Falling

Almost four weeks have sped by, we were now in July, my happiness died slightly knowing that each day that came and went, I was closer to leaving behind my father to return to school. Mrs. Weasley has kept us busy as pixies, with cleaning the home. It was exhausting tedious work, but together we have made it enjoyable. Having several laughs and even a couple injuries.

Cleaning out the bedrooms I have made several discoveries that were left behind in the rooms. I haven't been able to root through a lot, I took these things stealthily. Dad loathed his family, and the way he treated the heirlooms of his family made it well known to everyone. Made me realize just how much hate he had. Anything that was branded with the Black crest was destroyed with a laugh. I had to listen as portraits were ripped apart, the subjects cursing and screaming, my skin crawled.

I learned several things about my family; the family tree in the drawing room I could draw by memory. Walburga was my grandmother, who hated everyone that existed it seem, except me. She never had a bad word to say about me, instead she cried for me to get out and leave these 'mudbloods and traitors' it made me increasingly uncomfortable. Besides the warnings of leaving Grimuald Place I haven't spoke to Walburga since the night I arrived.

As I tossed bundles of newspapers to Ron, who kept dropping them most of the time causing this to take longer than necessary. The reason we were given this job, along with a good number of other was after told directly by Dumbledore that we were to refrain from contacting Harry in anyway. Well we weren't happy about that at all, so we wrote him a letter telling him all that we knew and what we were ordered, but Mrs. Weasely caught us, of course that only got us sentenced to washing dishes for about a month, we were half way through that before we grew the confidence to try again, after rewriting the letter we had to sneak into the bedroom that Mr. and Mrs. Weasely shared here to gain access to Ron's owl, again we were caught.

I never seen anyone's face turn as red as Mrs. Weasely's did. She beat out Snape that day, and so we were stuck doing dishes for the rest of the summer, scrubbing the floors, and doing whatever came to her head at that moment. We couldn't argue, that and we were too scared to do so.

"Ron! Really?!" I groaned as he fumbled with another bundle, this time when it tumbled from his grip the papers fell loose and scattered everywhere.

"Sorry!" He shouted back.

"Hey, no yelling at my girlfriend." George and Fred trotted in. Ron scowled at them and knelt down helping me stack the papers back up. "Let your white knight help, fair maiden." I glared up at George, but he didn't seem to see my irritated face, his wand emerged and with artistic flicks the papers from my hands were ripped out, zipping through the air along with all of the remaining papers into the trash bags.

I curled my fingers as blood started to bead up in my multiple places in both hands. Why are paper cuts the worst kind of wound a person can get? I cringed as the air touched the open flesh. "Charm?" Ron noticed me grimacing and wandered over to me, he forced my fingers to stretch out. "Brilliant, George you damaged your girl."

"What?" George blinked staring at me. I bit my lip, glaring at Ron. They were only paper cuts, but looking down at my palms it looked like a knife was slashed across the soft skin. Fred and George quickly stepped to my side and examined my hands. "Bloody hell!" George cried, pocketing his wand.

"Oh good you are done. Charm? What's wrong?" Mrs. Weasley spotted the blood. "Merlin!" She elbowed the boys back and studied the still bleeding cuts. "Make a fist and follow me. We need to clean these." We were in the kitchen, Mrs. Weasely vigorously scrubbed the blood and the dirt that was already on my hands away. George was apologizing repeatedly, after already explaining what happened to his mother and getting, still was, a mighty loud lecture.

"Despite the fact you are of age, does not mean that you have to use your magic for everything!" She was using this rather foul smelling glob to seal the wounds. I gagged many times, George's sorry growing closer together each time he noticed.

"It's fine!" I exclaimed. "We all knew I was the next one to gain an injury anyways." It was really nothing. The gunk, no matter how bad smelling it was, slowly closed the wounds and healed the pain. "It wasn't anything fatal." I locked eyes with him. "It's fine. Stop apologizing. It's pretty scary to hear your utter that word." We shared a laugh at that comment, Mrs. Weasely told us to take a seat at the table as she gather the ingredients for dinner. Not long after we discussed the latest Quidditch game did Hermione and Ginny join us, they were covered in dust, Ginny wore a rather sour look.

"Kreacher took the trash bags we had and dumped them on us." She scowled pulling what looked like an old tooth brush from her tangled hair.

"He is a nasty thing, if it wasn't for Dumbledore's orders I would have sent him packing with a new package of socks." Dad threw down a bloodied potato sack on the table.

"Sirius, what is in the bag?" Hermione asked, inching away.

"Rats." He answered, lifting the bag from the table and slamming it back down. "Hard gits to kill." Hermione's face turned a green that resembled a garden snake. Dad took notice of it. "They are for Buckbeak." Oh yes our resident Hippogriff, at points I would visit Buckbeak and pet him for a bit. He is a sweet creature.

"Sirius! Not on our dinner table!" Mrs. Weasely cried stiffly, looking a bit green herself. Dad snatched up the bag.

"My apologies, Molly. I'll be back in a bit going to go feed Buckbeak, Charm would you care to join me." It wasn't a question, but I doubt anyone noticed. I followed beside dad, wary of the swinging bloody rat filled bag. Once we were in Buckbeak's room and had bowed and were now tossing him dinner, dad turned to me. "Tonight we are going for a walk."

"We are?"

"Just the two of us."

"Is that even allowed?" No one ever suggested to take a walk, Mrs. Weasely who usually had us go with her on shopping trips never asked.

