The Girl with a Broken Smile

The girl with the broken smile.

Leo probed her hand across her face assessing the damage. She had cuts up and down her face crisscrossing athwart her cheeks, and she could feel places where she knew she was bruised up. Her lip was split open both on the top and bottom, and her nose was slightly broken. Leo furthered her assessment by slipping her hands down her opposite arms. There were more cuts and lashes on them, and she could tell that the blood she was smearing on her upper arms was also coming from her palms.

Leo's sweater was tattered and old, with fraying sleeves. Furthermore it was wet and cold from the rain and lack of heat. There was a quiet rapping at the window and she forced herself to stand up and walk over to it. A small owl with brown and black splotches sat perched royally on the window sill glancing up with big, round eyes full of a mystical understanding.

"Did you run away? You silly bird, I don't need any more trouble..." But Leo couldn't bring herself to force the little doe eyed bird out of the room. A thought nagged at the back of her mind, something that was trying to remind her of where she was. Leo clawed off a piece of wood from the window sill. With her blood she wrote down a quick note upon the wood, and slowly fell out of consciousness...

--

James groggily sauntered into the garden of his small palace estate. Really, it was his parents, but the two of them had up and left him and his best friend alone this summer and decided to spend a second honeymoon in Egypt. Sirius was flying loops on his new broom out at the mini-Quidditch pitch. The two of them had been living together for a year now after Sirius had run away from home once and for all, and now their relationship was beginning to resemble more so that of two brothers then two friends.

"OI! Sirius! Did you have breakfast?" James hollered up at Sirius, using his hands to amplify the sound. Sirius swooped down and stopped a few inches short of a crash landing.

"What was that mate? I thought I heard something about food." A big childlike smile crawled across his face at James' frustration. "Oh come on now...it's not like you weren't expecting a similar response!"

"How good of you to live up to my expectations! If you come inside...I'll make you pancakes..." On that note James turned around and nearly fell over as a tiny owl nearly flew into him.

After a small fray outside which included Sirius having to dive around James' garden in attempt of catching the tiny bird, the two boys dragged it into their room and shoved it into the empty owl cage of James' presently absent pet. After some further quarreling and some hostile bird-to-human interactions James managed to wrestle away from the bird a tiny bark of wood. What happened next was rather unusual for the Potter household: James Potter fainted.

As James was coming to, Sirius pried the wood from James' hand, and it took him all his strength, both mental and physical to not collapse in utter repulsion. The wood was covered with caked on blood. Upon further examination he found that the blood was not at all random, but rather formed words.

"13 Daedal Ln. Leo..."

By the time James was well enough to sit up Sirius was already running around looking for his broom.

"Waz' wrong?" James inquired as he stood form the bed and recoiled as his broom was shoved at him.

"It's Leo...she needs help..." Before James knew what was happening to him he was outside on his broom and flying towards London.

--

Leo awoke on the night bus. Her wounds were hurting more then before and she couldn't see very well. As the shapes before her came into focus she realized that she was looking at the faces of two of her closest friends. James Potter and Sirius Black were both staring back at her with wide, scared eyes.

"Oh...good...Night didn't take my note to Lily...she'd be worried sick." Leo choked out when she felt that she had the strength to use her vocal cords.

"And us? I suppose we were to ignore a note written in blood?!" Sirius growled with a dog like brutality.

"Come on mate, this isn't the time." James remarked as he turned his attention back to Leo. "Can you tell us what happened? We've been worried sick...Sirius here collapsed into a dead faint over the note."

"You know James, you're not very good at lying." Leo tried to grin, but her split lip hurt her too much.

"That's right; he's the one who fainted. Potter here couldn't take the sight of blood." Sirius added, more to support his own cause then anything else.

"That's beside the point. Honestly, you two could be on your death beds and be more worried about your egos then your health!" interjected James in attempt to spare further embarrassment (he failed).

"You're one to call the kettle black, James...you'd rather break your arm then suffer any embarrassment on your part," Leo observed.

"Oh hush...you should sleep anyway," James shot back and turned away. Leo didn't argue but rather turned onto her side facing towards him and closed her eyes.