Prologue
Down the street ran a girl, ten years old and at the moment in quite a hurry to get away from the two boys that she moments ago had soaked, soaked in water even though it was in the middle of the winter. She was laughing, because it felt so good to laugh and run, like her body needed to know that it COULD. Beside her ran a hooded figure, also laughing, who passed unnoticed by all the spectators of this quite everyday scene. In fact, he ran straight through an old lady at one point. The lady stopped for a moment and looked around uneasily, trying to make something out, trying to understand the strange feeling of an alien presence she had just experienced. But after having stared after the retreating back of the girl – such a charming little pixie of a girl, really, but such a trouble-maker! – she shuddered, as if suddenly feeling cold, and continued on her way down the street.
The girl, meanwhile, ran on, her course set on the quite small house at the outskirts of Hogsmeade where she lived with her family. She was amazingly pretty, with ebony-black hair that curled in lazy locks around her ears, cherry-red lips and sparkling, dark-grey eyes that seemed to draw you into them. But she was still quite young, about ten and a half, and everything about her more or less screamed out an outspoken childishness and a quite uncommon naïveté, even for one so young.
The figure running beside her was wearing a dark cloak, pulled down in front of his face so that nothing could be distinguished but white skin and the glitter of a pair of eyes. Strangely enough, the wind didn't blow the hood from his head, even though he was running. Another strange thing was the rest of his clothes. They were dark, but nothing more could really be said about them. They seemed to the alert observer unfinished, like were they thought up in just a moment, and then never really thought through again. They just seemed to be made up by the colour black, rather than any textile.
They made an odd couple as then charged down towards the girl's home, the evening already dark, the snow that muffled the footsteps of the girl quite blue. One could not hear the footsteps of her companion at all, and if one would look carefully, you'd notice that his feet scarcely left any mark either.
An odd couple indeed... And with an odd future ahead.
Not that either of them would really mind if they knew. It is just that right then, they didn't even have a clue.
Chapter one
Him
(About how my Invisible Friend showed his real self)
I stomp up the stairs, hoping that they hear that I am gravely pissed off. I mean, here you try to do society a favour, and get nothing but shit for it. And those words about the making of me were ACTUALLY only a joke!
He waits at the top of the stairs. He is a He with a big H, because I haven't found out any better thing to call Him. He has been around for as long as I can remember. When I was younger He did not speak, and thus I didn't really think about Him. I only assumed that He was one of those things that just Was, like the sky and the seasons and Mother and Father. But when I was six, I think, He spoke to me for the first time, when I was sad because the other girls wouldn't let me play at dolls with them. They said I was the wrong type. It felt awful, being looked at and judged to be the Wrong Type, excluded from those who were Right. So I was crying, because that is what small children do when unhappy. And then He came and talked to me.
"Eh... Lillian? Don't listen to them, they are just silly little girls, right? I mean, why want to be their type anyway, when they are... being mean." He was horribly clumsy about it, but I was so stunned by Him speaking that I stopped crying out of mere shock.
"You can talk?" I whispered in awe.
Somewhere inside the dark hood that shadowed His face, I could hear Him chuckling. "Yes, I can talk."
"You never did before" I pointed out like an idiot.
"No" He told me so gravely that I knew that He was making fun of me. "I noticed."
"So I didn't think you could" I tried to explain, feeling stupid.
He nodded, sitting down beside me.
"So who are you anyway?" I tried, getting curious.
"I'm just me. I... watch over you, you might say."
"Like a guardian angel?"
The thought seemed to amuse Him, but I was too small to get why. Now I know that He is far from being an angel.
"Maybe not exactly like that" He said with a choked voice.
"Okay..." I said, thinking hard. (Notice the sarcasm. Really, I was being so childish.) "Like I am born under a lucky star?"
This thought seemed to amuse Him even more, and it annoys me that I cannot for the life of me figure out why.
"Yes, that is a very good way of putting it." There was a smile in His voice, and I decided that I liked Him.
