Sirius Black | Omnia Vincit Amor ✓

Chapter 64: Coming Home for Christmas

~ Mathilda POV ~

The weeks leading up to Christmas were alright, mostly quite busy and sometimes quite awful. Mrs Stringer's special form of punishment has intensified and just the other day I also became victim of it. I simply suggested that she should show us again how to produce a corporal Patronus since many of us still don't know how to do it, well she wasn't the biggest fan of this idea. Dumbledore couldn't do anything against her, since she was sent from the ministry and hence Hogwarts now is subject to the ministry. And we can't tell anyone since she still threatens that not only Julie's father but also both parents of Ian will lose their job if we tell anyone.

Also the Slugclub meetings became quite rare, only his annual Christmas party was held yesterday. I wasn't really in the mood for a party, but I knew that Slughorn would be quite disappointed if I did not show up, so I attended it. I mostly sat in a corner, sipping on a drink until I was joined by Slughorn and we talked for a little while. I also shortly talked to Regulus, but that was rather frustrating since he more and more adapted to the behaviour of his friends and seemed rather cold all evening. I left the party pretty early after wishing Slughorn all the best from my grandfather.

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"Is that my jumper or does it belong to any of you?" Britt said, standing in the middle of the room in a pile of clothing and holding up a Hufflepuff jumper.

"I believe it is yours or maybe Julie's, but Mathilda and I are definitely too tiny for it," Emma said, chuckling and picking up a few books. Britt just packed the jumper into her suitcase after shrugging her shoulders.

Julie had gone to the library to return a few books and I also packed a few pieces of clothing into my suitcase and placed some books on top of the clothes. I now carried my wand on me all the time and since I was not going to wear my cloak I quickly stuffed my wand down my boot. In times like this you never know when you will need it.

"Are you going to spend Christmas with Sirius?" Emma said before sitting down on her bed and smiling at me.

"Ahm, no not really. He is going to spend Christmas with the Potters as every year. And you know my whole family will be there and since mum met a new guy he will be there too, so it is already quite busy. So Sirius and I are only going to spend New Years Eve together. But that is fine for me and for him as well," I said, smiling. It was fine, kind of.

Mum's new boyfriend was a halfblood and I knew this would already cause enough drama with my whole family so I really did not want to involve Sirius in all of it. And in addition, he really wanted to spend Christmas with the Potters anyways, so it was very much okay.

"What about you, are you going to Ian?" I asked her and she nodded shyly. "Yes, my parents are constantly fighting over everything and also on Christmas, so I just really want to escape that and Ian offered me to spend Christmas with him!" "That is really lovely, I am happy for you," I said, before standing up and grabbing my suitcase. We were ready to leave since now also Julie had returned.

We all had to wait in the Great Hall, also go together in groups of 6 to be picked up by an Auror that would then escort us to the carriages, sit in the carriages with us and bring us directly do the entrance of the train. Things were going crazy here lately, some people even claimed that Death Eaters had taken over Hogsmead and would just be waiting for us to show up their. The Death Eaters were recruiting heavily, also really young people and there is no doubt that Evan Rosier and Alecto Carrow have already joined them. I was still not sure about Reggie or Bertram but I supposed not. Other people who were claimed to have joined them were Lucius Malfoy, he had been some years above me in school and I only knew him through my grandfather who knew his father or grandfather, something like that. Also Sirius' cousin Bellatrix had probably joined them by now.