Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

By The Light	By : lycanthrope Category: Harry Potter > FemSlash - Female/Female Views: 17685 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: All of the characters portrayed in this fic (apart from Jamie.) and all other creations existing within the world Of Harry Potter are the creative genius of J.K Rowling, I make no profit from the writing or posting of this fan fiction.

Chapter List
- 47
- 48
- 49
Chapter 48

The tears that leak out of the corners of my eyes burn a blazing trail all the way along my cheek to the very tip of my chin but there is nothing I can do about them but feel them blister my skin because my fingers are locked in a hooked pose around the cold porcelain. With another groan and a heave my stomach contracts as it tries to expel its contents. The fact that it was practically empty to begin with doesn't seem to come into the equation, just continuing to clench and strain. Leaving me down on my knees and head bowed.

With a choked off moan, my lower abdominal muscles relax, aching with the exertion and I rest my cheek on the cool seat with my eyes closed, wishing that I could be doing just about anything else in this moment.

Blindingly my arm rises to grope around the wall until I find the handle to wash away the foul smell of potion and stomach acid. It probably would have been wiser to have eaten something today but I just didn't have the time. The Weasley twin's departure from the school may have been both extravagant and long overdue but it's left me running from pillar to post to try to make up for their absence. It's was a losing battle right up until the moment Nancy of all people was able to recruit Peeves back into the fold. That ability to pass through walls has been more than helpful but still I lack the time to think about eating anything substantial most days. Directly in spite of Nancy's constant complaints, "You done yet?" which apparently extends to moments that not even she would be able to continue to eat through.

"No." I try to say back but all that really comes out of my mouth is a negative sounding grunt.

I hear an exasperated sigh from the other side of the cubical door followed by a low mumble of "As if I don't have enough to deal with."

"A little sympathy wouldn't go amiss." Hermione admonishes in her very best prefect voice.

Nancy lets out a short bark of laugher at my groan. "Sympathy? For her?" There's a short pause that is so quite it has me forcing my feet beneath me and I begin fighting with my knees, trying to force them to straighten, just encase the two of them do actually begin to show open hostility. "By Merlin, you're serious."

"Of course I'm serious." Hermione says and I can almost hear the look of righteous indignation that passes over her face. "Considering she's agreed to help you, I don't see that a little compassion is asking too much."

A very long and very pregnant pause follows, then the rattle of the flimsy wooden door makes my muscles jump as Nancy strikes some unseen part of her body against it. "You told her about that?" She shouts, even though a raise in volume isn't needed and all it does is irritate the throbbing behind my eyes.

"Of course I bloody told her." I had hoped for my voice to gather more conviction but the exhaustion is enough for my voice to be uttered in little more than a mutter echoing inside the bowl below my head.

I run the flat of my palm over my sweat soaked hair and along the shell of my ear, lethargically lifting my cheek from its resting place; using every ounce of strength in my arms to push me up and straighten my bent legs.

"Typical." She mutters and I can hear her shoes striking off the ceramic flooring. "And you can wipe that blasted smirk off your face, as well."

Hermione doesn't move, not in any audible way but the sanctimonious look that must be upon her features sings out clearly with every word she utters. "Oh, I know all about you." Her tone could easily be described as menacing and Nancy is already feeling vulnerable over the whole thing. Which does make her somewhat unpredictable, even to me. That thought alone has me pushing much more weight onto my aching muscles than I am strictly comfortable with.

"Why you, self-righteous little upstart." Nancy's shoes once more strike against the tiles but Hermione stands her ground and I can see that without any intervention, they might actually resort to psychical violence this time.

In my haste to exit the cubical sometime before Hermione attempts to issue a detention or Nancy shows her authority by pushing an imprint of her Inquisitorial Squad bandage into Hermione's forehead, one of my feet catches behind my ankle and throws me against the side wall, which shudders suspiciously under my weight.

"Jamie?" Hermione queries, all traces of menace and superior tone melting away, unrelenting concern coming forward to take its place. "You okay in there?"

