It had been a week since I had gotten back to school from St. Mungo's. Generally, things have gotten back to normal. I was going to lessons, studying, and just generally going about my business. But things have changed around me significantly. The people that never even gave me a second glance in the halls would whisper behind their hands whenever they saw me coming. I felt sort of famous based on the way an entire room would go silent and look at me when I entered it, but it felt like the wrong kind of famous. People were just talking about me because I almost died, not because I didn't anything spectacular. But, for the most part, I just decided to grin and bear it. It was better than snapping at every person I came across.
One morning, I woke up a little late and I found that my friends, except Peter, were waiting for me in the common room. The reason for me being late? I had finally gotten some sleep. Since leaving St. Mungo's it has been hard for me to get decent sleep. I've been plagued with nightmares every night, and I was losing sleep because of it. I tried to keep the physical effects of this sleep deprivation under control, but it was getting harder as the dark circles grew darker. My friends and I walked down to the Great Hall for breakfast, which was uneventful. But after the meal, my group of friends and I walked out only to be stopped in the entrance hall by McGonagall.
"Professor Dumbledore needs to see the group of you in his office for a few minutes." she said quietly.
"I haven't even been back a week and I'm already being taken to Dumbledore." I said under my breath as we started to walk toward Dumbledore's office.
McGonagall led us all the way to the statue before saying the password and leading us up the stairs and through the doors. When we walked in, there were more people than just Dumbledore in his office. There was a man that looked suspiciously like Dumbledore, but without the broken nose, a man that looked like he had seen one too many battles, Hagrid, and a short little man that looked like he was carrying something illegal.
"Have you located Mr. Pettigrew, Minerva?" Dumbledore asked politely. She shook her head.
"Let's just start without him." The really beaten up man said.
Sirius pulled me a little bit closer as McGonagall shut the door.
"You probably are wondering why I brought you here." Dumbledore said, standing up.
"It crossed my mind a couple of times." James said casually.
Dumbledore smiled. "I've brought you here to introduce you to a few of the members of the Order of the Phoenix." Dumbledore said.
"The name is Moody, Alastor Moody." The beaten up man said.
We all nodded.
"You guys know me." Hagrid said with a chuckle.
"And me, of course." McGonagall said.
"My name is Mundungus Fletcher." The short man said, sticking his hand out to all of us.
He shook the boys' hands but kissed the back of mine and Lily's hands. James and Sirius kind of stepped in front of us at that point.
"And this is Aberforth, my brother." Dumbledore said.
Aberforth nodded at us. "Oh yeah, I know them. I've seen them sneaking around Hogsmeade one too many times for my liking." Aberforth said incredulously.
We kind of looked at our feet, guilty.
"I didn't just bring you up here to introduce you to other members. I also brought you up here to inform you of what your first task as Order members will be." Dumbledore said.
We all perked up. We haven't even been in the Order a week hours and we were already getting an assignment.
"Your first task will be training. You need to learn advanced spells that you might need somewhere along the line." Dumbledore said.
Our hopes were kind of dashed at that point. We already knew a lot of advanced stuff. We were animagi, for crying out loud.
"And one more thing, there are no secrets in the Order of the Phoenix. We need to know everything that you can do or have seen now, lest it be too late when we find out." Dumbledore continued.
James, Sirius, and I looked at each other. We were debating on telling him about our animagi. It was illegal and we knew that. But this seemed like something that Dumbledore needed to know about so we could use it on tasks. But then James almost imperceptibly shook his head once from side to side. I repeated the gesture but in an up and down motion. I understood that this was to remain our secret.
"Nothing that we can think of, sir." James said with a shrug.
Dumbledore nodded, and I thought he was going to press the issue, but he let it go.
"When do we start?" James asked almost sounded a little eager.
"Tomorrow." Dumbledore said as he sat down behind his desk.
"You're going to train every other day, including weekends in the Great Hall at midnight." Moody said gruffly.
We all looked at the man like he had literally gone and lost his mind right on the spot.
"Why so late?" I asked flabbergasted.
