Lady Black (Sirius Black's Daughter)

Stunned

The worries about the half giant residing in the Forbidden Forrest soon moved to the back of my mind. There were more pressing things going on at the moment, namely exams. I'm confident my students will do well, but then again ... it still depends on how much they study and how much they paid attention in class. It's out of my hand now. I've tried my best to keep m classes interesting and keep up with the mandatory curriculum. Normaly, everything should be fine. The thing that frightens me is that the students will also have to face exams by less motivated teachers like, I don't know, Umbridge. The DA must have done some good, but not everyone was a part of it so how will they succeed?

As the dreaded axams grew closer, the stress levels rose. Poppy has informed me of the increase of pupils who come to her for some Draught of Peace or Pepper-ups. As usual, there were other products circulating in Hogwarts as well. Amulets, special potions, even rituals were being sold to anyone who would be desperate enough to believe that they actually worked. Usually the upper years will try to sell them to the younger students, especially those who were doing an OWL exam for the first time. Thank Merlin I graduated already! Even if you know you'll pass because you've studied well enough, the atmosphere around the common rooms and in the Great Hall affect you. Each year you see people falling asleep at the breakfast table after studying the entire night. Comming across someone crying is also a regular thing, either they are worried about the exam they're going to take, either they are convinced they failed the one they just came from.

It's why I retreat to my own room in the evenings. A bit of snuggling with Charlie always cheers me up. Besides, I can't leave him to fend for the twins all by himself. They are getting big! They've both started walking which makes it hard to keep an eye on them. Specially now that Tony seems to find it funny to set things on fire or just play with fire in general. Andrew on the other hand, keeps on changing his appearance. Last night, I went to put him to bed, only to find he had turned his skin green. Of all colours! Of course that wasn't all, he had to make his hair a vibrant shade of lilac finished of with orange polka dots. My child looked like a freakshow! Thank the stars he went back to normal the next morning.

Today he had only turned his hair yellowish, matching the colour of the flames his brother was holding. I chuckled as Charlie kept glancing towards them and everything close to them, as if terrified we'd be out of furniture because it's gone up in flames. I entangled our hands and waited for him to look at me.

"Charlie? How many kids do you want?" I asked with a smile. He grinned and pretented to be thinking.
"Mmm, well we have two boys now, so we'll need a couple of girls to balance it out."
"A coulple? Like two?" I asked slightly terrified to go through labour twice more. He gave me a lopsized smile and leaned in closer.
"At least two. But we can always add a couple more. Maybe the twins want a little brother as well. I've always wanted a big family like the one I come from."
"But that seven kids!" I whispershouted. "That's a lot of babies! Are you sure you want seven possibly firespouting children who change appearance every three seconds?"
"Yeah, why not?" Came his completely relaxed answer. Meanwhile in my head every possible alarm went off. If we go for seven children I can only hope there'll be twins again because I can't handle another five pregnancies! Though I wouldn't mind being pregnant again soon...
"Well then, we better get started. Let's put the twins to bed."

Charlie gaped at me. I raised an eyebrow. He soon realised I wasn't kidding and went to scoop up the kids. We put them each in their cribs and then went to our own room. Let's do it!

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Over the next few days, nothing big happened. That's until the night the fifth years took their astronomy test. Harry had told me all about it. Twenty minutes before the test ended a group of wizards and witches lead by Umbridge went towards Hagrid's cabin. There they tried to stun him. What gives them the idea they have the right to attack him?! Umbridge may fire him, but that's where it ends. If it wasn't for his giant blood he wouldn't have gotten away. Fang, loyal to the bone, had tried to defend Hagrid until he got stunned himself. How could they stun Fang? He's harmless for Magic's sake!!!

Then, everything escalated. Minnie came on the grounds to defend Hagrid and promptly had to answer four stunners send her way. Being stunned by one spell isn't good, getting stunned by four ... and that at her age ... Madam Pomfrey tried everything she could but had to have our beloved transfiguration professor transferred to St. Mungo's.

This caused Harry to freak. He'd just been writing his history exam, which he - by the looks of it - couldn't care less about, when he got a vision of Dad being tortured by Voldemort. Of course he immediatly went to seek McGonagall. Upon finding out she wasn't on school grounds anymore, he panicked. First Dumbledore, now Minnie and Hagrid, who's next? Anyway at the moment, Harry  was in distress.

"We have to go NOW, Jane! Sirius is in danger! I saw it! He's being tortured! Please believe me?!"
"Harry, calm down. Let's fire call home and see if Dad answers, if he does then there's no reason to worry."
"What if he doesn't?! Then we're waisting time!"
"Let's try first."

Harry walked towards the fire place and made the call.

"He doesn't answer!"

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I would like to thank all my  beautiful readers because this story has reached 50K reads! I'm so happy! Thank you very much!

Lots of love, misschiefmanged