Disclaimer: I own nothing familiar from the HP Universe. All dates used in this story are taken from the timelines of HPLexicon.
Chapter Nine
Artemisia had everything unpacked and was downstairs catching up on the homework from the week she missed with Lily, when Professor McGongall came into the common room. "Miss Wyndham," She greeted the blonde and for a moment Artemisia's mind went blank before she realised the professor was speaking to her.
"Hello, Professor," She smiled up at the woman, who had always seemed to intimidate her.
"Here is your grade book back." McGongall pulled out an unfamiliar black book. Artemisia held back a frown. Her grade book was blue with a bronze eagle on the front cover. "Your scores are rather impressive."
"Thank you." She took the strange book and noticed the cover had a gold cat on it with the word Hexwood in matching gold lettering. She flipped it open and was relieved to see the same scores that had always been in her book. The only explanation would be that Dumbledore thought to make a copy of her book for the trip.
"Could I see?" Lily asked with a smile. Shawny was sitting at the table at well. It was in fact a bit like it would have been on a normal evening in Ravenclaw, only then she would have been with Laelia and Sadie. She was just hoping that Sunny didn't turn out like her roommate, Isabella.
"Sure." She handed the book over. Lily flipped through it, her eyes widening.
"Wow." She didn't have time to say anything else because Sunny took that moment to show her how much she was like Isabella.
"Well, well, well." She sneered at the blonde. Artemisia tried to figure out what she could have possible done in such a short amount of time that she had been at school that would get her to act like this. "Looks like we've got a brain in our midst." She continued to sneer. "Or were you just a little friendly with your professors?"
Lily let out a gasp, while Shawny looked about to come out of her seat, but Artemisia simply sat still. Her mind went to a quote by the muggle, George Bernard Shaw, 'Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.' She simply watched the bleached blonde with an eyebrow raised and a look that practically shouted, 'is that the best you can come up with?' She leaned back into her chair and folded her arm's across her chest and gave a smile as sweet as oleander and ten times as deadly. It was a look that was not from her years in Ravenclaw but from all the hell that she had been put through during the first two weeks of her summer. It was a baited look, and she could see it the moment the realisation came to Sunny that she wasn't going to lower herself to the other girl's level.
Sunny stormed away from the table to find comfort with a few girls who looked to be in their sixth year. Lily and Shawny looked at their new friend for a moment then looked towards Sunny before succumbing to laughter. Artemisia looked at them in question before Shawn calmed down enough to explain it to her.
"She's jealous of you." She chuckled. "Sirius has his eye on you because you're someone new, a challenge, if you will. Then she finds out you are a great student. So, she tries to get you to show an ugly side and you just sit there like she's some form of entertainment. She'll never live this down."
"I'm not perfect but I wasn't going to stoop so low, just because of a single insult."
"This isn't good. She'll do everything she can to make you look bad." Lily shook her head in worry."
"Great and I thought I was getting away from Isabella." She muttered
"Who's Isabella?" Lily asked as she tried to explain a problem on Shawny's charms' assignment to the other girl.
"She was one of my roommates at Hexwood." Artemisia replied before busying herself with her own homework.
Artemisia smiled as she remembered all the problems that Isabella had caused her when she had first started to date Roger. Isabella had publicly claimed or at least as publicly as the middle of the common room got that she believed Artemisia had obtained Roger's favour with some sort of means other than her looks and personality. Sadie and Laelia claimed that it was due to the fact that Isabella had been trying since fourth year to capture the quidditch captain's eye. Unfortunately, said captian was, according to the other girls, more interested in capturing her eye, ever since the train ride home for the winter holidays of their fourth year, when the two had first talked to one another. It wasn't until the end of fifth year that Artemisia had given what her roommates were saying any thought. Roger had come into the library as she was finishing some last minute study for her OWLs. She had invited him to study with her. After a summer of exchanging letters, Artemisia had returned for her sixth year as his girlfriend. It had gone smoothly until Fleur Delacour had decided that Roger should be her escort for the Yule Ball. She shook her head and tried to bring herself forwards to the present or would it be backwards to the past.
