AN: I'm just going to stop apologizing for long waits. I go back to school next week, but I'll try to get another chapter up before then. I feel bad for leaving this for so long though.

WARNING: There is some sensitive material in this chapter, relating to abuse. The topic will come up again later on in the story, but it will never be mentioned as much as it is in this chapter.

Chapter Eleven

After staring up the stairs where Severus had disappeared for ten minutes, Sirius finally snapped himself out of his trance. Determined to make things right without adult intervention he marched to the kitchen, pried open the freezer, and pulled out a giant box of cookie dough. He could prove that he was a great listener at the very least, which might prove that he was interested in having an actual relationship. Hell, Severus was probably smart enough to realize that the cookie dough was a declaration of him not wanting to have power over the boy. After exiting the kitchen he smacked himself on the forehead and turned around. He had forgotten the spoon. Did Severus even use a spoon for cookie dough? Probably…but did he use a bowl? Sirius decided to forgo the bowl, like he had seen many chicks do after a bad breakup at Hogwarts, and grabbed two spoons, just in case Severus was in the mood to share.

Sirius cautiously climbed the stairs, hoping that Severus was in the room they shared. The door was slightly ajar, when he was sure they had left it locked, leaving him hopeful. He rapped on the doorframe as he pushed the door open and stuck his head in.

Severus was indeed there. In the ten or fifteen minutes it had taken Sirius to come up the other boy had changed into his pajamas and was sitting on a chair by the far window. For a moment all the words Sirius had thought of when climbing the stairs, all variations of "I'm sorry, please forgive me," flew out of his head and thoughts of the young man seated before him flew in. Sirius had stopped denying Severus had a nice body, and exceptionally nice legs. But the image of his fiancé in, what seemed to him were, incredibly small shorts and a silk pajama top, with a bath robe that exposed just enough of what was hiding underneath still left him breathless. Severus's shoulder-length hair lay open, as it had all day, and seemed more beautiful than it ever had before. His pale skin highlighted the red lips he must have been biting on. And those mysterious eyes…the shone with the remnants of tears that had recently been shed.

Sirius shook his head, berating himself for narrating like a Shakespearean play, and entered the room, holding his peace offering behind his back. When he got closer to Severus, close enough to see the two tears that still clung to the boy's face; he got on his knees and held the container out before him.

"Oh beautiful creature of my dreams," he declared, deciding to go with the Shakespearean thing since he had found quite a collection of the Bard's works in the house. "I bring you this cookie dough as a symbol of my sincerest apology, and ask that you accept me back as your humble slave."

Perhaps it was his imagination, but Sirius thought he saw Severus's lips curve upwards. He shuffled forward so that his torso touched Severus's knees, looked his fiancé in the eye, and offered up the sweetest puppy-dog face he could manage. He was rewarded when Severus rolled his eyes gestured to the nearest seat on the bed, which he gratefully took.

"I am so sorry for everything I've ever done to hurt you," Sirius started. The grown-up part of him had decided it was time to make his real apology. "I know I'm an idiot, and will probably do a lot of stupid stuff in the future, but I don't want you to feel obligated to do anything because of me. We can both live our lives while being part of each other's."

He looked at Severus to see if his words were sinking in. The boy was watching him intently, though not revealing what he really thought or felt about the apology. So Sirius continued.

"What I did to you the other day was wrong and I promise it will never happen again. For the next ten years, I will be everything need and I will try to be everything you want. I promise to take care of you like our parents planned. If you there's ever anything you need me to know you can tell me and I won't treat you any worse. I can't promise to love you, but I can promise to be there for you during our ten years together."

"The only way you can make this up to me is by forgetting everything about Derrick. I never want you to bring him up again," Severus finally said.

"I would do that for you then. I'll never talk about him, ever," Sirius promised vigorously.

"That's a good start, but I don't want you to think about him either."

