AN: Hello, fanfiction and Harry Potter fans. I do not own Harry Potter, but feel free to enjoy this or hate it. If you enjoy it, please leave a lovely comment, if you hate it, then leave some constructive criticism, thanks!

Can You Take the Jump?

Chapter 16

By the time, Hermione was ready to join the day's classes, she was itching to get out of the Hospital wing and far away from its sterile smell. Despite being forced to take breakfast in bed, she was stiff and ready to enjoy some exercise.

"Sirius!" She jumped when she saw him standing behind the Hospital wing doors. "What are you doing here?"

"Well I couldn't let my DADA partner show up to class late by herself, could I?"

"Oh," She slowly nodded, unsure of how to properly respond. Her hopes of going for a run or working out in the Room of Requirement dashed before her eyes as she gave him a reluctant smile. "Right, class."

"C'mon. I hear today's going to be a wicked practical." He promised, pulling her along to their classroom. On the way there, Sirius joked with her the entire way, telling her about the times he and his friends played this prank and that prank. Although she didn't find all of the stories as funny as he did, she enjoyed the light-hearted company.

Just before they approached the classroom, she walked by a stain glass window, but stopped to check her reflection. She wanted to make sure that there was no trace of illness or weakness on her face when she walked into her class. It was bad enough everyone saw her faint, there was no need to throw oil on the fire and then fan the flames.

"You still look good Evans." Sirius reassured. "Not as good as me, but still good."

"I don't look sick?" She asked. "I don't want Lily to worry."

"You're fine." He promised.

They could hear Professor Goldstein's calm voice ring through the door.

"Now that we've learned the theory, put away your textbooks and push the desks back!"

Hermione listened in on the excited muttering and footsteps of the students as they did as were told.

"I told you it was a practical today, and we arrived just after all the boring theory stuff." Sirius grinned, "That's what I call perfect timing."

Without hesitation, Sirius took her hand and snuck her into the class, casually standing at the very back corner, trying to pretend they'd been there the whole time. Hermione didn't care for the practical, but instead searched for her sister in the crowd. Lily's red hair stood out like a beacon of browns and blondes, staring intently at their professor.

"Today, we have a real treat!" Professor Goldstein's handsome grin was infections. "But don't get too close!" She warned. She gently knocked on the wardrobe. Immediately the piece of furniture shook dangerously.

Hermione's eyes snapped to front of the class where a wardrobe stood on the teaching podium. Professor Goldstein had hidden it with a large cloth, covering it from top to bottom, but it made no difference to Hermione, she knew exactly what it was.

"What do you think that is?" Hermione heard James asked his friends out loud.

"That's a good question, Mr. Potter. Here's a hint. I am neither dead or alive and I don't have a face. I enjoy confined spaces, but can lurk in the woods as well. What am I?" Professor Goldstein riddled his class. "If you've already started on your assignment like I asked you to, this should be easy."

Lily and Severus who shot their hands up and was waving it wildly to answer the question, but Hermione spoke out of turn to answer.

A chill ran down her spine. "You brought a Boggart to class."

All eyes turned to Hermione. Shocked to both see her in class after fainting and hearing her answer a question.

"Correct! 10 points to Slytherin!" Goldstein praised. "Well done Miss Evans and welcome back to class. Could you explain what a Boggart is for the rest of the class?"

A Boggart. Of course, how could she have forgotten that this was part of their 3rd year curriculum? For a split second, her eyes went to Remus Lupin, the man who would teach this very class to Hermione Granger in twenty years.

"Miss Evans?"

"Huh?"

"Can you explain to the class about the Boggart?" She repeated gently.

Although Hermione's brain had gone white, the words were automatically spilling out of her mouth, like a robot reading out loud with no understanding of what the context was. She felt dizzy from the erratic pounding in her chest, her heart hurt from how hard it was pumping and even though she was standing absolutely still, she was breathless like she'd just completed one of her morning runs.

"15 points for Slytherin." Professor Goldstein rewarded once more, but Hermione had no idea what she even said.

"Can someone else tell us about its weakness?"

"The opposite of fear; happiness, especially in the form of laughter." Severus replied.

"Correct! You Slytherins must've done your homework!" Professor Goldstein continued on with the class, teaching the children about the counter spell for the creature, but Hermione heard nothing. She stood as if bound and immobilized on the spot, staring at the draped furniture with fear encompassing her very being.

