✦☾⚕☾✦
━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━
━ FOLLOWING THE EVENT DURING HALLOWEEN the group of five misfits had uttered no word to anybody, seeming apparently to outsiders, more secretive than before. None of them joked about Remus' condition in public, only resorting it to odd whispers in class or solely in the safety of the empty dorm room, when Frank Longbottom found himself out with fellow Gryffindor Alice Fortesque and Hufflepuff Emmeline Vance
The first term was shortly going to be coming to an end. Sirius had posed the idea of staying at Hogwarts for Christmas, though Peter was unable to, his mother's smothering once more getting the better of him. Genevieve also seemed apprehensive, but following a secret message sent by Remus, James and Sirius to Genevieve's father Stephen, with him urging her to spend their Christmas with her friends and that though he'd miss her she'd see him soon enough, she agreed.
The boys were ecstatic for Christmas at Hogwarts, having heard all the great tales they'd been told about Christmases in the castle by their parents. Genevieve felt envious that they knew what to expect and teased her for not being able to find out till the day, though Remus had informed her of a few things.
Though the girl still suffered with her hatred of Astronomy, she'd only tolerate it for her boys. She'd grown excited for this holiday once again, for the slight change in theme for herself. It was doubtful that the ground wouldn't be covered in snow so that made it all the more excited for the anticipation of the day.
The group had made a small pact with each other, that they'd stay awake Christmas morning in the boys dorm, the four boys still hadn't figured out how to get passed the small trick with the girl's stairs which enjoyed sending them down on a slide-type trip. Genevieve would be sleeping in their dorm room they'd decided with the absences of Frank and Peter.
But before that the group needed to make their week through the final week of the term. The five were sat in the Great Hall, accompanied with the groans, moans and whines of protest from Sirius and James about Potions with the Slytherins.
"Can I die?" James finally asked after thirty minutes of incoherent muttering in defiance. The clear statement caused for Genevieve to choke on her Pumpkin Juice, it spraying all over Peter and his uniform earning a whine of what sounded like distress.
The poor girl continued to cough, glaring a look of annoyance and anger towards the boy as Sirius slapped her back in assistance. "James." Remus muttered disappointed, rolling his eyes like he usually did when he didn't agree with his friends choices. "No, you cannot die, though it seems Genevieve might be instead. Are you okay?" His attention turned to the still spluttering girl.
She couldn't reply, shaking her head. "She had a whole mouthful of Pumpkin Juice when James blurted out that he would like to receive death as an early Christmas present." Sirius explained, humour lacing his words. "So no, Remus, I don't think she's okay." She nodded in agreement to that, her throat now sore from coughing horrendously.
"Go' I think I coughe' up a lun'." She croaked, sighing out in fatigue. "Why is coughin' so tirin'?" She asked earning nothing but a shrug from all the boys as she apologised to Peter for the splash attack of her breakfast drink. "Jamie, if I'm nae allowe' to die cause o' Astronomy, yer nae allowe' for Potions." He puffed out a sharp breath of disappointment.
Sirius' hand remained on her back, drawing large circles. "Are you okay, now?" She nodded, smiling at him. "It looked like it hurt." She nodded again with a humoured grin.
"Tha's cause it fuckin' di'." She answered. "I though' ya like' Potions, Jamie. Ya can pick on Snape in there." She pointed out.
He shook his head. "That's the only thing I'm looking forward too, but that just means that bitch Ebeneer and her even more conniving friend Jane is going to be there too." The boy had very much upheld his grudge against the girl, having knocked him unconscious and given him a horrendous concussion that lasted him four days.
Genevieve smiled at his childish statement. "Are you really that bothered by some reptile?" Sirius pondered to him. "You could just tamper with her potion and make it explode on her uniform." He added the suggestion into James' thought process, seemingly making him smile.
He snapped his fingers. "I do love the way you think sometimes, Sirius." He agreed. Peter remained quiet through this whole interaction, as usual. He was trying to wring Pumpkin Juice from his robes. Remus also remained fairly silent, rolling his eyes once more at the unhelpful suggestion from the boy to his right. Genevieve laughed at the boy's reaction, joining him as such.
"We should get going now then, shouldn't we?" Remus suggested, adding some force to the less implied question as the four agreed, rising from the benches. Genevieve picked up two bottles of Pumpkin Juice from the table, slipping them into her bag for the day.
"I will 'ave one decen' drink today, so help me Merlin." She muttered, standing beside Remus.
He simply chuckled, throwing his arm over the girl's shoulders. "Come on."
━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━
Upon Sirius' suggestion, James had taken the very unhelpful advice and had tampered with not only Jane's but also Ebeneer's potions, pouring too many of the ingredients into the cauldron, seemingly burning a hole into the bottom and through some of their table, causing for the class to have to evacuate the room while Professor Slughorn handled the situation at hand.
