A/N:
Okay. Many, many, many apologies… but
there was writer’s block like you wouldn’t BELIEVE as far as this story was
concerned, and not a lot of time to work through it. Anyway, thanks to my real-life equivalent of
Dell for the idea. This chapter: Something’s
amiss once more in the world of Sirius…
Something’s
very, very wrong.
Lyria’s
acting weird. Weirder than usual, I
mean. We had the whole talk and there’s
no way we’re getting married – yet- she doesn’t want to, so now why’s she
acting like she’s mental? Honest to God,
I just don’t get girls. I have
positively no idea how they work.
~Later…
Still have
no idea how girls work.
I went down
to the common room to ask her what’s going on.
“What’d I do?” probably
wasn’t the best way to start it, but that’s how I did.
“You know
what you did.” She looked at me with
some sort of you-ought-to-be-ashamed-of-yourself look.
“What?” I asked.
“You know
what you did,” she repeated.
“Honest to
God, Lyri, I’ve got no bloody idea what you’re talking about,” I snapped.
She seemed
almost ready to water up. I winced. “I’m sorry, okay? Can we go talk? Please?”
She nodded
and let me lead her away, but I noticed the identical looks from
“You didn’t
do anything but I can’t talk to you in front of people. We need to talk later.”
“Alright.
Well… well I’ll come get you and we’ll slip
out, okay?”
She nodded
and headed back toward
I think I’m
going to throw up. Again.
Lyria and I
went to talk and I just got back upstairs.
“What’s
wrong?” I asked her quietly. We’d found an empty classroom to sit in, but
Lyria was pacing anxiously.
“I’m a few
days late.”
I sat there
blankly a moment before I figured out what she was talking about, and it was
all I could do not to yelp in alarm.
“What? Then you’re… you’re…”
“I’ve been
later,” she said quickly. “But not since
we started… well, you know.”
“Have you…
aren’t there tests or something?”
“Yeah, but
they’d send me home if I am. And I’m not
going to not graduate.”
“This isn’t
really something we can keep covert for very long!”
“It might
not be anything at all,” she retorted.
“I don’t *know* yet, Sirius. But
I couldn’t exactly not tell you and then suddenly spring it on you.” Her lip was trembling slightly – a very
un-Lyri-like action.
“Right.
Okay…” I paused and looked at her a moment, then wrapped her in a hug,
hoping it’d help. “It’ll be okay.”
“I can’t
really help but be… nervous…”
Nevermind nervous, she was scared out of her
wits, and so was I. “It’ll be okay. I’m not going anywhere just because… because
of this.”
“Not yet,”
she said softly.
“I’m not,” I
said firmly. “I promise, Lyri.”
She put her
head on my shoulder and I knew she was crying, even if she was quiet. I rubbed her back a little bit. “Want me to bring you upstairs?”
She nodded,
and I lifted her and wrapped
And then ran
to the bathroom and threw up. I slipped
the cloak back in
Am I
supposed to marry her now? I mean, I
reckon if she’s pregnant I *have* to marry her, and it’s not like I don’t love
her, but graduating, getting married, and being some kid’s father in a matter
of months makes me feel sick. I mean,
they’re all things I want to do, but not all at once. And Lyri and I fight and I don’t think she’s
ready to be someone’s mother, and I KNOW I’m not ready to be anyone’s parent, I
don’t have a clue what I’d be doing and I don’t need to screw up some little
kid. I think I’m supposed to grow up
myself first before I try to raise someone else, but if I went and got Lyria
pregnant I can’t exactly leave her on her own either.
She keeps
saying it might be nothing. God, I hope
she’s right.
Still
feeling ill, still too early to test anything.
Terrified out of my wits. Remus has been trying to get me to study for NEWTs, and I’ve been spending uncommon amounts of time in the
library, but that’s mostly so I’ll be left essentially alone.
Lyria and I
haven’t gotten to talk in a while, she’s afraid it’ll look suspicious or
something. I still feel violently ill
every time I think of the possibility of being a parent. I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do if
it *does* happen.
Of course,
everyone has noticed that something’s wrong with me, and also that something’s
wrong with Lyri. So at any time now,
someone will put two and two together.
And if it gets slipped to the wrong people, Lyria will get sent home,
and then she won’t graduate and it’ll be my fault.
And I
thought somewhere along the way I’d gotten smarter.
February 28th,
1979
Lyria’s
refusing to test… things. I’m about
ready to strangle her.
She’s afraid
to do it herself because she thinks she’ll do it wrong, she won’t let Lily help
her because she doesn’t want to tell anybody, and naturally she won’t go up to
the hospital wing because if she *is,* Madam Pomfrey
would immediately tell Dumbledore and McGonagall and honestly, I don’t want to
be mentioned in the Howler her parents would send either.
So I’ve
decided to break our little agreement and I’m going to get her tonight, and
we’re going to sit down and have a chat about all this.
~Later…
I basically
had to kidnap her and march her away. I
decided we’d be best off going outside on the grounds, so I half-dragged her
outside to someplace quiet where not even Hagrid would really look for us.
“Lyria… you
can’t just keep putting this off,” I said.
“
“You’d be as
nervous as I would be, something would get messed up,” she said firmly. “And I *can’t* tell
I was going
to say we could use
“Probably…” She looked on the verge of tears again. She looked like that a lot lately.
I sat down
next to her and hugged her. “Lyri, it’s
going to be okay. Honest.”
“There’s
nothing about this that’s ‘okay,’ Sirius, and you know it,” she replied.
“Alright,
fine. What do you want me to tell you,
Lyria? That I’m scared out of my
wits? That I want to be sick every time
I think that I might be some kid’s father?
That I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, if I’m supposed to marry
you or just live with you or do God-knows-what if you are? Do you really think I’m not just as scared as
you are?”
“You say
that now but you’d take off. You’d be
right there up until graduation and then you’d be gone,” she said quietly.
Ah-hah.
So there was the problem. “No,
Lyria. I won’t run off on you, either
way.” I paused. Maybe I *was* supposed to marry her. “Listen, if… if you are… do you want us to
get married?”
There was
silence. I wondered if she’d fallen
asleep. “I… I don’t know… I don’t think
we should just for a baby, and we already talked about it and neither of us
really seems too eager to be married just yet…”
“Well… I
guess it’s something to keep in mind,” I offered.
She nodded
and then curled up close to me with a shiver, and I noticed that it was getting
a little bit cold. I wrapped my cloak
around her. “Better?”
She nodded, then completely unexpectedly flung her arms around me,
crying against my shoulder. “I’m
scared…”
“I know,” I
said as soothingly as I could manage, pulling her close. “I know you are…”