CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN
"Jane, could you at least unlock the door?"
Jane sat on her bed beside her suitcase. She had been sitting in that exact spot for a good ten minutes now. She was supposed to be unpacking, but she couldn't seem to make herself move. All she could do was sit there, and every now and then, some memory of Will came along to punch her right in the gut, and she couldn't stop herself from bursting into tears again.
On top of it all, coming back to the Potters' instead of Stockbridge just made her think of her father all over again, and she was just so sick of it all. She was sick of feeling sad all the time. She was sick of crying and having this massive headache afterwards. And even more than that, she was sick of crying in front of the boys which is why she just wanted them to go away right now.
James was standing outside of her door, occasionally knocking on it and trying to plead with her to come back out. Sirius emerged from his own room and shook his head.
"She's got her balcony doors locked too," he said before knocking on Jane's door. "Come on, Janie, please, let us in."
Jane grabbed one of her throw pillows and buried her face in it, letting out a silent scream that just turned into more sobs. Sirius pressed his ear against her door and closed his eyes when he heard her.
"Janie, please, open the door," he pleaded quietly.
Jane took the pillow away from her face and took in a deep breath before sniffling a bit.
"Please, just go away," she choked out.
"You know I'm not gonna do that," Sirius said, causing another wave of tears to wash over Jane.
Mr. Potter appeared in the hallway with a cup of tea in his hands.
"Boys, leave Jane alone."
"But, Dad, she—"
"No 'buts,'" he said. "Go downstairs and help your mother set the table."
James mumbled something but started walking towards the staircase. However, Sirius didn't move.
"That means you too, Sirius," he said.
"But she won't let anyone in, and she's got a charm on the lock—"
"Sirius, what did I say?" Mr. Potter said, giving him a stern look. "Downstairs. Now."
Sirius opened his mouth but closed it again. He pushed away from Jane's door and with a sulky expression, headed down the hallway. Mr. Potter turned to Jane's door and knocked on it.
Jane sighed.
"I said go away!" she said in a squeaky voice, thinking it was still James and Sirius.
"Jane, unlock this door."
Jane immediately jumped to her feet, wiped her face with the bottom of her shirt, and brushed her hair away from her face. Grabbing her wand, she muttered the counter to the spell she'd learned from Alice, and the lock on the door clicked. Mr. Potter walked in, giving Jane the same stern look he'd given Sirius just moments ago.
"We don't lock doors in this house; do you understand?"
Jane nodded and sniffled again.
"It won't happen again; I promise," she said, looking down at her wand before tossing it onto the bed.
"Cassandra made you some tea," he said, sitting the cup on Jane's bedside table. "Are you going to be all right?"
Jane scrunched up her face and pressed the bottom of her palms to her eyes, trying to fight another onset of tears. Finally, she shook her head.
"No," she cried, and Mr. Potter wrapped her in a warm hug and patted her back.
"I don't—know what—to do," Jane sobbed. "It-it just hurts—so much. And I can't stop th-thinking about him. And it's not fair!"
"I know. I know," Mr. Potter said.
"Will's gone, and my father doesn't want me," she cried. "And I just don't know what to do."
Mr. Potter let Jane sit back down on her bed and he knelt in front of her as she wiped at her eyes.
"I just don't wanna hurt anymore," she told him quietly, and Mr. Potter sighed.
"It'll stop hurting," he assured her, patting one of her hands.
"How do you know?"
"Because, believe it or not, I was a teenager once, and I fell in love and had my heart broken too," he said. "And I hurt just like you are right now."
"How'd you get over it?" Jane asked, still trying to wipe away a few tears.
"Well, it takes some time," Mr. Potter said. "Some days are gonna be better than others, and some days you're not gonna want to get out of bed, and that's okay as long as it's not every day. And sometimes you're gonna want to constantly be doing something just to get your mind off it, and some days it's not going to work, but other days it will. But do you know what the best part about all of this is?"
Jane shook her head, wondering how in hell any of this had a good part to it.
"You're going to fall in love again," Mr. Potter told her. "And I know you don't believe that; no one ever does, but trust me, it's going to happen."
"But I don't wanna fall in love again," Jane said, wiping her nose on her shirt.
