My Suetastic Story

Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Serenity Black-Malfoy yawned. As every morning, she had problems getting out of bed in time for a good breakfast before they had to leave for school.

This morning, however, was different. Today, she wouldn't be going to the local day-school for young witches and wizards. Instead, she would be getting on the Hogwarts Express with her guardian, Remus Lupin, who would be starting his first year of teaching there. He would be professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts. Serenity thought that this was great, because DADA was her favourite subject and having it taught by her guardian and friend Remus just had to be awesome. They would have so much fun together, she could just see it.

But now she had to hurry if they wanted to be on time to catch their portkey to London King's Cross Station. Dumbledore had arranged it so they wouldn't have to fly from the Black Forest to England the muggle way.

Not that she had anything against muggles; it was just that their way was so much slower than the magical means of transportation.

Serenity got dressed in a pair of jeans and a red t-shirt with a denim jacket over the top. She loved her Muggle clothes; they were so much more practical than robes.

But her biggest problem with robes was that they always had the embarrassing tendency to become form-fitting, with a large amount of cleavage showing, whenever any boys that could be considered hot walked by.

Serenity tried to keep her mind off the prospect of wearing robes almost daily for the next year and ran down the stairs in her guardian's house and sat down at the kitchen table. Well, technically, it was hers, she had inherited it when her father, Sirius Black, had been sent to Azkaban, the magical prison in the North Sea. She knew that he was innocent, but to the rest of the wizarding world he was a notorious mass murderer, the killer of Peter Pettigrew and twelve muggle bystanders.

Serenity had sworn to herself that she would clear her father's name eventually; she just had to find some evidence. And the perfect place for that, she had decided, was definitely Hogwarts, the very castle she was travelling to today.

As she poured her milk over her cereal, Serenity's hand shook with excitement. She had just started eating when Remus came in.

"Hey, pup. Excited?" he asked, using the pet name he had given her when they discovered that her animagus form was a huge black wolf. She thought it fitting that her animagus form should be close to her substitute father's werewolf form. After all, he had raised her since she had been one year old, when her father had been arrested.

She had been the product of a drunken fling between Narcissa Malfoy and Sirius. Serenity had always wondered how that had happened as Sirius and Narcissa were cousins and their worldviews were vastly different. Narcissa had also already been married at the time, which made the whole thing even stranger in Serenity's mind. She supposed she was lucky that she hadn't been born with a birth defect from all that inbreeding.

Anyway, when she had been born, her mother had turned up on Sirius' doorstep and handed him the baby, saying that she refused the responsibility and that Sirius, as the father, would just have to take care of the child.

"Of course I'm excited, duh. I'm only going to Hogwarts for the first time!" Serenity answered him. Remus grinned at his young charge's overexuberance. He remembered his own first day at Hogwarts well.

His feelings had been more mixed than Serenity's. His werewolf problem had had him very worried. Silently he had formed the resolution that he would not, could not have any friends. But in the end the walls he had tried to build around himself had collapsed under the onslaught of friendliness from James, Sirius and Peter. They had become fast friends during the train ride and their friendship had only intensified as their yeas at Hogwarts passed.

He sighed. Good times, he thought.

"Are you done eating?" Serenity nodded. "Good, then let's go."

Remus levitated their trunks as they walked out into the beautiful autumn sunshine. Serenity quickly pulled her hair back into a ponytail to avoid being dazzled by the sun reflecting off her hair. This was another strange peculiarity of hers that Serenity had never been able to explain. She and Remus had tried everything to make it stop sparkle, but in the end they had had to settle for dulling it just enough that anyone looking at her hair wouldn't be half-blinded. But Serenity still preferred not looking too closely at her hair.

The house they stepped out of was a pretty, traditional cottage with a roof tiled in red. Serenity looked at it wistfully once more and then steeled herself before gripping the stub of a pencil Remus was offering her.

After a moment of total disorientation during which she felt the air whizzing past her through a kaleidoscope of colours, they landed in a quiet corner of King's Cross Station.