NEPENTHE ⟶ James Potter

Chapter Forty-Two

Sirius came inside, leaving Renata confused by the scene as he collected Harry out of his room and the two made their way outside. Even Harry looked extremely puzzled, but all was forgotten as soon as his little feet hit the grass and he started racing around. To keep his distracted, Sirius took his dog form and started chasing him, leaving Renata and James to talk in private.

"Mr Potter?" she called to him in a questioning tone as he had yet to answer her question. He held out his hand, inviting her to make their way to the front of the flat to sit down and talk. She looked uneasy, but there was no hesitation on her behalf as she took his hand and allowed him to lead the way out front.

As soon as they were seated, James turned to her to speak. "You don't make me nervous, Renata, but I think something is going on with you and that makes me nervous because I don't want you getting hurt."

"My blood phobia has never really been this bad before," she whispered to him, " at least, not to my recollection. I haven't had it really come up many times. But I've never had an episode like that before. And a night terror? No one has ever brought up me having one, so I don't know what's going on."

"Your brother said that it could have been triggered by amounts of stress," James told her, " have you been feeling really stressed out about something as of recently?"

Immediately, Renata's body became rigid, especially as James grabbed her hands in his. It was a sweet gesture to give her hand a comforting squeeze, but it reminded her instantly when she felt the cold metal press against her hand.  She didn't want to think that his wedding ring had been causing her that much stress that it would cause such a reaction.

Pressing her lips together, she refused to say such a thing, believing that it would ruin everything that had developed between her and James. What would he think if she told him that his wedding ring was causing her to be uncomfortable? Would he think that she was just being silly or would that make him uncomfortable? Obviously, she wasn't going to tell him to take the ring off but James was probably going to question it and just thinking about all of it was leaving her to hold her breath.

"Ren?"

Peering over at him, Renata let out a small sigh before placing a hand over her face. " I really rather not talk about it, I don't think it has anything to do with what took place. Were we really just talking about Parma when it all happened? I don't know why-"

"No," James said with a shake of his head, " we were talking about other things besides Parma and food. If I'm being honest, we were talking about careers and I was questioning why you wanted to be an Auror. You got really defensive about it and then the plate broke. You were upset and you tried to clean it up with your hands, rather than your wand and you cut your finger."

She held her hands up, looking over as there was no evidence that there had been any sort of cut but she knew it had happened.

"You were talking in Italian, saying all these things and when I tried to comfort you, you made these motions like I was to get away from you. Then you said your brother's name, so I really didn't know what was going on. Adelmo didn't want me to say anything to you, he wanted to talk to you about it tomorrow, but I figured you had the right to know. You could sense something was up anyway, right?"

Placing her hands down in her lap, Renata nodded her head before looking over at James again. "I don't know what happened, but really, if something like that is going to happen, maybe I should leave, Mr Potter. I wouldn't want to present you with any of my troubles and if I'm finding myself troubled by something as simple as your..."

James heard her voice trail off as she stopped herself from delving into what was bothering her. He was about to ask her what it was, especially if she figured it was something simple and it had to do with him that bothered her. If it was considered something simple, then that meant he could fix it and that would help the situation. However, as her words trailed, all James had to do was follow where her gaze settled for a few seconds. Where his hand rested on her leg, there was a gleam of his wedding ring that caught the light outside.