epiphanies - sirius black

chapter 13

She was running through a long thinning corridor.

The walls were dark and ominous, and she wasn't sure where she was going.

All she knew is that she had to keep running, or it would catch her.

It was huge. It's sharp claws chipping the floor boards as it grunted behind her.

She didn't no how long she had been running for, but it felt like forever, when finally, and very suddenly, she caught the glimpse of a door at the end of the hall.

She ran, faster now, she ran with hope, edging closer and closer to the ever nearing door.

She went straight to the handle, and began attempting to ply it open, but it wouldn't budge.

She bashed her fists erratically on the door, begging, and screaming for someone too let her in as she watched the wolf nearing her.

The door finally opened, but to her dismay her father was standing there, pointing his wand at her. Behind him, Alex Avery stood, staring her down.

"You will Marry him, or you will be punished"

He repeated it over and over again, until Maggie's ears began to ring.

The wolf was now mere meters away.

She began to scream.

"MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP!!!"

She collapsed to her knees, before turning to watch the wolf leap to pounce on her and-

Maggie's head shot up.

She gasped for breath, surrounded in a pool of sweat.

She tightly grasped the bed sheets surrounding her to ensure that she was in fact safely in her bed, and that it was all a dream.

Maggie glanced around the room. Everything was still a little blurry but things were starting to focus.

She in fact wasn't in her bed at all.

She was in the hospital wing?

She turned to her side to see Sirius standing next to her bed, looking concerned.

"A-are you okay?! You were yelling in your sleep?"

Maggie sat there for a second, confused, why was she here? And why was Sirius here with her?

"W-what's going on?" She questioned panicked.

"Don't you remember?" He replied.

"Remember what?! Why am I here? Why are you here?!!" She said, slightly raising her voice, clearly distressed.

"You hit your head on a rock, passed out. You've been asleep for a few days now".

Suddenly it all came flooding back.

The wolf- it was real, it wasn't a dream!

But if that was real, then that meant-

"No! No! No it wasn't real! It can't have been real?!"She cried. Covering her face with her hands, as if it would block out her harsh reality.

Sirius, assuming she was talking about the werewolf situation immediately began shushing her so as not too draw attention to them.

"Maggie shh! No one can know, okay."

Maggie completely ignored him, her mind was running wild, the thought of marrying Avery was playing around and around in her head.

"I know it seemed like he was trying to kill you but he can't help it, it's only once a month, and you know moony, he would never hurt anyone" Sirius urged.

Maggie turned to him, still completely disregarding everything he was saying. She gripped his forearm tightly, and began to shake.

"S-Sirius, I-I can't d-do it, I can't!! They are going to m-make me but I c-can't" she cried, tears pouring down her face as she shook.

His face was twisted into that of a confused expression, and a simultaneously concerned one. He had thought she was talking about Remus, but now, it was becoming clear that she was on about something completely different, what that was, he didn't no. He wanted to ask, but he couldn't, she was broken, crumbling before him, as if she had had this innocent facade playing for so long, and it had just been shattered right before his eyes.

So instead of asking, he simply held her, as she fell, and cried in his arms.

It was if everything that had happened between them was forgotten. The months and months she had ignored him, the conversations that had broken him were all a thing of the past.

And Sirius was finally realising, that maybe those months of isolation, and those harsh conversations, had broken her too.

Eventually Maggie fell asleep in his arms, so he gently lifted her head from his chest, and lay her back onto her pillow.

He stood up from where he had been comforting her on her bed, and stepped out of the curtain, before glancing back at the sleeping girl. The bruise on her head was now accompanied by a thick and bloody cut.

His mind wondered back to their conversation the night before, and what she had, and hadn't said.

There was something that she hadn't told them, there was a reason that she had ignored them for months. He could tell.

He shut the curtain, and walked over too the other side of the hospital wing, where Remus lay, painted with fresh cuts and slowly wounds, James sitting on a chair beside him, Peter on another.

"H-how is she?" Remus asked, guiltily.

"I'm not sure, but she's awake, that's good." Sirius responded curiously.

"Oh god, I've hurt her havent I!" Remus croaked, his voice hoarse.

"Rem, it wasn't you're fault! You know that you can't control yourself!" James tried to reassure him.

"It's not that." Said Sirius, standing at the end of Remus' bed. "Somethings wrong"

"What do you mean?" Asked Peter.

"I mean, why do you think she ignored us for all of those months?" Sirius pondered.

"I don't know, because she didn't like us?" James stated as if it was obvious.

"No, I mean, don't you think it's strange, one minute she's joking, and laughing with us, and practically by our side 24/7, and then suddenly, just like that, she stops?!" Sirius pushed the thought.

"I guess it was a bit sudden..." James questioned, he too now pondering the thought.

"I think somethings going on, when we were talking last night, I asked her where she got the bruise from, you know, the massive bruise on her face, but she froze up and started getting all panicky, and she wouldn't tell me what it was..." Sirius continued.

"Maybe she got it doing something embarrassing that she didn't want anyone to find out about?" Peter suggested, earning a nod of agreement from James and a weak, feeble agreeing head tilt from Remus.

But Sirius shook his head. His mind flashing with images from his childhood.

He too had born bruises just like it, and they weren't from doing something embarrassing...

It had been the very thing he had fled from, the very reason he had left for James'.

But then he shook his head again.

It couldn't be, because from what Maggie had told them, her home life was lovely, and so were her parents. They wouldn't do something like that, they couldn't.

Unless.

Unless Maggie hadn't told them the truth...