Author: shyangell & MorningDawn

DISCLAIMER: All the fictional characters appearing in this fanfiction story are not mine, they're J.K. Rowling's; and they are being used with the only purpose of personal entertainment.

This story has been FINALLY revised. THIS CHAPTER IS NEWLY BETAED.

Friends and Foes

She could hear every single breath, shuffle, rustling of sheets, every tiny movement in the room; they were to her the loudest of noises. She turned around on her bed, again. She couldn't sleep, she didn't know why, but she couldn't. Bloody insomnia.

She got out of her bed, found her slippers and set off to the common room. She managed to find her way out of the room without banging her head into any doorframe, catching her toes against any bedposts or tripling with the carpets; but she wasn't that lucky with the stairs. She slipped and tumbled down the stairs, reaching the floor in about… five seconds and with a brand new string of fresh blows and a new concussion. She hit the floor hard. Still lying in the floor she saw two brand new polished school-uniform shoes that approached her, a unique gait; quite unmistakable if she was to be honest. Two shoes that could only belong to one Sirius Black.

Oh! Just what her perfect day was missing! Note the sarcasm in her (inner) voice. Her boyfriend's asshole of a best friend.

"Nice fast way of walking down the stairs." he commented; his soft deep voice dripping with sarcasm too. She groaned and with a bit of an effort, she rose. He smirked at her as she eyed him badly. Really badly.

"What are you doing here Black?" she asked. One might have thought that the reason for her sour mood was, in fact, not being able to sleep; but as it was the case, her current attitude had nothing to do with that. She would have been as rude to him had it been noon.

"Interesting question really… Red. Specially considering you are also here, and wait… also past curfew." Low blow! She thought. Oh, how much she hated him. Well not hated, him but disliked was more like it.

"You're not answering my question!" she yelled. He could get to her nerves like no-one could. Not even the little group of first years who liked to raid the kitchens.

"Nor are you Red." he stated calmly. She had the distinct impression he was finding the whole situation highly amusing; and she hated being the source of own his personal amusement.

"Black…"

"How unoriginal of you… so now we are resorting to naming people by they're hair colour? You know Red, petty revenge does not suit you."

"But you're here!"

"And you're hot." he deadpanned.

She eyed her disbelievingly. She could not believe her boyfriend's best friend was hitting on her. It was just too cliché.

"What?" she squeaked. He just raised on eyebrow.

"Oh, sorry." he said politely, but failing miserably to look contrite. "I thought you were starting on some stating-the-obvious contest here."

She just gaped, her brain too sleep-deprived to come with a witty comeback.

"Now, now don't be too embarrassed, we all make mistakes. So… what kept Mrs Evans from her sleep tonight?" he said. And she groaned.

"Just couldn't, don't know why." she mumbled, looking up at him grudgingly. "You?"

"Me what?" he asked nonchalantly.

"What kept you from your sleep?" said Lily exasperated.

He smiled, that lazy crooked smile that foreboded a joke at somebody else's expense. And he launched himself into very peculiar diatribe:

"Let's see…. the usual. Maybe it was Fabian's snoring; for his snores ring louder than the Hogwarts Express. Maybe it was Peter's nightly Tantalus Dream," he made a face very alike a grimace, "he has taken to smack his mouth around, I guess he thinks he's eating."

She looks at him and listens him ramble… she must be really tired because for the first time ever, she is being amused by him instead of just irritated.

"…Maybe it was James' perpetual and tireless fight with the blankets, and I guess today I wasn't luck enough for him to become immobilised by them. Maybe it was Remus' muttering…" he seems less mocking on this one "…probably another nightmare, I guess. Maybe it is because there was no quidditch practice to tire me off…" and with a grin, he added "The everyday worries of mankind. Pick your choice."

She looked at him like he had just grown a second head.

"Do you come here at the wee hours of the morning often?"

"What do you think? Yes. According to Remus, it's chronic insomnia. Apparently, it's a bad thing." he said so in a tone that left no room to doubt which was his opinion on the matter. Then he smirked to her and offhandedly commented: "Nice outfit, by the way."

She was wearing short yellow sleeping pyjama pants, leaving a fair portion of skin on plain view, a furry grey jumper (very nice and flowery) and a pair of fluffy knee-high red socks. Her skin turned bright red as he pointed it out. She also realised that he was wearing a dark blue long-sleeved pyjama and he had the school tunic on it. Ironically, much more decent than her own outfit.

"Fuck off Black." that was the only response she managed to come with.

