"I like me better when I'm with you."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Leaning against the wall as the train rocked rhythmically, Bell breathed in and out, slow and sure. They were almost there, just a stop at Hogsmeade Station, then the carriage ride up to the castle, and finally to the Great Hall, which would be filled with hundreds of voices as friends caught up after their summer break and professors greeted their best students in passing. The floating candles would alight the enchanted ceilings as they showed the storm outside without actively raining on those below. Familiar faces with familiar voices would cluster around and Bell would feel at home again.

"Bell?"

She startled, having been lost in thought, and saw Sirius holding the door for the other three boys to exit the compartment. Remus' robes looked immaculate, as usual; James, apparently having misremembered how to dress suitably, had his collared shirt missing a button at the top, his tie stuffed in his pants pockets, and his cloak's hood folded within itself; Peter, with his typical nervousness, was adjusting his perfectly-stiff collar; Sirius ran his hand through his wavy hair, his tie fastened incorrectly like always.

"Right." Stepping around her dark-haired friend, Bell reached forward and carefully adjusted his tie, shaking her head teasingly. "One of these days, you'll manage to do this correctly."

"I don't know, Angel, you do it so much better than me."

"Well one day, I won't be around to fix your ties, Sirius-" Bell paused as she stepped into the compartment. She didn't like to think about the days after their graduation from Hogwarts.

"And 'one day', Lily will go out with Snivellus. C'mon, Angel, we'll always have each other. Isn't that right?" James, Remus, and Peter all nodded, the first two smiling rather knowingly while the latter fidgeted with his sleeves and didn't look up, and Bell offered a small grin in return to their optimism.

"We'd better. Who knows what would happen to you fools if I wasn't here to offer a bit of reason."

"Ah, c'mon, Bell, I'm responsible-"

"James, you set Professor Slughorn's robes on fire when trying to levitate a vial of love potion to Lily during Potions. I still don't know how you managed that. If anyone here is 'responsible' other than me, it's Remus."

"Thank you."

"Gladly."

"Not me?" A toss of the hair and a wink that would make any girl swoon- well, any girl that didn't know Sirius as thoroughly as Bell did.

"Not in the slightest."

And with that, she slid the compartment door shut and Remus re-cast the cloaking charm. Humming as she dug her clothes out from her messenger bag and changed, she could faintly hear her friends discussing something in hushed tones out in the corridor, but she didn't pay any attention to their conversation. Sure, she was curious, but if it was important that she not hear, then she'd respect those wishes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sirius ran his hand through his black locks, chuckling softly at Bell's words. What a wonder, she was. Remus waved his wand to give her suitable privacy, and Sirius' smile faded a bit at James' smirk. His messy-haired friend leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, his knowing smile a little too wide for Sirius' liking.

"'I don't know, Angel, you do it so much better than me'?" James raised his eyebrows, the motion implicating the interrogative 'really?'. "With any other girl, you'd have said something as smooth as- as- what's that love potion McKinnon was all about last year?"

"Amortentia."

"-as smooth as Amortentia, but with Bell..." The best Seeker Gryffindor had seen in years shook his head wryly. "I'm shocked she hasn't caught on yet."

"James, we're not even at Hogsmeade Station. Leave him be."

The compartment door slid open right behind Peter and Sirius and both of them jumped- a usual reaction to a sudden occurrence for the former, but a peculiar reaction from the latter.

"Did Snape come by? C'mon, James, it's our last year, why don't you try to leave him be."

"Eh..."

"She may be right, Prongs," Remus said, slipping past Bell back into the compartment to grab his carry-on bag.

"Of course, I always am." Up went Bell's hand for a high five as she spoke, which Sirius quickly returned, and as she dropped her arm, she nudged him with her other elbow. "That was for Remus, silly," she teased, raising an eyebrow, but he played it off with a laugh and a reply of "I knew that", implying that he'd stolen the return of the gesture as a sort of joke. Bell was clearly confused, but through that confusion, she apparently found no reason to linger on the subject, and so let it go.

As the corridors grew more populated with students eager to get off the train, the group realized one by one that the train had stopped, presumably because they had arrived at Hogsmeade Station. Remus was the first to notice this, judging by his movement to get his bag, and the others quickly discerned the same. Smiles spread across the faces of all five friends, and as they nudged their way through the halls toward the nearest exit, taller than most of the second and third years who'd spent the ride in the other compartments in this car, the familiar whistle of the Hogwarts Express gave its shrill cry four times.

They were almost there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jostled by two eager first years as she stepped onto the platform, Bell wrinkled her nose at both their poor hygiene habits and the fact that it was still raining heavily. Professor Kettleburn stood waving frantically at every smallish student, trying to gather all the newcomers- Peter was beckoned at, like every year, and James teased him about it, like every year -and the enclosed carriages waited on the road, pulled by absolutely nothing- at least, that's what most students saw.

