The Marauders of Hogwarts
A/N: Yay! I've posted the eighth chapter! Sorry about the fairly long delay in getting it out…but you know school. *grimace*
Thanks to…SiriDragon (I don't mind long reviews! I live on them! ^_^) and Loki (no goddess of destruction part cuz I'm lazy today…don't hurt me :D) And Olivia, if you're reading this…I hate you, dammit!
Everybody else: Ignore that. I don't hate you! *hugs*
Note: The stuff in italics at the beginning of the chapter is the end of the last chapter, and I'll continue from there, in plain type. I have a few details in there that weren't in the last chapter, but oh well.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, places, etc. belong to J.K. Rowling, the best writer EVER!!! And I mean EVER! All the characters, places, etc. that you don't recognize belong to me. Get it, got it, good.
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Chapter Eight
Problems
"So…do you know what's wrong with Remus' mother?"
"Well…nothing's wrong with Remus' mother. It's Remus who has a problem," Mira whispered, glancing furtively around the common room to make sure no one was listening.
"What? What problem could he have?" Sirius asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.
There was a pause, and then Mira replied slowly, "…He's a werewolf."
"WHAT?!?!??!" Sirius yelled in shock. Less and less people looked up at the sound of his yells every day, as they were growing used to it by now. However, a few people still did, and he waved them off before continuing in a softer voice. "What? How do you know?"
"Well…I confirmed my theory about it about a month ago," Mira said softly. "To put it in a nutshell, I was suspicious about him always disappearing about once a month, so I thought about it, and realized that the full moon comes about once a month too. And then, I looked out the window when he disappeared that month, and it was a full moon. Disappearing, full moon--not hard to figure out."
Sirius just sat there with his mouth slightly open.
"You okay, Sirius?" Mira asked, looking anxious.
"Poor Remus!" he finally exclaimed.
"Yeah…"
"And if you found out a month ago, were you planning to actually tell any of us, so we could help him?"
"But how are we supposed to help him? There's no cure for…for being a werewolf," she said, lowering her voice at the latter part of the sentence.
"I'll think of something," Sirius said, looking determined.
"Okay, Sirius," Mira said, but she looked doubtful.
***
"Hm…I want some way to bait that Spirit Healer idiot…" Voldemort said one day. "Venyetta, what do you think is the best way to hurt that Spirit Healer girl?"
"Hm…I'd say get into her head, but she can't magic you out of her head, because it's her in trouble, right?" Venyetta said, after thinking for a moment. She was almost his right-hand Death Eater by now.
"I always knew you were my smartest Death Eater," Voldemort said happily. "Right then…"
***
Mira and Sirius were in the library, looking at books about werewolfs.
"Wait a second," Mira said suddenly.
"What?"
"I've got it!"
"What?"
"I've got how we can help!"
"How?"
"We can--Oh my God, I just got a headache…" Mira held her head. Stabbing pains had suddenly started in her head. "Oh my God, what's with this headache? It has to be the worst one I've ever gotten…Ow…"
"This isn't the time for a headache, Mira!" Sirius said exasperatedly. "How do we help Remus?"
"No, really, Sirius--I think something's wrong here--"
I know who you are, Spirit Healer. A high, cold voice was suddenly speaking in her head, and Mira gasped as Sirius' face in front of her flickered in and out of focus.
As Sirius watched in confusion, Mira's eyes started to turn…gold?
"What the…"
Mira was holding her head, and she was in horrible pain. On one side, Sirius was talking, but at the same time, on the other side, blackness was trying to pull her away from the table in the library, to some unknown place, and the voice was saying, Don't try to fight me…
Then, Sirius remembered. Lily's eyes had turned a different color too, at the Halloween feast last year, just before she screamed and blood spurted out of her arm. And that was because of…Voldemort.
"Damn Voldemort!" he muttered under his breath. "What do I do now?" he said, looking at Mira. But Mira seemed unable to answer at the moment.
