Potter | 𝘚𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘶𝘴 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬

Chapter 32

Knowing a lost cause when she sees one, Jenna decided to let go of the matter and not bother writing back to Sirius.

     Because no matter how much she threatened him or begged him not to, he was still going to keep on sending the daily letters.

     And as promised, Jenna received letters every single day for the next week, one more pathetic than the other.

     In two or three of them, Jenna found herself giggling as she read through them, but then shook her head, putting the letter away in her trunk.

     Only a few days were left from the Christmas holidays. Vernon and Petunia had gone to the point that Jenna could not stand them for another second. She nearly called Dursley a cow, before Lily took their coats and quickly dragged Jenna out of the house.

     "Where are we even going?" Jenna groaned as they kept walking. "It's freezing."

     It was the first snow of the new year and it was dropping from the heavenly sky lightly and majestically.

     It was almost dark that Lily and Jenna got to the park near their house. It was empty except for the two girls. Jenna locked her hand around Lily's arm as they strolled down the playground.

     "Oh, I missed coming here!" Lily sighed happily, running towards one of the swings and Jenna giggled, taking the one next to her.

They swung faster and faster, as if in a competition to see who would go higher as they laughed.

Finally tired, they slowed down and their laughters faded away into bright smiles as snowflakes fell upon them.

"Hey, Lily?" Jenna broke the silence, gulping.

"Yeah?"

"I – I need to tell you something."

"What is it?"

Jenna paused for a few seconds before saying, "It's about Sirius."

"Uh oh," Lily groaned. "What has he done this time?"

Jenna sighed, knowing that she couldn't keep it away from her best friend anymore, no matter how hard she had tried until then.

"Remember how I disappeared after Slughorn's Christmas party?"

"Yeah..." Lily said hesitantly, looking at Jenna anxiously.

"Well... I was with Sirius."

"WHAT!?" she shrieked, causing a few pigeons to fly away from the tree nearby.

"Merlin! Calm down, woman! Not with him like that!" Jenna said and Lily sighed in relief.

"Then what happened?"

"Err – he kinda... said stuff."

"What stuff?"

"He – he said that – that... well it wasn't what he said. It's how he said. Although, it was also a few things he said..."

"Oh, say it already, Jenna!" Lily huffed impatiently.

"Ugh! I don't know, Lily!" Jenna pulled at the ends of her hair angrily. "He just makes me so frustrated! He keeps confusing me with things he does!"

"Like what?" Lily asked softly this time.

"Like he's so kind to me, but the next moment he's flirting with some other girl. Then he starts flirting with me – if cornering me or sending me cheesy letters count as flirting – and then he goes back to ignoring me."

"Well, what do you expect from him?" Lily scoffed. "It's Black we're talking about. Confusing girls and breaking their hearts is what he does."

Breaking hearts...

Jenna thought back at the things Sirius had told her in the deserted corridor that night as he had her pinned against the wall. At the thought, Jenna suddenly felt a shiver run down her spine.

"Jenna?" said Lily after some while.

"Hm?"

"You're not... you know... thinking about Black, are you?" Lily asked nervously and Jenna turned to face her as they sat alongside each other on the swings.

"What do you mean?" Jenna asked, even though she knew Lily wasn't talking about the moment; she meant generally.

"I'm just saying that... please don't go and lose your marbles around Black," she said with a sad smile. "He's bad news. I just... don't want you to be heartbroken... again."

"You mean Remus," Jenna stated matter-of-factly, looking away.

"Yeah," Lily nodded. "And Remus was the good one. At least he cares for people's feelings."

"Yeah, right," Jenna scoffed. "He sure didn't seem to care about my feelings in the way he snapped at me, trying to tell me off."

"That really didn't seem like something he would normally do, to be honest," said Lily. "I mean, in forth year that Hufflepuff girl went to him to tell him she had a crush on him after Herbology. You were there. You saw how gently he put her down and apologized a hundred times to her after that."

Jenna looked down at her feet, saying nothing. So Lily went on in her motherly kind and calm voice,

"But Remus will come around, eventually. And you'll go back to normal," she said. "But with Black... he has a way of getting what he wants and he won't stop until he has it. And when he gets it... he leaves you in pieces."

Jenna felt her heart lurch painfully at those words, mostly because she knew deep down that Lily was right.

How could Jenna let herself believe for a second that Sirius Black actually cared for her? He only wanted her because he couldn't have her.

Jenna was just about to open her mouth to agree with Lily, but she closed her it again as she saw a figure walking towards them through the dark in a black hood.

"Lily," she pointed at him in horror. "Who's that?"