A/N: This chapter was written under the influence of Don't Close Your Eyes, by Max Jason Mai. GREAT SONG. By the way. Hopefully this chapter will not take as long to put out as the last one. I really apologize about that. It just wasn't working with me. Sigh.
-C
Jenny thought things were going to normal, or at least, the excuse for normal that she called normal. She and Remus had an understanding. Everything was going to be fine. Sirius had even agreed to stop pressing them together, for Celia's sake.
Apparently he was willing to agree to all sorts of things for Celia's sake. Jenny made a mental note of it and went on with her life.
As if N.E.W.T.s weren't enough of an issue on their own, Jenny had to pander to her fiancé, entertain her friends, and fake about a million smiles.
"It's going to be okay," she would tell herself in the mirror, faking the smile for practice each morning once the other girls had left, except for sometimes Lily. "You're going to be fine. Everything's fine. Everything's normal. This is normal."
It was a good lie, she decided, even though no one really believed it, not even her.
But the important thing was that they accepted the lie, and so even though Remus would sometimes catch her eye longingly, and sometimes she would realize that she was staring at him during classes and thinking about how it would feel to press her body to his and just let him take control of her.
Whenever she caught herself thinking of such things she would poke her leg with her quill, not often hard enough to break the skin, but sometimes it was, and she would let her blood mingle with her ink, wishing it would be a reminder every time she took out her inkwell that she needed to not lose herself to her desires.
It was a hard habit not to fall into, though, especially when he seemed to be healthier lately, invigorated by the studying from N.E.W.T.s or easier full moons or something, whatever it was.
"He kissed you the day before a full moon, JV," Sirius had told her. "That was part of what made him lose control like that. Don't worry; we'll keep him away from you leading up to it from now on. It'll probably go easier on him, too."
And it seemed to actually be going easier on him, so Jenny tried to be grateful when they kept him away from her, but all she could think about was how much she missed his smell, missed his closeness, missed at least being able to exchange looks across the table in the Great Hall during lunch and feel the heat in his amber eyes shoot straight to her core.
Complaining wasn't an option, though, just like Remus wasn't an option and had never been one.
And anyway, she was engaged, as fake as everything between Jenny and Regulus was. The engagement was still very real.
Christmas came and went without comment. She spent it laying low around her family and being as sweet and submissive as possible around her future in-laws. Mentioning her fellow Gryffindors was strictly out of the question, except for the one time that her mother and Mrs. Black had a brief discussion about the viability as a friend of Anna Knight, which they asked Jenny a single question during and then just continued on as she sat there for a three hour conversation over whether or not her best friend would be allowed to set foot on Black family property.
They decided she would be fine, in the end.
So Jenny went back to school in January with Regulus and all of her friends, not talking about her holidays because she didn't want to depress anyone any more than the war was already doing. It seemed like someone was dying or tortured every day, and Jenny found herself crying her way to sleep and having terrible nightmares. Sometimes Lily woke her up from them with soothing words and a cool washcloth for her head.
"You're going to be okay," she would whisper to Jenny. "Nobody's going to hurt you."
The empty words that bordered on lies might not have any lasting power, but they were certainly soothing in the moments late at night when Jenny needed them most.
During the day, though, nothing could hold Jenny's terror at bay except for the small comforts of life and her lies to herself.
For example, James had finally convinced Lily to go on a date with him, and that date had led to another which led to another which led to another...
Well, they weren't official yet, but everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before they were setting a wedding date like everyone else they knew seemed to be doing. Jenny figured it was also going to be fairly soon that Tien and Sirius would be announcing engagement, even though Sirius laughed every time she hinted it.
Jenny even entertained the idea for a while of setting Remus up with Anna, thinking that maybe that way he could be happy at least and he'd be so off limits that she couldn't ever dare touch him again.
But then she thought about the image of Remus kissing Anna, holding Anna, and Jenny knew that there was absolutely no way that it was going to happen. She could never put them together when the mere thought of them together made her so sick to her stomach, so full of jealous rage that she wanted to attack her best friend in the whole world.
No, they were a mess, Jenny realized. She would marry Regulus because she had to and Remus would stay unmarried because he thought he had to, and Jenny was almost happy about that, except that she hated to think of him alone. But she didn't like the thought of him with somebody else, so who did that leave?
Rumors of Death Eater attacks fairly close to the castle were reaching the ears of students regularly and Jenny could feel her blood chill a bit every time she caught Regulus's eye, which was increasingly often. He knew something, but he didn't seem to want to know whatever it was. She tried not to think about it, but Jenny knew it wasn't that easy.
"I can't wait until we can fight in this war," Sirius muttered, looking over the paper with a dark look in his eyes. James nodded his agreement and Lily murmured an affirmative sort of sound.
