epiphanies - sirius black

chapter 2

Maggie took her seat at the Ravenclaw table, placing her book on her lap so she could continue reading during the sorting ceremony, and Dumbledore's speech.

The man said the same things every year, she could practically recite his speech, and Maggie decided that the antics of the March sisters were much more interesting than listening to the old man babble.

She sped through the pages, and before she knew it she had finished her book, the ceremony had ended and dinner had appeared.

She placed her completed book beside her on the bench, serving a spoonful of mash onto her plate.

She didn't talk to anyone during dinner, she didn't want to. Maggie wasn't really friends with anyone, people were boring.

The only people Maggie conversed with were her book characters. Sometimes she would confide in them, playing out imaginary conversations with them in her head.

After she had finished dinner, Maggie dragged herself through the corridors.

She was headed towards the library, she was going drop off her copy of little women, seeing as she had borrowed it over the summer, and figured she could take out another book.

Once she got there, she kindly returned her book to Pince, before heading down to the fiction section of the library to pick out a new one.

Maggie scanned the books on the shelves, endlessly searching for something new, something that she hadn't already read.

It was a difficult task seeing as she had practically read every book in the library.

"Need a bit of help?"

Maggie swiftly turned around, startled, only to be met with the same eyes that had startled her twice already that day.

"Umm no, it's okay, I-I'm okay thanks" she stuttered nervously, still catching her breath.

"You really ought to stop scaring people like that" she added, as she turned to back to the book shelf.

"What are you looking for, a bit of Jane Austen? Perhaps Shakespeare?" Sirius replied, completely ignoring Maggie's statement.

"No" Maggie replied cautiously, "I've read all of Austen's books, and I-I don't really like plays that much, so Shakespeare's a no"

Sirius tilted his head, surprised.

"Really, I took you for a 'Where for art though Romeo' kind of girl?" He said, as he dramatically acted out the verbatim.

Maggie laughed under her breath.

"Nope, not really my thing" she said quietly.

Maggie was quite nervous around people, considering she had no friends, and close to no interactions with real people, her social skills were not of a high standard.

"So what are you looking for then?" Sirius asked.

Maggie glanced to look at him, before awkwardly turning back to the book shelf.

"I-I don't really know"

"You should try this." The boy said, as he brought a book from behind his back and placed it into her hands.

Maggie glanced down at the book in her hands. It was very worn. The pages were turned up in the corner, and the spine was broken. Maggie liked it when books looked like this, it meant they had been read a lot.

"Alice in wonderland?" Maggie asked questionably, looking up at Sirius with a raised eyebrow. "Isn't this a children's book?"

"Trust me, it's a good read, plus it's my favourite book, and this is my copy, so you will hurt my feelings if you don't read it."

Maggie smiled before answering.

"If you say so".

She turned around to say goodbye to Sirius, but he was already gone.

"What a strange boy" Maggie muttered under her breath before leaving the library, and heading to her dorm.

After cleaning her teeth Maggie said a brief goodnight to the girls in her dorm, before getting into bed. She pulled out the copy of Alice in wonderland that Sirius had given her in the library.

She opened the front cover to find a scribble of words written in messy hand writing. The words read:

'PROPERTY OF SIRIUS ORION BLACK. DO NOT TOUCH THIS BOOK UNLESS YOUR NAME IS AS FOLLOWS
-SIRIUS BLACK
THAT'S IT. IF YOU ARE NOT ME PISS OFF!'

Maggie laughed at the statement, obviously written by a very young Sirius, and despite the strict instructions not to, she continued to read.

Maggie stayed up all night reading, finding the book much more enjoyable than she had first anticipated.

She found her self connecting and relating to Alice, finding Alice's false reality of wonderland to be very similar to her own false reality of her fictional characters.

Upon reading the book she had also discovered the litter of annotations and thoughts left by Sirius, scattered in the margins of the pages.

She liked reading his notes. It let her see the book from another perspective. His.

Before she knew it she had finished the book, and Sirius was right, it was a good read. In fact it was one of the best she had read in a while.

Maggie yawned, before placing the book on her bed side table. She wasn't sure what time it was, but she was sure that it was late, very late, and she knew that if she didn't go to sleep now, she would be sleeping through most of her classes the next day.