Out Of The Woods
- Taylor Swift
"You didn't have to be here," Amie whispered as she took a seat on one of the uncomfortable infirmary beds, "I'm used to doing this, I can do it alone."
"You think Ted would let me keep my head if he found out you were visiting Poppy on your own?" James shot back, placing a hand on her shoulder as the aforementioned nurse bustled over to them.
"There's been a progression?" The older woman asked, placing the back of her hand on Amie's forehead and then her cheeks.
The way Madam Pomfrey fussed over her reminded Amie of her family - every single one of them treated her like glass because she was the youngest, because she would be the last of the women to die. Her father specifically liked to spoil Amie with everything she wanted, and her eldest brother, Ted, didn't bother hiding his soft spot for her. They overcompensated because they weren't doomed like she was.
Her mother and sister understood, and they tended to wait to fawn over her when she was actually suffering, when the urges were getting stronger, and the pain felt as though it would never cease.
Nobody in the Walker family knew when the maledictus curse began on their bloodline, but it went as far back as anybody could remember, taking out the women of every generation with no prejudice. The married, the unmarried; the adults, the children - it varied, and so did their 'beasts', but it was the same every time.
Ralph and Ted and Louis knew for a fact that their mother and sisters would die prematurely, and sometimes Amie didn't know which was the worse fate. She could live in solace that once she died, that was it. Her pain would end with her. But her father and brothers would have to live on without wives, mothers, sisters.
"Sort of. I've been getting more headaches, and sometimes the urge to turn is so overwhelming that I have to go outside just in case I can't hold it in anymore. It feels like it's getting worse, but more mentally than physically."
"That's something we can deal with," Pomfrey mumbled as she checked Amie's heartbeat, "Your physical faculties will wear down first. Your struggles now should just be because of stress and fatigue."
Physical faculties. Amie's mind flashed to the last time she'd seen her mother, sickly pale and unable to even get out of bed, the sheen of sweat on her forehead almost able to reflect Amie's face back to her as she tried to make her mum feel better. They knew she didn't have much time left, and still Amie had been told to leave for months at a time, to lose those final moments she might have with her favourite person.
It wasn't a decision she'd liked, but she understood why it was made. She needed an education, and if Louis had still been in school he would have been forced in the same way. Plus, her friends were a welcome distraction - not everything was awful when they were around, when she could laugh without feeling guilty for the sound.
"Okay. So, can we do anything about that?" James questioned.
"Well, I can give you some medicine for the headaches, but as for everything else..." The woman pulled back and placed her hands on her hip with a short sigh, "It's a matter of you cutting down on things that are bringing you stress, and getting some more sleep."
"I'll try." Amie offered, giving the nurse a nod to assure her.
"I'll get that medicine."
James came around from standing behind Amie to standing in front of her, putting a hand on his hip and raising an eyebrow at her, "You haven't been sleeping?"
"No, I've been sleeping. A bit."
"Right. I'm making sure that you follow Poppy's orders," James pointed a finger in her direction before turning and heading the same way that the mediwitch had gone, leaving Amie to roll her eyes and wait for them to come back.
[***]
Amie wandered through the library, her fingers grazing the spines of the books that she walked past as she hummed the tune to a song she had heard playing in the Hufflepuff common room once before quietly. Tomorrow would be time to worry about school, maybe even later in the evening, but for now her only concern was finding a new book to read.
She'd recently started reading muggle literature - something she was never very exposed to in a pureblood family - and once she finished one, she was determined to find another that was just as good. Starting with Pride and Prejudice made it hard to do that, and Wuthering Heights, while beautiful, didn't quite have the same intrigue to it. The Odyssey was a journey, her venture into ancient epics, and now she was on the prowl for something different.
Her footsteps made little to no sound against the carpet, though she wasn't the only person in the aisle. She couldn't hear their footsteps, but the sensation of being watched was not an easy one to shake off, and having grown up with her family, she was neatly tuned to pick it out. She turned, slowly at first and then quicker once she realised who had been following her.
"Sirius? What are you doing here?" She asked, eyes glistening with amusement as he pretended to be surprised to see her.
