Song for this chapter: Shattered by OAR
BPOV
As soon as she had administered more healing ointment to my throat and plied me with another group of potions I did in fact drift off to sleep again. I slept all through the night and a good portion of the next day as well. I was surprised when Madam Pomfrey didn't wake me very hour to take a blood-replenishing potion like she had last time. When I did wake up in the early afternoon she gave me a meal and another round of potions. I started to suspect she was also dosing me with a sleeping potion in the group of them because I quickly fell back asleep after taking the round of them. I slept until four in the morning.
"I promise to go back to sleep if you will refrain from slipping me another sleeping potion this time," I grumbled when Madam Pomfrey took away another tray of food and started handing me potions.
"You're very quick," she said with a chuckle. "Very well, but you really need to rest. You also have a history of sneaking out of here when I am not looking."
"I promise I won't sneak out," I sighed guiltily. "Please just don't make me take another potion. I already have to take so many of them."
"Very well… but if you go back on your word…" she warned while pointed her finger at me.
"I won't," I promised. "By the way… am I going to have to take Wolfsbane now? Is it possible to be infected by claws or does it have to be a bite? I really need to do more research on werewolves…"
"No Bianca, you won't have to worry about that," she answered softly. "Besides, if you were afflicted you would have transformed on the ward during the last two nights."
It occurred to me then that she might have been sedating me as a preventative measure in case I was going to transform. I supposed a sleeping werewolf would have been much easier to deal with. My anger at dosing me drifted away when I realized it had really been to prevent a safety risk for the others.
I was released after only two days. Madam Pomfrey gave me a box of potion vials with proportioned doses of blood replenishing potion to take for the rest of the week as well as two jars of the scar cream she had given me to heal the marks left behind after her treatments in the hospital wing. The four gashes wrapped from just under my ear, down my throat, and over the top of my right breast, and they were being rather stubborn about healing properly. I took the box back up to my dormitory, and got to work packing up my things to return home for the summer. I climbed down into the spare room, which had been stripped of any exercise materials, and set my box aside. This little room now housed my bulky or oddly shaped items that would not fit into the smaller compartments.
Once I had packed almost everything neatly away I pulled out new clothes to put on. I ended up wearing a pair of green cargo pants and a simple white t-shirt. The marks were still visible so I dug out a silky red scarf and tied it around my throat to hide them before throwing on my trainers. I wanted to go see Professor Lupin before leaving, and I was worried that the sight of my throat would make him uncomfortable.
The trip to his office was quiet as most students were either in their dorms packing or out on the grounds enjoying their freedom from lessons and homework. When I got to his office, the door was already open, and I saw that he was moving about the room packing as well.
"Hello Professor," I said quietly.
He turned to see who it was, and I saw his face flush red before he turned his back to me.
"You've been released, very good," he said awkwardly as he shoved a stack of papers into his briefcase. "I'm very sorry for what happened. I shall be gone shortly, so you won't have to worry about it happening again."
"I'm not worried," I pointed out as I stepped into the office, attempting to demonstrate that I was not afraid of being in his vicinity, but he just moved further away from me. "I am not afraid of you Professor Lupin."
"I fear that you should be Ms. Potter," he sighed, his back still facing me. "I am an uncontrollable and volatile creature. You can never be certain that I will not attack you."
"You just forgot to take your potion," I said, the desperation in my voice surprising even me. "And by the way, when did I become Ms. Potter again. My name is Bianca, and you've been calling me by it all year."
"It felt inappropriate," he said stiffly, finally turning to look at me with pained eyes.
"What's more intimate than trying t o rip my throat out?" I laughed darkly. "Surely we can use first names with on another."
"That is not funny," he sighed. "And you do not use my first name, so I'd say that we are about even."
"Fine then, Remus, I forgive you," I snapped. "Now will you stop acting like we are strangers and accept my forgiveness?"
"I don't think I can," he sighed. "To have nearly killed the child of my best friend is the worst thing I have ever done."
