Florence had received another letter after a few days, right after breakfast. She had decided to trash the letter addressed to Nicolai in the last minute, not because she still held grudges but because she felt like it wasn't a good time.

In addition to that news was her slowly coming out of her room during the past two days, as Emmy was far too busy doing other things or assisting her mum in her tasks that she hardly had any time to bring her food upstairs.

So she resorted into mustering up enough courage to come out of her room. The first few days were quite jumpy, as she would almost always get startled when she would come across Remus or Sirius down the hall, but eventually she had gotten used to it and had even sat down with them for dinner at one point.

She sneezed, Sirius mumbled a 'bless you'. It was still weird, even if it was the smallest attempt in striking up a conversation.

The letter was from Alexander, who wanted to meet up at Floreen Fortescue's ice cream shop that afternoon. The heat was begginning to turn unbearable as the days went by, but Florence did not turn down his request.

Diagon Alley was barely even packed with people during the summer. It wasn't a fairly famous place during break, as others preferred out of the country visits and what not.

Alexander was sitting at a four-seater table by the time Florence arrived, the small bell dinging as she pushed the door open. Her eyes scanned the shop; There was an elderly couple at the far back, and a brunette girl at a table beside Alexander's.

Nicolai.

Florence didn't walk out, and surprisingly plopped down at the table with Xander. The blond boy was nervous, the look on Florence's face unreadable.

"Okay," he began, "I'm sorry if I didn't tell you about the bit where Nicolai's tagging along with me, for obvious reasons."

Florence shrugged, "Well, I should just get used to people not telling me stuff from now on, yeah?"

"Flo, I'm sorry." huffed Nicolai, "I really am. And by now I do not know what else I could do to prove that I know what I did was shitty and I know that it was a total invasion of privacy...."

She was still seated at a separate table, however her chair was scooted as closely as possible as she talked, and Xander was just sure that she might topple over at some point.

"I'll get the ice cream then," he informed the two, who were still staring intently at each other. "Same old flavors, yeah?"

No reply.

Xander got up from his chair soundlessly to go up to the front and order some ice cream, also occasionally looking back to see how the two were doing.

"Flo, talk to me, please." Nicolai pleaded, moving to occupy the seat that Alexander had just vacated, "I promise, if you forgive me I will never ever do anything as stupid as what I did..."

"And I think the reason why I did what I did was because I was convinced that what George thought was right—"

"What did George think?" was the first thing that she's said. Nicolai sighed.

"Well, for one he thought that you were fond of Fred, and he was fond of you as well. It was really transparent that you liked each other... I thought it was a great plan as well—I just didn't expect that it would take a rough turn."

Florence made an incoherent noise, "Fred doesn't like me. If he did then he had a funny way of showing it."

"He's a git, I'm a git. And again I'm also very sorry, Florence." Nicola took out a paper-like thing from her pocket, gently laying it on the table in front of her.

"Adrianna said this was for you—I mean, I asked her if she had a couple extra tickets and she had two and I begged her for them. They're tickets to the Quidditch World Cup this summer."

Florence gazed at the ticket intently, "You're bribing me with Quidditch tickets?"

"No!" said Nicolai quickly, "I just, I thought maybe you'd want to. It would be great with Xander and You and Me. That is if you've forgiven me already..."

"I'll ask my mum about it then..."

Nicolai's eyes lit up, "Really?"

Florence sighed, "I was never really mad mad at you Nic. I just—I don't know, I still feel a bit bitter about what happened with Fred."

"So you forgive me?"

"Yes."

"For real?"

"Yes,"

"Are you sure—"

"Merlin, Nic, I said yes." Florence chuckled lightly, air being momentarily knocked out from her as Nicolai tackled her for a hug.

"But that doesn't mean that I'm okay with you screwing up all the time..."

"I don't even care what that even means right now," Nicolai mumbled, still clinging on to her best friend. Alexander came back with their ice creams, brows raised.

"Huh," he said, "That took quite shorter than expected." he distributed the ice cream as the two continued to cling on to one other.

"Plain vanilla for Nicolai, strawberry for Florence and an extra nutty scoop of pistachios for me."

Nicolai disbanded from the hug to glare at Alexander, "Hey I told you to get me something from the specials menu before we even got here, arsehat."

"I asked you if it was the usual order and you didn't say anything so I figured that your silence meant yes." shrugged the blond boy who settled into another seat.

