Questions, Again
On the final morning of term, Siria sat in her usual spot of the Great Hall at the Gryffindor table. She kept her back to the wall, was just a little closer to the teachers than not and sat beside Ron, who sat beside Hermione. Seamus Finnegan and Ron were in great spirits over the Quidditch World Cup. Siria tried to hang on to every word of past World Cups, but also wanted to come to her first one without raised expectations. It was Quidditch though, and so very difficult for her to expect anything less than breathtaking.
Seamus stopped mid-sentence and looked behind Siria. She followed his eyes to the small, thin framed Astoria Greengrass, who had walked across the Great Hall from the Slytherin table. Astoria opened her mouth, but then closed it and dropped her head. Siria looked to Ron and he scooted into Hermione while Siria squished herself to Parvati. Ron patted the spot they managed to make between them.
"What's up, Astoria?" Siria asked. Astoria shrank into the spot they made, with her feet toward the wall and back against the table. She whispered something. Siria had never seen her so quiet. "Sorry, we're a rowdy bunch." Siria smiled and pulled her hair from her ear then leaned closer to Astoria. "Could you repeat that for me?" The quiet whisper got louder near the end.
"...write me?"
"I'd love to write you. It's going to be full of nonsense about my dad though— Sirius is adopting me, so I'm totally going to follow him like a duckling this summer." Siria told her. Astoria nodded very quickly and raised her head. "I expect to hear all about what you want to learn next year. Professor McGonagall already gave us permission."
"I can't wait." Astoria beamed. Siria patted her soft, brown hair.
Astoria turned to Ron and Hermione. "Could I write you too?" She asked them.
"Me?" Ron asked. She nodded. "Sure. My owl's old and a little batty though, I don' know when you'll get a reply."
"I'd love exchange letters with you, Astoria." Hermione smiled.
"You can write to me and Padma, if you want to talk Divination" Parvati told her. Astoria's face seemed to glow with excitement. She dove her arms around Siria's middle, into a hug. Siria chuckled.
Across the Great Hall, Daphne Greengrass, Travers and Warrington sat together, even with Siria. Siria nodded to them. Warrington nodded back. Travers waved one of her green painted, silver ribboned nailed hands. Daphne gave a half smile and looked back to her bowl of porridge. Astoria insisted on giving everyone that had agreed to write her a hug, before she returned to her table and the spot between Daphne and Millicent.
The Gryffindor third years glared at anyone who seemed to look at Astoria oddly, which mostly only consisted of older Slytherin students. Siria clicked her tongue and glared fiercely at a sixth year Slytherin student until they looked away from Astoria. "If anyone so much as points their wand near that little ball of joy, I'll—" Siria began.
"Show them you're the bigger person by not starting any fights." Hermione snapped. Ron and Siria exchanged a speaking glance.
"Sure." Ron told Hermione. "That's what we'll do."
(Book: B3, 429-430 exam results come out. The trio has passed every subject & Gryffindor has won the House Cup. On the Hogwarts Express, Hermione tells them she's dropping Muggle Studies— even though she had 326% in it)
"[...] I can't stand another year like this one. That Time-Turner, it was driving me mad (B3, 430). Even with the three rooms in your trunk" Hermione looked to Siria, "I felt like I was about to snap."
"You know, you could have told me why you wanted the Cloak and trunk. I probably could have lied better than 'she forgot something'." Siria told her.
"Yeah. People thought you were losing it, Hermione" Ron looked out the window to catch a last glance at Hogsmeade Station.
"I promised not to tell anyone!" said Hermione (B3, 430). She swept Crookshanks into her lap with a sigh.
The countryside rolled past them, they got a small collection of sweets from the candy trolley, and laughed into the afternoon. Ron insisted that Siria had to come to the Quidditch World Cup with them. "Sirius has to be going" Siria told him. There was no way he wouldn't be interested in something like that. "Even if he doesn't, he's not going to stop me."
Their compartment door slid open and Siria practically growled. Draco Malfoy stood in their doorway. He gave a short glance down the hall of the train before he dove in and closed the door behind him. Hermione raised an eyebrow as Malfoy crouched down, beneath the window of the compartment door.
"What do you want, Malfoy?" Ron barked.
"Quiet, Weasley." Malfoy snapped. Ron and Siria rose to their feet, but Malfoy stayed crouched on the floor. Hermione held out her arm to stop Ron and Siria from advancing. She spoke a little louder than she had been.
