Miss.Ecofreak: wow! This story is written a lot quicker than when I started it. I don't have anything stupid to say so let's just go straigth to the reviews.

Answer to Dark Mar (who is in fact the only one who's reviewed in a looong time): No.

Zakura: the simple is often the best. What is this all about

Miss.Ecofreak: oh, flashbacks. This chapter is about Tetra, basicly just telling about her small family

Zakura: dude, her family is bigger than mine, not counting the half siblings.

Miss.Ecofreak: big familys aren't always a good thing, espesially not with those parents. read and... er... enjoy...

CHAPTER 31

BEHIND HER TOUGH LOOKS

Kate

"Why hasn't he come back yet?" I wondered out loud.

Tetra was still lying in her clothes, trying to sleep.

Though I could see she wasn't able to sleep either.

"Will you shut up? You make me nervous when you talk like that" she said, "I'm sure everything will be fine, Cornelius can look after himself".

"Sure, when he's out in the streets" I said, "But what happens now? If Erol decides to kill him, he's dead already"

"Would Erol kill his own brother?" Tetra asked, "I have some annoying little siblings myself but I would never kill them. Although there are so many of them my parents probably wouldn't notice if one died. I wonder how long it will take before they notice I'm gone."

Even though I still worried about Cornelius, I couldn't help but being surprised of how easy Tetra found it to talk about her parents.

She had seven younger siblings, and her parents hardly knew the names on all of them, seeing she had also three older siblings (for those who doesn't like math, there are eleven kids in that family).

When Tetra was born, her two older brothers and one sister was neglected and taken away by the Krimson guards when her parents were not able to look after them.

They wanted to take Tetra too, but her parents promised to improve themselves and look after this new baby.

The first five years they actually did get better.

During that time, they got triplets as well, three new girls.

Then again, looking after four children turned out to be too much.

Tetra eventually got used to having no parents to talk to when she needed it, that made her quite independent, and sometimes she got jealous of her sisters.

When the triplets were two years old, their parents had a small boy.

Their parents got sick of the children and started drinking.

If Jacob hadn't already died the year before, all five of the kids would have been taken from them, but the baron didn't care of course.

Even when the adopted mother of Tetras oldest sister died, he actually put her back with her biological parents.

Her name was Mimi, and she was seven years older than Tetra.

When she came back with her parents, she was thirteen years old and was often forced to look after her younger siblings and even sometimes she had to take care of her parents who got drunk every night.

Things didn't get better when Tetra's mother got another baby.

Another girl.

Now they had one boy, Nick, at one year old, the three year old triplets, Annie, Jill and Juliet, Tetra who was seven and the oldest, Mimi at fourteen plus the infant, who the parents didn't even bother to name.

Her parents knew her simply as "the little pest", though Mimi called her Faith.

Before Faiths first birthday, she got no less than two younger brothers, named (once again by their siblings) Sirius and James (Miss.Ecofreak: I do not own those names, they are from Harry Potter)

But soon after the twins birth, their parents decided to send Mimi of to krimson school.

Now Tetra was the oldest, but even she was only eight years old at this time, besides, she hated taking care of children.

But as you already know, she didn't want them to die either.

She sneaked the two newborns out of the house, and gave them to the adopted parents of one of her brothers.

Her parents didn't even notice they were gone, in fact, Tetra told me they still thought they had eleven children, while they actually had "only" six at home.

When Tetra was eleven years old, bad news reached her ears.

Mimi had been found dead in her room at the krimson intern.

Apparently she had taken her own life.

Her parents hardly cared of course, but the kids were devastated, Tetra had her hands full of trying to comfort them even though she was very sad herself.

Her parents seemed to have stopped making babies though, that was a relief.

Tetra was sick of the whole thing, at thirteen years old she actually begged her parents to send her to the Krimson School, believe it or not.

She knew that the school was a living hell, Cornelius had made sure of that, but living amongst a drunken mother and five siblings who constantly wanted attention seemed even worse.

Tetra is the toughest girl I know, the fact that she survived trough all this and still acts unaffected, I wouldn't be able to do it.

Compared to her, my life didn't look so bad.

But then again, she was used to the neglect.

Whenever she got in a hard situation, she always managed to get something good out of it.

She didn't seem to care much about her new appearance either.

After being caught in a chinbit-body for one month, she acted just like the tough girl she used to be.

I knew however, somewhere beneath the thick chinchilla fur, (they've got a lot of fur I tell you, they have sixty hairs in one hair sack), and her tough attitude, there was a very lonely little girl.

"Do you miss them sometimes?" I asked, "Your siblings I mean?"

"Who? You mean Simon who I hardly knew? Or Mimi who looked after me as a child? Timmy who took care of Sirius and James, or the triplets, Faith and Nick?" Tetra asked.

"All of them" I said.

Tetra looked down, "All the time" she answered, "And you? Do you miss your family sometimes?"
"You bet" I answered.

"Didn't you mention you had a brother?" Tetra asked, "How come I've never met him?"

"Oh, that's a long story" I answered.

"Well come on, we're not in a hurry" another voice.

"Tanya! Where did you come from?" I asked in surprise.
"Through the door like any other decent people" Erol said, I almost jumped up in surprise, I didn't see him come but now he was standing in the door.

"When did you come in?" I asked, "And where's Cornelius?"

For once, Erol didn't seem all overconfident, he looked out of the door nervously as to check if anyone was around, then he closed the cell door.

"I just came with the bird" he answered, "As for Cornelius, he's dead"

Miss.Ecofreak: to be continued

Zakura: you're evil

Miss.Ecofreak: relax, I'll update as soon as the next chapter is finished, and it is soon. meanwhile, please review! Having more than one review for this chapter would be great, or else... oh well, one is better that nothing anyway.