Mask

Dedicated to ArwenEvenstar, or Luinil_Telcontar, which ever she wants to go by now. She is my new Beta and Co-Writer for this fic. Thanks for keeping me Motivated girlie!

AN-With this chapter, I’ve tried to get to some of the problems that Samantha is going to face in her new life. More specifically, the feeling that she’s betraying her family by ‘going bad’, or not being the person that she thinks Phoebe and the girls want her to be. Let me know if it comes across as trite, or if I came close to capturing what she could be going through.

Also, this chapter is going to be the last one where Samantha has interactions with the group at Grimmauld place, at least before Christmas Hols, so I’m going to get the Romance going, or at least where they are halfway interacting with each other.

Chapter Six- The Face in the Mirror

“Slytherin!” The entire hall was silent as the house was called out, and Samantha sat frozen on her chair.

No.

She had misheard it, that’s all it was.

Any minute now, one of the other tables was going to break out in cheers and she was going to know that it was all going to be okay.

Nothing happened, and Professor McGonagall was giving her a look that clearly said “get moving’, so Samantha was forced to accept that she hadn’t misheard.

She really was evil.

She stood up slowly, and madder her way shakily down towards the green table, all the while hoping and praying that she was going to wake up from this nightmare.

After all, she was a Halliwell, and Halliwell, if they embodied any House at Hogwarts, were Gryffindors to the core, always ready to step in and save the innocents, no matter the cost to themselves. After all, hadn’t she lost a Aunt to a demon because Innocents were more important.

Now she was going to be the one hurting the Innocents.

After all, only Dark Wizards were sorted into Slytherin, there hadn’t been a Death Eater or wizard that went bad that wasn’t in the House of the Serpent.

Right?

She felt eyes on her back, and she turned her head, wanting desperately to stop her feet but they kept moving of their own volition.

She flinched at the look in her family’s eyes. The Weasley’s, all of them including Fred and George who she had come to adore, were glaring at her, fire in their eyes. She knew that she had just betrayed them.

What hurt worse was the Smug look on Hermione Granger’s face. She had known the whole time that Samantha was going to be a Slytherin. She had known, and tried to warn them.

Samantha had only been evil to her, proving the other girls point.

“Sit Down Samantha. Join us.” The voice was familiar and sent a spiral of fear down her spine. She turned around and bit back a scream. Sitting at the Slytherin table was the one demon that she had always feared, the only demon who had ever snatched her away from the protection that her family offered.

Barbas.

Samantha shot up in bed, screaming. Sweat was beading on her forehead and pouring down her back. She was panting for breath, the scream dying off, and she wrapped her arms around herself, shaking.

It had seemed so real, she could still hear that….things…voice echoing in her head, causing her to shudder and wrap her arms tighter around herself.

Barbas was still able to scare her shitless, even after all of these years.

It made her feel weak.

And she absolutely hated being weak.

Sam kicked her blankets off of her and swung her feet onto the ground, leaning over and feeling around for the jacket that she had shed there before collapsing into bed. It had been her mothers, and as she wrapped it around herself, she felt closer to Phoebe.

It was sentimental, and laugh worthy, but it was true. Sam needed every bit of comfort that she could get at that particular moment, and the jacket was the best thing she had. Peeking at the shapes that were Ginny and Hermione, and thankful that they appeared to be asleep, Samantha crept towards the door. She just had to get out of the bedroom, before the remnants of her dream choked her.

She had to get out.

HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP

The clock was chiming 2 A.M., and Sirius couldn’t sleep. He left his room, patting Buckbeak on the head as he passed, and padded down the stairs. The entire house was quiet, late at night being the rare times when the twins weren’t blowing things up in their bedroom and when the rest of the Order stationed in his house were asleep. Sirius used it as his time to think.

Think about mistakes that he made in the past and mistakes that he might be making now.

He was on the third floor landing, passing by the room that housed the Weasley and Granger girls, when he heard the voices. He slowed down as he got closer to the door, something telling him that he needed to hear what was being said inside the room.

“Ginny, you awake?” That was Hermione. Sirius would recognize the voice of his godson’s best friend anywhere. He was fond of the girl, thought she was a little too proud of her smarts, but she reminded him of Lily.

“Of course I am! I couldn’t sleep through that banshee’s cry. Honestly, you would think that no one else was sleeping in here, the way that bint acts.” That was Ginny, a girl that Sirius had always had his problems with. She reminded him a little too much of her mother, and Sirius and Molly Weasley had never gotten along, even when they were working on the same cases when he wasn’t an escaped convict.

Hermione laughed, and lowered her voice causing Sirius to lean closer to the door to hear what they were saying. “Did you hear what she was saying?” The girls voice changed, turning into a rather rude imitation of their other roommates voice. "No, please no. I'm not evil. I'm good. Please no. Aahh! Barbas!" The last word was spoken in a girly shriek, and was followed by copious amounts of laughter. Sirius felt his blood begin to boil. He had been rude, and a rather big jerk to most of his schoolmates, he wouldn’t deny the fact, but he had never deliberately hurt someone who he knew had gone through the hell that Samantha Halliwell nee Weasley had been through.

It was like pouring salt in a still open, and festering wound, and he might have been cruel, but he wasn’t that cruel.

Footsteps sounded in the room and Sirius guessed that one of the girls was getting up and moving to the other’s bed, so they could ‘gossip’ easier.

