CHAPTER 15: SIRIUS

Sirius sat in his bed breathing heavily, visibly shaken by his dream. He couldn't remember the last time he had thought about Buffy; not before his time in Azkaban, that's for sure. When Moody had brought back her lifeless body, his heart broke and it had yet to heal completely. At first he had wanted revenge and had spent a great deal of time with James planning, but Remus' intervention put a stop to that.

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Sirius and James sat around their room with books piled everywhere while trash littered any open space left. They had barely moved from their room since the incident, not even to get food. They were so consumed with hatred and driven by revenge.

Remus was getting worried about the two of them. He missed Buffy, but she wasn't his sister or his girlfriend. He was hurting, but not to the extent that he knew James and Sirius would be. Knowing his two friends, they would undoubtedly do something stupid since they weren't thinking clearly; not that they needed that excuse!

He had tried owling them, but his letters were returned unopened. He tried knocking on their door, but no one answered, even though he was sure someone was home.

James' parents weren't taking the news of their only daughter and youngest child's death well. They rarely answered the door, mainly to avoid nosy reporters, but they also closed off their fireplace; they obviously didn't want any guests. Remus didn't know what to do.

Finally, as his third owl was returned unanswered, Remus got fed up. He went down to their house and walked around to James' bedroom window. The curtains were drawn, not letting him see anything inside the room. He tried to listen for any sounds, but all he could hear was the whipping wind. He knocked on the window and waited.

Nothing. He sighed and then tried to pry the window open with his hands. It was locked tight. He glared slightly at the window and brandished his wand, as if he expected it to open at the mere sight of the piece of wood.

Giving a few waves of his wand and a couple of choice words, the window rushed open, banging roughly into the top of the frame. The curtains billowed inward with the sudden onslaught of wind. Remus crawled in through the window and closed it behind him, cutting off the fresh air, which the room desperately needed, if for nothing else than to clear away the stench.

Two black haired boys were staring at him from the bed with parchment scattered everywhere. "Remus," James said surprised. "What are you doing here?"

Remus looked at his two friends incredulously. "What do you think I'm doing here? I haven't seen you guys at all in the past week! You haven't answered any of my owls and you didn't even answer the door, or your own window for that matter," Remus ranted.

"Sorry, we've been busy," James said.

"Now if you don't mind," Sirius said, examining the pages once more, looking for something useful.

Remus just blinked in amazement. Then he narrowed his eyes suspiciously as he finally noticed all the books around them. "What are you doing?" he asked cautiously.

"Researching," James said absently, turning a page.

"Researching what?" Remus continued. "I know you already finished your homework and school doesn't start for another two days." They had all done their homework earlier in the summer. Not only was it easier to complete while they still had some knowledge of school, but it also made the summer much brighter, as they didn't have assignments hanging over their heads.

"Curses," Sirius said shortly.

"Why," Remus said, a reason forming in his head, but wanting it to be confirmed.

"To get back at the bastards that... did this," Sirius said, his voice full of anger, but he was unable to say exactly what they did. It hurt too much.

"You can't be serious," Remus said, incredulously.

Sirius raised an eyebrow at his remark and said, "Why not?"

"You'll get killed! You haven''t even finished school and you expect to go against an army of death eaters and live to tell the tale? How thick are you?"

"They have to pay," James said, his eyes flashing. "She was my sister, and I couldn't help her, couldn't save her. I have to do something."

"You're not the only ones that hurt; Lily was her best friend and she's been torn up, not that you'd know that since you didn't bother to answer any of my letters."

James felt really bad for not even thinking about Lily, but she was his sister! She could be a pain in the butt sometimes, but that's what little sisters are for; he didn't love her any less, in fact, he loved her even more. And most of the time they got along great. There wasn't much that could make them fight. And now she was gone.

"Do you really think she'd want you to do something this suicidal? Stop and think for a moment, please," Remus said. "You'll never win!"

"Well, we might as well take as many of them with us as we can," Sirius said.

"SHE'S DEAD!" Remus yelled, trying to get through to his friends. They froze at the blatant use of the words they had avoided. "She's not coming back," Remus said quietly after a moment's silence. "I know it hurts, I hurt too, but you have to move on. There's no point dwelling on the fact that you couldn't save her; she knew that you tried. If all five of us fighting couldn't do anything, what chance do you two have?

"She wouldn't want you to do anything stupid, like go and get yourselves killed. She'd want you to go back to school, do something really unthinkable and dedicate it to her. It's not going to be better all of a sudden, but it will start to hurt less. You still have me and Peter and Lily, not to mention your parents. What are we supposed to do if you go and get killed? We've already lost somebody, there's no need to lose another."

James and Sirius were listening to Remus' speech intently and it made sense, but they were still lost. "What are we supposed to do?" James said brokenly. "Planning our revenge was the only thing that could hold back the pain. If we just had a plan, then maybe we wouldn't have to face the fact that she's... that she's gone. That's why we put all our effort into it."

"What you do know," Remus said, feeling awful for his friends, "is to remember her and continue on with your life. I know this might sound awful, but life does go on."

