POSTING A BIT MORE TODAY TO WARN THAT I'LL BE AWAY FROM HERE FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS. I HAVE A SMALL TRIP TO GO TO, BUT I'LL BE BACK BY MONDAY.

trigger warning: mentions of sexual assault, please proceed with caution.

SHAME

Regulus felt the crippling shame burn his stomach inside out as he almost started crying in his bed after his father came to his room, warning him that he had already shared a conversation with Anne about her 'place in his bed, but not in his heart'. He wanted to simply die so he wouldn't have to see anyone ever again, but he had been quite happy when Severus Snape came knocking on his door with the excuse that they had agreed on training some potions, which made his mother allow the half-blood into her house once more.

The Black boy whimpered on his pillow once more as Severus, sitting on the floor of his bedroom using his very expensive potion ingredients to make a new potion he had been training to show Slughorn to allow him to be his apprentice.

"What happened?" Severus asked, finally tired of his wordless complaints made of whimpers and groans.

"I want to die," Regulus screamed against his pillow.

Severus nodded slowly. That was something he had felt before several times in his life, but...

"Why?"

"Because my father has gone absolutely mad," he said, raising his face from the pillow and slipping to the floor, sitting beside Severus. "Anne came here to have dinner yesterday after my mother wanted to meet her –"

"Wait? What?" Severus asked. "All you said you needed her address to send her a book she wanted. I was trying to help you flirt with the girl, not bring her to meet your parents; that's messed up!"

"Well, that was the plan until my mother made sure I invited her," Regulus said. "That's not important at the moment. The important part is that everybody liked her – well, at least the men and Narcisa – and then my father went to take her back home, and I tried to get in between, but it was too late."

"What did he do?" Severus asked, rolling his eyes at Regulus' drama.

"He made sure to tell Anne that if she ever came to my bed, she would never get any ring on her finger because she wasn't good enough to marry me," Regulus said. "I never even gone out with the girl and my father already made sure she knew she won't ever even think of marrying me."

Severus winced a bit.

"That sounds bad," he admitted.

"Oh, thanks," Regulus grumbled.

"Have you talked to her since yesterday?"

Regulus's eyes widened to him, shaking his head.

"Have you gone absolutely barking mad as well, mate? We both know she'll never talk to me again!" Regulus answered. "I can't write her. She must absolutely hate me right now. I can't even think of looking at her ever again, I'd rather rip my eyes out."

"Don't be dramatic."

But that was not something that the Blacks seemed to be able to do. They had a flare for the dramatic in their blood, Severus was sure of all that; he had grown close to Regulus and he had hated Sirius with the same intensity.

"Severus, I really don't want to see anyone ever again," Regulus said.

"Sage is a smart girl, she surely understands you have nothing to do with it," Severus said. "I can ask, if you want me to?"

Regulus looked up at him alarmed.

"Ask her? You talk to her?" he asked.

"Well, no, but I need to send her word about a meeting she requested with Nott for something," he said. "I can just ask her when I write if something happened or if she's not feeling alright. I'll be discreet."

Regulus nodded, eager. Severus knew how to be discreet, perhaps sometimes too discreet that not everybody could see understand the real question he had been meaning to ask. Still, he was standing beside Severus and reading over his shoulder as he wrote a short, but direct letter to Anne.

Anne Sage,

I've been told to pass the date Nott would most likely be free to meet you and help you get whatever you need, which is the fifth of this very month at 10 o'clock in the morning on the pub The White Wyvern in Knockturn Alley. However, I can write back to him if you don't feel up to it after such a tiring night that I heard you had.

Best regards,

Severus Snape.

Severus then turned to Regulus.

"Good enough?" he asked.

"Good enough," he agreed, nodding to his friend, though he still felt his cheeks burning in shame.

Waking up with knocking on the window certainly had not been the way Anne had wanted to wake up after spending so much of her night lying in bed, embarrassed and trying to swallow down another panic attack by the way Orion Black had made her memories come up and choke her in the dark, but she got up either way to see the small brown owl looking at her.

She opened the window and gave some food to the owl before taking the letter from the animal, who did not fly away, just stared at her, waiting for her to answer her owner as soon as possible.

Confused by the urgency, she read the letter and laughed in exasperation.

Of course, Severus Snape had already found out about her embarrassing meeting with Orion Black, how wonderful. Still, she smiled to herself as she took some parchment to answer him, knowing that if he had asked about it, it meant that he had been worrying about her reaction to everything. It was kind of him, which was more than she could say about a lot of things that adult Severus had done for her.

The answer was quick: she was fine, the fifth was fine and the embarrassing encounter was being forgotten slowly. She tied around the small owl's leg and let it go, but expected no answer.

"You know," she said as the owl started to prepare itself to fly. "You owner is cute when he wants to be."

The owl moved its head, but made no sound before flying away and leaving Anne alone.

Now awake at nine in the morning, she moved to the bathroom and brushed her teeth, but didn't brush her hair. She walked out of her room still in pyjamas and walked to James' room, knocking on the door lightly, but when she received no answer, she just sighed and walked to Sirius, knocking there too.

"Come in," said the muffled voice.

