CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The Easter holidays were terrible. Jane's mother wasn't herself again until the last couple of days. Jane decided not to tell them about Aaron. Her mother had inadvertently ruined her holiday, so why should she get to know about Aaron? However, the Easter holidays, terrible or not, couldn't have prepared Jane for what awaited her back at Hogwarts.
As she rode on the train, Jane couldn't wait to get back to school; she couldn't wait to see Aaron again. She couldn't wait to get back to their great little relationship. She wanted things to go back to being how they were: happy and perfect.
That wasn't what happened.
Jane had jumped off the train when it arrived at the station, eager to get up to the castle. However, when she had gotten inside, Marlene, who had stayed at school for the holidays, was waiting for her at the entrance of the Great Hall. She had this look on her face, a pitying look, that chilled Jane down to her very core.
"I need to tell you something."
Jane didn't want to hear those words. She didn't want to see Marlene's sort of sorrowful countenance. Marlene was never serious, and when she was, it usually wasn't a good thing, because she was either angry at someone or really hurt.
"What is it?" Jane asked curiously, though some part of her didn't really want to ask the question because she knew that this news was meant specifically for her and not anyone else.
Jane watched as a group of Hufflepuff third year girls walked past her and Marlene and into the Great Hall. They had been whispering in low voices until they caught sight of Jane, who was staring at them now. They immediately stopped their whispers and walked away. Jane crossed her arms in front of herself. If there was one thing she learned at her old school, it was how to tell when people were talking about her.
"What was that about?" Jane asked.
Marlene seemed reluctant to answer at first.
"Marlene?" Jane asked.
Marlene sighed.
"There've been…rumours going around. And they're all probably going to be pretty hurtful," she said carefully, trying to gauge Jane's reaction as she said this. "And one of them's true."
Somewhere between the carriages and the Great Hall, the boys had lost Jane. No one knew where she was. She had never appeared at the Gryffindor table for dinner, and she wasn't with Ashby at the Ravenclaw table. James spent most of the dinner looking around for her, hardly touching the food on his plate.
"I don't understand; she was right behind us when we got to the castle," he said.
"Maybe she went to the loo," Peter suggested.
James waved him off. He saw Marlene walk into the Great Hall. He was surprised to see that she was headed straight for where they were sitting.
"Well, hello, Marlene," Sirius had said in an arrogant voice.
Marlene didn't even roll her eyes, which is what she usually did whenever Sirius spoke to her nowadays. James just looked at her curiously, waiting for her to say something. She looked extremely uncomfortable.
"I think, maybe one of you should go find Jane and talk to her," she said seriously.
"You know where she is?" James asked.
Marlene shook her head slowly.
"She kind of took off after I told her…" Marlene's voice broke off.
"Told her what?" James asked warily.
Marlene kind of wrung her hands.
"While you guys were away for Easter, Aaron, he sort of—"
"What'd he do?" James asked in a much harder tone, his eyes narrowing.
"He, um, he hooked up with Megan Kershaw."
"You mean, you heard he hooked up with her," Remus corrected.
Marlene shook her head again.
"No, I mean he did. He's not denying it or anything," she said.
The boys were silent. James looked back over to Ashby at the Ravenclaw table. There he was, pretending he had done absolutely nothing wrong, acting as though everything were fine. James stood up, fully prepared to go over there and punch in that stupid, smug face of his.
"Wait," Marlene said. "There's something else as well."
The boys didn't finish their dinner. They had split up to look for Jane. She wasn't in her dorm or any of the girls' lavatories (Marlene had vouched for that), she wasn't on the Quidditch pitch, she wasn't at the lake or the library or seemingly anywhere to be found. She had vanished. They tried using the map, but seeing as how it still wasn't finished, it could only tell them that she wasn't anywhere on the first three floors of the castle.
James was furious, however (and he had been surprised by his own restraint), he had managed to walk out of the Great Hall without confronting Ashby. For the time being, he was much more worried about finding Jane, as she was probably very hurt at the moment.
He was with Remus, walking up to check the Owlery. Marlene's words kept playing over and over in his mind, making him angrier and angrier with every second that ticked by.
"He's been saying that he was only with her in the first place because she put out for him."
Once they had gotten to the Owlery to find it empty, James balled up his fist and punched at the stone wall. His knuckles busted, and blood spread over the back of his hand when he flexed his fingers. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt as much as he thought it would.
Once he found Jane, he was going straight for Ashby. He was dead. How dare he? It wasn't bad enough that he had, undoubtedly, broken Jane's heart, but he had blatantly started rumours about her, rumours that people actually believed, rumours that people were probably going to act on.
"It's been terrible," Marlene said. "People have been calling her dreadful names, saying she's a whore. I've been telling them that it's not true, but people only believe so much, and it's not usually the truth they choose to believe either."
James felt sick. This was his fault. He knew Ashby was going to hurt her somehow, but he had let it happen anyway. And now Jane was hurt and all alone somewhere, and he hadn't even done anything about it yet. Ashby was probably up in his dorm by now, happy with all of the damage he had caused. Jane had done absolutely nothing wrong, yet she had to pay for the damage that some sadistic boy had caused. It just wasn't right.
"I really don't think she'd be in Hogsmeade," Peter said nervously as they walked through the passage way on the fourth floor. "It's all dark outside."
