Chapter 30: A Star's Birthday
Days are long. Weeks are longer. Life feels like a constant cog; turning endlessly in a circle, never moving forward or back, but the world around you moves too in its own cogs.
For Sirius' birthday, which fortunately fell on a weekend, they all headed to the Three Broomsticks. And by, all, meaning both the Marauders and the Gryffindor girls. Wasn't such a bad day, in Cressida's opinion, and she's happy that Sirius had a family-sized gathering. It's probably the first celebration of that size that has been for him in a long time. He enjoyed it. Cressida tried to.
They were loud, but none of the other patrons seemed to mind. She was cramped in between Sirius and James, cupping an empty butterbeer glasses between both hands.
James grabbed his own and then gestured to hers. "Do you want me to grab you another?" Cressida shook her head instinctively, forgetting her manners. James slid from his seat to find a waiter.
The day felt like a haze. Like it just had a layer of fog over it and Cressida was trying to drive through it. A lot of days began to feel like that.
It was exhausting-is exhausting, to have a constant flood of emotion boiling inside of you, each one trying to climb its way to her face. Each one trying to burst out. The anger and resentment of her family. She finally came to terms with the fact that her family was just as dreadful as Sirius', if only in their owns ways. It had taken a long night of Sirius essentially yelling at her to get it through to her head.
It had taken another week to find herself feeling numb at the sight of Regulus. It wasn't fear that spiked with him, it was guilt. Guilt, because a sixteen-year-old boy, her best friend's brother, had given his life away to a cause that she knows would be his end one day. The guilt came after the revulsion. But that was centred on his marking, not the boy.
She tried so damn hard to put the marking and the boy back together as one in her head. To make herself see that he wasn't dragged into some sick cult; that he chose it. He is the cult. But that made her only feel worse, giving her a sense of failure to convince him otherwise in the short time they knew each other.
Fear was another. Fear of what awaits her both inside and out of the Hogwarts' walls. The lingering whispers in the back of her mind, reminding her that someone, or someones, knew what awaited her when she went home last summer. Knew-probably laughed and made snide remarks. How long till one of them gets tired of her Mud-blood presence enough that they'll act out?
Though, in some way, her fear isn't centred on the people. She's been dealing with Slytherin's her entire school life. She can fight them. And if it comes to it, the little box of spells she has stored in her mind is ready to come to practice if need be. The Darker ones included; if it would save one of their lives. She refuses to use them on any other principle.
No, it's fear of the crossfire. Who will get hurt in their attempts to get to her? Would Sirius be in danger when they live in the London apartment together? Does the name Black give him protection, or does his disownment make the target bigger?
The world suddenly comes back up to speed, and the muffled voices now clear like Cressida has broken the surface of a deep lake.
"You have not played fetch with the giant squid," Marlene drawls in disbelief, eyes accusingly narrowed at Sirius.
The long-haired boy grins, throwing his hands into the air. "I have!" he cries. "Peter was there."
Peter licks his lip, shyness growing at the sudden attention. "I mean, technically it was, but it only threw the stick back once."
Sirius leans back against his chair, satisfied with his witness, nevertheless. "See," he confidently declares to a still disbelieving group of Marlene, Lily, and Mary. Cressida's mouth tweaks up in one corner, her thumb running around the rim of her glass. She still doesn't believe the story. Or at least, the logistics of it. The squid sure might have thrown the stick back, but more in a 'don't throw things at me, you stupid wizard' way.
James slips back into his seat with a new butterbeer, but the rising tweak in the corner of her mouth drops as he places one in front of her too. Her sigh is silent and short, eyes closing over for a moment. She appreciates the gesture, really, she does, but her stomach can't handle anything more that's so sweet.
James has been trying so hard just to go back to normal. Friends. And Cressida knows his actions are the only thing holding them together at the moment. She would probably crumble completely if it weren't for him. But it adds a layer of guilt that her shoulders aren't prepared to carry.
And the only way to keep herself from falling apart completely is to be numb.
Cressida pushes her old glass out of the way, taking the new one into her hold. "Thank you," she murmurs.
"You don't have to drink it, but it's there if you change your mind."
She nods in both thanks and acknowledgement. It looks deceitfully delightful, but the clenching in her stomach keeps her from gulping it down in one go. She can pass it over to Remus or Mary if she doesn't touch it by the time they have to go back. Leaning forward, elbows braced on the table, she can feel the ghostly touch of a thumb rubbing along the ridges of her spine.
"You look tired."
Before she can answer him, Remus, who sits next to James but on the adjacent side of the table does. "That's because she was up until three am trying to finish the Transfiguration reports." His mouth opens in a wide yawn. "And I had to stay up too."