"Evans, you alright?" Sirius looked at the girl next to him worriedly. She was already pale, but she appeared to have turned stark white.

"Now!" Professor Goldstein's voice cut through Hermione's thoughts. She flicked her wand and the cloth that covered the furniture dropped to the floor to reveal a wardrobe. "Everyone, get in a line and we'll practice."

When everyone rushed to the front of the class to form a queue, pushing Hermione a few steps forward. The synapses in her brain weren't firing, she couldn't move, she couldn't even close her eyes to shield herself from the sight of the shaking wardrobe, absolutely terrified at the aspect of confronting her worst fears. She wasn't even sure what the Boggart would turn into. Her dead family? Her dead friends? A possessed Harry? Her fears were endless and she wasn't even wearing her diamond bracelet.

She might actually kill everyone here.

She felt someone grab her hand. Sirius stood next to her, gently tugging her to the back wall of the classroom.

"Come on." He told her, but his usual confidence and arrogance was gone.

The two of them joined Severus and Remus at the very back of the class, looking almost as scared as she was at the prospect of being forced to face their worst fears in front of the entire class. The boys who usually fought like cats and dogs stood side by side paralyzed, too blinded by their own personal fear even realize that who they were standing next to.

When Professor Goldstein finally unlocked the door, Hermione gripped Sirius's hands painfully hard. Jarred back to reality by Hermione's intense grip, Sirius looked at the girl next to him to realize she was shaking.

"Evans? Evans." Sirius returned the grip in his hands, but she stared forward at the piece of furniture with paralyzing fear. "Hermione maybe you should sit."

A collective gasp erupted from the class as the Boggart had exited the wardrobe. Hermione slammed her eyes shut and turned away hiding her face behind Sirius's shoulder.

A great flash lit up the room for a split second and was soon followed by a loud rumbling, like the castle was falling down.

A thunderstorm.

"R-riddikulus."

"Try again. With more conviction and confidence!" Professor Goldstein encouraged.

"Riddikulus! Riddikulus!"

The flashes and rumblings disappeared, replaced with snores.

"Well done! Next please!"

Without a warning the sound of a large dog aggressively barking rang in the classroom.

"Black." Hermione gripped Sirius's hand even tighter. "I ca-can't m-ove. Help me get out of here. P-please." She pleaded.

Sirius looked down at Hermione's trembling form with shock. He didn't know there were so many sides to Hermione Evans. In the last few days, he'd seen more expressions on her face and got more emotion out of her that he'd seen in the past few years of school.

"Evans, it's going to be okay. We're in the back of the class." He reassured, turning his body to face her and cover her completely from the creature at the front of the class. "Boggarts take the most feared shape of the person who's closest to it."

Hermione's eyes slowly lifted, peaking through her lashes. She met Sirius's eyes briefly, then looked behind Sirius's shoulder.

"Then why is it looking at me?" Hermione whispered.

Sirius paused. It was quiet. The student in the front of the class hadn't even cast the incantation, and yet the barking had stopped. Sirius slowly turned his head to see the boggart in the shape of a vicious and rabid looking large dog was staring directly at Hermione, just like she said.

It did a classic dog head tilt.

For a second, everyone was silent. Most of the students had never seen a boggart before, but everyone could feel it in their bones that this was abnormal behavior. Not a single person even breathed as they watched the large dog tilt its head the other way, staring intently at Hermione.

Suddenly, as if it finally figured out the answer to a puzzle, it stood straight up, its ears perking up. Slowly but surely, a human-like smile spread on the dog's face.

The girl at the front of the queue screamed, probably as her fear in dogs intensified thanks to the creepy dog in front of her. She wildly waved her wand shouting the first spell that came to mind. "Incarcerous!" But the magical ropes flew through the amortal non-being like a ghost.

Without another second of hesitation, the dog came charging at the four of them in the back of the classroom, ignoring the entire queue. The entire class freaked out and spread apart, making a clear path for the boggart to reach the back of the class with no issue. The dog-shaped boggart morphed, several times in the 3 seconds it took to get to the back of the class, but never fully changing its shape.

By the time the boggart stopped its steps at the back of the class, it was a weird morph between a dog and a snake with several hairy insect-like legs. The boggart stopped and tilted its head again, as if still not fully out of its dog-like shape. Its snake like eyes stared carefully into Sirius who stood in front of Hermione.