"No. That's why we will have to do it tonight." He grinned devilishly, it was contagious. "Midnight everyone should be asleep, go to bed fully dressed, but make sure no one sees. I mean it no one."

"I have snuck out of bed a time or two you know. I think I can handle it." I have, during my third year was the first time. To see him, after I realized the truth about my father I just had to see him, know him, and I did. Until the night Harry, Hermione, Ron, Lupin and Snape found him also.

"That's my girl." He ruffled my hair, after Buckbeak consumed all his garden rats we went back down to the kitchen just as dinner was being passed around. I took a seat between George and Hermione. George opened his mouth, and started to once again apologize. I covered his mouth, and gave him a warning look before scooping mac and cheese onto my plate.

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It was difficult to sneak into bed, wearing jeans and a t-shirt still when Ginny and Hermione shared my room with me, but I did it. Another obstacle that I always had to face was not falling asleep as I faked sleeping, Mrs. Weasely did bed checks before she, herself crawled into bed. Midnight though came without a hitch and I grabbed my shoes and jacket that I stashed near the door so they would be accessible for when I had to leave.

Dad was waiting for me, in dog form right by the door. "This is how we will be traveling huh?" I whispered, throwing cautious glances at snoozing grandmother Black. He nudged a backpack towards me. I slung it over my shoulder and carefully unlatched the door, holding it open for my father who trotted out happily. I realized as he went down the steps that there was a leash trailing after him.

When the door was fully closed behind me I burst into giggles, he snorted at me as I reached down and grabbed the leash. He raised his head proud and together we strolled down the sidewalk. "So is there a specified destination or is it just a aimless walk?" I realized how was I gonna get an answer? "Not gonna get an answer to that one am I?" It sounded like he was giggling at me. "Well growl if we have a place to go, snort if we don't." He growled. "Okay. Is it at least in London?" Another growl. "I'll take that as a yes."

It turned out the destination was a park. A decent one at that. I stood under a lamp post sorta scared about who was out at this time of night, I didn't realize that I dropped the leash. "Throw me the bag, Charm." I jumped at my father's voice and tossed the bag in the direction of his voice. I could hear the bag being unzip, and shuffling of some sort. I stood under a street lamp trying to see in the darkness where he was. "Come here." I took a few steps out of the light and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

I felt dad's hand on my shoulder, he led me into the thicker part of the trees. "What are we doing here?" I questioned watched as he reached into the bag and pulled out, two brooms.

"We are gonna fly." He answered handing me what was my own moon trimmer. Dad held his own broom, a Nimbus 1700. "I wanna see how good of a flyer you are." I held my broom firmly in my hand. The handle was a dark polished oak, the tail was made from birch twigs.

"Better than you old timer." I taunted mounting the broom, cheering as it raised quickly over the tree top. The moon trimmer were the highest flying brooms on the market. Dad soon met me in the air.

"Stay high and hidden in the dark, you have a less chance of being spotted."

"Let's race!" Before I knew it I was watching my dad speed away. I leaned forward, fighting the wind to catch up, and I did sneaking up overhead. We were high over roof tops, cars with the lights on that sped down the road looked like fireflies.

"You are adequate." Dad shouted at me as I spun. Laughing as I weaved out of the way of a bird. We spent literally hours flying around. Doing tricks, trying to outdo each other, it was only when we saw that the sky was lightening up that we quickly packed up and rushed home.

He was still in dog form when we entered the house, I latched the door up again, and gave him a quiet good night, he nodded and quickly jogged up the staircase. Carefully I slipped off my shoes and padded across the foyer.

"Mistress, Charm." I twirled around looking for Kreacher. He was mostly covered by darkness but I spotted him, back bent like usual right by the staircase. "You shouldn't be out late." He sneezed. I took a few steps towards him. "How interesting." He coughed. "Blood traitors would find this-" He broke into a coughing fit, but he didn't have to finish the threat.

"Kreacher. I-" He sneezed and coughed. "I command you not to speak of what you saw to anyone." I cringed as he fell to his knees as the coughing got worse. A sharp pang entered my heart, I knelt down next to him and help him up. He slapped my hands away and used the banister as a support.

"Mistress, Black wants to talk to you." He said before allowing the coughs to take over. Kreacher kept swatting him away each time I reached for him.

"Charm." I looked over my shoulder at the portrait, the curtain flapped as she called my name again. "Leave him. He is a house elf. The equivalent of dirt."

"He lives and breathes like us." I retorted standing up and yanking the curtain back, trying to ignore the dust that made my eyes water and tickled my nose. Rubbing my nose I narrowed my eyes at her as she scoffed.

"He is dirt that is able to serve us, but enough of him. I have heard that you are my pathetic son's daughter."

"Don't talk-"

"Who is your mother?" She interrupted.

"I don't know." I said through clenched teeth, the curtains crunching in my fist.

"Don't know!? How can you not know who your mother is?" Not knowing, or liking her taunting tone, what else to do with a screeching portrait, but to let the curtain cover her back up and run, grabbing my bags and shoes and high tailing back to my room. Just as another door down the hall, which I think was Mrs. Weasely's opened, I closed mine and jumped in my bed, cursing myself as I remember Hermione was laying in bed also. Covering myself and trying to make myself look like I was comfortable, the door opened and then closed moments later.

After the foot steps couldn't be heard and Walburga was silent again I let out a deep breath, and allowed myself to relax and fall asleep.