Disclaimer: Anything relating to the Harry Potter stories belongs to J. K. Rowling. She can have my characters and ideas as well.
CHAPTER 7
As Nora and Bert were studying in the library almost a month after the Quidditch match against Ravenclaw, Nora found herself wondering where the time had gone. In all the years she had been attending Hogwarts, she had never been busier. Along with all the work they had to do in their NEWT classes, Nora was busy with Prefect duties and Quidditch practices almost every day. She couldn't remember the last time she had even gone to bed at a decent hour.
Nora dropped her quill down and stretched her arms out. "Man, I am so bloody exhausted." she said with a yawn. "I can't wait until the winter break."
"Well that's still a month and a half away, so you're gonna have to wait." Bert said, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
"Why are you so tired? You don't do half of what I do." Nora said picking up her quill to write again.
"I dunno. I think I'm just bored." Bert shrugged and then said, "Hey, why don't we do something tonight?"
"Like what?" Nora asked him.
"Anything. Just chill. We haven't hung out outside of class or the library since school started." he complained.
"Yeah, I know." Nora said apologetically. "But the only thing is that I've got Prefect duty tonight. Maybe we can do something tomorrow?"
"Fine." Bert sulkily. "Man, you're always so busy. It's either Prefect duties or Quidditch practices. Or working on your dumb assignment with Black. I'm starting to feel like he's becoming more of your friend than I am."
"What?" Nora asked incredulously. "Don't be ridiculous. I don't like him more than you. He bugs me too much anyways."
"Who's buggin' you, Four-eyes?" Sirius's voice came from behind Nora. "Tell me. I'll take are of him. Is it Ernie?" He looked over at Bert with a fake scowl.
Bert rolled his eyes and muttered to himself, "For the last time, the name is Bert."
"What's that, Ernie?" Sirius asked.
"Nothing." Bert grumbled.
Sirius shrugged his shoulders indifferently and pulled up a chair next to Nora and plopped himself down.
"What're you doing in the library?" Nora asked Sirius curiously.
"Lookin' for you." he answered frankly and moved his chair closer to hers. "I just saw the practice schedule for the next game and the only day we have free is tomorrow. So we'll have to finish our Muggle Studies assignment then."
"Fine, we'll do it in the evening." Nora said. Bert suddenly cleared his throat and looked at Nora angrily. Nora remembered their plans and said, "Oh, shoot. Sorry, Bert. I forgot."
"Forgot what?" Sirius asked.
"We had plans for tomorrow." Nora said.
"Oh. Sorry, I don't mean to spoil your big date." Sirius said with a smirk.
"Don't worry about it, Nora." Bert said, ignoring Sirius. "We'll do something when you're not so busy." Nora could tell that Bert was disappointed, but she really didn't have any choice over the matter.
"Oh, guess what happened?" Sirius said, diverting Nora's attention away from Bert and back to him. He began to tell her about something that happened during the day with one of the Slytherin Quidditch team members and he and Nora started to laugh out loud. Nora happened to glance at Bert and saw that he didn't look very amused. In fact, he let out a little huff and started to pack his books away.
"Where are you going?" Nora asked him with some confusion.
"I just remembered, I have to go to a meeting." Bert answered curtly.
"What meeting? You're in almost all my classes." Nora said disbelievingly.
"Divination." he said quickly, getting up. "I'll catch you later. Bye." And he left the library, leaving Nora feeling a little bewildered.
"That was odd." Nora said to Sirius. "I don't think he had a meeting."
Sirius shrugged. "Maybe he did."
"No, I don't think so." she said, frowning a little, "Well I have to go for Prefect duties soon anyways. Have you seen Remus?"
"Yeah." Sirius replied. "He was in the common room with Michelle when I left it."
"I see. He spends a lot of time with Michelle, doesn't he?" she said, a hint of mopiness in her voice.
"Why do you care?" Sirius asked her with suspicion.
"I don't." Nora answered defensively.
"Then why would you notice that he spends a lot of time with Michelle?" he asked again, raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms over his chest.
"I don't know." Nora said, regretting starting the conversation. She packed up her things and said with a shrug, "I'm a very observant person."
'Yeah, especially with your four eyes." he said with a smirk while they both stood up to leave the library.
"Ha." Nora said sarcastically. "You know, your jokes are getting a little repetitive. You need to start coming up with some new material."
"Jokes?" he asked her with confusion. "I never joke. I'm always serious."
When Nora met Remus in one of the school corridors for Prefect duty later that evening, she noticed that he looked very pale and sickly again. Man, he looks pretty bad again. Why does he look like this so often? What if he's really sick or something? I wish I had the guts to ask him if he was okay…
They had been walking in silence for quite some time until Remus suddenly said, "Hey Nora, can I ask you something?"
Nora looked up at Remus and saw that he looked a little anxious. She could feel her heart start to beat a little faster. "Yeah, sure." she tried to say as steadily as she could.
"You're not really tight with Michelle, are you?" he asked her.
"Oh." Nora said, her heart feeling like it had dropped down to her knees. "No, I'm not. She's only really close to Shelby."
