If ever there were a first week of classes that proved to be a welcome sign of a stable, calm school term to come, it would be the one that had just begun.
Her bushy hair a little matted from sleep, an early morning, and the large butterfly hair clip keeping it from looking completely untamed, Hermione Jean Granger laughed when her friends finally caught up to her at the bottom of the stairs. With a joking jab to the elbow as the boys finished their retreat down the stairs, Ron pointed up towards the top of the tower from whence they came with a roll of his eyes that said it all. Divination professor is bloody weird, holding Harry after class. Hermione rolled her eyes, and smiled when she began to walk with him and Harry. Finding their other friend waiting for them towards the doors out to the Castle grounds, Ron twitted him on the head to get his attention, eliciting a brief yelp from him before he started laughing. Eddie shifted his book under his arm, a faint smirk dawning on his face the closer the four got to the gamekeeper's hut wherein their newest professor was waiting. Seeing no one else waiting near it nor where, close to it, the class had been asked to meet, the four began to chatter amongst themselves, waving at their new professor when they were close enough to speak.
Seeing no spiders congregating outside the hut, too, was also a pleasant surprise.
"There we go!" Hagrid declared, grinning at the four teenagers. "You're going to get a sneak peek into what we're going to be doing today."
Eddie smirked a little more. "Is it something my mum wouldn't approve of?"
"It isn't dangerous, if that's what you're asking," Hagrid paused. "Although what she and MACUSA consider dangerous is really extreme."
"Well, either way," Hermione said, carefully opening the course book. "I'm glad to know we're going to have a proper class after one as woolly as Divination."
"I didn't mind it, but, then again, you didn't have it with the Ravenclaws today," Eddie teased. "She did make it a little strange when she took one of my hands suddenly and began to read my palm. She went through the entire class but startled me with how she grabbed it. What she said was strange, though. 'Your lifeline indicates you came into the world after immense loss and struggle,' never mind the fact my mum and dad were perfectly fine when I was born."
"She's making some of that rubbish up," Hermione told him. "She spent most of our class predicting how Harry will die this year."
"Mum would have been thrilled," Harry said dryly, running a hand through his messy hair. He turned to Hagrid. "What are we doing today?"
"We're starting off strong with you – and the rest of your classmates, of course – being introduced to one of my favourite creatures," Hagrid said, waving for them to follow him. "He's a handsome fella, and a smart one too."
"A hippogriff?" Hermione said, raising an eyebrow at the sight of it when Hagrid nodded. "Aren't they dangerous? I thought we weren't going to learn about larger, magical creatures until Year Five."
"I thought it would be best to introduce them early, get you used to them before getting into the weeds with 'em," Hagrid replied. "And he's perfectly well behaved. All creatures can be dangerous if you don't treat them right. You just have to respect 'em."
"Mum would so not approve!" Eddie started laughing. "I love it!"
"America has intense restrictions on magical creatures, don't they?" Hagrid sighed when Eddie nodded. "I don't think your government understands how important, how majestic, these creatures are. Then again, MACUSA isn't known for being nuanced."
"That's true, from all I've read," Hermione said, sending Hagrid a pointed look when he tossed Buckbeak a large slab of meat. "And you're sure this is perfectly safe?"
"'Course it is!" Hagrid exclaimed. "I know what I'm doing. I've worked with creatures almost my entire life!"
"Like those horrible spiders you made me and Harry follow last year?" Ron said, shuddering at the memory. "That might have been the worst experience of my life, and," He scowled at Eddie. "Your dad's fault."
"I told Aragog off real good for how he treated you and Harry," Hagrid reassuringly told him. "You two were trying to help me! He should have been grateful for it!"
"Had a funny way of showing it," Ron muttered.
Eddie grimaced. "You're not going to bring out any creatures like that this year, are you?" He said, warily glancing at Hagrid.
"Don't think he'd agree to it anyways," Hagrid chuckled. "No, I won't be bringing any creatures like Aragog out for study. I gave Dumbledore me word that I'd be careful about what I bring to class and when. Also, I was meant to tell you, bring some of your Herbology gear next week. We're going to be working with smaller, burrowing creatures. I just wanted to start off strong with something you aren't going to see every day."
"Well, I'm sure it'll be fascinating," Hermione said, shaking out her hair a little. "Although I was surprised that none of Newt Scamander's books were on your list. He's one of the most famous researchers focused on the study of and conservation of magical creatures. I did get his compendiums either way, though. They looked fascinating."
