Fire Starter ~(Completed)

Chapter 6

Hold tight, you're slowly comming back to life~ Birdy

I woke up to my cheek pressed against the cold stone, something warm on the back of my skull. Where was I? Everything in this room looked so foreign, I was pretty sure I had never been here before. Blinking erractically, I wondered if I was just going blind, or crazy, as I couldn't see as much as I'd like to, everything was just white dots in front of my eyes.

Where was Severus? I wished with all the power in my tiny heart that he was next to me now, picking me up and putting me back to bed like the night before. Where was he now?

"Hey!" shouted someone, and I tried to move away, crawl on my hands and knees if I had to. My good old instinct of don't get caught being vunerable was kicking in. "Is someone up here?" A pair hazel eyes looked at me through the window, then burst threw the door, shedding his coat and kneeling by my side. "Sirius? What's happened to you?" It was James? I hadn't even thought of him, yet he was my best friend. Why?

"I fainted. Look, I don't want to talk about it now" I replied, laying where I was, my chest still raising up and down at an alarming rate.

"Why'd you faint? Are you sick?" he flapped, old daddy Prongs coming out again.

"I said I don't want to talk about it!"

"I don't care" he replied stubbornly, laying his coat over me like a blanket. "For once in your miserable life, will you just do as you're asked?" I ached to rebel and run, but I was tired. I was tired of avoiding my problems, of avoiding my best mate of six years. And the coat thrown over my shoulders was so warm, it would be a pain to move.

"I had a panic attack, I think" I whispered to him, as if someone could over hear me. He looked grim, the same bleak look he always had when he failed to catch the snitch in time. "I'm sorry" I added in a tiny voice.

"Sorry for what?"

"Shoving you earlier. I shouldn't have done it- I promised to turn over a new leaf, and the first thing I do is smack your head into a wall. I'm so sorry. Are you ok?"

"Don't worry, you've done worse" he said lightly, which didn't make me feel much better. He assessed my body for damage like the healer he would never be. When I realised what he was doing, I immediately twitched away from him, for his sake more than mine. "Hey, come back, you'll hurt yourself!"

"I don't want to hurt you" I corrected. I sat myself up onto one elbow, revealing the back of my head. His worst nightmare was currently dripping off the back of my head, and if I was any friend to him I should let him know."I know that you're haemophobic, James. You have been for years."

"Homophobic?" he asked, surprised. "No, I love Remus! Well, not in that way, but you get what I mean. I have nothing against him! Why would you say I'm homophobic?" he asked indignantly.

"I said haemophobia. No, it's a fear of blood, and I know you have one. Ever since second year when you fell off your broom trying to impress Evans." I smiled at the memory, James running his hand over my back for some bizare reason.

"Ow- hey what are you doing, Prongs?" I yelped, flinching away. He's just stuck his clumsy paw right into one of my deepest burn checking over for broken bones or whatever he was doing.

"Hah, I knew it. I knew they weren't birthmarks!"

"What?" I replied weakily. Maybe he wasn't as stupid as he made out.

"Those purple marks we've been seeing through your shirt for years. Me and the others all thought they were birthmarks, but when Remus touched your back, we thought that they probably weren't." I grew cold, and James looked at me with an almost proud look on his face that he'd discovered my deepest darkest secret. "What, you really think a thin, white shirt wouldn't cover them?"