Chapter 7- Dreams and Pain
Sirius POV
I stood looking in the full length mirror in the boy's dormitory, taking in my full reflection once again readjusting the collar on my jacket for the fiftieth time. I was really nervous for my dinner with Kate tonight, I really had no idea why I mean after all the girls I went through before Charlie nervous wasn't usually something I was used to feeling. The rest of the week at the pre- school had passed without any further damage to school equipment, unless accidental magic counts; in which Charlie had a little accident with a spinning chair.
I had manage to convince the others to let me pick up Charlie after school every day, firstly so I could surprise her and secondly because that way I could get in a bit of small talk with Kate. What was up with this woman, I really had no idea why she had such an effect over me all I knew was that I loved it and hoped she felt the same way about me.
Lily POV
I sat curled up on the Gryffindor sofa with James' arm around me and Charlie cuddled up between us trying to read us a book, both of us awing at the scene and clapping when she got words right. When Alice walked into the room Charlie jumped down and went up to the dorm with Alice, who had probably had intentions of sitting down with a nice book and now be playing make-up, hairdressers and mummy's and daddy's, yes we had all been there. In my head I was secretly thanking Charlie because now I could have alone (snogging) time with James without feeling guilty and disgusted in myself for doing it in front of an innocent three year old, who thought and I quote "boys are gross"
I turned my head to look at James only to be knocked breathless by his sudden attack on my lips with his own, I smiled still attached to him and drew my arms around his neck as he stretched out on top of me on the sofa running his hands up and down the length of my body, as my lips left his gasping for stolen oxygen even then his lips didn't leave my skin as they travelled down my neck and across my collar bone to the point we my school shirt collar blocked him access to anymore skin,
"You know Charlie is very smart and knows when to go, I guess she could sense that i really needed to kiss you" he smirked against my ear where he had now kissed back up to,
"I was thinking the same thing" I laughed and he brought his lips back to mine, as I reached for the hem of his t-shirt eager to feel more of him, we were rudely interrupted by Sirius barrelling down the stairs and coughing loudly to get our attention, unlike his daughter he really had no sense of timing,
"Sorry to interrupt... or well I think I am, though nothing beats a good shag on the sofa" he smirked and I blushed the colour of crimson, turning my face into James' neck which was now also slightly flushed,
"What d'ya want Padfoot" James asked through gritted teeth, obviously annoyed that we had been interrupted,
"Does this look alright" he said pointing to his outfit, "because I don't want to go to casual if she dresses up but then I don't want to go to fancy and end up looking like a dick" He said
James burst out laughing,
"You Padfoot are actually asking me for fashion advice; does Mr. Popular needs some help?" He laughed again, Sirius smirked and i knew the tables were about to be turned on James,
"No mate I was actually asking Lily" That shut him up and it was my turn to laugh at his crestfallen expression. I stood up and walked over to Sirius, giving him a once over and smiling,
"Sirius you look great, stop panicking, Jesus I've never seen you like this when it came to a girl before" I said bewildered
"Tell me about it" he said before moving his collar again just as I smacked his hand away,
"Don't mess it up" He laughed and went to sit next to James,
He was wearing a dark grey, elbow sleeve length shirt and dark wash jeans with a lighter grey jacket over the top, his hair was combed and to perfection (like it always was) all in all even I had to admit he looked hot.
"Right well I'll leave you two boys to chat, I'm sure everything will be fine and don't worry about Charlie Sirius just go and have fun" I smiled gently at him before walking over hugging him and kissing his cheek, it was weird to think that this guy that I thought of as my brother was the same person that at one point I hated passionately, but then again I was falling for the guy that used to be the bane of my existence, maybe that was just proof that people can change.
"Thanks Lil" he smiled and sat down next to James and the last image of them before I rounded the staircase was the two brothers playfully punching each other and James threatening to mess up Sirius hair.
Alice POV
"Fishy" Charlie pointed excitedly to the small orange fish on the page of her favourite book,
"Good girl" I praised her, she really had an outstanding ability in her speech and learning, she began making a fish noise and making a 'fishy face' which made me laugh uncontrollably.
