Chapter IV... The Only Exception by Paramore.


Sirius had been walking beside James for all of ten minutes, when his friend became fidgety. When the pair came into sight of the Great Hall, James pulled to a stop suddenly.

"I'm going after her." He told his friend, as Sirius turned around in exasperation.

"Who?" It was a useless question. Only one girl put that expression on Prongs' face.

"Lily." James pronounced matter-of-factly. "I want to talk to her about this living together thing.

Sirius gave him a half smile.

"Yeah, about that... What's the deal? Do you and Evans have to share a bed or something?" James pointedly ignored the comment, but answered anyway.

"It's the Head Boy/Girl thing. Apparently, 'cause the Heads are usually from different Houses, the living together thing is to promote House unity. But it still applies for Lily and me. So we'll be living together for the rest of the year." James paused, and looked over his shoulder urgently. "Look. I'll tell you the rest later, but I need to patch things up with her if I'm meant to live with her."

Sirius sighed, and waved him off as he turned and ran back the way they'd just come.

"Thanks Padfoot." James called over his shoulder.

"You're missing breakfast." Was the only reply James recieved, as Sirius continued onto the Great Hall.


Less than ten metres out of the Great Hall, disaster struck Violenta. Disaster being the opprative word. It wasn't that bad, but again it brought complications.

Thea's babberling about the Charms Proffessor, Filius Flitwick, whom Violenta already knew, stopped when Black came into view again.

"You're missing breakfast." Black yelled behind him then turned back, facing the two girls. He barely missed a beat, didn't falter in his steps and continued walking in what could be only called a strut. Thea grinned and gave him a small wave when he passed, making Violenta frown in confusion. From his tie, he was a Gryffindor, who apparently didn't get on well with Slytherins.

Then again, Thea seemed to be the exception to every stereotype.

Violenta was even more surprised when Black actually acknowledged her.

"Thea." He nodded politely at the red head, eyes not moving from Violenta. "Fox." He nodded again to the blond, tauntingly, before continuing on. The two girls walked until Black was out of sight.

"Why'd he call you Fox?" Thea burst out.

"No idea," Violenta lied, knowing full well that he'd used it to get a rise out of her. An idea slowly formed in the blonds mind. "I don't even know who he is."

That was all the opening that Thea needed. "His names Sirius Orion Black, as in the House of Black." Thea clarified, blue eyes wide and questioning. Violenta raised an eyebrow in response. Seeming satisfied, Thea continued. "He's in Gryffindor, bestfriends with the Head Boy, actually..." Violenta mentally noted to find out who the Head boy was. Could it have been the messy-haired boy from before?

Thea grinned cheekily, suddenly. "He's also single."

Violenta almost spluttered at the change in tone. Almost. Still composed, she raised an imperious eyebrow at the shorter girl by her side.

"What did you want to talk to be about?" The sudden change in subject didn't stop Thea in the slightest, besides her demeanor. She caste her eyes around for a moment, and upon finding no one could hear her, spoke;

"It's probably not my place to say this, in fact, I'm certain it's not. But I feel I should warn you." Thea's voice dropped in volume and she paused for a moment, then started again. "You've heard of the fraction of Dark wizards following Lord Voldemort, no?" Violenta resisited a smile, but nodded anyway. "Good, then I won't need to explain too much. Anyway, with the Slytherins reputation for siding with the Dark Side, we're collecting a lot of abuse from the other Houses. True as it may be, you need to be careful. They won't care if you're for or against Voldemort, as long as you're a Slytherin." A few truths dawned on Violenta in that moment, as well as the fact that Thea wasn't as oblivious or innocent as she seemed.

"Of course." Violenta didn't doubt the discrimination against a certain House, she'd seen the same sort of thing over and over again. She decided to give voice to the one queary that might give her trouble. "What side are you on?"

Thea gave her an almost dreamy smile. "Neither. I can't take sides. If I am for the Dark Lord, I go against all of the other Houses and most of my other friends. If I am against Him, I'm against my family and Ani. Everyone knows my stance on this."

Violenta couldn't help but wonder at Thea's determination and resolve. And there was the mysterious Ani again.

"Who's Ani? I've heard you talk about him before." Thea grinned as the pair reached the Charms Classroom.

