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flowrs4opheliaTitle: Requiems
Author: me
Previous chapters: 1 & 2 | 3 & 4 | 5 & 6
Characters: James/Lily, Sirius(/OC), Remus(/OC), Peter, Snape
Rating: PG-13
Summary: What will it take for Sirius to grow up and learn to regret the prank he played on Snape? Well, it starts with a girl. Meanwhile, there's something Remus should probably know about the girl he's interested in, and Lily and James have their future to worry about as the Death Eaters are becoming a growing threat.
Chapter 7
Love Is All Around
On the morning of Valentine’s Day, all of the Gryffindor students woke up to a song being played loudly on Sirius’s turntable in the common room. For some reason Sirius had gotten up a little early and apparently felt a great deal less bitter about what day it was than many others are known to be; at least enough to feel like playing "Love Is All Around" by the Troggs loud enough to wake everyone up. James was reminded of Sirius’s first morning at his house during the holidays, though this time the music was preferably calmer to wake up to than Jimi Hendrix, and it even made James start to feel a little happy about it being Valentine’s Day as he got dressed.
James went into the Great Hall for breakfast quite early and discovered that only one of his friends was already there at the section of the Gryffindor table where they usually sat. Lily looked very beautiful that morning, sitting up straight and looking through a chapter of Potions as she politely waited for others to get there before she ate. Today she had part of her hair tied back in a green velveteen ribbon that matched her eyes perfectly. As James approached her from her left he suddenly felt a surge of excitement for the time he had to steal to talk to her alone.
"Good morning," he said as he sat down next to her, adorning the greeting with a kiss on her forehead as she turned to him. "You look pretty."
"Thank you," she said, smiling warmly. "Happy Valentine’s Day."
James smiled guiltily and then said, "I have a confession to make."
"What?"
"I didn’t get you anything."
"Oh," she said with a careless wave of her hand. "It doesn’t matter. I didn’t get you anything either."
"Well, traditionally I don’t think you’re necessarily expected to as much as the guy..."
"Oh, come on. Don’t be old-fashioned."
"Fine, no gifts or anything like that. But let’s do something really nice tonight."
"Like what?" she asked.
"I don’t know," he said consideringly. "Go somewhere we’ve never gone together before."
"With you gentlemen and that map of yours, that shouldn’t be difficult."
"Shhh," he said, putting his finger to her lips. "You don’t talk about that in public."
"As if you guys take very drastic measures for security, calling each other those silly nicknames," she laughed as she pushed his hand away.
"We can use our nicknames and whisper about it in public because we’re Marauders. You can’t talk about it at all, cause you’re not one."
"I’m as good as, now that I know everything!"
"Nah, I really don’t think we could accept you as one of us," he said just to get on her nerves. "It’s more like a men’s club anyway. When we’re not sneaking around the school we drink beer and watch dirty movies."
She laughed, nudging him with her elbow just as Sirius and Peter appeared and sat down.
"Oh no!" Lily suddenly interrupted Sirius, who had opened his mouth to say hello. "I completely forgot, I’m supposed to be eating with Noriko so I can talk to her about something. I’ll see you guys later."
Just like that she had left, and as Sirius forked sausages onto a plate he said, "And what are everyone’s plans for this unforgivably fluffy holiday?" Even as he made the negative statement, he was smiling and his tone was light and cheerful.
James shrugged. "I don’t know. Probably hanging out in the Room of Requirement with Lily or something."
"Oh, I don’t think so, Jim," Sirius said right away. "I’m taking Sophia to the Room of Requirement."
"Oh. Whatever. We can find somewhere else to go."
"Er...Is that exactly fair?" Peter questioned. "With how many times Sirius has used that room for dates, and the one time you want it..."
"No, I really don’t care," James assured. "Something about using that room just doesn’t seem...I don’t know...classy, to me."
"Well, it’s a hell of a lot more creative than going to the Three Broomsticks for the hundredth time, Prongs," Sirius said, almost sounding offended.
"No need to get touchy," James laughed. "That just isn’t my style. Besides, something gives me the feeling Lily and Sophia wouldn’t exactly be impressed by the same things."
Peter and Sirius laughed as Remus came up and sat down with them. The first thing he said was, "I’m going to smash your turntable, Padfoot."
The others laughed some more.
The first class of the day that all four of the boys had together was Divination. They had all decided to take it their last year to ensure that they had a class together that they could be lazy in. In fact, it had become one of the most enjoyable hours of school for them because the teacher, Professor Fangora, was very easy-going and didn’t take the subject too seriously.
"Good afternoon, class," she greeted the room at the beginning of the hour. "Well, today we were supposed to review for your test on tarot readings tomorrow, but fortunately for you, in order to do that test I need the book I record your marks in which I left at my husband’s house this weekend because I’m a dingbat."
There was an eruption of instant applause from the class, who had been expecting a very boring study hour today.
"And since it’s Valentine’s Day," Professor Fangora continued, "and since you’re all still recovering from the holidays and don’t want to think too much anyway, I thought we’d do something a little fun. So I talked to Professor Phlox and he gave me some of these from the greenhouse."
She held up two flower pots full of pansies, one with purple ones and the other with yellow ones.
"Pansies?" said Monty Clubber, who was sitting close enough to identify the flowers. "We have normal stuff like that in our greenhouse?"
"Actually, Mr. Clubber, pansies are used quite often for magic, but especially most magic involving romance," she explained. "Pansy pollen is one of the most important ingredients in making love potions. Obviously I can’t teach you how to make a love potion because not only does it have nothing to do with Divination but it’s also illegal."
The class laughed.
"However, there is something kind of fun that we can do with pansies today that I thought would be appropriate for this holiday. We are going to use them to reveal our future love lives."
There was a mixture of various reactions from the class, including Arnaud Doisneau asking, "Is she serious?"
Laughing, Professor Fangora waved her arms to quiet the class. "Don’t take this that seriously. It’s completely unprecise and unproven magic, not to mention not a kind of fortune telling that’s commonly used for people your age. Anyway, to do this you will want to take two petals - from the purple pansies if there is already a specific love interest in your life and from the yellow pansies if there’s no one yet - and a couple of leaves from a weeping tree that are on this table. Get a bowl and grinder from the cabinet and crush the petals and leaves in it in a circular motion, adding a small hair from your head into the mixture as you do so, until you have revolved the contents of your bowl ten times. Then you will attempt to get a glimpse at your future love life or your future with your special someone by looking at the shapes at the bottom of your bowl and being very creative about what they could possibly look like."
Monty asked, "Did you make this all up?"
"Oh no, this method is in one of my Divination books, I swear," she said with a laugh.
"This is so lame," Sirius said as he and the others got in line to get their petals and leaves. As they stood in line Professor Fangora got bowls from the cabinet in the back of the room and passed them out to them.
"Um, Professor?" James called. "Sirius is going to need at least five."
"Why is that?" she asked.
"One for every girl."
Everyone who had heard this laughed.
"In fact, maybe you just shouldn’t participate in this, Padfoot," Remus said to him. "I don’t think you have enough hairs on your head."
James and Peter laughed even harder, and Sirius just rolled his eyes.
Once the boys were seated back at their table with their four bowls, three of them with purple flower petals inside and one with yellow, all of them but Sirius started selecting hairs from their heads to pull out. Sirius, who never listened very intently to instructions, was already grinding his petals unceremoniously.
When they were all done, they picked up their bowls and peered into them searchingly. The first comment to come out was Sirius saying, "What the hell?"
They broke out into laughter.
"This doesn’t look like anything," James said.
"I think I can kind of see a...ladle," Remus said, turning his bowl. "Or is it a burrow?"
"Doesn’t a burrow usually symbolize a secret or something?" Peter asked.
He shrugged. "Don’t know what that’s supposed to mean."
"Seeing anything, gentlemen?" asked Professor Fangora as she passed.
"Nothing," James answered.
"Well, let me have a look," she said, walking around to stand behind him and taking his bowl. As she studied it carefully, a look of recognition settled on her face. "Well, here’s a bell. That means marriage. That’s a happy thing to have in your bowl."
