Two girls who looked to be about eight years old were running up a grassy green hill, sunlight glinting off of their golden hair.
The one in the lead turned back to the other and called, "Come on Ana, I don't want to leave you behind!"
The world spun and the sun went out. The grassy hill was replaced with a dank corridor and the girl in the lead aged fifteen years in an instant, and her hair turned as white as freshly fallen snow. A high pitched scream of pain and horror ripped through the air.
"Ana!" the white haired woman cried, "Ana where are you?" She charged down the corridor toward the scream, but then her way was blocked by a heavy black door. "Ana!" she screamed again, pulling and banging on the door, "Ana, hold on, I'll help you!" Maybe there was another way in, the woman turned to try to find another way, but her path was blocked by another woman. This woman would could have been considered beautiful, with pale skin and golden hair, but her face was twisted in rage.
"You turn away again!" she screamed, "What happened to 'I don't want to leave you behind'? You left me to die to save yourself!"
"No, no I didn't!" the white haired woman sobbed, "I didn't, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!"
"You were too late to save me, you're always to LATE!" the blonde woman cry turned into a high pitched scream and a line of blood appeared around her neck and began dripping down her shirt.
"NO!"
Aribeth sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat and shaking uncontrollably. She clutched her knees to her chest and sobbed as her heart pounded its familiar painful tattoo on her chest. Finally she opened her eyes and flinched back at the red surrounding her, thinking she was still caught in her own mind. Then she remembered where she was, and that the red was only the crimson hangings of her four poster bed. Aribeth took a deep breath, then opened the curtains, praying there was no one on the other side. Luck was with her, as there was nobody in the room but her four sleeping roommates.
Silently, Aribeth got out of bed and slipped into the bathroom off of the dormitory. Aribeth closed the door with a soft click and turned to the sink. She jumped backward and shut her eyes when she saw the bloodstained blonde woman in the mirror, then quickly opened them when her screaming face appeared behind her eyelids. Aribeth was alone again, breathing hard, her back pressed against the door. She walked shakily to the sink and turned on the water, splashing her sweaty face. She then grabbed the towel from its loop affixed to the wall to dry herself off. When she lowered it, she studied her face, not missing that her serious expression looked completely out of place on an eleven year old girl. Then again that had always been her problem, being too old for her years. Now she just felt too old for everything.
Aribeth left the bathroom and glanced at the clock on her bedside table, it was just before two in the morning. She opened her trunk, looking for something to keep her mind occupied. She wasn't very tired anymore, and she knew that the moment she closed her eyes she would see everything again. Aribeth grabbed the first book she came across and a flashlight, then climbed back into her bed and pulled the curtains closed.
Aribeth flipped on the flashlight to find that the book she had picked was transfiguration. She opened it and began carefully reading every page. Concentrating on the words in the book alone until she could hardly keep her eyes open. Aribeth shoved the curtain on her bed aside just enough to put the book and flashlight on her bedside table and blearily noticed that is was just past three thirty. Hopefully she would be able to get close enough to the morning when she fell asleep again. Aribeth let the curtain fall back into place and put her head on the pillow. Immediately she was asleep.
It was four thirty before she began to twitch and moan.
xXxXx
What was that annoying beeping sound? James rolled over and pulled his pillow over his head to try to block it out. It didn't work.
"Who set an alarm?" a muffled Sirius cried out. It took James a moment to realize that the reason he sounded muffled was because he had a pillow over his ear. James sat up and blinked against the blinding light that was coming in from the window. A blob was moving around the bed next to his but he couldn't get his eyes to focus on who it was. Oh, right, glasses. The blob became one of his roommates, Remus Lupin, who was now rummaging through his trunk and looking far more awake then anyone had a right to in the morning. At least the beeping had stopped.
"How else was I supposed to make sure we didn't sleep through our first class?" Remus said calmly, selecting a pair of black robes from his trunk.
"We have classes today?" Sirius groaned. James turned to look at him, and sniggered. Sirius' perfect hair of yesterday was disheveled from sleep and lines from the creases of his pillow ran down one side of his face.
"Of course we have classes today." Remus said simply, "What did you expect to do? Laze around all day?" and he got up and went into the bathroom.
"Well, yeah," Sirius said as he watched Remus shut the door. Sirius groaned and fell back onto his pillow.
James just sighed, having accepted getting up was inevitable, and stumbled out of bed to his own trunk.
