Name: Courtney Kathrys

Title: Sirius Black

E-mail: [email protected]

Summery: Sixth in the "Be But Sworn My Love" series. The final chapter. Ginny admits how her clandestine relationship with Sirius Black began. Ends right where "We Were Only Two" begins.

Notes: This series is the prelude to the "We Were Only Two" series.

Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters are by JK Rowling. I only own the plot.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

It is always when you are most content with your life, that some new factor is thrown into the mix to complicate matters even more so. This time is no exception. I had just emerged from my arrangement with Draco, I could not in good conscience call what we had a relationship; it was a business arrangement, with some perks on the side. I was feeling elated, happier than I had ever felt in my entire life.

Until I was told I was to have no part in any of the covert operations that were being done. Harry was thick in the beginnings of Auror training and multiple missions for the Order. Ron was slowly but steadily gaining power in the slowly evolving Ministry of Magic. Hermione was working on complex and difficult new spells and charms, determine to find something useful. I was still in school, and I was forced to stay home.

It was on one of those hot, early summer days when I ran into Sirius Black while wondering the house. He was about to feed Buckbeak, and offered to have me join him. I was so sick for companionship that I agreed immediately.

Our conversation that day was light and easy, and we talked jokingly of all the pranks that had been performed between us. I remember thinking how easy it was to talk with him, and he seemed to me just another peer, instead of Harry's Godfather. There was no mention of deeper secrets that day, no questions on why we were locked inside this prison house, and everyone else out saving the world.

But the next day they were discussed in abundance. Sirius lamented on how ever since he had miraculously come back through the veil, nearly dead, he had been kept under lock and key at Grimmauld Place. He agreed that he understood why, but confessed that he abhorred it. I told him frankly that I did not know why I had to stay, as the Trio had been fighting all throughout their school years, and I had faced Voldemort far more intimately than any of them could possibly imagine. To Sirius' credit, he did not ask me how on that day, nor that week.

The question came soon enough, however. So I told him all of my secrets. I told him of Tom, of every sordid and sacred detail which occurred, and he listened to me wordlessly. When I finished I waited for it, for the pity, for the horror. He simply looked at me for a long while, before beginning to tell me of his tale. I was so grateful at that moment, at the subtle change in subject, and the opening of his guarded doors to his childhood. He trusted me with the details of living in a house of Dark Magic, as I had entrusted him with being possessed by it.

The next day I told him of Dean, and of how no one ever believed the boy capable of that. Sirius said the boy always looked shifty to him, and he wasn't surprised in the least that he turned out to be such a prat. I smiled as I bent my head, grabbing some dead rats to hand Buckbeak. I knew that Sirius had never met Dean, but his support was enough to give me an elation that surpassed most. So I dared to tell him of Draco. I told him every raunchy detail. By the end, Sirius gave me a roguish grin and told me all I needed was a Hufflepuff and I could be the perfect candidate to write a "Sex and Hogwarts – the Men and their Houses," handbook. I cheekily grinned at him and questioned whether he had one out already for the women. This time it was his turn to spill twenty-five years of sex and experience. I realized I had never talked to anyone the way I was him, and that he probably didn't even see me as a seventeen year old girl with whom this debauched conversation was occurring with.

Soon sex turned into darker conversations, and Sirius began to tell me of Azkaban. He admitted to me that he had told no one of these confessions, and I was touched that he trusted me. That day he talked from the moment the house was vacant, until the first foot stepped inside the door. That night at dinner I noticed that the haunted look in his eyes was faded.

The next day he told me of the veil, and I listened, enraptured by the descriptions of spirits that tortured the living that happened to fall into them. My heart twisted when he confessed that the only thing that kept him alive and striving to find a way out was that he knew Harry needed him, and that Harry could not handle thinking himself the cause of another death. He reminisced about finding the exit and clawing himself out and back into the Department of Mysteries, shocking the hell out of the Unspeakable working there. Luckily, he had been an Order member and Sirius was delivered to Headquarters without further ado. I had been there that summer, and I remembered the rest vividly, without need of further explanation in his part, and he was glad not to have to give it.

I remember, it was three day till my departure. It was unusually quiet between us that day, the gravity of my leaving hanging between us. It was late, most of the Order on overnight duties, and we had made dinner for ourselves, and returned to Buckbeak. He made the first move, taking my shoulder, and turning me towards him. I reached out a hand and traced his jawbone. He placed a hand behind my head. Then there was nothing but our lips as we closed in for our first kiss.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-