CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-ONE
Jane's new guard schedule on top of her school schedule had quickly proven itself to be difficult to transition into. By the end of the first week, her sleep schedule was out of sorts. Even on the nights she wasn't on post, she would lay awake in bed, unable to fall asleep until well after midnight. By the second week, she started bringing her textbooks to bed with her. She'd figured that if she was unable to sleep, she might as well had use her time wisely, especially since her work with the Order had really cut into her studying time to begin with.
Jane's free Fridays and Saturdays were no more. Instead, they consisted of her coming home from her nightly posts in the early hours of the morning, trying not to wake Sirius as she showered and crawled into bed. By the time she'd wake up, Sirius would be gone for his midday posts, so she would make something to eat and catch up on her schoolwork; more often than not, she found herself at the Potters', helping out around the house. In the event that Sirius didn't have to work at the White Wyvern, she might get to see him before she left for her nightly shift on those days. She hadn't gotten to see Sirius at all on his nineteenth birthday, which had fallen on a Friday that year.
Jane's social life had also felt the strain of the new responsibilities. Her Saturday night posts left her drained and quiet during their Sunday lunches with the Potters. On multiple occasions, she'd had to turn down what had sounded like fun offers from her classmates so that she could run straight to London or the library after class, depending on what day it was. In fact, the only good thing that seemed to come from any of this was her newfound friendship with Kevin Fawley.
It hadn't taken long at all to feel comfortable around the boy. He was funny and down to earth. He made the long hours spent atop the dreary, old rooftops bearable. The two had already found themselves on a first name basis just two weeks in; though, spending hours of your day doing a boring task with only one person to keep you company was bound to drive you completely mad unless you made friends with them. Jane's only complaint about her new relationship with Kevin was having not made friends with the boy sooner.
On the twenty-fourth of October, Jane awoke to the shrill ring of her alarm clock. It's loud sound penetrated the walls of her dreams, causing them to fall away until she was pulled back to the reality that was her bed. She wanted to smack the clock off the nightstand; it had ruined a pleasant dream, the details of which were fading fast from her mind, leaving behind only the feeling of longing. Before she could even open her eyes, she felt Sirius reach over her to silence the clock. Jane felt his arm wrap around her waist, pulling her closer to him as her eyelids slowly drifted open.
"Good morning" he said once her gaze met his. Jane offered him a sleepy smile in return, one of her hands coming up to slowly wipe the sleep from her eyes.
It didn't seem to matter how well she slept anymore; she always seemed to never want to wake up. Outside of her sleep schedule being out of sorts, maybe she just wanted a break. There were no exams or lectures or threats of impending doom in the comfort of her bed. There, wrapped in the warmth of the blankets, she never had to pretend like she wasn't exhausted. She felt like she could stay there forever.
Jane groaned, knowing that she would need to get up soon. She buried her face into Sirius' chest, closing her eyes again.
"I don't wanna go to class," she complained, her voice muffled from sleep and his shirt. Sirius was quiet for a moment before speaking.
"Then stay home," he offered, but Jane only groaned louder at this.
"You're not supposed to say that," she said. "You're supposed to tell me that my education is important."
Sirius chuckled as he ran his hand through Jane's tangled hair.
"It's like you don't know me at all." Jane smiled at his response. "Besides," he continued, "I think it would be okay if you took one day off. You haven't missed a class since the term started. I feel like you could skive off for today at least."
Jane rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. She sighed.
"I'm doing everything I can to keep some of my grades from slipping as it is," she said. "I can't go missing classes, especially my Anatomy and Physiology class; it the hardest one. There are so many things to learn and memorise about the human body."
Jane finally rolled herself out of bed, stretching as she stood. Sirius frowned, and she looked back at him, furrowing her brow.
"What is it?" she asked curiously.
"You really can't just take today off?" he questioned, and Jane felt herself getting a bit annoyed. She had already explained why she couldn't.
"Sure, if you want me to fail my next exam," she said in a half teasing voice as she made her way to the wardrobe to find something to wear for the day. Sirius sighed as he settled back into the pillows.
"We hardly ever get a day to ourselves anymore with our schedules," he complained. "Why should I think today would be any different?"
Jane frowned as she pulled a shirt over her head. Was he mad at her? For not wanting to skip class?
