{Disclaimer: I own nothing. It all belongs to the God-like J.K. Rowling}
Chapter 9
Slight Problems
**What you've got to do is finish/ What you have begun/ I don't know just how/ But its not over 'til you've won/ You see the storm is coming/ See the lightening cross the sky/ Its too late to run/ There's terror in your eye/ Then you just remember/ These words you heard me say/ It's the storm not you that bound to blow away. "Hold On" from the musical The Secret Garden **
Sirius Apparated for the first time in who knows how many years. He had forgotten the thrill of having a wand and being able to do magic again. He arrived in their chosen rendezvous spot: just outside the large castle-like structure. Sirius noticed two major things. First, it was freezing and second, they had arrived in the middle of a gigantic blizzard. He couldn't see much beyond five-feet in front of him. Peri turned up a few seconds later.
"Its cold out here!" she decided bluntly.
"You're observant," Sirius created a pair of thick down jackets for each of them. "Let's get a little ways from the castle and wait for the weather to calm down before going in." Peri nodded at the suggestion. She grabbed his hand to stay close as Sirius pulled them into the dense forests surrounding the prison. What seemed to be a clearing was soon reached. Peri pulled a wizard tent from her pack. With a flick of her wand it was up. They entered inside thankful to be out of the weather.
A roaring fireplace decorated one wall, warming the entire cabin. The walls looked to be made out of wood slats. A set of bunks, a small couch, and a square table finished off the interior. On the opposite wall, a dream catcher and a pair of snowshoes hung. The whistling of the storm could still be heard through the thin, strong walls.
The escaped convicts peeled off the heavy coats, setting them to dry by the fire place. Wyvern immediately joined the coats, falling into the sleep that cats are famous for. Peri shivered.
"That was stupid, wasn't it?" she asked no one in particular.
"Yes," Sirius answered. "It was rather moronic."
She glared at him. "I wasn't asking you."
Sirius held up his hands to ward her off. "Calm down there, tiger. No offense."
"None taken. You hungry? I think this thing's completely stocked."
"You thought of everything, didn't you?"
"No. Professor Dumbledore gave this to me before I left. He thought I might need it," Peri turned towards a set of cupboards and pulled out a can of soup. She poured it in a cauldron and stuck it over the fire. Two mugs were found for when the soup was done. She went back to rummaging through the cupboards, seeing what else she could find.
Sirius sat in one of the chairs, watching her. He definitely knew her. He remembered her tone of voice with just the slight hint of sarcasm. He remembered her mannerisms, especially the conversations that she held with herself. She had to be in some part of his mind. She just had to be. Now when he would remember her would be another story.
Peri pulled her head out of the cupboard to take the soup of the fire. She poured it into the ceramic mugs and handed one to Sirius. "Here, its tomato. Be careful, it is hot." She chuckled as Sirius tried to sip it and burned his tongue. Peri took a seat across from him at the table. She could see Sirius watching her over the rim of his mug. His dark eyes seemed to drill into her very soul. It was as if he was searching for something. Maybe he was for all she knew. They finished the soup in silence, each to their own thoughts. Peri quickly washed the mugs, putting them back where she found them, and continued her investigation of the cupboards.
"What exactly are you looking for?" Sirius asked with his curiosity piqued.
"This," came Peri's muffled reply as she pulled herself out of the storage system. She held up a deck of cards set proudly.
"You spent all that time looking for a mere deck of cards?"
"Yes, I did." Peri deposited the package on the table. She pointed her wand at it, thinking hard. It shimmered and changed to a larger box. "Ever play Phase 10?"
Sirius looked at her as if she had grown a few more heads. "No."
"I'll teach you, that is, if I remember how to play." She dealt out ten cards each and handed him another card with instructions on it. "These are the phases that you have to get to move on to the next one. First one's two sets of three. You can either draw a card from the discard pile or a card from the stack. You always have to discard when you are done so you keep the ten card hand. Wilds count for anything. First one to get rid of all their cards ends the round. You can get rid of cards by putting them in the sets that you made or the ones that I made. You go first, since I dealt."
Sirius looked over his cards. Two sets of three cards of the same number. Hmmm… He drew a card. "What happens when you have the two sets?"
"You put them down and try to get rid of the rest of your cards. Try to lose the highest numbers, skips, and wilds; they cost you the most points."
Sirius set down a set of three tens and three sixes.
"Bastard," Peri decided playfully as she set down her two sets.
