Yes, finally a new story! The first of many chapters. Pay attention, a lot of the things in the this chapter will come back to haunt us! This one's pretty light, not a TON happens, but it's meant to lead into the true action and adventure that is in store. So if you think it's boring (which I hope you won't), read the next chapter when it comes out, and maybe you'll like that better. When you review, if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear about them. Note that I said WHEN you review, not if. Take a hint!
Enjoy,
Empress Jade
All Harry Potter related material belongs to J. K. Rowling, her publishers, and Warner Brothers.
IN COR CLAUDERE
By Empress Jade
The dark haired boy pulled his glasses off his face and closed his eyes, sighing. The hard rock of the cave did little to comfort him as it poked into his head and back. Yet he did not seem to notice. He had a lot on his mind for a boy his age.
His dazzling emerald eyes blinked open again and focused on the man in front of him.
Sirius Black looked better than ever, it was now three years since he had escaped from Azkaban. His hair was neatly trimmed, his face full of color, and his eyes full of love for his godson.
"You what's funny though? Even with all this going on, the first thing on my mind is still Hermione," Harry blushed a little at these words, but continued gushing out his thoughts, "But she has this thing, especially lately where she's always looking at me as if I were a ticking time bomb," he looked at the ground. "So I am in danger, I always have been. But not all that much more that anyone else at this point. I just wish she wouldn't worry about it so much."
"So you wouldn't worry about her if the situation was reversed?" Sirius asked.
The right side of his mouth curled up as Harry tried to think of the right words. "I guess I would. In a way, I'm glad she is. It's just one of those things that kind of bothers you, but you don't want it to go away. You know?"
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Your father used to say things like that when--"
His face paused, the way faces tend to do when they let something slip and regret it.
"When what?" Harry sat up, eager to hear more about his parents.
"When he, uh…played Quidditch."
"Nice try. But really, when what?"
Sirius shook his head lightly. "It's nothing really. A long story," he added quickly.
"I have time," Harry insisted. "It's a Hogsmeade Saturday, I have until six o' clock and it's only noon now!"
Staring slightly, Sirius debated silently in his head. He knew he really couldn't get out of it now. And he had planned to tell Harry. Eventually. But now?
He took a big breath. "Your parents didn't really have the easiest time either. It wasn't that they didn't get along each other, it was that…"
* * *
"Christmas is in two days!" James Potter flopped onto a chair, aboard the Hogwarts Express. "I can't wait."
"Yeah, me either," Lily curled up next to him. "Even though I'm not sure spending Christmas with Sirius is going to be exactly, safe." Since her parents had died two months earlier, she and her sister were to be staying with the Black family, their neighbors. Luckily for Lily, and Sirius, Petunia was disgusted by the thought of staying in a house full of "freaks" and had been permitted to stay with a friend from school.
James chuckled. "Don't worry, I've spent weeks at a time with Sirius."
"And look how you turned out."
"You mean cunning and gorgeous and irresistible to women?"
"Do I look like I want to be irresistible to women?" Lily glanced up at him.
"So you admit that I am?"
"Will you stop answering my questions with questions?"
"How 'bout I answer them with this?"
He leaned down and kissed her lightly on the lips. He still knew how to make her head spin and her spine tingle. As he pulled his head away, her mouth flipped up into a smile.
"No, I think I liked the questions better."
"Oh yeah?" he murmured softly and leaned towards her again.
The compartment door flew open. And James's head flew up to see who it was.
Sirius waltzed in, with his current girlfriend, Callie, who was very close to beating the record of two weeks with him, hanging on his arm. Her long blonde hair and hourglass figure suited his tastes very well. After all, he hadn't had a blonde for nearly three months and brunettes do start to get old.
"Well, well, well, you two thought you could hide from us, huh?" Sirius somehow managed to squeeze into that tiny space between James and Lily and sat back, looking quite at home.
James scowled at his best friend for interrupting his private moment. "Damn, I knew I should have locked that door."
"Well," Callie cut in, "We really just came to tell you that we've arrived."
A surprised James turned to the window, and saw that the scenery had stopped whizzing past them, and that there wizarding parents scattered all over, waiting for their children.
"We can finish this later," he whispered at Lily, quiet enough so that no one else could hear, and stood up with a smug grin.
* * *
A pair of gentle, strong arms wrapped around Lily's shoulders. "Cherry!" She quickly embraced Sirius's mother, who was practically her surrogate mother now and flashed a smile at her husband, Jack, who were both now standing on the platform with the four seventh year Hogwarts, and Andromeda, Sirius's sister, who was a fifth year.
"James dear, you'll have to come and stay during this break," Cherry patted him on the shoulder as she acknowledged everyone.
"I wouldn't let those two stay in the same town, let alone the same house!" Callie exclaimed, tossing her head at James and Lily. The couple chuckled a little awkwardly.
