CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOUR
"So, how goes the first morning without magic, boys?" Jane asked as she sat into a spot between James and Sirius at the Gryffindor table at breakfast the next morning.
James shrugged, stuffing food into his mouth.
"It's not so bad," he said.
"You woke up about an hour ago," Jane said, grabbing a piece of toast and spreading jam onto it.
"Your point being?" Sirius asked.
"My point is," Jane said, taking a bite of her toast, "that it's gonna get a lot harder."
"I'm so happy we don't have to go to classes today," Remus said, sitting across from them with Peter.
Peter said something inaudible through the food that was crammed into his mouth.
"What?" Jane asked, taking another bite of toast.
Peter swallowed his food.
"I said that I'm not looking forward to this meeting. Last year when we got career advice—"
Sirius rolled his eyes and cut Peter off.
"You're just saying that because you're scared of Ole Minnie."
"I'm not scared of her!" Peter defended.
Sirius just smirked and shook his head.
"Yeah, sure," he said sarcastically.
"There's nothing to be worried about," Remus said. "We're only seeing which classes we can take."
"I got an Acceptable in Defence Against the Dark Arts," Peter said. "I know Professor Abernathy only took N.E.W.T. students with Exceeds Expectations on their O.W.L.s. I really hope this new guy takes Acceptables."
"But, Peter, you hate Defence Against the Dark Arts," Jane pointed out.
"I know, but a lot of jobs require it."
"I'm sure there are plenty of jobs that don't," Jane said.
"Yeah, you could always ask Madam Rosmerta for a job," Sirius jeered.
Jane elbowed Sirius in his ribs.
"Ow," he said, elbowing her right back.
"You don't have to be an arse all the time, you know?" Jane said.
"He knows I'm teasing, don't you, Wormy?"
Peter mumbled something into his plate that sounded like "sure," and Remus went on about the various jobs that didn't require you to have a N.E.W.T. level in Defence Against the Dark Arts, most of which Jane had never heard of before.
After Remus, with his vast knowledge of the career world, had sufficiently made Peter feel as though he would be able to be accomplished whether he got into a N.E.W.T. level Defence class or not, Jane began to wonder exactly how many career pamphlets Remus had looked through. She very vaguely remember him reading the little colour-coded pamphlets all throughout their fifth year. However, Jane had been too caught up in her own "more important" life problems to ask Remus (or herself for that matter) why he'd been looking through so many pamphlets when he'd already told her that he'd really like to be a professor one day.
As far as everyone else had been concerned, after they had picked out a few careers that they wouldn't mind, they had stopped looking and just hoped that one of the two or three paths they'd chosen worked out. Hogwarts' trash bins and corridors had been littered with the little colourful pamphlets that all the fifth years had discarded because it literally made them sick to look at them anymore. But not Remus. Remus would still have piles of them. It was something she'd ask him about later.
Later, when it was Jane's turn to finally go see Professor McGonagall, she was kind of excited. She was dropping all of the unneeded classes, so she'd have a lot of free periods. She had this vision of sleeping in late, relaxing by the Black Lake, and catching up on all the times she could've visited Hogsmeade last year but didn't because she hadn't felt up to doing much of anything back then. And though in all seriousness, she knew she'd probably just spend her free time in the library (she did have to get at least Exceeds Expectations in all of the classes she was going to take), Jane found that it was nice to have the option to do all of those things if she really wanted to.
"Ah, Miss Hensworth, come in," McGonagall had said when Jane poked her head in the door of her office.
Jane did as instructed and smiled happily as McGonagall rifled through her notes and pushed her reading glasses back up her nose as they slid down.
"All right, it says here that you 'might possibly' want to be a Healer," McGonagall said with an air of exasperation hanging over the words 'might possibly' that Jane (and probably every other fifth year student in the history of Hogwarts) wrote down in front of their chosen career path.
"I do want to be a Healer," Jane said with a certain finality in her voice that she thought for some reason might impress the older witch.
Maybe McGonagall would think, Now, here is a student that's gotten her future planned. I wish all my other sixth year students were like this.
However, if that's what McGonagall thought, then she certainly didn't show it, and in fact she probably didn't give it a second thought because she skipped right into drawing up Jane's schedule. Jane would need to continue with Herbology, Defence, Transfiguration, Charms, and Potions to become a Healer. However, she could drop Ancient Runes, Astronomy, Care of Magical Creatures, and History. She'd continue to take Art because she found it was very cathartic sometimes.
When it came to the subject of History of Magic, Jane made sure, even though McGonagall was hardly listening, to slip in that she hadn't ever planned on continuing it anyway, so it hadn't mattered that she had failed it. Let the world know that Jane Hensworth wasn't not taking History because she failed, but because she never wanted to in the first place!
Needless to say, Jane was still a little self-conscious about failing her History of Magic O.W.L.
Then, McGonagall brought up another class that Jane hadn't even known was offered at Hogwarts, called Healing Theory. It wasn't mandatory for Healers, but McGonagall had said that it would be "very beneficial in the long run" for when Jane started her training to become a Healer. So, Jane threw caution to the wind and took the class. After all, she had just dropped four; adding one wasn't going to kill her.
