AN: thank you all for continuing reading I'll be trying to update as much as I can as my summer break has just started. Please review. I appreciate them so much and love to hear your opinions and thoughts. I reply to all my messages so don't be shy!
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--It is warm in the great hall when maxima arrives. It is bustling with students and professors talking loudly and jovially, but maxima is sweating like a sinner in church, profusely. She just manages to get a seat as Dumbledore begins his evening announcements "happy evening it is."
His eyes twinkeled in a way that she would have appreciated it if he hadn't just been yelling at her, Demanding more than her magic would give. Or if she didn't know better than to believe the kind old grandfather facade. Her stomach groaned and her head spun furiously like one of those ice skaters her father, no, John granger, had taken her to see when she was a child. A different child. Nevertheless, she was almost sure she was going to be sick, hurl all over the great hall table. As if her classmates didn't already hate her, even sev had accumulated friends.
Thea offered her some dinner rolls, but she shook her head even the sight of the bread making her queasy. She could feel Lucius gaze heavy on her as balled her hands into fists. Pain was a good distraction, Severus had taught her that. Her nails dug into her skin. Inhale. exhale. repeat. The world steadied.
"Mr filtch would like to remind you, that the forbidden forest and the area around the whomping willow is to be avoided for all those who do not wish to die a most painful death" maxima looked at Remus, realization of the impending full moon dawning on her. She wondered if he had already made plans. If he had wolfsbane. If he needed anything. As if sensing her staring he sent her a lopsided smile and her heart warmed . She would sneak some chocolate to him this week. That was the least she could do.
Dinner proceeded without event, Thea giving biting commentary on the days classes, and Severus speaking excitedly about the new spell work or potions they had learned. She had never met anyone except herself who was so feverent in their excitement for knowledge, it was almost painful to know it would not last.
That night she dreamed of fire. In her dream She is caught in a house filled with smoke but she is searching for someone. She tries to yell to scream but only blood pours from her mouth. She is crawling, nails scratching desperately at floorboards hoping for an exit and crying out for this mysterious other person. I am going to die here she thinks and a beam breaks off falling straight towards her. She jolts up from the dream a name on her lips. Sirius.
Maxima bolts out of bed, her room both to dark and too cold and too far underground. Like hell she thought and dismissed the thought, it would do no good to contemplate morality not after her sins. She shrugs on a jumper, slippers and grabbing per wand she slips out of the dormitory. In her fevered state she doesn't notice the young malfoy heir curiously following her a few measured paces behind.
—
Lucius malfoy isn't sure what brings him to follow her, there was just something about so curious, so different about her. he just couldn't not see where she was going. He had fallen asleep in the common room, a luxury afforded to few but the slytherin prefects new better than to attempt to shepherd a malfoy where he did not choose to be. He was part of the sacred twenty-eight after all.
He followed her quietly gazing at back of her head dark curls falling in a halo around her head. She was ruffled, her green sleep set and black jumper askew but still he couldn't help but be entranced by her.
He had heard stories about her from his father, blood traitors abraxcus had called her family. Lucius hadn't dared to ask what it meant. Still he had been told about the female potter twin who had disappeared in the night and reappeared years later refusing to speak of where she'd been. He had wanted to know the secret, knowledge was power. He just hadn't expected her to be, well, so pretty.
Lucius followed Maxima as she climbed the stairs all the way out of the dungeon to the astronaut tower. How did she, a first year, even know of this place.
Maxima spilled out of the staircase and onto the floor and Lucius hung a few steps back waiting for, well something. The witch hadn't climbed her in the middle of the night for a laugh had she. Perhaps she knew he was there and she was having a laugh at him. He froze, his feet leaden.
And then the beautiful girl started crying. Not softly with grace but violently like a soul shattering. And for the first time, Lucius wondered if he really wanted to know whatever secret she kept.
He wanted to say something but felt frozen in place, besides what would he say? Hello I followed you from the common room, but not in a creepy way, just in a ' please stop crying and also if you could tell me your deepest, darkest secret too, that would be brilliant'. Lucius had half a mind to leave, or throw himself down the stairs, he hadn't quite made up his mind.
But then someone else spoke, someone too sitting in the shadows seeing her cry. Sirius black. Lucius knew all about him, no pride, disobedient, always getting himself into trouble. And then they got here to Hogwarts and the stupid boy got himself sorted into Griffendor, a bloody disgrace.
"hey this tower has a policy of one mental breakdown per evening and I'm afraid I've already filed the quota" black speaks and Lucius waits for her to yell, to tell the stupid Griffendor to bugger off but instead she laughs. The sound is rough, but it is still a laugh and Lucius finds himself furious at her reaction.
He watches her stare at remnants of a howler at blacks feet to which the Griffendor tipped his head "wallaburga sends her regards". He spoke bitterly, no disrespectfully, and if Lucius hadn't been standing there now too long to reveal himself he would have yelled at the boy for the impropriety.
Lucius barely holds his tongue when she blurts "I'm sorry you have to live with that awful witch. I know what it's like to live with people who hate you are" and he wonders who had ever hated her so much that she could empathize with that sad excuse of a wizard. Black looks at her, his denial on his lips but she interrupts "you've had bruises and swirl curse burns healing since we've got here and I know you didn't fall down the stairs to receive such things." Lucius feels a burn of guilt and rubs his own wrist sympathetically. Even black didn't deserve to be at the end of his own mother's wand.
Sirius looks vulnerable now, Lucius might even describe him as weak if his conscience wasn't nagging him in the back of his mind. Tears stained blacks cheeks, "Please don't tell anyone" he begs and Lucius watches as a solemn expression passes her face "You have my word" she says and he knows without a doubt she meant it.
"maxima," black speaks slowly asking the question Lucius too is wondering "how do you know the shape of a illegal curse burn". Lucius stares at Maxima intently, he can see her shaking, out of perhaps nervousness, and he waits for the answer. She stands up clutching the wall. The answer, please the answer, Lucius all but begs "because I've had that same burns on my skin before-" she starts before swaying on her feet.
Lucius sees her eyes roll back and her body drop and moves forward to catch her lest she fall to the stone floor. Her body shakes and a strange magic seems to bounce around the tower. Black stands staring his mouth agape.
" Malfoy" Sirius sneered him glaring to which he replied "black" lacing his words too with the same amount of venom. It was that he despised black not that he cared for the girl. It had nothing to do with the way Maxima had hugged black. Nothing at all.
He didn't not care, not about how soft her hair was in his hand as he marched towards the infirmary. Not about the way she smelled like cherries and lightning storms. And definitely not about how beautiful she was or that it would be a shame if she were not okay. He placed a hand on her forehead and it seared his skin he ran even faster.
"Madame pomfrey!" Alarmed black and Lucius didn't admonish him for not speaking without calmness or poise, not that the thought hadn't crossed his mind. But Maxima lay limp in his hands and he was trying desperately not to think about what that might mean.
He stayed by her side, along with Sirius bloody black long after the healer had come and the headmaster appeared. Black it appeared was just as determined to stay by her side as he.
"Ms. Potter, seems to have found herself quite come dedicated friends" whispered the old wizard conspiratorially and Lucius hopes news did not come to his father but still he remained even if it was, in part, to outlast black.
"Albus, never mind that" the madame scolded "you almost killed her, magical drain so severe you're bloody lucky the girl is not dead. This project of yours must end, or for merlins sake find another way" pomfrey pleaded.
Lucius stayed still feigning the sleep that black had succumbed to (small victory) his heard still racing with the possibly of the meaning such words could have. He traced the spirals seared into the skin on his arm, feeling, for once, part of something much bigger than himself.