"Bugger." I utter, pushing my thumb and forefinger into both of my eyes. "Will you two just…" I let out a long-suffering sigh to both combat the nausea and to calm my frayed nerves. Reaching out and pulling open the door slowly, glancing left then right at the two women currently in my company. "Can you just stop fighting, just for now." The look in Nancy's eyes and the tense line of her shoulders is enough to convince me that I am fighting a losing battle on that front. So in desperation I turn earnest eyes to Hermione and give a softly uttered. "Please?"

She manages to bite her lips together before she beings giggling in my direction but has no hope of being able to suppress the slight upturn at the edge of her lips. "Are you really asking me to be civil? To Nancy Ivybridge?"

"I realise that's a little hypocritical." I comment, with a shallow frown.

"A little?" My loud groan echoes around the room upon hearing the tone of her voice, clearly Hermione is firmly set into an antagonistic mood and I can say from experience that there are very few things that can coax her out of such things.

If I'm completely honest I don't have the energy to attempt it, so hold my hands up in the universal sign of surrender and shuffle slowly over to the sinks. "Have at it." I condone, hoping that if they do resort to pulling each other's hair they might be able to do it quietly.

"Aww, now you've upset the puppy." Nancy says, jumping right back into the fray.

"That's enough." There it is, that tone of authority to end a discussion and it quickly becomes apparent that I am not the only Slytherin girl in which that particular candour works on, as Nancy gives a loud huff but doesn't press further. Hermione follows me over to the high sinks, resting her hand over my shoulder in a comforting gesture. I file away the useful knowledge that lack of effort on my part might at least sometimes put my partner in a more agreeable mood. "What's the matter?"

"I'm just tired." I reply in a low voice.

Before I can elaborate further, Nancy falls into my vision along the other side of my body, arms crossed and her entire weight help up by the porcelain bowl. "That's what happens when you spend half an hour retching – which you still need to explain –" She interjects her owns sentence, to point and accusatory finger in my direction. "After you spend the day avoiding every meal."

With just a minuscule turn of my head I am able to glare daggers at the other girl from the corner of my eye. Trying to convey without actually speaking that I would not be adverse to killing for less detrimental comments than that, only for my eyes to slide closed in defeat at hearing the softly spoken question behind me. "You haven't been eating again?"

With more vigour than I should currently possess I turn the cold tap open, cupping my fingers under the icy spray. "Why is everyone so interested in my eating habits?" I ask, hoping that it might be taken as a rhetorical question. Optimistically filling my mouth full of cold, refreshing water as a way to both rid myself of the foul, acidic taste coating my tongue and also as an excuse not to have to speak any further on the matter, at least not until I have had time to carefully calculate my response. It's not something I can see Hermione letting go of any time soon.

"Mostly, because I'm hungry." Nancy offers in an overly offhand way, her attention firmly resting on Hermione, just to see how she will react and possibly to see how much trouble she can get me into with this piece of information she has so recently stumbled across. "And, can they even be called eating habits when you never, well you know, eat?"

Even though I had made no move to swallow the liquid in my mouth, my throat still closes around it, once more drowning on only the contents of my mouth and to avoid any further embarrassment spit the now warm water down the drain along with the lingering taste of bile. Without any direction to turn in that would be to my advancement, I am left to stare down at my hands, gripping onto the ceramics in a move that is equal parts, an excuse not to meet Hermione's eyes and to prevent myself from tearing some important appendage away from Ivybridge with my bear hands.

The gentle touch of Hermione's fingers against my wrist is enough to calm my nerves but not enough for me to meet her eyes. "So when exactly was the last time you ate?"

Nancy snorts loudly at the question. "I don't know. Was it Wednesday?" For a long moment she shows me a closed mouth, smug smile, up until the movement her loud, "Ow," Echoes around the room and she doubles over in order to rub at the shoe print I have left in her shin. She sends me a scathing look that I answer with a grin, which drops right off my face the moment I turn and see disappointment in Hermione's deep eyes.

I've only really seen that look on her face a hand full of times but still I can recognise that my reaction to it is as regular as clockwork.

First comes the irrational outrage, how dare she look upon me like that for something so trivial. The emotion makes me all but forget the tightness deep in my stomach and I have quickly turned on the ball of my foot, throwing up a hand in front of me while simultaneously leaning back against the cold skin. "I just..." The anger holds in my voice but only for a moment, only long enough for me to realise that I am already beginning to doubt myself, already beginning to defend my actions. The heavy sigh is a catalyst, a bridge between a potential outburst and the sag of my shoulders in defeat. "I forgot." The hard tone has already melted out of my voice and I continue down that slippery side, drawing my arms around me, my gaze falling to the floor. I might as well have folded my ears back and tucked my tail between my legs. All of that in the space of three of Hermione's heartbeats and she didn't even need to say a word.

