Shakespeare ❆ Sirius Black [1]

Chapter Forty Five

Days went by. Nights passed. The sun continued to rise in the east and set in the west. But things were different. By now all of Hogwarts knew about the death of Mary MacDonald at the hands of the Dark Lord's Death Eaters. It came as a shock to everyone, but most affected were her friends. The most jovial groups in Hogwarts were silent. The friends were distant, and all could see it. The trio of girls, that used to be a foursome, were distant and shaken.

Marlene didn't have the same excited and bubbly approach to every day. Lily had actually been distant in classes, often caught off guard and not knowing an answer to a question when the teacher called on her. But the two stuck to each other, handling their grief together, but to everyone's surprise, Nadia was not among them.

The distance between the Marauders was even more surprising to the students around them. The inseparable group of four was on the outs. Nobody understood or knew why. All that they knew was what they could see. Peter evaded his friends, choosing to sit with other students and spend meal times far from their usual area of the Gryffindor table, while Sirius, James and Remus still remained together. Nadia wasn't with them either.

The Russian girl drifted around by herself. She wallowed in her grief and guilt by herself. Scared of facing her friends. In her mind, now that they have had time to think about everything that had happened, she knew they would share Peter's opinion. She didn't blame them. She knew Lily and Marlene knew about her dream, she had heard them whispering about it one day in their dorm room. And while she too blamed herself, and knew she deserved whatever they had to say to her, Nadia was scared and selfish. She didn't want to hear it. She didn't want that final confirmation that her lack of effort had cost her all of her friends.

So she avoided them. She sat as far away from them in classes. She went in a different direction whenever she saw them in the hallways, even if it meant being late for class. She avoided going to meals at the same time as them, instead opting to get her food and eat in the kitchens. She roamed the halls until late at night, way past curfew so she would make sure to come back to the dorm room only when Lily and Marlene were asleep. And woke long before them in the mornings. She didn't even any of their eyes when she could feel them looking her way. Nadia knew she was being a coward, but she wasn't ready to face them and the anger they must hold for her.

However, everything she suspected and thought was wrong. On multiple occasions her friends tried to run after her, tried to corner her after class so they could talk to her and reassure her she had nothing to fear or to blame herself for. Sometimes it was Lily and Marlene, sometimes Sirius, James and Remus, and sometimes they tried individually. She managed to evade them each time. But they all swore to themselves, and to each other, not to give up. They hated to see her hurting and vowed to do their best to get her back.

It was one of those times, when Nadia was choosing to escape the consequences of her actions by eating in the kitchens instead of in the Great Hall. And once she was done, she didn't know what to do with herself. She didn't know whether to go to the library, spend her time outside of the castle or just hide away in one of the empty or abandoned classrooms. In the end she opted for the last one, feeling the weight of her books in her bag and knowing she had work to do, something she had been avoiding for quite a while now.