Alice Longbottom ii and James Potter ii

By My Side

"Rose are you sure about this?" James asked.

"James, I'm sure and I know you know this is what we need to do too," she says sympathetically.

"We follow those before us. I am the experienced. Rose I need to guide us from here," Scorpius chimes in. 

"Scorpius do you even know what really happened here?"

"Of course I do Rose, my father is Draco."

I've never heard this tone come out of Scorpius, especially not towards Rose. What fear can do to one is mad. 

Rose is taken aback, "Oh-kay. Then lead the way."

Scorpius takes the lead and James doesn't look happy to let someone else take control, but he doesn't protest. 

We walk in silence for a long while and I glance back at James once in a while to make sure he's doing well. He offered to take up the rear of the group just in case. I think it is so no one sees that he's in pain. 

We walk for a few hours until we get to a clearing in the woods. 

"Here looks like a good place to rest for a little while, don't you think?" I recommend.

My feet are sore and my shoulders are tired from carrying my bag. 

"We should really keep going," Rose says.

"Rose, we need to rest or if danger comes we'll be to weak to fight."

"We have deadline."

"Rose we can use an hour or two of rest," I say as calmly as possible.

"Fine, but I'll time it."

I nod to agree, "Thank you."

Rose gave me her bag to get some blankets out of it. She goes over and puts a shield charm around us to guard us from anything. I remember her talking about how long it took her to learn how to do this charm correctly but her mom taught her and they didn't give up on it. She was so excited when she got it. It is interesting to see her power work as the shield covers over us.

I lay out two blankets for Scorpius and Rose and bring mine and Jamie's over to where he's sitting. I sit by him and hand him the blanket and some packaged food.

"Thank you, Al," he says and takes them from me.

"How are you feeling?" I ask.

"Fine."

"Can-can I see it?"

"I think it's better if you don't."

"Jamie, please."

"Okay," he says and takes off his jacket.

I examine it and it really doesn't look good, "James-"

"Alice, we can't have anymore setbacks. You heard Rose we have a deadline," he doesn't say Alice unless he's being extremely serious or trying to mess with me.

"Okay, then.." I start. "Let me take care of you then."

He doesn't say no, so I take off the old bandages and rummage through my bag and get new wraps. I put some anti-infection plant medicine on his wound that my dad gave me. I quickly re-bandage it so that it doesn't start to bleed.

Rose comes over and tells us that Scorpius and her have the first watch for an hour and they'll switch for another hour. I nod and get under the blanket. I'm always cold and I find it surprising that I could be even more cold than normal. 

I hadn't noticed that Jamie was laying right by me but it makes me feel better and less nervous about the future knowing that he's by my side.