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Not long afterwards I arrived home, tear-stained and exhausted. I’d had to stop a couple of blocks away to compose myself enough to stop Mum or Dad asking any awkward questions, and cast a passable Cheering Charm on myself, but I was still less than my usual sparkling self when I pulled into the driveway. And seeing the Potters’ owl waiting for me on the front steps, a note in Sirius’ handwriting attached to its leg, didn’t help.

“Is that you, Laura?” Mum called out as I let myself inside.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I said, hoping to be able to disappear upstairs before she saw me.

“You’re home early,” she said, poking her head around the corner and seeing my face. “Oh, Laura, what’s wrong?”

If you’ve ever had someone ask you that question when you’re trying to hold everything in, you’ll know that it causes you to break down completely. In this case I just dropped my bag and burst into tears, and she rushed over to give me a hug.

“Careful,” came Dad’s voice. “We should make sure it’s actually her.”

“It’s her,” Mum said reproachfully over my shoulder as I cried into her. “You think I don’t know my own daughter? And she’d never be able to answer any questions when she’s in this state, anyway.”

Dad conceded defeat, and once I’d calmed down a little Mum managed to coax a little bit of information out of me.

“I was made a fool of,” I explained, hiccoughing uncomfortably. “I trusted someone I shouldn’t have and it backfired.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Definitely not, I thought. Instead I just shook my head.

“That’s fine,” she said, “whenever you’re ready. There’s a letter here for you, too,” she went on. “Is that anything to do with it?”

I shook my head again – it was easier to lie when I wasn’t talking. “I’d better go upstairs and answer it.”

Or, I thought, I’ll go upstairs, burst into tears again, and then send the letter back unopened. I knew that I didn’t want to know what he had to say, it was too soon and too painful. To think you believed him, a voice inside my head chastised me. You should have known it was too good to be true.

I gestured to the owl to follow me upstairs. Once in my room with the door shut, I pulled off my new bracelet and daffodil clasp, wrapped them in a bit of parchment and tied them to the owl’s other leg. “Take this and the letter back again,” I told it. “And don’t bother coming back, I don’t want an answer.” Whether it understood me I had no idea, but once I opened my window it flew off anyway, probably back to James’ house.

The next week was torture. I’d written to Mary to explain what had happened, and while she was sympathetic she had her own new relationship that was occupying her attention, and I didn’t want to depress her with my problems. Charlotte would probably have understood, but while we were much closer than we had been, we still weren’t really close enough for me to pour my heart out in a letter to her. And Sirius, well …

He hadn’t even tried to follow me.

This fact tore at me more than anything else. I’d kept an eye on my rear vision mirror as I drove away from James’ house, hoping against hope that he would try to coax me back, that the black motorbike would appear from nowhere and try to make me stop. But all I’d seen was a dog, probably a stray, which seemed to like the challenge of chasing the one car on the roads that early on New Year’s Day. Eventually, as I neared the motorway, even that had given up, its large black shape slowly disappearing behind me as I drove north.

Shows how much you really meant to him, that annoying voice in the back of my mind kept pointing out. If he’d really cared, he would have tried to stop you from leaving. He would have tried to get you to come back. And I knew that was true, because that was what I would have done if the tables were turned. I would have tried anything I could think of to get him to change his mind. But all he did was write a short note – I knew it was short due to the size of the parchment attached to the Potters’ owl’s leg – and leave it at that.

Right, so perhaps that wasn’t fair. There had probably been a dozen letters in the week between the party and school going back, but I hadn’t read any of them; they’d all been sent back, unopened. Cerridwyn was probably sick of the journeys to Somerset and London by now, but whatever he had to say could wait. I probably couldn’t have read his letters, anyway – my tears would have bled the ink across the page before I could have gotten through it. The trouble was that it had all felt so real – more real than anything else in my life – and I was having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that it wasn’t.

My parents, of course, realised something was wrong, but they weren’t very successful in getting any answers out of me, even with Mum at her police-officer best.

“Laura, is this about a boy?” she asked gently one night when she came into my room. “Is that why you’re not talking about it?”

“I’m not allowed to have boyfriends this year,” I said automatically, not looking at her. “I know the rules.”

“Something happened at that party,” Mum said, ignoring my answer. “You were unusually happy before it, and you’re unusually upset now, and all you’ve said is that you trusted someone you shouldn’t have. It looks to me like a broken heart.”

Well, that was uncomfortably accurate. When did she get so perceptive? “I’m fine,” I said stiffly. “I’ll be fine. I’d just rather be alone.”

“Hmm,” she said doubtfully. “I’ll bring a cup of tea up then, shall I?”

“Fine,” I agreed. “Now I need to get this homework done.” I looked pointedly at her and she left the room, closing the door gently behind her.

****

“Laura, can I have a word please?”

I looked up with dread as the train compartment door opened, but it wasn’t Sirius. It was, however, Remus, and I wasn’t sure how prepared I was for this conversation.

“Yeah, all right,” I heard myself saying. Might as well get it over with. Getting out of my seat and following him, I found myself in the roomy bit at the end of the carriage. “What is it?” I asked, trying to summon enough energy to sound interested.

“Padfoot,” he said seriously. “Look, Laura, what happened? All we know is that you left in a huff, and he hasn’t said anything except that he was a stupid idiot for letting you jump to conclusions, and you dumped him.”

“Like he cares,” I said bitterly. “He made it clear that it wasn’t that important to him, anyway.”

“You’re kidding,” Remus said.

“I’m not,” I said. “Like I said, he made it clear.”

“He can’t have,” he protested. “I know Sirius, and there’s no way known he would have done that. And he’s downright depressed at the moment, he’s taking it really badly.”

“Right,” I said. “Whatever. All I know is that I was a fool to believe him and I’m better off how I was before.” And I turned away from him and went back to my compartment, pulling the blinds down as I got inside.

“What did he want?” Charlotte asked. She looked a little strained, and I realised that Remus talking to me like that wouldn’t have been easy for her. I certainly wouldn’t have been comfortable if Sirius had stuck his nose in looking for a word with her.

“To talk about Sirius,” I said shortly. “Which should explain why it was a very short conversation.”