"Hey guys" Lily said as she walked in and flopped on my bed, "Where's Maddie?"
"She went out with Remus, apparently he has a surprise for her" I giggled and wiggled my eyebrows in a suggestive way and Lily joined in with my giggles.
We were both on the way to a giggling breakdown when Charlie interrupted,
"Doggy, woof woof!" She said before climbing sliding down of the bed on her belly and kneeling on all fours, where she began running around like a dog.
Lily and I just stared at her for a few seconds before it all became too much and our laughter once again burst to life.
We were once again calmed down, we had moved off animals and now onto colours and that was equally funny, but not as funny as the image of Charlie running around like the dog, nothing will beat that.
Maddie walked through the door about ten minutes later,
"Hey guy's, Sirius told me to come and get Charlie, he's leaving and wants to say goodbye" She said an over happy smile plastered on her face,
"Yeah sure, come on Charlie let's go say goodbye to Daddy" I turned to Charlie holding out my hand,
"Where daddy going" she asked her little eyebrows dipping from her confusion
"Remember daddy's going out with Kate" I told her confused myself by how she had forgotten, she had been going on about it all week,
"Oh yeah Kate, Daddy loves Kate" She grinned ear to ear and grabbed my hand pulling me to the stairs, me pausing to lean over to Maddie,
"When Charlie's in bed I want all the details" she blushed and I smirked
After counting the number of stairs on the way down we finally got to the bottom to were the boys were waiting, Charlie jumped off the last step and let go of my hand and ran up to her daddy hugging his leg. He bent down to pick her up and gave her a big kiss on her cheek,
"Right missy, daddy will see you in the morning, love you" he kissed her cheek again and she giggled
"Love you daddy" and gave him a smile that could melt Snape's heart and by the look on Sirius' face his heart had just been made into a runny liquid.
He put her down and she ran to James leaning to whisper in his ear he then widened his eyes before laughing and whispering back "later" before casting a glance at Lily,
"I don't even want to know"
"See you later guy's" We all said our respective goodbyes and with that he left.
"Now Uncle James please" She said elongating her ease giving her cutest puppy eyes
"Okay" and with that Remus and James grabbed her hands and ran out of the common room before Lily could say anything.
Back up in the dormitory we had all changed into our P.j's after putting Charlie in bed, which had proved harder to do when she was covered in various sticky solutions, turns out James and Remus had been persuaded by her eyes to do a prank and the situation had got a bit messy (literally) but was apparently well worth the mess and Snape had also been covered in the gooey substance, much to Lily's displeasure.
"Come on then Mads, I told you I wanted all the details" I winked at her
She blushed "Nothing like that happened, promise" She murmured looking down.
"Come on please we really want to know" Lily begged and I was pretty sure she was close to getting on her knee's to continue begging in a more appropriate way.
"Okay Jesus Christ guy's" She laughed and flipped her hair behind her back so it was no longer covering her flushed face.
"Well he took me to the 2nd floor and right along to the end of the corridors and told me to close my eyes and to trust him, so obviously I did but then I couldn't hear anything and realised he had put a silencing charm over me, I was about to ask him what the hell was going on when I remembered he had ask me to trust him, so I did. He then came up behind me and put his hands on my hips and kissed my cheek, but oh my god even that made me tingle guy's I am so falling for him." She said in a dreamy voice.
"Awwww, our little Maddie is falling in love Lily" I said "anyway carry on" I urged her
"oh yeah, right anyway so he kissed my cheek and gently started pushing me forward so that I was walking with him guiding me bearing in mind that I still couldn't see or hear, we walked into somewhere and all I could smell was fresh roses and vanilla, he took the charm of and whispered in my ear that I could open my eyes and when I did it was just amazing, the room was a blue colour and the lights were dimmed, there was a fire place a real fire place! And in front of it was a picnic blanket and basket which were bother scattered with petals from loads of different flowers, so we pretty much ended up having an indoor picnic." She finished and I began to feel all mushy inside how romantic.