"Well, what do you want me to do, Sirius?" she asked, wincing a bit as the words came out just a smidge colder than she'd meant for them to. She took in a breath and continued in a calmer voice. "I can't miss this class unless I want to fall behind, and I can't afford to fall behind because I have no free time to spare to catch back up again."
Sirius was silent at this, and Jane went about readying herself for the day, making her way to the bathroom to brush her teeth. When she came back to the bedroom to fix her hair and makeup at the vanity, Sirius spoke up again.
"Can you at least come home so we can have lunch together?"
Jane bit her lip to keep from letting out an annoyed sigh. In all honesty, she'd been opting out of lunch most days while she was at Pendle Hill in favour of spending her time in the library to study or get a head start on her homework since it was some of her only free time to work on her schoolwork. But at the same time, she couldn't really blame Sirius for missing their time together; she missed it too. She just wished that he wouldn't act like she was doing it on purpose.
"We'll see," she said, opting to see how her morning class turned out before she committed to anything. Sirius stayed silent after this, only speaking again once she was leaving.
"Do you have to work tonight?" Jane asked as she was grabbing her schoolbag.
"No, I took off for today."
Jane thought this was mildly odd but didn't say anything. Sirius was usually picking up extra shifts when he could; perhaps he just needed a break. Jane sure knew that she could use one.
"All right," Jane said, standing at their bedroom door, "I'll see you later then. Love you."
"Love you too," Sirius replied, giving her a small smile. He watched her disappear from sight, and when he heard the front door close behind her, he added, "Happy Anniversary, Janie."
All morning, Jane had the feeling as though she'd forgotten something. However, she'd checked her bag three times. She had her essay that was due in her afternoon class. She had all her schoolbooks, notebooks, quills, her wand. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but she knew that she was missing something. She vaguely worried that perhaps she was forgetting a deadline for a project or something, but no class came to mind.
Gradually throughout the morning, she pushed the thought to the back of her mind. She had finally convinced herself halfway through Professor Bailey's lecture that perhaps she hadn't forgotten anything at all.
"Maybe it's, like, just your mind playing tricks on you. Like last week, I kept thinking that it was a day behind of what it actually was. I nearly missed my Monday classes thinking it was Sunday!" said a girl named Cheryl Hernandez, a Californian witch who'd graduated from Ilvermorny that Keiko had befriended whilst Jane had been juggling her busy schedule.
Jane just nodded her head as she tried to focus on her notetaking. Perhaps Cheryl was right; maybe it was just her mind playing tricks on her. After all, she'd been under a lot more stress than usual lately. It was bound to affect her mind somehow.
"It's probably all the meals you've been skipping," Keiko told her in a matter-of-fact sort of way. "It's not healthy. As someone who is studying to be a Healer, you should know that. You never come to Finnigan's with me anymore," she complained. Jane rolled her eyes; she didn't think the food at Finnigan's was exactly healthy either.
"Oh, we should go after Sherfield's class today," Cheryl said to Keiko. "What about you, Jane? What are you doing for lunch?"
"I don't know. I don't have another class until the afternoon, so I was planning on going to the library and getting caught up on my reading," Jane replied.
"Perfect!" Cheryl stated. "You can study, and we'll come get you when our class lets out."
"I don't know. I might be going back to London for lunch today. My boyfriend's got the day off today, and he asked me about it before I left this morning."
Cheryl's ears perked up at this information, her own notes long forgotten as she turned her attention fully towards Jane. She and Jane still didn't know much about each other.
"A boyfriend? This is the first I'm hearing about this. What's his name? What's he look like? How long have you been dating?"
Jane held back a sigh. She liked Cheryl, she really did; it was just that the girl was a bit—excitable. Not to mention the fact that since Keiko had befriended the girl, Jane found it even harder to focus on her Anatomy and Physiology class. Cheryl really liked to talk.
"His name's Sirius. He's devilishly handsome with an ego to match, and it'll have be a year this—"
Jane's heart felt like it sank into her stomach. There was no way she had really forgotten.
"Oh, no. Today's the twenty-fourth," she said. Keiko and Cheryl nodded in unison. Jane let out a small noise of complaint as she let her head fall into her hands. How could she be so stupid as to forget that today was their anniversary? Sirius' mood that morning suddenly made sense. He'd taken off work and everything, and Jane had just forgotten.
"I'm a horrible girlfriend," she groaned into her hands.
"Miss his birthday?" Cheryl guessed.