I was sitting with Charlotte and Martha, Lily being busy with Head Girl duties and James, and Mary spending her time with Sebastian. I didn’t blame her for that – if Sirius and I were still together, I would have done the same thing, and the last thing she needed was me dragging her down with my tales of woe – and the other girls were perfectly happy to hold my hand for the duration of the train journey.

Martha kept trying to cheer us up by badmouthing both Sirius and Remus, trying to get us to say how awful they were (and in the process let off some steam), but she was met with a stony silence on both sides. I was heartbroken, yes, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak badly of him to other people, not even my fellow exes. Instead, we concentrated on the food we’d bought from the trolley witch, the passing landscape, and homework – just about anything that wasn’t male.

I couldn’t escape the gossip, though. Because Sirius and I had appeared separately on the platform, had occupied different carriages, and didn’t speak on arrival, it was impossible to ignore the whispers. “I knew it wouldn’t last” … “The amortentia wore off, did it?” … “I see he came to his senses …”

“Ignore them,” Charlotte said steadily as she helped me to the Gryffindor table at supper that night, sounding uncomfortably like Sirius had done before the holidays. “It’ll stop soon enough.”

“Whatever,” I said dully. I was having difficulty putting any effort into anything at all, and seeing Sirius at the same table didn’t help. He looked hopefully at me as I sat down, as though I might have been willing to hear him out, but I wasn’t ready to face him yet and turned away, and he moved onto ignoring me after that. He looked a little different – paler than usual, perhaps, with a bit of a closed look to his face – but he was still Sirius and having him there at all tore at my heart. I didn’t like the constant reminder of what I’d lost.

I barely ate that night. In fact, I barely ate all week. Lily cast a few Cheering Charms on me but even those didn’t have the desired effect, instead wearing off after quarter of an hour or so, though that may have had something to do with the fact that I still wasn’t sure how much I trusted her. In any case, just getting to classes at all was a huge effort and I struggled to get my homework done, something which didn’t go down very well with Professor Flitwick.

“Not at all to your usual standard, Miss Cauldwell,” he said as he handed back a particularly bad Charms essay. “You seem to be losing your flair.”

“Yes, Professor,” I said automatically. “I’m sure it will come back eventually.”

“For your sake, I hope it’s before final exams,” he said kindly, and moved on to the next student. I realised dully that Dad had been right after all – distractions during NEWTs were a bad idea. Boyfriends especially.

As Flitwick left I turned to look at Sirius, hoping that he didn’t realise he was the reason for everything, but from the look on his face I wasn’t convinced he was taking anything in at all. His head was turned towards me, but he looked so blank that for a split second I considered waving a hand in front of his face to see if there would be any reaction. At least, I realised, he wasn’t getting any satisfaction from my despair. In that one sense, I was probably one up on Dione Turpin.

Martha wasn’t really helping, either, though she probably didn’t know she was doing it. In her case, it was more a matter of not thinking.

“What’s wrong with Sirius?” she asked as she came into the dorm one night, joining Lily and me in the room. Mary was out with Sebastian somewhere, and Charlotte was finishing off some Divination homework.

Lily glared at her and put a finger to her lips, pointing at me. “You know that, Martha.”

“Oh.” Martha shrugged as she flung her bag onto her bed. “Really, though? He’s like this over a break-up?”

“He’s like this over this break-up,” Lily said quietly, clearly trying to wordlessly get Martha to understand that, with me there, the dorm wasn’t the place to be discussing this.

“It’s all right,” I muttered. “You can talk about it. I have to get used to it anyway.”

“I must say I’m amazed,” Martha went on. “I thought he must’ve been disinherited again or something, he’s really clammed up like he did in fifth year when he left home.”

Her words made me realise that I hadn’t heard him talking that term at all. He’d come towards me on the train platform as though he wanted to say something, but I’d turned my back on him and concentrated on talking to Mum and Dad, and he’d backed off, and then there was the attempt at contact on the first night at supper. And that was it. I hadn’t noticed any interactions with anyone else at all, not even James. As the week wore on he’d even stopped looking after himself – more often than not hair not combed, face unshaven, robes dirty or haphazardly thrown on. It was like he had shut himself down, like he just didn’t care any more.

“Well, he’s upset,” Lily said.

“Hmmm.” Martha looked at me. “How long were you together again?”

“About a fortnight,” I said. “Two weeks on, two weeks off, so to speak.” Together for a fortnight, broken up for a fortnight. And it still hurt like nothing else. I hated that he had this strong a hold on me, it just showed how stupid I’d been for getting that attached to him in the first place.

“Right.” Martha looked thoughtful before turning to Lily again. “You know, Lils, I think you might have been right. He did fall for someone.” She shook her head. “Too bad for him that it didn’t work out, hey?”

“He’ll get over it,” I said bitterly. “It’s all an act. He didn’t really care, not that much. He made that perfectly clear.”

“Are you sure about that?” Lily asked gently. “Are you sure that this whole thing isn’t just one big misunderstanding?”

“Oh yes, Lily,” I shot back icily. “I’m sure. You can depend on that.”

****

My week improved a little on Friday when Bernie Carmichael approached me after Ancient Runes. “Um, Laura, can I have a word please?” he asked.

“What?” I was so immersed in my own little world that I’d forgotten that other people even existed. “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Look, by all means tell me if I’m being too forward here, but I noticed that you and Black seem to have broken up.”

“Big call, that one,” I said dully. “Yeah, we did.”

“So,” he said a little hesitantly, “I just wondered if, when you’re a bit more over it all, whether you might consider, uh, me?”

I stopped dead. “You’re asking me out?”

He looked nervously at me. “Well, yeah, if that’s okay. But only when you’re ready,” he added quickly, as though I’d looked like I was about to curse him. (And quite possibly I did. I felt like cursing people all the time that week. It was nothing personal against Bernie.)

I considered his offer. He was nice enough, as I’d noted before the Yule Ball when I’d ditched him so unceremoniously. I felt horrible about that now – if I’d known how the thing with Sirius would end up, I would never have done that in the first place. This was my chance to make it up to him, and it would be a relief to think about someone else for a change.

“Thanks, Bernie,” I said with a smile that I didn’t even have to fake. “I’d like that.”

