November 4, 1976
7:59 pm
Great Hall

Since Leo had gotten the general perspectives from two sides of the story and deal between Anneliese and Sirius, he was now noticing things that he hadn't before.

First of all, there was an enormous amount of tension between the split genders of the Gryffindor table that he hadn't picked up on before. It was obvious that the two sides usually sat with one another, but the two arguing were separating them.

Then, there was the fact that Black would longingly glance over at Callaway every few minutes or so and then quickly dart his eyes back to the conversation, hiding his hurt and anger with a cocky, lighthearted attitude that Leo instantly spotted as fake.

That short interaction had told him a lot about Sirius, but the main thing was that he seemed like the kind of guy who would run away from his problems until they exploded violently.

"So are you guys just never going to look at one another again?" Leo asked as he took a bite of his first treacle tart. "Anger is just going to build if you don't address it."

"He's right, you know," Lily said, inclining her head to Anderson. "Even if it takes a screaming match, you two need to get it out somehow."

"I would only need to get it out if I cared," Anneliese contradicted them. "And I don't."

"I call bullshit," Marlene declared, slamming her glass of pumpkin juice down loudly for emphasis. "You do care. An immense amount."

"And what makes you think that?" Callaway asked with a raised blonde eyebrow. "I need evidence."

"Maybe the fact that in every one of the literal dozens of letters you have sent me, he's been in every single one of them."

All of the girl's heads turned to Leo, who innocently just took a sip of his water.

"It was bad stuff," Anneliese muttered halfheartedly. "Nothing good."

"Lies, Anneliese Callaway!" Leo exclaimed, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Last time I checked, you wrote about how easy he was to talk to and how-"

Callaway promptly threw a dinner roll at his face with a surprising amount of force, and Anderson raised his hands in mock surrender.

"Alright, all I'm saying is that maybe you should consider not giving all that up for one mistake," he said, his tone becoming serious. "It would make you happier in the end."

"Yea, it's that simple when you say one mistake but that one mistake of breaking a guy's nose out of spite or jealousy or whatever is a pretty fucked up mistake," Anneliese replied factually. "It's not like he just called me annoying or something small like that."

"Okay, try to put it in perspective," Leo said, having no idea why he was defending Sirius. "If you had been pining after someone, let's say Violet, for a few days and then all of the sudden, I dunno, Mitchell or someone like that comes and hits on her. Wouldn't you be angry?"

"I already hate Mitchell," Anneliese said firmly, thinking of the infuriating Horned Serpent. "So yes."

"And adding on that Sirius had already been a bit prickly around Fabian," Lily cut in, starting to understand Leo's point. "And that your little thing, not a relationship, I know, had been going on for like two months, not just a few days."

"Thinking about it like Sirius, I would be pretty mad as well," Alice mused mildly, twirling her fork in one hand. "Obviously not nose breaking mad, but very angry."

Anneliese looked warily between her friends.

"Did he tell you guys to defend him or something?" she asked with a small voice. "You're making me want to forgive him."

"No, he most definitely did not," Leo laughed dryly. "I hate the kid, actually, but I'm just doing this for you. Not him. My help benefits one of you, it just happens to also benefit him."

Taking in a deep sigh, Anneliese ran one hand down her face with a mental battle in her head. Down the table, Sirius was in the exact same state with the Marauders.

Neither of them were happy like this.

"Forgiveness or grudge?" Leo summarized simply as he saw their identical expressions. "The decision is up to you."

With the other boys, James in particular hadn't enjoyed his friend feeling so fake. It was obvious Sirius was just putting aside his real emotions, and the facade was painful to watch.

Upon seeing Anneliese stand up without the others, Potter took it as a sign that he should go try and talk to her to get his friends back on track.

"Hey, A," James called out, jogging to catch up with her. "Can I talk to you about Sirius?"

"Did he ask you to?" she replied skeptically. "Because everyone seems to be on the side of trying to get me to like him all of the sudden."

"No, he didn't," James said, the vague surprise showing on his face. "And can you really blame us?"

Anneliese found that she couldn't as the two of them continued to pace down the corridors without a goal, driven by their words and not their feet.

"See, you guys only see whatever it is between you two from your perspectives," James started, gesturing loosely in the air in front of him as he talked. "Neither you nor Sirius see things like the rest of us do."

"And how might that be?" Callaway replied casually, but she was really deeply invested in what he had to say despite her tone.

"Well, we see you arguing, obviously," James said with a shrug. "But we also see that when you've seen Sirius upset, it hurts you as well. On Halloween, you guys were standing in front of a window, you know."