The three of them spent the entire time laughing together about past events that they had encountered. It was nice, knowing that finally there were no more secrets that neither one kept from the other, no more sneaking around.

And they went home with smiles on their faces, looking forward to the Quidditch cup which would he quite a great experience for them.

The fact that Florence didn't look so deep in thought is what Sirius had noticed the moment he walked out from his room.

She was there, and just gotten back from her day out with friends. Florence looked as if she was in a lighter mood—and she was almost never out of her room during that time of the day.

Sirius held a guitar in his hand, the very guitar that had the initials of a good friend carved at the neck—Gabriel's guitar. He had found it in the basement.

And as he approached her, her eyes seemed to be fixated on what he was holding.

"You fixed it." she said. She was nowhere near mad, like how he thought she would be for he was snooping around her father's stuff.

Florence had never seen the guitar in tip top shape as it was at that moment. She had always depicted it to be dusty and rusty and a little bit moldy—but when it was cleaned up it looked good.

New strings and polished wood. She wondered if her father would have been happy seeing it as it is.

"Your mother," Sirius began with a chuckle, "She thought perhaps you'd fly off the handle once you knew that I went through your father's stuff."

"Well, she wasn't wrong..." Florence said evasively, "But I do not plan on ruining the good mood. So....thanks, for fixing it, I guess."

Sirius looked surprised, to say the least, and took her calmness as a sign that it was okay that he sat down with her.

"The conflict you had with your friends... I assume you've fixed it?"

Florence nodded, putting her book down and finally giving him her full attention. She didn't exactly know why she was so comfortable talking to him all of a sudden, but she felt as if nothing could break her pleasant mood.

"Yes, we have. I wouldn't really go to the extent where I let a small thing like the conflict we had result into us not speaking again."

"Well that's what real friendship is I guess, when one tests out how badly he could make a mistake, and if they would accept you again despite knowing that you did something horrible." said Sirius, reminiscing the events of when he was in his fifth year.

Moony. Almost murdering Snape in a poorly thought out plan. The possibility of Prongs never speaking to him again.

It was a bad dream, and when he was living in that moment he wanted to just magic everything away.

Florence was looking at him curiously, "What did you do?"

"Way worse than your friend, that's for sure. They wouldn't look at me for a few long weeks. It was terrible."

"Well you fixed it, didn't you? That's all that matters."

Sirius nodded. "Yes. I guess that's what matters."

Silence. Not the awkward type. It was surprisingly comfortable. Florence stared down at the book in her hands, before her gaze averted onto the guitar that was propped against Sirius' leg.

"So do you know how to play?"

He looked at her, puzzled, "Pardon?"

"The guitar." she said, "Do you know how to play it?"

"Well, yes. Gabriel taught me. I'm not as good as he was, though, but I know how to play a song or two. Including the one he sang to your mother when he asked her to be his girlfriend..."

"You were there when it happened?"she asked, genuinely curious and interested in their conversation. Sirius smiled as he started to reminisce again.

"Oh yes I was. It was quite amusing, if I recall it well."

Florence looked hesitant, but said it nonetheless, "Will you teach me how to play it, then?"

His eyes lit up, "You want me to teach you?"

She shrugged, "Why not, right? If this instrument meant a lot to my father then I could atleast know why."

"He nicked it from a muggle store, if you must know. The Prices were a big pureblood family as well, and having as much as a common muggle instrument was enough to give your grandmother a stroke."

Florence raised his brow, "Did he do it as an act of defiance?"

He shook his head, "Oh no, Gabriel was nothing like that. For one, he honored his family traits and values. But one's desire to learn something could never be held back. Curiosity got the best of him...."

The two continued to converse, on and on until Jane came out of her study room.

She watched with some sort of newfound ease as Florence started her first few interactions towards Sirius, ones that didn't really involve her being cautious and seeing him as a fugitive that a set-up from long ago depicted him to be.

Jane felt Remus standing beside her, and she did need to look at his face to know that he too found the sight as a good news.

"She came around..." Jane mumbled in what sounded like a mixture of relief and bliss, Remus nodding in agreement. "Well, I'm not surprised, your daughter is infact a very open-minded person. Wonder where she got that from..."

"Oh stop stating the obvious, Remus." She chuckled.

"You're right," he replied with a slight smile, "She does get it from Gabriel."

Jane rolled her eyes, "Some things never change..."