But Jenny could wait.
She wouldn't be fighting, not if Regulus could make good on his promise, but her husband would be, and he would be fighting against all of her best friends and closest confidants. Even Anna had decided she wanted to fight, which made Jenny feel sick to her stomach.
Jenny hadn't asked Remus if he would be fighting, but she got a very real feeling that he would. After all, even Peter had said he would fight, and if Peter was fighting, as well as James and Sirius and Lily and Anna and Tien... Well, of course Remus would be fighting.
And Jenny couldn't get the thought out of her mind of Regulus having to kill Remus for some reason. Would Regulus feel bad about killing the man Jenny loved, or would he be pleased about it, if it came to that?
Regulus had always been a sweet boy, but Narcissa had been a sweet girl and Jenny knew as well as anyone that she could be as vicious as Bellatrix when it suited her purposes. And Regulus had made it perfectly clear that Remus had to be forgotten completely, not at all a part of Jenny's life. Wouldn't that be easier if he were dead?
No, Jenny couldn't let herself think of that, whether or not Regulus was actually capable of such a thing. She wanted to hide under her duvet and pretend the war didn't exist. She wanted to just finish exams and go on with her less-than-pleasant life and keep Celia safe without endangering Remus, and if that meant never talking to Remus again she could live with that, she told herself.
Except it wasn't want she wanted to do. She wanted to kiss him and hold him.
But she couldn't.
Jenny sighed, putting down her hairbrush and looking over at Lily who had just gotten back from her patrol as Head Girl.
"Have you seen Mary?" she asked Lily. "She's not in the common room last I checked and I can't think of where she would be."
Lily frowned.
"No," she said slowly. "No, I haven't." She bit her lip nervously. "Follow me, Jenny. I think we need to figure out where she is and we're going to need help."
Jenny looked around at Anna's bed questioningly, but Lily shook her head, and Jenny knew she was right. Anna would be more trouble than she was worth if they had to walk around the school in the middle of the night.
Jenny and Lily went, to Jenny's surprise, to the boys' dormitory.
Sirius, James, and Remus looked at them with confusion, holding their fingers to their lips and gesturing to a sleeping Peter.
"James, I need your help," Lily whispered. "I know you're good at finding people, and Mary's missing."
James frowned.
"Missing? Missing how?" he asked while Remus fiddled through his things for something.
"She didn't ever go to the dorm and she's not in any of the places she might be usually," Jenny whispered. "We're concerned."
Remus had a large piece of parchment spread across Sirius's bed, searching it for something. Sirius turned to look with him.
"There," Sirius whispered. "She's not moving. Think she fell asleep studying?"
"In the middle of a corridor?" Remus hissed dryly. "I think they're right, this doesn't feel right. C'mon, let's go find her."
"All of us?" Jenny squeaked.
"All of us," Lily said firmly, grasping her hand firmly as if to punctuate the fact that she didn't want to have to go out in the middle of the night with just the Marauders for company.
They crept along the corridors, following Remus to whatever place he somehow knew was where Mary was.
When Remus whispered that they were close, Jenny could feel her heart pounding.
Mary had fallen asleep, that was all. She had just fallen asleep in the corridor for some strange reason. That was the only thing that made sense.
Remus turned the corner and instantly came back, holding up his hands for them to stop and he whispered, "Sirius, take the girls back to the tower, now."
"What?" Jenny said quickly, trying to get around Remus, around the corner, to see whatever Remus didn't want her to see. She felt Sirius's hand on her arm as she pushed around him, and Remus's hands on her shoulders, his voice begging her to listen to him.
But none of it really registered, because she had seen.
And she screamed.
There, sprawled out on the ground, was Mary's body, surrounded by a pool of blood, and a message daubed on the wall in what had to be Mary's blood about her being 'Mudblood filth'.
"No," Jenny screamed, trying to fight Remus, who was holding her tightly. "No, no no!"
"Jenny," Remus said soothingly, clutching her tightly to him as she thrashed. "Jenny, please."
"She's not dead!" Jenny screamed. "She's not dead!"
"Jenny," Sirius said, his voice heavy in her ear. "You need to stop. You're going to hurt yourself. Jenny, please stop."
"I... I..."
"Jenny," Remus whispered, petting her hair as she began to calm, more exhausted than anything else. She all but collapsed in his arms, and Remus held her tightly, keeping her on her feet. "Sirius, go get help."
While Sirius was off alerting someone, Lily cried into James's shoulder and Remus sat down, moving Jenny to his lap where she shook and whimpered, but not a tear fell.
If she cried, it was real.
