NOTHING GIRL || Remus Lupin

-Fifty: Open at the Close-

Linette Bell bit her lip and placed a hand on her stomach subconsciously as she glanced up at the clock. Her kitchen was fairly small, and fairly modern, and fairly clean. It was awash with pastel colours and soothing amber light leaking through laced curtains. It was exactly where you would expect someone like Linette Bell to live.

Lin bit back a laugh. Someone like her: Someone bright and alive, someone who always did the right thing, someone who had an entire future ahead of her, where she would fall in love with a boy-next-door type and live happily ever after, and then die, and everyone at her funeral would smile through actual genuine tears and talk about what a good person she was.

She was perfect, she was the nice girl that everyone wishes they made friends with when they are too old to do anything but become acquainted with hindsight. She was also inherently flawed, and the maker of mistakes, and the kind of person who couldn't face the best friends anyone could have and tell the truth.

The front door bell belted out it's obligatory 'Stayin' Alive' synth cover (her dad's doing), and Lin released a breath that she didn't realise she was holding. She looked at the warped version of herself in one of the saucepans that were hanging above the stove and tried to arrange her expression into some form of normalcy. She struggled to remember what a 'normal' expression looked like on her face.

Clenching and unclenching her hands in anxiety, Lin made her way over to the front door. She would smile, she would laugh, she would put on a damn show and grin her head off, and then this would be over and the problem would still be there.

The door cracked open, and Lin leaned around the edge, grinning at the dark haired girl on her doorstep. "Helia! Hey!"

Helia was looking more relaxed than Lin had ever seen her. She was wearing a faded grey hoodie that Lin didn't recognise as belonging to the Blacksmith girl and a pair of loose jeans. A purple spotted rucksack was strung over one shoulder.

Helia looked her up and down, once, with narrowed eyes, and then said, "How long?"

All Lin's plans of concealing the truth crashed down around her. She looked down at her stomach, where Helia's eyes now rested, and felt a small shiver of... something she had never felt before brush down the back of her neck. She sighed and pulled Helia inside.

"At the party." She admitted, voice low. She kept her eyes trained on the ground.

"Black?" Helia's voice was incredulous, "You're having Sirius Black's baby?"

"Shut up!" Lin glanced nervously around them as if she expected the Marauders to seep out from the beautifully crafted wood furnishings. "And yes."

"Do your parents know? Does Black know?" Helia asked. Lin still wouldn't meet her eyes, "Oh my god, Lin, does anyone know?"

"Yeah," Lin assured her, "There's me, and there's you."

"For fucks sake." Helia rolled her eyes, "Lin, you need to go to a doctor. The kids gonna need things and... and you are gonna need things and- don't you dare give me that look, Linette Bell- this is big. You can't just go all cool-and-casual on me now."

"I'm not going 'cool-and-casual'." Lin protested as she followed Helia through to the living room.

"I'm calling Jade." Helia announced, rummaging through her rucksack on the breakfast table, "And you have to tell Black."

"No. No, I'm not ready." Lin said, the usually comforting walls of her house spinning around her.

Helia was by her side in seconds, hands on Lin's arms to steady her. "Hey, hey. It's going to be alright. We are going to make sure this baby has the best fucking life possible. We'll go through every option."