"Way to go, Prongs," Sirius said half-jokingly, leaning back in his chair and giving a couple applauding claps.
"Wait a minute," Fangora said with interest, looking even closer in James’s bowl. "Wow, this is a very complex fortune, Mr. Potter. You have double-meaning symbols in here....Oh. Oh, that’s not happy at all..."
The faces of the four boys fell in unexpected disappointment.
"This is saying...This means that if you go through with that commitment with the person you love...then it’s going to.....mean death for both of you." She said the last part so quietly that they could hardly hear it, as if she wasn’t sure she should actually be telling them or not.
The boys eyed each other with very uneasy looks, and Professor Fangora looked at them and immediately forced a smile. "Well, come on. You can’t take these things seriously. I mean, you’re not actually thinking about marriage at your age, anyway. Are you, Mr. Potter?" She looked down at him, not necessarily expecting an answer. "Like I said, this isn’t even usually meant for wizards who are sixteen or seventeen years old."
With that, she walked away to go assist another table. The four continued to look at each other uncomfortably, and then Sirius barked loudly in short laughter.
"What the heck was that all about?" he wondered.
"No kidding," Peter said. "I thought this was supposed to be a fun and light activity."
"I wonder if she got in a row with her husband over the weekend or something," Remus said casually. "Being mad can make you misread predictions, can’t it?"
"I bet that’s it," Peter said.
Sirius, who was leaning back with his feet on the table chewing on a quill now and had completely forgotten about his own bowl, rolled his head lazily to the side at James, who didn’t look like he was even listening to their optimistic explanations. He nudged him with his elbow. "Hey. You’re not actually buying that rubbish, are you?"
James sat up, snapping into reality, and looked at him. "Oh. Yeah...No, of course I’m not. I mean, that sounds ridiculous."
"Yeah, it does," Peter agreed. "How is marrying Lily going to result in you both dying? Unless you drive each other so crazy you kill each other?"
James forced a laugh as the others chuckled. But as soon as they looked away from him again, he felt his smile fall.
Shortly after the last class had gotten out that day, James was walking away from his Charms class toward the dormitories by himself, his hands in the pockets of his robes and his face looking down at his feet dolefully. Because he wasn’t looking where he was going, he ran right into a girl who had been turned toward the wall of the hallway talking to a friend she was now waving goodbye to. He said, "Sorry, excuse me" and turned to face her, only to see that it was Lily. As soon as their eyes met something was already wrong; once she recognized it was him she looked very sorry for some reason, and in a strange way he didn’t really want to see her right now.
"James," she said, "I couldn’t find you at lunch."
"I was outside," he explained.
"Oh. Well...I’m really sorry, but I promised Noriko she could interview me for this paper she has to do for Muggle Studies, and she thinks the only night she’ll have a lot of time to work on it is tonight."
James registered what this meant and then said, "Oh. That’s fine."
"I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to be so inconvenient," she said almost shyly, looking genuinely regretful. "I’ll still be able to meet you later, but it’ll just be late."
"That’s okay, it’s no big deal," he said. "You can just find me later tonight, then."
"Okay," she said, smiling with a kind of forced relief. Then she tilted her head to the side questioningly and said, "You alright?"
"Yeah, of course."
"Okay," she said again. Then for a moment it seemed to be the time she should kiss him goodbye before walking away, but for some reason it just wouldn’t happen in the chilled space between them for that instant. She just said, "I’ll see you later," and turned to walk away.
James watched her sadly as she left, not bothering to continue walking himself, and wondering what was wrong with him. He was almost relieved that he and Lily weren’t having a date early tonight. He didn’t know if he would be able to act normally happy with her after what he had heard Professor Fangora say today.
He didn’t understand why it was affecting him so much. That prediction didn’t even make any sense. How could they be in such serious danger like that in their future?
As he started walking slowly, his foot slid on something that was on the floor. He looked down and saw that someone had dropped a few pages of today’s Daily Prophet that were now under his foot. Before even leaning over to look at it the headline on the top page caught his eye: "Investigations Reveal Possible Pattern In Death Eater Targets." James leaned over and picked up the page. Beside the article was a moving photograph of the ruins of a building that Death Eaters had destroyed. Suspended in the air above the charred, smoking ruin was the Dark Mark, the snake slithering in and out of the eyes and gaping mouth of the skull. As James stared at it, the pitch black voids of its hollow eyes seemed to bulge and stare right through him.
A sudden freezing thought entered his head right then. All of the students at the school were living away from home inside the cozy, safe walls of Hogwarts, and James had lost himself in the routine school life and forgotten about the threat of the Death Eaters just like everyone else did as soon as they were done reading the latest news on the subject. But what if it was something much more serious than they realized? What if things were happening in the magic world that were going to change their lives forever as all of the students sat in class all day trying not to doze off as they took notes? What if this Death Eater problem was going to go on a lot longer than most realized?
Maybe the prediction Professor Fangora had made when looking into his bowl made a lot more sense than it seemed. Lily was Muggle-born, after all. Couldn’t that mean that she could be in some danger in the future if this threat continued until then? Couldn’t that mean that by association with her, he could end up in danger, too?
James dropped the paper to the floor and crossed his arms uncomfortably. What if the prediction was true? What could he do about it? If he never ended up marrying Lily, would she still die and he just wouldn’t because he wouldn’t be at the wrong place at the wrong time with her?
Don’t be stupid, James thought to himself. Nobody is going to die.
But no matter what he told himself, he couldn’t seem to relax. He was bothered the rest of the day, and unconsciously made the decision to spend it by himself in the library where he could read to distract himself, the last place Lily would think to find him on a day that teachers weren’t likely to give enough homework to keep him there until very late at night.
Chapter 8
The Crystal Ship
Sirius didn’t meet Sophia anywhere in specific because they now knew where they were always likely to find each other in the castle. One of the places Sophia liked to be by herself was a very quiet hallway on the second floor with large pointed arch windows. He quietly walked down this hallway and found her sitting in one of these windows with one leg resting up against the pane and one dangling freely, not reading as she usually did here but just watching the snow fall outside where the sun had almost completely gone down.
She gasped when Sirius’s face popped up out of nowhere right next to hers. "Hello, beautiful."
"God, Sirius!" she said, shoving his shoulder. "Don’t do that."
"Sorry," he said. He reached into his back pocket and took out the book he had borrowed from her. "I’m done with this."
"Already?" she asked. "If I’d known you weren’t just the light reading type I would have given you some of Thoreau’s actual work."
"I think I got the idea, though," he said, handing the book to her. "Very interesting."
"Really? You liked it?" she said in an uncharacteristically bright tone as she slid down from the window onto her feet. "What was your favorite part?"
"All the parts you had underlined."
"All of them? Are you serious?"
"Yeah, I liked how you had all those quotes marked. I thought it was adorable."
"Oh, shut up! That’s not what I meant."
"No, honestly...I did like it. 'No man should have to count more than his ten fingers.' Brilliant."
She looked up at him with a very surprised expression, as if she never would have expected him to have taken such devoted mental notes while reading it after hearing the way he was talking about the play seconds before.
"Well...thanks for giving it back so soon," she said, looking down at the book, which didn’t look nearly as new as it had when she’d given it to him and appeared to have spent time in his back pocket on several occasions. She looked back up at him and said in a new, changing-of-subject way, "You’re not going to be all cheesy with me now because it’s Valentine’s Day, are you?"
"Of course not," he said. "Me?" He looked around suddenly to see if anyone else was around, and then he took her hand, stepping out into the middle of the hall a little. He looked back at her with his thought completed. "Want to do something against the rules?"
"Absolutely," she answered right away.
He started leading her down the hall toward the nearest staircase.
"Where are we going?" Sophia asked.
"Just wait and find out," he said.
Sophia did wait and find out, not asking him any other questions until they stopped in the hall where the entrance to the Room of Requirement was.
"There’s nothing here, Sirius," she told him as she saw him seem to be looking for a door.
"Oh yes, there is," he said. "There’s a room here you can’t find unless you need to find it."
"What kind of room?"
"Whatever kind of room you need to find."
