Roses Are Black

When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy. – Oscar Wilde

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“Roses are Black”

It’s not easy being a girl. No, really. There’s hair and make-up and the impending question; ‘does this dress make me look fat?’ Okay, so I have a uniform, but that’s not the point. There’s gossip and shoes (so, that’s a plus), and the little monthly reminder that, yes, I can have children. Wait, almost forgot, there’s seeing your boyfriend looking at his best mate with dreamy eyes across the Hall.

Sirius Sex-On-Legs Black can have anyone he bloody well chooses at this school. Right now, he has chosen me. All the more power to me, I say. And I know that he’s slept around with a good number of students. But it’s my time for a little fame. Normally when he’s undressing someone with his eyes it’s because he’s screwed that someone senseless before and liked what he saw. It’s different though, now.

Remus Lupin. Those words are so hollow, and I wish I could say more about him. Uh. He’s in my year and we’re both prefects and all. He’s just so bloody quiet and he keeps to himself, and his little group of Gryffindor mates. Yet he’s being undressed from fifty feet away and he doesn’t even know it.

I pull him gently, reminding him that we’re going off to Hogsmede; it’s Valentine’s Day. Reluctantly he agrees and he drapes his arm lazily around me. Of all the others he’s been with, how many can say they stole him for Valentine’s Day? And I make that clear as we find our way through the halls, proudly telling all who dare that Sirius Black is mine, at least for now. Some members of his fan club jeer and some cheer, but it doesn’t matter.

Hogsmede is done up in pinks and reds and it’s all-in-all rather merry. I’ve got the most gorgeous and desired boy in school walking beside me, and yet he’s off somewhere else, I know. I start talking, trying to devour the silence that’s been eating me, and he doesn’t notice. He’s not there, with me. I just…

Well, I’m not about to tell any one that my day with Sirius is anything short of perfect, and maybe it isn’t. I mean, he’s here, with me, but only he’s not. Well –

He’s nearly top of the class, and yet he’s spacing out… It’s just a bit irritating, you know?

I knew that I wouldn’t last long, it’s been four days only. He has these flings and whatever and we both know that it’ll be over and I’ll just become a mark on his bedpost. I get bragging rights in return. It’s a win-win situation, a predefined game with all the rules laid out. So I don’t care that he’s thinking about someone else. Merlin! I don’t even care that it’s another boy he’s thinking about, I know that he doesn’t discriminate. But he should bloody do something about it!

Opposites attract, that’s what they say anyway. One’s a prefect and the other’s a Quidditch star; one’s shy and the other’s outgoing. In the class I have with them, History of Magick, they sit next to each other and look enough like a couple that anyone that didn’t know them would think so. And Sirius obviously agrees with this. Lupin does too. So, why are they in denial?

It’s ridiculous.

Why did I even begin to contemplate such nonsense anyway? My date with Sirius ended when he walked me back to my common room. He’s such a gentleman, so charming. I want him for my own. Who wouldn’t? And, I’m a Ravenclaw. I should be able to think of a way to get him for my own.

So, I headed, not for my room, but for the Prefects’ Bathroom.

I know that he likes to go there, an hour before curfew – every night. No other prefects bother at that hour, so I knew it would be just the two of us. I had decided that we were going to have a nice, long talk. Though, what we were going to talk about I hadn’t the foggiest. Sirius was mine, he actually never dumped me, still hasn’t. Only because he doesn’t know that Lupin likes it when Sirius undresses him from across the hall. Or that Lupin has become the perfect model to Sirius’ ministrations.

It isn’t fair! Okay, so, I didn’t want to be just a fling. I wanted to be more to him. But, no. Lupin gets all the bloody attention. Lupin! Lupin! Lupin! What about me?

The door opened, quietly, and he moved as if he planed to continue as normal. It took him a bit to find me there and when he did he paused in his tracks.

‘You don’t know, do you?’ I accused him, trying not to sound hurt and hiding nothing. ‘You just don’t get it.’ He raised a single, golden eyebrow. ‘He’s been devouring you, he wants you like he’s never wanted anyone. And yet you sit here. This. Is. Sirius. Black. Just who do you think you are, anyway? You can't be too good for him.’ I turned away quickly as I left the Prefects’ Bathroom, unwilling to face him, uncaring of his response and unsure of what had come over me.

As I sit now, I don’t know whether to be happy or sad, whether to cry or to smile. But I know that I’ve lost Sirius. I’ve lost him even though he was never mine.