Hey everyone,
So two things:
1. I wish I had noticed the fact that ff is being buggy again and that some people might not have been able to read the past two chapters. I will try to keep deleting and reuploading these chapters (including this one) as much as possible and hope that the site will fix itself sometime soon.
2. unfortunately it seems my message that I am NOT INTERESTED in Commission offers. So for the time being I am just going to put this message in a place where it really can't be ignored, unlike Author's Notes.
I apologize to all those who might not like this new small change to my usual writing style, but I genuinely hope that it won't have to be like this for very long.
Sincerely (To all my loyal readers who actually read AN's),

Venquine1990
PS. Like with Destiny's Saying, I'm going to keep this line below at the top of every chapter title for a couple of chapters. To all those who get annoyed with this, same message, BLAME THE COMMISSIONERS!

COMMISSION OFFERS GET DELETED
Chapter 71
I Hear Her Story Too

1st of February 1996
Destiny Islands
Amare's POV

"Okay Molly, you're doing great.

I'd like to ask you two more questions and then, after Richard has told you four his story, I think we can just finish this all up with a short talk and asking each other any questions that might come to mind. How's that sound?"

I am absolutely loving how, yet again, the longer this session lasts, the more the woman seems to really grow in her understanding and benefit from all of this.

I know it's hard for her, as more than once this session she has had to check her hubris and eat some humble pie.

Yet for some reason, despite her incredible temper, the woman seems well acquainted with living a humble life and wanting what's best for others.

Because of this, I am very glad that, while the first question might not get a really great answer, I am confident the woman will enjoy answering my second question.

It will give her a goal – which is something I suddenly realize she must have felt to have lost when Lady Destiny took Sirius out of the house to her Haven.

"Alright, with my first question, I want to go back to that point that bothered you the most. The fact that Sirius didn't show any appreciation for your hard work and effort.

Now, it might be that this question won't really lead anywhere, but your answer might also give us exactly the information required to understand his reasons behind this.

So here's my question, and it's a simple one:

What was the first room you decided to try and clean together with Sirius?"

The woman seems to need a minute to think back on this and I can only imagine that she must have been busy with a lot of rooms over the past half a year or so.

Yet thanks to what I have learned about Sirius – both thanks to Kairi and thanks to Richard's efforts just now – her answer instantly makes me know one thing.

It's the second.

It's the required information.

"I believe it was his – mother's."

And Molly realizes the same. The woman whitens, her eyes widen and in her gaze I can see her realization.

The woman is doing exactly what I've been trying to help her learn how to do. She's taking what she knows and learned about Sirius, and his past, and using that to see her own actions from his POV.

The woman bends down, her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands as she lets out a groan of despair and self-loathing.

"His mother's. The woman who – both in real life and as a moving portrait – has done nothing but make his life miserable.

The woman that made him run away from home. The woman that made him so terrified to be open about his love for and relationship with James.

I feel so stupid. After meeting that woman's portrait, I was so determined to get back at her for yelling at my kids, I immediately decided to just get through all of her worst items first.

I never even thought about the notion that, due to his own upbringing, for all his bravery and strength – Sirius might still be suffering under his mother's tyranny.

That her portrait might, to him, be a constant reminder of his fears as a teenager. That her hanging there, on the first landing, might seem to him like a message.

You'll never be rid of me.

Now it all makes sense.

His refusal to go to any other rooms.

His lack of care with the clean-up.

His constant attempts to get out of there.

His constant suggestions of tearing her portrait down.

It – all – MAKES – SENSE!"

I nod at the woman, extremely proud of her as most of my clients, who come to me after months of trouble with others, usually don't come to this realization this quickly.

And yet I've worked my job long enough to notice certain signs and to recognize when I need to act and when I need to just let my clients act on their own accord.

So before the woman can lose herself to the negative side-effects of her realization, I step in and ask:

"And now that you understand all of this, what will you do moving forward?"

The woman looks startled for a few moments – which is a common occurrence among my clients – and holds silent in thought for a while longer.