Genevieve watched as the class collectively glared at Ebeneer, seemingly blaming her as James got away innocently, though his friends knew the truth, and apparently so did Lily and Snape, the pair glaring at James instead of the Slytherin girl. The girl couldn't help but roll her eyes at Snape, who continued to glare even once Lily had finished, now sparking up a conversation with some of the girls in their house.
Sirius joined Genevieve on the floor, leaning against the wall with her. "Are you seeing the way Snivy is glaring at James?" She hummed. "You'd think he has a crush on all of us with how obsessed he seems to be to despise us." The young girl snorted into her hand, masking it as a cough.
"Nah, tha' wee bastar' does'nae ken aboot love, he ai'nae gonna 'ave it so he nae nee' to worry." She teased quietly, statement of fact behind her voice. Had Severus Snape acted like a decent person when he first started, instead of trying to control and dictate who Lily could and couldn't be friends with, maybe Genevieve would see him differently, but here they were.
"Even Ebeneer and Jane don't know it was James so why's he so determined to think it's him?" Sirius questioned, just loud enough for the girl to quietly hear.
She shrugged. "Cause he will nae'r believe tha' anythin' tha' goes wron' ai'nae Jamie or any o' our faul's." She explained. "Face it Siri, he ha'es us, we ha'e him." She added, emphasising by balancing her two hands like a scale. "We will nae'r ge' alon' with de slimy prioc."
Sirius chuckled. "You know, I still need a Gaelic lesson." He quickly redirected the subject.
Genevieve laughed lightly, shrugging. "I tell ya wha', if ya can come to mine o'er de Summer, y'ken ma Da woul' be fine with it, he loves ya, says ya funny." She explained. "Both ma Da an' me can teach ya, aye?" She held her hand out.
"Oh I'd definitely love to stay at yours over the Summer, it's so much nicer to where I live." He replied, shaking her hand firmly. 12 Grimmauld Place was a dingy, disgusting looking terraced house, hidden from the Muggle world with a charm his ancestors had put upon it. Inside was just as dark and dead in Sirius' eyes, really living up to the Black Family Name. He rolled his eyes at the thought.
Genevieve's house was so much nicer, in a small town of Glasgow, there was the sea nearby as well as countryside, where kids spent a lot of their Summer doing idiotic things Muggle teenagers seemed to do, like drink cheap plastic bottled cider. Granted the Wizarding World was not much different, only with teenagers resorting to FireWhiskey than to cider. Sirius very much preferred the Lowry house, it was a lot more welcoming and homely than his own, a lot more accepting and tolerant of everyone around them.
The class waited another ten minutes before finally being allowed back into the room. Slughorn swiftly continued them on their lesson plan for that day, having lost a lot from James' little prank.
━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━
Following their lessons for the day, the group of five Gryffindors trundled their way down to the Black Lake, equipped with their warm clothing and accessories to protect them from the harsh Scottish winter.
Genevieve sat beneath the tree with a book beside her Remus was copying those actions, with Peter struggling to open a packet of sweets by his debilitating mittens.
Sirius and James however decided they would perform the 'smart' idea of testing the ice of Black Lake's strength against their body weights. Upon finding out it was safe, they decided to try and skate around the ice, at least to their best capability, given that they were not equipped with ice skates.
Genevieve found it rather amusing, how much they looked like baby deers walking for the first time. "The pair o' ya look like Bambi on ice." She laughed with Remus who had understood her references to Bambi.
Sirius smirked before executing some simple skating techniques, although James still hadn't obtained the knack to travel upon the slippery surface. Genevieve chuckled as Sirius slid over to the edge, walking over to her. She could still quite visibly see James struggling with his balance as Sirius smiled at her.
"Care to join us Evie, or are you too entranced in your fictional worlds?" Sirius asked in a formal manner, making the girl smirk amusedly.
"Fine." She sighed, standing up, entrusting her book with Remus as she walked carefully over to the iced over lake. She could see how thick the ice actually was once she was upon it, chuckling at the lack of awareness the boys had.
She stepped onto the ice carefully, gliding gently across as Sirius shuffled slowly onto the ice once again. Before he had balanced himself out, Genevieve had gone off catching up to James before gliding passed him.
The shock on the boys face was something of great entertainment for the girl, the group of boys not aware of Genevieve's small talent of ice skating.
"Havin' fun there, Jamie?" She asked gliding around him in circles as he nearly fell over again.
"How are you doing this so easily? I feel like I'm going to fall at every small move." He pondered to her.
