AN: Just a heads up, this chapter skips around quite a bit!

The morning dawned early, but to Kestrel, it couldn't have been early enough. The night had seemed longer than it was, and she wanted to see Remus. When he met them at the barrier to 9 ¾, Kestrel left the Weasleys behind to run off and hug him. He retrieved her cart and they ran through the barrier together. Once they were through, Remus pulled Kestrel to the side. He was looking considerably better than when she had last seen him, as the full moon had passed already.

"How did you sleep?" he asked immediately, observing the slight darkening under her eyes.

Kestrel could only bring herself to shrug, avoiding his concerned gaze. "Fine."

She let her tangled hair fall into her face as she looked at her shoes. Since her hair was so curly, Remus normally made her comb her hair thoroughly, but with so many children running around at the Burrow, she had gotten away with leaving it to curl and tangle as it wished.

Remus frowned, brushing her wild hair away from her face and bending down a little to look her in the eye. "I thought the dreams had gone away. That's what you told me."

"I know," she said guiltily. "But Remus, Dreamless Sleep is so expensive! And they're not that bad, honestly…" she trailed off as Remus sighed heavily.

"I'm going to order some more tonight and send it to you at Hogwarts. I know you don't want me to spend money on it, but I'm taking care of you, Kestrel, not the other way around. One more thing: if anything else happens... write to me, alright?"

Kestrel nodded, her shoulders slumping a little. He had to be talking about Snape. She had first told Remus about him at the end of her first week at Hogwarts, and had been very upset at his response to just ignore the Slytherin Head of House; in her overemotional stupor, she had been under the impression that Remus would write to the school and demand that Snape be sacked immediately. Regardless, Remus always insisted that she tell him everything that Snape said to her.

"Hey," Remus said, his voice softer as he noticed her good spirits disappearing. "You'll have a great time this year. I promise."

Kestrel gave him a small smile. "I know," she said. "I'll be fine."

Remus nodded at her, then looked at the time. "You'd better board now. Am I to assume that thirteen is too old to hug your godfather in front of your classmates?" he asked her jokingly.

Kestrel grinned, throwing her arms around him. "I love you."

"Love you too," he said, smiling as he watched her run off to hug Arthur and Molly Weasley. She jumped onto the train with a few minutes to spare, and leaned out of a compartment window to wave at him. She shouted a goodbye to him that was quickly lost in the noise of the other children and the train as it began to leave the station. Remus stood there waving until the train was out of sight.

Kestrel climbed down from the seat she was kneeling on and left in search of Fred and George. She wasn't in a very good mood anymore, and she knew that the sooner she found the twins, the sooner they would make her laugh and she would forget to worry about Snape. She found them sharing a compartment with Lee Jordan, who was entertaining a small group of first and second years with a creature in a box. She squeezed in between George and Lee, forcing a smile when they both greeted her enthusiastically. She nervously leaned against George because Lee's box had some sort of hairy leg sticking out that she hoped didn't belong to a spider. Because of her anxiety about Lee's giant bug (if it was a bug), she forgot to leave the smile on her face, and she certainly didn't notice how Fred was studying her.

"What's up with you?" he asked suddenly, raising his eyebrows when the fake smile immediately slipped back onto her face.

"Well, it's rather creepy, don't you think?" she said, gesturing to Lee's box.

Fred shook his head stubbornly. "That's not it, you've looked a bit down ever since you came in."

"No I haven't," Kestrel said just as stubbornly.

"Yes you have," Fred told her a bit more loudly.

"I have not!" Kestrel insisted, lifting her chin and staring down her nose at him.

"Alright," George said over anything Fred might have said next, addressing the younger students gathered around Lee. "Time to go sit with your friends!"

"Yeah," Lee said, rolling his eyes at their protests. "You'll be able to see it later, folks!"

Once the compartment was empty but for the four of them, Lee stowed his box away and turned to Kestrel. "Alright, what's eating you?"

Kestrel huffed, still irritated at Fred. "Nothing!"

Fred crossed his arms over his chest, staring hard at her. "Kes, you know we don't believe that."

"We're going to drag it out of you even if you don't tell us," George put in.

"So you might as well let it out," Fred finished.

Kestrel frowned, avoiding their eyes. "You'll make fun of me for it."

"Come off it, Kes," Lee said, throwing his arm around her shoulder. "We're not going to make fun of you."

"Well," Kestrel began hesitantly. "I just- I'm nervous... Potions is going to be-"

"So you're worried about Snape?" Lee asked, not a glint of humor in his eyes. The twins were just as somber, and Kestrel nodded, grateful they were taking it so seriously.

"Don't be," the twins said.

"He's just a bitter old man trying to entertain himself," Lee said.

"Yeah, can't imagine he gets out much," Fred began.

"Considering most people would be scared of a giant bat," George said, smirking at her.