She looked at him with her eyebrows drawn together and crossed her arms as he lifted up a tapestry on the wall. "Sirius, are you off your rocker?"
He opened a door under the tapestry and her eyes widened as light poured out from inside a room.
"How did you...?" she started as he took her hand again and pulled her inside.
The room was large and round and was lit by about a dozen torches circling around the wall. In the middle of the room were two very large burgundy couches facing each other that were separated by a large polished wood table. On the table sat a tall bottle of butterbeer and two wine glasses.
Sirius scratched his hand through his hair unsurely. "Er...I didn’t think you’d be the candlelight dinner type, I...thought this might be a suitable alternative."
Sophia seemed to be more concerned with how this was possible than with the selection of atmosphere. "You don’t mean to say you did this?"
"No, I didn’t do this. I mean yes, I...sorta did. You see, this room automatically supplies you with anything you need. My friends and I took forever to figure out what it did after we found it one night."
"You mean only you and your friends know about this?"
"Yeah. Except maybe the teachers do. I’m thinking this was probably once used for a classroom. I can definitely see how it could be inconvenient for all the students to know how it can be used, though..."
"Like how we’re using it right now?"
"Yes, exactly."
She looked around and laughed. "How in the world did you guys find this place?"
"Oh, I know my way around the school better than any of the teachers probably do."
"How?"
"By always being up to no good," he said mysteriously.
She laughed again and then said, "Well, are we going to sit down or what?"
They sat in one of the couches and forty minutes later had drank almost all of the butterbeer and taken their shoes, sweaters, and ties off and had their feet curled up comfortably on the couch. They were talking more calmly, no longer roaring with laughter as they had been for a while, which had actually resulted in one of the wine glasses getting dropped and broken.
At one point in their conversation they somehow got on the subject of physical fights with family members. After Sirius told her about a time Regulus had tripped him down the stairs, Sophia explained how one day when she was seven her dad had been in a bad mood and had kept taking it out on her and yelling at her about everything she did.
"...So at one point I was outside and he was really pissed and started telling me over and over again to go wash the dirt off my hands, but I pretended not to hear him because he was making me mad. So after about the fifth time he yelled at me I just stood up and started walking away, and he hexed me."
"Your father hexed you?" Sirius asked in surprise.
"Yeah," she said, undoing the top two buttons of her shirt. "He took out his wand and just attacked me from behind. It knocked me out for ten minutes and I was seeing stars the rest of the day. I got this scar." She pulled her shirt down her left shoulder and turned to show him a very faint line about as long as a fingernail on her back near her shoulder blade.
"How could he just do that to his kid?" Sirius asked. She was talking about it in an almost humorous way, but he didn’t find it very funny.
She shrugged as she pulled the collar of her shirt back up, leaving the buttons undone so that it was comfortably loose around her neck. "He’s the one person that nobody in my family really likes. That was the same year my mum got fed up with him and she took me to move in with her sister. The last thing I heard was that he had gone to a Muggle prison for getting in a fist fight in public. My mum just got remarried a couple years ago to a much nicer guy."
He looked at her a little sadly and then turned his face forward, staring off in space as he said the next thing. "I saw the last of my parents this New Year’s Eve. I ran away from my family. My cousin eloped with this Muggle-born, and I couldn’t stand the way they treated her for it. That was just the last straw, you know?"
"Well, sometimes parents are just ridiculous about wanting their kids to have good status and be successful in their marriages," she told him. "Even if their ideas of what’s acceptable are repulsive, the way they reacted was probably out of love for her. And I’m sure they didn’t really want you to leave."
"You don’t understand. My mum practically gave me a helping kick out the door once I mentioned the consideration that I would leave."
Sophia looked at him with a fully sympathetic expression. "But it couldn’t have been the way you say it was. I mean...my dad wasn’t a very good person, but I know that in a weird way he did love me. Your mother must love you at least a little bit."
Sirius’s eyes showed tremendous inner struggle for a moment, and then he resolved, "I guess...I guess she must have at some point, before I was old enough to question the things I had been brought up to believe. I don’t want to think that there are people so hateful that they can just forget about their love for people like that...but I’ve grown up seeing so much hatred that to me it’s believable. I’ve never known love in that house. Never." He paused, sighing, and continued, "I don’t like the person that’s turned me into. I’ve tried so hard not to be like the people in my family, and I’ve only become a different thing I don’t want to be. I don’t see the good things in people and forgive them anything like Lily does. I’m not heroic and morally impulsive like James. I’m just bitter and I hold grudges against everybody who’s like my parents. I mean, let’s face it: just because I’ve managed to be above my family and their bullshit, that doesn’t make me a saint. That’s not enough, is it?"
Sophia waited until he turned to look at her face and said, "No one’s asking you to be a saint. You don’t have to be perfect."
He stared at her for a quiet moment, and then as he leaned forward she closed her eyes expectantly. He kissed her face gently at the corner of her lip and she leaned closer into him. Then over her shoulder he saw the torches burning on the wall and the deep red color of the couch, which was not what the room usually looked like when he brought girls down here for dates. Already this felt completely different from all those other times, and suddenly he felt an unfamiliar kind of discomfort that closely resembled guilt. Without really understanding why he pulled a few inches away so he could see her eyes and whispered, "This is okay?"
In answer she just brought her face up next to his, turning her head so that the part of her neck and shoulder that was still exposed from when she had showed him the scar was right before him offeringly. He put his mouth to her neck there and his hands to her hips. Everything would move from there. As the night got older, they became more and more deeply entangled together on the couch, her hands raked through his long hair and his hands feeling her waist under her shirt, both of them always with their eyes closed, searching and knowing each other in complete darkness.
After Lily finished working with Noriko she went to the Great Hall to have a late dinner by herself, as she imagined all of her friends had already eaten. She found that there were only a few small groups of students there, and most of them were studying, not eating what was left of the food from dinner. But she did see one person who was eating, sitting all by himself at the far end of the Slytherin table. She blinked her eyes slowly for a moment and braced herself, and then she walked over to the table and sat down right next to Severus Snape.
He saw her out of the corner of his eye and for a long time said nothing. She couldn’t imagine he was actually grateful to have her company, but for some reason it just felt like the right thing to do. Even if he wasn’t thrilled about it, he certainly wasn’t completely objecting considering he let her stay there and didn’t say anything rude.
Finally he looked to the side at her and asked, "So where is dear James?"
She looked at him unaffectedly and answered, "I don’t know. I had some other things to take care of so we’re spending most of the night apart."
"Hm." He took one of the last apples from a large gold dish and said, "Seems like an awfully strange way for Gryffindor’s sweethearts to spend Valentine’s Day."
She cut herself a slice of bread and said nothing in response to that. "And what about you? Where are all of your friends?"
He scoffed. "With their future Pureblood marriage partners." He paused, looking down at his plate. "And they’re not my friends."
Lily waited a moment before saying quietly, "I know."
"I know what you would think, but that’s not something to be sorry about," he said quickly. "I don’t need them. None of us need each other."
"That’s fine, as long as the feelings are mutual," she said. "Well...lack of feelings, that is."
"What, you think your relationships with people are so much stronger?" he said a little snappingly. "You’re so naive that you’ll trust anyone. What about James?" he asked a little more quietly. "Are you sure he’s the noble hero you think he is? Didn’t you ever think he could have been worrying about saving himself from expulsion just as much as saving me that night?"
Lily decided it was best not to try to explain how James hadn’t been responsible for the prank in any way, so that couldn’t be true. Snape wasn’t going to understand no matter what. And besides that, if she defended James and made him sound like a good person for not being the mind behind what had happened, it would suggest that she thought Sirius wasn’t a good person, which wasn’t true at all.
"Because you would even suggest it I can see you don’t know him at all," she said calmly. "That’s why you think he’s so much worse than he is. And that’s why I forgive you."
"Forgive me!" he spat back at her in disgust. "When have I ever asked it of you?"
"You’d have to know what you’ve done to need forgiveness for in order to do that, Severus."
"Don’t call me by my first name. Why don’t you just hate me like the rest of your friends and stop pitying me?"
"Because I know you’ve never hated me. You can’t because I’ve never done anything to you."
