A Late-Night Encounter Going Nowhere Good

Off-key humming seemed to bounce from one side of the stairwell to the other as the girls made their way down to the basement kitchen. Hermione had assured Ginny that everyone else would be asleep, but as Sirius' unmistakable voice broke into a few words before lapsing back to hmmms, they both suppressed giggles. When Ginny stopped short, unsure whether to venture the rest of the way into the fire-lit kitchen, Hermione ran into her, and they tumbled out of the stairwell, laughing.

Sirius looked up from where he was sprawled comfortably across one of the benches, his back against the table, taking a swig from what looked like a Firewhiskey bottle. "To what pleasure do I owe this late-night visit?" he asked. Ginny couldn't help but giggle at his roguish tone, and Hermione seemed torn over whether to frown or join her.

"Sorry to interrupt, Sirius," Hermione said, "but we just wanted to get some ingredients for a potion we wanted to brew."

Sirius shrugged magnanimously and pulled a match out of the tiny box sitting beside his elbow on the table. "Just enjoying the holiday spirits," he said. "Care to join me? I wouldn't say no to some female company. Accio butterbeer!" As two butterbeers slid across the table, Sirius struck the match against the sole of his booted foot, which was crossed over his knee. He then lit the two candles that were sitting on the table.

"Don't mind if I do," Ginny said, tightening the tie of her dressing gown and sitting in front of the butterbeer, her back to the fire. Hermione waved a dismissive hand at the second bottle and dug around in the refrigerator.

"What type of potion are you girls brewing - especially at one a.m.?" Sirius asked, his question addressed toward Hermione, but his eyes on the redhead next to him. Ginny knew he was looking at her instead of the fire, and she couldn't help a demure grin at the bottle in front of her.

"It's not so much a potion, per se, as a Muggle remedy Hermione thinks she can enchant," Ginny said, keeping her eyes down on the rough-hewn table. Sirius leaned back even further into the table, his fingers tapping around his wand, and looked at Ginny with raised eyebrows. His black hair fell into his left eye, and Ginny felt a flutter in her stomach. She would definitely have to tell Tonks about this.

Hermione straightened up, shutting the refrigerator door, her arms brimming with honey, milk, and Pumpkin juice. She walked over to the cupboard and pulled out oatmeal. "One of the portraits at St. Mungo's mistook Ron's freckles for spattergroit," she said. Ginny could tell from the edge in the other girl's voice that she didn't think Ginny should be sitting down with a drunken Sirius in the middle of the night. But for the whole summer, Hermione hadn't wanted to be left out of Ginny and Tonks' discussions of the dead sexiness of Sirius and Lupin. She hadn't ever agreed, but she had listened avidly to their spectacular swoons.

"And that has what to do with your Muggle oatmeal enchantment?" Sirius asked, winking at Ginny. She finally looked him full in the face and raised an eyebrow of her own.

"We're just going to pull a little Gred and Forge," Ginny said, biting her lip in what she hoped was an alluring fashion. Michael always seemed to feel it was, but then, he was easily pleased. "We're going to make it, and spread it on Ron's face so that when he wakes up he panics. Then when he washes it all off, he should be freckle-free for a day or two."

Sirius laughed, bark-like, and Ginny took a swig of her butterbeer. Hermione tapped a foot impatiently. "We really should get going on it if we want to do it tonight, Ginny," she said.

"You go on," Ginny said. "I'll be up in a minute. I'm going to finish my butterbeer."

Hermione seemed to hover in indecision. But Ginny kept her eyes on her bottle, and Sirius started humming "O Tannenbaum" badly, and soon, the bushy-haired girl was tramping back up the stairs with all the ingredients needed to make a freckle-eating facemask.

