Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

AN: This has been posted before, but on the advice of some of my reviewers, I'm cutting it down into more user friendly sized chapters.

She woke grudgingly, her shoulders being shaken. Disorientated, she was unsure of where she was, until the ache in her neck and back told her of the down side of sleeping in the library. Blinking, she opened her eyes to find herself staring into a pair of dark green ones, framed by ginger lashes. Shrugging of his now still hands, she wiped her grainy eyes. "What do you want?" she demanded.

"Shh, what are you doing here so late? You're lucky I found you and not Filch." Now fully awake, she spotted the Gryffindor crest on his robes, and just above it, the Head Boy badge.

"I'm allowed," she snapped. "I have a pass, see." She dug the small piece of parchment out of her pocket and thrust it at him.

It didn't take him long to read, all it said was that she was found, after hours, in the library, or corridors linking the library to the Ravenclaw common room, then she wasn't to be punished. It was signed by Professor Dumbledore. "How'd you get one of these?"

"Professor Dumbledore gave it to me." He might have been two years older than she was, but it was late, she was tired, her back hurt from sleeping slumped over a table, and she was in no mood to be polite. "What time is it?" she asked, stifling a yawn.

"1am," was the reply. "I'm sure even the Ravenclaw dorms are more comfortable to sleep in than these chairs."

"Mm hmm." She was to busy trying to get her books together to pay much attention to what he was saying. Silently he helped her gather together her pieces of parchment, and, when she was finally organised, followed her out of the room. Opening the door, they walked right into Mrs Norris, Filch's cat, and seconds later Filch himself joined them.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" he asked, leering, drool escaping from the corner of his mouth.

Anahid drew herself up, ignoring the protests from her neck and back, standing straight, she somehow managed to look down at Filch, although she only came up to his nose. "You know very well what's going on here." She said, voice perfectly calm. "I have a pass to be here."

"He doesn't," Filch gloated, pointing at the other member of the group.

"No, but he doesn't need one. He's supposed to make sure students don't break the rules, he is the Head Boy after all."

"That doesn't give him permission to be out at this hour." Filch snarled.

"Yes it does," she replied calmly. "Now, don't you have something important to be doing?" She arched one black eyebrow at him.

Filch slunk off, muttering to himself, Mrs Norris at his heels. Anahid smiled to herself, turned and walked back to the Ravenclaw common room; oblivious to the Head Boy staring incredulously at her back, and looking somewhat impressed.

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Anahid didn't get much more sleep that night. On entering the common room she found one of the first-year boys curled up on a couch, crying quietly. The school year had begun only two days before, and some of the first-years were beginning to realise just how far from home they were. The added stresses of being a muggle-born had added to this particular boy's missing of home. After consoling him, and explaining the many joys of attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, she had crept into bed for a scant few hours more sleep.

```*```*```*```

Anahid was glad it was Friday when she woke the next morning, it meant that the next day was Saturday, which always meant the opportunity for a sleep-in. She was also glad she was the only Ravenclaw girl in the fifth-year, it meant a bathroom to herself.

```*```*```*```

It was looking like being a very ordinary day, until she was stopped after lunch. A hand grabbed her arm as she was headed to her Arithmancy classroom. Turning, she found herself staring into the same green eyes as the night before, or, more correctly, earlier that morning.

"What do you want now?" she sighed, too tired to pull away.

"I wanted to thankyou for getting Filch off my back last night." He scrubbed a hand through his longish, red hair. Looking slightly embarrassed, he added, "First week of school and the Head Boy almost had detention."

"Don't mention it." Anahid told him, "Ever."

He looked at her with wide-eyed surprise. "Can't I at least know your name?" he asked.

"Why?"

"Call it grateful curiosity. I want to know the name of the girl who stood up to Filch like that." He smiled at her.