"I do hate you! You’re everything I hate! A worthless, filthy Mudbl-" For some reason as he met eyes with her in the midst of his hissing, he couldn’t finish the word. Her calmness was infuriating. Why couldn’t he hate her? Didn’t he?
Lily slowly looked forward away from him. "I’m sorry I bothered you, Severus." She stood up with her plate and he said nothing to stop her as she walked away to another table.
Their ears and noses pink from walking around Hogsmeade in the cold winter air, Remus and Madelin returned from a long outing and went up to the entrance to her common room. The portrait that covered the entrance to the Hufflepuff tower was on a wall by a set of stairs, which Remus and Madelin stopped at the bottom of to say their last words before parting. She giggled when he picked her up around the waist and set her on the step above his so that he didn’t have to look down to talk to her.
"Thanks for taking me out again," she said.
"Did you have fun?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Really?" he said a little timidly. "I mean...do you really have fun with me?"
"Yeah. Of course," she said, laughing quietly.
"Alright...Sorry, that was stupid to ask. I mean..."
She giggled. "Are you trying to say something, Remus?"
He smiled. "I just like you a lot."
She giggled again girlishly as if she was nervous. "Ah, Remus...Goodnight." She leaned forward and kissed his jaw, which was the highest of him she was level with even when standing a step above him.
"Goodnight," he said back as she went up the steps. She murmured a password to the king in the portrait and then stepped through the hole in the wall after the painting lifted up. As Remus walked away, he was very glad no one was there to see him unable to stop smiling to himself.
Lily had ended up being busy with Noriko almost all night, and James hadn’t even been thinking about the fact that she would be looking for him afterwards and he had gone to his room at 9:30 after leaving the library. He was so detached from the present that he did not pay much attention to how strange it was when Sirius never showed up to go to bed at 10:00, even though Peter and Remus were very confused and brought it up every fifteen minutes that he continued to be absent. It was very much to Sirius’s benefit that Remus was Head Boy; not only did he never turn in his friends when they broke the rules, but he was usually quite reluctant to exercise his authority and was always lenient about his responsibility to check that all the boys were in bed. After Peter and Remus were too tired to talk anymore, they got quiet in their beds and started to go to sleep. But James did not feel tired at all, and he tried to sleep for only about twenty minutes before getting out of bed and quietly sneaking down to the common room.
It took him a while to notice that the piano was playing on its own as it had used to do all the time. He was so used to the sound he hardly heard it anymore. Remus seemed to have bewitched it to play various love songs, and right now it was softly keying "My Funny Valentine."
As he stood in front of the fireplace the same thoughts he had been having all day bothered him all over again. He hated this. He shouldn’t even have had to be worrying right now about whether or not he was going to one day get married to Lily or not. He should have just been able to live in the present and wait for where things would go. But because of the possibilities that had been brought to his attention, he was now worrying about how any kind of future with her at all was possibly threatened. He knew this wasn’t the way people were supposed to live. But at the same time, how could he just go on pretending everything was fine with everything he knew was going on in the world?
Something soft glided by his ankle, and he looked down and saw Lily’s cat, Galadriel. He leaned over and picked her up, holding her and stroking her white fur for a few seconds. Then he heard someone walking up quietly behind him.
"James?"
The cat was dropped to the floor and pounced away silently, and James turned around and took Lily’s wrist, pulling her to him. Before she could say anything he had his face buried in her shoulder and was hugging her so tightly that her heels lifted a little from the floor and the top of her pajamas came up to reveal her midriff. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and asked him, "Are you really all right?"
"Yeah," he said quietly.
"Are you sure?" she asked as her hand went up to where his hair started at the back of his neck.
"Yes, just listen," he said. "Lily, I know I’m always subtle with you. And I know I’m not the most emotional person...But you do mean everything to me. If anything ever happened to you, I’d go crazy."
"Nothing is going to happen to me," she assured in a voice that seemed to reveal that she already understood what he meant and what he was worried about.
"I know. But I just..."
"James," she said gently as she pulled out of his arms enough to look him in the eyes. "Everything’s going to be okay. I promise."
He gave a small nod. Then she smiled and there was nothing more he could say to her. Her hand on his neck moved to his upper back, her arm circling around him and pulling herself closer to him. Every dark thought in his mind was violently chased away as their lips met. The kiss deepened naturally and in the calm quiet of the common room, James felt everything restored to the way it should be.
In the Room of Requirement, the atmosphere was very different than it had been a while before. Sophia was lying across Sirius with her head resting on his chest and her eyes closed. They felt no need to talk to each other but simply lay on the couch in silence. The torches surrounding them on the walls seemed to be burning with less tall flames now, giving off a soft, constant glow instead of a blazing and flickering light as they had been earlier.
Sirius knew Sophia was awake because she opened her eyes and yawned every once in a while. Then after a while she seemed to realize she needed to stay awake and kept her eyes open staring off into space for a while, but then when she spoke for the first time in a while it was clear she’d been thinking about things while lying there.
"Sirius, I don’t know why I was put in the house I’m in, you know," she said in a way of having wanted to say this to him for a long time. "I was in that line to be sorted on my first day with all of these terrified kids, and I just remember not understanding what they were so scared about. I didn’t care what house I was going to be sorted into. Whichever one it was, I figured I would be fine in it if that’s where I was put. I didn’t expect it to work out so awkwardly. But I don’t know which house other than Slytherin I could belong in. It probably wouldn’t have worked out any better for me no matter what. All I know is I used to hear all about you and your friends and how much attention you brought to yourselves by causing trouble, and I kind of thought it would be fun to know all of you. So for a while, I think maybe I wished I was in Gryffindor instead. Or at least...in any other house, so that to people like you and James I would appear decent enough to talk to."
Sirius thought about what she had just said for a long moment. Then he said, "The most common trait of Slytherin students that I’ve always noticed is their lack of dependence on other people. People like them can be disgusting the way they’ll put their own needs before others` and bring others down for their own good. Even the friendships and relationships they have now are just for security. Narcissa and Malfoy never would have picked each other to date without the convenience of them both being Pureblood. I can’t imagine they actually love each other. That’s why even though I’ve always thought of their kind as being despicable, I’ve also always thought of them as being really lonely kinds of people. In a way they themselves can’t even grasp because they’re so lost in their principles of perfection.
"But you’re different because you don’t even rely on others as a way to keep yourself up. You have no interest in befriending people just to use them because you’re willing to go through everything on your own. You knew on your first day of school that it didn’t matter what kind of people you were sorted into the same house as, because you don’t depend on the people you’re around to help you succeed. Not depending on other people is a very ambitious way to live, and maybe that’s why you belong in your house best. But not needing any other people at all is also lonely in its own way."
Sophia was so silent that she almost seemed to have fallen asleep when she had actually listened to his every word. She sighed tiredly and stretched her arm around Sirius, hugging his chest. He rubbed his hand down her back and asked, "Do you want me to take you downstairs?"
She opened her eyes and said, "No, not yet."
"Okay. I know where in the castle you can get some food this late so I’m going to go get something. You hungry?"
She shook her head.
"Alright." He rolled her off of him and kissed her head between her eyes as she started to close them again, and then he got up and left.
Fifteen minutes later he came back with a banana and some bread and she was still curled up on the couch, her stomach moving gently as she breathed. He sat on the table in front of her and said, "Sophia?"
She just continued to lay there silently. Sirius noticed there was a folded blanket on the arm of the couch that hadn’t been there before. He unfolded it and put it over her. He felt kind of strange as he did it. Everything about tonight wasn’t the kind of thing he was used to. If someone like Victoria Knightley had fallen asleep in this room when he’d taken her here, he didn’t know how he might have reacted. He might have been insulted. He might have not cared and figured she was at fault if he left her there. He might have gotten a little annoyed because of how bad it would look in the morning if he didn’t leave her. But right now, he couldn’t really care less that Sophia had fallen asleep.
In fact, he kind of liked staying there with her and watching her. Eventually he got tired as well and dozed off on the other couch.