Ginny took another swig of butterbeer and was silent as Sirius hummed through another verse, the fire crackling unevenly in the background. It was one of the first things she had noticed when her family arrived in Grimmauld Place the previous summer - the fire burning in the kitchen never seemed to crackle as rhythmically as any that had ever burned in the Burrow. But Sirius had informed her, when she observed this to him, that he was methodically burning his family's possessions by Muggle means - matches - to spite the memory of his mother. Magical fires, after all, didn't need fuel to consume; he felt it fitting, he said, to put the Black family heirlooms to good use after all these years. They could provide something - heat - for once.

"So you were the one who got Harry to talk again after the first trip to St. Mungo's?" Sirius said, his face focused back on the fireplace now.

Ginny nodded, but then felt she should answer verbally because Sirius wasn't looking at her. "Well, Hermione got him to come down from Buckbeak's room when she got her. He's been a bit better after I convinced him he wasn't being possessed by You-Know-Who."

Sirius finished off the last of the Firewhiskey and slammed the bottle down next to hers in mock frustration. "Oh, come now, Ginny Weasley," he said, a definite drunken lilt to his voice. "A brave young Gryffindor woman like yourself can surely say the name."

"Well, I did, once," Ginny said. "But Michael had a conniption. He's not a brave young Ravenclaw. But Hermione started saying it, you know, during D.A. meetings. And Harry's been saying it for years."

Without the bottle in his hands to raise to his lips every few minutes, Sirius almost seemed at a loss. Ginny watched as he took another match out of the box and struck it on the sole of his shoe again, this time staring as it burned down to his fingers. With a flick of his wrist, the flame disappeared. His hands were the only remaining part of him that told tale about the years he'd spent in Azkaban - they were large and rough, but the skin was scarred much more than any man's should be at age 38. They looked almost as if they'd been torn apart and patched back together with a shoddy splicing spell. Ginny could only guess how they'd become so mutilated in the first place.

"Ah, Sir Michael Corner," Sirius said. "He hasn't fallen victim to any more Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes, has he?"

Sirius and Dung had teased her mercilessly throughout August after Michael sent an owl, demanding she call her brother off him, as he'd been receiving howlers that exploded with the same distinct odor as a Dungbomb. What type of bloke had to appeal to his girlfriend to defend him, Sirius had demanded. Hermione had made things worse by trying to defend Michael, saying he was "tall and dark and quite the looker." In fact, Ginny was surprised that Ron managed to be so much in his own world that he hadn't discovered her relationship with Michael until the first Hogsmeade weekend. With the disproportionate amount of time Michael Corner had been a topic of conversation at Grimmauld Place, even the thickest brother should have realized something, but not Ron. Then again, he'd bought Hermione perfume for Christmas, so maybe Ron made sense in some clueless git-type fashion.

"No more Wheezes," Ginny said. "But now Ron's shooting Michael malevolent looks in the halls between classes. I'm afraid it may come to hexes."

Sirius turned to her then, suddenly serious, and said, "You're good for Harry, you know. And someday he'll realize it."

Ginny stiffened. "Whatever do you mean by that?" she asked, downing the end of her butterbeer and fingering the empty bottle. She didn't want to talk about Harry in that way. Especially not to his dead sexy godfather whom she had been trying to flirt with five minutes previous.

"Oh, he's the exact opposite of James, but Potters always go for the redheads," Sirius said. "James fell in love with Lily third year, I think, and had a time of convincing her she loved him, too. But Harry never had any proper examples of affection. He'll figure it out soon enough."

"I think he's figured it out enough," Ginny said. "He kissed Cho Chang before he had that vision of my dad. Hermione told me."

Turning back to the fire, Sirius clasped his huge hand around hers on the butterbeer bottle and shrugged jocularly. "Believe me, he can't continue to not notice you for long." And as his thick, scarred fingers started to play over her own, Ginny suddenly lost her head. What was he doing? She watched, feeling completely removed from herself as she let go of the bottle, which permitted him to somehow work her fingers between his own. Her spindly, milky white digits looked tiny between his thick, scarred ones, and his thumb found its way into the cradle of her palm. The room felt indescribably heavy all of a sudden; Ginny noticed that the candles Sirius had lit when she and Hermione first came in were letting off a good deal of heat. She also noticed the black chest hair that was showing through his undone robes and his half-unbuttoned shirt.

