minnow // sirius black

twenty-three

23 :   the start

I had four more visions before we went back to Hogwarts. One of them occured right after I fell asleep, before anyone else had gone to bed, so all five of us went to the orphanage. We got the last child out of the house just before the Death Eaters arrived. Even though Mum and Dad tried to talk us into running with the children and workers, James, Sirius and I stayed to fight.

When the duo realized they couldn't win against us, they apparated away, and we helped the orphanage workers and children find somewhere safe.

I sent Lily a letter, telling her that I'd had another vision just a few days after she left, and she said she was grateful they were all okay.

The fourth one came in the middle of the day. I had fallen onto the floor of Flourish and Blott's, knocking down an entire shelf.

Mum said it was as if I was having a seizure.

We didn't make it to this one in time, and when the fire was out, all 12 children, and the 4 workers, were dead.

I cried for a week.

When September 1st came around, I desperately tried to talk Mum and Dad into letting me stay home. I told them that if I had another vision, there would be nothing I could do. Dad encouraged me to go to Dumbledore, and explain.

My largest concern was that Dumbledore wouldn't take the visions seriously, that he wouldn't try to save the people I saw dying.

Dad and I had, after the first one, thought that my visions were of people who'd escaped death - so I could find them, but when my second one came?

I had watched all of the children in that orphanage burn to death. I had felt their pain, heard their screams, and held them in my arms as they died. I'd watched them as they slept, then as a few of them heard the Death Eaters breaking windows. I had watched as the older children tried to get the little kids out, having heard about orphanages being attacked, and as fire engulfed their exits. I had watched as the older children cried to the younger ones, trying to comfort them. I had watched as they held the younger ones, as the workers there tried to fight their way through the fire.

I had watched as they burned, as the building came down and destroyed any chance of survival.

I watched them die, and I watched the next four orphanages burn down, killing all of the children. I saved as many children as I could, but the last one...

The last one destroyed a part of me. I had felt them die, just like the other ones, and I had watched them burn to death. It was the smallest orphanage, but somehow, it was the most impactful. Even if I had watched every child in each orphanage die, I had saved the other children - I had saved them from that death. The pain I felt was a pain only I  felt, but with the last one, it was a pain they felt too. I knew the pain they felt, and it tore my heart out of my chest.

Even though everyone, and I mean everyone I knew, told me not to, I learned the names of the children. I learned the names of the workers, and if they had families. I learned the names, ages, and faces of everyone that I let die.

The mental toll quickly caught up to me, the guilt and fear plaguing my every waking moment.

So when we went to Hogwarts, I didn't even wait until the first day of classes to speak to Dumbledore.

I couldn't eat, even though there was an immense amount of food in front of me, I couldn't take a single bite. Sirius tried to coax me into eating a strawberry-kiwi croissant, but I couldn't look at it.

I was too busy looking around the room for the children I had saved.

I had spotted a few, most of them being first years, while a few were older students, including the boy from the first orphanage. I saw one of the girls I had saved from the third orphanage, the largest one - where there were 41 children, most being siblings and Muggle, but there were a few witches and wizards, a few of them being half-blood or even pure-blood.