The game went on, though neither could seem to end the first round by ridding themselves of all their cards. Spitefully, Peri flung the remaining cards down at the table. Most of them rebounded to hit Sirius.
"Hey! That was uncalled for!"
"No, it wasn't. It was a perfectly acceptable thing to do."
Sirius shook his head. "Temper, temper."
"No, my temper's fine, thank you very much." A strong gust of howling wind punctuated her comment. She stood up to a look out a window built into the tent wall. It was a wall of bleak white. "Every second this storm goes on is a second longer that Severus could die. We can't just sit here and do nothing!"
Sirius stood up and put his arm around Peri's shoulders. "There's nothing that we can do right now, Peri. We can't bear this weather without getting ourselves killed in the process much less rescue him."
Peri pulled away from his grasp and flung herself down on the couch. "I feel useless. He's locked in a dark dungeon while we have a nice warm tent. It's torture!" A tear dripped down her cheek. "I just can't sit here and wait for the storm to end."
"The storm will end eventually."
"I know it will. It's the waiting for it to blow away that's the problem."
Sirius stood behind her and began to massage the back of her neck. He was still the womanizer that he had always been. His fingers probed the stiff muscles with gentle caresses. "There is nothing we can do right now." Sirius paused. "Have you thought about how to get into the castle?"
"No."
"Do you know how many people that are guarding the entrance?"
"No, I don't."
"Do you even know where the entrance is?"
Peri tilted her head to look up at him. "No. I understand where you're going with this, Sirius. I'm not as dense as most people think I am."
Sirius raised an eyebrow, doubting her statement. "I never said that you were dense, just hasty."
"You implied it. I realize that we have to plan if we are to succeed. Any error, however slight it may be, may cause us to fail. It's a thin line we walk, my friend, a thin line."
Sirius flopped down on the couch next to her. "So where do we begin?"
Peri turned her head toward him, a sad smile appearing on her lips. "I just don't know any more. We shall have to wait and see what happens next, I guess."
The raven haired man grinned back. There was still something familiar about her that nagged at the back of his mind. It was something that said he should know who she is, that he should remember her. There were too many similarities between them for them to be complete strangers.
"And so that's what I think we should do," Peri finished.
Sirius hadn't realized that he had let his mind wander enough for him not to have heard what she had said. "Can you repeat that? I lost you for a moment there."
"What I said was that as soon as the storm blows over, we have to first find the entrance or at least an entrance that we can use that is not heavily guarded. From there, we can find Severus and get him out."
"Right," Sirius decided still distracted by his earlier thoughts. He was going to force himself to remember who she was.
Peri stared into the flames, letting herself become hypnotized by the dancing flickers. There was so much that depended on her success, yet it would be almost too easy to let it all go and run away. She had come too far to let it all fall. She felt her eyes grow heavy with impending sleep. There had not been enough sleep for her during the night between the nightmare and running away. Sleep would be good. Peri let herself drift into the dark realms of unconsciousness.
She did not feel herself slide down the back of the couch onto Sirius's shoulder. Sirius put his arm gently around her. It would be best to let her sleep. The position felt natural, like they were meant to be together. Sirius let his mind wander back to his Hogwarts days. He was certain she had been there with him.
He could picture the bunch of them, just before graduation. James was there, still alive with his dark, unruly hair and glasses, his arm draped casually around Lily's pale shoulders. Lily was just as beautiful as he had remembered with her auburn red hair falling halfway down her back. They had all loved her, he mused. All of them: him, Remus, Peter, and James, yet James had gotten her. Lucky him. Yet was he so lucky? Remus was standing near James, intelligent golden eyes, hair not yet gone gray, but still combating his eternal curse. Peter was nearby, looking frightened, his blue, watery eyes filled with fear about something that none of them had known at the time. It was the fear of his soon to be betrayal. Then there was him, the carefree womanizer, long black hair, dark eyes joking with them all about some prank that they were going to pull. All the girls had wanted him, yet he could remember only one that he had ever loved completely. She was in the picture, too, off to the side. He could remember that she hated cameras and having her picture taken. She stood arms crossed, sandy haired with dark eyes that would stare into the depths of his soul. Yes, that was her. She was there, too. She was the same age as Lily, the only other female Gryffindor of their year. All the others girls had been put in Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin. They had been so different then.
