fatal love

Chapter 54

The end of January meant that it was Evans' birthday, and Remus gave him a card to sign. He rolled his eyes, but did so, scrawling a quick message saying that he guessed she was alright, really.

Remus read what he was writing over his shoulder. "Very generous," he smirked.

"Can't have her getting too attached," Sirius grinned.

"That's your attitude with all girls."

"You too," Sirius shot back, "except you do it for some bullshit self-sacrificing reason."

"Can we not have this conversation again, please?" Remus sighed.

Sirius huffed, but Remus looked so depressed at the topic that he acquiesced. "Fine. Have you got Evans a present this year?"

"The moon kind of distracted me," Remus said guiltily. "I'm hoping I can offer to do her Arithmancy homework or something."

Sirius nodded thoughtfully. Of course, Remus had a perfectly understandable reason for forgetting Lily's birthday, but he couldn't exactly tell her what it was. "She'll like that you got everyone to sign her a card," he said encouragingly. "Evans isn't really the type to care about presents anyway, I wouldn't worry about it."

"Yeah, I guess. She's said she'll spend most of the day with Snape as well."

"Ugh, I'll never understand why she's friends with that wanker."

"Me neither," Remus sighed. "Especially now he spends so much time with the Slytherins. She has to know the kind of stuff he'll be saying around them, she just doesn't want to admit it."

Sirius grimaced. "It won't last forever, Moony. Trust me, you can try and ignore those differences all you like, eventually the gap becomes too big to bridge."

"You never liked your family, though, even before you learnt about blood purity," Remus said, "Evans and Snape have been best friends for years."

"So were me and Reg. Look at us now, we don't even speak to each other."

That made the tone of the conversation turn dark, and Remus turned to look at Sirius properly, tilting his head empathetically. "He might change his mind, like you did," Remus said gently.

Sirius snorted sarcastically. "No, he won't. He's made his views very clear."

"Well, then you should at least be proud of yourself. You've made your views clear as well, even though it meant losing your best friend."

"Thanks, Moony," Sirius said gratefully, "I'm pretty happy with my new best friends anyway."

February came, and brought with it cold winds and rain. No electrical storms though, at least not yet. James and Pete had had to get used to Sirius' sleep schedule, so they could all say the incantations together every sunrise. Once the days started getting longer, even Sirius would have to wake up earlier than he normally did, but for now, he was always up when it was still dark out anyway.

The four of them were downstairs, having breakfast with Lily, who was trying to convince James that Florence wouldn't want him to hire the Frog Choir to serenade her for her birthday. The other boys had long since given up trying to persuade James against the huge spectacles he was prone to when it came to girls, but Lily hadn't yet realised it was a losing battle.

Sirius should have realised something was wrong by how empty the teachers' table was. Dumbledore was absent, along with about half the other Professors, but he had assumed that was because it was still early. Even when the two other girls came down, and the Hall was mostly full, no one seemed to notice all the missing staff.