"Did you always go for the redheads as well?" Ginny finally rasped out.

"Always," Sirius said.

On impulse, Ginny put her other hand on top of Sirius' as the shiver in her stomach turned more into a roll. "Then why don't you get on with my mum?"

His grip on her lessened then, and he tried to pull his hand back, but Ginny wouldn't let him. "Because your mum treats you all like you're children when you're obviously old enough to hold your own."

"You don't think I'm a child, do you?" Ginny caught her breath as he turned his handsomely chiseled face toward her and surveyed her with black, heavy-lidded eyes.

"A child, no," he said. "Too young? Yes."

Their gaze held for a moment, and then something snapped in Ginny's brain. What was she doing? Sirius was old enough to be her father. But he seemed so interested, and she couldn't deny she was wondering exactly what it would feel like to be in the arms of someone so big compared to herself.

Shaking herself, she awkwardly stood. "I should go back up," she said, damning her voice for wavering as she backed up a little, leaving his hand on the table as she did. But she hesitated, and suddenly, Sirius' other hand was on her waist, and he was pulling her to him as he uncrossed his legs, tilting his face up to hers, his long hair falling out of the way for once. "You should go back up," he agreed, and Ginny could practically taste the Firewhiskey on his breath. She closed her eyes because she knew in that moment he was going to kiss her. After almost a full minute, though, she opened them, only to find him still looking at her. Something snapped in her head again, and Ginny tugged on the open lapel of his shirt. His other hand was on her hip.

Sweet Merlin, sweet Merlin, sweet Merlin, she thought wildly as she leaned even farther forward, shoving her lips against his, the five o'clock shadow on his chin chafing the corner of her mouth and cheek. It was absolutely nothing like kissing Michael, who was always laconic and slightly unsure. There was not an ounce of indecision or hesitancy, and Ginny wrapped her arms around Sirius' neck as a huge hand slid across the small of her back, the other twisting into the hair at the nape of her neck, trapping her against him. Ginny felt completely enveloped, intensely desired. That she had the power to please this enigmatic, virile man was an astonishment. After all, he had chest hair. Bill and Charlie were the only of her brothers lucky enough to have developed any yet.

Ginny was quite swept up in the passion of the moment, and she lowered her lips to Sirius' neck, where she found even more five o'clock shadow. He rolled his head to the side and pulled her even closer, murmuring, "I should definitely not be letting this happen. Your mum would castrate me. Should not - be - letting ..."

He trailed off as Ginny sat down in his lap. She tried to kiss his lips again, but he shook his head, as if he were suddenly coming to his senses. "Ginny - this is going nowhere good," he said, his voice almost impossibly thick. "I can't let this happen."

Ginny found that she could not look at him as she climbed out of his lap. She thought she should probably feel like a reprimanded little girl, but instead, she felt luminous with power she hadn't had when she came down to the kitchen. Michael Corner was the first bloke who had really seen her as a girl; she'd dealt with being her brothers' little tag-along for years, and but to Michael she had her own identity instead of being an afterthought. But Ginny knew indefinitely, now, that someone saw her as a woman, worthy of kisses passionate enough to be kept secret. And it was probably really wrong that Sirius Black was the one who saw her that way, but Ginny found a little smile spreading across her lips. Dead sexy Sirius Black. She'd take it any day.

"I'm sorry," Sirius said, and he sounded like he truly meant it. "I - Harry will get it, one of these days. We really shouldn't tell anyone about this. Don't tell Hermione. Or Tonks. Crikey, I had way too much to drink."

"Well, don't tell Harry, then," Ginny said as Sirius stood up from the table with seeming effort. "Or Lupin. Or my mum."

Sirius surveyed her from under his flopping hair. He seemed surprised at her flippant reply.

"Or Michael," she added, grinning at Sirius as she started up the stairs, pulling the tie of her dressing gown tight again. "Unless you send him one of Fred and George's Dungbomb howlers."