Freaked out by the unnatural creature, Sirius instinctively pulled Hermione behind him. The creature took no time in changing its form fully into Sirius's worst fear; himself.

The Sirius Black standing before them was definitely the same person, but he was worlds different from the Sirius Black standing protectively in front of Hermione. Boggart-Sirius had a stone-cold expression while standing tall with his hair tied and combed neatly on his head and wore his uniform impeccably.

"Move aside, you shameful waste of space. If it wasn't for your blood or your family name you would not be able to amount to anything in life, so why do you think you can protect that mudblood behind you. Why even protect her? She's filth!" Although his voice was the same, the tone had the arrogance snobbishness that was often associated with the rich and spoilt. "Your heroic act is just that, an act. You're a coward inside. Your true nature is to use that girl to shield yourself away from me, so why don't you just do what you desire."

Sirius stood firm in front of Hermione, reaching around to grip her trembling hand in reassurance. "I'm not scared of you, you prick. I'm scared of becoming you."

"You think you're different? You think that wearing that ridiculous red tie makes you a real Gryffindor or that it somehow protects you from the real you? I'M the real you. I'm the you that's always inside, and you know it!"

"R-riddikulus." Despite Sirius's brave stance, he couldn't help but let the words of his counter-self affect him.

"Pathetic. You call that magic? You act like you're better than the rest of your family, better than me, because you chose to associate with filth, but are you truly different? You're evil, just like the rest of us, it's a part of who you are! You think you can ignore your duties to your family? You think you deserve friendship and love? You don't!"

"ENOUGH!" Hermione ripped Sirius away from her, blasting the Boggart backward. Fancy boggart-Sirius's eyes grew wide as it flew across the entire classroom. Unlike the usual thump one would hear if it was a real person, instead it landed on its feet, looking nothing like Sirius Black anymore.

Standing there was an exhausted man in his thirties. He had long and lanky limbs that made him taller than everyone in the class including Professor Goldstein. He would have appeared unassuming with his freckled fair skin and red hair, had it not been for the bloody slit in his throat. The students in the class looked around to see whose Boggart it was, but Hermione knew instantaneously. Afterall, it was hard to forget what your husband looked like, even if it had been over a decade.

Ronald Weasley stood before her, the exact replica of her unforgettable memories. He looked tired and haggard. His skin was pale like the newly deceased, making his freckles stand out more than usual. He broke the silence of the classroom with a bare whisper. Hermione couldn't even hear what he was saying from the back of the room, but she knew the words he spoke.

"Monster." He was whispering. "You monster."

"Ron." Hermione spoke equally breathlessly, as if a prayer. Unlike her other friends, her conscience never seemed to allow her husband to appear before her as an apparition. She took a step toward him, but he stepped back cringing like she was covered in feces.

"How could you?" He snapped his head toward her, bloodshot eyes glaring at her. "They were our friends! He was our godson! OUR FAMILY!" He spat, his voice growing exponentially louder.

Hermione was no longer Hermione Evans standing in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom in 1974; she was the battered and exhausted Hermione Granger who was about to lose everything if she couldn't convince her husband to run away with her and the children.

"No, Ron, please listen to me, I did it for us. Harry's not—he's gone."

"No no no." Ron grabbed his head and shook it vigorously. "Everyone is dying, and you caused it. YOU! YOU MONSTER!" His infamous Weasley temper exploded.

Ron reached behind him and pulled out the blade that had stabbed her all those years ago.

Someone was screaming, but Hermione didn't register the surrounding sounds. The horrified screams grew louder when Ron Weasley ran towards Hermione, dagger at hand, getting ready to plunge it into her heart. And this time, he wouldn't miss.

Everyone watched in horror as Hermione stood there, arms wide open, like she was welcoming the madman charging at her with murder in his eyes. Fully accepting what was about to happen, she closed her eyes in content.

"Ugh!"

Hermione's eyes flew open at the sudden force that caused her to topple over. Someone had side-tackled her onto the floor, American football style, jolting her back to her senses. Her reflexes rolled herself and the tackler over, only to hear the sound of metal clanging against the wooden floor at the exact spot where she'd been lying a mere millisecond ago.

"RIDIKKULUS!"

Although Hermione had not concocted a funny image in her mind of what the boggart should turn into, the shear power of her spell made the boggart fling backwards back into the wardrobe.

