Autumn continued through the Owlery, a note from St. Mungo's clutched in her hand. This just couldn't be real...no, there was just no way that this could be real. If this was real then that meant one thing and one thing only...and Autumn just could not handle that. Closing her eyes she tried to center herself, but every time she tried she ended up failing and falling into something different...something she did not like at all. Clutching the letter tighter she continued walking down the steps, her footsteps sounding clumsy and heavy from the weight that this letter had placed on her shoulders. How could this have happened to her? How could this all be real...it just didn't make any sense.

Pushing past a random first year she pushed the door open and began heading back up to the castle. She needed to lay down and think...no, she didn't need to think, she just needed to forget. Reality was so harsh and cruel, and the irony of it all was that Autumn had tried to make people see the world as it was....cruel... and yet...now that she had to see it that way Autumn wanted to do everything in her power to change it. Autumn wanted to fall into a fairytale where all she had to do was kiss the handsome prince and wake up. All the years she had spent so cold and she wasn't even sure how many more years she would have left after this. And worse of all...she had never loved any one...or had been given the chance to have someone love her.

Her life was meaningless, nothing but a void that God had seen fit to fill with pointless little challenges along the way...what was she going to do now that it was almost over? Now that her life was coming to a harsh, slow, end? Closing her eyes she pressed on, completely unaware of the person in front of her...and before she could react and dodge them she rammed right into them banging heads.

"FUCK!" she cursed falling back on her butt. "Owe...what the Hell is your problem!?"

Rubbing the sting out of her forehead she glanced up through her tears and tried to better see who it was she had bonked heads with.

Autumn

Sirius was going to go batty if he didn't step away from grading for a moment. These essays were so abysmal he was about to fall into a depression over it. It wasn't content that was the problem, not for the most part anyway, so at least he knew it wasn't that he was a horrid teacher. The problems were mostly technical. Spelling and grammar and vocabulary and the like. Sirius had always taken exception to the abuse of the English language, and he wasn't sure Hogwarts didn't make a mistake in not making its students study the language. Transfiguration was all well and good, but how far could a person really go in life if they didn't know that "a lot" was two words?

Usually Sirius liked reading what the students wrote, but this was his first experience with essays from the first years. How strict should he be about mistakes that had nothing to do with content? He didn't know. He should ask one of the other professors, he decided. But which one? He was torn. It would make sense to go to someone with experience, but he didn't want to appear too clueless in front of his colleagues. He decided to go and visit Professor Wallace in the green houses. She was new, too, so they could pick one another's brains. And besides, there was something sort of peaceful about the greenhouses. The ones that didn't have the man-eating plants anyway. Yes, Sirius decided, that's what he would do.

He stepped outside and took a deep breath of fresh air. The sky was overcast and the wind smelt heavily of rain. Sirius loved the smell of rain. Regulus used to say that there was nothing so delightful as London rain, and Sirius thought he might have been right, though Hogwarts rain ran it a close second. The beauty of the freshly showered forest was unlike anything else Sirius had ever encountered.

Sirius started toward the greenhouse but stopped along the way when something caught his eye. A Gryffindor tie was lying in the mud. One of his students would be looking for that. Sirius smiled thinking of the ribbing he would give whomever had lost it. He bent down to pick it up and was nearly knocked over by something as he stood. Something with a very nasty mouth. Sirius rubbed his head where the girl had bumped it and looked down at her, one eyebrow raised. He didn't have to work hard to paste on his stern face as a wave of annoyance shot through him. "Oi!" Sirius scolded. "You watch your mouth, young lady."

Autumn looked up glaring, she was to the point that she really didn't care what her teacher thought of her mouth. She was going to die, what was the big deal if she wanted to swear? She had no family to speak of, at least none that she cared off, and if she even wanted to have a future there was no point behind it. Before she would turn twenty she would be nothing but a corpse in the ground. She was not going to be able to travel to Rome, Italy, or any of those beautiful placed she had dreamed of. No, her life was going to crash and burn in a heap of flames.

"You were the one that should have been watching where you were going?" she spat. "What kind of person bends down in the middle of the path without any bloody consideration of the traffic coming down it?!"

She clutched her letter tighter, her pain and grief seeping out through her demeanor to the Professor before her. She didn't care....why should she? In about a year or so it would not matter anymore. What her Professor thought about her did not matter to her, what anyone thought of her no longer mattered to her! She was so fucked that words could not even describe it! So if she wanted to swear, blame God, and act like a pill...Autumn was a firm believer that she had a right to!

"Now," she snarled. "If you will excuse me...I have a life to go and waste."

