Sorry it took me so long to update! But you know, I pretty much like this chapter so hope you like it too!

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Like always, I do not own Harry Potter or any of its character. They belong to the wonderful J.K Rowling!

Chapter 5. The Astronomy Tower

The four Gryffindors spent all afternoon at Hagrid's hut; Rabazthian confessed who he was, leaving a perplexed and not entirely convinced Hagrid after the last Black introduced himself. Hagrid yet burst into tears once Harry assured him that Rabazthian was Sirius' nephew, while the half giant attempted to stem his weeping, promising that they were just happy tears. Rabazthian quickly leaped up, and walked around the table the long way to avoid the barrel of maggots, and patted Hagrid's shaking shoulders, trying to soothe his new friend. Hagrid, however, felt more than comfortable to shove his big arms around Rabazthian's tall figure, giving him his first crashing bone hug, while Harry, Ron and Hermione laughed at Rabazthian's red face as he struggled to catch his breath again.

After that, the atmosphere lightened considerably, and the four Gryffindors catch up with Hagrid, mostly Rabazthian, who spent more of the time answering his many questions and telling him everything he wanted to know. Later, Harry, Ron and Hermione explained to Hagrid (and Rabazthian could tell it was half lie) why they hadn't carried on Care of Magical Creatures, reassuring him that the reason was because none of them could fit his subject into their schedules.

After a long talk inside the hut, where Hagrid forgave them easily, the four teenagers avoiding the mahogany-brown tea and the rock cakes, said their goodbyes while Hagrid waved them off at dusk, looking quite cheerful, and went to the castle for a good and earned meal.

"Hagrid is rather… unusual," Rabazthian said chuckling along with the trio, and inwardly smiling happily at the thought of his new and charming friend, someone else who had been related to Sirius and shared the same memories of him. "I like him, though I'm starving now," he said, once the door had closed behind them and they were hurrying through the dark and deserted grounds; he had abandoned the rock cake after an ominous cracking noise from one of his back teeth.

Harry laughed. "Yeah, me too, and I've got detention with Snape tonight, I haven't got much time for dinner."

As they came into the castle they spotted Cormac McLaggen entering the Great Hall. It took him two attempts to get through the doors; he ricocheted off the frame on the first attempt. Ron merely guffawed gloatingly and strode off into the Hall after him with Harry by his side, but Rabazthian caught Hermione's arm and held her back.

"Something's wrong?" asked Hermione frowning at the sight of Rabazthian troubled face.

"Don't you think we should tell Harry?" asked Rabazthian, scratching the back of his neck. "About what we did today at the field. It doesn't feel so good to hide it from him now that I'm on the team and, you know, he's the captain."

"What?" hushed Hermione defensively. "We? If I remember well, you were the one who confused Cormac, Black, not me."

Rabazthian chuckled sarcastically. "Excuse me? I did it for you, Granger, you thanked me, remember that?" he hushed back. "So you, I'm afraid, are my partner in crime."

"Oh, all right," she whispered. "You can say I'm related to this crime, as you put it, but I'm not telling him."

"Deal," he claimed quickly, a winning smile over his lips and a mischievous twinkle in his icy-blue eyes. "You just got to be there with me. Though, if you ask me, I believe Harry already suspects something."

"Really? What makes you believe that?"

"I don't know, guess is just… intuition." Hermione perfectly saw the teasing grin that crossed his lips. "But seriously, he looked rather confused when Cormac flew right to the other side of the post he was guarding, and later when Ron motioned it too."

"Guess so…" Hermione looked down and blushed, realizing that Rabazthian's hand was still around her forearm holding her tightly.

"Well, look at this," teased Rabazthian, smirking playfully. "You're blushing."

"Oh, be quiet," she snapped, as he smirked wider and extended his other hand to squeeze her slightly red cheek.

"What are you two doing?" demanded Ron, reappearing in the doorway to the Great Hall and looking suspicious.

