Thank you for all of the support! I try to not ask for this, but please review. It lets me know what you like and don't!

Also! Want to connect with me or get updates? Check out my twitter, DarkSuspense

On with the story!

Flashbacks


How It Should've Been

Chapter 8: We Weren't Always Like This

Just as Harry had promised, they had talked about it later. Even if it wasn't as much later as he would've liked. After the first class, they had a free period, in which Hermione's made sure to drag him to the library so he could tell her what happened.

"Alright spill." She ordered as soon as they sat down. Harry looked at her and sighed.

"I hadn't done something that I remembered I had to alright? Simple enough, I just had to go do it really quick." Harry told her. She looked skeptical and like she wanted to question it but she didn't.

"So just curious. What's your opinion of Dumbledore?" Harry questioned. She looked up from her textbook with a confused face.

"Well he is the greatest wizard alive. He's also the leader of the light, so I think he is someone that we should believe in, he's the reason this school is the safest place in Britain. He's the greatest." Hermione answered. Before questioning "Why what do you think?" She asked curious.

Harry took a breathe before answering. "I just think that people act like he's so great but I mean, do any of you actually know him? You just take it as you hear it." Harry answered causing Hermione to look at him incredulously.

"What are you saying? He is great, everyone looks up to him." Hermione responded.

"Yeah so I've been told." Harry said in a tone that must've told Hermione he didn't. She looked him like he had two heads. "Look, I just don't believe in following blindly. Okay? Seeing is believing and I haven't seen anything that's so special about him." Harry defended.

"Ryder! It's not following blindly, it's respecting adults and authority figures and people that know best." Hermione countered when she turned her body to face him.

"Hermione. Believing that all adults and authority figures have your best wishes in mind is completely misplaced." Harry stated firmly. The look she gave him was one of pure disbelief.

"They know best! They know what we need!" Hermione argued.

"No Hermione, they don't always. They can try but at least a percentage of the time they are going to be wrong." Harry argued. Harry now saw something about Hermione that he didn't before, she had an undying belief that Dumbledore and all other authority figures were to be worshipped. Maybe that was why he was drawn to her, so he could show her the truth before she got hurt because of her belief.

"Ryder! What is wrong with you?" Hermione asked angrily. Harry took a deep breathe trying to bury anything he may have wanted to say but couldn't.

"Hermione, let's just say that my family have some experience with seeing people's true colors. I know not all adults want what's best for us. You will find out one day that some people only do things for themselves. Now let's drop this, we have differing opinions so let's let it go before we get into a fight over it." Harry told her. She obviously didn't want to drop the matter, but seeing the look on his face convinced her to let it go for now.

They remained in the library and mostly in silence for the rest of the period. Eventually it was over and it was lunch time. Entering the hall, Harry followed Hermione but after making a split-second decision he grabbed her arm and pulled her over to where Luna was sitting and sat across from Luna. Hermione frowned before sitting to Harry's right.

"Luna, meet Hermione. Hermione, meet Luna." Harry introduced them while sending Luna a warning look.

"Lovegood." Hermione greeted.

"Granger." Luna responded in kind, sending Harry a look. Harry looked between the two.

"You two know each other?" Harry said in a questioning tone.

"Your friends with Lovegood?" Hermione countered, looking at him. He turned his head to look at her.

"Yeah, is something wrong?" He asked not seeing what he was missing.

"Let's just say Hermione here isn't my biggest fan." Luna interjected, causing Harry to look between the two girls.

"Why?" He asked cautiously.

"It's because of her I don't have any friends. Her ramblings about her 'creatures'" Hermione answered bitterly. Harry's eyebrows shot up. " I'm not that hungry, I'm going back to the library. See you in class Ryder." Hermione said abruptly before picking up and leaving.

"Mhm, not how I saw that going. Why didn't you tell me you knew her?" Harry questioned Luna. Luna looked down at her plate before looking back at Harry.

"Because as I said, she's not my biggest fan." Luna didn't elaborate on it.

"What happened?" Harry persisted. Luna sighed.

