CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
"parting gifts"
Remus was having a dream made up of stacked memories.
Bellatrix is betrothed to Roldolphus, Hollis's scared whisper echoed in his head. Sixteen tends to be the age when our parents match us up to be married. That day by the lake when Remus realized the horrific plan that had been set out for her against her will.
The Rosiers are a very powerful family, Mr. Lupin. I'm afraid that we can't just investigate them without any proof. The four Gryffindors in McGonagall's office after they had seen the injury Hollis had been hiding for months.
Remus turned around in his bed quickly to try and escape the booming voices in his dream, making the sheets rustle violently and waking up James next to him.
I would rather die than let that happen to me, Hollis had told him, as if she had put a lot of thought into the matter. Stay away from our daughter, the threatening letter that both of its targets could never quite get rid of in the back of their minds.
"Remus, wake up!"
His eyes flying open, Lupin's dream ended as he saw Peter, James, and Sirius standing around his bed. His skin was slightly damp from sweat, and his eyes stung. Even though he was now awake, the memories and voices still thundered in his head like a persistent summer storm.
Catching his breath, he reached for the cup of water on top of a stack of books on his wooden bedside table.
"Nightmare?" Peter asked sympathetically, sitting down on the quilted foot of the bed.
Remus wished that it had been a nightmare.
Nightmares were made of events that hadn't really happened, which made the unlucky person experiencing them relieved that it wasn't true when they woke up. This dream, however, was made of entirely real times, times that made the fact that today was the day they were celebrating Hollis's sixteenth birthday become a bad rather than good thing.
"It's nothing, I'm fine," Remus muttered, pulling a black t-shirt over his head.
James and Sirius exchanged an unbelieving glance as they slid on their shoes to head to their corner for breakfast, the previously agreed upon meeting spot on Hollis's birthday morning. She was the last of the Marauders to turn sixteen, and none of them intended for anything to change as they secretly feared it would.
However, intention is much less powerful than fate.
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After nearly an hour of trying to convince Regulus to give them the Slytherin password the following night, Lily and Marlene finally got it out of the reluctant boy.
"Only because it's for Hollis," Regulus had muttered annoyedly as he told them the word to get into the high ceilinged, emerald tinted common room under the lake.
"I can't help it, this place just gives me the creeps," whispered Marlene to Lily as they quietly climbed up the stone stairs towards the fifth year girls dorms. "It's like I was swallowed by a snake."
Rolling her eyes, Lily silently twisted the silver handle and pushed open the black wooden door.
Hollis was fast asleep and facing the door, one arm dangling off the side of her dark green bed and fingertips brushing against the floor.
Lily and Marlene both catapulted themselves onto her bed. Feeling a sudden large amount of pressure on her legs, Rosier woke up from a light, dreamless sleep with a start. She was alarmed at first until she saw the giggling faces of her friends looking back at her, then smiled as well.
From the bed to Hollis's left, Narcissa watched jealously as the three best friends clambered out the door with a fit of quiet laughter, trying not to make anyone else wake up besides Hollis. It didn't seem fair to her that Hollis had somehow manged to end up with the six closest friends that she would kill to have even one of.
Black rolled back over, that sickening feeling coursing through her as the words her mother had told her after Andromeda ran away, trying to convince her that her older sister only left because she wanted what her friends had more than she wanted their family to succeed.
Jealousy provokes people to do terrible things.
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"Did Marlene and Lily kidnap her or something?" James muttered, checking his watch that told him they had been waiting on Hollis for thirty minutes when the two girls had sworn it would take ten at the most.
Right on cue, Hollis ran into the library, breathless and grinning. Remus instantly noticed the new small ring placed on her finger. It was made of dark grey metal, and three small stones were embedded into it.
One was the exact brown of Hollis's eyes, one sky blue, and one light green. With a small smile, Remus realized that each little stone symbolized one of the girls in their insepparable trio.
"Well now that you're finally here," Peter muttered, extending his hand to give Hollis a square package sloppily wrapped in purple paper.
Rosier's grin got wider as she opened the package. "Very funny, Pete."
In Hollis's hand sat a little blue glass marble that she had repeatedly thrown at Peter after stealing it off a gameboard in the Ravenclaw common room on a dare. After it had shattered, all of them were upset, the relic of a prank gone. Somehow, Peter had gathered all the pieces and put them back together for her.
Next, James threw a soft bundle at Hollis aggressively. Catching it easily, her fingers closed around the soft fabric of something. Unfolding what appeared to be a blanket on the library table, she smiled widely at what she saw.
"I told my mum what I thought would be good with a letter, and she sent this back after Sirius and I delivered a few things," James explained as Hollis's eyes roved over the patchwork. "It's from both of use"
Across the handmade quilt, scraps of fabric with similar colors had been pieced together by hand to create a patchwork tapestry of five animals running through a forest of pine trees. A werewolf was leading the way, looking backwards to a black dog with a small tawny colored rat on it's back.
Between those two, a tiny bloodred fox was sprinting, catching air while a large stag took up the back of the group. The blanket was somehow warm and smelled like brownies, giving Hollis an even larger sense of comfort looking at it.
"Mia was a bit confused at the rather specific request," Sirius explained as Hollis practically tackled him and James with a fierce hug. "Woah there, Nyx. Don't suffocate us."
"Thank you two so much," grinned Hollis, wrapping the tapestry around her shoulders.
Finally, Remus extended his arm to give Hollis a small brown paper envelope with a slightly nervous smile. Finger delicately opening up the pink wax seal, Hollis's eyes widened at the tiny charm inside.
It was a full moon made out of pure, metallic steel that shone in the morning light streaming through the windows of the library. There were tiny small dents in it to make it more realistic, and Remus gently took it out of her cut palm and pulled her hand closer to his. With graceful, precise movements, he clipped the little charm onto Hollis's silver bracelet through which they communicated.
The silver moon looked like it completely belonged on the bracelet, as if the two things were made to be bonded.
Like something had been missing when it wasn't there.
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A swarm of owls delivered the post to the students of Hogwarts in a flurry. James and Sirius frowned as they realized that there was not a single package for Hollis from her family.
"Do your parents not get you anything?" Peter asked bluntly, making Remus cringe slightly.
That was something that Mckinnon and Pettigrew had in common, neither had a filter. Her good mood let her just laugh at Peter's rashness. She shook her head.
"I think the last time my mother and father got me something for my birthday was in my second year," she said, taking a large sip of rich chocolate milk. "And it was a bracelet with the Rosier crest that I promptly threw away."
Sirius knew exactly how Hollis felt; every single item with the Black symbol on it he could find was disposed of the instant he discovered it.
James was focusing on an entirely different part of what Hollis said. He had always noticed how she called her parents mother and father, not mum and dad like most kids their age. The titles seemed cold and impersonal, making him and Remus frown on several occasions.
With mothers as kind and warm Hope and Mia and fathers as calm and understanding as Lyall and Fleamont, it was hard for either of them to imagine the distance that Hollis seemed to take care to maintain from her family.
The summer was becoming increasingly impossible to come to terms with.
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