celestial.

“Gifted with your company with not even so much as a return receipt?” She grinned at her own joke, each syllable of the final punchline emphasized with vicious pugnaciousness. She felt like laughing at him then. So she did, and let the high, tinkling sound continue on into her response. “They say pets mimic the behavior of their owner, so.” She lightly tapped her wand on Tiago’s talon and whispered ‘episkey.’

Some people you saw when you looked at them, and others you felt. And you felt Sirius Black’s gaze – down to your bones. His prodding, elevator eyes had made Emma feel crude and full of inappropriate, unwanted color. In return, her rigid gaze offered a quiet predestination that she would crush him to dust in her palm. No other wooden horse dared to breach her security with such loping, long-strided casualty, as if it were only a confessional screen, not a wall (and still he would have kept his smirk like he had not broken a sweat) she had built to keep him away. She had pivoted on her feet, switching her weight from one side to the other with arms crossed over her chest in between her short stride towards him so she could keep her eyes on him. He would probably think it was so she can take more of him in, but she had been taught never to turn her back to anyone.

“You’d soon be wishing for a second miracle for me not to meld your face with this wall.” She watched him blankly, as she did with mostly everyone and mostly out of habit. Though grooming in pureblood society had instilled this, it did nothing to help her now. Emma also liked extremities - even when they came in anger - and had no time for soft middles.

     “Pets mimic the behavior of their owners, huh?” Sirius asked, cocking a brow. The question was innocent enough, but he knew that Emma knew him well enough (through rumors and reputation, at least) to know that Sirius Black and innocence were incongruous. “S’pose that explains why your bird is a raving mad tosser, then, doesn’t it?” A cheeky grin split his lips and he imagined that he looked positively chipper with himself for having successfully (in his very humble opinion) rivaled Emma’s quick wit. 

     There was something very, very curious about Emma Vanity—something that as much entranced Sirius as it did ward him off; something that he couldn’t get enough of. He was quite used to pliable women—not in the physical sense (well, sometimes in the physical sense if he was lucky), but in the sense that the women he acquainted himself with were so soft; they would bend to his will without question, easily tamed and maneuvered by his hypnotic charm, by eyes that lured the prey and lips that trapped it. But not Emma; oh, no. This girl of stone wouldn’t bend for violent storms or quakes or tremors; she was immovable, and perhaps it was the intrigue of something new or the appeal of a challenge, but Sirius found himself riddled with a need to chip away at this ice princess. He took some small comfort in her obvious slight frustration with his flippancy, but he wanted more; he wanted to know if, beneath her wall of ice, there blazed the kind of fire that burned in his own veins.

A familiar grin - one she had quite a lot of trouble keeping away in his presence, and one she didn’t want to keep away - brightened her features. It was such a pleasant notion, the two of them against the world in their own category of reckless beings, untamable and unbreakable; no one able to catch up long enough to join them in their exclusive bubble. “Perhaps you’re right,” she allowed, “but with our best-selling self-help series, they can come one step closer to being slightly interesting. Of course, they’ll never quite reach our level, but we’ll pretend they can so we can get rich and buy a nice mansion somewhere. I’ve always liked Paris.” A faint blush tinted Marlene’s cheeks at the mention of Prewett. Her crush on Gideon was rare - almost unheard of - and being slave to such an emotion made her squirm. It was obviously unrequited, or for now it was. If she spent more time with him, Marlene’s charm could certainly pursuade him into a proper date, but that was easier said than done. He was busy with this or that and whenever they had set plans, Sirius seemed to have something more pressing to be dealt with. The timing was strange - just a coincidence, she was sure. (While lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t realized how fondly she’d been staring at Sirius and his trademark theatric hand motions, a smile eclipsing the blush.) “Oh, come on! Gideon is hilarious. You just don’t like him because…Why don’t you like him? You two should get along quite well, now that I think about it.” She reached up on her toes to pat him on the head, although she couldn’t quite reach so it was more of a smack to the forehead. “If it helps, you’re much funnier than he is and your bed is much more comfortable - his is all lumpy. Kidding! His bed is fine,” she teased with a cheeky smirk.

“What can I say? I’m a pureblood brat,” she admitted with an unrepentant shrug. Marlene pretended to stretch, raising her arms above her head and leaning her body from side to side, as if hopping onto his back should’ve been considered a sport. She placed her hands firmly on his broad shoulders - had he been working out that summer? - and hoisted herself up, legs hooking easily over his hips and arms wrapping loosley around his neck. “Thank you very much, my dashing chariot.” She poked her head around to kiss his cheek, then added, “Now off we go!” The topic of his mother - or rather, ways to upset her - was met with laughter and that brought a sense of relief together. It was still a sensitive topic, but not quite as sensitive as it had been just a few months prior. “Well, we all know I can’t live without firewhiskey. Or you - I suppose you’re a necessity as well.” And he was, more than she realized. One night she began thinking about how important Sirius was to her, but a strange emotion started banging from the other side of a locked door, so she quickly switched to a safer topic. “We already shag on almost a daily basis - good job last night, by the way - so I suppose we’ll have to get married. You already have the approval of my family and I have the disapproval of yours. It’s practically perfect, but I do have some demands. I want to be carried in a carriage pulled by hippogriffs, and there has to be a butterbeer fountain.”

