Chapter Seven,
In The Dead of the Night
There was the sound of many screams and the sound of breaking glass as the store windows were shattered open. The chaos surrounding the area was that of a riot, only much, much worse.
There was a whole in the middle of the road and all the poor Muggles that had gotten in the way.
There were two people standing in the middle of the road where it wasn't split. One had his wand out and was pointing it at the other. "How dare you,"
The other cut him off. "How, Sirius? Lily and James... How could you?"
With that being said an amazing event took place. The man was reduced to that of a pile of dust, or so everybody thought.
The man that was watching, the one known as Sirius swore under his breath and sighed, knowing what this meant.
A little later he was being thrown into a prison cell in one of the worst prison's every made.
Serena jerked awake, cold sweat covering her whole body. She sat up slightly, looking around. She was relieved to know that it was only a dream... But, it seemed so real.
Slightly confused, she looked around. She looked at her watch. 6:30am. Everybody she would want to talk to about this would be asleep... with the exception of one of two people.
Getting up silently, so as not to wake any of her sleeping comrades, she tip-toed over to the door of the Great Hall and opened it up. Creeping silently out, she closed it again. Since it was no longer night she couldn't get in trouble for walking around 'after hours'.
"But, mom," burst out Serena in frustration. She had asked for permission to use some floo powder to talk with her mother.
"I don't think it was his fault! If they were really his best friends, which it sounds like they were, why would he have reason
to betray them?"
"Serena," sighed Ilene. "There is no telling why this happened. All that matters is that you stay out of anything that has to do with him. Do you understand me?"
Serena was quiet for a moment. "Why?" she asked. "He's my father, why should I stay out of anything that has to do with him?
If you didn't even care to tell me about him in the first place, why do you suddenly care if I'm involved with anything
that personally relates to him?"
Ilene sighed once again, this time her breath coming out in an angry burst. "I didn't tell you about him to protect you!"
"Was it really protecting me? Or was it just a ploy?" asked Serena, rolling her eyes. Then a thought occurred to her. "Does the Ministry of Magic know he has a daughter?"
Ilene hesitated for a minute. "Well, no." she said after she had thought it over. Maybe this was the best time to come clean...
"Then what were you protecting me from! If they don't even know that I'm the only offspring of him, then I'm fine"
burst out Serena.
"That's not what concerns me. What concerns me is, now that the whole school knows, the Ministry could easily find out about you. You should've just kept quiet." said Ilene icily. "Now we're going to have to find out what to do with you once the Ministry does find out."
"Did you actually think I was just going to let somebody else tell my best friend about me? Mom, be real. Harry has a right to know. If my father actually did betray Lily and James-"
"Which he did," broke in Ilene.
"IF he did actually betray Lily and James, Harry has the right to know. They were his parents." said Serena, as if Ilene hadn't said anything.
"You're way too much like him. He was good at getting into other people's affairs too," snapped Ilene.
"Mom, this IS my affair. This is MY father we're talking about for Pete's sake!" said Serena, then she remembered something.
Ilene sighed. "Look, honey, I have to go. Just promise me you won't get TOO far into this Sirius Black case. We don't want people to start suspecting something fishy is going on here."
Serena nodded. "Okay, mom. Love ya." she said, taking her head out of the fire. She needed to find Professor Lupin.
She waited out side of the class room for a total of five minutes. It was the weekend, but he was preparing his lesson for the week and he wanted it to be a surprise.
When he finally got out he smiled. "Now, what is it that you wanted to talk to me about?" he asked.
Serena got straight to the point. "Did you go to school with Sirius Black?" she asked.
He looked at her sharply. "What makes you ask that?" he asked.
"Oh, come ON, Professor. We both know you know that he's my dad. I just need to know one thing. Did he hang out with a person named Peter Pettigrew?" said Serena.
"I don't recall ever seeing him hang around Peter. Peter was very quiet. Just from what I've seen of Black, he was the complete opposite." replied Lupin. "Is there a reason?"
Serena shook her head. She was slightly confused. "No, no reason. I just wanted to know who some of his friends were."
"Ugh," muttered Serena, looking around in her chest. The book that her mother had given her, the picture book, was missing.
Sighing heavily, she got into bed, she would worry about it later.
In the middle of the night, Serena was awoken by some commotion going on downstairs. A slight feeling of dismay shot up her stomach as she got out of bed. She was about to go down there when Hermione came rushing up. "You don't want to go down there," she said, pulling Serena back into the room.
