Liquid Luck [Sirius Black]/editing

chapter 22

"Keeks, I'm tired of having pink stripes in my hair! Can we please go back to our regular hair?" He holds his hands together in front of him, pouting whilst his glasses fall down the bridge of his nose in the cutest way possible.

I giggle, booping his nose affectionately. "JJ, you can go back to black whenever you like, you don't need my permission."

He furrows his bushy brows. "But I want us to be matching." He does his best impression of puppy dog eyes, his hazel orbs sparkling in the low lighting of the Common Room. "Keeks, we're basically twins, I go back to black when you go back to brown."

"Okay, fine we can go back." I grumble in response, causing a very enthusiastic James to cheer and whoop loudly from beside me on the couch. Truthfully, I miss my old hair as well.

"Let's get McKinnon do to it! She loves us." James boasts while I snort, knowing that much isn't true. Sure, Marlene loves me, but she's had to sit through far too many of Lily's rants about the boys to come to love them.

"Okay! Let's go!" We both scramble up off the squashy couch and towards the stairs of the girls dorms. Being the fools that we are, he and I forget all about the fact that James is in fact a male. We take the stairs two at a time, that is, until they morph into a slide and we take a terrible fall back down towards the floor. I land square on top of James and he makes an oomph sound as we hit the floor loudly. It's in that moment that people enter the Common Room, finding James and I on the ground in that compromising position.

And that's precisely how the Great Rumour of 1972 started.

*

The first time the quote unquote couple is confronted, it happens to be by none other than Lily Evans. Her face being as bright and as red as her hair, she stomps her way towards the two of us who walk side-by-side in the halls on the way to class. "Chiara Holland!" I hear her booming voice echo down the corridor filled with whispering students.

James mumbles a quick goodbye to me after catching the obvious hint of anger to Lily's voice. He disappears from my side and I whip around to face my best friend. "How are things, sunshine?" I ask, chipper as ever when the rage stricken girl finally catches up to me.

She crosses her arms over her chest and scoffs, "Oh, don't how are things me!" She practically spits. "When were you going to tell me that you and Potter were a thing!"

I can't help the laugh that bursts from my lips at what I hear. Me and James? Dating? After a bit of laughter in which Lily does not take part in, I realize that she isn't joking in the slightest. She continues glaring me down, though I find a bit of hurt in those beautiful green eyes of hers. "You can't be serious."

"I am, actually. The worst part of it all isn't even that I had to overhear it from a random Hufflepuff girl in passing! The worst is that you chose Potter out of everyone in the school! I thought we were best friends, how could you?"

I raise my arms to stop her absurd accusations while she's ahead. "Woah woah woah, slow down there, honey. First and foremost, James and I are most certainly not dating. So you can stop looking at me like I murdered your pet kitten."

Her face softens immensely and her emerald greens widen. "Oh."

"Yeah. Oh." I laugh, nudging her playfully. "And second, Lils, you don't actually believe that I would date him. Especially since it's obvious that you two were made for each other. And now more than ever that I realize you have feelings for him." I wink.