He beamed at me. “That’s great,” he said enthusiastically. “Maybe we could start sitting together in Runes, you know, just get to know each other a bit better. What do you think?”

“Sounds great,” I said, even finding a little enthusiasm. That would mean I didn’t have to sit with Remus – it was like killing two birds with one curse.

Remus, however, seemed to have other ideas. “I heard you and Bernie,” he said quietly as we made our way along the Gryffindor table for lunch. “Look, Laura, I might be completely out of line here, but I think that you and Sirius should try to work things out before you start thinking about seeing other people. You’re both miserable and, frankly, you’re pining for each other.”

I turned to him angrily. “And what would you know, Remus?” I spat. “How do you know what I’m feeling? It’s my life and if I want to go out with Bernie Carmichael, I’ll bloody well do it.”

“Well, make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons, then,” he said coolly, not blanching from my attack on him. “If it’s just to get back at Padfoot, or to try to get over him, then that’s not really fair on Bernie. Just keep that in mind.”

“Right, I’ll do that,” I said. “Now, if you’ve finished sticking your nose in other people’s business, I’d like to have some lunch.”

Or rather, I thought, I’d like to sit alone at the Gryffindor table, ignoring everyone around me and nibbling at a piece of bread. Because that was all I did at mealtimes these days. My appetite still hadn’t come back – in fact, the dinner at the Potters’ on New Years Eve was probably the last time I’d eaten properly. Mary had stolen into the kitchens a couple of times to try to tempt me with chocolate, but even that wasn’t working. At this rate, I’d waste away to nothing before my birthday.

After lunch it was Lily’s turn to try to talk me around. “I heard you’re thinking of going out with Bernie Carmichael,” she said as we headed up the stairs towards Gryffindor Tower.

“Remus been telling stories, has he,” I said bitterly. “Nice of him.”

She grabbed my arm firmly. “Laura, please talk to Sirius first,” she urged. “This is killing both of you. I’m sure if you just talked it over you could work things out.”

“Really,” I said. “Well, you think that if it makes you happy.”

“Now you’re sounding like him,” she said. “Look, Laura, he’s really suffering. James thinks he’s coping with this worse than he did when he had to leave home, he’s never seen him this down.”

“So you just want him to get over it, is that it?” I asked angrily. “More concerned about him than you are about me. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped. “I’m just as worried about you. I was just about to say that you’re not doing any better: don’t think we haven’t heard you crying yourself to sleep every night, those Muffliatos you’ve been doing haven’t worked. And no one’s been able to get a coherent sentence out of you all week – not one that’s not bitter and, well, venomous.”

“Oh, so you just want me to be better company?” I snapped, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice in deference to her last remark.

“You’re being ridiculous again,” she said. “I saw how happy you were. Both of you. No one could fake what you two had. I was so happy for both of you, and now, for heaven only knows what reason, you’re both miserable.” She paused. “And, well, I know this is selfish of me, but I want James back.”

“I bet you do,” I muttered cynically. “It’s all about you, isn’t it?” Then I realised what she’d actually said. “What do you mean, you want James back?”

Lily sighed. “Ever since you left on New Years Day, James has been concentrating on Sirius, trying to get him either over this, or back with you. I’m lucky if I get a fifth of his time these days, it’s all Sirius. And, to be honest, I miss him. I love that he’s the sort of person who does this for his friends, but I want it back how it was.” She sighed again. “I know it’s selfish, but please, if you won’t do it for your own sake or for his, do it for me? Just talk to Sirius? Please?”

“Why should I do it for you?” I asked. “You’re obviously on Sirius’ side, not mine. Why do I owe you anything?”

“I’m not on anyone’s side,” she said impatiently. “I don’t think it’s a matter of sides, Laura. I think that once you sit down and talk it over, you’ll make up.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I said tonelessly, though I wasn’t so bitter any more. To be honest, I hadn’t considered how this might be affecting Lily and James’ relationship, and I was feeling somewhat guilty for driving them apart like that. No matter what I thought of Lily just then, I didn’t want to break them up.

“You will, I’m sure of it,” she said, steering me into an empty classroom on the fifth floor and sitting me at a dusty table. “I haven’t had a chance to mention this before, but I think you should know what Mrs Potter said over the holidays. It might help sway your decision.”

I looked at her, surprised, as she perched on a nearby chair. “Mrs Potter? What’s she got to do with anything?”

“She was trying to get me to dish the dirt on you,” Lily said smugly.

I stared at her. “She what?”

“You heard,” she said. “She wanted information, and she decided I was the one to give it. You should have heard her talking about you,” she went on. “She was amazed at Sirius’ behaviour. Apparently Clio went to last year’s party and he hardly spoke to her, and so if you compare that to this year …” Her voice trailed off.

“I don’t know,” I said. “James would say he hardly spoke to me this year. Well, until the morning, he didn’t.”

She giggled. “You know that’s not what I meant!”

“What was she saying?” I couldn’t help myself. Mrs Potter was the closest thing Sirius had to a mother, at least one who cared about him, and even if it hadn’t worked out between us I wanted to know what she’d thought.

Lily smiled mischievously, clearly relieved that I was willing to hear her out. “Well, Mrs Potter’s a sly one, I’m discovering,” she began. “She’s got this great façade of being the friendly motherly type, but she’s pretty shrewd underneath. She tried to trick me into saying bad things about you.”

I was stunned. “Really?”

She nodded. “I don’t think she really thought there was anything bad to say, but if there was she wanted to get it out of me. I think she wanted to make sure you were good enough for Sirius. Now,” she went on, “I don’t know if this is her usual behaviour or not. She might have tried to get dirt on Clio last year, or she might not have. To be honest, I got the feeling she didn’t. I think this was prompted by the way he was around you.”

“Right.” I paused, distracted enough from my problems to think about this. What could possibly have come out?

“Anyway,” Lily went on, “she just started out with, ‘tell me about Laura’. Nothing about you and Sirius, just about you. So I told her that we’d shared a dorm for seven years and you came from a half Muggle half wizarding household, that sort of background stuff. Born in Wales, lives in Bristol, big Quidditch nut, you know the type of thing. And I told her that for a long time I didn’t really know you that well, but in the past couple of years you’d really blossomed. And I said you were really smart and a lot of fun to be around.”