"Door!" She commanded.

James who had been near the front of the classroom, protecting Lily from the rogue Boggart, quickly jumped to his feet and threw his entire body at the wardrobe doors. Not a second later, there was a loud thump and shake from behind the wooden doors, trying to open it once more with immense force. James managed to keep the doors closed, but was struggling. Lily was quick to react at the sight, rushing to James's side to help him keep the door closed.

"Professor Goldstein, lock the door." Hermione instructed.

The shocked professor, who'd done nothing except stand there with her mouth hanging open, jumped at the sound of her name.

"Wha-what?"

"THE DOOR!"

"Oh. Oh! Yes! Of course!" Goldstein rushed to the wardrobe and frantically fumbled around her robes to find her wand. After what felt like hours, Goldstein finally muttered the locking charm on the handles of the wardrobe door. Every single person in the classroom let out a collective sigh of relief.

Hermione's tense body finally relaxed, which made her realize her tackler was still on top of her, gripping her around the waist.

"Remus?"

"Are you okay?" He asked, breathless and concerned.

"Yeah. I'm fine. It's over now."

"Thank Merlin."

"So, you can let go now."

Remus blinked, then looked down at his arms. Blood rapidly flushed his face and ears as he quickly released her and got up from the floor, keeping his hands and arms behind his back and clearing his throat muttering an apology.

"Hermione," Lily ran over and crouched down next to her. "Are you okay? Are you hurt? Who was that man?"

"Class is dismissed!" Goldstein shouted, making everyone jump. "Except you Miss Evans. Miss Hermione Evans," she clarified when both sisters looked at her. "I need to speak with you."

Despite the glances, and Lily's attempt at staying behind, everyone eventually filed out the classroom, whispering about the craziness that had just happened.

"Miss Evans," Goldstein started seriously, but then shook her head. Her serious expression turned more sincere at the sight of Hermione's disheveled state. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't think 13 year olds would have fears like…that."

Hermione nodded, silently accepting her apology.

"I knew you were a girl with many secrets. I just didn't know how deep they ran."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you know what Legilimency is?"

"You tried to read my mind!?" Hermione stepped back from her professor in shock. She'd never felt the sensation of Professor Goldstein trying to invade her mind, but she knew she had secrets.

"I'm a natural born Legilimens. My abilities are not exactly like the Legilimency spell, it's more passive. I hear memories and thoughts that are prominent in one's mind, but I can't pick which memories I want to see or corrupt them and change them like the spell."

Professor Goldstein sighed and sat on one of the desks.

"Frankly, teaching a bunch of hormonal teenagers gives me a headache most of the times due to their thoughts, but you? Miss Evans, you're silent. I usually welcome it, but if behind that silence is…what we witnessed today, perhaps silence shouldn't be your answer."

Hermione remained silent for a moment.

"You're right, professor."

The DADA professor smiled with relief. "Hermione, I'm available to talk whenever—"

"I'll need a different method to hide my thoughts. Something more inconspicuous than what I'm doing. I don't want to walk around with a clear indication that I have secrets in my head. Thank you, Professor Goldstein. Your insights have been immensely useful."

"No, Miss Evans I—"

Hermione turned around to pick up her belongings, her hand slid into her bag until her finger touched her smooth wand, still warm from her powerful Ridikkulus spell.

"Somnus."

The unsuspecting professor's body crumbled to the floor when Hermione's sleeping spell hit her square on the chest.

"Sorry Professor, no loose ends allowed."

After levitating her body to the teacher's desk and settling her on the chair, Hermione immediately got to work.

She cast the Legilimency spell first to search when Goldstein first started having suspicions that Hermione was hiding something. Afterwards, Hermione carefully obliviated those very scenes and created fake memories of her thoughts being filled with normal teenager things, such as how her hair looked, when lunch was, how boring class was, how much she wanted to smack Mulciber in the back of the head with a very thick textbook.

Hermione paused at the memory of Goldstein compiling a list labelled 'High risk' and 'On the fence'. It was a list of potential Death Eaters and sympathizers. The list was extensive and long. Most of them Slytherin but a few Ravenclaws and even one Hufflepuff, but on the corner was her name and Sirius's with a question mark.

Goldstein was spying on her students for Dumbledore.

Hermione made a new memory of a new list without her or Sirius's name.

