good things fall apart • sirius black

The beautiful girl

Prefect's rounds were notoriously uneventful. Every now and then there'd be a couple groping each other that needed sending back to their common room, or a rogue group of friends that thought they were above the school rules - just like the Marauders. But normally, it was a matter of pacing around the halls waiting for your time to be up. Remus had tried to tell Ellie this when she accompanied him on his rounds that evening, she'd not listened, and now she was complaining about how he'd dragged her out for nothing.

"Then let's at least pull something." She begged, squeezing his hand tighter in a bid to get him to concede, "Nothing major. We could just leave a message on the wall outside the Slytherin common room. No one's around, this is the perfect time to strike."

"I think it'd be wrong of me when I'm supposed to be working." Remus grinned, thoroughly amused by her whining.

"Just take your Prefect's badge off and plead guilty if was get caught." Ellie shrugged, "Which we won't, by the way. You're the perfect excuse."

"Apologies, Minnie, just escorting my wanna-be rebel friend back to bed. Nothing suspicious here." Remus put on his best posh accent, "As if she'll believe that."

"Maybe she will, maybe she won't. That's a risk I'm willing to take."

"But not on my watch." When Ellie looked up at him with a pout, he simply flicked her on the nose, "Save the pranks for us all together."

And so they went round in circles like that, with the conversation and quite literally as they roamed the dark corridors. Ellie would propose a new idea, Remus would shut it down, and they'd continue. When nothing of any note happened, not even the opportunity for the beautiful girl to shout at some loitering students, Remus eventually told her to just go back up to the common room. He only had to patrol for fifteen more minutes, and Ellie grinned, telling him she'd warm up his bed for them before dashing off down the corridor in a stomping run.

Remus loved her, he really did, but he couldn't wait for the day that she was back in Sirius' bed - her kicking and fidgeting was sometimes unbearable with nowhere to escape it in the tiny dorm beds.

Ellie wasted no time racing back up to the Gryffindor common room, but first, she had to navigate her way out of the Dungeons where Remus had been assigned to patrol. They were even colder at night, so she kept moving quickly, no idea that her haste would be what sparked a whole disaster out series of events over the next couple of days.

A whole series of events that would change everything.

Just as she rounded the corner into the Potions corridor, feet practically skidding and almost laughing to herself, Ellie dropped like a sack of potatoes. Just like that, she collapsed with a smack against the hard stone floor. It would've been understandable if it was slippy, perhaps if she had a shoelace untied, but her fall came from nowhere. Or so it seemed until she managed to push herself up into a sitting potion. There up the other end of the corridor, wand aimed straight out in front of him, was Lucius Malfoy. His lips curled up evilly at the sight of Ellie in a heap on the floor, and something told her that whatever this was, it had been planned.

Avery flanked his right, whilst Crouch flanked his left, the latter of which had been invisible since Ellie's interactions with him around the ball last year - the fact he'd slithered out of the snake pit didn't bode well. Snape was also there too, lingering at the back like he still hadn't entirely been initiated into the group yet, but she was quite surprised to see Mulciber missing. He was always there as Malfoy's muscle, and Ellie really didn't think he'd struck her down just to have a chat. Not with the way they were stood blocking off the corridor; not with the way she was sure she'd twisted an ankle or worse. Yet Ellie could handle Malfoy and his goons, she wasn't intimidated.