A/N: Well, I've been reading a lot of Sirius/OC stories lately and I thought it would be fun if I made one of my own. I'll try to write as much of this story as possible, but I can't promise anything. But hopefully I'll write more often for this story than my other one for Holes. But I'm thinking I will seeing as I have much more fun writing this than my other one, but that's of course since I have the Marauders in this one. :) So please Read&Review! k, thnx. :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. I only own those few characters that you might not recognize from the books. :)

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Orange Skies:
Prologue

She sat in peaceful solace as the gentle breeze blew pieces of her hair out off her face. It was her favourite time of the day, the sun slowly dripping down and disappearing into the horizon and casting a faint glow into the atmosphere. Sunset. This picturesque scenario brought back hundreds of thousands of memories, both good and bad. Even the very porch that she sat on held countless memories that she neither could or wanted to forget.

Arianna Carden was a realist. Yes, she hoped, just like every other girl out there, that her prince charming would come one day and steal her heart away. She wanted to be a hopeless romantic, she really did. But what with the events that had taken place in her life, she couldn't ever imagine her fantasy to come true. She knew full well that even if there was such a thing as the perfect man, he could never settle for just her. The perfect man needed the perfect woman and that was undoubtedly not what she was. She was a girl who laughed too much, failed a grade or two, could start an enormous argument over nothing, bit her nails, and made many regrets that even jumbo erasers or tubs full of ice cream couldn't make disappear. That was far from perfect. But just like any teenager, she hoped for the next best thing.

But what happens to realists that had to come face to face with a reality that seemed almost impossible? Arianna was sure she was being pranked on the day of her eleventh birthday when an owl had come swooping into her living room to drop of a letter that was addressed to her. "Ridiculous." she had thought when she first finished reading about the school named Hogwarts and how she was to attend it. "If someone were to prank me, they might as well have thought it all the way through. Magic? There's no such thing."

And yet here she was, fully expecting a man to appear to her in just a few mere minutes by the very idea that she thought was impossible. A trunk sat next to her, heavy with dozens of books, parchments, quills, robes, and other items she thought were necessary for the upcoming year. Even when she looked at it, she couldn't help but shake her head. For about a week now she kept wondering how that man, that quirky old man, had convinced her to believe in a crazy thing like magic. The day was the 31st of August and tomorrow, the dark-haired girl would be boarding the Hogwarts Express to lead her to her new school. She could still remember the conversation that she had with her professor only a week before. It was, of course, sunset when he had come. And this was one of the memories that she was a hundred percent sure she would never forget.

It was almost September the first and Arianna still hadn't paid much thought to the absurd letter when the unthinkable happened. She had been sitting on her porch at the time, reading silently as the gentle breeze kept her cool on that hot summers day. With the faint cry of a bird and the silent noise of the girl turning the pages of her book, all was normal. That is of course until a somewhat loud "pop" emitted from seemingly out of nowhere.

Arianna looked up from her book, surveying the land around her and was shocked to see a plump man in what appeared to be robes. Was that a cloak he was also wearing? Stranger yet, he did not seem to have been anywhere near the vicinity just a few seconds ago and he was staring straight at her. She immediately turned, intent on calling out for her father to deal with this strange man but before a word came out of her mouth, he stumbled forwards and cried out, "NO!"

"Don't be scared," the man insisted. It was a bit late for that but out of curiosity, Arianna refrained from asking her father to come.

"You are Arianna Carden?" the man inquired in an exasperated tone. Evidently, he did not want to be there at the present moment.

Arianna let out a small "yes".

"Yes, well, I'm Professor Slughorn," the man introduced himself. "Normally, Hagrid would be out here to fetch you but apparently matters came up. Dumbledore couldn't seem to find anyone else free to do the job so here I am."

The girl remembered reading that Dumbledore was Headmaster of that school which she had gotten the acceptance letter for but the first name had not rung a bell.

"Hagrid?" she asked. Professor Slughorn seemed surprised at first before realization dawned on him.

"Oh yes. Of course you don't know. Muggle borns…" he muttered. "Hagrid is the gameskeeper at Hogwarts. Most students are particularly fond of him, that's why he's usually the one sent out to get the Muggleborns who don't believe in us."

Arianna furrowed her eyebrows. Surely this was a joke?

"So there really is such a thing? Magic, I mean. And a school to teach it?"

Professor Slughorn appeared slightly amused, though somewhat irritated now. "Of course there is, darling!" He let out a loud laugh. Arianna couldn't help but feel that he was laughing at her. He then pulled out his wand from his pocket and pointed it at his hand. He muttered something that Arianna couldn't quite catch and her eyes became wide as a bouquet of flowers suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

"For you, m'dear," Professor Slughorn held out the flowers for her to take.

"Th- thank you," she said disbelievingly as she took the gift that was offered to her. Immediately she got a quick whiff of the roses that she held and concluded that they were in fact real.

"So I'm really going to this place? What was it? Hogwarts, did the letter say?"

The professor beamed. "Well of course you are! They wouldn't have sent me all the way out here if you weren't!"

"Wow," was all that Arianna could bring herself to say. The overwhelming information had not all clicked in her brain just yet.

Now here she was, a week later, and she still couldn't exactly grasp the reality of it all. She had gotten her parents to agree in letting her go and had even paid a trip down Diagon Alley and yet the truth still hadn't sunk in. She was now sitting, waiting patiently for Professor Slughorn to appear to her once more so as to check that she had gotten all of her things and that she knew where to go and what to do the following day.

Just then, a loud "pop" was heard and she looked up expectantly and saw the professor standing there once again. He did not stay very long, saying that he had other Muggleborn first years to attend to and checked that everything was indeed there. Afterwards, he explained that Platform Nine and Three Quarters was at King's Cross Station and told her exactly how to get there. Then, with a final goodbye and not waiting for her to say her goodbye's back, he disapparated again, leaving her there staring at the place where he had just been in mild shock.

The next day came by fairly quickly after that. Arianna felt that everything passed in a blur. Once she was at King's Cross Station, she couldn't even remember what she had had for breakfast or how she had even gotten up that morning. Panic then started to fill her just before her and her family entered Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Professor Slughorn had explained to her how most pure-blooded wizarding families looked down upon Muggle-borns. They thought that there was no place for such filth in the wizarding community and this made Arianna tremendously nervous. She was afraid that she would never fit in at such a place with that kind of discrimination. She feared that she wouldn't become friends with anyone and would soon want to come back to her comfortable home.

Soon, King's Cross Station became Platform Nine and Three Quarters which soon turned to a compartment I nthe back of the Hogwarts Express. She was so nervous, almost petrified. Even if she had gone through some of her textbooks already, hoping to learn even a bit before school started so as not to make her look like even more of an idiot, she was still a pasty white. She had almost not let go of her parents when they were saying their goodbyes and only got on the train when her older brother who was 14 started teasing her and calling her a coward.

With a situation such as this, it seemed as if every wizard, skilled in Divination or not, could predict what would become of Arianna at Hogwarts. They would say that she would manage fairly well with her studies but would become an outcast. With her shy ways, she wouldn't really befriend anybody and that every pure-blooded wizard, or any wizard at all for that matter, would taunt her. But if they made that prediction, they would be sorely wrong because by choosing to sit in that compartment, she sealed her fate of befriending the four boys who would soon name themselves the Marauders and she would somehow capture, torture, and mangle the heart of one Sirius Black.