"How'd it go?" Sirius had waited until they had gotten back to the shack and had transformed before talking about what had happened.
"It was fine, but I don't know if he'll stop looking," Olivia screwed her mouth to the side as she tried to remember what she had wanted to tell Harry, "God, what was it?!"
"What? What happened?" Sirius sat on the edge of her bed, surprised at the outburst.
"I wanted to tell Harry something but I've completely forgotten what it was! I told him that I'm fine, and to stop looking for me, and that he can't ask too many questions," she trailed off, reviewing the conversation.
"Was it about Wormtail?" Sirius said at a lower volume, both to try and get Olivia to calm down and to not start his obsessions again. The filthy rat and its actions still haunted Sirius's dreams, but he had made an effort to keep those thoughts out of his mind and out of his words.
"Shit! That was it." Olivia quickly tried to cover up her cursing, but Sirius just chuckled at her surprised face.
"I guess cursing is fine in this situation. It doesn't matter anyway, we're not going to go after him until you're better." Sirius repeated the mantra he'd been repeating to himself whenever his nightmares became too much: As soon as she's better, we can go after him.
"But I might not be better for a long time, and what if he does something to Harry?" Olivia sighed as she started to feel defeated.
"We still have that cat on our side, don't we?" Sirius was also feeling like an idiot for forgetting that they had another set of eyes on the rat.
"What, Crookshanks?" Olivia asked, having also forgotten about the small ginger. Her thoughts also flashed to Czar for a moment before she focused on the topic at hand.
"That's the one. We can wait and see if he can catch Pettigrew while you heal." Sirius smiled internally as he once again came up with a halfway decent plan.
"I guess that'll be fine, but you need to talk to Crookshanks to update him on what's going on." Olivia decided, readjusting her leg as to try and wake it up.
"I'll wait until nightfall, that way Harry won't be out there. In the meantime, what do you want to eat?"
~
Turns out, a broken leg takes quite a lot of time to heal. For Olivia, it took until May to take the splint off, and even then she still couldn't fly on it.
In the meantime, life for the two wanted criminals started to form a pattern. Sirius would go to Inverness whenever they needed more food—usually it took a week, depending on how much he could nab— and Olivia managed to keep her episodes to when he was away. It hurt Olivia to see Sirius unable to help, and Sirius slowly started to think that she was healing. The desperate want from both of them to appear normal to the other was slowly crippling them, with Olivia's episodes and insecurities and Sirius's nightmares and paranoia. They both longed to be happy so much that they just covered up their problems, knowing there was no way to solve them.
And so those next five months were spent away from Hogwarts, with Sirius getting occasional reports from Crookshanks. Sirius did, however, try to enter the castle on his own one more time; without Olivia's knowledge, and in a deranged fit of rage, he used the codes that Crookshanks provided him and had intended to stab Wormtail where he lay. Unfortunately, this attempt was unsuccessful, and he got quite the earful when he returned to the shack.Eventually Crookshanks reported that the rat was nowhere to be found, and that the "humans assumed him dead". Crookshanks still promised to be on the lookout, thankfully, and gave reports whenever news surfaced.
Harry had wanted to keep looking for Olivia—despite her warnings— but found that the second semester was far too packed for him to do anything of the sort. Between piles of homework, trying to research for Buckbeak's trial, quidditch matches, and his increased fighting with Draco, he just didn't have time.
Speaking of Draco, as soon as the pureblood had gotten Harry's letter he was itching to return to Hogwarts. He didn't know how Harry came to know this, and frankly didn't care, as long as there was a chance he could see Olivia again.
Needless to say, Draco was crushed when he returned and was told by Harry that they hadn't found Olivia and shouldn't search for her. He figured that this was another one of Potter's plans to turn Olivia against him by finding her first. And since he had more free time than Harry, he decided to look for Olivia himself.
He searched every moment he could. He walked the grounds more than ten times, and even snuck into the forbidden forest on three separate occasions to try and look for Olivia. The problem was he had no idea how to look for her- was she in some sort of shelter? Had she left Hogwarts since the lettre? Had she taken refuge inside the castle, perhaps? Or—his greatest fear—had the dementors already caught her?
And so those five, six months felt wasted to everyone involved. Harry and Draco had neither the time nor the tools to seek out Olivia, and Olivia and Sirius had to wait until the time was right to strike on Wormtail. The time they found out to be on June 6, 1994.
~~
Sorry that this chapter feels short, the time jump is needed because I wanted to keep the original date and timeline mostly intact and Sirius really didn't do much during this time. I would get more into Harry's side of things but, again, I'm no J.K. Rowling.
Now I'll either put in another filler after this so I can get home to my book or the next update will be a little later because, again, I'll definitely be needing my book for the big scene ahead.
Anyway, please leave feedback, and I hope you enjoyed!