Later on, I naturally found out that no one heard Him or even saw Him. As they started to roll their eyes over me and my "Invisible friend", I found it more and more humiliating, and for a while refused to talk to Him, something that seemed to almost send Him into hysterics. (That was quite fun, actually.) But then we came to some kind of truce, founded by the rule that we would only talk when other people weren't around.
I never saw His face, though. I know nothing of Him really, something that bugs the life out of me.
"What are you angry for?" He asks me curiously. He usually keeps a small distance from my parents, I noticed, or maybe Mother especially. It seems to be hard for Him to be around her, it makes Him sad.
"They didn't like me soaking those idiots, and now I have to apologise to them. Thanks a bundle." It was His idea, so I do have a right to be angry with Him. Actually!
"It was you who did it. I couldn't have stopped you."
"Yeah, but without you, I never would've thought of it."
"Which only proves a lack of imagination. It was still your choice."
I stick out my tongue at Him, and I have a feeling that He does the same, even if I can not see it. He is quite childish, really.
"And father scolded me for saying something inappropriate."
"What was that?"
I tell him. He chokes.
"But Lillabell, then!" But then He laughs. We have the same sense of humour, Him and me.
"Gah! I hate that nickname. Sounds like a princess or something."
"Oh, but you are. Princess Lillabell of the Paling Moon and Red Sun, born under the luckiest of stars."
"Shut your face."
"Now, what a thing to suggest!"
Man, He is annoying! "I liked you more when you didn't talk."
"You always say so. But when I am quiet, you get worried."
"Of course. It happens so seldom that I am convinced that you have died every time it does occur."
"So you do like me!"
"Dream on."
I enter my room, painted in a lovely shade of moss-green, full of living, magical candles everywhere. My schoolbooks in math are still lying forlornly on the table, but I ignore them without much of a bad conscience. Really, I already know all that stuff. Why should I study it?
"You never wondered who I am?" He suddenly asks, and I have to sit down, I am that flabbergasted.
"Yes. But you never tell, and you walk around in that stupid thing all the time." I pull at His cloak.
"And you think you are old enough to know?"
"Yes" I answer without any doubt. I am actually more than ten years old. Honestly, I am no baby!
"Well, then... First this has to go..."
And the black cloth sort of just...melts away from Him. He is quite an old man, I think, about Mother's age. More than forty, that is. Well, in His eyes, at least. But His appearance is more that of someone younger, about thirty or so. He is tall, but I already knew THAT. His hair is black, just like mine, and his eyes are a very dark grey, shading to lavender. I guess that he could be called handsome, if he wasn't so old.
"And now..." He hesitates. "Well, you know our joke about your lucky star?"
"It's YOUR joke" I tell Him sullenly. "You never bothered to explain it to me."
"Well... Your mother has taught you the names of the stars, hasn't she?"
"Well... yes."
"And which did you learn first?"
"Sirius" I say promptly. "Because that was the name of an old friend of hers, see? He was a hero, you know. Died defending Harry Potter."
He blushes, looking at His feet. He really looks uncomfortable. "Well... you see... that's... me. Sirius Black."
"No way in hell!" I blurt out. "He is dead, I told you!"
"No, I am not." He says in that annoyingly stubborn tone that goes over my nerves like nails on a blackboard.
"But you are not him! You can't be!"
"Will you let me explain? Please? I can tell you why I am here." I am about to refuse, but I am too curious. I really WANT to find out what He means.
"Okay. But you better be good at explaining." I bounce down at my bed, glaring at Him. But He only laughs, sitting down at the other end.
"As you probably heard, I fell through a... veil."
"At the Department of Mysteries, yes. I never got what that was all about."
His eyes go all distant, like he was looking at something far away. "Well, you see... The Ministry of Magic were studying a number of things at the Department of Mysteries. Time, thoughts... and death. They were trying to make a gate to where people go when they are dead, so that they could study it. Understand it. That was the archway with the veil. And that's where I fell through. But things like that are not for mortals to know, and...they never really managed. They didn't see anything. That's because the veil only goes halfway through."
