“Now add three blades of scurvy grass…no, Lara, that’s way too many!”
I blinked rapidly to clear my eyes from the fumes escaping from the cauldron as I peeled away a bunch of the grass. Ginny reached out just in time, and just put in three little blades. I yawned, leaning on my book. “Can we stop now? This Befuddle-whatsit potion is confusing me, and not just smelling the stuff.”
Ron groaned. “We’ll get this right, Lara, it just takes time!” Where are you people finding all this time? Tell me!
“Have some patience,” suggested Harry. Easier said than done, my friend.
“And it’s Befuddlement Potion,” added Hermione. Know-it-all.
I laughed inside at what these people were trying to do. Trying to do the impossible, is what”teach me, about ingredients and cooking? I can’t cook cereal! Sure, I know most of the normal plants we used”I successfully brewed a batch of Doxycide for Mrs. Weasley, using daffodils and sunflower seeds and the like”but who ever heard of scurvy grass, or fluxweed, or flobberworms? (Which, by the way, are very gross. Try cutting one up.)
It didn’t help that my head was still reeling days after my encounter with Dumbledore, and all my unanswered questions were playing pinball in my head until it almost exploded under the pressure. I progressed in my studies in Potions (Dumbledore had left some supplies for us for some minor experiments, even if I was tired of it) and, unbelievably, History of Magic. Soon Runes came into play, and I feared my memory would burst from all the information that was thrown at me. What use is it to write in symbols that mean life and prosperity? Or, even better, death and destruction?
“Lara, no! That’s not Sneezewort, that’s knotgrass!”
This time, the knotgrass went in, incurring a huge explosion. Ginny, Hermione, and I were thrown back against the wall, and pain shot up my spine. Could things get any worse? Apparently so. Green slime covered everything in the kitchen, even Ron and Harry, who were on the other side of the table. I wiped it out of my eyes and flung it off my fingers, adding some more to the puke-green pile that was Ginny. She scowled through her mask, and pulled out her wand.
“Scourgify,” she said tiredly. Hermione did the same, while I spat out more of the green gook from my mouth. (I think I may have swallowed some there…tasted like peppermint.) The kitchen was clean in no time.
“I think we’re done for today,” sighed Ron. “Ginny, take the cauldron and stuff upstairs.”
“Why do I have to?” she complained.
“Just do it!” snapped her brother, and with a nasty look she toted the cauldron, full of everything we had used, upstairs.
Harry tried to smile. “Good try, Lara. How about we try it again tomorrow? We could fit it in before supper and after your Defense lesson.”
“Sure,” I mumbled, taking a seat at the table. Hermione touched me once on the shoulder and left, and Harry soon followed. Ron hesitated at the door.
“Lara--”
“Thanks in advance,” I interrupted. “I don’t need your condolences, Ron. I’ll never get any of this right by the time school starts!”
I put my head down between my arms. I heard Ron leave the step and walk over to put his hands on my shoulders.
“You will!” he told me. “You’re trying to do the impossible, but you’re getting there. Who else would try to learn three years worth of magic in two months?”
“Someone crazier than me?”
Ron laughed, taking a seat next to me. “No. Look, all we expect you to do is try. You can do that, right?”
I looked up and gave him a death glare at his sarcastic comment, but then I just smiled. I had never seen this side of Ron before”this sweet, sensitive side that had just emerged from inside him. He understood”he really understood. I felt heat rise in my cheeks, and I turned my head away. He walked out, closing the door softly behind him. Only then did I look all the way up and smile.
“Thanks, Ron,” I whispered.
*~*~*~
The stairs creaked at every other step I took; my hand gripped the railing as I went upstairs. Sirius hadn’t been at supper, and Mrs. Weasley wanted me to check on him. It had taken me twenty minutes after her request to get out of the kitchen, because Mr. Weasley had come in. He bombarded me with questions, just as I remember him doing to Harry, but with less intensity. I finally extracted myself from his curiosity and made my way upstairs, to the top of the house.
