Soul of Ice

5. Everybody Knows

Thanks to her fight with Malfoy, Abbie found herself stuck in the hospital wing for another week and a half before she was let out. She then had the pleasure of putting up with Malfoy through a week's detention. Fortunately, she was able to get through it without allowing him to aggravate her again, although he tried his hardest. She fully expected Snape to stick to his word that he wouldn't help her improve her spellcasting if she found herself in trouble again, and she knew she needed to be better if she ever found Malfoy's face irresistibly punchable again.

She therefore kept her head down for the rest of the school year, focusing on improving her mental health. Her notebook was becoming full with music half-written and abandoned as she tried to purge her feelings into it.

True to her word, Persephone was writing more, and Abbie found herself looking forward to brewing Lupin's potion with Snape on a monthly basis. After being stuck there for so long, she wasn't particularly fond of the hospital wing anymore, and so she found herself with more free time. This led to her spending more time in the common room and, as the weather improved, the courtyard.

Her fight with Malfoy seemed to have curried her some favour with Harry and Ron, and where previously she had felt she was more of an acquaintance by the circumstance of sleeping a bed over from Hermione, she began to feel more like they were friends. It hadn't passed her notice either that Neville had shown her genuine concern while in the hospital wing; he and Hermione had been the only people to visit her other than Snape, which had caused a slightly awkward moment when Neville had arrived to visit her just as Snape was leaving, although fortunately Neville hadn't pressed the subject of why Snape was visiting her in the hospital wing.

By the time the end-of-year exams approached, Abbie was feeling considerably less weighted down. She still had her bad days, but they were less and less frequent, and the days she felt she couldn't get out of bed, she was grateful for Hermione being so close and alert to encourage her to get up.

After completing her Muggle Studies exam in the great hall, feeling cautiously optimistic about how she'd fared, Abbie was just crossing the entrance hall to ascend the grand staircase when she crossed paths with Snape, who was holding a familiar foul-smelling goblet in his hands.

"Ah, Miss Payne," he said, addressing her formally as he did when other students were around. "Take this to Professor Lupin for me. He hasn't taken it tonight and we don't want him feeling... ill ."

Running around the castle in wolf form, more like.

"Of course, sir," she said as she took the goblet from him and headed towards Lupin's office.

She knocked on arrival, but there was no answer. She pushed the door to. "Professor Lupin?" She called out. "I have your potion."

The door opened fully to reveal an empty office. Abbie placed the goblet on the desk, wondering where he might be, when she spotted a piece of parchment open on the desk. Not just any parchment - it was that map Harry had of the castle, open on the grounds. She looked at it with curiosity, then did a double-take when she saw the names running around.

Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, someone called Peter Pettigrew and... Sirius Black?!

Abbie grabbed the map and darted out of the office, back down the stairs to the dungeons and burst into Snape's office without knocking.

"Abigail!" Snape exclaimed, standing up from his desk. "What is the meaning of this rumpus?"

"Sirius... Black..." She panted, holding up the map. Snape snatched it from her hands and looked at the page that was still open.

"Stay here," he commanded her, tossing the map aside and charging past her.

"Fat bloody chance," she muttered, following after him. He was already way ahead of her, and by the time she'd reached the spot on the map they'd seen Black's name, he was nowhere to be seen. She looked around, wondering where they could have gone, when she realised the whomping willow was frozen still. She approached it warily, and noticed upon reaching the trunk that there was an opening at the base. Had they gone inside the tree? It was either that or the forest, she reasoned, and the tree was the only thing out of the ordinary.