"You forgot?" Nancy asks, not oblivious to my very sudden shift in mood and then back again but as always has something else she would rather address. "You can remember all forty-three uses for Nightshade, yet you forget to eat. Please tell me how that works."

I hold my hand out in front of my in a clear gesture towards the cubical I have just vacated. "Clearly I have not been feeling well." The excuse is all for Nancy's benefit as I am certain that Hermione must have worked out that I had been trying to purge the foul tasking potion from my system that I must been seen to consume at this time of the month. However enduring a few hours of hunger pains and cramping muscles is much preferable to the nightmares that haunt me while in my wolf form, had I allowed myself to fully ingest the Wolfs Bane that I had been forced to swallow in Umbridge's presence. To that end, having an effective gag reflex has never been so useful.

"You have an iron stomach."Her voice is a flat monotone. Obviously neither convinced or impressed with the lie I have just told her. "Or some sort of enhanced willpower."

Lifting one hand from it's crossed pose and press in deeply into my eyes on the side of my body facing Nancy. Effectively covering my face. "Don't be ridicules." Strangest things is she's not, my formative years were filled with an abundance of control over many aspects of my body. Regeneration wasn't something that was acceptable so for me at least, it isn't just the physical act that is painful but also the memoires it tends to stir up because of that I can say with the utmost certainty that there is a burning question behind my ice blue iris'. Wondering how she could know that, even with her powers of observation it's not exactly something that comes to light all that often.

"Really?" She leans forward to glance across my body towards Hermione. "Have you noticed this?"

My partner very quietly shakes her head to indicate she had not. Which is probably a relief because if she really did watch me closely enough to notice even my bodily functions we might never have gotten together in the first place. It's a sobering through to imagine where I would be now if that had been the case.

"Wow." Nancy says, either in disbelief or awe, the turns her eyes to me again. "I suppose you don't have to pull those stunts any more." Right there, that sentence has my heart pounding in my chest, whatever she brings up is in no way going to ender me to Hermione but before I can reach out and clamp a hand down over her mouth she hooks a thumb in my direction. "First year, one of the bigger boys thinks Jamie here," She pauses to send me a satisfied smirk over both the story she is telling and the sarcastic use of my nickname. "is some new fish he can bully about. Had her under the Nent Intra Praecordia for a full minuet."

"It wasn't that long." I force myself to cut in she is exaggerating but not nearly to the extent that I am playing it up to.

Hermione, unfortunately appears to be quite enchanted with the story, giving Nancy a deeply curious look. "I don't even know what that is."

Nancy scoffs very loudly at Hermione's naivety. "Of course you don't"

With Nancy so distracted and having had time to school my facial features properly I run my hand down the side of my cheek to answer Hermione. "It's not dangerous. Just makes your insides feel like they are spinning."

"Yeah, along with everything else in the room." Nancy says with a scoff. "She didn't scream, didn't fall. Fumbled, mind you but I'm pretty certain you didn't throw up. Like everyone else. So don't tell me that feeling a little bit queasy is going to stop you eating. You're practically insulting my intelligence."

"Oh I'm certain I can do that much more directly." Is my initial response and I meet Nancy's eyes for a very long moment, seeing the hard brick wall forming behind her pea green eyes. This is something she isn't going to budge on, no matter how silent I remain. "It just wasn't important." Which was the sentence I had hoped I would not have to resort to, mostly because it's true. Every moment I have spent within the Great Hall over the past few days have been filled with moving about the room as inconspicuously as possible. Passing messages, time, dates and even advise on control of curses. There were a few bites here and there but only for show, only so my presence in each location wasn't noticed, not in any attempt to sustain myself.

At that time it just wasn't essential, wasn't necessary because I was so wrapped up in what I was doing I didn't feel the pangs of hunger, I can admit I am now though. After, quite literally, choking down the first half of my wolf's bane potion at the instance and in the presence of our new headmistress. I was forced to stop and think about my own body, to find some place to empty my stomach. Which I can now say for definite only consisted of exactly one half of wolfs bane potion and more scraps of orange stomach lining than I would be willing to count.

