Disclaimer: I own nothing. Warning, strange logic ahead. As if that's new for my fic's Lol.

Chapter 3

I didn't know how Sirius was surviving. I had been in that house for less than two weeks before school, and I was ready to go mad. Dumbledore sticking him somewhere safe and quietly out of the way… it was almost as if the man was asking for trouble. I wondered what I would do when we got back to the dorms. I was still waking up with nightmares every night, and that was if I could sleep at all. I didn't sleep well alone. I was thankful for my Padfoot shaped security blanket.

The ride to Hogwarts really wasn't that interesting. There was Malfoy, who with all his talk of superiority didn't realise that he was several rungs down on the food chain than me, just in skill and sheer determination alone, and God blood aside. What was really interesting was the toad woman in pink from the ministry and her fancy little speech. I've had enough teachers that weren't really teachers, just monsters, to know that even if the woman wasn't a monster, she was a total psycho in the making.

"Me mam didn't want me to come back," Semeus admitted as we were all standing in the common room, "It… it was mainly because of you Sia, and Professor Dumbledore."

"You don't believe me then, do you?" I said, my eyes sliding closed in frustration.

"If we just had proof, maybe if you could just tell us how Cedric died," he urged. My eyes shot open and I threw him a venomous glare.

"Why, are you sleeping a little too soundly?" I said my eyes darkening in fury, "Because if you had seen what I had, you wouldn't be." The ground tremored so lightly that nobody noticed, but I did and took a deep breath trying to calm down.

"So there is no proof," the boy sneered to the people assembling, "You really are off your rocker, like the prophet said." I gave a small dark laugh.

"Honey, I wouldn't wipe my ass with the contents of that rag. They print whatever the minister tells them to, and the minister wants to play pretend and stick his head in the sand and hope it will all go away when really all he's doing is lining himself up for a good ass reaming," I brushed him off.

"Me mam and the prophet are right, you stay the hell away from me Potter," he said taking a step back. I however was tired and didn't want to go through this every day.

"Later sure," I said firmly, "But you wanted to have this fight, so let's have this fight. Bottom line, one day you're going to be in a dark world where the people you love are in constant danger from Voldemort when you were warned full well it was coming, and when you ask yourself 'How did the world get this bad?' I want you to look back and remember the answer."

"And what's that?" he demanded, nostrils flaring.

"You were a good little sheep," I replied scathingly.

"I am not a sheep," he roared. I didn't raise my volume to get my point across, I didn't have to. I had the attention of the whole common room without even trying.

"The prove it," I retorted, "Forget what the prophet says. Forget your mother's options. Hell, I don't care if you don't automatically believe me, just for the love of magic, use your brain. Think about what you've seen and match it up to what you heard. Just think for yourself."

He drew his wand at that point and Ron got to execute some of his sparkling new prefect authority. I went upstairs, got changed and tried to go to bed. I wasn't very successful. What little sleep I did have, was plagued by memories and nightmares.

Fire, was the first thing I noticed. I was standing in camp and the field in front of me was full of it. Rows and rows of bodies wrapped in shrouds burning. My chest tightened and I couldn't breathe properly. My eyes prickled with tears but I knew I couldn't let them fall, not now, not here. Not at all. Other Demigods stood around me in various forms of grief and the wind blew the smell of multiple bodies burning in harmony. The whole camp would smell like that for weeks, and I wouldn't be able to get the stink out of my hair.

CRACK! People started running and screaming as the ground started shaking and fissuring apart. Whole blocks giving way, leaving nothing but darkness. Not, not there. I couldn't go back there. Panic swallowed me whole and I trembled in desperate fear.

"Come down, come down and play," the spirit of Tartarus crooned. The ground crumbled, and blackness enveloped me. I fell weightlessly back into the black. Annabeth's dead body half hanging out off the edge the only thing I could see on the surface.

I shot up, stifling a gasp and forcing my breaths to be as even as I could while I crept into the bathroom. Locking the door I still didn't let my legs drop me down to the tile like they so desperately wanted to, but padded my way over to the sink. The worst thing about demigod dreams is that you never know what's just a dream, just a nightmare and what is an omen of things to come.

I looked at myself in the mirror and almost cringed. I was a pale as the… well, Nico actually, because of my long stint without sunlight. With my long raven hair settling in tangles around my hips. The sea green of my eyes that usually shone like shiny jewels were now dull and lifeless. Black circles were underneath them. I was still unnaturally thin, almost skeletally so, except I had put on a few pounds in the two weeks recovery before school. Great.

Dressing I found myself in the kitchens, eating an unhealthy breakfast of pancake with waste quantities of maple syrup and cream. Or rather maple syrup and cream with some pancake. Either way it was good for fattening me up, as the house elves had demanded I eat more and visit them so I can put on more weight.

"Sia Potter isn't beings healthy," Dobby lectured shaking one of his slightly crooked fingers, "No, no, no, no. You's be coming backs for fattening ups." I nodded and played as if I was cowed. I didn't mind the elves. They were nice and they didn't ask inconvenient questions. Even if they were excitable.

When I left to collect my time table I wanted to let my head slump and bang into the table. Snape, Trelawney and that Umbridge woman all in the same day? What did I do to deserve this, it was a Monday for God's sake. The day of course went just as badly as I envisioned it. I told the divination teacher she needed to get her inner eye some glasses, spent the double lesson of potions being derided and snarked at, and got detention in defence.

To be fair, she did say that Cedric's death was an accident, I was a nutjob, insulted Remus and said the only good defence teacher we'd had was the one possessed by Voldemort. I did well, I ignored most of that stuff until I realised that she was going to spend the next year making us read a book that had nothing to with learning to defend ourselves and everything to do with learning to avoid situation where defence in necessary. Now I had a week's worth of detention and Professor McGonagall, in addition to being very disappointed said that I should shut up and let her get away with it.

I heard the thunder rumble outside of the window and figured that was Uncle Zeus's way of telling me 'Don't you dare show that mortal more respect than me.' No problem uncle, I really didn't intend to. If I couldn't keep my mouth shut around people who could incinerate me or turn me into some sort of rodent and run me over with their Harley, not to mention a litany of other really creative forms of punishments, the toad lady can deal. Detention certainly wasn't going to hack it.

"So what's the plan," Ron said, as he and Hermione walked next to me.

"Plan, what plan?" I asked confused.

"The plan to deal with the toad, I mean this is totally outrageous," Hermione complained, "This is our OWL year and we could fail due to her incompetence. We need to do something, or she has to go."

"Rebel," I commented lightly, "What makes you think that I have a plan? Why do I have to be the one with the plan?" They both looked at me impatiently.

"Because you're the one she's targeting," Ron pointed out.

"She is conspiring to ruin Hermione's perfect O OWL's score, I say that makes it her problem," I said before turning to Hermione, "Or in light of that, we could just throw you at her."

"Not funny," she huffed as Ron and I laughed.

"It kind of is. Anyway I don't have a plan," I reaffirmed, "Unless you count spending the rest of the year pissing her off so badly her head explodes a plan."

"Sometimes you're really vindictive," Ron said appreciatively.

"Why do you think I wanted her to come up with the plan," Hermione snorted seriously.

"Trust me honey, vindictiveness runs in the family and I'm the nice one," I said surely, listening to them gasp in amusement.

There, yet another chapter done. It kind of just flows right out of my fingers. Now, Review me or I'll tell Hermione that you're ruining her OWL's score and throw you at her.