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Lily didn’t wait for Sirius to come to her. She went to him, falling into step beside him and placing her hand on his arm as they left Ancient Runes.
Her conduct was so bold, for a young woman of her status, that it almost breached protocol. However, it would have been the height of bad manners for Sirius to refuse to escort her, and rebellious and brash though the Black heir might be, deliberately uncouth and graceless he was not. He simply braced his arm and took her out into the passageway, letting her shorter legs dictate their pace.
No sooner were they out of earshot of the classroom, than Lily turned sharply on her heel and dragged him into an alcove half-hidden by a tapestry. Sirius half-reared back, surprised that Lily, who had always been so conscious of her status and the behaviour that was expected of her, would pull him after her so brazenly. It was only when he glanced behind him and saw Lily’s best friend, his cousin Narcissa, preparing to enter the alcove too, that he relaxed and let Lily tug him behind the tapestry.
Lily barely waited for it to fall closed behind them before whirling on him.
“When are you going to do something about Potter?”
Sirius grimaced. In hindsight, he should have expected this. Indeed, it was surprising Lily hadn’t challenged him on this long before now. Even Remus was starting to ask questions about when he was going to defend Lily, and Remus was a half-blood. He hadn’t grown up with the seemingly endless web of restrictions and protocol and obscure codes of honour that Lily and Sirius had.
He spread his hands defensively.
“It’s not that easy, Lily! James has been my best friend since the day we were Sorted! Challenging him, risking our relationship, even over you, well, it would be like asking you to break friends with Cissy!”
“No, it wouldn’t! Cissy would never challenge me for you! Yet, Master Potter has been doing it repeatedly since he realised that you and I were even halfway close to any sort of understanding.”
Lily’s voice thickened on James’s lack of title, the disparagement heavy on her tongue. Sirius’s face twisted.
“James isn’t Sacred Twenty-Eight, Lily! He wasn’t there when we danced at Meda’s Bonding. You can’t blame him for not acknowledging something he didn’t see!”
“Oh, come off it! It was all over the papers! Meda’s wayward cousin dancing with the heiress of the third family in England? At a Bonding ceremony no less? When you’ve never followed a single Pureblood tradition willingly in your life and everyone in Wizarding Britain knows it? The society pages had a field day, I can tell you!”
“Do you really think James reads the society pages?” Despite himself, Sirius barked out a laugh at the mental image Lily’s words presented.
“No, but I’ll bet his sister Henrietta does!” Lily flung back, tossing her bright head, “And his mother Dorea. You know what a parvenu Henrietta is, and Lady Potter only encourages her, because she remembers when she was Lady Dorea, cherished only daughter of the House of Black!”
Lily’s voice had risen to what could almost be called a shriek. Catching herself, she inhaled sharply through narrowed nostrils and then exhaled forcefully, before huffing, far more peevishly than she would ever have admitted, had anyone called her out on it.
Coming up behind her, Cissy suddenly placed a hand on her cheek.
“Lily. Leave this to me,” she breathed.
The intimacy of the gesture took Sirius’s breath away. Oh, he’d known Lily and Cissy were inseparable – you couldn’t spend any amount of time with either of them and not know it – but to call her Lily, rather than Lilyanna or Lady Lilyanna, and to put a hand on her cheek like that, in front of anyone, no matter who it was? Cissy was practically claiming Lily as her sister, despite the lack of direct blood or marital ties between them. Even he, Lily’s unspoken intended, hadn’t done more than take her hand on occasion.
Still reeling from what he had just seen, Sirius was too wrong-footed to even think to protest as Cissy turned her head to him.
“What Lily is trying to say, cousin¸ is that if you don’t make a statement of intent too strong for Potter to ignore, and sooner rather than later, I shall have no choice but to write to Father and Uncle Orion and tell them that the heir to the House of Black is so much a coward that he won’t even stand up for his intended before a new-money upstart like Master Potter.”
Cissy’s tone brooked no refusal. But Sirius tried anyway, because he wouldn’t be Sirius if he didn’t, “I can’t give her a Black Family necklace! That’s got to be saved for our Bonding!”