"Ya leanin' too much." She replied. "Keep ya bo'y straigh' an' ya'll be just dan'y." She explained.
Sirius laughed as he glided passed James and caught up to Genevieve. The pair linked arms, Genevieve keeping him steady as they watched James struggle. Remus watched from the safety of solid ground, a small smile on his face as his friends giggled childishly.
They all burst into laughter as James fell onto his backside with a thump and a groan. James lay on his back in defeat as Genevieve let go of Sirius' arm. She offered her hand to the boy before pulling him back up.
She smiled helping him move around as a silhouette of a girl, she later noticed to be Lily as she watched the three glide around. Genevieve laughed with the two boys on the lake as she helped them around the ice.
James soon grew fed up when he realised he couldn't show off on the ice, quite the same as Genevieve could, shuffling his way back to solid ground and sitting between Remus and Peter in a huff.
Sirius chuckled, going to join him for a while, leaving Genevieve on the ice, alone. She decided to take the opportunity to skate around. She found the serenity of her surroundings quite calming, losing herself in the activity as the four boys watched from a distance.
Peter seemed almost unfazed, much more concerned with trying to acquire his sweets from the packet. Remus was half paying attention with a smile while also trying to maintain his focus on his reading as James sat there in a sulk. He was more grumpy that he simply couldn't get the grasp of skating like Sirius seemed to.
Sirius on the other hand, watched intently as the red-haired girl drifted around the ice, comfortably. He found it rather fascinating how the environment around her complimented her more striking features. How the glistening of the snow made her hair that much brighter and how the paleness of her skin made the rosiness of her cheeks from the cold pop just that slight bit more.
He found it entrancing just to watch the young girl enjoy her time on the ice. And once she had come back to her surroundings and had an awareness, she turned to Sirius and smiled before gliding back over to the side of the lake. She squeezed between Remus and Sirius, picking her book back up from Remus and smirking at Sirius, resting her head on his shoulder as she immersed herself in her new activity.
━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━
The five had soon moved themselves into the Great Hall, as the day ended quicker given the time of year. Genevieve sat between Remus and Sirius, laughing as James devoured into his food.
The girl sat quietly listening to the small bickers between Sirius and James as they went back and forth about something silly as they usually did. She smiled at Remus before noticing he wasn't eating.
Ironically for someone that had no interest and a strong hatred for Astronomy, which would never be a surprise to anyone, but what had been a surprise was that she had started to focus more and more on the lunar calendar upon discovering about Remus' ailment.
He sighed quietly beside her, shaking his head as a wave of fatigue had hit him. She smiled sympathetically, squeezing his arm friendly. He smiled in return to her squeezing her hand softly.
Once they had finished their eating, the five returned to the Gryffindor Common Room. The four boys had had to argue with Genevieve to convince her into suffering through yet another Astronomy lesson, her only yielding once Sirius had offered to cover her with a blanket, considering how baltic the Astronomy became especially during the particular season.
Leaning her head on Sirius' shoulder, James had disappeared upstairs to go and 'prepare' for Astronomy. Genevieve shortly after did the same. Packing up in her bag that she carried around with her, sweets that she had acquired as well as some drinks, along with a book if she grew bored even quicker than her usual lack of concern with learning about the stars. She begrudgingly packed her telescope as well as a blanket and her parchment for the class.
━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━
Trekking up to the Astronomy tower, Genevieve hid herself away in the corner with her bag of goods and her blanket. Sirius was shortly behind her, sitting beside her and nudging her annoyingly.
"Wha'?" She whispered, irritated. He pointed to the blanket, shivering slightly.
"Let me in." He instructed. She chuckled at him, raising the blanket enough for him to slide under it as the pair lay themselves down under the cover of the other three. Sirius smiled at her as the teacher rambled on and Genevieve grumbled in confusion as she went on.
Sirius had turned away to half pay attention to the class, although he didn't need to. He had always been taught about the constellations as well as the moons, and systems considered important in the Wizarding World, as if that was the be all and end all of subjects.
Once the boy had turned back to Genevieve, he noticed her eyes were closed, sleeping somewhat peacefully. Although he knew he would have to disturb her from this peaceful nature he currently found her in, he allowed her to sleep, smiling as he moved her so she would remain comfortable, using his own body as a pillow for the girl.
Remus watched this with a small smile, knowing Sirius only acted with these small actions for the girl. For whatever reason, that was the only time the seemingly loud-mouthed, cocky boy acted even remotely quiet and caring was to the girl.
For the remainder of the class, the four boys remained quiet, not wanting to disturb the girl, knowing they would be the ones to face her wrath if they were the one to wake her up accidentally, unless of course in an emergency or end of the lesson.
━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━
✦☾⚕☾✦