"What do you mean?"
"When a person dies, he or she opens a gateway through to the other world, and at the same time, SOMETHING in the other world opens a gateway for them. The Unspeakables managed to open a gateway, but they never got that something, whatever it might be, to open a way back. So it only went half the way." He sighs, dropping his head in his hands. "On that other place, wherever it is, there are Rules. Trying to open a gate when your time is not come is against the Rules. Which meant that when I fell through, I sort of... left the door open after me. Just a crack, mind you, not big enough to come back through."
"So why are you here, then?" I ask, getting more and more confused as He speaks. He really seems to believe in it, but this story is so fantastic that I... No, I really don't know what to think.
"Because of you." He smiles at me. "I just hung there, suspended in nothing, for half a year. And then there came this... knowledge. Of your mother, of her existence. I don't know why I couldn't remember it before, but..."
"I know that" I tell him, glad to be able to contribute something to his story.
"You do?" He tells me in surprise.
"Yeah. Mother told me. You never came close enough to hear her."
"So why?"
"She did a Memory Sleep-spell and took herself away from your memories as Si... as you, if it really is you, went to Azkaban." He shudders at the name, paling noticeably. "Well, anyhow, she spent all that time hiding, but when you died, or Sirius died, or whatever, she decided to come back. So after having spent half a year being sad, she came to daddy to tell him everything, and released the spell. And then everybody knew again. That's how it was. Actually."
His mouth is open, and he stares at me. Then, slowly, he nods. "Yes, that sounds like a thing that Al would do."
"Nobody is allowed to call her that" I scold him. "She goes all sad then, and father starts to glare."
"Sad? Usually, when I called her that, she went furious! It was our best joke, and..." His eyes go very big. "Oh. Oh, I see." He stares gloomily at nothing for a while, and I grow more bored for each second.
"So, how did you come back?" I finally ask, not being able to take it anymore.
"What?" He looks up in surprise. "Oh, yeah... Well, I sort of... could feel her existence. How she felt at the time, and so on, because I loved her so much. I could do that with Harry and Moony as well. So, I sort of followed them through the war, not being able to do a bloody shit..." He moodily gives my pillow a punch. "And... when she was pregnant with her first children, I felt something like an...opening in the barrier that held me back. Because their lives were coming through the same barrier, just the other way. The way INTO the world. And I was close enough to Alex to feel it. But the opening wasn't big enough. I think it was the fact that they were twins that mucked it all up. Their souls were so intertwined with each other that I couldn't follow just one of them into the world, and to go after two was impossible. I can't split myself, you know."
"So how did you...?"
"I am coming to it." He says, sounding a trifle annoyed. "Anyway... The next time, it was you. And you were just one, and at that, your soul was in many ways...similar to mine. So the opening got bigger, I was able to squeeze through with you."
"You mean that you came out the same way as I did? Like we were twins?" I say with a disgusted grimace, trying not to imagine it.
He makes a face. "No, heavens, no! I just slipped into your world again. At one moment, I was in the middle of all that... no I can't explain it... and then I was standing beside your mother's bed, and I saw you being carried off very hurriedly. It had apparently been a tough delivery, and you hadn't gotten enough air. It was very close that you died."
"I know. Father told me."
"Yeah. So anyway, I'm really glad you didn't. Not only because you are a charming little girl but because you are the only one who can see me."
"Why?"
He shakes his head. "I don't know. I think it has to do with the fact that I slunk through an opening that was not meant for me. It's hard to explain. It's like... I exist through you, through your mind and consciousness. And because of that, you are the only one that can see on the exact... wavelength, or whatever, that I exist on."
"So..." I drag out on it. "You're Sirius Black, my mother's friend, and you are both dead and not at the same time? Is that correct?"
"Well, that's a way of looking at it, I guess."
