The Tales of Black II (Original)

Chapter One: Back to Hogwarts

[Chapter One]

I cracked my eyes open. There was a dim light shining through the window from the rising sun.

Usually, I wasn’t up so early, but now that I was awake, there was no point in trying to go back to sleep.

Pushing the bed sheets back off of me, I stumbled to my closet. I grabbed the first thing that I saw and pulled it on. I paused at my mirror, taking in my appearance. When I had first started Hogwarts, my thick, wavy, black hair just barely reached the small of my back, and now it went past my belt. Dark circles had appeared around my eyes from constant sleepless nights and gave my grey eyes a sort of silvery look. But apart from those few things, my thirteen-year-old self look no different than my eleven-year-old self.

My eyes drifted to the photo tucked into the mirror frame. It was of me and my friends at the lake. On the left was Terry, who had his arm wrapped around my shoulders. Clinging to my waist were the Weasley twins, ginger and freckled. In front of us sat Luna Lovegood, who stared off into space without a care in the world, and Lee Jordan, who was laughing happily. I missed them all so much – more than I would care to admit.

Fred and George’s dad had won the Daily Prophet’s annual Grand Prize Galleon Draw and so they were spending it on a vacation in Egypt with the Weasley’s eldest son Bill. Terry was visiting some of his relatives in America, same as he did the year before. Luna and her dad were off searching for some kind of new creature. I hadn’t a clue what Lee was doing, but wherever he was, he wasn’t responding to my letters. Prick.

To make matters worse, a week after Fred and George left for Egypt, I tried to visit Sirius is Azkaban to find his grungy cell empty.

I had never felt so alone in my life, and it was dreadful.

My boots (Terry, ironically, had sent them two weeks before from America) sat by the backdoor and I slipped them on over my bare feet. When I’d first received them, they’d been still and hard to move around it, but now they complied with my every move without a protest. I don’t really know how to describe them, but they were the kind that you would see cowboys wear, but for girls. They were a dark bronze and had soft blue stitching.

I quietly snuck to the front of the house and let myself out. Most likely, my aunt and uncle were still asleep, so I didn’t want to wake them.

Not far from the house – just down the dirt road, there was an old shed that belonged to no one, and I so I used it as my summer hideout. When I’d first come across it, it had been full of old junk. So I emptied it out, keeping only the things that I liked and made it my own. I had used a saw and some other sharp object I’d found and made a window and covered it with an old window screen to keep out the bugs.

In it now had a large pile of CDs stacked in the corner, a small portable CD player, several packages of batteries, a few of my old school books, a small crate containing all of my wizard candy, and a pallet made of blankets and one of Tonk’s old pillows.

I sat down on the pallet and picked up the CD player. My Ramones CD was still in. Out of the stack, I pulled a random one and ended up with the Gang of Four. I grabbed a half-empty box of Every Flavor Beans from my crate and popped one in my mouth. Cheese.

A few minutes passed, and something jabbed my foot.

I shot up, my headphones jerking from my ear.

A barn owl stood importantly in front of me, a Hogwarts letter tied to his leg. I untied it quickly and sat it in my lap.

I patted the owl’s head and he looked rather pleased with himself as he fly away.

I ripped it open, and slid out the first page.