Two weeks before the winter holiday the castle woke to frost on their windows and snow on the ground. Inside the halls were decked with tinsel and garland, decorated trees were scattered about none bigger or filled with more ornaments than the tree in the Great Hall. Even more exciting was another trip to Hogsmeade the last weekend of the term. Everyone was delighted, save one lonely boy.

After careful deliberation, and Fred trying his hardest to convince George otherwise, the pair cornered Harry after everyone left for Hogsmeade to give him the map. Before George could show Harry how to wipe it, Fred scanned every room and corridor and tower.

"She's there," Harry told him pointing to the clock tower.

"Thanks mate," Fred said clapping him on the should as he stepped away. Before he rounded the corner he turned back to George flipping a galleon to him. "Get Ginny something pretty, Clio says we can have the rest."

George rolled his eyes as Fred left and Harry tucked the now blank map in his jacket. "What are they up to?"

George shrugged. "Probably snogging, or whatever they do when they're alone now." Though he sounded put out and annoyed, which he was, there was still a hint of a smile because he hadn't seen either of them as happy as they'd been lately.

Something Fred was looking as he peeked around the corner to the clock tower planning to scare Clione. He found it hilarious the way her eyes bugged and the way she gasped. Then as she processed it was just him she'd unconsciously reach for him, because he'd realized now when she was scared she wanted him. Before she started hitting him for scaring her.

But he found her sitting beneath the clock with her back to the cold stone wrapped in a thick fuzzy blanket. His footsteps had her looking up as she quickly closed her journal, but her dark eyes brightened at finding it was him. He might like this face better.

She pulled the corner of her blanket down and he slid in close beside her so she could throw it over his lap. "Surprised you didn't scare me."

"I thought about it," he said with a shrug. "But you looked sad "

That surprised her, having not realized she was let alone looked it. She pulled out the photograph she'd found tucked between the pages and held it out to him. Her mother had been very pretty but she hadn't been beautiful, beautiful came from Clione's father. Tallibah had had a round dark face with surprisingly soft features given her cold personality. The only thing Clione seemed to have gotten from her was her coloring and the shape of her mouth. Her father had regal pale features, but mischief shined in his squinted eyes. Clione even had his smile.

"He looks familiar," Fred said unable to place where he'd seen him.

Clione looked at the side of his face having kept this to herself the last two months. She'd almost told Gail so many times, even Harry. But she'd open her mouth and nothing would come out. Now she sat with this boy who had somehow become the only thing in her life she could count on with absolute certainty.

"Your family's super secret book," Fred said as she set it on his lap.

She hummed only partly amused. She'd been hiding it from him not yet ready to share, not ready for what it meant. "This stays between us," she told him sounding and looking very serious. But there was a timidness in her eyes, a worry he didn't understand.

He raised a hand to his chest and made an x over his heart. That at least made her smile. She flipped through the first several pages and he watched the names and lines and the branches of the acacia tree connecting them all flip past. This really was her family, he realized.

"It only follows the firstborn," she explained. "As soon as they're born their name appears in here. And apparently only those names can read it."

She stopped on the last page colored blue as the sky, an intricately designed pillar framed each side of the page with a tree swaying gently at the top. His eyes fell to a name he'd been seeing and hearing everywhere he went, his darkly elegant features stretched gaunt across his skull. That's why Fred couldn't place the photo of him when he was younger, full of life. Sirius Black. "Your dad's," he exclaimed before his voice died out. His mouth opened again trying to get it to come out but his mouth snapped shut instead. He looked at her patiently expectant face and nodded. "Well now you know," is all he got to come out.

It made her laugh, which was something she never thought she'd be able to do about this. She leaned into him pressing her mouth to his shoulder, grateful to have him. "Bloody hell," she heard him exclaim in a rush of air when he found her name. Next to her name was her husband's, and below that and unfilled line. He turned looking down at her unbearably warm eyes and he found himself breathless. He found himself looking at forever. "We're gonna have a kid."

She hummed watching the way his thumb brushed over the line connecting their names and the blank line beneath it, as he imagined them married and her pregnant. He had the stupidest smile and she gave a quiet sweet, "yeah." And for the first time since last year when she'd been sat down and coaxed to decide who and what she wanted to be, this felt right. "Want me to blow your mind?" she asked with a glimmering grin.

"Already blown, darling."

