Chapter 2
She made it two nights without incident.
Really she should be glad she was able to make it that long; especially in a new environment.
She was roomed with Pandora; and no one else. It was explained to her that due to her health the school had thought it best to give the girls privacy. As much as she felt awful for the special treatment, Aurora supposed it saves some poor students from waking up to the sound of her retching her guts out on a regular basis.
They gave her a room close to the infirmary. Maybe she can make it on her own.
She carefully extracts herself from the covers, and swings her legs onto the side of the bed.
A wave of vertigo sends her toppling over as she gets to her feet, sending her crashing rather loudly.
Nope, she thinks, not making it on my own.
A light flicks on as Pandora rushes out of bed to gather an unseeing Aurora off the floor.
“Shit it’s happening ok ok” Pandora harshly whispers as she ushers them, still barefoot, out of the bedroom and into the hall.
It’s a slow walk to the infirmary, Pandora holding her smaller cousin aloft under the arm, Aurora leaning into her unwillingly.
She hated this. Hated feeling so helpless. She used to think she would get used to it, but you never really get used to being sick. Especially not when it goes away; she would have days, maybe even weeks without a problem. But it always comes back. Like a ball and chain, the long tether growing slack and then suddenly taut, dragging her down down down.
She lets out something between a groan and a sob when they reach the infirmary and Pandora plops her down on the closest bed. The movement sends a lurch through her stomach.
“Bucketbucketbucket” Aurora manages, hands flailing, as Pandora scrambles for the bedpan and all but chucks it at Aurora.
Mercifully she catches it and heaves into the metal, just as Madame Pomfrey appears.
“Oh dear” the older lady utters solemnly. She turns to Pandora and says matter of factly “Right. Back to bed with you dear.”
Pandora hesitates. Madame Pomfrey tuts “I assure you I have been given all the proper instructions to care for Miss Lovegood, now off you go.”
Pandora rises from her seat, taking Aurora hand and giving it a light squeeze.
“I’ll come back in the morning”
Aurora would nod if everything wasn’t spinning. Speaking is out of the question, so she just lets her go.
“Right” Madame Pomfrey says to herself, and gets to work.
A potion is pressed into Rory’s shaking hand, which she takes blindly. She lets the older woman place her in the bed, and tries to focus on her breathing as her ankles are strapped down to the bed. Pomfrey hesitates at the strap at Auroras wrist.
“Is this all really necessary? The potion will surely have you sleep through the night”
Aurora recognizes the tone. The pity and underlying doubt in it. She knows that it’s strange, but it works. It’s the only thing that’s worked.
Aurora flops the arm closest to Pomfrey “yes but just the one is fine”
The straps keep her from falling, because yes, she has woken up through a sleeping potion before and taken one too many spills. At least with the straps she can’t go anywhere unless her hands aren’t shaking and her head is properly on.
Aurora thanks her professor and assures her she needs nothing more.
She can feel the potion begin to take effect, like a blurry film has been cast over her body. Her eyelids flutter and droop and then she is asleep.
Her head is pounding when she wakes up. Aurora squints in the watery early morning light. For a split second she tries to get up and struggles against her restraints until she remembers herself. She takes her free hand, blessedly steady, and undoes her bonds. She finds a potion on her bedside table and greedily gulps down the dose of painkiller; lamenting at having not been left the bottle. She conducts a full body scan of the damage. Other than her head, which is on fire, she finds a bruise on her hip presumably from falling last night. All in all it could definitely be worse. Her feet are frozen and her bones ache, but she is steady.
She considers staying put for all of thirty seconds before she is crossing the distance to the door.
She knows she ought to stay, Madame Pomfrey will be worried, and she certainly shouldn’t be running around the castle with no shoes on in her nightdress like a ghost. Maybe next time Pomfrey will actually tie her down and keep her there. The thought sends a dry chuckle through her.
It’s early enough that no one is wandering the halls, thank goodness.
She murmurs the password to the portrait, slipping into the Slytherin common room, ignoring the portraits admonishing at the early hour and inappropriate dress.
She scampers up to her room, manages not to wake Pandora this time, and goes for a shower.