The one door at the end of the hall was partially opened. I pushed it opened to look in on the dark room. In the dark I made out a huge lump; close by was a smaller one. Before I set foot inside, something glinted in the light let in by the door, snaking out to bite me. I stumbled backwards. It was a giant eagle’s head, sharp beak clacking at me.
“Hold up, Buckbeak!” rumbled Sirius. “Stand down.” A large creature, with the body of a lion, the back end and legs of a horse, and the front end and legs of an eagle, stood there, looking very menacing. With a hiss the hippogriff stepped back into the shadows, and I stood, flicking on the light. I thought back to the books and bowed, looking him in the eye without blinking. Or, trying to. It was hard, and soon my eyes had that dry, itchy feeling. But, slowly and surely, Buckbeak bowed, too. I rose and stretched my hand out to rub his face, and even if he was a bit mad at me. I saw his beak move, and I thought they formed words:
“Smart for a kit.”
I shook my head; I was probably just seeing things. I saw Sirius in the background and went to sit down by him, tucking my knees in. Buckbeak lay back down, nibbling at a dead ferret.
“Molly sent me up, Sirius,” I said, and unwillingly quiet at that. “What’s wrong?”
Sirius shook his head. “Nothing, Lara,” he sighed, “I was just…thinking.”
I knew then and there I shouldn’t have pushed the subject, but I did anyways. “What of?” I asked.
“Everything!” exclaimed Sirius, throwing his hands up to express his emotion, making me jump. “The War, Voldemort, the Order…it’s all jumbled up in my head, and no one cares to listen. I can’t do a damn thing, being cooped up in this house…”
“Sirius,” I looked at him, smiling understandingly. I knew the feeling of hopelessness. “No one wants you to do anything reckless, you know that! Dumbledore and them, they only care for your safety.”
Sirius looked back at me, his gaze unwavering as he whispered, “But I don’t.”
My eyes widened as he continued. “I only care for Harry’s safety, I don’t care if Voldemort kills me! All that matters is that Harry stays alive! That way, James and Lily wouldn’t have died in vain!”
I picked at my jeans; a hole was forming, right at the knee. I shook my head. “Getting reckless isn’t the way to go about it,” I said slowly. “Fighting isn’t, either, nor sulking. Why confide in me, anyways?”
Silence, then, “Because you asked.”
*~*~*~
Our conversation went on for an hour or so; he told me a lot of things that he probably should have told Dumbledore or Harry, but told me instead. I feel sorry for the poor man.
It wasn’t until much later that Sirius finally came down. I heard him go past my room, where I was hard at work on another History of Magic essay before bed. He shuffled past my room with his head low. He waved half-heartedly at me as he walked by, and I waved back.
“Poor tom…”
I turned around to see who had said that, but I saw only Spotty sitting on her chair in the corner. She was the only one in the room there with me…I went back to my essay, scratching away with my quill.
“What to do with a tom like that, I ask you?”
I whirled around again, once again looking Spotty in the eyes. I saw the corner of her mouth move up”was that a …smile? The other side went up, too, and I saw her mouth open in a peal of rough laughter.
“Ha, you can hear me!” she exclaimed. I started to scoot away from the cat and fell off the bed onto the floor with a thud; I heard Phineas chuckling. I quickly stood to recover what dignity I had left and stared strangely at my cat; out of the corner of my eye I saw Phineas dart away, out of his frame.
“Did you just talk?” I asked, pointing my finger at her. She laughed again, that rough, purr-like laughter.
“Yes! I talk all the time.” She had a sweet, small girl’s voice that didn’t really suit her long-furred, big-boned body. “This is the first time you’ve talked back without going into that baby voice.” She stuck out her tongue and faked a gagging motion.
I kneeled on my knees on my bed, still staring at my cat. “Um…” I didn’t know what to say to that. I’ve had that cat for three years at this point”she hadn’t spoken more than a loud yowl since the day I got her, and I became very suspicious. “Did someone put a spell on you?”
