FOURTEEN

- Chapter Fourteen -
"Take your shirt off."

Moaning Myrtle was too damn annoying.

Even though Remus had given in to her about going with them tonight, the night of the full moon, the other three had protested greatly. It's not like she didn't have anything to do, this just gave her more time to brew the wolfsbane potion. And the only secluded place she could get things done was the second floor girls lavatory, it was completely deserted and no one had step foot in it for years. Only thanks to one person, well, ghost. Myrtle.

"What are you making?" The girl with pigtails, glasses and a Ravenclaw tie floated right up behind Elladora as she was filling her cauldron with water at one of the taps. Except she touched the tap and felt a jolt or something pass through her, making her take her hand away and use another.

Elladora didn't reply as she returned to her place on the floor, lifting the small cauldron onto the metal stand that stood over a Bunsen burner. Even in the wizarding world they need to use some muggle products. She just had to wait until the pot started to bubble.

In the mean time, she grabbed the valerian roots from one of the tubs and chopped it carefully on a large wooden block she had brought with her. She cut them so they were precise sizes and they all looked almost exactly the same.

"You didn't answer my question." Myrtle floated to her other side and pouted menacingly, looking down at the roots she was chopping.

The girl continued to ignore the ghost as she placed the chopped roots in the tub that they came from. She then grabbed the moonstone and placed it onto the block, grabbing a smaller one from the large wooden box that she brought. Her hand brought the smaller block of wood down onto the moonstone as she smashed it into dust, or powder. Doing this in secret meant that she had to make all of her own ingredients, well, she did use a summoning spell to conjure most of the things, but she did the preparations herself.

The thuds of wood against moonstone echoed around the lavatory as she worked on the potion. Moonlight shone in through the windows and Elladora abandoned the moonstone immediately, walking up to the foggy window and pushing it open. It was only a crescent so far, and she spotted three shadowy figures walking towards the whomping willow. She saw their silhouettes morph down into different animals, into their Patronus'. The tiny rat scampered forwards, slipping under the swinging branches and then all movement stilled as the stag turned back into a boy and he followed a dog and a rat down a hole. Then the tree started to move again.

Knowing that they were on their way to help Remus, Elladora went back to her potion, continuing to powder the moonstone. She did this for another half an hour, making sure all the clumps were crushed until she moved onto crushing the silver instead, this took more brute force as she slammed the wood down, it also took her longer, about an hour. By the time she had powdered both of the rocks, the water was bubbling, so she dropped the three ingredients that she had prepped down into the water.

She took moonseed and dittany out of the tub too, as well as a knife as she placed the dittany to one side and crushed the moonseed, making it thin. When all the seeds were crushed, about another half an hour later, she sprinkled them into the water, dropping some dittany from its pipette too.

Now all she needed was the Wolfsbane.

She approached the window from before and pushed it open again. "Accio Wolfsbane." She said and it took a couple of minutes, due to her and Sirius destroying what was in the forest, but eventually, a purply-blue plant was in her grasp. Her hand pulled the window shut and she approached the cauldron once again.

The Wolfsbane was lowered carefully into the boiling hot water by the stem as the smoke and vapour from the top of it turned blue when the petals went in. It was working. Elladora chopped of the stem, close to the bubbling water when all the blue had been drowned.

She pulled her hands away, flicking the remaining stem away from her whilst she inspected her hands, they were red with burns and bruised with the strength of smashing the wood against the moonstone and the silver, but it was done. Remus would take cup of the potion a day the week before the full moon and by the time came, he hopefully wouldn't be in as much pain as he apparently was now-a-days. If she had brewed it right, then he should be able to tell who his friends are, she hoped to god that she got it right.

"Dora!" A voice echoed around the room and she whipped around to see James stood with wide-eyes. She stood up immediately and approached him. "It's Remus." He said and they both took off down the corridors together.

They arrived at the hospital wing and the first thing she saw was Peter and Sirius peeking in. "What are you doing?" She whispered and they both turned around abruptly, banging their heads together and quietly groaning. "Sirius, you're bleeding." He was indeed bleeding as red liquid trickled down his arm.

"Oh, yeah." He looked down at it. She grabbed his arm and pulled it up, rolling up his sweater sleeve to see a cut on his arm. He sighed at the sight and shook his head.

"Let's go see madam Pomfrey then, what are we waiting for?" She muttered to herself and began to push open the door but all three boys pulled her back. Out of fear, she ripped herself out of their grasp and took a step backwards from them, distancing herself whilst crossing her arms over her chest. They stared at her for a moment before looking away, back to the doors.

"We can't go in yet, Poppy would have a fit if she knew we were with him and this would make it obvious." Sirius gestured to his bloody arm. Elladora stared at it before walking forward to the door again, peeking through and seeing just Remus sat on his bed, no Pomfrey in sight.

"I'll go. I'm never noticed." She said and opened the door, slipping in before James could give her his invisibility cloak.

