Lady Lion [Sirius Black] [DISCONTINUED]

XVIII

The next day was a Thursday, meaning that potions was the first class for The Gang. Callie could actually stand going to that class now, considering she was doing much better than she was in the beginning of the year. It was mostly because of Severus' tutoring from nearly the start of the year, but credit could also partially go to Lily. The girls sometimes stayed up late on the weekends, studying together when the boys weren't around to make fun of them for being "nerds".

"Hey Severus!" Callie greeted the boy, who walked into the classroom only a few seconds before she had. The boy looked back at her, smiling slightly as a response.

"I'll see you guys after class." Lily told Callie and Mercia, before walking off with Severus to sit at their table.

Callie and Mercia walked over to their table together as well, but the sight of Remus sitting at the table in front of the girls' caught her off guard. "Remus?" she asked. She wasn't expecting to see him today; she had thought he would still be at home with his mother.

"Callie, hi." he greeted as she walked over to be next to him. Lethargy was clear in his voice, more so than usual. He was always raggedy to some extent, but on some particular days he was much worse than usual. Today was one of those days; his hair was an non-tamable mess- not for a lack of trying to fix it, however- and the bags under his eyes were prominent. Everybody silently noticed these days, but nobody seemed to figure out a pattern to their occurrences yet, if there was any pattern at all.

"I thought you went home to be with your mother." Callie said.

"I did."

"For one night, and now you're back?" She asked. It seemed odd, but she didn't think of Remus to lie to her. He nodded in response, and turned slightly to face her. That's when Callie saw the massive cut across his face that was beginning to become a scar, surrounded by smaller scratches. The cuts contrasted the paleness of his face, making them ever more noticeable than they would be on anybody else's skin, such as Callie's dark skin.

"Oh my goodness, Remus, what happened?" she asked, concern evident in her voice. She went to turn his face to get a better look, but Remus turned his head away from her hand.

"I-I fell." he muttered, looking down at his lap.

"On what, daggers?" Callie asked him.

Before Remus could answer, the Devastation Twins and Peter walked in together, heading over to where Remus was.

"Rem! Hey, you're here!" Sirius said, patting Remus on the back. "How are you doing mate?"

"Hey guys." Remus said, greeting the boys.

"Woah, what happened?" James asked upon seeing the same cuts and scratches Callie had. Callie was curious to see if he would respond differently to the boys than he did to her about the cuts. Remus and Callie may be close friends, but what the four boys in The Gang had was certainly special.

"Yeah, did you get Callie mad or something?" Sirius asked.

Callie rolled her eyes at Sirius. "Ha, you're a riot." she said, her voice coming out as monotone as possible.

"I take great pride in my humor." Sirius told her with a smirk on his face.

Professor Slughorn walked to the front of the classroom, making all of the students sit down. "Let's get started, shall we?"

The Gang sat together in the common room after classes were over. Mercia had practically begged Callie to allow her to draw on her arm; her plan was to give them matching ink-tattoos, but wouldn't show Callie what the actual drawing was until she was done. Meanwhile, Lily was doing her homework, and the four boys sat together doing nothing except chatting. Sometimes it would be loud and involve huge hand motions- mostly by James, who uses hand motions when talking about nearly anything- but sometimes their voices would drop down and they would get closer to each other to talk, so the girls would be unable to hear them if they actually tried. Lily and Callie just ignored their secretive conversations, because why would they care anyways? Mercia on the other hand would slowly get more and more curious that she couldn't handle it, often yelling out "I don't keep secrets from you guys, so you can't keep secrets from me!" when they were whispering to each other.

"Mercia, they're probably just talking about some prank they don't want us knowing about. Don't worry about it." Callie told her. She looked over at the boys, "They know better than to prank us anyways, right?"

They looked over at her, bearing mischievous smiles. "Whatever you say, little lion." Sirius told her.

"Once again, female lions don't have the mane!" Callie shot back.

"Fine, you're a male lion then." he said. "You even got 'hunt' in your name, Huntingdon."

Callie remained quiet for a moment, before mumbling "You know, female lions are the main hunters."

He looked over, pretend fury in his eyes. He pointed directly at her, saying "You are going to have the nickname 'little lion' and you are going to like it!"

The boys continued on with their conversation as if nothing happened, while Callie couldn't wipe the amused smile off of her face. Lily gave her a look, as to say "Why the heck are you smiling?" Callie shrugged, telling her "Sometimes they can be funny."

A few minutes had past until the boys were leaned back from each other and stopped whispering their conversation; Callie wasn't sure why the boys had to make it so obvious what was secretive and what was not in the common room, couldn't they just talk about thing they don't want others to know about in their dorm? If there is anything she had learned about the Devastation Twins this year, however, it's that they loved attention.

"So, Rem, why were you out yesterday? You never told us." James asked.

Remus looked down at his hands, which were occupied by twirling his quill around. "My mom, she was sick. I went to help take care of her."

"They let you leave Hogwarts to be with your family for one night? That seems weird." Peter said.

"Yeah, she must be pretty sick for them to let you go." Sirius added.

"Oh, you know..." Remus said, a nervous chuckle in his voice. The boys remained silent as though they were waiting for him to say more, but Remus did not continue on.

"Remus," Callie began, earning the boy's attention. "You know, my mum is an exceptional healer. You should have your mother visit her."

Remus nodded. "I will, thank you."

"Ok finished!" Mercia said, putting her quill to the side. Callie looked down at her arm, seeing an outline of a lion. Callie gave Mercia a curious look, so the blonde showed her arm as well, which showed the outline of a puppy.

"You always say I'm like a puppy, and then Sirius calls you a lion. These are our animals!" Mercia told her, getting more excited with each word she spoke.

Callie looked again at her lion, which was drawn very nicely; Mercia had proven she possessed talent for art. A smile was on Callie's face as she looked back up at Mercia. "I love it, thank you Mercia."

"Yay!" Mercia beamed, bouncing in her chair. "I'm so glad you love it! Here, let me draw more!"

Lily and Callie shared a look, chuckling with each other about Mercia's eagerness. Although she may get annoyed with the Devastation Twins, and sometimes needed a break from the craziness The Gang contained, Callie couldn't be any happier about the group of friends she ended up with in her first year.