I growled at myself for even coming back this year, I warned mum that I wasn't going back while that nutcase that I used to call dad was on the loose. It was mental, I was about to get off the train again, scowling to myself, but the doors shut and the warning whistle to stand back from the edge sounded. I groaned, I'm going to HAVE to go to school this year, then. I walked down the corridors trying to find an empty compartment, I saw my little brother sitting with Ginny, Neville and the Weasley twins. I sighed again, I'm not going in there t tell them that his older sister was the freak of the school. She tended to keep to the shadows and that probably wasn't a factor of the reason that she was in Gryffindor. There was ONE not full carriage, but unfortunatly this carriage held a teacher, I think, Harry, Hermione and Ron. I groaned again, and slumped against, the wall, before mustering up the courage to go in.
"Hey Harry, can I sit here, there aren't any other seats." I shrugged and he nodded.
"Sure, Liberty. Guys, this is Liberty. Liberty this is…" He was cut off by me sticking my hand out to them.
"Ronald Weasley, little brother of my favourite twins; and Hermione Granger, the brightest witch of our age. I know who you two are, next t Harry and the infamous old pranksters of Hogwarts, you're school-famous. I'm Liberty…" I bit my lip, and sghed. "Liberty Black. Yes, Ronald, BLACK. B-L-A-C-K. And no, I am not like the rest of my family, on the Black side. ESPECIALLY not like Malfoy and my DEAR sort-of Aunt Bellatrix. If I was like them, I'd be in Slytherin." I smiled at them. The other two looked awkward. "I don't bite… well…" I looked to the side, trying to keep my secret hidden, and my eyes landed on the man, who I nearly forgot about. I looked a him closely, and I saw his face a little through a gap in his cloak. He was quite young, mid-thirties at the max, but he had greying hairs. His face was covered in little scratches, and in his sleep he looked troubled and depressed, I frowned trying to remember where I had seen this man before… He looked like… but he couldn't be, he strayed away from this place a long time ago. That's fine… I'll just let it pass. I shook my head and was pulled out of my thoughts at the shutting off of the lights in the corridor.
"What's going on?" Hermione asked, curling up in her seat at the sudden chill to the air.
"There…there's something moving out there!" Ron caled, standing on my toe, trying to get a better look. I groaned, and moved my foot, he muttered an apology, and sat down, the door slid open and we could see little breaths and movement.
"Who's there?" I asked, I took out my wand and lit a small light, although it was a little underage magic, I was let off because of my father's name and terror. The light illuminated the face of my terrified little brother, James, and Ginny Weasley, followed by Neville. "Jay! Come here." I pulled him into my lap and stroked his hair. "It's okay, little Jay, you'll be fine. It's just a minor breakdown, we'll be at school soon. You'll see home again, and Mum'll be there and you'll go to lessons with your friends and you'll have fun… even with my Godfather being an idiot at times." I grinned as he relaxed. Ginny sat next to Ron by the window and Neville sat next to us. The chill swept through the air again, and the door that had been shut, opened again, showing a creature in a cloak, standing there and another one soon followed. I gulped, knowing exactly what these things were. One turned to me, and James, and the other to Harry. I pushed James out of the way, and he landed next to Ron, as the Dementor started to feed on my fear. I screamed, and felt my worst memory returning to me.
"Where's dada going Mummy?" I asked, feeling foolish at such a question. She turned to me, her eyes all puffy and red, her hair blue.
"They're taking him away, honey, he didn nothing wrong, and they're taking him away… to prison." I didn't know what that meant at the time, but I felt angry and sad, so my hair turned blue, as well. My mother gasped, and touched my hair, that had changed back to it's normal dark brown and was very scruffy and never seemed to be calm. "I guess you're more like me than you're father, honey. You'll be asleep until morning, and you should forget that this never happened. Never remember your dad, or it'll just bring pain… Where's Dada gone?
I felt someone shaking me, and I came to.
"Jay?" I croaked, my throat feeling as tight as if someone had strangled me.
"LIB!" He shouted, grabbing me around my neck and hugging me tightly. "I thought I was going to lose you, like you lost Dad." He had been crying.
"I'm sorry, Jay, it'll be okay, honey, I'll go and talk to mum when we get to school, ad I'll tell her what happened and she'll fix it, okay. You're never going to lose me, little boy, remember that Jay. I'm not losing you like I lost Dad and you're not losing me, like we lost everyone else." I was thinking about that day that mummy came home and told me we'd never see Aunt Lil and Uncle Prongs again, I cried myself to sleep that night. I may have been two, but I was a smart two year old. She also told me that night that Aunt Loony and Uncle Moony wouldn't be seeing us ever again either, and that Aunt Mar and Aunt Al wouldn't be coming to see us either. That night, she packed our bags and we went to live at Hogwarts. But me, now, being nearly sixteen, am allowed to live in a house with my little brother by myself. You see, after my father was taken away, my mother discovered that she ws, in-fact, pregnant with another child, and that she had only just conceived the baby a few weeks before, so the father would probably never see his little boy that he desired so much. He loved me with his whole heart though, before he was taken from me and my mother. Mum never told me about Unle Wormy, but I sort of guessed that he would never be seeing us again either. I sighed, and sat up, to a piece of chocolate shoved in my face. The person came into focus, but my scrunched m nose up in confusion to the face that I knew so well, but couldn't put my finger on. "I'm sorry, but do I know you? You look SO familiar, but I don't know WHO you are. I can't place my finger on it…" I rubbed the back of my neck in a VERY Unce Prongs-y way, and my hair turned a really pale blonde, nearly white, in confusion.