As for today's boggart incident, there were too many witnesses that saw the same thing. Instead, she decided to change the memory of their conversation. Goldstein would apologize, Hermione would explain that her boggart was simply a terrifying re-enactment of a scene from a muggle horror movie she'd watched as a child, then she left the class after accepting the professor's apology. Afterwards, Goldstein felt tired from the exhausting day of listening to children's incessant mental chatter and the boggart that she deserved a nap before her next class.

"You don't even feel sorry about what you're doing, do you?"

Harry shook his head at Hermione as she picked up her bag and left the class, leaving their slumbering professor.

"I don't know what will become of Professor Goldstein once Voldemort officially starts the war. She has a gift that the bastard values. She might be captured and tortured for information. I can't let him know of me until I'm ready."

"She was just trying to help you."

"And she did. By telling me my weakness so that I can fix it."

"You know that's not the type of help she was offering."

"Yet it's the type of help I took."

"You have no right! It's her memories! You've tampered with it without her knowledge or consent. Hermione this is wrong. She's innocent!"

Hermione whirled around at her best friend, spewing words about right and wrong, innocence, and consent as if she didn't know them. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to punch and kick him, grab him by the neck and wring him, but she didn't. Not because she couldn't, but because he was right. What she did was terrible, but she knew in her bones that a false memory charm was going to be one of the many wrongs she'd commit in this life and it'd be one of the kindest as well.

"Most children don't have memories like mine, Harry. That's the point." She cleared her throat. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to break into my professor's office to make a new copy of that list, without my name or your godfather's."

…

(AN: Could end it there, but decided not to.)

"Did you hear about Mudblood Evans? Apparently, a man tried to kill her in DADA…"

The echoes of whispered bounced off the wall of the Great Hall and into Lucius Malfoy's ears as he sat at the Slytherin breakfast table drinking his favorite tea (a special blend made just in London and sold for a whopping 30 galleons for 1 ounce). If anyone else tasted it, they would promise you that it tasted no better than the free tea given at the Leaky Cauldron on a brisk day, but Lucius swore it had much more depth than the regular English Breakfast.

The Head Boy's calculating grey eyes perused the Great Hall in search of a certain redhead who was fueling the engines of the Hogwarts rumor train. The incident with the boggart and the mudblood had spread like wildfire across the school within hours.

She wasn't here and he assumed she wouldn't show for some time since the rumors spreading about her were turning wild and unpredictable by the minute. Which ones held a grain of truth, he wondered. Lucius observed the Slytherins, in search of someone who might know the answer, when Fredrick Avery caught his eye. The Potions prodigy was the mudblood's old time Potions partner, he must know.

Lucius made an attempt to get some information out of him when he realized that Avery was struggling with some homework; a Potions assignment, as a matter of fact.

"Are you struggling with Potions, Avery?"

Several eyes at the table turned to the boy.

"Avery? Struggling?" Damocles Belby asked in surprise. "Has Slughorn upgraded the curriculum to insanely hard?"

"No, I'm just doing supplementary work for him." He quickly replied, but the initial tremble in his voice didn't go unnoticed by Lucius.

"Really?" Belby stood from his seat and reached for his book, apparently, catching the lie as well. Avery's eyes went wide with panic as he gripped the edge of his books tightly.

"Leave it alone, Belby." Malfoy commanded.

Belby stopped with his arm mid-air. His eyes went from Avery's panicked eyes to Lucius's calculating ones.

"Sorry mate, didn't mean to pry." He gave a friendly slap on the younger boy's back. "You know, I doubt Mudblood Evans will attend class. Potions will be a whole lot easier for you today." Belby joked.

"What? She's not in class today? But there's a practical." Avery asked bewildered. "It's a group assignment."

"After what happened in DADA yesterday, I doubt she'll turn up."

"Right." Avery's voice no long held the tremble, but there was undeniable unease in his eyes. "Good."

Lucius and Belby stared at the 3rd year with curiosity. Belby walked behind Avery, pretending to go back to his seat, but glanced over the kid's shoulder to see if he was telling the truth about his homework. The two older students shared a look; with a small but firm shake of Belby's head, their suspicions were confirmed. Avery wasn't doing supplementary work for Slughorn. If he was struggling with basic curriculum assignments, he was no Potions genius.