"Oh, okay." he said, sounding a little disappointed.
"Why?" Nora found the courage to ask. "Is there something you wanted to ask…her?"
"No." Remus said shaking his head. "It's nothing important…really." Nora could tell there something about Michelle on his mind, and she didn't like it. Remus was relatively quiet throughout their whole round, and Nora was thoroughly miserable.
Nora's thoughts were still preoccupied with Remus the next afternoon as she made her way down the hall to one of her classes. She was so distracted that she had forgotten her book in her previous class. As soon as she realized this, she quickly turned around to retrieve it, and crashed right into Sirius. He was running in the opposite direction and was caught off guard when she had turned around. He ended up knocking her right onto the ground, and landing on top of her.
"Sorry, Four-eyes." he said quickly pushing himself off of her. "I didn't see you turn around so quickly. Thanks for breaking my fall."
"Ugh." Nora moaned. "Help me up." Sirius grabbed her hands and pulled her up.
"Are you alri—oh shit!" he exclaimed backing into a wall.
"What?" Nora quickly looked behind her in fright and didn't see anything. She looked up at Sirius and he was looking at her a little worriedly. What the heck is wrong with him? She looked down and saw her glasses on the floor. She quickly bent down, picked them and put them on. "What happened?" Nora asked Sirius again.
"Oh, nothing!" Sirius said quickly. "I just uh…thought I saw something. Must've been Peeves or something." Sirius lied, still looking at Nora anxiously. Oh my God. Sirius thought to himself worriedly. I think I just accidentally hexed her eyes into different colours when I bumped into her! She's going to kill me when she sees them. Quick! Change the subject so she won't think it was you when she notices! "Um...oh! Listen, James had to switch practice to today instead of tomorrow."
"Oh, okay." Nora said, wiping the dust off of her clothes.
"So we'll have to meet to do the assignment tomorrow instead." he said.
"Yeah sure." Nora said distractedly. "I'll see you later."
Sirius watched Nora walk away quickly and headed towards his own class. Shit! What did I do? Maybe I should've just told her! Well, it's a good thing she wears those glasses. You can't tell a thing when she wears them. I'm sure she'll notice by practice tonight and confront me. I'll just pretend I don't know what she's talking about…or better yet, maybe her eyesight is so bad, she'll never notice them!
They had been practicing on the Quidditch pitch for an hour later that night before Nora remembered to ask James something. "Hey James," Nora said flying over to where he was hovering, "I wanted to ask you...what's that charm for repelling water? You know for your glasses when it rains and stuff?"
"Oh!" he said, "It's the impervius charm."
"Right, that's the one." said Nora remembering it finally. "Last game I could barely see through the rain."
"Oh damn, I didn't even realize that. I should've told you about it." he said.
"That's okay. I got lucky last game." Nora said with a smile.
James smiled back at her and said, "Yeah. Whenever I'm playing, I really wish I didn't have such bad eyesight so that I could take off my glasses. Is yours really bad too?"
"Um…no, not really." Nora said, feeling a little guilty. Sirius flew up to them, laughing as usual, cracking some private joke to James.
He then flew up to Nora and said, "Everything alright, Four-eyes?"
"Yeah, fine." Nora replied looking down the pitch for the Snitch.
"Cool." he said, looking at her intently. "So…nothing strange happen to you today?"
"Uh…not that I can thing of." Nora said, taking her eyes away from the pitch and looking at Sirius peculiarly.
"Alright, then. Carry on." he said nodding to her and flying away.
That was strange. Nora said to herself. He's been acting a little funny today…
"Sirius did you read the assignment?" Nora asked him the next day while they were sitting in an empty classroom together starting to work on their Muggle Studies work.
"Not yet. Why?" he asked her.
"Well, it's just a bit odd. Read it." Nora passed him their assignment sheet and Sirius began to skim through it.
"Hmm." he said, still reading it. "So we're supposed to tell each other something that nobody else knows about us and write about it."
"Yeah like a dark secret or something ridiculous like that." Nora said.
"Hmm." he frowned. "I don't have any secrets."
"Neither do I. Well, not really anyways." Nora said, thinking about Remus and her glasses. Well, Bert knows about both of those things so they're technically not secrets.
"Well, we have to write about something." Sirius said. "I guess there are a couple of things that only my really close friends know about me…" Hmm, Sirius thought to himself, there's no way I can tell her about one of those things. I'll just have to tell her about this summer. That should be good enough. I don't really care if she knows anyways.
"But it says here that we're not allowed to tell anyone else this secret. We'll be bound to it and if we do tell anyone, we'll be penalized. Our mark will automatically go down." Nora said.
"So it's basically an assignment about trust." Sirius deduced.
"I guess. Kinda lame, isn't it? What does this have to do with what we're studying, anyways?" Nora asked.
Sirius shrugged. "It's...interesting." He leaned back into his chair and gave Nora a cheeky grin. "So spill your guts."