"Oh my goodness Maddie you are one lucky well for lack of a better word bitch!" Lily said
Maddie laughed "I think I have to agree with you there" She replied
"So you didn't have any kissing or anything" I asked slightly disappointed,
"Of course there was but not to the extent you're thinking of Ally" She said laughing giving me an apologetic grin.
"Come on lets go downstairs and see what those boys of yours are up to and then we can just sit by the fire for a bit" I said standing up and stretching both girls following me, all of us laughing and messing around.
Sirius POV
Okay so I was a little bit nervous, maybe a lot but it doesn't matter she won't notice right?
Standing inside the entrance of the three broomsticks I scanned the room making sure that Kate wasn't here before I walked over to the bar ordering two butter beers, after I thanked him and sat down in one of the booths I looked around again this time my gaze stopping on the magnificent creature that now stood in my line of sight.
She literally looked heart stopping and for a second I thought I had missed a beat in my heart. There stood Kate dressed in a knee length red strapless chiffon dress, a black belt across the middle, black studded earrings and Louboutin black heeled pumps. Her long curly brown hair had been pinned to one side so that the tresses came tumbling down over her shoulder and just past her breast. I managed to pull myself together and stand up to greet her,
"I hope you weren't waiting too long, I had some business to attend to at the Pre-school." She said smiling guiltily at me
"Oh no it's fine I've only been here about 5 minutes" Okay so it had been a bit longer but I didn't want to make her feel bad,
"Please have a seat" I gestured to the chair before pulling it out for her
"Thank you" She said smiling "So how have you been?" She asked
"I'm good thank you, yourself?" I replied, maybe this wouldn't be so hard as long as she was the one asking the questions and not allowing any silence.
"Fine actually a bit busier than usual, but I suppose your little trouble maker has something to do with that" We both laughed
"Yeah sorry about that she is quite a handful, takes after me in a lot of ways" I replied
"How is she?" She asked taking a sip of her butterbeer
"Charlie? She's great, she loves the school and her three little friends there going to be a handful for McGonagall" I laughed while she looked confused.
"McGonagall?"
"Oh yeah forgot your from America, she's the head of Gryffindor house at Hogwarts and transfiguration teacher" I informed her
"Oh I see transfiguration was my favourite subject" she said smiling fondly
"Yeah it's mine too that and DADA" I said, our conversations grew steadily as we ordered food and ate, which even then wasn't in silence at some point either one of us wanted to ask the other something. After about an hour we had finished eating and had a few more drinks, I paid the waiter for the meal and drinks ignoring Kate's protests about paying, it wasn't as if I was poor good old Uncle Alphard had made sure of that. We walked outside into the night air and I saw that Kate was shivering so I took this as my chance and took my coat off draping it over her shaking slim shoulders
"Thank you" she smiled gratefully at me "Well this is me" she said pointing at a block of flats "Thank you for tonight I had a lot of fun, more than I have had in a while" she said smiling
"Yeah me too it was...fun." It only took one look into her eyes before gravity began its force and my lips began lowering to hers, until I felt a heat in my jeans pocket, I drew back shocked by the heat, it would only heat up to that temperature if someone was trying to get to me urgently. I pulled it out quickly only to see Lily's reflection thought she looked nothing like herself, her eyes were red and tears wouldn't stop falling down her cheeks there was shouting in the back ground and crying,
"LILY!" I shouted "WHATS WRONG!" by now Kate had gathered something was wrong and moved to my side to look into the mirror
"Sirius" Her voice was no more than a whisper "It's Charlie"
With that my world stopped.
Lily POV
I was sitting across the length of the sofa with my legs on James who was rubbing them in a soothing rhythm, Maddie and Remus were curled up on the opposite sofa talking about things that I couldn't quite catch and Alice was stretched out on the floor reading a book in front of the fire.
Everything was quiet and peaceful everyone either thinking to them self or to someone else, that was until our silence was broken by a piercing scream. We all jolted up from our comfortable positions and raced up to the boys dormitory, as we all ran in I almost wanted to leave again, the sight before us was just sickening. Charlie lay sprawled on her bed kicking and clawing the air before bringing her hands to her head and crying out in pain. A nightmare.
