Chapter 2

Hours passed and Samira soon fell asleep, but her dreams were interrupted by Lupin.

"What time is it?" she asked groggily.

"It's around noon; you've been out for a long time."

Samira grabbed her head to make sure her dog ears were gone. She gave a small sigh of relief.

"I wasn't able to brew up the potion in time to give it to you, but at least you'll have something for next month."

Lupin handed her a small corked bottle. She looked at the liquid inside and held the bottle in her hands.

Lupin left her in her room, but as he left he looked back to her.

"Just to let you know we're going start heading to Arthur Weasley's house soon."

"Thanks, I'll get ready to leave." she called back to him.

When he was out of sight she started for her bag, she pulled out a pair of bright red trainers and a fresh pair of jeans, she finished her new look with a hot pink tank top. Samira looked at herself in the mirror across the room. She looked at her bright blue hair, then she took to hair band out of thin air and wrapped her hair into a small topknot, loose parts of hair fell to the sides of her face.

Once again she threw her bag over her shoulder and walked down stairs where Lupin was waiting.

"Do you know how to use a port key?" Lupin asked.

"I used one once or twice."

Lupin took the port key and put his hand on Samira's shoulder. They both flew into nothingness, Samira spun uncontrollably until she landed on a soft patch of grass.

There in front of her was a nice cottage; smoke came bellowing out of the chimney. Lupin led Samira through the gate and up the small path to the door where after a few small knocks from Lupin did a large woman answer the door.

"Remus!" she cried. "We've been expecting you for a while now. What on earth have you been doing?"

Lupin ignored her as he and Samira walked through the door and sat at the kitchen table.

"Samira, this is Mrs. Weasley, her and her husband live her with her two younger children."

"One of my oldest is staying for a while with his fiancé. " Mrs. Weasley said as she served Samira a bowl of soup while she reentered the room.

"Eat this child, why it looks like you haven't eaten all week."

Samira smiled kindly and followed Mrs. Weasley's orders. She didn't complain for the soup was the best she had ever tasted.

Mrs. Weasley sat next to Lupin and started to make small talk for the sake of breaking the silence.

"So Lupin, are you going to stay long?" she asked

"I'm hoping so, I was wondering if you could take Samira with you when you start to shop for school's supplies with Ron, Ginny, Harry and Hermione. I would be glad to pay for her things."

"That would be wonderful, but you know things have been pretty dangerous lately. I will only take her if you think she'll be ok."

Lupin stared at Samira who had already finished her bowl of soup and was trying to overhear their conversation.

"I think she'll be safe with you and your husband looking out for her."

There was a knock on the door, Mrs. Weasley answered it in seconds and brought in a girl with dull brown hair and sat her across from Lupin.

"It's god to see you again Tonks." Lupin said.

Tonks just gave a small smile and stared at the wooden table.

Samira felt awkward as she sat there looking at the three adults at the table.

Samira whispered to Lupin. "Is there something here that I can do, I really don't want to sit here all night ."

"Where's Ron and Hermione?" Lupin asked.

Mrs. Weasley thought for a moment. "I think they're upstairs."

Lupin nodded to Samira who thanked Mrs. Weasley for the food and slowly moved backward towards the stairs.

"What a nice girl Edwards's daughter turned out to be." Mrs. Weasley said.

Samira climbed up the stairs and looked for any signs of life that there were people upstairs with her. She began to look through every door on her way down the hall, but she was unlucky to find anyone.

"Can I help you with something?" someone asked behind her.

Samira turned to see a short girl with red hair staring at her in the middle of the hallway.

She didn't know really what to say to this red head as she started to open up her mouth.

"My name's Samira, I came here with Lupin and he told me there was other people here my age." Samira said nervously.

The girl stared at her for a minute or so.

"How old are you again?" she asked.

"I'll be Seventeen in October." Samira said hesitantly.

The girl walked closer to her.

"Well I might be exactly your age but I'm close to it, my name's Ginny, I'm the youngest of the Weasley lot."

"It's nice to meet you Ginny. Um, Lupin told me there was someone named Ron and Hermione?"

"Yes well they're out in the garden right now, but I guess we can talk while we wait for their company again."

Samira followed Ginny back into her room.

Once inside Samira sat on the floor and looked up at Ginny who sat at her desk near the window.

"So, how many siblings do you have?" Samira asked.

" Well I have six older brothers."

Samira's eyes widened as she heard Ginny say it with such casualty.

"So that would make you the baby in the family?"

Ginny shook her head. "Sadly yes."

Samira and Ginny talked about many things from, O.W.L. testing to Hogsmead.

"So how do you think you did on your O.W.L.'s?" Asked Ginny.

"I think I did fairly well, but then again I might have been completely horrible, it's really up in the air right now."

"So what class did you like the most at your old school?"

Samira thought for a minute.

"I don't know." She answered. " I'm stuck between herbology, charms and care of magical creatures."

"You liked care of magical creatures?" the look Ginny gave Samira was as if she grew an extra head.

"Well, I got to go outside everyday and play with animals, what's not to like about the class?"

Ginny sat on the floor next to her.

"Our class at Hogwarts was pretty dull, but then again I didn't like half the animals anyway."

There was a knock at the door and a red headed boy came into the room. Right behind him was a girl with brown frizzy hair.

Ginny stood up along with Samira and introduced them to her.

"Samira this is my brother Ron, the second youngest and that's his friend Hermione behind him."

Samira smiled at them and exchanged hellos.

"Did the owls come yet?" asked Hermione.

Ginny shook her head and faced Samira.

"Their test scores are supposed to come today by owl, Hermione has been asking all day if the owls came." she explained.