She just about snorted and smacked his arm. Grabbing her mother's journal she rifled through it looking for one picture in particular. It was of her father beaming as a ragged looking young man held her. "Look familiar?" she asked pointing to the other man.

Fred stared hard at the picture, really only able to see the side of his face from how he was looking down at a small Clio. But he could just barely make out a thin line running along his cheek. "Lupin?"

Clione cleared her throat and read what her mother had written. "The boys are even more ridiculous; they've been calling themselves Padfoot and Moony." She wore a satisfied smirk as he gaped at hit her after the Halloween feast when Sirius Black had snuck in, that padfoot was another name for a large black dog. Coupled with Lupin falling ill so close to a full moon, again, and Snape teaching the sixth year's advanced potions class how to make Wolfsbane Potion though it hadn't been in the original lesson plan. A potion Clione had found an advanced variation of in this very journal. Puzzle pieces.

"Your dad,"

"And godfather."

"made the Marauders Map?"

"And," she said not finished yet. She tucked that picture back in and flipped to the one she'd shown Harry a couple weeks ago of their parents. She pointed at a man Harry was the spitting imagine of. "I'm pretty sure Harry's dad was Prongs."

He looked from her to the picture of her parents and the Potter's, and her mom's pregnant belly. Clio was gonna look like that one day, he thought feeling her warm against him. "I'll be more impressed when you come back with Wormtail," he told her, trying to shake off the want he suddenly had.

She smacked his arm again as she laughed again, a series of giggles all strung together. He really liked her laugh. "She wrote down the spells and draughts she made. She was a brilliant witch," Clione said setting the book and journal to the side as she snuggled under the blanket. She found herself wondering what her mother had chosen to study during her time here, if she would've been proud of Clione. "She even made a charm to keep the scarf in place."

"Impressive," Fred said a little too quickly, a little too seriously.

She shot him a look catching the way he bit back a smile. "I'll show you."

She threw the blanket off them and pulled him with her to his feet. He waited curiously as she slid the small magnets off and draped the deep blue scarf with shiny silver stars over his head. "Clio," he whined.

"You'll see," she told him.

Her knuckles grazed his sensitive throat and he swallowed. He wasn't used to being able to see her golden neck, she still had a scar that ran across it from last year. She pulled the back end of the scarf around either side of his neck and used the magnets to keep it in place. Then she took the ends of the scarf and threw them around the opposite shoulder.

He let her move around behind him smoothing it carefully down his back. She had gentle hands and a warm soft touch, and he was gonna marry her one day. "So, wife, mother of my children," he said boldly, proudly, making her grin, "how do I look?"

Ridiculous was the answer, but she fixed the way the scarf laid over his hair. "You look good in blue," she told him simply. Matter of fact. Before he could look too smug she bent down and pulled the knot on one of his shoes. "Tie your shoe," she ordered.

"Give me a challenge at least," he scoffed. As soon as he bent down both ends of the scarf fell off his shoulders and hung in the way. He stood up straight and tossed them back over his shoulder before trying again. Maybe if he didn't bend over and just raised his leg - one of the ends slipped around to hang from his chest and got tangled with the laces. Heaving a dramatic sigh he propped his foot on the wall and felt that same damn side start slipping around to the front. With his shoe tied and his foot stinging from how hard he'd stomped it back on the ground, he flicked the soft material over his shoulder again and turned to her in an annoyed huff. "How can you stand this?"

She was doing her best not to outright laugh in his face because she could see he was serious. Beneath his minor frustration he really wanted to know. "I first picked the hijab because that's what my mom had, but I feel beautiful in it."

"You are beautiful in it."

That made her face warm as she smiled. "Now that I'm older, I like that my husband,"

"Which is me," he corrected.

A loud breath left her nose before she nodded. "I like that you're the only one who'll get to see me that way."

Something that was just for him, he hadn't thought of it like that before. He pulled the scarf off and laid it over her head, fastening the magnet as she'd done, and carefully draped the ends over her shoulder. Because it was important to her, and that it made it important to him. "Me too," he told her softly.

He fixed the hem of the scarf over the white undercap she wore, and he let his hand fall so his knuckles grazed her cheek. She had the darkest eyes, sometimes he swore he saw stars in them. He saw the shift in her stare as she blinked, and he took a breath through parted lips as they leaned into each other.

"Hey, did you guys wanna, oh-" George stopped and stared open mouthed at the way Clione pulled away from Fred.

