The Marauders

The Great Hall was a cacophony of noise, clinking silver plates, and boisterous laughter, but at the Gryffindor table, Sirius Black's attention was anywhere but on his plate. He held an apple in his hands, tossing it listlessly into the air, searching for his usual target to ruin his breakfast. Severus Snape was already at the far end, isolated as always, but Sirius wasn't looking for him.

I was looking for you.

Being Snape's sister had made you the perfect target from day one. For Sirius, teasing you, throwing your books in the corridors, or making sarcastic remarks as you walked by was practically a daily sport. It was a mixture of contempt for your surname and a strange obsession with seeing your eyes light up whenever he bothered you.

But that morning, when his eyes finally located you a little further down the Slytherin table, the apple got stuck in his hand.

You weren't alone. You weren't even near your brother.

Barty Crouch Jr. was standing next to you. Too close.

Sirius narrowed his eyes, leaning slightly forward across the Gryffindor table, completely ignoring James's conversation beside him. Barty was whispering something in your ear, a ridiculously intimate distance that made Sirius's jaw clench immediately. The worst part wasn't that; it was seeing you laughing at what he was saying, leaning towards him without a trace of the high guard you always wore when the Marauders approached.

Barty reached out, brushing his hand against your face to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, and you didn't move. In fact, you smiled at him with a familiarity that belonged to no one else in that castle. Barty murmured something else to you, his fingers tracing your cheek before he placed his hand on top of yours on the table.

At the Gryffindor table, the fork Sirius was holding in his other hand hit the wood with a dry click.

"Sirius? What's wrong, brother?" James asked, noticing how his friend's posture had changed from one second to the next, going from relaxed mockery to dangerous rigidity.

Sirius didn't even hear it. He felt a heavy, irrational burning sensation rising up his neck. You were supposed to be the whiner's sister, the girl he teased to pass the time, the one who shouldn't look at anyone else like that. Since when did Crouch touch you like that? And since when did you let him?

Seeing Barty get even closer to you, almost touching your neck as he shared some of his food with you as if you owned each other, instantly killed any desire he had to make a joke. His blood was boiling. The idea that you were "more than a friend" to that Slytherin idiot was driving him completely crazy, when something happened—he saw you, he saw you kissing, which made him explode and storm off.

You were in the library when night fell, you were about to leave but something pulled you, it was Sirius