The Last Gryffindor (Sirius Black)

Chapter XVI: Memories

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There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.
—GEORGE CARLIN

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It was well passed three in the morning by the time Aeliana managed to creep out of the Slytherin Common Room to meet Remus. As she darted from corner to corner trying to avoid Filch, she worried Remus might have gotten fed up and left already, given that she'd said to be there over an hour before. Lia had done her damnedest to escape that snake-den, but Alecto was a difficult person to shake after she sunk her fangs in.

Lia discovered Remus fast asleep atop the bed, leaning against the splintering wooden walls of the shrieking shack. Even sleeping, with his brows furrowing worry lines across his forehead, he looked troubled. The shrieking shack didn't hold fond memories for him, she supposed, especially as it was now, frigid from to harsh winter and thin walls.

Watching him clutching his robes close in sleep for warmth, Lia regretted asking him to come all the way out. He had enough on his plate without freezing half to death in the middle of the night to listen to her problems. How could any of her issues really compare to transforming into an unstoppable monster once a month?

Just as she resolved to leave him be, however, he stirred.

"Lia?" he questioned groggily.

"Yeah," she finally admitted after some hesitation by the door.

"I was beginning to wonder if you'd show," he yawned, sitting up straighter and readjusting where his robes had slipped to expose him to icy midnight air.

"You do know you're a wizard, right?" Lia conjured a small floating fire in the centre of the drafty room between them. Despite its size, a wave of warmth wash over her, offering instant relief from the bitter cold. "Amazing, isn't it? Almost like magic."

He shrugged. "Alas, that's why you made Head Girl and not me."

"I feel like there may have been a few other interfering factors that prevented you from being Head Girl, Remus, but who am I to judge."

"You know what I mean," he laughed, then turned serious. "So what was it you wanted to talk about? That note you left on your devil cat barely said anything."

"Originally, I left it so if something happened when I went to talk to our little Slytherin friends you would know who to pin my gruesome death on, but," she sighed, looking up to the heavens dramatically, "a whole lot of help you would have been, sleeping through my grisly murder."

Lia tacked on an extra sigh of despair at the end, just so he would know she was just pulling his leg.

"And?" he prompted, not buying her bullshit for a second. "Have you been murdered?"

"You wish." Lia took a deep breath. "They've decided... to take me to see him — Voldemort."

"That's... good, right? That's what you wanted?" He asked, trying to decipher her expression, and why she wasn't bouncing up and down.

"It is," she reassured him. "But there's still one final test when I meet him before I can join."

When she didn't continue, Remus intervened.

"And that is?"

"Voldemort — he's going to look into my mind, to determine loyalty." Lia glanced briefly at Remus to view his speechless expression, before darting her gaze away again, chewing her bottom lip. "But I have an idea. A bad idea, but it's my only shot. I can't kill him yet, and I can't back down, either. I'll be killed immediately if I don't try. So much could go wrong, I know, th—"