By: Sweet 16 Movie Buff!
Disclaimer: Nope, nada, zilch on the proprietorship issue. I yield it all to J.K Rowling, one of the finest authors I've ever read.
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With a sigh, Jillian snapped the dusty book closed and leaned heavily on the bookshelf; "Nothing. There's nothing here on minor independence or minor residence. I'm sorry, Sirius."
"No, nothing here, either." Lamenting, Sirius Black collapsed back into his seat. He was a strikingly handsome young man in his sixth-year at Hogwarts. His shaggy mane of black hair was cropped tame and just swept across his eyes in a casual sort of elegance. His eyes were usually a cool, misty gray but today, and for the past two weeks, they had been dark and brooding like thunderclouds.
It was not even two weeks after the Christmas holidays, the weather nasty and dreary and nothing but rain, and Jillian McKee found herself back in the eerily vacant library of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The Hogwarts teachers had not assigned any assignments that could not be done without the use of textbooks, yet here she was only at the peculiar request of the sixteen-year old slouched at the table.
There was a scraping of chair legs. Sirius glanced up through his lashes to see Jillian seating herself across from him. She blinked concernedly at him with large dark eyes and leaned across the table to ask quietly, "Why are you so interested?"
"No reason," he barked, a little harsher than he had meant to sound, "We just have to keep looking. There's bound to be something."
Abruptly he stood and strode to the section of the library that housed volumes of Ministry laws and hearings. Jillian watched him carefully as he snatched a heavy black tome from the shelf and leafed through it, almost frantically. When he found nothing, he angrily stuffed it back into its slot and grabbed another green-bound edition.
Silently Jillian rose from her seat at the table and came to his side. "What happened?"
"Nothing happened!" he snapped at the same time snapping the green edition closed. He strode farther down the aisle away from her.
Shaking her head, she hurried down the aisle after him, "You've been moping since the end of the holidays, you go into a temper at a second's notice, you're moody and elusive, AND you've been avoiding me. Something happened, I know it did."
It was true. Sirius had indeed been sulking about the school, hexing others more so than usual, and seeming only to take comfort in the presence of his three closest friends: James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew, a twitchy watery-eyed boy known by Wormtail. He use to confide in Jillian as he did them when things were bothering him, but now it was as if he regarded her as a prying mother. He didn't even look her in the eye anymore. Sometimes she wondered how badly her Christmas present had gone over when the owl had arrived at his house. She often caught herself wondering how a bag of Honeydukes candy and Zonko's exploding snaps could turn their friendship so sour?
"Oh, you know, do you?" he snorted bitterly, "You don't know anything."
"Then enlighten me!" she cried exasperated, throwing herself directly in his path as he moved to storm away. "I want to know, Sirius! I want to help! I want you to look me in the eye again and stop cowering like - "
"I don't cower before Mudbloods or anyone!" he shouted back, rising to meet her gaze with his own angry glare.
The air between them turned into a wall of glass, rising solid and cold. Something in Sirius's eyes flickered, shock more likely, but not quite. Jillian stood there motionless and abhorrently stunned. The effect of the blow took a full minute to recede and when her senses returned, her gaze was as frigid as ice.
"Fine," she sniffed.
"Jillian, I'm . . . I didn't . . ."
She brushed past him and strode down the aisle of shelves, her over-robes billowing behind her in a black cloud. Sirius trotted after her, watching her every stiff and livid movement as she collected her books and stuffed them into her canvas pack.
"Jillian!"
She was half out the door when he grabbed her hand. She turned about, staring at him down her nose with a look of absolute loathing. She snatched her hand out of his grasp, "Don't touch me, you filthy arrogant pig."
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PLEASE NOTE!I am trying a new style of writing with this fic, something I usually don't do, and I'd like your opinion on it.
Usually my first chapters are exposition, but as you can see, I started at what seems to be the middle. That's because I'm going to use flashbacks to create the exposition. The exposition of Sirius's and Jillian's friendship occurs over a series of two years and that would take forever and just be plain dull, so I'm going to try flashbacks.
I'll label chapters as flashbacks when they occur, so hopefully that will limit confusion.
Please, tell me how it goes.
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OH! AND BEFORE I FORGET . . .
I'll review your fic, if you'll review mine. Simple as that.
Thanx : )