"And... and... you don't know how to become... real?"
"Don't I look real?"
"But nobody can see you" I point out.
"Except you, no. But I am real. Just not the same "real" as the rest of the world."
I look at Him for a while, trying to determine if he is lying or not, but no, there is nothing of that in His eyes as far as I can see.
"Wait" I tell him, getting an idea. I slip out of my room and into my parent's, falling to my knees beside the bed. Under it, mother keeps an old box with assorted "articles of nostalgia" as she puts it. She takes it from there sometimes, to look at and remember, usually when uncle Remus is visiting. Now I quickly open it, sneaking the old photo album out of there, and then close it with a snap, hurrying back to my room. "Here!" I triumphantly lift the album so He can see it.
"Oh…" He breathes. "Has she kept it through all of these years?"
"She says she likes to remember" I tell him, opening it wide on my bedsheet. "She has shown me some of them. She often says that she needs not cry over them anymore. And then father calls her silly."
"He would" He mumbles, shaking His head.
I look down at the first one. This one I've seen, it's the same as mother's painting. She sits amidst four boys in Julie's and Jacque's age, of which I recognize uncle Remus.
"That's me" He says, pointing.
"I know that, you dolt" I tell him resentfully. The Sirius Black at the picture keeps winking and smiling widely at me, until mother finally steals Remus' book and hits him with it. I look up at the man sitting beside me, and I can see that they indeed look very much alike.
I turn the page, finding a picture taken up only by one of the boys from the former one, bent over his studies with a slightly frustrated look on his face.
"Peter..." Sirius mumbles, his voice strained and sad.
I'm already starting to think about him as Sirius. How annoying.
Then there is a picture of uncle Remus and mother, playing chess. They both look so intelligent that it's disgusting.
"Look at the cute geniuses" He falls into my thoughts.
By some reason, that makes me want to hit Him.
On the next page, mother sits huddled in a blanked, soaking wet from the look of it, and beside her sits Sirius, teasing her and tickling her.
"From her birthday, a while after us waking her up with a little surprise."
I snort. "From what I heard, it was YOU who woke her up by soaking her."
"They were in on it!" He says, looking hurt. "Hell, Moony conjured the water up there."
"Uncle Remus?"
He looks at me blankly for two seconds, before bursting out laughing. "Damn, I'm never going to get used to that. Oh, I am going to have to tease him over that…"
"You can't" I point out tartly. "He can't see you."
He looks crestfallen, and I feel a bit guilty. After all, it can't be that funny not being seen by your friends. But then He grins once more. "I'll make him."
Now He's talking! I grin back at Him, and then turn to look at the other page. There sits a cute, redheaded girl, cuddling a cat in her arms. Yet another familiar one.
"I know who she is" I point out, as He opens his mouth. "I am named after her."
He nods, smiling warmly at me. "It's a good person to be named after. Lily was one of the wisest persons I ever knew."
"Yeah, but then, mother keeps telling me I'm much more like you, mind. Quite insulting, really."
"Hey!" He exclaims, trying to look hurt, and then He ruffles my hair. The bastard!
"Get of my hair! You're messing it up!" I tell him angrily, slapping at His hand.
He grins. "You ARE a lot like me, I believe."
I ignore that, turning the page in the album. This is one I've never seen before, though. It's father, sitting in front of a large, rundown building, reading and apparently perfectly unaware of anything else than the book in his lap.
"Didn't know she had pictures from then..." Sirius mumbles, and I cannot figure out his expression.
"Pictures of when?" I demand to know.
"What? Oh, nothing really... It's just..." He shakes his head, and I sigh irritably. Grownups! Really...
On the next page sits a woman of about thirty years or so, smiling and waving in a strangely girlish way. She looks a bit like dad. She has long, dark hair, and she is wearing a white dress. She has yellow roses in her hair. But something about her seems in some way wrong; some haunted look in her eyes, a trace of emptiness in her gaze.