"Oh! Amie! Well, I was just reading my favourite book here." He closed the book and held it up, shaking it slightly in emphasis as Amie nodded her head, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Wuthering heights?"
"Yes," He lifted his head, "It's my favourite, actually. You know, the-the...heights and, uh...." Sirius turned the book around, his eyes reading over the blurb as Amie raised an expectant eyebrow.
"You know, the wild and passionate love story of intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff," He read from the blurb on the back page, eyes flitting up to hers to see if she had believed him, but when he was met with her unimpressed stare, he haphazardly dumped the book back onto the shelf and instead held his hand out.
"Come with me."
"Where?" She questioned, tilting her head to the side slightly as a smirk came across Sirius' face.
"Just...come on." He urged, and Amie sighed as she placed her hand in his, and he quickly latched onto it, beginning to pull her out of the library and towards the open front doors of the school.
Once they were out on the grass, Sirius dropped her hand and sat down, gesturing for her to do the same, and when she did he fell backwards, his back hitting the ground with a small thump before he began looking up at the mostly clear, orangey-yellow, evening sky. Hesitantly, Amie copied his actions, and the two of them laid in silence for a few moments, staring up at the sky with the little wisps of clouds that passed their vision. It was beautiful, and Amie had to remind herself to breathe every once in a while.
"Madam Pomfrey wouldn't be happy that I was out here," She broke the silence that had been draped over them, "She said I should be resting, that I'm too stressed. That's why I'm getting the headaches."
Sirius didn't know about her curse. None of the boys did, only James and her friends, and Amie needed it to be that way. She couldn't handle more pity from the people in her life, what she received already was enough.
"You are resting." Sirius countered, and Amie giggled as she rested one of her hands on her stomach and the other on the cold grass between her and Sirius.
"My mum says that laying in the grass heals your soul." She changed the subject, and Sirius laughed though he kept his eyes on the calm sky.
"I should do this a lot more, then."
"Sirius..." Amie moved her head so that she was looking at him and he moved his head to face her the same way, his grey eyes searching hers.
But she dropped his gaze, instead peering down at the grass, her fingers moving to pick delicately at the green strands.
The wind whistled in the air as the sky darkened, making a few faint stars visible against the deep blue canvas. Sirius looked up as Amie did, his own eyes taking in the landscape in front of him as he flopped onto his back again, pushing his body off of the floor once in order to shuffle and get a better position.
"You see that star there?" He pointed up at the sky, but with only the brightest stars showing she couldn't make out which star he was talking about. Sirius laughed as he shuffled closer to her and lifted her own arm, his chin resting on her shoulder as he pointed at the star again but this time with Amie's finger, hoping that now she would be able to see it.
And she did. It was, by far, the brightest star she could see in the sky, and a small, peaceful smile came across her face as she looked at it.
"That's Sirius," He guided her arm once more in a shape, sending small goosebumps down her skin, "In the constellation Canis Major."
"Canis, like a dog?" She questioned, not able to move her head with Sirius resting on her shoulder.
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess. Canis like a dog, that works."
They laid together in silence, Sirius' eyes raking across the sky as he searched for another constellation that he could show her. His knowledge was vast, and while he despised the lesson of astronomy, because of the having to get up in the middle of the night, he quite enjoyed looking up at the stars.
"There's the Virgo constellation," He pointed out suddenly, his fingers tracing the stars as if they were on a piece of paper in front of them, "That is your birthday, right? You're a Virgo?"
"Yeah," She breathed, her eyes watching the stars as Sirius' eyes watched her, his grey orbs dancing across her soft features. Her eyelashes caused tiny shadows on her perfectly rounded cheeks, and her lips were rested in a soft smile, with a miniscule brown hair from her head sticking to the gloss that resided there.
"What are you looking at?" She smirked slightly, her head tilting to the side to look at him as his cheeks flushed a gentle pink and he shrugged his shoulders lightly.
"Admiring the view," He offered, and now it was Amie's turn to blush as she shook her head, chuckling slightly as she looked back up at the sky.
"Shut up."