Yet the longer she holds silent in thought, the more a determined frown appears on her face. And the more a growing sense of care seems to come to life in her eyes.

"I'm going to go back. I'm going to go back, talk to Remus, apologize for how rude I've been towards him and his friends.

I'm also going to give the Old Crowd a piece of my mind and make sure I share all I've learned with them, especially with people like Hestia.

Oh, the amount of times I've heard that woman talk with Sirius about their old missions. And he would always have a smile on his face, yet up until now part of that smile just always confused me – and that confusion would just fuel my annoyance with him.

Of course there would be melancholy and longing in that poor man's smile. After all he's been through, of course he'd want to go back to the old days.

And of course he would always have that look in his eyes that I was never able to understand, not until now.

It was another one of his silent messages, another of his silent pleas.

Don't just talk to me about the old days, treat me like you did in the old days.

Give me back the respect you claim you had for me back then.

The message was clear as day in his eyes – and of course it was only in his eyes. After that ridiculous way Albus had just skimmed over Sirius' actual innocence and their guilt, OF COURSE he wouldn't expect to be heard anymore.

He still tried, of course he did. But we – oh for – magic's sake! We constantly shot down his vocal attempts and completely ignored his silent ones.

Well, I'm going to make sure that changes.

Forget that dangy old place. It's a lost cause, anyway. Sirius probably knew that too. That must have been another reason he was always so lackluster about the cleaning.

No, I'm going to put all my effort into making sure that, when Sirius comes back, he'll actually have people who understand him, who hear him and who will respect him enough to apologize for their terrible mistakes.

I am going to do right by that man if it's the last thing I do, for Magic's sake!"

All of us have huge grins on our faces as we applaud the woman's wonderful – and probably self-motivating – speech.

What interests me is that the woman seems to turn shy and red when she realizes that Merlin is clapping alongside us.

"Molly, you can be very proud of yourself.

I've had a few clients who were brought to me by their friends and they had been at each other's throats for months, sometimes even years.

Most of them actually needed two to three sessions to get where you are now, and that was at a minimum.

But you – you know me only as Sora's adoptive mother and a shrink. Yet you took to my methods like a fish to water.

I fear that you might encounter the same resistance Sirius has been facing, but I also feel confident that you'll be as likely to give in as he has apparently been.

I believe in you, dear."

The woman beams at me and thanks me as she says that my words mean the world to her.

"Alright, anyone still interested in hearing that story that I based my last question on?"

The group nods, yet then suddenly Lady Destiny speaks again.

"I too am very proud of you, Molly dear. And I'd like you to know that, because you and Albus were the strongest advocates of things going Albus' way, I send him off to another world to learn as well.

He is now visiting and learning from a wise man, this I can assure you."

Just the way that the deity lays emphasis on the word wise instantly makes Richard, Merlin and myself know exactly where Albus Dumbledore is right now.

The three of us share a grin, all of us quite confident that, like Molly, the man will probably learn a very valuable lesson from this experience.

"Alright, time for my story.

It all starts even before I was dating my beautiful wife here, though a few years after we first got to know each other.

I'm sure you can already guess this, but our people are mostly dependent on fishing and gathering supplies from other islands.

However, even though our world is deeply settled into what is called The Light Zone of the World – don't ask – even our world has its shadows.

And a few years after I finished my college years – eehm." It surprises me to see that Molly and Arthur are now looking confused.

"Imagine an advanced form of Hogwarts where you study mostly for a certain profession, such as law, healing or teaching."

"So, like a Mastery under a Master?" Hermione seems somewhat startled to hear about this, yet she nods regardless at Arthur.

"Either way, a few years after I graduated college, a famous fisher went off on a long expedition with his crew.

Yet, he hadn't been the one to decide the course, it had been decided by a large group of market-owners and shop-owners.

These people had never gone out to sea past the point that they couldn't see our home island anymore and this – made them blind to the truth of our world.

Our fisherman, he knew better. He knew that, if he went there, he could run into a pod of killer whales who often travelled all over our seas.

He also knew that it had just been their mating season and that they were probably traveling with their young, thus highly dangerous and highly protective.

