CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

Jane didn't get any sleep that night. She lay awake in her sleeping bag, clutching her wand, and staring up at the ceiling of the Great Hall. She watched as the bewitched ceiling turned slowly from a starry night into a cloudy morning sky.

Jane was the first one to get up; she was rolling up her sleeping bag when Dumbledore came in the Great Hall to wake everybody up.

"As some of you, no doubt, already know, Death Eaters attacked the village of Hogsmeade last night," Dumbledore said.

Jane closed her eyes to stop tears from forming, and whispers broke out throughout the hall. Sure, everyone had heard by now, but they were all hoping that it wasn't true.

"As a result, extra security measures have been put into effect, and Hogsmeade trips are, henceforth, suspended," Dumbledore said, talking over the students.

Dumbledore talked for a while longer, but Jane, who was still clutching her wand, stopped listening. She just stared blankly ahead.

Death Eaters. In Hogsmeade. The whole thing seemed slightly dreamlike, or rather more like a nightmare.

Everyone in the Great Hall rolled up their sleeping bags, which started to disappear one by one, and the tables made their ways back to their respective places.

Jane sat at the table, still too scared to really do something such as eat breakfast. She both dreaded and eagerly anticipated the coming of Remus' Daily Prophet. Some part of her wanted to forget this whole thing ever happened, and the other part wanted the whole story. When it finally arrived, Jane almost didn't want Remus to unfold it. But he did, and Jane's eyes landed on a headline that she never wanted to read:

Hogsmeade Massacre: Countless Lives Lost

Underneath was a picture of the High Street. The place looked as though someone had set off a bomb. The Three Broomsticks had all its windows smashed in. Honeydukes was missing a huge portion of its rooftop and front wall. Zonko's was still smouldering as though someone had attempted to burn the place to the ground.

Jane decided to not read the article after all, and she sat in silence as the boys stared intently at it. She had known the world was getting worse. She had been scared before, but in the end, there had always been that barrier of youth that separated her from the real world. However, last night, the feeling of invincibility that comes with being young, the feeling that nothing bad was really going to happen to her, had been thrown out the window, and she was truly frightened.

Those Death Eaters could have easily tried to attack Hogwarts instead. Hogwarts, the place where nothing bad ever happened. It was as though someone had taken her safety blanket and punched holes in it, and she had a feeling that things were only going to get worse from here on out.

The horrible headline ran through her mind over and over: Hogsmeade Massacre: Countless Lives Lost

All those people. All those normal people just going about their own business just to have their lives taken from them. All those families destroyed and broken. All those families…

Family.

The word hit Jane like a train going full speed. Her heart raced as a terrible realisation struck, and she stood from her seat, swaying a little from the lack of sleep.

"Jane?" Remus asked, but she took off.

Jane ran out of the Great Hall, up countless stairs, through a maze of corridors. She stopped when she saw a teacher walking down the corridor with the big mirror. The boys caught up with her.

"What are you doing?" James asked.

Jane didn't answer, she only waited for the teacher to leave, and then, she darted straight towards the mirror.

Jane ran as fast as she could down the dark passageway and climbed up through the trap door, only vaguely aware that she was still in her night clothes and had no shoes on. Jane emerged from the narrow alleyway between Scrivenshaft's and Dervish and Banges followed closely by the boys. She looked around the High Street in silence. Seeing it in the paper was one thing, but seeing it in person was completely different. Her heart dropped to her stomach.

Jane pushed her way through the crowds of people trying to help fix the shops and buildings and ran and ran and ran. The boys chased after her, immediately understanding why Jane, the girl too afraid to get within ten feet of Knockturn Alley, had stormed straight into Hogsmeade only hours after it had been attacked.

When they caught up with her, she was standing in front of the little white cottage, however, it wasn't much of a cottage anymore with a big portion of its right half blown off. Wordlessly, she walked up to the door which looked as though it had been kicked in. Carefully, she stepped inside what was still standing of the structure.

The boys didn't follow her this time; she would have just ignored their presence anyway.

Jane walked through the torn apart little cottage, wading through rubble and furniture, picking up broken picture frames that held photographs of the family that she had watched for so long. She came to a room with a child's bed in it, and carved upon the broken headboard in elegant letters was the name Lucas. She ran her hand along the letters and didn't even flinch when a tiny splint of wood stuck in her finger.

Jane sat on the tiny bed and began to cry. She felt as though a gaping hole had been punched through her chest. This wasn't just any family to her. She may have not known them personally, but she had grown to love them in a way. They were the family that she longed to be a part of for so long now. They were the family that she herself had dreamed of having one day. And now they were gone, and she felt as though a little piece of herself had left with them.

The boys waited outside, and minutes later, Jane emerged from the cottage holding a broken toy broomstick.

There was a click and a flash that startled the boys, but Jane seemed unfazed by it.

"That's a great shot," the man with the camera was saying. "Could you turn this way a bit, dear?"

Sirius picked up a piece of rubble from the ground and threw it at the man.

"Go on!" he yelled in a hostile voice at the man.

The man snapped another quick photo of the ruins of the cottage before leaving.

James walked up to Jane who hadn't moved from the doorway of the cottage.

"Jane?" he asked in a tentative voice.

Jane looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

"You said—you said that they would catch him," Jane choked in a constricted voice. "You said that everything was going to be okay."

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."

Jane allowed herself to be wrapped in a hug, and she started to cry again. She hadn't been blaming James. She was just frightened and hurt. She felt as though everything she had associated with that family, things like love and warmth and happiness, had been stripped away from her. And she was further frightened by the prospect of things getting worse.

They could all feel it, all five of them. The ground underneath them, their solid foundation, was beginning to shift and erode away. They were going to have to face many dark and dangerous things to come, and they were going to have to be ready despite the fact that they were still children. And they were all scared of the storm that they and the rest of the world was going to have to face.