traumatized layers and selfish anger

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March 25, 1977
8:09 pm
Hogwarts Corridor

Sirius's eyebrows furrowed with intensity as he kissed Anneliese even harder against the wall, pushing so hard that both of them were glad that everyone was at dinner and the corridors were uninhabited.

"People are gonna get suspicious why we're still 'in the common room' when we said we were going to be at dinner ten minutes ago," Anneliese said, suddenly pulling away. "Or someone's gonna see us, James always seems to have a talent for finding people-"

"Oh, that's not going to be an issue," Sirius muttered, eyes still on her lips and desperately wanting his back on them. "Trust me."

The Map resting in his pocket gave him that confidence, but Anneliese was still uncertain.

"Sirius, I really don't want someone to run into us right now," she whispered, standing up straight from her position against the wall. "Not after what I heard earlier."

"That Hufflepuff was stupid," Black said, narrowing his eyes at the memory. "Just stop thinking about it already, cmon."

"It wasn't stupid when they said that 'well, everyone is starting to like her more now that she's not so obsessed with Black anymore,'" Anneliese snapped back. "Forgive me if I want to keep it how people actually like me."

"And you think that one person seeing me kissing you is going to change that?" Sirius asked with an irritated raised eyebrow. "I can just obliviate them."

"First of all, no, and second of all, that's not the damn point," Anneliese said in a small yet angry voice. "The point is that things tend to go more smoothly when people don't mention their suspicions about.. us, so can we please just not right now? The corridors are too open."

Sirius paused for a moment, giving her lips one last longing glance before pulling away from the wall with a frown.

"I do hope you know that you're being way too cautious," he told her in an annoyed voice as they started to walk to the Great Hall. "For all we know, someone could have already seen us, so there's really no point."

Anneliese scoffed slightly, readjusting her tie.

"No, if someone had seen us, then the entire damn school would know in about a half hour and everything would go back to how it used to be with the notes and rumors," she corrected him. "So there definitely is a point."

"No, the difference between then and now is that now, the rumor would be about us together, not fighting," Sirius corrected her in turn. "So people would know better than to mess with you like they did last time."

"I don't want people to not be jerks to me out of fear," Anneliese replied. "I want things to be genuine and for myself, not because some boy is scaring them away for me."

"You've really got to stop with the whole some boy or just his bitch thing," he said coldly. "I'm not just a rando hitting on you, I'm the guy who chased you across a damn ocean to make sure you were happy."

"I never said that I didn't appreciate that, Sirius," she sighed. "Like I've said a dozen times, it's a looking out for myself thing and being an individual, not a you thing."

"It feels like a me thing," Black grumbled, running a hand through his hair. "Like a very heavily me thing."

"You always think everything is a you thing," Anneliese replied factually. "So this isn't new."

"Feeling particularly bitchy today, are we?" Sirius asked with a raised eyebrow.

"You know what, I'm not feeling particularly hungry anymore," Callaway declared, stopping her steps towards the Great Hall. "All of the painfully bitter insecurity in the air ruined my appetite."

"Fine," Black snapped back, turning quickly away from her.

Before he got too far away, though, he paused and turned around with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his black leather jacket.

"Do you want some rolls or do you want me to get pretzels from the kitchen?"

"Pretzels."

"Some pretzels coming your way as soon as I can get them, you petty fucker."

Anneliese just flipped him off as a form of thanks.

Things like this happened quite often with Sirius and Callaway. They would get into biting arguments twice a week that made them both feel horrible, and then still care for one another while being deeply annoyed at the same time.

James called it madness and Lily called it sweet, but everyone else knew it was a mixture of the two only Anneliese and Sirius could have possibly created.

As Black turned around, his hands came out of his pockets, taking a long rectangle of parchment with it. He was too busy thinking about Callaway's comment regarding how it 'wasn't a him thing' to hear the soft, crisp crinkle of the Map hitting the stone.

Anneliese waited for a few seconds as he walked away to see if he was going to notice the parchment, but Sirius just kept walking.