    “Paris?” Sirius repeated inquisitively, his eyebrows shooting upward with smug amusement. “You’ve got our whole future planned out, have you, McKinnon? Hope you left ample room for shagging in our ten-year plan.” He turned to her eagerly, expecting to find eyes dancing with humor and a sharp quip on the tip of her tongue, but he was instead met with eyes that were fixed on him in a way that no one had ever really looked at Sirius Black. Don’t get him wrong—there was always someone looking at him; women looked at him with hungry desire, professors looked at him with disapproval that would almost always inevitably turn into resigned amusement, friends looked at him with adoration, and rivals looked at him with disdain. Someone was always looking at Sirius, but no one looked at him the way Marlene did—like he was the axis upon which her world rotated; like he was a bright star twinkling with dazzling light instead of the dark night sky that everyone seemed to think he was. Being looked at like that made him all at once feel overwhelmingly invincible and overwhelmingly vulnerable. “Oi, what kind of double standard is this?” he asked, voice dripping with mock offense. “When I stare at you like that, you kick me in the shins—shins—plural—both of them—because crippling only one of my legs just isn’t enough for you to get your jollies,” he pointed out matter-of-factly, fighting the grin that was always fresh on his lips whenever Marlene was near. His good humor faltered slightly when she asked about his recent anti-Gideon crusade, but he recovered quickly with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders. “What’s there to like? He’s a self-righteous prick, that one. Don’t know what you see in him, Mar. In fact, I’ve never really understood that whole ‘hanging out with people other than Sirius Black’ thing you do. Why you choose to spend time with anyone but me is beyond me, really,” he deadpanned.

   Moments later, he felt her slight weight on his back as she pounced, and he hooked his hands beneath her knees for added security. He scoffed at the mention of Prewett’s bed, knowing that the jibe was bait but also knowing that he had neither the self-control nor the sound temper to not take said bait. Had he believed that there was any real possibility that Marlene had been in Prewett’s bed, he’d have been hexing the older Gryffindor at present; but he knew that there were only two places one would ever find a sleeping Marlene McKinnon, and that was in class (slumped against Sirius) or in Sirius’ bed, and so he was only mildly cross at the jest. “Keep it up, McKinnon, and the next time you sleep in my bed, it’ll be lumpy with the first lass I find who doesn’t have a schoolgirl crush on Prewett. But fret not, love, I’ll leave room for you, too,” he teased, eyes aglow with mischief. That mischief, however, was short-lived, for it melted into something very similar to enchantment when he felt a familiar pair of lips press against his cheek, a honey-like warmth slowing the usual violent storm that raged within his veins. “Sorry, sunshine, but a kiss on the cheek isn’t gonna cut it. The fee for taking a spin on this dashing chariot is much steeper than a kiss on the cheek, I’m afraid. I’ll be expecting a much fairer payment when your ride is over,” he told her cheekily, stepping through the portrait hole and venturing into the hallway with one Marlene McKinnon bouncing on his back.

    Their casual (and very public) affection still earned them some curious sideways glances from a few of the younger students, but the sixth and seventh years were so used to Sirius’ incessant need to touch Marlene McKinnon that they probably would’ve been more surprised to see Sirius walking down a hallway without Marlene on his back or at his side, his arm slung over her shoulder. “Oh, come on, McKinnon,” he groaned, hefting her up a bit to keep her from slipping from his grasp (though she held onto him so tightly he doubted the little monkey needed the extra support from his arms). “You’ve got to dress up for weddings—I’ll have to wear a tie! You know I hate those bloody things. Can’t we just make a forever pact and shag on it?”

     Reality wasn’t something that Sirius Black was too keen on—especially when reality was as harsh and bleak as it had been the past few days. Kidnappings, vandalism, and blood-painted letters? Count him out. Under different circumstances, he might have been as inclined as James was to get to the bottom of all of this mayhem, but Sirius could all too clearly feel the weighted, accusatory gazes that sought him out like daggers, the dark shadow cast over him by his roots seemingly unshakable. More and more, it seemed, his classmates were beginning to remember what being a Black meant, and with the budding tension splitting a divide between Gryffindor and the other three houses, Sirius was not lost on his peers’ crumbling faith in him. And so, not at all in favor of this reality, Sirius had sought out fantasy, which he’d promptly found in the fifth year Gryffindor (what was her name?) he was presently snogging in the broom closet on the second floor. And his escape from reality was going quite swimmingly, thank you very much, until the sound of scuffling shoes and a familiar pair voices (one he loved, one he loathed) gave him pause, his lips parting from the girl between his arms as his head snapped up, cocking to the side to strain to hear the noises on the other side of the door. The girl opened her mouth to complain about his inattention, but she got not three words out before he clamped one hand over her mouth, muffling her complaints (Merlin, she was a talker) and hissing an urgent 'sh!' at her. He didn’t much mind being caught—oh, no, he quite prided himself on public audiences; he did, however, mind people taking what belonged to him, and when he heard a familiar ring of laughter that entranced him like a siren’s call to a stormy sea (Godric, he worshipped that sound), his muscles coiled instantaneously.