Author: me
Previous chapters: 1 & 2 | 3 & 4 | 5 & 6
Characters: James/Lily, Sirius(/OC), Remus(/OC), Peter, Snape
Rating: PG-13
Summary: What will it take for Sirius to grow up and learn to regret the prank he played on Snape? Well, it starts with a girl. Meanwhile, there's something Remus should probably know about the girl he's interested in, and Lily and James have their future to worry about as the Death Eaters are becoming a growing threat.
Chapter 7
Love Is All Around
On the morning of Valentine’s Day, all of the Gryffindor students woke up to a song being played loudly on Sirius’s turntable in the common room. For some reason Sirius had gotten up a little early and apparently felt a great deal less bitter about what day it was than many others are known to be; at least enough to feel like playing "Love Is All Around" by the Troggs loud enough to wake everyone up. James was reminded of Sirius’s first morning at his house during the holidays, though this time the music was preferably calmer to wake up to than Jimi Hendrix, and it even made James start to feel a little happy about it being Valentine’s Day as he got dressed.
James went into the Great Hall for breakfast quite early and discovered that only one of his friends was already there at the section of the Gryffindor table where they usually sat. Lily looked very beautiful that morning, sitting up straight and looking through a chapter of Potions as she politely waited for others to get there before she ate. Today she had part of her hair tied back in a green velveteen ribbon that matched her eyes perfectly. As James approached her from her left he suddenly felt a surge of excitement for the time he had to steal to talk to her alone.
"Good morning," he said as he sat down next to her, adorning the greeting with a kiss on her forehead as she turned to him. "You look pretty."
"Thank you," she said, smiling warmly. "Happy Valentine’s Day."
James smiled guiltily and then said, "I have a confession to make."
"What?"
"I didn’t get you anything."
"Oh," she said with a careless wave of her hand. "It doesn’t matter. I didn’t get you anything either."
"Well, traditionally I don’t think you’re necessarily expected to as much as the guy..."
"Oh, come on. Don’t be old-fashioned."
"Fine, no gifts or anything like that. But let’s do something really nice tonight."
"Like what?" she asked.
"I don’t know," he said consideringly. "Go somewhere we’ve never gone together before."
"With you gentlemen and that map of yours, that shouldn’t be difficult."
"Shhh," he said, putting his finger to her lips. "You don’t talk about that in public."
"As if you guys take very drastic measures for security, calling each other those silly nicknames," she laughed as she pushed his hand away.
"We can use our nicknames and whisper about it in public because we’re Marauders. You can’t talk about it at all, cause you’re not one."
"I’m as good as, now that I know everything!"
"Nah, I really don’t think we could accept you as one of us," he said just to get on her nerves. "It’s more like a men’s club anyway. When we’re not sneaking around the school we drink beer and watch dirty movies."
She laughed, nudging him with her elbow just as Sirius and Peter appeared and sat down.
"Oh no!" Lily suddenly interrupted Sirius, who had opened his mouth to say hello. "I completely forgot, I’m supposed to be eating with Noriko so I can talk to her about something. I’ll see you guys later."
Just like that she had left, and as Sirius forked sausages onto a plate he said, "And what are everyone’s plans for this unforgivably fluffy holiday?" Even as he made the negative statement, he was smiling and his tone was light and cheerful.
James shrugged. "I don’t know. Probably hanging out in the Room of Requirement with Lily or something."
"Oh, I don’t think so, Jim," Sirius said right away. "I’m taking Sophia to the Room of Requirement."
"Oh. Whatever. We can find somewhere else to go."
"Er...Is that exactly fair?" Peter questioned. "With how many times Sirius has used that room for dates, and the one time you want it..."
"No, I really don’t care," James assured. "Something about using that room just doesn’t seem...I don’t know...classy, to me."
"Well, it’s a hell of a lot more creative than going to the Three Broomsticks for the hundredth time, Prongs," Sirius said, almost sounding offended.
"No need to get touchy," James laughed. "That just isn’t my style. Besides, something gives me the feeling Lily and Sophia wouldn’t exactly be impressed by the same things."
Peter and Sirius laughed as Remus came up and sat down with them. The first thing he said was, "I’m going to smash your turntable, Padfoot."
The others laughed some more.
The first class of the day that all four of the boys had together was Divination. They had all decided to take it their last year to ensure that they had a class together that they could be lazy in. In fact, it had become one of the most enjoyable hours of school for them because the teacher, Professor Fangora, was very easy-going and didn’t take the subject too seriously.
"Good afternoon, class," she greeted the room at the beginning of the hour. "Well, today we were supposed to review for your test on tarot readings tomorrow, but fortunately for you, in order to do that test I need the book I record your marks in which I left at my husband’s house this weekend because I’m a dingbat."
There was an eruption of instant applause from the class, who had been expecting a very boring study hour today.
"And since it’s Valentine’s Day," Professor Fangora continued, "and since you’re all still recovering from the holidays and don’t want to think too much anyway, I thought we’d do something a little fun. So I talked to Professor Phlox and he gave me some of these from the greenhouse."
She held up two flower pots full of pansies, one with purple ones and the other with yellow ones.
"Pansies?" said Monty Clubber, who was sitting close enough to identify the flowers. "We have normal stuff like that in our greenhouse?"
"Actually, Mr. Clubber, pansies are used quite often for magic, but especially most magic involving romance," she explained. "Pansy pollen is one of the most important ingredients in making love potions. Obviously I can’t teach you how to make a love potion because not only does it have nothing to do with Divination but it’s also illegal."
The class laughed.
"However, there is something kind of fun that we can do with pansies today that I thought would be appropriate for this holiday. We are going to use them to reveal our future love lives."
There was a mixture of various reactions from the class, including Arnaud Doisneau asking, "Is she serious?"
Laughing, Professor Fangora waved her arms to quiet the class. "Don’t take this that seriously. It’s completely unprecise and unproven magic, not to mention not a kind of fortune telling that’s commonly used for people your age. Anyway, to do this you will want to take two petals - from the purple pansies if there is already a specific love interest in your life and from the yellow pansies if there’s no one yet - and a couple of leaves from a weeping tree that are on this table. Get a bowl and grinder from the cabinet and crush the petals and leaves in it in a circular motion, adding a small hair from your head into the mixture as you do so, until you have revolved the contents of your bowl ten times. Then you will attempt to get a glimpse at your future love life or your future with your special someone by looking at the shapes at the bottom of your bowl and being very creative about what they could possibly look like."
Monty asked, "Did you make this all up?"
"Oh no, this method is in one of my Divination books, I swear," she said with a laugh.
"This is so lame," Sirius said as he and the others got in line to get their petals and leaves. As they stood in line Professor Fangora got bowls from the cabinet in the back of the room and passed them out to them.
"Um, Professor?" James called. "Sirius is going to need at least five."
"Why is that?" she asked.
"One for every girl."
Everyone who had heard this laughed.
"In fact, maybe you just shouldn’t participate in this, Padfoot," Remus said to him. "I don’t think you have enough hairs on your head."
James and Peter laughed even harder, and Sirius just rolled his eyes.
Once the boys were seated back at their table with their four bowls, three of them with purple flower petals inside and one with yellow, all of them but Sirius started selecting hairs from their heads to pull out. Sirius, who never listened very intently to instructions, was already grinding his petals unceremoniously.
When they were all done, they picked up their bowls and peered into them searchingly. The first comment to come out was Sirius saying, "What the hell?"
They broke out into laughter.
"This doesn’t look like anything," James said.
"I think I can kind of see a...ladle," Remus said, turning his bowl. "Or is it a burrow?"
"Doesn’t a burrow usually symbolize a secret or something?" Peter asked.
He shrugged. "Don’t know what that’s supposed to mean."
"Seeing anything, gentlemen?" asked Professor Fangora as she passed.
"Nothing," James answered.
"Well, let me have a look," she said, walking around to stand behind him and taking his bowl. As she studied it carefully, a look of recognition settled on her face. "Well, here’s a bell. That means marriage. That’s a happy thing to have in your bowl."
"Way to go, Prongs," Sirius said half-jokingly, leaning back in his chair and giving a couple applauding claps.