She had seen the Marauders all huddled around this bit of secretive and heavily guarded parchment before, but every time someone walked over to them, the four boys would shove the item away faster than you could blink.

No one had ever seen what was on it, and it seemed like Anneliese finally had an opportunity to.

Callaway waited until Sirius was all the way around the corner before rushing forward and scooping the parchment off the ground, eyes roaming all over the rough, yellowed surface.

To her surprise, it appeared to be completely blank.

Anneliese slid into a spare classroom for a bit of privacy with the well known, mysterious item, rapidly unfolding it's creases until she was certain after a few minutes that nothing was visible without some sort of charm or incantation.

"Okay, useless piece of shit, then," Callaway muttered to herself, starting to fold the Map back up to return to Sirius as subtly as possible later.

Right as she said those words to insult the Map, though, it did what it was charmed to do. Anneliese's dark blue eyes narrowed in surprise as dark crimson writing began to form in four different scrawls, all familiar to her as belonging to the Marauders.

The first, most neat one, she recognized as Remus.

Mr Moony presents his compliments to Anneliese Callaway and begs her to stop being the most ignorant person to other people's problems he has ever had the mistake of meeting, no matter how hard she tries to hide it.

Anneliese's eyes widened in shock, and she didn't even have time to process, much less recover from these words before the next message began.

Mr Prongs agrees with Mr Moony and would like to add that Anneliese Callaway should have stayed in America or an orphanage while she still had the chance.

The skeleton tattooed hand gripping the paper began to tremble.

Mr Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that Anneliese Callaway is such a selfish person who only seems to care about herself and her own reputation, not other people's feelings that she constantly invalidates.

At this point, hurt had taken over her confusion, and there was a choking sensation in the back of her throat. Anneliese just hoped that the messages would be over soon.

Mr Wormtail bids Anneliese Callaway a good day, and advises her to just shut her damn mouth for once in her life so that they can all relax.

Holding her breath for a few more seconds, Anneliese waited a dozen beats of her rapidly pounding heart to see if the parchment was done stealing the air from her lungs.

When the ink sunk back into the page as if it had never been there, Callaway realized that it was.

Anneliese didn't even make the conscious decision to go to the Great Hall in her fury, her feet just carried her there. A more rational person would have considered the cause of the words on the parchment, but Callaway had a tendency to let her anger get the best of her.

A few students looked at her warily as she stormed past them, and Anneliese didn't even care that they looked mildly scared by her expression.

I think I understand why James is so cruel to Snape now, she thought as her fingers twitched near her wand. I really just want to hex someone right now, or make a new one that causes even more damage-

Anneliese cut off that thought of the dark green notebook as quickly as she could, forcing herself to focus on beating the living shit out of all the Marauders and confronting them about their highly amusing little creation.

The second she stepped into the Great Hall, Sirius turned her way with roll in hand.

"Hey, they didn't have any pretzels, so I was just going to give you one of these instead," he said, tossing the bread to Anneliese. "Is that- what the fuck?!"

The second the Seeker caught the roll from the air, she instantly weaponized it and threw it as hard as she could directly at Sirius's annoyingly pretty little face.

James and Peter exchanged a wide eyed glance before innocently tucking back into the potatoes while watching the argument unfold from the corners of their eyes as subtly as they could.

"I bet you think this is very funny, don't you?" Anneliese asked, holding up the blank parchment with a furious expression. "So, do you really think that I'm a selfish person who only cares about myself and my own reputation?"

At this, the entire sixth year Gryffindors turned their direction, very curious to see what had happened now.

"What'd you do, Sirius?" Lily asked with a disappointed, exasperated sigh.

Black turned his head back to the ginger to answer, but Anneliese grabbed his chin before he could get too far and pulled his gaze back towards her.

"What didn't he do is a better question," Callaway said with disgust, her face inches away from Black's.

Despite the circumstance, Sirius still found himself slightly happy to be in this position with Anneliese in front of so many people.