"I still need to pack," she told them. She had a hand held to her mouth as she stepped around George, trying to hide her smile.

George turned to where his brother stood staring at the hall she disappeared down. "So?"

He looked to George and a big smile spread over his face squinting at the corners of his eyes. "I'm gonna marry her," he told him.

George blinked having expected to get chewed out for interrupting what he'd realized too late was going to be their first kiss, or for Fred to go on and on about how great she was with hearts in his eyes and a stupidly happy grin on his face. But he honestly hadn't expected that. "Sure you are," George told him letting him have it.

..

The train ride back to King's Crossing was filled with excited cheer. The train cars themselves were strung with garland, and thankfully no dementors this time. Clione, Ginny, Fred, and George had gotten a train car to themselves. Percy had taken one look at the four of them hunched over something suspiciously and left them to sit somewhere else. Mrs. Weasley welcomed them all with a rib-cracking hug. They didn't see Mr. Weasley until after he came home from work that evening and Clione's eyes had turned misty and she'd hugged him a little too long.

Though she didn't celebrate it, Mr. Weasley had surprised Clione with tickets to the town's yearly Christmas Eve performance of the Nutcracker. The boys were ready and waiting downstairs with Mrs. Weasley after a quick dinner, when Clione and Ginny finally joined them wearing matching red dresses.

"Oh, goodness, look at you two," Molly exclaimed at the sight of them.

Ginny shrugged wearing jeans under hers while Clione did a little twirl. She wore a white turtleneck tucked into leggings, and a black scarf wrapped only around her hair, with big gold hoops dangling from her ears. "This is for you to open now," Clione said with a big grin and handed Mrs. Weasley a gift bag.

Molly took it from her trying to wave it away, the girl was good at sneaking expensive things here and there for them. But Molly eyes filled with joyous tears as she pulled the exact same dress out. "I'll be right back," she told them and hurried up the stairs.

Clione was still grinning as Fred came to stand by her, knocking his shoulder against hers. "I'm starting to think red is your color." With her dark eyes and nut brown skin, she could've been a goddess.

A hand landed on his shoulder forcing him a step to the side as his father stood between them. "Lovely as always," he told Clione feeling her arms come around his middle. "That was a wonderful gift you gave mom. Just wonderful." He held his other arm out to Ginny and he stood a moment holding his girls.

Molly came down in the dress and gave a twirl like Clione had. She was almost blushing at the way Arthur took her hand and spun her like he had the day they married. The boys made a face but the girls looked at each other hiding their giggling behind their hands.

The whole performance Clione had sat with stars in her eyes while Fred held her hand glancing at her every so often with a little smile. George had fallen asleep, Ginny wished some of Clione's excitement for ballet extended to quidditch, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were happy to have the majority of their children home for the holidays, and Percy was home having declared himself too busy to attend.

Afterwards the five of them slowly ambled down the sidewalk in the direction of the van that had been delivered two weeks ago with a big Christmas bow on top already registered under Arthur's name. No matter how innocent Clione pretended to be they knew she'd done it.

She and Fred walked ahead with their held hands in his jacket pocket. "I'm gonna be the sugar plum fairy next year," she told him with a determined twinkle in her eyes.

"Best sugar plum fairy this town'll ever see," Fred declared proudly making her smile.

She turned to where George was on her right as they walked with their arms linked. "You gonna stay awake?"

"Only for you, then I'm going back to sleep."

She was still laughing lightly at that as she turned looking for Ginny. She was scuffing her trainers on the pavement in the space between them and her parents. Her stopping had both boys stumbling and where George let her go Fred kept his hold on her. Clione looked past Ginny to Mr. Weasley. "They've got the lights up downtown. Maybe we could walk around?"

"A fine idea," he declared warmly with an arm around Molly.

Fred pulled their hands out of his pocket and let her go, which had Clione turning to him in such a sharp way he grinned. "Hop up, Clio, your chariot awaits."

Her mouth opened automatically to tell him no but a laugh came out instead. He bent down just enough for her to jump on his back, and he stood with his arms around the backs of her knees shifting her up higher as she settled with her arms loose around his neck and her cheek against his temple. Without warning he shot across the street leaving her tinkling laughter in their wake. And not far behind came George with Ginny on his back giggling as he ran.

..

