CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
That afternoon, in the boys' dorm, when the Evening Prophet arrived, Jane was surprised, confused, and a little angered, to find herself on the front page.
Wizarding Communities in Distress
Under the headline was a picture of Jane standing in the threshold of the little, broken cottage, staring down at the broken toy broomstick in her hands (which she had carried all the way back up to the castle with her). She almost didn't think it was herself at first. The girl's face wasn't really visible, and the picture, being in the newspaper, wasn't of the best quality. Honestly, she didn't remember a photograph being taken at all.
She read the caption underneath:
Young girl mourns over ruins of a cottage in Hogsmeade Village
Jane threw the newspaper down, tears brimming her eyes again as she thought about the family. However, she picked it up once more when she saw the list of the confirmed dead or missing. She skimmed through the list looking for the only name she knew at this point: Lucas.
There, grouped in the category with the missing people, Jane read:
Margaret Lyles (25) and Lucas Lyles (3)
Jane's eyes drifted back up to the group of confirmed dead.
Thomas Lyles (26)
Jane silently cried for what felt like the hundredth time that day. These people, these good, happy people, had had their family torn apart. It wasn't just them either; it was countless numbers of families. Every person taken or killed belonged to someone. They were someone's child or grandchild, mother or father, brother or sister, aunt or uncle, nephew or niece, cousin or spouse… The list went on and on. This line of thinking only caused Jane to cry even more.
The boys, who were playing Exploding Snap a few feet away, took notice.
"Christ," Sirius whispered in an almost annoyed tone, "is she gonna give it a rest?"
Remus scowled at him.
"She's scared," he said.
"Yeah, but she's been like this for hours. Crying on and off. You'd think she'd run out of tears sooner or later," Sirius said.
"You know, I can hear you," Jane said, loudly enough for them to hear, trying to cease her crying.
Sirius mumbled something under his breath, and James hit him in the arm.
"What was that?" Jane asked.
"I said," Sirius said, James giving him a reproachful look, "that maybe you should be more considerate. You're making everyone around you uncomfortable."
Jane bit back a humourless laugh, and stood from Remus' bed where she'd been sitting. Anger flushed through her, drying up her tears.
"The only reason I'm even in here is because James didn't want me being by myself," she said. "But by all means, if I'm making you uncomfortable, I'll leave."
"No, don't go," James said. "Apologise to her," he said to Sirius.
"What? No," Sirius said.
"I don't want you to make him to apologise," Jane said. "It wouldn't mean anything."
"Besides, I didn't do anything wrong," Sirius said.
"Of course not. The world turns upside down before Sirius Black does anything wrong," Jane said caustically, rolling her eyes.
Jane made her way to the door.
"It's not like they were your family," Sirius said, stopping Jane in her tracks as she reached the doorway.
He was right; they weren't her family. She had spent so long wishing that they were that she had forgotten that she hardly knew the people. And it made her sad that she wasn't a part of their family, and she felt guilty for wishing it, and she was angry that he was reminding her of what she couldn't have.
Jane looked at Sirius with cold, hurt eyes.
"I hate you," she said in a bitter tone, tears, once again, threatening to fall. "You're such an arse."
And with that, Jane disappeared. James punched Sirius in the arm again.
"Ow!" he said. "Stop doing that!"
"Go fix it!" James ordered.
"No," Sirius said, rubbing his arm.
"Yes. Now," James said, pointing to the doorway where Jane had vanished.
James reared back to hit him again, but Sirius put his hands up in surrender.
Sirius grumbled as he stood up and walked out of the room. He got down to the common room just in time to see Jane leaving through the portrait hole. He followed after her.
"Where exactly are you going?" he called to her once in the hallway.
"Go away," Jane said, continuing to walk down the corridor.
Sirius rolled his eyes and caught up with her, grabbing her lightly by the arm.
"All right. You've made your point. Now come back before James has a conniption."
Jane jerked her arm out of his hand, turned, and pushed him away from her violently. Sirius just stared at her for a second.
"Leave. Me. Alone," Jane said slowly.
"I would, but James might hex me if I come back without you."
Jane rolled her eyes and started to walk away again.
"God, you're so apathetic," she said.
"Oh, all right," Sirius said, walking after her, trying to sound as if he actually cared. "Why did they mean so much to you?"
Jane stopped, looking out of a window that looked out over the grounds. She shook her head a bit.
"Don't ask a question when you really care nothing for the answer," Jane said, not looking at him.
Sirius threw his hands up in exasperation.
"You know what? Fine. Go ahead and cry and sulk by yourself. I really couldn't care less," he said.
Sirius began to walk back down the hallway, slightly agitated. He heard a slight sniffle that almost stopped him.
Keep walking, he thought. You don't care.
However, Sirius looked back at Jane anyway. She was silently wiping her tearful eyes. He shook his head and started to walk again.
You are not turning back. You tried to help; she told you to leave her alone. You don't care, he thought to himself.