She smiled amused at herself and pulled out her Transfiguration book. She still wasn't sure how she had managed to obtain that OWL. Transfiguration had never been one of her strong suits. Lily finished her homework and left to do her Head Girl duties. After a few minutes of listening to Shawny joke about what would be found at the school, she left Artemisia to find her boyfriend, a Hufflepuff.
Artemisia pushed herself into study mode and was deeply concentrating on how to apply a theorem to one part of the homework before her, when she heard the sound of someone pulling out a chair. She didn't think anything of it, but after a few more minutes of telling herself that what she had written couldn't possibly be right, she started to feel eyes boring down on her.
She looked up to find herself staring into a pair of dark eyes that seemed to be able to see whatever was going on in her mind. "Oh, hello, Sirius." She smiled as she played with the feather on her quill.
"So, you remember who I am." He grinned at her.
She liked him, but she also knew that it would never work. From what she had seen and heard he was outgoing and popular. She had been able to keep up with Roger. Dating Sirius would be quick and painful when it was over. It would be like dating one of the Weasley twins but without the knowledge that when it was over, they'd still be there as a friend. "I haven't met all that many people, so it's still early for me to be getting you confused with someone else." His smile slipped. When he doesn't say anything, Artemisia avoided his eyes by looking down at what she had written. She frowned. 'No, that can't be the right answer.' She thought to herself. She shook her head at the paper and sat back resignedly.
"Having some problems?" His words surprised her. She didn't think he'd still be there.
"Just one. That can't be the right answer." He got up from his chair and moved next to her, leaning over her shoulder as he read what she had written. As he stood there, she could feel the warmth radiating from him and smell the rich scent of his cologne. She didn't know the name of the scent but she thought that she recognised it from somewhere. Then she remembered where she had smelled the exact same scent. It was at the Black Manor. She could remember the scent teasing her senses when he had carried her to a bed after she drank the sleeping draft from Mrs. Weasley. It had been stronger in his room, when she had told him about all that she had been through. The scent carried with it the memory of those two kisses that they had shared. Artemisia shifted in her chair as he chuckled.
"That's the correct answer." He announced as he drew away from her. For some reason she missed the warmth that came from him.
'That's ridiculous,' she told herself, then pulled herself away from such thoughts. "Are you serious?"
"Every day of my life." He replied with a playful grin.
Artemisia tilted her head as the pun hit her and she laughed lightly. "Is that really the answer? I thought it would be something else."
"It's really the answer. We can ask James if you want. He's top of our year in Transfiguration."
Artemisia shook her head and smiled. "No, I trust you." His smile brightened as he scooted his chair next to hers. She finished off her Transfiguration homework and put the book away. She pulled out another book. This one had nothing to do with school. The book was about the theory of the veil between life and death. She had founded it in her family's library as she had packed to run away.
Sirius tilted the book and read the title. "This book is a restricted section book. I've seen it there."
She looked up at him. "Why would you have been in the restricted section?"
"The question is how you have this book."
"I got it from my family's library."
"A strange choice in reading material."
"Not really." She replied. "I want to work for the Department of Mysteries when I graduate."
"Impressive." Her grinned at her. "But that book is just a bunch of crackpot theories. The whole book is thought to be a joke."
"Well as George Bernard Shaw once wrote, 'When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth."
"A pureblood from one of the oldest, richest, and truest houses as my mother would say that quotes a muggle." Sirius smiled widely at her. "She'd be horrified."
"My father certainly is." She told him with a large smile. "Do you get the Cause speeches?" She blurted out, and then blushed. That was her name for the speeches that her father constantly gave her about how she should act and who she should befriend.
He chuckled. "I never thought of them like that, but yeah. My mother is always comparing me to my younger brother."
"My father compares me to my brother." She announced without a thought as she thought of Teddy. She had never met anyone that seemed to understand her life before. "He's attending Durmstrang." She added to avoid suspicion. She would have to be more careful in the future that she didn't blurt things out.
