Author's Note: I normally don't do Sirius/Lily, but this one-shot is linked to my longterm fan fic My Everlasting Love, so I didn't not want to share it with my readers, and everyone else who might be interested.

Disclaimer: Sadly, I do not own Sirius Black. Well, except in my dreams, maybe…

Kiss and (don't) Tell

"Hurry up!"

"I'm already running as fast as I can!"

"Well, try harder!"

Lily shot a furious glare at the guy in front of her. It felt like they had been running down corridors for hours. Rounding corner after corner, even crawling through a narrow dodgy hole behind the portrait of Louis the Flamboyant on the way. And still they had not reached the corridor of the Gryffindor common room. "I thought you said this was a shortcut!" she hissed when they were facing yet another candlelit hallway on the third floor.

"It is! It's not my fault Filch was roaming around the second floor."

"But how much longer is this going to take? It's almost midnight already," she asked when the guy was staring up and down the corridor, trying to determine whether or not it would be safe to cross it. When he did not respond, she tugged on his sleeve. "Sirius!"

"Shhh!"

He pushed her right back against the wall, so that both of them were hiding behind a suit of armour. "I thought I heard someone," Sirius whispered urgently as he tried to peek around the corner of the helmet. He groaned. "Peeves."

"Are you sure?"

He shot her an annoyed look, as though to ask whether she might have heard of another loony poltergeist haunting the halls of Hogwarts, but did not need to give a reply, because she could already hear the ominous sniggering of Peeves (probably brooding on his next trick to annoy Filch, his eternal nemesis) getting closer. Lily suddenly realized that Sirius was pulling her even closer to him, and for once, she did not mind. If they snuggled up together a little more, they would become almost invisible and Peeves might pass them without making a fuss.

But no such luck. Suddenly the poltergeist's head appeared right in the head of the suit of armour. "Boo!"

Lily screamed and Sirius jumped aside in alarm, although he made sure he was still standing in front of her. This surprised her; she had never seen Sirius Black look out for anyone else but himself before. "Peeves," he growled, drawing his wand. "Let's not get into something you're going to regret later."

But Peeves was clearly in his element with this unexpected discovery. He hovered in the air, a malicious glint in the beady eyes, glaring down at him from under his bell-covered hat. His lips had curled up in a cruel grin when he jeered: "Wandering around the corridors at midnight…. Sirius Black at it again…"

"Peeves," Sirius said warningly.

"Who is the lovely lady you've brought with you tonight, then?" Peeves asked in a mockingly sweet voice. He poked his head around Sirius's shoulder and when he set eyes on her, his grin turned even bigger. "Evans! How lovely." And then he was suddenly soaring upwards to the ceiling while loudly bellowing an incredibly off-key version of: "Evans and Black! Sitting in a tree!-"

"Peeves, please be quiet!" Lily pleaded. "Filch'll be here any minute now," she added to Sirius, who grimaced and groaned.

The poltergeist merely answered by making a loud and rude sound, like the air being let out of a balloon, before repeating the song in an even louder (and more off-key) voice. When he had finally finished, he bowed effusively to the non-existing round of applause from his audience and made a backwards somersault before he grinned down at them. "My singing will have Filthy Filch hurry towards us. But this," he said while grabbing hold of a tall glass vase, "will have him run."

And before Lily or Sirius could have said or done anything else, he was smashing the vase to the floor where it crashed in a hundred pieces. "STUDENTS OUT OF BED!" Peeves bellowed while pulling a heavy shield from the wall and flinging it right through the window. "STUDENTS OUT OF BED, DESTROYING SCHOOL PROPERTY!"

Pieces of broken glass were flying everywhere. Sirius pulled Lily behind him and, right when a hysterically laughing Peeves wanted to hurl a porcelain vase towards them, managed to raise his wand just in time. "Reducto!"

The vase exploded in the poltergeist's hands, who had to sneeze several times to get the mortar and dust out of his nose, which gave them enough time to run to the nearest room. Sirius opened the door and pushed Lily inside. He magically sealed the door from the inside (they could still hear Peeves crashing any object within reach) before crouching down and peeking through the keyhole. "I think we should be alright in here," he said. "Filch will probably think Peeves did this all by himself."

Lily stared at him. "But Peeves knows we're in here," she said, biting on a nail.

He shot her a confident smirk over his shoulder, and suddenly she began to understand why her best friend Mary always said Sirius Black was just as arrogant as James Potter, if not more. She rolled her eyes and was about to tell him to stop smiling like that when he finally elaborated. "That may be, but I just sealed the door, so none of Filch's keys will work. By the time he's gone back to fetch a Professor, we're out of here. I've dealt with things like this before. I know what I'm doing."

