The Saturday that Christmas break began, and the day before the Hogwarts Express headed back to London for everyone going home for Christmas, was the second Hogsmeade day of the school year.
FitzSimmons joined everyone else third year and up walking through the gently falling snow to the all-magical town, happy to get out of the castle for a while and stretch their legs, and not have to avoid all of the professors who still wanted to walk everywhere with Harry Potter but also still weren't telling him why. Their trip was much the same as the first one, only this time they knew what spots they wanted to hit and which ones weren't worth visiting again, so they were able to spend more time enjoying themselves in specific shoppes and locales, instead of exploring the entire town to see what about it they liked and what they didn't care enough about to return to.
As they were leaving the Three Broomsticks after lunch, FitzSimmons did see Hagrid and Professors McGonagall and Flitwick enter the pub with a portly man in a lime-green bowler hat and a pinstriped cloak but they thought little of it, as why wouldn't the adults of the castle want to get out every once in a while as well, and they were bound to have friends from outside of the castle who would want to meet them for a drink. FitzSimmons did find it slightly odd that the lime-green bowler hat man stared at Fitz like he was shocked to see him there, but then they figured that it was just because he was seeing Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, in the flesh for the very first time, and the man was simply rather starstruck. It had been a common occurrence with the other students of the castle when they had first arrived at the school, so it would make sense that it would occur with a few adults as well — after all, even Daisy had been one of those sweaty cosplay girls hanging around Stark Tower once.
In reality, however, their theory was only half true. It was in fact the first time that the man had ever seen Harry Potter, but he was not starstruck. In fact, he was the Minister of Magic, Mr Cornelius Fudge, and he was in Hogsmeade to check in on the search for Mr Black and have dinner with Dumbledore. And his shock at seeing Harry Potter there in Hogsmeade was because he had been led to believe by Dumbledore before the start of the school year that Harry Potter was not going to be let outside of the safe and protected castle grounds so long as the (never actually convicted) deadly mass-murderer Sirius Black remained uncaught. And yet there the boy was, plain as day walking out of the Three Broomsticks accompanied by no one but some random female student — and clearly a muggleborn at that based on the weird clothes and no robes that she was wearing — who looked to be no older than Harry himself. But the castle adults whom the Minister was with, including the deputy headmistress herself, were continuing on inside the pub right past the pair like there was absolutely nothing wrong with it, so he slowly followed in after them as well. But once they had all sat down and ordered their drinks, he did ask Professor McGonagall about it.
In a noticeably terse voice, the long-time Transfiguration professor and deputy headmistress of the school brushed it off, answering, "We came to an agreement that he would always be with at least one other person when he came to Hogsmeade. He had his signed permission slip, after all, and that muggleborn girl you just saw him walk out with, who has literally always been with him every single time I've seen him inside the school grounds in the two and a half years he's been at Hogwarts, can make a very convincing argument for following the established school rules."
Fudge wasn't pleased with this answer, and he was positive that Minerva wasn't either, but she also clearly wasn't discussing the matter any further. And when it came down to the matter, he trusted that Dumbledore knew what he was doing, and would let no harm befall the boy-hero, given just how much effort the headmaster had put into keeping the Boy-Who-Lived safe ever since Harry's parents had been killed by You-Know-Who. So he let the matter go for the time being, until something actually happened.