It takes me a moment, but I do eventually meet Hermione's eyes. I'm not really certain what I expect from her but it certainly isn't the open display of curiosity that is fluttering across her face. "Did that really happen?"

"Happens every year." I confirm. "It's an initiation."

"That's on odd way of phrasing it." Her face screws up for just a moment in distaste when a though accursed to her. "Does that mean that you..." She pauses, even going as far as to cease her breathing. "I don't even want to know."

I offer her a tight lipped smile, not a drop of humour but also not an ounce of self deprecation. "Probably not." My words all but confirm that I have been involved in this particular ritual some time after my first year, on the other end of the curse of course. It's hardly worth denying it now.

Hermione sighs, running a hand over her check around a deep calming breath, softly whispering, "Okay." To herself and actively trying to become distanced from the topic that we had been discussing. Reaching under her robes and pulling out a small, folded paper bag. "Here, eat this." Slowly I take the small parcel and after unwrapping it throw her a questioning look, which is met with a slow shrug. "It helps."

"Why do you always carry chocolate?" I ask, breaking the bar in half and handing some to Nancy, after all it if my fault she feels so malnourished.

Hermione's eyes are intently on my fingers, waiting to see what I'll do, likely wont be satisfied until she has seen me consume at least one mouthful. "It's just a trick one of my old professors taught me."

Breaking off a small peace and pushing it between my teeth I turn my gaze over to the other Slytherin girl. Lifting an eyebrow in challenge. "Moody." She answers almost instantly.

"Lupin." I counter, after having pushed the contents of my mouth between my teeth and slowly we both turn towards Hermione who is already rolling her eyes at our competitiveness.

Her hands land on her hips almost of their own violation. "How much did you bet this time?"

"Three sickles." Nancy offers instantly and I nod in consent. It's not that we can read each other's minds exactly, we just have a firm grasp of each other's perspective. How much weight any particular wager should carry, it's not often that we differ but it does give an illusion of mystery and intrigue so it's a trick we have taken to using over the past weeks.

"All I said was..." she stops, looking between the two of us and apparently giving up at the sight of us eagerly awaiting the verdict. "I give up. You two are just..." She pauses again, either not comfortable with the phrase she had chosen or simply just not thought that far ahead, instead the throws her hands up into the air with a non-committal noise in the back of her throat. "I'm going to find Harry and Ron." Just like that she is striding away, her shoes echoing off the floor.

"Wait a second, who was right?" I call out behind her but only manage to address the door as it swings closed.

"It was Moody." Nancy says in a very matter of fact way, taking a bite out of her sugary treat and making to follow Hermione from the room.

With a huff I also dig in to the foodstuff, the warmth already beginning to seep back into my skin right to the tips of my fingers and I feel almost well enough to partake in this particular, useless argument. "No it wasn't."

"If you'd have been right she's have said so." Is her logic and I laugh out loud at the statement. "All right fine, if I'd have been wrong she'd want to rub my nose in it."

Thoughtfully I chew, letting the chocolate melt in my mouth and cover my tongue. She does have a point but, "Not this time."

In her excitement, her voice raises a few decibels and she practically bounces along as she walks. "Let it go, I've got this one."

"No way am I paying you without confirmation." I respond, reaching out for the banister to descend down to the ground floor.

The discussion, while pointless does prove a decent distraction all the way down to my tiny chamber and by the time we have reached the door we still don't reach any sort of peaceful resolution, so without words, agree to wait until an opportunity arises to pry this piece of knowledge from my partner. Until then the wager stands.

I leave Nancy's company with the firm belief that at least this time she is wrong, I could be too but that really isn't my main concern. That is my final thought, as all the days of relentless planning and preparations take their toll. I don't notice the paper thin mattress, or the stale smell upon the bedspread, not even the shortness of the bed that forces me to curl up along my side because the movement my head hits the pillow I am already deep in the field of dreams.

