Wasting Time

35

For the next week, every time Sirius and I spoke to each other, we fought. Not big blow outs like we had the first day, but small, nasty arguments. Neither of us was willing to apologize, because neither of us felt that we were wrong.

Friday evening, Sirius came down from the boys dorms to join the rest of us by the fire. He sat down next to me, an odd choice given our current situation. He glanced over at me reading a letter from my brother.

"What's that? A letter from your other boyfriend?" He said frostily. I just rolled my eyes.

"Matt," I replied shortly.

"Oh so he's remembered you exist, has he?" Normally, the others would have told him to knock it off. But they were all sick of us by this point, and knew we wouldn't knock it off anyway. So now they all just rolled their eyes. "Probably for the best. Your other boyfriend is what started this all anyway."

I looked up at him now, appraising him.

"Really? Because I remember this all started when you slept with my friend," I said dryly. "Funny How people remember things differently, isn't it?"

"Oh please," he scoffed. "That never would have happened if—"

"If what?" I interrupted him, still calm. "If I hadn't sat on a couch with my ex boyfriend? If I hadn't comforted a grieving friend?"

Sirius had nothing to say to that, and I could tell it bothered him that he had failed to get a rise out of me. Our friends all looked irritated, and I saw Remus and Mary exchange a knowing glance.

"Okay," Mary started. "When are you two gonna deal with this? You need to have a come to Merlin meeting, because this is getting ridiculous."

"Excuse me?" I replied, irritation colouring my tone. This got more of a rise from me than Sirius had. "I don't remember asking for relationship advice."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't get defensive. This is affecting all of us."

Sirius made a noise and rolled his eyes, but said nothing.

"Affecting all of us? Our relationship is none of your business, Mary McDonald, and you'd do well to remember that. If you aren't actually in our relationship, this has nothing to do with you."

"Yes it does," Remus said firmly. He looked angrier than he was letting on.

"Oh yeah? How exactly?" Sirius asked in a mocking tone.

"You two have become absolutely intolerable to be around. You do realize that, don't you? You sit down, you say awful things to each other, and then one of you leaves. Multiple times a day, everyday. It's completely absurd."

Remus wasn't one to lash out, so we were both taken aback by this outburst.

"So what do you want us to do mate? Do you all feel this way?" Sirius asked the group. No one said anything, but their faces said it all.

"You go and talk about it now, or you leave the rest of us out of it. Be grown ups for once in your life," Remus told him.

We looked at each other, and then around at our friends. They all looked either uncomfortable or agitated. We looked back at each other and sighed.

"Well, come on then," I said and stood up, walking to his dormitory. He followed behind me.

When we got upstairs, I sat down on James' bed and he sat across from me on his own. I crossed my arms and waited for him to speak.

"What?" He asked when he saw how I was sitting.

"Well? What do you want from me? You're the one who's mad, so tell me what you want."

"I just want to be honest with me. Just tell me what happened." He sounded tired as he spoke.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Because you're not gonna like what I have to say."

He shrugged. "Can't be worse than where we're at now." I nodded and took a deep breath.

"Well I basically told you, after everything with Emmeline, I wanted to hurt you back. I thought for a while actually, a couple days, about the best way to do that. Caradoc, it was actually obvious that that was it. So my plan was to sleep with him and then make sure you found out about it. But after I did, I decided that I didn't want to hurt you. So I never told you," I paused.

"And that's it? That's not so bad."

I looked at him for a moment before sighing.

"No. That's not it. I kept sleeping with him for awhile. He was nice and I was hurting. I never meant for you to know, but I didn't stop either. And I don't feel bad about it. I feel bad about why I did it, but I don't feel bad that I did. I didn't do anything wrong, we weren't together."

He nodded, seeming to accept what I had said. "And why didn't you tell me about the letters?"

"Honestly?"

He sighed. "Yes Marlene, honestly."

"I was scared. Last time Fabian was involved, you slept with Emmeline."

He flinched at the words. It kind of surprised me, because I had been reminding him of that regularly since our fight, among other things.

"I thought you forgave me for that," he said quietly. I looked at him sadly.

"I did. But I didn't forget about it. And I don't know if I ever will, so if that's going to keep being a problem for you, I should just go." I stood up. Sirius reached out a hand to stop me.

"Don't go."

I nodded and sat back down. "So? Have we come to Merlin? Is that everything?"

A small smile crossed his face. "I think so. Thank Merlin for Mary and Remus, I don't know if I could have gone another day like that."

I laughed. "Oh we've gone longer."

"Doesn't mean i like it."

"Okay, also," I started, moving over to Sirius' bed. I all but jumped on him, I was so happy to be talking to him again. "What was that prolonged eye contact communication thing they did? I did not think they were that close," I said and Sirius laughed.

"It's definitely a new development."

I looked at him and gasped dramatically.

"You know something!" I accused. He laughed again.

"I don't know anything. I think they were just conspiring to get us to stop being intolerable assholes."

"A noble endeavor. Probably for the best, as well, she still hasn't dealt with Edgar."

"She hasn't?" He asked, surprised.

"Oh my god, he was staring at her like the whole start of term banquet, it was absurd. She says she just ignored it all summer, no ultimatum yet." He laughed as I excitedly filled him in. "God, I hate not talking to you!"