Where Dark Meets the Light

Weeks Going By

Jay woke up at 7 in the morning. Her eyes were gritty. She'd been crying in her sleep again, like she often did nowadays. The dreams she had of the graveyard had started to mix with the nightmares from killing Quirrell.

With a sigh she got up out of bed. How she had ever functioned on this few hours of sleep was a riddle to her. She got a good 5 hours this night, having woken up not just once from nightmares. It was getting to the point where she was even more tired when waking up as when she went to bed.

Still she sucked it up and moved to the shower.

Severus had been gone for a while, but he'd returned yesterday. It was a relief. While the Malfoys had been taking care of her and helping her to stay out of trouble, they weren't Severus. And while she logically knew that there would be little that he could do to keep her safe, it still felt better when he was there.

She sighed.

Despite the fact that there had been few issues, it was frustrating to be here. She knew she had to bide her time, wait for just the right moment, but she'd been here for 19 days now, and there was still no sign of Nagini anywhere.

Besides that, there had been more and more Death Eaters gathering at the manor. Jay was afraid of what was to come. Voldemort was planning something big.

She got out from under the shower to find that an owl had left the Daily Prophet on her desk. She wondered what the headline this time was. Dumbledore had been trying to get people to believe that Voldemort had returned. His pleas were falling on deaf ears however.

Just like she had thought, the Ministry was infiltrated. The Minister was either dirty or stupid, or perhaps both.

The man was doing everything he could to discredit Dumbledore, and while in any other case Jay would have found it hilarious, it was greatly impacting their chances to win the war. And besides that, Fudge was trying to discredit Dumbledore and Charlie. The man had even gone as far to implicate that they were both insane.

She had to admit, she hadn't thought that Fudge would go that far to get what he wanted.

Though, she supposed, jealousy and greed could do awful things to a person.

The only good thing that had come from it was that Jay knew that Charlie was alive. There had been pictures taken by the press that had shown off the thick white bandage on her brother's wrist.

The press was convinced that Charlie had done this to himself. There had been speculation, but then a reporter had caught an interview with a mind healer who claimed to be treating Charlie. They claimed that Charlie had tried to kill himself, and that he was a danger to himself and others. When she read that, her blood boiled. It was probably a blatant lie. But she knew that people would believe it.

They would rather believe that their precious boy-who-lived had tried to kill himself and had mental problems, than the truth.

It pissed her right off.

She sighed again and shook her head. She got dressed and went down to the dungeons, where Severus would undoubtably be. She kept her head down and avoided any Death Eaters as she went.

"Hey. I heard you were back." She says softly, so as not to startle him.

Severus doesn't immediately look up from the potion. That's okay though, the work was probably delicate. When he turns around, he smiles tightly at her and draws her in for a hug.

From how tightly he holds her, she can tell that he needs it just as much as she does. Neither of them really want to be in the manor, or anywhere near the Dark Lord.