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“…wasn’t hard to distract him, Slughorn’s a sucker for—Oi, I can’t find that knit cap your parents gave me for last Christmas, Jaime,” Sirius says, breaking off in the middle of his explanation to Remus. “Did you nick it again?”
“I never nicked it, you left it in my book bag and I made use of it.”
“Do you know where it is?” Sirius demands. “I want to wear it to Hogsmeade, you said it brings out my eyes.”
“It’s grey, of course it bloody brings out your eyes,” Jaime mutters. She wiggles deeper into the nest she’s turned Sirius’s bed into, and turns the page in her novel. “And I don’t keep track of your things.”
“That’s the biggest lie I’ve heard all term,” Remus remarks.
“I keep telling you, Moony, just because you’re prefect again this year is no reason to get uppity,” Sirius shoots back.
“I’m not up—”
Peter cuts Remus off before the two of them can really get going, saying, a little anxiously, “Why are you worrying about what you’re gonna wear to Hogsmeade already, Padfoot?”
“I like to be prepared,” Sirius says.
“But it’s only Thursday,” Peter points out. “There’s prepared, and then there’s—”
“He has a date,” Remus says.
That doesn’t make any sense. Jaime frowns, her eyes stilling when she realises that she’s just read the same sentence twice, and it doesn’t make any sense either.
“Thanks, Moony,” Sirius says, sarcastically, and he sounds like he’s glaring at Remus.
“Oh, she was going to find out eventually,” Remus replies, unintimidated. “If nothing else, when you walked off on Saturday with Annie Locke instead of her.”
Jaime drops her book.
“What.”
All three of the boys turn to stare at her.
“Oh, dear,” Peter whispers. He scurries around so his bed is between him, and Sirius and Jaime.
Sirius clears his throat. “Uh, so, look, Jaime—”
“You want to go to Hogsmeade with the Ravenclaw Keeper instead of me?” Jaime demands, loudly and incredulously.
Sirius winces. “Not exactly?”
Jaime crosses her arms and narrows her eyes.
“He asked her on Monday,” Remus says.
“You asked her?!”
“Jaime, I—” Sirius starts.
Jaime climbs off Sirius’s bed and storms out of the room without bothering to bring her book.
She is absolutely not giving Sirius his hat back before Saturday.
—
“Explain to me again how we ended up doing this,” Mary says, from behind Jaime.
“I’m still not sure, either,” Lily replies. “I feel like I was just saying ‘no’ over breakfast a moment ago, but now here we are.”
“You’re my dorm mates,” Jaime says, not bothering to look over her shoulder at them. “You have to help me.”
“I don’t think ‘stalking your cheating boyfriend on his date’ is anywhere in the dorm mate honor code,” Mary mutters.
“Especially since you’ve spent the last three years insisting he wasn’t your boyfriend,” Lily adds, so under her breath that Jaime barely hears it.
At that, Jaime does turn around, taking her eyes off where Sirius is propping up a banister at the foot of the stairs into the entrance hall while he waits for Jaime’s second worst Quidditch foe. “Sirius isn’t my boyfriend,” she says, firmly.
Lily raises her eyebrows. “Then why are we stalking him?”
“Wait—haven’t I seen him wearing that hat of yours?” Mary asks, squinting at Jaime’s head.
“We always go to Hogsmeade together. He can’t just ditch me for some Ravenclaw like Locke for no reason,” Jaime snaps.
“I’m pretty sure if the two of you aren’t dating, he’s allowed to date other people,” Lily says.
Jaime scowls at her. “Not Quidditch players. Or Ravenclaws. And not on my Hogsmeade weekends.”
“No, really, I’m sure I’ve seen him in that hat,” Mary says. She leans around Jaime to peer past her at Sirius. “If he’s not your boyfriend why would he wear your—”
“It’s his hat.” Glaring, Jaime shoves Mary back before she gets spotted by Sirius and ruins the whole thing. “He doesn’t get it back until he stops trying to waste perfectly good Saturdays with girls who aren’t me.”
Lily sighs, hiding her face with one green-gloved hand. “You’re really not doing the whole ‘not dating’ story any favors right now,” she says.
“I’m—Shh,” Jaime says, turning as she hears footsteps on the stairs. “She’s coming!”
