Bloom Again /James Potter/ ❁book 2❁

❁Chapter 1❁

Chapter 1

Scalding.

The scalding hot water burned the flesh of the young girl. Eyes blank staring at the wall ahead, arms hugging bare skin and knees and bumps of pain and pruned fingers from the water still so warm. The hair she had cut herself - no magic at all - fell just above her shoulders darkened with her own hands scrubbing dye into it. Chocolate brown hair dye she had stolen from a shop, eyes blank as the box slipped under her heavy coat, too warm for summer, though she would risk getting caught than having to open her mouth to talk.

Dripping, small droplets of water from the faucet near the bottom of the tub she sat in, cornered into the wall like a lost puppy, a fear she had felt for weeks, for months. Her skin never cleared the touch of a man still felt upon her shoulders, and most nights she wished that the release of death could pull the fingerprints and claw marks from her body.

She never wished to die before.

But now it seemed like a heavenly thought.

She had scrubbed her skin each night, a cry of pain leaving her lips was the only sign of life that she was able to produce noise, though it was a split second of a whimper, a horrid sound so frail and unhappy and foreign on her tongue.

More bodies roamed the halls of their small home, filled up Remus' room and stayed out of her way. No one dared enter the room in which it happened, boarded and taped, she couldn't stand it. She couldn't stand the house and as the nights crept by slowly, she stayed awake. Eyes dropped with exhaustion and sometimes she slept leaning against the messy black-haired boy with glasses who felt sick every time he thought of the rough brutal hands hurting the girl he loved.

He didn't walk on eggshells with her.

He was the only one not to.

He knew she needed routine, to feel something which was why he sat outside of the bathroom leaning against the wall with a blanket and a mug scalding with hot chocolate like clockwork because she needed to feel and the burning on her hands and the aching water on her skin allowed her to feel, and the nipping of a burning tongue allowed her to feel.

He talked and she listened and she took in everything and on the rare days she replied but not much, a sentence maybe, or mostly a word, but she knew why he talked and she knew why his voice was softer than usual.

He soothed her, he didn't mean to and sometimes she hated the thought of relying on someone as much as she did him but his voice was able to drop her eyes and she knew he meant it after he realised what he did and she still allowed it.

The others stayed out of her way and she knew why and she hated the foreign feeling of the silence though she accepted it. Remus wasn't himself and she knew why and it sent her heart to clench in her chest, aching to reach out to him but she just couldn't.

He witnessed her so close to death, blood and wounds and eyes milky and rolled back into her head so far gone, he witnessed the goodbyes she whispered in her last breath and held her and clutched her and cried for her in those aching moments of horror.

He couldn't bear thinking of it.

Sirius kept his distance and yet she saw him everywhere. She read textbooks after textbooks, studied plants after plants and ignored the mountains of letters of sorrows and apologies, ignored the same inked word on brown rough paper all within the same meanings and sadness sprouted from the page.

The paper, front page news that everyone had seen. The name of her written in big letters under the headline and the horror that she was the victim of made it onto the very front page, headlined the news for a week straight and even after, even now;