36 ⏤HER SMILE
“Where is she?” Sirius snaps with an exhausted but irate rasp in his voice, prompting James to look over their map in search of your name.
“Looks like she’s just left the library and is heading off to her common room,” James answers as Sirius groans; he’s gonna have to be quick if he wants to catch you so that he doesn’t need to climb all of those godforsaken stairs.
With a flourish, Sirius leaves behind his robes and races in your direction from the Gryffindor common room, an impressive roll of parchment clutched in his hand. Ever since he was assigned to be partners with you for the transfiguration project and the two of you established a fair split of the workload, you have been pestering him day in and day out on whether or not he had completed his share of the work. It was almost impressive how tenacious you were in your pursuit of him and his progress on the project if only he wasn’t the victim of your harassment.
“It’s not harassment Sirius, I’m simply asking if you’ve done your share of the project yet? And, if not, how much progress have you made since I last checked,” was your annoying, impassive response to his accusation, making him feel as if he was the crazy one. No! You’re the crazy one because no one should be this goddamn annoying!
Because of you, multiple pranks he had tried to set up with the boys ended in failure. You practically exposed them every time by popping out of nowhere to pester him. As a result, they all landed detentions that weren’t even worth it because they couldn’t successfully pull off their mischief.
Because of you, he couldn’t eat his breakfast, lunch or dinner in peace either. Despite being seated at the Ravenclaw table, you managed to always be in his line of sight, pointedly staring at him to the point that Sirius was able to hear your voice nagging his ear off and lose his appetite.
Because of you, he even failed to court a really cute Hufflepuff in the library where you also happened to be and wouldn’t let him pass until he gave you an update on his progress. Before he knew it, the cute Hufflepuff girl had disappeared and you still hadn’t left his side.
He was fuming.
Enough was enough!
That night, Sirius, in his anger and spite of you, worked tirelessly on completing his share of the work. He managed to get a majority of it done and persevered with the work during all of his free time throughout the day until finally. Finally! He was finished. And just before curfew as well. You’d be out of his hair and he could finally be free of your torment.
“(Y/N)!” Sirius’s booming voice drew your attention to the back of the corridor, where you locked eyes with him for a moment before he then proceeded to stomp his way over to you, James, Remus and Peter trailing not too far behind him.
“Hello Sirius,” you say formally in your usual inscrutable tone of voice, “how is your progress wi-”
“It’s done!” he announces, presenting his grand roll of parchment and handing it over to you, his grin widening when he sees your brows fly to your hairline. This is the first time he’s seen you express an emotion that wasn’t just a blank stare or slight annoyance from his previous lack of efforts.
“Oh…” is all you manage to say as you unroll the parchment and examine his diligent writings.
“Yes, you see? I’ve done all of it so you can stop pestering me with your empty stares and monotonous demands!” he huffs, smirking at his clear victory, “You better not complain and cry-”
“Oh no,” you chirp, uncharacteristically elated as you turn your gaze up from the parchment to meet his shocked, grey eyes, “thank you for working so hard, Sirius,” suddenly his name sounds really good when you say it, “I definitely won’t be complaining after this, everything you needed to include is there and it’s really well organised,” there’s a heat that slowly creeps up from Sirius’ neck to his cheeks and, finally, his ears. His friends snicker beside him when they recognise the obvious flush on his face. Sirius isn’t used to such positive praise, not even from his friends and especially not from you, the proclaimed stone princess for your lack of emotions. It was then that you smile, so soft, so sweet and so incredibly beautiful, the heat on Sirius’s cheeks worsen in response, “it’s perfect and just what I need to finish everything up on my end so don’t worry-”
“Yeah!” Sirius cuts in, embarrassed for feeling so tight chested but faint just from having you smile and praise him, “So you better stop pestering me, y’hear?!” he doesn’t take the chance of looking back at you and stomps away with evidently red cheeks and confusing thoughts befalling his mind.
There’s no way you were ever that cute before…no way!