"That language Ms Evans, please." he said, mock-scolding her for her particular choice in words, but not looking the least bit put off by her recent descent to plain vulgarity. Most would have gaped. He didn't. It was as if he had always known the Head Girl was perfectly capable of dropping fair play. She eyed him badly as she moved towards a couch. Heaving her body off the floor without the help of his proffered hand.

And then, she saw it. The table where he had presumably been sitting was covered in pieces of written parchment and opened books splayed around. She looked from the papers back to him a few times, just as if she was watching a tennis match.

"You were doing homework?" she blurted. He nodded.

"Again, stating the obvious." she grabbed one of the parchments.

"But this is due next month!" Sirius raised an eyebrow.

"So?"

"Why?" he did something that clearly resembled a snort; but had you asked he would have denied it because it was a very inelegant thing to do; he simply didn't snort.

"Why what? Aren't we supposed to actually do the homework and study?"

"Yes. But…" she looked back at him in flustered disbelieve. "Why at this hour?"

"Do you know a better time? I do have a reputation to uphold, you know?"

She rolled her eyes at this particular piece of Black bravado.

"This is absurd. How can you study? Besides, you never work…"

"I'll just ignore the comment and act as if I heard nothing. To your first question; because my brain works better…"

"At 2 am?" this guy was unbelievable. She was so tired despite her inability to sleep that was unable to pick her own thoughts. "And what were you doing this afternoon when we where working?" she said referring to the study session she had coaxed them into. He stretched on of his long fingers and pretended to count.

"Helping Remus… joking with Prongs, flirting… oh, yeah and pissing you off. How could I forget? Because, I don't know if you know, but there are certain things that can only be done basking in the daylight." Lily sighed in exasperation as he said so.

"I don't get you Black!"

"You don't have to. In fact, I am very glad not to be understood. The day I begin to be understandable it'll be the worst day of my life; it'll mean I begin to be dreadfully commonplace… And anyways, getting me won't help you liking me… I get you, and still think you are a bossy know-it-all."

She started stuttering. The cheek of him!

"I don't want to get you! I don't want to stand you, in fact! My life would be far happier without you!"

"Yes of course, nothing I haven't heard before. The same all song and Evans being so very immature… The fact is… I was here before." he stated, serious all of a sudden; the mirth gone from his eyes, his voice a few tones lower, warning.

She pretended not to understand. But he lowered himself and sat in front of her; looking her in the eyes. People always told her how beautiful her green eyes were. His were an incredible shade of liquid silver; and through his unwavering stare she had the feeling he was going to be sincere.

"You know what I'm talking about, so stop feigning shock. I was there before. They were my friends ever before you approached them. I know them better than you do. I keep their secrets. Just because you have decided all of a sudden they are worth your attention; that it was an appropriate moment to join and have decided to come barging in…" he raised his hand to silence her as she made to speak. "… because you like them (or James)… does not mean you can try and change how we work. We are all part of that group and come in the same package. You can't pick just what you like and leave the rest… You can't force me into changing into something I'm not just because I offend your sense on propriety."

So that was it? Well she had to admit that he had made himself crystal clear. Up until now, they had avoided this very same, and admittedly important, piece of conversation. He had always brushed off her displeasure as it wasn't there to begin with. And she felt anger rise up her throat, mixed with a good dose of shame.

"But it would be better if we just behaved properly around each other. Unless we want to split James in two, that is." he finished as if he was talking about the weather. She raised her eyebrows. "He is like a brother to me; and I for once, I'm not sure enough of myself to force him to make a choice." He smiled half-heartedly. It was a small smile, sincere, albeit it seemed a bit pained. "Oh, don't worry, anyway. I am afraid right now the biggest risk for Jimmy is that one of our, oh so interesting, fights will get out of control and something will hit him in the head by accident."

She was absolutely nonplussed. Was he saying what she thought was saying?

"Are you offering me a truce?" she asked astonished.

"Let's just say I'm asking you to bury the hatchet for now." he offered.

"Really?" he nodded. "Ok" she said softly. She smiled softly too. It was just this easy. And it felt good. His face went back to his usual grin.

"Good!" he said as he sat back in the couch, facing his papers again. "Now, am I allowed to go back to work?"

"Yes, and I should be going up again. Because it wouldn't seem very proper if someone saw me with my boyfriend's best friend in the middle of the night and in pyjamas." she said smiling. He looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

"Don't worry about that. Tomorrow is Saturday and you will be lucky if James wakes up before 11 am." he added with his usual grin: "Besides, you're not my type." she opened her eyes in shook. "No offence there, it's plain truth." If he was cracking a joke, she simply couldn't tell.

"What are you talking about?" she was used to people telling her many things, but ugly wasn't one of them. The corners of his mouth curved slightly.