"Does anybody know what classes we have today?" asked James' fourth and final roommate, Peter Pettigrew. There were supposed to be five in every dormitory, but this year they were one short.
"I think we find that out at breakfast," James said, knowing that there was little chance Sirius would answer.
James shifted through the contents of his trunk, trying to remember all of the components of his uniform, but his brain wasn't quite functioning yet. He laid his head down on a pile of clothes inside his trunk, and thought about what a great pillow they made. The bathroom door open and shut, but James didn't open his eyes to see who went in; although it was quite likely it was Peter.
"You know, I don't know how long they serve breakfast, and I would hate to miss it," Remus said offhandedly. James sat bolt upright, and a loud thump from behind him made him believe that Sirius had fallen out of bed.
"You don't think that's a possibility do you?" Sirius asked, sounding extremely worried.
"Well I have no idea," Remus' voice was extremely innocent, "I've never been to Hogwarts, have you?"
Sirius scrambled to untangle himself from the pile of sheets on the floor and began to haphazardly select pieces of uniform from his trunk and jam them on while James followed suit. When James was still trying to pull his shirt on over his glasses Sirius sprinted to the bathroom.
As James finished lacing his second shoe he called out, "Come on, Sirius, food!"
"Two seconds James!"
"Has anyone seen my left shoe?" Peter asked, on his hands and knees peering under his bed.
Remus helped Peter while James felt his head to see if his hair was sticking up in any strange way, which it was. He smoothed it down, felt it spring back up, and James decided to leave it there, because that was probably how it was going to stay no matter what he did.
Just as Remus located Peter's shoe (under Sirius' bed) Sirius emerged from the bathroom, his hair immaculately groomed.
"How did you do that?" James asked, astonished.
Sirius just shrugged, "Practice."
"Does anybody actually know how to get to the Great Hall?" Peter asked as the four boys trooped down the stairs to the common room.
"We were there last night, we'll just go back the way we came," said Sirius lightly.
"I don't remember how we got here," Peter said, sounding nervous.
"Neither do I," said both Remus and James.
"Well I do, I have always been good at remembering how to get around places I've been to, come on," and they all followed Sirius out of the portrait hole and (hopefully) towards breakfast.
As they walked James looked around, carefully making note of what they were passing to see if anything was familiar from the night before and so that he could start learning his own way around the castle. When they walked by a large portrait of a witch with a hairdo so astonishing that James knew they couldn't have passed it last night James knew that Sirius was just as lost as everyone else was. He was just about to open his mouth to make this point when they rounded a corner and there in front of them were the double doors leading into the Great Hall.
"Are you sure that was the way we came?" asked James.
"Yes." Sirius said slowly, "how else could we have gotten here?"
"We passed a portrait that I know we didn't before, with this witch with hair-"
"That looks like a great bird landed on her head and stayed there, with a beak and everything?" Sirius interrupted, "she was one of my landmarks to get us here, so yeah, we went that way last night, James, you're just really unobservant."
"Great," James mumbled as the four entered the hall and found seats together at the noisy Gryffindor table.
"All right, bacon!" Sirius said as he sat down, and he promptly began shoveling mass quantities of bacon onto his plate. He then looked around to see if there was any syrup when he noticed three pairs of raised eyebrows staring at him. "What?"
"Let me guess," Remus said, his face straight his voice even, "you like bacon."
"Well," Sirius said defensively, "I don't get it very often, not civilized enough or something."
"What's uncivilized about bacon?" James asked incredulously.
"I don't know but 'proper purebloods' don't eat bacon" Sirius snorted at his own mocking voice.
"I'm sure if you asked you could get some bacon in a to-go bag," Peter said. For a moment, the other three just stared, not quite sure if he was being serious or not, then Peter started to chuckle, which set off the other three, and they all began to laugh uproariously.
"First year schedules," the four boys turned wiping there streaming eyes, and accepted the proffered schedules from a fifth year prefect who was looking at them a little strangely.
"Thanks," Remus called as the prefect turned to leave.
"So what have we got," Sirius mussed as he looked over the piece of parchment in his hands, "charms first, I don't suppose anyone knows where that is?"
"We didn't even know how to get to breakfast, Sirius," James said, "and we've been here before, what are the chances that we can get someplace we haven't been to?"
"True, hey you," Sirius nudged the fourth year he was sitting next to, "any idea how to get to charms?"
xXxXx
"I swear this is where he said that charms is," Sirius said as the four boys were peering into classrooms hoping to find one full of first year Gryffindors.