She paused and I took the opportunity to interrupt. “Thanks, Lily.”

“No problem,” she smiled. “Of course, that was before you and Sirius broke up, so you were fun to be around then. Anyway, Mrs Potter then started asking about previous boyfriends, really subtly though. I think she was trying to get a feel for how you were going to treat Sirius. Like I said, this was before the fight, obviously. Anyway, I told her about Bertram and what he’d done, and I said that you were really hurt by it but you showed a lot of strength and dignity in dealing with it.” She paused when I snorted in disbelief.

“You call bawling my eyes out after I found out, dignity?”

She laughed. “Of course not, but that was in private. In public you were very dignified. Even James thought so.”

That surprised me. “Really?”

“Yep,” she nodded. “And if James thought that, then Sirius probably did too. Anyway, I told her you had a heart of gold and wouldn’t hurt anyone without a really good reason.” She paused. “Look, Laura, I don’t really know what happened with Sirius, and I’m sure you think you were justified. But I do know that you haven’t heard his side of whatever it is, so just maybe there are things in the background that you don’t know about. This is why I want you to talk to him – at least hear him out.”

“Right,” I said stiffly, unhappy at being returned to a reality where Sirius and I would never work out. “But you’ve changed the subject. Are you done with the Mrs Potter thing?”

Lily clearly saw that she was stepping very close to the mark and backed off. “Right. Mrs Potter. Like I said, you only hurt people if you really think they deserve it. So then she asked about things you’d done to people you thought did deserve it.”

“I can see why you’re calling her sly,” I admitted, my mind going back over everything I’d done to people over the years and wondering what Mrs Potter had thought about it.

She smiled broadly and nodded. “Yep. Anyway I said that it was mostly pretty harmless stuff, and mostly things your sister had taught you. I loved that one where you joined Gibbon’s knees together, by the way – that was a scream.” She paused, still grinning. “I think you passed, though,” she said. “I told her that I thought you and Sirius were a perfect match.” She paused significantly. “And I still think that, no matter what you think at the moment,” she said pointedly. “You just need to give it a chance.”

“Right,” I said again. “You just go on thinking that.”

She made a face. “You’re sounding like him again,” she said. “And you’re still thinking about him, too, aren’t you?”

“Does it matter?” I asked bitterly.

“It might,” she said. I just looked at her. “Right, back to Mrs Potter,” she said quickly. “I was there on Boxing Day, as you know,” she went on, “and she’d heard your name a lot by then even so that was why she was so curious about you. You should have seen Sirius’ face when he was talking about you, it was a bit like a prior warning of how he was going to behave once you did arrive. ’Cause you’d seen each other just before Christmas, right?”

I nodded, trying not to remember how wonderful that day had been. “Two days before, on the Friday.”

She smiled. “Yes, that was it. Anyway, when I was talking to her on New Years Eve she said, ‘I’ve never seen him like this. He hasn’t let go of her since she got here’, or something like that. Which was true, it was like he was scared you were going to get away. Or that you were a dream and if he let go you’d disappear. So I explained that he’d been crazy about you for months so of course he’d look like all his Christmases had come at once. And then I said that you were just as crazy about him. She seemed happy with that.”

I sat in silence for a little while, trying to take it all in. “So, what happened after I left?” I asked.

“The whole place was in uproar,” she said quietly. “Sirius was running off down the lane trying to catch up with the car, and when that didn’t work he came back and wrote to you to try to get you to come back. And then their owl brought the letter back unopened, with another parcel … he was devastated. What was in that parcel, anyway?”

“Gifts,” I said, somewhat surprised she didn’t know. “I didn’t want the reminder.”

She looked shocked. “That bracelet? You sent that back? But you loved it!”

“That, and the clasp I got for my birthday last year,” I said. “That was him, too.”

“Well, that would explain it,” she said, shaking her head. “He locked himself up in his room and didn’t come out again all day. When he did, he just got straight onto the bike and left without saying goodbye to anyone. James was terrified he was going to do something stupid like pick a fight with some Death Eaters, so he Disapparated to London to wait for him there. I’ve barely seen him since, to be honest.”

“I’m sorry, Lily,” I said guiltily. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble for you two.”

“I know you didn’t,” she said, coming over and giving me a hug. “So, will you talk to him? Please?”

I knew when I was defeated. “Yeah, why not,” I said dully. “Not that it’ll make any difference.”

“You never know,” she said quietly. “Wait here, okay? I’ll go and get him.”

________________________________________

43
I felt uncomfortable and rather vulnerable sitting alone in the classroom like that, my tear-stained face on display to anyone who opened the door. To help counteract this – I wasn’t going to leave, I’d made a promise to Lily – I moved from my chair in the middle of the room to a spot on the floor behind the door, hidden from anyone who didn’t know I was there. A little while later the door opened again and James poked his head in.

“Good, you’re still here,” he said when he spotted me leaning against the wall, curled up in the foetal position. “Now give me your wand.”

I stared at him. “Give you my wand?”

He nodded, coming into the room and standing in front of me with his hand held out. “Yes, your wand. We don’t want this turning into a hex battle.”

“I’m not giving you my wand,” I said petulantly.

He shrugged. “Your choice. But be warned, I’m prepared to fight you for it. I’d just prefer it if you handed it over voluntarily.”

Figuring I’d been through enough lately without James Potter using me for target practice as well, I reached into my robes and pulled it out. “Fine. Have it your way.”

“Good,” he said. “I’ve taken Padfoot’s too, just so you know.”

“Right,” I said listlessly. “Whatever.”

James went back out into the passage and a moment later Sirius came in and sat down next to me, not too close but not very far either, maybe a couple of feet. We heard the door squelch as it closed: it had obviously been Colloportused. It looked like we were being locked in this room until something – anything – got resolved.

For several seconds, neither of us spoke. Sirius broke the silence. “Prongs and Lily think we should talk.” His voice sounded a little hoarse, like he hadn’t used it much lately.

I nodded. “Apparently.”

