The Missing Marauder: A Harry Potter FanFiction

Chapter 3

Rowan and Sirius walked in silence, going the way that would get them back to the Gryffindor common room. They usually would have talked and joked the entire time, only that they were a bit embarrassed, or at least Rowan was. Sirius seemed to be enjoying most of the attention, though only someone as close to him as Rowan would notice.  

It was amazing that by the end of the day, the entire school knew about "the incident." It had started out as a simple story that all the Gryffindors in Transfiguration that morning told.  

"Yesterday afternoon," they would say, "Sirius Black picked Rowan Mulciber up and carried her to the portrait! They weren't seen coming back to bed that night, and that morning no one knew where they were! Then they just showed up in Transfiguration all dirty, and together!" Then, it would turn into, "Sirius Black carried Rowan Mulciber away yesterday and they weren't seen again until the next morning when they showed up in Transfiguration with their uniforms dirty and their hair messy!" This then would evidently lead to everybody in the school thinking they'd been together the entire night, which could only mean...  

"Nice one, Black!" a Ravenclaw boy called out, while another boy he was with whistled at Rowan.  

"I wish they'd stop that," she whispered to him as they crossed through one of the many courtyards in the school, stopping at a fountain in the center, "It makes them seem like the animals."  

"Lighten up," he said calmly, sitting down on the cobblestone, his back against the wall of the fountain, his hands behind his head and his legs crossed out in front of him, "You should be enjoying all of this, like me."  

"How could you possibly be enjoying that fact that everybody thinks we-" she stopped there, not wanting to say what everybody thought.  

"How do we know you didn't?" James asked, beaming as he wandered over to them, "We left around seven and you never came back."  

"We had a long night," Rowan explained stiffly, as she sat down on the wall of the fountain, "It was late and we couldn't sneak back into the common room without being caught, so we slept in the forest."  

"We woke up a bit late," Sirius added, "There's nothing else to it."  

"That's not what we heard," Remus said as he and Peter hurried over to sit by them, "We heard that you-" he pointed to Sirius "-and you-" he pointed to Rowan "-hooked up last night."  

"Well," Rowan said, with a hint of finality in her tone, "You heard wrong. We most certainly did not 'hook up' last night." As she spoke, she glared at a group of giggling third-year girls by one corner of the courtyard. They only giggled more as they picked up their books and took one final, hopeful look towards Sirius before walking through the archway that took them out of the courtyard. "Besides, I can't understand what's so interesting about two people supposedly spending a night together."  

"Are you denying it?" Sirius asked, looking over at her with those grey eyes that, at that particular moment, seemed to see into her soul, but a moment later, that feeling was gone and she replied, "No, I'm most certainly not denying it. But I am denying what everybody thinks."  

"As you should," he said, leaning his head back with his eyes closed.  

Peter sat down beside Sirius, close enough that he opened one eye and said, "Please move away from me."  

James sat across from him, leaning on one arm and started to stare off into space, fiddling with a blade of grass from between the tiles. Remus pulled out a book and leaned against one of the beams of the fountain.