Friendless » Fred Weasley

lxxxii. sirius black is back

Anyone coming into the Gryffindor common room would have thought they already won the Quidditch Cup. There was a huge party in the common room that went out all day and well into the night. Fred and George disappeared for a few hours, returning with full bottles of butterbeer, pumpkin fizz, and several bags of Honeyduke's sweats.

"How did you do that?" Angelina squealed as George began passing out Peppermint Toads. Fred smirked, handing Tori a chocolate frog. She overheard him whispering to Harry. "With a little help from Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs."

"Hey! Who wants to see Freddie and I juggle these butterbeer bottles?"

The party only ended when Professor McGonagall turned up in her tartan dressing gown and her hair net at one in the morning. Tori said goodnight to the twins, heading upstairs still discussing the match with Angelina.

Tori crawled into bed, exhausted. The lights went out and she fell into a light sleep. She had an odd dream. She was walking in a field, wand in her hand when the sky went dark. A loud wind hissed, bending the long grass.

"Victoria! Victoria!"

A large funnel swarmed in front of her, yelling her name. Tori tried to run, but it just came after her. It was about to suck her up when the light flipped on.

"What? Oh— what's going on?" Tori asked, jerking upwards. Alicia was wrapping herself in her dressing gown, "Someone screamed... come on,"

Tori rushed down after her friend, feeling dizzy from getting up so fast. She wrapped herself in her robe as sleepy voices called out.

"Who shouted?"

"What're you doing?"

"What's all the noise?" Tori asked, coming into the common room. She yawned, standing next to Alicia, who sighed. "Professor McGonagall told us to go to bed!"

Fred and George came down, looking as if they hadn't slept at all. "Excellent, are we carrying on?" He asked, glancing around at the debris from the party.

"Everyone back upstairs!" Percy said, hurrying into the common room and pinning his Head Boy badge on his pajamas as he spoking. Ron looked at his older brother, panicking.

"Perce— Sirius Black!" He yelled faintly. "You had too much to eat— Ron— had a nightmare—"

"I'm telling you—"

"Now, really, enough's enough!"

Professor McGonagall was back. She slammed the back of the painting frame and glanced furiously around at the students. Tori glanced over her shoulder to see Angelina and Katie leaning against the stairs to the girl's dormitory.

"I am delighted that Gryffindor won the match, but this is getting ridiculous! Percy, I expected better if you!"

"I certainly didn't authorize this, Professor! Percy said, puffing himself up indignantly. "I was telling them to get back to bed! My brother Ron here had a nightmare—"

"IT WASN'T A NIGHTMARE!" Ron yelled, startling everyone. "PROFESSOR, I WOKE UP, AND SIRIUS BLACK WAS STANDING OVER ME, HOLDING A KNIFE!"

The room went silent as Professor McGonagall stared at him. "Don't be ridiculous, Weasley, how could he possibly gotten through the portrait hole?"

"Ask him! Ask him if he saw—"

Glaring suspiciously at the boy, Professor McGonagall pushed the back open and went outside. The whole common room listened with bated breath. "Sir Cadogan, did you just let a man enter Gryffindor Tower?"

"Certainly, good lady!" Sir Cadogan cried. There was a stunned silence both inside and outside of the common room. Alicia gripped onto Tori's arms frightened. Even the Weasley twins didn't have a joke to say about this, their usual lopsided grins disappeared into thin lines of fear.

"You— you did?" Professor McGonagall said. "But— but the password!" Sir Cadogan replied, way to proudly. "He had them! Had the whole week's, my lady! Read 'em off a little piece of paper!"

White as chalk, Professor McGonagall pulled her lead back through the portrait hole to faced the stunned crowd. "Which person," She began, her voice shaking, "Which abysmally foolish person wrote this week's passwords, and left them lying around?"

The students all looked at each other warily before a timid hand coming from Neville Longbottom went up.

No one got much sleep that night.

"He could have murdered us!" Alicia cried, patting her eyelids which had dark circles under them. "Not the girls! He can't get up there..." Lee argued, yawning halfway through his cup of orange juice. Tori sat completely silent, staring off into her cup of tea.

Fred and George even seemed too tired to make a joke. Every boy's dormitory was searched and Lee had told Tori that McGonagall nearly took their Zonko's tools away. Katie sat at the Hufflepuff table, talking to her new friend about what had happened.

Alicia told the girls that she had woken up a couple of minutes before Ron screamed. She was about to go down into the common room and read by the fire when Athena, Tori's owl, stared rattling in her cage. Alicia let the barn owl out and then heard Ron. Tori planned to reward her owl by letting her hunt later in the evening.

"Hey, Tori! I heard what happened last night. Are you alright?" Cedric Diggory appeared, glancing up and down the table to see all the tired students. Most had been too scared to fall back to sleep, knowing Sirius Black could be lurking in the shadows. Professor McGonagall and Professor Dumbledore did an entire sweep of the Gryffindor Tower, leaving no bed unturned. There was nothing. Sirius Black had just disappeared.

Tori meekly nodded, trying to wake herself up. "All fine. He didn't hurt anyone, luckily." It was clear the idea of a mass murder was still bothering Tori. She had overheard Ron's story about three times, but something was bothering her. If Black was after Harry, why did he run? Why not just kill Ron and continue with his plan? Why come into the common room at all? Why not wait until Harry's alone? These kept her up the entire night. She even slept with her wand tucked under her pillow.

"I'm glad, really. I'll see you later." He waved goodbye to the group before heading off in a different direction. Tori gave him a tired smile in return before staring back into her tea.

scary