The Years We Were Alive: Year 1

Aunt Flow

March 1, 1972

Classes were becoming tiring. It was just that time of the year. Lizzie thought about how summer would be amazing for her. She still didn't want to leave the realm of magic that she had entered. She was just utterly exhausted. It didn't help that this was her time of the month.

The boys never wanted to hear it, they said it was gross, but when Lizzie tried to talk about it with Lily, she said she hadn't gotten hers yet. So, Lizzie just annoyed the boys with it.

"Hello dear, how can I help you?" Madam Pomfrey smiled as Lizzie walked into the hospital wing. Lizzie promptly threw up in a bin that sat near the front of the room.

"Oh, not again, come here," she led Lizzie to one of the beds in the wing, "how long have you felt like this?"

"Umm, I'm on day three, so five days," Lizzie estimated.

"Oh Merlin, why didn't you come to me earlier?"

"My friends said I was being a girl," she gulped. She tried not to let it bother her that her friends thought she was gross. Or that they always said she was being a girl.

"My dear, you are a girl," she sighed, "here, take this," she handed Lizzie a hot water bottle to put over her abdomen as well as putting a small bucket in her hands, "I'll be right back,"

Lizzie threw up the rest of her breakfast into the bucket. She had told the boys that she was skipping class. She was a strong powerful woman that was tough yet emotionally vulnerable. She couldn't show them that something every girl and woman went through knocked her out so badly.

Lizzie could hear the nurse talking quietly with another student, then two sets of footsteps approaching her bed. When the curtain was pulled open, Lizzie saw that Madam Pomfrey was standing there with Remus next to her.

"Are you feeling alright Liz?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she tried to make her face look as pleasant as possible. Remus wasn't especially cruel, but he went with the boys.

"Will you stop whinging?" Sirius had sighed at Lizzie.

"Sorry," she responded. Dejected. Everything hurt so bad, and she couldn't stop being sick.

"Doesn't like, every girl go through this or something?" James raised an eyebrow at her.

She didn't like to think about that. The boys were always so nice to her, but this was something they wouldn't let up on. For no good reason as far as Lizzie could tell. Well, something she had been trying to tell them about. Sexism. As a girl, her pain was less important. The boys didn't do it on purpose though.

Lizzie liked to see the best in people, so it was hard for her to be mad at the boys. They didn't know better, and it was uncomfortable for them. Maybe it was her fault for making them feel so uncomfortable.

"I want to keep watching you Mr. Lupin," Madam Pomfrey then set down a small cup of a potion and drew the curtains closed again, with Remus inside.

"Were you already in the hospital wing?" Lizzie asked him.

"Yeah, I," he rubbed the back of his head, "I fell down the stairs,"

"Oh, are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine," he smiled at her. Lizzie promptly threw up again and Remus winced, "so it's really that bad?"