Still, one of his agents had made a deal with the owners. He'd be allowed to sail past the point where he could run into the killer whales, if in return, he came back with double his usual fair of fish and other supplies.

Our friend knew of some islands that were indeed past this point and after he had inspected his ship three times to make sure that it could sail past the killer whales safely, he left.

He was gone for almost two and a half months, while his usual trips only lasted 6 weeks at most.

And when he came back, at first everything was fine. He had done as asked, gotten more than his usual fair and had kept his end of the deal.

His employers were ready to reward him with some extra time off – and he gave them a reason to almost never deal with him again.

During the trip, a new crew member had accidentally swabbed the deck a bit too ambitiously and relied on the sun a bit too much to dry the extra wet wooden floor.

He just hadn't told his captain this and so our friend – fell overboard. He went down, got back up and grabbed the first rope that was thrown overboard to help him climb back up.

But this – was right at the point where the killer whales swam their yearly route – and he knew that.

He came back, constantly telling everyone that he had felt the teeth of one of the whales scrape his lower leg as he hauled himself out of the water and that it had almost been bitten off, if not for the quick response to his falling overboard.

The problem was that his leg, while red and sore, didn't show any signs of having been scraped by the teeth of a killer whale.

And while we later discovered that it had simply been just a baby who had, unfortunately, fallen behind the group a little, who had been scared by his sudden arrival and who had swam past him fiercely to get back to his pod, that doesn't really matter.

Besides, most of that – bar the fact that it was a baby – is kind of speculation based on his later account and that of a few crew members, who also only gave their account later.

The problem was that, instead of understanding how terrified our friend had been the whole journey, how much he had wanted to get past that pod and how scared he had felt to suddenly be off of his trusted vessel – people judged him.

Like Sirius, he tried getting people to see his side of the story, to empathize with him and to understand how scared he had been while underwater, if only for a few seconds.

But they only saw a brave, famous fisherman suddenly, slowly in their eyes, turn into a raving lunatic, who, again in their eyes, had no idea what islands he resided on.

The notion that he understood the world and its dangers better than them didn't occur to them.

And the fact that he swore off fishing outside of a simple canoe just baffled them all the more. To make matters worse, they tried throwing just about everything but the kitchen sink at him to get him to go fishing again.

The crew had gone back, but his skills usually allowed them to get the best hauls.

But the poor fellow, he was just terrified that, if he sailed past the point of being able to see his home base, he'd run into those vicious teeth again.

Like I said, I was fresh out of college, had just gotten my first part-time job that I hoped to turn into a full-time gig – never happened, by the way."

My off-handed comment, thankfully lightens the mood and Hermione even giggles a little, while Molly seems intrigued with the notion of a part-time job.

And I know my wife well enough to know that, if she gets another chance, she will definitely be talking to Molly about these kinds of topics.

Stuff that is completely normal for us,

But apparently unknown to them.

"Either way, all of this went on for about half a year. I admit, I only noticed snippets and bits of it. Like I said, I didn't really have much to do with any of this and had no interests in sailing or fishing.

But then one day, I heard a couple of my new colleagues talk about him and they mentioned that they hadn't seen him in a while.

It then occurred to me that, while I wasn't really involved, the guy had been more present in the community before the incident than after. Even I, who barely ever spoke two words with him, had often seen him stroll through the plazas and such.

But while I did my job, I realized that, even for me, that had last occurred a few months ago.

Like I said, by this time I wasn't really dating Amare yet, but I was interested in her and she knew it. And she was both interested in the story behind all of this and worried about the guy.

She was already studying to become a shrink and had to do a paper on a present-day case. But the guy's agent had forbidden him from talking to student-shrinks.

Don't ask, no one ever found out why.

Either way, she asked me to do her a favor and go see what he was like and what state he was in. I wasn't really supposed to interview him or anything, just see if I could spot anything that might help them both.

Even back then I knew I was easy to talk to when it came to other guys. I started a conversation as easy with some old friends of my grandfather as I did with a couple of freshmen who were getting used to life in college.