Hermione pulled her onto her bed and closed the hangings around her, telling her to pretend to be asleep.
"Well?" came Professor McGonagall's stern voice.
"Asleep, Professor. She's a really sound sleeper." said Hermione. "I tried to crash things together to get her up, but she wouldn't budge. And boy does she snore."
Serena was trying not to laugh. Sensing somebody coming up, she threw herself onto the bed and pretended to be asleep. To prove Hermione's story, she started 'snoring' loudly. It was only when Professor McGonagall started shaking her that she 'woke up'.
"What's going on?" she asked sleepily. In reality she was still sleepy. And since she hadn't talked before her voice still had that crackly quality that helped her cause greatly.
"Sirius Black was in here; he had a knife." said Professor McGonagall. "Did you give him the passwords?"
Serena looked around in surprise. "No! Why would I do that?" she asked in dismay.
"Because he's you're father," said Parvati Patil.
Serena sighed impatiently, but Hermione beat her to the punch. "He's trying to kill her best friend. Besides, it's not her fault. She didn't get to choose who her father was."
Professor McGonagall went back down stairs. In a few minutes she came back up, along with the band of girls that had been so rude to Serena. "I think, Ms. Tuskino, we owe you an apology." said McGonagall.
It turned out that Neville had written down the passwords after he had forced them from Sir Cadogan, the dingy, loud,
obnoxious replacement for the Fat Lady.
"Thanks," said Serena, sinking back onto her bed, relieved.
It took a while for everybody to start calming down again. After they did they all went back to sleep.
"Thanks, Hermione. You didn't have to do that." said Serena in the still night air.
"What are friends for? Besides, I figure you've been through a lot of trouble these past few weeks. No thanks to me," said Hermione, heaving a sigh.
"Ah, Hermione. You did what you thought you had to. I don't blame you. I would've done the same exact thing." replied Serena, happy to have her friend back. "But," she said grinning. "I guess I only have Harry to wrap around my finger."
Hermione laughed a little bit. "It seems to be working. You should have seen how tormented he was when he wasn't talking to you. It was pitiful." she said.
"I guess we're just two peas in an extremely weird pod," replied Serena, yawning. "I don't know about you, but I'm going back to sleep."
"Good night," said Hermione, rolling over and soon her snores were helping fill the room.
But, try as she might, Serena couldn't get back to sleep. Something kept bugging her; some lurking suspicion had settled in over her, creating a feeling of uneasiness in the pit of her stomach.
She shuddered. Something didn't feel right; something WASN'T right. Suddenly she sprang out of bed, opening the cupboard by her bed again. She knew that the book her mother had given her was missing, but...
She turned sharply as she sensed a movement in the corner of the room, the darkest place in the room.
Thinking quickly she pulled out her wand and muttered, "Lumos,"
The wand lit up and she pointed it to that corner. She just about gasped as she saw somebody there. What was even more surprising is that he was holding her scrap-book!
"Hello, Serena." said the person. Then he looked at the book. "You weren't by chance looking for this earlier, were you?"
She was about to say something when he cut in. "I thought I might have a looksie; so, I borrowed it. I hope you don't mind."
Serena's throat went dry. "H-how did you get in here?" she stuttered, suppressing another shudder.
"I dare say one of your class-mates is a tad forgetful. He helped me out." said the person with an impish grin.
Serena set her face, squaring her jaw. "Everybody here thought I let you in," she said. Then she jumped as one of the girls started stirring.
"Perhaps we should go someplace where we can talk without waking a bunch of teenage girls." said the person, shuddering at the last part. "That's the LAST thing I need,"
Serena raised an eyebrow. "That's the LAST thing YOU should be worried about." she replied.
"True," said the person wistfully.
"Why are you here and not in the boys dormitories?" said Serena and then she rolled her eyes. "Oh, wait. You tried that once. I'd say subtlety is not one of your strong points."
"As much as I just love to stand here and be insulted by my own daughter, there is more important things to be done, and said."
"Well," said Serena, lying back on her pillows looking at him. "What do you propose we do?"
He thought for a moment then grinned his impish grin again. "Well, as subtlety might not be my strong point, maybe you could think of something."
Serena thought for a moment. "Sure," she nodded. "Only if this is really important, though."
"It is," he said, nodding.
"If Harry never hated me before, he will now," she muttered, getting into her trunk. Her Sailor Scout stuff was there. She had seen it ealier with a little note. She pulled out a little pen like thing and, shaking her head, went downstairs into the common room, beckoning him to follow her.
