CHAPTER 14 (part two)
LONDON
They were only met with Sirius' response of turning around, throwing his hands up and exclaiming, "To find whoever is playing this great music!"
At the end of the park, within a gravel plot where cars were supposed to fill, only one was parked in front of the streetlight. A dark green bug, with a guy who seemed a few years above them, looking perpetually sad. Not a sad that told others he was, just that his face looked forever set in melancholy disdain. He was sat in the driver's seat with his legs out of the car. Another man, blonde, more boyish and younger, had a cocky look, was leaning on the open car door. Both had cigarettes perched on their lips. A girl was in the street closer to the brick building behind them was dancing to Killer Queen that was blasting through the little car.
The girl was beautiful, her full lips decorated with bright red lipstick and her head covered with a thick red scarf. She was tall, probably could tower over Sirius.
She continued moving her body as she spotted Ana who approached with the four boys rather than the staggering behind the group. "Bonjour! Venir. You."
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She beckoned over Ana, pointing at her and making pulling motions with her hands. Ana bounced over to the french women, letting her take her hands and join the dancing.
Sirius had greeted the smokers with a compliment to their music, receiving nods in return. The music players offered cigarettes to which only Sirus excepted, and meaningless conversation about Queen's discography started mostly with the Blonde, Sirius, and occasional opinions from James while Peter opted to go back to the group of girls and the honorary boyfriend.
The girls and Frank sat on the slope of a small hill at the end of the park, choosing to indulge in the music and the pretty girls dancing from a far. Marlene, Peter, and Lily especially were similar in that they liked their dotty buoyancy with the comfort of friends and not the unpredictable thrill of strangers.
The existence of Ana and Sirius was feeling a high whenever they were around friends. Born into a liability of an extrovert, only to bury itself in the yard outside the moment they were unattended. And when alone, without those friends, never feeling want to speak to others.
Remus stood silently, his only greeting being two nods of his head. He choose to observe, listening in on the not so riveting conversation and watching Ana dance, jumping around and moving her arms erratically with the tall french women.
"Pretty things huh?" The sad faced man spoke to Remus a thick Italian accent came out. Remus wondered how the three met. He turned his head to the man away from the dancer, but not answering the question, only stiffening his shoulders. All the boys turned to the voice of Ana speaking loudly over the booming music.
"I love this song!" She said, continuing to dance. The tall women yelled something back in French, though it was inaudible.
"What?" Ana yelled while being twirled around by the girl.
"She's french, doesn't speak much English." The blonde yelled at Anastasia. She stopped dancing for a second, peeved to be interrupted by a man, but continued on.
"That's Jean. She's all interior, doesn't really speak all that much." The Blonde said to the boys who were watching the dancers now.
"She's our flatmate. Got pretty lucky. She's French, so she walks around in her knickers all day." He brought up her nationality like it correlated to her frisky at home attire.
"Guido here's in love with her." He patted the sad faced mans shoulder. None of the marauders said anything, so he continued on, dropping his cigarette to the gravel and twisting his foot over it.
"Want some cognac?" The blonde pulled out a plain silver flask, taking a swing before offering it out, almost testingly. He noticed their looks of confusion.
The three were sixteen or fifteen, most only exposed to wizarding culture besides Remus, who has isolated from both. They didn't know some muggle type of brandy. The most they knew of brandy was the Dragon Barrel kind. The only type of alcohol they had seen was their mother's nettle, elf-made wine or their father's paulopabita's fishy ale. At parties the most they could smuggle in was firewhiskey, chocolate liquer, and berry ocky rot.
"Say, where are you lot from?" He pulled back his flask, squinting his eyes, now taking in most of their attire that looked dated, not fitting into the modern city.
"We're visiting from South Devon." James said, making knowing eye contact with Sirius.
"Brit from South Devon know what cognac is." The blonde challenged back.
"Unless there's some cult in South Devon, I don't know about." He put emphasis on the town's name.
"We go to a private school in Scotland." Sirius tried an excuse to defuse the guy's growing judgment.
"Oh... you're some private school posh." He was picking a fight and everyone could see it.
"And what the fuck is his problem?" He pointed up to the looming Remus, who hadn't spoken once. Remus without a book in hand, and the costume of a school uniform, only an imminent figure at night, looked like a gruff bully who would grow to be an intimating bouncer.
"I mean god did you fucking do that to yourself?" He challenged Remus, taking the subject of the scars. "It looks fucking sickening."
The song had changed seconds before to the more quiet B-A-B-Y. Quite enough for Ana to hear the blonde and come storming over.
"Hey, watch your fucking mouth." She cut through Remus, pushing the blonde back into the car, hard. The group in the hill stood up, now confused as to the sudden violent nature of the stranger's interactions.
