A/N
i wrote this in detention so its kinda short 😬
-
Hermione approached Harry, Ron, and Jupiter in the common room, holding a letter in her hand.
"Hagrid's just sent me this," she said.
It read:
"Dear Hermione,
Bucky's execution date has been fixed. Thanks for all your help.
Hagrid."
The letter was hard to read through all the tear stains.
"They can't do this," Harry said. "Buckbeak isn't dangerous."
"Lucius Malfoy can do whatever he wants," Jupiter sighed. "The ministry is frightened of him. When it comes to my uncle, they don't have much respect for ethics."
"They'll be an appeal though. There always is. But I don't imagine it will do anything." Hermione's voice was filled with despair as she looked down at the floor. "Nothing will ever change."
"Yeah it will," Ron said, standing up from the common room sofa. "You won't have to do all the work alone, Hermione. I'll help."
"Oh, Ron!" Hermione cried, flinging herself around Ron's shoulders and hugging him tightly. Ron's freckled face flushed red, and he patted Hermione's back awkwardly. "Ron, I'm really, really sorry about Scabbers."
"Oh, well, he was old," Ron shrugged as Hermione let go of him. "And he was a bit useless. You never know, Mum and Dad might get me an owl now."
---
"S'no good, Ron," Hagrid sighed sadly as they walked up the castle steps with him after Care of Magical Creatures. "That committee's in Lucius Malfoy's pocket. I'm jus' gonna make sure the rest o' Beaky's time is the happiest he's ever had. I owe him that..."
Hagrid turned around and hurried back toward his cabin, his teary face buried in his handkerchief.
"Look at him blubber!"
Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle were standing just by the castle doors, listening.
"Have you ever seen anything quite as pathetic?" Draco smirked. "And he's supposed to be our teacher!"
They all stomped over to them, but Hermione reached Draco first, and - CRACK!
Hermione had punched Draco across the face with all the strength she could muster.
"Don't you dare call Hagrid pathetic, you foul, loathsome, evil little cockroach!"
"Hermione!" Ron said, trying to grab her hand as she held it up to hit Draco again.
"Get off, Ron!" She pulled out her wand.
"Hermione, he's not worth the detention. Let's just go," Jupiter said, pushing her wand down.
"Yeah, that's right. You'd better run off before Daddy finds you," Draco snickered. His voice was shaky, and his eyes were teary from the punch. There was a trickle of blood running from his nose.
"What?" Jupiter asked, her eyes locking onto Draco's gray ones.
"Oh, you don't know? Nobody's told you yet?" Draco chuckled, looking very proud of himself.
"Told me what?" she demanded.
"Potter knows, look at him," Goyle said, pointing a chubby finger at Harry. Harry's face was a sickly-looking pale, and his breathing was rapid as he stared at Jupiter.
"Harry, what is he talking about?" she asked, but Harry stayed silent. She turned back to Draco. "Tell me, or I swear, I will hex you into oblivion, Draco," she snapped, pulling her wand from her pocket.
"Calm down, Black," Draco smirked knowingly.
As her mind raced with what her cousin could be talking about, his previous words came to the surface. "Better run off before Daddy finds you."
She looked to Harry. He looked like he was about to be ill with guilt. Then it hit her.
Harry hadn't let her see the map for a reason. He had purposely been covering her name on the map. For a moment, she thought, "How would I have not noticed when I saw it the first time?"
She hadn't even looked at her name. She had decided to look everywhere but her name.
"Is he lying?" She asked Harry, who remained frozen. "IS HE LYING?" she yelled louder, pointing her wand at Harry's throat.
"No," he muttered. His hands were raised in innocence, and they were shaking.
"How long have you known?" she asked, her voice weak and uneven as she held back tears.
"Around Christmas," he said quietly. His green, regretful eyes were staring into hers.
She stood there for a minute, trying to process what he had just told her. She felt like she had just been stabbed in the heart. Her world had been flipped upside down, and Harry knew about it. Not only that, he had let her cousin tell her. For a brief moment, she wondered how long Draco knew. How many times they hid together during their parents' meetings. How many times he watched her get crucified by her mother for "disgracing her bloodline." She looked at Harry one more time, and as soon as he opened his mouth, she ran.
---
"Jo!" A voice called from the common room. She knew it was Harry. Nobody else called her that. She sat on her bed, her head in her knees. She was unsure of how long it had been, but she didn't care. She had just been betrayed by her best friend and her cousin, and perhaps everyone else in her life.
"Jo!" Harry yelled again. He was probably standing right in front of the stairs. She was going to let him yell. She didn't owe him anything.