"Woah, I'm sure whatever this is can be calmed easily," James said, slightly panicked. "A, let go of Sirius, and just tell us-"

He had definitely wanted his friends to be this close and get over themselves already, but not in an aggressive way like they were now.

"Oh, don't act like you're so innocent, Broomstick Boy!" Anneliese snapped, suddenly whipping her head towards James and away from Sirius. "All of you actually, Remus, Peter!"

The Marauders were used to getting yelled at by annoyed students at their pranks or furious professors that they had disrupted their class, but for some reason, all of that hardened experience melted away like wax with Anneliese's fire.

Callaway was terrifying.

Anneliese could handle getting called a bitch by Sirius, or being told dozens of other shallow insults by entitled assholes who thought they had the right to talk to her in those ways.

But when someone hurt her in the places they knew she was the most deeply vulnerable like that parchment had just done, her thick, tough skin suddenly became thin and easily sliced through to let boiling hot blood pour out.

"What did we do?" Peter asked cluelessly, scooting a little closer to James. "Why are you so mad?"

Anneliese's anger dissolved for a split second as she saw that Pettigrew seemed genuinely confused.

Maybe they don't know, she thought, giving herself a bit of a break from the rage to breathe. Nevermind, Peter is just generally stupid and has way too much damn trouble connecting simple dots.

"So you're telling me that you have no idea what I'm talking about?" Anneliese exclaimed to the Marauders. "Jesus, I thought yall were supposed to be the smart ones in the godforsaken school!"

"Anneliese, if this is about earlier, then I'm sorry," Sirius said, standing up from the bench to be next to her. "I shouldn't have-"

"No, Black, this is worse than you just calling me a bitch again," Callaway snapped. "Believe me, I'm used to that bullshit by now."

"Wait, what exactly happened earlier?" Lily asked with her green eyes incredibly mad on her friend's behalf, standing up as well. "Because Sirius, I swear to god-"

"Just tell us what the hell we did this time!" Remus snarled, venom in his voice. "Because-"

"Because I'm the most ignorant person to other people's problems that you've ever had the mistake of meeting?" Anneliese cried, turning to Lupin. "Is that why?"

Remus wasn't going to have said it that harshly, but Callaway did seem to have somehow just read his mind in an unnervingly concise and accurate way.

Anneliese saw the silent validation of this being his opinion in Lupin's expression instantly, and her face turned to one of pure disbelief and so much revulsion that she almost physically recoiled away from Remus.

Sirius and James looked at one another with even more concern as Remus averted his eyes away from Callaway with slight guilt. None of them had all the sides of the story, and they were all worse for it.

Well, the longer Lupin seemed to think about these words, the more he realized that he wanted to say them to someone.. but maybe not Callaway.

Anneliese parted and shut her lips a few times to say something as her eyes darted across all the Marauders, but the sob strangling her neck prevented her from actually saying a word to them.

"I need some space," she said finally, turning on her heel and walking out of the Great Hall as quickly as she could. "Oh, and take your stupid parchment back."

Callaway forcefully shoved the Map in James's chest as she exited, and everything suddenly clicked into place as Potter looked down at the rough surface against his palm.

Sirius blinked several times as he stared at the Map, realizing that it must have fallen out of his pocket and then insulted Anneliese.

"I-I thought that it was just supposed to be funny things," Peter stuttered in shock a few seconds later. "Why'd she get so upset-"

"I recast the charm yesterday because it was acting up from when James originally made it," Remus admitted in a low tone. "I guess the whole emotion and spell connection must have happened and.. and it must have hit her pretty hard."

Sirius winced as he recounted the words Anneliese had said, starting to get a very horrific general idea of what must have appeared on the parchment.

"Someone fix it," James muttered, holding his head in his hands as he set the parchment back down on the table. "And I'm going to go make sure Anneliese is okay, Merlin, I feel like a horrible person."

Remus was silent as he watched James and Sirius both stand up. His emotions were becoming an angry blur as he thought of the letters from Leo and hints he had given and all of the nights in the past days when all he had done was reread Anderson's unity scrawl.

