Night air stole it's way into the Hospital Wing. Helia had managed to avoid sneaking in all day, but the night had always been a time where she let herself feel the things that she couldn't when she was smothered by everyone else's feelings and thoughts, all so much more intense than hers. His bed was at the end, she could see the soft rise and fall of his chest in the moonlight.
She padded gently over the tiles, the book that she had spent all day pretending to read clutched in one hand. There was an empty chair set up next to his bed that she took hesitantly, perching on the edge of the seat as if she expected to jump up at any point. She placed the book in her lap, and folded her hands formally on top of it.
She didn't look at the boy. She wouldn't be able to say the words if she did. But she needed to say them out loud, needed to know that they had been said at least once, even if he couldn't hear her. Even if he would never hear her again.
"I'm scared." she started, "Am I allowed to say that? Am I allowed to be afraid?" She laughed hollowly, "Or maybe I'm supposed to tell you that I'm ready to die, that it's for the greater good and that makes everything okay. It doesn't. I don't want to die. I can feel it inside me like this living, clawing... thing, telling me to stay alive. Just for one more minute. Just for one more day. But that voice can only keep me here for so long. I'm so, so scared. I don't want this to be the end. There are so many things I have left to do.
"You made me realise that. You made me realise that I wanted to live. And I did want to live. But I didn't know until you were there and you were so alive."
She didn't know where the words were coming from, but she couldn't stop. She just let every emotion pour out into the empty air of the room, covering the silence with the sound of her voice.
"I know you have the whole world telling you how I'm an arrogant prick only using you for my own agenda. I know that I am definitely those first two things. I know that there's only me, I know it's just a whisper in your ear trying to convince you that I want to be here. It's so hard to open up to anyone, and to you as well. Like cutting open my own arm, but talking to you has always been like that: terrifying and addicting and likely to kill me someday, but I don't care. I stopped caring some time ago.
"Maybe I don't deserve you, but people get things they don't deserve all the time. And I'm not selfless enough to wish you'd let me go already."
Helia looked up at the ceiling, trying not to let a sob tear at her throat. She stood up, and put her book on the bedside table. Helia gave Remus one last look before she left.
"The stars are coming out tomorrow tonight. They're going to be beautiful. Just... Notice them for me, alright?"
.............
Professor McGonagall arrived back in her office that night, sighing heavily as she wrung her hands. The serious injury that Remus Lupin had suffered today only underlined the serious flaw in security that the Forbidden Forest represented. And the reports that a group of Snatchers were responsible only made her feel less confident in whatever plan it was that Albus Dumbledore had for the children they were supposed to protect.
The last thing she expected from that day was the man with weasely black eyes and wrinkled skin to be tied up, gagged and knocked out in the chair behind her desk. On the desk was an unusually short wand, snapped perfectly in two. Around his neck hung a note on a string with some scrawling handwriting on it. After her initial shock, McGonagall had to squint to read it's awful script:
A present for you. I hope you find some use for it.
P.S. just threaten him a bit. He squeals like a pig.
McGonagall passed a hand over her forehead briefly. No, this was not how she had expected today to go.
......................
Remus blinked his eyes open. He was in the whitewashed world of the hospital wing at Hogwarts, he recognised instantly. He had woken up enough times to the cracked and peeling ceiling to recognise it from most others of the same kind. He sat up slowly, a sudden punch in his side stopping him suddenly. He hissed his pain out between his teeth as he struggled into a sitting position.
"Good morning, Mr Lupin."
Remus turned sharply, sending another spike of agony through him. Professor Dumbledore was seated in the comfortable armchair by his bed, eyes twinkling the way they always seemed to do.
"Professor." Remus scrambled to do... Something. He didn't know. Just something to regain his dignity in front of the wizened old wizard.
"I don't wish to waste either of our time." The headmaster said, "And I am sure that Mr Potter and Mr Black will be most eager to see that you've made a recovery, but there is only one thing that I regretfully must ask you beforehand."
"What.. uh... What is it?" Remus asked, his mind already elsewhere. He was trying to collect his memories of last night so that they formed some kind of cohesive pattern.
"Last night, a man was found in Professor McGonagall's office. A man with this around his neck." The professor handed Remus a slightly creased note. The handwriting was instantly familiar.
A present for you. I hope you find some use for it.
P.S. just threaten him a bit. He squeals like a pig.
Remus felt like banging his head against the wall. Merlin, Helia. What have you got yourself into now?
