August 31st, 1993

Nicole Muriel Weasley slipped easily through the hoards of people practically salivating over the newest broomstick in the wizarding world, the Firebolt.

She knew, without a doubt, that if James had been around the entirety of the Potter fortune would have been squandered on as many brooms as it could buy. Never mind the fact that a wizard or witch could only ride one broom at a time.

Shading her chocolate brown eyes from the unrelenting end of August sun, she stretched up onto her tiptoes, her five foot five stature not giving her any favors in the bustling crowds of Diagon Alley. Her face bore the telltale redness of a sunburn, her freckles a stark contrast to the near-scarlet color of her usually pale cheeks.

The fourth of eight children, Nicole - call her Nikki or else you'll be on the receiving end of a particularly vicious Bat Bogey Hex - was used to the chaos. She usually threw herself into the fray, especially when there were six brothers in their eat-anything-and-everything phase. She wasn't exactly sure if they would ever grow out of it, as Bill and Charlie were already graduated from Hogwarts and across the ocean.

At least they were able to have seen Bill over the summer in Egypt. Nikki missed her elder brothers, even though they could be pains in her arse at points.

"Bugger," she cursed under her breath, "I've lost Fred and George."

If they had gotten into Knockturn Alley, their mother would be furious. Molly Weasley's temper was well-known to the Weasley family, and woe to anyone who crossed her or threatened her family.

"I wouldn't look at the posters plastered everywhere if I were you, Nic," George casually stated as he seemed to materialize out of thin air at her left shoulder, his twin brother on her right. "Wouldn't want the redheaded fury to appear."

Fred snorted. "Might be fairly obvious about your whole tim-"

Whatever he was about to say was smothered with a swift elbow to the chest, Fred choking on the breath in his lungs.

"Use your brain," Nikki sighed, "we've kept my escapade a secret for this long. I don't exactly want it getting out, especially now."

Her lips curved into a frown as she studied the aristocratic, sharp features of Sirius Black, "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WIZARD?" emblazoned across the top of the parchment in big, bold, capital letters.

She scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Honestly, did they expect him to not age? He looks... well, he would have turned twenty-two within a couple days of being sent to that hellhole."

"Hell of a birthday present," George mumbled, linking his arm with Nikki's as Fred looped his through her other arm. "Onwards to Harry - or, what did you call him? Bambi?"

"James was a deer Animagus," Nikki mused under her breath, only her younger twin brothers able to hear her. "Lily made us watch a Muggle movie once about a baby deer named Bambi. I thought it was fitting, no?"

Fred snorted. "Isn't that the movie you mentioned that everyone was bawling their eyes out?"

She grinned innocently. "Maybe you just have to watch it and find out. And there's worse movies to watch. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde scared the living daylights out of us all; I don't think I was able to sleep right for days after."

George elbowed his older sister in the side, other hand ruffling her ginger hair. "Find a... I don't know what it's called. Whatever Muggles watch movies on. That they put into whatever the box that shows moving stories is called."

"George. Aren't you two taking Muggle Studies? How the bloody hell are you both oblivious to the telly?"

"One, we either are working on more prank products or sleeping," George started listing off points.

Fred picked up where his twin left off. "Two, it's not like the curriculum is all that current. I don't think we've learned something that is as recent as the 50s."

"And three," they chorused together, "we have Hermione or Percy's lover Penelope to help us out."

The boys drew out the word "lover" with as much dramatics as they could infuse into a two-syllable word.

Nikki let out a single burst of dry laughter. "What I would have given to be a fly on the wall of Grimmauld when his parents found out about the electives he was taking... Muggle Studies alone would have caused Walburga and Orion to bloody lose it."

"Moving on," George grinned, "precious Harry Potter has some explanations to give after the juicy Weasley gossip about him blowing up his aunt..."

His voice carried enough to reach the three thirteen year olds sitting outside of Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor, a particularly scrawny, bespectacled boy wincing at the mention.

"Honestly, Harry," Hermione Granger shook her head, bushy brown hair brushing against her shoulders as she moved. "You could have gotten in trouble!"

Ron Weasley merely roared with laughter at the mention of his best mate and the Marge incident, as he had vowed to call it. His shoulders shook with the force of his sniggers.

"Very smooth," Nikki smothered any snickers that threatened to come out, smile stretching across her lips. "Right when everyone in the entirety of magical Britain is appropriately distracted by the escape from the so-called inescapable Azkaban. Sounds like the Titanic if you ask me."

Harry frowned as Hermione tilted her head to the side in bewilderment. "How do you know what the Titanic is - well, was?"