The heat is bliss for her frozen bones and aching head. The potion has started its magic and her pain is at a low whimper rather than a howl.
Stealing back into the room, hair dripping lightly onto her uniform, Aurora looks up at a noise of surprise.
“Rory?!? You’re supposed to be in the infirmary! I was about to go visit you!” Pandora huffs, lightly balled fists hitting the blankets.
“Yes well sorry to ruin your plans but I’m fine. Listen I’m putting these slippers by the door and a robe here; I was freezing in the halls”
Pandora makes an indignant noise in response, rising from the bed.
“I’ll get dressed and then let’s go get brekkie”
“Don’t say brekkie”
“Come Aurora, let us break our fast this fine morning” Dora says, putting on an exaggerated posh accent and ending with a bow.
Aurora laughs and throws a pillow at her cousin, which lands smack on her head, eliciting a strangled giggle from Panda.
The great hall is filled with chatter and the clanking of dish ware. Usually the din would aggravate her head but by now the potion is in full effect so her headache is quite mild. Without the pain and nausea her hunger hits her full force. Years of missed meals and thrown up dinners have left her smaller than others, but luckily she isn’t totally skin and bones. When she wasn’t puking or enduring a punishment from her father, who liked to withhold food from her for any reason at all, she was well fed. She had a particular sweet tooth, made worse by the wide assortment allowed them at hogwarts.
“Really? Cake for breakfast?” Pandora asks disapprovingly.
“Yeth” Aurora says around a mouth full of cake, just to peeve her cousin.
Pandora rolls her eyes, directing her attention to a head further down the table.
Regulus is sat with two other boys, Evan and Barty; she has learned that those are his friends, but mostly he sits in silence while they do most of the talking. She wonders if he even likes them at the same time she tells herself she doesn’t care either way.
“I’m going to steal him you know” Pandora says softly.
A savage part of Rory wants to scream at that, wants to scream that no one else can have him, but of course that isn’t true and he isn’t hers and then her brain catches up to her heart and she realizes Pandora intends to steal Regulus from his friends.
Mercifully, Pandora has caught none of this on her face, still looking down the table at the trio of boys.
Barty and Evan get up to leave, say their goodbyes and depart.
The pressure of the air changes like before a storm and Rory knows what’s about to happen, but is powerless to stop it, as Dora’s hand shoots up and she is calling him over.
“Regulus!!” Pandora beams and waves her hand when Regulus looks up with a surprised look on his face. When he sees who has summoned him, and Pandora keeps waving him over, he gets up. And- oh god- Horror dawns on Rory like her namesake because he is actually coming over and Dora is gesturing for him to sit down next to Aurora.
“Hello girls” he says smoothly, settling down next to her. It’s an effort not to shake, or shy away. He doesn’t touch her, sitting just far enough away that only their robes touch. He never touched her on the train either, she remembers. Only when he helped her down, ever the gentleman. Her hand had burned like a brand that whole night. Maybe it still did.
Suddenly it was all too much. Gathering her things, blaming her head, she flees to the library.
Behind her, She hears Pandora explain her health to Regulus and she flees from that too.
She doesn’t need to hear it.
Weak.
Frail.
Of course Pandora would never say so, but the message comes across anyway.
She grits her teeth, finding a seat in the library and behind sulking.
She can’t even sit next a boy. Can’t be in a loud room. Can’t sleep through the night.
She releases the book she find herself strangling, white knuckles like snow peaked mountains. She takes a measured breath and wills herself to read instead of berating herself.
A gentle voice in her mind tells her to be kind to herself; she can always try again.
She likes to imagine that voice is her Mother. She has no idea what her mothers voice sounds like, she died giving birth, but it seems like something a mother would say. Her father certainly never would, no, he’s the voice in her head that berates her.
Eventually she manages to lose herself in her book, extraneous thoughts lowered to a dull hum in the back of her mind.
The weeks pass in a blur that bleeds into months, classes are challenging, most of her time is spent studying and spending time with Pandora. The two girls grow closer every day and Aurora is starting to think they are on the road to being sisters; which all told isn’t surprising because Pandora is easy to love.