"Scamander's a good man, all he's done for these creatures," Hagrid said, walking over to pet Buckbeak. "I've always wanted to sit down with him and talk about his work over some drinks. I think it would be fascinating. Also!" He looked to Eddie. "I nearly forgot to tell you, but I think your little sister will be alright. She was scared to get into 'em boats to travel to the Castle for sorting, but she made it through."
"I think the worst part for her was when her name was called," Eddie shook his head. "She's really shy, so having people looking at her while she was sorted made her nervous."
"It was rather nerve wracking to know the whole school was watching as everyone was called up and sorted," Hermione admitted. "I thought I was going to be sick when I sat down to be sorted. The hat took a while to decide between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, too, which made it worse. Although I might have also been a little self conscious. You couldn't tell, but I had broken my nose a few weeks before school started, and was really insecure about how it reset."
Harry looked to her in surprise. "How did you manage to break your nose?"
"I was at Primark with a few of my friends, and we were getting clothes – normal clothes – before school started. I made the mistake of bringing Anna Karenina with me that day, and was reading it while we went around," Hermione explained. "It might have been alright if we hadn't gone roller skating right after. I had my book and my shopping bags, and thought I was paying enough attention to be able to get around fine and finish my chapter. I ended up slamming into a lamp post and tripping over face first into a curb. My friends, thankfully, walked me to A&E when they realised something was wrong and called my parents, but it was still embarrassing to have to explain what happened. My parents were just glad I didn't accidentally knock out a tooth."
"Bloody hell, Hermione," Ron teased. "How else did you think that would go?"
"Don't know," Hermione said, turning a little pink though she laughed. "And that's why I don't roller skate and read anymore."
The man he had been pretending to be the canine companion to exiting the Tube when the train reached South Kensington, Sirius Black padded into the station, an apparent stick still in his mouth as it had been since nicking it off a wizard sleeping on a bench in Upper Holloway.
Acting out doggish behaviour still an uncomfortable fact of life, he began scouting out the best place to barricade himself in until he could sufficiently alter his appearance enough to be able to walk about as a human being. The discomfort a disquieting and unwelcome feeling since the passing of the relief and adrenaline from escaping Azkaban, he tried not to dwell upon it. Weaving in and out of the throngs of people as best he could, he kept looking. His eyes catching on a sign half fallen off the door to a bathroom taped off for maintenance, it took him only a few seconds before he ran towards it; as though he were, his mind taunted, a dog chasing after a squirrel.
Or a rat.
The second he was through the door and found it to be empty, he slammed the door shut behind himself with as much force as he could in his canine form. He dropped the wand down on the edge of the sink and, barely aware of it, slowly turned back into his natural form with his back pressed against the door. For a few seconds, he found himself gasping for air but, soon after, biting back a sob and, then, a laugh. Exhaustion nabbed at him, and he pulled his knees up to his chest and closed his eyes. No sooner did he relax, however, than was he panicked once more; faster than he thought he could move after having remained in his canine form for so long, he grabbed the wand from where he had set it down and used it to lock the door. The thought of being trapped a less than pleasant one, he used the wand to soon after repair the smashed lights, only to start laughing again when he saw, all around him, the walls were covered in graffiti and spent cans of spray paint were still littered on the ground.
"Can't say I envy the poor bastard who has to clean this up," He paused at the sound of his own voice and the sight of his face in the mirror. "Twelve years in hell."
Almost afraid of knowing whether or not he were real, Sirius slowly stepped towards the mirror, one hand hesitantly brushing over his face and the other still tightly wrapped around the stolen wand. Unsure of where to start, and struggling to pull the right ways to do so without utterly disfiguring himself from his foggy mind, Sirius raised the wand towards his head. The first spell coming to mind feeling familiar enough, he began only to suddenly stop at the sight of his hair becoming thicker, a little shorter, and strawberry blonde. Barely aware of it until he was done, the rest soon followed; his gaunt cheeks fuller to make himself look healthier and younger, his face much rounder and the scars on his body hidden; enough to not resemble the man printed in the papers whom the whole of Britain, it seemed, was after and more than enough for him to be unable to recognise himself. Uneasy, and only sure he recognised himself still by his eyes, Sirius started towards the door before realising he was still in his tattered prison garb and flimsy shoes. Hands shaking and his mind growing fuzzy again, he frowned at his reflexion when he transfigured the clothes.
