In third-year halls, their paths first crossed,
A Raven boy, a Blonde girl lost.
"Stay out of my way," she warned with a glare,
But something lingered in the frosty air.
Crimson with his scar and fame,
Emerald with her secrets untamed.
Two worlds ap...
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"Where the fuck is he!?"
The blonde girl paced back and forth in front of the Gryffindor Dorm, waiting for Harry to return from Hagrid's. Harry had only 5 minutes left to be at the fire and time was running out quickly. Aria wanted to hold a grudge because Harry hadn't mentioned that Sirius asked Harry to meet him at the Gryffindor Fire via fireplace until the last minute but decided to just let it go.
"Balderdash!" Harry suddenly appeared and gasped at the Fat Lady, who was snoozing in her frame in front of the portrait hole."If you say so," she muttered sleepily, without opening her eyes, and the pictures wung forward to admit him.
Harry climbed inside, taking Aria's hand, and dragging her with him inside. The common room was deserted. Harry pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and threw himself into an armchair in front of the fire. The room was in semidarkness; the flames were the only source of light.
Aria sat in an armchair too, looked into the flames, and jumped. Sirius's head was sitting in the fire. If Aria hadn't seen many people do exactly this, it would have scared her out of her wits.
Harry scrambled out of his chair, crouched down by the hearth, and said, "Sirius - how're you doing?"
Sirius looked different from Aria's memory of him. When they had said goodbye, Sirius's face had been gaunt and sunken, surrounded by a quantity of long, black, matted hair - but the hair was clean now, Sirius's face was fuller, and he looked younger.
"Never mind me, how are you?" said Sirius seriously.
"I'm -" For a second, Harry tried to say "fine" - but he couldn't do it. Before he could stop himself, he was talking more than he'd talked in days - about how no one believed he hadn't entered the tournament of his own free will, how Rita Skeeter had lied about him in the Daily Prophet, how he couldn't walk down a corridor without being sneered at - and about Ron, Ron not believing him, Ron's jealousy...
". . . and now Hagrid's just shown me what's coming in the first task, and it's dragons, Sirius, and I'm a goner," he finished desperately.
Sirius looked at him, eyes full of concern, eyes that had not yet lost the look that Azkaban had given them - that deadened, haunted look He had let Harry talk himself into silence without interruption, but now he said, "Dragons we can deal with, Harry, but we'll get to that in a minute - I haven't got long here. . . I've broken into a wizarding house to use the fire, but they could be back at any time. There are things I need to warn you about."
"What?" said Harry, feeling his spirits slip a further few notches... Surely there could be nothing worse than dragons coming?
