"Oi! Padfoot! Wake up!" James called excitedly, "We have to get ready for the train!"
Sirius groaned.
"Get up or you're not going."
Sirius bolted upright in bed. "I'm up."
James laughed. "Get dressed, mate, and I'll see you downstairs in a minute."
"Sure," Sirius muttered sleepily, "Yeah, okay..." He pulled the covers off and swung his legs around, stood up, and rubbed his eyes. "When are we leaving?"
"After breakfast," James replied, "So hurry up."
"Yeah, yeah, don't rush me," he moaned, yawning.
"Wow, you really look tired," James pointed out, buttoning up the shirt he was putting on.
"What say you make that?" Sirius stopped for a second and thought, before shaking his head and rolling his eyes. "I need coffee."
"Once you're dressed, you can go downstairs and get some." At that, James took his cloak and left.
"Yeah," Sirius agreed, "Once I'm dressed...that can wait five more minutes..." He collapsed back onto the bed with a groan and drifted off again.
"Padfoot!" James exclaimed, "We're going to be late!"
"That's what you get for not waking me up," Sirius said, "Next time wake me up."
"I thought I did," James laughed, "You fell back asleep."
"I didn't go to bed until, what, three in the morning?"
"Oh yeah, 'cause you were so caught up in the homework you didn't do."
"Who's every heard of homework for the summer?"
"You, unfortunately."
"That was a rhetorical question."
"Oh, really? I hadn't noticed."
The pair was racing through King's Cross Station as fast as they could, Mr. and Mrs. Potter hurrying behind them. Ahead, they could see the column to Platform Nine and Three Quarters, with the analog clock a little farther back reading three minutes to eleven.
Correction, it read two minutes to eleven.
Believing they wouldn't make it in time, Sirius sped up and, meters away from the barrier, jumped onto the edge of the trolley, keeping perfect balance, and let it slide on its own through it. James followed his example and showed up on the other end seconds later. Mr. and Mrs. Potter showed up only a moment after.
"Oh dear," Mrs. Potter muttered, staring at a couple each with jet black hair, and a young, miniature version of Sirius.
Sirius followed her gaze, and immediately went cold. His eyes narrowed and he clenched his fists so tight his knuckles were turning white.
James saw them too, and watched as Regulus turned his gaze sharply towards them, succeeded by his parents.
They saw Walburga make a motion to go after Sirius, Orion attempt to stop her, and Regulus defend his fleeing mother.
In seconds, Mrs. Black had advanced on her son and stood in front of him. Her pale grey eyes were sad and she had premature grey hairs in her black mass which was pulled half up. She was wearing a dark blue dress that went down to above her knees and a matching suit jacket. In her hair was a comb with a small fake flower on it; a black rose, of course. And on the long ring finger of her left hand was the Black Family Crest ring.
After a moment of just staring at him, he demanded sharply, "What?"
Her expression changed from one of sadness to one of pain, and then to one of anger as she slapped him across the face.
James and Mr. and Mrs. Potter all reacted at the same time. James grabbed Sirius's arm and pulled him backward, Mr. Potter said, "Now wait just a minute-!" and Mrs. Potter stepped in front of Walburga and whispered, "You have no business here. I think it'd be best if you left us."
Now Mrs. Black was really mad. "If I left? He's my son!"
"Was your son," Mrs. Potter corrected, "If I'm not mistaken, this poor child's already been disowned from your family."
"If he were willing to change his opinions we would gladly take him back!" Walburga snapped, crossing her arms.
Sirius sort of laughed, "Yeah, like I'd ever want to go back there."
Mrs. Black's eyes widened and had a sort of insane glint to them. Her lips seemed to tighten and she exclaimed, "How-how dare you? How dare you insult your own family?" She raised her hand again to attack, but Mrs. Potter snatched at her wrist and threw it back at her side, and repeated, "I think it'd be best if you leave now."
Walburga stared at her son as if she didn't know who he was, before muttering, "You...you are not my son."
