Magic Words

"No magic," fumed Sirius as he dunked his cloth rag into a suds-filled bucket. "Clean the Great Hall with no bloody magic."

"Stop whining," Lily snapped. She was struggling to push a mop twice her size across the floor. "Muggles do it this way every time. I'm used to it."

"Well, lucky you," Sirius sneered, whipping his soaking rag against the Hufflepuff table. He'd worked for nearly three hours to get all the food stains off the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables (and he secretly hoped Filch would arrive to end their detention before he could make it to the Slytherin one). "Not all of us can be perfect at everything."

"I didn't say I was - " (she grunted as she hoisted the mop back into the bucket) " - perfect."

"We all know you were thinking it."

Lily narrowed her eyes. "Just because I'm not stuck in detention every single week like some people - "

"There you go again," Sirius said loudly, scraping away at a particularly tough stain with all the strength in his eleven-year-old muscles. "You think you're better than the rest of us. But you're stuck in detention right now, aren't you, so clearly Little Miss Perfect screwed something up."

She whipped her head around to glare at him. "We both know perfectly well that it's your fault I'm here at all."

Sirius bared his teeth in a ferocious grin. "It's not my fault you were out of the common room after hours."

Leaning the mop against the wall, Lily reached around to tighten her ponytail. "You literally said, 'Evans, come quickly, I think there's something wrong with James.'"

He shrugged. "It was the truth."

Lily let out a great hah! that echoed through the Great Hall. "Being lovesick is not a real illness, you prat."

Sirius let out a low whistle. "Prat?" he echoed. "Is that the worst word you've ever used in your life?"

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Lovesickness is a real illness," Sirius continued lazily. All intentions of cleaning had been abandoned. "And the only cure is a kiss from your one true love."

She opened her eyes. Glared. "I don't like James."

"James likes you. " Sirius hopped up to sit on the table and began to examine his fingernails. "I can't see why," he added. "You're not kind, or compassionate, or fun. You're a bossy uptight selfish little priss stuffed into a body with shiny hair and green eyes." He shook his head. "And they call me the shallow one. Little Miss Perfect? You don't seem so perfect to me."

(If she were the type of girl who cried, this would have been the moment.)

"And what does that make you, then?" she fired back. "Sirius Black, the arrogant toenail who won't listen to anybody and won't respect anything? Is there an ounce of politeness in your entire body, or are you so busy going against the grain that you can't be bothered to realize that everyone hates you? Even your family doesn't love you. The only person in this whole school who can stand to be around you is James bloody Potter, and that's only because he's infinitely kind and - " She cut herself off immediately and turned bright red.

"James Potter is infinitely kind," Sirius repeated slowly, and he was grinning. "Evans. Do mine ears deceive me?"

She didn't say a word, but her jaw tightened.

"Did you just pay James Potter - the James Potter, whom you have claimed to loathe beyond compare for the past six months - a compliment?"

Lily grabbed the handle of her mop and began to swipe furiously at the floor.

"I think you did." Sirius reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out his wand. "Scourgify," he said, and the spell swept through the room and cleaned every surface thoroughly. "There. Detention complete." He dropped his rag into his bucket. "Ready to head up to bed?"

Lily stared at him, open-mouthed. "We weren't supposed to use magic," she said stupidly.

He shrugged. "I'll take the fall, if Filch finds out. Merlin knows I'd have found a way to end up back in detention next weekend anyway." He offered her his hand. "To the common room?"

She didn't take it. "Why did you wait three hours to clean using magic?"

He winked. "I was waiting for the magic words."

"Magic words being. . . ?"

He adopted a high, girlish voice. "James Potter is infinitely kind."

She was turning red again. "He'd have to be, to put up with you all the time," she said, but her heart wasn't in it.

"I won't tell him," Sirius said, and it was almost tender, except he was Sirius Black and nothing he did was anything but loud and brash and rude. "I won't tell anyone. But I also won't let him give up on you."

She rolled her eyes. "I don't care what you do," she said, setting the mop in the bucket and folding her arms across her chest. "You can tell him to chase me for years, if you want. Nothing on Earth will make me want to date James Potter."

Sirius set his own bucket on the floor next to her mop. A few soap suds spilled over the sides; without a thought, he bent and wiped it up with his rag. "He doesn't want to date you."

She snorted. "Could have fooled me."

Sirius smiled, and it wasn't his usual sarcastic smirk: it was gentle, almost friendly, and it was the most honest expression she had ever seen him wear. "He wants you to fall in love with him."

Lily pulled her hair down from its ponytail and began to walk toward the staircase. "You have to be a hell of a lot more than infinitely kind," she said, and she said it mockingly, she was making fun of herself, "to get me to fall in love with you."

"But it's a start." And Sirius bounded up to the common room ahead of her.

[Disney Character Competition: Agent Pleakley - write about someonetrying to finish a job they don't want to do]

[Het-Pairings Boot Camp: cloth]

[30 Harry Potter Prompts: Great Hall]