Suddenly, though, Mira surprised him by saying, "Get…help…Dumbledore…anybody…" Then, her eyes turned completely gold, and Sirius left her at the table as he sprinted out of the library.
***
Mira was fighting the blackness as hard as she could, but then it pulled her away. Her feet slammed down on something hard, and she almost fell over, but struggled to stand up and succeeded. And she saw that she was inside a well-furnished room that looked like a living room or the like, and right in front of her, there was a man and a woman. The woman had black hair, bright green eyes and a very satisfied smile, and was standing beside the man, who was sitting in a leather armchair. He was thin and black-haired, and his dark blue eyes stared coldly at her.
"I told you not to fight me," the man hissed. So, this was Voldemort.
Mira said, in a somewhat shaky voice, "I know you did, but I don't always listen to directions."
Venyetta saw the brown-haired girl struggle to keep standing up, and inwardly admired her determination at such a young age, but said mockingly, "Oh, rebellious, are we?"
Mira, ignoring the woman, said to Voldemort, "What are you going to do with me?"
"I wanted to give you a warning," Voldemort said slowly. "Listen carefully, little girl."
Mira seethed with anger at the 'little girl' comment, but based on Lily's experiences with Voldemort, she thought that it was probably wise not to challenge Voldemort any further. But maybe he would hurt her anyway. She tried to keep herself from trembling.
"I want you to stop helping Evans," Voldemort said, slowly and clearly. "And I want you to stop helping her now."
Forgetting what was wise, Mira blurted, "I'll never do that! You're insane!"
"Hm…you won't do it?" Voldemort said. "Well, I guess I'll just have to make you do it…"
***
Sirius ran all the way to Dumbledore's office, and was in such a hurry that he nearly ran full tilt into the gargoyle that guarded it. He hadn't been to Dumbledore's office since last year…
"J…Jeh…Jelly Bellies," he panted. The gargoyle didn't move.
What was it James had told him the password was? Sirius racked his brains in panic, and then, in complete despair, he said randomly, "Acid Pop!"
The gargoyle jumped aside.
Sirius blinked for a moment before running up the stairs. Why would anyone want to get a hole burned in their tongue? He wondered blankly.
Finally, he got to the large door with the golden knocker, and without even stopping to knock, he banged the door open and shouted, "Professor Dumbledore, there's a big, big, big, big, big BIG problem!"
Dumbledore, who was sitting at his desk, looked up calmly and peered at Sirius over the tops of his half-moon shaped spectacles. And somehow Sirius felt a bit calmer, even though he shouldn't. "What indescribably gigantic problem would this be, Mr. Black?"
"The same thing that happened to Lily last year…it's happening to Mira, right now, in the library."
Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "That is serious indeed," he said, rising very quickly for such an old man and saying, "We shall go to the library at once."
Sirius took the stairs two at a time on the way down; Dumbledore went down somewhat more slowly, but his long legs helped him keep up.
People had stared at Sirius very strangely while he was running, at full speed, to Dumbledore's office, and people stared even more now that Dumbledore was involved, as the two of them traveled through the halls (Sirius ran, Dumbledore speed-walked).
In a few minutes, Sirius rushed into the library, over to the little table where Mira was still sitting, her eyes colored pure gold. Curiously, she didn't appear to have screamed, as Lily had in the Great Hall last year, attracting so much attention. She was simply mumbling something, in a frightened sounding voice, and hadn't attracted as much attention as Sirius did, for example, running out of the library. And besides that, it was a table that happened to be rather isolated from the rest, so not many people could even see her.
Dumbledore got there a few seconds later, and looked serious.
"I've only tried this spell a few times, but it's worth a go," he said, and held up his wand, muttering something. Suddenly, a blue light shot out of the wand, going straight for Mira.