"Thank God for that," Sirius said, stepping out of her slapping range.
She recoiled from Mrs. Potter and the entire group. "You can't be my son. This is not how we-how I raised you!" She looked him over once more and whispered, "All I see on you is my hair and my eyes. But you are not the boy I brought up. That boy...that boy is dead to me."
"Again I say," Sirius murmured, "Thank God for that."
She blinked and said, "I'm terribly sorry for my outburst. It is obvious my son is lost. I will go now."
She turned on her heel and took four long strides to her husband, and practically fell into his arms, pulling her only remaining son into the hug. He squirmed away from them, probably making some sort of excuse like, "The train will leave without me if I don't go right now," picked up his bag and walked away.
James took Sirius by the shoulder and led him away, his parents following.
"Now," Mr. Potter said, "Do try not to get into anymore trouble."
James sort of gave him a strange look. Then he and his father both burst into hysterical laughter.
"Sirius," Mrs. Potter said, "Please make some sort of attempt to disregard your...er...former family. It'd be healthier for you-and them-if you just put them behind you."
"Oh, believe me, I'm trying," Sirius insisted.
"Well, alright then," she muttered. Then, louder, "I want to hear from you, Jamie."
Sirius let out a bark of laughter and then covered it up with a coughing fit when he saw James's glare.
"Please don't call me that," he whispered to his mother, "It's humiliating."
She made a sort of whining noise before reaching up, squeezing his cheek, and gently hitting it in a loving sort of way. James groaned, "Mom..." He never called her "mom" unless he was really annoyed; otherwise she was "mum."
"Come on, Jamie," Sirius mocked, "We've got thirty seconds."
"Shut up," James snapped, but he still smiled. "Bye mum." He looked at his father and nodded. "Dad."
"James," Mr. Potter said, nodding his head as well, an arm around his wife.
"Don't forget to write to us, Jamie!" reminded Mrs. Potter, "We like hearing about things! And keep up your grades! And do try to stop bullying the other students, okay? Even the Slytherins!"
"Goodbye, Mom."
"Don't forget-!"
"Mom!"
"Goodbye, James, dear!"
They slammed the sliding door of the carriage shut, blocking out Mr. and Mrs. Potter and, a little farther off, Walburga and Orion Black.
"Moony's in the Prefect cabin," Peter explained, "And..." He stopped dead, blushing. "Never mind."
"If it's something about Rowan," Sirius said, "Then, please, do tell."
"Um..." Peter glanced around desperately, "She's sitting alone."
"Understandable," James muttered, "Considering the last time you saw her she was running from an alley covered in bruises and the time before that you both were practically screaming at each other."
Peter looked back and forth at the two of them. "What?"
"The last time I saw her, she had a boyfriend who had a tendency to lose his temper and get rather violent," Sirius growled, sitting down.
"Oh!" Peter gasped, "I thought that you-"
"I have a strict policy that says I do not hit girls, children, or the mentally handicapped," he said, "So, no, I did not cause those bruises."
"Well," Peter said, "She's sitting a little farther back, a few cabins down, if you want to go find her."
"Maybe later," Sirius said, "After the trolley comes by. I'll bring her some pumpkin pasties...maybe a cauldron cake." His hands were behind his head and his feet were up on the empty seat in a very relaxing position next to the window.
As the whistle went off, he looked out of the window at the families watching the train start to move. Among them, he saw Mr. and Mrs. Potter, waving as the wheels slowly started to roll. And behind them, he saw Walburga Black staring at him with a heartbroken expression.
He got up from his position and pulled the curtains down.
Hours into the train ride, the trolley had come around, and the three boys, who'd been talking about Quidditch, bought as many treats as they wanted, along with some iced pumpkin juice.
Sirius got some extra pumpkin pasties and cauldron cakes, just like he'd promised.
"I'll go find Rowan," he announced suddenly when he'd finished his glass of iced pumpkin juice, "Where did you say she was sitting?"
"Just a few cabins down," Peter repeated, munching on a licorice wand.