So I went to his agent, got my hide screamed full because the guy thought I was some rookie reporter or student-shrink or something else he didn't want near his client and got told to – well, you get the picture, I'm sure.

But while I wasn't any of that, I did want to both impress Amare and prove to her that she could rely on me to help her if she needed me.

So, instead of going to his agent, I went to some people he had, as far as I knew, befriended during his canoe trips.

The guy told me where our friend lived and that his agent only visited our friend once a week. So, after hearing that he was also working another client, I waited, saw him leave to visit the other client – and went to check up on our friend.

To be honest, what I found made me only want to do one thing; go back out, find that agent and scream his hide full.

Apparently, the guy hadn't visited his client, because his client hadn't opened the door to him in three bleeding months.

Why? The agent cared more about continuing financial relationships with the shop-owners than the mental or physical health of his client.

And trust me, what I found behind those bushes, hedges and hedgerows – it still haunts my nightmares sometimes.

To put it simple, the guy hadn't left his home in three months, because during one of his canoe trip – some kids had been playing dress up in the water – and he had unfortunately seen the silhouettes of their fake backfins."

Hermione winces more than the other two and explains: "It's a kind of water costume. You put these two straps around your arms, like with a backpack. But instead of a pack, it's shaped like a fin, like that of a dolphin or a shark.

It's pretty popular among Muggle kids, especially ones who live close to lakes or the sea."

"And these things can look actually lifelike?"

Hermione shrugs and says that it depends on quality.

"Either way, while I wanted to make that agent pay for his lack of care, I knew he wasn't the only problem, the whole damned community was.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I called some of my own friends and colleagues, rushed back to where I had met with the canoe-fishermen and got them all to come with me.

And good thing too, as I needed all nine of them to get into the place, get the guy on a makeshift stretcher and get him to a hospital through the quickest possible route – one I didn't even know the existence of.

If it hadn't been for those guys, I would've taken a completely different route. I don't think that would've been too bad, but my nightmares often say otherwise.

Either way, while this route was incredibly fast, it was also through some pretty public points on the island.

So while we rushed him there and while we made sure he was kept on the makeshift stretcher, many people finally saw the damage that had been done.

How emaciated, exhausted and scared he really was. It destroyed everything they thought they knew about him and about the situation.

They didn't see that famous fisherman, they saw someone who – if he had been left alone for another month or so – could've died.

Thankfully, the guy got help, both physically and mentally. And it was after he got that help, that he made his true realization.

Thankfully, that realization and his declaration didn't revert people's opinion of him back to what they thought previously, but that was mostly because they were still so shocked at what they had seen of him as we rushed for him to get treated.

They saw him, they finally really saw him."

The group is obviously as relieved as I feel as I finish my story. Yet Hermione seems to feel both relief and have some strong thoughts at the same time.

She turns to her fellow guests and it seems to take Molly and Arthur a few minutes to get her silent message.

Yet the way that Arthur's eyes widen and that Molly gasps proves that they both drew the same interesting conclusion.

Hermione nods, turns to me and says: "You know what's crazy? I don't just hear Sirius' story of the past 14 years in this tale.

I hear another – one I think Lady Destiny is finally setting up to have the same conclusion;

Jessica's.

I hear her story too."

Hey everyone,
So, not going to lie. This and my plans for Dumbledore are what inspired me to get back to this story and to take this route.
At the same time I'm currently working – in my head – on another story. One that might just help me to grow as a writer.
It's one that puts Campbrina and The Mother in the spotlight almost as much as I try to put Lady Destiny in the spotlight in this story.
Even moreso even, to be honest.

I want to put this story on paper, but I'm still debating with myself on a few things.
The biggest is a strong cliché of mine; the Bashing of AD/RW/GW/MW.
Considering that my last two new stories were FULL of AD Bashing, I'm just not sure if I should go down that route again.

To be honest, I want to start writing more stories with the same AD portrayal as I have in Family And Friends or Master Yen Sid. But for some reason I struggle with that.
Anyone interested,

Venquine1990
PS. Please note that, if I write this, it won't get uploaded until it's finished.