Accio Evans

Chapter 47: Finals

Recap: Madam Pomfrey is confused about the origin of Sirius' wounds and struggles to heal him, Lily realises the curse is one of Snape's and she passes the information onto the Headmaster, feeling guilty that she did do not so earlier. Sirius wakes and is furious that he was overcome by Mulciber, but has no recollection of the attack. After being sedated again, Sirius tries to escape the hospital wing but goes to find his brother in the dungeons, they fight and Sirius is injured, Regulus drops his battered brother at the hospital wing and tells a recovering Benjy that Sirius is no longer his brother. This is all relayed to Sirius upon waking again. Remus finds out Jess is going to the ball with Benjy, and is upset. Upon leaving the Hospital wing, Meghan catches up without him and asks him to the ball, he initially wants to decline, but remembers Jessica and accepts.

NEWT week approached quicker than any of the seventh years expected; caught up in a deadly cocktail of ball preparation, hospital visits, prefect patrols and dreaded revision, the time approached much quicker than anybody could have anticipated. Sirius discharged himself from the Hospital Wing several days after he had woken from his last period of sedation, severely behind with revision and classwork from the sheer amount of time he had spent either unconscious or recuperating in the Hospital Wing since his original attack from Mulciber, but despite worries by his friends, the man himself didn't seem too worried.

"How can you be so calm?!" Alice snapped, slamming her book shut with disgust. Sirius looked up from the opposite sofa, quite unsure of whether Alice was even speaking to him. He raised an eyebrow in reply but the blonde haired witch did not seem to notice. "You've missed a good fortnight worth of work and yet you're sat there reading a Quidditch magazine while I revise for Charms and it's almost certain you'll get a better grade then me! How is this fair?!" Alice continued. Sirius shrugged wincing slightly; although Madame Pomfrey was able to heal the majority of his injuries, she hadn't been able to stop the pain completely. Occasionally, caught off guard, he would be hit by a sudden and unexpected jolt of pain that sharply reminded him that he was only partway down the road to recovery. When Sirius didn't reply, Alice distastefully reopened her book, still eyeing it with distain. The common room was unusually quiet, eerily so, the only Gryffindor students that graced its presence were a handful of the seventh years, Alice with her Charms textbook, Peter tucked away in the corner with a tea set and a set of divination flashcards quietly muttering to himself as he swirled the dregs of the tea around the bottom of the tea cup and Sirius flicking through a battered copy of last month's issue of Quidditch Monthly, everyone else seemed to have braved the library or had mysteriously vanished.

Lily and Remus had decided on the library, but Alice couldn't face it; at this time of year the library was noisier and more crowded than the common room, which was almost deserted, provided a perfect revision space, if it wasn't for Sirius idly flicking through that damn magazine!

"This is not fair!" Alice moaned again, dropping her book onto the table with a thump.

"What's not fair Al?" Frank interrupted, his smiling face appearing at the bottom of the dormitory stairs. Clothed in simple tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt, he slumped into the sofa next to Alice, his arm lazily wrapped around her shoulder. His girlfriend did not look impressed.

"This!" she replied, gesturing toward Sirius who was watching the exchange with relative amusement. "He's missed so many classes and has done virtually no revision and yet he's going to do brilliantly, as always, and I'm here sweating my head off to learn Charms and I'm probably going to fail!" she finished, holding her head in her hands. Frank had to resist the urge to laugh; Sirius seemed to be doing the same.

"Well, we can't all be brilliant now, can we? That would make things very boring. " Sirius replied, failing to subdue his smirk. A murderous glare crossed Alice's usually serene features.