"I'll be back in a bit," he said, "See you later."
He opened the door and stepped into the hall, walking past cabins full of Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. Like Wormtail had said, three cabins down from theirs, there was a mostly empty one.
Mostly empty.
Except for one girl with reddish-brown hair, wearing a long-sleeved sweater and jeans, leaning her head against the window.
He rapped on the glass portion of the door, which caught her attention. When she saw him, she made a sharp movement of her head to indicate, "Come in."
He slipped inside the cabin and sat on the seat across from her, holding out the treats to her. "I got you something," he said, grinning.
She looked at the food in his hand and said, "Thanks."
She didn't sound enthusiastic.
"You want it?" he asked, trying to keep his voice from getting too, well, like he was talking to a puppy or a small child.
"Maybe later," she muttered, not taking her eyes off of the passing scenery.
He sighed and placed the treats on the seat beside her, then sat back comfortably. "So, need I ask what the problem is?"
"I'd prefer it if you didn't act like I was just that predictable," she said, pulling the sleeves of her sweater down over her wrists.
He eyed the sleeves and murmured, "I'll oblige. What's wrong?"
"Like you don't know," she whispered under her breath. Then she said, "I dumped him, so you can dance for joy."
"You dumped him?" he asked incredulously, "You dumped him?"
She nodded. "Any guesses as to why?"
He shook his head.
Finally, she lifted her head from the window and he saw the left side of her face for the first time.
Her eye was swollen and her cheek was a fading green.
"He did that to you?" Sirius didn't think the square would dare touch her face if he would be stuck looking at it all the time.
"He wanted to..." she began, but stopped with a ghost of a smile and shook her head. "I bet you can guess what he wanted."
He thought for a split-second, then bent over a little bit, his hands on his knees, and whispered, "You...you didn't, right?"
She burst into laughter and shook her head. "I told him he could go to hell!" she giggled. And suddenly she went eerily silent.
Sirius wanted to know more. He knew it wasn't any of his business and he wouldn't be mad if she said that.
Okay, maybe he'd be a little frustrated.
But he cared about her even if she didn't give a crap about him. And he wanted to know every detail so, the next time he arrived in London, he could find the square and beat him to a bloody pulp.
He didn't have to ask anything. After a moment, she said, "He tried to force me to, so I started screaming. To shut me up he started choking me." She pulled her hair back from her neck to reveal brown bruises in the shape of hands on either side. "So, I kicked him and ran."
"You kicked him?"
She nodded. "I was desperate to get away from him. I never wanted to see his miserable face again. Unfortunately," she added angrily, "In military school he learned to recover fast. He caught me when I was running down the stairs."
Sirius wasn't liking where any of this was going.
"He grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back to him, but I slipped and fell. He could either catch me or let me fall, or fall with me. He decided to catch me, punch me in the side of the face, and then let me fall.
"I never hit any of the other steps."
He stared at her. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, I practically flew down at a perfect angle so I didn't touch any of the steps at all. And when I landed at the bottom, I sort of bounced. It was really weird, but I literally bounced off of the ground upon impact and then landed softly and inch away."
"What did the square think?" Sirius half expected her to glare at him through already narrowed eyes and exclaim, "He's not a square!"
But, to his relief, she didn't. "He thought I snapped my neck in half. I didn't move a muscle. I just laid there at a very uncomfortable angle and waited for him to come around. I kept my eyes closed and I tried to breathe only when I felt I really needed to. He didn't bother check my pulse," she added disappointedly. "He came down the stairs and kicked me a few times. Broke a couple ribs..." As she said the last part, she moved an arm to her stomach and made a face. "Then he picked me up and dumped me just outside his house. It was dark, so the neighbors probably thought I was a bag of trash or something."
Sirius just stared. He couldn't help it. He couldn't even begin to imagine what she had gone through that night. She was telling the story as if it was something out of his nightmares, and she'd been forced into it headfirst.
"And then what happened?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
She took a deep breath and recalled that night...