"Wait a minute," Fangora said with interest, looking even closer in James’s bowl. "Wow, this is a very complex fortune, Mr. Potter. You have double-meaning symbols in here....Oh. Oh, that’s not happy at all..."
The faces of the four boys fell in unexpected disappointment.
"This is saying...This means that if you go through with that commitment with the person you love...then it’s going to.....mean death for both of you." She said the last part so quietly that they could hardly hear it, as if she wasn’t sure she should actually be telling them or not.
The boys eyed each other with very uneasy looks, and Professor Fangora looked at them and immediately forced a smile. "Well, come on. You can’t take these things seriously. I mean, you’re not actually thinking about marriage at your age, anyway. Are you, Mr. Potter?" She looked down at him, not necessarily expecting an answer. "Like I said, this isn’t even usually meant for wizards who are sixteen or seventeen years old."
With that, she walked away to go assist another table. The four continued to look at each other uncomfortably, and then Sirius barked loudly in short laughter.
"What the heck was that all about?" he wondered.
"No kidding," Peter said. "I thought this was supposed to be a fun and light activity."
"I wonder if she got in a row with her husband over the weekend or something," Remus said casually. "Being mad can make you misread predictions, can’t it?"
"I bet that’s it," Peter said.
Sirius, who was leaning back with his feet on the table chewing on a quill now and had completely forgotten about his own bowl, rolled his head lazily to the side at James, who didn’t look like he was even listening to their optimistic explanations. He nudged him with his elbow. "Hey. You’re not actually buying that rubbish, are you?"
James sat up, snapping into reality, and looked at him. "Oh. Yeah...No, of course I’m not. I mean, that sounds ridiculous."
"Yeah, it does," Peter agreed. "How is marrying Lily going to result in you both dying? Unless you drive each other so crazy you kill each other?"
James forced a laugh as the others chuckled. But as soon as they looked away from him again, he felt his smile fall.
Shortly after the last class had gotten out that day, James was walking away from his Charms class toward the dormitories by himself, his hands in the pockets of his robes and his face looking down at his feet dolefully. Because he wasn’t looking where he was going, he ran right into a girl who had been turned toward the wall of the hallway talking to a friend she was now waving goodbye to. He said, "Sorry, excuse me" and turned to face her, only to see that it was Lily. As soon as their eyes met something was already wrong; once she recognized it was him she looked very sorry for some reason, and in a strange way he didn’t really want to see her right now.
"James," she said, "I couldn’t find you at lunch."
"I was outside," he explained.
"Oh. Well...I’m really sorry, but I promised Noriko she could interview me for this paper she has to do for Muggle Studies, and she thinks the only night she’ll have a lot of time to work on it is tonight."
James registered what this meant and then said, "Oh. That’s fine."
"I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to be so inconvenient," she said almost shyly, looking genuinely regretful. "I’ll still be able to meet you later, but it’ll just be late."
"That’s okay, it’s no big deal," he said. "You can just find me later tonight, then."
"Okay," she said, smiling with a kind of forced relief. Then she tilted her head to the side questioningly and said, "You alright?"
"Yeah, of course."
"Okay," she said again. Then for a moment it seemed to be the time she should kiss him goodbye before walking away, but for some reason it just wouldn’t happen in the chilled space between them for that instant. She just said, "I’ll see you later," and turned to walk away.
James watched her sadly as she left, not bothering to continue walking himself, and wondering what was wrong with him. He was almost relieved that he and Lily weren’t having a date early tonight. He didn’t know if he would be able to act normally happy with her after what he had heard Professor Fangora say today.
He didn’t understand why it was affecting him so much. That prediction didn’t even make any sense. How could they be in such serious danger like that in their future?
As he started walking slowly, his foot slid on something that was on the floor. He looked down and saw that someone had dropped a few pages of today’s Daily Prophet that were now under his foot. Before even leaning over to look at it the headline on the top page caught his eye: "Investigations Reveal Possible Pattern In Death Eater Targets." James leaned over and picked up the page. Beside the article was a moving photograph of the ruins of a building that Death Eaters had destroyed. Suspended in the air above the charred, smoking ruin was the Dark Mark, the snake slithering in and out of the eyes and gaping mouth of the skull. As James stared at it, the pitch black voids of its hollow eyes seemed to bulge and stare right through him.
A sudden freezing thought entered his head right then. All of the students at the school were living away from home inside the cozy, safe walls of Hogwarts, and James had lost himself in the routine school life and forgotten about the threat of the Death Eaters just like everyone else did as soon as they were done reading the latest news on the subject. But what if it was something much more serious than they realized? What if things were happening in the magic world that were going to change their lives forever as all of the students sat in class all day trying not to doze off as they took notes? What if this Death Eater problem was going to go on a lot longer than most realized?
Maybe the prediction Professor Fangora had made when looking into his bowl made a lot more sense than it seemed. Lily was Muggle-born, after all. Couldn’t that mean that she could be in some danger in the future if this threat continued until then? Couldn’t that mean that by association with her, he could end up in danger, too?
James dropped the paper to the floor and crossed his arms uncomfortably. What if the prediction was true? What could he do about it? If he never ended up marrying Lily, would she still die and he just wouldn’t because he wouldn’t be at the wrong place at the wrong time with her?
Don’t be stupid, James thought to himself. Nobody is going to die.
But no matter what he told himself, he couldn’t seem to relax. He was bothered the rest of the day, and unconsciously made the decision to spend it by himself in the library where he could read to distract himself, the last place Lily would think to find him on a day that teachers weren’t likely to give enough homework to keep him there until very late at night.
The Crystal Ship
Sirius didn’t meet Sophia anywhere in specific because they now knew where they were always likely to find each other in the castle. One of the places Sophia liked to be by herself was a very quiet hallway on the second floor with large pointed arch windows. He quietly walked down this hallway and found her sitting in one of these windows with one leg resting up against the pane and one dangling freely, not reading as she usually did here but just watching the snow fall outside where the sun had almost completely gone down.
She gasped when Sirius’s face popped up out of nowhere right next to hers. "Hello, beautiful."
"God, Sirius!" she said, shoving his shoulder. "Don’t do that."
"Sorry," he said. He reached into his back pocket and took out the book he had borrowed from her. "I’m done with this."
"Already?" she asked. "If I’d known you weren’t just the light reading type I would have given you some of Thoreau’s actual work."
"I think I got the idea, though," he said, handing the book to her. "Very interesting."
"Really? You liked it?" she said in an uncharacteristically bright tone as she slid down from the window onto her feet. "What was your favorite part?"
"All the parts you had underlined."
"All of them? Are you serious?"
"Yeah, I liked how you had all those quotes marked. I thought it was adorable."
"Oh, shut up! That’s not what I meant."
"No, honestly...I did like it. 'No man should have to count more than his ten fingers.' Brilliant."
She looked up at him with a very surprised expression, as if she never would have expected him to have taken such devoted mental notes while reading it after hearing the way he was talking about the play seconds before.
"Well...thanks for giving it back so soon," she said, looking down at the book, which didn’t look nearly as new as it had when she’d given it to him and appeared to have spent time in his back pocket on several occasions. She looked back up at him and said in a new, changing-of-subject way, "You’re not going to be all cheesy with me now because it’s Valentine’s Day, are you?"
"Of course not," he said. "Me?" He looked around suddenly to see if anyone else was around, and then he took her hand, stepping out into the middle of the hall a little. He looked back at her with his thought completed. "Want to do something against the rules?"
"Absolutely," she answered right away.
He started leading her down the hall toward the nearest staircase.
"Where are we going?" Sophia asked.
"Just wait and find out," he said.
Sophia did wait and find out, not asking him any other questions until they stopped in the hall where the entrance to the Room of Requirement was.
"There’s nothing here, Sirius," she told him as she saw him seem to be looking for a door.
"Oh yes, there is," he said. "There’s a room here you can’t find unless you need to find it."
"What kind of room?"
"Whatever kind of room you need to find."
She looked at him with her eyebrows drawn together and crossed her arms as he lifted up a tapestry on the wall. "Sirius, are you off your rocker?"