After that the four adults sat around drinking and chatting, until as was wont in any extended conversation since his escape, the topic eventually turned to that of Mr Black, and in this case his recent foray into the Hogwarts castle that was still relatively limited knowledge outside of the castle. As they talked, Fudge told Hagrid, Professors McGonagall and Flitwick, and now Madam Rosmerta the story of how Dumbledore had done a Fidelius Charm for the Potters to keep them safe, and despite the fact that it was supposed to be a Secret Keeper, not a Lots-of-People-Know Keeper, it was well known amongst the higher ups of the government how Mr Black, James and Lily's close friend, James's best man, and Harry's godfather, had been the Potter's choice for Not-So-Secret-After-All Keeper, before betraying them to You-Know-Who some time later. And how it was believed without question because of eye-witness testimonies by people who didn't even believe that magic existed in the first place, that Peter Pettigrew had tracked Mr Black down the day after You-Know-Who had murdered the Potters, and that was when Mr Black had killed Pettigrew and twelve muggles with some spell that no one had ever thought to figure out what was despite being the murder weapon, and then those same people for some additional reason never bothered investigating why he had just stood there until the magical police showed up to take him away, instead of killing the remainder of the muggle witnesses with the same spell that he had just used to kill twelve of them plus the Rat, and apparating away and probably very easily escaping at least for a while, though possibly forever given the fact that he was still free six months after his escape from the government's kidnapping of him for the past decade.
Only Fudge and the rest of the adults talked about the entire incident as if it were absolute, undeniable fact that Mr Black had betrayed the Potters and murdered a bunch of people, and not about any of the oddities and inconstancies surrounding the whole thing that had never been looked into in twelve years, since the whole concept of 'due process' and 'beyond reasonable doubt', or even 'trial', didn't exist in the wizarding world when it was inconvenient to the political mood of the time. Instead, people were sentenced for crimes based on what someone in charge thought, or wanted to be true because it gave them someone to blame and make themselves look good and useful, and not on pesky little details like evidence, facts, or truth.
And even worse, apparently not a single wizard had ever seen a single crime/detective tv show, where someone innocent was arrested first because that's where all of the surface evidence pointed, but then the savvy, attractive, and usually romantically invested lead characters continued to investigate because something just didn't quite feel right about the whole thing, eventually leading to them finding the real killer, setting the innocent man free, and kissing in glorious fashion under the fading sunset.
Or something like that.
Christmas morning, FitzSimmons awoke to find presents at the foot of their bed for the third straight year.
But presents were of at most second importance to FitzSimmons as they knew that they hadn't got each other anything, as all they needed was each other — plus Daisy's melodrama to keep things interesting. So instead of immediately attacking their presents like every other student in the castle and world would do when they woke up that morning, FitzSimmons first did that of highest importance to them. That is, Fitz crawled between his wife's legs to make her writhe in pleasure and orgasm once to start their morning off right, before she flipped him over and rode him to a combined release. Important things done for the time being — though definitely to be revisited again later to make sure that they had really got it correct — they climbed down to the foot of their bed to see who was still sending them Christmas gifts every year.
As it turned out, there were only three people who sent them presents this year, and one of them was completely anonymous. Noticeably absent compared to their first two years in the magical world were presents from Hagrid and the Dursleys. They guessed that Hagrid had finally realized that 'Harry Potter' wasn't going to come visit him and be friends with him just because he sent the boy presents at Christmas and on his birthday. And that the Dursleys were either the same; thought that their adopted son was dead since he hadn't come home in two years and based on never receiving anything from Hermione's parents anymore, the wizarding world didn't bother telling 'mere muggleborns' that their children were alive, safe, and well; or else, as Professor McGonagall had insinuated in some of her comments to them first year during the debate over whether FitzSimmons were being expelled or not, had never cared about their adopted son enough to bother sending him an insult anymore. But whatever the case was, FitzSimmons found no presents sitting at the foot of their bed from either of those two parties, which they didn't mind in the least as they would have really preferred no one sending them any presents at all, and therefore believing (even if subconsciously) that FitzSimmons now 'owed' them something by the rules of social convention of gift-giving.
Ron, however, did send a present for the third straight year. Or, if he hadn't still been trying to hang around them pretty frequently, FitzSimmons might have wondered if it was actually a passive-aggressive punishment for Fitz not being best friends with him like he clearly still wanted 'Harry Potter' to be. Because he had given them a jar of cockroach clusters. Which they personally didn't mind, as they had no problem trying weird foods and had seen cockroach clusters for sale in Honeydukes in Hogsmeade and so knew that they were real and edible, but they knew that such a 'delicacy' could be a very questionable present for a lot of people.
