Petal in the Rain
Chapter 15 – Rising from the Ashes (Part 1)
"You learned to run from what you feel, and what's why you have nightmares. To deny is to invite madness. To accept is to control."
-Megan Chance, The Spiritualist
Rain poured down onto the terrain, soaking the lush garden, bolts of spindly lightening illuminating the storming sky. Thunder rumbled, mixing with the distant clinking of expensive crystal from the party room. It was dark...the middle of the night...the only light coming from the dirty street lamps beyond the perimeter of the estate.
A girl with a torn dress was twirling nearby, eyes closed and mouth open to catch the saccharine raindrops that slide down her tongue. She spun like a child playing pretend games, vulnerable and free. Despite the cool summer night and the glittering precipitation, she looked joyous and enduring...an everlasting nymph born from the earth.
He stepped forward into the rain, a sliver of light revealing him. He squinted to see past his rain-spattered spectacles to see the face of the dreamlike figure.
"Lily?" he breathed uncertainly.
The figure stopped spinning, coming to an abrupt halt before him. She stared at the ground, her hollow expression disguised by the wet hair that covered her waxen face, unmoving.
He stepped closer, his voice pitching hopefully: "Lily...is it you?"
She looked up, uncanny green eyes piercing through the darkness. At the sound of her eerie and far-flung voice, everything died around her...nothing else mattered.
"You left me."
"But I've come back for you like I said I would," he started earnestly, his heart writhing in his chest. There was something strange, almost sinister about her. "We can be together now...I promise to never leave you again."
He offered his hand to her, but she did not take it. She continued to regard him with a vacant, numb expression. The blissful dancing girl had evaporated at the sight of him, replaced with what was more like a mechanical corpse.
"We can't be together," the girl replied enigmatically, unblinking as she drew a pattern in the dirt with a stray tree branch.
"Why do you say that?" he asked, scrunching up his troubled eyes. "What's wrong Lily?"
He recoiled as the figure slithered up beside him without breaking eye contact and clenched his hand. A chill crept up his spine. She stood on her tip-toes and leaned into him, her lips mere inches away from his ear. "We can't be together, my love... I'm dead."
His face contorted in horror, his eyes widening in inexplicable fear. "No! It's not true! Your here with me now!"
She looked back at him, malice and revulsion unnaturally spreading over her delicate features. She ripped her hand out of his grasp, her emerald eyes blackening, and sprinted in the opposite direction, disappearing into the abyss.
"NO, LILY! COME BACK!"
James jolted awake, releasing a mangled gasp as his eyes flew open. He breathed heavily, his eyes adjusting to the searing light and his face and neck drenched in sweat. He sat up in bed, one hand over his left breast to calm his speeding heart. It was just a dream. He swept the perspiration from his brow and looked around in confusion.
He was lying in a seaweed-coloured, cramped hospital room.
James shakily swung his legs from the bed to the ground, fumbling on the night stand beside him in search of his glasses. Situating them on the bridge of his nose, he became aware of the bed a few metres away from him, filled with another sleeping occupant. He recognized him immediately.
"Sirius?" James whispered, feeling disoriented. His head began to pound painfully. "Wake up, Sirius."
Sirius's face, though badly bruised and scarred, looked serene in slumber. His injuries did not register with James. He waited for Sirius to respond—to excitably lurch out of his sleep—but he did not stir. James stared at him for a while, unaware that he was in a medically-induced stupor, the cause of his mystification and slow motor function.
James suddenly felt extremely thirsty—the kind of panicked, craving thirst that followed a night of heavy drinking—and grabbed a glass full of water on the nightstand beside Sirius' bed. As he put the glass to his mouth, he immediately spat out the liquid, the glass smashing to the floor. With a disgusted look on his face, he picked up the bottle on the table and read the label: Skele-Gro.
"Repulsive," James grumbled, setting the bottle back down.
Feeling queasy, James stumbled back towards his bed and sat down, leaning over so his head was practically between his knees. He eventually found some water on his nightstand and gulped it down, breathing a sigh of relief as it comforted his burning throat.
What the hell am I doing in a hospital? James wondered half-heartedly, too physically exhausted to care in that moment. He groaned, felling hung-over, his body yearning for him to climb back into bed and shut his eyes and mind to the questions that were clawing to the surface of his consciousness. Cradling his head, he willed the nausea that was threatening to overtake him to disappear.
It wasn't until ten minutes later—when the room stopped spinning—that things began to become clear.
James looked around again. He didn't recognize the putrid green walls of the hospital, the moving medical advertisements papered around the room, nor the clogged layout itself. He hastened to get up again—ignoring the stabbing pain in his shoulder—and tottered over to the window across from his bed. Expecting to see crowded streets, old buildings and honking automobiles, James was startled when his eyes met a very different scene.
