A New Dawn,
Chapter Nine,
Annoying Cats, Annoying Teachers.
What could be worse?
Serena was still reeling over what had happened a week ago. She truly was not expecting the attacks to come so soon. There hadn't been another one since, but nonetheless she decided it would be a good idea if she started monitoring the situation carefully.
It was on that premise that she was walking the halls to Professor Dumbledore's office. She had mustered up the courage to go and ask the headmaster for permission to be out after hours on account of the attacks.
As she stood in front of the stone gargoyle trying to figure out what she was going to say, she felt a sudden presence. She turned quickly, but didn't see anybody. Suddenly remembering about the cat she looked down and, sure enough, there was a little purple cat with the moon on it's forehead.
"Why, hello there." said Serena, bending down and scratching it behind it's ears.
The cat purred and then stopped, suddenly scowling at herself. "Serena," she said seriously. "I know your current situation with the attacks going on here at school."
Serena nodded. "That's right. You're the one that helped me with my tiara thing. That helped a whole bunch." she said.
"My name is Luna and I've come here to help you," said the cat. "Obviously you haven't been training your abilities any."
Serena looked at the cat with a raised eye brow. "Hey, I've been neck high in homework for the passed few weeks here. The teachers are relentless. Besides, if I didn't know how to use that thing then, I probably wouldn't have been able to use it as I was training either."
Luna looked around. "School is important, but I would think that you would take your duty as lead Sailor Scout more seriously, especially after what happened to your friend." she said.
"To my understanding these attacks weren't supposed to happen until I turned fourteen. Start explaining that, would you?" said Serena, glaring at the cat. "Besides, I have been taking my duty as lead Sailor Scout seriously. Why do you think I'm standing in front of the headmaster's office!"
"That's all very well, but it would help if you didn't get very deep in your homework. Then we could train you." said Luna.
Serena raised both eye brows. "Okay, first you expect me to risk my life to save people, which I'm fine with, and now you want to get me kicked out of school, too?" she said.
"I would think you would take your calling more seriously. School is always going to be here, the people aren't." said Luna.
Serena narrowed her eyes. "Do you know who runs this school, Luna? These students are under the best headmaster ever, Professor Dumbledore and so by you saying that the people wouldn't be here, Dumbledore wouldn't anything happen to these students!" she said, waving her arms about.
"Even so, I think it would be good if you told him your current position." said Luna.
Serena let out an exasperated sigh. "What do you think I was going to do, invite him to a tea party!" she said.
"One needs to hold ones tounge," said Luna.
'Oh, great. This year is going to be the best one of my life, I can already tell.' thought Serena, straightening up.
"Well, there is only one way to tell him anything, and that is leaving me so I can get to it." said Serena.
Luna glared, but went her own way. 'Oh, boy. A slacker type. I hope none of the other girls are like that one.' she thought as she pranced away.
Serena stood tall and told the password to the gargoyle and was soon up the spiral stairs to Dumbledore's office.
She knocked on the door and waited only for a moment before the old wizard was there, smiling kidly down at her.
"Why, Ms. Tuskino," he said. "What can I do for you?"
Serena took a breath. "Professor, I need to talk to you about something very important." she said as Dumbledore ushered her in. "Professor, I know you've been noticing all these attacks going on lately. I was wondering if I could have permission to patrol at night, because it is my duty as lead Sailor Scout to make sure nothing harmful happens to these students." she said. "And I would like you to start calling me by my father's name, as everybody else does."
He smiled. "And just how does your mother feel about this change?" he asked.
"Well, I haven't actually told her yet." she said sheepishly. "I've been meaning to, but she would just freak out and I don't want that to happen."
"Have a seat," said Dumbledore, gesturing towards a chair in front of his desk. "I think you have more on your mind than just that."
Serena nodded and took the chair. Inhailing a deep breath she let it out slowly. "I haven't talked to anybody but Harry about this. Professor, I don't think it was my dad who betrayed Lily and James. I think it was somebody else." she said.
"I see," said Dumbledore, looking at her with searching eyes. "And what would make you come to such a conclusion?"
Serena looked down. "I'm sure you heard about that night in the Gryffindor Tower," she said.
