Hello Everyone!
I had previously started this almost two years ago, but over the last few months found myself cringing at my sixteen year old self's writing, and couldn't stand it any longer!
You'll pick up the general gist of the story as you go along, but just to fill you in right now...
It's seventh year for Harry, Hermione and Ron. The Dept. of Mysteries fiasco hasn't happened, and the whole 'prophecy' hasn't been revealed yet. However, Voldemort has been discovered. If you could, imagine the atmosphere to be like that of 'The Half Blood Prince'...dark and scary!
Any question's, please don't be afraid to ask me!
We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future – Franklin D Roosevelt
It was Saturday the twelfth of September. A sweltering eighty seven degrees of Fahrenheit heat ruthlessly persisted in its vicious regime of scorching the Miami shoreline...each grain of coarse white sand at a burning second of time.
No less than five days earlier, the beginning of the school year arrived hand in hand with a heat wave that descended across the globe like a duvet made solely of UV rays. The weekend couldn't come earlier for adults, children and all those in between who were eager to escape educations clutches of boredom, and flee with wild abandon from anything remotely resembling a stifling classroom.
The general consensus that took effect was to get as close to infinitely wide open spaces as possible; hence why the people flocked to Miami Beach in their droves. For the most dedicated of escapees, even the shoreline posed no restriction- renting a boat was money well spent to revel in the isolated emptiness of the sea.
But for a small group of teenage girls, a secluded part in the far corner of the beach was perfect. It was far enough away from screaming children and overbearing parents, yet close enough to the testosterone fuelled football game taking place by the water. Religiously pouring oil on their already over tanned skin (sure to become wrinkled and leathery well before its time), the teen's provoked adults into pondering an age old question concerning all self absorbed seventeen year old girls.
If the human race suddenly transformed into living chocolate, would those girls eat themselves or the boys they started at possessively?
Regardless of the many attempts to solve the enigma that is the teenage mind, life on Miami Beach went on.
"Yeah Josh, over here I'm open!" Josh, the token jock among the group of performance enhancer addicted young men had the ball. Finding his friend was 'open', with feet too small for his oversized body Josh ran so fast he barely left footprints in the hard sand while propelling the ball forty yards down the shore.
On any other day, the ball would have flown right into the boys grasp that made the fatal 'teenage cringe' of getting frosted highlights he couldn't pull off, and the game would have resumed normally.
Alas, Saturday the twelfth of September was about to make its own off road route on the opposite side of the tracks to normal; at least, it was for anyone who came into contact with the five foot nine bronze limbed brunette who just appeared out of nowhere.
The exotic creature's name was Anna, and no matter what language you spoke, in the not so well known dangerous circles across the world it translated into one word- trouble.
"No you're not sweetie. But I am." She purred, grabbing the ball with cat like reflexes before 'frosted highlights' received a broken nose.
"There you go darlin'." She pushed the ball into the boy's chest and smiled mischievously up at him from underneath feather long eyelashes. "Maybe lay off the steroids for a while N'Sync; girls like the touch of muscles, not stone." With a smirk and a wink, she strutted her rather small arse up towards the pavement.
Anna was of course aware that the football game had come to a halt while the players watched her walk away. In her defence, the strut was actually a necessity- everyone knows walking in sand is exhausting at the best of times. Especially in this heat, when one was dressed for downtown Paris- not Miami Beach.
Instead of a dental floss bikini and flip-flops, Anna was clothed in a D&G leather biker jacket and skin tight jeans. She could already feel her t-shirt clinging to her skin- a white one no less, which would not win any wet t-shirt contests if the fluid happened to be her own perspiration.
'Bloody Gloria Estefan!' she practically growled. Just as she was about to Jump from New York, some idiot decided to blast on their radio. Visions of Miami Beach parties instantly flashed through her mind, and before she smelt the salt air, she was cursing whatever Dj had yet to escape the 80's funk.
Anna wasn't halfway up the beach, before she felt the daggers slicing into her.
'Ah, the predictability of high school girls.' Add boys into the equation, and the majority of teenage girls will never fail to amaze you with their one track minds. Not that Anna was searching for any type of praise- far from it to be honest. When you have the ability to appear out of nowhere, one of your worst nightmares is accidentally ending up in a crowded area. People tend to run for crucifixes and pitchforks...and that's after the ear splitting screams.
