cigarette daydream || james potter

"Nearly brought me to my knees,"

The grueling, suffocating weight of the Christmas holidays had finally drawn to a close, and the day to return to Hogwarts arrived like a quiet mercy. The atmosphere in the small Yorkshire cottage had remained frozen in a tense, speaking silence since the night in the garden, a fragile glass facade that everyone was terrified of breaking. When the time came to leave for the station, Estella hadn't even looked her parents in the eye. There had been no tight hugs from her mother, no clipped words of caution from her father. She had simply gathered her things and walked out. She hadn't spoken a single syllable to Lyall since the moment he had splintered her broom into kindling on the damp lawn, leaving the house with a hollow ache in her chest that felt entirely unresolved.

Even Remus had been kept at a distance. When he had cornered her in the corridor the morning after the incident, his eyes scanning the blooming violet marks on her arms and the jagged scab cutting across her face, she had forced a brittle laugh. She spun a frantic lie, claiming she had tripped blindly over Oliver in the dark and landed flat on the hardwood floor. Remus had lingered, his amber eyes searching hers for a long, agonizing moment, but under the weight of her stubborn stare, he had simply nodded and let it drop, choosing to accept the story rather than force open a wound she was desperate to hide.

Now, the scarlet steam engine of the Hogwarts Express idled on the tracks of King's Cross, belching columns of thick, acrid white smoke into the glass-roofed station. Estella hauled herself up the iron steps and dragged her heavy, battered suitcase down the narrow corridor, the wheels catching on the frayed carpet. The train was a chaotic labyrinth of shouting students, but the air in the aisle turned instantly frigid when she realized she had to pass a specific, loitering group. Leaning against the wooden paneling of a large compartment were Lucius Malfoy, Severus Snape, and Regulus Black.

"Look at Looney Lupin," Lucius drawled, a cruel, aristocratic smirk curling his lips as he pointed a pale finger toward her. "Look at all those bruises. Quite a collection."

The passing remarks drew the immediate attention of the others, their eyes locking onto the dark scabs and mottled purple marks that she hadn't bothered to hide beneath her robes. Snape stepped forward, his dark, greasy hair falling forward as he sneered down at her, his voice dripping with venomous satisfaction. "Probably her own family doing the honors," he hissed, his black eyes glinting. "Since it's quite clear no one else could ever love a freak like her."

Something inside Estella snapped. The weeks of suppressed terror, the memory of the kitchen floor, the shattered wood of her broom, and the suffocating silence of her home all coalesced into a single, blinding flash of pure fury. She didn't reach for her wand. Instead, she bit her bottom lip so hard it nearly bled, clenched her right fist until her knuckles turned white, and threw her entire body weight behind her arm. She swung hard, planting her fist square in the center of Snape's face. Her knuckles connected with his rather large, hooked nose with a loud, sickening *smack*.

Snape staggered backward, his hands flying to his face as a dark stream of crimson immediately began to ooze between his fingers. A sharp, shocked gasp echoed through the corridor, but it was quickly followed by a loud, high-pitched laugh from Narcissa, who had just stepped out of a nearby compartment, while Lucius merely raised an eyebrow in amused surprise. Estella didn't wait around to witness the fallout. With her heart hammering against her ribs and her knuckles throbbing with a dull, satisfying ache, she stormed past them, yanked open the door of the first empty compartment she could find, and slammed it shut behind her.

She was still trembling with adrenaline, aggressively hoisting her heavy suitcase up onto the overhead metal rack, when the compartment door clicked open again. She whipped her head around, her defensive walls immediately slamming back into place, but stopped when she saw Regulus Black sliding into the space. He shut the door quietly behind him, his expression serious and entirely devoid of the cruelty his companions had just displayed.