Roses All The Way Down【Sirius Black】

ⅩⅩⅢ. 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐝

"Are we sure we want to do this?" Virginia confirmed, fiddling with her hands awkwardly.

"Yes," Remus said with a grin that went all the way up to his eyes. "Ever since I've learned about them, I've wanted to face one!"

"And I'm sure that we'll leave this room forever scarred and forever changed," Lily said shrewdly, clasping her hands around Mary's and Virginia's. Marlene and Dorcas had stayed behind, conjuring up some lame excuse.

"That's the spirit," James said with a smirk, craning his neck to look at her.

The five of them, also accompanied by Sirius, Alice and Peter - who had been forced along - stood in a line outside of the wooden door. Remus pulled it open to reveal a small and mostly abandoned classroom. Nothing about it was out of the ordinary - some dusty desks and books - except for the rattling case in the corner. Its small doors jostled and clanked in a way that set all of them on edge.

"Now you remember the spell," he confirmed, closing the door behind them and drawing out his wand, "Riddikulus!"

They all muttered this under their breath, pulling out their own wands and brandishing them. None of them looked like they had any faith in themselves.

"So we think of the thing we fear the most..." Sirius said, even his voice sounding shaky, "and then a way to make it funny."

"Yes," both Remus and Lily said at the same time.

"Do we make a line?" James suggested.

"Yes, let's have a turn system for this," Mary said, rolling her eyes. However, no one else had a real problem with it and they all awkwardly shuffled into a single file formation. Peter was squeaking in terror when he realized he was at the front.

Lily smiled at him with sympathy, moving to stand in front. She pulled out her wand and looked back at Remus, who cast a spell to open the doors to the wardrobe.

What crawled out of the shelves was indeed a terrifying sight. A bloody girl with a partially bandaged face clutched the side of the doors. She looked up at Lily with red and bloodshot eyes.

"What is that," Virginia whispered to Alice, who was in front of her.

Alice grimaced, "A zombie, but the real question is... of who?"

Lily raised her arm slowly, "Riddikulus!" She shrieked, the girl tripped over her dangling bandages and fell in a comically dramatic way to the ground. A series of chuckles rippled through the room and Lily moved out of the line to make way for a trembling Peter.

There was a sound like a mechanical whirring and then the boggart became a dark mass that hissed and spewed spittle. "Betray them Peter... you have no choice."

"I think that's the dark wizard that killed Marlene's aunt," Alice whispered, her face white as a sheet.

"R-r-riddikulus!" he cried, the cloaked man was suddenly donned in a most atrocious outfit of pink sweater vests.

They all recognized it as the outfit of one of the Seventh years - a particularly annoying young woman named Dolores.

Remus's was a moon which seemed to confuse only the girls in the room. He caused it to become a balloon that whizzed all around everyone's heads. Sirius faced a version of himself, a posh and prissy one who had become a Slytherin. James was an image of a stack of skeletons and he, like Lily, refused to share whose they were. Alice was up after him.

But Virginia was so caught up in her own thoughts that she didn't register what hers even was.

What is my greatest fear? That was the only thought running through her head as she stared at the floor. A few came to mind - the first was her parents. Their expectations of her scared her to no end. Then Pandora although she was more a jerk than something that inspired real fear. Perhaps it was Sirius and her weird feelings towards him. Could it be something that had already happened, the reason she had been able to see the Thestral?

When Alice vanquished hers, Virginia stepped up to the front. She felt herself shake slowly and then it morphed into someone. Someone who mortified her greatly.

It was Sirius Black.

She could feel the awkwardness rise in the room. She silently begged the apparition not to speak like Peter's had, she didn't want to know what he had to say.

Boggart Sirius began to slowly make his way towards her. She tried to move, to will her legs to move backwards or her arm to raise so she could cast the spell. The apparition grew closer and closer.

"Stop it," she said fruitlessly, forgetting about the wand clutched in her right hand.

The rest of the people in the room stared at the Boggart, nobody seemed able to move. Everyone was in different stages of total and all encompassing shock.

He drew even closer to her, his hand hovering next to her face. Boggart Sirius looked at her lips and Virginia felt her breath leave her lungs. It was clear to everyone in the room he was about to kiss her but she was too caught up in the moment to even register how embarrassed she should be feeling. Then the only sound in the room became Boggart Sirius's chuckles as he leaned away from Virginia.

"You're going to lose," he said, a malicious grin coming to his face, "everything."

"RIDDIKULUS!" She screamed, suddenly remembering she was a witch. Boggart Sirius's hair grew even longer than it already was, giving him the appearance of a shaggy dog. The hair curtain blinded him and he stumbled around the room. Virginia slowly stepped out of the way. Mary, who stood behind her, shifted her feet awkwardly.

The Boggart became a snake but Virginia didn't stick along long enough to see what happened after that. The entire experience seemed fake, it had to ' be a sick dream. That wasn't real. He hadn't seen that.

But even as her brain struggled to process the proceedings she knew one thing - she had to run. Run, run and keep running. Her feet slapped against the ground as she scrambled down the hallway.

She heard her name being called out from behind her. She didn't know whose it was but she didn't care. She racked her brain to think of the safest place. Was it a bathroom, a broom closet, back to her dormitory? She found a set of spiraling stairs and plunged up them automatically. She nearly tripped about four times until she finally made it to the top and locked the door behind her with a spell. She collapsed onto the ground, heaving sobs coming up from a place she hadn't known existed.

A few minutes passed and then she heard someone banging at the door.

"Ginny!" James shouted, "I know you're in there! Open the door!" He continued to bash his fists against the wood, "Damnit, this is why Lily should have come with me, I bet she'd know the spell." He snapped, rattling the doorknob fruitlessly. "Come on Ginny! We'll forget it happened, it's okay. We're sorry, we didn't mean to make you-"

"Is she in there?" another voice said, it was low and uncharacteristically quiet. Sirius.

"No, I just wronged this door so I'm apologizing to it," James said sourly.

Virginia stood up from the ground and rubbed her tears off of her face. This was so dumb. How had a simple excursion become so fucking dramatic?

She took stock of her surroundings - the Astronomy Tower. The sides were open - what if she just jumped out. Just flew away and went home. Boggart Sirius had been right - she would lose. Who on earth would want to kiss her? There had been a short time when she thought Sirius had wanted to, she had felt something between them. An invisible something that had apparently been her imagination, if his relationship with Pandora was any indication.

"Oh fuck it," she heard Sirius exclaim, "Bombarda."

The doorknob blasted off and went soaring off the tower. James and Sirius stood in the doorway. They both gulped awkwardly. They had gotten through the door- but that didn't mean they had a plan.

"Ginny," Sirius said softly, taking a step forward. He looked awkwardly at James who took the hint quickly. He excused himself to look for the others.

"Sirius," she returned in a hollow voice.

He took several slow steps towards her before wrapping his arms around her and drawing her close to him. "I would never do that to you," he whispered. He drew back and paused for a moment before blurting out, "Ginny... do you fancy me?"