Anneliese stiffened slightly, realizing that they must have noticed her reaction to his scar.

"That kind of stuff doesn't just go away," Potter continued. "When he first came to my house, you know, it took him weeks to tell me what had happened. And then, he goes on and tells you within two months of knowing you. And you cared and wanted to know. That means something, A."

Slowing down, Anneliese sat down on the end of a stone staircase, trying to process the alarming simplicity of her emotions as she listened to James.

"Also, when you guys were out that one night after you asked Slughorn that question he didn't know the answer to, you only saw him when he saw you," he said, sitting down next to her. "Before he was upset, Sirius was really concerned because you're new to the UK and all that."

"No, I could tell," Anneliese whispered while she stared at the ground intensely. "I could tell that it wasn't just pure anger, and that he really did care."

"Good," James said firmly, glad that his point was starting to catch on. "And I think that hex was just an extension of that feeling, A, not just pure jealousy. Not to say that it wasn't totally idiotic, but it wasn't just from pure malice."

Potter paused before he said this next part.

"Sirius has lost a lot in his life," he explained softly. "More than most of us, or at least I, can imagine. So when he finds something or someone worth holding on to, he protects them with fierceness. It's just part of his instinct that everything good will be stolen from him."

She understood, more than James could guess.

"And he just really doesn't want to lose you already too."

Deeply sighing, Anneliese turned her neck to James with an expression of something not quite pity, yet still more kind and understanding than he had ever seen her.

"So I should talk to him," she said slowly, hardly believing the words coming from her mouth. "Maturely."

"Yes!" James exclaimed, having to calm his own excitement. "I mean, yes, you should."

Anneliese slowly shook her head with a sour laugh.

"And to think I thought I would never see him again."

"I think you lucked out," James said with a cheeky wink as he chivalrously held out his hand to help her up. "Sirius is usually a rather amazing person to be around, it just happens that you guys got off to a rocky first two months."

Without him knowing it, this triggered Anneliese to think of a phrase she had lived by her whole life, one that had also been repeatedly proven to her. When she told it to Sirius was the last time she had thought of it at Hogwarts, but now it was back in her mind.

Rough start, perfect middle, disappointing end.

November 4, 1976
9:41 pm
Gryffindor Common Room

Anneliese had been sitting in front of the fire with a book Remus had left on the coffee table in what appeared to be a rush for the past half hour while keeping her eye on the portrait hole for whenever Sirius would walk in.

Not that he usually returned early, but all of the other Marauders said that they hadn't seen him since dinner, which was rather concerned for her.

"Dorcas, what time is it?" she called across the full room, not wanting to squint at the tin copper clock resting on the mahogany mantle.

"Nine forty-two!" Meadows called back. "Only eighteen minutes until curfew, hurry up on whatever business you want to get up to!"

Anneliese rolled her eyes as Dorcas jokingly winked at her and walked up the stairs to the boys dorms. Closing her hand into a fist, she rapped on the door a few times before James opened it with a curious expression.

"I would invite you in, but it smells awful in here," he said with a lopsided grin. "What's up?"

"Have you seen Sirius?" Anneliese asked, glancing at the common room entrance behind her again. "Or Leo for that matter? I want to spend some time with him before he leaves in the morning."

"I know that Sirius went to the astronomy tower for some alone time," James said, squinting his eyes in thought. "I haven't seen Leo, or Remus for that matter in quite a while."

"Thank you," Anneliese said, a smile on her face as she thought of the last two. "They're the two people who smelled one another in the amortentia, by the way."

Blinking furiously, James watched with wide hazel eyes as she quickly descended the stairs.

"YOU CAN'T JUST RUN AWAY LIKE YOU DIDN'T JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU JUST TOLD ME!"

Annelise just gave him a mysterious look before racing out of the common room, making James groan and slam his head on the doorframe in exasperation and amusement.

It took Callaway a few minutes to remember and then navigate her way to the astronomy tower, but once she did, the southern girl was in total awe of the sight above her.

The early November sky was the clearest it had been at her time so far in Hogwarts, giving a cloudless display of the brilliant stars above her. The sky was smeared with swaths of inky purple, and splotches of navy with tiny dots of pulsating stars sprinkled on top sporadically.

It took quite a bit of willpower to tear her eyes away from the sky and back down to where a black haired boy was standing against one of the short walls with his back to her, smoking.

Unknown to Anneliese, Sirius was completely aware that she was there, a master of detecting the presence of footsteps and then identifying who they belonged to since he was a child. He hadn't wanted to speak first though, he had already messed enough up.

