When Time Travel Goes Wrong | MWPP

Chapter Ten

Sirius made it to the dorm, leaving Aquila alone with her uncle, who he still didn't trust. As soon as he rounded the corner and entered the castle, he hung back, waiting to see if anything happened, but Lucius only seemed to be asking questions and Aquila only seemed to be giving mumbled answers.

He hurried back up to Gryffindor tower, but it was quite a distance. When he made it to his dorm, he put the photo of the boy in the red jumper into his trunk, and, luckily enough for him, some of the tailored wizarding robes that he'd bothered to bring from home were still laying at the bottom, unpacked.

He scribbled a note for James and the others, asking them to use the mirror to talk as soon as they found it. Merlin knows I'll be going spare with Reggie this week at home, he wrote. He shut his trunk and tapped it, shrinking it and putting it in his pocket. He did the same with Draco's, the one the others had been avoiding.

Sirius walked quickly back down to the entrance hall. It had only really been thirty minutes, but Regulus was waiting inside it, and it looked like he and Lucius and Aquila were in polite conversation.

Some people stared at them as they walked down to the gates. Dumbledore was there, too, and he unlocked the gates to let them out.

Lucius held out a black umbrella. The other three took it with a hand.

They disappeared.

Sirius landed on his back with a thump. Standing up, wiping off his trousers as if it were second nature for him, he looked around. The sight of great, black iron gates greeted him, and, while leaning over to Regulus to help him up, he gasped. Aquila stood behind them. He looked at her- and didn't expect to see what he found.

She looked terrified. She looked like she hated the very idea of the huge fucking manor in front of them. And, most of all, after a moment, her eyes looked haunted after the initial panic.

Something must have happened here. Sirius had no idea what idea he'd just walked into. What had he been thinking, accepting Malfoy's offer? It wasn't as if the guy had given Aquila a choice, either. Sirius had just wanted to protect her.

But now, it looked like all three of them were fucked.

Or were they?

Aquila looked at the old house in front of her. Its front walk and iron gates looked the same as ever. She never thought that she'd return here, to her old home.

This was where her mother and father were murdered. She remembered... she remembered...

"Will you join me, Aquila?"

His voice reverberated throughout the room in which Narcissa taught her to dance as a child. Aquila looked around, but her gaze was curiously empty. Everything she ever knew had been ripped away from her just now, and yet she could feel nothing. There was a monster in the ball room. Why?