"Nothing," said Rabazthian and Hermione together, as she backed away from the calm and smirking seventeen year old. Ron frowned before they hurried inside the Great Hall and to the Gryffindor table. The smell of roast beef made Rabazthian's stomach ache with hunger, but they had barely taken their seats in the table besides Harry when Professor Slughorn appeared in front of them, ruining Rabazthian's intention to eat.

"Harry, Harry, just the man I was hoping to see!" he boomed genially, twiddling the ends of his walrus mustache and puffing out his enormous belly, "I was hoping to catch you before dinner! What do you say to a spot of supper tonight in my rooms instead? We're having a little party, just a few rising stars, I've got McLaggen coming and Zabini, the charming Melinda Bobbin — I don't know whether you know her? Her family owns a large chain of apothecaries — and, of course, I hope very much that Miss Granger and Mister Black will favor me by coming too."

Slughorn made Rabazthian and Hermione a little bow as he finished speaking. It was as though Ron was not present; Slughorn did not so much as look at him.

"I can't come, Professor," said Harry at once. "I've got a detention with Professor Snape."

"Oh dear!" said Slughorn, his face falling comically. "Dear, dear, I was counting on you, Harry! Well, now, I'll just have to have a word with Severus and explain the situation. I'm sure I'll be able to persuade him to postpone your detention. Yes, I'll see you three later!" He bustled away out of the Hall.

"He's got no chance of persuading Snape," said Harry, the moment Slughorn was out of earshot. "This detention's already been postponed once; Snape did it for Dumbledore, but he won't do it for anyone else."

"Oh, at least you can go, I wouldn't have wanted to go on my own!" said a relieved Hermione to Rabazthian; he knew that she was thinking about McLaggen. He returned the smile.

"I doubt you'd have been alone, Ginny'll probably be invited," snapped Ron, who did not seem to have taken kindly to being ignored by Slughorn.

Rabazthian intently stared at Ron while he eat, who was still in this bad mood that had taken over him since Slughorn had came across their table, or even before, since Ron had interrupted his and Hermione's talk at the Great Hall doors. If Rabazthian didn't know better, he would say that Ron was acting quite… jealous. Ha! Did it mean that he had a thing for Hermione, fancied her even? The thought of Hermione with Ron made a strange and unknown feeling, a nuisance, appear in Rabazthian's stomach. But he covered it by eating a few roasted potatoes.

"Thought you were going to Old Sluggy's dinner with me?" asked Hermione, who was just drinking pumpkin juice when she saw him eating.

"Yeah," said Rabazthian, "but we might get to the dessert, because I'm really hungry right now. Couldn't get myself to eat Hagrid's rock cake."

Hermione snorted. "He's not the best of cooks, is he?"

"Not at all." They both chuckled, while Harry and Ron were talking by themselves, though Rabazthian could have sworn he heard his name coming out from Ron's mouth in a hiss. "So tonight we've got enough time for you to show me the Astronomy Tower, don't you think?"

"I'm a prefect, Black. I'm not suppose to let you go around the corridors at night," said Hermione in a hesitant whisper, afraid that someone else would hear their conversation.

"Oh, come on, Hermione," Rabazthian whispered back, with a exaggerated pout. "You've been telling me you'll show me the Tower since day one. Please, we'll go before Slughorn's' little… get-together. Or are you just afraid to break a few rules for me?"

"Oh, alright," hushed Hermione, giving in after a few seconds. "But shut it! If McGonagall finds out…" She trailed off, surely picturing how the Head of House would punish her for breaking the rules while being a prefect.

"Don't worry, we won't stay long, I promise."

After dinner they made their way back to Gryffindor Tower. The common room was very crowded, as most people had finished dinner by now, but they managed to find a free table and sat down; Ron, who had been in a bad mood ever since the encounter with Slughorn, folded his arms and frowned at the ceiling. Hermione reached out for a copy of the Evening Prophet, which somebody had left abandoned on a chair.