He did not see himself in the mirror; the man looking back at him was much less a man in his early thirties and instead one at least ten years younger in the slightly oversized clothes of the average muggle teenager. A part of him longing for it to be the truth, at the sight of a broken skateboard in one corner, he repaired it and swept the thing up, dropping the stolen wand into the pocket of the jacket he could hardly believe was real. He took one last look at himself in the mirror, uncertainty whispering still, before unlocking and running out the door and towards the way out of the station. Adrenaline seizing him, euphoria at being able to be freely human rising in him, he almost forgot, for a moment, that he was not seventeen, running away from home to stay with his best friend, and finding himself to be more than a little bit abysmal at muggle sports. Jumping over the railcard readers with the skateboard just barely tucked under his arm, he let himself close his eyes for a moment as he headed out of the station and onto the streets of London.
When he opened them again, he almost wished he hadn't.
Her.
She was older, now; yet she must have been as well when last he had seen her through the cell bars. It was hearing her voice as she stepped towards and unlocked a car, however, that made him stop short.
"…All given evidence and eyewitness reports has led this court to the decision I expected, and, for it, I am satisfied of its veracity. For your blatant breach of the International Statute Of Secrecy and the murder of thirteen muggles, you, Sirius Black, are sentenced to a whole life order in Azkaban prison, your sentence to be enacted immediately following –"
The sounds of cars and buses all around him and the chatter of other pedestrians all but disappeared. He pulled the skateboard tighter against himself, staring at her and taking in every motion she made; from how she dropped her purse into the car that must be hers and the way she stepped into it, shut the door, and started the engine. When she caught sight of him, the engine still running but the car parked, she suddenly opened the door and ran towards him. The noise of the vehicles and people began to grow louder, painful, and –
She snatched him by the arm, pulling him out of the crosswalk. He screamed, only to stumble back a little, holding the skateboard in a desperate attempt to ground himself, when she let him go.
"Good Lord," She said, swearing under her breath in a language he could not quite place as she walked away and back towards her car. "What kind of idiot stands in the middle of a crosswalk with traffic incoming?"
Her.
The voice was, without a doubt, hers. The countenance and gait, too.
When he looked back at where she had dragged him, he found he could only stare at the buses and cars rushing down the busy street. He swallowed hard when she glanced back at him with narrow eyes as she joined the flow of traffic, too, only to feel almost impossibly light, watching her disappear as quickly as he had seen her.
Her.
Amelia Bones, the British Ministry Of Magic's very own head of the Department Of Magical Law Enforcement.
Her.
A gasp of relief escaped him, and he leaned back against a nearby lamppost, staring down at where she had disappeared in disbelief.
If Amelia Bones doesn't recognise me, then who will?
Cold relief began to flood his senses but it was quickly followed by dejection.
How the hell am I going to be able to find Lily and Harry without ending up back where I started?
Hearing a knock at the door to her office, she glanced at the time on the delicate, thinly braided gold watch loose against her bony wrist; expecting it to be, at best, her husband or, at worst, the frassled young woman working as her secretary bringing her less than pleasant news from Woolworth, she flicked the door open with her wand, barely looking up as she did so.
"If something has happened in the last six hours that will cause more problems on top of the ones we've already got, I don't want to hear it."
The woman who entered laughed and, an eyebrow raised, she looked up.
"I'm not here to talk about work, Delia, don't worry," Lily said, slowly closing the door behind herself and locking it by hand. "Though, if you want to hear something interesting, it's that the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad have been sent out to help deal with a wizard who splinched himself by accident trying to catch up to his pet that got out while he was out on a mission to measure all of the road signs in Wandsworth."
"Why was he trying to do that?" Delia said, looking amused. "And what kind of pet?"
"Technically not a pet, but a niffler he had been keeping," Lily laughed. "Besides that, the most interesting thing I've had to deal with was being asked by Amelia to check – while she went to see if her brother, as he's taken ill, is doing any better – on Mad Eye Moody and ensure he wasn't doing anything too mental, seeing as no one has heard much from him in a few months."
"And was he?"
"More or less so. I didn't feel as confident in that write up after he showed me some of the things he has kept around, during which he confessed to having stolen a woman's pants for seventeen years in order test them for 'unspecified and defencive' magical properties, whatever he means by that."