He opened a door under the tapestry and her eyes widened as light poured out from inside a room.
"How did you...?" she started as he took her hand again and pulled her inside.
The room was large and round and was lit by about a dozen torches circling around the wall. In the middle of the room were two very large burgundy couches facing each other that were separated by a large polished wood table. On the table sat a tall bottle of butterbeer and two wine glasses.
Sirius scratched his hand through his hair unsurely. "Er...I didn’t think you’d be the candlelight dinner type, I...thought this might be a suitable alternative."
Sophia seemed to be more concerned with how this was possible than with the selection of atmosphere. "You don’t mean to say you did this?"
"No, I didn’t do this. I mean yes, I...sorta did. You see, this room automatically supplies you with anything you need. My friends and I took forever to figure out what it did after we found it one night."
"You mean only you and your friends know about this?"
"Yeah. Except maybe the teachers do. I’m thinking this was probably once used for a classroom. I can definitely see how it could be inconvenient for all the students to know how it can be used, though..."
"Like how we’re using it right now?"
"Yes, exactly."
She looked around and laughed. "How in the world did you guys find this place?"
"Oh, I know my way around the school better than any of the teachers probably do."
"How?"
"By always being up to no good," he said mysteriously.
She laughed again and then said, "Well, are we going to sit down or what?"
They sat in one of the couches and forty minutes later had drank almost all of the butterbeer and taken their shoes, sweaters, and ties off and had their feet curled up comfortably on the couch. They were talking more calmly, no longer roaring with laughter as they had been for a while, which had actually resulted in one of the wine glasses getting dropped and broken.
At one point in their conversation they somehow got on the subject of physical fights with family members. After Sirius told her about a time Regulus had tripped him down the stairs, Sophia explained how one day when she was seven her dad had been in a bad mood and had kept taking it out on her and yelling at her about everything she did.
"...So at one point I was outside and he was really pissed and started telling me over and over again to go wash the dirt off my hands, but I pretended not to hear him because he was making me mad. So after about the fifth time he yelled at me I just stood up and started walking away, and he hexed me."
"Your father hexed you?" Sirius asked in surprise.
"Yeah," she said, undoing the top two buttons of her shirt. "He took out his wand and just attacked me from behind. It knocked me out for ten minutes and I was seeing stars the rest of the day. I got this scar." She pulled her shirt down her left shoulder and turned to show him a very faint line about as long as a fingernail on her back near her shoulder blade.
"How could he just do that to his kid?" Sirius asked. She was talking about it in an almost humorous way, but he didn’t find it very funny.
She shrugged as she pulled the collar of her shirt back up, leaving the buttons undone so that it was comfortably loose around her neck. "He’s the one person that nobody in my family really likes. That was the same year my mum got fed up with him and she took me to move in with her sister. The last thing I heard was that he had gone to a Muggle prison for getting in a fist fight in public. My mum just got remarried a couple years ago to a much nicer guy."
He looked at her a little sadly and then turned his face forward, staring off in space as he said the next thing. "I saw the last of my parents this New Year’s Eve. I ran away from my family. My cousin eloped with this Muggle-born, and I couldn’t stand the way they treated her for it. That was just the last straw, you know?"
"Well, sometimes parents are just ridiculous about wanting their kids to have good status and be successful in their marriages," she told him. "Even if their ideas of what’s acceptable are repulsive, the way they reacted was probably out of love for her. And I’m sure they didn’t really want you to leave."
"You don’t understand. My mum practically gave me a helping kick out the door once I mentioned the consideration that I would leave."
Sophia looked at him with a fully sympathetic expression. "But it couldn’t have been the way you say it was. I mean...my dad wasn’t a very good person, but I know that in a weird way he did love me. Your mother must love you at least a little bit."
Sirius’s eyes showed tremendous inner struggle for a moment, and then he resolved, "I guess...I guess she must have at some point, before I was old enough to question the things I had been brought up to believe. I don’t want to think that there are people so hateful that they can just forget about their love for people like that...but I’ve grown up seeing so much hatred that to me it’s believable. I’ve never known love in that house. Never." He paused, sighing, and continued, "I don’t like the person that’s turned me into. I’ve tried so hard not to be like the people in my family, and I’ve only become a different thing I don’t want to be. I don’t see the good things in people and forgive them anything like Lily does. I’m not heroic and morally impulsive like James. I’m just bitter and I hold grudges against everybody who’s like my parents. I mean, let’s face it: just because I’ve managed to be above my family and their bullshit, that doesn’t make me a saint. That’s not enough, is it?"
Sophia waited until he turned to look at her face and said, "No one’s asking you to be a saint. You don’t have to be perfect."
He stared at her for a quiet moment, and then as he leaned forward she closed her eyes expectantly. He kissed her face gently at the corner of her lip and she leaned closer into him. Then over her shoulder he saw the torches burning on the wall and the deep red color of the couch, which was not what the room usually looked like when he brought girls down here for dates. Already this felt completely different from all those other times, and suddenly he felt an unfamiliar kind of discomfort that closely resembled guilt. Without really understanding why he pulled a few inches away so he could see her eyes and whispered, "This is okay?"
In answer she just brought her face up next to his, turning her head so that the part of her neck and shoulder that was still exposed from when she had showed him the scar was right before him offeringly. He put his mouth to her neck there and his hands to her hips. Everything would move from there. As the night got older, they became more and more deeply entangled together on the couch, her hands raked through his long hair and his hands feeling her waist under her shirt, both of them always with their eyes closed, searching and knowing each other in complete darkness.
After Lily finished working with Noriko she went to the Great Hall to have a late dinner by herself, as she imagined all of her friends had already eaten. She found that there were only a few small groups of students there, and most of them were studying, not eating what was left of the food from dinner. But she did see one person who was eating, sitting all by himself at the far end of the Slytherin table. She blinked her eyes slowly for a moment and braced herself, and then she walked over to the table and sat down right next to Severus Snape.
He saw her out of the corner of his eye and for a long time said nothing. She couldn’t imagine he was actually grateful to have her company, but for some reason it just felt like the right thing to do. Even if he wasn’t thrilled about it, he certainly wasn’t completely objecting considering he let her stay there and didn’t say anything rude.
Finally he looked to the side at her and asked, "So where is dear James?"
She looked at him unaffectedly and answered, "I don’t know. I had some other things to take care of so we’re spending most of the night apart."
"Hm." He took one of the last apples from a large gold dish and said, "Seems like an awfully strange way for Gryffindor’s sweethearts to spend Valentine’s Day."
She cut herself a slice of bread and said nothing in response to that. "And what about you? Where are all of your friends?"
He scoffed. "With their future Pureblood marriage partners." He paused, looking down at his plate. "And they’re not my friends."
Lily waited a moment before saying quietly, "I know."
"I know what you would think, but that’s not something to be sorry about," he said quickly. "I don’t need them. None of us need each other."
"That’s fine, as long as the feelings are mutual," she said. "Well...lack of feelings, that is."
"What, you think your relationships with people are so much stronger?" he said a little snappingly. "You’re so naive that you’ll trust anyone. What about James?" he asked a little more quietly. "Are you sure he’s the noble hero you think he is? Didn’t you ever think he could have been worrying about saving himself from expulsion just as much as saving me that night?"
Lily decided it was best not to try to explain how James hadn’t been responsible for the prank in any way, so that couldn’t be true. Snape wasn’t going to understand no matter what. And besides that, if she defended James and made him sound like a good person for not being the mind behind what had happened, it would suggest that she thought Sirius wasn’t a good person, which wasn’t true at all.
"Because you would even suggest it I can see you don’t know him at all," she said calmly. "That’s why you think he’s so much worse than he is. And that’s why I forgive you."
"Forgive me!" he spat back at her in disgust. "When have I ever asked it of you?"
"You’d have to know what you’ve done to need forgiveness for in order to do that, Severus."
"Don’t call me by my first name. Why don’t you just hate me like the rest of your friends and stop pitying me?"
"Because I know you’ve never hated me. You can’t because I’ve never done anything to you."
