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ENTER NUMBER TWELVE GRIMMAULD PLACE, ISLINGTON, LONDON.
[ THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX has dispersed, presumably after a meeting, with select few members still seated around the large kitchen table holding mugs. There are thin wisps of steamy vapor rising from some, and others appear to have been discarded. SIRIUS BLACK is at the head of the table, accompanied by LYRA REED and HARRY POTTER. SEVERUS SNAPE has just risen, and appears to be moving toward the doorway to leave. As an audience, we catch them mid-conversation. ]
“Wait a moment,” said Sirius, straightening up in his chair.
“Sirius... Don't.” Black’s name fell from Lyra’s perfectly painted mouth in the cadence of a low-toned warning. Though the silvery-grey of her eyes had trained upon him, she didn't stiffen in her seat like the others. Instead she tilted her chin back, shuddering a stray curl of auburn hair from her eyes. Tightening both her hands around her mug. Tonks appeared briefly from the doorway, but ducked back out into the hall to eavesdrop from a safe distance. (Who could blame her?)
Snape had turned back and was facing Black as well, sneering. “I’m in rather a hurry, Black … unlike you, I do not have unlimited leisure time…”
A soft sigh beckons Harry’s attention once more to Lyra seated beside him, yet all she says is “That’s enough,”
“I’ll get right to the point, then.” said Sirius, rising to his feet before Snape who ─ both Harry and Lyra had noticed ─ had crammed a fist in the pocket of his cloak over what was unquestionably the handle of his wand. “If I hear you’re using these Occlumency lessons to give Harry a hard time,” continued Sirius, “You’ll have me to answer to.”
“Boys, cut it out──” this was not the first row she'd mediated between them, and it seemed to exhaust her to consider that it certainly wouldn't be the last. Harry's eyes flickered toward the two men, and he bristled.
“How .. touching,” Snape sneered without any regard for Lyra, who was still ogling them both warily. “But surely you have noticed that Potter is very like his father?”
“I have,” said Sirius, now seeming elated with a rush of pride.
“Well then, you’ll know that he too is so arrogant that criticism simply .. Bounces off him.” said Snape sleekly. Lyra took Potter's hand in hers to keep him still beside her, and her jaw tightened visibly beneath her cheek. When they glanced over at each other, she shook her head. This particular squabble was beyond his pride.
Sirius pushed his chair roughly aside in the flash of a moment as though he'd been itching to do it for hours, and strode around the table toward Snape, drawing out his wand as he went. Snape whipped out his own from the depths of his billowing traveling cloak, and soon they were squaring one another up.
“Sirius──” Harry’s voice rose, though neither of the men appeared to have heard him.
“Oi! Knock it off!” warned Lyra even further with her eyes darting, meanwhile taking care in squeezing the young lad's hand to steady him.
“I’ve warned you, Snivellus,” said Sirius, his face barely a foot from Snape’s. “I don’t care if Dumbledore thinks you’re reformed, I know better──”
Lyra’s body finally became rigid in her chair. The little vein that ran the length of her temple had begun to throb. It could be seen just there, beneath her ivory skin. She could feel the rhythm of her heart behind her eyes.
“Sirius, that's enough!”
“Oh,” whispered Snape over Lyra’s voice, “But why don’t you tell him so? .. Or, is it perhaps that you’re worried he may not heed the advice of a man who hides in his mother’s house for six months with any over-abundance of care?”
“Tell me, how is Lucius Malfoy these days?” growled Sirius, “I expect he’s just delighted his little lapdog’s working at Hogwarts, isn’t he?”
“Speaking of dogs,” replied Snape, with a grim air of calm. There was a discernible an edge upon his demeanor now. It was paper-thin, but razor sharp. “Did you hear? Malfoy recognized you the last time you risked a little jaunt outside. Clever idea indeed, Black, getting yourself seen, it gives you a cast-iron excuse not to leave your little hiding place in the future… Ingenious.”
Sirius raises his wand,
“Stop!─” Lyra’s voice has risen above the rest, but still seems to barely be heard.
“─No!─” Harry yelled, tearing himself free from Lyra’s hold and scrambling over the table, fighting to try and wriggle himself between them.
“─Harry, no!”
In an instant hardly long enough to snap a twig, Lyra was on after him. Beneath an adrenaline-filled surge of her bodily strength, she vaulted herself upward with one hand and cleared the distance of the table (it may have been quite the impressive sight, if any of them had a chance to notice) before swooping down upon the boy and yanking him away roughly by the sleeve. In the space Potter had left behind, the Matron was shoving her own body between the two men by the shoulder. There was a whirl of robes; of black hair, feral red curls, and of various grunts that had begun to overflow from the struggle.
