A/N: This chapter is based off This Is Your Life, by Switchfoot. Sorry, it's not really an uplifting chapter, but it's got to happen. I've always planned it to go this way. I apologize both for the wait and for the inevitable disappointment many of you will feel. I recommend rereading the end of the last chapter for continuity's sake.
-J
Jenny passed out at breakfast, and they were unable to revive her until lunch. Even then, she didn't move. She didn't talk. She just stared at the ceiling despondently, hardly blinking. Not even Professor Dumbledore was able to make her talk, but Sirius and Remus knew exactly what was wrong. The headline in the paper that morning said that Elias had been killed in a Death Eater attack in the early hours of the morning.
She could hear them talking around her, and they had taken to talking as if she couldn't hear them, as if she was still passed out. Her parents had sent a letter: She was engaged to Regulus. Just like that, her life had been steered completely out of her control again, just when she thought things were finally going to be okay.
In fact, the only time she had moved in hours was when Remus tried to hold her hand. She had moved her hand from his grasp and blinked. She couldn't let him get too close. They couldn't repeat their kiss. He would only get hurt. He might even get killed.
Suddenly, Lily, Anna, everyone understood that Jenny hadn't been dramatic all those years; they realized why she was so afraid of her family. It didn't take long for Sirius to explain that her family had found out about Elias's attempts to save her from them and they had him killed. In fact, her father may have been the one to make the light leave Elias's eyes, but she would never know. It's not as though anyone involved would be caught, and even if they managed to catch someone, it would be some scapegoat, not the people truly behind the crime.
Professor Dumbledore allowed her to be excused from the first week of classes. When her friends were forced to leave her in the hospital wing as they went about their day, he actually came and sat with her, frowning.
"I know how you must be feeling, Jeneva," he said softly. "It hurts quite a lot. Elias was a good man, and he died fighting for your freedom. It's exactly as he would have wanted to die. Not that he wanted to die, of course," he said thoughtfully. "He would have rather stayed alive, but I think he would rather they hurt him than you."
She nearly snorted. They would hurt her anyway, maybe even Cecilia. She had told. There was no place to hide.
"I will be telling them that I found evidence that Veritaserum had been used on you illegally during your sessions, Jeneva," he continued. "They will not be able to blame you. I can't promise things will be any better, but I will do everything in my power to make sure they aren't any worse."
"Please," she breathed, so soft and suddenly that she surprised herself with her first word since reading the paper. "Please."
"Yes, dear?"
"You're sup-supposed to be the – the strongest wizard in the world," she sniffed. "Can't you do something? I mean, you know what's happening. Can't you fix it?"
His blue eyes were filled with sadness as he looked down at her.
"I'm afraid it doesn't work that way, my dear. I'm afraid there are consequences for every action, and I can't singlehandedly make them relinquish you and your sister. Even if I could, you wouldn't be very happy. Life would still be very hard for you, and you would never truly be safe. This is a war, Jeneva. It won't be over in a week or two. I suspect it will last a very, very long time."
"Do I have to marry him?" she whispered. "Will they really make me do that?"
"It is possible," he sighed. "They will certainly try. There are a few tricks up my sleeve yet. Don't give up hope entirely, all right?"
For several months, Jenny spoke to no one but Professor Dumbledore and Sirius. She did not talk in class. She barely ate. When her friends spoke to her, she hardly acknowledged them. Remus she treated as though he didn't exist. What pulled her out of the slump was Severus Snape, toward the end of the year, using a curse on her as she tried to help Mary MacDonald, who was being tortured by Mulciber. Sirius had been furious.
He tried to kill Snape. He actually actively tried to kill him, by tricking him to check out the tunnel under the Whomping Willow on a full moon. At best, Snape would have become a werewolf. At worst, werewolf chow. Jenny should have been mad, she knew. Everyone else was, even after James saved Snape's life. But she wasn't.
"Leave him alone," Jenny snapped. Everyone in the hospital wing surrounding Remus's bed fell silent and stared at her. Most of them hadn't heard her voice since January. "He did it for me."
"He shouldn't have," James insisted, but Jenny glared at him.
"Be upset, be disappointed all you want, but I'm glad he did it. Snape's alive. He's fine. He's not allowed to tell anyone. Remus hasn't hurt anyone. Everything's fine and Snape got a good scare, which is only a fraction of what he deserves. Just stop hassling him, please."