CLONK!

"What the…" Sirius turned back and peeked through the keyhole again. "Oh crap."

"What?" Lily asked anxiously. "What is it?"

"Peeves blocked the door with the armour suit. There's no way we can get out of here by ourselves now."

"What?"

Lily strolled towards the door and put her hands against it while peeking through the keyhole herself. "Peeves, Peeves you horrible excuse of a ghost, get us out of here!"

But Peeves continued to cackle madly while making some more somersaults in the air. "Evans and Black, caught in the Trophy Room… Wheeeeeeeeeee!" And he disappeared from sight as he zoomed off down the corridor while repeating the same sentence over and over again. "Evans and Black…" until his voice was slowly dying away, too.

Lily leaned back against the door and momentarily rested her head against it with closed eyes before looking at Sirius, who was studying a display case of old Quidditch Cups in a far corner of the room. "This is all your fault."

"Excuse me?"

"You're the one who persisted on helping me to tutor those first-years tonight."

"It was a detention. Flitwick demanded I do it before the end of the year and we take the train home tomorrow. When else was I supposed to tutor that bunch of midgets?"

"First-year students, Sirius," Lily said reprovingly. "Almost second-years by now. Besides, you've been a first-year yourself."

Sirius sniggered. He walked to the middle of the room and lay down on his back, his arms folded under his head as he calmly stared up at the ceiling. "No way I was ever that puny."

"Whatever," Lily muttered, feeling annoyed with how he relaxed he seemed to be feeling about all this. She got up and started to pace around the room. "But it doesn't change the fact that it's your fault we ended up here."

He shot her an amused look from his lazy spot on the floor. "You're the one who's tutoring them every week. I'd have thought you would know at what time they should be back in their dorms."

"I lost track of the time, ok?!"

"OK…"

"And after we sent the students away and finally cleaned the classroom, you suggest taking a shortcut. And I go along with it. How could I have been so stupid?"

"We might have had a few setbacks on the way…"

"Who cares about setbacks?" Lily cried, frustrated. "The Professors surely don't. And unlike you, I do care what they think of me. I'm a Prefect, for Merlin's sake!"

Sirius sighed before raising himself slightly and leaning on his elbows. "And that's exactly your problem, Evans. You care too much about what other people think of you. How many detentions have you been in this year?"

Lily stopped pacing and raised her chin slightly. "None."

"Trust me, one detention on your spotless record won't kill you. Remus has had a lot more detentions and the Professors still think he's mister goody two shoes."

She shot him an insecure look. "You really think so?"

He nodded and got back to his former position. "You'll still be Saint Evans tomorrow, don't worry."

"Hmm," Lily replied, inwardly pondering whether she could get out of this without a detention anyway if she came up with a plausible excuse. It was not like she was out at midnight to hook up with Sirius, after all. After another moment, she dared to glance at him. He was still stretched out on the floor, looking so at ease that it was making her wonder. "What are you doing?"

"Staring up a the ceiling."

"Why?"

"It calms me down."

"What?"

He shot her a look. "Promise you won't laugh?"

Lily, surprised that, apparently, he did care what she thought about him now, nodded and after another pause he said: "Old ceilings fascinate me. The way the time can leave its mark on them, a small crack here and there, water stains or little holes. Each one has its own story, you know?"

She had never heard Sirius talk like this. "That's er… interesting."

Sirius raised his head slightly to look at her. "Not really, but it's a way to pass the time," he said, smiling faintly. "I do it all the time at home. In fact, I know the ceiling of my bedroom by heart."

Lily sat down next to him and looked at the ceiling. "It has a crack in the far left corner just like this one," Sirius continued, more quietly.

"Where? I can't see it."

"I think you can only see it when you lie down."

He never actually invited her to join him, but Lily had decided that she wanted to learn more and lay down next to him. The fact that Sirius was turning out be to more than just a prolific prankster and womanizer was fascinating her tremendously. They stared up at the ceiling in peace for a while and, just like he had told her moments before, Lily started to relax. "This is nice," she sighed.

Sirius looked sideways. "Told you so," he grinned.

The enchanting grin that made countless girls before her go weak in the knees. Supported by his aristocratic looks and fierce grey eyes, Lily would have been blind not to notice he was a handsome guy. Too bad he was James Potter's best friend, besides being one of the most arrogant guys of Hogwarts. So she stubbornly ignored the sudden pleasant lurch in her stomach and smiled back convincingly. "Yet I still don't understand why you can dream the ceiling of your own room."

