Hope In Hiding (Book 2 of the Lost Potter Series)

Lack of Sleep and Important Discussions

Olivia closed the door as gently as she could and made her way to her usual stomping ground this early in the morning: the sitting room she and Sirius lounged in when the nightmares hit. Luckily, most everyone had gone to bed by the time Olivia left her room, leaving her and Sirius both having the same idea as to where to go.

"Can't sleep?" Sirius asked as Olivia took her usual spot.

Olivia just buried her face in her hands and let out a short scream, "I hate myself so much."

"Aw don't be like that, tell me what happened," Sirius urged, tossing a pillow her way when the silence continued.

"Fine." Olivia grumbled as she sat up, "When I wrote to Ginny before I would often write multiple drafts because I don't want to seem daft or expose my feelings just yet. And, me being the true idiot that I am, I didn't pick up the drafts from the floor and dispose of them all until she had read three of them, and I've no idea which ones she read."

Sirius let out a low whistle, "That's, well, that's unfortunate."

"No shit." Olivia grumbled, earning another thrown pillow at her face (though this time she stopped it just short of hitting her and let it fall into her lap).

"What did I say about cursing?" Sirius tried to reprimand, but Olivia could tell his heart wasn't in it, "Look, Liv, if she read anything incriminating then it's really her job to bring it up if she wants to know anymore about it. If she says something, then how she asks it will tell you how she feels."

"But what if she doesn't ask anything? Do I just get to be stuck in this limbo?"

Sirius shrugged, "I guess you could bring it up but it'll seem awfully paranoid of you."

"Oh I really don't need that, everyone here already thinks I'm psychotic after me letting my anger out on those trinkets." Olivia groaned again as she tried to imagine how weird that must've seemed.

"That's just because you're getting a little stir-crazy cooped up in here, that doesn't mean Ginny thinks—" A knock sounded at the door, cutting Sirius off as he almost instinctively reached for his wand.

The door opened timidly, with a nervous looking Harry standing in the doorway, "I can't sleep and figured this is the place to be. Mind if I join you?"

"Oh it's just you, Harry. Yes, yes, of course," Sirius ushered him into the room, "We were just talking about—"

"Absolutely nothing at all. What's got you up and awake?" Olivia cut off, shifting the topic on to Harry.

"Er— it's my vision earlier, you see, " Harry dived into an in-depth explanation of the vision, including his perspective from behind the snake's eyes and the feeling of instinctive rage as he seemed to attack Mr. Weasley.

"Did you tell Dumbledore this?" Was the first thing Sirius asked.

"Yes," said Harry impatiently, "but he didn't tell me what it meant. Well, he doesn't tell me anything anymore..."

"I'm sure he would have told you if it was anything to worry about," said Sirius steadily, though Olivia could see the panic rising in his eyes.

"But that's not all," said Harry in a voice only a little above a whis- per. "I...I think I'm going mad... Back in Dumbledore's office, just before we took the Portkey...for a couple of seconds there I thought I was a snake, I felt like one — my scar really hurt when I was looking at Dumbledore — I wanted to attack him —"

"It must have been the aftermath of the vision, that's all," said Sir- ius. "You were still thinking of the dream or whatever it was and —"

"It wasn't that," said Harry, shaking his head. "It was like something rose up inside me, like there's a snake inside me —"

"Let's get one thing settled here: you're not going mad and there's no physical snake inside of you, yeah?" Olivia started off with, trying to wrap her head around all of this. Harry nodded without enthusiasm.

"Look, Harry, this was probably just the residue of it all and it's nothing to worry about. If you want me to I can take this info to Remus or anyone you trust to try and see if there's anything more to it but I don't know if I'll be able to find anything."

"I— I trust Remus on this, definitely, and Dumbledore will probably tell every Order member anyway..." Harry breath a shaky exhale, "I'm just a little freaked out over it, and really don't want to wake up having attacked anyone here in the house."

"Harry, in this vision, did you have any control over what you were doing? Did you willingly attack Mr. Weasley or did it happen without your input?" Olivia continued questioning, hoping that something would come up to help Harry realise that he was fine.

"I mean, no? Not really... I didn't actually move to strike him, but I just felt like I wanted to, like it was what I was supposed to do." Harry tried to elaborate, struggling with his diction.

"But you weren't controlling the action?" Sirius continued the line of questioning, earning a shake of the head from Harry, "Then that means you don't have to worry about actually being a snake. If that was you, you would've had to have made the move to strike."

"I suppose..." Harry sighed, "I still feel like I'm going mad though. When does that go away?"

"We're probably not the people to ask about that." Olivia tried to lighten the mood.

"In fact, we were even talking about that earlier..." Sirius trailed off, looking at Olivia as if urging her to let him bring Harry in on the Ginny situation.

"Sirius, I said we were talking about nothing." Olivia persisted, feeling very nervous about coming out and revealing her crush shared the same room as her/ was the little sister of Harry's best friend just seemed like a lot at once.

"I guess I'm not allowed to know that conversation either, alrighty then," Harry said with his lips pressed together firmly with every pause, "Mighty typical for this place. Maybe I should try to sleep after all." And with a huff, he stood and marched out of the room.

"Look Liv, you scared away our family bonding time!" Sirius complained childishly.

"Sorry, but I don't feel like coming out to him yet. Ginny had a massive crush on him before and went to the Yule Ball as his date, so forgive me for being a little jealous over the whole ordeal. And even at the dance he was just pining over Cho the whole time, who was taken and is now too emotional for him!"

"Wow, okay, that's a lot of pent up anger." Sirius raised his hands in fake surrender, "I see your point in not wanting to tell him about Ginny, but you probably shouldn't have blown him off like that, now he's going to be pissy towards us too."

Olivia glared at the wall, "Let him be pissy. Maybe by the end of it he'll start seeing some sense about it all."

Sirius rolled his eyes and leaned back into the cushions, "Teenagers, what a mess."

It's almost as if he wasn't expecting the pillow that came hurling at his nose. How unobservant of him.

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Shorter Chapter but I really like how neat and tidy it is so I'm keeping it.

Anyway, please leave feedback and I hope you enjoyed!