Then, there was only one way Avery could pull the wool over everyone's eyes as well as he did. Avery was a puppet and Hermione Evans was the real Potions prodigy.

"I saw her, that mudblood."

With her blonde hair pinned back into a French bun, and beautiful pearl earrings, Narcissa Black was a vision. She sat near at the centre on the Slytherin table, where all the elite sat, with perfect posture. She ate with pristine manners, her silverware never clattered against the plates, her napkin was placed on her lap, her water to her right, her bread plate to her left.

This was the type of person Narcissa was, perfect, quiet, unassuming, but beautiful. She'd been bred and trained for these types of things since birth, so to hear her speak up without being spoken to astonished Lucius.

"Where?" Belby asked.

Lucius glanced at the Slytherin prefect, noting his odd behavior as well. It was unusual for Belby to be interested in others, but when he glanced around the table, Lucius noticed that several students had stopped eating to listen in on the conversation. Perhaps it wasn't so unusual after all. Hermione Evans was always a hot topic of gossip in Hogwarts.

"I'm not talking about now. At that time, I hadn't even entered third year, so it was before she even started Hogwarts."

"Where?" Lucius repeated Belby's question before he could stop himself.

Finding herself in the center of everyone's eyes, especially her betrothed, Narcissa couldn't help it when the slightest bit of color flushed the tops of her cheek bones.

"At St. Mungo's. I was there with…Androm—someone" she corrected herself, quickly glancing at Lucius.

It was customary for young Pureblood witches to get checkups with a Healer to ensure she could provide an heir. Therefore, it was no surprise that the eldest Black sister (before being burned off the Black family tree after her traitorous act), was forced by her parents to get several medical check ups too.

"That's when I saw her." Narcissa continued. Suddenly her voice grew quieter as she leaned forward. "Near the Janus Thickey Ward."

Lucius's eyes grew wide. The Janus Thickey Ward was just for long-term patients, why would Mudblood Evans be there?

"Janus Thickey?" A previously uninterested Bellatrix looked up from her Dark Arts book and echoed Lucius's thoughts. "That's impossible, you're wrong."

Narcissa shook her head firmly. "That's what I thought too, but I'm sure. I went to the section to say hello to Uncle Alphard, and I saw her there speaking to some female Healer."

"Janus Thickey is for permanent patients. The mentally ill and unstable. If what you're saying is true…" Alecto Carrow trailed off, a smirk formed on her face revealing a row of horrible teeth. "No wonder her boggart was so crazy. I bet the boggart was of a healer that tried to calm her during one of her fits of crazies."

"Who's to say that the person's even real. I bet she made up the whole thing in her head, that crazy filth."

Lucius watched Bellatrix Black cackle and snort unpleasantly. He couldn't help but think that it was she who sounded crazier, but he was wise enough to keep that comment to himself.

It was rare of a Janus Thickey patient to ever be discharged, but Narcissa wasn't the type to lie. Yet another mystery about Hermione Evans. She was by far the most odd girl Lucius had ever seen.

"Doesn't your father work at St. Mungo's?" Antonin, who had been silent during the whole conversation, asked Belby. "What do you know of this?"

"My father is one of the few Master Potioneers in the world. He doesn't deal with simpletons like the patients in Janus Thickey. Even if she was there, my father would have no idea." Belby replied. "But I do know Janus Thickey patients don't get discharged. There's a reason why the place is nicknamed the morgue by everyone in the hospital. It's a ward where Healers send their patients because there's nothing left to do for them except let them die peacefully. Therefore, they don't go home and they don't get to attend Hogwarts."

"Are you accusing my sister of lying?" Bellatrix demanded.

"Not necessarily." Belby appeased the terrifying woman. "I'm saying your sister might have seen someone else and mistook her for Hermione Evans. If, by some tiny chance, Evans was really at St. Mungo's, she had to have been there for a different injury or just happened to go to the wrong floor."

"So… her boggart must've been her father. It's the only answer. He's the one who tried to stab her." Dolohov concluded. "According to Zabini, the boggart turned into a redhaired man in his thirties at least."

"I know Mudbloods were filthy and low lives, but I almost pity her." Bellatrix cooed, but contrasting to her voice her face showed far too much joy. "I always knew they were under developed cretins."

Lucius knew what it was like to have a murderous and abusive father, many of the Slytherins sitting here did, but Abraxas was certainly not Lucius's worst fear. Something didn't fit. He couldn't really explain it, but he knew that Mudblood Evans's boggart was of someone else.