"Jove?" Hermione's voice said softly as she opened the door to their dorm.
"Go away," Jupiter muttered into her knees.
"Harry really wants to talk to you," Hermione said. Jupiter looked up at her.
"Yeah? I wanted him to not keep my whole life a secret from me," she snapped. She knew her eyes were red and puffy, and she definitely looked like she had been crying for hours.
"He feels really bad. You saw how guilty he looked down by Hagrid's," Hermione sighed, leaning against the door.
"Good. I want him to be guilty. He deserves it," Jupiter grumbled, letting her head go limp again.
"At least he is," Hermione said. "I know some people that wouldn't be." She turned and walked out.
---
Forgiving Harry Potter was not on Jupiter's list of priorities. She shouldn't ever forgive him, not ever.
However, she had to admit that she had been relishing in his suffering a bit too much. She would catch him staring at her in the Great Hall with his big green eyes, and she would ignore him when he tried to apologize for the thousandth time.
Although she hated Harry's guts for sending her into a spiral of an identity crisis, she didn't blame Ron and Hermione. She sat with the group at meals and studied with them in the common room. She didn't talk unless she was talked to, and Harry certainly wasn't getting any of her work.
Still, even though she wanted to murder Harry and then inform him that his whole life had been a giant lie, it was hard to stay this mad when she fancied the blundering idiot.
Now, she couldn't give a reason for her stupid crush. Sure, Harry was a bit easy on the eyes, but he was also a major git. Sometimes she wondered if she should be more mad at herself than Harry.
"Why weren't you in charms?" Ron asked as she finished the taxing climb up the wooden ladder to the Divination tower.
"Oh, maybe because I was crying my eyes out," she said, sending a look to Harry, who turned pink. She sat at a table with Hermione.
"Good day to you!" Professor Trelawney said as she made her usual dramatic entrance from the shadows. "I have decided to introduce the crystal ball a little earlier than I had planned. The fates have informed me that your examination in June will concern the Orb, and I am anxious to give you sufficient practice."
"Well, honestly... 'the fates have informed her.' Who sets the exams? She does! What an amazing prediction!" Hermione scoffed, not bothering to keep her voice low. Hermione's blatant hatred for divination was quite amusing, considering Jupiter thought she didn't have it in her to hate a subject.
"Crystal gazing is a particularly refined art," Professor Trelawney continued as if she had never heard Hermione. (She definitely did.) "I do not expect any of you to See when you first peer into the Orb's infinite depths. We shall start by practicing relaxing the conscious mind and external eyes so as to clear the Inner Eye and the superconscious. Perhaps, if we are lucky, some of you will See before the end of class."
Jupiter felt extremely stupid as she stared at the glass ball. It was hard to keep her mind from wandering over to thoughts of her... father? She nearly gagged at that. The idea of someone like Sirius Black being her "father" was almost worse than Bellatrix Lestrange being her mother. Maybe this meant she had an excuse to never go back, though. That is, if Black didn't kill her before summer's over.
"This is such a waste of time," Hermione hissed. "I could be practicing something useful. I could be catching up on Cheering Charms."
"Would anyone like me to help them interpret the shadows portents within their Orb?" Professor Trelawney asked as she trodded past their table, her long orange robes trailing on the carpet.
"I don't need help," Ron said. "It's obvious there's going to be lots of fog tonight."
"Now, really!" Professor Trelawney groaned. "You are disturbing the clairvoyant vibrations!" She bent down and stared into Harry and Ron's crystal ball.
"There is something here!" She gasped. "Something moving, but what is it?"
Everyone knew what she was going to say.
"My dear..." she looked up at Harry with fearful eyes. "It is here, plainer than ever. My dear, stalking towards you, growing ever closer..."
As Jupiter watched Professor Trelawney harass Harry, something in the crystal ball caught her eye. There was a familiar face staring back at her.
A scream escaped her lungs as she instinctively hit the ball off its pedestal. She watched the face of Sirius Black roll to the floor.
"You know what? This subject is useless! Harry isn't dying, and that ball is complete bullshit!" she snapped, throwing her bag over her shoulder. She pulled her wand from her pocket as she walked towards the ladder.
"Bombarda!" she said, and a string of red hit the crystal ball. It exploded into a giant cloud of steam and glass. Before she could climb down the ladder, she noticed a face within the fog that was quickly spreading throughout the tower. It wasn't the ghastly face of Black, but a woman. A beautiful woman, definitely, but a woman she had never seen before. She had tanned skin and long dark hair that flowed perfectly past her warm brown eyes. Jupiter only caught a glimpse of her for a moment before the mist began to clear, and she quickly headed down the ladder.