“What the fuck was that?”
Sirius stood frozen amidst the milling crowds as Lily Evans — one-time foe, part-time pretend girlfriend, and, apparently, full-time psycho bitch — strolled away, heedless of the inevitable shitshow she’d left in her wake.
“Well, I’m no expert,” said Peter from beside him, his voice glinting with sarcasm, “but it looked like Lily Evans just snogged your face off.”
“Yeah, thanks, Wormtail. I worked that bit out myself. Come on.”
Sirius pushed through the tangle of jutted elbows and bulky bags that clogged the corridor as their peers spilled out of classrooms, feeling rather like he was macheteing his way through the jungle in search of his game. For James had already vanished into the throng along with Florence, a fact that both annoyed and troubled Sirius.
It wasn’t like James not to wait for his friends.
“You might not want to look so ticked off about her snogging you,” advised Peter as he scurried to catch up with Sirius’s determined strides. “She is supposed to be your girlfriend, remember?”
This was prudent advice, but Sirius wasn’t sure he was capable of following it at the moment. Because he was ticked off. In the stumbling aftermath of Lily’s kiss, it had taken him a moment to work out precisely why he was quite so irritated, but the answer, when it arrived, was simple: It had been the look on James’s face, glimpsed from across the corridor as Sirius tugged himself back from Lily’s ambush. It had only lasted a moment, that worrying expression on his friend’s face — for James had turned quickly away then vanished into the crowd — but Sirius had seen it all the same, and now it lingered, needling at him, admonishing him.
James had looked…hurt.
Read on Ao3