"Anniversary," Jane corrected. "Merlin, I'm an idiot."
"Well, it's still early in the day," Cheryl informed her as she looked at her watch. "Plenty of time to make it up to him once Bailey sets us free from this torture chamber that he calls a classroom. I'm begging him just once to use some sort of intonation when he speaks."
Jane looked at the clock on the wall that hung just above the door of the classroom. They had little over half an hour left in the class. For a brief moment, she thought about just leaving in the middle of Professor Bailey's lecture. Keiko glanced up from her notes to look at Jane.
"Don't even think about it," Keiko said, seemingly reading Jane's thoughts as she went back to her notetaking. "We have an exam coming up next Thursday. Your boyfriend will forgive you; your grades will not."
Jane waited as the minutes ticked by, glancing up in between her notetaking to see that the hands of the clock were moving exceptionally slow today. At a quarter past ten o'clock, she was finally packing up her things with the rest of her classmates.
"I'll walk with you guys to Sherfield's class," Jane told Keiko and Cheryl. "I still need to turn in my essay for his class this afternoon since it doesn't look like I'll be attending today. Will you let me know if he assigns anything new?"
Keiko nodded as they left the classroom together, heading for the nearest staircase.
"He won't be happy about that," Keiko said to Jane, talking about Professor Sherfield. Jane knew this. Professor Sherfield was always complaining about students missing classes or being late. He said it all went towards "professionalism," which was great and all, but Jane didn't really want a lecture from him. Compared to Professor Bailey's class, Sherfield's was a walk in the park, and Jane made decent marks in his class. Despite this, lately, Jane got the feeling that Sherfield didn't like her very much, mostly due to the fact that he'd started calling on her in class to answer questions when other students were already offering up their thoughts.
As they reached the third floor, Jane could see Professor Sherfield down the corridor, standing just outside the door of Room 311, greeting students as they entered the classroom and collecting their essays. Cheryl and Keiko went ahead of Jane, leaving her to take their seats. Sherfield looked at Jane expectantly.
"Miss Hensworth, I wasn't expecting to see you until my afternoon class. To what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked. Jane held her essay out to him.
"I won't be able to make this afternoon's class," she informed him. "I've had something come up."
Sherfield glanced down at her paper and then back up at Jane. For a moment, Jane thought he wasn't going to take her paper, but he finally took it from her and placed it atop the stack of essays already in his hands.
"Oh? More important than class?"
Jane resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
"I can't be at class this afternoon," she repeated, opting to not answer the question.
"I had noticed you'd seemed a bit distracted recently," he told her. "You are a smart girl, Miss Hensworth, but you will not fare well at Pendle Hill if your classes aren't your top priority. Let's not make a habit of this."
Jane bit her tongue as he walked into his classroom and shut the door. Distracted? Yeah, maybe. How could she not be with everything that was going on in her life? She really didn't understand his issue. Perhaps she'd see where he was coming from if she were failing, but she had great marks in his class.
Jane took a deep breath before turning away from the classroom and making her way back to the staircases. She left the building as quickly as she could, arriving at the front door of the flat with a pop.
Jane stared at the door with a frown, one hand fumbling around her bag for her key. How could she forget their anniversary? Worse yet, how could she forget their anniversary when Sirius had remembered? She felt truly awful. Jane finally pushed open the door and quickly glanced around. She didn't see Sirius in the kitchen or den. Jane walked over to the bedroom to push the door open.
"Sirius?" she called, but as she entered the room, she saw that he was not there either. Jane's eyes drifted around the room, finally landing on top of the chest of drawers, where Sirius typically kept his keys. They were gone.
Jane huffed and turned to fall face first into the bed. Merlin, it felt inviting. For a moment she deliberated kicking off her shoes and crawling under the blankets. After all, it was probably just best to wait for Sirius to come home. She closed her eyes for a brief moment before willing herself to slide off the bed and onto the floor. Looking under the bed, she shoved a pair of shoes over to grab the shoebox that was behind them. Jane pulled out her wand and placed it at the top left corner of the box top, ran it halfway across the width, and dragged it down to the centre of the top. A muffled rattling noise sounded from within the box as though items were being shuffled around.
When Jane lifted the lid of the shoebox, she peered into a three feet deep shoebox-shaped hole lined with shelfs. Jane pushed her sleeve up before reaching down into the box and pulling out a package wrapped in a deep blue paper from the second shelf down. She placed the top of the shoebox back in its place and tapped it twice with her wand before pushing it back under the bed.