They returned to Hogwarts in high spirits. The decorations had been taken down, the weather was still frigid and the shadows of the dementors floating above the grounds could be seen from the carriages, but overall it'd been a nice holiday. Fred tried kissing Clione under the mistletoe George had placed before their father threw something at him. But she'd planted a soft kiss on his cheek to ring in the new year before he and George nearly burned the Burrow down with what they called Weasley's Wildfire Whizz-Bangs.

Though as soon as Ron saw Clione he marched right up to tell her what Hermione had done with Harry's new broomstick. "She told McGonagall and Harry's Firebolt was taken away. A Firebolt, Clio, those are the best!"

Clione's brows were raised as she listened to his self-righteous anger. It was Fred who slung an arm around her shoulders and looked down at his hot-headed little brother. "First of all, I call her Clio. Second, you really think a mysterious broom turns up while someone's after Harry and she's not gonna destroy it?"

Clione hummed thoughtfully before giving a nod. "We learned a gouging spell in Earth Magic that'd do the trick."

Fred looked at her a moment before saying, "well there you have it." Though he'd made it clear he would take her side, he clapped Harry on the shoulder giving a quiet, "that's a pisser, mate, a real Firebolt." What he wouldn't have done to get his hands on that.

The pair separated as they sat at their respective tables for the first dinner back from holiday, though they got seats on opposite sides so they could see each other. He spent quite a bit of dinner making her laugh, a few times she'd had to spit her water back into her cup to keep it from going up her nose. The rest of it she'd spent trying to drag out of Cassius what he was planning to study next year. This brooding arrogant boy, he'd actually blushed when she told him he was good enough to be whatever he wanted.

But before they got up to go to their common rooms, Clione noticed the way Hermione was sitting apart from everyone else. Ron and Harry were apparently refusing to speak with her because she'd been the one to tell Professor McGonagall about the broom Harry had gotten over break, she intimidated Neville into being too shy to speak to her, and they'd all had such a nice break no one really wanted to talk about their classes yet. So Hermione sat with a book propped up on the table using her intellect as a weapon, as a shield.

The next morning Clione was making her way towards where Gail and Noemi sat at the Hufflepuff table. But she stopped behind Fred sneaking her arms around his shoulders to hug him from behind. His chest jolted with a cough from swallowing wrong at the feel of her pressed against his back. "Maybe next time you won't be so annoying when I'm eating," she told him before pressing a kiss to his warm cheek and smacking his back like she was trying to help his coughing.
She moved down a little ways and stopped beside a lonely girl burying her hurt in another book. "Hermione." The girl in question looked up timidly, ready for someone else to chew her out about the broom. "Would you like to eat with us?"

The first thing that sprung to her eyes were tears, the second was relief. "I really would, thanks." Storing her book back in her bag, Hermione followed Clione to the Hufflepuff table.

Which is how the two girls later found themselves the beginning of the second week sitting on a bench together while the Gryffindor team practiced. They both had their noses stuck in a book, but Ginny stood beside them yelling up at the team excitedly as they made a pass. All the while Fred and George swooped low rustling the pages of their books, with an added compliment to Clione from Fred every so often that had her trying her hardest to look annoyed but ended in her laughing.

"How do you tolerate them?" Hermione asked her quietly, still stung by how quickly Ron had turned against her. He'd been after her the whole year because of Crookshanks and now the broom, she'd never had someone be so outwardly mean.

Clione sat a moment with her hands flat on either page holding her ancient magic textbook open as she watched George lob a bludger through one of Oliver's goalposts. The only way she could tell the twins apart from this distance was because George was the better player. "They're a passionate lot," Clione told the younger girl. She remembered very easily how awful Fred used to be, before she realized it was because he liked her. It figured Ron would inherit that.

"Not sure I'd call it passion."

She turned to Hermione with a brow raised. "If I remember correctly, Ron spit up slugs for six hours last year because Draco called you a name," she reminded her, and Hermione ducked her head further into her book to hide the sudden flush creeping up her neck. "I also heard he lost Gryffindor points this year going after Snape because he was mean to you."

Hermione grumbled to herself about Clione always taking their side, while Clione's head turned to follow Harry trying to chase the snitch on an old slow broom. As Harry swooped back around, Clione's gaze drifted lower where she could just barely see the tips of the Whomping Willow's branches twisting. She was slow to face forward as her mind began sifting through information she'd collected but had never sorted.