"Sweeping around Hogsmeade-"

"-fangs bared-"

"-grease dripping from his head-"

"-glow in the dark skin-"

"Scary stuff, yeah?" Lee said, grinning as he watched Kestrel giggle at their antics, her worries temporarily forgotten.

Fred and George managed to keep Kestrel's mind off of Snape on the train ride, but at the feast, she knew that she would have no choice but to be subject to his nasty looks from across the room. She'd be lying if she told herself she was used to it; even after two years, she knew her heart would still skip a beat when she glanced up and found him glaring at her.

When they got to the castle, she and the twins found a place at the Gryffindor table that was much too close to the Head table for her liking, but she didn't dare show them how much it bothered her. Instead, she immersed herself in a conversation with Lee, whom she had forgotten to ask about his mother. He had written during the summer and said she had come down with a virus. She was just asking him how she was doing when Dumbledore called for attention.

Now that she was not distracted, Kestrel resigned herself to the fact that she would have to face Snape sometime. As Dumbledore finished his speech, she snuck a peak at Snape, only to find that he was looking at the group of nervous first years that stood in a huddle in front of the Sorting Hat. Kestrel felt relief for a moment before curiosity set in, and she looked closer at who she thought he was staring at. She studied the small boy with thick black hair and glasses, and wondered if she had seen him somewhere before. She shrugged it off, clapping for a girl with bushy brown hair who had been sorted into Gryffindor. She would find out who he was when he was called up to be sorted. She was just turning to say something to the twins when she heard it.

"Potter, Harry!"

She immediately felt all the blood drain from her face as the boy with glasses went up to be sorted. Whispering broke out throughout the room, and students from all four houses gaped back and forth between her and Harry Potter. This went on for several long minutes as the boy sat beneath the Sorting Hat, and when the Hat placed him in Gryffindor, Kestrel laid her head down on the table, feeling faint.

In all her anxiety about Snape, she had completely forgotten that this was Harry Potter's first year at Hogwarts. Not that she had consciously kept track of the years, of course; she had always tried to block out any memories from before Remus had taken her in. Still, she should have known- hadn't Remus been acting strange at King's Cross? He was the type to keep track. She felt a twinge of anger as she realized that he must have known, and that he hadn't even bothered to warn her.

She spent the whole of Dumbledore's speech determinedly avoiding the small, black-haired boy's eyes, but it didn't help matters that he was sitting only a few seats down from them. Fred, George, and Lee kept giving her worried glances as she sat through the feast, pushing food around on her plate and frowning. The time for them to head up to Gryffindor tower couldn't come soon enough.

When they were in the common room, Kestrel headed straight up the girls' staircase with only a few parting words to the boys. Once there, she opened her trunk to grab some parchment, a quill, and some ink, then got into her bed and pulled the curtains closed. There were a thousand things she wanted to say to Remus. She thought about asking him if he'd known, then decided that there was no way he couldn't have. She wanted to accuse him of being too overprotective and sheltering, but that was a little harsh. Finally, she settled for one question.

Why didn't you tell me?

She rolled up the piece of parchment and put it beneath her pillow, setting the ink and quill on the floor. She would go to the owlery the next morning.

The day classes started, Kestrel wasn't able to concentrate on any of them. Her mind kept going back to Harry Potter, the boy who had been orphaned by her father's doing. Did he know what had happened? She didn't think so, because he hadn't come seeking her out yet. She wondered why no one had told him. She knew she should just have been happy that he was ignorant, but shouldn't he know why his parents had died? She could understand that it wasn't exactly a topic to discuss with an eleven-year-old, but-

"What?" she hissed at Fred, who had been repeatedly elbowing her.

"Black."

Kestrel's attention snapped away from Fred and she looked up at Snape fearfully, realizing that he must have been calling her name for roll. She sank down in her seat a little. "Sir."

"I see you have not hesitated to begin day dreaming in my class," he sneered. "Ten points from Gryffindor for your blatant disrespect."

Kestrel nodded silently, her heart pounding. At least he had only taken ten points. Fred and George didn't feel the same way. "Git," Fred mumbled under his breath, and George and Lee turned around in their seats to give the professor dirty looks. They gave her reassuring smiles.

"I had trusted that you all, being third years, would not need a speech about my expectations of you." Snape paused for effect, turning on his heel to lock eyes with Kestrel. "But as fate should have it, Ms. Black has chosen to make an example of herself. Apparently, my trust has been severely misplaced."

Kestrel sank lower into her seat as groans echoed around the room. Fred nudged her foot with his as comfortingly as he could, glaring at the few people who turned around to scowl at her.

"There will be no sleeping or day dreaming in my class," he went on. "You will pay attention at all times, lest you blow up a cauldron and send half of your classmates to the Hospital Wing. Now, take out your parchment. Since Ms. Black has thought herself above the rules, we will begin the year by taking notes."

