Chapter Four
"Concentrate, Sirius! Don't let your mind wander off!"
Sirius, his face scrunched up with the effort of wordlessly (and wandlessly) trying to make the quill levitate off the desk, gasped for breath and shook his head in defeat.
His lessons with Ruby had so far been a miserable failure. This was their third meeting and he had yet to move that damned feather even an inch off the desk. They had tried other simple spells too, like Alohomora, the Unlocking spell, on a small lock and Reparo, the Mending Charm, on a broken inkpot, but all had ended the same. Sirius often wondered whether this was how Muggles felt; disappointed and hopeless.
The dingy classroom he and Ruby were practising in looked like more of a storage room for old desks and chairs. They had cleared away the mess and set everything against the walls except for two chairs and a desk in the middle. Both were seated and the desk between them had the stubborn unlevitating quill on it.
"I give up," Sirius said in defeat.
"You'll never get it being so negative. Just because this doesn't come to you as easily as everything else, doesn't mean you just give up."
Sirius sighed, "You're a harder teacher than Remus is."
"You came to me for help. Not a pep-talk."
He looked up at Ruby sitting across from him with her arms crossed. She frowned and gave him a hard stare before standing and saying, "We're done for the day. I have my own work to do. Same time, same place tomorrow?"
"We only just got here like half an hour ago!"
"And still you show no improvement. Both in terms of magic and attitude."
"I'm doing my best, alright!" Sirius said, standing in anger.
"Listen some wizards can do this and others can't, just accept that."
"That's a real poor excuse for your bad teaching, you know."
They both stared at each other with anger in their eyes before Ruby sighed and returned to her seat. "Listen, I'm sorry. Please sit down. I... I just have a lot on my mind, that's all.
Sirius raised an eyebrow at her and said, "What is it then that's got you so head up, huh?"
Ruby looked up at him, frowning, "Well, actually it's none of your business. So do you want to start practising again or not?"
Sirius sat down and twiddled the quill between his fingers, still looking at her. "You know, you can actually talk to people about your problems. It sounds crazy, but it can actually help, funnily enough."
"My problems are my own."
Sirius nodded slowly before saying, "Does this have to do with what happened over Christmas?"
Ruby froze, the events of Christmas pushing all thoughts of Regulus's Dark Mark to the back of her mind.
...
She had slipped out of her grandparents house on Christmas Eve and taken the train to the small village her parents lived in. As she crept through the snow to their cottage and peered in through their front window, she saw both her mother and father watching television and sipping cups of tea, laughing at something she couldn't hear. A half frozen tear had trickled down her face at how happy they were, and at how unhappy they had been with her, in the end.
Her face hardened as she drew her wand. She could show them now what she could really do; that what had made them leave her on a doorstep could wipe the smiles off their stupid Muggle faces...
"Ruby, is that you? Hey yeah, it is! Ruby!"
In horror, Ruby turned to see Sirius Black and James Potter walking towards her, through the falling snow. She almost fell over as she backed away from the window, stammering, "Sorry, you must mean somebody else." She turned and ran, not stopping until she reached the train station and hid in the shadows, waiting for a way home.
...
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Ruby answered, still shaken. Surely, he would have forgotten about that, she thought.
Sirius looking at her expression said softly, "Were they your parents? It's ok, you know. Being Muggleborn isn't a thing of shame, even if your friends say it is. They're wrong, they don't-"
"I'm not a Mudblood, Black, and how dare you suggest it, " Ruby hissed, leaning across the table, "Do you even realise what you're saying? Who could have heard you, you fool? In case you haven't noticed, now is not really the time for declaring your blood status, or have people question it, like you just did."
A moment passed and Sirius, stunned, said, "Forgive me, I shouldn't have presumed... Did you just say Mudblood?"
"Oh, don't play innocent, Black. You and I both know the real situation of what's happening beyond these walls and what's coming for us when we leave here. We have to protect ourselves while we still can. The time for political correctness is over."
"You are an absolute prig if you think you can just use that disgusting word and have it not mean anything, " Sirius whispered, leaning even closer over the table to Ruby, "Of course I know what's going on out there. I'm not an idiot like you clearly believe, but I will not stand for you and your little friends' blood supremacy bullshit you're all so fond of. I thought you were different, but I can see now you're as much of a Death Eater as they are, aren't you?"
She stared back at him and raised her hand, concentrating her focus on the quill. It sprang out of his hand high into the air and began doing loop-de-loops before it suddenly burst into flames and its ashes fell back softly down onto Sirius's head.
He stood up and scraped the chair back, slinging his bag across his back before storming out of the room and slamming the door behind him.
Ruby sat alone in the room and closed her eyes.