Sirius opened his mouth and prepared to launch into a scathing lecture that would put this impudent little ego on legs right back in her place. But he stopped short, the words already on his lips. Something was very wrong. Her words, harsh as they were, were not what gave her away. Sirius had already encountered plenty of melodramatic teenage girls and knew better than to let himself get sucked in by their words. It wasn't that he was unsympathetic or that he didn't care about whatever crises they were experiencing at the moment, but he learned while he was a student himself not to let himself get dragged into other people's drama. He would listen and sympathize when people needed him to, but he never chose sides unless one of the Marauders was involved, and he certainly never got involved himself, even when he'd been the cause of the drama. Learning how to do that was a skill that had served him well his entire adult life.

No, it wasn't what she said or even how she said it. It was something else. Something in her eyes. Her bearing. It almost seemed to radiate off of her. Sirius almost thought he'd be able to see it if he squinted just right. Like she'd just stepped away from a dementor. He watched her clutch something tighter in her hand. A letter, perhaps? She must have just had bad news. Very bad, from the look of her.

Sirius dropped the finger he was preparing to wag in her face and frowned in sympathy. He hated to see anyone looking so very, very sad. "Are you all right? What's the matter? Would you like to talk?"

Autumn looked up at her Professor almost confused by what he had said. Had he just asked her if she wanted to talk? She had just sworn at him, snapped at him, and he thought that she wanted to talk? Well...she kind of did...but Autumn wasn't used to that kind of charity. Nothing in this world was free and not too many people wanted to really talk to her at all. Still...this was all very suspicious and although she would LOVE to have someone to vent to, she wasn't so sure if she should take her Professor up on such an offer.

"Why?" she said, her tone bored and unfeeling. "Is this some sort of trick to lure me into detention or something?"

Autumn wasn't naive nor would she let someone make her feel. She wanted to be numb up until death, that way everything would just fade out as it should. If she lived, loved, laughed, and enjoyed her remaining...year...then she would want to keep living. It was better to yearn for death and get it, than to run and hide in fear of it. Loosening her grip on the letter she was holding and looked down on it. There were only a few paragraphs...a couple of treatment options...her...her timeline. Just meaningless words and statistics drawn up on paper...and yet they hurt her so much and impacted her very existence more than anyone would ever believe!

She squeezed the letter again, her eyes glaring at it...just wishing that it would burst into flames right in front of her. Sighing she looked back up at her Professor and tried to put her stone face back on.

"It's nothing important Professor Black..." Autumn breathed. "Just some stupid letter from home."

Sirius knew she was lying. It was written clear as day across her face, but he wasn't going to push the issue. If she didn't want to talk to him, he wasn't going to force her. Though he did hope she had someone to talk to; a friend or something. Writing home for help clearly wasn't an option. Sirius was painfully familiar with the devastating letter from home, and he was always glad he had the Marauders around to cheer him up after he read whatever horrid things his mother had seen fit to write to him. He didn't want Autumn to have to deal with this whatever-it-was alone. It may have only been teenage melodrama, but it was clearly upsetting her, and he knew how real teenage melodrama was to teenagers, even if adults thought it was silly.

Sirius smiled an encouraging smile. "Contrary to popular belief, teachers do not enjoy putting students in detention. Most of us, anyway." Snape probably did, but Sirius wasn't about to say that out loud. Sirius may have thought he was a git and a horrible teacher. He may have thought he had no business being headmaster and that he was the worst one since Sirius' own great-grandfather, Phineas, but he wasn't about to undermine him in front of a student. He hoped Snape would afford him the same courtesy if their roles were reversed. "As a general rule, we try to avoid doing it whenever we can. If you ever do want to talk, I'm happy to listen. I believe you know where to find me? Have a good afternoon, and do try to watch where you're going." And with that, Sirius started off toward the greenhouses.

Autumn watched as Professor Black disappeared into the Greenhouses. She didn't know why but at that moment she just felt so compelled to follow him. Maybe they didn't need to talk about her disease; maybe they could just talk about other things. Autumn had no parents to talk to when it came to her studies and interests and although she wasn't looking for a surrogate father; she could also use at least one friend. Sighing she pocketed the letter and trotted to the Greenhouse. She looked to find her Professor and not completely looking at him she went over to him and sat on one of the table tops.

"Professor?" she asked, somewhat gently. "Can we talk....not about the letter or anything...but...just about stuff?"