...How late was it? It was so dark... and cold... it had to be past midnight.
Rowan was in pain. She knew that somewhere in the world there was someone in more pain than she was, so she tried not to make a big deal out of it.
But God, did she hurt!
Everything ached. Her head felt like there were little men with hammers banging on the inside of her skull, her ears were pounding, her arms were throbbing, her entire torso felt like she'd been poked through every inch of skin with needles, and her legs were splintered and soaked in something thick and sticky.
Blood?
Her blood!
Everything had happened so fast. She remembered falling but touching nothing until she reached the ground, and then bouncing a few inches in the air before landing softly on the hardwood floor of her boyfriend's house.
She remembered feeling pain but ignoring it, the instinct to play dead ringing in her ears.
She lay there, bleeding, when he came and kicked her. He kicked her. She heard snaps that came from her own body and she felt like crying out, but she stayed completely silent and let him pick her up as if she were a bundle of worthless junk. He kicked the door open and dropped her in the bushes beside it.
And, for a moment, she thought she wouldn't be able to get up.
When she heard the door slam, she screamed in pain. It was such a sound that she didn't even think she was the one who'd made it. It was a tortured cry, filled with anguish and hatred and sadness and defeat.
And then she just lay there until huge clouds covered the moon and blocked out any light she had, and chance of surviving.
Suddenly, she was swept with a feeling of irony. It was sort of funny how wrong she'd been about Kyle.
Sirius was right. She should've contacted the police or something.
Following the irony was determination, and, again, she ignored the throbbing pains all over her body and started to crawl.
She barely made it a foot.
She couldn't breathe without her ribs aching, and she couldn't move without her entire body feeling as if she'd been set on fire. But she tried her best to ignore the pain and at least get to the street where somebody would be able to see her clear as day.
Try as she might, she nearly gave up the second she'd made it completely out of the bushes.
But, the moment she thought she couldn't move, and that she was going to stay there and bleed to death, a voice in her head spoke to her.
At least get to the street, the voice said, Crawl. Ignore all the pain you're in. Endure it once you've reached the curb. Do it for your mother and father. Do it for your friends at school who you can see in just a few days if you survive this now.
Do it for Sirius.
And, strangely, she listened.
She grabbed at a random spot in front of her and pulled her body, feeling the burning sensation as all of her body weight fell on her broken ribs against the firm ground.
She ignored it.
She reached again, pulled. That same feeling came, only ten times worse. She whimpered but reached out for the third time.
She couldn't pull.
She tried. Her body would lift off the ground just a little bit and the pressure on her ribs would recede, only to bring the pain back. She couldn't move anymore, the pain was too unbearable.
She lifted her right hand off the ground and reached out towards the street that was barely a yard in front of her.
And suddenly, a loud screeching noise like tires taking a sharp turn filled the air and her headache worsened.
She lifted her head up to see a long, purple bus stop in front of her. It was a triple-decker, and she saw the door open and a boy step out.
The boy stared around. She couldn't see him very well in the darkness, but he seemed tall and skinny and her immediate thought was: Remus!
But the moon was full, and Remus would be somewhere isolated from the human world.
"Hello?" the boy called out, "This is the Knight Bus for the stranded witch or wizard! Is there a...stranded witch or wizard somewhere out there?"
This was her chance. She had to make a noise.
She took a deep breath, ignoring the pain, thinking only of what would happen if she didn't make some sort of noise.
"Help me!" she cried.
The boy's face turned towards the ground.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, "What are you doing down there, Miss?"
"Bleeding!"
"Well, that's just a plain rude thing to say, ma'am!"
"I'm bleeding!"
"Don't be so hard on yourself, Miss. I can't see you well but you don't look that bad to me!"
"I'm actually bleeding, you idiot!"
"I don't see any blood."
"That's because...it's dark!" To Rowan's horror, she was running out of breath. The edges of her vision were becoming blurry...
She was dying.