"If it makes you feel any better you aren't the first, and you probably won't be the last," I said with a shrug that was meant to belay the seriousness of the statement. "Heck, even I have tried."
"I have done some awful things, but this… this I cannot forgive," he lamented.
"I have done bad things as well," I said plainly. "I have been someone's whore, I have killed a man, I have tried to slowly kill myself, but you know what… I am still here."
I paused for a moment to let that sink in.
"I will still be here tomorrow and the next day, and I intend to enjoy myself rather than beating myself up for things that I have done wrong," I continued. "I want to be your friend regardless of what happened the other night, but I will understand if you choose not to be mine."
"You are very much your mother's daughter," he whispered before a smile brightened his features. "I would be honored to be your friend Bianca."
"Well that's settled then," I said somewhat awkwardly as I tried not to think of my mother. "So are you leaving because of me?"
"I suppose that is part of it," he said honestly. "But then there is the fact that Professor Snape let slip my situation… and I will soon have to be let go at the request of the parents anyway."
"That's outrageous," I snapped.
"Not all witches and wizards are as tolerant as you and your friends," he pointed out in an effort to head off my anger. "And he hasn't done it, but I really think Albus ought to ask me to leave considering that he is your guardian and am a serious risk to your safety."
"He wouldn't," I said.
"No, he wouldn't but it changes nothing," he said with a dismissive hand gesture.
"Well I…" I stuttered. "I guess I don't actually have a solution for this."
"Not every situation has a solution," he pointed out kindly. "I will only be an owl's flight away Bianca."
With that we said our goodbyes and I decided to go make one last visit. I hadn't been to see Hagrid in quiet some time, other than our group visit the other night, and I was quite overdue. He was sitting on a stump in his yard whittling something with his knife and he looked up with a smile on his face when he saw me approaching.
"Hey there," he beamed. "Dinit 'spect you to be up and aroun' jus' yet."
"I'm healing very quickly," I told him as I sat down in the grass beside him. "What are you making?"
"Tryin' ter make a duck," he chuckled. "Failin somethin' awful."
"Can I see?" I asked, holding out my hand to receive his project.
He handed it over easily, and I saw what he meant. It was really just an oddly shaped lump of wood at this point. I couldn't whittle, but I could draw, so I carefully used the knife to draw an outline of the ducks head so he could follow it while he worked and then I handed his supplies back to him.
"That might help," I shrugged.
"Thanks Kiddo," he said cheerfully as he set back to work. "I'da been here all day."
"Well I find that sometimes certain projects are just beyond me," I admitted. "But with a little help from my friends I always seem to manager to get where I am trying to go."
"Are yed sure yer only thirteen Bianca?" he laughed as he worked.
"No, I'm not," I sighed, sounding a little too serious when the image of a phoenix flitted through my mind. "Sometimes I feel a million years old."
"Don' we all?" he asked with another laugh, missing the change in my mood. "Yeh jus' need a vacation. Look a' that, now yeh've got one."
"You're right," I agreed. "I should go get ready for the end of the year feast, but I wanted to stop by and see you first. I'll miss you over the summer Hagrid."
"Oh don' yeh worry. I'm sure you'll be havin' too much fun ter miss me." He said. "Don' yeh know their havin' the Wold Cup in Britain this summer?"
"Wow really?" I gasped. "I wonder how much I would have to do in order to convince Albus to get us tickets."
"Not much I bet," Hagrid laughed boisterously. "Tha' man loves his Quidditch as much as the next one."
I went back up to the castle for the feast. It was fun but fairly uneventful. Gryffindor won the house cup again, but that was expected at this point so no one was surprised. I enjoyed a nice meal with my friends, all of them kindly ignoring the red scarf on my neck and what it failed to hide completely. We laughed and talked together while we worked our way through the delicious food in front of us.
