Chapter 34: First Date
The Great Hall was alive with noise as the final Hogsmeade weekend of the year arrived. Despite the bitter cold and clouds threatening to coat them in a foot of heavy snow, every student eligible to go to the village was bundled and ready to make the trek, even Harry James Granger, who had yet to take Tildy or Sirius up on their repeated invitations to come. The boy was bouncing in his seat, waiting for breakfast to end, smiling at the girl beside him.
"Where's Potter?" Lily asked, glancing nervously down the table. The hazel-eyed Chaser was nowhere in sight.
"Miss him?" Harry asked, his voice oddly hopeful and slightly smug.
She snorted. "Hardly. I don't trust him not to hex you while your back is turned. At least if I could see him, I'd know where to point my wand."
Harry's smile fell. "He likes you," he said quietly. "I can understand why he'd be so…"
"Stupid? Immature? Idiotic? Infantile? Brutish?" she offered with a huff of annoyance.
"Eager. I was going to say eager."
Lily blushed slightly. "Still, I'd like to have one Hogsmeade weekend that didn't end with me being told off by a professor because I hexed him. Although last time Sprout gave me five points after I'd made a gillyweed grow from his nostril." She laughed.
Harry's hand flew to his nose. "That's not funny."
"You should have been there! You'd have been laughing, too," she assured him.
"I doubt that," he mumbled and dropped his eyes to look at his plate. "He's my friend."
"Okay, no more talk of hexing that prat today. I promise. I'll talk about hexing someone else." She smiled widely and rather cheekily. "Come on, I have to do a bit of Prefect work on the way down. Most of the third years know their way by now, so it won't take long."
Harry followed her from the Great Hall and watched her herd the third years down the path toward the village, stupid smile on his face and a sigh permanently lodged in his throat at the sight of her.
"She'll figure you out in a heartbeat if you don't wipe that love-sick look off your face, Prongs," Sirius muttered with a smirk.
"She'll figure me out in a heartbeat if you don't piss off," James replied, glaring at his friend. "I appreciate your help making my eyes green and all, but fuck off. And make sure Moony keeps that girl of his well clear."
Sirius sniffed indignantly, "I don't know if I will after being so ill-treated, and after I did you such an enormous favour. Might be a good lesson in manners if the lovely Miss Evans did find you out."
James's transfigured green eyes flashed dangerously. "Go away or I'll tell Harry just who has been occupying every one of your wank fantasies for the past month."
"Git," Sirius replied. He glanced over his shoulder at a hazel-eyed Harry James Granger, who was standing well back from them. "Keep your bloody mouth shut or I'll hex you before she gets the chance."
"Have I mentioned lately how much I enjoy your being secretly in love?" James smirked. "Gives me quite the card to play."
"Git," he repeated gruffly and turned away, walking with his usual confident swagger despite being rather pink in the cheeks. James continued to smirk, wondering how long it would take his best mate, a bloke he thought braver and more outspoken than anyone he had ever met, to work up the courage to finally tell Harry the truth.
"What's up?" Lily asked, following his eye to see Sirius pulling Harry away. "Ah, there's Potter. You talk Black into keeping him occupied for the day?"
"Something like that," he smiled.
"I'm surprised he isn't trying to sabotage our date," she admitted. "Everyone knows he fancies you."
James snorted and muttered quietly to himself, "Not everyone."
oOo
"I can't watch anymore," Harry groaned and moved his hazel eyes to focus exclusively on his butterbeer.
Sirius looked at what had so offended his companion: James and Lily sitting together at a small table in the Three Broomsticks, their shoulders touching and faces so close they had to be breathing one another's air; they were so near to kissing it was maddening, although Harry clearly thought it sickening. "Why do you always turn green when it comes to snogging Evans?"
Harry just groaned again. "Can we not talk about that?"
"Fine," he agreed with a shrug, pausing to take a drink of his hot chocolate and enjoy being alone with Harry, but he couldn't stop his brain working or his mouth from opening again. "If it's so disgusting, why did you want to spy on them?"
"Making sure he behaves himself while pretending to be me," the boy said.
Sirius had to admit that it sounded a valid enough excuse, but he kept thinking there was more to it than that. Harry was not keeping a hawk-like watch on James, hissing when the boy put his hands where they didn't belong or cursing when he was forward enough to drop a kiss onto Evans's cheek. Whenever anything happened, Harry did not grow indignant or worried about his reputation; he looked as if he might throw up. No, whatever the boy might claim, he was not watching out for himself or Evans. Sirius just wished he could sort out what it was Harry was doing.
"Bugger," he cursed and hauled Harry up from his seat. "It's that bloody sister of yours. Hide." He shoved his companion rudely into a dark corner, one he often took advantage of during dates. Sadly, he couldn't use it for that same purpose now, not when Hermione was so close to finding James and Lily on a date. It was one of Harry's later-added stipulations that the girl be kept far, far away from the couple for fear of her discovering them. It was a stipulation that made no sense to Sirius.
"Where the bloody hell is Moony? He's meant to be keeping them apart," Sirius wondered as he forced Harry farther into the corner.
"Distract her!" Harry hissed.
"Are you daft? I'd like to keep my bollocks, thank you very much."
"I didn't say you had to do anything stupid, just get her talking about Transfiguration or something." He pushed Sirius out into the pub. "Go on."
