureheads in the French Ministry having a squib for a daughter, their first child at that, so she kicked her out. Left Margot at an orphanage in Paris when she was ten. I haven't seen her since. It's a miracle I still remember what she looked like, honestly, since I was six when she left."

He seemed to be at a loss for words. He opened his mouth to come up with some sort of comforting reply, but nothing came out.

Finally, after almost a full minute of silence, he said, so simply and dumbly that he cringed, "I'm so sorry."

She shook her head and waved a dismissive hand, splashing as she did so. "It was so long ago, I almost don't even miss her. It's awful, but my mother insisted that we behave as if she never existed. It was like I never had a sister in the first place. Life moved on. We moved on." She said with a smile that was more sad than anything else.

She ducked under the water then, swimming several feet away before resurfacing with a mischevous expression, as if their previous conversation had never even happened.

"You know, just because the French don't know about your various crimes, doesn't mean we can live like this when we go back." Sage remarked, and she watched his expression change in the moonlight.

He nodded and swam to where she was treading water. "I dunno, we could always stay here." His offer hung in the air for a moment. "Harry seems to like it here. We could stay and be a fucking family, y'know? I won't have to worry about getting captured, you won't have to worry about working anymore. Harry'd like Beauxbatons, I think—and he'd learn French quickly, I'm sure."

She raised her dark eyebrows. "Have you considered that, maybe, I don't like it here?" She asked in a flat voice, mouth tightening.

Sirius didn't reply, instead just looking at her inquisitively.

"I grew up here. I've got lots of happy memories here, but even more bad ones. Being here for a month because you lot chose to vacation here is one thing. Moving here and having to relive my childhood every single day is a whole other thing." She explained, and her words had a sharp edge to them that he often heard her use with him.

It was strange, really, how she could love him so much and hate him at the same time. She would die for him, but she sometimes couldn't stand to have a full conversation with him.

"Then we'll move somewhere else." He sounded so sure, so confident that they could make it anywhere as long as they were together. "The states. Australia. Fucking Russia, for all I care. Harry can learn Russian."

She couldn't help but laugh. "You really think he'd be able to survive without his friends? They're attached at the hip, you know."

"So were we, but you managed just fine for twelve years."

oop!