Nevertheless, it wasn't everyday one witness's somebody appear out of thin air. If she wasn't met with awe or wonder or curiosity, then the least she could have asked for was a little bit of shock for fucks sake! But no; the leather skinned girls no longer sat there, minding their own business (or flaunting it for others to see, whatever). Their immediate reaction was to give her the fucking evil eye, because a group of boys were staring at her arse.
One of them even had the cheek to sneer at her when she walked past.
Luckily for her, Anna was feeling optimistic today, and decided not to bother saying anything. Instead, she merely concentrated, flicked her wrist and smiled when a bottle of tanning oil spilled all over the peroxide blonde, orange faced girl who made the throaty 'ugh' sound behind her back.
She was exiting the overcrowded sand pit when she felt bad for her initial judgement of the girls. After all, she'd be jealous too if she saw someone with next season's knee high Louboutins...the suede version.
Finally reaching the pavement, Anna's good mood was buoyed by stepping onto a stable surface. She decided to forget about cheesy Dj's, scorching weather and Schwarzenegger wannabe's. Not a particularly difficult task when you're suffering from a hangover.
Not two seconds later, and any inkling of her optimistic mood was decimated by the tell tale sounds of the banes of her existence hot on her heels.
"Not today!" She stomped her high heel childishly, clenched her fists and glared at the water, daring the vision that met her to be more than a mirage.
Unfortunately, at her exact arrival point, in the midst of a group of frozen young men, four armoured Paladins were trying (and failing) to disentangle themselves from the large limbs of said young men, who joined the Paladins on their delightful trip to taste roasted sand grains.
By the time the Paladins managed to find their way out of the maze of legs and arms, Anna was already gone, leaving nothing but a shimmering fragment of air in her wake. The portal that looked like a rippling window was slowly closing in on itself.
But not fast enough, as a group of entirely different teenagers would soon find out...
Meanwhile, at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, both students and teachers alike were attempting the same feat as those in Miami. They found themselves a great deal more restricted than those on the Eastern seaboard of America, but did the best with what they had.
Clustered in their groups inside courtyards, by the lakeside and across endless acres of grass, the occupants of Hogwarts Castle lounged under the heat of the burning mid day sun. Too exhausted to perform any sort of activity that was physically exerting, they simply lay there with their backs against the warm ground, willing their worries to evaporate away as easily as the beverage's they hadn't quite mastered placing cooling charms on.
In Scotland, the emphasis was placed on warming charms for a rainy day stew and mid winter hot chocolate.
Seventh year students had been back barely two weeks, and already found professors hanging the dreaded N.E.W.T's over they're heads. June was a long way away they assured each other, and so allowed themselves to bask guilt free in the heat of the U.K's Indian summer.
Besides, in this heat, even the most diligent of students would find it hard to work up the motivation for study. Save one, perhaps...
On the outskirts of these clustered groups, Hermione Granger sat, desperately trying to find the will to concentrate on the fifth of several dusty tomes she had rented from the library, not one week back.
She managed to convince herself that she didn't feel the ancient books leather melting onto the soft skin of her hands. She even persuaded herself that heat waves weren't forcing the words to blend together. She could not, however, ignore her boyfriends arguing any longer, and so gave up to join the rest of her peers in sprawling out on the dry grass.
If anything, the weather was fuelling Ronald Weasley in his heated argument with Seamus Finnegan about the outcome of this year's Quidditch League.
"Here Weasley calm down would ya! I get enough bother off McGonagall for settin' stuff on fire round here as it is. I don't wanna be the cause of you goin' up in flames and all!" Seamus' harmless insults against Ron's flaming hair sent a rippling laughter around the group. He threw the last droplets of water at Ron and left to refill the bottle.
Even laughter proved to be a strenuous activity for them all. Harry Potter, a.k.a The Chosen One, felt his stomach muscles cramping both at Seamus, and the look on Ron's face.
