CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Peter kept saying as they made their way up to the dorm.
"Peter! What's going on?" Jane asked, still crying in pain as she clutched her arm.
They walked into the dorm, and Peter flicked on the lights. Jane looked at the clock beside Sirius' bed. It was really early in the morning. Frank stirred in his bed and woke up.
"What's going on?" he asked in a groggy voice.
He looked at Jane's sleeve which was torn and drenched in blood.
"What happened?" Frank asked.
"Nothing!" Peter said, shoving Jane into their bathroom. "Just go back to sleep."
Peter walked into the bathroom and shut the door behind him.
"Peter, you tell me what's going on right now!" Jane demanded through tears.
"Shush!" Peter said, looking anxiously to the door of the bathroom.
"What the hell is happening?" Jane asked in a much quieter voice.
Peter ran his hands through his hair, obviously distressed.
"I-I can't tell you," he squeaked.
"You can't—? Peter! I was almost attacked by a werewolf. I was attacked by a dog that I happen to know is very friendly. And you were a rat. Why were you a rat?"
"You've seen that dog before?" Peter asked.
"Yes! I-I've seen it in Hogsmeade over Christmas. It followed me around. I-I petted it. It never once attacked me. And you were a rat!" Jane repeated, her voice getting a little louder.
Peter shushed her again. Jane seethed in anger. She grabbed the collar of his shirt with her uninjured arm, and pulled him so that their faces were just inches away.
"Where are the others? And you explain to me right now why in the name of Merlin you were a rat," Jane said.
James and Sirius rushed back up to the castle as the sun was starting to peak out over the horizon. They were sore and exhausted; getting Remus back to the Shrieking Shack had taken a lot of energy.
Sirius' ribs throbbed from where Jane had kicked him, and no matter what he did, he couldn't get the taste of her blood out of his mouth. He hadn't meant to hurt her; he had been trying to protect her. What the hell had she been doing in the Dark Forest anyway?
"What do we tell her?" Sirius asked as they ran into the common room.
"I don't know! The truth?" James said.
They skidded to a halt when they saw Frank sitting in one of the armchairs by the fire.
"Frank, have you seen Jane and Peter?" James asked frantically.
"Yeah, they're up in our room. Jane's arm, it's covered in blood. What the hell is happening? Do I need to get help?" Frank asked.
"No!" James and Sirius said simultaneously.
"Just…stay down here and let us handle it," James said.
He and Sirius rushed up the stairs to their dorm, leaving a very confused Frank behind in the common room. They burst through the door, and Sirius' eyes landed immediately on Jane's bloodied arm. He ran a hand through his hair, not knowing what to do.
"Janie, I—"
Sirius was interrupted by Jane's hand colliding with his face.
"I hate you," she cried in a hurt voice.
Sirius stared at her with a pained expression. He knew she wasn't talking to all of them; it was just him. She was mad at the others. But he had been the only one that had broken her trust the way he had.
"Jane, he didn't mean to hurt you," James said, not knowing that she had spent part of her holidays unknowingly talking to Sirius about everything she was feeling. "And-and Remus, he made us swear not to tell you anything."
Jane didn't want to talk to any of them right then. She felt angry and lied to and betrayed. She just sat on Sirius' bed, crying and clutching her arm to her.
"Guys, her arm," Peter said as he kept glancing nervously at her.
"Jane, let me see your arm," James said, walking over to her.
She only glared at him.
"Let-let me see it," James said, pulling at her arm.
James pushed back the sleeve of her night shirt, revealing deep puncture wounds in her arm. There were some gashes from where her arm had been yanked on as Sirius had dragged her out of the forest. It was swelling and bruising, and Jane cried out in pain as James started to dab it with the washcloth that Peter had brought him.
Sirius stared at Jane's arm, horrified. He had done that? He hadn't meant to. He flinched as her cries of pain met his ears. Why hadn't she run away? She had just stood there. He had been trying to protect her.
"Guys, I-I don't think I can fix this," James said, staring at her mangled arm. "She needs to go to the Hospital Wing."
"W-We need to wait," Peter said anxiously. "It's too early. She'll know we were out of bed."
"She's still bleeding!" James argued. "She needs to go now!"
Jane clutched her arm back to her chest when James finally let it go. She continued to whimper and cry. Sirius just stared at her helplessly as James and Peter argued.
Finally, they took Jane to the Hospital Wing. When they walked in, they saw Madam Pomfrey talking to Remus, who shot them a terrified look.
"What happened?" Madam Pomfrey asked as she ushered Jane to the bed next to Remus.
"She was bitten," James said and Madam Pomfrey pushed him out of her way.
"By what?"
"Some stupid mutt," Jane said in a harsh voice as she stared at Sirius.
Sirius seemed to shrink away from her. Madam Pomfrey disappeared into her office, and Jane looked over at Remus, tears of anger in her eyes.
"How could you?" Jane asked in a voice a little over a whisper.
Remus blanched.
