CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
The whole ride to Kings Cross was in silence. Jane's dad never seemed to talk anymore. He hardly looked at her sometimes. Jane didn't know whether it was because she reminded him of her mum, or because he blamed her, or for some other reason. He had become a total shell of a person around her, and she couldn't help but feel that the passing of her mum had taken both of her parents away from her.
When they pulled up to the station, Jane just stared at the building. She felt her heart drop into her stomach. Why did she have to go back to school? Why couldn't she have just a few more days of summer?
When Jane got onto the platform, she spotted Mrs. Potter and quickly ducked inside the train, finding an empty compartment. She wasn't up for talking to her at the moment.
As the train began to move, that hollow feeling came back to Jane. She didn't have Sammy or Sarah or alcohol to make her feel alive this time. It was just her and the landscape outside of her window. She would have smoked, but for fear of getting caught, she decided against it.
Jane took out her lighter and started to flick it. She focused on the flame. On how easily it appeared and disappeared with just a movement of her finger. Fire was something that intrigued her. It was destructive, but in a way still beautiful. The way it wasn't solid, but yet not quite considered a gas. It was plasma.
Jane had often wondered how fire was considered a plasma while at the same time part of blood was considered plasma as well. They were so different in so many ways, blood and fire. However, she liked to imagine sometimes that everyone had a kind of liquid fire that ran through their veins. Humans had to have some kind of fire inside of them, right? Some kind of metaphoric fire that kept them warm, that kept them alive whenever things got bad. Maybe her mum's fire had just gone out. Maybe it had been as simple as that.
Jane closed her eyes, trying very hard to focus on her mum's smile. That beautiful, wonderful smile. That smile full of mischief and kindness and mysteries. That smile that she thought the world would never see on another human being. However, the image would not come to her. Had she forgotten so soon what her mother's smile looked like?
Jane tried desperately to remember, but still she couldn't see it. She pulled down her suitcase and started to rummage through it, throwing various things on the floor of the compartment. She needed her scrapbook. She needed to see a picture of her mum's smile. She needed to remember. But it was gone. She couldn't find it.
Jane started to push things aside. Maybe she had missed it. It had to be there. She now felt that if she couldn't remember her mum's smile, then the part of her that kept her mum alive through nothing but memories was fading away. It was like she was going to lose her mother all over again.
When Jane realised she had left the scrapbook at home, she slid down to the floor of the compartment. She was crying hysterically, her breathing becoming short and panicked. She needed to remember. Why couldn't she remember?
Jane buried her face in her knees. Her hands pulled painfully at her hair, as though if she tugged on it hard enough, she might pull the memory forth. Her mother's smile had been her favourite thing in the world. And now, she couldn't even remember what it looked like.
Jane squeezed her eyes shut. She tried to recall any memory with her mother in it, but for some reason, the only ones she remembered vividly were the ones she'd have rather forgot. Yelling at her mum. Calling her a bad mother. Her mum locked away in her room. Her mum dying on the bathroom floor.
Jane cried even louder at the terrible memories that flooded her mind. She was going crazy. She was sure of it. How much was she to blame for her mother's death? Surely, she had some part in it. She had been awful to her mother.
James, Sirius, and Peter searched the train compartments for Jane. Remus, who had had prefect duties, couldn't assist them in their search. They were all worried about her. She hadn't wrote them all summer even though she had been excited about having her own owl. She hadn't shown up in Diagon Alley even though she claimed to love those trips very much. None of them had seen her at the train station. It was as if she had dropped off the face of the earth after fourth year ended.
"We've been looking forever!" Sirius complained. "I personally don't care if she sits with us if she's gonna make us go on a hunt for her."
"Could you quit being an arse for, like, two seconds?" James snapped.
Sirius rolled his eyes.
"Look, all I'm saying is that maybe she doesn't want to be found," Sirius said. "If she would've wanted to sit with us, she would have. If she had wanted to come to Diagon Alley with us, she would have. If she had wanted to write to us, she w—"
Sirius stopped mid-sentence as they checked a compartment near the end of the train. Clothes and spell books and packs of cigarettes littered the floor around an open, upturned suitcase. There, in the middle of all the mess and folded in on herself was Jane.
