good things fall apart • sirius black

Stars, planets, galaxies

Two of the Marauders had a tradition that the others were excluded from. It wasn't in a mean way or out of any malicious intent, it had simply just come about on its own. And now the two did it every first night of the new school year.

Ellie trudged down the girl's dormitories stairs and into the common room with blurry eyes.

She just couldn't sleep, for the excitement of finally being at Hogwarts was far too much. Having lay staring at the drapes around her new bed and watching the moonlight dance around her and Lily Evans' dorm, she'd tried to make herself sleepy, but it wouldn't happen.

Instead, she decided that perhaps sitting by the fire in the common room (which already felt like home), would help her to get cosy. However, once she reached the bottom of the stairs, the common room wasn't empty, as she'd expected. There was a familiar head of black hair sticking up above the back of the sofa and her steps faltered.

Sirius Black, the boy her and James had sat with on the train, the boy the best friends had instantly become fond of, was curled up in a ball in front of the fire. He was staring at the flames dancing around one and other, deep in thought, but when he heard footsteps behind him, he jumped. The beautiful girl noticed the slightly tortured expression he wore and made her way to sit down next to him without a word. Sirius shuffled awkwardly, rubbing his eyes in a way that looked like he may have been crying, but Ellie wasn't sure.

"Why are you up?" She asked him, a friendly smile on her face and more awake than she had been a few moments ago. Ellie didn't know what it was, but she liked Sirius a lot. Maybe it was his almost shaggy hair, which was longer than James', but not long enough for her to class as 'long'. Or maybe it was the fact that their souls were same.

Something the beautiful girl wouldn't learn for a long time.

"Why are you up?" Sirius fired back, a defensive tone in his voice that made Ellie tuck her legs up into her chest with a slight frown.
  
"I couldn't sleep." She felt a little put out by his cold demeanour, for that's not the impression she'd gotten of him earlier in the day. It upset her somewhat.

"Me neither." Sirius mumbled, recognising that he'd made the beautiful girl uncomfortable. He felt guilty for it, but he couldn't really understand why. He didn't know her enough to really care about her feelings yet. Did he?

They lapsed into an almost peaceful silence, the only sound being the crackling fire. But Sirius kept screwing his face up in worried thoughts and Ellie was fidgeting restlessly, so it wasn't quite as relaxed as it could've been. However, shooting the beautiful girl glances periodically, Sirius' thoughts were no longer engulfed in the panic they had been, but attacked with confusion over why she'd decided to sit with him.

When he'd heard that James Potter and the girl whose name he was very confused over, both were hoping to get into Gryffindor, he'd been very disheartened. He'd liked them both, but knowing he was going to be put in Slytherin, seemed to ruin the chances of becoming friends with them. Yet now he found himself in the house of the lions, and still his prospects didn't look very good. Sirius hated to think what his parents would do if they found out that, not only wasn't he in the house they thought he should be in, but he was friends with the Gryffindors too. That, in his eyes, made him believe he wasn't worthy enough of the friendship of James Potter and the perplexingly named girl.

"I'm very confused as to what your name is?" His words could've been quite rude, but Ellie just giggled a little and that confused him even more. He wasn't sure what he said that was funny, for his words had been more than cautious, trying to gage whether Ellie actually liked him or not, at the same time as getting answers.