I. social casualty | blaise zabini ✔️

STRANGE YEAR

CHAPTER 21, YEAR 5

STRANGE YEAR

The rest of the month went by a lot smoother. Harry had survived his hearing with no punishment, thanks to Dumbledore, and the others had stuck to cleaning most of the house, it was nowhere near clean but still looked a lot better than it had earlier this summer. She also spent a lot of time helping the twins with their inventions, the only perk to having the dirty house as they found a lot of useful things for their creations.

The dye was almost completely out of her hair, which was a bummer because she liked the blue. Ginny offered to redye it.

("No!" Elliot said from the hall before she could answer.

"Hey, It's my hair." Lyra called back, affronted.

"Yeah, and you're lucky I didn't shave it off after the first time."

Lyra dramatically clutched at her hair, gasping loudly.

Sirius laughed loudly. "Come out Elliot, don't you remember when you and Remus dyed your hair."

Elliot glared at the man, "We didn't dye it. You and James did it in our sleep and we woke up with neon blue hair."

Lyra laughed with Sirius and Ginny, "Damn, I wish you had a picture of that."

Sirius's smile turned feral, "Oh, Little Lyra," He had since taken a page out of the Weasley's book when it came to her name, "But of course there's pictures. I'm going to find them."

And for the rest of the summer he was a man on a mission, looking all over the house for his old, school pictures.

"He hasn't smiled that much in 16 years." Remus mused from beside one day, during a meal. Lyra felt her heart break and grow three sizes at the same time.)

The mood had dampened on the eve and day of Harry's hearing. Sirius was upset that he couldn't go with the boy, per Dumbledore's request, and had spent the whole day sulking. But everyone was in a much better mood when Harry returned, pardoned for his 'crime.'

When he arrived with the news, an entire celebration had taken place. Hermione and Ron ran to hug him, Mrs. Weasley might have cried, and George, Fred, Ginny and Lyra had danced around the kitchen. Sirius had been overjoyed as well, but over the days he became a bit moodier. Lyra assumed it was because Harry being cleared, meant he wouldn't be staying any longer in the Black house.

Lyra had made sure to stick around him longer that day, crack more jokes, make more pranks.

On the last day of holidays, book lists arrived along with a shiny "prefects" badge for Hermione and Ron. Mrs. Weasley had been ecstatic, the twins and Harry not so much. Lyra didn't care very much, knowing that her pranking tendencies made her a model Gryffindor but not prefect material. She had heard the phrase Gryffindor Knight a couple of times when the students spoke of "house royalties."

So she cheered for Ron and Hermione, tried to make the twins smile again and helped Mrs. Weasley setup for the little celebration. She had starred in shock as the mood changed when Mrs. Weasley had opened the boggart and the dead corpses of her friends popped out. Had yelled to her dad and uncle and anyone to come and stop all of these dead people that she knew and loved.

And she realized that this sense of calm that she had felt wasn't going to last. Because Cedric was dead, You-Know-Who was back, and any day now that boggart could become her reality.

Lyra woke up early the next morning. Her bags had been half packed the night before, and finished this morning. She pulled her trunk downstairs in the entrance hall before returning to her room to finish dressing. Then went with Ginny to the kitchen and was knocked down two flights of stairs by the levitated trunks of the Weasley twins. Mrs. Weasley and Mrs. Black began to scream as Fred and George ran down to help the girls up.