Chapter 37

Thankyou

Sound, phonetic and deep, an unnamed repetitive scrith; scritch-scritch-scritch and a thud, one thud after another, methodical and incredibly annoying. I was tired. I needed to sleep, my body was tired, my blood was like sludge in my veins. The last thing I wanted was this, but at least there was a bright side to all the noise. His voice was so nice, whatever he was saying he was saying it well.

This didn't feel right, the skin on the soles of my feet was cold and the rest of my body was so warm. Leather, my head was like a puddle seeping out through my body, no tide to send a message, just muddy water from some place else swishing around with no purpose or connection. I could smell it, leather and wood.

There was a great pop and they pulled out the inside of my ears and made them able to hear by whistling and when they stopped the thud was foot steps and the mumbling made words and the scritch, well it was still a scritch but two outta three ain't bad, right?

"I never really did say thank you properly did I?" the warbled effect to the words cleared further and I listened; "I don't know, I don't know how to deal with this. I didn't think your voice was real, at first I though I had made you up, I really did. But then you asked me if I was real, as if anyone could think me up! I'm Sirius bloody Black and you had never heard of me. It was all I could think about. You asking if I was real and then me thinking if the truth made you real." he started laughing. He kept pacing. All my sides tingled. I wanted to fall asleep but I couldn't resist eavesdropping on a conversation Sirius refused to actually have with me, or maybe he was babbling with nerves, he sounded nervous. I knew these were things I shouldn't hear. The sort of things you say in confidence to a silent room or to someone like Jude or just not to someone like me. People never opened up to me, so much so I started to wonder if people had anything on the inside.

"I waited for something to give, for someone to realise. To see a face again, to hear a voice. It reminded me why I had even bothered to stay alive for all that time. Something besides bitterness and I just needed there to be justice for my friends. For everyone. I couldn't let it be all for nothing and I know it sounds like I can't know this but I just feel like even if you don't get why I need to get Pettigrew I think that you understand about doing something to make it; to restore the way things should be. I need you to just not…" he paused, he wasn't even pacing. His hand slipped under my chin and he pressed a finger to my pulse. He laughed again. My body still wouldn't listen to me or I would of laughed with him as I realised why he was so anxious. He thought I was in some sort of mortal peril. I wanted to tell him I wasn't going to die before I realised that I might have been wrong. Maybe I was going to die. I couldn't bring myself to panic. Apparently I couldn't bring myself to do anything but remain here in a very PeterPan sort of way, in the place between asleep and awake where you still remember dreaming. Except for me the dream was on the outside. I was living the biggest joke of an adventure the world could of thrown at me. He still laughed,

"I can't believe you came to Azkaban prison on an antique clean sweep and you know I though about it, when you splinched yourself and you made me sleep in a bathtub, I couldn't sleep thinking about that note. That the owl brought in, you just wrote my name on it, a piece of paper with my own name on it. Its not exactly how I imagined my release papers looking, I have had more official looking detention slips off of Remus. Not the best counterfeit really." he breathed a huff of air; "This isn't a very good thank you is it? Well it isn't really my thing to be honest. I amn't really the sort of person you would describe as humble. While I am being honest I might as well tell you, and I know this sounds bad, but I actually really wish you had been someone else, that someone else had come. Anyone else. I mean, not because I don't like you but just because, I uuh"

I was glad he seemed like he was stopping, I didn't want to hear anymore. It wasn't as if I had a choice; it was more like the direct opposite. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I was such a joke, I hated that every time I learned something about myself that I liked there had to be a reason to suffer for it. I had done something because I believed it was right and I thought that was pretty hard core but it just made me an even bigger joke; now I was an eighteen year old girl who was humiliated by the one person she cared about the thoughts of most. He kept talking and I felt my emotions heave as he broke the momentary silence.

"I just didn't think I would ever feel this way about someone so quickly. I didn't think I would feel this way about anyone at all. I just regret it because I didn't want to meet someone like you this way. Where were you when I was your age, you know? We really could have used you back then. The stuff you do. I mean, I wanted to say thank you but now you are just going to go ahead and just lie there and you just have to wake up because I actually don't what I will do because we have to… I don't know; meet Harry and introduce you to Remus, that great git! We have to get married as well and oh God Malfoy, I don't know what I'll do if I know a girl like you has died a without being properly loved! I don't just mean sex" he was laughing again and I could feel it and I wondered if I was blushing but I couldn't tell. I wish we hadn't met this way either. Had never been engaged, had never been cursed, had never been imprisoned, but that was the price for the wonderful things. If it wasn't for curses and engagements I never would have met Sirius at all and I couldn't abide that. He was the reason this was an adventure and not a tragedy, I needed his help, I needed to help him. He had saved me from a half life, or maybe I had saved myself by finding him but looking back he was like magic all over again.

But instead of being the newest and best part of me he was the newest and best part of my life. I would literally be dead without him even if we were only bound to another to accommodate a plot to kill some terrible wraith it would only kill me if we didn't.

Oh god, the Grin, the mirror. Maybe I was going to die, it was in my lungs, it was in my hands. But how could it get to me if I was supposedly safe from it. I was pulled from my thoughts by his breath against my cheek.

"Thank you Juniper." my cheek was wet with his tear and my heart was speeding with his words.

scritch-scritch-scritch zooip; and music and he kissed my tear stained cheek, his tears.

Hey Jude don't make it bad

Maybe I would have to cry too because no one had ever come up with a better way to thank anyone and I was on the receiving end of it and it was perfect. The dry noise had been the record and I realised that it mustn't have been the first time he had let it play out where ever we were. Then I made a few tears of my own and I realised my head hadn't felt like mud in a long moment and now if my body wasn't full of dirty water I might be able to tell Sirius you're welcome.