"Bloody, buggery hell," Sirius mumbled to himself. "If I didn't fancy you, I'd kill you for this." He made his way awkwardly through the crush of students, weaving a path as best he could considering how little room there was and how much he really did not want to be approaching Hermione Granger. "Hermione!" he called happily. "What are you doing here all alone? Where's Moony?"
"Oh, he kept trying to drag me into Madam Puddifoot's," she snorted. "I've no idea what's gotten into him today."
"Distracted by your beauty," Sirius offered with a smile. The girl narrowed her eyes at him, and he clamped his mouth shut before she did it for him. Distract her, Harry had said. "I'm surprised you didn't just camp out at Tomes and Scrolls. I'm sure there's material enough to keep you both entertained for the rest of the afternoon."
She nodded slowly as if trying to determine if he was winding her up. "Their selection isn't quite that good and certainly not in the area of my need," she said, sounding at once both scholarly and ambiguous.
"What is your area of need?" he asked before he could reel in his curiosity. "I can't seem to sort out what this pet project you and Harry are working on is. What's the secret?"
Hermione flushed and not from the warmth of her Butterbeer. "There is no secret, Sirius. You just have a suspicious mind." She turned away from him and from the messy-haired boy he had been bodily blocking from her view, allowing Sirius a momentary sigh of relief. The girl was dangerous to have around, too observant and clever for anybody's good. He would have hated to have her as a sister.
"Hermione!" Remus shouted over the noise and forced his way to the bar. "I can't believe you left!"
"I can't believe you actually thought I'd want to go to Madam Puddifoot's," the girl retorted. "I'd sooner go to the dirty old Hog's Head than have those nasty cherubs flying 'round my head." She shook her head disbelievingly.
Spurred on by her insistence that she was hiding nothing, Sirius could not help but point out what to him was rather obvious. "For someone who's only been to Hogsmeade twice, you sure do know an awful lot about it. How do you know about the cherubs? And the Hog's Head? Nobody's ever been brave enough to set foot in that place but the four of us, and I doubt even Remus would have mentioned it to you."
He did not expect her to finally tell the truth. He didn't actually want her to. After all the work he had put into accumulating and arranging the items on his Operation Not-Prongs list, he would hate to have the girl just blurt out her secret as if it were nothing. No, what Sirius wanted was to make her squirm and stutter and in her panic provide him with something more for his list. He wanted to sort it out for himself, though a few more clues would have been extremely welcome.
Hermione did squirm and flush and stutter a bit, but she said nothing more about it. "Remus," she said in a slight squeak, "let's head back to the castle, shall we? I'm a little tired after all that walking."
"Okay," the boy agreed readily, looking back over his shoulder and smirking at Sirius.
Snogging her senseless was certainly one way to keep the girl too busy to notice that her brother and James had swapped places; it was a wonder neither of them had thought of that before. It would have made the trip infinitely less stressful and allowed Sirius to enjoy more of his time with Harry James Granger. Remembering Harry, he ran back to the dark corner as quickly as the crowd would permit, wishing the whole way that he could use it as he normally would, to snog the boy senseless. Instead, he gave the 'all clear' and they took up their old positions, sitting and watching James and Lily grow ever closer.
"I think it might have worked." Sirius smiled as they walked some ways behind the couple on their return to the castle.
"I hope so," Harry muttered. "I don't think I could tolerate another day like this."
"I am offended, sir!"
"Not you," the boy snorted. "You're fine company."
"I am fine, thank you for noticing," Sirius waggled his eyebrows suggestively. It was the closest he had come to admitting how he really felt, this caricature of flirting.
"Git."
"Well, at least I got you to admit that I'm fine," he replied, forcing his voice light and careless.
They walked and joked their way back to the warm and welcoming common room, where James and Lily had claimed the couch by the fire and were leaning against one another. They looked so happy; it was almost a shame the truth would have to be revealed.
"He's going to have to tell her soon," Harry said, sounding almost disappointed. His face held no revulsion. He looked blissful, his eyes shining as if he were struggling to hold back tears, an odd smile pulling at his mouth. Sirius could not explain the shift, though perhaps it had to do with not being able to see the colour of James's eyes from this angle. From where they stood, James looked like no one but himself.
"Think it'll work?"
"We're about to find out," the boy replied darkly, turning away as James brought his wand from his sleeve and waved it at himself.
A moment of silence stretched into two, then three, before Lily's angry voice filled the entire common room. "YOU DISGUSTING LITTLE TOE-RAG!" the girl shot to her feet, distancing herself from the boy she had been inches from kissing just seconds before. "DON'T YOU EVER COME NEAR ME AGAIN!"
"Wow," Sirius muttered. "Better than I expected. I thought she would maim him for sure."
Harry groaned, "I'm doomed."
"Looks more like Prongs is doomed if you ask me," he replied, slight smirk on his face. "Doomed to a life of eternal loneliness as he pines for the one that got away. He'll never get over Evans."
"Exactly," Harry moaned. "I'm doomed."
Sirius frowned his lack of understanding at the boy, but could not voice it as the irate girl stomped across the common room toward them. Harry ducked behind him and tried without success to disappear from her view entirely.
"Evans," Sirius greeted her.
"Don't," she warned, her eyes as fiery as her hair. "Granger, get over here. Now."