The Rise And Fall Of The Stag And The Doe

part of me

Two Days Before Christmas Break...

"You can't leave me here with these people," James stated flatly when he saw Marlene edging towards the door.

Marlene groaned. "At least you have Lily... Hey! You have Lily, you don't need me to be here!"

"I made you my guest for a reason." He muttered draining his Butterbeer. "I don't have Lily, Slughorn has Lily. I have this empty glass of Butterbeer."

"Are you jealous of an overweight, middle aged man with I'm pretty sure is a whiskey stain on his collar...?"

"Yes." James snapped back.

Marlene leaned back against the wall, "You are ridiculous."

"No, I'm not. I didn't want to come. Lily asked me to, and she made that face, you know the one where her eyes get all big and she pouts her lips out."

"It's called a puppy dog face...Sirius makes it all the time when he wants something."

James scowled. "Yeah, well, it's stupid."

"And you're easily persuaded."

"Well she was pissed about something I had done so this was a bit of a compromise."

Marlene snorted, "What did you do?"

"She kept putting me on the schedule with Slytherin's so I may or may not have mixed up all of her clothes so she couldn't find anything..."

"You do realize she can leave you right?"

James rolled his eyes. "Yeah whatever."

Checking her watch, Marlene fixed the straps of her emerald green dress and scowled. Across the room Sirius was shamelessly snogging some sixth year Hufflepuff. Marlene's face flushed in anger at the sight, but she said nothing. They hadn't been together in months. In all honestly she should have had any feelings about what he was doing at all. He didn't want her. He wanted just a casual fling; he didn't want feelings so it was never going to work out between them. She'd long accepted that, but sometimes it seemed her heart wasn't quite ready to let go.

She didn't know what it was waiting for. He'd given her no reason to hope, no reason to expect him to change or grow up. The problem was she was always going to be around him. Marlene was never going to stop seeing James, and Sirius was never going to be away from James, so inevitably she would always have to see Sirius. It was a fact she had learned to live with and usually didn't bother her. The only part that still got under her skin was having to see him snog every girl in the county all the time. Couldn't he learn to keep it in his pants in front of other people? Marlene knew he couldn't but that didn't stop her from hoping he'd stop.

Sighing she glanced at James. "I'll make you a deal. I'll give this party another hour if you go try and hang out with Lily."

James made a face and dropped his head onto her shoulder. "That's a horrible deal."

"It's either that or I'm leaving right now and I'll pants you while I do it." She added seeing how low his trousers were on his hips.

He glared at her. "You know you're only allowed to do that when I'm wearing my funny underwear...like the boxers with little birds on it."

"Okay, you know those are your favorite. I bought them for you especially, but that doesn't matter, go!" Marlene pushed him in the direction of his girlfriend.

Lily tensed up when she saw him stand next to her, but she stayed silent, hoping he'd notice her body language and just go away. But Severus never was one for recognizing signs when they were right in front of him.