"Anything new?" said Harry.

"Not really…" Hermione had opened the newspaper and was scanning the inside pages. "Oh, look, your dad's in here, Ron — he's all right!" she added quickly, for Ron had looked around in alarm. "It just says he's been to visit the Malfoys' house. 'This second search of the Death Eaters residence does not seem to have yielded any results. Arthur Weasley of the Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects said that his team had been acting upon a confidential tipoff.'"

"Yeah, mine!" said Harry. "I told him at Kings Cross about Malfoy and that thing he was trying to get Borgin to fix! Well, if it's not at their house, he must have brought whatever it is to Hogwarts with him —"

"But how can he have done, Harry?" questioned Rabazthian, looking rather alerted. "You were all searched when you arrived, weren't you?"

"Were you?" said Harry looking at Hermione and Ron, taken aback. "I wasn't!"

"Oh no, you weren't, you were late," remembered Hermione. "Well, Filch ran over all of us with Secrecy Sensors when we got into the entrance hall. Any Dark object would have been found, I know for a fact Crabbe had a shrunken head confiscated. So you see, Malfoy can't have brought in anything dangerous!"

Momentarily stymied, Harry watched Ginny playing with Arnold the Pygmy Puff for a while before seeing a way around this objection.

"Someone's sent it to him by owl, then," he said. "His mother or someone."

"All the owls are being checked too," said Rabazthian. "Dumbledore's told me a few times already; he's quite repetitive."

Really stumped this time, Harry found nothing else to say. There did not seem to be any way Malfoy could have brought a dangerous or Dark object into the school. While Hermione watched a thoughtful Rabazthian with her narrowed eyes and the same features that Harry had seen whenever she was thinking hard, he looked hopefully at Ron, who was sitting with his arms folded, staring over at Lavender Brown.

"Can you think of any way Malfoy — ?"

"Oh, drop it, Harry," said Ron.

"Listen, it's not my fault Slughorn invited Rab, Hermione and me to his stupid party, neither of us wanted to go, you know!" exclaimed Harry, firing up.

"Well, as I'm not invited to any parties," retorted Ron, getting to his feet again, "I think I'll go to bed."

He stomped off toward the door to the boys' dormitories, leaving his three friends staring after him. Rabazthian was about to say something when someone interrupted him.

"Harry?" said one of the girls that had tried for Chaser, Demelza Robins, appearing suddenly at his shoulder. "I've got a message for you."

"From Professor Slughorn?" asked Harry, sitting up hopefully.

"No... from Professor Snape," said Demelza. Harry's heart sank. "He says you're to come to his office at half past eight tonight to do your detention — er — no matter how many party invitations you've received. And he wanted you to know you'll be sorting out rotten flobberworms from good ones, to use in Potions and — and he says there's no need to bring protective gloves."

"Right," said Harry grimly. "Thanks a lot, Demelza."

She left after that, approaching a few of her friends, while Rabazthian and Hermione stood up, rather bored.

"We've got to go if we want to get to Old Sluggy's little party," said Rabazthian. "Good luck with Snape, Harry!"

"Night," smiled Hermione while she and Rabazthian headed for the portrait.

Once outside the Common Room, Rabazthian sighed dramatically. "Oh, I realize now that I'm not in the best mood to go to this… gathering or whatever. Guess I'm just going there for the dessert."

Hermione rolled her eyes playfully. "Don't tell me you have an appetite like Ron's!"

"Not quite," laughed the blue-eyed. "But I just cannot simply reject desserts. I'm a fan of the sweet food, you know," he lowered his voice at the end, as if remembering a really old and fond memory, while shoving his hands inside his pants pockets, smiling though Hermione noticed it did not reach his eyes.

"So, how come you're invited to Sluggy's special meals for rising stars?" she asked, quickly changing the topic.