"I'm going to be going back up to the dorms to get some sleep," Remus muttered to Peter, standing up from the table. "Night."

This may have been the lie he told to Peter, but Remus was really just going to spend hours rooting through the stack of letters in his drawer hidden under a brown sweater and probably end up sobbing quietly.

Again.

Lily watched with tension in her brow and a frown as Lupin exited quickly, slowly realizing where all of his bitterness was coming from. She didn't want to talk to him right then, knowing that Remus might just break if he had any more emotional strain that night.

"Is he okay?" Peter asked Lily nervously, seeing her expression. "Everyone is mad all of the sudden tonight, I don't understand."

"He will be," Lily replied softly, sitting back down. "I'm going to talk to him in the morning."

Meanwhile, several corridors away in the castle, Anneliese was sitting in an open air, breezy courtyard with her chin resting on the steel back of a bench she had curled up on. She could see the sky well from this angle, and something about the openness relaxed her.

The words of that damned parchment were echoing around in her head, along with Remus's expression when she had confronted him.

It's all true, the negative doubt in the back of her head told her. Just like your parents, they don't want you-

"A, at least let me explain," a warm voice said from behind her, cutting off her thoughts. "It's really not what you think, I promise."

Anneliese turned around to see James standing there, the parchment in his nervous fidgeting hands that would usually be occupied by the snitch. His hazel eyes looked genuinely apologetic in the nearly full moonlight, and Callaway just nodded for him to continue.

To her surprise, Potter sat down right next to her on the bench so that their legs were pressing together.

He's such a touchy person, Anneliese observed, shoulders stiffening slightly at the contact.

"That parchment isn't just a thing meant to insult people," he started slowly, knowing she deserved a full explanation as a friend that he valued. "Those insults are a defensive mechanism to repel anyone away from figuring out the real purpose."

Callaway's blue eyes narrowed slightly, and she was just about to ask the real purpose before the parchment was snatched out of James's hands by a very angry Remus.

Lupin had seen the two of them sit next to one another on his way out, and all of his rage was suddenly funneled into the closest American.

"Why don't you just go and tell the whole damn school about all of our secrets, why don't you?" Lupin snapped, eyes darting furiously between the two of them. "I'm taking this back to somewhere where it's actually safe, James."

"Woah, Moony, I'm just trying to explain why it hurt her," James said, eyes widening in alarm as he stood up. "Is everything okay?"

"No, everything is not okay," Remus said angrily, looking at Anneliese with disgust. "She is the one being so ignorant to everyone else's problems because she's too busy with herself!"

Anneliese's expression changed from hesitantly open to James's explanation to closed off rage at Lupin's hostile accusation towards her.

"I have every right to be upset and want a bit of time away if that thing just starts insulting me out of nowhere under all of your nicknames!" Anneliese said back furiously. "Sometimes it's healthy to focus on your own mental health!"

"Well that's very wise of you, isn't it?" Remus asked in a patronizing, sarcastic tone. "The kind and caring Anneliese Callaway, taking a break from helping others for one? Stop the shit, you don't even notice when one of your friends is struggling."

"What the hell is going on?" Sirius called, jogging up to them from the castle. "I leave to use the restroom for a minute-"

"What's happening is that your dear Anneliese doesn't seem to comprehend how damn slow she is!" Remus cried back. "No matter how many times I-"

"Moony!" Black shouted in response, a very similar reaction to James "Calm down and explain what happened, you're not making any sense!"

As if it was from some sort of gut feeling that something was wrong with their closest friends, Lily and Peter had given up on eating as well and followed the muffled sounds of shouts as they gradually got louder to the courtyard that they stood at now.

A bit of the tension in James's shoulders relieved as he saw Lily there.

"How many times do I have to say that- that she is the damn problem?" Remus shouted, throwing his hands out at her. "All she ever does is-"

There was a bit of a waver in Lupin's voice as he accused

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