"I-I'm sorry. I couldn't control it. I—"
"Not that!" Jane hissed. "How could you not tell me? How could you think so low of me to believe that I would judge you for something you couldn't help? I thought we were friends," she cried.
Remus opened his mouth, but no words came out.
"I told you everything," Jane reminded him in a hurt voice, and Remus couldn't meet her eyes.
Finally, Madam Pomfrey came back and shooed the boys away, closing the curtains around Jane's bed.
The boys waited all day for Jane to be released from the Hospital Wing, each of them mentally preparing their own apology. However, when she walked into the common room a little while after dinner, she didn't even glance in their direction. She walked straight up to her dorm.
They didn't see her again until their Defence Against the Dark Arts class on Monday, and even then, she had requested that Professor Abernathy assign her a different seat so that she was all the way across the room from them. She never showed up for lunch. In Care of Magical Creatures, Jane claimed that her arm was hurting her, and Professor Kettleburn excused her from class to go to the Hospital Wing (though it was likely she never went). And in Herbology, Jane stuck so close to Professor Sprout that they couldn't say a word to her without the teacher overhearing.
At dinner, Jane just picked up a couple of sandwiches and a Butterbeer from the kitchens and walked up to the Astronomy tower to eat by herself. However, after she finished her dinner and lit one of the six cigarettes she had left, someone walked up the stairs to join her.
Jane didn't have to turn around to know who it was. She just knew somehow. She took a long drag of her cigarette.
"Give me one good reason that I shouldn't hex you right now," Jane said, exhaling the smoke as she talked.
"Because your wand arm is still recovering," Sirius replied.
"I said a good reason."
"I don't have one," Sirius admitted.
"Then, why are you here?" Jane asked coldly.
"To apologise."
"I'm not interested in your apology," Jane said.
"Please, just talk to me," Sirius said.
"Oh, I've done plenty of that, haven't I?" Jane said scathingly.
Sirius frowned. He wasn't exactly sure why she was so mad at him. It had made her happy, hadn't it? Talking to something about how she felt. Besides, it wasn't like he had made her talk to him; she just sort of did.
"Why does it bother you so much?" he asked. "Knowing that you were talking to me? It made you feel better; I helped you."
"Oh, is that what you think you did?" Jane said, standing up from her spot on the floor.
"Yeah, it is," Sirius said defiantly. "I helped you, and now, you're pissed off about it because you found out."
"You're damn right I'm pissed off," Jane said.
"Why? Because I finally got you to deal with something?" Sirius asked.
"No!" Jane yelled at him. "I'm mad because I feel lied to and violated!"
"Why?"
"Because the things that I talked to you about weren't for anybody else to know! It was personal! It was mine! Those were my thoughts and feelings, and you just sat there and listened to them like you had some kind of right to know about them, and you didn't!"
"Why does it matter?" Sirius asked. "Why are you so afraid to open up to someone about how you're feeling? Why is it that big of a fucking deal to you?"
"Because I don't want people to know everything that goes through my mind!" Jane yelled. "I don't want them to know about all the terrible thoughts and feelings I have! I don't want people to see me the way that I see myself! Don't you understand that?"
Sirius just stood there. No, he didn't understand. He didn't know what it was like to hate himself the way that Jane had hated herself. He didn't know what Jane saw when she looked in the mirror. He saw only what he knew about her. Everyone saw only what they knew about her, and maybe that's what she was getting at. The more that people knew about the inner workings of her mind, the bigger glimpse they got of what Jane saw herself to be.
"And you know, you're right," Jane continued, "it made me feel better. But what about now? Now, when I'm feeling betrayed by my own friends? Who the hell am I supposed to talk to about that? My mum's dead; my father doesn't talk to me; I can't talk to any of you because you're the ones that hurt me in the first place! I can't tell Sammy or Sarah about any of this, and I can't very well tell Hellen that three of my friends are unregistered Animagi! So congratulations! You've made me feel better only to make me feel worse, and to make me realise that I have absolutely no one."
"That's not true," Sirius said. "You still have us."
Jane let out a bitter laugh.
"Right! The friends who have been keeping things from me because they think so poorly of me that they actually thought I'd—"
"Remus did that!" Sirius interrupted. "The rest of us wanted to tell you."
"The point is that you all expect me to tell everyone every little detail about my life, when for two years you've known about Remus and kept me in the dark!"
Jane reached down to snatch up her things, but immediately dropped them back onto the ground when a sharp pain shot through her injured arm.
"Son of a bitch!" Jane hissed, clutching her arm to her.
Sirius stepped towards her, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Jane said, jerking her shoulder away from him.
"Is it supposed to still hurt you like that?"
"Madam Pomfrey said to expect it for the next few days," Jane said, rubbing her arm as the sharp pain subsided into a dull throb.
Sirius picked her things up for her, but when she reached for them, he pulled them away from her.
"Are you going to forgive us?" he asked.
"God, you know that I will!" Jane said disdainfully, snatching her things from him. "I fucking forgive you for everything!"
Jane flicked her cigarette off of the tower.
"It's just that this one might take a while," she said. "So back off and give me the space I need, or it's never gonna happen."