Maybe they could get to that point where they talked about what St. Mungo's had sent her, but at the present moment she was content with maybe asking her Professor about todays Astronomy lesson. Granted, she didn't have many questions. Autumn wasn't shy to academics and her grades were fairly impressive. She had been talking with her head of house about future career opportunities and so far there was only one career that really stuck out to her. Something that involved research and digging through the worlds archives. Autumn wanted to become a historian. But not just when it came to magical history, but also muggle history. There were so many things that intertwined with one another and Autumn wanted to dig into both.

"Ummm..." she stumbled. "Like...I don't know...did you always want to be a teacher? I mean...when you were my age did you see yourself in this present position?"

She began lightly kicking the air, careful so as not to slam her feet into her teacher.

"I think it would get boring after a while," she continued. "Same period every day, same people, same boss, I want a job that involves something new every day...new discoveries, old secrets."

Taking out her wand she summoned a daisy from one of the flower bowls and gently began plucking the pedals from it; awaiting her teacher's response.

Sirius was surprised that anyone would think teaching could be boring. Teaching was never boring. It was nerve-wracking sometimes. It was occasionally frustrating. It was sometimes heartbreaking, but it was never boring. How could it be, with something new every day? Sure, the people stayed the same, but people were dynamic creatures, and young people especially were endlessly fascinating. He couldn't imagine ever getting tired of teaching.

He shook his head. "No, I don't get bored. I like talking to students, and even when I teach the same lessons, it's to different people, so there are different comments and different questions and different ways of doing things, so in a way each day is completely different." Sirius smiled again. "It's never boring." Sirius ran his fingers through his hair. They probably shouldn't stay in the greenhouses. Students really weren't supposed to hang around in here without Professor Wallace's permission. "Would you like to come up to my office with me? I've got tea and biscuits up there with your name on them." Sirius rose and held the door open for her, wishing his office wasn't all the way on the seventh floor. It was convenient being so close to the Astronomy tower - and his Gryffindors - but at times like these, he wished he were a little closer to everything else.

"So," he asked as he started toward the castle. "You want to make new discoveries of old secrets, eh? There are lots of things you can do once you graduate that will allow you to do that. Which one were you thinking of?"

Autumn followed her Professor and nodded, feeling the rough parchment in her pocket rub against her leg. She would just ignore it for now and try not to think about it...but as Professor Black asked about her future it was brought back into focus sighing she shook her head. She wasn't so set on thinking about what she would do with her life after this year. Only a fool would believe in that kind of hope.

"I'm not sir." she said softly.

She walked a bit faster than him, but not before slowing down because she knew that she would need most of her energy to climb the steps to his office. Turning back to her Professor she began pulling at her hair, hoping to distract herself from how utterly depressed she was starting to feel. Walking back at his pace she sighed and pulled the letter back out of her pocket.

She opened it and read it over again, just to confirm that what she was reading for the umpteenth time was real. But the more she read the words, "You have been diagnosed with Acute Lymphblastic Leukemia..." the more her life began to fade in and out of focus.

Crumpling the letter up again she forced it back into her pocket and looked away. She was going into a panic and just didn't know what to do to comfort herself! So she moved her hands...tapped her fingers against her pant leg, removed and replaced the letter that was in her pocket, bit her lower lip, bit her tongue...did everything she could to keep her from yelling out, "I'M GOING TO DIE!"

Realizing that she had actually stopped walking and that tears were in her eyes she sighed in defeat, and partial exhaustion, and sat down on one of the stone benches...uncertain if she had lost her Professor or not.

Sirius kept up a slow, steady pace toward the castle, casting sideways glances at Autumn from time to time. He wasn't sure what to say to her. Usually he wasn't the one having to take charge in these sorts of conversations. Usually upset students poured their hearts out to him, and all he had to worry about was how to respond. He wasn't used to having to make small talk. He was plenty good at making small talk in most situations, but with students? That was a different story.

He stopped when she did and sat next to her on the bench, feeling unsure and stupid. Recognizing the signs of potential breakdown, he pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her, wishing he knew what to say. Whatever was the matter, he decided, it was no small thing. He wanted to say something, to offer words of comfort or wisdom or anything, really, but with no idea what was the matter, there wasn't anything to say, so he waited there with her in stillness and silence, in fellowship and solidarity. There wasn't much else he could do.

Autumn held the handkerchief in her hand and almost felt numb. She took the letter out of her pocket once more and opened it so her Professor could glance at it as well. She blinked her tears away, not letting herself become any weaker than what she already felt and she kept her gaze forward. Her hands shook a bit as she steadied her breathing to tell Professor Black what the letter had told her, of course, she wasn't going to read word from word from it. There were a lot of medical terminology that she just did not comprehend and she really did not want the explanations at that present moment.