Additionally, Ron's mother had sent them a package again, this time containing a scarlet sweater with the Gryffindor lion knitted on the front, a dozen home-baked mince pies, some Christmas cake, and a box of nut brittle.
"Third year — looks like we're dealing with either a conspiracy, or a serial gift-giver," Fitz said, looking over the presents from the woman they had never met or talked to.
"Indeed. We should check first to see if Neville and Sally-Anne and the rest of our year got something from her as well, and if they did then check with the twins' year and Percy's year to see just how far this goes. But if they didn't get anything from her, then there is definitely something strange going on with her and Ron about Harry Potter," Simmons replied. "Because most boys his age wouldn't have spent this long trying to weasel their way into someone's friendship, no matter how famous said person was. Now, I'm not exactly sure what we can or should do about it in that case, other than maybe treat all of her gifts — and maybe Ron's as well since they're the same family — as if they are potential biohazards, and chuck it all in some fireplace in this castle, though not ours in case there actually is a biohazard in there, like the wool lets off toxic fumes when it burns or something, so that we don't risk unintentionally harming ourselves or Gryffindor Tower."
"Just the entire school," Fitz smirked.
"Yes, well, then it becomes the professors' problem, something we'd never be able to convince them of about Christmas presents from a well-known, not dis-respected family," Simmons smiled back wryly. "So if it takes some people getting sick to get their attention, it's not good by any means of course, but it's not the end of the world, either. And it will be dissipated more through the entire school, instead of concentrated like it would be here in the Tower, thus reducing the toxicity if there is in fact any. But as far as the actual presents themselves go, it's not like we need the extra food since we get three very good buffets every single day, and desserts at lunch and dinner. Which makes food a rather odd gift to send in the first place, since there's definitely no lack of food, or even sweets here."
"Guess it's for snacks between meals or something, even though you can easily just wrap food up in a napkin in the Great Hall and keep it with you in your backpack for a snack later in the day," Fitz said. "Or a taste of home if she sends that food to her children. But we've one more present to open."
And indeed they did. It was long and thin, slightly bulbous on one end, and had no label on the outside as to whom it was from.
"If I didn't know any better, I would say that it looks like one of those school brooms we learnt to fly on first year," Simmons said, running her hand lightly over the nondescript brown wrapping paper. "But who would send you a broom when you don't play quidditch, and haven't even flown since classes first year?"
Fitz simply shrugged in response, having no answers, before tearing off the wrapping paper. As it turned out, Simmons' guess was exactly correct — it was a gleaming, clearly nice broomstick. A Firebolt, in fact. With absolutely no note.
"Okay…" Simmons said as they stared at it in surprise. "This is odd, to say the least."
"Especially with how expensive it has to be," Fitz said. "I mean, I know nothing about broomsticks, and we never saw any prices when we saw it in the broomstick store over the summer, but that can't be cheap, especially when compared to other broomsticks, and all of Ron's ramblings about how great a broom it is. And who would send it to Harry Potter and not say they did it? And why send him one at all? Some fan of the hero?"
"Or it's a trap," Simmons offered. "Gets above fifty feet and blows up like an over-concentrated, under-estimated burn rate algae bio-fuel hydrogen cell — easy-peasy assassination. Not sure why a broomstick, though, unless they just assume that everyone in the wizarding world will automatically go fly on a broom if they get one...completely anonymously...not expecting it at all. So yeah, they'd probably all go immediately fly it and blow up."
"So what should we do?" Fitz asked. "Obviously not fly it to fifty feet, since that's apparently where it explodes."
