Moonlight » Harry Potter

Eight

          Tonight, I met Sirius Black for the first time.

It was, to say in the least, a very interesting, awkward, uncomfortable experience. Very uncomfortable for me. Harry, Hermione, Ron, and I were working on homework when it happened. Hermione had given in to helping Ron and Harry with their work. She offered to help me with mine, but I had finished a lot more than they boys had during the week, which meant I didn't have nearly as much, so I declined.

"...copy down this conclusion I've written for you, Ron...Harry, this isn't correct, Europa is covered in ice, not-" she stopped, looking up. "Harry?"

I looked up too to find Harry on his knees, gazing with wonder into the fire.

"Harry, what are you doing?" Ron asked.

"I just saw Sirius's head in the fire," Harry responded, unnaturally calm for the circumstances.

Sirius? "Sirius Black?" I asked, sitting down next to Harry.

He nodded.

"Like the criminal?"

He turned sharply to me. "Be quiet with it! And Sirius is not a criminal, Everest! Don't ever say that again."

I jumped back, startled by his tone. What was he talking about? Sirius Black was a criminal, wasn't he...?

"Harry!" Hermione scolded in a whisper-yell. "You haven't told her anything. How can you possibly expect her to know that?" Then, she turned to me. "Sirius isn't guilty, Ev. And he's Harry's godfather. And Harry clearly gets super defensive—" she glared at Harry— "about this all, so I do urge you not to say anything like that in the future."

I hesitated before nodding, furrowing my brow. The Daily Prophet certainly disagreed with them on this fact, but then the Prophet also said that Harry hadn't actually fought Voldemort last year. I definitely didn't think Harry was lying about that.

When I looked back at the fireplace, there was indeed a head there. And it was, as I suppose I had expected, the head of the one and only Sirius Black.

"Sirius!" Hermione exclaimed, joining us on her knees on the floor. "What are you doing? Do you realize how dangerous this is?"

"You sound like Molly," Sirius Black said with a roll of his eyes. Who was Molly? I wondered.

"I had to answer Harry's letter, in any event, and this is the only way I can do it," Sirius Black continued, and at at the mention of a letter, all of us turned to face Harry.

"You wrote him a letter?" Hermione asked severely.

"Yes!" Harry answered. "But it didn't have any important secret information, did it, Sirius?"

"No, it was good," Sirius Black said with a proud smile. "But about your scar hurting with that Umbridge woman—"

At this, we all turned to face Harry, who held up a finger. I hadn't heard about any scar pain, and apparently, neither had the other two. What did it mean?

"I don't think it's anything," he went on. "I know Dolores Umbridge by reputation and I'm positive she isn't a Death Eater."

"She's nasty enough to be," Ron commented, and the rest of us nodded in agreement. I was still extremely foggy on what was going on. Sirius Black? Death Eaters? Scar hurting?

"She isn't," Sirius Black assured us. "But you should hear Remus talk about her. She drafted an anti-werewolf legislation a few years back. It's impossible for him to get a job. He hates the woman."

I felt my face go pale; I hadn't known it was Umbridge that did that. Umbridge. And she was right in this school. She was my teacher.

"Why does she hate werewolves?" Hermione asked.