lovesick || r. lupin

¹⁹informal invite

A week passed after the six teen's detention and though most of the group had seemingly recovered from what they saw in the mirror, Ayla still felt pain from the idea that she could not obtain what it had shown. It tormented her in her dreams; Ayla walking in for summer break, alone and without Avi, while her mother tortured Grace. In the nightmare, her mum would yell nasty slurs, cast horrible hexes, and use all three of the unforgivable curses on her best friend. The thought of her mother doing this would cause Ayla to wake up, panting and weeping, trying to hold back the sickness that would climb up her throat. Tegan would have to calm her down quietly, attempting to not wake the other three girls in their dormitory.

Another person who hadn't fully healed from the mirror was Grace, herself.

Grace never admitted it, but Ayla could easily tell by how she was acting. Grace avoided any proximity near Sirius Black, which meant no bickering between the two like there usually was. It was a bit eerie seeing Grace completely ignore the boy and not butt into the group's conversations so she could get the chance to poke fun at him. The four boy's noticed this as well, which had led to a very sickly looking Remus Lupin ironically asking Ayla if Grace was under the weather during Transfiguration, worried she may need to go to the hospital wing.

To get their minds off the images they saw in the mirror, the two girl's decided to take in the last bit of air before it got too unforgivably cold to be outside for a long period of time. They grabbed their sweaters and school bags and set out under a tree beside the Great Lake, prepared to catch up with all the homework they were given that week.

"Ruddy stupid we have write about what the Cruciatus Curse is. The teachers already know and I'm almost positive all the kids know too, saying that we hear about it in The Daily Prophet every day. 'Blah blah blah found brain dead from the Cruciatus Curse!', 'Cruciatus Curse causes ten to go insane!', it's all old news, everyone knows what it is," Grace complained as she messily wrote out her essay on her parchment. "And The Prophet always acts as if it's not some blood purist. It's obvious! All the victims are muggle-born's or people who associate with them. Ridiculous! The government is so corrupt!"

Ayla was only half listening as she concentrated on practicing her non-verbal spells but subconsciously nodded to show she agreed with what Grace had said. After another failed attempt, Ayla frustratedly turned to Grace, "Can we take a break? I'm about to lose it if I mess up one more time on a stupid non-verbal spell."

Grace chuckled, "I'm glad you asked, I'm two seconds from ripping this essay in half."

The girl's shoved their work aside and laid in the sun for a bit; cracking jokes, complaining about the amount of school work they had, and doing embarrassingly bad impressions of their professors (which had Ayla feeling horribly guilty after doing an impression of Slughorn saying that he was fat). After a while, the conversation somehow had made it's way to the topic of the mirror from their detention a week prior.

Ayla anxiously bit the inside of her cheek as she pulled at the grass underneath her before she asked Grace the question that had been on her mind since that night. "Grace..." Ayla mumbled, "May I ask what you saw in the mirror? You've just been acting... a bit funny around Sirius since and-"

"It had nothing to do with Black if that's what you're implying," Grace answered stiffly, not meeting Ayla's eye and shuffling around in her bag so she could act nonchalant.

"You know you can tell me anything, right? You know I wont judge you?"

"I know you wont judge me, you're the bloody nicest person on this earth... But... I'll judge myself if I do tell you those things. It's real when you tell someone something personal that you can't even admit to yourself."