metanoia

Chapter Eleven

School was progressively becoming more and more taxing, with midterms fastly approaching with the end of the term in December. Each evening Remus, Lily and Alex would be stationed in the Common Room working on their assignments and essays, taking turns helping Marlene with her own homework upon realizing that she had dyslexia and that was why she had such a hard time in school, all while their other friends would watch them or play Wizard's Chess, asking for the trio to complete their assignments as well. 

Late one Sunday evening after a rather long and tiring Quidditch practice for the opening match of the season against Slytherin, Alex was sleepily working on a Potions essay for Professor Slughorn and accidentally ended up falling asleep on the couch in the Common Room.

On a chilling Halloween, a peculiar and unnatural darkness had blanketed Godric's Hollow. Sirius Black finally arrived at the severely damaged house, parking his motorbike haphazardly on the street in a panicked manner upon seeing the blasted bits of the infrastructure.

Sirius didn't dawdle, realizing that something had to have been horribly wrong he sprinted into the destroyed home, harshly swinging open the unhinged front gate. After cautiously walking into the front hallway of the home Sirius came to a screeching halt, stopping in front of a figure lying motionless on the ground.

 James Potter.

The wild haired, tattooed young man fell hard onto his knees, crying over his best mate's lifeless body. James Potter lied dead on the ground of his home, with no wand in hand. Sirius knew why his best friend was now dead in his home in the still of the night... more like who was the reason.

Sirius picked himself up off the ground beside his fallen friend and ventured deeper into the house, running up the flight of stairs. Sirius stopped completely in front of a nursery, praying that he wouldn't find the rest of the Potter family in the same condition as he found James downstairs. The small room was painted a bright sky blue and had a Quidditch mobile slowly turning above the white crib.

A baby boy with tuffets of messy dark hair was crying inside the crib, reaching out for Sirius from the moment the 21 year old stepped into the room. Sirius at first ignored the baby, walking in front of the crib to the dead body of the mother. The fallen body had flaming red hair and her lifeless eyes were a beautiful shade of green.

 Lily Evans.

Sirius looked down at Lily's unmoving body and screamed in agony, punching the blue wall behind him repeatedly, "I'm going to kill him! That bastard! That bloody- He was our friend!"

As Sirius screamed and cried, the newly orphaned baby cried harder. Their cries mix in with the other's. Sirius stopped his grief stricken tantrum and shakily picked up the baby and began soothing him, cradling him to his chest, "Shush, shhh Harry, it's going to be okay. We'll- we'll be okay. It's just going to be you and me from now on, alright? And Aunt Twilight and Uncle Moony. We're going to raise you to be smart like your mum and loyal like your dad."

A rustling noise came from outside the nursery along with the sound of heavy footsteps, Sirius heard them slowly get closer, drawing his wand in case whoever killed the Potters came back to finish the job. Rubeus Hagrid, the Hogwarts groundskeeper, ducked in the door seeing the death and destruction in the blue nursery, "Sirius-"

"Don't you come any closer," Sirius warned in a barking manner, keeping his wand trained on the half giant. "How do I know that you're truly Hagrid? Tell me something only Hagrid would know."

Hagrid sighed, raising his hands up for the defensive 21 year old to see, "In 'er fourth year, you 'nd James Potter came to me hut in the middle of the night 'nd gave me Fang. Found 'im in the woods, you said."

Sirius hesitantly put down his wand after hearing the story of how he gave the half-giant his beloved dog, "I trusted him, with their lives. He did this. He was supposed to be their Secret Keeper."

Alex woke up calling out for someone, sweat drenching her forehead. She looked around frantically, seeing that the Common Room was empty and realizing that her dream wasn't reality so she began to watch the fire flicker in the fireplace, taking deep breaths to calm herself down.

Footsteps rapidly ran down the boy's staircase, Sirius stopped at the foot of the stairs, panting.

"Oh I'm sorry, did I wake you?" The blonde apologized, pulling her hair in a messy bun.

Sirius plopped himself down on her right as Alex pulled her legs onto the couch, crossing them Indian style, "No, not really. I was having a nightmare."

"You too, huh?" she asked, closing her open Potions textbook and stuffing the old and badly bound book into her messenger bag full of parchment.

Sirius stiffly nodded, watching the fire dance, "Yeah. It was intense. Like I was really there but it was like it had already happened. You were in it too."

"You get those dreams too, I thought I was the only one. Wait, me? What happened?" Alex asked, alarmed that both of them had a nightmare starring the other.

Sirius looked deep into her eyes, seeing the concern in her eyes he laid his hand on her knee, "It was when you, your brother, Letti, dad and your mum got in a car accident. From the looks of it, you three couldn't have been more than 12."

Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach, she knew she didn't tell him about that. She doesn't tell anyone about that. "How did you know about that?" she whispered, her voice threatening to fail.

He shrugged, lightly tracing a circle on her knee with his index finger that was stained black from spilled ink, "I didn't." There was a prolonged silence between the pair, Sirius not moving his hand from her knee. Sirius watched her as she faced the fire, sliding her body away from his touch. He tried not to be offended while asking, "Anyways, what was yours about, Lex?"

Alex began to pick at her nails, chuckling at the nickname, "It was you in the future, from what I could tell. You went to James and Lily's house but they were both dead, Voldemort killed them I think, and the only one alive was their son, Harry."

Sirius and Alex looked at each other with wide eyes, then Sirius chuckled, trying to lighten the mood, "So James and Lily do actually get married and have a son but they don't name him after me? That's so insulting."

Her laugh escaped her throat, making Sirius smile at the sound, "Of course that would be your priority. Not that they died."

"Sorry," Sirius mumbled as his smile slowly faded, feeling judged for his trying to make her smile.

Alex looked at her friend and felt a little guilty for making him feel bad. She cleared her throat, deciding to tell him about the accident, "It was the summer holiday that L- that was after First year. My mum and I wanted to do something that would cheer Letti up, she had a... a bad week beforehand. We took her to the beach, her favorite place. My father had been drinking all day and on our way back home, we got into the accident."

"I saw that... I'm sorry for your loss," Sirius apologizes, remembering the look of absolute horror and sadness on the girls' young faces in his dream.

Alex watched the dancing firelight again,grimacing as she remembered the sound of the car crash so clearly in her mind, "Thank you. I'm sorry you had to watch it."

"Can I ask you a question?" Sirius asked quietly, breaking their silence. After they told each other about their dreams, they hadn't left each other's company but instead sat in the Common Room watching the fire slowly burn out in the fireplace.

Alex stiffly waved her wand, adding another log onto the fire, "Isn't asking me if you can ask me a question, a question in itself?"

"Yes...?"

She chuckled at his confusion, finding his hesitation refreshingly different for Sirius Black, "What's your question, Black?"

"I was wondering what the spell was that made our wands shoot out ducks, I want to use it on Snivellus," he laughed, making her snort in the randomness of the question he asked in place of the question he'd originally wanted to ask her.

"Anaticula."