"My parents said that sometimes the classrooms switch around," said Remus.
"You mean the teachers switch rooms?" asked Peter.
"No, the rooms switch themselves, like the changing staircases."
"Awesome," smiled James.
"Awesomely confusing," muttered Peter.
"Don't worry Pete," said Sirius, slapping Peter lightly on the back, "stick with us and we'll get you were your going, or we'll all get detention together.
xxx
In the end it was Peter who found their first class of the year, as it was him who spotted a couple of first years going into a classroom down a side corridor. They had made it with only a minute to spare, but when class was supposed to start the room was only half full.
"It's often like this the first couple of days," said their teacher, Professor Flitwick, cheerfully. He was the shortest adult anyone had seen, and, as Sirius pointed out, likely had some goblin blood, or maybe house elf.
The four boys had taken seats in the back of the room and sitting next to Peter was the strange girl, Aribeth, from the train.
"We'll start in five minutes," Professor Flitwick squeaked, "hopefully most of your classmates will have found their way here by then, and those that haven't I'm sure you will be most happy to fill in later."
"I told you fifteenth time's the charm,"
"Or the charms classroom."
Remus turned to see the Grant twins, David and Marcus coming into the room.
"Hey you two," called Sirius, who was also twisted around in his seat, "I see you made it."
"Just barely, Sirius" said David, him and Marcus sitting in the seats in front of Aribeth, who, Remus noticed, was staring at the twins with a strange look in her eye. It almost looked like fear, but why would she be afraid of David and Marcus?
"All right," call Professor Flitwick, drawing attention to the head of the class, "let's see who made it shall we?" and he began calling out attendance.
xXxXx
"I don't know about you, but I'm ready for dinner," said Sirius as the four boys their way back up to the castle from the greenhouses that they had just finished their Herbology lesson in.
"Sirius," said James in mock annoyance, "I have known you for twenty-four hours and in those twenty-four hours you have consumed enough food to feed a third world country, complaining that you were hungry all the while."
"So I like to eat, what's the problem with that?"
"Oh no," interrupted Peter, "wait here, I left my bag in the greenhouse," and he turned and hurried back.
"Well well well, what do you know, it's the black sheep of the Black family," sneered a voice from behind the three remaining boys. They all turned to see a tall sixth year with platinum blonde hair looking at them like one often looks at the thing that has just died under your front porch.
"What do you want Malfoy," Sirius growled, curling his fingers into fists.
"Now now Black, there's no need to be rude, I'm just here to deliver something to your lovely Professor Sprout," he held up a roll of parchment. "Well, I really must be going, I just wanted to give my condolences to the Black family for the loss of their first born." Malfoy turned to leave just as Sirius muttered something under his breath. "I would be careful what you say, Black, I am a prefect you know." And he continued on to the greenhouses.
"Don't listen to him Sirius," James said consolingly, "he's just some git who thinks he's better than everyone else because he can trace his family back to the dinosaurs."
"It really isn't that hard," said Sirius, reining his temper back in, "his family are dinosaurs."
xXxXx
Peter slid the door to the greenhouse open, hurriedly trying to locate his forgotten bag before the others left without him. People tended to leave him behind, sometimes out of spite but other times because they forgot he was supposed to be with them. Professor Sprout looked up from the plant she was examining.
"Do you need something?" she asked with a smile.
"No, well, just my bag, I left it in here."
Peter went to the table that he had been working at, and bent down to retrieve his bag that he had thrown under it at the beginning of class. He squeaked and jumped back when he saw there was already a person underneath the table.
"Sorry," it was the short girl he had bumped into the night before, she had also sat next to him in charms, "I spilled everything out of my bag when I picked it up, and most of it rolled under here." Sure enough in addition to his own bag books, parchment, and quills littered the dirty greenhouse floor.
"What happened to those girls you came in with?"
"They left without me, I have…trouble making groups remember I am there."
"Me too," said Peter, helping her gather her things together. "Well at least your ink bottles didn't break."
"Yeah, thanks for helping," said the girl as she slid the last book back into her bag. They both crawled out from under the table and slung their bags over their shoulders. "I'm sorry, but I don't remember your name."
"It's Peter, and that's fine, I was just trying to figure out how to ask for yours."
"Aribeth."
The sound of a door closing made Peter jump, Professor Sprout must have left, because he and Aribeth were now alone in the greenhouse.
"Want to eat with me and my friends at dinner?" asked Peter, "well, I hope my friends waited for me at any rate."
