RECKLESS FUN | Blaise Zabini | Au

7- BOOGIEMAN

***

"HEY," LEE GREETED, taking a seat next to Fred around the Gryffindor table at lunch, "have you heard? Daily Prophet this morning - they reckon Sirius Black's been sighted."

"Where?" George asked, leaning forward.

"Not too far from here." Lee continued, who looked excited. "It was a Muggle who saw him. She had phoned the telephone hotline, but by the time the Ministry of Magic got there, he was gone."

Zoe felt as if someone had poured a bucket of ice cold water over her. She didn't enjoy the fact that Sirius Black was without a doubt going to be involved even more in her peer's conversations. It would be only a matter of time until someone would start asking her again for sharing the same last name as the escapee. Fortunately, the photograph shared of him in the Daily Prophet didn't have lot of appearance resemblance with Zoe. The man looked so rough and gaunt in the photo it created enough difference in their looks that someone wouldn't recognize their actual very similar resemblance.

"Damn." Fred said, interested.

He and George begun conversing about where they thought Sirius Black was off to. Whilst Lee seemed to notice Zoe's facial expression, bringing him to ask,

"Are you alright? You don't look too good."

"What? Oh... Yeah, yeah." Zoe said, brushing it off. "I'm just tired, that's all."

"I'm assuming that you didn't get much sleep last night based on the circles under your eyes?" Lee said, his eyebrows held high.

"Try at all and two nights."

Zoe was bad at sleeping: for some reason, it had always been very hard for her to drift off to sleep. Though, it wasn't a problem for her: she rarely got tired and hardly required any sleep at all. She usually slept about five hours altogether in two nights.

The other hours of the night Zoe often spent scheming, doing her homework or trying to fall asleep.

To be honest, the girl hated the moments when she tried to catch after sleep, because those hours were not occupied by any distractions from her thoughts, which often brought a lot of discomfort for her. No-one was aware of how many panic attacks the girl in reality had, basically daily, because majority of them she experienced during night when she was the only one awake.

"You haven't slept for 48 hours? Zoe, that's bad, even for you with your weird no-sleeping-required system." Lee said, eyeing her.

"I promise to sleep after classes are over."

Zoe's last lessons for the day were her first Defence Against the Dark Arts classes of the term. She was looking quite forward to it since her uncle was her new teacher.

Remus wasn't there when they arrived to the class. They all sat down, took out their books and were talking when he finally entered the room. He smiled and placed his worn, old briefcase on the teacher's desk.

"Good afternoon." he said. "Would you please put all your books in your bags. Today's will be a practical lesson. You will only need your wands."

Zoe who had had her feet up on her desk, removed them and looked at her uncle, impressed with a mix of curious.

"Right then," Remus said when everyone was ready, "if you'd follow me."

Puzzled but interested, the class got to its feet and followed the Professor out of the classroom. He led them along the deserted corridor and around a corner, where the first thing they saw was Peeves, who was floating upside-down in mid-air and stuffing the nearest keyhole with chewing gum.