CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

A couple of months passed, and Jane packed her things for the Easter holidays. She missed Sarah and Sammy. She missed non-conjured cigarettes. She even missed her father. Maybe by now, he'd actually hold a conversation with her. After all, it had been almost ten months now since her mum died.

Jane was walking up to the carriages with Peter, the other three lagging behind. She had been laughing because Peter was talking about how James had taken one of Snape's potion books from him.

"He actually calls himself the Half-Blood Prince?" Jane asked, still laughing. "Him? A prince? As if! I told Lily he was an overly pretentious git. I can't believe she's still friends with him after all these years. Him and his friends are all Death Eater wannabes if you ask me."

"That's where James found that jinx," Peter said. "He said Snivellus has gotten all kinda of jinxes and curses that he's made up in that book."

"Which jinx?" Jane asked curiously.

"Levicorpus," Peter said.

"Oh, I hate that jinx! It was fun at first, but in the past month alone I've been hoisted into the air by my ankle at least three times," Jane said.

The jinx had easily gained popularity around Hogwarts. It was all very entertaining until you were the one that got hit with it.

"You're lucky. Sirius finds it extremely funny to hit me with that jinx, and when he finds something funny, he does it way more than three times a month," Peter said.

Jane just shook her head.

"You've got to stick up to him, Peter," she told him, laughing a little. However, as she looked up to the carriages, she stopped smiling, and she rooted herself to the spot, not taking another step.

It was that thing, that creature she had seen in the Dark Forest the night she had learned about Remus. One of the black, skeletal horses seemed to turn its white eyes on Jane, and she stumbled backwards. Peter looked at her, confused.

"What's wrong?"

"Th-Those things! What are they?" Jane asked.

Peter knitted his brow together, even more baffled.

"What things?"

"What—? Those! Those things right there! Pulling the carriages! They didn't used to be there! What are they?" Jane asked again, pointing to one of the winged horses.

Peter looked to where she was pointing, and he started to get worried.

"Jane, I don't see anything," he said.

"Stop messing around. They're right there!"

Peter looked at the carriages again and then back to her. Jane looked at him and realised he wasn't joking.

"You-You can't see them?" Jane asked.

People were staring at her and Peter now as they passed them to get to the carriages. Could no one else see them? Was this it? Was she finally going crazy? Had her mind just finally given up? Was this how it started? Seeing things? What next? Would she start hearing voices?

Remus, James, and Sirius caught up with them. Sirius slapped a hand on Jane's back.

"All right there, Janie?" he asked happily.

Jane started to cry, and Sirius immediately stepped away from her.

"What did I do?" he asked, bewildered.

Remus pushed him out of the way and tried to comfort her.

"Jane, what happened?"

"I'm going mad!" Jane nearly screamed.

"What are you on about?" James asked.

Jane just pointed to the carriages. The boys all looked around, puzzled.

"I'm seeing things!" Jane said, still crying and running her hands through her hair.

"What is she talking about, Wormtail?" James asked, hoping that Peter could elaborate on Jane's sudden meltdown.

"I don't know! She just started talking about things pulling the carriages! I don't know what she's talking about!" Peter squeaked.

James looked around at the carriages again, concern marking his features.

"Janie, come on," Sirius said, trying to make her stop crying. "There's nothing there."

James and Remus pulled Jane into one of the carriages where she just continued to cry. None of them knew what to do. She was seeing things that weren't there.

"You're just under a lot of stress," James said, trying to think up an explanation for why she was seeing things. "O.W.L. year is stressful on loads of people. Just last week, Cassie Hamby fainted during the middle of a practice exam."

Jane found no solace in his words. Fainting and seeing things that weren't there were two completely different things.

"Yeah, it's just your mind playing tricks on you," Sirius said in an unsure voice, though by now it sounded like he and James were trying to reassure themselves more so than Jane.

Jane just sat there. She knew this wasn't her mind just playing tricks on her. She wouldn't still see them if it was. They looked so real, like she could reach out and touch them, not that she wanted to.

The five friends sat quietly in the carriage on their way to Hogsmeade Station. Jane buried her face in her hands, and the boys took turns glancing at her and each other nervously, all wondering the same thing that Jane was: Was she going insane?