They turned the corner of the dark corridor and climbed the few stairs they faced ahead.

"Well, it's all about my last name, of course. Slughorn was a teacher of most part of my family; my uncles and even my father were his students. He always mentions he would have loved to have the three Black brothers as their Head of House, however, Sirius got the chance to not be a Slytherin."

"So your father was a Slytherin too," said a not so surprised Hermione.

"Yeah," mumbled Rabazthian, "though is not strange. I mean, the entire Black family was sorted into Slytherin, except for two people: Sirius and I."

There was a short but comfortable silence, both still walking through dark hallways while Rabazthian tried to memorize his way to the highest Tower.

"And how come you're invited to Sluggy's special meals for rising stars?" he asked using her own words.

"Well, he says I'm the best in class —"

"Of course you are," said Rabazthian as if it were a knowing fact. Hermione frowned at him. "Oh come on, don't play modest with me. You are the brightest witch of your age, I think everyone knows that already."

Hermione snorted. "I'm just good at the library."

"And clever and really brave for what I've heard," claimed the seventeen year old.

Hermione didn't say anything back, pleased to hear Rabazthian complimenting her.

They finally reached the Astronomy Tower after a long walk and silently breaking through a small door, and for the first time since his arrival, Rabazthian had no smart or funny comment to say. The view was everything Hermione had claimed it was, beautiful and breathtaking: he could see the lake and the extensive Forbidden Forest, and a few of the other towers of Hogwarts, while the moonlight covered almost every spot of the castle's gardens, its reflection perfectly lucid over the clear water.

Hypnotized by the view, Rabazthian leaned over the metal railing that prevent anyone from falling, supporting his weight with his elbows.

"You like it then?" asked Hermione quietly, standing close beside him. He looked at her, astonished and still speechless. "I take it as a yes. And if you like it now, you should come at dusk."

"You know what this view provokes me to do?" he asked, smiling and making a mental note to come when the sun was setting as Hermione had advised. "To take Buckbeak and fly all around Hogwarts' grounds."

"Oh dear," said Hermione nervously. "Buckbeak's still a bit scary, isn't he?"

"Come off it, you've ridden him, haven't you?" Rabazthian chuckled amused, but before Hermione could make a smart come back, he spoke again, "I know is not Buckbeak that you're afraid of, Granger, you just don't like flying," Rabazthian said, and Hermione gave in, nodding. "And you're very fond of Quidditch, that's odd."

"I never said I liked Quidditch!" she exclaimed annoyed. "I've gone to every Gryffindor match because of Harry, and now you and Ron are another reason to go. It doesn't really bothers me to go and watch friends playing, I kind of like it actually, but flying is…"

"…Terrifying?" Rabazthian guessed, raising an eyebrow questionably. "If you don't think about it, if you just let the worries out of your mind, it's an incredible sensation, Hermione. I'm sure you would really enjoy it."

"Is just… Flying is not exactly what frightens me," he confessed. "But crashing…"

"Well, nothing can happen if you go with someone, don't you think?" he smiled sympathetically. "I know you've flown with Harry before, but the situation was of life or death. So I believe that if you put your sight in just enjoy the ride, you will." Hermione nodded, hesitant. "I can take you myself, if you want to. And Buckbeak already likes you, so I'm not giving you choice but to say yes."

Hermione made a grimace, but finally accepted. "Okay," she mumbled reluctantly, and Rabazthian smirked.

He looked over at the view again, and his features softened. He sighed, then, "You know, Hogwarts is everything Sirius said it would be. Just… the most magical place in the whole world, and I'm glad I got the chance to be here, even under this certain circumstances we're living in."

"I believe everyone has the same first impression of Hogwarts," Hermione mumbled.

"You too?"

"Yeah," she said looking down at him, "Even though I had previously read about it in my excitement."

"Hogwarts: A History?" he guessed turning at her with a grin.