"We have to check everywhere, Peter. And unless she's in the Forbidden Forest, she's not on the school grounds," Sirius said.
"Maybe we just didn't look hard enough," Peter said.
"Do you want to check the forest? Because we can," Sirius said maliciously.
Peter shivered just thinking about the forest.
"Hogsmeade is fine," he said timidly.
Once they were there, it didn't take long to find her. On the outskirts of the town, where the shops ended and the cottages of the residents started to spread out over the rolling hills, there was a spot on the edge of the woods where Jane liked to drag them to whenever they were there. She usually liked to sit there and watch this one family in this little white, thatched cottage; Sirius guessed she liked to imagine living there someday, maybe with a family of her own. However, he usually found it pretty boring and a waste of his time.
In the dark, they could hardly make out her figure. Upon coming closer, they saw that she was crying. She had her face buried in her knees, which were clutched to her chest. Any sarcastic remark that Sirius had been planning to say to her, and he had been planning many, had washed away at the sight of her. Sirius usually had no problem with kicking people while they were down, but if he did it now, it'd be a new low for him, and he knew it. Besides, she was more hurt than he had ever seen her before.
They didn't say anything; they just stood a few feet away and let her cry. She was aware of their presence. She didn't look up to see who it was, but she knew that only one of her friends would think to look for her here.
"Go tell James and Remus that we found her," Sirius said, and Peter walked away obediently.
Jane continued to cry for a couple minutes more before sniffling and wiping her puffy eyes. She looked up, resting her chin on her knees, but she still didn't look at Sirius.
"Go ahead," she said in a small, shaky voice. "Say 'I told you so.'"
Sirius put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.
"Believe me, I had been planning on it," he said truthfully, "but trust me when I say, out of all the times I've wanted to tell you that I told you so, this is not one of them."
Jane wiped her face with the back of her hand again.
"I'm so stupid," she said, a new wave of tears flowing from her eyes.
Sirius stared at her awkwardly, not really knowing what to say or do.
"It's going to be okay," he said, thinking that maybe she'd stop crying if he said that.
"No, it's not," Jane cried. "I feel like a complete idiot! Have you heard the things people have been saying about me? It's awful. And I can't do anything to make them not believe it."
Sirius had remembered Marlene's words clearly, and he felt a pang of anger rush through him. Who did Ashby think he was? The smug, poncy bastard. Sirius couldn't wait to get his hands on him.
"I can't believe I actually thought—" Jane choked out a very bitter, humourless laugh. "I can't believe I thought he really liked me."
She shook her head, her lip quivering.
"I'm just so stupid, to think that somebody could like me," she said, more to herself than to Sirius.
Sirius bent down beside her, resting on his haunches.
"Hey, you're not stupid, all right? So stop saying it," he said. "And I told you, it's going to be all right."
"No, it's not! Everyone thinks I'm some slag," Jane snapped at him. "I feel so used and pathetic, and you don't know what that's like. So, don't tell me it's going to be okay when you have no clue."
"People will forget about it," he assured, "and Ashby's gonna get what's coming to him."
"You don't understand. Hogwarts was the place that I loved most because it was an escape; nothing bad ever happened here, not like this."
She started to cry again.
"What am I ever supposed to look forward to now? Where am I supposed to go when I don't want to go home, but I don't want to be here anymore either?" she asked in a quiet voice, finally looking Sirius in the face.
The expression on her face wasn't just one of hurt, Jane was genuinely afraid. Afraid that Hogwarts was going to end up just like her old school. Afraid that this new life she had built for herself was going to come crashing in around her, and she couldn't do anything to stop it. They always told her whenever she was bullied at her old school that things would get better, that's all anyone ever told her; the teachers, Sarah, her parents, school counsellors, they had all told her the same thing. She had thought that they were right, that Hogwarts had been the turning point for some better life that she could only dream about before.
And now, with things being the way they were, Jane was afraid. What if things never did get better? What if it was just a lie people told each other and themselves so that they could survive through their shithole of a life? What if things were always going to be this way? With people always being terrible to her, people always trying to hurt her.
Jane felt as though her heart had been cut out of her chest and trampled on. And then, she was going to have to face all these accusations of people that didn't really know what they were talking about. It wasn't fair. What had she ever done that was so terrible to deserve something like this?
For once, Sirius felt as though there was something more to Jane than what he thought he knew about her. Maybe there were things going on in her life that she hadn't told them about, or maybe she had and he hadn't paid attention. And for once, he actually felt sorry for her, felt sorry for someone other than himself.
"Janie, it's going to get better," he promised.
"How do you know that? How do you know it's not just going to get worse or just stay the way it is? How do you know it's going to get better?" Jane asked through sobs.
"Because I just do," Sirius said. "Because you and James and me and Remus and Peter, we're going to make it better. I promise."
Jane just looked at him and nodded, needing to believe him.
"It's just not fair," she whispered.
Sirius patted her on the back.
"I know."
He was able to help her up, and she hugged him for a long time before they started walking back toward the town.
They met up with James, Remus, and Peter on the High Street. Jane and James didn't say anything to each other, he just looked at her, and she began to cry again. And James held her for a long time, telling her that it was going to be okay as she kept apologising for not listening to him, her voice muffled by his shoulder that she was crying on.