He merely nodded and signaled for her to continue with her story.
"Well," she said looking up into his kind, wise blue eyes. "My dad stayed to talk to me after all the commotion had died down and what he said made sense... He was sad, Professor," she said quietly, eyes filling with tears. "When he talked about Lily and James, he was sad."
Dumbledore sat and considered this for a minute. Then he smiled a little. "Well, of course you have permission, but if you don't get to class Professor Snape might be a little angry." he said.
Serena's eyes widened and she hurried to the door. "Thank you, Professor."
She skidded to a hault in front of Professor Snape's office and took a deep breath before going in the class-room.
"Class started twenty minutes ago, Ms. Tuskino," came Snape's cold voice from out of the dim light of the dungeon.
Serena started. "I have a note from Professor Dumbledore," she said, handing Snape the note.
He sneered at her, while telling her to go take her seat, while adding that, had it not been for the headmaster, she would have detention for the next month and a half.
"Moon Tiara Magic!" yelled Serena, dodging an attack from one of the monsters. Sure enough there had been an attack that same night.
"Well, that was most interesting." said Luna, jumping out of the bushes. "Although it could have been quicker."
Serena narrowed her eyes. "Unless your here to encourage me to become better, I suggest you go away."
"You have no right to send me away," replied Luna nastily.
Serena picked up her bag and detransformed. "Well, Luna, I've got a detention to serve, so I've gotta get going now." she said and started walking up the steps to go to Snape's dungeon.
He had found some way for her to have serve a detention. So, when she was doing her potion that day, Snape had watched her like an eagle to make sure he found something wrong with it. Sure enough, she put too much of one thing and not enough of the other.
"You do know why you're here, do you not?" sneered Snape from his desk as he watched the young girl clean out the cauldrons.
Serena had to try hard not to roll her eyes. "I have an idea why, Professor, but I'm not exactly sure." she replied in even tones, but inside she wanted to slam Snape upside the head with the cauldron she was cleaning out.
"How is it, that during class, Longbottom's potion came out better than yours?" snapped Snape.
Serena tried to look innocent. "Maybe he's just getting the hang of potion making, Professor. He has been studying quite steadily about it. Maybe now he's just reaping the benefits."
"Don't lie to me, Ms... Black," he let that name hang in the air for a minute, making Serena cringe. The way he said it made it sound like it was the nastiest of curse words. "I know you've been helping Longbottom. You and Miss Granger seem to have a thing for that. And, need I remind you that I require all of my students to do their OWN work?"
Serena was just happy that she didn't have to clean up any messes that Neville had made, because, according to Snape, his potion came out better than hers. "No, sir, you needn't remind me."
"Good," he sneered again. "Because if it happens again I'll take away fifty points from Gryffindor and I'll report you to not only the headmaster, but your head of hose as well."
It was a good thing that she had just finished the cauldrons at that moment, or she might have been tempted to say some very sore words at the professor standing before her.
"Am I free to go, Professor," said Serena. "because I've got lots of homework that I need to get done."
Snape had to survey every cauldron to make sure every bit of it was clean enough to eat off of. When he couldn't find anything wrong with them, he took five points away from Gryffindor and accused Serena of using magic to clean them out, which was impossible, as Serena had left her wand upstairs. Then he sent her away.
Serena hurried away. As soon as she was far away from Snape's office, she turned to a stone gargoyle that had been standing there and kicked it.
"I'm guessing detention with Professor Snape didn't go very well, did it?" said a voice, making Serena jump and turn around.
She smiled as she saw that it was only Lupin. "No," she said, restraining herself from saying the things that were floating across her mind. "That whole detention thing was stupid, anyway. Making me clean out all the cauldrons just because I helped Neville a little in class. Would it hurt S... Professor Snape to notice that poor Neville is frightened to death of him?"
Lupin smiled a little bit and lowered his voice. "I don't think that's in Professor Snape's nature," he said.
Serena laughed. "Maybe not," she said. Then she got serious. "But, I've got enough on my plate without him giving out detentions to his own demented pleasure."
They started walking towards Gryffindor Tower. "Professor, can I ask you something?" asked Serena, looking at the walls with the pictures on them. The people were snoozing in their frames.
