Stay - Mattheo Riddle

Chapter 107

The next morning, Kirra had decided that the best person for her to inform about her scar would be her best friend who also happened to be her godfather.

Kirra leapt up from the bed, hurried across the room, and sat down at her desk; she pulled a piece of parchment toward her, loaded her eagle-feather quill with ink, wrote;

Dear Sirius, then paused, wondering how best to phrase her problem, still wondering how much she should tell him about her nightmares. Though she knew she could tell him anything, she wondered if he were in the right mind state to hear about all the horrors in her head.

Sirius had been in Azkaban, the terrifying wizard jail guarded by creatures called dementors, sightless, soul-sucking fiends who had come to search for Sirius at Hogwarts when he had escaped. Yet Sirius had been innocent - the murders forwhich he had been convicted had been committed by Wormtail, Voldemort's supporter, whom nearly everybody now believed dead.

For one glorious hour, Kirra had believed that she was leaving the Dursleys at last, because Sirius had offered her a home once his name had been cleared. But the chance had been snatched away from her - Wormtail had escaped before they could take him to the Ministry of Magic, and Sirius had had to flee for his life, leaving her once again.

Kirra had helped him escape on the back of a hippogriff called Buckbeak, and since then, Sirius had been on the run. The home Kirra might have had if Wormtail had not escaped had been haunting her all summer, and the fact that her and Sirius were meant to live their years ago after the first wizarding war ended, though sadly her life had been stolen from her too early. 

It had been doubly hard to return to the Dursleys knowing that she had so nearly escaped them forever. Nevertheless, Sirius had been of some help to Kirra, even if he couldn't be with her. It was due to Sirius that Kirra and Harry now had all their school things in their bedroom with them.

The Dursleys had never allowed this before; their general wish of keeping Kirra and Harry as miserable as possible, coupled with their fear of their powers, hadled them to lock their school trunks in the cupboard under the stairs every summer prior to this. 

But their attitude had changed since they had found out that Kirra had a dangerous murderer for a godfather - for Kirra had conveniently forgotten to tell them that Sirius was innocent. Kirra had received multiple letters from Sirius since she had been back at Privet Drive.

All had been delivered, not by owls (as was usual with wizards), but by large, brightly colored tropical birds. Hedwig had not approved of these flashy intruders;she had been most reluctant to allow them to drink from her water tray before flying off again. 

Kirra, on the other hand, had liked them; they put her in mind of palm trees and white sand, and she hoped that, wherever Sirius was (Sirius never said, in case the letters were intercepted), he was enjoying himself. 

Somehow, Kirra found it hard to imaging dementors surviving for long in bright sunlight, perhapse that was why Sirius had gone South. Sirius's letters, which were now hidden beneath the highly useful loose floorboards under Kirra's bed, sounded chearful, and in all of them he had reminded Kirra to call on him if ever Kirra needed to. 

Well, she needed to right now. Finally, when sounds of movement could be heard from Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's room, Kirra cleared her desk of crumpled pieces of parchment and reread her finished letter.

Dear Siri,

Thanks for your last letter. That bird was enormous; it could hardly get through my window. Things are the same as usual here. Dudley's diet isn't going too well. Tuney found him smuggling doughnuts into his room yesterday. They told him they'd have to cut his pocket money if he keeps doing it, so he got really angry and chucked his PlayStation out of the window.