"I don't think anyone wants to know. Christ, the man needs to call down," Delia rolled her eyes and primly adjusted her glasses. "So. What's going on?"
"What isn't?" Lily hesitated a few seconds before sitting down in front of where her friend was sat, still looking through files, at her desk. "The good news," She finally said. "Is that Harry seems to be having a much better year than the last so far, although his first class for Care Of Magical Creatures was…less than stellar."
"So I heard. Per usual, and especially considering Neil and I don't like having to interact with the Malfoys if we can get away with it, the incident and the rancorous complaints about it from the boy's parents were redirected. We have work, and – with Black on the loose – we don't have time to listen to two of the most insufferable people in the country complain about their son being injured by a creature I'm damn surprised any of them were near in the first place."
"Hagrid meant well. His enthusiasm just got the best of him."
"And Hagrid is not, for example, Newt Scamander," Delia said, reaching for something in her desk before suddenly slamming the drawer shut. "If you're looking for a well meaning but occasionally blindly enthusiastic man obsessed with magical creatures, he is the one I would say is credible or, at the very least, understandable. After seeing the book Hagrid assigned for the class, too, I'm not particularly surprised that an incident occurred, but I do wish it had been a little worse, if only so the boy's parents would complain to Dumbledore instead of disrupting those of us who don't have money that works for us."
Lily nervously laughed. "Not all people who are so…well off are like that."
"They aren't," Delia shortly agreed. "You, for one, aren't. If you were, I doubt you would have insisted on raising your son as far away from magic and as frugally as possible until you had no choice but to expose him to the world he was born in."
"A decision I stand by. The last thing I ever wanted was the painful amount of attention he and I have received since…"
"I know," Delia said, calmly reaching over to reassuringly steady her friend's increasingly shaky hands. "But I don't imagine James is the reason you're here."
"It's not," Lily said, unsure of what to say. "As you and, well, nearly everyone in Britain it seems know, Sirius is out of Azkaban and…well, frankly, it's dredged up ruminations I thought I'd long since buried."
"About what? The knowledge he's a cold blooded killer who is fixated on your son?"
"No. It's the…what he's seen as – what he's known as – is so paradoxical to the man I knew, the man James and…the man we named the godfather of our son, and…it hurts. It's hard to have to think about him again, and especially with all of that. I want to believe he's innocent, but, if he is, then…in that case, the last thing I'd want is to see him back in prison. I don't know what to think and, even more than that, I…I don't know what to do."
A few seconds passed in silence.
"I suspect I'll regret this professionally, however, as your friend…" Delia sighed, looking tired and reopening the door she had shut to take out a small, orange bottle. "What are your instincts telling you about it, Lily?"
She hesitated. "That he's innocent, that there has to be another explanation for what happened, and that, if he's trying to find Harry, it's not to hurt him but to reunite with him."
"I can't say I agree with you," Delia frowned. "But there's an easy way to determine if you're wrong or not. You could try to have the investigation into the matter reopened, though whether or not you can convince anyone else of that being worthwhile is a separate issue."
"Could I convince you?"
"You can't honestly think that, Lily. I know what Neil and I saw that day, and the impact it left on the both of us."
"And if evidence proves otherwise?"
"If it's genuine and compelling evidence, then of course."
"Do you think I can at least convince Amelia to let the Department take another look at it?"
Delia raised an eyebrow. "I'd say that depends on how you approach the matter. Make it worth her time, and I think you have a chance."
Lily nodded, falling quiet again for a few seconds when she saw her friend take a few pills before quickly closing and shoving the bottle away.
"It would do a lot if you were to sign off in approval of reopening the investigation. It'd almost certainly convince Amelia to as well."
"In no world, Lily, would the signature of Cordelia Amelié Fudge have any impact on that, and it absolutely wouldn't side by side with that of Amelia Karolina Bones and Lillian Potter. You don't need me to get the damn investigation reopened if it means that much to you."
"Maybe not but…" Lily chewed at the inside of her cheek for a moment before shaking her head. "I want to believe – I want to find out – my old friend and my son's godfather is innocent, even if everything and everyone else thinks otherwise. Is that so wrong?"
"It's not."
"Then I suppose I know what I've got to do," Lily gave her a weak smile. "I know it might be wishful thinking…but I can't let the hope that, somehow, things have gone wrong and we've had the wrong man without even realising it die."