What is surprising is how often Regulus joins them. It seems that every time his two cronies have something else to do, he elects to dine with them, or sit on a couch in the common room with them.
He has even found her in the library a few times and to her surprise, has sat down with her and wordlessly pulled out a book and read.
Over time they have seemed to develop a silent way of communicating. Of course they speak as well, she has learned more than she expected to about him, like how he isn’t speaking to his brother and his fathers declining health. She gets the idea that his home life isn’t good, which is confirmed by what she already knows about the ancient house of Black.
Sometimes when someone moves too quickly he flinches. Aurora knows about that too.
Aurora also knows that he takes his tea the same way she does, but with less sugar. His uniform is always immaculate, and his penmanship is beautiful.
She complimented it once and he got quiet; simply saying if his script didn’t meet his mother’s standards he would get a wand to the knuckles.
Rory expects it was much worse than that.
She knows a thing or two about cruelty too.
But maybe her favorite thing about Regulus was when he spoke French. Mostly he just curses in French but sometimes Pandora and she manage to bully him into saying simple sentences in French and Rory’s heart swoons every time.
Most surprising though is her blooming friendship with the Marauders. That’s what they call themselves Sirius, James, Remus and Peter. They spew all kinds of nonsense, calling each other silly nicknames constantly.
On one of the many nights spent strapped to the bed in the infirmary, feeling sorry for herself, the four boys burst into the room.
The curtain around her bed was drawn for privacy so they didn’t see her and she didn’t see them.
But she heard them. Someone definitely sounded injured.
Madame Pomfrey hurries in, a multitude of voices speak over one another explaining various injuries, followed by what Aurora assumed are sounds of Pomfrey treating the patient.
After making the boys promise to be more careful, and them assuring her they will leave and go to bed very soon, the professor leaves.
It doesn’t take long until a familiar tension builds in her gut.
Please no, not now please not right now she thinks before promptly retching out the contents of her stomach. Loudly.
“Oi who’s that then?” A voice says followed by a thud and some scuffling noises. Rory pulls the curtain back, mortified, to find James and Sirius wrestling. The two break apart and the whole group of boys turn and look at Aurora.
“Hi” Rory croaks. Merlin strike me down
She takes in Remus’s lanky form in bed, bandages over several cuts on his arms and face. The other three are crowded around his bed, also dirty but apparently not as injured.
“Oh. Hello there” James says, flashing a disarming smile. Sirius squints into the dark and says to his companions “first year I think” to which Peter murmurs something that darkens Sirius’s expression.
“Regulus friend huh?”
This is it Aurora think. He’s going to throttle me.
Sirius temper is somewhat legend. She has already seen him go off on people for bumping into him or his friends, and the group often pull public stunts. Courage certainly isn’t lacking in these gryffindors.
She blinks, preparing for the onslaught. Nothing happens
She blinks again.
Silence.
Everyone is staring at her in silence and it’s then that she realizes they are waiting for her to respond.
“Oh. Yes, I’m friends with Regulus” she utters dumbly, cheeks heating. Friends hardly seem to cut what she felt about Regulus.
Sirius lets out a thoughtful hum.
“Well we better get going… visiting hours…” James says, scratching the back of his neck. The boys say their goodbyes, James waving to Aurora on the way out, Peter mimics the motion more softly, and Sirius simply stares straight ahead.
Fair enough Aurora thinks, and begins drawing the curtain. This elicits a chuckle from Remus; as Aurora realizes with a cringe that she has essentially just slammed the proverbial door in the older boys face. She can’t very well open it back up now, can she?
Burying her face in her hands she laughs at herself.
“I’m sorry I don’t know why I did that” she admits.
“No it’s alright I’m poor company anyway”
Aurora feels a stab of sadness in her gut at that.
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
A beat of silence, filled with doubts.
Aurora wrings her hands and decides to try again. “the curtain is really for your protection. Unless you want to see me vomit, which is likely to happen if I’m being honest apologies in advance for that”
Remus laughs again, and Aurora smiles, pleased with herself.
“No thank you I would rather close my eyes and not see that thanks”
Rory nods even though he can’t see her, and falls asleep in the ensuing comfortable silence.