There was another silence. This time, I broke it. “Did you want to start?”

He laughed hollowly. “Why bother? Even if you did listen, chances are you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

There was too much truth in this for me to ignore so I just sat there, staring at the wall opposite us. After another pause, he leaned over and put a small parcel on the floor next to me.

“You might as well have these back,” he said dully. “I’ve got no use for them. Do what you like with them, I don’t care. You can even sell them, you should get a decent bit of gold for them.” His voice was flat and he didn’t look at me.

I picked up the parcel. It jingled a little in my hand and when I opened it, I saw the clasp and the bracelet he had bought me. The ones I had sent back to him.

“You should keep them,” I said awkwardly.

He shook his head. “No point,” he said, still dully. “I bought them to try to show someone how much she meant to me,” he went on, his voice cracking a little. “Turns out she didn’t care.”

Tears started rolling down my cheeks. “I cared,” I protested. “I probably cared too much. That’s why it hurt so much, finding out it wasn’t real.”

“But it was real,” he said, anger making his voice come alive again. “You wilfully misunderstood.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Well, then, did it ever occur to you that there might be something in it?” he challenged.

“I know what I heard,” I said defensively. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Sirius. It was pretty obvious what you meant.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter anyway,” he said, his voice dull and expressionless again. “You’re not the person I thought you were. I made a mistake.”

The tears came back again. That was all I was now – a mistake. It was like a knife in my heart.

“What did you think I was like?” I asked tentatively.

He shrugged. “I thought you actually understood me,” he said eventually. “I thought that if anything like this ever came up you would stop to hear my side of it, rather than jumping to conclusions and, well, ditching me like that.” He paused again. “I thought you were special.”

The knife in my heart turned. I ’d thought I’d understood him, too, just as I’d thought he’d understood me. We must have both been wrong.

I pushed the jewellery back towards him. “You take these,” I said. “Maybe you can return them or something.”

He shook his head and pushed it back to my side. “I bought them for you,” he said. “They’re yours. Sell them if you don’t want them, you should get seventy or eighty for them.”

“Seventy or eighty Sickles?” I asked, turning my head to look at him.

He looked offended. “What do you think I am, a cheapskate?”

My eyes widened. “Galleons?”

He nodded. “Only the best,” he said bitterly. “I thought you were worth it.”

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured, trying not to cry again. His words cut at me, and to try to distract myself I picked up the bracelet and fingered it absently.

“Worth every Knut, though,” he said suddenly, his voice coming alive again with what almost sounded like enthusiasm. “We had, what, three full days together?” I looked at him and nodded, the tears blurring my vision a little. He turned to face the wall again. “Best three days of my life,” he went on. “Best two weeks of my life, really, even if I didn’t see you for most of them. If all it took to feel like that all the time was a bit of gold, I’d be shelling it out happily.”

I could have said that myself. Almost word for word, it was exactly how I felt. How could it all have gone so wrong? Trying not to think about it, I took a deep breath and asked the question I’d been avoiding for a fortnight.

“Sirius, tell me about what I heard. You know, at James’ place.”

He turned his head and looked at me, clearly surprised. “Really?”

I nodded, steeling myself. “Yes, really.” I took another breath. “I’m not that different from what you thought. I know I should hear you out. I just didn’t want to in case it hurt me any more.”

He looked a little relieved, but didn’t answer straight away. “Where to start,” I heard him mutter. “Right,” he went on, this time louder. “Well, as a bit of background, the things that we talk about among ourselves are pretty much sports, girls and sex. Though not necessarily in that order.”

I nodded. “Probably not a huge surprise.”

The ghost of a smile crossed his face. “No, probably not. Anyway, well, there are twenty girls in our year group here, so you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that we’ve gone through and rated every one of you over the years. And that sparks off little asides, and in-jokes, and that sort of thing.”

“Right.” I wasn’t sure how much of this I really wanted to know.

“Okay.” He took a breath. “So, keep that in mind as I move on to what you heard that morning,” he said. “We were trying to find Wormtail a girlfriend, because as you know he hasn’t had much success with girls. You know, someone who might actually want to touch him.”

I smiled despite myself. “Good luck with that.”

“Well, yes,” he agreed. “And he doesn’t make things any easier for himself because he’s so picky.”

I stared at him. “Peter?”

He nodded. “Yes, he is. We’d thrown some names at him and he’d found something wrong with all of them. So we summed it up by saying that he just wants someone with a great body but not much in the way of brains.”

“Tits and arse and not much else,” I supplied tonelessly.

He made a face. “I’m not proud of that line,” he said, “but, well, yes. And someone made the connection that, before you, my past history was pretty much that.”

“And then with me,” I said bitterly, “you didn’t even get that because, as Peter pointed out, I don’t have much by way of –”

“No,” Sirius said suddenly, cutting me off. “No, that’s not what we meant.”

I looked at him scornfully. “Yeah, right. Pull the other one.”

“No, it’s not,” he insisted. “We meant that you’re different because you’re more than that, not less.”

“Funny way of saying it, then,” I commented wryly.

“I said we talked about sex, not feelings,” he said with some exasperation. “They’re two completely different things.”

“I guess,” I said, trying to be fair. “Connected, but different.”

He made a noise like he was about to argue the point but thought better of it. “Right. So if anything as – um – personal as feelings comes up, then we try to say it in as, er, as general a way as possible. And if there can be more than one meaning to what you say, if it could be misconstrued, then so much the better.” He sighed again as he took in my sceptical expression. “Look, Laura, I’m not trying to excuse what I said, I’m trying to explain it.”

“Okay.” I tried to hide my irritation. “But you never talk about anything personal? Not even with James?”

“Oh, one on one we do,” he explained, “but not in a group. There are probably exceptions, of course, but usually it’ll only come up in a group situation if we want to embarrass someone.”

“Right,” I said. “So, what you’re saying is, you were speaking generally and trying to give things connotations that weren’t necessarily accurate.”

“I’m the first to admit it should have been worded differently,” he said, looking at the wall again. “I’m not proud of it. We just figured that you were still asleep and Lily was in the shower, so we didn’t think anyone would hear us. Call it not thinking, call it what you like, but it was a mistake.”