“So who d’you reckon Barbas is? Her boyfriend?” The youngest Weasley giggled, and Sirius could imagine the look on her face. It would be more akin to a look that would be at home on that of Lucius’ Malfoy’s children than the child of a upstanding family strong in the Light.

Made him dislike the girl even more.

Sirius ignored the little voice in the back of his brain that said he was upset on Samantha’s face more than because of what she had gone through in the last two years. Nothing could come of it, so he would just pretend that it didn’t exist.

After all, it had worked for him in the past.

“Absolutely not, Gin! After all, who in their right mind would want to date that?!” Sirius had to fight back a growl. That was going too far. He wanted to walk away, maybe go find Sam and see for himself that whatever dream she had had wasn’t badly affecting her, but he couldn’t force himself away from the door and the conversation that was going on behind it. It was like a train wreck that you couldn’t look away from, to use a muggle turn of phrase.

The younger girl laughed again, the sound like nails on a chalkboard to a now angry Sirius, and said snidely “Well, with a name like Barbas, you’d probably have to take what you could get Herm. Maybe she was so desperate she would date anybody!” Both girls laughed, though it was slightly muffled, apparently trying to keep the noise down out of respect for the rest of the house. As if the two girls inside knew anything about respect. Samantha had done nothing to them, well, without being provoked, and yet they were talking about her behind her back like she was the Hag from Hillmore.

“Oh and that crying! I’m serious Gin, I thought I was going to go mad. The way she was carrying on made her sound like a Blubbering Blogwart!” Both girls laughed, and Sirius gritted his teeth. Why was he still standing here listening to this?!

Ginny, for the first time sounding half way serious, and almost a fourth intelligent, asked Hermione a question that Sirius really wanted to hear the answer to. “You really don’t like her, do you Herm?” Sirius leaned closer to the door, almost putting his ear to the wood, so he wouldn’t miss the answer. He was very curious as to what it was. After all, there had to be a reason why a normally sweet girl like Hermione was being a rotten bint. Ginny he could understand, but not Hermione.

He was disappointed however.

“Well do you? You’re her ‘sister’ after all.” Sirius could see the quotation marks around the word ‘sister’. He knew that the Weasley children, with the exception of Fred, George, and the oldest two, hadn’t taken to the fact that they had an American Half-sister, but he didn’t think that it had escalated into hate. Apparently he and every other adult in the house had been wrong in that assumption.

Ginny snorted, the sound carrying clearly through the door. “Honestly? I hate her. She thinks that just because she’s dad’s American bastard she can come in and try to weasel into our lives. Well, I hate to tell her, but we don’t have room for a whore’s night-out daughter like her. She needs to just go back to where every the bleedin’ hell she came from!” Ginny’s voice got more passionate as she went on, and Sirius bit clean through his lip in his efforts to keep silent. He wasn’t used to exercising so much self-control, but he knew that hearing what the two girls had to say would give him more insight into Samantha’s mind.

He also wouldn’t mind having something to take to Arthur Weasley. No matter his wife and youngest children’s feelings on the girl, the Weasley Patriarch had tried to be as good of a father to his newest daughter as he was to his legitimate children, and Sirius didn’t think that he would take kindly to his youngest daughter’s words.

It might be the only payback that he could get, but he would enjoy taking it.

“Ginny, that was a little harsh.” Hermione’s voice was insincere, and Ginny snickered.

“No Herms, that’s just truth. Now, what about you? We’ve gotten my opinon of the bitch, but we have yet to hear from the glorious Hermione Granger. Tell me, what do you think of the interloper?” Hermione snorted.

“I don’t like her, not one bit. She never smiles, its odd and slightly disturbing.” Sirius rolled his eyes, thinking to himself. ‘You try smiling after all of your loved ones have died and you’re shipped off to another country. I’m sure you’d be depressed too.’

“Yeah Herms, I’ve noticed. Have you seen the way she’s looked at Sirius? Slightly creepy if you ask me.” Sirius pressed his ear against the door at the mention of his name. So Samantha had been looking at him, that was….interesting. A scowl darkened his face as the conversation unraveled however, his mind unable to comprehend the depths that these girls were dropping to.

“More like have the seen the way he’s looking at her? Its sickening!” Sirius bared his teeth. He had been doing no such thing…well, not much anyway.

“Do you think she’s put a Wic-canni spell on him or something? Something to make him act the way that he has?” Ginny clearly stumbled over the word, it being unfamiliar to her tougue, and Hermione laughed.

“Wiccan, Gin, Wiccan. And I do, actually. Sirius is entirely too intelligent to fall for the wiles of a slut like Samantha.” The words were harsh, and if Sirius hadn’t heard them himself, he wouldn’t have believed her capable of coming out of her mouth. He had once thought her entirely too sweet for such…vulgar….words.

“Well, Hermione, you have to remember that he was in a prison designed to drive people mad for twelve entire years. Maybe he isn’t exactly as put together as we would like to think, or as he would like us to think.” That was it, Sirius had finally had enough. He pulled himself away from the door, and began stomping down the hallway towards the back door. At this point, he didn’t care who heard him, knowing that they would just chalk it up to the antics of the “Insane Sirius Black”.

Maybe he was insane.

AN-I know that I was going to put the scene between Sam and Sirius in this chapter, but it just got too long and its too late for this little author. Love it or hate it, leave me a review!