[***]
Amie woke in her bed, her fingers closing around the duvet cover with the tiredness that seeped through her body. Her limbs stretched out, sending a small ruffling sound through the dorm as she refused to open her eyes, not wanting to meet the harsh sunlight that filtered through the curtains. Her pillow was less soft than how she remembered it from the five years of sleeping in her bed, but perhaps it was just the fatigue in her system playing tricks on her.
When her eyes finally cracked open, she was met with a barrage of red, and she bolted up, plastering her hand to her chest to keep the covers there as she looked around.
"Morning." She whipped her head to the side, a scowl painting her features as she met the warm eyes of Peter Pettigrew sitting on the bed next to hers, his knees pulled up to his chest and his feet resting on the wooden frame of his bed as he smiled sheepishly at her.
"Uh... What am I doing here?" Amie pulled the duvet closer to her body, afraid of looking underneath.
One thing she noticed was that Peter was sitting on a bed that had a piece of paper with the name 'James' on the wall above the headboard. She looked around again, seeing that the bed opposite the one she was sitting on was labelled 'Remus' and the fourth bed in the room had 'Peter' scrawled on parchment stuck on the wall.
Count on the boys to label their own beds. Amie for the life of her couldn't figure out why they would need such labels, but this meant that she was sat in Sirius' bed, and she had slept there, too.
"I think maybe you should find the others. They said I should stay here for when you woke up, but they all stormed out in a big argument about ten minutes ago."
"You've just been sat here watching me sleep for ten minutes?" Amie questioned, looking at the boy with slightly furrowed eyebrows as he shook his head, blushing profusely as he held up a book.
"Um, I also picked these up for you," He got up off of the bed, carrying in his hands a pile of clothes that he placed down on the mattress before stepping away again, "Figured you wouldn't want to walk around in whatever your wearing. Which... Which I-I wouldn't know what that was, because I didn't-"
"Peter."
"Right. I'm going downstairs," He muttered, scurrying away in a haste that she had never seen the small, mousy boy carry before.
As soon as the door was closed again, Amie slowly lifted the covers from herself, sighing half in relief and half in disappointment as she saw that she was in the vest she had been wearing yesterday and her leggings. The only piece of clothing that had been removed was her jumper, which was folded neatly on the end of the bed.
She put the clothes that Peter had gathered back onto James' bed before picking up her own jumper and tugging it over her head. Peering back at the chosen clothes, she debated putting James' Quidditch joggers on, ruined with grass stains, just to hold them over his head. But, ultimately deciding to get out of his dorm was her main priority, she left the joggers to their rightful owner.
She wanted to explore their dorm room - she would probably never get another chance to be in there, and who knew what kinds of secrets these boys kept - but she was too busy being confused as to why she was there in the first place, and she needed to investigate the aforementioned argument.
Everybody stared as she came down the stairs, arms closed around her middle as if she could protect herself from all of Gryffindor's gaze. She was so clearly out of place. Was it possible to be a sore thumb in a sea of red?
"Slut." Someone spat, some seventh-year sitting on the sofa.
"Miriam, if you never open your mouth again, it'll be too soon." A blonde, Marlene McKinnon, shot back before nodding slightly to Amie.
If anyone understood the walk of shame, it was Marlene McKinnon.
"What? She slept with one of them - doesn't that bother you? And she didn't even have the sense to sneak out before the common room would be full."
"I'll write you up later. Or did you forget that I'm Head Girl?" Lily Evans stood up from the sofa that she was sitting on before taking Amie's hand and leading the younger girl from the common room.
"I'm sorry about her. I really will write her up, what she said is disgusting." Lily apologised once they were in the hall. No sign of the boys out here.
"Thank you," Amie looked over her shoulder, hoping to see one of the boys near their common room. No luck again, "I just... Have you seen the boys?"
"James, Sirius, and Remus all left in a bit of a huff a couple of minutes ago. From what I saw coming in, they all went separate ways."
"Thank you, Lily."
"You're welcome." The girl smiled, squeezing Amie's arm before walking back into her common room, red hair bouncing as she went.
Amie set off down the stairs, determined to find at least one of the boys in the sea of Hogwarts students.
How hard could it be?