     A few moments later, once the laughter quieted, the only remaining sound a quiet hum in the air taught with tension, Sirius knew—almost intuitively, as though his body was synchronized with Marlene McKinnon’s—that something far too intimate was about to happen on the other side of that door. "Son of a—!" he barked, the swear lost on his tongue as he threw open the broom closet's door and barged out of the small room, shirt halfway unbuttoned and tie hanging loosely around his collar. His eyes, moments ago hooded with mild pleasure, were now aglow with an almost manic kind of hate-filled edge as they landed on one Gideon Prewett, whose head was bowed and whose lips were very, very near Marlene's. It wasn’t that Sirius minded Marlene snogging someone else—it was that he minded Marlene snogging Gideon Prewett, because he knew that snogging Gideon meant something to her. "Can we help you, Black?" Prewett asked, sounding more annoyed than startled. We? We? The only other person that would ever be a part of a 'we' equation with Marlene McKinnon was Sirius. Sirius could have very well just said that, but where would the fun be in that? He was a connoisseur of fists (and wands), not words, and he used the former to make his point as he swung his right arm at Gideon, knuckles all too familiar with violence connecting with the other boy’s jaw. It all got very messy then, and Sirius became unhinged as he released the wrath that had been festering within him these past few days unto Gideon, the two boys wrestling each other to the floor and drawing the attention of more than one student passing by. “This is what you’ve been doing the past week, then, McKinnon? This tosser?” Sirius hissed as he struggled against the other boy.

“Well, then our way seems to be the better one; we should write a self-help book. ‘Ten Ways to Lead an Exciting Life, Although You Might Die From Liver Failure By Thirty’.” Marlene spread her hands, as if the title was appearing before them in the air. “We could make millions, Black. Mull it over,” she insisted, nodding as if the idea was sincere. At his theatrics, Marlene rolled her eyes, an irrepressible smile tugging on her lips nonetheless - she knew Sirius would not only encourage, but partake in her irresponsibility. It was only a matter of one, two, three before he finally agreed. “Thank Merlin!” she shouted at the victory; smile turned to grin, wide and cheery, completely unconfined. (There were few students occupying the common room in as pleasant a mood as she now was, and several of some shot glares her way, others shoosh-ed her in irritation; it only confirmed her theory that they needed exorbitant amounts of alcohol to break them out of this horrid slump.) Marlene stood moments after him, pausing to stretch her sore joints; the competition required far more walking that she would’ve liked, and following it by days of banishment certainly didn’t help. She was excited to be getting out and having some illicit fun far, far away from the castle with someone she could always count on having fun with. “You know what, no,” she had just begun walking to the portrait when he spoke, and she was appalled by his words. “Just for that terrible joke, you have to carry me the whole way there. It’s your punishment and, quite frankly, you deserve it. Badger.” She shook her head in disappointment. “You’re better than that, Sirius. Now, bend down.” While waiting for him to concede, she wrapped her hair into a careless bun, strands falling out at all angles, not that she cared enough to remedy it. “That I’ll actually agree to - I want credit for this genius idea, even if we’re landed in Azkaban. I’d love to see that headline. And it’s a bonus that your mother would hate to see it. Hey, after we get the booze, let’s get ourselves thrown into Azkaban.”

     Sirius snorted at the prospect of the two most self-destructive students at Hogwarts writing a self-help book. “Not quite sure the wizarding world has the kind of ‘exciting life’ stamina that we do, McKinnon. We’re a rare breed, you and I. An anomaly of supernaturally strong livers and supernaturally weak consciences, really.” The smug smile that tugged at her lips in response to his eventual compliance to her plans was one that he was familiar with; he knew that she knew that, under the right methods of persuasion, there was little (if anything) Marlene McKinnon could not get him to do. Had he lingered a bit longer on the thought, he might have recognized some significance in his ease and comfort with Marlene’s complete control of and sway over him (the rebellious Black heir surrendering himself totally to another person—preposterous!); but—for perhaps that very reason—he never reflected too long or too profoundly on the willing ease with which he fell under Marlene’s spell. At her criticism of his pun, he turned on her, mouth agape with dramatic offense. “Oi, bite your tongue! That pun was right brilliant, thank you very much!” he argued defensively, his hands moving around in wild gestures that accented the theatricality of his words. “You’ve just got low comedic standards, McKinnon. For Godric’s sake, you laugh at Prewett’s jokes—Prewett’s! My broom’s got a better sense of humor than that dull bloke.”

James: Our kids? Sirius, we're not married.

Sirius: Dude, we're a little married.