~X~

The scrape of the lock turning in its barrel is the next noise to great me in the waking world, pulling me kicking and screaming from the deep, restful sleep I had fallen into. With narrowed eyes I throw a scowl at the offending fixture before having to bend myself over backwards to turn over onto my other side, just hoping and praying that the rather irritating noise might just wear itself out if I ignore it for long enough. When the door opens it reminds me why it is that I do not rely on hoping and praying very often.

"Get up." Nancy's breathless voice assaults me a scant moment before what I suspect to be a pair of trousers are thrown over my prone form. "Come on."

"Go. Away." I hear myself say, slowly and riddled with sleep.

"Yeah, can just see the look on your face in the morning if I did that." She says in a sarcastic tone then pauses, waiting for me to move. Something she soon realises I have no intention of doing, so she reaches out and roughly shakes my shoulder. "Its time to get up now."

Honestly, I don't think I've ever heard anything more ludicrous, the sun is still hiding behind the horizon so at the time of year it's cannot possibly be any later than four in the morning. Now I may be an early riser lately but even so, this time of day is not when I should be being dragged from my bed. No matter how uncomfortable it may be.

It's only when I draw breath to tell her this, that I smell it. Cold and metallic in the air but undeniable. Blood. The scent has me twisting my body so my shoulders rest flat on the lumpy mattress and I have to hold a hand up to shield my eyes from the bright Lumos spell being held at the tip of Nancy's wand. "What happened to your nose?"

"Ginny elbowed me." She responds before she has fully thought about it, also throwing a shirt at me so it drapes haphazardly across my face. "Get up." With a swift turn she has left the room, left me to my privacy, so I might change in peace. While musings over why Ginny would want to break Nancy's nose, considering her affliction to the sight of blood, pulling me further and further away from my dreams.

The Slytherin's urgent voice and her vague words are enough for me to get a move on and when I exit the room I am still fastening the buttons to my shirt over my chest. "Clearly I'm missing something here." I say, more as a way to gather Nancy's attention as she has taken to hastily pacing along the corridor.

"That's an understatement." She responds running her fingers through her hair and giving out a strong aura of discomfort, not something I often see shrouding the woman before me. "They escaped."

"They?" I query, with half a mind to turn around and head back to bed. A flustered Nancy can only be amusing for so long and she hasn't exactly given me any reason to become interested in the cause for her irritation.

"Yes they." She stops her maddening stride to gesture around wildly with her hands. "The golden bleeding trio."

Now she has my attention. "What?" I can feel my voice drop in pitch to such an extent that the normally unflappable girl in front of me all but loses herself from under its weight.

Her hands are the first to break, fidgeting in front of her in such a distracted fashion that I might be inclined to believe she hadn't even noticed it. "Yeah the lot of them and a couple of others."

"Where did they go?" My patience is already wearing thin.

Her shrug is quick, clean and most importantly honest and her hand goes through her hair another time. She's only able to meet my eyes for the shortest of moments before she's turning away and nervously pacing the hall once more. "I-I-I don't know. They just..." Her fingertips touch her forehead with such vigour it crinkles the skin. "I don't know." She repeats.

It's at this moment that I realise how sacred of me she is. What I'll do or say upon learning these things and she has every right to be. It has been noted many, many times over the coarse of my education that I can appear imperturbable. This is not strictly true, although it can appear that way a lot of the time. The truth of the matter is that there very few topics that can raise my ire because I just simply do not care enough to become as agitated over certain matters, things that often deeply effect others, to me it all just seems so trivial.

However anyone who has seen it in action can tell you that my the fuse on my temper is not only short but leads to a ferocious explosion that normally ignites instantaneously, whether or not the person or object in front of me is the direct cause for my anger or not. Nancy is one of these people and the well-being of anyone I deeply care about is one of these things. So her fear is in no way misplaced but right now I need whatever knowledge she possesses.

So in the face of this I consciously take a breath and try to pull my face out of the angry, hard mask it has settled into. "Start from the beginning."

"I don't know everything." She says and I feel myself blink, very slowly and deliberately. As a substitute to reaching out and wrapping my fingers tightly around her throat, which I suddenly have a strong impulse to do. She swallows audibly at my movement before quickly continuing. "All right, all right. All I know is that I get called to Umbridge's office told to restrain Ginny and we find Potter with his head in the fireplace."