"I don't know if that's possible," Sirius admitted. "Every time you reference some horrible relationship from the past he's going to pop into my head. I'll always have questions, but I can promise not to let you or anyone else know it."

"Then how about a memory charm?" Severus proposed. Sirius searched his face but saw no hint of a jest. He closed his eyes and thought about it for a moment, inhaling and exhaling as slowly as possible. He could feel Severus leaning forward, intent on finding out how much of his rant Sirius actually meant.

"If it's what you want," Sirius finally said, "I'm willing to go through with it. Right now if you want." He thought it would be best to get it over with if he was going to lose his sanity, even though he'd never get the chance to say goodbye to his friends before it happened.

"I'll go get Francesco," Severus announced after a short pause. Sirius sat back on the bed and watched the perfect figure exit the room. He threw his head back on the pillow, for once not pausing to note how it smelled like Severus, and pondered what he had just agreed to. He supposed he could always change his mind before the spell, but knew that there was no way he would have a decent ten years without it.

"What's all this about a memory charm?" Francesco said, announcing his presence.

"We need you to obliviate Sirius," Severus explained, glancing nervously between his brother and fiancé, "just everything that happened yesterday." Sirius sat there, blankly nodding in agreement.

Francesco, still half asleep until this point, eyed them strangely. "Memory charms are tricky. Even the most experienced caster has no clue how it will affect the person they cast it on."

"You cast one on that security guard last year and he seemed perfectly fine." Severus remarked dryly. Sirius quickly realized that Severus was attempting to blackmail his own brother. He was a Slytherin through and through.

Francesco eyed the two suspiciously, probably weighing the consequences of his actions. Sirius could tell he had plenty of questions, but Francesco was clever enough to keep them to himself.

"You do realize I'm not qualified to do this?" Francesco asked, aiming his question at Sirius this time.

"I know," Sirius said, "but it's a risk I have to take." Looking at Severus, he could see that they had reached a new understanding, one that hopefully wouldn't be destroyed by the memory spell. A nod from Francesco prompted Sirius to stand and close his eyes, readying himself for what was to come.

"Obliviate," Francesco whispered.

Sirius, with his eyes closed, couldn't tell exactly what was happening; but he felt a pair of long-fingered hands pull him to the side. He heard something collapsing to his left and Francesco swearing. The hands that had saved him were still tightly grasped around his upper arms. He cautiously opened his eyes and saw Francesco stomping around the room, shouting in Italian without pausing for air. The room itself was coated in a layer of white dust, which could only have come from the hole in the wall Sirius had previously been standing in front of. The fact that it could have been insides covering the room instead of plaster hit him hard. He turned to face Severus, who had gone completely pale, his eyes wide in shock.

"You," Sirius paused. The words seemed hard enough to say without the dust particles practically choking him. "You saved me. You saved my life."

Severus didn't respond. In fact, he looked like he wouldn't be responding to anything for a long while. Sirius didn't think he should mention Severus's fingers, still on his arms and beginning to draw blood. Francesco was the first to come to his senses.

"I'm going to go get dad," he told the couple. "You two better get your story straight and come up with a good excuse for why this," he gestured at the room, "was a good idea." With that, Francesco left them standing alone and gaping at the debris around them. Severus came out of his trance the moment Francesco left.

"I am so sorry," were the first words out of his mouth. "I didn't think you would agree, I thought you would jump out of the way or defend yourself or something."

"I gave you my word," Sirius replied, "I promised I would try to make the next ten years work and that's what I'm going to do. I already screwed up by reading your journal, I'm not going to lie to you or mislead you after that."

"I'm sorry," Severus repeated, "I'm sorry, it wasn't right for me to do this. It wasn't right for me to test you like that."

"You didn't make me go through with it though; you saved my life. That proves that at least some small part of you wants to make this work too."

"But why would you go through with that?" Severus asked, clearly frustrated and confused.

"I don't know if I can tell you that."

"Twenty questions, remember? Why did you agree to have your memory wiped; you even knew Francesco wasn't great with memory charms."