However, a feeling a guilt swept over him, and he stopped walking.
"Shit," Sirius sighed as he turned on his heel and started to walk back; he hated the moments when his conscience crept up on him.
He hopped up onto the windowsill and looked at Jane. She didn't say anything or make to move away from the window. She just stood there, chewing the inside of her lip.
"Why do they mean so much to you?" he asked again in a more curious way.
"It's doesn't matter anymore," Jane said.
"Obviously, it matters if you're still crying over it. No one cries this much over someone that meant nothing to them."
"Why do you care?" she asked, looking up at him.
Sirius fought back the urge to say, "good question," and instead thought of a real answer.
"As much as you and I would love for everyone to believe we hate each other, we are, regrettably, still friends," he answered. "Something's going on with you, and I want to know what it is."
"And what if I don't want to tell you?" Jane asked.
"Then, I'll do what I always do and annoy you until you give in," he answered.
"And what if the answer makes me sound selfish and ungrateful?" she asked quietly.
"You call me selfish and ungrateful at least five times a week," Sirius said. "I think you'll be fine."
Sirius patted the spot next to him on the windowsill, and Jane hopped up beside him.
Jane was quiet for a while. Telling him the answer meant telling him other things. Things she wasn't exactly sure she was ready to tell anyone just yet. That's why she surprised herself when she began to speak.
"Do you ever look at someone and wish you had their life?" Jane asked.
"I'm Sirius Black. People wish they were me, not the other way around," Sirius replied in a boastful way.
"Right, stupid question. Let me rephrase. Do you ever look at someone else's family and wish that they were yours?" she tried again.
Sirius let out a bark of laughter.
"All the time. Have you met my family?"
Jane had forgotten that she was talking to a person with much worse home conditions than herself, and she immediately regretted saying anything at all. She looked down at her hands, and the grin slowly slipped from Sirius' face as he watched her.
"Do you?" he asked.
Jane nodded, but she didn't say anything. The two friends sat in silence for a bit before Sirius finally spoke.
"Do they hurt you?" he asked in a serious way.
"No," Jane breathed. "No, my family loves me. That's part of what makes me so ungrateful. I have no right to complain, especially next to you."
"'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'" Sirius quoted.
Jane gave him a funny look.
"Leo Tolstoy," Sirius explained.
Jane continued to stare at him.
"What? I read sometimes," he defended. "What do you think I do over summer?"
Jane shook her head, and looked back down at her hands.
"So, what's going on with your family to make you wish you had someone else's?" Sirius asked.
"We're just so unhappy," Jane admitted, her voice catching a bit. "You know, the last holiday I had where nothing bad happened was the Easter in second year."
"But you came to the Potter's with me and James that Easter," Sirius said.
"Exactly my point," Jane said.
"Do your parents argue a lot?" Sirius asked, looking for a reason as to why Jane's family was so unhappy.
"More now than they used to," she said. "And a lot of it's because of me. I'll just get so angry with them and yell at them. Then, they yell at each other and everything just snowballs."
"Well, why do you get so angry with them?" Sirius asked.
Jane took her time with the answer, still not really sure if she wanted to tell him or not. But she had told him this much, she might as well tell him the rest.
"It's my mum," she said quietly. "Ever since I was little, she's been getting these sort of episodes where she kind of just folds in on herself and locks herself away for days at a time. She just gets so sad and unhappy with her life, and I don't know why.
"And then, there's my father. And he's been trying to convince her to get help ever since she got this way, but he doesn't ever make her.
"And I only make things worse because I get so mad at both of them because my mum should want to get help, and my dad should make her do it. But they don't, and I say things that I shouldn't because it's not fair that my mum slept through my tenth birthday, or Christmas, or Easter. And it's not fair that my dad tries to stick up for her whenever I say anything about it.
"And every time I'm at home, I wish that I were somewhere else. And I see a family like the one in Hogsmeade, and I fixate on them because they're everything I wish my family was. And then they get taken away."
By now Jane was in tears again.
"And you are an arse because you have no right to tell me who I can and can't cry for," she continued as an afterthought, remembering his words from before.
Sirius hesitantly put an arm around her shoulders.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Please, stop crying."
Jane looked up at his face which was mix between sympathetic and apprehensive. She guessed that all this crying was making him kind of "uncomfortable." Jane let a little laugh escape, replacing her sobs.
"I hate you," she said, though she said it in a way that was more endearing than anything.
Sirius smiled in relief when he saw that she had stopped crying.
"No, you don't."
Jane rolled her eyes after she wiped the remaining tears away. She jumped off of the windowsill, feeling a lot better. It was that temporary moment of relief one feels when they say something that they've been holding in for so long. She knew it'd be followed by the anxiety stage of "why did I tell him that?" But for now, she was okay.
"You just keep telling yourself that," she said as she and Sirius walked back to the boys' dorm.