Friends
She had planned her weekly schedule and included seemingly random periods of time that she should spend with her classmates so she could make friends. She started jotting down possible conversation topics she could bring up during that time to avoid awkward silences, but halfway through, she realized they were all subjects that interested her and that she had never heard anyone around her start a conversation about any of them.
Were her conversations with people too one-sided? She remembered Anko joking about how Ryuna used to lecture about things when she was excited about a topic or when she was angry. She remembered talking a lot with the Council at the beginning of her term when they were particularly annoying and opposed her just because they could. Things got better over time, especially once everyone got over their own issues and started working together, but it had still been a pain in the ass back then.
Lyra sighed, tossed her list in the trash, and started over... Well, she tried to start over, but then Halie, her dormmate, found her and dragged her along.
The pale light of the Hogwarts infirmary always seemed colder than necessary. Maybe it was the smell of bitter potions mixed with the silence, broken only by the rhythmic sound of distant footsteps. Lyra sat on one of the hard chairs beside Concordia’s bed, trying not to look as uncomfortable as she felt.
Cordia had woken up that night, Halie had told her, brown eyes fixed on the ceiling, her face still marked by yellowish bruises slowly fading. Halie perched on the edge of the bed, her restless hands tugging at the fabric of the sheet, her Hufflepuff scarf draped over the back of the chair instead of around her neck. Meanwhile, Griselda chewed on a piece of licorice, her brow furrowed.
“You look like a mummy,” Halie commented with a crooked grin, trying to lighten the mood. “Careful, or Snape might see you and use you as a potion ingredient.”
Cordia let out a weak laugh. Potions could heal injuries quickly compared to the time it would take without them, but that didn’t mean they were completely free of side effects. Most caused headaches, drowsiness, and nausea. Lyra wasn’t sure which of these symptoms Cordia was suffering from, but she’d bet on at least two of them, if not all.
“At least that way, Snape would finally give me a compliment,” she replied with a huff.
Gris snorted.
“Doubt it. He’d probably complain that you haven’t been a mummy long enough, which makes you a mediocre ingredient,” Gris said, imitating the Potions professor with a snobbish voice and an exaggerated look of disgust.
Lyra wanted to point out that Snape didn’t even teach Potions anymore; it was mostly an independent study subject now. However, she was pretty sure the girls already knew that, so she stayed quiet.
Silence fell for a moment, and Cordia broke it with a soft sigh.
“It was the third-year boys,” she whispered. “From Slytherin.”
Halie and Gris straightened immediately. Lyra tilted her head, curious to know who it was even though she wasn’t going to do anything more about it than she already had.
“Four against one?” Halie said, blushing with indignant anger. “What a bunch of cowards.”
Cordia shrugged, trying to appear indifferent.
“We’re Slytherins. Bravery has never been a highly valued virtue in my House,” she reminded them. “But! I did land a hit on one of them before they took me down. Pretty sure I broke his nose.”
The pride in her voice was subtle but present, hidden under the fatigue as she flashed a smug smile.
“Did the training help?” Gris asked curiously, her smile bright.
“Oh, yes. I broke his nose with a punch,” Cordia was still smiling.
“Wish I could’ve seen his face at that moment,” Gris said with mock melancholy but a mischievous grin.
Lyra considered teaching more combat techniques for dealing with multiple opponents, but they weren’t at the level yet where they could do that successfully. She’d stick to her decision to teach slowly but thoroughly. Even so, it was good to know none of them had any trouble landing a real punch on an opponent—training without the intent to hurt is completely different from doing the real thing.
“Technically, if you’d used a Disarming Charm with more magical force behind it, you could’ve knocked down two of them at once if they were lined up,” she said finally. It was like bowling, she thought—a simple but effective strategy. “If you’d pushed hard enough, maybe their Shield Charms wouldn’t have been strong enough to hold you back.”
The silence that followed was a bit hesitant, as if everyone was digesting her words, and Lyra wished she’d kept her mouth shut because it was strange how every time she spoke, she seemed to break the flow of the conversation. That still happened as Ryuna, but in that world, it was less frequent because ninjas lived for their work, and Ryuna’s mindset wasn’t so strange compared to the eccentricities of other ninjas in Konoha at the time. Here, as Lyra, she felt like a zoo animal everyone was watching to see when she’d perform the next trick.
Gris glanced at her, raising an eyebrow, then turned back to Cordia.
“That… that’s a good idea, Lyra,” Halie said hesitantly after a moment. Then Halie’s face lit up as she remembered the latest gossip circulating among the Hufflepuffs—big gossips, her housemates. “Oh, Cordia, did you see the seventh-year Slytherin boys here in the infirmary? I heard they were released this morning too. Someone attacked them in the corridors…”
Lyra felt a small chill creep up her spine at the thought of the girls discovering what she had done. Her methods, as Ryuna, would’ve been seen as a bit harsh, but no one would’ve really cared because, in the end, everyone was still alive, and ninjas were more of the “ends justify the means” type. However, remembering that the rules here were different, that morality and ethics themselves were different, wasn’t always easy. Maybe if she’d spent her entire childhood with her loving father, who wasn’t violent—at least not at home or with children—then she would’ve absorbed this world’s morals and refrained from violence.