"I really don't know myself," Sirius whispered. "I guess that I wanted to prove myself to you; every time you talk to me, every time you look at me, I can tell that you're holding back. It's because you don't trust me, and if you did things would run so much more smoothly."

"I can't—I don't know what to say."

"Tell me why you saved me."

"Is that one of your questions?"

"Yes, it is." Sirius looked Severus in the eyes, attempting to see more than the façade his fiancé put up.

Severus was silent for a short moment before continuing. "I don't know why either. But you didn't deserve it. You've never tried to make me prove myself to you. You've been trying to get along for the most part, and I should have just told you not to pry instead of asking you to…you know. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Sirius assured him, "you can stop apologizing. Let's just put this behind us, stop being sappy, and agree to try to get along."

Sirius didn't know if Severus was going to respond, though he hoped the other boy would agree with him, but Vito burst in at that moment looking frazzled and, understandably, a bit tired.

"What happened in here?" Vito asked. He was glaring at Sirius as he spoke, and Sirius realized that the incident in the gym had not been forgotten.

"It was my fault," Severus said. "I was mad at Sirius for digging through my things so I asked him to be obliviated. He agreed and Francesco's spell went wrong."

"Are you sure?" Vito asked, fixing Severus with a hard stare. When Severus met his gaze and nodded Vito let out a sigh. "That was incredibly immature of you. He could have been injured!" Vito looked between the two of them. "I realize that I can't tell you how to interact with each other, but I do hope you are done causing each other harm. This arrangement is a contract that can't be broken and the two of you will have to put up with each other for the next ten years."

Sirius glanced at his fiancé, hoping the other boy would see reason coming from Vito's mouth if he hadn't from Sirius's own.

Vito continued: "The two of you will stay in one of the guest rooms until this can be repaired, which may take weeks. If the two of you ever cause so much damage again you'll be moving into a house of your own immediately."

Feeling ashamed of himself for causing his future father-in-law so much stress, yet proud for the advancement his relationship with Severus had made, Sirius simply nodded and allowed Vito to usher him into the hall.

"You'll be staying in the room at the end of the hall on the second floor," Vito informed them. "Get there now, and don't dally. It's the middle of the night and I don't want to see or hear either of you until morning."

Sirius and Severus set off for the guest room without a word. They didn't speak to each other until the door to their temporary bedroom was closed.

"I need to tell you something," Severus blurted out, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. The room was very warm and welcoming, much like the Gryffindor common room, and was painted in similar shades of gold and red.

"Of course," Sirius said, surprised by Severus's sudden forwardness.

Severus fidgeted with the tassels at the end of the bedspread as he spoke, and his eyes darted everywhere except Sirius's face. "What did your parents tell you about why we're engaged?"

Sirius thought for a moment, going back to the moment when the engagement was announced and every moment spent with his parents since then. "They didn't really tell me anything. I thought it had something to do with both of us being purebloods and our fathers wanting to do business together." Severus snorted, but quickly tried to cover it up with another question.

"How much did you read about Derrick?"

"Not much. I just saw the name and know he hurt you, so I'm guessing he was an old boyfriend or something. What does he have to do with us being engaged?"

"Everything," Severus responded. Sirius felt a sense of trepidation as he took a seat on the bed near Severus, but kept enough distance between them so he could tell himself they weren't sitting together. He leaned back against a pillow and listened to Severus tell his story.

"Last summer, I met Derrick at this party thrown by my father's business associate. It was one of those parties where no one really liked each other, but everyone wanted to make connections and prove they were better than everyone else. I hadn't wanted to go, but I was playing the part of the perfect son.

