The Pureblood Princess | Sirius Black

|84| How Un-Puglike

Little Adelaide sat upon the tree swing with her fluffy toy cat in her lap, swinging back and forth in the night, bursting with happiness. Little magic specks of light danced around her and she felt as if she was swimming in the stars. She giggled and swung higher in awe. "They're so pretty, Alex!"

The boy grinned then moved his hands so that the lights burned brighter in the filtered light of the full moon, rearranging themselves into what looked like a cat, much to his little sister's delight.

"LAIDY! ALEX!" their father called from somewhere far away, "DINNER! TIME TO COME IN!"

Adelaide quickly jumped off the swing and tottered away toward the entrance of the garden, extremely excited about the prospect of eating mashed potatoes.

"Race you!" the boy laughed from behind her.

Adelaide looked over her shoulder to flash him a mischievous smile, then ran as fast as her little legs would take her, not realizing that the older boy was letting her win. "I'm going to win!" she said loudly with a giggle.

She kept running and running along the moonlit, tree covered path until suddenly, she stopped dead in her tracks and pouted.

"Laidy, you know you're not going to win by just standing there!" Alex laughed, catching up to her. "What's wrong, Laids?" he asked, seeing her pouting face.

"I left Mr. Fluff in the garden..." she said sadly.

"LAIDY! ALEX! GET INSIDE!" their mother called.

"I'll get him for you after dinner, okay?" the boy smiled. Adelaide nodded, yet still looked quite forlorn. "Come on! I'll give you a ride up to the house!" he said crouching down for the little girl to climb onto his back. Adelaide giggled the whole way back to the manor as Alex pretended to be a dragon named Doug.

Adelaide awoke the morning of Christmas Eve a little out of breath, as if she had just been sprinting. "Not again..." she groaned to herself as she sat up in her bed, running her hands through her hair.

Just as with the first memor—dream, Adelaide did her best to convince herself that what she saw was just that, a dream, not a memory. But with vivid images and feelings as the ones she'd just experienced... it was becoming harder and harder to convince herself that it was all in her imagination.

But it had to be her imagination.

Her tireless study on the subject since her return home only served to prove the fact that obliviated memories could only be recovered at the cost of one's sanity and/or short-term memory.

Seeking a distraction from these troublesome thoughts, she reached out to the compact mirror and whispered, "Sirius Orion Black the Third", fogging the glass slightly as she did so. As she waited for him to respond, she wondered if his picture of her would be foggy if her glass stayed foggy...

After nearly ten minutes of waiting in vain for Sirius to answer, she finally gave up, figuring he was still asleep and decided to get ready for her day.

As she got primped and searched for the perfect ensemble, Adelaide reflected on her conversation with her loopy boyfriend a few nights before... and his oddly casual declaration of love...

While what he said was incredibly sweet, she had a hard time really believing that he meant it. After all, he had begged for a charmed duck half the night and whined for most of the other half. Most of his memory of the night under the influence of Regulus's botched painkiller potion was spotty, and he didn't seem to have any recollection of his profession of love. Besides, if he had meant it, she thought that surely he would have brought it up again in one of their other subsequent chats.