Love Can Be Found In the Darkest of Places (A Marauders FanFiction)

Chapter 7: Damn Fools

Sirius jolted awake one morning after a particular bad dream a few weeks later, involving his house-elf, Kreacher, apparating with Rose to show his mother “the mud-blood filth” that Sirius was so in love with. His eyes snapped open just as she began screaming her head off at him. Walburga Black was about as unpleasant a person as there ever was, and he could only imagine the look on her sour face if he told the woman how he felt.

The past few weeks hadn’t been easy for Sirius – Peter still wasn’t speaking to him and what was left of his friendship with Rose was crumbling. He could see that being around him physically frustrated her and so much time had gone by now that he wasn’t sure if she’d take him even if he asked her to. James and Remus were still speaking to him of course, but they’d been looking at him differently lately and he wished that he could just restart the whole damned year.

Tonight was another full moon, so it’d be impossible for all of them to ignore him. On his way to Defense against the Dark Arts with Professor Langdon last period, he bumped into Severus Snape. “Oi, Snivelly!” Sirius called, stopping Severus in his tracks. Sirius knew he was only lashing out because of how bad everything was going for him, but he couldn’t help himself. “Any plans for tonight? Watching Lily broodingly from a distance, perhaps?”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re all up to,” Severus said darkly, approaching Sirius with such force Sirius put a hand on his wand. “Don’t think I don’t notice that the five of you disappear every time there’s a full moon. And when Remus misses class.” Severus pushed a lock of straight hair out of his face and continued. “And don’t think that I won’t expose Lupin for the monster that he is.” Sirius felt as though his heart had stopped, but on the outside he looked unperturbed.

“Oh, is that right?” Sirius asked, raising his eyebrows and nodding his head. He would very soon regret these words, but he spoke them anyway. “Well then, if you’re up for a bit of fun tonight that doesn’t involve stalking Lily Evans, I recommend the Whomping Willow at nightfall. There’s a knot on the base of her roots. Press it and I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out the rest.”

With a wink, Sirius pushed past him and into Langdon’s classroom, who gave him a dirty look. “Ten minutes later, Mr. Black.” He shook his head disappointedly. Every professor at Hogwarts knew that Sirius was one of the brightest of the whole bunch, but his tendency to fool around got him into a lot of trouble. “Five points from Gryffindor.” There was a collective groan from the Gryffindor side of the room, and a few snickers from the other side, which was made up of Slytherins.

“Where were you?” Rose whisper-scolded him, as he took his usual seat next to her. She looked particularly beautiful to him that day, which didn’t make speaking to her terribly easy. Lily, who was to Rose’s left, cast him a distrustful look. The two had grown closer over the past couple weeks and had actually been spending quite a lot of time together. James was hoping to use that to his advantage.

“Catching up with my old pal, Sev,” he wagged his eyebrows up and down at Lily, who rolled hers and turned her attention towards the lesson.

“Why don’t you just leave him be?” Rose demanded. “Don’t you guys have anything better to do with your time?”

“It’s not like it’s all one sided.”

“If you’d just ignore him there wouldn’t be a problem!”

“Problems don’t go away if you ignore them!” he fired back hotly, raising his voice out of a whisper and forgetting if he was talking about Severus or Rose. Professor Langdon slammed his hand on their desk and the two went silent.

“Is there a problem or do I need to separate the two of you, like I would separate my first years?!” he asked exasperatedly, running his hands through his hair and creating an unruly mess of grey tangles in the process. “Please, be quiet!”