Maybe.
But the truth was, she grew up surrounded by indifferent old men who looked at her and saw someone who could be the future Head of the Black Family—or just a waste of time. She grew up under Walburga’s discipline, Arthurus’s expectations, and Cygnus’s silent judgment. Above all that, she constantly pressured herself to free her father and find Harry. Slipping back into the ninja mindset had been easy, comfortable, familiar.
Getting out of it after so long felt like trying to fit into a disguise, but that’s not what Lyra wanted her life to be. She could pretend to be like the other kids for a few days, she knew that, but it wasn’t something that came naturally to her and it always left a bitter taste in her mouth. She didn’t want to be like that, not with her family or her friends.
"I heard about that, though I heard they refused to talk about who attacked them," Gris said. They were still talking about the attack on the Slytherin seventh-years, apparently.
"Yeah, I heard about that too," Halie confirmed before turning her attention back to Cordia. "You know, I’d thought the same people who attacked you had gone after the seventh-years—I even thought it could’ve been a teacher—but if it was third-years..."
"If Cordia managed to land a punch on one of them, then I doubt they’d be good enough to go after the seventh-years," Gris added, finishing Halie’s thought.
How would the girls react if they knew the truth? Would it be better if Lyra just told them? But what if they turned her in? It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it’d still be inconvenient, and Lyra wasn’t comfortable letting Harry study at Hogwarts without her around to make sure Dumbledore wouldn’t drag him into his crusade for the greater good.
It was simple, really: if Lyra got expelled, her family would move, and they’d study in another country while she kept hunting Voldemort and his Death Eaters from afar. If necessary, she had no qualms about just dropping out and carrying on by herself while dealing with things here. It’s not ideal, but she’d do what needed to be done.
Of course, her father wouldn’t approve, but if it came to that, Lyra could give Arthurus a heart attack and immediately become Head of the House of Black. That way, she’d have some independence from her father, and he couldn’t really do anything about it considering he relied on the family’s finances to maintain his lifestyle and support Remus.
Again, Lyra preferred not to resort to that because she knew it would end up poisoning her relationship with her family, but she’d rather have them hate her alive than love her dead. It’s a risk.
Lyra decided to stay quiet. Actively lying could later be seen, if the girls found out the truth, as a betrayal—but if she said nothing, it’d be easier to justify, and they’d find it easier to forgive.
She remained silent for the rest of the meeting, and part of her wanted to leave and continue studying things that actually interested her instead of gossiping about things that didn’t affect her at all. Why should she care if so-and-so is dating someone? I need to create a training schedule for the kids at home to send to Harry, I need to look for books in the school library that could help destroy a Horcrux without destroying the vessel, I need to figure out how to modify the Animagus Ritual to help Remus, I need to fix that safety issue in the Quidditch classes because there’s only so many times I can fake being sick before the professor fails me—but I’m not flying on that stick several meters off the ground with no safety measures beyond a distracted teacher.
Anyway, she has plenty to do, but she needed to make friends so her father wouldn’t worry. Of course, having friends had its uses too—they were her greatest allies if she knew how to use them. That sounded a little wrong, but Lyra would be lying if she said she didn’t invest her time in them with the intention of making them useful in the future.
Lyra wasn’t training them just as an excuse to spend time together; she was training them so they could fight when she needed their strength. That’s why she trained Harry, Draco, Ron, Hermione, Fred, Ginny, George, Charlie, Bill, and Percy. She was training as many people as possible because, if one day she died, she needed to know there’d be more people out there who could get the job done. That she wasn’t irreplaceable. That the plans wouldn’t fall apart just because Lyra wasn’t there to push them forward.
Not that she’d ever tell her father that, because he’d be furious—but Lyra wasn’t going to stop. She needed that comfort, needed the relief of knowing that the lives of the people around her didn’t depend on her. That they’d have their own strength.
So, all her friendships were made with ulterior motives. She always looked at the people she got close to and kept thinking about how to make them useful, and part of Lyra hated herself for that. Part of her felt like Dumbledore and Danzo and Hiruzen, looking at people and seeing pieces they could manipulate for their goals.
She rarely thought about it, but that joke from the twins a few days ago had hit a nerve. No matter how much she acted like this, Lyra didn’t want to be like them. It was something she did for a while as Hokage—not that she was proud of it, but it happened. Lyra didn’t want to fall back into the bad habits of the past.
So she stayed in the infirmary, listening to the girls talk about things she didn’t care about, hoping she could set her thoughts aside and just be there. Wishing she could look at these kids and see who they are instead of trying to mold them into who they could be, training them until they reached their full potential.