"How did you know?" she said smiling back.

"Intuition," he smirked, then turned to the view and his face softened once again. "I know because I've wanted to read that book since I first heard about Hogwarts. Guess that in the library must be a few copies, I'd like to have one for a few weeks."

"You don't need to go to the library," Hermione said almost hesitant, almost. "I can always lend you mine."

He smiled at her.

"Thank you, Hermione."

There was again a comfortable silence, in which both were wordlessly grateful for the other's company. Rabazthian was lost in thought, admiring the beauty surrounding him, and knew for sure that the Astronomy Tower was his new favorite place in the whole world. But something still bothered him about that place, something dark and even painful, as he deep down knew he could feel the air filled with the smell of tragedy, of imminent death.

"I don't want to either, but we should get going," Hermione said, noticing the clearly evident change in his features, his lips turning into a tiny line and his icy-blue eyes becoming darker all of a sudden. "If we don't hurry, you won't have a chance to get some dessert."

Rabazthian finally turned to her, standing straight once again. "You're right, I don't want to miss it."

"Right," she said blushing slightly under his intense gaze.

If he noticed her pink cheeks he didn't say, just whispered, "Thank you for showing me this, 'Mione."

And he found himself smiling at her for the hundredth time that night.

Rabazthian touched his covered left arm, trying to overcome the pain.

That night, after Slughorn's party, Snape had made his and Dumbledore's job to treat his arm, as Dumbledore was not in the castle at the moment; he was attending one of his searches. Rabazthian now would caught sight of the headmaster only twice over the next few weeks, and he knew the reason was imperative. He rarely appeared at meals anymore, and would come into sight at Hogwarts just to attend his meeting with Rabazthian and Snape, and the seventeen year old felt slightly abandoned at the old headmaster's absence.

Now, at half past midnight, Rabazthian was walking down the hallways and climbing stairs, intending to get to the Astronomy Tower as fast as possible. He was glad that Hermione had showed him the way there, though he had never believed he would have the need to go back so quickly and so desperately. It was just something up there that dragged him back, perhaps the cold and fresh air, or the incredibly beautiful view of Hogwarts' grounds.

Maybe it was calling him because it was calm and he could think clearly, remember clearly.

Or perhaps it was the fact that soon the tower would turn out to be one of the more detestable places in Hogwarts, and the thought made him want to be there until such a thing happened.

Throughout dinner at Sluggy's rooms, Rabazthian had thought about it all, and no matter the reason, now he had set his sight in the Tower, thought it to be his place to ponder his deepest thoughts and feelings. As dinner had been nothing but interesting, he had got enough time to think and plan what moment of the night would be ideal to walk up there and how he would evade the prefects who patrolled the halls before bedtime. He was glad that he and Hermione had gone to the meal together and had sat beside each other while they ate ice cream of all flavors, as he had been able to have a good time even whispering and having fun with her while the others kept track to whatever Slughorn was relating, a few of his many adventures, as he put it, just to try to impress them all.

It was odd how he felt so careless around this girl, this unusual but kind, gentle and brave girl, as he had told her before. He had come to take her as a really good friend.

But that was no good thing.

The sound of footsteps behind him made him lose his train of thoughts. Alerted, he looked around and was ready to jump into the shadows if the walking figure passing through the opposite corridor was one of a prefects. But when the light illuminated his pale face and perfectly combed, blond hair, Rabazthian stared over at him. When he realized that Rabazthian's eyes were locked in his tall and slender figure, he stopped dead in his tracks and looked back.

Draco Malfoy's grey eyes mate his icy-blue ones.

Neither of them did nothing. It didn't matter if certain raven-haired boy with a lightening shaped scar came to both their heads, they stared at each other for a few minutes, blank expressions over both faces.

Until Draco shortly nodded his head towards him, and Rabazthian nodded back.

Then they both turned and kept walking their own paths.

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Thank you for reading!

-J