The rest of the night was a blur. Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore were woken up and they came to see for themselves what Sirius had related to them. Madam Pomfrey was woken up to administer Calming Draughts to the distressed Gryffindors. Professor Dumbledore assured that he would get to the bottom of it, and Mary's parents would be informed. There would be a service.
And Jenny could feel tears prickling in the corner of her eyes and she shook her head slightly, finally having to believe it.
Mary MacDonald was dead.
She didn't push Remus away in the hospital wing while he held her as she finally let tears run down the front of his pajama shirt. He wrapped his arms around her, tightly, tenderly, as she gripped his shirt and sobbed in spite of the Calming Draught. She knew Lily and James looked very similar and Sirius was just sitting there, staring at the stone floor of the infirmary, waiting for news.
But what news did they need?
Mary was dead.
She wasn't coming back.
She was gone.
Professor Dumbledore came back to the infirmary eventually, though, and he pulled up a chair so that he could look at all of them together.
"Mary's family has been contacted," he said gently. "There will be a service and I will do everything in my power to get to the bottom of this. There was no break-in to the castle, so it must be a student, as much as it pains me to think that any student would do anything so atrocious."
They all nodded.
Remus wrapped her up a bit tighter.
"Something bad is going to happen," Sirius said softly. "I mean, something worse than this. I can feel it."
"Did you feel this coming?" Jenny hissed.
"No, but-"
"Then shut up," she snarled, clutching Remus's shirt even tighter. "I can't... I won't take any more of this, Sirius. I can't handle any more of this. I've taken a double dose of Calming Draught and I'm still a basket case and I just can't... I can't..."
She sobbed again and Remus kissed her forehead gently, wrapping his arms a little tighter around her, shooting Sirius a reproachful look.
"Let's all just be nice, okay?" James said gently. "This isn't easy for any of us. It does no good to start fighting amongst ourselves."
They all nodded, but Jenny didn't feel like being nice. She wanted to claw Sirius's eyes out. She wanted to claw someone's eyes out. She wanted to kill whoever had killed Mary, in the very way they did it, as painfully as possible.
And then she wanted to find out what exactly was the name of the cologne Remus wore so she could spill it all over her pillows every night because it was making her head feel a positive sort of foggy. Combined with the way his fingers were stroking her back comfortingly, she was getting almost embarrassingly aroused.
It would be in the news tomorrow, she realized. Those sorts of things travelled. Jenny's parents wouldn't care that a Muggleborn was killed by fellow students, but many parents would. Some people, especially younger, Muggleborn students, would likely be pulled out of Hogwarts. Especially if Dumbledore couldn't find the person or persons that killed Mary.
Jenny shivered.
"It's okay," Remus whispered. "It's going to be all right."
"No," Jenny whispered, shaking her head. "No, it's not. Think of what will happen if they don't find-"
"He'll find them, JV," Sirius said gently. "Don't worry about that. Dumbledore has a pretty good pulse on everything that happens in this school and there's the portraits and the ghosts and... Don't worry. Nothing is going to slip by him, I promise."
But Sirius wasn't the one that she wanted the promise from. She could feel more tears leaking down her cheeks and she nuzzled her face into Remus's neck taking deep breaths.
Had Mary screamed when they attacked her, or had they done something to her first so that she couldn't? Gagging her, perhaps. Stunning her. The Imperius Curse, like they'd done to her so many years ago.
"This is really real," Lily whispered, looking out at some invisible thing in front of her. "This war, everything... it's all real. We could all die."
"You are not going to die," James said firmly. "I am not going to let you die."
"Do you really think that you can make a promise like that?" Jenny said, choking out every word. "You Marauders, it's just a habit with you, isn't it? Making these grand, beautiful promises that you can't keep. We don't need pretty promises, boys. We're not as fragile as you think."
She knew that Sirius tensed, that James was hurt, and she could feel Remus's hold on her loosen a bit, but Jenny was sick of it.
"I want to go back to bed," she said with a slightly shaky voice, and Remus helped her to her feet immediately, silently walking with her all the way back to Gryffindor Tower.
She was angry, but not at anyone in particular. She had half a mind to track down the culprits behind Mary's death herself and kill them, but she didn't think she could in the end, and it wouldn't do any good. And she even felt angry at Remus, and he hadn't done anything wrong.
It wasn't going to get easier, this war, and Jenny realized that as she fell into her bed, pulling the covers around her, wondering how she was going to break this news to Anna and Tien. She decided she would leave it to Lily to tell everyone. She was Head Girl, after all. That had to be part of her job description or something. It wasn't Jenny's responsibility.
And so Jenny sat up trying to keep her eyes open, trying not to fall asleep, because if she did she couldn't properly convince herself that it was all just a bad dream.
