I really should have learned by now, after thirteen years of being by Harry Potter's side, that everything goes wrong just when you feel like you could rule the world.
I think there's a Muggle saying out there about pride coming before a fall, but in my case the happiness produced by an amazing Quidditch win and a successful Patronus was stamped out by my possibly criminally insane, mass-murderer Azkaban escapee of a father once again breaking into my school.
I was getting a bit fed up.
This time, thankfully, he hadn't gotten to the dorms this time, just to the Fat Lady, who refused him entrance and frustrated him almost to the point of slashing her. He didn't, but the fact that he had a knife at all made everyone uneasy.
Security had been raised again, with security trolls now roaming the hallways and every single portrait – all 130 of them, I heard Lupin tell McGonagall – to keep on the lookout for a man matching the description of Sirius Black.
Students had also, once again, been relocated to the Great Hall as a safety precaution. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and I had set up our sleeping bags in a corner of the massive room; this created quite a tense situation because, on top of everything else, Ron and Hermione still refused to talk to each other.
I was just settled in my sleeping bag, stomach down and propped on my elbows, when Dumbledore walked in, followed closely by McGonagall and Percy, who was Head Boy.
"This can't be a coincidence, Headmaster," I hear Percy say. "She's got to have something to do with this…twice in one year…"
I freeze and be sure to keep my eyes on a spot on the floor in front of me.
"Now, Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore returns in a placating tone, "let's not jump to conclusions. Miss Black might not be…"
Yeah, they're definitely talking about me. I shake my head and tune out the rest of a conversation I wasn't supposed to hear in the first place.
It's just Percy, a small voice argues as I flip over onto my back, Percy the Prat, Humongous Bighead, King Stick-In-The-Mud, Scholar Weasley, Percy the Prefect…why does it matter what he thinks?
I shake my head again, harder this time, and slide down into my sleeping bag as Dumbledore leaves, extinguishing the torches that lit the hall as he did so.
"'Rissa," Hermione murmurs after a few moments of lying there in the dark, "would you please tell Ronald that he-"
"Tell him yourself," I snap viciously, ducking into my sleeping bag but not before I could glimpse the wounded expression on her face.
I didn't care, not tonight.
I didn't care about some stupid little feud that shouldn't have continued this far. I didn't care that I was probably going to be hounded for an explanation, nor was I worried about the rumors that would once again surface.
Because there was no doubt that both of those things would happen - Scabbers and Sirius Black were both touchy topics for my little circle of friends. And anytime anyone mentioned my father, rumors spread like wildfire.
But right now I could care less, because currently I was lying on the cold ground instead on my nice warm bed in the dorm, there was an almost palpable feeling of tension in the castle, and I was sick and tired of everything surrounding the elder Black.
I was bloody pissed at my father, too. Why did he have to break in when I was feeling the happiest I'd been since September? I was happy, truly happy, and then life had to throw a huge, flashing sign in my face that screamed 'Look! You aren't normal! Your father is a mass-murderer!'
Figures, right?
And I wonder if he even knew the effect his little "visits" had on me - I wonder if he realized the whispers that would follow me around tomorrow. I wonder if he knew about the ankle cuff and me being under the Ministry's microscope since October.
Either he truly didn't know, or he did know and didn't care; the former would make him a good father, and the latter, a good Death Eater.
At any rate, I was mad.
I sigh and open my eyes back up, sleep apparently nowhere to be found. And I couldn't lie here in the dark all night, because I would probably drown in my own thoughts.
That left me with one option: get up.
I sigh and sit up, quietly squirming out of the sleeping bag. I quickly grab my wand and cast a Silencing Charm on my shoes before standing up and beginning to carefully make my way towards the doors.
"Ori?" Harry looks up as I pass him, voice husky with sleep. "W're y'goin'?"
I pause for a moment before bending down to brush my fingers through his hair. "Don't worry about it, I'll be fine. Go back to sleep."
He just blinks at me once and then twice before humming something unintelligible and burrowing back into his sleeping bag. I crouch there for a moment, waiting for his breathing to even out, before getting up and continuing through the crowds until I get to the doors.
I slip through unnoticed, my mind so occupied on what I was trying to do that the shock of Harry letting me go do something secretive without protest barely registered.
I slip from shadow to shadow until I can't hear the murmur of the Great Hall anymore, then wriggling into a tiny alcove I had found a few weeks earlier, crouching behind a statue whose plaque read Barnaby the Butterfingered.
I idly wonder what the poor sod had to drop in order to get that title before shoving that stray line of thought aside and grabbing something out of my back pocket and laying it on the ground in front of me, tapping it with my wand. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
The Marauder's Map unfolds with it's usual ripple effect, and I immediately begin looking for a room that suited what I needed to do tonight – big, nothing valuable that couldn't afford to be blown up…
My eyes find the seventh floor, the top floor, where a lot of people simply didn't go because we were all lazy bums who couldn't Apparate.
I figure it's a good a place to start as any, and I quickly erase the map before slipping it back into my pocket. I crawl out from behind the statue, setting a brisk pace towards the nearest staircase, intent on making a quick detour to Gryffindor Tower to grab a few things.
I pause three quarters of the way up a staircase, hidden a few feet from the portrait of the Fat Lady. She didn't look too bad, which was a relief.
