The Clockwork Locket || SIRIUS BLACK

The Nosiness of Cassie Alderfair

She was, quite literally, a deer stuck in wandlight as the brightness emanating from Sirius's spell seared into her eyes, along with the petrifying image of catching two of her mates in an empty classroom in the middle of the night.

She mumbled something unintelligible along the lines of "ad-gah...der" before common sense finally kicked in, and she all but fled down the corridor the way she'd come.

Mortification such as she had never felt swelled inside of her, and she thought she might die from the severity of it, her mind unable to stop replaying the scene she had just witnessed over and over again.

It's all a dream. A very bad, disturbing, terrifying dream. Everything will be all right when I wake up. Oh, Merlin...

"Cassie! Cassie, wait!"

She quickened her pace when she heard footsteps chasing after her, and her embarrassment only grew when she realized that it was Sirius pursuing her.

She hooked a sharp left down the corridor, attempting to make it back to the ground floor and the relative safety of the dungeons, but Sirius grabbed hold of her arm.

"I don't want to hear it!" she said shrilly, refusing to look at him. "I just want to pretend like nothing just happened and I didn't see you and one of my best friends doing...things!"

"Cool it, will you, Princess?" He sounded exasperated. "It wasn't anything serious, all right? You can stop acting like you've just seen me naked."

"Been there, done that, and this was infinitely worse," she replied, staring up at the high ceiling. He gave a deep sigh.

"Cassie, please look at me."

His tone was so calm, so soothing, that she dropped her eyes, meeting his silver gaze and swallowing nervously.

He looked gloriously rumpled, his hair disheveled and falling into his face, his cheeks flushed a lovely shade of pink. He hadn't buttoned the top buttons of his shirt, but she snapped her eyes back to his quickly before she could notice anything else, wishing the floor would open up and swallow her whole.

"There we go," he said softly, giving her a slight smirk that tightened something in her chest into a taut strand, quivering like it was ready to break. "It was no big deal, yeah?"

And just like that, the strand snapped.

"No big deal?" she repeated. His smirk wavered at her harsh tone. "Oh, I'm sorry, you must have me mistaken for some pervy third-year that just happened upon two older students getting it on in an abandoned classroom in the middle of the night! Not two of my mates who, until now, had no prior contact with each other as far as I knew!"

He frowned down at her. "Well, it was an honest mistake, wasn't it?"

She laughed bitterly. "I guess you're forgetting about the part where Lily, Alice, and Mar didn't speak to me for weeks because I was hanging out with you! And now here you are, shacking up with Marlene as if you didn't know what our row had been about in the first place!"

He put his hands up in a placating gesture but dropped them when her teeth clenched together with an audible snap.

"Look, Cassie, this isn't a recent thing," he said, sighing. "This started a few weeks before you and I officially became friends—"

"Like that's supposed to make it any better?" She was nearly yelling, but she didn't care. "Sirius, we weren't speaking for three weeks, and in all the time I was off gallivanting with you, you never once decided to mention oh, by the way, I'm hooking up with your mate Marlene?"