The Last Gryffindor (Sirius Black)

Sequal? Ch. II

"You're so..." Maellie searched for an appropriate word, landing on, "boring. Incredibly boring, in fact. Horribly boring. Terribly boring. Disgustingly—"

I glared at her over the top of a tome detailing a list of all graduating Hogwarts students in the past fifty years that I'd spent the last hour perusing. "If you have a point, please get to it, rather than wasting time listing out my character flaws."

"Why are we in a library?"she asked in the same tone that another might ask, Why are we sitting in a dumpster?

"You are free to leave." I nodded to a spot behind her. "There's the door. Don't get lost. Make good decisions."

"You're hilarious," she said, deadpan, before prostrating her upper half across the table in defeat. "You do realize there's a library in Beauxbatons? Have we even seen the Beauxbaton's library? Have we even set foot in there? No. We haven't. Why would want to break our streak like this?" She took one of my hands, the one not turning pages, with both of her own and squeezed tight, as though comforting. Her voice dropped to consoling whisper. "Caius, dear child, who hurt you?"

I jerked my hand away, unamused. "If you aren't going to help, go away. Leave me in peace, for a single moment since the day I had the misfortune to meet you."

"Aw, I know you love me."

"What I love," I articulated slowly, " is peace and quiet."

"What a coincidence. Those are my two middle names."

"Don't make me hex you."

"Ugh, fine." Maellie pushed her chair away from the table and stood. "But mark my words, you will rue this moment when I am gone from this plane of existence. You will think to yourself, 'how could I send her away? How I wish I could see her face one last time—"

"For the last time, you aren't dying, you hypochondriac. Go find a partner for the Yule Ball or something."

I don't care what you do, as long as you leave me alone, I didn't add.

"Ew. No. I don't dance," she said, pointing a finger at herself. "Ever. How embarrassing that you'd even suggest such a thing."

I gave her a pointed look. "Goodbye, Maellie."

"Yeah, yeah. I know when I'm not wanted." Do you? I wanted to ask. "See you at supper."

Mercifully, she at last departed with a wave, and I turned back to my book.

After some digging, I figured out Sirius Black — my father, I thought, with a unidentifiable mix of emotions — graduated the school 1979. With that information, I began the slow work of cross referencing all the witches that graduated his same year, first determining from various wizarding family registries if they had any siblings, and then if one of the sibling's went by the name Caius. I moved from Evans, Lily to McKinnon, Marlene with a sigh, then onto another, and another. And another. My frustration mounting after all those leads came up empty, I moved into the surrounding years. After all, I had no guarantee my mother was in my father's exact year, if she went to Hogwarts at all.

That knowledge did nothing to improve me mood, however.

The chair across me slid back. I didn't bother to look at who fell into the seat before snapping, "Maellie, I swear to God—"

"Who?"

That pulled me up short, enough so that I tore my eyes away from a Fawcett, Tara, to spare a glance at the intruder.

"Oh," I racked my brain for a name, after the dozens I'd seen today crowded my head, "Hermione, was it?"

"I've been meaning to speak to you, actually," she said, cutting to the chase. "About that name, Caius. I'm not certain, but I wonder if I might be into something."

Immediately, I perked up, my attention piqued. I certainly had been getting nowhere on my end. She slammed a book down between us, A History of Magic, by Bathilda Bagshot.

She continued, "I swear I've heard that name somewhere before. In here."

I didn't bother trying to hide my skepticism. "In a textbook? Anyone by that name in there is probably a thousand years dead, with absolutely no relation to me."

"Related to you?" she caught on quickly. "I thought you said you didn't know anything else that could help?"

Idiot, I chastised myself.

Grudgingly, I admitted, "My uncle. He's my uncle."

"You should have said so before," she said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. To my eternal gratitude she didn't question that I didn't know my own uncle's identity, or that the sister of my uncle very well could be my mother. "This makes things much easier. At least now I have a relative time period to look into..." she trailed off, eyes focused on a distant point across the room.

Before I could press the issue that he still wouldn't be in her school textbook, regardless, a man edged forward to interrupt us, asking for a moment of Hermione's time. I recognized him, though not as soon as I likely would have had his entourage been around. For once, in the countless days I'd noticed famed Quidditch player and Triwizard Champion Viktor Krum skulking around the library, he was alone.

Hermione looked uncertainly back at me, but I was already stuffing my things back into my bag, because if Krum was there, his fans wouldn't be far behind. Best to escape before they showed. I waved goodbye, promising we'd talk later, and fled fast out of the library and into the adjacent corridor.

• — • — •

How annoying it was that whenever I wished to find Maellie, the darker skinned witch was nowhere to be found. The staggering size of Hogwarts didn't help matters in the slightest, either. I checked around the carriages, the forbidden forest, the Great Hall, and every other place I could imagine might entice her, yet no dice.

What I did find, however, was of far greater interest to me than a single girl that I saw just about every day, multiple times a day.

The Boy Who Lived.

As with the first time I laid eyes on him, he was sat in the Great Hall beside a nameless red haired boy. Unlike that time, though, he was buried beneath layer after layer of scarves and gloves and a litany of other warm things to ward away the encroaching winter cold. His glasses deflected the candlelight as he threw back his head to laugh at something his friend said, completely immersed in their own world, unaware of how intently I watched them.

Almost against my own volition, I felt my legs carrying me up to the two and sliding into the bench across the table. After a quick sweep of the area for an easy excuse for my presence, I took a bowl and began ladling in steaming tomato soup, listening intently. Tragically, few things disgusted me the way soup did. If I wanted to at sip something I'd rather procure a butterbeer.

While I eavesdropped, I considered a way to introduce myself into their conversation, hopefully casual enough not to rouse either their suspicion or curiosity. Unfortunately, small talk wasn't my strong suit, and the art of subtlety didn't come easy either.

Strangely enough, though, when I peaked up at them through my eyelashes, Harry Potter was staring — at me! — with his eyebrows scrunched together in a mix of serious thought and abject befuddlement. I plunged past my own confusion at his bizarre reaction and ran a a hand through my dark, shaggy locks, pushing them out of my face. For whatever reason, his eyes widened from behind the veil of his glasses at that motion.

Tentatively, I offered him a lopsided grin. "So," I began, racking my brain for a nice, non-controversial topic, "What can you tell me about escaped mass murderer Sirius Black?"

I winced, wondering what other idiot would call that uncontroversial. While it was true I hoped to discover as much as I could about my parents, and yes, this was the last known person to see my supposed father, my father also tried to kill him just a couple of months ago.

Wow, I thought wryly. I absolutely nailed that introduction, didn't I?