Forsaken

𝜊𝑛𝑒

Rowan Emmens had been lying awake for hours.

A blank ceiling of chipping white paint hung above her, yellowing and curling off the wall in spots of damp. Occasionally flakes peeled off, floating down to where she lay and peppering the room in small piles of dust, sometimes settling on her warm skin. Her breaths felt loud in the thick dusty air of the room, as if more dirt than oxygen was reaching her lungs.

After just a few hours of sleep, a car alarm had blared her awake, the thin walls around her providing little resistance to the street noise outside. All throughout the night cars came and went without fail, the grinding of their wheels on the tarmac, the hearty growl of their engines. Whether it was that or the steady breathing of the other people sleeping around her, for all the hours she had been awake it had never once gone quiet.

She had shuffled between the springs in her thinning mattress, finding a somewhat comfortable gap between her and the floor, a scraggly blanket screwed up in a ball and long forgotten at the bottom. It wasn't ideal but she had fallen asleep all the same. Only now she was wide awake.

A slight glow beginning to show through the single bare window in the room gave her an idea of the time. Maybe seven, eight o'clock. It being October, she knew that was when it usually started to get light. Not that she had any chance of falling back to sleep.

With one last deep intake of breath, she pushed herself up from the mattress, one of many on the floor of the room. She slipped her feet into her boots, pulling the laces tight against her skin before grabbing her bag. The leather had worn and softened with age yet still seemed to rub against the same spots of her feet, working against the bare skin as she walked.

Her jacket slipped far down over her hands as she slid it onto her arms, to be fair it wasn't hers. She stepped over unoccupied mattresses and stray bags on her way to the door. Now that it was lighter she could that only four other people had been occupying the hostel that night. Explaining why, much to her relief, the mattresses either side of her had been empty.

It was a long hallway connecting to the washroom and by the time she had covered it the warmth of sleep had entirely skulked away from her body, letting her skin prickle slightly with the unheated air. She dropped her bag down beside the sink before looking up into the clouding mirror screwed into the wall above it.

An image of herself stared back at her, her face smudged both by the misting glass and the days old makeup worked into her skin. Her eyeliner had become more of a brown tinge around her eyes, more so resembling the fading bruise which rested just below it on her left cheekbone. She took in how it had turned yellow and spotty around the edges with time, not nearly as purple as it had first been.

The tap twisted on with a creak and she let the water run for a few moments, just watching it drizzle down the drain, before she rolled up her sleeves and splashed some on her neck and arms. It felt cool against her skin, dribbling down her wrists and collecting dust from the room as it went.

Winter was quickly approaching, the chill was a sure sign of that and she probably would have preferred warm water, but seeing as there was only one faucet she wasn't going to complain. She didn't really mind. Cold water made her feel clean in a way the warm stuff just didn't.

She shook her arms dry, using the fabric of her jacket to collect any remaining water droplets on her skin as she pulled her sleeves back down.

Pulling it out of her pocket, she checked her phone. The small screen at the top was cracked and at least three buttons were missing from the keypad but again, it wasn't hers.

8:14 am

She hadn't been far off.

She shoved the phone into her bag this time, taking one last look in the mirror before grabbing her things and heading for the door.

A second hallway took her to what one would perhaps consider the lobby of the place, if you could even call it that. The room consisted of a desk of sorts, where someone sat all throughout the night, and a single plastic chair in the corner with what appeared to be the remnants of a dying plant potted beside it. And the walls were in about the same condition as those in the dorm.

She reached into her jacket pocket, her fingers sliding past some stray notes, a couple of loose cigarettes and onto some coins. Pulling out a handful she dumped them into a pot on the front counter and a beefy man sat behind it grunted in recognition.

A small bell rang above her head as she pushed out of the front door and onto the dim street. As the cold air hit her, she shivered slightly in the thin fabric of her jacket, her skin still cold from the water, and wished she had pulled another layer on from her bag.

◢✥◣

Remus Lupin had been lying awake for hours.

The full moon had passed only three days ago meaning getting comfortable enough to sleep was still a struggle. The mattress felt cold and hard beneath his aching bones and no matter which way he lay, the pillows seemed to do nothing for his pounding head.

He tried for another twenty minutes before giving up completely and pushing himself up with a groan.

Life hadn't been the best as of recent. Last year had been an undeniable peak in his life, seeing Harry after all those years and finally being reunited with Sirius, though that was a whole other complication in itself. But now, well now he had been exposed for what he was to the entire wizarding world.

And that was how he got to where he was right now. Unemployed, exhausted and with an escaped convict sleeping in his spare bedroom.

His eyes drifted to the clock on his bedside table.

8:14 am

Getting back to sleep was long out of the question. Sirius wouldn't be up for a while.

Carefully swinging his legs round to the edge of the bed, his feet hit the wooden floor and with much effort he pushed himself to a standing position. With every shuffle and movement his bed had creaked beneath his body, the wood splintering in several places from sheer age.

The creaking moved from his bed to the floorboards as he walked across the room, rubbing a knot in his lower back as he went. His hand occasionally found itself against the peeling wallpaper to support his weight as he made his way through the hallway and eventually, with slow and careful movements, down the stairs. With every step, every reach another muscle strained to hold him up.

Normally his body would have been cold, heating wasn't a luxury the cottage held, however the lingering fever his body held from the moon temporarily solved that issue. Even in short sleeves he found himself sweating.

But even the stickiness of his skin didn't stop him from filling the kettle with limey tap water or flicking it on and watching as the water boiled and escaped from the top in billows of steam.

Along with a teabag, he poured the water into a mug, yellow and chipping at the edges, stirring it aimlessly with a teaspoon. The way the metal scraped and clinked against the edge of the ceramic going straight to his hypersensitive ears.

Lowering himself down into one of two unmatched chairs in the kitchen, he took a deep gulp of tea, sighing as he felt it travel through his body in a warm stream.

He placed his mug down on the wooden surface only to pick up a newspaper and unfold it in his scarred hands. He turned to the first page. It wasn't a new paper and most definitely wasn't today's. In fact the date of it was unclear as the front page had been lost somehow, but it didn't matter much to him, some of the articles were worth a second read anyway.

He took another sip of his tea before turning the page, it all being just as he had done it every day for the last four months.

Little did he know how much everything was soon going to change, beginning with a knock on his front door in little over three days time.

A/n: short first chapter but I just wanted to establish the characters, what do you think so far?