The first few days of term, whispers followed Kestrel everywhere she went. She put on a brave face, having expected as much because of her connection to Harry, but it hurt a lot more than she let on. After first year, she'd thought that the other students had begun to trust her more, as second year had gone off nearly without a hitch. One day in the library, as she was checking out a book for Charms, she nearly ran into a group of gossiping Hufflepuffs in the year above her.

She apologized quickly, making he way to a table in an abandoned corner of the library. She was able to read peacefully there for a few minutes, until the sound of whispering reached her from a few shelves away. She discretely glanced up- it was the same group of Hufflepuffs she had seen before. They didn't seem to notice her in the corner, and carried on with their conversation.

A girl with long brown hair sniffed indignantly. "I can't believe she's still allowed in Hogwarts."

"Well, she hasn't technically done anything." A blonde girl with glasses reasoned, searching through the books with interest as her friends stood and talked.

"Yes, but you know who her father is! What if it's hereditary? She could turn out just like him!"

"Maybe Dumbledore's letting her stay so he can keep an eye on her," another suggested.

"Maybe there's no where to send her to. I heard she's been passed around from relative to relative and they all hate her," a skinny girl with a slight lisp speculated.

"No, she was adopted by some man after... you know..." the first girl informed her.

"After her dad went to jail?" Kestrel felt herself tense, her fingers gripping her book too tightly.

"Don't you know anything? He didn't adopt her until her mum went crazy and offed herself!"

Kestrel stood up abruptly, gathering her books and making her way to the library door with tears in her eyes. As she left the Hufflepuffs behind her, she heard the last comment, uttered by the girl with the glasses: "Do you think she heard us?"

She cried all the way to the common room, not bothering to hide her tears from anyone that passed by. When she finally stumbled into the common room, as luck would have it, the twins were the first people she met.

"Whoa," Fred said in good humor when she nearly ran into him. "Slow down a bit, Kes!"

"Going somewhere?" George added.

She looked up at them both, and the grins slipped off their faces.

"Merlin, what happened?" they questioned.

Kestrel shook her head, wiping her eyes. She was beginning to think she was being ridiculous. "Nothing, just some dumb Hufflepuffs. It doesn't even matter."

"Then why are you crying?"

"What did they say?"

"I don't know," she told them, answering George's question and ignoring Fred's completely.

"What did they say about you?" Fred repeated stubbornly.

"We're blocking the way into the common room," Kestrel said, moving to sit down on one of the couches. She stopped in her tracks when she saw Harry Potter already sitting there. She froze as he looked up at her through his glasses, his green eyes knowing. He had found out.

"You're Kestrel Black, aren't you?" he asked. She nodded guiltily.

She expected him to yell at her or try to hurt her, but he simply looked at her for a moment and then said. "Oh. I'm Harry."

Kestrel gaped at him in confusion, her heart thudding in her chest. Finally she managed to force a word from her throat. "Hi."

"Kes," Fred pressed, looking from her to Harry and back again. "What'd they say?"

"They were just gossiping," Kestrel said evasively, glancing at Harry.

"Can we talk to you in private?" George asked, understanding her subtle hint.

The three of them made their way up the boys' staircase and into the third year dorm. Fred leaned against what she guessed was his bed, while George chose to lean against the wall. They remained silent, and Kestrel sighed, realizing she would have to tell them sooner or later. "They were just talking about my father..."

"That doesn't usually get you so upset," George said cautiously.

"Well," she said softly, tears springing to her eyes again. "They might have mentioned my mother."

The twins immediately shifted uncomfortably, glancing at each other. In all the time they had known her, Kestrel had rarely, if ever, spoken of her mother. They had figured it was a raw subject. George stood up straight, clearing his throat. "What did they say about her?"

"Just the truth," Kestrel said bitterly. "That she went insane and killed herself."

George went pale and said nothing, but Fred grimaced and said, "I'm sorry, Kes."

Kestrel's chin quivered as she sighed again. "It's not your fault. It's just... with Harry Potter being here and all... Maybe if I'd had some kind of warning, I would have been prepared for it..."

The twins once more shuffled their feet uncomfortably, avoiding her eyes.

Kestrel's heart dropped into her stomach. "What?"

"Well..." Fred began. "We might have seen him on the train..."

"But we didn't want to make you worry-"

"-When you came into the compartment looking all sad, I thought you knew."

"And then we started talking about Snape-"

"And we forgot to mention it..." they twins chorused guiltily.

Kestrel was staring at them incredulously, her mind whirring. "You two knew he would be here?"

The twins nodded hesitantly, their expressions anxious.

"I don't understand," she said softly. "You knew how much this would change my school life. I could barely breathe the other night when his name was called because it shocked me so much! How? How could you not tell me?" her voice had been growing steadily louder with each sentence, and by that time she was yelling. The twins shrank back, their hands up in a gesture of peace.

"Kes-" they said, attempting to apologize.

"Don't!" she snapped, then her face softened. "Just leave me alone for a little while, okay? I just need to think." She left them standing remorsefully in their dorm room as she ran back down the staircase.