"I do hate you! You’re everything I hate! A worthless, filthy Mudbl-" For some reason as he met eyes with her in the midst of his hissing, he couldn’t finish the word. Her calmness was infuriating. Why couldn’t he hate her? Didn’t he?
Lily slowly looked forward away from him. "I’m sorry I bothered you, Severus." She stood up with her plate and he said nothing to stop her as she walked away to another table.
Their ears and noses pink from walking around Hogsmeade in the cold winter air, Remus and Madelin returned from a long outing and went up to the entrance to her common room. The portrait that covered the entrance to the Hufflepuff tower was on a wall by a set of stairs, which Remus and Madelin stopped at the bottom of to say their last words before parting. She giggled when he picked her up around the waist and set her on the step above his so that he didn’t have to look down to talk to her.
"Thanks for taking me out again," she said.
"Did you have fun?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Really?" he said a little timidly. "I mean...do you really have fun with me?"
"Yeah. Of course," she said, laughing quietly.
"Alright...Sorry, that was stupid to ask. I mean..."
She giggled. "Are you trying to say something, Remus?"
He smiled. "I just like you a lot."
She giggled again girlishly as if she was nervous. "Ah, Remus...Goodnight." She leaned forward and kissed his jaw, which was the highest of him she was level with even when standing a step above him.
"Goodnight," he said back as she went up the steps. She murmured a password to the king in the portrait and then stepped through the hole in the wall after the painting lifted up. As Remus walked away, he was very glad no one was there to see him unable to stop smiling to himself.
Lily had ended up being busy with Noriko almost all night, and James hadn’t even been thinking about the fact that she would be looking for him afterwards and he had gone to his room at 9:30 after leaving the library. He was so detached from the present that he did not pay much attention to how strange it was when Sirius never showed up to go to bed at 10:00, even though Peter and Remus were very confused and brought it up every fifteen minutes that he continued to be absent. It was very much to Sirius’s benefit that Remus was Head Boy; not only did he never turn in his friends when they broke the rules, but he was usually quite reluctant to exercise his authority and was always lenient about his responsibility to check that all the boys were in bed. After Peter and Remus were too tired to talk anymore, they got quiet in their beds and started to go to sleep. But James did not feel tired at all, and he tried to sleep for only about twenty minutes before getting out of bed and quietly sneaking down to the common room.
It took him a while to notice that the piano was playing on its own as it had used to do all the time. He was so used to the sound he hardly heard it anymore. Remus seemed to have bewitched it to play various love songs, and right now it was softly keying "My Funny Valentine."
As he stood in front of the fireplace the same thoughts he had been having all day bothered him all over again. He hated this. He shouldn’t even have had to be worrying right now about whether or not he was going to one day get married to Lily or not. He should have just been able to live in the present and wait for where things would go. But because of the possibilities that had been brought to his attention, he was now worrying about how any kind of future with her at all was possibly threatened. He knew this wasn’t the way people were supposed to live. But at the same time, how could he just go on pretending everything was fine with everything he knew was going on in the world?
Something soft glided by his ankle, and he looked down and saw Lily’s cat, Galadriel. He leaned over and picked her up, holding her and stroking her white fur for a few seconds. Then he heard someone walking up quietly behind him.
"James?"
The cat was dropped to the floor and pounced away silently, and James turned around and took Lily’s wrist, pulling her to him. Before she could say anything he had his face buried in her shoulder and was hugging her so tightly that her heels lifted a little from the floor and the top of her pajamas came up to reveal her midriff. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and asked him, "Are you really all right?"
"Yeah," he said quietly.
"Are you sure?" she asked as her hand went up to where his hair started at the back of his neck.
"Yes, just listen," he said. "Lily, I know I’m always subtle with you. And I know I’m not the most emotional person...But you do mean everything to me. If anything ever happened to you, I’d go crazy."
"Nothing is going to happen to me," she assured in a voice that seemed to reveal that she already understood what he meant and what he was worried about.
"I know. But I just..."
"James," she said gently as she pulled out of his arms enough to look him in the eyes. "Everything’s going to be okay. I promise."
He gave a small nod. Then she smiled and there was nothing more he could say to her. Her hand on his neck moved to his upper back, her arm circling around him and pulling herself closer to him. Every dark thought in his mind was violently chased away as their lips met. The kiss deepened naturally and in the calm quiet of the common room, James felt everything restored to the way it should be.
In the Room of Requirement, the atmosphere was very different than it had been a while before. Sophia was lying across Sirius with her head resting on his chest and her eyes closed. They felt no need to talk to each other but simply lay on the couch in silence. The torches surrounding them on the walls seemed to be burning with less tall flames now, giving off a soft, constant glow instead of a blazing and flickering light as they had been earlier.
Sirius knew Sophia was awake because she opened her eyes and yawned every once in a while. Then after a while she seemed to realize she needed to stay awake and kept her eyes open staring off into space for a while, but then when she spoke for the first time in a while it was clear she’d been thinking about things while lying there.
"Sirius, I don’t know why I was put in the house I’m in, you know," she said in a way of having wanted to say this to him for a long time. "I was in that line to be sorted on my first day with all of these terrified kids, and I just remember not understanding what they were so scared about. I didn’t care what house I was going to be sorted into. Whichever one it was, I figured I would be fine in it if that’s where I was put. I didn’t expect it to work out so awkwardly. But I don’t know which house other than Slytherin I could belong in. It probably wouldn’t have worked out any better for me no matter what. All I know is I used to hear all about you and your friends and how much attention you brought to yourselves by causing trouble, and I kind of thought it would be fun to know all of you. So for a while, I think maybe I wished I was in Gryffindor instead. Or at least...in any other house, so that to people like you and James I would appear decent enough to talk to."
Sirius thought about what she had just said for a long moment. Then he said, "The most common trait of Slytherin students that I’ve always noticed is their lack of dependence on other people. People like them can be disgusting the way they’ll put their own needs before others` and bring others down for their own good. Even the friendships and relationships they have now are just for security. Narcissa and Malfoy never would have picked each other to date without the convenience of them both being Pureblood. I can’t imagine they actually love each other. That’s why even though I’ve always thought of their kind as being despicable, I’ve also always thought of them as being really lonely kinds of people. In a way they themselves can’t even grasp because they’re so lost in their principles of perfection.
"But you’re different because you don’t even rely on others as a way to keep yourself up. You have no interest in befriending people just to use them because you’re willing to go through everything on your own. You knew on your first day of school that it didn’t matter what kind of people you were sorted into the same house as, because you don’t depend on the people you’re around to help you succeed. Not depending on other people is a very ambitious way to live, and maybe that’s why you belong in your house best. But not needing any other people at all is also lonely in its own way."
Sophia was so silent that she almost seemed to have fallen asleep when she had actually listened to his every word. She sighed tiredly and stretched her arm around Sirius, hugging his chest. He rubbed his hand down her back and asked, "Do you want me to take you downstairs?"
She opened her eyes and said, "No, not yet."
"Okay. I know where in the castle you can get some food this late so I’m going to go get something. You hungry?"
She shook her head.
"Alright." He rolled her off of him and kissed her head between her eyes as she started to close them again, and then he got up and left.
Fifteen minutes later he came back with a banana and some bread and she was still curled up on the couch, her stomach moving gently as she breathed. He sat on the table in front of her and said, "Sophia?"
She just continued to lay there silently. Sirius noticed there was a folded blanket on the arm of the couch that hadn’t been there before. He unfolded it and put it over her. He felt kind of strange as he did it. Everything about tonight wasn’t the kind of thing he was used to. If someone like Victoria Knightley had fallen asleep in this room when he’d taken her here, he didn’t know how he might have reacted. He might have been insulted. He might have not cared and figured she was at fault if he left her there. He might have gotten a little annoyed because of how bad it would look in the morning if he didn’t leave her. But right now, he couldn’t really care less that Sophia had fallen asleep.
In fact, he kind of liked staying there with her and watching her. Eventually he got tired as well and dozed off on the other couch.
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Date: 2006-12-24 04:56 pm (UTC)~Runa :)
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Date: 2006-12-25 09:34 am (UTC)painter 11
Date: 2011-01-17 09:48 am (UTC)