He turned his gaze back to the ceiling and shrugged. His mind seemed to be miles away for a moment when he said: "If you spend summer after summer in your bedroom, you're bound to memorize it at some point."

"Why would you want to do that?"

"Because it's better than being downstairs."

Lily looked at him. She had heard stories of the Blacks and their ideas about purebloods and Muggle-borns, even knew that his parents had been livid when he got sorted into Gryffindor, but she had never given a thought about how it must be to go back to a family who hate you. "That sounds horrible," she replied after a pause, not knowing what else to say.

"You get used to it." Again that outwardly careless-looking shrug, but Lily knew better. "I can't imagine my parents being unsupportive. They are so happy for me."

"Good for you."

This could have been a sarcastic remark, but he actually sounded sincere. Lily sighed. "Except my sister, though. Petunia has been acting weird ever since I got my Hogwarts letter."

"Sounds like Petunia is just jealous."

"Not exactly. She thinks… She thinks I'm a freak."

Sirius slowly turned his head to look at her and after moment, Lily looked back. "That's rubbish. You're an extraordinary person, Lily. Don't let anyone ever make you believe otherwise."

She narrowed her eyes slightly. "What's happened to the Sirius Black I know? You're actually being mature. And… really nice."

He snorted. "Better enjoy it while it lasts. And I'd prefer if you would keep this bit of knowledge to yourself. Might damage the reputation, you know?"

But Lily merely smiled back. She had only just realized something: that below that bold behaviour, below the large armour of pranks, disobedience in class and his confidence around girls, there was actually a decent guy. Someone who'd been (and was still going) through a hard time at home and was using his impudence to cover up that he was damaged inside. She was still studying his face with a thoughtful frown when he seemed to notice she was onto something and broke the eye contact. "So how did you do on your Charms O.W.L.?"

She did not want him to change the subject, but was not sure what she might have wanted to say to him anyway. "I'm keeping my fingers crossed for an O. I definitely got an E, though. You?"

He smirked. "I sailed through it without even really trying. Charms isn't worth much, anyway."

Lily sat up straight, shooting him a indignant look. "Excuse me?"

Sirius sniggered. "It's true. Charms is just not hardcore enough for me, no offence."

"Oh, and what is hardcore enough for you, then?"

"Transfiguration. Defence maybe, but not Charms. Charms is for pansies."

She gasped in indignation. "It is not!"

"It so is."

"Isn't!"

"Is."

Lily was about to say something else when she noticed he was grinning at her. She pushed him. "You're teasing me."

"By Godric, she has seen the light."

He was still grinning, his grey eyes twinkling mischievously, clearly proud of his latest achievement. And Lily could not help herself; his grin was so infectious that she had started to giggle herself. Giggles that soon evolved into a downright laughing fit. This whole situation; getting locked up in the Trophy Room with Sirius Black, a guy she had despised for years, and the fact that she was about to receive her very first detention of the year seemed incredibly funny all of the sudden. Sirius joined in momentarily as he also sat up straight and wrapped his arms around his knees. She was still laughing when he said: "You should laugh more often."

Lily realized he had been watching her for a while. "What?" she asked, still a bit giggly.

"You have a beautiful smile," he said quietly. "It makes your eyes light up like nothing else."

Her smile slowly faded and Sirius jokingly rolled his eyes. "I meant laughing like this more, not stop doing it altogether."

But Lily was not even listening. She did not know what was getting into her or how she would feel about this in the morning, but she suddenly felt herself lean forward and tenderly kiss his mouth. Sirius drew back a few seconds later, looking more than confused. "Lily, what-?"

She interrupted his question by kissing him again, more urgently this time, and after another moment, she could feel that Sirius was finally giving in. He deepened their kiss and gently let his fingers run through her hair with one hand and stroking her back with the other. And Lily? She had no choice but to admit that he was every bit as good a kisser everyone said he was. There were butterflies flying up and down her stomach and in this moment, the guy kissing her made her feel like she was on top of the world. Sirius Black was definitely living up to his reputation in that area.

But both of them were forced to pull back eventually when they heard two pairs of urgent footsteps approach. Sirius quickly got back to his feet and pulled Lily up, who was shooting an anxious look at the door, where now also voices could be heard, Filch's being one of them. "They're in here, Professor. I heard them talking earlier myself!"