"I just gave that as an example," Simmons replied with a chuckle, rolling her eyes at her husband. "But I'd say let's ask Professor McGonagall to come get it from the common room upstairs, as I don't particularly feel comfortable carrying an obviously expensive international standard broom through the castle where everyone can see it. But let the professors check it out, see if it's a trap or just some crazy fan, and if it turns out okay, then I guess we get back into flying. It did seem like it could be fun if you had halfway decent brooms, instead of the century-old kindling we had in class."
Finished with their presents FitzSimmons showered (taking longer than most people took to shower, having a little more Christmas fun as they did), and then headed up to the common room on their way to the Great Hall for breakfast. Stepping into the circular room, they saw Neville sitting alone on the couch in front of the fireplace and walked over to him.
"Merry Christmas," Simmons greeted. "Odd question, but have you happened to get a Christmas present any of the past three years from Ron's mother?"
"No," Neville answered in confusion, shaking his head. "The Weasleys are a pretty well-known name in the wizarding world, but I never met any of them until coming here, and I've never met Ron's mum."
"Okay, just curious," Simmons said. "Sorry for wasting your time. And have a good rest of your Christmas."
As she and Fitz left Gryffindor Tower and began walking down to the Great Hall, she said to her husband, "Well, that answers our question about serial gift-giver. This is clearly about Harry Potter."
"Should we ask Ron or the twins why their mum keeps sending a complete stranger gifts?" Fitz asked. "Or just toss it all in a fire in an unused part of the castle, and wait until something bigger happens."
"Well…if there is some kind of a conspiracy, and she's not just a creepy fan, I'd rather not let the target know that we're on to her," Simmons answered slowly, thinking everything out as she went. "So I think we just throw it all in a fire, pretend like nothing odd is happening, never mention to Ron that we got a present from her — it's not like he's ever asked about it the past two years — and we just see what happens. Unless it is some airborne pathogen, which would be very risky on her part unless she somehow knows that we don't live with anyone else like we're supposed to, it doesn't seem dangerous yet. After all, she may just be a creepy fan of Harry Potter's, though it's odd that she only sends him something at Christmas and not for his birthday as well — assuming a celebrity like Harry Potter's birthday is common knowledge, even if there is no Google or IMDb here. But that's odd either way, whether fangirl or conspiracy."
By this point their stroll had reached the Great Hall, and they went to the Gryffindor table to eat breakfast. When they were full, they walked up to where Professor McGonagall was sitting at the staff table eating.
"Excuse me, Professor McGonagall," Simmons began politely, "but we received an anonymous Christmas gift that we would like the professors to check out to make sure that it's not cursed or anything. It's a broomstick, and we don't fly or play quidditch, so it seems odd."
"You don't — you don't think it's from Sirius Black, do you?" Professor McGonagall asked.
"Oh — never thought of that," Fitz answered with a shrug. "Who knows, could be. But we don't really care who sent it, we just want to know if it's safe or not. And if it turns out that it's not safe, that's for the magical police to figure out who's trying to kill me, not us."
As it turned out, Professor McGonagall was actually correct. The broom was from Harry's godfather and should-have-been and was-supposed-to-be guardian and rearer, before Dumbledore messed everything up by sending Hagrid to kidnap Harry and force him to live with his abusive relatives, making Dumbledore complicit in the abuse that Harry Potter had suffered for ten years. For unbeknownst to almost everyone, Sirius Black had snuck into Hogsmeade as a dog one night, and left an order form on the doorstep of the Owl Post Office using Harry Potter's name, but with his own Gringotts Vault number written down for where to take the money from.
Because a month or so earlier, he had stopped by the opening quidditch match in hopes of watching Harry follow in the footsteps of James. And though he hadn't actually seen Harry playing that day, he figured that Harry must have just been injured or — heaven forbid — went to Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff instead of Gryffindor, and was still the magnificent quidditch player that his father had always been. And so when Christmas came around and Sirius found himself thirteen Christmas's worth of gifts behind, he figured that he would get Harry the nicest broom out there to try to make up slightly for having been prevented from being the godfather that Harry's parents had wanted him to be, and Harry had deserved.