"Derrick was just entering the world of upper class purebloods. His parents had been nobodies, they pushed paper at the ministry and worked until they died. His father died when he was seven and his mother when he was eighteen; he had been born when they were pretty old, but he blamed their deaths on the common lifestyle they had led. He was only a few years older than us, but he had already begun to make something of himself. He was at that party as a guest of one of the other well-to-dos, he was a rising star in that man's company. At the age of twenty-two he was already making millions of galleons. But Derrick was smart; he knew that he needed more than money to make it in our crowd. He needed to be a member of one of the noblest bloodlines.

"I think he came to that party looking for someone to open the door to the elite for him. And I was the person stupid enough to do that. He came over and started talking to me; not about my parents or stuff my parents had told everyone but about me. That's what made him stand out. I introduced him to my father after ten minutes of conversation. That is how much of an idiot I was. He exchanged information with my father and received an invitation to dine at our home. I was thrilled, because I would get to see him again.

"After that first dinner, Derrick seemed to be everywhere. He would come by our home for short visits every now and then. We would run into him at the club, or while out shopping or getting something to eat. Looking back, I realize that running into him at least twice a week was no coincidence; he knew we would be there. But he had us all charmed, me especially. My parents and siblings adored him, and I had the biggest crush on him. After a month of being in our lives he asked my father if he could spend time with me alone.

"My father was hesitant at first; I was still in school and about six years younger than Derrick. But he agreed to let us go out as long as we were chaperoned by Geoffrey. I was…insane, I guess is the word. I hung on his every word, put more stock in his opinions and beliefs than my own, and I had already begun planning our wedding in my head! So when he took me by the hand, marched me over to my father, and asked if he could marry me I was ecstatic. My father was still hesitant, since we had only known each other two months and I was headed back to Hogwarts the next day, but he allowed it as long as we didn't get married until I was two years out of school."

Sirius frowned at this; he hadn't known Severus had been so serious with anyone else before. And it bothered him a little that he hadn't been Severus's first fiancé, even though he probably would be Severus's first husband. Severus didn't notice this, and continued with his story.

"The first few months were great. We wrote each other three times a week and got to know each other better. Then I took two days to respond to one of his letters and he sent me a howler. He said he expected me to be punctual when responding to him, and that he came above all my other obligations. He basically told me that he owned me. I was frightened, and ashamed, and a bunch of other things I can't even name. I wrote him back immediately, telling him I was sorry, begging for his forgiveness. He told me he would forgive me if I could convince my father to buy us a mansion. So I spoke to my father, without telling him any of this, and got him to agree to give us one of our ancestral homes as part of our marriage agreement. It was sort of like a dowry.

"But Derrick still wasn't satisfied. The mansion, which was worth more than he had in the bank, was too old, too small, too damp…I asked my father to gift us with a different home but he refused, he said it was the best one for us. Derrick was really angry with me after that. He refused to speak to me for two weeks, and I spent that time begging for forgiveness and asking if there was anything else I could do. I was so pathetic, but I didn't realize it then.

"Eventually we went back to our old habits of writing to each other all the time. I thought it was great; I thought I was doing something right and we were going to have a happy life together. I didn't notice that he was asking me about all of my friends, making me tell him what their histories were and how close I was to them. I didn't realize that he was paying extra attention to my grades and the things I told him I did.

"When I got home for winter vacation he was there to greet me. It was surprise arranged by my parents. We immediately went to my room to catch up. And the moment we were there…I didn't know he could…it was….just…. I closed the door, and I turned around to look at him. I didn't see how close he was to me, I didn't see him coming. He hit me. Hard, harder than my parents ever did when I was a child. He berated me for getting better grades in certain subjects than he did, because it made him look dumb. Then he called me stupid and brought up all the classes I had done worse in than him. He brought up my friends, insinuating that I was…cheating on him, when the thought had never crossed my mind. He threatened to leave me and marry one of my friends instead, and said that I would look horrible in front of my family if I drove him to that. And the worst of it was that I believed him. I sat there, on the ground since his punch had knocked me over, and I took it.

