"Anytime you need a friend,
I will be here.
You'll never be alone again,
So don't you fear."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"So?"

Sirius grinned at Little Miss Impatient, otherwise known as Bellamy Roac, who was sitting cross-legged on his bed, her hands clasped as she stared at him with a 'come-on-don't-leave-me-in-such-suspense' face. He was half-tempted to wait another few moments before telling her what he'd overheard from Remus and Persephone's conversation in the Quidditch stands earlier that day just so he could keep her gaze so intently on him for a little longer, but her eagerness won him over and he relented.

"They were talking pretty quietly for most of their conversation, but the wind died down long enough for me to gather they have a date this Wednesday at four pm on the dot in- get this -the library." Sirius was about to make a further joke as to who on earth schedules a date in a library of all places, but then he stopped himself, remembering when just a short time ago he and Bell were discussing their Lists, just the two of them, in the library itself and he'd been tempted to ask her half-jokingly if they were on a date. 

Bell gasped and looked about to reply as Sirius took off his sweater, purposefully letting the white shirt he was wearing underneath lift up to show his toned stomach, but then James, who was taking a shower one room over, started singing- ahem, screeching -"Margaritaville" by Jimmy Buffet and she started giggling at him instead. Sirius grimaced in mock emotional pain and flopped onto his bed, facedown.

"Ever since Lily introduced that song to him, he's been trying to learn it as if it might woo her," he said into his bedsheets and Bell nudged his side with her foot, getting him to roll over with just one touch. His wish was her command, even if she didn't know the effect she had on him, Sirius mused and flicked his legs up in the air behind him, leaning his chin on his hands. This was something he'd seen the girls on the telephone do when gossiping in that movie Bye Bye Birdie (a Bellamy movie-night special) and considering their topic of conversation, it seemed appropriate. This move also garnered a smile from Bell, which was always a plus, and so Sirius went on as she brushed out her damp hair (she'd taken a shower just a few minutes ago and hadn't bothered to dry it with anything but a towel).

"Well- I didn't exactly hear the word 'date' in their conversation at all, but they were both blushing so much it looked like they'd been sunburned." Sirius gave a huff of laughter. "Nervous messes, the both of 'em." He grinned then. "I guess number seven on your List will be a lot easier to accomplish than you thought." Bell leaned back, gaze studied, in what Sirius had learned to recognize as a motion that meant she was thinking well about something.

"Knowing Remus, I don't think he'd have the guts to ask Persephone out on a date just like that." She sighed softly and absentmindedly traced patterns on the blanket she was sitting on with her right hand. "Not to say he isn't brave, he really is, but he's liked her and been so worried about it for two years now, I doubt-"

"TWO YEARS?!"

In his surprise, Sirius, who'd been moving to sit up, fell completely off the side of his bed and narrowly missed hitting his head on Remus' full-to-the-brim bookbag. James stood in the doorway of the bathroom, wearing a very fluffy, very crimson bathrobe with a towel haphazardly wrapped around his head. Sirius winced at the sudden ache he felt on his hip- that was sure to bruise -but his frown faded when he looked up and saw Bell leaning over the side of his bed, her head tilted a little to the side and her hair draped around her face like a wavy brown curtain.

"You alright?"

Sirius took the hand up she offered and nodded as he stood with a bit of her help. "Just surprised by Prongsie here-"

"Yes, yes, he's alright- but TWO YEARS?!"

Sirius shared a glance with Bell. Did he even know what they were referring to? James grabbed his glasses off the nightstand beside his bed and practically slammed them onto his face as he cleared his throat.

"I mean, I knew Remus had a thing for that Persephone girl, but two years? Why didn't he tell us?"

Bell dropped her gaze to the floor for a brief moment and rubbed the back of her neck. It was a nervous gesture, Sirius gathered, and his smile faded when he noticed it.

"He only told me because he thought I could help him figure out how to make his feelings disappear. Two years later and he still hasn't, but then again, I'm not the best therapist." Sirius frowned and crossed his arms at her.

"Says who? You give some of the best advice around, Angel. You always seem to know when someone needs a pep talk or just a hug or something, so it's no wonder Remus went to you first." He thought about it for a moment as James grabbed a set of clothes from his dresser and retreated to the bathroom but made sure to say he was still intently involved in the conversation. "Come to think of it, that would have been sometime early fifth year, huh?" Bell's nod affirmed his suspicion, and he winced. "James and I would have been busy messing with Snivellus all the time then, I'm not surprised Remus didn't feel like talking to us about a crush of his."