Falling back onto the grass again, he placed his hands behind his head and watched the light wisps of clouds float by. They were all too thin to make shapes from, and soon Harry found himself straying into deep thoughts- until he was sweetly interrupted.
"What are you thinking about?" Ginny smiled down at him, losing herself in her boyfriend's magnificent green eyes. She propped herself up on the grass beside him, staring down at him with a dreamy expression that matched his own.
"I was just thinking about how weird it's going to be this year, having Sirius around and Lupin back. It'll be great...but still weird." Harry learned quite early on in their relationship that it was almost impossible to lie to Ginny. Luckily for him though, omission of some truth was a lot easier.
In actual fact, Harry was worried for his Godfather.
Sirius was given a full pardon by the Ministry of Magic when Fudge was forced to acknowledge the fact that Voldemort was indeed back. But in the eyes of wizard society, Sirius was still the dangerous ex-convict bearing the title of 'the only wizard to ever escape Azkaban unaided'...something Sirius wasn't afraid to brag about either, overjoyed in the knowledge of getting one up on his deranged cousin Bellatrix.
People were slowly coming around to the idea that Sirius Black was an entirely different man than his prison photo painted him to be though. When parents demanded extra security for Hogwarts Castle in favour of pulling their children out of school, Dumbledore appealed for volunteers rather than relying solely on Ministry Officials. This of course had nothing to do with the fact that Dumbledore knew that many of these "Officials'" had questionable allegiances.
When people saw Sirius Black give up his newly acquired freedom to protect school children, public opinion started to change in his favour. People were even starting to praise Lupin, a known werewolf, for returning to a job that was widely rumoured to be cursed...by Voldemort himself, no less!
The general public of course didn't need to be privy to the information that most of the volunteers were members, or sympathisers, of the Order of the Phoenix.
"Speak of the devils." Hermione broke the silence and drew everyone's attention to Hogwarts' latest celebrities. To say the two former marauders drew attention was a drastic understatement; the pair of them were magnets for it.
It was to be expected of course. It wasn't every day that students were subjected to the view of an 'ex-convict' and a werewolf perusing Hogwarts grounds...until now. These days it was practically a daily occurrence to see Sirius strolling suavely through the castle, his barking laughter eclipsing the regular explosions and all other sounds of daily Hogwarts life. Lupin, utilising a lesson he had learned as a child, knew that it was difficult to keep laughter under wraps in Sirius' presence; but he did have a position to maintain and so tended not to bask in the limelight of Sirius' new found fame that the DADA teacher so often found himself caught in.
If Harry wasn't mistaken, he was actually quite sure that Sirius just winked at a group of giggling sixth years. His cocky grin was, of course, still intact- although Sirius preferred to refer to his smirk as arrogant. 'It sounds more...dashing.' Harry still wasn't quite sure how his godfather had managed to live that one down.
"There's something irresistible about bad boys, and you don't get much more bad ass than an ex-convict." Or so Harry had been informed by Ginny four days previous, when he started to get wind of the slightly unsettling comments about his godfather that were making their way through the female population of Hogwarts.
"Please tell me you don't share their opinion?" Harry groaned, remembering the incident that occurred last Thursday. A Hufflepuff fifth year actually approached him, desperately wondering if 'The Prophet were sure they had their story straight' and if 'Sirius Black really is falling for a Norwegian Veela's charm?'. Harry's hasty denial of the statement spread not only through the school, but into the media world like wildfire.
"Oh Merlin Harry please! Need I remind you that I spent an entire summer cooped up in that crypt with his royal highness whilst he was house bound? Besides, Sirius was forever ruined in my eyes after I found him asleep, nursing an empty bottle of vodka and drooling over leftover's on the kitchen table." Harry simply laughed at this. Ginny shook her head and shuddered. He could only assume it was from the memory of Molly's reaction to said drool more so than the sight itself.
"Alright children? Anything interesting happening in this neck of the woods then?" Sirius sauntered over to them, collapsing onto the grass with inexplicable elegance.
Harry recently noticed that Sirius' usual demeanour, which was normally brimming with confidence, was overflowing with tidal wave like proportions lately. He had a feeling it had something to do with all the female attention Sirius was getting...teenage girls weren't very discreet.