Remus stared at her for a moment before nodding, which almost broke her heart. Before she said a word, he was set to never forgive Sirius, to never speak to him again, but he was still willing to do anything for Jenny, anything she asked. It wasn't fair that she would never get to love him like he deserved. Maybe he would find someone else someday. Maybe he would be lucky.
After all, no one was forcing him to marry someone he didn't love. He could wait until he fell in love with someone else. She just wished he didn't have to fall in love with someone else, because the thought of him not being in love with her made Jenny want to cry.
The problems with Snape were far from over, of course, and during exams, after their Defense Against the Dark Arts exam, James, Sirius, and Snape got into a bit of an altercation, which led to Lily and Snape actually ending their friendship. He accidentally called her a Mudblood. Jenny knew it was difficult to use such words, "accidentally" if one didn't use them regularly anyway. He was just too attached to Lily, unwilling to give her up. But it was too late. The damage was done. She decided for him.
Jenny's parents miraculously bought the story that she had been fed Veritaserum, so her beatings weren't worse than usual that summer. Her O.W.L. results were fine. She scraped five O.W.L.s, and two of them were even O's. As she really only needed one N.E.W.T., her parents agreed that she would be able to continue in only three of her classes: Care of Magical Creatures, History of Magic, and Potions.
Potions was her favorite. It was a nice escape from wandwork, where she tended to make a fool of herself with her clumsiness. It was a place where she could see Lily, and where she would probably be able to spend time with Sirius and James, who were hoping to be Aurors.
She didn't see them over the summer, which she had expected. They weren't even at Diagon Alley on the same day, and it wasn't safe for them to send her letters. Jenny always told her friends not to send her letters over the summer. She got beaten for each letter she received from someone "unsuitable". She half thought Remus would write her a letter and disguise it again, but he didn't. Maybe he had realized nothing would ever come of it. Maybe he had succeeded. Perhaps he had been the first to move on.
When she wasn't crying herself to sleep, Jenny would stare at the ceiling and dream of a world where Elias hadn't been killed, where she and Remus could be together. They would have had a house in the country, a small thing, with a fence and a yard where their children could play. Not too many children, just three. They would have Sirius and Tien Black and Lily and James Potter, and Anna and whoever she manage to settle down with over for tea all the time and when they grew old together and died together in their sleep, they would be buried side by side in a small little churchyard, far away from her family plot, far away from the expectations of life and death of the pureblood elite. But it was just a dream. She would never have a life like that.
But it felt good to dream, only for a little while, that something in the world was all right for once. There was little danger in wishing, as long as she wasn't hoping.
The days of summer wilted away into the fall and Jenny found herself back on the Hogwarts Express. Despite the differences in how they dealt with their lives and their situations, Sirius and Jenny never wavered in their friendship and devotion for each other. But Remus, she couldn't read him.
It wasn't that they were more distant with each other, exactly, but they were certainly even more careful about keeping their distance from each other. She was expected to spend time with her fiancé, and as little as possible with all other men. The last thing Jenny wanted was to hurt Remus, especially knowing how much he cared about her, about how much she cared about him, and about how hopeful they both had been for a change. That sort of pain wasn't desired.
As far as her other friends, she did her best to hold onto them throughout the year. The girls, they wouldn't have let her go if she'd tried, and they certainly had an advantage, living in her room, knowing her habits and schedules better than anyone. The boys had a harder time keeping her in their influence, and it drove James up the wall.
"How am I supposed to protect you if you won't let me in?" he hissed at her in February, checking over his shoulder once more to make sure no one was listening in. Jenny was not so naïve. There was more danger from what you couldn't see than what you could. She assumed she was being followed and watched at all times.
"You can't protect me, James," she muttered. "You'll just get yourself hurt trying. It's not worth it, trust me."
James wasn't convinced, certainly, but he kept her wishes and didn't push the protection issue.
The greatest blessing of sixth year was that Jenny was seventeen by Christmas. Her parents still had control over her, just with the fact that they still had Cecilia under their power and influence, but they were a bit loth to push Jenny quite as far as they once had, directly, anyway, because they knew that she could leave any time she wanted if they pushed hard enough to make it worth her while to do so.
But such thinking underestimated Jenny's love for Cecilia. She wouldn't have left if her life had depended on it.
With more time focused on her studies, Jenny found herself doing better than she had ever done before, and Lily, at the least, seemed proud of her. She could tell that Anna felt a bit left out, a bit betrayed, because they used to make fun of Lily's obsessive study regimen together, but Anna never once complained out loud. Since Jenny's "engagement", her friends trod lightly around her, careful not to upset her. Why, Jenny wasn't sure. She hadn't done anything volatile. Yet.
