A/N: This chapter was written under the influence of The World You Love, by Jimmy Eat World. Enjoy!
The next morning, Jenny woke up on the couch in the Gryffindor common room. Lily, Anna, Mary, and Tien were sleeping in armchairs. She sat up, wondering for a moment where Dorcas and Marlene were before remembering that they decided to call it an early night. They had actually slept in the dormitory. It just never felt right to Jenny to fall asleep where most of her friends were not, even if that meant sleeping on the couch in the cold common room because Lily wanted to gossip until three in the morning.
It had been difficult, she thought as she put on her makeup before breakfast, to put on a fake smile all night, especially when she got really tired, but she knew if she smiled while the others talked about their summers, and then said that hers was fine but uneventful, there would be no awkward questions. As much as she loved them, she couldn't bring herself to open up to the girls like she did with Sirius. They just didn't understand.
Lily was a Muggleborn with the world's most supportive parents, even if her sister was a bit of a nut. Dorcas, Marlene, and Anna were all purebloods with loving homes. Tien's parents were just about the coolest people on the planet, bar the Potters, and Mary's parents were sweet, mousy people who were just thrilled that their daughter was a witch. None of those girls could understand what it felt like to go home and be afraid for your life, never knowing when you would have to duck, run, or hide.
It hadn't always been that way. She was loved so much as a child, being the oldest daughter of a long, reasonably prominent wizarding line, a pretty girl with more than average talent. She was incredibly polite, and excellent at charming her family's friends and acquaintances with her manners, even as a small girl. But her perfect existence ended at the age of eleven, when she was Sorted into Gryffindor, first in a long line to not be in Slytherin. That Christmas holiday, instead of a lovely holiday with her family, Jenny had been treated to the first beating of her life, and if she had thought that was bad, it was just a small teaser for the years to come. She was the family example. Her parents showed her younger siblings what happened to those who strayed from the path laid out for them by her father.
"Hey, slowpoke," teased Lily, "you're going to miss breakfast if you don't finish your hair fast!"
"Coming," said Jenny eagerly, throwing her hair into a quick ponytail and tossing her bad over her shoulder, running as fast as she could after Lily to catch the last bit of breakfast in the Great Hall before classes began.
They managed to scarf down a bit of food before rushing off to double Herbology first thing that morning. They were working in groups of four, so Jenny expected to be grouped up with Lily, Anna, and Mary again, like usual. However the Marauders, who were typically a group of four, didn't stick together, and it threw everyone off. Anna and Mary ended up with Marlene and Dorcas, and Lily and Jenny wound up with James and Sirius, much to Lily's disappointment.
"So Jenny," said James, as he handed her a pair of goggles, "how is your family going to take little Celia being Sorted into Ravenclaw?"
"About as well as a hole in the head," she quipped back, snapping the goggles onto her face.
"As long as they don't give her a hole in the head," muttered Sirius darkly, so that only Jenny heard. She gave him a sad look and he frowned back. She would have to go back for Christmas, to make sure nothing happened to her sister, but she wasn't looking forward to it. She would have to take the beatings for both of them, now, and she had barely survived some of her own.
Herbology, usually a wonderful class to have a chat it, was remarkably silent today. Mostly, this was because Lily didn't want to give James any excuses to talk to her, and by talking to either Jenny or Sirius, this was like inviting James into the conversation. Somehow, Jenny survived, and she followed Lily out to break, which they spent in a courtyard. They had Charms after break, and they didn't want to be too far away from class.
"So what was that about?" said Anna, sifting through her bag to make sure she had her Charms book with her. "James and Sirius joining you two, I mean."
"I'm not entirely sure," said Jenny thoughtfully, leaning against the cold stone wall. "I think part of it was James wanting to be around his darling Lilyflower, and I think Sirius and James were a bit curious about Celia. Other than that, I can't honestly say."
"Well, I suppose we ought to expect bizarre behavior from those two by now," said Lily casually, sifting through her bag for her Charms notes from the previous year. She liked to maintain continuity in her study regimen.
Jenny didn't want to talk about the boys. She didn't want to argue about their motives. She didn't want to think about them, especially because in that moment she was keenly aware that James Potter's eyes were not the only pair watching the girls from the Marauder's perch on the opposite end of the courtyard. Remus Lupin was gazing thoughtfully over at the as well, and Jenny was avidly pretending she hadn't noticed, fumbling with the fastenings on her cloak and praying that the break was almost over, Sirius's words from the night before still fresh in her mind.