Finally, McGonagall looked at Jane and did something very surprising. She asked how Jane was doing. She asked about how her summer had been and if she was better now. She asked if she still needed to see Hellen, who was still at Hogwarts because, as hard as it was for Jane to fathom sometimes, other kids at Hogwarts had problems too (especially with You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters out there).
Jane just assured her that she was fine and that maybe she'd even pop by Hellen's office once in a while, which was probably a complete lie. Jane didn't care though. She just wanted to get out of that office and enjoy the rest of her day with her friends.
When she got out of the office, Jane found the boys and held up her schedule in triumph, as she was very proud of it. Monday was her only full day, which seemed fitting because Jane already had the general dislike that everyone has for Mondays anyway. All of the other school days had at least one or two free periods. And Jane was happy to find that her schedule completely coincided with the boys' save for the Healing Theory class, which Sirius had sneered at her for taking.
"Why take it if it's not mandatory?" he had asked as they climbed the stairs up to the Astronomy Tower.
"Why do you talk when no one cares about what you have to say?" Jane had retorted, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of her purse, and that's where that conversation had ended.
Jane and the boys had come to realise their previous year that the Astronomy Tower was a great place to just hang out. No one ever came up there except to have class, and that was at midnight (as technically it was supposed to be "out of bounds" save for classes, but it's not like anyone was guarding the place). In the middle of the day, no one bothered to go up there, making it the perfect little hideout whenever, say, Sirius wanted to smoke or Jane wanted to not have to deal with other people outside her little group of friends. Plus, the view from the tower was amazing; you could see everything from up there.
In fact, James found the ability to see almost all of the grounds quite entertaining. He'd bought a pair of binoculars off a Muggle-born, birdwatching kid in Hufflepuff near the end of last school year. It was amazing the things you could catch people doing when they thought they were alone. You'd be surprised at how many people hooked up on some part of the grounds which apparently they thought was a big secret to everybody but themselves. One time, they'd caught this one kid practising his kissing with his hand. It had been one of the funniest and most disturbing things Jane had ever seen.
However, today was a pretty slow day, as most of the schools' students were in class, and only a few sixth years roamed the grounds. James huffed after a while of staring at a couple who were sitting all alone by the lake.
"This is boring," he said, lighting up a cigarette and handing the binoculars off to Jane, who was leaning on the parapet beside him.
He sat on the floor beside Sirius who was watching Remus and Peter play a game of Exploding Snap. Jane smiled and looked over her shoulder at the boys. It must've been torture for James and Sirius to watch other people play Exploding Snap and not be able to play it themselves.
Jane turned her attention back to the grounds, taking a drag of her cigarette. She squinted at two blonde figures, and looked through the binoculars to see Mary and Marlene sitting beside each other on the grass. The first thing that struck Jane as odd was where they were at: the edge of the Dark Forest, almost shrouded from Jane's view by the trees, like they were hiding from people. The next thing that was kind of odd was how close they were sitting to each other; Jane was sure that if she just casually sat that close to Remus or Sirius, she'd feel pretty uncomfortable.
Before Jane knew it, she was full-fledged spying on her two roommates, who were talking and laughing with each other. Now, usually Jane didn't spy on her friends because there was a certain level of respect she held for them that was way higher than the level of respect she had for the strangers that she and the boys usually spied on. Also, it crossed her mind that this shouldn't be weird to her. After all, Mary and Marlene had known each other for who knows how long. And they were best friends. What did it matter to Jane that they were seemingly hiding away from everyone? Wasn't that what she and the boys were doing too? Hiding up in the Astronomy Tower?
In all honesty, Jane should have stopped looking. She should have put the binoculars down once she realised that these were her friends, and what business did she have to know what they were up to anyway? And that would be the last day Jane spied on anyone from the Astronomy Tower, because that day she realised how terrible it felt to know a secret that you weren't entitled to know, like she was intruding on someone else's life, and it wasn't fair to them at all.
When Jane saw Marlene lean over and kiss Mary, no matter how shocking it was to her, Jane heard the voice in the back of her mind say, Merlin, Jane, you're such a bitch! That's their business!
And when Jane let out an involuntary, shocked little gasp, James looked up at her and asked:
"What is it?"
And Sirius was on his feet in an instant, because he was so bored, and he knew that gasp meant Jane saw something interesting.
And as soon as Jane realised that Sirius was about to snatch the binoculars out of her hands, she panicked. She already felt bad enough about spying. She felt even worse about knowing a secret that obviously Mary and Marlene hadn't wanted to share with anybody. She'd be damned if she was gonna let Sirius know about it, and have her friends' secret spread like wildfire throughout the school.
So, in the split second before Sirius could grab the binoculars, Jane dropped them, and down they fell off the Astronomy Tower to the ground below.
"You idiot," Sirius exclaimed, "what'd you do that for?"
"Slipped?" Jane offered, extinguishing her cigarette and pushing away from the parapet, a lot of very confused, and also very guilty, thoughts swimming around in her head.
"Well, what'd you see?" Sirius asked.
Jane shrugged.
"I don't know. I thought I saw something pop out of the lake; it was probably just the Giant Squid or something," she lied.
Sirius looked at her suspiciously.
"Yeah, probably," he said, and Jane knew he didn't believe her, not for one second.
Jane looked away from him. There was no way in hell that she'd tell anyone. It wasn't her secret to tell; it wasn't her secret to know. No. She'd carry this one to the grave and pretend she never saw it.