“But this is the sort of thing you’d be saying in the dorm,” I said accusingly.

“Well, yes,” he said, sighing again. “Maybe I shouldn’t even be trying this. Trying to get you to understand how a boy’s mind works – I don’t really understand how your mind works, so trying to explain this to you is probably pointless.”

“Try me,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”

He hesitated. “Okay, I’ll try you,” he said eventually. “Just in case you are worth it, after all. So, going back to what you heard. The comment about your … well, that comment, that was a throwback of those ratings of girls we used to do.”

“So that was how you rated me,” I said dryly. “Thanks.”

“Hey, you said you’d hear me out,” he said defiantly. “This is you doing your best?”

I felt chastened. “Sorry.”

He nodded. “Right. Well, that was how I rated you in fifth year. I think you got about a five. Out of ten, that is. Nothing special, I thought, and could do with bigger …”

I looked away from him again. “Right. Thanks for that.”

“And then last term when we did it again,” he said loudly, talking over me, “I gave you a ten.”

My head spun towards him. “Ten?”

He nodded. “I told you in Bristol that you were just about perfect,” he said. “And I meant that. I thought you were.” He shook his head again. “Got that one wrong, didn’t I.”

I realised suddenly that we had both moved from our original positions, towards each other, just subtly but enough that the gap between us was now only a matter of inches rather than feet, and I wondered what that was telling me. Probably it was just something else I didn’t want to think about.

“So,” I pressed, “what you’re saying is, when you were talking about me that day, you were saying – in a roundabout way, by the sounds of things – that I represented more, not less, than, well, that phrase.”

He met my eyes and nodded, clearly willing me to believe him. “Yes.”

“Then why did you say that I made up for it by shagging you?” I asked bluntly.

“I didn’t,” he said defensively. “You’re jumping to conclusions again. I said that they knew what I thought of that comment – which incidentally was that I liked them how they were – and that you made up for it in other ways. And bear in mind what I said about skirting around any feelings in these conversations and saying stuff that could mean several different things.”

I nodded, trying to be fair and hear him out. “Okay. So you were deliberately implying one thing, but you meant something else.”

He nodded. “Yes. And the guys understood that, so they never interpreted it that way. They’d laugh about it, yes, but they knew it didn’t mean that.”

“So what did you mean?” I asked.

He hesitated for a fraction of a second before answering. “I meant that you, as a whole package, were … you know that phrase, the whole is more than the sum of its parts? Or Golpalott’s Third Law in Potions – the antidote to a blended poison is equal to more than the sum of each individual antidote. That’s what it was like with you. That is, the parts were all brilliant, but combined … it was like you were too good to be true. Which in hindsight I guess you were. Because if you were what I thought you were, we would have been having this conversation two weeks ago instead of now, and you would have figured out that there was nothing in it. And none of these past two weeks would have happened.”

I shook my head, my eyes welling up again. “You see, Sirius, this is why I didn’t want to talk to you, why I sent those letters back. You’re too good at this. You always say just what I want to hear. It makes it so much harder not to believe you.”

“Well, then, try believing it,” he challenged. “I’m not just saying this stuff, Laura. I mean it. Think about it – the way people talk about me at this school, do you honestly think that if I said this sort of thing as a matter of course, you wouldn’t know?”

I smiled wryly. “I’ve got to hand it to you, that’s a good argument.”

“Because it’s true,” he insisted. “And believe me, if the guys thought we were shagging, you would have known about it.”

I shook my head again. “Fool me once, shame on you,” I said. “Fool me twice, shame on me.” And I hugged my knees tightly and burst into noisy and very undignified tears.

I immediately felt his arm around me, comforting me, even though I had just called him the worst sort of liar. Before I could stop myself I had collapsed onto him, throwing my arms around him and crying onto his shoulder as he patted my back reassuringly and held me to him. It was incredibly comforting, even though every now and then I felt him shudder a little, as though he too was struggling to stay calm.

“You still don’t believe me, do you,” he said quietly after a while. I looked at him and shook my head mutely. “I thought you would,” he mumbled, releasing his hold on me. “The person I thought you were, would have.”

“I want to,” I whispered. “More than anything I want to. But I can’t risk it.” I looked away. “I can’t go through this again. It just hurts too much.”

“Try,” he insisted. “We can work this out. You won’t have to go through this again. Come on, prove to me that I wasn’t wrong about you.”

I looked at him, sighing inwardly. He did understand me, too well I thought – this was definitely intended to be a challenge and he would have known that I would have trouble backing away from it. But could we do it? After this, could it ever be like it was before?

“I’m not sure I can,” I admitted finally. “It’s probably too late.”

“Try me,” he said. And he gently turned me to face him and put a finger to my wet cheek, wiping away a tear.

Through blurry eyes I gazed at him, longing for it all to be real. And his face was open, it had that look that I’d thought meant he was being genuine. Maybe, a small voice in the back of my mind pointed out, he was. Just maybe, this was true.

Watching me intently, he gently pushed my hair back off my face, where it had been clinging to the wet skin, and leaned in and kissed my cheek, his lips just brushing where a tear was sitting. A moment later, after I didn’t push him away, he did it again, focussing on another tear on the other cheek, further down this time, closer to my mouth. And before I even realised I was doing it, I had moved my head ever so slightly and caught his lips with mine, kissing him hungrily and with all the passion of a broken heart, pulling him towards me to be as close as possible.

After a little while we broke apart, not really sure why we’d been kissing at all. Wasn’t this a break-up meeting? Don’t be silly, that voice in the back of my head told me, this is what you wanted all along. As soon as he came into the room, you wanted to make it up with him.

He seemed to know what I was thinking because he put a hand to my face again and looked at me searchingly. “Laura, what does this mean? Are we back on?”

I hesitated. I wanted more than anything to say yes, but something still held me back. “I don’t know.”

He pulled away from me abruptly and stared at the wall opposite again, his hand raking through his hair in frustration. “For the love of Merlin, Laura, make up your mind. If this is ever going to work out – and deep down you know we both want it to – then you’re going to have to trust me. Tell me honestly, when have I ever lied to you? Think about it. Never, that’s your answer. Never. I might have not answered a question, or I might have dodged it with jokes and sarcasm, but I haven’t lied. Not once.”