Bell gave a shiver, not from the chill the rain brought, but from seeing those winged, skeletal beasts for the seventh year in a row. No one else she knew could see them. When she'd asked Remus about it last year, trusting that he, of all people, would know something about the creatures and, if he didn't, wouldn't make fun at her for seeing things that weren't there, he'd furrowed his brow and asked her to describe them. That was one of the reasons Bell and Remus were such great friends- neither of them judged each other to any degree, unless the matter was dangerous.

"Well, they're sort of black and bony, and they've got these big but thin wings, and their eyes are almost like... well, like you're staring into death."

That very afternoon, after a short time spent in the library, Remus had approached Bell in the Common Room after lunch- it was a Sunday, therefore they had no classes -and pulled her aside for a private conversation.

"Those creatures you can see pulling the carriages? They're called thestrals, and they're very much real." Bell had breathed a sigh of relief. So she wasn't crazy, good. "I asked Professor Dumbledore about it after I did some research. He said thestrals have been pulling the carriages since the beginning of Hogwarts, but not many people know about them." He shifted uncomfortably on his feet.

"What?"

"I know you don't like to bring up your mum, but... Thestrals can only be seen by people who've witnessed death first-hand."

Bell's chest had tightened up in that moment. Her mother had died from cancer, a disease that mostly affected Muggles and that not even magic could cure yet, when she was seven years old. It was a traumatizing time in her life, as she'd been in the hospital when it happened. Her mother had just finished telling Bell how much she loved her and her father was showing her out of the room when her mother started coughing, and couldn't stop. In the chaos that proceeded, Bell was left to watch with wide, frightened eyes through a window into the hospital room as doctors rushed around her mother, trying to aid her in some way they could not reach.

When someone, her uncle, finally came to get Bell and her father from the hospital (her older sister was at school that day), she was found still standing in front of that window, not a single passerby paying her any attention. All she could do was stare through that wicked window, at her father weeping into the sheets, knelt on the floor, and at her mother, laying in that cold bed, dried blood frozen in a relentless trickle coming from the left corner of her mouth, a mouth that would never again laugh, or scold, or joke, or smile.

Bell learned what Death was that day, for she stared into his eyes as he all-too-calmly took her mother's hand and stole her from this world.

"That one looks empty-"

"Hey James, there's Lily-"

"Angel? You alright?"

"Why wouldn't I be, Sirius? We're back!" A bright smile flashed onto Bell's face, almost too quick to be believable, and Remus shot her a concerned glance. He didn't know the extent of the pain held in the memories of her mother's last moments, but he did know that the thestrals brought back the worst moments with their mere existence. "Uh oh, there goes Jamesie." Indeed, there went James Potter, hightailing it toward the carriage Lily and Marlene were climbing into across the muddy road. Peter followed him, apparently to atone for pointing out the girl of James' long-time fancy, and within moments, the pair of them were soaked to the bone by the downpour coming down like a torrent around them.

As Remus shook his head at James' actions and Sirius chuckled at the same, Bell winced with pity for the first years looking apprehensively at the boats on the turbulent waters of the Black Lake. "You really think he'll make them go?"

"Who'll make who go, and to where by what means?"

"Professor Kettleburn, the first years, and to the castle on the boats. The Lake looks pretty rough tonight."

Bell and Sirius' attention was drawn from the anxious first years back to the carriages when Remus tugged at each's sleeve, motioning that they should get into one before the vehicles left and they'd have to walk. As the trio headed toward the lineup, Sirius pointing at one at the far end which, unfortunately, seemed to be the nearest empty transportation, Bell pulled her wand out of the thin inner pocket she typically housed it in when wearing her school robes. She paused the other two as they were about to sprint out from the cover of the station awning into the rain, raising her right hand.

With a quiet incantation, a whispy strand spiraled up from Bell's wand and spread out into a wide, umbrella-like cover. "It's not much, but it'll keep us dry enough so that when we get there, we won't have to cast the Hot-Air Charm so much that the carriage turns into a sauna." Although the umbrella charm was wide enough to allow each of the trio a bit of personal space, Bell found herself walking at a closer proximity to Sirius than to Remus, even though she was the middle point of the charm, being the one casting it and all. It registered to her, though not enough to cause a thought process to be sparked, that it must be he who was walking close at her left side, whereas Remus was giving her a bit of space on her right.

If she'd only slowed her step for a beat, if he'd only taken the chance while it was there, the accidental brushing of hands between Bell and Sirius in that moment might have evolved into a slip of one palm into the other's grip. Alas-

"Agh, this storm is brutal."

-and into the carriage they went, no further touch realized.