She wasn't exactly pushing Remus away. She just wasn't encouraging him. It would never work, and he knew it. One of them would end up dead, whether it was him being killed by her family for daring to touch her, or her being killed by him one full moon when he got out of control. It was like asking oil and water to mix and expecting results you knew couldn't possibly happen.
Finally, break ended and the girls gathered their things and rushed inside to Charms, followed closely by the Marauders. Professor Flitwick went about assigning partners for the year, after a speech about the importance of O.W.L.s, and Jenny expected him to pair her up with Anna as usual, but instead, he started at the other end of the room leaving her with the only person left: Remus Lupin. Their eyes met, shocked, and they both blushed looking down at their laps. Jenny tried to ignore Sirius's sniggering. Thankfully it didn't last long, as Anna smacked him upside the head.
Charms class was a bit awkward that day. Remus and Jenny avoided each other's gaze, but stole glances whenever they thought they could get away with it. Jenny couldn't help it, and she had to admit to herself that he sure had her messed around good. It had been a very long time since she had last been so close to him, and his scent was driving her crazy. By the time she realized she was subconsciously leaning into him, she had also realized he was leaning into her. Her first clue was the fact that they ran into each other over the table. Sirius, who seemed to find their interaction more interesting than class, snorted loudly. Jenny had wanted two things in that moment: to find some way to make Sirius suffer horribly and to crawl in a corner and die.
As soon as Charms was over, of course, Jenny ran up behind Sirius on the way down to lunch and pinched the back of his neck rather harder than was necessary.
"OW! Bloody hell, Avery, what in the name of Merlin's bollocks was that for?"
She smirked as she hurried around in front of him and walked down the corridor backwards, not wanting to waste time getting to lunch, but also not wanting to miss a single expression as they had this conversation, the same one they had every year, it seemed, about him not interfering in her love life.
"You know perfectly well what that was for, darling," she drawled in her best pureblood voice. "The next time I catch you making noises of amusement at my misfortunate awkwardness, you'll get far worse than that."
"You say that every year, love," he winked. "I say you must rather enjoy all the attention or you would have just shagged him already and gotten over this mess."
James gave an amused snort, and Jenny could feel herself going hot around the neck, the heat creeping up into her cheeks and she attempted to meet Sirius's playful gaze head-on, not wanting to lose again this year. She lost every year. Although, usually it was because he said something even more disgusting and she was far too embarrassed to go to lunch. This time, something new happened.
"Merlin, Jenny!" she heard Remus cry as she tumbled backward down the steps. Stone steps. A whole bloody castle built of stone and marble with multiple floors and changing staircases and filled to the brim with eager, unobservant underage witches and wizards. They said the Founders were brilliant, but at that moment in time, Jenny would have had quite a bone to pick with them.
As a matter of fact, she could have taken the bone right out of her arm and picked them with it, it was shattered in multiple places and they could have had a fractured piece each. After all, her arm wasn't supposed to bend that way. Stumbling backward down a flight of stairs, falling off the end and landing in the middle of a staircase three stories down would do that to you. Jenny lay there on the cold stone, woozy and confused as she heard the frantic cries of her friends, shrieking, hollering, and trying to figure out the fastest way to get to her. She wasn't even entirely sure in that moment what had happened, but by all the noise she could hear bouncing around in her skull, it couldn't be good. And then she heard Professor McGonagall's voice and all of her suspicious were confirmed.
"Now really, what is going on out here?" said the tight, harsh voice of Professor McGonagall. "What is all this noise about?"
"Professor!" cried Anna frantically. "Sirius killed Jenny!"
Always the dramatic one, Anna.
"No I didn't! Professor, Jenny was walking backwards like she likes to do, and she tripped, like she usually does, and she happened to fall down the staircase while it was changing and–"
"Oh, no, do you know where she is?"
"Um, yeah," said James slowly. "I think she's alive, because she's making sounds like a dying animal, but her arm definitely didn't bend that way before, and there's a growing pool of blood around her. Actually, I'm pretty sure I could donate her arm to St. Mungo's. I'm not sure what they'd do with it, but I bet it would be exciting."
"You're not touching my arm you bloody wanker!" she shrieked. There was an awkward silence bouncing around her skull now, but she didn't mind. He wasn't taking her arm anywhere, and it was best they got that sorted out now.
"Oh, goodness," said Professor McGonagall. "Black, Evans, Lupin, you come with me. We need to get her to the hospital wing."
"You'll need to let Anna come to," called Jenny. "She'll kill us all in our beds if we don't insist she comes along. Or at least, she'll threaten to do. She never actually goes through with it."
