A Parental Guide

By xXxFluffy-Pink-Socks

a.k.a Miss Willow

A/N: Wow. I must be psychic. Seriously. I'm not joking at all when I say that after I wrote out the last chapter and I turned the computer off, the next day the computer stopped working altogether and had to have (surprise surprise) all its files wiped. I'm so lucky, especially because there was another chapter that is quite important for later on in the story that I'd written and luckily, my wonderful beta (Xx-I-Love-The-World-xX), had it saved on her computer. Anyway, enough chit chat; here's chapter 12.

OH and I'd like to say thanks to Nina (XxGryffindor-GirlxX), my cousin and 'my inspiration', because without her, I wouldn't have regained my muse and finished this chapter.

-x-

I had a strange dream at night. I was sitting alone in a Transfiguration classroom, dressed in a red jump suit, facing Professor McGonagall, who was wearing a fluorescent pink witch's hat and glaring at me. Suddenly she began to speak but the words didn't come from her mouth but instead from the rim of the hat. McGonagall/hat said that due to unfortunate circumstances everyone had Hogwarts had died and for my own safety, I was to be kept prisoner and to be a slave for the pink hat and the Hogwarts house elves for the rest of my life. The elves appeared and demanded that I go outside and roll around in some mud and then serve myself to the Whomping Willow for its dinner. Then Lily's ghost appeared and started shouting at me, telling me that she couldn't believe I'd used all her shampoo and how without the shampoo she hadn't been able to go to heaven within everyone else and was doomed to hell.

Then suddenly a Hufflepuff ran toward me on all fours and sunk its teeth into my arms and tried to drag me down the hall. I began to scream and before I knew it I was falling... falling...

"GOD DAMMIT ROSA WAKE UP!"

"AHHHHHHHH!!!"

"ROSA! GET OFF ME!"

"I DON'T WANT THE WHOMPING WILLOW TO EAT ME!"

"WILLOW GET OFF!"

"NOO! DON'T DO THIS TO ME, CRAZY HUFFLEPUFF DOG PERSON!" I stopped flailing my arms and legs about and opened my eyes, my gaze darting around the room in search of the hufflepuff. I tried to get to my feet but fell again. I was tangled in my own bed covers and it was only when I noticed Sirius crumpled in a heap beneath me that I realised that it had all been a dream... and that I'd fallen out of the top of a bunk bed. I looked down at my hand. Ah. Shame I hadn't dreamt the co-joining of my hand with Sirius'.

"Rosa?"

"Hmm?"

"Could you get off me!"

"Nahh, I think I'm quite comfortable actually... I think I'll sit here for a few more min- OW!" Sirius cut my ramble off mid-sentence by shoving me off of him. I rolled across the floor to the other side of the dormitory, feeling very much tied up and taken hostage in my white sheets. Sirius found himself sprawled on the floor for the second time in ten minutes and glared at me. It wasn't my fault! Maybe I should explain why we were sleeping in bunk beds in the first place. So, along with the hand bonding, Sirius and I realised, after we returned from our detention, that our dormitory had been magically sealed. To add to our frustration, we had to be escorted by a house elf to the other side of the castle and moved into another dormitory that strongly resembled a room that you would find in a mental institute. Apart from a single bunk bed, there was no other furniture in the room. The floor and the walls had been painted white, giving the eerie effect of not being able to tell where the floor ended and the wall began. It was so bad I actually found myself longing for our old dormitory.

So that's how we had found ourselves trying to get to sleep in bunk beds; holding hands. Do you know how hard it is to sleep in a bunk bed while holding onto another person's hand? It's impossible, I can tell you. Me being on top didn't have it too bad because all I had to do was drape my arm down over the side of the bunkbed, while Sirius, on the other hand, had to sleep with his arm in the air for the entire night. And then there was the problem (as we had both just discovered) of waking, temporarily forgetting you were stuck to someone's hand, getting up and wandering why you found yourself flat on the floor, being squashed by another person.

"What's the time?" I asked, groggily.

