No Body No Crime □■ Hermione Granger

Chapter 20

The entire day, Arlene's head was filled with problems and thinks to think about.

She thought about Sage's date with Lee the next week, she thought about the Hogwarts Weekly, about how her mother was going to react upon finding out that she had fainted, about those damned dementors and about Sirius Black.

But mostly, she couldn't keep the thoughts of Kreacher and the Infiri out of her mind.

She knew that she wasn't going anywhere thinking about Kreacher, he was, after all, a person and there were no documents or no sources of information whatsoever. So instead, she focused on the Infiri.

She scanned 'Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them' from cover to cover, it said nothing about Infiri, which meant only one thing. They were classified as dark magic.

There was probably a ton about them in the restricted section, but she needed a pass to get in, and non of the teachers were stupid enough to give one to a student as troublesome as Arlene.

But then an idea hit her. Lupin.

He was the DADA teacher and probably knew a lot about dark art, she could simply ask him. Of course, she could risk him questioning where she heard about it, but anything was better than going insane trying to figure out what it means.

Thankfully, when Pomfrey released her from the hospital wing that day, her first class was DADA.

Not thankfully, there was a chance lupin was still, well, supposedly sick.

Arlene knew that the man wasn't ill when he said he was and that he was a main suspect in the 'Who Let Black In?' game, but she also knew that all these accusations were made by Snape, and she's rather taste her foot than trust a word that comes out of that man's mouth.

But Arlene didn't have much time to dwell on it, as she realized that she forgot one issue.I

The stairs.

Arlene was late, she had missed the them.

She goarned as she threw her bag on the ground and dropped next to it, might as well skip the lesson.

Her plan to sit there and sulk was ruined when someone stumbled upon her.

That 'someone' being a cat.

Crookshanks marched to her lap and started purring.

A smile started to make its way to Arlene's face as she scratched him behind his ear, causing him to purr even more.

"Where's you friend?" she asked him, not really expecting him to reply.

She sighed and ran her hand through her hair "She's probably in DADA, I just left the Hospital Wing a few hours ago and I forgot the schedule of the stairs." She told the cat, sounding more as if she was talking to herself.

Suddenly, Crookshanks stood up and started to walk away.

Alarmed, Arlene pushed herself up and started to follow it "Crookshanks?" she questioned.

The cat turned a corner and Arlene went after it, Crooskshanks finally stopped and turned to look at one of the painting.

It was the portrait of Elizabeth Burke, one of Arlene's ancestors.

She remembered finding the painting in first year, she was excited to finally meet another member of the family. But she was let down when she started talking to Elizabeth.

Unlike the painting of Circe that ignored everybody or the Fat Lady that guarded the Gryffindor entrance, Elizabeth never missed a chance to encourage Slytherins to be purist, so Arlene simply started avoiding that corridor.