'Tansy, could you stay behind please?'
Tansy looked up in surprise; it was the end of their Friday Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson and this was the first time that Professor Lupin had called her anything other than 'Miss Laverstock'. She bit her lip nervously and hugged her books to her chest, waiting until everyone had left the classroom. Professor Lupin finished packing away the Hinkypunk they'd been studying, before he turned to her. His young face was aged beyond its years and his eyes were sad; the monthly transformations had obviously taken their toll on his body. Tansy blushed and looked and looked at the floor, embarrassed to be caught staring at him.
'Well, first of all, I would like to apologise, Tansy.' Tansy dropped one of her books and winced as it landed on her toe. She looked up at Professor Lupin in some disbelief. 'I'm afraid that I have been treating you unfairly and I am sorry; you look so much like your uncle and the memories were... are... rather painful, not that it excuses my behaviour.' Tansy shrank back slightly as a pained expression crossed Lupin's face and scuffed her foot awkwardly across the floor, trying to work up the courage to speak to him. She felt her face growing hot and hurriedly stooped to pick up the fallen book, hoping to hide this from the Professor.
'It's okay, Tansy,' Professor Lupin had seen her discomfort and he hastened to reassure her. There were a few seconds of awkward silence before Professor Lupin changed the subject.
'And I also wanted to thank you Tansy; I overheard you talking to your friend in the library last Sunday, and I am extremely grateful for how you stood up for me; I won't deny that I am indeed a werewolf but I can, at least, assure you that I take a potion which allows me to keep my own mind during my transformations so that I am not a threat to you students.' He sighed, looking older than ever and extended a hand to Tansy.
'I'm afraid that I misjudged you Tansy, and I am extremely sorry.' He shook her hand and turned towards his office. As he reached the door he looked back over his shoulder. 'Ah, Harry informed me yesterday that you wish to learn how to fight Dementors?' Tansy nodded, her heart pounding with anticipation. 'Well I don't pretend to be an expert by any means, but I promise to try and help the two of you, although it will have to wait until next term I'm afraid.'
'Tansy, Tansy!' Tansy whipped round to see Harry hurrying towards her; he looked flushed and excited and she could see the silvery cloth of the invisibility cloak bundled under his arm. 'Look at this,' he pulled out a crumpled piece of parchment from his bag and then removed his wand from his sleeve. After a quick glance around to ensure that nobody was nearby, he tapped the parchment.
'I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.' Tansy's blue eyes widened as green ink began to spread across the parchment.
'The Marauder's Map?' She asked, puzzled. 'It's a map of Hogwarts, oh…' She'd seen the moving dots, each representing one of the castle's occupants. Magic never ceased to amaze her.
'Fred and George gave it to me,' Harry began excitedly. 'See, it shows loads of secret passages out of the castle. They said that we could use this one to get to Hogsmeade. So I went up to Gryffindor tower and grabbed the invisibility cloak. I've been all over the castle looking for you...'
'We can't just decide to go to Hogsmeade, Harry. We're not allowed…' She trailed off, torn between excitement and apprehension. After a few seconds, excitement won over and she nodded slowly; it would be great to see the village.
'Dissendium!'
Harry tapped the hump of an extremely ugly statue of a one-eyed witch. It opened to reveal a narrow hole and Tansy was reminded strongly of the trapdoor in her first year; jump first and ask questions later. Harry immediately dived for the opening but Tansy hesitated before closing her eyes and sliding feet first through the hole. She didn't want to copy Harry's head first decent; she could break her neck. She slid, for what felt to her like a considerable way, down a cold stone slide, and landed on top of Harry.
'Ow!' He protested as he got to his feet, brushing damp earth off his robes.
Tansy grimaced at his stupidity for not moving out of the way but didn't speak; she was trying to swallow down the familiar gnawing sense of claustrophobia. She knew that she should be used to being underground by now, after all, she'd spent most of the last summer trapped in the Ministry of Magic but it was still hard to push down the fear. Somehow she always found it harder to repress the horrible memories when she was underground.
'You okay?' She nodded at Harry's question and suddenly found herself smiling; in the small light from his wand tip, her shadow looked huge and distorted. Telling herself firmly to get a grip, she pulled her own wand out of her sleeve and lit it, before hurrying up the tunnel in Harry wake.