Jane stared down at the package in her hands. She had found it weeks ago from a man selling used books from one of the vendor stalls in Diagon Alley. It was a book on bewitching and charming Muggle motors and vehicles. All of the work that Sirius had done on Bonnie had been through trial and error since there wasn't really a whole lot of material on the subject that one could purchase at a place like Flourish and Blotts. It wasn't really illegal to have books on how to bewitch Muggle items, but seeing as it gave detailed instructions of an illegal act, most stores wouldn't sell it, not the ones in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade at least.
Jane pulled herself off the floor and walked back into the den. She grabbed her school bag and carefully placed the wrapped book in it. There were exactly two places that made sense to look for Sirius; though, Jane was doubtful he'd be at either. She opted for Diagon Alley first. It was closer, and the second option was the Potters', and Jane wasn't sure how quickly she'd be able to leave once she arrived there.
As she walked down the pavement, making her way towards the Leaky Cauldron, she chewed on the inside of her lip anxiously. She'd read a story in the Prophet just last week about a wizard who disappeared on his way home from Diagon Alley; he only lived half a mile away, and still, he never made it home. Despite the fact that it was still daylight out—it had been after dark when the wizard from the newspaper story had disappeared—Jane couldn't help but feel a little jumpy as she walked alone towards her destination. She clutched onto the shoulder strap of her bag as she stuck to a brisk pace.
Once the Leaky Cauldron was in view, Jane slowed a little. As she waited at the last crosswalk, she relaxed a bit, letting a hand fall to her side as she shifted her bag on her shoulder. As the cars rolled by, she watched from across the way as three wizards made their way out of the Leaky Cauldron. The two older men had clearly not tried to blend any Muggle fashion into their wardrobe that day, and they looked terribly out of place on the streets of Muggle London. The younger boy, however, wore a simple black suit jacket and trousers; though lacking in colour, the garments fit the boy in a way that suggested they had been tailored for him especially. Jane's eyes fixated on the back of his head as he talked to the older men; she'd yet to see his face, and she felt a strange sense of familiarity as she looked at his figure.
The boy only turned around when the two older wizards had walked off opposite the direction of Jane. She audibly gasped, not at the fact that the boy happened to be Sirius' younger brother, Regulus, but at the fact that he had immediately made eye contact with her from across the street. As the last car passed by, the people waiting beside Jane at the crosswalk moved forward to get to their destinations, but she remained rooted to the spot as she stared at Regulus, who stared back at her with an intention she was uncertain of until he made his way across the street in her direction.
At this, Jane finally moved, but not towards the Leakey Cauldron; she opted to go left instead, ducking her head down as she walked quickly away from the intersection. At the next crosswalk she came upon, she crossed the street and then took another left. She wasn't sure why there was a knot in her stomach just from making eye contact with the boy. Outside of the fight they'd been involved in during her last year at Hogwarts, Regulus normally treated Jane as though she didn't exist, so Jane wasn't entirely sure what she was worried about. Was she paranoid for thinking that he had been walking towards her? Perhaps he simply had been intending on going that direction before he had spotted her. Then, there was the lingering question of why Regulus wasn't at Hogwarts. It wasn't even two whole months into the first term of his seventh year, so why was he hanging about London?
Jane finally slowed her pace as she came to another intersection, crossing once the cars were gone. She figured she'd just make another left at the next intersection and loop her way back around to the Leaky Cauldron that way. She found herself on a street lined with flats, passing an older couple who were out for a walk with a small, white poodle. Jane was once again all too aware that she was alone and hoped that the next street she turned onto had a few more people walking about, if only to make her feel a little safer.
A small pop suddenly sounded from somewhere around her, and Jane quickly looked over her shoulder. However, she only saw the older couple crossing the street in the distance. She shook her head and let out a small laugh at her jumpiness. She made it a few more yards before she felt something press into the back of her neck. She froze.
"Walk backwards. Slowly."
