CHAPTER THIRTY
"Wake up, Janie," came a voice from somewhere inside of Jane's head.
"Wake up."
It sounded like it was getting louder.
"Oi! Wake up!"
Jane groaned when she figured out that the voice wasn't in her head at all; it was just Sirius. She rolled over and placed her pillow over her head, thinking of ways to make him pay for interrupting her slumber later.
"Go away!"
"No, get up," Sirius said, pushing her a little. Jane had to catch herself from rolling off of the bed. It was her first night at the Potters', and if this was going to happen every night, then she was going to be a very angry person; she needed her sleep. She opened her eyes and looked out the window. It was still dark outside. She frowned.
"What time is it?" she asked groggily.
"Two in the morning," James said from somewhere across the room. Jane groaned again.
"Why are you waking me up at two in the morning?" she asked.
"We couldn't sleep," James said.
"So, you figured that I shouldn't either?" she asked, sitting up in the bed. She saw Sirius shrug before jumping off of the bed.
"We wanted to do something," James said.
"That sounds like a personal problem to me; besides, there isn't anything to do at two o'clock in the morning because most normal people reserve that time for sleeping," Jane half-whined, wanting more than anything in that moment to go back to sleep.
"Let's go flying or something," James said. "It's always fun to do a little night flying."
"You woke me up so we could 'go flying or something?'" Jane asked with a dead expression. "When I get enough energy, I'm gonna strangle the both of you." She lay back down to just have Sirius rip away the duvet.
"No, get up!" he said. Jane sighed into her pillow, wanting to scream. Deciding that they weren't about to let her sleep anytime soon, she reluctantly crawled out of bed.
"Fine," she said, "but I want something to eat first."
"All right," James said as she walked past him muttering something about crazy people.
She walked down to the kitchen and made herself a sandwich. Moonlight was pouring through the windows, reflecting off the marble countertop. It wasn't technically the full moon until tomorrow night, but the moon was still pretty bright. She looked out of the kitchen window and admired how the moonlight lit up the back garden.
"Let's go walking," she said, mashing her turkey sandwich together and taking a bite of it.
"Walking? I thought we were going flying?" Sirius asked.
"Walking's fine with me," James said.
Jane was no longer mad at them for waking her up. She and Sarah used to stay up until ungodly hours all the time, looking for things to do, just like James and Sirius were doing now. The problem was that there was never anything to do in the dead of night in Stockbridge except for walk around the neighbourhood or lay on the roof or in the fields. But those things were nice too sometimes; the world always felt very surreal when it was asleep.
"Come on," James said, grabbing Jane's wrist and pulling her towards the back door of the kitchen, almost causing her to drop her sandwich. "I wanna show you something."
Jane followed Sirius and James out the door and through the back garden, munching on her sandwich as she walked. She watched as they proceeded to hop the small stone wall surrounding the garden. She followed, stopping at the edge of the forest behind James' house, though the boys had walked in already. Sirius looked back at her.
"Are you coming or not?"
"You're not dragging me into a forest in the middle of the night," Jane said. "It's creepy in there."
"Don't tell me that you're actually scared of the forest," Sirius said.
"So what if I am?"
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
"Leave her alone," James scolded. Jane stuck her tongue out at Sirius.
"Look, it's just a little walk. It's not that much of a forest to be honest," James told her. "It clears out after a while."
Jane looked at the dark forest. Why couldn't James and Sirius ever do normal stuff, like not walk into creepy forests at night?
She sighed. They wouldn't be James and Sirius if they did normal things. She reluctantly walked into the forest. She quickly noticed the footpath that ran through it, as though James had done this all the time. She kept her head down, trying to not trip over tree roots. This proved difficult because not a lot of moonlight was allotted through the tree leaves. She tripped at least five times.
After a while of stumbling and having Sirius scare her out of her wits by jumping at her from behind a bush, Jane finally saw the clearing that James had said was there. It was really more of a large pond than it was a clearing though.
James hopped up onto a boulder near the side of the pond, and Jane sat beside him, tearing him off a bit of her sandwich to share with him. She had a feeling that James had brought Sirius there before because Sirius had gone straight to looking for rocks to skip.
"This is my favourite place," James told her, biting into the sandwich. Jane took notice in the little boat dock with a little wooden boat tied to it.
"Do you actually use that?" she asked, finding it somewhat hard to picture James rowing through the pond in that little boat by himself for no good reason. He laughed a little.
"Not really," he said. "I use the dock for jumping off of sometimes in the summer."
"You swim here?" she asked.
"Whenever it's warm enough."
Jane looked around. It really was the perfect little spot, with its dock and little rowboat and boulders and trees. It seemed like a place Jane and Sarah would run off to, if a place like this existed in Stockbridge. All they had was the Test River which wasn't as beautiful and secluded as this was.
"It's perfect, like something out of the fairy tales you hear when you're little," she noted.
"Fairies actually hatch from cocoons and like to lay eggs near here sometimes," James said. "Mum fancies them for decorations."
Jane looked at him.
"Fairies?" she asked, and he nodded.
"So, good things exist too, not just vampires and werewolves?" Jane asked.
"Oh, yeah. There are loads of creatures out there," James told her.
"What, like unicorns?" she joked.
"Yeah, and mermaids, though they aren't as pretty as Muggles seem to think they are," James said.
"Will we get to see them? Unicorns and fairies and stuff in that class we're taking next year?"
James shrugged.
"Maybe. That's up to the professor."
Jane nodded and looked out at the water, with the pale moonlight reflecting in it and the ripples caused by Sirius skipping stones. Remembering something she read once, she turned back to James as she finished the last few bites of her sandwich.
"Did you know that in ancient times, people believed that the moon could make you go mad?" Jane asked; he shook his head. "Well, they did. They thought the moon controlled all the water on Earth, not just the tides and stuff, but like, fluids in people's bodies too. So, when someone went crazy or something, they started to call them lunatics, because 'luna' means 'moon' in Latin. They thought the moon changing caused people to act strange."
"Why do you know that?" asked Sirius, who had stopped skipping rocks to listen to Jane.
"I read a book; you should try it sometime," she said, rolling her eyes; though, she doubted he could see the gesture.
"'Lunaticus' in Latin actually means 'moonstruck,'" she continued.
"Yeah, we know Latin, Janie," Sirius said.
"Well, it's not like I knew. And who asked you anyway?"
"Well, I think it's interesting," James said.
Jane smiled. James and Sirius were so smart; she always felt accomplished when she could tell them something that they didn't already know, even if it was something as simple as the history behind a word or a superstition. While she was okay in school, she excelled most in knowing about useless things.
It annoyed her father a little. He would say: "If you could put all that time and effort into remembering the things you learn in school, you'd be top of your class." But it wasn't her fault that useless facts were more interesting to learn about.
She watched the moon a bit more as Sirius went back to skipping rocks. She could see why James liked the place. It was just so peaceful and serene. She never wanted to leave.