"You, stay here. You're in enough trouble as it is." she said. Sighing, she held up then pen. "Disguise Power. Turn me into Harry Potter." In ten seconds there stood an exact replica of Harry. Serena shook her head. If Harry ever found out about this, he would hate her for the rest of her life.
"Nice," he said, smiling.
She suck up to the boys dormitories and quitely suck over to Harry's trunk. She pulled out the invisibility cloak and was about to sneak back downstairs with it when she heard stirring.
"Harry?" asked Ron's voice. Serena's eyes widened. "What are you doing up, Harry?"
Serena turned to him, thinking of a reason. "I'm getting...uh...some candy! I just got a sweet-tooth. Why don't you go back to sleep. You've had a hard night."
Ron nodded, laid back and was snoring loudly.
Sighing a breath of relief, she got up and went downstairs. Just as she had gotten down into the common room the magic of her pen went away.
She held up the ivisibility cloak. "So, Subtle Sam, should we go?" she asked, laughing at him.
They walked down to the common room and sat down. Serena threw the invisibility cloak over Sirius so that if anybody walked in they wouldn't notice him.
Serena started squirming a little bit. Her stomach was suddenly filled with butterflies that she couldn't seem to get out.
"It wasn't me," he said quietly. "Whatever anybody says, I didn't betray Lily and James. I would never do that. They were-"
"You're best friends. It would be like me betraying Harry, wouldn't it?" said Serena, quietly. She couldn't even imangine hurting Harry in any way, shape or form.
"How fitting," said Sirius thoughtfully. "that you and Harry should be best friends."
"Not everybody thinks so," replied Serena bitterly. "No, either they think that I'm trying to kill Harry myself, or trying to help others kill Harry. That's not so fitting."
"How does Harry feel about all this? Assuming you did tell him." said Sirius, knowingly. At this point he knew that she was very open with her best friend.
"Of course I told him!" burst out Serena, then she quieted down. "At first he never wanted to speak to or see me again. Then he caught me talking to Malfoy-"
"What!" asked Sirius, outraged.
Serena rolled her eyes. "THEN he caught me talking to Malfoy. I think he got jealous." she said.
"And you're what... thirteen?" said Sirius. "Far too young to have these boys chasing after you,"
Serena chuckled a bit. "They can't help chasing after a good one when they find it, now can they?" she said.
"You're mother probably has some problems with you," replied Sirius in mock exasperation.
Just then something flickered in the fireplace and Serena jumped when she saw the head of her mother floating in there.
"Mom! What are you doing in the fireplace?" asked Serena, folding her arms. It was now close to 4:00 in the morning and her mother wasn't supposed to be awake for another two hours.
"Just checking up on you," said Ilene. "I heard about the 'Sirius Black' break in and thought somebody might be in trouble."
Serena looked at her funnily. "Mom, that was four hours ago." she replied. Something wasn't quite right here, Serena though as she gazed at her mother.
"Oh," said Ilene, surprised. "I just got word of it."
Serena didn't believe that was true, but didn't push the subject. "We're all fine. All the boys, and girls, are fine. If Black was indeed in this place, the only thing he did was threaten a student."
Ilene nodded. "As long as all of you are okay... You said Harry was alright?" she said.
"Yep, he's alright." said Serena, raising an eye brow. "Why this sudden interest in Harry, mom? You've never cared for him before. He was never allowed in our house, remember?"
"Well, things change when kids become your own kids best friends, you get concerned. Besides, when you have a crazy murderer on the loose, your maternal instincts kick in and you get worried." replied Ilene.
"Ah," said Serena. "Anyway, mom, I'm sleepy. I just had to do a special assignment for Professor McGonagall on Animagus,
and I've just finished. I'm going to bed."
"Okay," said Ilene, popping out of the fireplace.
As soon as she was gone Serena turned to the spot where Sirius was supposed to be sitting. "I'm not sure if I believe her.
Something sounds too fishy there."
"I hear you," replied Sirius slowly. "You said Harry was never allowed in the house before now?"
Serena nodded. "Yeah," she said, slowly.
"Maybe she's..." said Sirius, but he got cut off as they head somebody coming. "I've gotta go," he said quickly, throwing off the invisibility cloak and running out the door.
Thought that was a good place to end right there. So, hope ya liked it. I've suddenly gotten lots of inspiration for this story, so I think the chapters will come out more steadily now. Maybe... One never knows. ANYWAY, R&R if you liked; if you didn't, I'm sorry.