After what felt to Tansy like several hours, they finally reached an almost never-ending staircase. Panting, she followed Harry up the stone steps, using her hands to help her when the going got tough. Just as she felt as if her legs were about to give up, Harry suddenly staggered backwards, swearing loudly.
'What's happened? Are you okay?' She asked, panicking slightly as he his wand clattered to the floor. She felt it roll up against the toe of her shoe and was glad that it hadn't ended up at the bottom of the staircase because she didn't think she could've managed them for a second time. She stooped to pick it up before handing it back to him.
'Yeah fine, just fine,' Harry moaned, after another string of choice swear words. 'I just cracked my head on this wooden thing, ah, blimey it hurts… anyway, I think we've arrived.'
Tansy felt a thrill of anticipation as he pushed open the trapdoor and climbed through. He extended a hand to pull her through and together they slid the trapdoor back into its place, where it blended perfectly with the dusty floor. They had surfaced in a dusty cellar filled with enormous crates of sweets. Tansy saw many of her favourite things poking out of the dusty packaging and felt her mouth starting to water.
'C'mon; this way,' Harry pulled Tansy up a narrow flight of stairs and they ducked out from behind the counter at Honeydukes. It was lucky that the shop was so crowded with students that nobody looked twice at the two of them although Tansy found the close proximity of so many bodies slightly uncomfortable. Her old fear of crowds and small spaces grumbled disconsolately and she felt herself paling.
'Over there…' Harry pointed through the crowd of students and, standing on tiptoe, Tansy could just make out the figures of Hermione and Ron, standing under a sign labelled Unusual Tastes. She followed close behind Harry who was jostling and shoving his way through the crush of bodies and was thankful when they finally made it to the other side of the shop where the crowd was slightly less dense.
'Oh my goodness!' Hermione squealed, and threw herself around Tansy, who staggered backwards and knocked over a stand of Cockroach Cluster. After righting both herself and the stand, Tansy turned back to her friends, who were having a heated discussion about the Marauders Map.
'But Sirius Black could be using one of the passages to get into the castle.' Hermione protested vehemently.
Tansy shivered; not at her best friend's ominous words, but because she had spotted a picture of her uncle taped to the front door of the shop. There was something horribly freaky about the man's unkempt hair and gaunt face; it was almost as if she was looking at a skeleton. Ron had spotted the notice too and took no time in pointing it out to Hermione, who still looked worried.
'But what if Sirius Black turns up now? He could kill Harry…' Hermione trailed off as she spotted the expression on Tansy's face. 'Um, Tansy, look there's a new type of sweet that I think you'd really like.' She said, in an overly bright voice. Tansy grasped at the opportunity to change the subject and hurried over to the stand labelled Fruity Flavours where she proceeded to show rather more than the average enthusiasm for the new confectionery.
After the four friends had bought as many sweets as they could carry, they headed out into the wizarding village. Tansy thought that Hogsmeade looked stunning; the little thatched cottages were covered with a thin layer of perfect, white snow and the Christmas decorations were gorgeous and somehow seemed far more natural and less contrived than the ones up at the castle. Down in the street, the snow was grey and slushy after hundreds of students had passed through it but she found a small patch that hadn't been touched and wasted no time in making a clean footprint in its centre.
'Your feet are tiny Tansy,' Ron said, comparing her shoe-print to his own. Tansy shrugged; she was small but she still hadn't quite given up hope of a growth-spurt.
She was quite sad to leave the picturesque street for the inside of the Three Broomsticks, even though she was shivering from cold, having forgotten to bring a cloak. They settled down at a small table near a beautifully decorated Christmas tree. Tansy was amazed to see that its decorations consisted of tiny real-life gingerbread men and women who were dancing among the spiky needles. She was so entranced that she didn't resurface until Ron slammed four foaming tankards of frothy Butterbeer down in the centre of the table.
