And a little spike of romance again...! Thanks to melb5628 for following and ginny1701.x for the review. And to every one of my readers, of course. It's only for you that I write.

This chapter is the last in our favourite characters' fourth year.

Enjoy! And please leave a little review :)

Spin the Bottle

29th April, 1975

"Yeah, I know that, but James is on the team too and he plays better than me, so why don't you ask him? Or better, ask Davies, he is the captain."

Marlene impatiently shook off Kevin Peters, turning to enter the common room. The second year had been pestering her all afternoon about Quidditch tryouts. Marlene was hardly ever this impolite, but her patience had run thin with the constant blabbering of the boy.

She looked around the Gryffindor common room for James, hoping to tell him to handle the overexcited student. She spotted the Marauders soon enough, fooling around as usual, talking and laughing. Sirius had cracked some sort of joke, and Peter was rolling on the floor, wheezing with laughter, while Remus shook his head, amusement written on his face nevertheless. But when she reached the place that James and his three friends had occupied, she stopped short.

"Er, James," she blinked at the boy, "I know you need glasses, but I don't think that your eyesight is so impaired that you can't tell that this bottle's empty." For James was holding an empty bottle of butterbeer close to him as he frolicked with his friends. The other three sniggered.

"I know that, Marlene." James replied calmly enough, looking up at her, "We thinking about playing Spin the Bottle."

She looked at them again. Four boys, no girls.

"Oh, I didn't know that you guys had a thing for each other," she teased. They all looked nauseated at that, amusement quickly wiped off from their faces.

"Ew, Marlene, never ever suggest that again," Remus implored. Marlene giggled.

"What? Who else do you have to kiss except each other?"

"Play with us," Sirius offered. Make that demanded.

"So that all of you get to kiss only me? No thanks."

There was a collective sigh of exasperation from the boys, and suddenly, Sirius was hollering out an advertisement for the game. Marlene's eyes widened. "Hey, no —"

But already, quite a few people were looking over at them, visibly interested. Marlene realise that there was no way of getting out of this.

James' eyes suddenly lit up as he looked at the girls' staircase. "Evans! Hey Evans! Come play Spin the Bottle with us!"

Marlene whipped around hopefully to see the other girls of her year — Lily Evans, Emmeline 'Emma' Vance, Alison Marlon and Mary MacDonald coming down the stairs. But as soon as Lily heard James, she froze, and then shaking off the coaxing efforts of her other friends, marched past past them all out of the common room, red in the face.

"What did she say?" James asked hopefully even as the others rolled their eyes in exasperation.

"That she would rather jump off the Astronomy Tower than give you any excuse to kiss her," Emmeline chuckled, squeezing past the crowd over to them. "Besides, apparently she has an evening planned with Snape in the library."

"Greazy git, that Snivellus," James wrinkled his nose. "Bad luck again, it seems," he sighed, and shook his head. "But she'll come around one day."

"But we're here, anyway, so let's begin!" Alison cheered, causing the Marauders to nod enthusiastically.

What did I drag myself into? Marlene thought as she shook her head, preparing herself for a busy evening.

After ten minutes, quite a large circle of students had been formed on the soft Gryffindor carpet, the participants ranging from a few daring first years to seventh years. The bottle was spun.

As the game progressed, Marlene began to have second thoughts about playing it. Sure, she got some nice snogs (and some admittedly poor ones as well), but that was just what the game was all about. The only fun was to see just how variant kisses could be — from barely there ones to ones that were nauseating due to excess of passion.

Matthew Davies was a great kisser (he was a great-looking bloke, too, although not quite her type; Marlene silently made a plan to set up Emma with her). She should never had agreed to kiss that second year, what's-his-name-Dawlish in the first place, and she teased James for being a horrible kisser for a solid five minutes (although, honestly speaking, he was quite good; Lily would be lucky if she managed to change her mind). As she watched Sarah Tanner, a sixth year, kiss Sirius and break into near hysteria, she began zoning out, her concentration drifting away from the game. Maybe she should have stopped Lily from going off to spend the evening with Snape. What she saw in that greasy git, she did not understand.

Her focus returned sometime later, and she looked down to see one end of the bottle pointed at her. She blinked, trailing her gaze to its other end, only to meet a darkly handsome teenager. Sirius.

Her eyes widened. All of a sudden, she felt very bashful. Heat was creeping up her neck. She met Sirius' eyes; he too looked nervous, and there were blotches of pink on his cheeks.

"What are we waiting for?" James asked, nudging his best friend. "Do it."

Sirius looked at her, and giving her the slightest of nods, leaned in. It's only a game, she told herself. She had kissed quite a few people this evening, and so she couldn't figure out why the prospect of kissing Sirius was making her jittery. Hadn't she kissed him so many times before, as well? On the forehead or cheeks, yes, but they could still be counted, right? It ought to...

His lips met hers, moulding them together effortlessly, and she lost her train of thought. Her eyes closed, she let her other senses enjoy the sensation. She had hardly begun to respond (with unexpected enthusiasm), her hands moving to grab his hair, when he pulled away.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she felt acutely aware of a strange sense of deprivation in her heart. For a second, she suddenly felt a wave of madness which urged her to grab him and start kissing him again, but she quickly mastered the strange desire. What the hell am I thinking?

Their kiss got a few appreciative grins and even a few wolf whistles, and then the game resumed. The bottle spun again. But Marlene's mind had gone far away from the game. The kiss had been quite ordinary, barely lasting two seconds, without much touching or anything, but there had been an undeniable flash of electricity that had run through her as their lips met. What was that all about?

"I think I will just call it a night," she heard herself say, rising from the circle. "Night, all."

There was a slight murmur of acknowledgement from the group at her words, but none of them paid much attention to her departure. As she walked up the stairs to the girls' dorm, she cast a last glance at the group, Sirius in particular. He wasn't looking at her, staring steadily at the spinning bottle, looking a bit unfocused (or was that her mind playing tricks on her?). Marlene watched as the bottle stopped between him and a third year girl, and as the girl grinned and Sirius leaned in mechanically to kiss her, she felt an unexpected wave of jealousy wash over her.

Hey, hey, hey, what's that all about?

She hurried away up the rest of the stairs without looking back. She felt disoriented as she plopped down on her four-poster in her dormitory. Her mind kept playing back the kiss again and again, and with every image flashing across her mind, strange, unknown emotions kept rising in her heart.

It was just a game, she told herself sternly, and he is one of my best friends. But was that how things went?

And so the fourth year ends. I have this little announcement to make, friends. I am in my final school year, and the exams are nearing. So I'll be on hiatus till around May or so. I am so sorry. But please don't give up on me. This story will be finished, I promise. I'll start writing as soon as I'm free. Until then, goodbye. Wish me luck :)