"Certainly," replied Lupin.
Serena looked at him. "I have this... problem. It's not really a problem so much as it is a duty."
"Go on," said Lupin.
Serena sighed. "Well, it's been getting in the way of school a lot lately and I'm concerned about my school performance. I've been so busy with this... duty that I have barely any time with school. I mean, I barely even made it to Potions today, and I got lucky because I had a note from Professor Dumbledore. What do you think I should do?"
Lupin considered this for a moment. "That's a hard one," he said. "How long have you had this... duty?"
"I've only just found out about it maybe a week ago," replied Serena.
Lupin frowned. "I'm not exactly sure," he said. "I'll have to think about this. By next class I'll have a solution for you."
"Thanks, Professor." said Serena. "I knew I could count on you."
He watched her walk away shaking his head. "If she's worried about homework, you know there's something wrong."
"Yes, I agree." replied Professor Dumbledore, standing beside Lupin. "But, if she is anything like her father was at school, she shouldn't be too worried about it."
"You're right," sighed Lupin.
The next couple of weeks were crazy around Hogwarts for Serena. Between battling monsters and doing homework, she hardly had any time to do much else.
True to her word, however, she never went to Hogsmeade and stayed in the castle with Harry, so he wouldn't be lonely. She blamed it on the homework overload, but that wasn't the reason entirely.
There was two of two reasons she decided to stay at the castle. Numero Uno being that she promised Harry that she would stay.
Number Two is that she wanted time to think about things, go through her pictures, take time to recollect her thoughts.
The hard thing about all of that is that Luna wanted to train Serena every spare minute that she got, which was interfering madly with the huge pile of homework that was on Serena's bed.
"You've gotta punch harder than that!" said Luna, watching the young girl practicing her hand-to-hand combat on a scarecrow. "You've gotta be able to knock the darn thing down."
Serena wiped the sweat off of her brow as she threw another jab at the stick that just WASN'T falling over. "I'm trying!" she snapped at Luna. "I'm not even supposed to be doing this until I'm fourteen. If you haven't noticed, that's next year!"
"Well, it's a good thing you're getting your training in now, so you'll have nobody to blame when you mess up in the future." snapped Luna.
"So you automatically expect me to mess up in the future!" said Serena, balling her fist and hitting the scarecrow so hard in the face that it fell over. "I can't believe you!"
"Oh, well then, huh?" said Luna. "I don't expect you'll ever be as good as the other Scouts."
Serena stopped and looked at Luna with her brows furrowed. "There's more?" she asked.
Luna's eyes widened. "Not at the moment," she covered real quickly.
Serena ran up the stairs into her dormitory. It was now nine o'clock in the night and she was already exhausted, and she STILL needed to do her homework.
She had just finished with an essay from Snape when Hermione and Ron walked into the common room. They were beaming and looked as if they had had the time of their lives at Hogsmeade.
"Hi, guys," said Hermione slightly out of breath.
Serena simply smiled her way, and then started on an essay from Trelawny. That essey was the easiest one that she had to do all night.
After she was finished, she leaned back in the chair she was sitting in. "If I have to do that much homework every night, I want you guys to dig me a grave and throw me in it. I'm exhausted!"
Hermione smiled. "I don't think so," she said. "If you need help, you know, you CAN ask."
Serena looked at Hermione and smiled. "Thanks," then she looked around. "You know what, I haven't seen much of my siblings lately."
"They're around," replied Hermione, frowning. She didn't want to tell Serena that she had seen them talking with Malfoy earlier in the day.
"Hmm," said Serena thoughtfully. "I wonder why they don't come say hi any more."
Ron looked at her, biting his lip. He too had seen them talking to Malfoy. Even HE had enough tact not to say anything in front of her. "Their probably just busy. I mean, isn't Josh in O.W.L year?"
Serena nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, he sure is." she said.
"And Mina's a teenage girl," stated Hermione. "She's not supposed to pay attention to her younger sibling."
Serena nodded, feeling better about her siblings absence. But, down deep she knew that SOMETHING was going on with them. And she was most likely going to find out.
Okay, end of Chapter. R&R, if you want. If not, I'm glad you're reading.