Barking Mad (Sirius/OC)

They can't break me

I know some of you have been waiting for a certain character.... Drumroll, please!

Chapter 34 

And you see the things they never see,

All you wanted, I could be,

Now you know me, and I'm not afraid,

And I wanna tell you who I am,

Can you helpme be a man?

They can't break me,

As long as I know who I am.

~I'm still here - TreasurePlanet OST

"So how are you feeling, Nika?" Greene looked at me as if I was a bomb that could go off any minute.

I couldn't really blame him though. Sirius had even tried to pick a fight with me, when I refused to tell him why James had come to me when I looked distressed. Sirius' angry reaction had given me a bit of hope though. He had almost sounded jealous and well, I could definitely live with Sirius being jealous over me. Who wouldn't?

But that was probably not it though. Maybe he just wanted to be in the know, but I was hardly ready to tell Sirius what I had told James. Hell, I was barely ready to tell Lily what I had told James.

I knew that Lily wouldn't judge me for being who I am and she'd probably kick my ass that I even doubted that for a second, but yeah. We had a good thing going on, finally, and I didn't want to ruin that with my dark past.

What if I put her in harm's way as well?

It was bad enough that I thought that I was risking Sirius now that the mysterious notes had showed up...

Those notes. A shiver ran down my spine. Who was the writer? In the last two days since the first note, I had received two more. Each one had a name on it.

"Nicole Raven," had been the first one and it had nearly given me a heart attack. I bit my lip and studied Greene's hands.

If the first one had almost given me heart failure than the second one shocked me to my core. Sirius's name had been written on it and I couldn't help but perceive it as a threat. That wasn't all though, a date and place had been written underneath his name as well.

Today was the second of February and I was expected to meet my mysterious writer in an hour.

"Nika," Greene said gently. "Is there anything else on your mind?"

"Anthony didn't deserve to die," I said instead. I didn't want Dumbledore or Greene to know about the notes. I wanted to show people that I was in fact capable of cleaning up my own messes. I wanted to let people know that I wasn't the scared little girl under the bed anymore.

I had grown up to be a young woman who could handle whatever you threw her way.

I hoped.

These notions were beyond foolish, I knew that. It was dangerous playing with other people's lives as I was currently doing, but I knew that my family had never run from anything. I wasn't about to start - or well continue - either.

Greene nodded. Anthony was a subject he was familiar with, especially since he had helped me through the last three deaths I've seen. "Did you know him before?"