Chasing Time (sirius black)

LONG RUN

Lily sat on the edge of my bed, her movement waking me up. Groggily, I rubbed my eyes. I'd had a Bellatrix nightmare still rolling around my brain. Flashes of her face, watching me as Sirius was being tortured, flickered behind my eyelids. I opened them, banishing the cruel face away to see a pouting redhead with her arms crossed and grumbling.

"Years. He became an Animangus years ago. And I had no idea. Bloody arrogant bastard."

"I'm guessing you're still upset," I mumbled under my arm which was now over my face.

She threw her arms up dramatically. "A stag! Do you know what my Patronus is?! A doe! Which means I'd probably be a doe as an Animangus! So not only is he better at Transfiguration than me, he also stole my Animangus form!"

"Lily, I really think you're overthinking this."

"And he kept it a secret! For - what happened to your hand?" Her gaze was fixated on my right hand. Which was bandaged up. Because I punched Lucius Malfoy. I almost forgot.

"I punched Jamie last night." Believable. Our relationship had a lot of goodnatured rough housing which I typically only did with my actual cousins. My sisters and I used to rough house all the time when we were younger. We still, on occasion, tackled one another but it's much less than it used to be. It was kinda fun getting to smack Jamie for no reason. Jesus, Sirius was right about my violent tendencies. Bastard. "Just a few scrapes."

Lily pulled my hand into her grasp, unwrapped it, and inspected the damage. It was scabbed over and looked fine but was still pretty sore. "What'd he do this time?"

I sighed, rolling my eyes to sell the story. "He was sneaking out to the kitchens and I caught him. He made a mate joke about Sirius and I and then -" I gestured to my injured hand. "My hand slipped."

She bit her bottom lip in amusement then gave me an inquiring look. "How are you feeling about that? The mate thing?"

"Freaked out. Pissed. Idiot can't ask me out like a normal person but he can claim me? I really don't know how to feel, Lils." I ran a hand over my face in frustration. I looked back up at her, suddenly nervous. "Is it wrong that I kind of...like it? I mean, it hurts like a bitch but -" I groaned, pressing my hands against my eyes. "I'm loosing it."

"You like Sirius, right?" She asked quietly. I picked my head up to see her watching me carefully. I nodded, unable to really say it out loud, afraid she'd hear how much I liked him in my voice. "Then I wouldn't worry about liking it. It's kind of...well, it's kind of hot."

My jaw dropped as she blushed. The thing was...she was right. There was something unbelievably hot about being claimed by Sirius. Even if dogs don't mate for life and we certainly hadn't done anything to be considered mates, the bite was still really hot.

I blame every trashy werewolf novel I read over the summer. Damn library book sale.

To clarify, the sale let you fill a whole bag for five dollars. If you've ever seen a trashy romance novel, you know they're small. I fit a lot of books in that bag. Then spent the entire summer filling my brain with completely unrealistic scenarios involving werewolves, vampires, and fae.

Which were now not completely unrealistic.

God damn it.