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The Girl in my Arms	By : PotionMaster Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 3779 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Sirius, Bella and Remus trudged back through the entrance hall to Remus’ rooms. Two of them were soaked to the skin and shivering slightly, even after liberal casting of drying and heating charms, the other was grinning wildly and chortling to himself whenever he got a glimpse of the bedraggled pair.

‘That was such a fantastic shot!’ Sirius crowed. ‘It must be inherited. Even James couldn’t have been that accurate.’

‘If it was inherited then James would have been exactly that accurate, unless you’re suggesting he got his talent from Lily,’ Remus grumbled, wringing out the sleeve of his robes as he walked. ‘And don’t think I didn’t see your hand in that little manoeuvre, old friend. I’m sure Harry didn’t suddenly decide to try and bury two of his teachers in several inches of snow and the three first-years he picked to be on his team were so shocked I thought they were going to hurt one another in the effort to be the first to apologise.’

=Who won in the end, Paddy?= Bella asked. =I was too busy trying to get warm and dry and strangle your Godson to notice.=

‘One of the all Hufflepuff teams if you can believe it,’ Sirius said. ‘Although Harry’s group ran them a close second. What were you thinking ‘ standing under a snow-covered tree to watch the fight! You might have known someone would try and dislodge the snow on to you ‘ it was far too good an opportunity to miss.’

=We were thinking that the kids would be trying to hit one another and not us. There are absolutely no points involved in burying the umpires and how did Harry manage that quite so effectively anyway? He couldn’t have knocked the whole lot onto us with one snowball.=

‘He waited until you were standing close together and then swung his broom round in a tight loop so the bristles hit one of the top branches. It was a very fancy bit of flying. He had to hit the tree just right to get all the snow to land on the two of you,’ Sirius explained happily.

‘You know I seem to remember James pulling a similar stunt on a group of Slytherins after practice one evening and I know I didn’t tell Harry that story so I have to wonder where he got the idea,’ Remus complained, glaring at Sirius who did his best to look innocent.

=That look doesn’t work on us, Si,= Bella signed. =Besides I saw you chatting to Harry before the fight started. I knew you were up to something.=

‘Who me?’ Sirius said, grinning widely.

*It’s nice to see him acting like himself again but I wish he could have ended up this happy without soaking us,* Bella thought.

*Yeah. It might be irritating but it’s better than the depression he’s been suffering from since his escape,* Remus answered. *Pity his good mood’s about to end so suddenly.*

They rounded the corner to find Severus leaning against the wall next to Remus’ door.

‘What’s he doing here?’ Sirius snapped, his previous high spirits dropping away from him immediately.

‘You promised you’d try and clear the air about our Fifth Year, Paddy,’ Remus said quietly.

‘Well, yes, but -’ Sirius started.

=Now, Sirius,= Bella signed exasperatedly. =If we left it to the two of you you’d never do it so you two are going to talk while Remus and I shower and change. That way we’ll be close at hif yif you try killing one another. Besides,I’m not waiting till I get back to Ravenclaw Tower to get dry. I feel like an icicle.=

‘Merlin!’ Severus exclaimed, straightening as the trio approached him. ‘What happened to the two of you?’

‘Harry dumped an entire tree full of snow on to us when we weren’t expecting it. The grinning idiot here thought it was hilarious,’ Remus exclaimed, opening the door and letting them all into his rooms. ‘Someone light a fire. Bella and I are going to shower and find some dry clothes while you two talk. If I hear either of you trying to start a fight there will be trouble. Do you both understand me?’

‘All right, you don’t have to rub it in,Re,’ Sirius complained. ‘I’m sure we can manage one conversation without trouble.’

‘Good,’ Remus kicked off his shoes and pulled his sodden robes over his head revealing equally wet jeans and a t-shirt before going into the bathroom to start the shower. Bella walked over to Severus and waved for him to sit down. Resting her hands on the arms of the chair she leant over and kissed him. *If you’re good, Remus and I will think of a way to reward you later,* she thought. Then she dropped her robes on top of Remus’ and followed him into the bathroom, firmly closing the door behind her.

Severus watched her go and then turned to face Sirius who was stood in front of the fire glaring at him. He smirked, ‘Is something the matter, Black?’

Sirius practically growled at him before getting hold of his emotions. ‘Not a thing,’ he snapped. ‘Now why don’t you just sit there and shut up like a good little boy while I talk and then we can both get the hell out of each other’s way.’

‘Oh please, do go on,’ Severus sneered. ‘I can’t wait to see how you’re going to explain away your attempt to kill me and turn your supposed best friend into a murderer. It should be fascinating.’

Sirius glared at him again for a moment and then began to pace backwards and forwards in front of the fireplace. ‘Look, first of all, I wasn’t trying to kill anybody. I didn’t think that far ahead. You were only supposed to get a really bad scare, that’s all. Secondly, I screwed up. I had the wrong victim - it should have been Malfoy, not you, creeping up that passageway.’

Severus stared at him unbelievingly, ‘Let’s assume that I accept the fact that you were too stupid to foresee the consequences of your actions, which I must admit is hardly a challenge, are you trying to tell me you ‘accidentally’ suggested I follow the secret passageway under the tree? Because that’s just too far fetched for even you to claim.’

‘Yes. No. Sort of,’ Sirius said.

‘Well which is it, Black?’ Severus snapped.