"I know," he said. "But I promise that you're going to be okay. All that pain you're feeling will go away. One day, you're gonna wake up and realise that it doesn't hurt like it used to. And instead of crying, you'll be able to smile even when you're thinking about them."
Jane couldn't ever see that happening. Every time she thought about Will, all she wanted to do was cry and cry and cry some more.
"And in time you'll meet someone new, and you'll get to make plenty more memories, and it'll be just as wonderful as it was the first time. And it may or may not work out," he told her truthfully.
"How many times did you fall in love?" Jane asked curiously.
"Three times, though two of those times was with the same person, and then, I married her," Mr. Potter said with a smile, and Jane managed to choke out a small laugh.
Mr. Potter squeezed her hand a bit.
"You're gonna be all right," he promised, standing and turning towards the door.
Halfway there, he stopped and turned back to her.
"And Jane, about your father, that has everything to do with him and nothing to do with you. It's not your fault in the slightest. And it's his loss because over the years that I've known you, you've grown into an exceptional young lady."
Jane managed another smile, and Mr. Potter turned once again towards the door only to be stopped this time by Jane as she jumped up from her bed and hugged him tightly.
"Thank you," she said quietly, and Mr. Potter smiled down at her.
"Anytime," he said before she pulled away to wipe away some more tears. "Supper will be ready in a bit, all right?"
Jane nodded and watched him leave. She felt some comfort in knowing that just because her own father had no interest in her that didn't mean she had no one to do all the things a father was supposed to. She picked up the teacup and took a sip before finally opening her suitcase.
When Mr. Potter walked through the dining room, James and Sirius looked at each other and dropped the utensils in their hands onto the table and made to run out of the room to go see Jane. However, Mr. Potter caught both of them by the back of their shirts.
"Finish setting the table," he said.
James grumbled something, and Sirius sighed. They both rushed through setting the places for supper, but before they could make it upstairs James' dad stopped them again, directing them to the sitting room.
"You two can stay down here," he said
"But we wanna talk to Jane," James argued.
"Yes, well, she's still unpacking right now, and I remember telling you both to leave her alone for the time being."
James opened his mouth, but his mother walked in and immediately said:
"James, don't argue with your father."
James plopped onto the couch with an annoyed expression on his face. Mrs. Potter turned to her husband.
"Is she all right?"
Mr. Potter nodded.
"She'll be fine."
James and Sirius sat on the couch, bored out of their minds. James was wishing that he at least had his Exploding Snap cards, but they were in his room, upstairs, where apparently he wasn't allowed right now. Sirius kept throwing glances at the doorway of the sitting room, wondering when Jane was gonna come downstairs, or out of her room for that matter.
About twenty-five minutes later, they got their window of opportunity.
"Supper's ready," Mrs. Potter called. "Someone go tell Jane."
The boys raced up the stairs and straight to Jane's room where they found her hanging up a few clothes in her closet. Her eyes were still puffy and her face was a little pink. And when she spoke, she sounded congested.
"What?" she asked as they looked at her.
"Supper's ready," James told her, and she nodded.
"All right."
"Are you okay, Janie?" Sirius had to ask.
Jane looked down at the shirt in her hands as she stuck it on a hanger. She shrugged before hanging it up.
"I guess I have to be," she said, picking up another shirt.
The boys just looked at her as though expecting her to start crying again. Jane hated when people did that, especially when she did start crying again.
"It just sucks so much," she said, her voice cracking a bit, and as soon as it did, a pair of arms wrapped themselves around her.
Jane buried her face into Sirius' chest and tried to stop crying which she found was already getting a little easier to do. Sirius combed through Jane's hair with his fingers. Jane relaxed into him, and with this small gesture, a hint of a smile flashed involuntarily across Sirius' lips, but James, who was looking at Jane with sad eyes, didn't notice it.
"Come on," he said. "Mum's waiting."
Jane pulled away from Sirius and wiped her eyes with her palms. The three of them walked down to the dining room where Jane was distracted for a while by listening to Mrs. Potter relay the gossip she'd heard to her husband. Jane wasn't really hungry because after all that crying, she honestly felt a little sick. However, she managed to eat something because she didn't want Mrs. Potter to think she hadn't liked the food.