It was like drinking liquid chocolate or caramel; Tansy couldn't quite put a name to the wonderful taste but the drink seemed to warm her from the roots of her hair to the very tips of her toes. She drank deeply but choked suddenly as she looked up from the bottom of her tankard; Professors McGonagall and Flitwick had entered the pub, along with Hagrid and the Minister for Magic. Tansy didn't even have time to react before Ron and Hermione had forced both her and Harry under the table. She saw four pairs of feet come straight towards them and the chairs at the next table were moved back. The teachers sat down and a pair of sparkly blue high heels approached the table at high speed and began to hand round drinks. Tansy's heart sank; why hadn't they realised that this was the last weekend of term for the teachers too? They could be stuck under the table for hours.
'Mobiliarbus!' Hermione's voice whispered, from somewhere above them. The huge Christmas tree, that Tansy had so admired, rose a few inches off the ground and drifted lazily in front of their table, effectively blocking it from view. It was now hard for Tansy to make out anything through the think branches. The sharp smell of pine filled her nose as the branches settled slightly after Hermione's spell. She began to look round for a means of escape.
'Can't we use the invisibility cloak?' She breathed, but Harry shook his head.
'Their blocking us in; we still couldn't get past without…'
'Shh!' Ron's foot collided painfully with Tansy's head and they ceased their whispered conversation.
Tansy listened with mounting horror as the teachers began a heated discussion about Sirius Black betraying the Potters to their deaths.
'But he didn't manage to disappear, did he? The Ministry of Magic caught up with him the next day!' Madam Rosmerta, the barmaid, seemed to be trying to put a positive spin on the whole situation.
'If only we had,' Fudge said bitterly. It was not we who found him. It was little Peter Pettigrew…' Tansy hugged her knees into her chest and bit down into her robes; she could feel a scream building up inside her and she had no idea how much longer she could hold it in. She focused on keeping her breathing as steady as possible as the teachers continued their intense conversation
'…and Black standing there, laughing, with what was left of Pettigrew in front of him… a heap of blood-stained robes and a few – a few, er fragments.' Tansy felt tears sneaking out of the corners of her eyes and bunched up her robes in her mouth to absorb her scream. This was too much... too much information. She remembered how she had almost fainted when she'd first received the news about Black and realised that she would almost welcome losing consciousness now.
'Is it true that he's mad, Minister?' Madam Rosmerta asked in a hushed voice.
'I wish I could say that he was…' Fudge answered slowly. '…I do believe that his master's defeat unhinged him for a while. The murder of Pettigrew and all those muggles was the action of a cornered man. But I met Black on my last inspection of Azkaban and I was shocked at how normal he seemed; the Dementors didn't seem to be having much of an effect on him…'
'Good gracious, Minister, he isn't trying to re-join You-Know-Who is he?' Tansy, privately, felt as if this was a rhetorical question; from what they'd just heard, it seemed to her as if that was exactly what Sirius Black was intending to do in the long run. She watched through the branches of the Christmas tree as five chairs were pushed back as, one by one, their occupants stood up.
'Harry? Tansy?' Tansy fought to free herself from underneath the table; her heart was pounding and she could feel herself shaking horribly. She saw that Hermione had tear stains on her face and Ron looked very pale. Tansy felt the tremors in her body intensifying as she turned towards Harry. The expression on his face confirmed her worst fears.
'Harry, I'm sorry… I…' She began, tears choking her voice.
'I have nothing to say to you,' he said shortly.
'Harry; that's really out of order mate…' Ron began, but Harry interrupted him, his eyes blazing with hatred.
'My parents are dead because her uncle betrayed them!' He yelled. People at nearby tables turned to look at them and he lowered his voice slightly. 'Traitor…'
'Please Harry,' Hermione's eyes were sparkling with fresh tears, but he ignored her. He pulled on the invisibility cloak and, pushing through the crowd of people by the door who immediately started looking around wildly for the source of the commotion, he left the pub. Tansy felt her knees give way and she collapsed onto the floor, curling herself up into a ball.
'Tansy, Tansy? Harry was really out of order. He'll come round, I promise.' Even Ron sounded close to tears. Tansy grabbed her legs with her hands and buried her face in her knees.
'I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know…' She moaned, over and over again in her head, quite unable to talk verbally.
'You're okay, you're okay… he'll come round…' Hermione answered, wringing her hands, her voice thick with tears. 'B- But let's j- just cross one b- bridge at a time; we n- need to get you b- back into the c- castle.'
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