always and forever

VI. the first sleepover

Rose POV

We ran to our dorm to gather all of our things and get ready for bed. It was a frenzy of shoving things in bags so that the boys wouldn't get bored and start without us. I was rummaging through my trunk looking for one of my favorite books and Lily was throwing pajamas into her bag. I snagged the instant coffee packets from my trunk and threw them in my bag. When we were finally all ready, we trooped downstairs and went to the boys dorms. They were moving all their beds into the corner for more room for us to hang out. I threw down my blankets onto the floor and hurtled myself onto the nearest bed. I sprawled across their beds and closed my eyes. 

"Oomph," I said, as the wind was knocked out of me. I looked up to see that Sirius had jumped on top of me, his eyes sparkling.

"Get off me, you fat lump," I shrieked, kicking him off of the bed. He looked up at me from the ground, mock insulted. James jumped onto him from behind, knocking them both onto the ground. Peter joined in on the attack and of course I had to too.

"Cmon Lupin, join us. The floor is much more fun then one of your books," James said. I elbowed him in the ribs.

"Do not disrespect books like that," I said only half joking. Remus allowed a half smile as he looked down at our tangle of limbs and James rubbing his ribs.

"Lupin, my grandmother is more fun then you are," I barked," Join the cool kids."

Everyone else looked on, laughing at us trying to convince Remus to put his book down and mess around with us.

Eventually after a bit more harassing, Remus put down his book and jumped into our pile. We squirmed around for a bit trying to make our bruises count, until Lily yelled that I was going to kill someone if we continued this. The boys all looked at her confused. Lily explained that I had learned how to fight when I was young, so that I could release some of my pent up energy. I nodded, smiling deviously as the boys started to back away from me. After that , we decided to built a pillow fort for us to stay in while we tried to pull the all nighter. It was collapsing on one side and extremely lopsided, but we sat back and admired our hard work. Us girls went to the bathroom to get changed for bed.

"Don't you think Sirius is kinda cute?" Marlene asked. I gagged a bit as I heard those words.

"WHAT?!" I yelled.

"I don't know. You guys seemed kind of into each other earlier."

"We're just friends. That's it," I said, trying to shake the thought of Sirius being attractive from my head. We walked out of the bathroom and as we continued through the night, I saw Marlene giving Sirius flirtatious looks and laughing a bit too loudly at his stupid jokes. Sirius looked unnerved from the attention that he was getting from her, but it was obvious that he enjoyed it. I didn't care. I'm only eleven, that's way too young to have a boyfriend. It's best to be free for a bit before actually beginning to care about boys. We talked and messed around all night until at one point we found ourselves all lying down in our pillow fort watching the lights that James had enchanted to fly around. He told us that it's what his mom used to do for him when he couldn't sleep as a kid.

Mary started to doze off then so did Peter. Soon everyone was asleep except for Sirius and I. 

"So, how can you stay awake during these?" He asked.

"I love staying up and reading under the covers all night. My favorite hour of the day is 4 AM because everything is so quiet and peaceful. How about you?"

"My little brother Regulus and I used to stay up together and whisper each other secrets long into the night. We're best friends," he sniffled a little, "I really miss him. I'm also kind of scared to hear how my mother is going to react when she hears about me being sorted into Gryffindor. I hope she doesn't take it out on him."

I sat up partially, "Take it out on him how?"

"Ya know, hit him."

I was enraged, fuming even. How could he say that so casually? Did he know how bad it was for his parents to hit their children.

"No I don't know," I said. He looked over at me confused, "Does she hit you too?"

"Yeah, sometimes," he said quietly.

He lifted up his shirt to show me his back. I gasped, unable to conceal my shock. Some were magically healing, but some of them were still fresh, just starting to scab.

"Why is there something wrong with that? She says that she does it because she loves us. She said that she should be proud that they care so much about us," he said, looking confused. I lifted up the back to my shirt to show unscarred skin.

"Si, parents aren't supposed to do that to their kids."

"But, she says she does it because she loves us," he said, still confused, "She does it because she wants us to be strong."

"Sirius..."

"She says she loves us," he said, his voice breaking as tears began pooling in his eyes, "She does it because she loves us."

He broke down, crying. He shook as sobs wracked his body. God, I wanted to kill his mother. I wanted to hurt her for all the things that she did to break him.

"It's okay," I said, stroking his hair. I tried my best soothe him, but he continued to cry throughout the night.

When everyone else woke up, they were confused to see Sirius and I huddled together in the corner to the pillow fort with puffy eyes.

"Rose have you been crying?" Lily asked. Sirius shook his head slightly.

"No it's probably just because we stayed up all night," I said waving her off. I grabbed by instant coffee and mixed it in with some water.

"Drink up everyone," I said, downing a glass. The purebloods sniffed at it not knowing what it was. Sirius tried it and instantly took a liking to it. Marley spit it out the second it reached her tongue and James made a face, but endured it. We ran to breakfast hyped up on caffeine. As we went downstairs, I could see that Sirius was still hurt from his discovery last night. He looked over at me and flashed a gin, but it just didn't meet his eyes.

A/N: IM SO SORRY!! THIS IS SUCH A SAD CHAPTER. I actually ended up crying while writing this because I could just imagine a young Sirius curled up in a ball repeating "she loves us" over and... okay im just gonna stop there. Love yall goodnight!

Sidenote: "Si" (the nickname she calls him) is pronounced like sigh.