She was screaming into her knees, hands tangled up in her hair, tugging at it. They pushed aside the things on the floor and stepped over them. Sirius picked up one of the unopened cigarette boxes curiously. As they got closer to her, her screaming became more distinguishable as words. And they realised she was screaming "It's all my fault!" over and over again like a broken record.
James kneeled down in front of her and gently grabbed her hands, trying to detangle them from her hair. Jane, not knowing who was touching her, started to scream even louder, hitting at the person. Why couldn't people just leave her alone?
James grabbed her wrists and pinned them to her sides.
"Jane! Jane, it's me, James!" he said.
Jane finally focused on the person in front of her, and she stopped fighting him. Even with her eyes blurry from tears, she could still see very clearly the concern marking his features, and that made her cry even harder. Why did he care for her so much? Did he not know what a terrible person she was? Did he not know that she had killed her mother?
James put his hands on the sides of her face, brushing away her tears with his thumbs.
"Shhh, Jane. Look at me. Breathe, just breathe," he said, trying to get her to calm down.
Jane tried to do as instructed, but she couldn't get her breathing steady. It seemed such a simple task, and she couldn't even do it. She was a complete failure. She began to cry even harder, her hysterics getting worse.
Sirius and Peter stood in the middle of the compartment, feeling rather useless.
"Should we go get someone?" Peter asked, afraid that Jane would never calm down.
"No," James snapped.
He turned back to Jane, tightening his grip on her face, forcing her to look at him and him only.
"Jane!" he said. "Look at me. Just look at me. Just stop thinking for a second, look at me, and breathe. Focus on me, okay? Just don't think of anything else."
Jane stared at him. She did as she was told and stopped thinking, focusing on his eyes. They were so hazel. Had they always been that hazel? Had he always had that freckle on his eyelid?
Slowly, as Jane focused on something other than her guilt, her breathing began to return back to normal, though tears still continued to fall down her face, and James continued to wipe them away.
"Now, tell me what happened," James said slowly, brushing some of her hair behind her ear.
Jane's lip quivered as she looked at him.
"It's my fault," she whispered in a shaky voice. "It's all my fault."
"What happened, Jane?" James asked carefully.
Jane shook her head. She didn't want to answer.
"Jane, look at me," he said firmly. "What happened?"
"She's dead," Jane said in a squeaky voice. "She killed herself, and it's all my fault. I should've been a better daughter. She deserved a better daughter."
James' expression turned to shock, and he felt as though his heart stopped for a second. He let his arms fall to his side, and Jane began to cry into her hands. Sirius and Peter both had identical disbelieving and stunned looks on their faces.
None of them knew what to say. No one ever expects anything so drastic and traumatic to happen to one of their friends. They didn't know what to do. They didn't know how to comfort her. Their friend was in pain and they could do nothing about it, and they felt just as helpless as Jane felt guilty.
James slid next to Jane and just wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to him. She buried her face into the crook of his neck and continued to cry. James just rocked her back and forth, holding her tightly. As he let the seriousness of her situation sink in, he realised that Jane was feeling more pain than any of them ever had. None of them knew what it was like to lose a parent, and they especially didn't know how it felt to lose a parent to suicide.
James wanted desperately to be able to help her. She was, for all intents and purposes, his little sister. That was how he had seen her for going on five years now. He wanted to protect her, and he wanted to tell her that everything would be all right, but he felt like it would sound like a lie because the dead couldn't get better. Jane's mother was gone, and she wasn't coming back.
James looked at his friends. Peter had sat down in a seat and had his head in his hands, and Sirius caught James' gaze. Sirius opened his mouth, but no words came out, and he had this sort of pained expression on his face. And for the first time in his life, as he felt Jane crying against his neck, James felt completely and utterly useless. And he squeezed his eyes shut, but not before a couple of tears were able to escape.