He sensed Professor Dumbledore's eyes on him. "What can I help you with, sir?"
"I thought maybe you would be able to identify the writer of this message." Dumbledore said.
Remus understood that there was more to be implied from his words than what Dumbledore was saying. "Wouldn't Professor McGonagall be able to do it, sir?" He asked politely.
"It would be inadvisable for Professor McGonagall to make any comment without being absolutely sure, given the reprocussions of kidnapping, binding and implying the torture of another person." Dumbledore said. Remus felt a form of understanding slot into place.
"I couldn't tell you if anyone I knew had written that." He answered firmly.
"I understand, though that is a shame." Professor Dumbledore said, standing. "I wish you a good recovery." Dumbledore paused on his way out, leaning back around the door. "Oh, and on an entirely unrelated note, Miss Blacksmith appears to have disappeared from the Ravenclaw Tower overnight."
The teacher left, and it was only then that Remus noticed the book left on his bedside table. He barely noticed the title, or the author, or the swirling colours of the cover. What he noticed was the scrawling font that he had been staring at only a few seconds before: Property of Helia Blacksmith.
And he tried not to think about what it meant that the book was there. He tried not to imagine the possibilities of Helia caring enough to visit him while he was dying, because that would make him think about yesterday, and the one memory that he could piece together, of Helia's eyes looking down at him: somehow the most brilliant blue you've ever seen while also being dark enough to hide sparks of stars hiding around her iris.
No, Remus wouldn't think about any of that.
Hours later, he was released from the Hospital Wing under strict instructions to return once every day until the end of term, when he would be referred to Saint Mungos.
"Excuse me, Mr Lupin?" Madame Pomfrey's voice called him back. Remus turned around, smile ready. "You forgot your book."
"Oh," Remus felt something shock through him at the sight of Helia's book in the nurse's hands. He could picture Helia's eyes narrowing and her pulling the kind of thoughtful expression that made it seem as if she was making a mental note to punish Madame Pomfrey at her earliest convenience for touching her stuff.
"Mr Lupin?"
Remus realised that he had been staring at the book, and took it from the teacher with an apologetic smile. "Thank you, miss."
He glanced down at the book for the first time as he walked down the corridor. The cover was mainly dominated by two words written in large, friendly red letters: DON'T PANIC!
Remus snorted. The perfect advice in the circumstances, but not the kind that he would expect a book belonging to Helia Blacksmith to give him. He shook his head. For Merlin's sake, Hel Bel. You don't get to run into danger without me trailing behind you.
................
The shack in the middle of the Forbidden Forest would have looked abandoned, rotting wood being held together only by the rust that coated the iron nails, had it not been for the light leaking out from under the door. Helia smiled thinly as she observed it, listening to the sound of men on too much firewhiskey as they yelled and sang out of tune with no regard for subtlety. She supposed they thought that no one would notice, this place being miles from the school. They were right, in a way; it had gone completely under the radar of humans, but the animals who shared territory with the Snatchers were not so easily fooled.
Helia had not seen a single living creature inside of the last kilometre or so, and she had not expected to. Their noise would have made hunting difficult. Drunk, starving Death Eaters in the middle of foreign territory when she had the element of surprise. It was like they weren't even trying.
For a split second, Helia entertained the possibility of living through this.
"To Dean," She dictated out loud in a whisper, a last letter to her brother. "How are you, Big Brother?"
She pushed open the barn doors. Instantly, her brain ran the calculations. There were around twelve people in the space around a naked, open fire. They all wore familiar black cloaks. Their laughter faded as soon as they caught sight of Helia. A few of them, probably the ones who had only had a few glasses to drink, went for their wands, but Helia stopped them with a silent tying spell.
"Everything's normal on this end, I can tell you that." Helia sent one woman sprawling into a stack of barrels with a well-aimed kick to the chest. Because they needed to see that they could be beaten through something other than magic.
"I've just been doing the usual things, you know," She sent a spout of water to extinguish the fire. It didn't leave total darkness, but the Snatchers were left scrabbling around for wands. "Reading," Expelliarmous jinx. "Doing homework," Petrificus Totalus, "Practising drawing again." Stupefy. "I'm still terrible at art without you to help me."
She stomped past the two blubbering idiots who had managed to trip over each other in a rush to get outside, and stopped just short of a killing curse aimed at the wall in front of her. He had to be here. He had to be here somewhere.
"Who's she talking to?" One of the Snatchers yelled fearfully.
"She's insane!" Another responded.