Jane's mouth went dry as she was vaguely able to recognise Regulus' voice right before he placed his left hand on her shoulder, guiding her backwards towards an alleyway she'd just passed by. Jane could feel her stomach twisting as her feet slowly followed where he led her. Once in the alleyway, the pressure on her neck was gone and she was being spun around. She felt her back slam into the brick wall behind her and she gasped as the air fled from her lungs at the force. Regulus backed away as far as the alley would allow, leaning up against the opposite wall, but he kept his wand trained on Jane. She stared at his wand, glancing at his face only occasionally. She could feel her own wand against her right arm, hidden carefully up her sleeve; her hand twitched, the urge to attempt to quickly slip it into her hand was overwhelming. At her slight movement, Regulus flicked his wand and the bricks to the left of Jane cracked slightly with some invisible force.
"Just you stay still for a moment, Hensworth, or next time, it'll be your skull," he threatened. Jane chose to assume he wasn't bluffing and stayed as still as she could. She studied him, and despite his clean-cut appearance, he seemed just a bit off—frantic almost. It hid very poorly under his normally stoic countenance, most visible in the way his hand shook ever so slightly. It was an emotion she'd never seen on him, and it made her uneasy. "I just want you to deliver a message to my big brother."
Jane felt a small bit of anger rise up in place of some of the fear she felt.
"An owl wouldn't have sufficed?" she spat out bitterly; though, her voice shook, fear not completely forgotten. Regulus narrowed his eyes nonetheless, unamused by her.
"Tell Sirius that the next time he dares approach me in a public place, I will see to it that he doesn't make it home to whatever dump you two are holed up in."
Jane's chest tightened at his words. He'd seen Sirius?
"After all," Regulus continued, lowering his wand a fraction, "it wouldn't shock anyone to know that a blood traitor working in Knockturn Alley, of all places, has vanished. And if that doesn't deter him, just perhaps mention how easy it was for me to get to you."
A chill ran up along Jane's spine at his words and their implication. However, she knew now that she could not pass along the message, not if she wanted Sirius to let it go.
"Perhaps threatening me isn't the best way to get Sirius to leave you alone," she told him after a moment of silence. Regulus let out a disdainful noise at her reply.
"You know, the only reason he's with you is to piss off our parents," Regulus said to her in a venomous tone. "He's always been like that, even when we were kids. He's always gone out of his way to upset them, to make them angry. You are nothing more than another way for him to rebel, you and the rest of his so-called friends."
Jane could feel the anger rising up in her once more at his words.
"It must have been so difficult," she said, her voice only wavering slightly this time, "growing up with an older brother that can actually think for himself whilst you are unable to."
She regretted having said the words as soon as they left her lips. Here she was with a wand pointed at her, completely void of the upper hand, and she still didn't know when to shut her mouth. She briefly wondered if this was something she'd always done, or if it was a trait she'd picked up from James or Sirius.
Regulus surprised Jane by letting out a laugh. It was dry and humourless, but it sounded eerily like Sirius. He slowly lowered his wand, tucking it into his suit jacket. Despite this, Jane still felt tense.
"Well, it obviously didn't do me any favours," he told her motioning around him with one arm, and Jane was confused by what he was trying to imply. "Thanks to him, now, I have to—" He cut himself off and let out a frustrated noise before speaking again. "Just make sure he gets the message."
Regulus pushed himself from the wall and started down the alleyway. Jane stayed glued to her side of the alley, watching him, finally slipping her wand from her sleeve. While she doubted at this point that he was going to harm her—he would have already done so if that were his intention—she felt safer with her fingers wrapped tightly around her wand. She nearly jumped out of her skin when he started to talk again, calling to her from further down the alley.
"Oh, and Hensworth?" He didn't bother looking back in her direction as he spoke, his tone almost light, as though telling a joke, bouncing and echoing off the buildings encasing them in the alleyway. "If I were you, I'd limit my time alone on the streets of London. Not very safe for your kind these days."
Jane supposed he said it just to set her more on edge than she already was, but before she could say anything in return, he vanished with a faint pop, leaving Jane alone in the alley. With a shaky hand, Jane pushed herself away from the wall and tried to steady her racing heart, feeling embarrassed at the fear she had felt, at how easily she'd been taken off guard.
Jane Apparated herself right back to her flat, rushing inside and locking the door behind her, acutely aware of how the locks were merely a false sense of security. She was just thinking about looking into some protection spells to place on their flat when she looked down and saw that she was bleeding. She gently touched the place on her thigh where there was a tear in her jeans, which were stained a dark red. She had splinched herself.