"We'll see about that. Please stand back for a moment, Argus," a stern familiar voice replied and Sirius pulled a face.

"McGonagall," he mouthed and Lily groaned inwardly.

They heard the loud noise of the suit of armour being moved before the magical seal was broken, causing the door to open with a soft squeaky sound. Lily did not think she would ever forget the shock on the Professor's face when she saw her (she wasn't so sure about Sirius). "Miss Evans?" McGonagall asked. She was dressed in a tartan dressing gown and with her hair in a long plait, but Lily hardly dared to look at her.

"I told you so!" Filch said eagerly, unaware of Mrs. Norris slowly curling her long tail around his leg. "These students are out of bed. At night! And they've misbehaved badly! I recommend a punishment of-"

"Thank you, Argus," McGonagall intervened, holding up a hand when Filch made a swishy move like he was holding a whip. "I'll deal with Mr. Black and Miss Evans. You can go."

"Hmmpf," Filch harrumphed and, after shooting another dark look at Sirius and Lily, he stalked off while inwardly muttering about how "uncalled behaviour like this was dealt with in the old days."

"Well," McGonagall said as soon as Filch rounded the corner. "Care to explain yourselves?"

"It wasn't our fault, Professor," Sirius spoke up quickly. "We've been tutoring the first-years earlier tonight and ran in on Peeves on our way back to the common room, that's all. He did all this, by the way," he said defiantly, pointing to the chaos around them.

But McGonagall's glare did not soften. "That does not explain why the first-years have all returned safely to their beds long ago, nor what the two of you are doing on the third floor." She turned to Lily. "Miss Evans, what have you got to say about this?"

"I-" Her voice got caught in her throat and she had to swallow repeatedly to regain control of it. "We lost track… the time…"

"That is not an excuse."

"I know," Lily replied timidly. She wanted nothing more than explain that they had ended up here by mistake, but now that she had been snogging Sirius in the Trophy Room, she felt there was nothing she could say that would justify them being out here so late.

McGonagall seemed to have come to the same conclusion. "You two leave me no choice. Fifty points from Gryffindor each, and a week's detention."

"But we're going home tomorrow!" Sirius objected.

"Then there's still enough time to be in detention with me in the morning." Sirius groaned. "And you can serve out the rest at the beginning of next year," McGonagall continued as if she had not heard him. "You're dismissed."

The two of them hurried down the hallway as soon as possible, both eager to get out of McGonagall's sight. They did not say anything until they had reached the corridor to the common room, but when they were finally standing in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, Lily took a deep breath. "Look Sirius, what happened back there…"

He paused and looked at her, but did not say anything, so she had no choice but to continue: "I'd prefer it…"

"Had never happened?" he finished for her.

"No, that's not it! I just think that…" Her voice died away slowly when she realized he was messing with her again. "Ha-ha!" she said, jokingly punching his shoulder.

He laughed. "Nah seriously, I agree. We both know that kiss didn't really mean anything, it was just a spur of the moment kind of thing. So yeah, let's keep it to ourselves."

Lily nodded, feeling relieved that she would not have to explain anything to Brice in the morning, until she realized something else. "Also because of Potter," she said shrewdly. "I don't assume he'll be too happy if he finds out."

Sirius bit his lip. "True, true," he said, nodding thoughtfully. "Prongs would never look at me again. But he won't know, so it should be okay."

He turned around and called the password so that the Fat Lady would let them pass. When they were inside and standing in the middle of the room and Lily was about to go to bed, Sirius suddenly grabbed her hand, making her turn back to him. "I know I won't say anything to anyone, but promise that you won't either."

She frowned. "I already said I wouldn't."

"I know, but…" He shot a look at the dormitory stairs behind her. "Just don't tell her."

Lily followed his gaze before looking back at him and for a moment, an unexpected pleading note in his eyes clearly told her that the "her" he was talking about was not Brice. Lily was not sure what to think about that, and she doubted even Sirius knew, but something told her it would be better if none of their friends would ever know about this. So she smiled and squeezed his hand. "Don't worry, our secret is safe with me."

Sirius grinned at her, his confidence already restored. "Great." He remained standing at the bottom nevertheless, watching her walk upstairs. Right before she would have disappeared from sight he said: "See you in detention, Lily."

Lily leaned back down and smiled at him, amazed with herself that an upcoming detention no longer seemed like the worst thing in the world. "See you in detention."

- The End -

AN: Want to know about the "her" Sirius was referring to in this one-shot? Check out my fan fic "My Everlasting Love", which can be found on my profile. Thanks!