"5am." Sirius replied, hoisting me to my feet and beginning to look for some new robes. We'd both decided it would be easier, just for the night, if we stayed in our outfits from the night before (I didn't need to worry about my towel because Brendan made sure to put a powerful sticking charm on it, before he let me leave with Sirius) instead of going through the bother of trying to figure out how to get changed while joined to the hand of someone of the opposite sex.

"Oh... 5am... right..." I said, my eyes drooping again. My slow mind began to tick. "Wait... 5AM! WHAT THE HELL! W-w-why are we up at 5am?!"

"Quidditch practice." Sirius said simply. He hadn't been looking for his school robes but instead his quidditch robes, which he had now laid out on his bed.

"Quidditch practice starts at 5am?"

"No. It starts at 6."

"What! Then why wake me up an hour early!" I demanded to know angrily. Sirius just shrugged. "Actually an hour might not be enough time."

"Why? What do you mean?"

"Well, we still have the problem of getting changed," I said, unable to believe that he could have forgotten. I certainly hadn't.

"There's a problem?"

"Yes! In case you haven't noticed you are a boy and I am a girl-"

"You know, actually, Willow, I hadn't noticed that. It's not like there are parts of our bodies that tell us what gender we are or anything."

I rolled my eyes, "Well, for all you know I could be a boy." That appeared to be the exact wrong thing to say, as it only gave Sirius an excuse to look me up and down with that smirk that I was sure he only used because it pissed me off. "Sirius, my eyes are up here."

"Yes and your breasts are on your chest, which doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out you are a girl," I felt my cheeks heat up again and would have stomped off but, unfortunately, my hand wouldn't allow it.

"Haha. Enough joking. How are we going to get changed?"

"Strip off and throw on whatever's hanging in the wardrobe?"

"Do you want me to start the gender argument again?!"

"OK, OK!" Sirius paused and a thoughtful look passed over his face momentarily. He snapped his fingers, grinning in triumph. "The shower curtain."

"Erm, what about it?"

"You on one side, me on the other!"

"Sirius... you're a genius."

"I know."

-x-

Sirius grabbed his quidditch robes, I grabbed my school robes and we both hurried into the bathroom. I was about to lock the door when Sirius pointed out that there was really no point, as apart from the house elf who had brought us and the school staff, none of the other students knew where we were currently living. I agreed but locked the door anyway when his back was turned; you never could be too careful.

"Who's going to stand in the bathtub then?" I asked, eyeing it with open dislike.

"You."

"Why me!" I complained.

"Because if you break your leg no-one will be bothered but if I break my leg then I won't be able to play the upcoming match about Slytherin." Sirius replied in a patronising voice.

"Oh, thanks," I bit back, glaring at him. None the less, I clambered into the bath tub, being careful not to slip on the bottom.

"Right. Then let's get this down with." Sirius' voice said from the other side of the curtain. I nodded, knowing that he couldn't really see me but felt more reassured anyway. I made sure to keep my body faced away from the shower curtain, not at all trusting Sirius not to look. Don't get the wrong impression; it wasn't because I thought I was anything worth looking at, it was just that Sirius Black really was that much of a pervert. My arm was is in absolute agony, as I tried to shield my body to the wall and not pull Sirius through the shower curtain.

"Are you looking?" I called out, my eyes narrowing suspiciously, as I struggled to get my head through the arm hole of my red t-shirt. Putting a t-shirt on one-handed is absolute hell, I can tell you.

"Only if you want me to, baby." There was a crash, as I slipped and grabbed onto the shower rail, bringing the whole thing crashing down into the bathtub. I looked over at Sirius and found that he was decent and had managed to remain standing, though he appeared to have tripped on my school robes.

"You are the most clumsy person I've ever met," Sirius stated, looking at me in a way that suggested he was wondering if there was something about me that made it that way or whether I was just unlucky and had been born like that.

"And you do absolute wonders for my confidence..." I replied sarcastically. I struggled to get out of the bathtub and quickly pulled my t-shirt on correctly, brushing imaginary dust from the bottoms of my jeans. Sirius handed me my robes and after I had pulled them on, he pocketed his wand and we both headed out of the door, me praying for a miracle that would help me get through the quidditch practice with more than one limb intact.

-x-

Please R&R!