Lady Lion [Sirius Black] [DISCONTINUED]

XXIII

Callie woke up earlier than usual the next morning, and decided to escape the dorm that was full of her sleeping peers. It was uncommon for Callie to wake up early; typically it was Mercia who acted as everybody's alarm. Since it was an hour or so before she would usually go down for breakfast, Callie thought it'd be nice to relax in the common room with a book that Lily let her borrow.

As she walked down the stairs, Callie realized she was not the only person with plans for early-morning reading. She smile appeared on her face, "Why good morning Remus!"

His face snapped away from the page he was so focused on. "Callie? You're usually the last to wake up."

She chuckled as she came to join him on the couch. "Yeah, I know. It's really weird waking up before everyone. Everything is so... quiet."

"Everything was quiet until you came down here and started talking to me!" Remus teased, earning him a slap on the arm with Callie's book.

"Oh please, you are ecstatic that I'm here and you know it!" She told him.

A focused look became a facade on his face. "I don't know, are you sure?"

Callie laughed at his response, settling in closer to him. She let out a deep breath, and Remus rested his arm on the couch behind her back. "Remus, how did things go last night after I left?"

"They were confused about your little production in there, and I worked up the courage to tell them what I actually wanted to." he told her. Callie was surprised, shifting in her spot to face him more. She gave him a look that told him to elaborate. "Well, the whole moment seemed like a blur, but I'm pretty sure they accept me."

"Of course they do, why wouldn't they?" Callie said.

Remus smiled at her. "Oh Callie, you live in this little bubble of optimism- it's refreshing." He told her. "But werewolves are too big of an issue to assume that anybody will be okay with it. With your uncle, you were raised already knowing that werewolves can come from good people. However, most people can only associate werewolves with bad things."

"I'm just glad that they seem like they're okay with it." Callie told him, and Remus smiled at her.

"What you did last night, telling them about being a metamorphmagus to save me from revealing myself, it was unnecessarily nice." Remus said to Callie. "I truly appreciate it; you didn't want to tell people but you did because you care about me. I feel so grateful."

Callie shrugged, "It was bound to come out eventually, and to be honest it was just embarrassing to see you struggle with your words like that!" she teased him.

He stood up, scoffing at her. "Right, like you didn't love every second of listening to me stutter like a bloody idiot." He put out his hand for her to grab after standing in front of her.

She giggled at his comment, then took his hand and stood beside him. "Where are we going?"

"It's earlier than we usually go down to breakfast, but let's beat the rush, yeah?" He said, which Callie happily agreed to.

As expected, the Great Hall was much less filled than how Callie and Remus usually saw it. There were ten to twenty people at each table, possibly less, and the food looked much more appetizing when there weren't fifty sweaty kids rushing to get it. Remus and Callie sat down in seats close to the entrance, and it wasn't long before more and more students filed in to eat.

"That's her, right? The Callie girl that Emily told me about?" a voice spoke when it passed Callie.

Callie was utterly confused, turned to see Remus with the same puzzled look on his face. "You heard that too, right?" she asked him, who responded with a silent nod as he looked around. 

From a conversation far away, Callie could've sworn she heard her name again. She turned quickly to look at the Hufflepuff table, seeing a small group facing in her direction. It seemed as though the more she looked around, she saw more and more people that were looking, motioning towards her, or saying her name. It was, in a word, terrifying.

"Remus?" She asked quietly, although knowing that he wouldn't have an answer to what was going on.

He shook his head, more confused than she was. "Do you want to leave?" he asked her.

Callie nodded, standing up and walking quickly to the exit of the Great Hall. "There," Callie heard. "the metamorphmagus is the girl who's by the door now."

Callie nearly felt her blood turn cold- her entire body filled up with a dangerous mix of fear and rage. She walked quicker, nearly stomping out of the Great Hall. How stupid could she have been to tell the biggest idiots in the world about her personal secret!

"Woah, Callie, what's going on?" Remus asked, catching up to her. He didn't hear the comment that was made in the Great Hall, but it was clear that Callie caught wind of why her name was being brought up today. He grabbed her arm to turn her around, being met by a girl with pure red eyes, and red creeping up her hair from the tips. "Holy- what's in Merlin's name, Callie?"

"Sirius and James and Peter are dead. I'm going to kill them, and you better not get in my way, Remus Lupin!" her voice was oozing rage. To be honest, Remus could've left out of complete fear of Callie in this state, but instead her stood there with her, a hand on each arm, looking directly into her eyes.

"Callie, breathe, and then tell me what has made you so mad." he told her.

Callie was fuming, and the contrasting calmness of Remus' voice did nothing to change that. "People know, Remus. People know I'm a metamorphmagus!"

He was surprised and confused as well, and continued to just ask her questions before she went to the common room to possibly murder their friends. "Ok, what does that have to do with them?"

"Are you an idiot, Remus? I had told Lily and Mercia before, and nothing happened regarding other people. However, the day after I expose myself to the three of them, the whole school suddenly knows about me!" She yelled, getting louder towards the end of her answer. If people weren't looking at her because of the recently learned fact of her being a metamorphmagus, they was now looking at her because of the scene she was making.

"Callie, they were with me all night!" he pleaded, realizing that if she got back to the common room in this state, things would get very very ugly.

"Let go of me!" Callie demanded, twisting to get her arms out of his grasp. Once she did, she stormed off before Remus could regain his grip on her. She ignored his calls of "Wait, Callie!" and continued to rush towards the common room.

Sirius, James, and Peter all sat in the common room together after just waking up, among a few
other students. James sat there staring at a spot on the wall in a daze as he played with his own hair, while Peter was reading the book that Remus left behind and Sirius was scribbling down random answers to his unfinished homework. There was a peaceful quiet in the common room that quickly fell apart as a red-headed Callie entered the room like a storm. Her hair looked like fire, and oh god would she burn them.

It was almost immediately that a panting Remus was behind her, pleading "Callie, stop."

Rather than succumb to Remus' demand, Callie stormed to where Peter sat on the couch, ripping the book out of his hands and slamming it onto the floor. The three boys were started, staring at her with a degree of fear in their eyes.

Each caught a glimpse of the fire that was Callie as she spoke to them in the most menacing tone they had ever heard: "We're done."