"Hold on," the boy said, "I'll get a light." She couldn't see, but he seemed to be reaching into a pocket somewhere and pulled out a long stick-a wand!
"Lumos," he muttered, and his blemish-covered face was illuminated. He had long black hair and black eyes and a hooked nose and wore a conductor's hat and a tacky blue suit. When he lowered his wand to her, she could see her own hands in front of her.
They were red.
He cried out in shock, then took two short strides to her, then slid his arms underneath her blood-soaked body, gently lifting her off the ground.
"Blimey," he muttered, "I've never seen so much..." He sounded as if he was going to be sick, but he turned around and called, "Ernie! Set a course for St. Mungo's! We have to get there as fast as we can!"
But after that, she'd completely fallen out of consciousness.
When she woke up again, she was in a bed and there was a rough hand putting pressure on her forehead.
"Ernie, faster!" a boy's voice screamed, "I've never seen a girl this pale before! And she's so cold! Ernie, you have to go faster!"
"We're almost there," an elderly, calm voice said from the front, "Can she make it ten more minutes?"
"No!" the boy's voice exclaimed, "She's already on the verge of death!" Suddenly he seemed to stiffen.
"I can't feel her pulse!" he whimpered, "I can't feel it! No, she can't die! We have to save her! Ernie, go faster, please!"
"If I go any faster, we're risking the lives of other passengers!" Ernie cried.
"What passengers?" the boy demanded, "There aren't any other passengers! Get this bus moving, Ernie! Please!"
"Faster, faster, faster!" Ernie muttered loudly to himself, and suddenly she seemed to jerk backwards and there were multiple crashing sounds, but her eyes flew open and she gasped in a lungful of air.
She hadn't been breathing.
Her pulse had died.
She had died.
For only a second, but Rowan knew she had actually died.
The inside of the bus was interesting. Maybe it was just her imagination, but the floors looked like white tile and the walls, which bore candles that provided all the light in the area, were painted equally white. The windows were blurs of light and dark shapes zooming by so fast she didn't have time to take them in.
And the bed she was on wasn't even remotely comfortable. She eyed the sheets around them and got the impression that at one point they had actually been white...
"Oi!" the boy cried, "You're awake!"
Rowan groaned. "I feel lightheaded..."
"You lost a lot of blood," the boy explained, "You've been out cold for a good five minutes. I thought you weren't gonna make it!"
She groaned again.
"Most of the blood loss is from a gash in your head," the boy said, "What happened to you?"
"My stupid ass boyfriend strangled me, pushed me down the stairs, kicked me in the ribs and-" she used some creative swearing "-dumped me in front of his house."
"Geez," the boy murmured, "Your stupid ass boyfriend must've been trained for the army or something...it looks like he got all your weak spots."
"Military school..." she moaned, "I'm so stupid..."
"No you're not," he said, "I'm Steve, by the way. The conductor of the Knight Bus, which you just so happen to be on."
"The night bus?" Rowan muttered, "But I've been on night buses before and the windows don't move like that..."
"Windows don't move at all, love," the boy pointed out, "Not night bus; Knight Bus. There's a difference."
"That's not what I hear..."
"You're just a little loopy right now from blood loss," Steve said, "How about some simple questions. What's your name?"
"My name?" she asked, "How is that important?"
"Well, when we check you into St. Mungo's, I'd rather tell the nurses your name instead of having them call you 'Patient 139.'"
"My name is R.D.R.L.C.M."
"What?"
"R.D.R.L.-"
"I heard you, what does that stand for?"
"Rowan Diana Rosina Lucinda Cassandra Mulciber."
"Well, Rowan, you're going to be safe real soon," Steve insisted, "I promise I'm going to get you helped."
"Right..." Rowan muttered, "Because I demand help."
And then she was out again.
The next time she woke up was to a horrible taste in her mouth.
She sat up straight, not feeling the pain she expected to come, and spat out whatever was in her mouth.