"It's called..." she whispered. "Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia."

Her hands shook more violently as the words left her lips. Hearing her own voice name her disease almost made it too real. As if she was accepting that death was right around the corner...and in a way she almost was. She was almost accepting that she would die because she had basically given up all home of survival. Muggle medicine, magical medicine, either way the treatments for cancer were horribly painful and time consuming. She would probably lose her hair from muggle radiation, or become horribly ill from the different potions St. Mungo's would prescribe. And her parents...her parents were in Rome...living it up...not caring that their one and only daughter had a year at the most to live.

"The doctors and Healers say, that I have a year...at the most..." she whispered. "They caught it in its mid-stages....which...I suppose that means it wasn't soon enough."

She felt moisture on her cheeks but she kept her face stone still, not wanting to submit to anymore drama than she had to. She had already spoken to the Headmaster about it, and that alone was a nightmare in itself. Headmaster Snape was understanding, even....sympathetic...which wasn't what she had expected or wanted....but she knew that when a student was dying from disease that was how her teachers would act. And Autumn liked it to an extent, mostly because her own parents didn't give a flying damn.

"I got the owl this morning...two diagnosis from one muggle hospital and St. Mungo's..." she felt herself release a shuddering breath. "The muggle hospital gives me a year with current, modern, medicine...St. Mungo's gives me a year and a half...and they only offer certain treatments."

She knew that she would have to go for chemo and radiation treatments...and Autumn wasn't sure what wizarding medicine would do for her if they could do anything at all. She was scared of losing her hair, but she supposed that there was a charm or spell she could cast to keep it so people wouldn't notice.

Autumn looked back at her Professor, the letter still slightly pointed towards him so that if he had wished to read it he could.

"You don't have to try and come up with something to say sir," Autumn sighed. "I know it's hard to...to swallow."

Tears welled in her eyes and she briefly brought her hands up to her face to hide her fearful expression. Swallowing her sobs she took in a deep breath and felt as her chest heaved slightly. She would not cry, she would not cry, she could not cry....God...please...she didn't want to cry.

Sirius read the letter she handed him quickly, feeling a touch guilty that he'd thought she was being dramatic. This was worth being dramatic about. It was odd to him to think that there were still so many mysteries in the world. With all the magical advancements they'd made, there were still things they couldn't fix. Silly though, that. Of course there were things they couldn't fix. That's what the war had been about, but that was magic fighting magic. This was magic fighting nature. There was only so far anyone - muggle or magical - could go in that direction.

Sirius folded up the letter and handed it back. "It looks like you have a few treatment options. Muggle doctors and magical healers don't work particularly well together. Healers think doctors are all quacks, cutting on people. And muggles, well, they're happiest not knowing magic exists. But both the muggles and the wizards are making guesses based on what they know. Maybe if you take both treatment options, they'll come together in ways that neither can anticipate. I don't think anyone's ever tried it before - using both muggle and magical treatments."

Sirius thought again. The letter had said a few things about the muggle treatments, but he didn't know enough about it for the strange words to mean much to him. Maybe he'd do a little research. Muggles had always been fascinating to him. He'd been duly appalled when he learned that muggle medicine mostly relied on cutting away the bad parts and filling people full of chemicals, though James pointed out that that wasn't so terribly different from making people drink potions, and that sometimes healers ended up just cutting out the bad parts, too, although they did it with a little more grace, being able to shrink things with magic and whatnot. Sirius sometimes didn't understand how muggles even got along. Ingenious creatures, they were. He never could understand all the animosity toward them. He may not understand them terribly well, but as far as he was concerned, people were people.

Chemotherapy was a word he knew. When he was younger, a muggleborn girl in his house had a sister who was undergoing chemotherapy and losing all her hair. The girl kept stealing hair regrowing potions from Slughorn to send to her and asked the Marauders to help. They were always up for mayhem of any type, so they helped willingly, despite hardly knowing the girl. Eventually, the sister died, but the girl said it made her feel better being able to regrow her hair whenever it fell out.

"We can get you a stock of hair regrowing potions, or better yet, a blue wig. Everyone will think you're overloaded with house spirit. And I'll give you points every time I see it, just for having so much, and before you know it, everyone will be running around in blue wigs and red and yellow and green. You'll have started a trend." Sirius gave her a smile and patted her shoulder. "There's always room for hope, you know."

