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Remus blinked for a third time, and then blushed. "Oh. I knew that. Uh, sure!" He grinned and got up, offering a hand to Wendy.

"I s'pose not, but is it a bad thing? All or nothing isn't so bad when you think about it..." Sirius said, trailing off. It meant that you were never caught on the fence about something, and always felt passionate about it... Sirius was kind of that way. But the difference was that he had the skill to pick and choose his battles - Mar just chose to take on the world.

He admired her for it.

After his short pause, Sirius said just that... or perhaps a little bit too much. "I love you, Marketa."

Then, his eyes widened as he realized exactly what he said, and hoped she wouldn't react negatively. He turned his head and looked out the window, hoping to pass it off as cool as possible. He didn't want to look like a douche.

"Hold on, I need to put my secret agent face on." Wendy also wiped her face on her sleeves, then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. After a moment she opened them again, all pseudo-badassery. "Right, then. Let's do this." With a smirk and a salute, she jumped down from the trapdoor like she'd done earlier, jarring her kneecaps uncomfortably for a second time. She looked both ways to see that the coast was clear, then she signaled to Remus that he could descend.

Wendy giggled quietly, nodding approval at Remus's contribution to their wild escape. Then she mouthed "stay here" and tiptoed to her father's office. She tapped Alfred on the shoulder, and when he turned to look at her she put her finger to her lips so he wouldn't exclaim her presence. "Me n' Remus are going to The Attic," she murmured. "That all right?"

Wendy's father smiled and nodded. "Let me guess, don't tell the boys?"

"That would be lovely," she said, kissing him on the cheek before making her way back to where she'd left Remus in the hall. Then she grabbed Remus's hand and scurried out the front door with him in tow.

Once the front door closed behind them, she smiled up at him. "We. Are so. Cool."

Marketa couldn't help but feel the corner of her mouth twitch upwards at Siirus's embarrassment. At least he was not so cocksure as to assume anyone would be flattered by his declaration of love. However she, Marketa, was rather like a sink with an open drain. People poured love (artificial or otherwise) into her, but she wouldn't let herself be filled; instead she let it flow through and right back to the person who tried to fill her. Glen had said he loved her, and she had immediately loved him back even though his intentions were not so pure. Now Sirius claimed to love her, and one would think she had learned from past mistakes, but her heart began to thump like a wild horse in her chest at the thought, and she knew she was a goner already. And it may not be the wonderful thing her hormones were making it out to be.

"You t'ink I am offended by people saying dey love me?" she asked with a tiny shake of her head. She moved over to Sirius's side and looked down at the street below them, feeling the heat of his body going straight to her head and making her sleepy again. She could see up to three blocks away from the building, and told herself that perhaps she could see Glen, only two and a half blocks away, playing guitar on the sidewalk. It was only a blip on her imagination, though, because there were a great deal of trees and buildings between them. "It's really opposite of d'at," she admitted. "I...I don't hear it much, and when I do, I don't quite believe it. Glen...hurt me, very badly. And it...it's hard to trust people after you've been hurt like me." She tightened her lips together for a moment, but then turned to Sirius and smiled faintly again. "But I've been getting better, and I know Glen has too. He's trying harder to be a good Da, for Ivanka's sake, and I appreciate it a lot. But...I'll never let myself feel for him what I did once."

Why are you telling him so much? she thought to herself irritably. She had never been one to spill her guts out to anyone, let alone boys she could potentially fall in love with someday. Perhaps she was waxing poetic because she had hardly slept a wink the night before. Or maybe she just wanted him to know that she wasn't nearly as crazy as she came out to be.


"Indeed," Remus agreed, feeling not quite so cool as his teeth began to chatter almost instantly. A chilly breeze, which probably wouldn't have bothered him under a waning moon, nearly blasted him over. But he put on his best straight face, knowing how he had perfected it over the long eleven years in which he had had the curse, and smiled at Wendy before blowing some warm air into his hands.

His eyebrows knitted together, and he felt like his entire innards were being ripped in two. Hearing her talk like this was heartbreaking, especially because he knew every word of it to be the truth. And somewhere, deep down, Sirius knew that he was falling for her... and this kind of thing was a whole lot more complicated than it could have been if they had been regular teenagers. The fact remained that they weren't regular teenagers, and this was causing a lot of heartache.

For him, anyway. He couldn't testify as to how she felt...

Sirius cleared his throat. "I'm sorry about all that, Marky. But I meant what I said. I care about you a lot, and I appreciate you inviting me over here."

Wendy laughed heartily at his anecdote about his grandmum, hugging her stomach like she did whenever anything "tickled" her in such fashion. Then she simply walked alongside him with sure strides, fighting the urge to skip through the snow. Remus commented on the neighborhood and she flashed him a grin. "Thanks! I like it."

A few minutes after this exchange they reached the highway that they would have to cross to reach the little community of The Attic. She subconsciously held her arm out in front of him as if he'd simply continue to saunter on into the street if she didn't bar his way. She glanced both ways, letting an old jalopy pass, then grabbed his hand and led the way across the icy road, walking at a significantly faster clip. It took her a second to notice it, but eventually she realized that she had started humming the James Bond theme song like Remus had been earlier. She laughed at herself as they reached the safety of the snow bank on the other side.