Meanwhile back in the present, and talking about Sirius's present, Simmons was asking Professor McGonagall, "Will you come up to our common room to get it to look over? We would rather not be seen carrying an expensive gift through the castle, since Harry has enough people staring at him all the time as it is."
"Of course — I'll be up in a few minutes," Professor McGonagall replied.
So FitzSimmons walked back up to Gryffindor Tower, where they headed straight down to their dorm to get the broom. Wrapping it up in one of the spare beds' sheet so that it wouldn't be quite so obvious to any Gryffindors walking through the common room on their way too or from breakfast, or hanging out waiting on whomever they were meeting, FitzSimmons carried the broomstick back up to the common room hoping that they wouldn't have to wait too long on Professor McGonagall, and sat down on the couch in front of the fireplace with the wrapped broom lying on the couch behind them, blocked from view by their bodies. No one payed them any attention until ten minutes later when Professor McGonagall opened the common room portrait and walked over to them, at which point everyone turned to stare.
FitzSimmons held the covered broom out to her, but paying no heed to their desire not to draw attention upon themselves, the deputy headmistress, instead of simply taking it, said, "Let me see it."
Grumblingly, Simmons lifted the corner of the sheet just enough for McGonagall to be able to see the shiny tail of the broom within. But McGonagall then snatched the broom out of their hands, dropping the bedsheet to the ground in the process, and examined the broomstick carefully and slowly from handle to twig-ends, revealing to the entire common room that FitzSimmons had a Firebolt racing broomstick.
"Yes, it will need to be checked for jinxes. Of course, I'm no expert, but I daresay Madam Hooch and Professor Flitwick will strip it down — shouldn't take more than a few weeks, and you will have it back once we are sure it is jinx-free. Thank you for bringing this to my attention."
Then she turned and strode out of the common room to take it to Madam Hooch to begin looking over. But the moment the door closed behind her, an angry voice burst out from behind FitzSimmons.
"Granger! What did you go running to McGonagall for?! Do you have any clue what that broom is?! It's a Firebolt! The nicest broom in the world, an international standard broom! And you just took it away from Harry!"
Fitz right hooked Ron square in the jaw, sending him sprawling to the floor. The next moment Fitz had his wand whipped out and was standing over the redhead pointing it directly at his face.
"Don't you ever talk to my wife like that again!" he growled. Then turning to said wife, he continued on curtly, "I think we will have a better time outside this morning, don't you?"
And with that they left Ron lying on floor of the Gryffindor common room, massaging his dislocated jaw and trying to stop his nosebleed.
~FS~
The one good thing about Ron blowing up over a stick of wood was that he now completely refused to speak to Simmons.
In his mind, it was impossible that Harry Potter, his hero, would have let a teacher take and strip down, and as likely as not destroy, such a sacred object as a world-class quidditch broom, and therefore it must have been the muggleborn girl that he always hung out with who had turned the broom in to McGonagall, betraying Harry. Therefore, in solidarity with Harry and the Firebolt, there was no way in hell that he was going to speak to the broom-stealer until she apologized to him and Harry for committing such a travesty against the broom and against Harry, since it had to be his broom. However, this plan had the unfortunate side-effect of him not being able to talk with Harry anymore either, as Fitz was pretending like he couldn't hear a single word that Ron uttered until the redhead apologized to Simmons for what he had said to her and wrongfully accused her of.
As for FitzSimmons, in addition to no longer having to deal with the redhead, it also had the effect of their sneakoscope rarely going off anymore. Over the first half of the year — in addition to the one incident with Malfoy on the very first day insulting the noble Buckbeak — it had gone off every now and then when someone near them in the library or common room was copying someone else's homework, or the twins were setting up one of their pranks, but none of those events were ever anything serious enough for FitzSimmons to go report it to a professor, and those kinds of isolated incidents continued to occur here and there, as they had nothing to do with Ron.