—
“Was it actually necessary to push her into the snow drift?” Lily asks, around a regretful-sounding groan.
Remus, whose table at the Three Broomsticks they invaded for an alibi, looks worried but not especially startled. Come to think of it, he looks a lot like he did whenever he made token protests about them not needing to study the Animagus transformation for his sake. “You actually pushed her into the snow, Jaime?”
“She was going in for a kiss,” Jaime mutters. Her face feels like it’s still scowling, even though she told it to stop ten minutes ago.
“Oh, no,” Peter squeaks. He’s got his face buried in his butterbeer and hasn’t looked up for longer than a second since he spotted Jaime descending on them, Lily and Mary in tow.
“She was not going for a kiss,” Mary says.
“She was!” Jaime says, defensively. “I saw her leaning in. She was this close to his face.”
“She wasn’t trying to kiss him,” Mary insists. She’s eying Peter’s butterbeer like she’s considering liberating it from his tight clutches.
“But I saw—”
Lily says, “She thought he was choking on his Bertie Bott’s,” speaking over Jaime’s very important rebuttal. She groans again, and pillows her head on her arms, folded over the tabletop.
“What?” Jaime frowns, though Lily’s eyes are hidden so she won’t see it. “Why would Locke think that?”
“With the way he turned red and started spluttering when he spotted you around the corner spying on him?” Mary asks, rolling her eyes. “I’m sure it wasn’t a reasonable conclusion to reach, or anything.”
Now Remus looks a little alarmed. “You were following him? And he saw you?”
“She’s hopeless,” Lily says. It’s muffled by her arms, though; Jaime doesn’t have to listen.
“Completely,” Mary says, apparently finding Lily’s comment more important than Jaime had. “I’m getting us butterbeers, Lils.”
“Well, it looked like she was going to kiss him, anyway,” Jaime mutters. If she’s still scowling it’s only because nobody’s offering to get her a butterbeer. Where was Sirius when she needed him?
Yeah. She knows where.
—
“Now nobody’s ever going to agree to go to Hogsmeade with me again. I hope you’re happy,” Sirius says, when he pulls back his curtains to go to bed and finds Jaime already curled up there.
Jaime doesn’t look up from her book. “Ecstatic.”
“What are you even doing here, I’m annoyed with you,” Sirius says, huffing.
“I wasn’t finished with this novel,” she says.
“You could’ve picked it up and left.”
“And you could’ve not tried to date people on my Hogsmeade day,” Jaime snaps, lifting her head so he can see her glare properly.
“Well I won’t be anymore, since you ruined my entire plan with one shove,” Sirius snaps back. He’s glaring, too.
“Do you need us to leave?” Remus asks, from behind his own bed curtains; Peter immediately starts snoring horrendously. “Or do you like having an audience?”
“Oh, you had a plan?”
“Yes!”
Jaime sets down her book and crosses her arms, exactly the same way she had when she first heard about Sirius’s stupid date. “And how exactly did I ruin it?”
“We keep telling people I’m not your boyfriend and they keep assuming I am anyway,” Sirius says. He crosses his own arms. “I figured if I was seen on a date with someone else maybe they’d stop.”
“Oh.” Jaime blinks. “You. Oh.”
Sirius gives her his most annoying, knowing look, and nods. “But you went and pushed Locke into the snow and she’s even more convinced. By now she’s probably told half the school I tried to cheat on you.”
“You did,” Jaime says.
“I did not.”
“You were with someone else on my Hogsmeade day!”
“I was trying to do something nice for you!” Sirius protests.
“Well, next time, ask me if I want you to. Or don’t do it at all!”
“Maybe I won’t!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
They glare at each other.
Remus’s curtains open. “It’s very late,” he says, using the stern voice he’s been practicing since he got his prefect badge the summer before fifth year. “If you don’t stop shouting right now, I’ll dock you both twenty points.”
Jaime turns her glare on Remus. Sirius doesn’t bother.
“Oh, sod off, spoilsport,” he says, and lifts his bedcovers. “Jaime, budge up.”
Still glaring at Remus, Jaime makes room.
—
Curled up around Jaime’s back, with his arm stretched out so she can use it as a pillow while she finishes reading, Sirius mutters into her hair, “You did nick my hat.”
Jaime grins at her book. “I didn’t, I just didn’t give it back.”