The days until Florence returned to Hogwarts could be counted on their hands, and she spent her remaining time as productive as she could. Sirius had taught her her very first song on the guitar, which was an old muggle song from a band called Beatles that Florence's father used to love before.

To say that she was extremely proud of herself was an understatement.

She had also taken interest in tending to thw Hippogriff that resided in their attic. Florence had never actually gotten the chance to see Buckbeak when he was still in the care of Hagrid due to the Mafloy incident. And she was frightened by the sight of the creature the first time she entered the attic.

"Hippogriffs are proud creatures, and very much easy to offend and very dangerous when they are," Sirius told her, "You bow first, and you wait for it to respond. If it bows back then you are allowed to touch him."

Florence did as she was told, and the creature responded with the same courteous gesture. And it had been her job to bring Buckbeak food for the remaining days.

One thing that completely slipped her mind, due to the fact that she had quite a lot of interesting things that happened over the course of summer, was that her O.W.L.s results had not arrived yet.

Normally it would have been attached to their Hogwarts acceptance letters—atleast that was what Penelope Clearwater had told them. But there was no word about where her results were at.

She had gotten letters from both Xander and Nicolai who were greatly thrilled with their exams. Nicolai had gotten an O after she had accidentally transfigured the whole desk instead of the paperweight during the Transfiguration practical exam.

Both had also asked her about her results, and they too found it weird that she hasn't received them yet.

Worry started gnawing at the pit of her stomach as September first grew nearer and nearer, and with each day that passed when she didn't get her O.W.L.s letter.

Maybe she had failed everything was the first possibility that came into mind, but they would have still sent in a result paper with a bunch of P's on it.

Her worrying stopped one day when her mum had brought out a special looking parchment over breakfast. Florence had been ultimately relieved that her mother had simply hung on to it and that the owl did nor drop it by accident like she had thought of.

"You had me so worried!" she half-exclaimed, Miss Mimsy—who was rubbing her face against her foot—gave out a short startled hiss, "Why didn't you show it to me sooner?"

"Because," shrugged Jane, "I didn't want you to get so worked up about it."

"But it did the exact opposite of what you were trying to prevent... Did you open it?"

"No," she said, shaking her head, "We can open it together, though."

They sat back down, Jane neatly tearing open the envelope. The moment she had pulled the document out, Florence seized the paper from her mum's hand, fumbling to get it open.

"Hey now, easy on the grabbing," she told her, watching her daughter skim through the contents with anxiety written all over her features.

"What does it say..."

There was a pause, a very long one at that. Jane sat patiently, hands folded over the other as she gave Florence her time.

Her brown eyes went wide, although it was an unclear expression of whether or not the results were great.

2 E's and the rest were O's. They were very good grades, better than Jane had done in her time at Hogwarts. She was proud of her daughter, and words couldn't quite describe how she felt. Her mind had subconsciously wandered to Gabriel, and her heart ached at the thought of not sharing that certain moment in their daughter's life.

"Mum..?" Florence asked as she saw the vacant expression on her mother's face. "Are you not happy with what I got?"

"What—no, no! They are very good grades, darling. I am very proud of you. I was just thinking about...what you'd possibly want to do after Hogwarts." she lied, not wanting to replace her daughter's happy moments with her emotional ones, "Have you put some thought into that?"

Florence shook her head, "I know I should. But I don't really know what I am going to do after all this... I could play Quidditch professionally... But I don't think it would work out too well."

"You're going to have to think long and hard about that one. They'll be asking you about that this year—as they will be telling you which subjects you must continue."

"Adrianna has told me about that. There's just a lot of things that has caught my eye profession wise. There's Quidditch, Curse Breaking, or maybe I could be a Healer... or get into Auror training."

Not Auror training, Jane thought, I don't want to lose anyone because of that job again, "Anything you want, dear." Jane smiled, "I'll be here to support you all the way."

She hugged her, "Thanks, mum," Florence mumbled into her ear, "I'm really glad we had this talk."

"Me too, me too."

"Curse breaking sounds ideally terrifying," said a voice, Sirius emerging from the pantry in a nonchalant fashion, "This hufflepuff named Helia Baits who was in my year back in Hogwarts took up Curse Breaking. I heard she almost got her head blasted off when she was trying to open an old tomb back in one of Egypt's pyramids."

Florence threw him a questioning look, completely disregarding what he had just said. "What were you doing in there?"

"Your mum said she wanted to be alone with you... So I simply hid instead of getting out. Moony's in the fridge if you're wondering—"

"Am not," said Remus, who came into the kitchen as normally as possible, making Sirius frown, "But you promised you'd do it for me."

Remus crossed two of his fingers together before grinning, "Doesn't count."

"Alright, you two," Jane clapped, grabbing the attention of the two grown men who were sticking their tongue out at each other like toddlers in a petty row, "While you're here, why don't you help flearing out the table and washing the dishes—"

"Buckbeak needs tending to..." said Sirius immediately as he attempted to walk out, only to have Jane grab him by the hem of his shirt and dragging him back into place, "You're in charge of the silverware."

"You know Remus could handle silver, right? Those are just muggle tales—"

"I am aware—" Jane clamped her mouth shut, eyes wide as she realized what she had just done with the wide grin on Sirius's face:

"–wolf," he finished, still grinning, crinkles forming by his eyes as he continued to suppress his laughter, "awarewolf."

Florence snorted, chuckling to her self as the other two adults were none-appreciative by the not-so-clever pun that the man has said more than a hundred times in his whole lifetime.

"That is getting really old, mate." said Remus, patting his friend on the back.

"Old but gold," said Sirius, before beginning his task.

"I'll head up for awhile. I have to write to Nicolai and Alexander about my results. They've been asking me about it for quite a while now."

"Speaking of letters," said Sirius, "I have something that I need to ask you about," he told Florence, Jane shaking her head, "If you're saying that to get out of chores—"

"No, I promise." He reassured, "I'll only be awhile."

Both Sirius and Florence sat at the living room, away from both Remus and Jane. He produced an utterly crumpled piece of parchment from his pockets, attempting to smoothen it out before handing it to Florence.

She recognized the hand writing as her own, her face draining of color as she saw what she had written, slightly embarrassed that Sirius had seen it.

Dear Fred,

You acted so stupidly. Truth is I already forgive you but my ego's getting the best of me. I know I'm just making things worse---- end.

Florence nervously looked up, expecting some sort of teasing look on Sirius' face, instead it bore one of genuine concern, "Boy trouble is that?"

She nodded her head, which gradually transitioned to shaking her head no, "It's nothing big, don't worry. I'm already over it."

"I found this a few days when you got home from Hogwarts. Jane was emptying your trash bin and this one particularly rolled out to the side and I curiously took a peek. Back then if I meddled with your business, you would have removed your restraints from hexing me—" Florence laughed, as what he said was true.

"But now I get to tell you: I think you should send it."

Florence blinked, and repeatedly did so for a couple of times, "Pardon?"

"Send it."

She sighed, "I don't—Sirius, he did something really stupid."

"Believe me when I say this dear, I am speaking for men and boys everywhere. Boys are utterly stupid when it comes to expressing their feelings."

"But why?" Florence frowned.

"Because we have a much harder time processing and handling feelings, unlike women...or girls. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus."

"And you really think I should send it?"

"You should. Or you could wait awhile and talk to him when you see him in person. Both works." he shrugged.

"I'll think about it," she promised, offering Sirius a small smile, "Thank you."

Sirius nodded, watching her go up the stairs and to her room.