Chapter 5. The stranger

The next day went on as usual. The Sirius-Ally problem was almost not affecting me at all until, of course, after dinner when we sat down to wait for the try-outs to be finished. I could see the jealousy come in waves over Ally's face as she struggled to not show me what she really felt. I just wanted to switch place with her, which would have made it so much easier. But who said life was ever easy?

We had waited in 40 minutes before the first students who had tried out for the team arrived to the Gryffindor tower again. After a while, James and Sirius came in and went right to the boys dorms to take a shower and change to normal clothes. Sirius was back very fast, dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt, which fitted him very well of course. He waved me with him as he walked by, and I gave Ally an excusive look before I got up and followed him out from the common room. When we were outside, he waited for me to come up beside him and he steered me towards the stairs.

"McGonagall will let us use her classroom to practice.", he said as we went down through the first staircases.

"Really?", I asked, a bit chocked.

"Yeah. I guess she's happy about the fact that I'm going to do schoolwork instead of messing around all the time.", he said, and smiled at me with a mischievous glint in his grey eyes.

We only met a few students on our way down to the ground floor, and all of them were heading the opposite way. Sirius walked in front of me, down the last steps of the staircase and straight up to the door of the Transfiguration classroom. He gently tried to open the door, and surprisingly for me, it swung up with a creak. He made a smile of triumph at me and walked in. I followed him and looked around in the big room.

"Close the door.", he said, already standing next to the professor's desk. I pushed the door, which closed with a small click, and went after him. He went around the desk to the front of it and laid his fingers on one of the desk drawers, getting prepared to open it.

"Er, Sirius... I don't think you should...-", I began but he interrupted me with a smile.

"Relax, Iz. I don't actually think she's left anything here anyways, she doesn't trust me that well yet.", he said, and winked. "But I wanna look just in case."

And of course, as he had predicted, the drawer was empty. He closed it again fast and came over to where i stood.

"Okay. Let's begin.", I said and grabbed my wand. He did the same and came to stand beside me.

"Let's make it easy to begin with. We'll choose a thing in here and try to make a double of it.", he said, looking around for a proper target. He lit up when he found a quill at the desk and placed it on the table in front of us.

"I'll do it first, and then you'll try.", he said, looking at me. "You concentrate on the quill, flip your wand softly and say 'Geminio'."

Sirius flipped his wand gracefully and easy, at the same time as he almost mumbled the spell with his dark voice. Out of the tip of his wand came a copy of the quill which already were lay on the table. The new one slowly fell down, next to the original twin. When it just had landed, Sirius raised his wand again and mumbled another spell and the quill disappeared again. We looked at each other, he with a kind of satisfied grin, and I was probably looking impressed, but quickly hid it for him.

"You like to show off, huh?", I said with a joking tone.

"Just a bit. But only for those who want to see it", he answered, still looking a bit satisfied, probably by my expression. But then he suddenly changed to a more serious mode and turned to me again. "Now it's your turn."

I have to admit I was a bit nervous, but I raised my wand, tried to concentrate as much as possible on the quill in front of me, and flipped my wand at the same time as I said 'Geminio'. But nothing happened. I looked up at Sirius, feeling helpless. He had a small smirk on his face when he went to stand a bit behind me, taking a grip around my wrist with his hand.

"Just a soft flip, remember. Be gentle in your wrist.", he said, as he steered my hand the right way. "Try again."

I tried to relax and concentrated one more time, and said the spell again as I flipped my wand, this time a bit more soft. Out of the top of it, a quill, but much smaller and darker, but still a quill, came out and fell down to the table next to the other.

"Well done!", Sirius said and grinned at me. I gave him a little grin back but I was not pleased with the small feather lying next to the bigger one, only looking ugly.

"Bombarda.", I said with a steady voice, and the feather exploded with a muffled bang. After that, I concentrated again, this time with my eyes closed, trying to put up a picture of the quill in my head. When I had got the perfect model designed in my mind, I opened my eyes and cast the spell.