Cissy snorted, “There are other ways to make a statement of intent, you know.”
She paused for a moment, then sniffed, “You’ve a good brain between your ears, cousin. Use it.”
Then she spread her arm out, catching Lily by the waist. The two of them dipped brief half-curtsies to Sirius, and swept from the alcove side-by-side. Neither of them looked back, though they both smothered chuckles at the thought of how horrified Sirius would doubtless be by their curtsies. That was his lookout. He might not bow to them, and be able to get away with it, being the heir to the first family in England, but they’d be damned if they didn’t show him every last bit of the protocol he was so uncomfortable with, even in private, given how much he’d set their teeth on edge over the past few months.
The Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch matches were always the best attended events of every term, and that was saying something, given how eagerly Hogwarts students pounced on anything that broke up the monotony of their schooldays.
The one that took place in the January after Andromeda’s Bonding to Aristeus Selwyn was no exception. Fought on a crisply cold, briskly clear day, it ended in a close-run Gryffindor victory.
The Lions erupted in delight, delight that quickly turned to whispered consternation as Sirius, who had been playing as Chaser because David Barnes had dislocated his shoulder in Duelling Club the day before, pulled away from the rest of the jubilant team and went to hover before the Slytherin stands.
What was he doing?
Steeling himself with a deep breath, Sirius reached into the breast pocket of his uniform and cancelled the sticking charm that was holding the objects in it in place with a muttered ‘Finite Incantantum”.
Then he cast Sonorous on himself, and turned to face the pretty, auburn-haired girl he was level with.
“Lady Lilyanna Helena Evans, it would give me great pleasure if we were able to join our families in marriage when we came of age. Although I acknowledge that it is our fathers who will have to arrange our Bonding at the appropriate time, would you, in the meanwhile, do me the honour of wearing these as a sign of our mutual understanding?”
As he spoke, Sirius held up two delicate hair combs that glittered in the sunlight. Made of deepest jet and sparkling crystals, the gems wove together to create the illusion of a spray of foliage.
Lily, whose shoulders had tightened imperceptibly in displeasure as Sirius announced her hated full name for all the world to hear, leaned back in her seat as the import of this moment – of Sirius choosing to offer her hair combs in his house colours in full view of the entire school – began to sink in.
When she’d challenged him to make a clear statement of his intentions towards her, she’d had in mind a meal in Hogsmeade or asking her to partner him to the Spring Solstice Ball. She certainly hadn’t expected anything this dramatic. But then, that was Sirius for you. He never did anything by halves.
Rosy colour stained her cheeks, despite her training, as she stood and reached for the combs.
“Lord Sirius Orion Black, I accept these combs as a statement of your intentions towards me and I swear by the magic of all the Four, on whose hallowed ground we now stand, that I will do all that is within my power to be worthy of the trust and honour you extend to me with this offer.”
To her surprise, her voice rang out above the crowd just as Sirius’s had done. She didn’t remember casting a Sonorous on herself.
But that didn’t matter. Not now, not with Sirius’s eyes fixed so intently on her as she reached up and slid the combs into her riotous auburn curls.
Over Sirius’s shoulder, she saw the devastation on James Potter’s face. Heir to a nouveau-riche family though he might be, his mother would have drilled the importance of hair ornaments into him. He knew only too well what her acceptance of these combs meant.
She flashed him a nasty grin, one that flitted across her face so fast that not even Sirius, who had yet to take his eyes off her, could have sworn to Merlin that she actually had, and then held out her hand to Sirius, stepping back to give him room to swing himself down into the stands.
He lost no time in accepting her silent invitation, clasping her slender, pale hand in his gloved one and bowing over it, brushing her knuckles with his lips, his breath warm and possessive against her skin.
“My Lady Lilyanna,” he whispered, voice heavy with formality, before belatedly cancelling the Sonorous and repeating the phrase in an awed tone, laying extra emphasis on the first word, as though he couldn’t quite believe his luck.
“My Lady Lilyanna.”