"I'm planning an adventure." Helia kicked aside another barrel, as if Greyback would be hiding behind it. "Like, a real one. I could be like Peter Pan, hey Dean? Or Percy Jackson. One of those."
Helia dodged more curses half heartedly. It seemed the wizards had finally remembered that they were wizards.
"Anyway, dad's doing okay, mum's fantastic as always. I think Jack got himself a girlfriend. He's finally starting to move on." tears caught her throat. "I would say 'I'll see you soon', but wherever you ended up, I don't think the great bouncer in the sky would let me past the pearly gates."
There was a door at the back of the shack, leading to another room. That was the only option left.
"I miss you."
The door slammed open without Helia moving close to it. A familiar, snarling face emerged from it's depths.
"Well what have we here?" Fenrir Greyback's face was twisted into a smirk.
"A really clichéd villain line?" Helia supplied, not moving. She impressed herself with her own ability to speak.
Greyback laughed in a way that sent spiders running down Helia's spine. "Looks like Little Miss Death is all grown up."
He prowled nearer, and Helia felt her muscles instinctively tighten. They circled each other, the rest of the Snatchers pulling themselves up to form the cage to the fighting ring.
"Yeah," Helia agreed, "And she's brought you a birthday present."
Fenrir lunged at Helia but she sidestepped, hurling a confundus at him that he shook off too quickly, being a werewolf.
"How fascinating," Fenrir growled, "You come here to claim revenge for the little werewolf traitor." he spat.
"I don't know if you took the time to get to know Remus while you were trying to murder him," Helia said, sounding way more calm than she felt, "But he's not big on the whole 'revenge' thing."
"Oh, I see." Greyback gave long looks to each of his henchmen. "So this is for darling big brother, is it?"
He lunged again, and this time Helia's wand went spinning out of her hand. She didn't flinch.
"My brother's dead." Helia said simply, "There's nothing I can do for him now. This is for me, because trust me, I am amazing at revenge."
"Enough of the heroics, little girl." One of the Death Eaters snapped. "You're surrounded."
"Oh, I love being surrounded." Helia quoted through gritted teeth, "It means everyone's looking at me."
Helia braced herself, ready for the strike that would end her life, but Greyback was stopped short by the doors to the shack once more slamming open. Tens of lions bounded through the the creaking archway, snarling as they tore Death Eaters to pieces, and occasionally informing the soon-to-be-deceased that they are responsible for all legal persecutions that may come their way in the unlikely event that they survive this encounter.
The Sphinxes were here.
Helia sucked in a breath as a very familiar human-headed beast charged past her and smashed into Greyback.
"For full disclosure on the reasons for your termination," Kyle yelled over the screaming, "Please read the terms and conditions listed on our website."
Helia was so caught up watching the one-sided massacre rage with a kind of morbid curiosity that she didn't even notice the curse that had been flung her way until it was too late.
..........................................
Remus couldn't sleep.
He stared up at the mahogany roof of his four poster bed, trying to lose himself in the way that the lighter streaks plaited themselves around the darker ones running through the material. It had always been his way of overcoming a lack of exhaustion and finding rest, but tonight it wasn't working.
He sat up for what felt like the millionth time that night and reached across his bed for the Marauder's Map that was lying on his bedside table from where he'd stolen it from James earlier that same day.
There was his dot, in the Gryffindor dormitories, with James and Sirius, and there was Jade Wood and Marlene McKinnon somewhere in a sixth floor classroom, and Filch and Mrs Norris walking the circumference of the Astronomy Tower for some reason, and Dumbledore pacing in his office, and some guy named only 'Stride' that Remus had never heard of stood in place outside the Great Hall. There was no Helia Blacksmith.
Except... Wait. There she was. A tiny dot, moving through the edge of the Forbidden Forest, towards the school grounds. There was another for next to hers, keeping pace with Helia easily: Kyle.
No embellishments, no surnames- Sphinxes didn't bother with things like that.
Remus watched in fascination as the dots separated, Helia moving into the castle as Kyle turned back the way he had come. Relief slowly built inside him at the sight of Helia, alive, well, okay, intact, safe- whatever you wanted to call it.
His eyes followed her all the way up to the Astronomy Tower, where the dot paused for a second, and then slid over the page to the wall. A shot of fear pulsed through him.
She had a particular penchant for the imperious curse, as I understand it. People were reported leaping off buildings all over London.
He was out of bed and running down the hall as soon as he could pull his mind back together.