"Let's go." She beckoned before standing and she started walking towards the doors of the Hall. Standing Harry followed her out of the Great Hall and through the corridors of the castle until she stopped in front of a painting of a pear. She hit the right spot and the portrait opened. Stepping through, Harry could see that there were house elves everywhere. "This is the kitchens and a pretty good place to talk considering we are missing lunch." She informed him.

"You going to tell me now?" Harry questioned once they sat on one of the benches across from each other.

"Okay, so when I first came to Hogwarts, I met Hermione. And just from spending ten minutes in the same room as her, I thought it was possible that she was a daughter of Athena. N-" Luna was cut off.

"All children of Athena have grey eyes." Harry reasoned.

"Well I know that now. At that point, I was still relatively new to the godly world and I was eleven. So, I told Hermione about some of the creatures that I had learned about. And at first, she didn't believe me, not many, if any did. But I convinced her. We became friends and the longer we were friends the more we spoke about the creatures. One day when we got back from spring break, I don't know exactly what happened but I do know she was being made fun of for her belief. They told her that, those creatures weren't real and that she was crazy. And the more and more they said that she believed them. Everyone saw her as crazy and quite a few still do. She doesn't have many friends and she blames me for that. I learned she wasn't a child of Athena, and since then she hated me, I backed off." She finished looking down at the table.

"Wow. That's… a lot. But, it's not your fault. You didn't know. You can't be blamed for that." Harry assured her.

"Yeah well, Hermione does." Luna countered.

"Well I don't."

"That's because you know the truth. You have Alex who taught you all about her world and taught you to control your powers. You know it all because you grew up with it."

"You're wrong. I didn't. I didn't grow up with it. When I was younger, Alex lived with us but at the same time didn't. I didn't understand it back then, why she would leave and go I didn't even know where. So, one day when I was thirteen, she was about to leave again, and I'll never forget it.

Harry came walking around the corner when he spotted Alex walking down the stairs. She obviously walked down the stairs everyday but something was different about this time. She had a backpack in her hand. Following her down the stairs, he followed until he saw her about to walk out the side door that connected the kitchen to the garage.

"What're you doing?" Harry asked from behind her, she froze and turned around to face him.

"I'll be back in few days." She assured him.

"You're leaving again?" Harry asked incredulously. It was the fourth time that summer and it was only a month into it. He had no idea where she went, but she was constantly leaving, and he was tired of it.

"I have to." Was all she said.

"Just like you had to all of those other times? I never even know where you go! What if I needed you?" His voice got louder with each sentence.

"You have Sirius. You'll be fine." She reminded him. He could see something in her eyes but he honestly couldn't have cared less.

"I screamed at her, I said all of these things. Things that I had no right to, but I did because I didn't care, I was angry. I told her that I hated her. And she just took it all, she didn't say anything. After I must've spent a good twenty minutes yelling, insulting, trying to hurt her. I just couldn't yell anymore. So, she looked me and said…"

"We will pick this up when I get back." She said not addressing anything he had just said.

"No, I want to talk NOW!" He yelled angrily.

"Harry! Enough!" Came a voice from behind him. He turned to see Sirius behind him with an angry expression on his.

"What you aren't mad she's always leaving?" Harry shouted him.

"No, I'm-" He was rudely interrupted by a person falling through the ceiling and landing on the island in the kitchen right next to them.

"Alex, it's seems your friend led me right to you." A voice came from the direction Alex was in. Harry and Sirius both turned to Alex with a sword held to her throat and a man standing behind her. The person that had dropped onto the island rolled off of it and using the wall as a crutch stood coughing.

"Tyler, don't bring her into this!" The person exclaimed.

"Oh, it's too late for that. You already did when you choose her side in this war." The man reminded him. "That's where you made your first mistake, picking the side of somebody that isn't even a demigod. You should know by now, never pick the mortals side." The man smirk cruelly. Sirius and Harry couldn't do anything other than watch the scene play out. Sirius knew Alex would be okay but Harry didn't. All he could think about was all the mean and hurtful things he said and now she may die.