"My mother use to tell me that I shouldn't be friends with James and them." He smiled. "Does your father get upset if you befriend muggle borns?"
Her mind went instantly to Laelia. Her best friend's life and that of her family had been threatened because she was her friend. Artemisia suddenly knew exactly how her father would react if he found out how close the two girls were and used it as the real reason she had transferred to Hogwarts. "You remember what I said was the reason I transferred?"
Sirius nodded as a frown began to form at the thought that she had lied to him and his friends. He wasn't sure if he would be able to trust her again if she lied to them about something so trivial. After all, why else would she bringing it up.
"It wasn't really why I transferred. My father made me transfer when he found out that my best friend was muggle-born."
Sirius smiled feeling relieved. "I'm glad that you had the courage to befriend her and stand up to your father. Otherwise, I would have never met you." She smiled back at him. He had no idea just how true his words were.
A few days later, Artemisia found herself in her first class shared with Slytherins. She had seen the rivalry between the houses but she was still unprepared for experiencing it first hand. As a member of Ravenclaw, there was really no rivalry. The students of Gryffindor and Slytherin had always believed that there was a rivalry between her house and Hufflepuff, but Ravenclaw students were told from day one that they were at Hogwarts to learn and that nothing should take away from that. They were to look on with superior amusement when a student from another house couldn't answer a question and to have the right answer waiting.
It was with these thoughts that Artemisia entered the potion's classroom. This was Snape's domain in her mind and the sight of a rather rotund man in front of the class greeting people cheerfully was startling.
Just as she was about to sit down a Slytherin student hurried past, knocking her book, parchment, and quill to the floor. "You should be more careful with your supplies." He sneered.
'Oh, this isn't possible,' she thought to her self as she stared after the boy.
"Hey, Snivellus, watch what you are doing." James glared at him as Remus helped her pick up her things.
"Don't mind Snape." Sirius shook his head as he handed Artemisia her bottle of ink that had rolled under his and James's table.
"That's okay." She stood up and met that surprised looks of the three boys. Peter didn't take potions. She turned and smiled at her future potions master. "I'm sure you didn't mean to knock all this over." She gestured at the supplies on her desk. He hurried away to his table, muttering under his breath. The Gryffindors with Artemisia snickered at the boy, even Lily. This surprised Artemisia because it seemed a little cruel. The only part of the Gryffindor crowd that she was uncomfortable with was their exuberance. As a Ravenclaw, she was to be sedate and respectful. This change unnerved her. It unnerved her even more as she was starting to settle into it.
"How did you know to do that?" James asked with a grin.
"Wilde."
"What?" He asked confused.
"Oscar Wilde, he was a muggle writer."
"Ah, another quote." Sirius grinned. "What's this one?"
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
Soon the class started and she found herself working on a potion wit Remus. He explained that he wasn't always able to attend class. Her mind instantly went to the realisation that it was because he was a werewolf but Artemisia accepted his lie about one of his family members being sick. At the end of class, Artemisia waved her housemates on and finished packing up her supplies. This put her into the intimidating situration of a Gryffindor alone with a half dozen Slytherins. She was about to leave when she heard her name.
"What makes you so different?" Snape frowned as he came to stand next to her and before Artemisia could stop herself, she found herself thinking that he had was almost cute.
"Diffferent? How?" She questioned, tilting her head to look up at him.
"You didn't let those three protect you from the big bad Slytherin. Only the mudblood Evans does that."
Artemisia reacted without a thought, the same way that she had with Teddy. Her hand left an imprint on his cheek. "You have no right to call her that, to call anyone that. It's disgraceful and vulgar. For a bunch of wizards who like to think they are superior to everyone who doesn't share their bloodlines, you leave a lot to be desired." She turned and left him gapping after her.
She entered the hall and turned towards the dungeons' staircase before she saw that the three boys had waited for her. James and Remus broke into applause as Sirius put an arm around her shoulders. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you?"
"I suppose so." She smiled and walked with the three of them towards transfiguration.
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