"Not for her," Sirius said bitterly.

"No," Remus said softly, "not for her, but for you, and for us, it does. It's going to be hard, and painful, but it's something you'll learn to deal with."

"I don't want to deal with it!" Sirius yelled, jumping up. "I want her back!" He strode out the door and then out of the house, slamming the door behind him. He just wanted her back.

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Sirius shakily got out of bed and walked over to his bathroom to run water over his face. He couldn't stand the pain back then. It hurt too much to think of her and know that he would never see her smile again, never hear her teasing voice, never kiss her again, or tell her how much he loved her.

The pain was so unbearable, that he vowed never to think about her. No one ever talked about her much, and they went to school for their seventh year as usual. There had been a toasting at the Welcoming Feast and a moment of silence, but after that, the friends tried to get back into a normal routine.

They were fairly successful, but her presence was sorely missed. Quidditch was never the same, the school was never the same, and neither were they. But they moved on, albeit very slowly. Every once and a while, something would happen to make him think of his first love, and he would lapse into broody silence for a while, before shaking himself out of it and planning a joke for her.

One time, they had come up with the brilliant idea of moving the Slytherins' beds onto the lake while they were sleeping. All of them. Needless to say, when the first to seventh year Slytherins woke up on shaky beds floating uneasily on the lake, with tentacles wrapping around some of them, they were not happy. But, it was a great spectacle to see. It was for Buffy, as all the Death Eaters were known to come from Slytherin.

Once they put the finishing touches on the map they had been working on for the last several years, they named it the Marauder's Map, for Buffy, and dedicated it to her.

They had all moved on after Hogwarts, Lily and James got married and had Harry while Remus, Sirius, and Peter remained single. Then the attack on the Potter's came once again causing more grief upon them all. Sirius was shipped off to Azkaban where he never thought of Buffy once in twelve years. He hadn't even thought of her since he escaped, so needless to say he was shocked over his dream.

She had looked so real, and much older; 'although not as old as she would have been,' Sirius thought with a frown. How did he know what she would look like when she was older? A guess? It seemed to be a pretty good guess. She was so beautiful and he knew some part of him still loved her, as his heart had beat rapidly in his chest at the sight of her.

Sirius shook his head to clear his thoughts, but her image would not go away. He walked downstairs to get something to drink. He could still feel her lips on his own and the softness of her long, blonde hair...

Remus was sitting in the kitchen nursing a cup of tea and looked up when the door opened to admit a preoccupied Sirius. "How was your nap?" he asked his friend. Trapped in this house, Sirius had a limited amount of things to do: clean or sleep. It wasn't surprising he chose the latter frequently.

Sirius started at the sound of his friend's voice and turned sharply to look at the werewolf; it was as if he could read his mind.

"Padfoot?" Remus asked carefully, surprised and worried at his friend's reaction. "Is everything okay?'

Sirius debated over telling Remus about his dream or not, but quickly decided to, as he needed someone to confide in; someone who knew her.

He sat down heavily across from Remus at the table. Remus only became increasingly worried about his friend. "I had a dream."

"And," Remus prompted.

"It was about her," Sirius said, looking his friend in the eyes.

At first Remus didn't understand exactly who he meant, and he searched through his mind to find a 'her' that Sirius could be referring to, and be this torn up about. His eyes widened as he came upon an answer. He couldn't possibly mean her, could he? Nobody had talked about her in years, it was almost as if she had never existed.

"You don't mean..." Remus started to say, but couldn't bring himself to say her name in case he was wrong.

"Yes, Buffy," Sirius said, closing his eyes with a sigh.

Remus was shocked that his guess had been correct; not shocked that he had been right, but shocked that Sirius had a dream about Buffy. As far as he knew, Sirius didn't think about her anymore either. She had certainly never been brought up in any conversation they'd had.

"Have you dreamt about her before?"

"No," Sirius admitted. "At least not before she died." It wasn't difficult to talk about her death as it had once been. It had been about 15 years, but it still hurt; first love and all that. It still hurt that James and Lily were killed, but he had gotten over the fact that they weren't coming back. He had accepted it and moved on, like Remus once told him to do.

"What about her?" Remus asked curiously.

"I was at Hogwarts and I saw someone walking down the halls, and she turned around, and it was her. It was Buffy," Sirius said with his eyes closed, as he remembered what she looked like. "It was strange, because it wasn't the Buffy we knew. She was older, but young as well. I mean, she couldn't have been any older than 25."

"How old were you?" Remus asked, surprised at this development.

"Same age as I am now, I think," Sirius said with a frown. "Nobody else was there, but it seemed as if it was real. I thought it was really her, come back from the dead," Sirius said with a bitter laugh.

"Did she say anything?"

Sirius paused for a moment, before saying, "She said she missed me, and that she loved me."

Remus didn't know what to make of the dream. Obviously, it wasn't true, because they had seen the body, had seen it get lowered into the ground. And there wasn't any spell powerful enough to bring a person back from the dead; at least, not without turning them into a zombie of some kind.