"Who's that?" I wonder, looking up at him.
He looks strangely distracted, as if not really aware of what me or anything else in this room. "I would guess that's your grandmother. My mother's cousin, I might add" he says after a while, shaking His head and coming back to this world.
"Oh." I take another look at the woman in the picture, studying her more closely. "I never really got to know much about her, more than that her name was Julie and that she died when mother and father still were very young."
"That is probably quite good" says He, nodding.
"Why?"
"Well, truth to be told, I believe you are a bit too young to know that."
Why did I just know he was going to say that? "Boring!" I tell him derisively, flipping the page.
We continue looking through the album together for an hour or so, and by the way He talks about people in the pictures, like He knew them and remembers them, I am more and more convinced that he was actually speaking the truth. Which means that Sirius Black never did die, but is invisible for the whole world except me.
Hmm... This could be fun.
At this moment, I hear footfalls in the stairs, I wave my hand at the lights, and they go out as father charmed them to do. (Really, how DO muggles manage?).
"My mother, you see" I tell Sirius, who looks questioningly at me.
"How do you know that?" he demands. "I always wanted to ask you."
"I can hear that on the way she walks. Like she doesn't like the ground and tries to avoid it. And she probably wants me to sleep by now..." The steps have stopped just outside the door now, I notice. She is probably listening. But that doesn't bother me that much.
"Well, her animagus-form IS a bird, so her walking like that should figure."
"What? Mother never told me that she was an..."
"Hush, not now!"
"Oh no, I'm not going to hush, not until you tell me..."
"She's outside the door."
"I know that, you ninny, I..."
The door opens, and mother pokes her head inside. Jamie Eddings once said that she is ugly. I punched her on the nose for it, and Sirius said some things about her that were really... interesting, if quite pointless, since Jamie couldn't hear him. I can't understand anyone thinking my mother anything but pretty. She has such a kind gaze, and her face sort of... glows, as if she is so happy that she can't keep it all on the inside. That should make anyone beautiful, really. But Jamie is a stupid kid anyway, although father told me that I really should feel sorry for her since she has a dad that drinks a lot.
"Who are you talking to, dear?" mother asks me, looking bemused.
I sneak a quick glance at Sirius, who sits looking at his own hands, his face sad. I feel sorry for him. I've never seen his face when mother is present before, didn't know how much it hurted him. "My invisible friend, mother" I answer, and a small, small grin parts his lips just a trifle.
"Whatever you say, love" she answers with a sweet smile. "Now sleep."
I nod at her, falling back against my pillow to show her that I am really going to sleep. I smile at her as well, before closing my eyes.
Then she closes the door. Sirius chuckles suddenly, and I giggle in return, hearing him shuffling around in the darkness and flopping down on my small couch, where he mostly sleeps.
"Good night, Lillabell" he mumbles sleepily.
"Good night... Sirius."
I wake up to find Him jostling me gently.
No, that is not right. He has a name now, I don't have to call him "Him" anymore. So, here it goes:
I wake up to find Sirius Black jostling me gently.
"You are going to be late" he tells me. "You were going over to Janna's house today, remember?"
"Can I thwack you like you usually do with annoying alarm-clocks?" I wonder sourly, sitting up.
"Only if you're prepared on me thwacking back." He says with a grin. "You slept with your clothes on" he then points out quite unnecessarily.
"I know" I growl, rolling out of bed. "Get out of here so that I can change!"
I open the door for him, glaring, and he slinks out, still grinning. I slam the door behind him, venting out my early-morning temper on it.
I am really not an early bird.
I change into some moderately clean robes, wondering for a short second if I shall do something about my hair, but deciding to let it be as it is. I pull a cardigan over my head, flinging the door open and running down the stairs, completely ignoring Sirius's call for me to wait up. He'll just have to work for it a bit, hasn't he?
I pull a hat on my head, snatching my cloak, and run out into the brisk winter air, sprinting down the snow-covered street. After just a few seconds he catches up with me, running at my side with a big grin.