Bell laid a hand on his arm and Sirius' gaze softened as he met her eyes. "Yes, that was probably the reason," she admitted and he glanced down, feeling bad he wasn't there for his friend when he might have needed someone to talk to, but then Bell continued. "But he also told me then he thought he should figure this out with as little help as possible." She sighed. "He said it was 'about time I-' well, he '-learn to take care of things myself for when I won't have other people to help me'. Help him." James gave a low whistle from the bathroom and Sirius realized Bell must have struggled just as much with aiding Remus then as their friend had with working through his own feelings.

Sirius pulled Bell into a hug as James walked out of the bathroom, still pulling his Rolling Stones sweatshirt (a Christmas gift from Bell last year) on over a black t-shirt.

"Why would he ever think that?" Sirius wondered aloud into Bell's damp hair, not minding that his white shirt was getting a little wet. "We'll always be here for him. Always." 

Bell nodded against his collarbone but didn't step back out of the hug just yet. "That's what I told him, and I've been trying to convince him of that ever since." She tilted her head up and Sirius was surprised in a good way by how his first urge was to go find Remus and hug him until he realized that he was loved and cared about forever instead of to kiss Bell like he normally would have thought.

"Have you made any progress?"

A slight smile tugged and Bell's lips and she stepped back, turning to face James to answer his question. "Yes, I really think I have. As far as I know, he believes we'll always be here for him, but he still thinks the world outside of Hogwarts is a dangerous place. And I'll give him that, it is." She swallowed. Sirius could tell the mood in the room was quickly darkening, and he didn't much like it, although he knew well it was very important that they talk about this.

"Remus- Remus has been keeping close tabs on everything the Prophet and any other semi-reliable news source reports about You-Know-Who. Remember at the end of last year, when he said he wanted to pray for every Muggleborn and Half-blood student at Hogwarts?" Remus wasn't at all a religious person, so this memory had, in fact, stuck with Sirius, and from James' expression, they remembered that day with the same emotions. "He told me later he had a feeling some of them wouldn't be coming back after the summer break." Bell drew in a shaky breath. "He wasn't wrong."

Sirius laid a gentle hand on Bell's shoulder and she immediately put her own hand over his as if she needed it to stabilize herself. He stepped closer and wrapped his other arm around her waist and she leaned back just the slightest into his chest. A silence fell in the room and James, who'd covered his face with his hands for a long moment when Bell finished talking, finally spoke up in an unusually quiet voice.

"Of course he's worried. Lily's parents didn't want her coming back to Hogwarts this year because of that bastard You-Know-Who, it was only when Dumbledore himself paid them a visit that they realized she was safer here than anywhere else." Sirius didn't think much of James knowing this until he realized Bell was surprised, which caused him to raise an eyebrow, too.

"How do you know that? She didn't even tell me that much."

James gave a small smile and rubbed the back of his neck. Sirius realized in the back of his mind that both he and Bell tended to do this and wondered which of them picked up the habit from the other. "We... might have had a little heart-to-heart last night while scouring the halls for students up to no good, excluding my fellow Marauders, of course." Bell smiled slightly, though Sirius could see it only out of the corner of his eye as she was still standing with her back against his chest.

"No wonder she seemed a little off this morning and didn't want to come along to Quidditch practice with us," she mused with a slight chuckle, and Sirius could feel with relief the weighted air of anxiety lifting from the room. "I do believe, Jamesie, your darling Lilyflower might be coming around after all these years."

James then proceeded to jump so high in his excitement that he accidentally punched through the top of the wooden canopy above his bed and broke two bones in his hand. He was promptly ushered to the Hospital Wing by both Sirius and Bell, as well as Peter (who happened to show up in the doorway just as they were leaving the dorm room and tagged along), and the darkest parts of their discussion were filed away by each to be discussed at a later point.

Remus, having no knowledge of this conversation ever taking place, was having an excellent rest of his day as he kept thinking about Wednesday, four o'clock, until Lily ran up to him in the hall with a surprisingly-worried expression considering the person she was telling him about. He met the others in the Hospital Wing along with Lily and scolded James for being so careless- though when he was told the reason for his friend's excitement (after Lily left a bit later, having done so when she saw James was going to be fine), he promptly took his chidings back. 

Except for the particularly-poignant part about expressing one's emotions in other ways than punching through a piece of wood that has the density of a brick.