"And why is that?" A new voice emerged from behind Callie. She was unmistakably her mother, with the same fair tresses and tall, slim figure wearing a chic tailored business suit and a beautiful gold chain that hung at her neck although the charm was hidden inside her shirt.
"Well, they are quite the couple now. The Magic Word, you know our school paper, Mum, has given them the best pair award for two months now."
"Oh!" Her mother looked surprised for a moment, and then broke out into a smile, revealing perfect white teeth. She could have been Gilderoy Lockhart's sister. With that she turned toward Sirius's parents. "Jack and Cherry Black? Genevieve Lirdde, good to see you again." She shook hands with them, "And you know my daughter Caliga, of course?"
There was a loud groan, "I prefer Callie."
"Darling, I gave you that name and I am entitled to call you by it," her mother replied, "But either way, we need to be going, we have reservations for lunch."
They left after giving their farewells, like twins from the back with their hair swaying.
"Really though, you and your family will have to come over for dinner. I'll talk to your parents later today about it," Cherry said to James, who smiled in his boyish way. "Are you three ready?" she inquired of her children and Lily.
"Yep," Lily pulled her cloak up tighter around her neck, and gave James a quick kiss. Only to turn around to see Sirius making kissy faces at her. She stuck her tongue out at him, a skill which she had perfected on him many years ago.
"C'mon kiddo," he put an arm around her and began dragging her away from James, who chuckled at the sight.
"Owl me when you get home!" she cried, slightly muffled in Sirius's sleeve. "Arggh! Leggo o' me!"
* * *
"Um, Sirius? I thought you said that they were having problems. What you're explaining sounds like a picture perfect relationship," Harry grumbled.
"Someone once told me 'patience is a virtue'" Sirius said thoughtfully.
"And you didn't listen, did you?"
"Never have, never will." The wise words of a responsible godfather.
* * *
Ding. Ding. Ding ding ding ding!
The doorbell sounded. Cherry tried desperately to remove the apron she was wearing as she ran toward the door, through the Blacks' Tudor house."Get the door!" A cranky voice called. Ah, Charon, the ever pleasant Black family door. "What are you gonna to do, wait till these people are solid blocks of ice and float 'em in the punch?"
"Who is it?" Cherry asked, ignoring the door's remarks. She was quite used to his abuse.
"It looks like William, Clarice, and James Potter."
"Jack! Sirius! Andromeda! Lily! The Potters are here!" Cherry tossed the apron on a chair and pulled on the front door. It wouldn't open. She sighed, knowing the routine very well, and also knowing exactly how to solve it. "Charon, you open right this minute or I will trade you in for those double doors from Paris!" She commanded, kicking the door for extra emphasis. It swung open.
"Clarice!" Cherry hugged her old friend with a radiant smile, although she was sure she could hear the door mumbling behind her. "Will, James, come in."
There was a rumbling in the house, signaling that Lily and Sirius had come running down the stairs. "James!" a chorus of voices shouted.
James looked up just in time to see an ecstatic Sirius sailing through the air toward him. "Umph!" he grunted as his best friend landed square on him.
"Sirius!" his mother scolded. "Is that how you greet a friend? One would think you were some kind of dog." She shook her head woefully as she ushered the Potters into the family room where the Christmas tree was, leaving the three children in the entryway.
"Funny how perceptive moms are sometimes, huh?" James nudged Sirius in the ribs as they both got off the tiled floor.
"Good morning," Lily said as she wrapped her arms around his neck and ignoring James's remark to Sirius. "Thanks for the present, I loved it."
"'Morning, Lillian and you're welcome," he loved calling her by her real name and kissed her lightly.
"Hello? I'm still here so can we cut the snogfest here for a sec?" Sirius jumped around waving his arms at them.
James rolled his eyes. "Really Sirius, you of all people talking about cutting snogfests short."
"Well, it would be a little different if I were an active participant."
"Nice try, but I don't think--hi Andie," James acknowledged the brown haired girl who had just come down the stairs.
"Hi," she replied quietly, turning--what would we call it? Pink? Surely not. Red? Closer. More like…crimson.
"I think she fancies you," Sirius taunted his sister, who in turn hit him in the stomach with surprising strength, smiled at Lily and James, and skipped back up the stairs to avoid further humiliation.
"Really Sirius, could you be any more cruel to her?"
"It's my job as a big brother Lil, don't talk about things you wouldn't know about."
Lily sighed in exasperation as they collapsed on the couches of the living room, next the entryway. She and James shared the biggest sofa, and Sirius swung his legs over the armrest of the stuffed armchair. "So what are we going to do today? Just sit around and eat?"
"I heard Lucius Malfoy's having a party today at Malfoy manor," James replied. "I think he was going to open the house at around two in the afternoon."