"Well, I tend to prefer girls with which I don't happen to have the need to find a stool every time I feel like kissing them." he said tauntingly.

"Sirius!"

"Oh! So you even know my name, and not only my hair colour…" he said sarcastically.

"Ha, ha, ha."

"Well, will you let me work or not?" he asked.

"Yeah, sure thing."

"Thank you very much dear Lily." she rolled her eyes at that.

They hadn't been even five minutes in silence, hearing the fireplace crackling in the background, when she grabbed a piece of written parchment and with a bemused look, she said:

"Do you really understand this?" they were notes of advanced transfiguration theory. They had given them just two days ago; and she found them painfully hard to understand. He raised a single eyebrow.

In fact, Transfiguration was her worst subject. It was hard. Painfully so. Most of it took an awful amount of hours just to get the basics of each procedure. And if learning basic transformation with external detonating (aka: you point your wand from outside the object you want to change and do your magic) hadn't been easy; now that they were doing internal transformations it had become horrible. To her. Basically it meant a good grip on non-verbal spells, and deeper knowledge of wand-less magic. You, in fact, forced your body to change form inside-out. Like an animagus would do, but without a full body transformations.

As she stared at the careful diagrams showing diverse stages of a transformation of a human arm into a hammer pointing the differences between both types of transformation procedures it became obvious that she may be the only one there. It certainly seemed like Sirius really got it.

"Are you suggesting I don't?" he asked.

"No, I was meaning I don't." he smiled to himself at that.

"Well, I think James would be glad to explain it to you." she giggled.

"So, burying the hatched doesn't mean I get you to explain it? It that horrible the idea?" she asks wryly. But he only grins. "Guess you can't look a gift horse in the mouth…"

"Nah, it's not about that Lils… more like I've got no patience for explaining things." he adds. Wow, she thinks, he has just made a self-deprecating comment. "Ask Peter."

As if she neded to check that up. The only person he seemed inclined to explain anything was Remus; and only when it was because his friend had missed on a class.

"And besides" he had on that cheeky smile "he would be glad to do other things, but actually studying with you… forget it, you'd get everything wrong."

"Wow, and you call him you're best friend Sirius, I'm impressed: you just called him stupid. That's what I call a nice friendship." she said sarcastically.

"Oh, don't worry, the thought has never crossed my mind" that was definitely pure sarcasm, luckily she had enough contact with him over the years to know it probably wasn't true. "I meant that he would probably be too busy staring down your cleavage to build up one sentence. You are a very bad influence Lily…"

She flushed. And was going to berate him again because he really deserved it. She knew he was the resident cynical bastard, but that didn't give him the right to be rude all the time. But a loud noise cut her. Both turned around and saw Remus, who had been descending down the stairs and was in a very precarious balance after having almost slipped. After recovering his balance, he headed to where Sirius was sitting with single-mindedness purpose, without noticing Lily's presence.

Lily raised her eyebrows, he was wearing only an old T-shirt and his boxers, which were decorated with bones and dogs by the way. He looked like ha had been having a bad dream. And he also did look terribly cute with his normally well-groomed hair mussed up.

"What the hell did you do with the water this time Padfoot?" he snapped his tall friend as soon as he came to a distance when he wasn't forced to shout just to be heard. Sirius looked at him with a smirk and instead of answering said question, he just pointed pointing to Lily and commented:

"There's a Lady in the room, I would have thought you more modest Mr Lupin." Remus turned his head and as he saw her, he turned beet-red and threw one of the blankets that laid forgotten on one of the couches over himself. But his friend couldn't stop himself from keep poking fun at him:

"Nice boxers, by the way, Moony." Poor Remus blushed even deeper and made a valiant effort of a mourderous stare at Sirius before giving up and rolling his eyes in defeat.

"Shut up Pads. And no you aren't allowed to comment on this anymore" he knew Sirius wasn't going to listen, but you couldn't blame the guy for trying. "Oh, fuck off." said as he sat on a nearby couch, when he caught Sirius' downright evil expression. "Sorry about all this Lily…" he said politely; as if he hadn't been practically swearing hell, fire, and perpetual injury to Black moments before. She laughed.

"No problem, my father's are much worse." Sirius looked at her astonished, as if the mere idea were preposterous, and Remus smiled gratefully.

"Well… back to my question Padfoot: where's the water jug?" he asked again.

"I couldn't sleep" he said as if it explained everything, but due to the stubborn silence he clarified (or at least though he was doing so) "And as I couldn't sleep I decided that it would be great to try and get said sleep by trying to refresh myself, as you very often do too…" Lily looked in awe as he launched into what looked like a very long monologue steaming directly from his impressive linguistic skills; and his admittedly better distraction techniques. Remus sighed.