She was a mystery. She contradicted everything he knew about people. She was powerful, but didn't flaunt it. She was beautiful, but she hid it. She was intelligent, but she downplayed it. Lucius had assumed that it was a strategy, since it was never a good idea to show all your best cards all at once, but Evans kept her cards so close to her chest, he wondered if she even knew what her cards were.

The girl he struck a deal with two years ago was charismatic, powerful and undeniable. When they sat next to each other in the empty Slytherin common room together, he forgot about her blood and was purely compelled by the Mudblood's presence and words in a way he'd never felt before. So much so, that he assumed she'd enchanted him with a spell or a curse or even a potion, but all tests came clean.

Lucius assumed that with his protection, the little red head was going to try and make a mark in the Slytherin House for years to remember, but it never came. All that power and all that fury disappeared like it never existed. What a waste!

What was her goal? What did she aim for? Was she downplaying her brilliance to attack at the most unexpected moment, or did she truly have no aspirations?

"C'mon Malfoy, let's not waste time talking about a mudblood. We need to head to class." One of the Carrow twins noted, lifting his school bag onto his shoulder.

"Yes, you're right."

…

"Did you hear?"

"About what?"

"Hermione Evans."

"What about her?"

"The Boggart incident. Melissa told me that the man who tried to kill her is her father. They have the same red hair and everything."

"No way, seriously? I heard it was an ex-boyfriend who was driven mad by her."

The two gossiping Ravenclaws jumped when the loo flushed and the door banged open, unaware that someone else had been present. Sirius Black stood there with his arms crossed, staring at the two Ravenclaws with an unamused expression on his face.

"Are you guys having fun?" Sirius asked, slowly approaching them.

The boys took a step back. "W-what?"

"Are you having fun, gossiping and perpetuating ridiculous rumors of something you know nothing about?"

"Well, do you know something about it?" One of the boys asked, puffing up his chest out.

There was a flash of a frown on Sirius's face, "No, I don't know anything, that's why I'm keeping my mouth shut, like you should be." He pushed the two boys roughly aside and turned the tap to wash his hands. He heard the boys muttering to themselves, but scurried away while he preoccupied his himself by lathering soap between his hands.

It was a good thing that those boys ran off before Sirius could do anything. He'd gotten detention several times for hexing students who he heard speaking badly about Hermione since the incident.

Sirius sighed, as he leaned against the sink. It's been almost two weeks since the incident in DADA, but people couldn't seem to stop talking about Hermione's boggart. He wanted to hex everyone who whispered behind their hands as Hermione walked by, but at the same time, he understood their curiosity. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see that crazy man running to Hermione, trying to stab her with his dagger. He hated himself for freezing in that moment. He stood there like an idiot, leaving Remus to do all the saving.

He pushed off the sink and shook his hands dry while exiting the washroom. He trudged through the snow, back to Herbology, one of the few classes the Gryffindors didn't have with the Slytherins. Usually, he loved it when his green tie peers weren't around, but ever since the incident, he couldn't help but anxiously wait for the next class with the Slytherins. It was the only way he might see Hermione Evans.

Peter asked him why he was so worried about her. Everyone knew Hermione Evans had thick skin. It didn't seem to matter to her that there was so much talk going around for so long, Evans showed up to class with no evidence of any stress or strife on her face; no tears or anger or embarrassment. But Sirius knew better, she might not care what the rest of Hogwarts said about her, but he saw her face when she faced her Boggart. It was the look of absolute terror and despair.

"Please hurry into your seat Mr. Black." Professor Sprout tutted.

Class droned on, and Sirius's concentration waned. His eyes wandered from the front of the class to where Lily Evans was, the red-head sat next to her roommates, furiously writing down every word that came out of Sprout's mouth. If anyone knew about Hermione Evans's true nature, it would be Lily Evans.

Sirius looked to James. He was the one to talk to anything Lily Evans related, but with the Quidditch game against Slytherins coming up later this afternoon, he wasn't exactly focused on anything else.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder, "What's wrong?" Remus mouthed to him.

Sirius opened his mouth, but paused when he couldn't find the words. How was he supposed to explain when he didn't really know what was wrong either? Ignoring Remus's expectant eyes, Sirius shook his head to faced the front once more.