Padfoot

For a while the McKinnon girl was quiet, picking up her delicate white feathered quill and dipping it in the ink pot before making neat notes on what it was Flitwick had been wittering on about for the past fifteen minutes or so – she may have been friends with the Marauders, but that by no means meant Marlene didn’t care about her grades, not the same way the boys did. “Eventually your unusually good luck is going to run out and your pretty face won’t be able to save you. When that day comes I fully intend to be stood on the side lines laughing and telling you that I ‘told you so’” An equally cheeky smile flourished upon her pretty features and masked the fact that she was internally cursing herself for giving him the satisfaction of hearing her say he had a ‘pretty face’ because Merlin knows if you gave Sirius Black and inch, he’d run a mile.

Her gaze had since drifted back towards Flitwick who was now stood on his desk demonstrating a spell whose name she hadn’t caught, something else she could now add to list of things she could blame Sirius Black for but the second she felt his warm breath against her ear it was though a spark of electricity was racing through her body, it was like she had amortentia coursing through her veins, in that moment she certainly was frustrated, and in that way and Sirius Black was – as always – entirely to blame. She didn’t have time to react or come up with any kind of witty comment or retort because the second his foot came into contact with her leg a rather loud gasp fell from between her pretty lips and suddenly all eyes were on the pair of Gryffindors at the back of the class. “Miss McKinnon, Mr Black, are we interrupting?” Flitwick’s voice floated through the air and Marlene once again narrowed her eyes in Sirius’ direction, he was always doing this.

“The Lily to my James? What next, the Juliet to my Romeo?” Sirius chortled, his eyes glancing over once again to the mass of red and black hair which was Lily and James, so close that you could barely even see their faces. At the present, James must have said something particularly stupid as Lily appeared to gasp and hit him playfully on the arm with a disgruntled expression. Sirius snorted. “I never realised that Lily and James were such star crossed lovers. How long have they been dating for, like around a month? Not that serious surely. Nothing Shakespeare worthy” He laughed, ignoring the sudden pang of jealousy in his stomach which had been haunting him for a while. Lily and James were spending an awful lot of time together nowadays. Exiled from his own home, Sirius had found that James was more like a brother than Regulus had ever been to him. He was more than a best friend; he was family, and Sirius couldn’t help but feel slightly bitter about the fact that James spent more time with Lily now than with him. But those were childish feelings, and he refused to acknowledge them to anyone, not even Remus. He just buried them deep inside of himself, to the place where he had long been accustomed to hiding the most sensitive parts of himself.

“Besides,” he continued, turning back to Marlene. “I’m what you call an eternal bachelor.” He grinned. “No woman will tame me, McKinnon. Mark my words. All I need is my bike and the open road. Girls don’t come into that picture.” Sirius seemed pretty adamant about that part of his life. He was quite ready to flunk his N.E.W.Ts and whizz away on his now iconic flying motorcycle, away from life and responsibilities and a family who had let him down. Never would Sirius Black rely on anybody again.

Yet despite all of the pent up emotion Sirius carried seemingly effortlessly around him, it would still take a lot to offend him. He had grown a thick skin, and after the terrible thing that his Mother had shrieked to him as she threw his belongings outside of the door of 12 Grimmauld Place he felt no insult could ever hurt him again. He felt, almost, invincible. “Scathing, Marlene.” He tutted towards her, wagging his finger in disapproval. “But you admit I’m pretty?” he grinned, pouting his lips and posing dramatically to fits and heaps of giggles from the class before Flitwick so rudely interrupted.