"The only people that should be awake at that time of the night should be teachers patrolling the halls. We don't want anyone to stumble on this and start any rumors that could get in the ears of the wrong people." Moody said, straightening up a little.
I glared at him and crossed my arms across my chest. But I quickly uncrossed them because the motion caused the still sensitive skin on my back to stretch painfully. That pain reminded me why I was here to begin with. The others grumbled incoherently but I just stayed silent.
"Well, you have your assignment. Now off to your lessons." Dumbledore said in his usual soft tone.
We all nodded and walked silently out of the office. But that silence didn't last long past the time we reached the bottom of the stairs that led to Dumbledore's office. Once we reached the floor of the castle, James exploded.
"How dare they? We don't need training! We need to be out in the real world, fighting!" he shouted, slamming his fist into his open palm.
The group of us was making our way back to the common room. We never had plans that included attending lessons, even before the little meeting.
"James, these aren't some slimy Slytherins we're dealing with here. These are adult dark wizards that have had a lot more experience with this kind of dueling." Lily said, sounding a little concerned.
"Yeah, Prongs. And this could be fun. We are going to be dueling legally and supervised. It's going to be a blast." Sirius said, putting his arm carefully around my shoulders and pulling my closer.
I winced a little at the added but I didn't say anything. My wince wasn't lost on James, but he didn't say anything to Sirius. We all headed back to the common room. James sat down on the sofa next to Lily. Remus sat in an arm chair and Sirius and I sat down on the other couch. My back was killing me, and I could almost feel my shirt sticking to my back. It was starting to hurt; I thought it might be my back bleeding.
"Tiger, can you help me with something in our room?" I asked, trying to sound casual.
She agreed and we walked up the stairs to our room. When we got there, Lily asked what I needed help with. I slowly peeled my shirt away from back, and I could feel it tugging it on my skin.
"Can you put some new bandages on my back? I feel like they're soaking through the old ones." I said through gritted teeth.
I didn't hear Lily say anything, she just removed the old bandages.
"Sirius was a nervous wreck without you, Sky." She said as she peeled away the second of the four bandages on my back.
"I could only imagine. I feel so terrible about the whole thing." I said, looking down at my lap. I was gently pulling my hair over my shoulder, trying to get it out of Lily's way.
"Don't blame yourself for what those slimy, filthy arses did to you. It wasn't like you were asking for it." Lily said with a sigh.
"But what if this was just training for them? What if I was just the beginning and they're going to be doing much worse soon?" I said, voicing my own fears to someone for the first time.
Lily didn't say anything, but just peeled off my last bandage.
"Well, they look good. You just have to be careful of what you do for a while until these last ones heal." Lily said kindly.
"I hope you plan on being a healer when we get out of here because we're going to need one." I said with a laugh.
Lily also laughed, but it was more of a hollow laugh.
"What's wrong Lils?" I asked turning slightly to look at her.
She had a few tears running down her cheeks.
"Lily." I said, turning all the way around.
"I'm just so glad you're okay. We all need you, and we didn't know what we would've done without you." Lily said, her voice cracking.
She put a hand up to her chin and held in a sob. I gathered her up against my shoulder, even though the movement of hugging her caused me a little bit of pain. We sat like that for a while before I pulled away from her. Lily had stopped crying by now, and she wiped away the remaining tears that still lingered on her face.
"You're my best friend, Sky." Lily said with a smile.
"Love you too Lily." I said with a laugh.
"Let's rebandage your back before one of the boys comes up looking for you." Lily said, pushing me a little to turn around.
I did so and she made quick of putting new bandages. After I put on a clean shirt, we went back down to the common to find that Remus and Sirius were gone. I gave James a questioning look as I sat down on the couch across from him.
"They went to get food for later when we don't go to dinner." He said simply, just staring at the fire.
I nodded but left it alone. I also stared at the fire and Lily pulled out a book from the bag she had left there.
"I'm going to go use the loo." Lily announced after a few minutes.
James and I nodded and we let her go. After the portrait hole had swung closed, James turned to look at me critically.
"Why did they do it?" he asked randomly.