"Good morning, Lillian!" calls Mrs. Perham from a window, waving at me. I wave back, calling a quick 'Good morning' over my shoulder.
"Lillian Snape, I want to talk to you!" calls an angry Mr. Stevens, but I just blow a raspberry at him and continue running. I do not stop running until I am at the verge of Hogsmeade, and then both I and Sirius have to stop for a while to regain our breath.
"I am definitely not as young as I used to be" he pants, leaning against a tree.
"No, but you are younger than you should be" I point out, as a thought just struck me. "I mean, you are just as old as father. But you look like you haven't aged a day since that... accident."
"That's because I haven't, physically. There was really no such thing as time in that other place, and when I finally arrived into the world... Well, since I exist through your mind, and I never let you see my face, you never really thought about how it looked, didn't notice if it was ageing or not, and because of that, I didn't."
I stare at him. "Too many words. I got the general gist of it, anyway. Now come on."
Janna is hanging by her knees out of her window when I arrive at her house. Reading. Of course, her room seems to have moved again, so she is only two stores from the ground, but still... Last week she was ten stores up. It is at least fortunate that it's summer in a ten-meter radius around her house, otherwise she would probably freeze to death. There is an explosion somewhere inside the house, and the rooms start to rearrange themselves at the speed of light. After the house has stopped being a blurr of various colours and returned to simply being a building - at least more or less - Janna is hanging just a meter over the ground. The ginger hair is touching the grass, and the hazel eyes are fixed on the writing. She has obviously not noticed anything. I tap her shoulder.
She twitches, looking up - or down, from her point of view - at me. She smiles, putting the book on the ground. "Oh, hello there Lillian. What are you doing here?"
"Ehm... We were supposed to meet today, remember?" This is the problem with being around Janna. She never is really sure on anything, and she has the memory of a goldfish. On the other hand, she is my best friend, we have known each other since we were little, and we make a fabulous team in everything we do.
"Oh, right!" she puts her hands on the ground and does half a backflip, landing on her feet. A few sparks fly out of her hair, falling to the ground. Some really strange flowers start to grow where they landed.
"Overload on magic again" she groans irritably. "I have to get mum to fix it. Come on." She opens what looks to me like a roof hatch, but that it is located where the door is supposed to be. We enter the kitchen, go through a room I have never seen before, and enter her mother's laboratory. It never ceases to surprise me that Janna and her mother can find anything in this constantly changing building. Janna calls it instinct and her mother says they have the right way of thinking.
Sirius usually says that they are just as mad as the house.
"Hello there, doctor Lovegood" I greet Janna's mother. She looks up, sooty-faced, hair in disarray, bruised and wearing a some kind of goggles that magnifies her eyes by almost four times. She is holding a tulip upside-down in her hand and it is making meowing noises.
"Oh, do call me Luna" she says absently, pouring something from a beaker into another and watching in avid fascination as it turns yellow and starts to bubble. "'Doctor Lovegood' sounds like a mad old lady that everyone is afraid of." The yellow liquid turns green and starts to hiss. "Everybody DOWN!" hollers Luna, and we all manage to drop to the floor before the beaker explodes with a sound like a swarm of angry bees. When we stand up again, all furniture in the room is stuck in the ceiling.
Or is it?
That's my last thought before my feet let go of what USED to be the floor, and I fall upwards through the air to land quite painfully on the ceiling-which-isn't-a-ceiling-any-more.
"That is the fourth time this day!" Luna exclaims angrily.
"Explains the bruises" I say, and she nimbly touches her forehead.
"No, that was the golf-balls" she answers, and I decide that I really do not need to know.
"Anyway, mother" says Janna, fingering some kind of a cross between a teapot and a turtle with an interested face "I have an overload of magic again. I think it's the house that magnifies it. You have to get it out before I blow something up."
