Hello, my pretties... *insert evil witch cackle here* Yeah, okay, watching too much 'Wizard of Oz' over here. Haha.

So, here's a new Wolfstar fic for you all. I had the idea a few days ago and then I was in such a dreadful mood last night that I sat down at just started writing. I guess with the subject matter it kind of helps not being in a cheerful mood. I don't think I could write a lot of this while happy and bouncing off the walls.

WARNING: This story contains violence, language, possible mild smutty scenes, and a whole ton of sad face moments.


It was a mistake they saw anything in the first place. Who would have thought that a harmless muggle game like 'truth or dare' would lead to this?

Sirius Black, age 11, struggled to close his eyes. The hot summer air smothered the room and made it difficult to breathe. He was beyond the point of tired, but after what had happened that day he could not get the images out of his mind that were keeping him awake.

It was summer. Summers were meant to be fun. Days spent running around wrecking havoc and playing pranks on the icky girls next door. When Sirius escaped the watchful eye of his young brother, Regulus, at home – who had a definite habit of playing 'mommy's spy to see what trouble Sirius was getting into' - he would run out the door and race off to the playground. His parents disapproved of any sort of communication with muggles or mudbloods, but Sirius tended not to care what a person was as long as they would play with him.

On this particular day he met a boy his age he had never seen before. The boy had messy black hair and was wearing glasses that seemed to keep sliding off his nose. Sirius spotted him just in time to watch the boy trip another boy who had been walking by. It was a rather nerdy looking kid holding a book – Sirius would have done the same thing. Laughing in amusement, Sirius hopped on over and introduced himself to the new kid.

"Hey," he grinned, "I've never seen you around here before. I'm Sirius."

The kid eyed him up coolly. "No need to be so serious about it. I'm just here with my family on vacation. My name's James Potter."

Sirius blinked, and then started laughing. "Oh Merlin, you thought-" he laughed more, "no, I meant my name. It's Sirius Black. S-I-R-I-U-S. You know, like the star?"

"Oh." James grinned. "I get it. Well, Sirius Black, what's fun to do around here? My family and I are only here for a week."

"There's lots of fun things!" Sirius nodded.

He was about to continue when he heard someone shouting his name. "Sirius!" Both boys looked over to see a girl with rather frizzy dark hair looking their way. "We're playing 'truth or dare' and you have to join us!"

Sirius sighed, looking anything but delighted. "That's my cousin, Bellatrix. She always makes me join her games and then always makes sure I lose somehow."

"Well, then this time you'll just have to win!" James told him. They went over and joined Bellatrix and her friends, introducing James before they started the game.

It was not a bad game, all in all. Sirius had fun daring the one girl to eat a worm. When it came time for Sirius' turn though, that was when things went wrong. He should have chosen truth instead of dare, maybe then things would not have gone the way they did. Sirius was not about to let his cousin make him out to be a sissy though, so of course he chose dare.

"I dare you to go up over the hill to the old barn and go inside for at least five minutes." Bellatrix grinned mischievously.

"What?" Sirius gaped. "But that place is haunted!"

"Well, if you're too scared-"

"I'm not!" He huffed.

"A haunted barn?" James piped up. "I wanna see! I'm not scared of anything so I'll go with. It can be the dare for my turn too."

Bellatrix rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Just go already!"

Having no doubts that Bellatrix and her friends would run off as soon as they were gone, Sirius got up and lead the way for James up and over the hill. As they went Sirius told James about the barn. He explained that a few years back someone had found the body of a child inside. After that people began reporting hearing strange things coming from the old barn and started coming up with stories about ghosts. Occasionally though some people had even heard weird howling coming from inside late at night, almost as if there were wolves inside.

It was all quite silly of course. Sirius did not believe any of it, but that did not mean he wanted to just waltz right on it. After all, there had been a dead body in there before.

After hearing the story, James shrugged and just continued following Sirius, stating again that he was never really afraid of anything so if there were any ghosts then he would scare them away.

The old barn was slightly hidden amongst old trees and bushes. Thin vines of ivy were creeping up the old walls to the ceiling, which was missing sections of shingle at the top. Sirius and James were about to move closer when they heard an odd yelping sound, causing them both to jump in surprise. It seemed to have come from inside the building. As they drew closer they began to hear more sounds coming from inside, and then came the voices.

