reputation - (h.p.)

1.19 . first cousins once removed

𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧

GAIA KNEW SHE WAS ABOUT to lose her shit. She didn't yet know if that was going to mean fainting, screaming, running, hexing, or crying, but it was not about to be pretty for anyone in this cave. 

       "Gaia!" Hermione was the first to react, jumping off of the wall she was leaning against and rushing toward her shellshocked friend. "What are you doing here?"

       "HIPPOGRIFF FEED?" Gaia exploded, smacking Hermione's arm away when the girl tried to touch her shoulder. "You're having a meeting with an escaped mass murderer and you told me you were going to get HIPPOGRIFF FEED?"

       The silence following her outburst was interupted by soft sounds of... chewing? 

       "Technically, that wasn't actually a lie," Ron said sheepishly. He avoided eye contact by looking into the dark corner where, when she looked carefully, Gaia could barely make out the shape of a hippogriff sitting on the ground and digging in to a bag of feed. "That's Buckbeak."

       Gaia chose to ignore the creature and finally managed to find some competant part of herself to pull her wand from her pocket and aim it straight at the filthy man crouched on the ground, a pile of chicken bones surrounding his feet. 

       "Gaia, no!" Harry exclaimed, stepping towards her gently. "I know it sounds crazy, but he's not dangerous."

       "You may believe that, Harry Potter, but I don't," she bit without taking her eyes off of Black. "So you better have a damn good explanation for me to stand down before I blow this mountain to flying chunks."

       "Ha!" the mangy man cried out, laughing as if Gaia had told the most amusing joke he'd ever heard. "Yeah, I see the Bella in you."

       "The fuck did you just say to me?" Gaia spat, stepping closer to him and holding her wand out more furiously than before.

       "Gaia, please, hear me out!" Harry cried, closing in as if he was going to hold her back from attacking Black but was too afraid to actually touch her. 

       "You don't even know me, and in two seconds you think you have me all figured out?" Gaia pressed, ignoring Harry entirely. "I'm nothing like Bellatrix."

       "Oh, don't get me wrong, I hate my cousin, too," Black clarified with an honest-looking smile. "But she's nothing if not fiery. And you seem to have inherited that from her. Although I appreciated that your fire is more self-defensive, rather than killing me without a second thought."

       "My second thought is still telling me to kill you. My third and fourth, too. You're lucky I want a confession from these three so badly, or we might not still be talking." She turned to look at Harry for the first time since coming into the cave, but her wand remained faithfully on Black. "You have sixty seconds."

       "I'm gonna need more time than that," he said with a wince, as if he knew it would cause her to turn the wand on him, instead. 

       "Five minutes," she settled. "Start now."

       "Sirius never murdered anyone," Harry dove in. "It all started way before that night in Godric's Hollow. He was best mates with my dad, and Professor Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew. And they all became Animagi to help Lupin during his werewolf tranformations on full moons when they were here at Hogwarts. But Peter became a spy for Voldemort. And Sirius convinced my mom and dad to make Peter the secret-keeper when they went into hiding. So when Peter sold them out, everyone who was in on the plan thought that Sirius betrayed them, because they didn't know about the switch. Sirius confronted Peter that night, and that's where everyone thought that Sirius killed all of those muggles — because all they could find of Peter was a finger. But Peter staged the whole thing, he cut off his finger and then turned into his animagus — a rat — and ran away to make Sirius look like the murderer. Sirius never got a trial or anything, and he spent all those years in Azkaban. He thought he'd never get out, until he saw a picture of Ron's family on holiday."