"Sorry, I don't think we've met." He said, pushing the chocolate into my face, a little more, urging me to take it. I took the chocolate and ate it, feelign the warmth spread to my toes and make me feel better.
"Thanks, Re-" I stopped, and frowned, standing up. "I'm sorry… I have to go." I tucked my hair behind my ear, and ran frm the room, down the corridor. It really was him, I can't tell mum, she wouldn't react well, who else to tell? Harry? No, he'd get suspicious… Jay? No… he's not allowed to know our past until mum says… Then, I saw the corner that I knew so well and knew that I would have to talk to someone later. I walked into the compartment again, collected my bag, hiding my face, and just as I tried to leave, Harry grabbed my sleave.
"WAIT!" He called, pulling me back in and pushing me to sit down. I blushed and my hair turned a deep purple, great. "Why did you run out? What happened? Come on, you can tell me, you're like my relative to me. I trust you, like how Ron and Hermione are my brother and sister; Neville's like me cousin, and I feel like I can trust you enough to be like a cousin to me." I asped, he really had no idea.
"I have to go, Harry. And LET GO." I tugged on my robes sleeve as he tried to pull me back.
"But…" I was interupted my Remus coming back in.
"We'll be at Hogwarts in ten minutes, you should go get changed." The others left the room, leaving an awkward silence between me and Remus. "You know, I sort-of recognise you too… You'renot related to anyone who went to Hogwarts in 1970s are you?" He asked.
"I'm afraid I am, related to a few good trouble makers. Although you probably wouldn't know them, they're a few trouble makers, nothing special… oh and a few special people, had a problem, two or three of them did. Needed a lot of support, my mother's best friend and cousin was a best friend to someone with a problem."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"That's okay, I think you knew them, actually. That's how I know you, my mum used to talk about you a bit, and then it all stopped when I was about five, and she started teaching. Oh, well. I'll see you around, Professor Lupin."
~In the first DADA lesson~
I tried to open the doors as quietly as I could, and sneak into the back of the room, but as I was attempting to get to my seat at the front, Professor Lupin turned around.
"Merlin's beard, I thought I was actually going to make it for once!" I shouted, and then moved to the front of the classroom where my usual spot was un-occupied.
"Don't use language like that in my classromm, please." He asked politely, he obviously didn't recognise me from the other night, probably because my hair was a particular shade of pink this morning. I made a weird face, and took my books out of my bag. "Right, back to the topic, werewolves and animagi. What is the difference?" He asked facing the class, my hand shot into the air, while every one else around me rolled their eyes and threw paper at the back of my head. They stopped when my hair turned an alarming shade of red, almost hot enough to be flames, oh wait, there are those flames that I've been waiting for. I shreiked before answering the question and patted my hair, trying to put out the flames. Thery went down and my hair turned a light shade of bubblegum pink. I smiled sheepishly and then went to answer his question, without waiting for his call.
"A animagus is a person who trains and so willingly becomes an animal when they want to be, the animagus takes the form of someone's patronus, while a patronus can change depending on a tragic event, an animagus CAN'T. A werewolf has no choice to change into a beast every month, but they can take a wolfsbane potion to… subdue them for the full moon. The werewolf would wake up the morning after their full moon, not remembering anything from the night before, and he or she wouldn't be able to tell whether the blood on his hands was his own or his best friends…" I said, hissing and rubbing a light scar on my arm, where when I was a little girl… I walked in on Uncle Moony's time of the month.
"Very good answer, Miss…" He asked, I calmed myself and my whole appearance chnaged back to what it was yesterday.
"Black, sir." I answered his question, and sat back, reading my text book on Animagi. "But an animagus could take up to three years to complete. It is a very dangerous and hard process that takes a lot of time, but it's sort of worth it in the end, that is why the Ministry looks over nayone who is training, unless they went behind the Ministry's back and trained anyway, becoming an illegal Animagi. However, a Particularm Moderatoris can change their normal, or animal appearance at will, and become a merperson, werewolf, vampire, part of an element or anything like that at the mere thought of it. Although finding a Particularum Moderatoris would be very hard, considering that there are only two left in the world, the third having passed away recently. Also, there are people who are scratched, not bitten, but scratched by a werewolf on the full moon, in special cases, get the characteristics of a werewolf, like eating meat raw, or keeping the scars forever." I smiled, and put my glasses on to read the book better. "And it happens to be that I know the only last two Particularum Moderatorises in the world." I sighed and put my book away. "And now if you excuse my Professor Lupin, I need to have a word with professor Rivera, if you don't mind, in the Astronomy tower." Without an answer, I packed up my stuff, put my over-robe back on, and left the classroom, without a second thought. But then a thought came to me, and I grinned, I went back to the room, and stuck m head around the door, oh and by the way, Professor Lupin, just a matter of opinion, but werewolves are just like normal people, but just with a small… problem once a month, you should get a discussion going about that, and then teach them how to recognise the difference between a werewolf and a normal wolf on the full moon, and then get them to read textbook page 394 in the old version, and 399 in the new version, and to my classmates, enjoy the rest of your lesson!" I shouted, turning away, and making my way up to the tower, remembering the shocked look on Remus face as I went. This was going to be a FUN year.