"Obviously," said James dryly, and there was a smacking sound. Good girl, Anna, smacking James. She might be overdramatic, but she knew just how to use her two perfectly well arms.
And with that, Jenny promptly passed out.
She obviously woke up long before this, but her full conscious awareness of her surroundings returned on the way to Transfiguration after lunch, which she was assured she attended, which probably explained why she wasn't hungry. Out of some sort of stupidity, Professor McGonagall actually put Jenny and Sirius together as partners, thinking that by splitting up James and Sirius and Jenny and Anna she would solve all the problems she had had in pre-O.W.L. years. How very wrong they were going to prove her. Putting Anna and James tougher was like asking for things to explode regularly. They liked each other fine, but Anna was a hopeless mess when she and James actually had to accomplish things. She didn't work well under pressure, as the staircase incident proved. The really stupid move, however, was one every teacher they ever had ought to have known better than to do, and that was putting Jenny and Sirius together.
They had always been like that. Even when they were children and they went to events with their families, Sirius's cousins tried to use her for dress-up and Jenny and Sirius would sneak off and break in to his father's liquor cabinet. Finding a pair of pissed seven-year-olds wasn't such a strange thing when people mentioned it was the Black boy and the Avery girl. Maybe that should have been the first sign that they would end up being rebellious, Gryffindor blood traitors, not to mention raving alcoholics by the time they reached Hogwarts. It was a good thing he had found the kitchens so early, or they would have been going through serious withdrawals.
People still thought Jenny was joking about them being alcoholic eleven-year-olds. Far from it. If she didn't have at least a bottle a day she would convulse. And that was by the time she was nine.
Sirius liked to blame their parents for the way they turned out, and Jenny knew he was partly right. After all, they needed something to rebel against. But she knew that if it wasn't for their parents, they'd be rebelling against something or someone else, doing something else to get into trouble at their parents' parties, getting their kicks in some other way. Jenny had never been allowed to really socialize as a child, but Sirius had been her best friend for as long as she remembered. Truly, neither of them could remember how they had first become friends, although as early in life as it would have been, it probably would have been a fabulously adorable story. Probably pot brownies.
Jenny knew that they fought, they pushed each other to the brink, but they would always be there for each other. There were things she couldn't tell Anna, things he couldn't tell James. That was why they had each other. When his mother first started beating him, he cried on Jenny's shoulder for hours. He was ten. When Jenny's father first touched her, she Flooed to Sirius's house and hid in his room for a week, not moving from his bed until her father forced his way into the room, fought past Sirius, and literally carried her home. They were thirteen.
They never said a word about these things to anyone else. Who would believe them if they did? Jenny, Sirius, their siblings, their playmates, they were supposed to have this charmed life. They had money, status… They practically had the entire Wizarding world on a string. But Jenny didn't know what a charmed life looked like until Sirius talked James into inviting her to stay for a week the summer after their first year. James Potter had all the money and blood status and influence, but he also had parents who loved him, a safe place to sleep, and the peace of mind that comes with not having to fight to exist. Jenny had forgotten what that felt like long ago.
So with a small smile to herself, she took her seat in Transfiguration next to Sirius Black, her best friend in the entire world, no matter what, no matter who was asking, with an apologetic look toward Anna and a smug smirk in James's direction. As soon as they sat down, they promptly ignored the speech about O.W.L. year and wrote notes to each other, as always.
Partners this year, eh, Avery?
Yeah, well, this time I'll actually do some of the work. How does that sound?
That sounds like a horrible plan, love. You know you're going to fail this O.W.L. Just try not to kill me this year and we'll call it even, okay?
I didn't kill you last year.
And I'm incredibly grateful for that. I'd like to keep it that way. Just let me do the work, please?
Would it kill you to not be brilliant in something for once?
JV, that's not fair. You know you'd beat me any day in History and Potions. I'll bet you could even give Snivelly a run for his money in Potions.
I'd love to test that theory… Even though I know you're just saying it because you wish it were true.
Perhaps, but you know I adore you, JV.
She smiled down at the little scrap of parchment. Of course she knew that. He was the only person in the world he let call her JV, which stood for her initials, Jeneva Violetta, and he only got to say it when it was just the two of them. It was what he called her when they were children, because he said her full name was a ridiculous mouthful, and Jenny was far too plain for an extraordinary girl like her. And then he said something about cooties. But, after all, they had been about six at the time.
I know, darling. Does this mean you'll be taking that vow of celibacy I've been attempting to get you to make for me?
There was a long pause as he frowned down at the paper. It was all she could do not to lose her mind with snickering.
Not funny, Avery. Not funny at all.