Unable to make out what the voices were saying, Sirius and James paused once more glancing at one another nervously. "Should we keep going?" Sirius whispered as quietly as he could.

"Well, it is a dare, but there are people already inside..." James looked unsure, yet sounded highly curious. "Let's just peek through that broken window." So they crept silently closer, crouching down to edge along the side of the building until they reached the one window that was missing glass, lifting their heads carefully to glance inside.

Now, late at night and unable to sleep, Sirius wished he hadn't.

A small group of about twelve people were huddled in the one corner of the barn. Most were adults but there were about four children amongst them. Four grown men were sitting on old wooden benches that were on either side of an old, beaten looking table. They were seemingly arguing amongst themselves and ignoring the group of people.

"Sirius, look!" James whispered, indicating to the people huddled together.

Sirius took a closer look and his eyes widened. The people looked almost as bad as the old table, especially the adults. Most of them bore old or seemingly faded scars on various parts of their exposed skin, arms, legs, even their faces. The children carried less visual scarring, but they still had some bruises. Every single person in the group had their hands bound in chains.

What the hell was going on?

Watching in confusion, Sirius almost jumped when suddenly one of the children started crying. It was a young boy with light brown hair, looking to be about Sirius and James' own ages. The other boy sitting next to him leaned forward and tried to quiet him, fear evident in his eyes. If Sirius' eyes weren't playing tricks on him, the two boys looked to be twins or at least related as brothers.

"Shut up!" One of the men at the table snapped out. The crying boy only got louder which angered the man more. He got up from the table and grabbed the boy by his shoulders, dragging him out from the huddled group and tossing him out to the side. "Merlin, I'm so sick of your sobbing! You're a pathetic animal; you know that? A freaking mutt."

As Sirius and James watched in joint horror, the man pulled a wand from his pocket and pointed it at the crying boy as the other three men laughed and the group of people seemed to collectively shake and hold one another. The crying boy's brother had managed to struggle to his feet, his eyes wide with fear yet showing some sort of determination.

"Leave him alone!" The boy shouted, his voice quivering slightly.

The man who was towering over the sobbing boy glanced over and turned his wand on the brother. "No one gave you permission to talk, you monster, so sit back down before I decide we don't need you either!" He flicked his wand in the brother's direction, causing him to fly back into the barn wall and cry out in pain as he fell to the floor.

Turning back to the crying boy on the ground in front of him, the man sneered and pointed his wand back down. "You've been pathetic from the start. We never should have nabbed you, should have stuck with just your brother. We don't need weak mutts like you." The man mumbled something then, that neither Sirius nor James heard, and a jet of green light hit the boy. When the light was gone the boy on the ground was no longer crying, nor was he moving.

"RO!" The other boy had gotten up again and cried out in terror.

After that Sirius had not seen anything else, instead fleeing the side of the barn until he made it back over the hill and hit the edge of the trees next to the park. Without any warning he bent over and vomited; the image of the dead boy was still fresh in his mind.

"Sirius!" James' voice called out to him. "Sirius!" The voice grew louder as James approached him. "Hey...oh, you threw up. Gross." James wrinkled his nose. "What the heck was going on back there?"

"They killed him!" Sirius exclaimed. "Those people were- and that boy was- I don't know, but they killed him!"

"It was a spell." James stated.

"You're a-"

"Yeah." James shrugged, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "Known since I was little, but I only just got my school letter a bit ago. I've never seen a spell like that before."

"It was the killing curse." Sirius told him quietly. "My parents know all about those types of spells, and I saw them mentioned in a book in my mom's library. Not that I do a lot of reading, but I was bored one day and just happened to come across the info."

James looked slightly ill. "So that man really killed that boy...but what were all those people doing there in chains in the first place?"

"I don't know." Sirius replied, still feeling rather ill.

It was getting late so they agreed to meet in the park the next day in the afternoon, if possible. Sirius ran on home, ignoring Regulus when he walked in the door who tried to follow him and ask him where he had been. Shutting the door to his room, Sirius flopped down on his bed and pulled the covers up over his head, blocking out the world for just a while.

He barely slept that night and when he met up with James in the park the next day, he found out James had barely slept as well. Both of them were apprehensive about going back to the barn, but curiosity won out and they snuck back over the hill.

When they got there though, they found no one. The dead boy was no where to be found either.