Breaking Black (A Sirius Black Love Story)

Chapter 16

After the potions exam, I breezed right through all of my other exams, with the exception of herbology. Mum wouldn't be pleased with my less than average herbology score... She wanted me to become a nurse at St. Mungo's just like her. It would be like she couldn't even see my perfect marks in potions, transfiguration, and defense against the dark arts when she saw the herbology score.

However, for the time, I was sitting at the foot of my bed, hunched over my trunk as I packed up my stuff and unpacked all my pranking supplies. Mary, Rebecca, and Sarah watched me haul out a package of dung bombs. They knew all about my pranks and were wary of them.

"Up to the pranks again, huh?" Mary asked quietly as she shoved her poster of the Chudley Cannons into her trunk. "I thought you were over them..."

"Nope!" I grinned and placed a stray sock on the top of the pile of clothes in my trunk.

"Prank?" Lily perked up and sat up in her bed. She was ahead of everyone and packed that morning, leaving her to try to recover in silence from the exams.

"Yup," I laughed at her wild expression.

"My Lexi is back!" Lily exclaimed and fell back on her pillows. Shaking my head, I threw all my pranking supplies in my bag and began to walk out of the room.

"If Black's eyebrows aren't on fire tomorrow, I'll be sorely disappointed!" Lily called after me. "And get Potter while you're at it!"

Rolling my eyes, I skipped down the last step and jogged up the stairs to the boy's dormitories. After knocking once on the first years' room, I pushed open the cracked door and saw three of the boys running around like chickens with their heads cut off as they tried to clean their disaster of a room. Only Sirius was relaxing, his hands behind his back on his bed and a bag lying at his feet. He'd packed early, knowing we had an adventure to complete together.

"Ah, Ms. Sryker!" Sirius said as if he were an elitist. "Fancy seeing you here!"

"As seeing you!" I laughed and curtsied. James gagged as he picked up a molding dinner plate from under his bed. The smell filled the room, mixing with something I could only guess was the scent of dirty socks.

"Oi! Jamesie!" Sirius called as he slung his bag across his back. "I need the cloak!"

"I still don't think this is fair!" James groaned as he threw Sirius a silvery cloak from inside his trunk. "I love pranks too! Let me help Lexi!"

"Nope, sorry James!" I grinned as I followed Sirius out of the room. He led me into the common room where, despite it being only ten o'clock, it was empty. I guessed everybody was doing last minute packing.

"Alright!" Sirius clapped his hands together and sat on the couch across from me. "Show me what you've got."

"Probably the same as you." I laughed and poured the contents of my bag onto the table between us. Grinning like a kid in a candy store, Sirius sifted through the large pile before pouring his own bag out next to mine.

"Venomous Tentacula seeds?!" I gasped and held up a bag of small, long, black seeds in a bag. "These are a non-tradable good! How'd you get them?"

"Probably the same way you got those Tentacula leaves for that itching potion!" Sirius replied and set a package of my unopened color bombs off to the side.

"Yeah! Only you didn't get caught!" I groaned and admired a large spool of connecting wire for setting off multiple fuses at once.

"That's because I had this!" Sirius patted James' cloak that was hanging on the armrest beside him.

"What? It's just a cloak."

"You'll see Lexi," Sirius alluded mischievously and started throwing my color bombs, fireworks, and sparklers into his bag. "Toss anything that can explode in here."