Heart Scars ||| Remus Lupin

Four

The rest of their summer holiday was quiet. Not even her mother could bring herself to yell at her children or complain about muggleborns and halfbloods.

No, their mother shut herself up in her room, and their father in his study. Which had left Kreacher to care for the remaining Black children.

Kreacher accompanied her and Regulus to King Cross Station when it was time to go back to school, and he wished them farewell.

They went to their usual compartment and sat quietly, waiting for their friends to arrive. Neither her or Regulus had slept much since Sirius left, and they both looked like hell. Regulus' eyes were fluttering closed every few minutes, trying to get some sleep.

"Ara." Adhara looks up at the sound of her name, and she smiles when she sees Alecto.

"Hello Al." She laughs as her friend jumps to hug her. She can hear Regulus conversing quietly with Amycus.

"Heard about Sirius." Amycus says loud enough for her to hear, she clenches her jaw tightly before taking a deep breath.

"He's gone to live with the Potter's." She says firmly, her face stony.

"And good riddance to him. He never brought anything but shame to the Black family anyway." Alecto pipes up, her brown eyes were soft as she looked at her friend.

"Yeah." Regulus mumbles, and all of them drop the discussion.

Slowly, their other friends filed in.

Pandora and Evan came first, followed by Dorcas, Severus, and lastly Barty. Barty smiled happily and sat down in the floor, his head leaning against Adhara's knees.

After about fifteen minutes, someone came knocking on the door of their compartment.

Dorcas slid it open, to reveal a small Gryffindor boy, who looked about twelve. Evan and Barty smirked at one another.

"A- Adhara Black y-you need to go to the prefects compartment." He was shaking and stuttering, and she was so sure he was going to wet himself.

"What's your name kid?" Barty stood, and the kid looked up at him with wide eyes. Barty towered over the boy with a grin on his face.

"Kenji." He answers, Adhara slips past him and makes her way down the hall. She doesn't stop when she hears a small yell of terror.

When she got there, all the other prefects and the head boy and girl were there.

"Took you long enough, Black." Sebastian Pucey, the head boy, comments as she saunters in.

"Fashionably late as always." She replies with a smirk, and head girl Tina Adams rolls her eyes.

"Well, since we had to wait on Black, we're behind schedule. Pucey and I have made up patrol partners and schedules." She begins handing out sheets of paper, and Adhara glares daggers at her paper when she gets it.

"Seb-" She begins, panic flooding her eyes. This wasn't right, surely he didn't stick her with the halfblood Gryffindor, Remus Lupin.

"No changing or switching." Tina says and then she waves for them to be dismissed. Adhara marches up to Pucey.

"I can't be his partner." She shakes her head quickly, she didn't care that out of the corner of her eye she could see him and his mudblood friend.

"Adhara-"

"My mother will kill me. He's a halfblood." She snaps at him.

"I tried, I really did Adhara, but Dumbledore is really big on inner house unity and what not, and Adams made the matches. I argued with her for hours, she stuck me with Evans." He throws his hands up frustratedly. She couldn't blame him, this wasn't on him.

"Thanks for trying." She mumbles.

"Black, in a few months we can make something up. Say he yelled at you, or doesn't listen to you because you're a girl. Something like that, just a few months." He smiles and she grins back.

"Thanks Sebastian."

"No problem Adhara."

She walked out of the compartment and huffed as she ran into someone.

"Seriously? Why can't any of you people snog in compartment's like everybody-"

"No one's snogging anyone Black." She glared up at Remus Lupin, who towered over her.

Adhara wasn't short, she stood at about 5'6, which was tall for a woman in the Black family. But Remus Lupin was tall, about 6'2 maybe.

"What do you want?" She snarls, looking at him with a sneer.

Remus thought it was odd how her and Sirius could be so alike, yet so different. Their faces looked similar, yet she was meaner looking, colder.

"What's your problem with me?" He asks, looking down at her with his big brown eyes.

"You're a halfblood." She pushed around him and began walking back to her compartment. He fell into step beside her.

"That's not it, or, not all of it." He says.

"Yes it is." She says quickly, trying to speed up, but of course, him and his long legs kept up easily.

"No, it's not. You say you hate halfbloods and muggleborns because that's all you've ever been told, but I think that you don't like me in particular because I took Sirius from you." He tells her, and she stops dead.

Remus Lupin had never been stupid. He had always been one of the top in their class with Adhara and the red headed mudblood, she just never expected him to hit the mark so quickly.

She rounds on him.

"I couldn't care less about Sirius or any of his friends," she says, and Lupin just nods, "he's a blood traitor and he is dead to me."

She was walking away again, and he didn't follow. Just as she was about to go into her compartment, he spoke up.

"He's your brother, whether you like it or not. He could murder someone and you'd still love him." She didn't say anything, but pushed into her compartment.

She didn't want to tell him he was right.

///

The great hall was somber.

Adhara didn't miss the glares that the other houses were throwing at the Slytherins through the entire sorting. Some even booed as kids were sorted into Slytherin.

Quite a few seventh year Slytherins were gone, along with a handful of sixth years. There were speculations that they moved away from the war, or were killed as a casualty.

Anyone who knew anything knew where they were, though. They were working for the Dark Lord.

"Welcome back to another year at Hogwarts." Dumbledore begins his speech.

"Today I would like to talk to you about friendship, about creating bonds with people you wouldn't usually affiliate yourself with." Dumbledore looks around at all of them, stopping momentarily on Adhara.

"These are dark times we are living in. No children such as yourselves should ever have to witness war, yet here we are. Friendship and love will hold us together-"

"Like anyone would want to be friends with Slytherins." She heard a boy at the Hufflepuff table whisper.

"Why don't you shut up, Smith before I cut your tongue out." Barty turns to him with a harsh glare, and the boy cowers down in his seat.

"That'll really make them like us." Dorcas muses. Pandora nods from her seat beside Dorcas. Severus snorts.

"Like they'd like us anyway. We're the bad guys, we always have been and we always will be." Amycus rolls his eyes. Alecto hums in agreement.

"Tuck in." Dumbledore calls.

Adhara picks at her food. She hadn't had much of an appetite since Sirius left.

"Ara, are you feeling alright? You're looking pale." Pandora lays a hand on her forehead, and Adhara smiles.

"I'm fine, Panda." She replies.

"If you say so." Pandora hums.

Adhara was far from fine at the moment.