Limitless

Something Found

The Marauders did not arrive back until the following morning when we were all at breakfast. The four of them bound into the house looking decidedly dishevelled. Remus looked completely drained, his skin ashen, his eyes bloodshot but his face still smiled his kind smile. They all attacked the breakfast spread with particular zeal eating just about everything in sight. Lily looked fondly at James while he shoved a bangers into his mouth, Peter was slathering butter onto his toast in preparation for some eggs while Sirius didn't even bother with a plate and took to walking around the table reaching over people to grab bits of food before taking the seat next to me.

"How was your evening?" I asked leaning towards him to grab some cheese.

"Brilliant!" he said with a lopsided grin. He really needed to shower, he smelled distinctly like wet dog but it wasn't entirely unpleasant, "How did your meeting with Dumbledore go?"

"He didn't come." I said sprinkling the cheese on my toast, "he sent Fabian instead." Sirius's movements became staccato, his head snapping to look at me.

"He did?" he asked in a falsely blasé tone.

"Yeah, Dumbledore has put him on the case." I said taking a bite.

After that Sirius didn't speak. We ate in silence but I could see that he was measuring his breathing. After breakfast I went back to the room. I wouldn't be able to concentrate on much if I was surrounded by people and I had to have something new for Fabian. I knew tonight was going to be particularly unpleasant. I didn't like speaking about myself at the best of times but to open up to a relative stranger would be doubly difficult. And, to make matters worse, Fabian was really very strange. It was so difficult to communicate with him, it always felt like I was giving far more than I was receiving.

I rifled through a book on magical symbology trying to see if there was any significant markers I could detect about the S emblem. It felt like I had done this a hundred times but once more couldn't hurt. Besides, my brain was basically screaming for me to remember something all the time now. It was just out of my reach but on the tip of my tongue.

Sirius strode through the door slamming it behind him and walking straight into the bathroom, which shut angrily behind him. I knew he could be moody, I had seen that much at school but he didn't even know the whole story about Fabian and I knew things were about to get much worse if he was reacting this way to the mere mention of him.

I tried my hardest to ignore him when he exited the bathroom but it was a bit difficult when he was standing over me, his hair dripping beads of water onto my neck.

"What?" he said in a voice that told me he was rearing for a fight, "no hello kiss?"

"But I've said hello." I said staring purposefully at the browning page not that I had any idea what it said. My body had become too sensitive to Sirius, way too responsive. It was almost as though we were on the same frequency.

"Not properly you haven't." He said coming to whisper into my neck. I wasn't fooled though, there was something tense in his voice.

"You could have done this downstairs." I said plainly. He could have but he chose not to kiss me in front of his friends. It stung a little especially because next to Lily and James who were basically jumping each other any time they had a chance.