good things fall apart • sirius black

Teenage fantasies

Ellie stood in front of Sirius with a pencil stuck between her teeth.

He'd been sat on the sofa in the Gryffindor common room, discussing Quidditch with James whilst Remus and Peter buried themselves in textbooks, when the beautiful girl had appeared out of nowhere.

Eyes narrowed and head cocked to the side slightly, she was staring at him as if he was a complete stranger. She meant business, that was clear enough. Whatever it was that was swirling in that complicated brain of hers, was being planned out strategically. Her feet tapped rhythms on the floor as she continued to shift her wait from one hip to the other, studying Sirius like a piece of art in a museum.

And then she was sat in his lap.

One swift movement, and she'd straddled herself across his knees, making James shuffle to the other side of the sofa awkwardly. Hands hovering in the air, Sirius blushed perhaps the most he had done in his entire life, heat rising up the back of his neck as his stomach did flips. He was completely frozen as she continued to examine his face, his mind lost to some ungodly place.

James coughed very indiscreetly, eyes scanning the common room to see who might be watching and this drew the intrigue of the other two Marauders. If Remus had been taking a sip of tea at that moment, it would've been spat across the room as his eyes almost bulged out of their sockets. And Peter looked absolutely traumatised. They all shared frantic looks and wild expressions, trying to come up with some way to intervene before Ellie potentially put on a show for the whole common room, and when she grabbed Sirius' chin in her left hand, James gripped the arm of the sofa tightly.

"You're gonna have to stay really still for this..." Ellie's lips curled up around the pencil between her teeth almost wickedly as her eyes sparkled.

"F-For what?" Not breathing, Sirius spluttered for a reply, and the giggle it elicited out of the beautiful girl didn't help his shaking hands.

Taking the pencil from between her lips with her free hand, Ellie's smile only grew wider as she got nearer to his face with it. Sirius ducked his head away, confused as to why she was coming at him with a pencil, but her grip on his chin got tighter.

"I said, stay still."

Sirius gulped submissively, letting her get nearer and nearer to his face, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to form the words to protest if he wanted to. Accepting his fate was in her hands, Sirius decided to just take his time to drink her features in. Her proximity to his face was enough to distract him from whatever she was drawing on his eyelid, and he let his gaze fall to where her teeth pressed down on her lip in concentration. His hands itched to touch her, but when his fingertips grazed her sides, Ellie shook her head.

"Don't distract me. I wouldn't want to see such unique eyes get damaged."

Her words gave him a confidence he'd been lacking previously, and a cheeky smirk tugged at his lips. In any normal circumstance, he would've teased her about how she found him distracting, or milked the compliment he received, but Ellie Gryffin was straddling his lap and so it wasn't easy to form coherent thoughts.

When the pencil was finally pulled away from his eyes, she squinted at him a couple of times, leaning back to get a better view of what work she'd done. Sirius waited patiently for her to explain, almost hoping she wasn't done quite yet so she didn't have to go anywhere, and lucky for him, her eyebrows furrowed displeased. Sticking the pencil back between her teeth, Ellie asked him to shut his eyes before she ran her thumbs over his eyelids and right below his eyes too. She patted his cheeks gently to let him know that he could open them again when she was done, and as soon as she did, the biggest grin yet formed on her features.