She kept her footsteps quiet as she creeped over to Remus' bed, holding a finger to her lips as she approached Madam Pomfrey's office door, having to actually crawl on the disgusting floor to peak into it without being seen. When she looked through the glass, she saw Pomfrey shutting the light off and heading into  another room connected to it. Elladora stared at the mini hoop that could pull the blind down, narrowing her eyes slightly and it fell shut, blocking her sight.

"Guys, you can come in now." Remus called in a whisper when the girl nodded at him. The door opened and Peter, Sirius and James all came through, looking around skeptically, when they saw no Pomfrey, they strolled in and took a seat next to Remus.  "Did I hurt any of you?" The boy in the hospital bed asked with a solemn look.

Sirius stepped forward and Remus' eyes went straight to his bloody arm. He was about to say something when Sirius interrupted him. "Mate, its okay, it's fine, it was a wild one tonight but I'm okay." He reassured but Remus still didn't look convinced, looking down to his bedsheets whilst his bandages were wrapped around his chest, some blood coming through but not a lot.

Elladora walked over to some drawers in the corner of the room and opened it to get some wipes and some bandages. She went back over to the boys and gestured for Sirius to sit on the bed, he did so with a very confused expression.

"Take your shirt off."

"What?" All four boys said at once. The girl rolled her eyes and pulled off Sirius's sweater, then his white shirt, leaving him topless as she tended to his wound. The boy winced as the wipe came into contact with the cut, she rolled her eyes once again and muttered stuff under her breath as she continued to clean it.

"Someone hold onto his hand." She instructed and James stepped forward, holding his friends wrist as Elladora got another wipe.

"Sorry." She said quickly and pressed the wipe onto the cut easily. Sirius let out a hell of pain, but she quickly covered his mouth, in order not to wake Madam Pomfrey up. "It'll be over soon, I'll...end it all." She remembered that lullaby, pausing for a second with that wipe still stinging on Sirius' arm.

The boys watched as she stilled for a moment, her eyes far away as though she was thinking deeply about something, which indeed she was, she was thinking about that night.

"You're hurting me." Sirius gasped, squeezing James' hand a little bit tighter, his words seemed to make her shake slightly as she now remembered her own voice.

"You're hurting me." Twelve-year-old Elladora gasped as she tried to sit up in that same dark room, that same shadow stood in front of her, that same spell being cast all over again, that same girl, curled up into a ball.

"Control it." Her mother seethed. "Imperio."

Something in Elladora's head was telling her to do something, but she tried to resist, she really tried, but apparently trying wasn't enough as Cassiopeia watched whilst she stood up and started dancing around the room. The woman lifted the curse and Elladora wobbled for a moment, before falling back down after a harsh slap across the face.

"You're hurting me." She screamed, holding her cheek, she didn't realise her mistake until it was too late and Cassiopeia had grabbed her by the hair and held her up, slapping her one more time and then on another cheek, before throwing her back down to the ground.

"Again." She commanded. "Imperio."

Elladora screamed as she felt that familiar sensation of something trying to crawl into her brain, it hurt more when she tried to resist, it stung more. If she didn't try and resist, it'd be over in a flash and she'd be back to normal in no time at all, but she would still get slapped and made to do it all over again.

"Dora!" Peter pulled her away from Sirius, who instead of hissing with pain, was watching her concernedly as she shook. James tied the bandages around his best friend's arm, taking over from Elladora, whilst staring at her concernedly.

"I have to go." She said and pushed Peter off of her, not harsh, just a little shove as she disappeared out of the hospital wing.

The four boys watched as she left, turning to each other afterwards. "Is no one else seriously freaked out?" Peter whispered and they didn't respond, just sat there, thinking.

"That's was horrible. I could...see her pain." James frowned, staring at the doors.

"Where do you think she went?" Sirius asked.

"Back to the potion?" James suggested the wolfsbane potion that she needed to go and check on in the middle of the girls lavatory.

"Potion? What potion?" Remus asked from the bed, looking in between all three boys.

"She was going to make a wolfsbane potion for you, it's supposed to help with transformations and bring up some humanity inside." James told him, and Remus sat shocked, she had done that for him?

"For me?"

"Duh, who else." Peter laughed, but it sounded more like a forced laugh. "She does a lot for you. Seems to like you most." He sounded almost bitter, but no body seemed to notice, even if they did they weren't going to comment on it.

"I saved her life." Remus said. "That doesn't mean she owes me anything and I've told her that but..."

"Mate, she wants to do it, it's okay." Sirius assured but Remus still looked doubtful. He had seen her red hands, he had seen the bruises that were littered all over them and he had seen the sweat that plastered to her forehead, sweat that could only be there from a hot potion you had sat in front of for more than 3 hours.

"Are you sure?" He asked.

"Positive." James smiled, though he had seen her hands too, and wanted to be there for the next one, so all the pain doesn't go on one person, but he would be busy.

But Elladora didn't want anybody else's help, in some sort of bittersweet way, she liked the pain when it didn't come from her parents or another human being, she liked having scars that she could tell the truth about, she liked knowing that they weren't inflicted by someone she once loved. They were just...natural.

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