As they arrived at the station and walked to the train, Jane looked back at the dark creatures. James watched helplessly as she stared at something that wasn't there. He tugged on the hem of her shirt, trying to bring her back to the real world.

"Come on, Jane. Let's get on the train."

Jane let James guide her to the Hogwarts Express, but she stopped short of boarding it. James looked back at her.

"What do I do, James?" Jane asked tearfully. "I don't wanna go crazy."

James grabbed her hands and squeezed them tightly.

"Jane, listen to me. You're not going crazy," he said, trying to sound sure of himself, and failing.

"Then why am I seeing things?" Jane asked, on the verge of crying again.

"I don't know," James answered truthfully.

James wrapped her in his arms, and Jane just cried on his shoulder.

"They can fix me, can't they?" Jane asked, hoping that her sanity could be saved with a simple flick of a Healer's wand. "Please, tell me they can fix me."

James didn't say anything; he only hugged her tighter. He knew that, even with magic, afflictions of the mind weren't easily cured, and some weren't cured at all. He didn't have the heart to tell Jane that, but he also didn't have the heart to blatantly lie to her and say that they could.

James' silence acted as the answer to Jane's question. She was going mad, and nothing could be done about it.

For the entire ride to London, Jane didn't speak a word. And though she could tell that the boys were trying to take her mind off of it, she couldn't stop thinking about the skeletal horses. What would she do if she saw them again? What would Sammy and Sarah think if she started talking about scary black horses with wings? What was she going to tell her father? Would he send her to St. Mungo's?

Jane rubbed her eyes and then pressed her palms to her temples. So many thoughts were swimming around inside her head, and she couldn't get them to stop. Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she needed to be locked away in a padded room far away from the rest of humanity.

On the platform, Jane said goodbye to her friends and left. James watched her pass through the barrier, a sorrowful look upon his face. Sirius patted him on the back.

"There's nothing you can do for her right now, mate," Sirius said.

James sighed heavily.

"She deserves to be happy," James said. "After everything that's happened to her, she deserves to be happy. Why is it that every time she starts to get better, something comes along to ruin it?"

Sirius shook his head and shrugged.

"And now, she's going home to a father that doesn't talk to her and friends that don't know anything about our world," James said. "Who has she got to talk to?"

"She's going to be all right, Prongs."

"It's just—I mean, you saw her mum, at Diagon Alley and on the platform all those times. She seemed normal and happy, and she was just so much—"

"Like Janie," Sirius finished for him.

"Well, yeah," James said. "You know, what if—"

"Janie's not going to end up like her mum. She's just having a hard time, and she'll get through it. And you wanna know how I know that?"

James just looked at him.

"Because she's got us, and we're not gonna let anything happen to her," Sirius finished.

"I'm just scared for her," James admitted.

"And I'm telling you that you don't need to be."

Jane was silent most of the ride home. She didn't know whether she should tell her father or not. Should she tell him that she was seeing things that weren't there? What if she told him and then never saw them again? What if it was just stress? Then again, she had seen the creature twice: once in the forest and then today. What were the odds that she'd just stop seeing them?

Probably not good.

When they finally got home, Jane decided that she'd tell him. Maybe she really needed help. She wasn't going to be like her mother and refuse help anymore. She was over that. She didn't wanna go mad, and if there was a possibility that someone could help her, then she ought to take it.

Of course, it took Jane a little while to build up the courage to actually say anything, so she sat in her room for a good forty minutes trying to decide on what to say. Finally, she walked downstairs and stood in the doorway of her father's little office.

"Dad?"

"Hmm?"

He wasn't looking at her. He was looking through the piles of paperwork that were strewn across the little work desk. Jane started to pick at a little spot of chipped paint on the doorframe.

"Can I talk to you?" she asked.

"I'm working right now," he said, adjusting his reading glasses, still not looking at Jane.

"Well, it's just…it's kind of important," Jane said.

"Can it wait for a little while, Jane? I really need to get this done before tomorrow," her dad said, rubbing at his temples.

"Yeah, but—"

"I'm really busy, Jane."

Jane's face contorted a little in disappointment. Couldn't he just listen to her for one second? But she just started to pick at the chipped paint again. She supposed it could wait until after he was done, whenever that would be. She just nodded and headed back up to her room.