(42 : I DO SPY  . . .
A KIND OF HOPE )

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AIDED BY A DREAMLESS SLEEP potion, Juliet slept for two days straight. Even as someone who was well-versed in the extremes that stressed students would often reach, Madam Pomfrey had never seen such a severe case of exhaustion in all of her time at Hogwarts. When the Slytherin eventually woke up, she was immediately excused from lessons and ordered on bed rest. The matron kept her in the hospital wing for observation, highly suspicious of how the teenager had lasted so long without sleep considering a diagnostic spell suggested her body had started shutting down over a week ago.

     In a physical sense, Juliet was never better. In an emotional sense, Juliet was a complete disaster.

     Her sleep had been peaceful, void of the monsters that usually lurked in the crevices of her mind, then she woke up and remembered her mother was apparently dead. In a flash, Juliet Fawley had become the heir to her family fortune and the sole survivor of a tragedy that the Wizarding World would never know. It was the collapse of a great pureblood dynasty — one murdered, one suicidal and the other practically doomed.

Outside of the matron, Regulus was the first person who visited Juliet, meaning he was the one who was there for her as she digested the news. However, she had almost mistaken him for one of the school ghosts when he walked into the hospital wing before breakfast. He looked paler than usual and appeared uncomfortable as he approached her bedside, closing the blue privacy curtains around them.

"How?" was the first thing she said. It was only one word, but it was impactful and straightforward. Juliet didn't have the heart to engage in pleasantries with him, not when he knew her mother was dead and had never once thought to bring it up with her.

His posture was stiff and he seemed to have an internal debate before sitting down beside her. "I thought you knew," confessed Regulus, almost ashamed. "Are you feeling better now? I sent you a card —"

"I hope it's a condolence card considering my mother is dead and you knew the entire time," she deadpanned, infuriated by his nonchalance. "You might like to avoid the hard topics, but I don't. I want to know exactly what happened to her. No diversions, no small talk, only the truth."

"I like to avoid the hard topics?" repeated the boy in vexation. "What does that mean?"

Juliet had to bite her tongue. Regulus liked to pretend that he hadn't admitted to having a crush on her. Regulus also liked to pretend he still hated his blood traitor brother whilst using the same penknife Sirius had given him. Although Regulus still liked to pretend, Juliet didn't anymore.

The redhead shook her head. "It doesn't matter. How did she die?"

"I — I told you, suicide," answered Regulus. He hesitated before casting the muffling charm. "Your mother was having an affair . . . with a muggle. I don't know the specifics, but I went to my second Death Eater meeting the day before the Malfoy Ball. I wasn't marked then, I mostly observed, but nothing was happening that day. Your father was meant to report back after leading an attack on a muggle village. The attack never happened. He showed up late and drunk. The Dark Lord was so furious that he used legilimency on him and broadcasted his wife's infidelity to everyone present." The boy couldn't meet her anguished eyes. "He was mocked mercilessly. His wife had chosen a dirty muggle over him. The Dark Lord wanted to punish your father, but he fervently fought his case and said he was not the one who deserved to be punished."

The day she was tortured, her father had said she was as "wanton as her wretched mother," but she had never thought much of it. Her father was prone to his anger and living in his own false realities, making up scenarios in his own head. Yet, her mother had been mysteriously absent for the Malfoy Ball and more resigned than usual that Christmas. Since their family had never been particularly close knit, she brushed it off. How ignorant she was.

Juliet never pinned her mother as a blood traitor, but she was always good at faking it. "You said it was suicide."

"It was. At least, that's what your father said," clarified Regulus. "The next time we met . . . he called her a coward, informed us all she had used the Killing Curse on herself instead of enduring the punishment he saw fit. To make up for his errors, he — he offered her up as part of the Dark Lord's army."

"I don't understand," she whispered, sounding like she was a young child once again.

Regulus swallowed. "The Dark Lord has been creating an army of inferi. They are mostly dead muggles, but your father — your father was insane," he elaborated, his low voice thick with horror. "It was the first time I'd ever seen a dead body up close. He dragged her body in and her — her lover's. He was covered in blood, begging for the Dark Lord's forgiveness in return for the corpses of two vermin."

Somewhere in the middle of his explanation, silent tears had begun to stream down her face. It felt wrong to mourn her mother — someone she loathed most of her life — so she mourned her own obliviousness instead. Juliet thought James was the naive one, but she had been so consumed in her newfound hatred for the pureblood ideology that she allowed her mother to die. Her mother who had been a victim to same ideology. Never once did she question why it was Walburga who took her wedding dress shopping that summer, or why it was her father who sent the howler that time.

When Regulus moved to wipe her tears, she slapped his hand away. "B—but he said they were both disappointed in me in the letter. Your mother told me she was ill over the summer. Why wasn't I allowed to know? Why was it being covered up?"

"You know as well as I do that you would have been exiled from the Sacred Twenty-Eight if it was public knowledge," the boy told her truthfully. "Your father went to great lengths to cover it up. He lied to my parents, lied to you. He would have done anything to save himself from the shame."