"Well, she's awake," a woman's voice said, sounding extremely annoyed. Then the same voice said in a nicer tone, "Honey, you have to swallow, okay? This is a blood-replenishing potion. You've lost a lot of blood and you need to get it back."
"It tastes like shit!" she moaned as firm hands grasped her forearms, holding her in place.
"But it'll help you," the nurse insisted, "You'll be okay-"
As she said this, she pulled out a long needle, and Rowan's eyes widened with horror. There were two things she was afraid of: spiders and needles.
She whimpered, "What's that for?"
"This will help you sleep," the nurse replied, "It's a bloody brilliant Muggle invention, too... You need to rest, otherwise the potion won't work."
Without warning she took Rowan's arm and stuck the needle into a vein, bright blue against her pale skin.
Almost immediately, Rowan's vision blurred, everything went numb again, and she fell backwards onto the bed into a deep sleep.
"When I didn't go home, my aunt started to worry, so they sent me to a Muggle hospital. They got all my blood back, but they didn't have time to help the bruises," Rowan concluded, "I was just released yesterday."
"And your aunt actually let you come back to school after that?" Sirius asked incredulously.
"Yeah," she replied, "To her, I just had a bunch of bruises. I told her I was a klutz and fell down the stairs... which isn't a complete lie."
"So, you're going to have to let those bruises heal on their own?" he questioned.
She giggled. "No, the people at St. Mungo's gave me some bruise-healing paste. I put it on at home. I'm supposed to be bruise-free by the time we arrive at Hogwarts."
Sirius nodded. "Are you feeling better?"
"Yeah," she said, "My bones are fixed, my cuts are closed, and my bruises are a work in progress. I don't feel any pain at all."
He looked as if he wasn't sure.
"I really am fine," she insisted, "The doctor's at St. Mungo's are miracle workers. They're almost as good as chocolate."
Sirius unwillingly let a smile slip. In return, she grinned back at him.
The cabin was very silent for a moment as they just stared at each other. Out of the lack of comfort, she picked up a cauldron cake and took a bite.
"Can I ask you something?" Sirius said suddenly.
"Absolutely," she replied after swallowing, "Ask away."
"Am I still handsome, smart, and funny?"
She burst into laughter and nodded.
Sirius grinned and leaned back in an arrogant way. "Still the package deal," he muttered to himself, "Awesome."
Rowan rolled her eyes exasperatedly and said, "Oh my God. You are such a-"
"Ass?" he suggested, "I know."
"Actually," Rowan said matter-of-factly, "I was going to say 'conceited jerk,' but ass works, too."
"I don't appreciate that."
"You weren't supposed to."
He looked at her through narrowed eyes.
"Changing the subject," said Rowan, "How was your summer? Surely not as crappy as mine..."
"Definitely not as crappy as yours," he agreed.
"Well, what'd you do all summer? I can't imagine you sitting around that awful house of yours for two months."
"Ha!" he barked, "I wouldn't stay in that house for two minutes if I had the choice."
"Which proves my point exactly," Rowan said, taking another bite of the cake.
"In the most positive terms I can manage," he replied slowly, annunciating every word carefully, "I moved out."
"And in negative terms?"
"I ran away."
Rowan's jaw dropped. Sure, she expected him to leave eventually, but she didn't think he'd just escape without explanation. "And then you went to stay with James, right?"
"Yeah," he responded simply, "But only for a little while. After this year I'm thinking of getting my own apartment, living my own life."
"Will you have enough money?" she asked, "I mean, you ran away. Your parents-"
"Former parents," he interrupted.
"Your former parents would've emptied your vault by now, right?"
"I got to it first," he said, "But there wasn't that much in there in the first place."
"Oh," she muttered, "So, how are you going to afford an apartment?"
"I have no idea," he replied simply, "I'd rather figure that out when it gets closer to the end of the year."
"Why?" she asked suddenly.
"Well, because I really don't feel like having to deal with all the legal stuff while I'm only sixteen-"
"What? No, I meant why are you doing this?"
"What do you mean?"
