The Outcasts Of Hogwarts

Chapter 15 Near Misses

Chaos erupted around Amaris. The younger students started screaming, crying as they hugged each other. While the older students shouted over the noise, spreading their theories. Many of them gave Amaris suspicious, even accusing, looks but she glared back at them until they lost their nerve and turned away. She silently swore that if she ever met the writer of the article about her father, she would stab them with their own quill.

"Everyone, please head directly to the Great Hall, in an orderly fashion." Said Dumbledore. He didn't raise his voice but he was heard by everyone. The Gryffindors fell silent again and did as the Headmaster had instructed. Only the occasional whispers were heard over the sound of all their feet once again descending the stairs.

Amaris walked amongst the crowd in a daze, her mind far away as it tried to find the answer to a question that wasn't yet fully formed.

They were joined in the hall by the other three houses, all of them very confused and tired. Dumbledore told them that they would have to spend the night there and with a flick of his wand, the hall was lined with sleeping bags.

As they all settled in, Amaris silently thanked Sirius Black, the mass murderer, for not breaking in the night before. That would have been a wonderful opportunity to reveal her secret to the entire school and get expelled all at once. She flopped down on her sleeping bag, thoroughly exhausted. But no one else in the hall had any plans on going to sleep any time soon.

The room was a buzz as the tale of what had happened spread amongst the students, getting more dramatic with every telling. Amaris looked over at Harry, Ron and Hermione and sighed. They were doing that thing. She had found them doing it a number of times. They would be sitting in a huddle with their heads together, not explicitly excluding her from the conversation but they would not so subtly change the topic when she arrived.

Percy called for lights out but that didn't stop the giant game of Chinese whispers, it continued in hushed voices. Amaris lay there in the dark and listened.

Most of the conversations were on how Black had gotten past the Dementors, some of the theories were so ludicrous that Amaris struggled not to laugh. She thought that they were wasting their time. It wasn't a new discovery that he could get past the Azkaban guards, he'd done it before, months ago. In all that time the Ministry hadn't figured it out. What were the chances of school children coming up with something they hadn't?

The other topic being discussed was what Black had been after. Amaris listened more intently to these but nobody seemed to have any good ideas.

After a while, the whispers died away as the students succumbed to sleep. No one else seemed to have given a second thought to the thing that was plaguing Amaris' mind. The damage to the Fat Lady's portrait. With no one else's theories to listen to anymore, she began forming her own.

According to Peeves, Sirius Black had tried to enter the Gryffindor Tower, the Fat Lady hadn't let him in so he had gotten angry and what?  He shouldn't have had a wand so how had he done that to the painting?

The canvas had been split into straight strips, not with torn and jagged edges like there would be if he had attacked it with his hands. A knife then? But the tares had been in groups, three or four slices in parallel. That wouldn't have happened if he had slashed at it with a single blade.

No, Amaris had known what had caused the damage the moment she had seen it. They were claw marks. The notorious mass murderer had a pet.

Or at least a non-human companion, this was the bit she was trying to work out: what type of animal/creature/being was it? If only she had gotten a better look and had her book with her. Amaris scrunched up her eyes trying to remember every detail she had seen.