"Fine, but only because I'm going to be late, and this will stop you from bothering me any more." She rubbed her eyes with one hand, so missed his bewildered expression. "My name is Anahid Black. Goodbye." She spun on her heel, and disappeared before he could recover himself.

```*```*```*```

Bill Weasley was confused. Not only that, he was confused about being confused. One minute he thought he was helping an overly studious Ravenclaw avoid detention, the next he was dealing with what appeared to be Sirius Black's fifteen year old sister.

The story of how Sirius Black had betrayed the man who was supposed to be his best friend was well known in the wizarding world, it having occurred only five years earlier. And the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, Bill added to himself.

That the dark haired girl who had talked Filch out of giving him a detention was related to that monster was more than a little difficult for him to swallow. He could still see her, as she has been when he had entered the library the night before, slumped over a table, an ink smear on one cheek, books and papers spread out around her. He had shaken her shoulders gently until her eyes had opened. Her eyes, he smiled to himself, he'd never seen eyes quite that dark a shade of blue before. Then this afternoon, she'd seemed so certain that after she had told him her name he wouldn't want anything more to do with her. Which brought him back to his problem, she was Sirius Black's sister.

A small voice snapped him out of his reverie. He had been pacing the entrance hall, having given up on trying to think clearly in the Gryffindor common room, and quickly rejecting the library. Looking down he spotted the source of the voice, a boy wearing robes with the Ravenclaw crest, and looking rather nervous, was standing in front of him.

"Can I help you?" Bill asked.

"You're the Head Boy, aren't you?" the blond haired boy asked, wringing his hands.

"I certainly am. Why don't we go sit in there?" Bill gestured to the Great Hall, left empty after dinner had ended half an hour ago. The first-year (he was so small he couldn't be anything but) nodded dumbly. Once seated, at what happened to be the Ravenclaw table, Bill turned back to him. "What can I do for you?"

"I…I wanted to ask you a question. You see, my friend, Michael, he was homesick last night, and he said this nice Ravenclaw prefect found him in the common room and talked to him about it. He said that her name was Anahid, and that if I ever felt like he did, I should go talk to her. But I asked one of the big boys in the common room if they knew where she was, and he said that her brother was evil, and that she was bad news too. But Michael said she was nice, and the other prefects seem big and scary." He ended in a breathless rush, having said all of this very quickly.

Bill looked at him astonished, suddenly forced to face all of his own apprehensions and prejudices. "Well…"

"George."

"Well, George. I would say that if your friend trusts her, you should too. Just because her brother did something bad, doesn't mean she will. Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"Yes," George nodded, "a sister, she's four."

"Well you wouldn't want people to treat her badly if you did something wrong, would you?" George shook his head. "Exactly, so I think you should talk to Anahid, and if, for any reason, you still want to talk to someone else, come and find me, ok?"

"Ok," he grinned, "thanks a lot mister." He jumped up off his seat.

"Bill, just call me Bill."

"Bye."

"Bye." Bill watched George race off, looking much happier than he had at the start of their conversation. "Mister indeed," he snorted, "I'm only seventeen."

Alone again, he turned has attention back to his own problem to do with the Ravenclaw prefect, only to find it solved. After all what was it his mother was always saying? 'Just because one apple is rotten, doesn't mean you have to throw out the whole basket.' He smiled to himself and headed for the library.

```*```*```*```

Anahid had just put the finishing touches on the Transfiguration essay that was due to be assigned next week, when just about the person she least expected joined her.

"What do you want?" she asked, rolling up the parchment, now that the ink was dry.

"And hello to you too." Bill replied.

"You're awfully chipper considering you're talking to the infamous Sirius Black's sister." She eyed him carefully, "that means either you've flipped your lid, or you're on something. Which is it?"

"Neither," he replied, sounding a little insulted.

"Oh, so someone put you up to this then." Anahid began packing away her quill and ink, it was Friday night, and as soon as she got rid of this guy, she was going to treat herself to a nice read of a good book.

"No. I just came to tell you that it seems you've made quite an impression on some first-year boys."

"Really."

"Yes, they're about to make you their official confidante."

"Yippee for me. Didn't the other prefects talk them out of coming near me yet?"

All traces of Bill's grin and good humour disappeared. "Some of them tried, yes, but I had a first-year, George, come to see me, to ask whether or not he should talk to you. It seems you helped his friend last night."

"And what did you tell him?" her cool indifference was beginning to warm.

"That he should talk to you, of course. Why punish the sister for the crimes of the brother?"

"That just shows how little you know." She snapped, picking up her bag. She would do without that book tonight.

"What do you mean, I would have thought you'd be pleased." His face showed his confusion.

"Pleased? Why exactly should I be pleased? You just don't understand." She was standing now, leaning over the table, glaring at him, voice rising with every word. She had already turned to go when Madam Pince stalked over and kicked them both out.

"Help me understand then." He caught her elbow, "explain it to me."