After supper was over, Jane helped with the dishes, and later, she let the boys talk her into walking to the pond. They lay on the dock and smoked. Jane had carefully placed Will's jacket on the boulder before lighting a cigarette because she didn't want it to start smelling like smoke. Plus, Will never liked when she smoked anyway.
Jane didn't really say anything; she just listened to the boys talk back and forth as she watched the sky grow darker, and thankfully, they didn't really try to get her to join in on the conversation; they just let her be. Jane waited hopefully for the stars, but around the time it was dark enough for them to shine, clouds had rolled in. The only light she was going to see tonight was the end of her cigarette as it burned its orange-red colour.
However, Jane just closed her eyes and imagined the sky as it had been just the night before, with the stars twinkling above her and Will out on the Quidditch pitch. If she focused hard enough, she could almost smell his cologne, almost feel his breath on her neck, could almost taste him on her lips. And though a few tears ran down the sides of her face, Jane smiled a bit. And when she opened her eyes, she almost thought she'd see him smiling down at her, but there was nothing there save for the dull night sky.
Jane sighed, taking a drag of her cigarette and blowing smoke up into the humid air. Words couldn't describe how much she missed Will right now. The pain in her chest that had shown up when Will left had yet to go away, and it just felt like a constant dull ache in her heart. Jane wondered when that was going to go away because it didn't seem to be letting up any.
When the three of them had decided to go to sleep, the ache was still there as Jane stared up at her canopy. Jane realised that nights were going to be tough for her. Already, she was crying, burying her face into her pillows and trying to muffle the sound of her sobs. She couldn't seem to go to sleep which is what she desperately wanted because maybe Will would at least be there in her dreams. She wondered if Will was having a hard time sleeping as well.
Sirius couldn't sleep either. The sounds of Jane crying were drifting through his wall, and it was heart-breaking to listen to. He pulled his pillow over his ears, but that didn't change the fact that he couldn't stop thinking about her. Finally, he threw the pillow across the bed and stared at the canopy of his own bed before turning his head to look at his door.
With a sigh, Sirius got out of bed and walked across the cold floor. He peaked his head out into the dark hallway and glanced across the hallway towards James' door before quietly stepping out of his room. It only took him a few steps before he stopped in front of Jane's door. He hesitated a second before grabbing the doorknob and turning it slowly. He opened the door just a smidge.
"Janie?" he whispered into the room.
Jane sat up in her bed and wiped her eyes on the duvet.
"Yeah?" she said.
Sirius poked his head into the door and squinted at her through the dark.
"It's just, I can kind of hear you crying," he told her as she sniffled.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to keep you up."
Sirius walked in and closed the door quietly behind him.
"It's all right. I was just wondering if, you know, if you were gonna be okay?"
"Yeah, I just—I can't really get to sleep. I'll be okay."
Sirius nodded and went to put his hands in his pockets, but upon realising that his pyjama pants didn't have pockets, he folded his arms across his chest.
"All right, well, um, goodnight then," he said.
"Sirius?"
"Yes?"
Jane wondered for a second if it was too much to ask, after all, she'd already kept him awake with her crying. However, she decided to just ask anyway.
"It's gonna sound kind of stupid, but could you, I mean, will you stay with me, just until I fall asleep?" she asked.
Sirius nodded softly.
"That's not stupid," he said. "Of course I will."
Jane smiled just a little as Sirius lay down beside her, hugging her to him. Jane rested her head on his chest and within a matter of minutes, fell asleep, snoring softly. Sirius stayed there for a long time, running a hand through her hair as she slept.
After a while, Sirius tried to slide himself out from under her, but when he moved, Jane suddenly grabbed onto his shirt and shifted groggily.
"Where're you goin'?" she asked, her voice laden with sleep. "What'sa matter?"
Sirius froze, but realised that she probably wasn't even fully awake.
"Nothing," he whispered, "just go back to sleep."
Jane mumbled something that sounded like "all right" before rolling over onto a pillow, leaving Sirius free to leave as he pleased, but before he was off of the bed, a few more sleep-ridden words escaped Jane's lips.
"I love you, Will."
Sirius flinched just a little at the words as he felt like someone had just taken a knife and twisted it into his chest. With one last glance at Jane, who was sleeping soundly, Sirius quickly walked back to his own room.