Anne opened the door and smiled.

"Morning," she said.

"Morning," he grumbled in response from under the covers. "Lunch already?"

"No," she said. "It's nine something. I just came here because I can't sleep again and I want company. Can I hang out here?"

Sirius looked her up and down before sighing and scooting to the side of the bed, leaving her some space in his bed. She smiled, knowing his answer. Anne closed the door behind her now that she was inside the room and slipped into the covers, lying beside sleepy Sirius as he sighed in annoyance when her cold feet touched his leg.

"You're freezing!" he complained.

"And you're warm," she said back, getting closer to him. "Is that a canine thing? Remus is always warm as well. I could never."

"No, we just have bloody normal circulation while I believe there's no blood going on in your feet," he said. "Merlin, girl, do you want some socks?" she chuckled, lying her head on his chest once he pulled her closer to get her warm. "Hey, I'm... I'm sorry for what Orion did."

"Is not your fault," she said.

"Still, I should've done something about it and told him you had a boyfriend or something," he sighed. "I know you hate needing protection and all, especially coming from a man, and I shouldn't have jumped into it without your permission, you can defend yourself. But... Anne, you looked pale like Death, I thought you were about to throw up or faint, or both if I was unlucky enough."

"I'm fine now."

"But you weren't at the time," he said. "I should've done something. I don't know what he said to make you like that –"

She took a deep breath, pulling away from him.

Sirius had always been someone she trusted and now that he was younger that was something that didn't change. He was impulsive and all, but he was loyal to a fault and that was something that Anne could count on.

"Sirius," she started. "If I tell you something, this cannot leave this room."

"If it's important –"

"It's not important to the story or to the future, it was just... something that happened and that I can't change," she explained. "Something that, in the future, I told you before. You just didn't get your revenge because your life would've been in danger if you tried anything at the time."

"Is that about your uncle?" he asked, voice so low that she almost didn't hear. "The one you said that beat you and did other things that you could survive."

"Yeah," she answered, nodding. "I... When I was fourteen or fifteen, I looked less like a child and more like a woman and he... thought it was a good idea to take pictures of me." Sirius watched, not seeing the problem yet. "He'd make me take my clothes off and –" she swallowed. "One day, taking pictures was not enough and he decided touching was good as well."

"Did he –?" he stopped, just looking at her, looking greenish.

"He didn't. I left home soon after, but I think that if I stayed for longer, soon enough touching wouldn't be the only thing he would want to do," she explained. "It's hard for me to just... be comfortable with this type of thing or conversation, so when Orion implied that I was to be a bed-warmer, I just couldn't breathe. I usually can take it and even joke around, but I guess it was the idea of being alone with such an older man in the dark, talking about those things and not having the tongue to answer as I usually do."

Sirius went silent.

He knew how it felt to be sexualized, he had been sure to ignore his parents, but they had tried their best to make him see women as horses – which was better to give children, which one of them would open their legs for him. At first, James and him had several rows about it because Sirius just couldn't help himself but to talk shit about women and James would cut him off and tell him that if he ever said something like that again, they wouldn't be friends anymore. Now he saw it was just another response to his own trauma.

Though Anne's response was different from his, it didn't make it any less valid.

"I see," was his answer. "Did you ever do anything after it all?"

Anne thought for a moment.

"Do kisses count?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Then, yes," she said.

"But never more than that."

"Once, but," she shrugged. He looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

"What does 'this'," he shrugged, "means?"

"It means that I did sleep with a boy before, but I didn't really enjoy it," she explained. "It was awkward and I just wanted to go home and lay in my own bed and tell Ginny to fuck off after she convinced me to give him a chance."

"Ginny? Your brother's girlfriend?" Sirius asked, trying not to laugh.

Anne laughed with him, making Sirius snort.

"Yeah," she admitted. "I know, right? Weird."

"Who was it? Now I'm curious," he said, turning completely towards her and putting his hand under his chin to prop himself up. "Give me a name and a description, sweetheart, and I want to know what went wrong. Oh – wait. Is this making you uncomfortable? We can stop talking about it."

She laughed and shook her head.

"It's fine, Sirius. If I was uncomfortable, I'd say. And it was more the way Orion talked to me than what he said to me. I just usually try to avoid talking about it, but you make it sound fun and all – if something comes up and it make it weird, I'll tell you, don't worry," she said. "Now, his name is not important, what you do need to know what that he was terrible at it and I had just turned sixteen."

"Oh, come on, give me a name," he said, pouting.

She laughed again, hiding her blushing face into his chest. "His name was Dean Thomas, a half-blood in my brother's class. Very nice boy, very Gryffindor-ish, though not really my type," she said. "He was gay and he hadn't really admitted it to himself, so I was his experiment much like he was mine. It was cool afterwards, though; it was like nothing happened. He ended up finding a great boyfriend in his best friend. They were nice together." She raised her eyebrows at Sirius.

"Are you trying to tell me something?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.

"If the shoe fits, wear it," she mumbled.

"Is this about Remus?"

"Who said anything about Remus?" she asked, laughing. "As I said before, if the shoe fits, wear it, Sirius."