idiots

ONE

I was sitting in the library once again, just like every other evening I have spent in this castle. I had an early morning the next day but I was still up late. The insomnia kept me from sleeping properly, like it has been for years. I can go days without sleeping, honestly.

It was around two in the morning when I snuck back to the dorms. Everyone was sleeping of course since tomorrow was Friday. I had learnt how not to get caught when walking late around the castle. The Slytherin common room was quiet when I got there. That was quite unusual. Almost every night someone is up the whole night trying to finish an essay or some work they didn't accomplish on time. I can't stand those types of people. It's not so hard to do the work on time.

I finally got some sleep probably around four am, which meant that my alarm would go off exactly four hours from now. That's more than enough for me to be honest. All teachers always complain to me that I don't sleep enough or I look tired or something, but I always choose to ignore that. I don't like sleeping, because of the nightmares. Not any of those pathetic dreams about ghosts or crap like that. Real nightmares, like my parents.

I spent last summer alone in my parents' house, mostly locked up in my room. I didn't have Sirius keeping me company since he chose not to come back. Of course I knew that he wouldn't come there but still I hoped he would. I also hoped that he would come back for me and take me away, but that was a long shot. That summer I decided to leave the house forever.

The only person I knew who would help me wasn't even my friend back then. Lily Evans. I knew he was friends with my brother and she must have known about my family. I got in touch with her right away so I couldn't change my mind anymore. She promised to come pick me up when I knew my parents were out of town. She saved my life and I'm really grateful to her for that. She and I became closer this semester because of that.

It had already been two weeks since school started when I decided to tell Sirius that I'm not going back home anymore. I don't know why it scared me so much, he had done the exact same thing a year earlier and would totally understand my choice. When I eventually told him, he claimed to be proud of me and said that he's going to take care of me from now on. I didn't want to ruin his proud big brother moment by saying that I can take care of myself, so I let him hug me for a while. I still feel slightly uncomfortable around him because I can't forget the fact that he abandoned me into that hell hole alone. I'm trying to move past it.

"Good morning class!" said professor McGonagall way too happily when we got into the class in the morning. Even though I had slept poorly last night, I wrote all the notes in my notebook. The class felt longer than it actually was because we didn't get to try any spells ourselves, we just had to listen to her monologue in front of the class. She let us out of there a little bit earlier than was supposed to but I didn't mind at all, no one else didn't either.

Next lesson I had next year's potions. The teacher, Slughorn, was convinced that I was somehow special and on the top of my year, so he moved me with the 5th year students. All "the marauders" had the same lesson with me, which is why I wasn't so thrilled. And on top of that, Slughorn had intentionally put me next to Potter, who was a complete disaster. Maybe he thought that I could help him or something. Most of the classes I do all the work voluntarily because I don't want him to mess it all up.

All the first lessons of potions, Potter would just leave me there and go over to Sirius and Lupin while I did all the work. But now for the past few weeks he has been sitting next to me quietly just watching me. I have no idea what's that all about but he makes me nervous. He has always made me sort of nervous.

"We are going to have a small exam on the 29th day of October. You may mark it in your calendars. You have two weeks to prepare yourselves for it since today is the 15th." Slughorn announced before starting the lesson. Today's task was to make an invisibility potion. It was pretty easy to make in my opinion so I just got to work as usual. I didn't even ask if he wanted to help because I knew the answer already. He had been sitting there without saying a word for almost ten minutes now. I didn't even know he could stay still that long.