I turned my gaze from the fire to look at James's fierce gaze. I knew that he wasn't angry at me, but he just looked like that when he was angry at anyone.
"Was it because we pulled pranks on them? If it was, why didn't they go after Sirius or I? We've done more to them than you. Why did they go after you?" James asked, raising his voice a little.
I sighed. I knew that I'd have to answer something like this sooner or later. I looked down in my lap.
"I don't think it had to do with the pranks, Prongs." I said sadly.
"Then why? Why you? Why are they trying to kill you?" James practically shouted at me.
He moved from his relatively casual sitting position on the couch to right at the edge of the cushion.
"To make an example out of me." I said, looking up at James with a strong gaze.
"An example?" James parroted, sitting back.
"I think they were trying to break me, because they figured that I was going to be the hardest to break. Just look at you guys; from what you've said, you guys could barely function when I was at death's door. So they were going to break me to prove that they could and then they would have come after you guys, and they probably would have done the same thing to you guys." I said flatly, my voice devoid of emotion.
James was quiet while he processed this information. "Is that why you decided to join the Order?" James asked softly, not looking at me.
"Not entirely, but it did have something to do with it." I admitted.
"I joined because of Lily. She was the first to say she would. I joined up right after her. I didn't want her in any danger, and this is the best way I could think of to make sure that the world is safe for her." James said, getting a sort of dreamy look in his eyes.
"Have you officially asked her out yet?" I asked, a smirk on my lips.
"No not yet, but I don't know if I should, now that we're going to be doing this thing together." James said, biting his lower lip.
"I think that's even more reason to do it." I said with a sigh.
I looked back at the fire and I didn't have to say anymore because Lily came back into the common room followed closely by Remus and Sirius, who came bearing food. We all decided to move up to the dorm room, because it felt a little more private than the open common room. When we got up there, I sat on Sirius's bed with him and the other boys sat on their respective beds while Lily sat in the armchair that had been in the room since we first pulled her into our fold. Sirius and Remus passed around a bottle of something that I couldn't figure out. James took a huge swing of the liquid and his face scrunched up when he swallowed. Lily took a small sip and passed the bottle over to me. That's when I read the label and figured out that it was firewhiskey. I took a swig and shook my head from the taste.
"How did you get that from the house elves?" I said with a chuckle, and I passed the bottle to Sirius who took the same sized swallow as James.
"Who said we got it from the house elves?" Remus asked back as he plucked the bottle out of the air as Sirius levitated it over to him. He put the bottle down and we just sat in silence.
"It doesn't feel real, does it?" James asked softly.
We all looked at him questioningly.
"We thought that we would just have normal lives after we graduated. But now we're being thrust into this conflict that we didn't even knew existed before today." He clarified.
"I think we always knew, we just couldn't figure out what it was that we were picking up on." Remus said, not much louder than James.
"It's kind of exciting, though." Sirius said.
We all looked at him. He had a strange glint in his eyes.
"Most people don't even know what is really going on. But we're going to know exactly what's going on, and we won't we surprised when something hits the papers." Sirius said, a little more seriously now.
I grabbed his hand and squeezed it.
"But we can't trust anyone anymore. We are the only people we can talk to. It's like we're outsiders." Lily said. She sounded a little heartbroken.
"But that's all we need. I'd rather have a few people that I can trust completely, than have a bunch of people that I only can trust on the surface." I said, squeezing Sirius's hand.
"That's because Mauraders stick together." James said, getting excited.
We all laughed a little and then passed the bottle around again. After an hour or so, Peter came up into the room, and we let him know what was going on. He seemed nervous and jumpy, and the others played it off to this new assignment. But I looked at him critically, not buying his excuses. I also saw that Remus was looking at Peter like I was, so I knew that I wasn't getting paranoid. Shortly after Peter came back, Lily and I decided that we needed our strength for the next night. We went to bed, but as I slept I couldn't shake the anxious feeling in my gut. I felt like I was being watched and it was hard to sleep. When I did fall asleep, I was haunted by nightmares that consisted of the faces of my attackers looking over me with evil grins on their faces.