"Geminio!", I said firmly and flipped my wand once again, and this time a bigger quill came out of it. But it was not perfect this time either and I got very disappointed. How hard could it be?

I looked at Sirius, probably with that helpless face again because he made a small chuckle.

"Why do I suck? I mean, didn't I do everything right this time?", I asked him, and he laughed even more.

"You don't suck. I told you you're doing well. This is only the first time we're training, remember?", he said as I blew the second quill up.

"You're right. I'll try again.", I said, almost desperately wanting to succeed.

I kept conjuring quills and blow them up until Sirius stopped me and said it would not get any better than that today. At my last three tries, it was an almost perfect quill which came out of my wand, but almost was not good enough for me, so I was glad he stopped me, otherwise I would have continued the whole night. We walked to the door, discussed ideas for the project. I opened it and walked around to the outside of it, closing it after Sirius. We went up the stairs to the first ground and headed forward through a corridor. Sirius was telling me about how he learned the conjuring spell when I suddenly saw someone at the other end of the long, and now dark corridor.

"Hey.", I said and put my hand on Sirius' arm to get his attention. He stopped in the middle of a sentence and looked at me. I pointed my head forward, and he looked in that direction instead. His grey eyes narrowed when he saw the shadow that moved towards us in an almost flying pace. I had not even realised we stood still, because I was so focused on the shadow, and when it came close enough, I could see it was a man, but he was covered in a large black cloak with a hood that hid his face in the dark. He did not stop until he was right in front of us. All I could see was a stern mouth; the rest of his face was still to dark. He turned his head up a bit, so we could se his entire face. Then he looked at us; first at me, and then at Sirius, and his mouth made up a strange smirk.

"Ahh. Mr Black, I didn't expect to meet you here tonight.", he said with a dark, low voice. I looked surprised up at Sirius, and saw his jaw tighten. He only nodded at the man.

"I bet you wonder why I am here.", the man continued with a wider grin now on his face.

"Please, tell me, Mr Lestrange.", Sirius said, with a monotone voice, showing no interest at all.

"I have an appointment with your headmaster about a certain problem that is constantly growing for every year at this school.", he cleared out, and then looked at me.

"I understand."

"I always new you were an intelligent boy, Sirius. Such a shame you didn't get sorted into Slytherin, then you wouldn't have to be near those filthy scum dregs that are accepted in the other houses."

"Excuse me?", I said, almost did not believe my ears. Sirius laid an arm before me, trying to push me behind him, and though I was angry, I did not fight back.

"Oh, my dear, it's time to stop pretend like nothing is wrong.", the man, obviously called Mr Lestrange, said and looked at me with an ugly grin playing over his lips.

"What is wrong?" I asked, not understanding what he was talking about.

"You see,", he started and looked around us for a moment. "The increasing amount of students with unpure blood makes me really worried. How long will it take before they let in people with much worse diseases too, such as werewolves for example? This school will not be safe anymore if it continues this way."

"I don't understand how you can compare normal humans with werewolves!" I felt the horror spread in me as I said the word myself; Werewolves. Scary and extremely dangerous creatures. Was there any werewolves near Hogwarts? Would Dumbledore even allow that?

Mr Lestrange laughed at me for a long moment before he turned to Sirius, still smiling big.

"You have a good taste in women, but this one seems to be a little bit too innocent. What's her name?", he asked Sirius, as if I was not able to speak for myself.

"Izabel... Potter.", he answered and squeezed my hand with his, as for he new I would come with an objection.

"Then I guess you're a pureblood?", he asked and turned to me. I saw Sirius gazing at me and I quickly nodded.

"Well then you have nothing to worry about, dear Miss Potter." When he said that, he looked up behind us and suddenly lit up. His face expression frightened me and I took a step closer to Sirius without even noticing it myself. He took my hand again, holding it steady, as if trying to calm me down. It did not work.