"Sure."
They left the greenhouse, Peter trying to look past the next greenhouse to see if Remus, Sirius, and James were still waiting for him. That was probably why he didn't noticed the foot the stuck out to trip him, sending him sprawling face first in the dirt.
"You really should watch where you are going," a voice drawled from above him, "here, let me help you," and someone grabbed his arm painfully tight and pulled him too his feet, nearly wrenching his arm out of his socket.
"Let go of me," Peter mumbled, not looking at his tormentor in the face, noticing only that he was a great deal taller than him and had a lot of silvery blonde hair. Peter had experience with bullies, and although everyone said that you should stand up to them, because there really afraid to, in his experience, standing up to bullies made them bully you harder.
"I'm just trying to be polite the least you could to is, arg!"
The hand on his arm let go, and Peter looked to see that Aribeth had twisted the taller boys arm behind his back. "He said, let him go," she growled, and then she released his arm as well.
"We'll see if I'll ever be that courteous to you too again," the older boy sneered, rubbing his arm, then he stalked away.
"You didn't have to do that," Peter muttered, not looking at Aribeth.
"You helped me," Aribeth said simply.
"But, that was easy."
"So was this,"
"But, but, he could make your life miserable."
"My life…I can take care of myself."
Something in the tone of her voice made Peter look up. There was something strange about her eyes, but whether it was the eyes themselves or the look in them Peter couldn't be sure, he had never been very good at reading people.
"Come on, let's go to dinner."
The pair rounded the corner to find Sirius, Remus, and James leaning against another greenhouse and laughing about something. They had waited for him!
"What did you do to Malfoy?" Sirius asked when he saw them, "he looked mad."
"He's just upset that he didn't find the easy targets he thought that he did."
"Speak for yourself," Peter mumbled softly.
"What were you doing back there," James asked Aribeth.
"I spilled my bag, Peter helped me pick it up."
"I told her she could eat with us, she can can't she?" Peter said, suddenly worried that he had overstepped himself.
"It's a free table isn't it?" said Sirius, "but come on, if we don't get there fast I might have to start eating the wildlife so I don't faint from hunger."
xXxXx
Sirius lay with his hands behind his head staring at the top of his four poster bed. Remus was reading his charms book, although Professor Flitwick hadn't assigned any homework, and Peter and James were writing home. As he tried to avoid communication with his family whenever possible and there was no way he was going to do class work just for the fun of it, Sirius was left with his own thoughts.
Although he had waited a long time to get to Hogwarts, finally, a place where he didn't have to answer to his parents every whim, he had forgotten that that would also mean school, real school, not the private tutors that Sirius could always blow off, because there was no real punishment that his parents could give him. No teachers had assigned any real homework tonight, but they had all hinted that this was rare.
Then there was his dorm mates, they all seemed nice enough, certainly none of them were into any of the blood status things that his parents practically worshipped. He could defiantly see himself becoming good friends with James, they both loved Quidditch and could care less about the teacher droning on in front of them. Remus seemed to be more bookish, obviously because he was reading a class book when there was no need. But he had a bit of a sickly look about him, so he would probably never be good at sports, and everyone needed some talent. Just as long as Remus didn't make him read more Sirius could care how much the other boy read. Peter of course was cripplingly shy, but that was something that could be remedied easily enough.
The thing that mystified Sirius the most was Aribeth. Peter had invited her to eat with them, and during dinner, although she was not as talky as the rest of them, she had joined in their discussions of the classes that they had had that day. Maybe she was just having a bad day on the train, although one again Sirius had noticed that her eyes kept coming unfocused. And, when they had gotten back to their dorms for the night, Peter confided that when Malfoy had tried to bully him not only had she stood up for Peter she had literally fought Malfoy off. Sirius would never have guessed that the tiny girl would either know or use any form of self defense, and yet she had used it for Peter.
James shut off his bedside light and Sirius shook his head. There was no use thinking it to death, he likely wouldn't get any answers. Instead, Sirius opted for pulling his bed curtains closed and getting some sleep.
XxXxX
(AN: Shorter than last time but not super short. And a little bit at the beginning to either tell you what is going on or confuse you, whichever. I'm interested to know what you have picked up about Aribeth, because all of the hints that I have dropped seem really obvious to me, but then I know what is going on. At any rate, reviewing makes me really happy, so do it, and I promise I will reply! Plus, whenever I get a review, I often write at least a page on the spot, so reviewing really does make me update faster!)