I'm in the countryside. This isn't St. Mungo's hospital...why am I not in London?
Then, like a bullet to the temple, memories flooded his head with raucous images and sounds...memories that would haunt him, and all those involved, until the day he died.
The city was blotched with orange-red fire that emitted opaque, polluted smoke. The air was a sooty black mess, the ground patched with destruction. The faint ringing of sirens floated from the city and mingled with the roar of plane engines; the RAF was in a frenzy, attempting to attack the German bomber planes and dodge oncoming gunfire from the escorts.
Smoke was swirling around Big Ben; the Thames was reflecting the fire that burned on its shores…
James winced, his stomach twisting into knots. He turned his gaze from the window to where Sirius safely slept, suddenly aware of how close he had come to dying the day before.
The slender, camouflaged body of the airplane, which only momentarily was agilely maneuvering amongst the clouds, was barreling towards the ground—more specifically the English Channel—as fast as gravity and velocity would allow, a swirl of smoke issuing from the tail. The silhouette of the jumping dog Sirius had painted was perpendicular to the earth, leaping to its fate...
James had reached Sirius in enough time to cushion his plane's impact with the water. He had used the same spell on himself, too, but it had not prepared him for the unforgiving embrace of the English Channel.
He had hit his head on something hard upon impact, but he remembered the pain was nothing compared to the sting of the cold water seeping in his lungs. He wasn't sure how long he'd been struggling underwater until he'd started to scrape for the surface.
James had found a floating piece of debris to stay afloat with. Half-conscious, he'd lifelessly watched burning bits of the destroyed Spitfire gently drift on the waves, wondering what had happened to his best friend...if he had survived the crash, or if he too was floating somewhere nearby. He hadn't possessed the strength to look for him or help himself...he didn't even know where his wand was.
For a long while, time ceased to exist. Then, a pair of arms had pulled him out of the water and the blackness of unconsciousness has ensued...
How did I get here? James wondered as he looked around, his lack of knowledge aggravating him. He knew he and Sirius had been recovered by magical authorities, perhaps even by the Order, as they had likely located him after he had demonstrated significant amounts of magic to save Sirius whilst in a high-alert muggle war zone. What he didn't know was what kind of consequences he and Sirius would be facing for breaching both magical law and Dumbledore's orders...
The consequences, however, meant little at that moment. There were much bigger things to worry about.
James heard a pair of muffled voices sound from outside the door. Struggling to his feet again, he shuffled to the door and pressed his ear against the wood. He recognized only one of the disembodied voices.
"...strict orders that they both remain here until Alastor Moody arrives, do you understand?"
"I understand, but whatever am I and the other staff to do if either awakes and demands to leave? Neither Lord Potter nor Lord Black are of proper health to leave this facility, but I have encountered angry nobility before and they are not easily persuaded."
"You can inform them that they have broken magical law and it will serve them well to quietly obey orders rather than be publicly arrested; that is, unless they don't care about their reputations remaining intact."
"They would have me fired for saying such a thing."
"You can tell them Kingsley Shacklebolt has passed along the message."
James heard the healer grumble irritably, "I still don't understand why members of the magical enforcement agency are not dealing with these war enthusiasts. What are two noblemen doing mixed up in such affairs?"
"That is none of your concern. Now, please do as I've asked. You will alert no one of their identities, should a media circus ensue, and you are, under no circumstances, allowed to let either Potter or Black leave this premises. Also, should any problems occur, you are to contact me or Alastor Moody, no one else."
James flinched, backing away from the door. Kingsley was trying to keep his and Sirius' infringement under wraps. He reckoned Kingsley knew it would not benefit the Order to have two of its most active members locked away in Azkaban...not that either he or Sirius couldn't easily buy their way out of the charges.
However, as guilty as James felt about putting the Order in a tough position, there was no chance he would obligingly remain in hospital.
Hearing the two wizards walk away, James slipped out of his hospital robs and into the now dry air force uniform he had crashed in hours ago. As his wand was nowhere to be found, he slipped Sirius' wand out of his jacket pocket and into his own, determination settling on his battered face.
Before disapparating, James looked over to Sirius' sleeping form, dread settling in his gut. "I'll be back, Sirius. Don't get into any more trouble without me."
James closed his tired eyes, gripping his friend's wand tightly. The image of the old academy building, with its hallowed halls and creeper vines, filled the blackness. He concentrated on it hard, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling anxiously. James took a deep breath, battling the nagging pessimism that told him he was about to plunge into his nightmare again.
Lily...please don't be dead.
Author's Notes
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-pratty_prongs_princesse