COMFORT ZONE | Sirius Black [REWRITING]

21. A New Band and the Summer

Wednesday, 30th May 1973

Gryffindor lost their final match against Ravenclaw, foregoing their collective desire to win the House Cup that year. Despite the general supportiveness of the rest of the House, Wood was quite devastated and had spent majority of the weekend after the match brooding on his own, only leaving Gryffindor Tower for mealtimes and had been rarely spotted in the common room. This was until Dorcas and Andrew decided to give him a piece of their minds on Monday, after he attempted to excuse himself from his position as Team Captain to McGonagall, who outright refused to allow such a thing to happen.

Madiha wondered how the fifth year was doing as she strolled out of the library towards her common room, having completed an intense studying session with Lily, who was now feverishly trying to revise for her end-of-year exams in the company of Severus Snape. Personally, she felt quite prepared for the exams that were due to start in June, seeing as she had rigidly enforced hers and Sirius' revision timetable the past few months so that they could avoid the hot stuffiness of the library in the current climate, when most students were usually found drowning helplessly in seas of textbooks and notes.

She reckoned that Lily was very well-prepared too, but knowing her, she would find a way to convince herself that she had forgotten something and would not hesitate to dive headfirst into an unnecessary revision session about said topic. This was exactly what she was doing with Severus right now, hence the reason Madiha had decided to leave the two of them to study on their own, along with the fact that she did not want to spend much time in the Slytherin boy's company.

In all honesty, Madiha didn't despise Snape the way Sirius and James did, neither did she approve of the pranks they pulled on him, but she did not like him, nonetheless. There was a certain demeanour about him which made her feel irritated to be in his presence, as if he felt that he was far too good to be within a metre's range of a person like her. Yet, he constantly seemed to make that exception for Lily: a muggleborn Gryffindor whom none of his fellow Slytherins liked. This included people like Avery, Mulciber and a few others who were known to get a lot of joy out of hexing muggleborns and younger students just for fun; she despised them with a great passion.

But in regards to Snape, she couldn't help but feel that he was creepily obsessed with his so-called 'best friend' and that Lily was too good-hearted to see his unnerving tendencies for what they truly were.

Turning the corner in the corridor and walking towards the portrait of the Fat Lady, Madiha saw a brown-haired first year whom she vaguely recalled as Mary Macdonald leaning against the wall next to the painting.

"Hey, is everything alright?" Madiha asked her with a small smile.

The girl seemed taken aback, clearly not expecting to be addressed by her, but responded either way.