"I apologized for getting better marks than him and promised to study ten times harder for the classes I hadn't done as well in. I promised nothing was going on with me and anyone else, I pleaded with him to believe me and even swore not to ever speak to any of my friends again. I just sat there and reaffirmed the idea that he owned me; I let him know that I was no more than a possession, a piece of furniture or something, that he could use to get what he wanted. He just looked at me in disgust and walked away."

At this point, Sirius was so horrified with this Derrick that he couldn't help but lean over and cover Severus's hand with his own. No one deserved that kind of treatment. Even his parents, who he complained about constantly, had never treated him like that. And Severus wasn't even finished with the story.

"I cried myself to sleep that night, praying Derrick wouldn't tell my parents about any of this, and that he wouldn't leave me. I went over everything I had done wrong in my mind and thought up ways to fix them. The next morning Derrick came into my room, said he was sorry, and handed me a bag of makeup so my parents wouldn't know he had needed to hit me."

Severus paused here, he seemed to not want to go on. Sirius understood why, and wouldn't blame the other boy for stopping. But Severus continued.

"The next few months were like that. We would write each other letters while I was at school; he was always complaining about something and threating me, telling me I wasn't good enough, and I was always begging him to stay and promising to do better at whatever had sparked his ire that time. Over spring break he hit me, every single day. He made me buy makeup so that my family wouldn't notice, though he never left marks in any noticeable areas. He would punch or slap me, even pull my hair, every time we were alone together. And he made me—he made me do other stuff. He would hit me more if I didn't do what he asked.

"I never told anybody, but after spring break my roommates noticed the bruising. They all knew my parents, they knew they would never have done such a thing. They asked me about it but I told them I had taken too many hits from a bludger. I said I hadn't gotten them healed because I didn't think they were that big a deal. But they knew anyway. They wrote my parents immediately, telling them what they saw and what the suspected. My father came up to the school right away, pulled me out of herbology, and forced me to come with him to the hospital wing.

"I resisted at first. I told him the same story I had told my roommates, and said that they were just overreacting. But he pulled my shirt off and saw the bruises for myself. I expected him to be angry, and he was at first, but then he just looked sad. He even started crying. He started going on about how he felt so guilty, how all of this was his fault, and that he was so sorry. That's when I realized what an idiot I had been. I had let Derrick do all that stuff to me. Even though I wasn't guilty of all the things he accused me of I was guilty of that."

"Severus," Sirius cried out, now feeling incredibly guilty for every bad thing he had done to the other boy the past year, "he brainwashed you, you couldn't control what you thought at the time. It's not your fault!"

Severus just shook his head and held up a hand. Then he continued on with the story, a sad smile on his face. "My father broke off the engagement right away and reported Derrick to the authorities. There wasn't much they could do though. Derrick was put in prison for a month and then let out. I haven't heard from him since, no one has. Even though there weren't heavy legal repercussions my father made sure Derrick had no life to come back to. Derrick lost his job, his reputation, and most of his belongings thanks to my father announcing where Derrick's spare key was in the middle of Knockturn Alley.

"But I was tainted after that, at least in the eyes of most of the upper class population. They heard what happened to me and I became something to be pitied, someone to feel bad for, but not someone to continue a family line. Everyone except your parents wanted me to stay far away from their children, in case being pathetic was a contagious disease. Your parents realized that the only person in their society who would marry you would have to have no other options, thanks to your being in Gryffindor and turning your back on every value the Blacks held dear."

"I—that makes sense," Sirius said. It was the only thing he could say. It hadn't occurred to him that the reasons his parents chose Severus for him was because they wouldn't be able to find anyone better. It was kind of sad, really.

"We really are a perfect match," Severus laughed, though there was something extremely depressing about the way it sounded. "Nobody else wants either of us, and we don't even want each other!" At this point Severus was hunched over, his body shaking with laughter. It took Sirius a moment to figure out the quivering was because of tears instead. He awkwardly put an arm around his fiancé, patting him on the shoulder with the other. He didn't know what else to do.