"No," She told them very clearly. "That's really what he said." Hermione's round, brown eyes looked intently at them. Ron and Siria looked to each other, but sat down.
"That's crazy!" Siria said in a similar volume to Hermione's.
"Yeah!" Ron agreed a little louder. Ron and Siria continued to exchange puzzled looks until they heard voices in the hall.
"Draco!" An unfamiliar, female voice called. "Come on" The girl called. Another girl made a clicking sound, as if she were trying to attract a cat. A few heads peered through the window of their compartment. It was a mix of Slytherin girls. They looked through and a girl with long, tidy black hair and green eyes raised her head at Siria. Siria bit back a growl, but glared at the girl. "Poor Potter." The girl called through the window and left, laughing with her friends. Their cackles carried down the hall of the train until they were out of earshot.
Malfoy rose to his feet and dusted himself off like he had been sitting in dirt instead of the compartment floor. "It's your fault— Potter." He tsked at her.
"Excuse me?" Siria snapped back. Ron shot an arm over her to stop Siria from rising to her feet,
"Haven't you been listening?" Hermione asked. "Whenever we're in the bathroom, it's all anyone talks about."
"What?" Siria asked. To their surprise as much as Ron's and Siria's, Malfoy and Hermione shared an empathetic look. He quickly shot his head up to look down on them though.
"Next time, I'm letting you fall, Potter" Malfoy told her and slammed the compartment door behind him.
Siria gestured wordlessly to the door and Ron let go. "What is going on?" Ron asked. Hermione clicked her tongue and leaned into her seat.
"Ever since Siria claimed Malfoy rejected her, he's been getting asked out— daily." Hermione told them flatly while she scratched behind Crookshank's ear.
"Ever since red cabbages were found, people have been buying more bell peppers," said Siria. Hermione arched her eyebrows in such a way, she mirrored a young Professor McGonagall. "I don't get it." Siria tsked and looked to Ron, who shrugged.
"Siria, if we went to school with…" Hermione thought for a moment, "Zendaya and she asked someone out and they rejected her, any girl that wanted to be better than her might try to ask out the person that rejected her. They'd think that dating the person who rejected Zendaya would make them better than her."
Siria let out a howl of laughter. "That's crazy!" She gasped through her laughter, but Hermione's face remained unamused. "You're serious?" Siria stopped laughing. "First of all, that makes no sense and secondly, I— oh" Siria paused. "But like, I'm not famous for being pretty or feminine or being talented. I just didn't die."
"But who's Zendaya?" asked Ron.
"A very pretty and talented Muggle." Siria answered before asking "are they really hounding him over that?"
"If it makes you feel better, apparently he'd let you fall next time." Ron told her with a shrug.
Crookshanks let out a large mew from Hermione's lap. Siria looked out the compartment door window without seeing. "No…" she said quietly. "Malfoy may not have meant to catch me, but I think, if he's close enough, he'd catch me again."
"Really?" Ron asked through a mouth full of Cauldron Cake, "Malfoy?"
"Yeah." Siria nodded. No matter how mean Dudley was to her, she always reached out to catch him when he tripped. It was pure reflex, like picking up something that's been dropped.
At King's Cross station, Siria spotted Uncle Vernon at once (B3, 434). She turned to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, who were with Sirius, Remus, and Chloe. Mrs. Weasley hugged Siria and Hermione in the mix of her children. Remus got a lot of waves from students that passed them. "She's got to come to the World Cup!" Ron told Sirius.
"We wouldn't miss it for anything," Sirius winked at him. He syphoned Siria from the crowd after she gave Hermione and Ron another hug.
"See you soon!" Hermione waved as left with her parents.
Chloe, Remus, and Sirius stood behind Siria, before the Dursleys who seemed completely unsurprised to see them. "As we've discussed," Sirius said. Siria looked up at him. His face was surprisingly difficult to read. She looked to Remus, who had a similarly difficult face to read, wore the same smile he gave Snape when Snape told him that Neville was prone to accidents. Chloe was actually readable. She had the face of someone trying not to scowl, but clearly not succeeding. Her arms were crossed and she was tapping a set of perfectly done, midnight purple nails along the opposite arm. Chloe looked like she was ready to tackle Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia to the ground of the station.
Sirius placed his hands on Siria's shoulders. She felt a rush of confidence she didn't know she had lacked. She smiled and looked to the Dursleys. Sirius was going to adopt her, no matter what it took.