But most of the times that the sneakoscope had gone off during the fall term was when Ron approached them, and hung around them as they studied in the library. It hadn't occurred every time that the redhead was around them, only part of the time, but it had occurred enough to be noticeable to the highly observant spies that FitzSimmons were. However, as Ron had always insisted that he wasn't doing anything wrong and that all he had was his schoolwork and pet rat when they had mentioned it the first few times, they had soon stopped mentioning it to the redhead, as he really didn't seem to be doing anything wrong when it went off.
So with Ron now refusing to be within ten feet of Simmons anymore, for the most the sneakoscope had stopped going off. FitzSimmons logically knew that this had to mean something, but as it wasn't readily apparent from their observations, and they had their own learning to focus on while the adults were supposed to be the ones protecting the school and everyone in it, not a couple third year students, they pushed it to the back of their minds until new information about their sneakoscope decided to present itself to them.
It wasn't until the beginning of February that Professor McGonagall finally returned the Firebolt to FitzSimmons, 'shouldn't take more than a few weeks' having turned into nearly six.
Not that FitzSimmons cared one way or the other, as they hadn't had a broom before receiving this present, so not having one while it was being looked over didn't change anything for them.
But Professor McGonagall approached them in the library after supper one evening open carrying the broom, and told them, "We've done everything we could think of, and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it at all. You've got a very good friend somewhere, Potter."
"Thank you, Professor," Simmons replied as she took the broomstick from their Head of House. "And no hint of who that friend could be?"
"Sorry, no," Professor McGonagall said, shaking her head. "Best as we could guess, the broom was sent straight from the store it was bought in, but there's no way to determine that, either."
"Okay, thank you," Fitz replied, before the two parties parted ways.
Entering the Gryffindor common room a few minutes later to store the broom away, FitzSimmons found themselves assaulted by Ron Weasley, apparently done with his refusal to talk when Simmons was around now that Harry Potter had his broomstick back. "She finally gave it back to you, Harry? Excellent! Listen, can I have a go on it? Tomorrow?"
"No. You never apologized to Hermione while Professor McGonagall and the other professors were still looking it over to make sure that it was safe, so you never get to ride it," Fitz answered coldly, before striding past the redhead and disappearing down the stairs to his and Simmons' dorm room, leaving a shocked, and quickly becoming angry Ronald Weasley behind.
Word spread quickly through the castle that Harry Potter had a Firebolt — why nobody even considered the possibility that it might be Hermione Granger's, FitzSimmons didn't know as Simmons had flown just as much as Fitz ever had, which is to say only in flying class so almost none — and everyone quickly began hounding them about it.
At first FitzSimmons replied with something like, "What's a Firebolt? We got a broomstick for Christmas, that's all we know," or "Is that what it's called? It's just a broomstick to us," infuriating quidditch fanatics to no end. But by the time that Malfoy caught wind of it and approached them a few days later with his normal sneer firmly etched in place, they could no longer pretend that they didn't know exactly what it was or how impressive it was to have one, and were simply telling everyone that they'd got it for Christmas from an unknown sender, and no, they hadn't tried it out yet, they'd been busy with homework and were waiting for the weekend.
"What crazed Boy-Who-Lived loony wasted this much money on you, Potter?" the Slytherin bully said in his cold, drawling voice as he walked up to FitzSimmons. "You can't even make your House's pathetic team, you don't deserve that broom."
"No idea," Simmons answered honestly, as at the same time her husband said boredly, "Can't make what you never tried out for. Quidditch just seems like too boring of a game for me — I like a little more excitement in my life, a little more risk of life and limb. But this broom should be pretty good for cruising around the Hogwarts grounds on, like we did on Buckbeak's back the first day of classes — you know, the hippogriff that you couldn't even say hi to without nearly getting yourself killed? But I have heard that this broom is pretty fast or something."
Malfoy ground his teeth, unable to stand the blasphemies against such a nice broom. "Pretty fast?! That's the nicest broom in the world! That is a quidditch broom!"