Fred said the map showed seven passages leading to Hogsmeade; Filch knew of four and so they'd been guarded, one caved in last year, the one they'd used into Honeydukes from the witch's statue, and the last one the Whomping Willow had been planted over. And she'd seen Sirius as a dog by the tree a number of times, she'd been so stupid to have not realized it sooner. It more or less seemed to follow the passage to Honeydukes, and right beyond Honeydukes -

"Hermione, when did the Shrieking Shack get its name?"

She'd still been pouting over what Clione had said about Ron, but that had her furrow-browed stare rising from her book to look at her blank face. "About twenty years ago." There was no change in Clione's face at hearing that, but she was blinking too fast to consider casual. All at once Hermione knew Clione had figured out the same thing she had about Professor Lupin.

It wasn't that night or the night after, but the night after that when the astronomy class was up into the late hours of the morning looking for constellations, that Clione slipped outside under the cover of darkness. Clothed in the color of night Clione cut across the north lawn with a bag slung over her shoulder and her wand in hand. With a flick of her thin wrist a pale light seemed to emit from the tip of her wand and it pierced the heart of the Whomping Willow causing it to fall utterly still.

Lupin had been impressed at how quickly she'd taken to nonverbal magic, something her mother had apparently struggled with. She shifted the weight of the bag higher on her shoulder, took a breath, and crept down into the dark earthly hole under the great tree. Using her wand as a flashlight she followed the tunnel a long ways until it widened into a wooden hall with old creaking stairs leading to a door barely holding on at the hinges. The board under her foot groaned and the shack above her seemed to hold its breath. She turned to the haphazardly supporting wall framing the tunnel and rapped her knuckles on it.

The door swung open and the shadow of a thin ragged man with matted dark hair stepped out, then sighed when he saw his daughter. "You shouldn't be here, darling," he told her, his voice hoarse from years of nonuse. But he beckoned to her and held a hand out helping her up the stairs.

She stepped into the old dusty shack taking in the claw marks on the floor and the walls, the broken furniture, the dim crackling fire in a corner casting the room in an eerie orange glow. It smelled of timeworn abandonment and wet dog. Sirius watched her set her bag on the cracked side table and leave her wand beside it, like an afterthought. "What is it you're after?" she asked him from one of the boarded winders, her fingers running over a gouged mark in the wood.

"I'll ask the questions," he told her inching closer to her bag. He could smell what she'd brought him.

Her face had turned in on itself in a flush of indignation, the way it did when Percy bossed her around. But she rolled her eyes in a huff and pulled out the wrapped plate she'd snuck in there at dinner. "They're gonna be executing Hagrid's Hippogriff, you won't have him to blame the carcasses on anymore." She stood back trying not to watch him inhale the food, she did her best not to hear it either. "Snape watches the Witch statue, he knows that's how you got in last time."

He snorted a laugh as he picked the bone clean of chicken. "How is Snivellus?"

Her eyes rolled so hard they could've stuck facing the inside of her skull. "Mom was right about how childish you are," she mumbled more to herself earning herself a sharp look from him. "Seriously, Sirius," she made a face at the way that sounded, "what are you after? Harry thinks you killed his parents and that you're trying,"

"I never," he cried a little too loudly, a little too desperate. She pulled back and the breath knocked out of him at seeing she was scared of him. "Clione, love, I'd." His hands balled at his sides to keep from reaching for her. "Peter Pettigrew," burst out of him.

There was a boarded up window at her back, a broken dresser to her right, and the door too far to her left that he was closer to. She'd been searching for an easy exit. But her mind stopped at that name and she looked at his gaunt sunken in face, seeing sincerity flickering in his eyes. "The man they think you killed," she said and he nodded. "Fred said they kept seeing his name on the map."

"Not our old map?" he asked with a rush of pride.

"Yeah," she answered waving that away. "If you didn't kill him and he truly is somehow wandering the castle unseen," she paused sorting through everything she'd learned about the day that sent Sirius to Azkaban, "then he's the one who sided with the Dark Lord." Who got Harry's parents killed.

He stepped closer taking her hands in his, his eyes growing wet at hearing his own innocence out loud. He'd wanted to leave her out of it, to put himself back together so she didn't see him like this. But she was clever like her mother, determined like her too; yet she'd gotten his own openness to question what she thought she knew. "He's an ani-"

The door shook on its hinges as someone reached the top of the stairs. Danger flashed in his pale eyes and he turned snatching her wand from the table. Between two weathered boards the firelight glinted off bright auburn hair, and as Sirius raised her wand she lunged for the door.