Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and therefore must egearly await tomorrow night to find out what happens in his sixth year, just like the rest of you. However, I do own a few ideas, and here, in my laboratory, I have merged my plotlines and Harry Potter to create a monster! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
A common goal, that's what these four girls shared. Split up between houses, never knowing that they all yearned for the same thing. It would come to pass differently for each girl.
She sighed and opened her grey eyes to the equally grey sky. Sitting up, she realized that she had fallen asleep in the astronomy tower again. She peered to her left and saw that the person was still there. They had grey eyes as well, but they were framed by green glasses and black hair, while hers were framed by freckles and almost white hair. A ravenclaw, sitting on the tower, waking up just in time for classes. She wasn't even taking astronomy; she just liked to look at the constellations, especially the dog.
Just as she liked to look at him in real life.
Sirius Black knew that he was well liked, but she didn't believe he knew the extent of it. She sighed again, and the person beside her gave a quizzical look.
"Lars, I know you understand. Thank you." He nodded, and she went to lean into him, before he moved away. He never let her touch him, he never spoke, but he understood. He never left her, and she always spoke to him. No one else acknowledged him, though. Only her.
They were special friends.
"I have class now. Are you coming again?" She had only met him in the middle of last year. That's when she had started sleeping anywhere but the dormitory, from a fight with her classmates. She hadn't really spoken to them since then. Lars nodded, his vest still smooth and ironed while hers was wrinkled from their camp out. There was no badge on his shirt, but she had never bothered to ask why. I had never seemed important to her.
They made their way to potions and sat in the back together, waiting for the professor to finish. She knew what was needed for the NEWTS and so did Lars, she presumed. He never seemed to study, and when she studied, he sat and looked at her.
Tonight was such a night. She was in the back of the library, studying charms when someone else, for the first time, walked out the restricted section. It was the dog, Sirius!
He didn't seem to notice her or Lars, in fact, he almost walked into Lars before he spotted her.
Sirius smiled and winked, before holding his finger up to his sweet lips and motioning to the librarian.
She nodded.
He walked away and she sighed after him.
At dinner, she was at the back, as always. In every room, she sought out the back. No one noticed a girl hanging out in the back, even if her friend had green glasses. She ate more than usual, perhaps because she has been noticed today. She felt less invisible than usual, and it made her happy.
Up in the common room, she took out her pajamas and went down to the common room. This night, she would sleep in the girl's toilet on the first floor. Nobody thought to go there in the middle of the night, she had found out earlier this year. Nobody stopped her; nobody even seemed to see her, just like Lars.
She had heard, though she's forgotten the source, that men and boys cannot climb the stairs to the girl's dormitories or they will turn into a slide. She ponders this at night sometimes, how Lars has no trouble getting up them or down them, but he always gives her a look as if to say that she is special, and so is he, and that is why they can break the rules. She just smiles and goes to sleep.
She slept soundly, and Lars was still there when she woke up. They ate breakfast together, though Lars never ate. She saw Sirius enter as she was exiting, and he winked at her again. This prompted his Roman friend (Remus, brother of Romulus, founders of Rome) to look at her.
She was noticed again!
The next class was transfiguration, and she sat in the back. She saw him then, the dog, and he was laughing. His glorious lips were open to show his white teeth, and she sighed. She always sighed for Sirius. She wished that she could be closer to him, be near him, but she had never found the courage. Today, though, she would.
Sitting through the back of history, she and Lars listened. She didn't think that Lars ever actually paid attention; he seemed to watch her more, just as she watched the constellation and his glorious friends. Lars leaned on his hand, the first time she had ever seen him do so, and he looked tired.
"Lars... are you alright?" she whispered in the quiet room.
He looked at her and smiled.
"You'll be alright, then?"
He nodded, and that was that.
Potions, her first class the next day, and she still could not gather the courage. Walking to the front of the class, she gathered the ingredients she needed, mindful of everyone, Slytherins and Gryffindors alike, who seemed not to notice her. She quietly took a bottle of Hukkledrought just as someone else was reaching for it. They turned and smiled at her.
The Roman friend.
"Hullo." He said, before he took another and left her standing at the front of the class, staring after him.
Lars was looking at her and he shook his head, so she returned to her seat with the ingredients. As if by fate, or chance, there was an empty seat, one ahead of her. She looked around, and was about to move when Lars looked at her. He seemed to growl, and she stayed where she was, worried.
Lunch was worse. Lars was moody, and he wouldn't look at her. She was worried, so she offered him soup, bread, even orange juice, but he declined.
She looked at him, thinking about how he never ate, and he looked back at her. She knew that he was thinking about the fact that she had also gone several days without eating. She wasn't speaking to him anymore, but not because she was mad. In that moment, at lunch, in the Great Hall, she discovered that she didn't need words. With a start, she realized that she had been using them less and less. The only person she had spoken to in the last six months was Lars, and her words had become more and more quiet, and less and less frequent, until that day, in the lunch room, when she realized that she didn't need them. Words only confused people, but thoughts... You couldn't misinterpret thoughts.
Lars looked at her, she looked back. A thousand words, in mere moments. Her head was dizzy with her revelation.
She staggered out of the Great Hall and up the main steps only to run right into someone. They looked down at her.
"Uh, hi." They said. It was the dog's friend, Potter.
She looked at him, but he didn't understand. He couldn't read her look.
"H-hi." She said finally, her voice sounding old and rusty. She smiled, just as Lars growled again.
"Oh! Hey, my secret keeper." The dog said, and winked at her. They were congregating next to her. "I'm Sirius, by the way, and thanks for not telling on me." He was smiling at her!
"N-no problem." She was shocked, her earlier revelation turning upside down and twisting. She couldn't simply look at them! She needed to speak, the words being torn from her unwilling throat. She cleared that throat, and she knew that this was what had been missing, talking.
"I'm James." The first said.
"I'm Remus." The roman one.
"You certainly don't look Roman." He raised an eyebrow, but his friends laughed. She had made her constellation laugh!
She had forgotten Lars, though, in her rush to make new friends. Lars had always been rather... protective. And now? Now, he rushed at the boys, screaming.
Lars knocked Sirius to the floor, turned to look at her, and grabbed her by the waist, hoisting her off the ground. She screamed in surprise, and the boys took it as if she were scared. They rushed Lars, and tackled him to the ground.
Sirius grabbed her and held her, while she hid her face in his neck (something purely instinctual, she later told herself). His arms were around her, one stroking her back and calming her as she heard fighting behind. His other hand was wrapped almost around her waist, and she felt safe. She felt as if nothing else in the world mattered at that moment because nothing could harm her.
Suddenly, Sirius pulled back and looked at her.
"Are you alright?" He asked. She nodded. She slowly turned to where Lars had been and only saw empty floor and the three other boys.
"Where did..." She trailed off, the question left unasked.
"Sirius grabbed you and it started to fade. It turned to get you, but then we stupefied it. It turned to look at us, and then disappeared." Remus explained.
"You mean... it's gone?"
The boys all nodded.
She extracted herself from Sirius's grip and thanked them all before leaving. She had things to do.
A month later, she was sitting in the back of the class, taking notes, and paying close attention. He was there, staring at her, and so she turned and took the note that her friends had passed to her. She read it, wrote that she would tell them later, and besides, hadn't she already told them before? She then passed it back to the Hufflepuff boy to pass back to her Ravenclaw friends.
Her real friends.