Black was lucky that all of his friends, and Leo, cared so much about them.

"Hey," Anneliese started in a small voice, not knowing what else to say as she leaned next to him. "It's beautiful up here."

"Yea, it is," Sirius said back, not turning his head to her.

He was afraid that when he looked into her eyes, they wouldn't have a shred of forgiveness in them. Taking in a deep breath, Sirius worked up the most nerve he had ever had to possess with a girl before.

"I'm sorry," he started firmly. "My emotions got the best of me, and I messed up, hardcore."

Anneliese was startled by his immediate thrown away pride.

It just attested to the side of him that she admired, the first contribution to her liking him for what felt like a long time.

"I agree," she said back, making him smile dryly. "But I also understand that you just want to hold onto good things before they're taken from you. I.. I know how it feels."

The only sound was the wind whistling through the pine trees below them and soft rustling of bushes that created a peaceful atmosphere that both could have fallen asleep in if it weren't for the circumstances.

"When I was little," she started, fidgeting with her fingers. "As I already told you, I lived on a farm in Somerville with my mother, father, and younger sister. We played games, cooked dinner together every night, planted new food in the garden. Life was perfect."

Sirius watched as a wistful look came over her face, only lit by the starlight.

"But then, they figured out that I wasn't like them," Anneliese said slowly, the nostalgic look changing to a cold one. "I'm muggleborn, you see, and they didn't like that I was somehow special or more important than them."

This scenario felt like the same story he had been through with different characters and conditions to Sirius.

"So, one day after I had used my magic to help a hurt fox that was going to drown, they decided that they had taken enough," Anneliese said deeply. "I was only six years old, but they disowned me and sent me to an orphanage in North Carolina."

A jolt of horror went through Sirius's stomach.

"The orphanage was living hell," she continued. "I had to learn how to fend for myself, no matter how much they cleaned up when the government came to inspect so that the funding could continue. The workers took almost all of that money for their own pockets, leaving us with nothing."

She swallowed forcefully as her mind went back to the peeling paint flaps and grimy, graffitied walls for a few moments.

"And I found myself thinking, maybe if I had held on to what was good a little harder, then things wouldn't have turned out the way they did," Anneliese said, still staring out at the grounds below. "Maybe if I had just been a little more forceful, things could have changed."

Sirius was starting to understand how similar the two of them were as she continued her story.

"Then, when I was eleven, Ilvermorny happened," she said with a small, remorseful smile. "I met Leo, Violet, and Queenie. I still had to go back to the orphanage for the summer, and a foster home once, but while I was on the coast, things were amazing."

The smile melted.

"And this time, I told myself that I was going to hold on even tighter, nothing was going to take that happiness away from me like my parents had before."

Black knew where this was going because of the fact that it had been taken away from her. He felt a feeling of empathy, not pity go form in his chest.

"But it was," Anneliese continued, emotion leaking in her voice. "And now it feels like everything is just slipping away. I just need stability, and I want to do everything, anything I can to feel like I belong and control that happiness."

She paused for a moment to make sure that she wasn't going to start crying.

"What I'm trying to say by all of this is that I understand," Anneliese said, turning to look at Sirius. "I understand why you did what you did, not that it was right. I understand that sometimes things just go so emotional that we will do anything we can to hold onto what's good so that it doesn't fall away."

Black was left completely breathless by her story.

He would have never guessed that she was an orphan, or that anything like that had happened to her upon meeting Anneliese. She seemed so happy all the time, which then just attested to her strength.

"I was disowned too," he offered with a sheepish expression. "If that makes you feel any better?"

Anneliese just looked at him and let out a disbelieving laugh, wiping the corners of her eyes to make sure that there was nothing there. The tension melted away between them, to both of their relief.

"That's what you have to say?" she said with a tiny laugh as she looked up at him, emotionally exhausted. "Oh my lord."

They both pulled away from the wall and stood looking at each other for a few minutes, seeing the person that had been there all along that they were both just too blind to see before.

To both of their shock, Anneliese stepped forward and hugged him. Sirius tensed for a split second before wrapping his arms around her torso while hers were around his waist, both of them with their eyes shut.

They had never been this close before, but it felt more right than either had anticipated.

"I know this sounds stupid because it was like a day, but I missed you and your stupid little smirk," Anneliese whispered into his chest. "And don't be arrogant about it, or I will not hesitate to hex you."

Sirius smiled softly as he looked up at the stars.

"I missed you too, Callaway."

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