"So, in plain speech so normal people here understand: you drank it." Sirius nodded thoughfully, the other boy sighed exasperatedly again. "But it does not help you to sleep. It has never done so. But in the other hand, it does help other people to sleep; mainly me." Lily giggled

"So now I'm not allowed to try to sleep after all the ruckus I have to put up in that dorm room?"

"You're lying! You don't do it for that… you…"

"Everybody lies." he said rolling his eyes. Clearly his cynical side had just decided that it had been turned off for too long and had com back again full mode "Deal with it."

"But it's not fair for you to do that" Remus kept protesting (admittedly loudly) and ignored the last bit.

"Life it's not fair Moony. The water is there for anyone in the dorm to use. Don't like it, make a complaint to Minnie."

"But you don't have to finish the jug every time. You said yourself it is no good to you!" the sandy-haired boy feebly protested.

"No, but it keeps my kidneys healthy."

"Oh! Forget it." then he looked at Lily and Sirius, and then back again. Something wasn't quite right. And then it struck him.

"Since when you two are not yelling at each other, or at least trying to; specially considering you're both in the same room and there's no James to dissuade any of you?" he said inquisitively, he had the feeling the answer could be either real good, or really, really bad. "Scrape that, why have you even remained here to breath the same air for more then ten seconds? Since when?"

"Since she discovered that I actually work." Sirius deadpanned, as he pointed to the work strewn in front of him, spread all over the table

"No, it's not because of that!" said Lily, obviously upset. "It's since I found out that he can actually behave seriously!" stated Lily. Remus smirked trying to control the laugher, but failed miserably and almost chocked in his own mirth.

"Oh no!" exclaimed Sirius "This can not be true! I'll kill whomever has been the mindless twat who has been such an imbecile as to tell her that one!" Remus was laughing hard, not bothered on bit by his best friend's almost roaring (well, it was more like growling…), and Lily couldn't understand what had got him so upset in the first place. "Please Lily, tell me that nor James, nor Remus, nor Peter told you that joke." he spat with venomous intent, glaring at the boy seated between them.

"No. Mot that I know which one but I'm on a deny everything policy for now. Basically because I don't know what on Merlin's pants are you talking about!" Sirius looked like if he clearly didn't believe her.

"Yes, it's the old behave siriusly joke." explained Remus. "Sirius happens to find it siriusly ridiculous."

Sirius huffed and looked ready to throw him the inkpot with that one.

"Then no, James did not tell me that one." assured Lily. "But I guess Remus just did…"

"Good" said Sirius. "or else I was going to commit multiple homicide." Remus laughed, loud. "Now I'll just have to settle for plain murder."

"Of course, of course Pads" he kept going on between spurts of laughter: "and there are also the Are you serious? No, you are or Are you serious? No, that's you… ones and those really annoy the heck out of…"

"God gracious, stop it! That's not funny Moony" said Sirius with a hint of exasperation in his voice. Lily laughed. "They're not ever funny or original to begin with. And people say I'm childish." grumbled, this time already recuperating his usual Sirius tone.

The other two laughed even harder. Sirius looked at them with his eyebrows stuck to his hairline; remaining too aloof and superior just to join them and laugh a bit at himself for now. When, five minutes after, laugher finally died, Lily said, trying to emulate Sirius facial expression:

"I believe this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Remus laughed his ass off at her try at quoting Casablanca and Sirius looked at her as she had just grown a second, scrape that, third head. Obviously he had not understood the joke, and it wasn't strange considering the guy was more magical than a wand.

"Why, Mrs Evans, is Mr Lupin laughing so hard about such a silly line?" asked the grey-eyed boy, solemn and pompous, on purpose of course.

"Muggle stuff" Remus managed to say between coughs and trying to calm down.

"Well, gentlemen," Lily said. "I believe I shall go up an try to sleep."

"Then go, my fair lady." answered Sirius, standing again and mock-bowing to her as she scurried through. She rolled her eyes; that gesture was second nature now while dealing with him.

"Good night, both of you!" said the read-headed as she climbed through the stairs. And just before entering her room she believed she heard something in the lines of:

"Are you really expecting me to go to the kitchens to get water in just my underwear?"

"You aren't expecting me to go and get you water? Would you? Especially it's you who wants water. I certainly don't."

"Yeah, but you're the one that finished the bottle…"

"So? Your problem."

"Your fault!"

"And if I do what exactly do I get out of this…?"

She didn't heard more because she entered her dorm. And it was dreadfully silent again. She smirked to herself, some things would never change.