She spun around to glare at him. "What exactly would you like me to explain? That ever since my name was read out as Black, Anahid at the sorting ceremony people have avoided me. That as the only girl in Ravenclaw in my year I was naturally chosen to be a prefect this year; although I have no friends, no one in my house will talk to me, and no one out of it knows I exist, except to whisper 'there goes Sirius Black's sister' when I pass, if they notice me at all." She paused for breath. "Do you have any idea what it is like to have to contrast every memory you have of your big brother. Who's practically the only family you have because your mother died after diving birth to you, and the biggest contribution to your childhood your father made was to hire a new nanny every time the old one quit. To have to remember crawling into his bed at night after I'd had a nightmare. To contrast the memories of the boy who spent hours cleaning up and repairing every glass thing in the kitchen. All because I'd caused them all to shatter, when I was three, because everyone was ignoring me, and no one would make me breakfast. The boy who laughed and congratulated me afterwards because it was the first magical thing I ever did. To have to contrast those memories with the knowledge that he killed three of his best friends, and a dozen innocent muggles. To know that everybody avoids you, hates you even, for something your heart refuses to accept, even though your head knows all of the facts."

Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she gasped in air at the end of her speech. Bill stared at her dumbfounded, and Anahid turned and disappeared before he could stop her.

```*```*```*```

Anahid didn't recognise the owl that pecked on her window two hours later, but the confidence, and arrogance even, with which it delivered the thick envelope, marked it as a school owl. She didn't recognise the handwriting that wrote her name so smoothly across the envelope's front. She opened the envelope carefully, trying not to rip it; it was an old habit she had picked up somewhere, she refused to acknowledge the voice that whispered it was something she had done with the letters Sirius had sent her when he was away at school.

The envelope open, she pulled out a thick wad of paper. Unfolding the sheets of slightly yellow parchment revealed a letter written in forest green ink, that ran over five sides. Mystified still to the identity of the sender, she turned to the bottom of the last page. Printed at the end of the letter was Bill Weasley, and stamped under it, Head Boy, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. For the first time she realised that she hadn't known the identity of the young man that she had spent more time talking to in the last day, than with almost any other in her time at the school.

```*```*```*```

An hour, and three readings of the letter later, Anahid had decided something. Either he was the nicest guy she had met since Sirius had brought Remus Lupin home, or he wasn't quite all there. Either way it looked like, despite all of her best efforts, she had made a friend.

She refolded the letter, placed it back into its envelope, and slipped it carefully into her desk drawer next to all of Remus's.

```*```*```*```

Despite Bill's Head Boy duties and Anahid's role as Official Confidante to all of Ravenclaw's first-year boys, and some of the girls; as well as her determination to spend at least two hours a night studying. That she would on occasion be 'busy' and not explain to him where she had been, and the fact that they were in separate houses; they managed to spend an awful lot of time together in the next months.

Bill introduced her to his younger brother Charlie, a sixth-year and Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and even convinced her to attend the first game of the season, Gryffindotr versus Slytherin. He dragged her down to Hogsmeade during the school visit to the village on Halloween, ignoring her protests that she had study to do, or that she didn't need to go. They spent the morning browsing the shops, and the afternoon in a warm corner of the Three Broomsticks, with mugs of Butterbeer.

Anahid got Bill to study, rather than buying his excuses about Head Boy duties that he had to do, though he was known to open a book on occasion. She also had to deal with new kinds of rumours about her. Despite everything, the friendship flourished and a nervous Anahid was happier than she had been for a long time.

But, it was a friendship and a friendship only; as she was quick to point out to anyone who asked her how she had managed to 'snag' the Head Boy, being two years younger than him, in a different house, and rather plain looking, excluding her somewhat unusual eye colour. She had mentioned Bill in her letters to Remus, along with everything else that was going on in her life, and included her annoyance of people insisting they were a couple, although she denied it. Remus made supportive comments, and mentioned his pleasure that she had found a friend.

Anahid's feeling that things were getting too good to be true were added to when Bill invited her to spend Christmas at the Burrow.

```*```*```*```

"I don't think it's such a good idea, besides I've got lots of study to do, O.W.L.s are at the end of the year after all."

"Nonsense," Bill replied. "You don't need to study twenty-four hours a day you know. A break will do you good, and you can study at the Burrow if you feel like you must."

"You're not going to take no for an answer, are you?" she sighed.

"I already told Mum you would come." He told her with a grin. For that she cast a Jelly Legs Jinx on him, and put his wand at the other end of the library.

```*```*```*```

Although she didn't tell Bill, or even mention it to Remus in the letter she sent him telling him that she would be spending her first Christmas away form Hogwarts since starting school, Anahid was scared. Hell, she was terrified. Bill had told her about his family, so she thought she had some idea of what to expect, and although Bill hadn't told them of her kinship to Sirius, she was sure they would figure it out. Not to mention that her own home life hadn't exactly prepared her for a real family Christmas.

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AN: Please R&R, any comments would be appreciated. The next Chapter will be up soon, where in we see Christmas Weasley style, and Anahid does a runner.