build me up buttercup [s.black]

[4] Christmas

"Merry Christmas!"

Aisling spun around to see Sirius jogging up behind her and smiling. Not the smirk that he usually wore but an actual smile.

"What you doing out here in the snow?"

"What are you doing out here in the snow?" Aisling retorted almost automatically. "And merry Christmas." She added hastily.

"Coming to see what you were doing out here in the snow," Sirius shot back, the playful smile still on his face. "Aren't you cold?"

"Got to be careful asking things like that, Black. Someone might overhear and think you care about someone's feelings other than your own."

"Of course I care." He muttered, plunging his hands deeper into his pockets. He looked at her with a slightly concerned expression on his face. "If you're stuck up in the hospital wing with hypothermia, who am I going to copy my Potions homework off?"

Aisling snorted and rolled her eyes before starting to walk again. There was about a minute of silence before she spoke again.

"Anyways, I like the snow. I feel like it makes everything sort of fresh and new again, you know?"

"No actually, I don't." Sirius stated flatly. "In fact, I think you might be a bit mad McCawley."

"Oh I am. I'm absolutely bonkers, a certified lunatic, actually." Aisling replied, dragging her feet as she walked and kicking up snow with each step.

She didn't know why but she had the feeling that she was suppressing giggles, except nothing was funny. For a while they walked without talking. Aisling kicked the snow and Sirius trailed his gloved hands aimlessly along walls and branches, knocking snow off them as he did so. The silence was comfortable, and neither of them felt the need to fill it. They walked like this until they had done a full circuit of the castle grounds and came to a stop outside the castle doors. The snow had started falling again but neither of them seemed to notice.

"Anyway..." Mumbled Aisling, who was feeling quite awkward now that they had stopped moving and she had nothing to do with her hands and feet. "We should probably get inside, or we'll miss the food."

"Yeah." Sirius agreed.

But neither of them moved towards the doors. In fact, if anything Aisling felt like the boy had moved closer to her. But she hadn't seen him move. He blinked and she now realised there were flecks of deep blue in his stormy, grey eyes. They didn't look so piercing anymore; in fact, they were almost soft. He stood with his mouth parted slightly open so that she could feel his warm breath on her face. Again, they seemed to be closer together than before, was she the one moving towards him? She didn't know.

Sirius looked down at the girl in front of him, he'd never actually looked at her up close like this before. But, as he stood there watching her nostrils flare and her toes scrunch up inside her trainers, he saw that her pale skin was littered with freckles; and her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold. He felt himself getting closer to her, it was definitely him moving towards her now, and he reached his hands out to hold the front of her jacket.

Was he going to kiss her? She wondered. It definitely seemed like he was. It was true that, since that evening in the library, there had been a certain amount of tension building between them. But it was Sirius Black. The guy was renowned for being a professional flirt. There was hardly a single Ravenclaw in their year who hadn't been caught snogging him in the Astronomy tower at some time or another.

But she'd never kissed anyone before, what if she was crap at it? She had a habit of chewing her bottom lip a lot when she was nervous or stressed, what if he could feel it? Or worse still, what if his lips felt weird? Was that something you were supposed to comment on? Or, forget about lips, what was she meant to do with her tongue? And what the hell was she supposed to do with his tongue? Her eyes widened as his hands tightened around the front of her coat and he pulled her closer towards him. Don't think about tongues. She repeated this to herself in her head over and over. But she couldn't help it, his mouth had parted ever so slightly more now so that she could see almost inside his mouth. But his tongue was green.