"Aeneas Hepburn. He's Ambrose Hepburns' older brother." Violenta vagually remembered Ambrose Hepburn's name from the list of Seventh Year Slytherin boys, but failed to see its signifigance. "He's my fiance." Thea added, peeking at the blond girl as the pair entered the empty classroom.

"Was it a betrothal?" Violenta asked, following Thea to a seat at the back of the classroom.

She wasn't unfamiliar with betrothals, but had never seen the appeal of having her free will taken away by marriage. She supposed that for some people, people who actually cared for Blood purity, they would be important. Violenta just didn't like the idea of marriage in general. Thea giggled girlishly.

"No. My parents ended my betrothal when I met Ani. He was in love with me from the moment I met him, it just took me a while to fully recipricrate." Violenta resisted rolling her eyes, as that would probably seem rude. She didn't believe in love, not the kind of love that Thea was talking about. Her parents had never truely loved one another, and their constant fights over their only daughter had blown any hopes of love from a young age. Love was something that Violenta had resisted her entire life. That boy in grade school who'd proposed with a ring he'd temporalily stolen from his mother, was just a smitten fool. The first kiss she'd had at fourteen from the a different country was amusing, nothing else. The first time she'd physically loved someone was a distraction from the thought of her parents, nothing more and no feelings involved. What she didn't believe in was the kind of love Thea spoke of. It was unconditional, beautiful and innocent, everything the world was not.

But she wasn't going to be the one to burst Thea's bubble.

"But he's...well... not exactly what you would call good." Violenta smiled when Thea started to speak again. Reading between the lines, she came to a startling conclusion.

"He's a Death Eater?" Luckily her voice was low, because the other students were starting to trickle in for class. Thea looked scandalised at the pronouncment. "That's why you're not taking sides?" Because, deep down, Violenta felt that Thea was a good person, someone who would have been in the order, if not for her social pains. Love truely was blind.

Interupting Thea's answer, was the teacher. Filius was someone you under esitmated, then lived to regret it. He strode into the classroom, greeting everybody with a grin.

"Hello class. And welcome back to the school year." His eyes flew over the class, and finally came to rest upon Violenta and Thea. His eyes widend in recognision, and only a firm but small shake of the blond girls head stopped him from calling it out.

Damn. Only Dumbledore would forget to tell the rest of the order that she was in classes with everyone else.

Understanding, Flitwick went up to the front of the class room. "This is the NEWT Charms class. I need you to all understand this, because then you're more likely to forgive me later on when you're all buckled down under homework." He glanced down at his desk. "Before we begin, I'll call with role. Sirius Black?"

The name jerked Violenta's head over to where Black was sitting on the other side of the classroom. It just figured that they shared classes as well. Darn it. Black gave a lazy 'here', and Flitwick went down the list. The class was a mixed bag, with around twenty students from all the Houses. Half way down the list, Flitwick paused for a moment.

"Violenta... Nyda?" It was a question more than anything else. Of course, Flitwick only knew her as Layfarette. Darn it!

"Here, sir." She replied cooly, hoping that he understood.

He did, and continued on with the lesson.


Sirius was out of energy by the time he made it to his second class, he had no idea how he was going to make it to his last. Somehow, by a large amount of luck, and with the help of Remus' notes, he managed to survive. Although barely.

The exhausting thing about it wasn't actually the work, which was hard enough, it being NEWT and all. It was the atmosphere. The students, as oblivious as they usually were to this sort of thing, weren't in the dark about the up coming war. Infact, most of the upper years had chosen a side already.

It wasn't that much of a shock, it had been coming for a while. But this year was the first it had been on the forefront of everyones mind. There was no signal or sign to show that the war wasn't just a rumour, or a faulsity, the Ministry was still mostly in denile about the entire thing. And yet, the students of Hogwarts, sheltered and inclosed in a fortress as they were, knew.

Rumours were speading like wildfire, and nothing anybody did helped in anyway.

It wasn't until Sirius was sitting in the commonroom just after school, that he finally found out what had happend to James.

"Have you seen him Moony?" Remus just raised an eyebrow from his book slowly, then glanced down again.

"Not since Transfiguration. It's the only class we share."

Sirius sighed in frustration.

"I don't understand." Peter announced, slumping down beside the two on a couch.

"What don't you understand?" Remus asked. The werewolf was the only one Peter trusted enough to answer his questions; both James and Sirius had a record of leading him off in the wrong direction.