"I could've helped you," James says to her softly.
"I wasn't struggling," she answers. "Just didn't have time."
Mary, who has been listening to them rather than the other half of the tables' heavy debate on the importance of Herbology, says, "I feel that. Lils and I were up all night on Wednesday trying to get that damn Charms essay done. I don't even understand what the topic is."
"I can read over yours if you want," Cressida offers. "I think I did alright in it."
Mary nods with a small grin. "That would be amazing."
Cressida smiles back, but brings the glass up to her lips simply so she doesn't have to talk any further. And she manages to stay relatively quiet, her enjoyment coming from watching the others laugh and have fun. Her cheek is developing a red marking from where it presses against her hand for so long.
"Oi, poker-face."
Cressida snaps her eyes away from the window where she had been mesmerised by the bright auburns, oranges, and reds that litter the ground in the mid-Autumn season. Autumn is always pretty to watch from a window, but the chilly winds and bitter mornings are a rude awakening for students still caught in the warmth of Summer. The carriage taking them back to Hogwarts jolts as the wheels dip into a pothole.
She finds Sirius looking at her, his eyebrows raised, looking as though he's been trying to get her attention for a while. "Were you listening?"
"Clearly not," Remus says with a peeking smile. "Sirius thinks we should pull something on McMullen."
"As a warning," Sirius adds, as though the idea of a prank simply being a prank is now above them. Cressida folds her arms across her stomach, pressing her foot against a small space on the opposite seat between his legs and the wall. "Might get him to leave you alone."
James leans forward, seated on the same length of chair with Wormtail between them. "He's still harassing you?" he questions in a disgusted tone.
"No," Cressida answers quietly. "We're just seeing him around more because we recognise him. He hasn't even talked to me since that time Sirius and I went to Magical Creatures."
"That's not what you told me." Remus braces his elbows on his knees, kind and soft eyes stern for once. "He was there when you ran into those Slytherins."
"And at Quidditch try-outs," Sirius adds.
Peter meekly holds up a hand. "I thought he was following me around the other day. But that was when you missed class because you felt sick. And that time we were near the fifth floor, and he tried to stop us from going past him."
Sirius nods once in Peter's direction. "Creeps following you," he says to her.
"How come I don't know any of this?" James is tilted in his seat, resting mostly against the door, acting almost like the header of a table. "Seriously, you're being practically stalked and harassed and none of you thought to tell me?"
Sirius gives a feeble shrug. "Thought you knew," he mumbles. James gives a soft grunt, falling back against his seat.
Cressida chews her cheeks. In all honesty, she has no space in her mind to spend worrying about the actions of a pathetic boy. She knows that he's just targeting her because he thinks she's the easiest way to get into the ring of the Marauders. Her forgiveness, her opinion means something, and he's trying to use that.
A smart tactic, she can't deny. A Ravenclaw tactic. And perhaps if she cared to mend relationships, he would stand a chance, but Cressida is as interested in hearing him talk as she is in Blast-Ended Screwts.
"Do whatever you want," she says with a sigh. "Just don't get caught."
Remus purses his lips to his mouth, tilting his head to the side. "Not exactly our speciality," he laughs.
"Well it's going to have to be," she retorts, the humour Cressida tried to show only slipping through, "because I don't think Hogwarts' Head Boy can be caught pulling pranks on other students. In fact, he should be the one giving you detentions for it."
"Prongs won't give us detention," says Sirius, narrowing his eyes at James. "Will you, Prongsie?"
"If you touch my comb again, I'll give you a months' worth."
Sirius' eyes widen theatrically, holding his hands up in surrender. Cressida lets her temple fall back against the side of the carriage, watching the thin stream of the outside world through the window. It was raining earlier that day, which is why the open-aired ones were not being used.
Pulling her from her thoughts again, Sirius nudges her foot. Cressida lifts her eyes but not her head. Sirius raises one brow. It's his birthday, she reminds herself. With that in mind, Cressida pushes back off the wall, sitting normally in her seat with a small smile in his direction. She moves the arch of her foot off the seat to rest over the curve of his knee, pushing it from side to side. In retaliation, Sirius undoes the laces of her boots, loosening them all the way down the tongue. Then once he finishes that, his attention turned to Peter in some nonsensical chatter, he ties them back up all the way to the top so tightly that she feels blood pooling in her toes.
He laughs softly at a joke she missed, his fingers pinching at the underside of her calf while he looks to the boys.
She watches him, the only sight today that brings a true smile to her. To the Dog Star in the sky and back, she thinks.