Autumn looked up at her Professor, was he really trying to make her laugh about this? She sniffled, knowing that sometimes that was just how people chose to cope with depressing news. So she didn't say anything to get into an argument, mostly because she did not want to push away the one person that seemed to take interest in her. Wiping her eyes she stared straight ahead out towards the flawless sky. She wasn't even sure if she had hope anymore. Or if she had ever had it to begin with. Her life always seemed so set in stone. She had never planned for a cancer to kill her. She actually had never really thought on death all that much, or what happened to a person afterwards. Was there heaven or Hell? How had she taken such comfort in not believing in much of anything? What was she going to do with her life before the hourglass ran dry?

Leaning back against a tree that had been lucky enough to shade them from the sun she sighed. She was starting to feel tired again. Closing her eyes briefly she shivered as a soft breeze passed her. Everything seemed to hit her harder now. She had bruises on her fingers just from tapping them on tables, her skin was paler than normal, and it seemed that every other night she awoke with a fever or temperature above what it should be.

"Chemotherapy is horrible," she whispered. "It makes a person sick...it's radiation meant to kill the cancer cells....I'm going to miss so much school..."

She wiped her eyes once more and sniffled, looking up towards the sky. Maybe she just needed to not think about it. She needed to look at things with a far more positive light; if she didn't the darkness of the situation would just swallow her whole.

"If you wear a purple wig, I'll wear a blue one," she said softly. "Actually....I'll wear the purple and you wear the blue..."

Looking over at her Professor she shivered a bit and sighed with frustration. She couldn't even admire nature anymore without this getting in the way. She just wanted to sit outside and be able to stare into the sky...was that so much to ask?

"Professor..." she whispered. "I...I'm scared of death....I don't...I don't want to die alone."

Tears filled her eyes once more as the thought she had held inside of her all day came out into the open.

"My parents don't care...they've just sent me money for the treatments," she whispered. "I don't have any living relatives...I just...I don't want to go through this and die alone..."

Sirius sighed. Everyone died alone. Uncle Alphard died alone, drifting off in his sleep, never to return. Regulus died alone, probably surrounded by Death Eaters and terrified. Maybe even pleading for his life. Sirius tried not to imagine it. James died alone, trying to protect his family, fighting a battle that could never be won, an evil far too big for him to ever stop alone. Lily died alone, hoping to save her child.

Someday Sirius would die alone. Someday a long way from now, and in what he really hoped would be a fun and exciting way. An explosion when he was ninety, perhaps. Or being shagged to death. But however he went, he'd go alone. Even if a person died surrounded by loved ones, they still died alone. It was the nature of death, he supposed. But then, they weren't alone for long. That was the beauty of it, he supposed. He didn't look forward to death or anything of the like, but it would be nice to see James and Lily again. He supposed it might even be nice to see Reg, if only to say, "I told you so".

"Who said anything about dying?" Sirius asked. "A year is a long time. All sorts of things can happen in a year." That was certainly true. This time last year, Sirius was on the run as Padfoot and living on rats. "There could be some miraculous breakthrough tomorrow. You just never know." Sirius pulled out his wand and conjured two wigs. He set the purple on his own head and the blue on hers. He looked her up and down and gave a decisive nod. "I think it suits you."

Autumn chuckles as her teacher put the wig on her head and gently she tucked her own dark, curly, hair back so it wouldn't show. Looking up at her Professor she smiled weakly at him. He looked absolutely ridiculous, but she supposed that was the point. He was trying to make her laugh and smile. Which was a nice change... Autumn didn't have many people in her life that tried to do that. In many ways Autumn was surprised she hadn't been sorted into Slytherin.

Sighing she leaned back into the tree and looked at her Professor. He seemed to be the type to hide his pain with laughter; but she wasn't one to talk. Autumn hid her pain in harsh words and abrupt actions. At least her Professor's way of dealing with it seemed more appropriate. Closing her eyes she released a long, slow, breath...her ears listening to the sound of nature around her. She could sleep... right where she was sitting...her Professor could leave her there and she could sleep until the day started anew.

"Thanks," she smiled gently, at his comment on the wig. "Purple is a good color on you as well..."

Coughing into her hand she cringed and cursed. She was getting a cold...she would be stuck in the castle for weeks until it decided to go away, or get worse. God...that sucked. Her immune system did fight for her anymore, so she basically had to load herself up on Vitamin C and orange juice.

"I...I think..." she said, regaining her composure. "I should go back to the castle sir...I'm getting cold."

Of course it was still the beginning of fall...so it was fairly warm. But for Autumn she was always cold...all the warmth had left her body. Shivering once more she stood weakly and yawned.

"Can I still go to your office?" she asked. "If I go to the Hospital Wing, or my dorm...all I'll have to do is just sit there...."