She sat back, crossed her arms, and stared out the window. "Why are you being so nice to me? After what I did to you..."
"You didn't do anything," he reminded her, "I was an idiot."
"But I led you to believe that I did do something," she countered, "And that was wrong."
"You had no idea what I was talking about," he argued, "You couldn't help it."
"I still don't believe it."
"Believe it or not, Ripley," he said, "I'm the one who should be begging for your forgiveness."
"You thought I betrayed you..."
"I thought so, true," he agreed, "But I was wrong."
She looked away from the window again, and he could see that her bruises were much smaller already. "I don't understand your logic. First, you hate me. Now, you're trying to get us to be friends again."
"Exactly," he said, "What's not to understand?"
"We can never just be friends, Sirius."
He stared at her, then said, "I realize that, but I'm willing to try."
"But I'm not," she whispered.
"Why not?" he asked, leaning over again.
"Because," she snapped harshly, "We've gone too far to 'just be friends.' Surely you know what I'm talking about."
"I haven't forgotten," he agreed quietly.
"So then you know that I can't live with it," she said, faster, "I can't live while knowing about how I feel and how you feel-and don't tell me you don't feel the same way-and not being able to look at you the same way because you don't trust me." She spat the final words, swiftly turning her glare back out the window.
He was silent for a moment. She had a point.
Suddenly, a shadow loomed over her, and she felt like she did the first time they'd met, when he was peering over her book on that very train.
"If you think," he whispered so angrily, so silently it frightened her, "That I still don't trust you, that I can't ever trust you again, then I guess you're right. We shouldn't 'just be friends.'"
At that, he turned around, pulled the door open, and stepped out, slamming it shut behind him.
Oh, God, she thought, Now look what you've done, you moron!
She stood up and pulled the door open again, looked from side-to-side and saw him standing to the left as if he'd been waiting for her...
As if he knew she'd come after him...
"Can I help you?" he questioned irritably, "I need time to think, and you are...well, you're taking that time away from me. That time is me time."
She recoiled from him as if he'd burned her. "You time?" she demanded, "I'm not done talking about this yet!"
"I am," he declared, "So you can just run along now."
She fumed. "I'm not a child, Sirius. I'm sixteen years old."
"And so am I," Sirius observed, "And yet, I am so much more mature than you."
Her eyes widened with shock and pure fury, until she realized that his voice was much more strained than it had been seconds before.
"You're trying to get off this subject," she acknowledged, crossing her arms and jutting out her jaw. "Well, it's not going to work, Sirius."
"What makes you say that?" he queried, "I'm not trying to change the subject. I'm trying to get you to leave me alone."
"Well, maybe I don't want to leave you alone," she suggested, "Maybe I want to stand here and sing 'I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am' all day until you talk to me."
"I am talking," he pointed out, "I'm talking very reluctantly and angrily, but still talking. Will you go now?"
"I'm not leaving."
He pushed off of the wall he'd been leaning on and gained on her, standing about an inch away and glaring down at her slightly horrified expression.
"Might I ask you what it is you so desperately have to talk to me about?" he demanded, "Because we've already discussed our utterly horrible summers, and we've already determined we can't be friends. There can't possibly be anything else you would want to tell me, unless your goal in life is to torture me with my own affections."
She was silent for a second before muttering, "For a second there you sounded like Mr. Darcy."
"Now who's the one changing the subject?"
"I don't want to torture you," she replied quietly, sadly, "I don't want to in anyway upset you."
"Then what is it?"
She was unnaturally, eerily silent.
Sirius stepped backwards. "See you later, Rowan," he muttered, turning around.
There was something like a pang coming from her chest, and she knew she couldn't let him walk away, she couldn't let it end like that. "No," she mumbled, "You're not getting away from me that easily."
She stepped after him, placed a hand on his shoulder, and exclaimed, "Sirius-!"
But he'd already swung around, snatched her face in both his hands and pulled her up to him, in a passionate, and completely unexpected, kiss.
And what was even stranger and more unexpected was how she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.