"That place is huge!" Lily exclaimed. "But I'm so glad he got rid of those terrible decorations from his ancestors. Man-eating plants and murderous suits of armor aren't exactly fashionable anymore."
"Yeah, it's lucky his parents died when he was so young, otherwise, who knows how twisted he could have been. The Malfoys have such a terrible reputation," James shuddered as he thought of all the things the family had done in years past.
"It makes me sick just thinking about it, but we have to remember that it's not like that anymore," Lily stated finally.
"So I take it we're going?" Sirius craned his neck to look at them.
"Not yet, it's only eleven now, we still have four hours. But we should probably bring something. I hate being an empty-handed guest," she responded. "Callie's coming over at one, right?" Sirius nodded. "So why don't we leave for Diagon Alley in a little bit to buy something, and then we'll meet Callie at Malfoy mansion?" she asked, quite pleased with her plan.
The boys thought it over for a second. "Okay," the answered in unison.
Sirius hopped out of his chair. "I'm gonna go owl Callie."
* * *
"Still sounding pretty perfect to me," a doubtful Harry glared at his godfather.
"You're the one who wanted to hear this."
"I wasn't expecting a new rendition of Cinderella."
"Beggars can't be choosers."
* * *
"I say we go with this."
"Food would be more appropriate. Let's go back and get the cheesecake."
"This is better."
"Sirius, you're not of legal age to buy things like that," Lily grabbed it out of his hands and placed it back on the rack. "Besides, who knows what they already have, but you can never have too much food."
"Sounds like something Sirius would say," James called from the next aisle.
"I told you nothing good could come of staying with him."
"You're not exactly a box of chocolates either," Sirius picked up another rather illicit object.
"Come on," Lily grabbed James and Sirius by their sleeves and pulled them out of Hugo's: Gift Ideas for Every Occasion, and back into the Diagon Alley toward the cake and pie stand that they had passed earlier.
"We'll take…one cherry and one strawberry cheesecake," she said to the elderly witch behind the stand as she opened her money bag. "Ten sickles? Here you go."
"Do you actually know how to get to Malfoy mansion? I don't think it's connected to the Floo network." James asked as they walked back toward the Leaky Cauldron.
"Good point." Lily stopped walking. "Why didn't we think of that before?"
"Don't worry about it," Sirius reassured her, "It's somewhere near the town of Umbra."
"Well that does help, doesn't it?" she rolled her eyes at him, unconvinced.
"It's a tiny town. We get there, we find some chicks, I pull a few moves, and they tell us how to get there!" he beamed at her.
"It might work," James cut in before Lily could respond, desperate to settle this as soon as possible, leaning against the brick wall that would take them back to the Leaky Cauldron. Not that he was one to let a good argument die out, in fact, if he had attended a Muggle high school, he would probably have been a master debater; but unfortunately, Sirius-Lily debates usually resulted in headlocks and 'I know you are, but what am I?'-type comebacks. "Why don't we just go there first, and then decide?" He started to feel a headache coming on.
Lily, a little more perceptive than Sirius, picked up on his desperation, "Alright, let's go," but not without a little resentment in her voice. She stepped forward and tapped the wall with her wand and then stepped through the archway that appeared.
"Ow! Sirius, get off me!" Lily slapped the object that was on top of her as they all landed on the floor of the Umbra owl post office via Floo powder.
"Actually, that was me," a familiar voice answered.
"Oh, sorry James. But really, you should know that we would end up in this ridiculous position if you didn't wait for a minute after I stepped into the flame."
"Maybe I planned it this way," he replied mischievously.
"Well in that case, it's not so bad," she smiled, they both stood up and dusted themselves off.
"Yes, let's continue with another knock-your-pants-off fun round of 'Everyone Ignore Sirius and Hope He Doesn't Get Pissed'," a cranky voice behind them interrupted.
"You just never know when to go away, do you?" James did not sound pleased, holding the glass door of the post office open for Lily to walk through. They all stepped into the blinding early-afternoon light that reflected off the snow drifts.
"Now, we try part two of Sirius's brilliant plan," Lily said in a flat voice.
"Perfect…yes, that will do quite nicely," he mumbled.
"What?"
But he had already started walking toward a bare-looking tree. The boughs arched over some large rocks that were placed at its trunk. Under it, two girls sat, who looked a few years older than Sirius. One clutched a notebook and a quill, chewing thoughtfully on one end. The other, with fair hair, was speaking, and apparently quite eloquently as her hands were flying all over in gestures.
Lily and James followed Sirius cautiously, catching a bit of their conversation. "…I think it's your characterization that's a little fuzzy, you see, if he does that, it totally contradicts the fact that he's supposed to be a nice guy, see what I mean?" the blonde paused, waiting for a reaction. And Sirius dove in.
"Good afternoon, ladies," he flashed them his best spine-melting smile and they turned toward him.