She suddenly felt it, and it felt like a white-hot pain in her leg. It was funny to her, how some things didn't really hurt until you saw them; though, in this case she felt certain that the adrenaline rush had helped numb the pain initially. She discarded her bag and shouted out in agony as she tried to move towards the bathroom. She nixed the idea and turned to lean against the door instead.
"Accio dittany!" she said, flicking her wand in the general direction of the bathroom before throwing it aside and holding her hand out, catching the little bottle as it whizzed towards her a moment later. With shaky hands, she unstopped it. As she looked at the wound again to inspect how deep it was, she was suddenly a little lightheaded, ears starting to ring.
Jane had never really had any issues with blood or injuries when they were on other people, but she was experiencing it now, and she felt sick and dizzy. She forced herself to look closer at her leg, thankful that it wasn't too deep. She dropped the brown liquid onto the wound and immediately hissed in pain at the burning sensation it caused on top of the pain that was already there. She slowly allowed herself to carefully slide to the floor as the dittany did its job. She put the stopper back in place before setting the bottle aside and leaning her head back against the door.
Jane stared blankly at the empty flat for a moment before the weight of the whole day came crashing in on her. She felt too drained to try and stop the tears from welling up and running down her cheeks, a few sobs escaping her lips. Regulus' words from earlier replayed in her mind, and he was right; it had been far too easy for him to get to her. Jane hadn't been harmed—not by Regulus anyhow—but she knew he had the upper hand the entire time, and had he only wanted it to end differently, it would have. She had been next to defenceless, and it scared and angered her in equal parts.
As she sat there, despite her crying, she could feel her heartrate start to slow. Not long after, her eyes slowly started to dry. She sniffled and cleared her throat, hating how congested crying always made her feel. She looked back down at her leg. The blood there was starting to dry, and the pain had dulled significantly. She allowed herself a few more seconds of just sitting and staring into nothing before she forced herself to stand.
Jane grabbed the dittany and her wand and slowly made her way to the bedroom, her leg still sore and tender when she moved. She lay her wand and the dittany on the nightstand beside the bed before unbuttoning her jeans and slowly peeling them off of her legs. The denim fabric, tacky with drying blood, stuck to her thigh, and she winced from the tenderness of her leg as she carefully pulled the fabric off of where the wound had once been. Despite the tenderness and blood, the top of the wound had healed quite a bit.
Jane moved to the bathroom, grabbing a washcloth, and sitting on the side of the bathtub before turning on the faucet. She ran the washcloth under the cool water before gently wiping it across her thigh. As the blood washed away, Jane could see that the skin, though healed, was still red and irritated. She frowned, knowing that it could take up to another hour or so for her leg to be completely healed.
She turned the faucet off and dabbed her leg with a towel before walking over to the little cabinet and opening it. She pushed a few things around before finding a circular, blue container. She opened it and applied a bit of the salve that was inside onto her leg, which instantly felt cool and numb as she rubbed it into her skin. Jane sighed in relief. Looking up, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She looked awful. Her eyes were still red and puffy, and the mascara she had worn that day had run down her cheeks and dried there. She had somehow managed to get blood on her shirt as well. She sighed before leaning over the sink to wash her face.
At that precise moment, Sirius arrived home in a foul mood. His impromptu trip to Knockturn Alley to visit Remus had not gone at all how he planned. Of all the people he had to see there, his brother had to be one of them, which was entirely unsettling to Sirius since Regulus wasn't supposed to be in London; he was supposed to be at school. But there he had been, standing outside Borgin and Burkes, suit jacket causally hanging over his arm, chatting up two old men Sirius had never seen before.
Sirius wasn't entirely sure what had made him approach his brother. Sirius had long ago given up on trying to talk some sense into Regulus; he was too brainwashed by their parents before Sirius could help. And as he had approached Regulus and the men he was with, Sirius saw it. Jet black and bold on his brother's forearm, permanently branding him. The Dark Mark. It had made Sirius' stomach coil in on itself, but more than that it made him angry, livid.
The conversation that followed had not been a pleasant one, and Sirius was still fuming over it. Regulus believing their parents' vile rhetoric was bad enough, but now he was actively throwing his entire future away for it. Sirius hated it. He hated more than anything being in the Black family, with being associated in name and blood with people who thought that he and his friends and the person that he loved were something to be stomped out of society, something to be erased.