So the headmistress' office is the place to start, I turn on the ball of my foot arrogantly assuming that Nancy will be a few paces behind me. "Who was he trying to contact?"

"He wouldn't say." She replies, jogging a couple of steps to fell in stride. "He tried to tell Snape though but he didn't look like he understood."

Snape being a master of his facial features couldn't have easily concealed that. "What was the message?" We turn a corner and a wrap my fingers around the granite bannister to propel myself up the first two steps, as it's single file and I have a strange compulsion to be ahead of the other girl.

"Padfoot is in the place where it's buried, or hidden. Or something to that effect. Mean anything to you?" Her initial fright has dissipated somewhat but there is still a weariness about her tone.

"Only that it's gibberish." I mutter. More to myself than any other prying ears but my voice raises to continue my questioning. "You said they escaped?"

"Yeah." She says and only continues when I turn my head to send her a scolding look over my shoulder. "Hermione started going on about this weapon. Something they were working on for Dumbledore. She took Umbridge away with Harry then the rest of them jumped us." We continue to clamber up the small winding staircase, the only sounds are our footfalls and Nancy's breath steadily becoming more laboured with the exertion. When the ground beneath our feet flattens out she draws level with me one more, sending my contemplative look a sidewise glance before commenting. "There isn't any weapon, is there?"

I draw to a stop. We're still relatively far away from Umbridge's office and until I actually get there I have no idea if it will be any help and I might just be able to work this out. "No." I reply after a long sigh. "She was looking for help."

"Figured as much." With a decisive nod she shuffles her feet. "Where would she go?"

That is the question. I raise my hand and press the heel of my palm against my temple, blocking out the world around me so I can run through a list of options. Any member of the faculty is out, considering Hagrid has been run off the grounds and McGonagall is currently in St. Mungo's because of it. Harry might risk a less trusted member of staff but not Hermione. "Who exactly was in the room?"

"Oh, come on. Like I know their names." She takes in my hard stare, looking at her from under my low eyebrows. She relents with a tilt of her head, reaching up to hook a hand around the back of her neck. "Well, Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny." She begins by telling me what I already know and that impulse to throttle her is back again. "Then, oh I don't fucking know. The weird girl in Ravenclaw. You know the one that's spaced out all the time."

"Luna." I correct. Striking her off my mental list.

"Probably. And the big kid that trails around after them all the time."

"Neville." I say around a deep sigh, he was my next guess. Slowly I run my hands over my face. "That's everyone accounted for, she doesn't have anywhere else to go to."

'You would." Ammy makes her presence known behind my eyes and my head tilts in curiosity. 'You have allies that she might try to contact.'

"Yeah." I scoff at her, uncaring of the eyes that are on me. "An outcast werewolf goes around making all sorts of..." I pause as exactly what Ammy is talking about dawns on me the word 'contacts' dying before it manages to pass from between my lips. "Oh, she wouldn't."

"What?" Nancy asks in an anxious voice.

At the same instant Ammy is also sharing her opinion. 'Are you certain?'

"Oh no, she would." My correction hits the open air just moments after I let the possibility filter through my mind. "How long ago did they leave?"

Nancy's breath catches in the back of her throat and she glances down at her watch, staring unblinking and the dials so such a stretch of time my skin begins to itch. "About twenty minuets."

"My, you're so precise today." She rolls her eyes at my sarcastic comment but I ignore it in favour of grinding my teeth. "You have to help me." At her nod I reach out, clamping down on her shoulder, she winces slightly. Not in pain just in fright, considering that my hand is placed so close to the column of her neck that my thumb grazes her windpipe might have something to do with her fear but I have to have her attention. "You go to the kitchens. You find Dobby and you ask him if he knows anything. Say it back to me."

"Go to the kitchens, find Dobby. Got it."

"Good." I pat her once on the cheek in a very condescending form of approval but the impulse just jumped along my arm before I could stop it. Before I can give myself time to analyse it, my weight shits on the ball of my foot and I am forcing my legs into a jog in the opposite direction.

"Where are you going?" Nancy shouts along the corridor towards my retreating back.

"To the forest!" I yell back, turning a corner and taking a more direct route back down towards the Entrance Hall. Praying to every god that I can think of that she truly hasn't gone to the Centaurs for aid.
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By The Light