I take a deep breath and steel myself before walking confidently into the light.
"Who's there?" the portrait gasps. "Oh, why are you here?"
I jut my lip out and widen my eyes. "Oh, sorry. You see, I have a small problem, madam. I left something in my dorm, is there any chance I could go get it?"
She narrows her eyes at me suspiciously. "What did you leave?"
I shuffle my feet nervously and bite my lip. "It's - I - um, it's a stuffed dog. My aunt gave it to me when I was a baby, and she said it belong to her mum...you see, with everything that's been happening, it helps me think of her...I miss them…" I quiver my lip a little and note, with satisfaction, that her features were softening. "So can I get it? Please? I'll be quick, promise!"
She nods, "Don't dally, dear," she orders before swinging open and allowing me entrance. I nod and climb through as if I was in a rush.
I grin once I'm safely in the Common Room. The sob story I fed her wasn't entirely a lie - I did have a worn little black stuffed dog in my trunk, but my aunt did not give it to me, of course, (Petunia would've rather died), I did not miss that horse-faced woman at all, and it wasn't what I was going up to get.
Instead, once I reach the third year girl's dorm, I dig through my trunk before pull out four items: a worn book, a roll of parchment, a lump of charcoal a little bigger than the Snitch, and a tiny little knife that came from my Potions kit.
I quickly shove all of these things into a small bag before leaving the dorm again and turning right to enter the boys' dorm, paying no heed to the generally messy and putrid state of the room as I whisk the Invisibility Cloak off Harry's bed.
I head down to the Common Room again, climbing out of the portrait hole and giving the Fat Lady a sheepish wave before melting back into the shadows again; seamlessly, this time, because of the Cloak thrown over my shoulders.
I make it up to the seventh floor in record time, anticipation making my heart flutter.
I need a place to practice my Animagus transformation, I begin to chant in my head as I make my way through the hallways, I need a place to practice my Animagus transformation...I need a place to practice my Animagus transformation…
I turn a corner and stop in my tracks. Just ahead of me, on a wall that I could have sworn was blank a few minutes ago, was an ornately carved wooden door.
I approach it with caution, because with Hogwarts being magical (almost sentient sometimes), you never knew what was going to be behind every single door.
It was like a messed-up Muggle game show.
I nudge the door open cautiously, silently amazed that it doesn't even creak like all the other doors do.
I step inside and let the door close behind me, getting a good look at the room itself.
As far as I could see, it was perfect: a big, open space about the size of two classrooms, with big, cathedral-style windows letting in loads of moonlight, casting an eerily silver glow over the floor. There was no furniture in the room, which was good in case something went wrong.
Not that anything would go wrong. I hoped.
I shrug off the cloak and set it, along with the bag containing the things from my trunk on ground near the door. I take out the piece of charcoal and kneel down, pressing the charcoal to the stone and beginning to draw.
Fifteen minutes later, my arms are streaked black up to my elbows, and there's fine particles of charcoal everywhere, but I've successfully managed to draw out the symbol I needed for the Animagus incantation.
The symbol was a circle that was ten feet in diameter, inside of which was a four-pointed star. At each point of the star, there was a small symbol: at the north point, there was a bird's footprint, to symbolize animals of the air; at the west, a paw print, to symbolize earth animals; at the south, a small silhouette of a dolphin, to symbolize sea creatures; and at the east, a simple spiral, to show that everything was interconnected.
Inside the center of the star was another circle, this one about two feet in diameter, and this was where I was currently standing, with a copy of From Man to Beast and Back Again: The Complete Animagus Transformation in my hand.
I shut the book after making sure I had everything correct, levitating back over to my bag and then tossing my wand after it. I adjust my stance so that I'm facing north before pulling the scroll I had collected earlier out of my sock and the Potions knife out of my pocket and beginning to read.
"I, Orissa Andromeda Black, seek to merge my body with that of another. May my spirit blend with the animal inside my heart, and my body be better in all of the ways that it can."
I take the knife and use it to prick the palm of my right hand, letting one drop of blood fall to the north, one to the south, one to the east, and one to the west, watching as the blood begins to bubble and sizzle on the ground.
I pause as there's a blast of air and the sigil suddenly glows a golden color before moving onto the second part of the writing – the incantation I've been working on for months.
"Ego canis niger tamquam fur in nocte ferro coloris oculos et cor leonis," I recite, my voice echoing slightly in the empty room. "Sarcinas dilecta est, sed quod omnes odientes me tradet. Astabo sarcinas usque ad finem fortiter, et me animam meam."
I pause again as the air around see starts humming and gains a distorted look, kind of like a heat wave.
"May the animal inside me enrich my spirit, mind, magic, and body in all ways possible," I continue, before taking a deep breath for the final line. "I, Orissa Andromeda Black, will my magic to reach out to the magic that surrounds me, both inside and out, and assist me in this transformation. So mote it be!"
As soon as the last word falls from my lips, the circle's golden glow seems to explode, growing to a blinding level; I feel like I'm on fire (everything burns) and I briefly catch a whiff of burning charcoal, fire, and copper before a sharp pain shoots through my body and everything goes black.
Dun-dun-duhhhh!
Please tell me what you thought. The Latin was translated using Google Translate, so if it's not right, don't blame me. If anyone wants the English, just ask.