Peter was interupted from answering, by James flouncing across the room to the threesome. There was no smile on his face.

"What happend Prongs?" Sirius asked glumly, knowing he'd be in for a 'night of comforting Prongs about Evans'.

"Lily refused to talk to me."

"What did you do this time?" Remus asked, eyes not straying from his page. James flicked his fringe before answering, brown eyes dull and tired.

"Well... It was all going fine. Lily and I were talking, she was explaining what she expected of me. It was perfectly fine. Then she got all angry and stalked off." James pouted sullenly, and stole Moony's book, glanced at the cover and threw it back at him.

"I feel like we're missing a large part of this story, James. Anything else you'd care to mention?" Like he'd known he would, James bit his lip indecisively.

"Well... I may have asked her out..." He didn't even get to finish before groans were ringing across the couch from the three other boys.

"James, I've never had a girlfriend, and even I can tell that was stupid." Peter pointed out, blushing when James glared.

"Yeah, man. How can you expect her to like you if you keep asking her out?" Sirius interupted James glaring.

James seemed perplexed by this, and stared at him for a moment. "You mean I should... not ask her out? And then she'll like me?"

"Yep. I mean, I'd like you a Hell lot more if you didn't ask me out all the time, so I'm sure Evans will appreciate it as well." Sirius joked, trying to ease the tension. James considered it for a moment, then nodded.

"Sounds like a plan... Now here comes the real question." James stated, grinning eagerly at his friend across the couch. "Who is Padfoot going after this year?"

Sirius choked on air, and stared at his friend. "Unlike some people, I actually have to study to pass subjects. That's why I quit Quittage." Sirius, Beater extrodanaire, had ditched the team for his last year, must to James dismay. "If I'm quitting Quittage to study, then I'm going all out." He grinned lazily at Remus' expression.

"Finely! He see's the light..." Remus murmered in an unbelieving tone. A glance at Wormtail and Prongs' prooved that they were equally disbeliving.

"Nope. So not true." Prongs said finally.

"Agreed." Peter answered, still staring intently at Sirius.

"No guys. I'm Sirius-"

He was interupted by a chorus of "We know"'s.

"- I am banning myself from girls this year. They are usless, and distracting." Sirius announced to the bemusment of the three boys watching.

"Yeah, like Marlene was last year-" This time James was interupted by Remus.

"Are you in love Padfoot?"

Had any other the other guys said that, it would have sounded mocking. But Remus said it like a fact, like it was logical. Which it wasn't. Not at all.

"Nope. You know me. Bachelor till the end." He grinned smuggly, seeing a way to once again remove them from the topic of his love life. "But we have a much more important thing to think about... Getting Petter a Girlfriend!"


The day had gone reasonably well, Violenta decided.

Information wise, it had been lacking, but that was to be expected on the first day of a mission. And her cover hadn't been blown yet, that was always a plus.

Well, almost.

Black was presenting a problem, mostly because he was so annoyingly curious, decided Violenta as she walked down toward the Slytherin Commonrooms, Thea chattering mindlessly by her side. And he was hiding something. Something big by the looks of it. Was it simply an illicit affair, or something else? And he knew her name. Well, fake name, but it would be enough, if he really tried, to unearth her. Fox was, in so many ways, a different version of Violenta. The more carefree, happy, but impulsive part of her personality. And that was made her so good at what she did. You had to be impulsive, be ready to think on your feet, when you did what she did. The careful, planning part of her was usful, but less so in the settings she worked in. But it was good for understanding things better, at looking at things objectively rather than jumping to conclusions. The two main parts if her personality were perfectly merged to make her the person of contradictions she was; excitable and solomn, proper and underhanded, calm and impulsive.

And all of this anysing of her personailty did nothing to solve the problem that was Black. She'd have to bring it up with Dumbledore later on; as annoyingly superiour her relative could be sometimes, he did have occasional insights. Maybe he'd have an idea.


Oh God, that chapter was annoying. I'm sorry it's so awful! It's been bugging me for a while, so I've decided to lower my standards for a moment, and let this... thing... pass.

I was definately a filler, but I need to be able to set a basis for the next few chapters, and this was the best place to start. Sorry

In case your wondering, the whole Peter-Getting-A-Girlfriend thing actually does have a purpose, but it probably won't come into play for a little while yet.

Any way, hope you enjoyed. Next chapter should be better, and sooner :)

India xxoo