Thicker than Water (Marauders Era)

10 June, 1978 - Spiral

***

Lavinia spent the next week or so in a state of mind that was as close to normal as thought she'd been in the past 3 years. For the first time she had a goal to work towards. She had friends and a plan and Remus had agreed that she could take the spare room in his and Sirius's house and everything was going to work out. She just had to get the right grades.

Sirius had stopped being awkward and distant, though there were still moments when she caught him staring and it made her wonder, though she supposed at this point, she wasn't entirely sure why she did. She could have been wrong, she knew that, but she didn't think she was. It hadn't been just a weird sibling relationship getting in the way of a friendship that had caused Sirius to act strangely. Just like it hadn't been a normal silence that had stretched between them that night in the bell towers. It had been more.

But he didn't say anything and she didn't ask. She didn't want to know. She didn't want to ruin what they had because what they had was good and, in her opinion, not worth the risk. Besides which, she didn't want that. She didn't want anything complicated or new or different right now. And she wasn't ready to move on. She had settled on friendship with Regulus, but some part of her still wondered if she had made that call out of necessity rather than because that was what she actually felt and she had to keep reminding herself that it didn't matter.

And then there was the issue of her actual feelings for Sirius, regardless of whether she wanted to start anything knew. Unfortunately for her, those feelings were just as muddled and confusing as the ones she had for Regulus. So she didn't deal with them. She didn't want to. She wanted to hold on to the simplicity of what they had, a friendship that was secure and constant and strong. A friendship that had held her up more times than she was willing to admit.

So for one lovely week, everything was good and normal.

Predictably, it didn't last.

The week before exams dawned with levels of stress Lavinia wasn't sure she'd ever experienced before. In previous years, her anxiety over her grades had stemmed from the fear of her mother's retribution and while that was now lifted, she was somehow more stressed than ever. In part, she suspected it was because, though she logically knew her mother couldn't touch her, the old fears refused to completely vanish. But it was also because this time, she wanted it. She wasn't fighting for something someone else had demanded, she was fighting for something she demanded of herself. And failure was not at all an option because somehow, she feared her own disappointment more than she feared her mother's wrath. She knew the consequences of her self hatred. She had them permanently marked on her skin. And that scared her more than anything her mother had ever done.

In her head, of course, it made sense. If she failed her exams, her acceptance to the healer program would be rescinded and her life would be over. James thought this logic was bullshit and told her as much when she mentioned it one night. She had ignored him. And then ignored the increasingly worried looks and inquiries he and the other Marauders sent her way.

If she was honest, she knew she was getting obsessive. She'd done the same with OWLs in her fifth year. But she also didn't care so long as she came out on the other side with the marks she needed. She knew that along the way, she was crossing some lines she probably shouldn't have and knew that by the end of the two weeks of exams, she would face the consequences, but in the moment, nothing seemed to register except that she needed to be perfect.

It was like the approach of exams had triggered a relapse and she had fallen back into the girl she had always been, terrified of her mother's retribution, of her own head, grade obsessed and determined to be the best because anything less was tantamount to failure.