"WAKE HER UP" James shouted and we all moved into action.
We all hovered over her bed and were shocked to see that she was in fact awake, her face was pale and her eyes looked dull and sunken into her head, as I touched her skin it almost burnt she wasn't dreaming she was ill, and seriously ill by the look of things.
"James she so hot" I barely got out through a strangled whisper "Charlie sweetie what's wrong" I asked her in a panicked tone but all I got out was a scream,
"Charlie Auntie Lily's going to touch your head and you tell me where it hurts okay" I asked her trying to remain calm even though tears were flowing down my cheeks and I wasn't the only one Maddie and Alice were in bits and both boys had run off to get Madam Pomfrey,
I moved my hand to her forehead and down the shape of her face I moved them to the top of her head and down to the middle of the sides and she screamed in pain,
"Okay baby it's going to be okay" I said my voice breaking, it was taking too long, something bad was wrong, so I picked her up and ran from the room Alice and Maddie hot on my tail. We ran in screaming to the hospital wing where James and Remus were helping Madam Pomfrey gather various potions. Dumbledore and McGonagall were also there both with extremely worried expressions, all of that stopped when Charlie's scream echoed off the walls
"HELP!" I screamed.
Sirius POV
I ran down the corridors slightly aware that Kate was trailing behind me, out of breath but I couldn't even feel out of breath now I was running on pure protection needs, my Charlie was hurt or maybe even... no I wouldn't even go there she's fine she'll be fine, she has to be.
"Sirius!" I heard a familiar voice shout from my left, I looked over to see my mum and dad running towards me no, if they were here something terrible must have happened.
"Mum, Dad where are they, have you seen her?" I asked quickly and panicked
"No darling we just got a patronus saying come to the hospital wing, it was Dumbledore and Sirius ... there was screaming in the background." She whispered the last part,
"No" I whispered and ran off in the direction of the hospital wing now with Mum, Dad and Kate following.
As we entered my heart broke, all I could hear was crying and screaming and I knew it was Charlie I ran to the bed where Lily was being held by James and was completely breaking down and Remus was comforting both Maddie and Alice who were shaking and crying at the sight before all of them.
I heard my mother's sharp intake of breath before she ran forward to help Madam Pomfrey. There she was my little Charlie, thrashing and screaming on the bed being comforted by McGonagall who was trying to keep it together and failing miserably. Charlie was turning a grey sort of colour and her eyelids kept drooping only to spring open when she screamed, she kept clutching her head and I guessed that's where her pain was. I ran forward kneeling at her bedside and grabbing her tiny hand in mine.
"Charlie baby, daddy's here daddy's here it's okay everything is going to be okay, I'm here now you're safe please baby come on" It didn't take long for me to also have teas flowing down my cheeks along with every other person in the room.
Madam Pomfrey came over and made Charlie swallow some, what looked to be, pain relief potion and after 10 seconds she began to calm down still whimpering every now and again before she went completely still and silent.
"CHARLIE" I shouted panicked fearing the worse,
"Sirius it's okay her body needs the rest we gave her dreamless sleep potion mixed in with the pain relief because she could have the pain relief on its own because she is to young" Mum said trying and failing to reassure me.
2 hours had passed and I couldn't move not even an inch of my body away from her, she looked so small curled up in the pure white hospital bed her blankie, which had been with her throughout the whole episode, was clutched tightly in her hand, she had returned to her normal olive coloured skin and her breathing rate, had slowed down immensely.
"Sirius" Dumbledore spoke softly behind me, but I still couldn't look away,
"Sirius I need you to come with me, it's about Charlie and what happened tonight I believe needs to be explained." He said, pulling my eye sight away from Charlie I looked to him my eyes pleading with him not to make me leave her,
"It will only be a few minutes I just feel that you should know what happened instead of guessing and torturing yourself, Madam Pomfrey, Professor McGonagall and all your friends can stay with Charlie, we will only be over in Madam Pomfrey's office." I sighed and leant down kissing Charlie's head and stroked her hair away from her face, before turning to Lily,
"Don't leave her" I murmured quietly but forcefully,
"I won't Sirius, I promise" She said looking me squarely in the eyes and so I followed Dumbledore to the smallish office at the back of the room, turning back every few steps to see Lily now reading Charlie's favourite book to Charlie's unconscious self while stroking her hair.