“Dear God, no! Like I said, I’ve always talked. You just can’t understand me. Well, technically, now you do, but that’s not the point!” She licked a paw and ran it over her head and ears, nonplussed by the fact that she now had a voice in a language I could understand. Which, for me, had ‘weird’ written all over it!
My parchment and quill were slammed into the drawer, and I went to pick Spotty up. I held her up in my face, and she gave me a small smile.
“Someone bewitched you, I know it! Who was it, Fred, George, Ron? Ginny, even?”
“Come on, Lara, think!” spat Spotty, and I turned my head away. I want the news, not the weather. “What have you eaten today? Swallow anything unusual?”
I blinked, than glared at the cat. “When did you get so smart?” I grumbled, setting her down. She leaped onto the bed and sat there, smiling. “And how’d you know that my potion exploded?”
“I didn’t. Crooky told me.”
“Crooky?” I held back my laughter. I knew who that must be”but she obviously hated Crookshanks.
“Yes, Crooky!” cried an indignant Spotty. It was her turn to glare at me. I never thought a cat would glare at me. Another item to add to my ‘weird’ list. “We settled our differences and compromised. If he doesn’t try to attack me with that kitten-making thing of his--”
“Whoa! TMI, Spots!” I interrupted. I also never thought my cat would start to talk to me about sex!
Spotty giggled. (Well, it sounded like a giggle. Once again it sounded like a half purr, half bark sort of thing.) “Once we start talking about mature subject matters, you shut me up. You truly are a piece of work, Lara.”
“Just…just stop talking, alright?” I sat down on my bed, making the mattress sag and Spotty topple to the floor. She landed on her side”so much for cats always landing on their feet”and quickly flipped over, recovering the dignity strewn over the floor. “I need to figure this out.”
All right…that potion, what had been in it? Scurvy grass, Sneezewort, I think maybe some flobberworms bits, too. There had to be something in there that allowed me to talk to animals, because now I was sure that Buckbeak had talked (I was now holding a conversation with my cat, for crying out loud!), calling me a ‘kit’, which I took to be a young person/animal thingummy. From what I’ve read, griffins”which are basically the same as Hippogriffs, I’m pretty sure”are supposed to be very smart, very proud, and a bit arrogant. That fit Buckbeak, all right. (Come on, he tried to bite my head off!)
“Excuse me!”
I looked up at Spotty, who twitched her tail impatiently. “I don’t like being ignored,” she said, with an edge to her meow. “And besides, I hear that fat lady coming up the stairs--”
“Molly is not fat!” I snapped.
“Who’s not fat, dear?”
I smiled weakly at Mrs. Weasley, who now stood in my doorway. I heard Phineas snicker again, but he was gone as soon as I shot a glower his way.
“Nothing, ma’am,” I said, turning back to Mrs. Weasley. “What would you like?”
“Just want to thank you for bringing Sirius down,” she said. “Your talk obviously helped, he’s eating now. I’m a bit worried about him.”
“Everyone is, Molly,” I replied. “He’s just a bit depressed. Everyone goes through that stage.”
“I know.” She sighed. “Well, goodnight, Lara. I expect you to be up bright and early tomorrow for breakfast, it’s about time we got you proper supplies!” She seemed extremely perked up about this, and went off up the stairs humming.
I flicked my cat on the ear as soon as she was gone. “She is not fat, you idiot!” I hissed. Spotty hissed back,
“From this eye level, I say she’s fat.” She jumped off the bed in a huff and stalked off to her chair in the corner.
I rolled my eyes. I liked Spotty when she couldn’t talk, but I guess that until the potion”if the potion”wore off, I was stuck with it. I pulled back my covers and slipped under them. Just before I went to sleep, I figured out what Mrs. Weasley had said”
We were going to Diagon Alley!
Muggles can't be Witches! by Wand_Waver2006
Chapter Notes: Don't y'all just love my updating time? ^-^ Thanks for reading, and all the great reviews! Please let me know if this chapter skips around too much--it'll prepare me for future chapters to try and keep it in order. Thanks! Keep up the wonderful work, Kate!