"So I've heard from — well, practically everyone," Fitz replied. "Which means it should be pretty nice as a country cruiser, right? But if you want to see for yourself, we'll take it out Saturday afternoon sometime after the quidditch match will probably be over, say 1500 from right out front. Goodbye."
And Saturday afternoon they did take it for its first test flight, with what felt like half of the castle — Malfoy and his cronies, the entire rest of the Slytherin quidditch team, and all three other quidditch teams included — showing up to watch. Ladies first, Simmons kicked off from the ground like she hadn't since flying classes first year, and soared into the air. If riding the school brooms was like trying to fly a cow, riding the Firebolt was like flying a state-of-the-art military drone. The sleek piece of wood turned at the lightest touch, accelerating at supercar speeds and handling even better.
Simmons flew all around the main grounds for five minutes, before coming to a landing right in front of her husband, letting him take his turn. When he landed five minutes later after his own first flight, Simmons swung her leg over the broom behind him holding onto him around his waist, and he kicked into the sky again, this time not coming down anytime soon — in fact, not coming down until long after everyone had finally grown bored of staring up at the sky and went back inside the castle for supper.
FitzSimmons soared all over the grounds, Forbidden Forest, Black Lake, and not-forbidden forest on the other side of the castle, occasionally landing on a castle tower to exchange places, and sometimes just stopping midair to enjoy the view from a couple hundred feet up. But eventually they got hungry as well, so Simmons, who was flying at the time, flew them back down to the great oak doors of the castle, and they carried their very fine grand tourer back up to their dorm room before returning to the Great Hall to eat.
During that walk, over the next several weeks, and every time they brought their broom out to fly for the rest of the year FitzSimmons received a ton of jealous looks, but as FitzSimmons were used to nothing but unpleasant looks for the entire two and a half years that they had been in the castle, they weren't at all bothered by it and went on their merry way, not caring what anyone thought of them.
~FS~
The night after FitzSimmons' first flight on the Firebolt, as FitzSimmons were safely and soundly asleep in their dorm room eight floors below, Ron was being visited by Sirius Black at the very tip top of Gryffindor Tower.
Ron's screaming woke everyone in the upper floors of the tower, and then everyone rushing down to the common room to try to catch Mr Black before he left woke lower dorms of the tower, resulting in everyone quickly gathering in the common room to find out what the hell was going on. This of course set off Professor McGonagall's wards on the common room that alerted her of when a large number of students were awake and in the common room in the middle of the night, and she quickly came to break up whatever was going on and send them all back to bed like they were supposed to be. At which point Ron told her that the self-freed man had slashed his curtains with a knife, startling him awake. Of course, neither McGonagall nor anyone else believed Ron until he yelled really loudly, forcing McGonagall to ask Sir Cadogan about it.
"Sir Cadogan, did you just let a man enter Gryffindor Tower?"
"Certainly, good lady!" Sir Cadogan answered cheerfully.
"You — you did?" Professor McGonagall gasped in shock. "But — but the password!"
"He didn't have it, but I instantly recognized him as being a Gryffindor from his years here as a student, and he said he didn't have the password because he wasn't a student anymore, but that he urgently needed to see someone inside," Sir Cadogan answered proudly. "So of course I let him in!"
Professor McGonagall, however, did not agree with Sir Cadogan's logic, and immediately contacted Dumbledore to begin a castle-wide search for the sneaky bastard.
All of Gryffindor that was already awake stayed up to hear the results of said search, and so it was a very crowded common room that FitzSimmons walked into the following morning just before dawn. Normally finding no one else awake yet at that time of the morning, they looked at each other in surprise before quickly finding Sally-Anne hanging out with Lavender and Parvati.
"What's going on?" Simmons asked in an undertone.