Dumbledore took the seat behind the desk and gestured to the seat in front for me to take, I sat down heavily rubbing my face,
"Sirius I think you should sleep" he sounded worried
"No, I'm not leaving her" i was suddenly wide awake again, which had been happening all night, one minute I felt like I weighed a million pounds and the next thing you know Charlie moves in her sleep and I was straight up again, the effect that little girl had on me was overwhelming,
"Sirius as you already know about the dreams it will be easier for you to understand, but after talking with you mother and various other specialist healers I believe that what happened tonight was also a result of a dream" He said,
"But Lily said when she walked in that Charlie was already awake and screaming in pain" I said confused,
"Sirius, when psychics have dreams about themselves they feel it in real life" He said slowly letting me process it,
"You mean Charlie was being hurt in her dream and she could feel it" I asked bewildered and slightly sick,
"Madam Pomfrey thinks that, and please try to stay calm, but she thinks that in the dream Charlie may have been under the influence of the cruciatus curse" He said cautiously as if eyeing my reaction,
"WHAT!" I shouted, standing up "She's only three for Christ sake!" I said putting my head in my hands,
"She obviously saw something in the future, which is why as soon as Charlie wakes up we need to ask her what she remembers," he said
"Why her, what has she done?" I moaned into my hands
He was about to answer when Lily burst through the door,
"Sorry to interrupt but Charlie's just woke up" she said breathlessly
I wasted no time and jumped up from my seat sprinting down the length of the hospital and once again kneeled at the bed of a now conscious smiling Charlie,
"Daddy" she squealed happily, I pulled her in to my arms and felt her warm but not too hot skin against my own,
"Hey baby girl, how are you feeling?" I asked concerned looking her over,
"Ouchies" She pointed to her head and giggled and I began to think that she had gone high on the drugs,
"Sirius she has had a lot of potions in her system so she might be a little um... hyperactive," Mum assured me, oh lord this was going to be fun.
After about an hour when Charlie had finally calmed down and was sitting on my lap with me reading to her Dumbledore came over and i realised now we were going to find out about her dream, I closed the book and set it on the bed side cabinet,
"Daddy" she whined reaching for the book again, but I held her a still as I could without hurting her,
"Baby Dumbledore needs to ask you some questions okay" She just looked at me scowling still annoyed that I hadn't finished her book,
"We will finish it later, I promise"
Everyone had pulled up a chair around the bed to listen,
"Charlie do you remember what happened last night" Dumbledore asked her getting straight to the point and again she pointed to her head,
"Ouchies" we all thought of course she was referring to last night,
"Yes we know it hurt baby" I said to her,
"No daddy ouchies" she said grabbing her head again, all of our eyes widened and Madam Pomfrey jumped up,
"Don't worry everyone it's just the pain relief wearing off, here you go sweetheart" she said giving Charlie some more potion,
"Yummy" Charlie said approving,
"Charlie do you remember anything from last night" Dumbledore asked again, this is hopeless was what I was thinking to myself, she won't remember anything she was in so much pain I'm surprised she is still, no don't go there.
Charlie surprised us all, in fact more then we could imagine. So far what we had managed to get out of her was the number 16 and shooting stars. Dumbledore seemed happy with this and I guessed that these would be the reminders Charlie saw in the future closer to the time,
Soon after Dumbledore left she fell asleep in Remus' lap snuggling closer to him every time she moved, we were all allowed to stay the night in the hospital wing as long as we all promised to sleep, Madam Pomfrey had made up extra beds for all of us to sleep in, I would be sharing with Charlie, Lily and James would have one as would Remus and Maddie and Alice and Frank, who much to Alice's surprise had heard about Charlie and came as soon as he could, also had a bed to themself.
As the night drew on and one by one all of us went to bed I crawled in with Charlie and pulled her into my arms knowing that tonight while I was with her, not even her dreams were going to hurt her.