"Maybe it's just all your memories and emotions coming back from when you were in Azkaban," Remus said.

Sirius frowned at him and said, "I've been out for about two years now."

"Yes, but the first year you were sorely focused on getting to Wormtail, and the second year you were too busy worrying about Harry and the Triwizard tournament. Now that you don't have anything to occupy your time, your repressed thoughts are making their way back," Remus theorized.

"Maybe," Sirius said doubtfully. "It just seemed so real..."

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Buffy got out of bed quickly, realizing she had missed all her afternoon classes, and the first few minutes of dinner. Umbridge was going to have a fit.

'Stupid jet lag,' Buffy thought grumpily. She still hadn't gotten used to the huge time jump from California to England. She had survived on little sleep since arriving in London, due to her excitement, but it was starting to catch up to her.

Buffy hurried around the room, trying to keep her mind off the dream. Maybe it was prophetic. She's had a few of those before, and it did seem like it was the future, as he was much older than she had remembered. Buffy's heart sped up as she thought of her dark haired love, and how hot he still looked. 'Although, he's going to need to cut that hair.'

If it was prophetic, then that meant she would meet him at Hogwarts, but he couldn't possibly be staying here, could he? Not when the wizarding world thought he was a murderer. Buffy looked thoughtful for a moment. 'Unless Dumbledore knows he's innocent...' She dismissed this thought quickly. She knew that Dumbledore knew more than he let on, but if he knew Sirius was innocent, surely he'd prove his innocence. Right?

Buffy stopped at the mirror and fixed her dishevelled hair before leaving the room to catch the last half of dinner.

Buffy entered the great hall, where everyone stopped talking for a moment to stare at her before quietly conversing in whispers. Everyone wanted to know what the new professor was like and why she didn't show up for some of her afternoon classes.

At the head table, she sat down in her chair between Umbridge and Professor Dumbledore. Hem hem. "How nice of you to join us Professor," Umbridge said.

"Thanks," Buffy said cheekily.

Hem hem, Umbridge frowned. "Where were you this afternoon?"

"I wasn't hungry so I went upstairs to get something, and the next thing I know it was time for dinner," Buffy explained with a shrug.

"Were you hurt?" Umbridge said, assuming someone had attacked her.

"I fell asleep," Buffy clarified.

Umbridge scowled at the flippant girl. "I thought I told you that you were not to be late to class anymore," scolding her like she was a student.

"Well, I guess we're good then," Buffy said, pouring herself a glass of pumpkin juice.

"I thought I made myself clear this morning when I said I would not tolerate lateness," Umbridge said, confused by her last statement.

"That's good," Buffy said. "But I wasn't late, I just didn't show up. There is a difference." She gave a small smile and could have sworn she heard a little snort come from Dumbledore, but dismissed it as she saw him conversing with McGonagall.

Hem hem. Umbridge couldn't believe this little girl had the gall to be sassy with her! Where was the dumb blonde from this morning? Apparently, it came and went. "Well, I won't tolerate your absence either," Umbridge said haughtily. "I'll be sure to let the Minister know about your performance on your first day."

"You do that," Buffy said, drinking from her cup.

Umbridge had nothing left to say.

McGonagall must have finished talking to Dumbledore because she leaned her strict face over to talk to Buffy. "Professor Fox, I have been informed that Neville Longbottom received a detention from you today. As he is in my house, I would like to know why you felt the need for such a large punishment for him on your first day."

Buffy looked over at McGonagall and eyed her for a minute before saying, "There's a lesson that needs to be learned."

McGonagall gave a small huff and continued, "And what lesson is that?"

"Not to be so disruptive in class," replied Buffy, coming up with the first thing she could.

"I'll admit that Neville is lacking a little in the control department, but since your class is only theory, I fail to see how Neville could be disruptive."

"I didn't say it was his lesson to learn," Buffy said.

McGonagall thought for a minute before she realized what Buffy was saying. "You can't give someone a detention for something they didn't even do! Albus!" she entreated the headmaster, but Umbridge spoke up first.

"On the contrary, her actions today in class were necessary. As High Inquisitor, I will allow the punishment to be carried out, and any future punishments she decides upon."

"My hands are tied," Dumbledore said calmly to McGonagall. Yes, he did believe that her punishment was unfair, but there was nothing he could do about it.

But, there was something about Professor Fox that had peaked his interest. She did not seem to be as, well, blonde, as she had this morning, and she even seemed to be egging Dolores Umbridge on. She was very flippant. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

Professor McGonagall stared at Dumbledore unbelievingly, and then angrily stormed away to her quarters. The school was going to be taken over by the incompetent Fudge and Dumbledore wasn't going to fight it.

Buffy also stood up and excused herself from the table. It was creeping towards 6:30, and she wanted to talk to her friends before she had detention duty.

"But you didn't eat anything," Dumbledore protested. "You missed lunch and you barely ate anything for breakfast." For some reason, he was worried about the new professor. He knew he shouldn't like the Ministry employed official, but there was just something about her...

Buffy looked back towards the table and gave a small frown. "I'm not that hungry," she admitted and walked away.