"Hello there," the writer eyed him up and down with approval.
"I'm Sirius, and this is James and Lily," he acknowledged them, and they smiled at the girls.
"I'm Lynn, and this is Cassidy," she fluffed her hair a little.
"Pleasure to meet you," Sirius's tone was getting more and more syrupy as he extended a hand to meet Lynn's. He suddenly turned around and looked at James and Lily, giving them a 'go away, I'll take care of this' toss of his head.
So James and Lily backed away until they were out of hearing range. "You know, one of us simply going up and saying 'How do we get to Malfoy mansion?' would have been just as effective as Sirius's whole charade," she commented absently.
"Yeah, but then he doesn't get to have any fun," James replied.
Lily frowned. "But he's not letting us have any fun!"
He thought for a moment. "You know what? You're right." He scowled in Sirius's general direction.
James was still pouting when Sirius returned. "We are set, my friends!" he smiled broadly. "Up this path for about half a mile, and we supposedly can't miss it!"
"Yahoo," James replied with little intonation.
"Now, now, you can always take one of the Malfoy's thirty-seven bedrooms once we get there."
"Yahoo!" he repeated, with more emphasis.
And the three headed own the snowy, dirt path. Sirius looked back toward the tree for a moment. "Remind me to come back for that one in a few weeks."
* * *
"You know, Sirius, I think you're right. Maybe they didn't have a perfect relationship."
"Well I'm glad you're finally going to listen to my story."
"And it wasn't that they didn't get along with each other, you were right about that too. It's that you were always there to ruin the moment."
"Hey, watch it, kid."
"Okay, let me guess: now they're going to go into the mansion and a manticore is going to try to kill them and then they make a daring escape, Dad saves Mom, you get left in the dust, and all is well."
"Have you ever considered writing for 'As the Wizarding World Turns'?"
* * *
"This place still looks a little somber," Lily craned her neck as she looked up at Malfoy mansion's walls of dark stone, going up for stories and stories with little windows at consistent intervals. It reminded her of medieval fortresses, as it appeared to have once served the purpose of keeping others out. "The doors are open, so I guess we can just go in."
They sauntered in, trying to look like had been there a hundred times, and also trying to take in their surroundings at the same time. The inside of the house, castle really, was well-lit with chandeliers and candles. The hallways were filled with paintings Malfoy after Malfoy: Lady Henrietta, who had once tried to marry a merman, but soon afterwards found it difficult to reproduce and left him for a wealthy vampire; Sir Carlisle who had performed an long list of illegal human experiments in this very house and it was said that he inspired many of Hitler's experiments during the Holocaust; and then Ladies Thea and Rhea, veela twins who had both wed Lord Mortor Malfoy, who had claimed to be Mormon. Sadly, Rhea was found dead a few days after the wedding and it was said that Thea had to suppress a terrible fit of giggles during the funeral. The portraits dated back to who knows when and Lily squirmed as she looked at some of them, remembering their infamous names from History of Magic class.
They followed the sound of a loud bass beat, which would inevitably lead them to a band, where the party would be. Through a large doorway, they found themselves in a large hall where colored lights spun and a stage had been set up along one wall. James recognized the band to be the Psychotic Psychics, a popular wizarding rock group.
"I guess we should see if Callie's here yet," he said.
"What?!" Lily shouted over the music.
"I said," he shouted back, "that we should go look for Callie!"
'Oh,' she mouthed back silently, showing comprehension on her face. She hated yelling, it was so barbaric.
The three promptly began scanning the room for Sirius's girlfriend. She wasn't at the table of food, which was piled high with snacks, treats, and drinks, she wasn't asking the lead guitarist for his autograph, and it didn't seem that she was dancing.
"Can't find her, can you?" Sirius yelled.
Lily and James both shook their heads 'no', and continued to look. The boys headed to the adjoining room while Lily combed the dancing throng.
"Maybe we're early," James suggested in a normal voice, the music was fading as they went into what looked like a billiard room. It was dark and dim lights hung above the pool tables. There were a few people scattered around the room, which seemed to be a lot larger than it really needed to be, a lot like the house itself. He noticed a solo girl sitting in a leather armchair, sipping a drink and approached. She seemed to see him, and a wicked smile played on her lips. She sat up, slender figure enhanced, with her long legs crossed and manicured fingers set firmly on her glass. Even in the low light, James could see her heart beating irregularly, almost thumping out of her chest, and her blue eyes were dark. Dark colored, and trying to be even darker. If only there hadn't been that look of fear and panic deep in their pools.
Callie.
******************************
Well…what did you think? Good? Bad? Too fast, too slow? REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW!!
I've already started on the second chapter, expect it in…a couple weeks. I'll try to get it up sooner, but I have finals next week (yucky!), so we'll see.
Thanks for reading! (even if you didn't like it).
Jade