He remembered how Lily and the girl could never be separated though they were almost complete opposites. Lily was tall, gorgeous, popular, intelligent, and almost perfect. The other, he still could not remember what she had been called, had the same intelligence, maybe more so, yet was a loner. In her own way, she had been beautiful. It wasn't the beauty of a face, but the beauty of personality. She had never been popular because people for some reason naturally despised her. It probably helped that she had the record for the most fights gotten into at Hogwarts. Not that she minded, but she was an outcast none the less. The Marauders had taken her in, not out of pity, but from the fact that she was a rebel and a plotter, like them. She was the one who could get their pranks to work.
Sirius remembered her clearly now. They had been friends, close friends. She had been there for him when his father had died. There was not much she wanted in exchange for the support except a friend. He had been her friend, maybe closer to her than Lily ever had been. Then he had lost her and forgotten about her until this moment.
It was the name that irked him the most. He knew that there had to be a rightful designation to go along with her face, yet his mind blanked out when he tried to contemplate it. She had been a tom-boy, so it wasn't a girly name, he remembered. Mary, Susie, or Jane just would not be her. No, she wasn't a frilly dress kind of person. It was more of a tougher, darker personality. Sirius could remember the first time they had met. It was an image that stuck clearly in his mind.
He had known no one on the Hogwarts Express and had been searching for an empty compartment that he could relax in. As he walked down the corridor, he had heard some shouting and a few thuds. Being the person he was, he had gone to investigate. Some older Slytherins had her cornered, yet she was fighting them like a feral tiger. Sirius remembered watching her from the shadows as she slugged their leader across the face giving him a bloody nose and a black eye. After a time, the Slytherins had simply gave up and walked away.
"Are you all right?" he had asked her, stepping over to where she sat on the floor.
"I'm perfectly fine," she snapped, obviously in some pain. "Now, go away, unless you want me to take you on as well."
"I was only trying to help."
"I don't need anyone's help. Who are you any ways?"
"I'm Sirius, Sirius Black."
She had said something as she introduced her self with a handshake, but there was no recollection as to what is was. For all he knew, it could have been anything.
There had been other memories of her. He could see her being sorted and the hat, which had been as dilapidated then as it was now, loudly crying out "GRYFFINDOR!" There were fights that she had been in and the people that she had sent to the hospital wing from her fists. There was an image of her sneaking into the library late at night to find information for some strange project. There was one image of her in a deep argument with the old Potions Master about something dealing with mixing herbs together and what would happen. She had been astute in potions, he could remember that much. She always could be found in the either the potions dungeons or the library. Yet it was her name that would be the death of him. Until he remembered what it was, he would not fully know who she was now and who she had been. Eventually, he would recall it. He knew he would.
Sirius looked down at Peri's now darker hair. She squirmed slightly, to find a more comfortable position on his shoulder. For her, he would find out who she was. He let his eyes close. As he drifted back to sleep, a last conversation came to his mind.
"No! You can't let them take me! I didn't do anything wrong. I found it! Sirius!"
He had been held back by James and Remus as she was taken away. There was nothing he could have done. In his heart, he knew that she had done nothing, yet why they had taken her was another matter. "No! You can't do this to me!" he sobbed quietly, supported by his two friends. He fell limply against Remus's shoulder. "Andy…" he whispered.
Sirius slept soundly, his roguish grin still on his lips. He knew who she was now. He remembered everything.
{Author's Note: I wanted to let you guys know that I am an idiot. I was climbing trees barefooted in shorts and a tank top and succeeded in falling out of one. My right leg is all marked up with an interesting collection of scrapes, along with my left elbow. I found it quite amusing. I also succeeded in pulling a muscle in my jaw, though I have no clue in how I did that. I've concluded from this that the world enjoys inflicting me with pain. The entire Phase 10 thing is an inside joke. I was at a summer camp. It was around three in the morning. My friends and I were attempting to play Phase 10 and ended up getting into a huge card fight. Needless to say, it turned into a laughing fest.
Anna Black: You can be as enthusiastic as you would like. I'm glad you like the new name of the cat. Smirks You almost have it, but don't worry. I have a handful of twisted ideas on what will happen and has happened to Peri and Sirius. Oh, and in response to your profile message that states Hayden Christensen is hot, he most definitely is. My friend bought a life size cut out of him as Ani and we were drooling over him.
Josie: A bit odd? This is me that we're talking about. Actually, it was a four day weekend and I was really bored, except for Monday which involved us marching in wool uniforms in 80 degree weather.
Jackie: I could be going cow tipping or tractor riding instead of writing.
Thanks to all who read and review my tale. Next chapter will be Snape's break out. Be scared. Be very scared. Peace, Love, Ice Cream, and Chocolate, Nataly Ravenlock}