Harry didn't mind though; he knew Sirius was just rejoicing in the fact that Azkaban hadn't diminished his 'devilish charm'. And anyway, anything that made Sirius smile was a good thing in his books...his godfather deserved to have some happiness in his life, and had the right to enjoy it for as long as he could.
Apparently though, Sirius' life back at Hogwarts wasn't all sunshine and roses, even if it appeared so on the surface. The facade of 'protecting the castle' had worked for a few days; amongst Harry and everyone else, it was a widely accepted reason in relation to the other Order members being stationed at Hogwarts.
Before they returned to Hogwarts though, and after Sirius got his freedom, Harry noticed the man would spend the majority of his time in the Black family library, even though he claimed to despise the house with a vengeance. Every time he exited the library, he would be frustrated and –to put it bluntly- pissed off. Harry didn't know what to make of it, and once he returned to school, Sirius' mood swings seemed have run their course.
Until a few days ago, when Harry found Sirius leaving the Hogwarts library again, pulling at his hair and cursing under his breath. Out of curiosity, Harry brought the Marauders Map with him during class hours for a few days, and made an interesting discovery. Almost every single moment of Sirius' time, from the morning right up until four o clock was spent in the library- so much so that if he wasn't in the Hogwarts library, then he was rarely in Hogwarts.
Harry wouldn't have been so suspicious of his godfather until he was informed by Hermione that Sirius was meticulous about 'cleaning his tracks' after leaving the library. He moved like a ghost through the library, not even displacing a speck of dust on any of the books he may, or may not, have perused.
Sirius usually told Harry everything that was going on in his life, personal and Order related, after he became his legal guardian. Why was he being so secretive about this?
"This isn't natural!" Harry was distracted from his speculations by yet another round of Ron's moaning. "Hermione is finding it too hot to even think! Merlin forbid Harry, I know we've had a few tight scrapes throughout the years, but if something life threatening was to happen now, I hope you know we'd be done for!" Amidst the chuckling and nods of agreement, Ron dropped into a heap in front of a blushing Hermione.
With everyone in the tight knit group privately reminiscing about the tight spots the 'Golden Trio' had found themselves in, it was with a delayed reaction that they responded to the shouts of confusion and excitement breaking out across the grounds.
Hogwarts resident 'Bad- Boy' and Co. craned their necks behind them and were privy to the sight of hundreds of Hogwarts students standing on the tops of their toes, hands raised to block out the sun and pointing.
Turning around in unison, fast enough to give everyone whiplash, the group suddenly realised what all the fuss was about.
Down by the castle gates, appearing literally out of nowhere, was an Amazonian warrior like Goddess...or, at least a modern day version.
She was soaking wet from head to toe, her tanned skin glistening like diamonds in the sun. Sand was clinging to her body tighter than the shredded jeans that stuck to her mile long legs. It was also potentially possible that the buckles on her ripped biker jacket were starting to rust from the droplets that were falling from her drenched mane of hair.
Gasps of horror and despair were wailed by the fashion conscious population of Hogwarts females, who only just realised that not only were her shoes next season's Louboutins suede version, but the heel of one shoe was hanging on by a thread.
Her chest was rising and falling at a rapid rate, drawing attention to the slashed white t-shirt she was wearing...the wet white t-shirt. Twigs and leaves fluttered to the ground when she stumbled, but managed to catch herself at the last minute before she fell face first.
Straightening up to her model like proportions once again, the mysterious woman placed her hand on her hip and raised the other to block the suns strong rays from her eyes. She stared around her with a befuddled look of complete and utter confusion- which immediately switched to anger when she took one step forward, and became aware of her broken heel.
The growl of frustration she was clearly muttering was almost palpable through the earth's surface. Sparks started to fly from her furious green eyes. When a shiver passed through his very bones, Sirius Black could almost feel the tingling touch of Fate tying him and this mystery girl together.
"Well, it appears that things in this neck of the woods just got interesting." Ginny Weasley mused to a group of dumb struck wizards.
I hope you enjoyed the first chapter! Any questions, please don't hesitate to ask :D
Oh, and please don't get put off by the changing view points...it's only for the first four chapters!
Shewolf x