"I read," Nikki shrugged casually.

Fred sighed over dramatically. "Our bookworm of an older sister. Her one fatal flaw. We've tried to break her of the habit, but no luck."

"Do you know anything about the whole Azkaban breakout?" Harry asked. "Fudge wouldn't tell me anything. Seemed pretty tight-lipped about the whole Black debacle."

It took every bit of willpower within Nicole Muriel Weasley to not flinch at Sirius Black's godson referring to him by his last name instead of Uncle Sirius or Uncle Padfoot.

She wouldn't put it past the two dark-haired Marauders to coerce their son and godson, respectively, into referring to his uncles in all but blood by their Marauder nicknames.

"...The Blacks are a..." Nikki started slowly, thinking of the best word to aptly describe the family, "powerful family, let's put it that way. Pureblood. The lineage is said to date back to Salazar Slytherin himself, although given how many years ago the founders lived you could probably pick a random person off the street and they would be related to Slytherin."

     Ron jumped in, "The Blacks are notorious for their only-pureblood ways; they fit in with everything You-Know-Who was trying to accomplish."

     Fred smiled innocently. "Damn, you really hadn't listened to Granny 'Drella at all, had you?"

The youngest Weasley boy cocked his head to the side in abject confusion. "What does Grandma Cedrella have to do with the Blacks?"

"Disowned from the... what did they call it?... Noble and Most Ancient House of Black for marrying a Weasley," Nikki answered succinctly. "We're related to the Black family dearest Ronald."

George gave a mock shudder, flashing a teasing grin at his older sister. "All purebloods are related to each other in some way or another."

     "I should be very, very happy I'm a Muggleborn then, right?" Hermione chimed in dryly, smiling slightly at the trio of older gingers.

     "Yes."

     It was an instant response from all three.

     "...Backtracking a little... if Azkaban is supposed to be such a formidable fortress that nobody has ever escaped from, how did Sirius Black do it?!" Harry burst out, eyebrows furrowed as he thought hard about how anyone could have escaped the prison without a wand.

     "Especially without a wand... all prisoners get their wands snapped when they get brought in if they're in for life," Ron added, frowning slightly as he absentmindedly stroked the fur in between his pet rat Scabbers' ears.

     Nikki snorted, laughing as the mental image of Sirius using a rope and rappelling off of the walls of Azkaban like in one of the adventure movies James had preferred ran through her mind.

     Lily should have known that Sirius and James would have recreated the fight scene from The Man With the Golden Gun. And they should have known better than to try to jump from one level to a lower level without using the stairs.

     "Nobody's got any bloody clue," Fred said. "It's a mystery, ickle Harry."

     Harry made a face at the nickname.

     Nikki shook her head, the humorous picture dissipating as if it was never there in the first place. "Ron, Mum wants me to remind you that we're all gathering at the Leaky to Apparate back to the Burrow at around six. Don't lose track of time. And, for the love of Merlin, don't forget to get Scabbers' rat tonic."

     She frowned down at the rat in her younger brother's hands. "He looks like shit."

     "He's old, Nikki! He's at least twelve!" Ron defended his pet passionately. "Leave him alone."

     "I'm not criticizing your caretaking skills," Nikki deadpanned, "I'm just reminding you."

     She turned to Hermione, smiling at the younger girl cheerfully. "Are you planning on getting a pet this year, Hermione?"

     Hermione bit her lower lip, thinking. "I was thinking about getting an owl... or maybe a cat."

     "I've always wanted a dog," Nikki shrugged innocently. "I'm a dog person. But cats aren't a bad pet."

     Fred and George snickered to themselves at the irony of their sister being a "dog person." They knew for a fact that she was more than just a casual dog person — hell, she had been dating someone who could bloody turn into a dog, for Merlin's sake!

     Come to think of it, had they even broken up? Was their older sister still theoretically the girlfriend of an escaped convict?

     Meh, they'll think about that later. Bully their older brother for being named Head Boy first.

     Fred and George had just seen Percy Weasley's head standing tall among the throngs of people in Diagon Alley, doing their back-to-school shopping just like the Weasleys, Hermione, and Harry.

     "This year's sure going to be interesting," Nikki mumbled to herself as she began to weave her way through the crowds once more, heading for Flourish and Blotts to pick up some Muggle novels to read in her free time.

     She was fully expecting the drama of her seventh and final year at Hogwarts. The year prior, the chaos had snuck up on her with the stealth of a panther, culminating in a very peculiar hourglass-shaped pendant necklace on her dorm-mate's night table.

Word Count: 1,791