‘Bloody hell,’ Sirius cursed. ‘Look, I knew Bella was being bullied and she was really scared but she was being stubborn and said she could deal with it herself, so she wouldn’t talk to us about it. I wanted to give the bastard responsible a taste of his own medicine and I thought it was you - only it wasn’t, it was Malfoy. I fucked up and it nearly cost me my best friends and my little sister. It wasn’t about you, it was never about you. I made a mistake and I’m sorry, OK. You didn’t deserve it.’

Severus was totally stunned. Sirius’ admission had taken the wind out of his sails, never in a hundred years had he expected to hear Black admit to making a mistake, let alone apologise for it. He had to, grudgingly, admit that it took a lot of courage to admit something like that, especially to someone you hated. ‘What on earth made you think that I was responsible for bullying her?’ he asked eventually.

Sirius had been staring into the fire while Severus processed the information he had just been given. He was relieved that Severus wasn’t going to gloat about it, but was instead trying to understand how it had happened. He turned back around to face his former enemy. ‘Because we saw you,’ he said quietly.

‘How could you have seen me,’ Severus argued. ‘You just admitted that Malfoy was to blame and not me.’

‘Well if you’d shut up and stop interrupting maybe I could explain,’ Sirius snapped, inwardly wincing. He had promised Bella and Remus that he would do his best and Snape had actually taken his earlier comments reasonably well, but he was acutely embarrassed about this particular part of his past and Snape would have been the last person he would ever have chosen to willingly discuss this with. ‘As I said,Bella was being bullied and it had been going on for a while. On that day she was due to play in the Ravenclaw-Slytherin Quidditch match that afternoon. If Ravenclaw won they would win the cup and it would put Slytherin into third place, only just above the Hufflepuff team. The Slytherins weren’t taking it well - if they won they handed the cup to us and if they lost they sealed their worst season for decades. Bella had been practicing that morning and was coming back, I guess, when she was cornered. We, James, Peter, Remus and I that is, were all curled up in the common room doing nothing. It was going to be a full moon that night, obviously, and Remus was on edge so we were playing cards to keep his mind off things. That afternoon we were going to go to the match and then it would be time for him to go to the Shack. One of the first years burst in and told us that Bella had been cornered by a group of fifth year Slytherins in an empty classroom and things were getting nasty. So we ran down to re hee her. We got to the Great Hall in time to see her with you. You had her by the arm and were saying something to her, we were too far away to hear what. You saw us and ran off. When we went over to her she was white and shaking and looked like she was ready to burst into tears, but she wouldn’t tell us what had happened. She said it was OK now and not to worry about her. Then she went into her common room and we didn’t get a chance to see her again because she was preparing for the game. During the game she and Malfoy flew into one of the stands and she was unconscious for a few hours so we couldn’t talk to her before moonrise. We all assumed you were threatening her so I told you about the Whomping Willow to scare you. When she came round the next day Remus was in the ward with her recovering from his injuries. James told them both what had happened and how it had happened. Neither of them would speak to me and so Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t let me into the infirmary. Remus didn’t talk to me until the next moon by which time we’d finally completed the animagus transformation. He was still angry but he was grateful to us so he decided to forgive me. Bella was in the hospital wing for a couple of days but when she got out she came after me and yelled at me for a solid hour. Then she explained what had really happened. Malfoy and his goons were the ones that had cornered her. Malfoy was threatening her to get her to throw the game. He was scared she would get to the Snitch before he did and he’d look a prat. When verbal threats didn’t work he drew his wand and said he was going to make sure she didn’t play that afternoon. You came across them at that point and pulled her away. You apparently dragged her through the corridors to the relative safety of the Great Hall and then gave her a lecture on wandering around on her own when there were people like Malfoy around. She was furious that you’d nearly been killed for helping her and that I’d blown Remus secret wide open. After she finished yelling at me she told me she never wanted anything to do with me again and she stuck to that until a couple of weeks before the end of the summer when she ran into me at James’ after I’d run away from home. So that’s it. You were a hero, Malfoy’s an evil git, and I’m an idiot. End of story.’

When Sirius finally finished he walked over to the window and leant on the wall next to it, staring out across the Hogwarts grounds, not wanting to see the superior expression he was sure was on Severus’ face. As for Severus he was still trying to take it all in. Bella was right, he didn’t remember the bullying incident at all, partly because of the events later that day and partly because trying to stop Malfoy from terrifying the younger students wasn’t exactly an uncommon occupation for him. He knew from his experiences with the Marauders, amongst others, what it felt like to be the victim of a group of arrogant bullies and he did his best to make sure no one else had to suffer that way. At least Sirius heart had apparently been in the right place over the Shrieking Shack incident even if his brain had been notably absent. He looked at the forlorn figure Sirius made, silhouetted by the setting sun and sighed. He had definitely been hanging around with Bella too long, he was actually feeling sorry for the man. He walked over to the drinks cabinet and poured them both large whiskeys. He went and stood slightly behind Sirius for a moment before moving slightly to the side and into the other man’s eye line. He offered him one of the glasses.

‘Do you think it would be considered cruelty to animals if we killed him and fed his worthless corpse to the Giant Squid?’ he asked casually.

The remark surprised a laugh out of Sirius, ‘Probably. There’s a nice spot in the centre of the Forbidden Forest Moony and Padfoot found one night that we could bury him in.’

‘Bella would kill us,’ Severus said.

‘Yeah I know. Pity though,’ Sirius replied.

The pair lapsed into silence and that is how Bella and Remus found them when they emerged from the bathroom a few moments later, stood, almost shoulder to shoulder, staring out of the window at the snow.
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The Girl in my Arms