Taken aback, I forced myself to think about it. I went through every conversation I’d ever had with him that I could think of, every single one (aside from what had caused the fight in the first place – I was trying to be fair), and I couldn’t remember a definite lie. Evasions, yes, but no lies. So, I reasoned internally, that would tend to indicate that he wasn’t lying now. I had to swallow my insecurities and accept that. Finally, I took a deep breath and turned to him again, saying the words that I knew in my heart to be true.

“I trust you.”

Of course you do, that annoying voice in my head pointed out. You’d trust him with your life, if it came to that.

He was still staring at the wall, but at this he quickly turned towards me. “What was that?”

“I trust you,” I repeated. “You’re right. You haven’t lied to me. Not that I can think of, anyway.”

His whole body relaxed, which surprised me as I hadn’t realised how tense he’d been. “You really mean that? You believe me now?”

I nodded slowly. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, tears welling up yet again as I thought of what I’d done to him. “I’ve been completely unfair to you, haven’t I?”

“It was my fault too,” he said. “I should never have said that in the first place.” He took a breath, his hand running through my hair. “I spent all this week, after you wouldn’t talk to me on Sunday, trying to convince myself that I’d misjudged you, that I was wrong about you. I’m so relieved that I wasn’t.”

“I missed you so much,” I admitted. “I couldn’t cope, knowing you were there and you weren’t mine any more.”

“I missed you too,” he murmured, and we kissed again, still hungrily, needing to make up for those two weeks in as short a time as possible, me starting to wonder why we’d broken up at all. This was what I had always wanted. Even when I didn’t know I wanted him, I knew I wanted this.

Some time later we paused for breath, and he took the opportunity to put a hand to my breast. “And, for the record,” he said quietly, “I would never need a search party to find these, and I certainly don’t want you casting an Engorgement Charm on them. I think they’re perfect just the way they are.” His hand was still there, caressing me through my robes and sending a surge of electricity through me. “In fact,” he went on, “my only complaint is that I don’t know them nearly well enough. They are, like the rest of you, beautiful.” And he leaned down and kissed each one softly – and it sent my heart racing even more.

I put my hand to his chest and made a move to start inching downwards. He lifted his head, a mischievous smile crossing his face. “Do I take it you don’t want to go slow any more?”

“This is slow,” I pointed out, surprising myself with my newfound boldness. “We’re both fully clothed, aren’t we?”

“For the time being,” he teased. A little alarmed, I took my hand away – I hadn’t intended to go any further than that. “Joking, joking,” he said quickly, grabbing my hand and moving it back to where it was. “Though if I’d known this would happen today, I would have shaved this morning.” He put a hand to the stubble on his cheek smiled ruefully.

“I don’t mind,” I said with a smile, reaching up and pulling him even closer to me. “I’d rather that than nothing at all.”

****

Some time later the door opened again, and James and Lily tentatively poked their heads into the room. “It’s been two hours,” Lily said nervously. “How’s it go-” Her voice cut out as she saw Sirius and me, curled up together in a corner, our arms around each other. “Well,” she said, looking so relieved it was almost funny, “I guess you two have worked it out.”

“You could say that,” Sirius said, unable to stop his smile as we stood up. “Oh, and Prongs? I’ll take my wand back now, if you don’t mind.”

“What?” James looked confused. “Oh yeah, right. Of course.” He reached into his robes and pulled out two wands, which he looked at intently before throwing the correct ones to each of us.

“Thanks,” said Sirius, twirling his in his hand before stowing it inside his robes. “Could have done with this an hour ago.”

“Why?” asked Lily.

“Conjure up a mattress or something,” Sirius explained, rubbing his elbow. “This floor’s not very comfortable, if you know what I mean.”

“So, are you saying that you’d like us to leave you here?” James asked, smiling broadly. “That can be arranged. An Imperturbable Charm on the door, perhaps?”

“Now there’s a thought,” I said. “But, you said it had been two hours?”

Lily nodded. “We thought that would be long enough. Looks like we were right.” She looked pointedly at the bracelet I was now wearing again, and smiled.

I ignored her grin. “But that means that classes have finished now,” I said, thinking hard. “And that would mean that supper’s not very far off.” I looked at Sirius. “Food’s sounding pretty good right now, to tell the truth. I’m starving.”

“No problem,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “I might duck upstairs first, though, if you don’t mind. Clean myself up a bit.”

I fingered my hair, hanging limply past my shoulders. I wasn’t sure when it – or my face, for that matter – had last been washed and, like Sirius, I was keen to rectify this as soon as possible. “Good idea,” I said with a smile. “Wait for me, will you? I’ll come up too.”

****

I was saddened but not surprised when our entry into the Great Hall for supper was again greeted by whispers. “What? They’re back together?” … “How did that happen?” … “She must be helping it along a bit …”

I tried to ignore it while Sirius just groaned. “Delightful, aren’t they,” he muttered as we sat down. “You’d think they’d have something else to talk about. There is a war on, after all.”

“Until that starts affecting them directly, though, I think this is the sort of thing they’ll want to talk about,” I pointed out. “And as much as it annoys me, I don’t think I’m going to start wishing a Death Eater attack on the Vablatskys.”

He smiled and kissed my cheek. “Though that would be one way of dealing with it …”

Mary interrupted us by running over from the Ravenclaw table, where she’d been sitting with Sebastian. “Thank goodness ye worked it oot,” she breathed as she gave us the biggest bear hug I’d ever experienced. “Ye were drivin’ us all mad, nae talkin’ t’ each ither when we coul’ all see ye were both dyin’.”

“Nice to see you, too, Mary,” I laughed. “Merlin’s beard, has everyone been talking about it?”

“Jus’ yer friends,” she said, still smiling broadly. “An’, I think, yer fan club too, Sirius. Though they micht nae be as chuffed as we are t’ see ye back together.”

“Was I that bad company this week?” I asked.