Once Lily had seen Anastasia get mad, she immediately went to defend her friend, only to be held back by Marlene and Mary.
"Woah handsy lass." He gasped, letting out a confident chuckled. "Oh my gosh, did you do that to her, too?" He looked up at Remus.
Ana never felt insecure about the scars on her body. Parts of her wished she did, so that humility would cover up all the sadness that came with them. They were more so reminders of what she had lost, what she had felt. And now that the scars were so faint, only the deepest ones had white markings across her fair skin. She felt guilt that she would heal and when she was old, they would be unrecognizable. Barely there, only people who had seen her young and herself would know she had them, while her parent would be forever scared with theirs. The fading felt a reminder of what she was forgetting.
When she heard the asshole of a muggle accuse Remus of inflicting them on her. To compare the boy she admired to some disgusting murder left her in a blinding rage.
The Welsh boy took his hands around Ana's waist, picking her up to pull her away from the instigator. Anastasia looked like a cat mad to be held by their owner, trying to claw her way back to their toy, or in this case, the asshole of a British man. Remus turned around, walking with Ana still in his arms and her back pressed against the camera, until he reached the cobble path. Setting her down and telling her to keep walking, how everyone would catch up in a second.
"Hey-" James butted in before getting interrupted.
"No, I want to know what you fucking gag of freaks are doing in this city." He yelled, stone faced. It was obvious he wanted someone to fight him, as some power play to show he was unpredictable. He was above them. Either way, Sirius didn't care if this would give him what he wanted. He sent a proper undercut to the blonde's nose. A sickly crack and unmanly groans came out.
"Lets go." They walked fast paced back to the nearest floo system, letting the now broken noised guy scream whatever slur or insult he could come up with for the group. He tried to get them to come back yelling about beating up Sirius, and saying they were too scared to fight him, but they continued on Remus and Ana right next to one another.
Once they had made it back to the Potters residence in the company of the coffee nook, Remus sat in the bay window looking more dejected than usual, staring out the fogged glass with his hot chocolate in hand.
Ana approached Remus, sitting down across from him in the bay window now in the wearing her cotton pajamas covered in dainty lavender flowers. "Hi."
"Hi" Remus whispered back, looking interested at the #1 Dad mug in his hand.
Anastasia looked around, thinking about how to start a conversation. "That guy was a real pidin tarw?"
Remus looked up in surprise at the girl's broken Welsh.
"That's what they call fuckers in Welsh, right?" Ana asked, hopeful she didn't just butcher his language.
He laughed, deciding to not to correct her and inform she called the guy a huge bull penis, though he wasn't certain she would be miffed to call him that either. "Yeah sure."
They fell into awkward silence, not knowing how to approach the conversation.
"I don't know how you get your scars and I'm not gonna ask cause I wouldn't want anyone to ask bout mine." Ana rushed out. "But I would totally commit like 50 unforgivables to whatever gave you them." She smiled, trying to lighten the tension left from the night's altercation.
Remus looked down, trying to hide his smile. He was already feeling a slight high from seeing her protect him earlier in the night; he knew he probably shouldn't have been weirdly prideful looking back at the memory of course it still came with the anger of the words but they came from a stranger he would never see again the only thing that caused him anger was an accusation that he had any play into how Ana got her scars. In all reason, Remus knew he shouldn't be internally giggling at his crush, technically saying she wanted to commit the worst forms of dark magic on him. "Pfft no you wouldn't."
"Yes, I would! I would live the rest of my life in Azkaban, really." Ana bit back playfully, seeing his crooked smirk.
"I'd do hundred." Remus said.
"What?" Ana asked, not getting his joke.
"I mean like a hundred unforgivables." Remus explained, straightening his hunched over posture, and adding. "And Azkaban too."
Authors Note:
I hope everyone saw me do a Lorde and Hozier reference in one sentence.
It came to my attention you can't comment on the last chapter. I think it's because I finally invested in novel pad to start writing this story. Omfg I love it but before publishing I will just have to copy the story onto docs to make sure formatting isn't jacked. I love this also newsflash this was the last holiday chapter. I had originally wanted to do a new years chapter but brain empty and I think it would be fun to have a good New Years chapter their sixth year.
I am actually so excited for the story to progress more I am really a prancing kinda writer. I love planning but it tends to burn me out so I don't but after how much fun I had planning and researching the ending for this story. I am gonna try to do some more.
I just want to make sure this story still feels like it has a plot. And the first conflict of the story will be like like shown shown and not just known to the readers in a chapter not to far away from this one!
Oh I have surgery on Friday:( so I don't know how long it'll take for me to get better but hopefully the next chapter will be out before Monday.
Date Posted: May 24th