***
Voldemort, with a sort of evil amusement in his eyes, pulled out his wand, and pointed it straight at Mira. Mira tried to move, but her feet seemed to be stuck to the floor.
"Believe me, you'll never help that Mudblood brat again with the proper…persuasion," Voldemort hissed, twirling his wand between his fingers. "Cru--"
Just then, Mira disappeared, and Voldemort cursed.
"Who helped her now?" he yelled. "Damn your plan, Venyetta!"
The Seer was looking rather put out.
***
Mira's eyes suddenly turned from gold to brown again, and the frightened mumbling she had been doing stopped.
"Th-Thank--Thank you, Professor D-Dumbledore," she stammered. "But…but what did you do? I didn't know you could get a person out of that any way but with Spirit Healer powers."
"And that's quite right, Miss Gonzalez," Dumbledore said. "I simply know a spell that lets me borrow the power from a Spirit Healer who I have working for me."
"Really? Is it a Jimnez you have working for you? That's the only other family that I knew did Spirit Healing."
"Well, yes, actually."
"Oh." Mira didn't seem to want to know any more.
"Glad that worked out alright," Sirius said.
Mira smiled. "Thanks, Sirius."
***
"My God, that was horrible," Mira said later, to Lily. "I think he was going to torture me."
"Wouldn't be surprised," Lily said. "Did he even say why he'd gotten you?"
"…No, that lousy git," Mira said fervently. Although Voldemort had been going to torture her to make her stop helping Lily, she didn't want Lily to know that and feel like it was her fault, because it had happened simply because Voldemort was a lousy git. So at least part of what she was saying was true.
Lily said softly, "I'm sorry. He is a git. A lousy, horrible git."
Mira, to cheer Lily up, said with a small grin, "Yeah. He's a lousy, horrible, mean, conceited, stupid…evil, idiotic…retarded…incompetent git," using all the insulting words she could think of.
Lily smiled. "Yes, that's right. You get a gold star for good work!"
Mira grinned, wider this time.
***
For a whole month, Mira tried not to think about anything serious. When she was with her friends, she succeeded very well, and even got pretty hyper. But when she was alone, she sighed--and thought about a lot of serious things. For example, how Voldemort might attack her again…but for some reason, what was more important was how Raven seemed to be getting even more distant with her.
Mira had spotted her talking to various Slytherins, and she talked about them all the time when she was with Mira. She seemed unable to carry on a good conversation anymore. Mira tried to be nice to the Slytherins for Raven's sake, as they seemed to like her, but it didn't do much, since most of them still laughed at her, like they always had since she came to Hogwarts. "Mudblood," they said. "Know-it-all." But Mira couldn't help being smart or Muggle-born. It was just the way she was.
Also, it seemed that over a very short period of time Raven had become as nasty as Lucius Malfoy around people who weren't Slytherins or Ella and Mira. She was even rather scornful of the Marauders and their friends now. "They're so weird. Why are you friends with them, Mira? I mean, no offense, I know Sirius Black's your boyfriend and all…" she said once.
"I…I dunno," Mira said evasively, because she didn't want to be mean to Raven. Raven didn't seem to notice how Mira was struggling not to yell, No, they aren't! And anyone nice wouldn't give a damn if they were, you superficial idiot!
All in all, she had various things to worry about by the time it was January 25th, a month after Christmas.
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A/N: In the next chapter, I'll have a couple more funny things, since this chapter was unusually serious for me. And I think I'll put a few other people's points of view in there, whatever happens…And yay! I finally got in some Voldie evilness! Whew!
And just to remind you of the questions you can torture yourself with while I veeeeeerrrryyy sllllloooooooowwwwwwwllllyyyy write the next chapter…*evil grin* Here they are:
What can people do to help Remus? Will Voldie strike again? And will it be fatal this time? Am I ever going to say anything else about James' powers? *slaps self* What is Raven's problem? Hehe, Raven the Ravenclaw, kinda catchy. =)~Hermione2