"Fa — Arin is dead," the redhead spat, venom dripping from her shaky words. "Does Voldemort not even know one of his most devout followers is missing?"

Lowering his gaze, Regulus scoffed. "Of course he knows. He made an example out of it to us all. Your father is a cautionary tale to Death Eaters with too much bravado," he divulged coldly. "If I disappeared tomorrow, none of them would care. That is how things work. All of us are replaceable."

Everything made sense suddenly — why Arin reacted so violently to her spending Christmas with the Potters and why Regulus wasn't surprised by the news of Juliet murdering her own father. Perhaps the most jarring part of the revelation though was how bluntly Regulus spoke about what happened, like he was recalling something as mundane as a Quidditch game. His use of 'us' was an abrupt reminder of his status as a Death Eater. Sometimes he was so sweet and nice that Juliet found herself forgetting about the mark on his left arm.

"Get out," she said suddenly, her voice raw with pain. "You're one of them. Get out."

     Startled by her outburst, Regulus flinched. "I'm not like th—"

     "I — I can't even look at you." Juliet grabbed her wand from the side cupboard and pointed it at his throat. "Get out!"

     Resigned, the boy that was as pale as a ghost left, not wanting to haunt her anymore.

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     The second the bell rang to signal it was the end of the school day, a messy-haired boy in Gryffindor robes bounded into the hospital wing — his excessive vitality clinging to him like a second layer of skin. He skidded on the linoleum floor and almost toppled over when he made a beeline for Juliet's bed, dropping a stack of books on the empty chair at her side.

"Julie, hi," said the Gryffindor without a trace of awkwardness. "I was going to visit earlier, but Moony said you'd probably prefer it if I brought you notes on what you missed in class, sooo . . . here you go." He pulled some parchment from his bag — it was rumpled with lots of crossing out, but it was thorough and detailed all the same. When she merely blinked up at him, he scratched the back of his neck and added, "I'm pretty sure it was also Moony's way of tricking me into doing schoolwork, but I didn't want you to fall behind or —"

"James," she cut off his incessant rambling, "I appreciate it, I do, but would you like to tell me why you have a black eye first?"

Indeed, James' left eye was swollen and coloured various shades of red, purple and blue. It was impossible to do anything but gawk at it. As if he had forgotten about it, James touched it and winced, "I, um, did something stupid. Usual, fight with a Slytherin. It's not a big deal, really."

"I thought you're meant to set an example now that you're Head Boy and all." Her tone was teasing, which made James relax. "Just come here. There's no point in bothering Madam Pomfrey with something as small as a black eye," she sighed, gently tugging him closer by the chin. "Episkey."

When she didn't retract her hand, James found himself staring deeply into her blue eyes. They looked sad — as sad as they were the day he had bumped into her on Halloween. "Are you okay?"

"I will be." Juliet cleared her throat, diverting her attention to the tower of books that had been dumped on the chair. "What's with the books? They're not textbooks."

"Oh, them," hummed James, shaking himself out of his trance. "I heard you were on bed rest and I thought you might get bored, so I thought — since you like reading all — I'd bring you some books to keep you busy. Well, these aren't my books. I'm not much of a reader, to be honest. They're Moony's, but that's a technicality —"

Juliet cringed at his unexpected bout of nervousness and plucked the first book from the stack, if only to put James out of his misery. "Robin Hood?" Juliet read the title from the cover. "I'll be honest, I never took Lupin for the Robin Hood type."

     He shrugged. "I think that one belongs to Sirius actually." There was moment of deliberation before he sat down at the foot of her bed. "There's also Treasure Island, The Outsiders, Wuthering Heights, Orpheus and Eurydice, Romeo and Jul—"

     Her cheeks were still wet from before. "I don't know if can handle anymore tragedy."

     "How about I tell you a story of my own then?" suggested James, grinning. "Because I know this one about a boy who really fucked up and doesn't even know where to begin in begging a pretty girl for her forgiveness . . ."

     "You're staying?"

      "Yeah." He reached out to intertwine their hands, scooting closer to her. "There's nowhere else I'd rather be."

     And so James told an epic tale of a stubborn knight going through various trials to earn the forgiveness of a princess, acting out each scene with a flourish, but Juliet dozed off before he reached the end. Hand in hand, there a Gryffindor and a Slytherin slept side by side. Even a cynic could see there was a kind of hope in that.

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A.N: This was ready to be posted last night, but I kept rewriting the scene with James and I think I'm finally happy with it. They're still going have to address what happened over Christmas, but one of them being in the hospital wing was not an appropriate time to do so. Hopefully you all enjoyed this chapter — the reveal of what happened to her mum is a lot to take in. I might do a bonus scene at the end because obviously Juliet wasn't there, so she's never going to know the full story.

Question, how do you feel about fanfictions that diverge from canon? Love or hate them? I already know how this book will end and I can't see my mind being changed, but I'm curious if people have any strong feelings towards books that stick or diverge from HP. We're now in 1978, meaning a lot of big canon events are coming up soon.