"And your first mistake was assuming you know me." Alex commented before disappearing a torrent of fires only to reappear right behind the man and twist his arm past its breaking point causing his arm to break and drop the sword while also kicking out his knee. Once he was kneeling on the ground, a sword materialized out of fire in Alex's hand and now the roles were reversed, the man now had the sword to his neck accept the main difference was the fact that this sword was crackling with electricity. Harry looked on eyes wide and in pure shock. He didn't know how to process everything. A minute ago, he was yelling at his aunt about how she was always leaving and now she was holding a sword to someone's neck.

Making a split-second decision, rather than ending the man she flipped the sword over and smashed its hilt into the man's head, rendering him unconscious. The person from before that was leaning on the wall still looked at her curiously.

"He may be able to tell us something." She answered his unspoken question. The person nodded, before limping forward and crouching down, he touched the man's shoulder and sent a nod to Alex before the two men disappeared in a flurry of shadows.

"And after that, Alex and Sirius explained everything to me, well they didn't really have much of a choice given everything that had just happened. But that's when I found out the truth. Sirius gave me the ring he would wear on his middle finger, said it was time. And I finally understood some of the things that Alex would do and say that I hadn't before. I was upset that they lied to me for so long but I understood why they did. Just seeing that, I understood." Harry finished.

"I always believed that from how you and Alex acted around each other you were always close." Luna admitted.

"Oh, don't get me wrong, we were as close as we could be with me not knowing a whole other part of her life. But now we are incredibly close. Most of the time it's like she's more my bigger sister than my aunt but she does have her moments when I know she's not." Harry told her. They spoke for a few more minutes before it was time that lunch would've been over and the two went their separate ways to the rest of their day.


The next morning, Alex was sitting in her own apartment's study in New York. She had been going over possible solutions to find Sirius while Amelia was going over magical means back in Britain. Alex was just writing down a note when the front door to the apartment closed. Alex didn't pay it any mind and just continued on. A knock drew her attention.

Jake was standing in the study doorway, knocking to get her attention. "Hey." He greeted.

"Yeah, what's up?" Alex asked closing the book she was previously reading.

"I was actually just going to ask you that very question." He informed her. She tilted her head to the right and lifted an eyebrow in question. "A book of mine went missing this morning. And don't say you didn't take it, it's sitting on your desk right there." He commented as he pointed to the book.

"Well if you already know I took it, why confront me about it?"

"Because knowing you did doesn't explain why you did? What do you need with a book on magic?" Jake questioned curiously.

Alex sighed before looking from the book sitting on the desk up to Jake. "I'm looking for someone." She admitted before taking the letter from 'Sirius' out of the desk drawer and handing it to Jake. He stepped forward and took it, observing it. His eyebrows furrowed.

"Well I don't know who this is meant to be from but there is an odd magical aura on it."

"Meaning?" Alex asked leaning forward in the chair.

"Meaning, whoever was meant to write this definitely did but I don't think it was of their own free will. This signature at the bottom, what is it?" Jake inquired. Alex picked up a paper that was lying on the desk and handed it to him. "Hm, so whoever wrote this obviously fought back against whatever was compelling them, that's why I it seems like this signature looks like this. This more than likely wasn't the name they were meant to write, but they fought it and left it as a clue." Jake concluded before handing the papers back to Alex.

"Could you find the person that wrote this?"

"Possibly yes. If you had something of theirs, and that letter more than likely yes." Jake answered. Alex nodded thoughtfully.

"You busy today?"

"No?" Jake asked totally wondering where that came from.

"Good." Alex stood taking the papers before she picked up her leather jacket from the back of the office chair before walking around the desk. "Hold on." She ordered as she grabbed Jake's forearm causing them both to disappear in a flurry of flames.

Seconds later they appeared in Sirius's study back in Britain, shocking Amelia halfway to hell and causing her to jump up out of the chair and cast a stunner at them. Alex flicked her hand causing the spell to change direction and make a sharp right hitting the bookshelf. Once Amelia saw who it was she relaxed somewhat but not completely since she had absolutely no idea who the man was.

As if reading her mind, Alex spoke. "This is a close friend of mine Jake. He can help us find Sirius."

"How?" Amelia looked skeptically between the two.

"Find me something of his and I'll show you." Jake grinned slightly.


And that concludes this chapter. I believe this gave a little more background to some family history. Thank you for all of the support! As always, hope you enjoyed and Happy Reading! -DS