Take a sad song and make it better

Remember to let her into your heart

He lay beside me, at my back and pulled me toward him;

"Please wake up."

Then you can start to make it better

Hey Jude, don't be afraid,

You were made to go out and get her

The minute you let her under your skin

Then you begin to make it better

My hands refused to move, as if every direction I asked them to bend was backward on a hinge. As if they just weren't built to move that way, or anyway. It was really very frustrating. Sirius hummed along with the tune. I felt like I was living the perfect life of someone else and that my punishment for trying to steal their life was to be locked in. My only home would become my new prison, my body. The only root I had.

And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,

don't carry the world upon your shoulders.

But I wasn't all root because I had another gift, magic. Magic was like wings and I felt so happy for a moment because I could remember something from when I was very young, when I couldn't tell the difference between my imagination and reality; that I used to think I was spending time with my Mother, and that my Mother lived in a room underneath the floor. I used to press my ear to the floor and she would whisper up; "Roots and wings, it is the best I can give you Juniper. Roots and wings."

For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool

By making his world a little colder

Hey Jude, don't let me down.

"But I have nowhere; no place else to fly too." I told the floor. "So what are wings for?"

You have found her, now go and get her.

Remember to let her into you your heart,

then you can start to make it better.

So let it out and let it in, hey Jude, begin,

"it's the best I can give you." said the floor.

You're waiting for someone to perform with.

"I am going to go crazy on my own. If I loose you as well. You are the only person who makes me feel like there is a right way to do it. The only person who can protect me from doing the crime I should have been put away for right after I got out. When you aren't around I'm just bitter. I need you to bring me back." I knew that I wouldn't tell him that I heard him speaking if I ever woke up. If is such a scary word. If I wake up, if I don't die, if it all goes wrong, if he really cared then why wouldn't he say it to my face?

And don't you know that it's just you, hey Jude, you'll do

The movement you need is on your shoulder

A searing pain ran through my middle and I realised it had been a while since I had felt the tug and pull of the warm light through my middle. I tried to bring it out, to fill myself up with it, to puppet myself with it but it was like it was caught in something, like a web made of tar had bound it in place. My wand hit into the palm of my hand and I felt Sirius rise behind me;

"Juniper?" my hand wouldn't move to grip it and my mouth wouldn't move to answer as I felt like a bullet was somehow being shot through the centre of every which one of my bones at a time.

Hey Jude, don't make it bad

Take a sad song and make it better,

remember to let her under your skin,

Then you'll begin to make it better

There was a crack somewhere far off in the house and Sirius's whole body seemed to flinch behind me.

Better better

"I think our time is up Jude, you are really gonna need to wake up now." I was pulled to sit up and like a high-tech baby doll my eyes opened as I sat up and the light attacked my eyes at first.

better better

"You really have some timing Malfoy, come on."

better better, oh.

He wrapped his hand around mine and pulled me from the bed, my feet hit the floor and I hissed with the sensation of pins and needles but my body remained upright. I looked at Sirius from the back as he pulled me out of what I realised must have been his old bedroom because, similar to Sirius, it was completely out of place in the house. The biggest give away, aside from all the naked girls and motor cycles and cigarette butts and the (hate to say how glorious) smell of him was the laughing photographs. I wondered if he laughed in photographs under every circumstance. I had enough figured to understand that a household like this wouldn't be caught dead with a picture with a young moustacheless Remus Lupin unless the young leather clad Sirius Black had something to do with it. Oh Black was really a very beautiful boy. I blushed, he had matured well too; oh the leather was just cruel! He tugged my wrist again in a get a move on gesture and caught me looking. I narrowed my eyes.

"What?" One gloating grin later I had the picture pocketed and we were half way down the hall smeared with blood which I remembered vaguely to be mine. Yup, there is were I smeared it into the carpet for delirious fun. On the wall were the runes I recognised from the inside of the mirror, written in blood because I am just that artistic. I stared at them until I heard a little pop which made goose bumps rise all the way up my arms and down to my legs. The song played out in the background;

Nananana nananana hey Jude.

I wished I had more cause to appreciate it but unfortunately I was too busy appreciating what a certain intrusive head would look like on a certain far more intrusive pike. Sirius let go of my hand and pointed his wand at the intruder;

"Where did you get that?" I asked eyeing the wand. Distracted for a moment before remembering the magnitude of the situation and pulling out my own wand; "it's actually not important just remember to remind me to ask again later cause I really do want to know.

"Jude." he said warningly and I nodded;

"What? I'm focussed, jeez, you try losing more blood then you knew you could fit in your body and come out the other side and not even lose focus for long enough to notice your fiancés…" he looked at me with his eyebrows raised and I closed my mouth. He shook his head and turned to face the other wizard who had just turned to face our end of the hall; oh splendid. Now he is going to grill me about the end of that statement until I can come up with a good enough lie to keep him happy.

"Stupefy!" Sirius sent a spell which was assumedly a hex at the intruder. The spell lit the other end of the hall as the wanker deflected the spell;

"I guess I am a bit rusty." mumbled Sirius glancing down at his wand.

"At least you have a nice bum." I said and then smiled conspiratorially. Ha! Now he couldn't try and get it out of me cause I had already told him! In retrospect that wasn't as genius as I had originally thought. Better follow it up with something hard core; stepping ahead of Sirius I pointed my wand and shot of pushy light toward the other end of the hall.

And you know I was really on to something before Sirius took the opportunity to pinch my bum.

"Sorry," I heard from behind me; "couldn't help myself." I laughed as I redoubled my effort to lash out at the idiot approaching up the hall. He wasn't laughing. Some people have absolutely no sense of humour.

A/N: thanks for reading! Please review