"Ronald says that Sirius Black attacked his bed last night with a knife, and Sir Cadogan confirmed that he let Black in," Sally answered. "Said Black didn't have the password, but he knew Black was a Gryffindor when he was here years ago, and Black said he urgently needed to see someone inside the tower. Why Black would want to kill Ronald, though, I have no clue. Sure, the redhead's annoying and all, but Black wouldn't know that, and it's hardly a reason to kill someone — I mean, none of us have, and we have to live in the same tower as him and have classes with him."
"Pretty sure Sir Cadogan is getting the boot after this, though, and good riddance," Lavender added.
But before FitzSimmons could do anything more than look at each other in surprise at the excitement that they had missed, Professor McGonagall opened the door of the common room to tell them all that the search had been fruitless, and Mr Black had escaped yet again.
As FitzSimmons walked down to the Great Hall for breakfast a few minutes later, Fitz said, "So did Mr Black just get the wrong bed instead of attacking the empty one that I'm not in, or is he actually after Ron or someone else in our year for some reason?"
"I don't know," Simmons replied, shaking her head. "If he was after Ron, why not stab him? So maybe Ron woke up just in time and yelled, waking everyone in the room up as well, but it's you against five — well, technically just four, but he'd believe five — thirteen year olds, something he'd surely remember from his own time here, as he seemed to know exactly what dorm to go to. So why not plunge the knife into Ron's heart, or slice his neck real quick, and then run out? I mean, I know we're professionals and all, but he's been planning this presumably since at least Halloween when he tried to get in before — stab and run doesn't seem all that tactically advanced to me. And maybe his stab isn't efficient, and Ron survives, but you'd at least think he would have tried if he was after Ron, and his ability to escape wouldn't have been hindered at all by slamming his knife into Ron's chest and leaving it there as he ran out — a few thirteen year olds aren't going to find their wands in the dark and be able to point them at Black and say a spell in the extra two seconds it takes to plunge the knife down before he runs out, and he clearly had plenty of time to run out and escape or hide, since he did. But if he wasn't after Ron, why not carefully and quietly peak around each set of curtains before slashing anything with a knife?"
"Because it's pretty dark and he couldn't see well?" Fitz offered, unconvinced. "But then how was he expecting to find whomever he was looking for? I don't know, none of this makes any sense. And combining last night with his first attempt to get into Gryffindor Tower only seems to muddy the waters, not clear them any."
But the professors clearly still believed that Mr Black was after Harry Potter, or at least trying to kill someone in the castle, as over the next couple of days they ramped the security up higher than it had ever been before. And like Lavender had guessed and hoped, Sir Cadogan was replaced by the newly restored Fat Lady, who now had a group of real, live security trolls pacing the corridor leading to the entrance hole into the Gryffindor common room, which made Fitz jokingly ask Simmons if the troll in the dungeon that Professor Quirrell had warned them about Halloween night first year, had actually just been a security troll for the Slytherin common room.
The entire incident had also given Ronald Weasley the spotlight that he had always dreamt of having, turning him into a fifteen minute celebrity even more than his scuffles with Malfoy the year before in the presence of Lockhart had. For the first time people were consistently paying him more attention than they were Fitz, and he clearly couldn't have been happier about it — though FitzSimmons were quite happy about it as well, as they were always more than happy to let literally anyone else in the castle take over the fame that they'd had to suffer through for the past two and half years. And capitalizing on this overnight fame, every time that anyone asked Ron anything about the attack, he would launch into a longwinded tale of daring and bravery about being attacked by the most wanted man in all of wizarding Britain.
But by the time the third Hogsmeade trip of the school year arrived just a week later, his fifteen minutes were already over and he was back to being nothing more than just another unnoticeable student that most people didn't think twice about. He wasn't the practical jokers that the twins were, or the Head Boy and prefect before that like Percy was, and with only low to mid performance and grades in all of his classes he certainly wasn't known for his intellect, leaving him nothing more than another random student to anyone who didn't already know him from the first two and a half years of school.