She made a face. “Worse. Both o’ ye, horrible t’ be aroond. Bu’ ye’ve made up so we can all relax agin. Nou jus’ promise ye wilna dae it agin, I dinna think any o’ us coul’ stan’ it.” She turned to me. “Oh, an’ dinna worry aboot Bernie. I think he’s worked oot it’s nae goin’ t’ happen.” And she gave me another hug and trundled back to Sebastian, waving merrily at us over her shoulder.

I looked past her to the Ravenclaw table, where Bernie did indeed look somewhat resigned as he stabbed at something with his fork. That was twice I’d let him down, I realised with more than a little remorse. I’d have to make a point of apologising.

Sirius looked at me. “Bernie? As in, Bernie Carmichael? What’s that about?”

“He asked me out,” I explained. “And I said I’d think about it.”

“He’s got a nerve,” he growled. “What jinxes haven’t I used on him yet?”

“Hey, be fair,” I said. “He was really polite and said he’d wait till I was ready. And, well, we had broken up, so it’s not like I wasn’t single.” I squeezed his hand. “But Lily asked me to talk to you first, and, well, that was this afternoon.”

“Right.” He still looked put out. “Thanks, Lily,” he said a bit louder. “I owe you one.” Lily turned and looked at him, clearly a little confused, but he didn’t elaborate.

The meal was almost over when Sirius leaned over and spoke very quietly in my ear. “This is driving me crazy,” he said. “When can we get out of here?”

I swallowed my bite of treacle tart. “I think I’ve just about made up for not eating over the past fortnight,” I said, “but it’s up to you. Do you want to be the first to leave the hall?”

He winked at me. “They’ll talk about us anyway, we might as well give them a reason,” he said, a sly grin on his face. “Come on.”

Our friends smiled knowingly when we stood up to leave, and some whispers came from the other tables, but to my surprise I found I didn’t care. I knew what I had to look forward to once we were out of sight and Sirius didn’t disappoint, stopping in the Entrance Hall to kiss me deeply before we headed upstairs. “I’m not really one for broom cupboards,” he said conversationally on the way up. “Too cramped, generally, and Filch tends to find you. Not to mention the potential for stepping in buckets and things by mistake – most uncomfortable. I got hit in the eye by a mop handle once because I knocked it the wrong way.” He grinned. “Besides, that cupboard just off the Entrance Hall gets used by so many people you almost need to book it in advance. So we’ve come up with some other alternatives.”

I had thought he was taking me back to what would have been an empty Gryffindor Tower, going by the route we took, but that seemed to indicate otherwise. This impression was confirmed when we detoured off route on the fourth floor and stopped outside a large mirror.

“Alohomora,” he said, tapping it with his wand, and the mirror creaked as it came out from the wall and revealed a secret passageway.

Sirius pulled me inside and the mirror closed back up, leaving us in darkness. We both lit our wands automatically and I had a look around.

“This leads to the back of the Three Broomsticks,” he explained. “It’s probably the roomiest of the passages out of the school. Now,” he went on, “let’s make it a bit more comfortable.” And he conjured a thick rug for the floor and a rather plush-looking couch while I just watched dumbly, trying to take it in.

“Right,” he said once he was happy with it, “where were we?” And he pulled me towards him and we kissed again, tenderly, passionately, as though there was no one else in the world.

________________________________________

44
The following Monday I was accosted by Elvira, Greta Catchlove and a handful of other fan club members as I sat in the library in my morning free period. Sirius had just gone to Muggle Studies and I wanted to spend some time catching up on the homework I’d neglected the previous week.

“Okay, tell us how you did it,” Elvira said accusingly, taking the seat next to me. I was a little surprised as I understood she took Muggle Studies too, but maybe she was willing to risk the ire of Professor Penrose by being late.

I decided to play dumb. “Did what?”

“Got your slimy paws on Sirius, of course,” she snarled. “And I thought you were my friend! How could you do that to me?”

I laughed. “For one thing, Elvira, I would never have called us friends. Friends hang out at lunch time and go to Hogsmeade together and catch up over the holidays. That was never us.”

“But what did you do? Was it a love potion? ’Cause we tried that and it didn’t work.”

This was news to me but I wasn’t exactly surprised. Sirius would have to be really thick to eat or drink anything any of this lot gave him. However, it did give me something to work with.

“That’s right,” I said. “I stole some amortentia from Slughorn and fed it to him. Unfortunately it ran out over Christmas, though, and I’ve only just got my supplies up again.”

From the looks on their faces they actually believed me. “How much did you use?” Greta asked.

I had no idea how much amortentia would be needed to get someone interested in you, and unlike Elvira, Greta did NEWT level Potions so I’d have to be convincing. “Half a tablespoon,” I invented.

“So, was it worth it?” Greta demanded. “What’s it like?”

Well, if the fact that I couldn’t stop smiling didn’t give it away, then she and Elvira weren’t as smart as I’d previously given them credit for. Then again, there are none so blind as those who will not see, as my mother would say. “Definitely worth it,” I said dreamily, my mind going back just half an hour to the free period Sirius and I had spent together. “It’s amazing.”

Anyway, I might have been laying it on a bit thick because Elvira was looking suspicious. “Why are you telling us all this?” she demanded. “What if it gets back to him?”

This brought me back to earth a bit, though nothing had been said that offered me any unease. After all, before we got together I hadn’t given Sirius even so much as a breath mint, so I wasn’t overly worried even if they did tell him. “Tell him what you like,” I said. “You think he’d believe you anyway?”

“She’s got a point,” said a sixth-year I knew was in Gryffindor, though I’d not heard her speak before. “He wouldn’t listen to us.”

“She’s lying anyway,” said Elvira, eyeing me shrewdly, and I was reminded suddenly that she was a Ravenclaw. “You never gave him any love potion, did you?”

I grinned. “I admit it,” I said. “Caught out again. How did you guess?”

She didn’t answer, returning instead to her favourite theme. “So how did you do it? What do you have that we don’t?”

Again I refrained from giving the obvious answer – “Sirius” – and instead smiled a somewhat vicious smile. “Well, Elvira,” I said sweetly, “remember how I once suggested you not throw yourself at him but rather just be yourself, be a person who’s nice to be around, and see if it works?”

She blanched a little. “Vaguely. What about it?”

I kept smiling. “Well, guess what? It works.”

****

I got the distinct feeling after that little