"No you tell me first. I'm still deciding on what to tell you." Nora said. What do I tell him? About Remus? Or my glasses? He'll be bound to secrecy, so maybe if I tell him about Remus, he can help me out! But, then again, I don't really want him to know about that. It's too embarrassing. I'll tell him about my glasses. He'll probably think I'm a freak! Oh well, I don't really care what he thinks…do I?
"Ooh, so you have more than one secret, eh? Tell me the juicier one." he said plopping his chair back down.
"Yeah right." Nora scoffed. "So you start. I'll write."
"Okay, fine." Sirius moved his chair closer to Nora and said, "I ran away from home last summer."
"You what?" Nora asked, looking surprised.
"Ran away from home. Left it for good. I spent the summer at the Potter's." Sirius said indifferently.
"You're kidding." Nora said, her eyes wide. "Why'd you leave?"
"Aah, my family's a little messed up. A bunch of pure-blood maniacs. I just don't agree with any of their ideologies. Makes me sick, actually. I don't even like to think about it." Sirius said, running his hands through his hair and leaning back into his chair.
"Wait, isn't your brother in fifth year?" Nora asked him.
"Yeah, we don't talk." Sirius said quickly. "He's been totally brainwashed by their thinking."
"That's awful." Nora said sympathetically. "Actually, I think I remember your cousin from a few years ago when she was here. What was her name? Narcissa?"
"Ugh." Sirius shuddered. "Yeah."
"She cornered me in the hall one day and was going on about how we pure-bloods shouldn't be associating with other people. Called me a blood-traitor just 'cause I was friends with Bert."
"It's all rubbish." Sirius said, "Well, according to them, I am the biggest blood-traitor of them all. My mother actually blasted my name off the family tree." Nora was looking right into Sirius's eyes when he spoke. She knew he had nice eyes, but she never saw them up so close. They were a very cool grey, with tiny specs of brown around the pupils. She suddenly saw him differently at that moment. He wasn't the same cocky jock that just enjoyed teasing people. He was a person who had been brought up in a privileged background by people who looked down and others, and still turned out to be a decent, down-to-earth guy.
"Well," said Nora, prying her eyes away from his. "I guess I might as well just tell you my secret. Although now it'll seem quite petty next to yours..."
"Who cares." he said, moving closer to her and looking at her intently. "What is it?"
She sighed and pointed to her eyes. "This."
"Your glasses?" Sirius asked with uncertainty.
"Yeah." Nora nodded. "I don't need them."
"What do you mean?" he asked her, looking puzzled.
Nora bent her face down and took off her glasses and said in a muffled voice without looking up, "Well, you see…my eyes…"
"Yeah?" Sirius asked, moving closer to her.
"Well look at them." Nora said finally looking up at Sirius. She bit her lip nervously. It was the first time she was letting anyone besides Bert see her eyes and it made her feel very self-concious.
Sirius peered into one eye and then the other. "Are they…?" He was afraid of asking the question himself, just in case she was trying to tell him something else.
"Yes, they are both a different color." Nora said bluntly.
"They are?" he asked, obviously pretending he didn't notice. Oh, thank God! It wasn't me!
"It's okay, Sirius." Nora said, feeling slightly peeved. "You don't have to pretend not to notice. I know the difference in them is very apparent. That's why I wear these stupid glasses. So people don't stare at me and think I'm some kind of freak."
"What?" Sirius said incredulously. "They aren't freaky. I mean okay they are a little different. But they're definitely not ugly-weird or anything."
Nora smiled at him. "Well, maybe you're the only one who'd think that. But I know that most people will think I'm odd. I mean, when I was younger, kids used to tease me and called me 'freak-eyes'."
"Hmm, Freak-eyes." Sirius said, contemplating the name. "I think I like that one."
Nora glared at him and he quickly said with a nervous grin, "Just kidding."
"Anyways," Nora said, putting her glasses back on. She leaned forward on her desk and rested her chin on her clasped hands with a sigh. "This is why I wear glasses. I'd rather people call me 'four-eyes' than anything else."
Sirius stared at Nora in silence for a moment, and then suddenly leaned really close to her. He pulled her glasses down her nose with his index finger and gazed in her eyes. Nora raised her eyebrows at him in wonder, and then he pushed her glasses back up.
"What?" Nora asked him with a frown. But, before Sirius could say anything, James walked into the classroom.
"Here you are." he said to Sirius. "I've been looking everywhere for you."
"Why? What's up?" he asked James.
"Moony is waiting for us. He's getting late." James said. Nora's attention shot up at the mention of Remus's nickname.
"Oh, shit!" Sirius exclaimed. "I totally forgot."
"Where are you guys going?" Nora asked with concern.
"Oh, nowhere. We just have some stuff to do." Sirius said casually. "I guess we're done the assignment, right? I'll catch you tomorrow in class."
"Yeah, sure." Nora said, eyeing the boys suspiciously as they left the room in a hurry. Okay something is definitely going on here, and I'm going to find out.
A/N: So I fixed this chapter up quite a bit. Hope you liked it! Send me some reviews if you did...or didn't for that matter. hehe