After desert we all went up to bed, as we had to get up bright and early to ride the Hogwarts Express back to London in the morning. I had already made arrangements to ride back to the house with Cedric since Albus would be dealing with some last minutes business at the school tomorrow. It probably had to do with Professor Lupin leaving, but I hadn't asked much about it.
I had the entire day planned out, but what I hadn't planned for was the terrible surprise waiting next to the carriages that would take us down to the train station. I ground to a halt, staring in something between terror and fascination at the mottled black beast of a winged horse standing in front of our carriage. I looked around in surprise, and I realized that there was one pulling each carriage. What were they?"
"Are you coming Bianca?" Cedric asked me, looking over his shoulder when he realized I wasn't walking with him anymore.
"I… uh…" I said dumbly, still staring at the strange horse. "I'm sorry… but what is that?"
His head snapped back and forth between me and the front of the carriage, and I saw understanding dawn on his features.
"You can see them now?" he asked quietly as he closed the distance between us once more to take my hand. "It hadn't occurred to me… with you being there when Betsy… I'm sorry they must come as quite a shock."
"What are they?" I asked a bit more firmly than I meant to.
"Thestrals," he told me as we began to walk forward hand in hand. "You can only actually see them if you have seen death. Everyone just assumes that the carriages pull themselves up to the school, but Hagrid told us in our sixth year class what they actually are."
"Can you see them?" I asked him, turning my eyes away from the thestral to meet his gaze.
"No," he told me with a soft smile. "I've seen drawings, but I cannot see them in real life."
"They are certainly a sight to see," I said with a slight shudder as I started walking to our carriage once more.
Cedric and I got a compartment together on the train and spent most of the ride just talking about what we should do over the summer. I talked to him about the Quidditch World Cup and discovered that he was far more excited to go than I was. We made plans to go out for dinner and a muggle movie that night after we had gotten our things settled at home and then we settled in to just enjoy one another's company for the rest of the ride.
"I hate to put my wand away even though we are getting close to London," I grumbled. "I hate that Albus enforces the no magic rule at home. He keeps going on and on about protecting one's developing magical core, but I just love doing magic."
"He is right you know," Cedric said with a laugh. "But why not do one more spell before we arrive. Something fun, so the enjoyment will last you all the summer.'
I thought about telling him he was irritating for agreeing with Albus but I didn't really mean it, so instead I dug my wand out of my pocket and tapped it against my palm while I tried to think of what spell I would do. It came to me all of a sudden and I gave Cedric a beaming smile before I began to intricately twirl my wand in the air above the palm of my left hand. I whispered the spell, hoping to keep it a surprise from Cedric and watched with a smile as my creature began to form above my hand.
It was a butterfly like the one than had landed in my hair last summer while we'd be sitting in the tall grass near the swimming hole we liked to go to sometimes. Cedric had commented that it was such a beautiful butterfly before indicating that it was only so beautiful because it was sitting in my hair. I thought the creature had a beauty all its own with glossy blue and black wings that spread at least six inches wide.
I dropped my wand hand, releasing the butterfly to do as it wished, but it simply landed in my hand. I swung my hand over to offer it to Cedric and he had a lost smile on his face as his eyes focused on the butterfly, then they looked up at me and they were filled with such love it nearly bowled me over. He held his hand out, and the butterfly fluttered over to land on his hand. I thought he might hold it for a bit, but he simply raised his hand up and waited until the butterfly flew off and landed in my hair like its inspiration had a year ago.
"Beautiful," Cedric murmured as the train rolled to a stop in the train station
When we disembarked I ran over to catch Harry before he left with our Aunt and Uncle. As I was hugging him goodbye the butterfly finally flew away and I noticed our Aunt gawking at me. It took me a moment to put it together that I looked just like her sister had at this age. It must have been quite odd for her to see me. I told Harry goodbye, and gave them a quick wave before hurrying away. I had a feeling they wouldn't take very kindly to me going over and making conversation with them, so instead I joined Cedric and we followed his parents out of the station and over to their car.