"What for?" both I and Sirius ask at the same time, but of course, nobody hears him. Janna laughs, and her mother shakes her head as she scans the shelves of the room for something. After a while, she gives a happy exclamation and lifts something down from behind a stack of books. It's a long silver instrument, and I've seen it before. She only needs to touch Janna's temples with the pointed ends, and some of her magic will stream into it, ready to be tapped into one of the mystic devices constructed for holding raw power in place that Luna uses in most of her experiments.
As we leave the room to find the kitchen - apparently some stores up at the moment - Janna heaves a theatralic sigh. "I have to admit that there will be good points in going to Hogwarts. I won't get these overloads anymore. I can SWEAR it is this house that does it. I mean, all wizards and witches emit small amounts of magic all the time to sort of ease the pressure a bit. But around here it's like it all bounces back into me again, so the pressure just keeps building up until I can't hold it inside me anymore."
"But I spend a lot of time around here, and it doesn't happen to me" I point out as we enter the kitchen, carefully stepping over the windows that seem to have decided to take up residence at the floor.
"Maybe you can hold the magic back." Janna shrugs, fishing bread out of a box. "Or maybe you can hold more magic at one time. It could be genetic. Your mother and father are both among the most powerful wizards and witches in England."
"So is your mother, isn't she?" I answer, as I stealthily slip Sirius a muffin from the tray that Janna presents to me.
"Yes, but nobody knows who my father is, do they? He might be a muggle, he might be a wizard, he might be a vampire, hell, he might even be a troll for all I know."
"Your mother should know" I say around a mouthful of apple.
Janna makes an ugly face. "If she does, and that is a big If, she won't tell me."
"Then maybe he is a troll" I say, and dodge laughingly as she tries to hit me with a loaf of bread.
"Trolls don't have reddish hair" she answers a bit testily. "At least I don't THINK they do. On the other hand, I am not sure they've got much hair at all. But my hair colour HAS to come from my father, 'cause my family has been blond for generations."
"Maybe it's a Weasly then?"
"Hmm... Is that better or worse than a troll?"
"Ha! But genetics have a weird sense of humour" I say sagely. "Or so my mother keeps telling me. But that's because I look like a Black. She finds it amusing."
"Do you? But aren't the Blacks all died-out?"
I send Sirius a glance, and he mutters something inarticulate that sounds like "That's all YOU know..." I roll my eyes at him, turning back to Janna.
"My grandmother on my father's side was a Black, or so I've heard. So I guess I've got it from her."
She nods. "Suppose so. Wasn't your mother's best friend a Black?"
"Yep." I nod, taking another bite from my apple. "Infamous supposed-to-be mass-murderer Sirius Black."
"Oooh, I am real star!"
Sometimes, it is REALLY hard to ignore him...
Not to say neigh impossible.
"I would give quite a lot to know the whole story about your family" says Janna thoughtfully, chewing on a piece of fudge.
"I don't know... It seems awfully sad, from the parts I've heard, and that's probably not even half of it. I told you the most of what they told me, though, you know. There are just a few things that mother of father or both wants to stay within the family. But it's not the most cheerful history."
"It's not about if it's cheerful or not, most history isn't. It's all wars and diplomatic disputes and hopeless love-stories. But that doesn't stop it from being interesting."
"You sound like my sister" I tell her with a grimace. "She almost never tears herself from her history-book. It's sad, actually."
"I think I would like to have a sister or brother" she says, looking a bit wistful.
"That's because you are the only child" I answer her. "You don't know what its like to have to hang around with people that are just a bit older than you twenty-four-seven. The pros doesn't nearly make up for the quos. They're really pests."
"You just say that. But if someone tries to hurt them, you turn feral." She smiles widely at me, and I grin back.
"Well of course. They may be pests, but they are MY pests."
Here you go. I've changed perspective, as you see, and I can tell you that starting on this wasn't easy. Lillian is probably as unlike me as anyone can be, and writing her is sometimes close to torture. But it's a load of fun as well.
/Alex