In frustration, he forcefully kicked the closest thing to him, but furrowed his brow upon realizing what it was. It was Jane's schoolbag. That's when he realized he could hear the faucet of their bathroom sink. He picked up Jane's bag and tossed it onto the couch before walking to the bedroom. He looked down at the bloodied jeans on the floor and his heart skipped a beat.
"Janie?" he called, quickening his pace towards the bathroom. As he entered, Jane was turning the water off and reaching for a towel. Sirius took in her appearance as she stood with blood on her shirt and no trousers on. He looked down at the reddened skin of her thigh. "What happened?"
"It's not as bad as all the blood makes it look," she said, wanting to stop him from worrying over her. "I just splinched myself a little," she said in a quieter voice, a bit embarrassed.
Sirius looked at her as though he knew something else was off. He walked closer to her, bringing his hand up to gently brush his fingertips against her cheek.
"Is that why you were crying?"
"What? Being in intense pain isn't a good enough excuse to cry?" Jane joked morbidly. She could tell that Sirius didn't find it amusing today. She sighed. "Might have been part of the reason," she answered truthfully.
"And the other part of the reason?" he asked. Jane looked at him with tired eyes. Part of her wanted to tell him about Regulus, about what he'd said, about him pointing a wand at her, threatening her. But the other part of her didn't want Sirius to have any reason to go near Regulus, and she knew that he would never let it go if he thought Regulus so much as breathed on her in a threatening way. He might even drag James into it. Then, Jane would have to be worried about both of them.
"I'm sorry," Jane said, opting instead to apologise for her earlier faux pas. It wasn't a complete lie; it too had been a part of the reason she'd been crying. Her forgetting their anniversary had kickstarted the entire awful day; had she remembered, she would've stayed home, would have been having a nice, relaxing day instead of the one she was having now. Moreover, she still felt like a terrible girlfriend. Sirius pulled her into a warm embrace, arms wrapped securely around her, with her head resting against his shoulder.
"It's okay," he assured her. "You've been busy lately."
Sirius had not said it to make Jane feel guilty. If anything, he was making excuses for her to make her feel better. It had the opposite effect, however.
"You can't let me off the hook that easy," she complained, wrapping her arms around him, her fingers reaching to gently run through his hair. He let out a quiet chuckle, but it sounded void of any sincere humour. He sounded tired, and Jane suddenly remembered why Regulus had followed her; he'd said he'd seen Sirius.
"Sure I can," he told her. "Besides, I just want to hold you for a bit, if that's okay?"
Jane's lips stretched into a small smile at his words, but she furrowed her brow shortly after, wanting to know more about what Regulus had told her, but knowing that she couldn't let Sirius know what had really happened. Sirius was visibly tense, and she was certain it was because of more than just her injuring herself.
"Are you all right?" she asked. She could feel him tighten his arms around her just a fraction, but he remained silent, and Jane frowned, thinking on what to say next since it didn't seem like he planned on answering her.
"Is this about Regulus?" she finally asked in a quiet voice.
Sirius' eyes—previously closed—snapped open, and Jane could feel Sirius pushing her just far enough away so he could look at her face, confused and a little concerned by her accuracy. Jane could see the worry washing over his face.
"When I came home, you weren't here, so I went to Diagon Alley. I saw him outside the Leaky Cauldron," she admitted.
"Did he say anything to you?" he asked.
"No," Jane lied. "I'm not sure if he even noticed me."
At these words, Jane could feel Sirius' tight grip on her waist relax just a bit.
"Why isn't he at Hogwarts?" Jane dared to ask, and Sirius brought a hand up to rub at his eyes, feeling tired and not really wanting to talk about it. He pulled her back into him, burying his face into her hair.
"If I promise to tell you later, can we let it go for right now?" he asked. Jane was too drained to fight about it. Later was fine with her so long as she did eventually find out. She nodded.
"I had planned on taking you out somewhere today, but now, I kind of just want to stay home," Sirius admitted. Jane was relieved to hear him say that. She pulled away only a fraction so that she could see his face. She placed a quick kiss on his lips before burying her face into the crook of his neck, pulling him closer to her.
They stayed like that for a moment, locked in an embrace in the middle of their bathroom. Neither of them said anything, enjoying the peace that came with the quiet. Sirius was the one to finally break the silence.
"I got you a gift," he told her, and Jane could feel the corners of her lips lift into a smile.
"I got you one too," she replied. "It's in my schoolbag."
Sirius was silent for a moment before asking,
"It wasn't breakable, was it?"