The end of sixth year couldn't come fast enough for Jenny, though, who was counting down the days until she would have a job, excuses to be apart from the temptation of Remus, freedom to leave the house more when she was home. After all, moving out wouldn't be an option, not until she was married. And then, Regulus was bound to have words about whom she was allowed to see and when, and until then her parents pointed out, she had to maintain propriety. Her integrity was important for her wedding.
She tried not to think about her future much. It was depressing. It wasn't uncommon knowledge that there was a war brewing on the horizon, and that their generation would be the foot soldiers of it. Jenny knew that by her arranged marriage to Regulus, she would be on the wrong side, the side that her friends would be fighting, and that she didn't have any say at all in the matter, and the thought made her toss and turn at night.
What if she was dragged into the war? What if someone made her hurt Sirius, or Remus? Jenny didn't think she could stand that, but she might not have a choice. Her parents might not have understood the extent of her weakness for Cecilia, but she was almost positive that Voldemort did: He was the sort of man that knew things like that, things that might be useful to him. She didn't expect that he'd need to use her, but he might do it because he wanted to, because he found it entertaining.
Thankfully, Regulus had told his parents that he did not want to marry until he had joined the Death Eaters (was that really thankfully?), and Jenny's parents had agreed that this would be a pleasing arrangement. So until then, her life was in limbo, and she wasn't sure what her options would be. She actually sat down with Regulus at Christmas that year, which she hadn't done since they were children.
"What will my life be like?" she asked softly, afraid their parents were listening in. "What are you going to require of me?"
Regulus looked at her with that sickening look, that look of pity and apology. She didn't want it. There was nothing his pity could do to help her.
"I require that you be faithful," he said. "I require that you give me a son. I require that you at least feign interest in your role as the Black family matriarch. You'll be allowed to see your sister if you behave yourself, and… some of your friends. Miss Knight shouldn't be a problem. Potter is negotiable." He lowered his voice. "I'll even let you see Sirius, if you're careful about it."
He very skillfully left Remus out of the list. She didn't have to ask; she knew he'd done it on purpose, to point out that she was under no circumstances allowed to socialize with Remus once she married Regulus.
In a way, it was hard to blame him for that. What sort of a man would let the wife who didn't love him make a fool of him by continuing to spend her time with the man she really did love? Such action would disgrace the Black name.
"And your… activities?"
His eyes darkened and he said, "I hope that you will support me in spirit and the way you keep our home, but I will do my best to keep you from direct involvement if that is your wish. Lucius has kept my cousin out of the fray, and I hope to be able to do the same for my wife."
It was certainly better than Jenny had hoped for or expected from Regulus, but he had always been a nice boy, if a bit spineless. That, of course, was the troubling bit. Lucius Malfoy, however vile and disgusting, had a spine and so was useful and important to Voldemort. Would Regulus be important enough to protect her? She certainly hoped so. At the worst, she would try to make herself as undesirable to the 'cause' as possible so that Voldemort didn't want her doing his bidding.
Sixth year was over soon enough, although it felt like it took whole lifetimes. Jenny thought about dropping out of Hogwarts, not going back for her seventh year, simply taking her N.E.W.T.s early and taking what she got, or even just forgoing qualification altogether. What good would it do her in the life that awaited her? But leaving Hogwarts would speed along the wedding, and Jenny certainly didn't want that, so she survived the summer by keeping her head down and spending as much time as possible with Cecilia, and then gathered up her things like every other year and went to King's Cross station with more anxiety than most years.
There was Anna, bobbing up and down anxiously on the balls of her feet. There was Lily, tossing her red hair over her shoulder impatiently to reveal the shinning Head Girl badge on her chest. There was Peter, fawning over Sirius, who was telling some raucous story. There was Remus, just visible behind the book that was hovering just above his… prefect badge? Wasn't he Head Boy? Who else could it possibly be?
And then Jenny saw James Potter, smiling a little more maturely than normal, shaking his head indulgently at Sirius, on his chest a gleaming Head Boy badge.
She blinked a few times to make sure she wasn't mistaken, but there it was, evidence plain as day. It only took a brief moment after Jenny saw it for Tien to approach Sirius, take his hand, and comment on the badge, which led to Anna noticing the badge, squeaking incredibly loud, and pointing it out to Lily, who looked as though she was going to faint.
Well, Jenny thought to herself, perhaps it was a good thing she decided to come back. Seventh year had a few tricks up its sleeve after all.