Ron stepped out of the room. "I'm going to sleep for a while, wake me up when Harry gets here."

Hermione turned to the other two girls.

"That's an interesting color for your hair." she said, staring at Samira.

"It's a really funny story how it happened. My hair's not naturally this color, it was once brown. But then in my second year of school I got into dueling, it was one of my first matches and I was up against a first year. She tried to hex me with an innocent curse, but it missed. In turn, it hit my hair and turned it blue, from then on it was sort of like my signature look."

The three of them laughed as Ginny and Hermione told their stories of Hogwarts.

"So you're telling me that Ron had to dance with a professor?" Samira laughed.

"Yep." Hermione giggled. "He looked so horrified."

"Not to mention what he wore to the ball, talk about hideous." said Ginny, she went through his wardrobe in excruciating detail.

Their laughter was interrupted by Mrs. Weasley.

"I'm so sorry Samira, but Lupin had to leave to meet with the order. You'll have to stay here and sleep in Charlie's old room."

Mrs. Weasley walked back down the stairs

Hermione stared at her watch. "Well since you're going to stay here, why don't we go and see if Ron's up." Hermione stood up and headed out the door.

Samira followed her down the hall and up to Ron's attic bedroom. Ginny stayed in her room, she decided to go through everything she would need to buy the next day.

Ron was relaxing on his bed reading the Quidditch section in The Daily Prophet. He didn't take his eyes off the paper while the two girls walked in his room.

They sat there in silence waiting for the boy to finish.

"For Merlin's sake Ron! If your going to pretend we're not here at least flip the pages from time to time!"

Ron still didn't look at them.

"Is he always like this?" Samira whispered.

"No he isn't," she whispered back. "He's usually very happy to meet new people."

Ron finally put down his paper and stared at the girls. He never seemed to look at Samira while he talked.

"So, what do you lot want to do?" he asked.

"We were hoping you would have something to do." Hermione confessed.

Samira grabbed a book lying next to her and started to read out of pure boredom.

"Fleur and Bill should be hanging out in the garden, maybe we can talk to them." Ron suggested.

"If I have to talk to Fleur anymore than I usually do, I think I'll die." Hermione said.

Ron tried to change the subject.

" Samira, my mum said you grew up in Russia."

Samira nodded her head and put the book back on the floor.

"Yea, my father wanted me to go Hogwarts, but his job kept him from taking me to England."

Hermione looked at her watch and left the room momentarily.

"Where do you think she went?" Samira asked.

"Probably gone to see if the owls came yet." Ron said as he resumed reading his paper.

"Is there anything exciting in the world today?" Samira asked looking at the headlines.

"Nothing in particular, but I just got done reading about the Holyhead Harpies losing for the fifth time this year,"

"Darn, I was really routing for them. Oh well you win some games, you lose some games."

"I didn't know you liked Quidditch."

"Well, in your defense we just met so I don't think you'd know everything about me."

"What I meant was that you don't look like the type of girl that would be that into Quidditch."

"You're sort of right about that, in my five years at Durmstrang I never played a game of Quidditch in my life, I sort of just stuck to dueling for the most part."

Ron looked at her shocked. "You never played Quidditch?!"

"All I really did was watch. I did try out once in my third year, but there was always one person better than me, I never developed a talent for it."

"Don't worry, when Harry gets here tomorrow, we'll both teach you."

"You really don't have to do that, seriously I'm fine just watching or keeping score."

"Mark my words Samira, before we go to Hogwarts you will play a game of Quidditch."

Samira laughed. " If I play, you'll all be in the hospital wing for the first week of school. I'm that bad, I swear I am."

Hermione came in the room again.

"well since the owls aren't coming tonight I'm going to turn in. I'll see the both of you tomorrow morning, and hopefully Harry will be here so we can start to have some real fun."

Hermione left the room again and headed down the hall to Ginny's room.

"and then there was two." Samira said.

Ron put the paper aside, and stared at Samira.

"why are you staring at me like that?" she asked.

"I'm trying to think where I've seen you before. I'm not that good with faces, but I remember yours, I just can't think of the place yet."

"well maybe if you sleep, you'll remember in the morning."

"what about you? What will you do if I go to bed?" he asked.

Samira grabbed the book from the floor and showed it to him.

"I think I'll catch up on my reading. Maybe draw a little."

"don't you sleep?" he asked.

Samira grinned.

" not very often, but I think about it sometimes." she joked. "but really, I slept the majority of today away, I don't need anymore sleep right now. Maybe I'll get my sleep schedule right before school starts."

Ron chuckled to himself and pulled a blanket over his head.

"good night." he mumbled from under the blanket. Then with a flick of his wand he turned off the lights.

Samira grabbed the book and stumbled out of the dark room and into the hall. She didn't feel like reading, but she didn't want to sleep either.

She walked down the hall to her room for the night. The room was almost empty, except for a few boxes labeled 'Charlie's things'.

She found that her things were already in the room, so she searched in it to find her sketch pad. Samira sat on the windowsill and looked out on the small country side, it had a lot more hills than the small cottage house had, and had an excellent view or the whole sky, not just the moon.

She began to draw when she noticed that there was an aurora off in the distance. She longed to leap from the window and fly to the beautiful lights, but of coarse all that she did was stare at it from afar.

It must have been hours since Ron went to sleep, because the clock chimed six times before Samira snapped out of her lock with the aurora.

She saw that it was almost one thirty in the morning.

"I better get to bed." she said under her breath.

Just the n she heard a loud crack from outside the window. Samira saw two dark silhouettes coming towards the house.

Samira ran to the end of the stairs and knelt down by the stair railing.