“That’s ENOUGH!" Lyra shouted, "Both of you COME──OFF IT!”
Harry stumbled back, his strikingly green bespectacled eyes wide. He found himself somewhat taken aback by the vehemence of Lyra's protective fury. The sound of her raised voice clashed against the room in such a cacophony, he might not have thought it possible without being present to bear witness to it. He'd never heard her sound at all like this before .. never seen her burn like a struck match before. Had he?
In an instant, she'd been transformed into a raging storm in the shape of a woman. A hurricane heart with vicious grey hues and a head of fiery red hair cascading like flame down her back. She was baring her teeth. (Look too closely, and you might even glimpse that her canines had sharpened to a point.) Harry couldn't help but wonder, had they always been that large? .. Had she always been that pale? A map of blue veins had begun swelling beneath her arms. The whites of her eyes were darkening. In the light, they almost seemed to reflect an amber hue.
Harry had to blink twice, teetering upon the possibility that maybe it was just a trick of the light. Yet, still, neither of the men were even looking at her. They carried on bickering despite the figure in their midst fighting to keep them apart.
“Are you calling me a coward?” Roared Sirius over Lyra, all the while trying to shove her back and out of the way.
“Why, yes, I suppose I am.” said Snape coolly, his black eyes never averting despite the body squirming to remain steadfastly between both he and Black.
“Lyra,” Sirius snarled disgruntledly, at last acknowledging her, yet still struggling to shift her out of his way: “Get──Out──Of──It!” but before he had the opportunity to properly dislodge her balance, Lyra had extended her arms and brought two splayed hands outward to shove her palms forcibly against both Sirius and Severus, driving them back harshly by the center of their chests. She, whom rather contrarily seemed such a small and narrow thing when compared to the two men, must indeed have contained some preternatural sort of physical strength. The force of her hands alone was quite enough to stagger both parties back a step or two, even going so far as to threaten their balance.
In the effort to regain themselves, their wands were lowered just in time for Arthur Weasley to come bursting through the door─ “Cured!” he announced brightly into the room. “Completely cured!”
The room fell immediately to a sudden, somewhat eerie quiet... Though, only until the maiden reeled back toward Snape with her lips curled, roaring like a lion: “Have you completely lost your bloody mind?!”
“Merlin’s beard,” says Arthur against the shouting, “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing, Arthur.” replied Sirius, still glowering after Snape for as long as it took for him to be face-to-face again with Lyra, who had refocused her untamed attention to the sound of his voice. The single step he may have faltered back into the room was broadened once again as she pushed him back from the shoulder.
“And YOU! You've got enough cheek for a second arse. I don't think you're even capable of going a single night without acting like a proper gobshite. Don’t even think I’m through with you, either ── Severus, go!” but Snape simply pocketed his wand, and swept across the kitchen without a sound. He pauses at the door, even with Lyra’s hand white-knuckled around his wrist, tugging him by the arm.
“Six o’clock Monday evening, Potter.. That's the eighteenth hour.” Lyra’s free hand reached out to interrupt him, and she grappled a fistful of his robes,
“Come on! We need to talk.”
And in a moment he was gone, trailing after the healer through the doorway. From a distance, they could still hear her scalding tone; though it seemed, for now, at least, that the shouting was done.
The moment they'd spilled into the hallway, Tonks had come scrambling back into the room and was ducking through the far entrance. "Wotcher, Harry! Never a dull moment."
In all his boyish curiosity, Harry could not help but peer from around the archway after they'd gone. He found himself only half-surprised to still be able to see both Snape and Lyra standing in the entrance hall to Grimmauld Place. Both their lips were moving, but their tones had fallen to a hush. He could tell they were arguing. Snape seemed exasperated, but was absolutely determined not to crumble before her fury ── though only before, in a fleeting backward glimpse, he had caught the sight of the young boy gawking at them and snarled. “Potter!─”
Lyra's eyes snapped back toward him, and the boy half-blinks with a flinch as she barks “Harry, GO ON!” out from behind Snape’s lanky build. It sent the boy reeling back into the kitchen, wide-eyed. (He couldn’t recall having ever been shouted at by her before.) It burned like a hot iron in his heart. He shifted uncomfortably beneath some strange sense of knowing, now, of what both Snape and Sirius had in store for them.
Stealing a gaze at his godfather, he’s almost shocked to see that after it all, Sirius will only wink at him and offer something of a smile.