Birds were chirping, and a gentle breeze was sweeping the grass, reminding Jack that some people were busy leading a normal life. Their background music was these gentle sounds, while hers were screams and the swish of spells. Jack waited with her hand on the doorknob, holding herself up using the brass fixture. She slowly turned her head, looking at the orange horizon. The sun had not yet risen - within the hour, it would begin its ascent into the sky. Sun meant safety, that's always how it had been. The night brought fear and terrors, and the day brought relief from it all. She turned her head as she sensed movement behind the door, and patiently waited for one of her strange family to appear and gather her into the home.
Naturally, it was the last person she had verbally abuse who happened to answer the door. She had not seen him since their small fight, as Charlie had watched Sunny when Jack had to run off to work. All traces of the verbal battle escaped in the shadow of the real battles she had faced, as visibly shock crossed Max's usually cheerful and carefree countenance. He demanded with gentle insistence that she come inside and she found it a perfectly wonderful command, and she stumbled across the threshold, leaving the door for Max to handle.
He closed the door and Jack leaned against the wall, reaching up and rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. "No one's coming... Well, they shouldn't be. If they are, there won't be any trouble, just- just lawyer talk and false... false..." Jack was having a hard time stringing her words together as thought after thought rolled over one and then the other, images of the night before splashing across the forefront of her brain, guilt fighting against innocence. She heaved a breath and slowly opened her bleary eyes, like tearing apart sleep-crusted lids after a night full of nightmares to see a dazzling morning light, but that light was Max Morrison's soft-featured face.
She shuddered a breath out. "Look. People are going to say some things, some really bad things. There was a fire... and there were Death Eaters attacking children, and a Death Eater was killed by a combination of two spells, and one of those was mine. And then, three hours later, a Death Eater trying to break away crossed my path before she was murdered by Death Eaters. And I- I tried to stop it, and help her out, but they killed her and... they saw me with her. The Ministry workers saw and I think they think I did it. I swear, Max, I don't want to hurt anyone ever. I don't give a shit what everyone else thinks, but please don't believe that I hurt anyone. It's the last thing I'd ever want to do."