"Miss Evans," Professor Dumbledore said. "Thank-you for coming. I am very sorry to inform you that Katie had some…. trouble."
"What do you mean, professor?" I asked totally confused, all too aware that it was showing on my face.
"It seems that your sister went to Hogsmeade without permission last night, and had a lethal accident."
"What happened?" I asked as the sky outside turned from black to gray, as night turned into day.
"I'm not certain that I should tell you that Miss Evans." Dumbledore looked at me with the saddest eyes I had ever seen, the sparkle that was almost always shimmering in them was dead, and they looked lifeless and miserable behind the glasses, that were shinning in the firelight.
"WHAT HAPPENED TO MY SISTER?!" I screamed at him, after hours of silence that was broken only by my sobs, my heart tearing in two at the very thought of something bad happening to my sister. I didn't want to yell at Dumbledore. I was ashamed to know that I was; yet I couldn't seem to get any control what-so-ever over the volume that my voice was at, at that moment. Nor was I aware that there was another person in the room, until I heard someone cleared their throat somewhat nervously. I blushed a red so deep that my face most likely matched my hair, at the thought that someone other than Dumbledore and myself had heard my lunatic like screaming. I turned around to see James Potter-no not James, though he did look remarkably like James, though with blue eyes instead of Hazel.
"The Evans family is here." He said before once again looking at me as though afraid that I would start yelling at him and maybe throw a thing or two around the room, and walking out of the room.
The door was once again throw open, this time by my mother, who ran forward and hugged me harder and longer than she had ever hugged me in my life. Dad and Tuney followed mum closely into the office. Dad hugged me as well, but Petunia on the other hand walked over and leaned on the wall on the opposite side of the room. She had always liked Katie better than me. As a matter of fact, Tuney hated me.
"Mr. and Mrs. Evans, it is so wonderful to meet the parents of one of the most intelligent pupils I have had in my many years at this school. I had however hoped that we would have got to meet under different circumstances." Mum and Dad greeted Dumbledore as well, and sat in the two chairs that sat in front of Dumbledore's desk. I stood behind my mother, my hands resting on the top of her chair.
"What happened to our daughter, headmaster?" Mum asked, her voice cracking terribly. She had streaks of mascara and eyeliner running down her face and her eyes were red and puffy, like mine. She had been crying, hard.
"It seem that you daughter went on a late night trip to Hogsmeade and was very unfortunate to run into some Death Eaters." Mum and Dad looked back at me, totally bewildered by what he had just said, searching me for the explanation.
"Katie went to the village just outside the grounds, in the middle of the night, and ran into some of the bad guys." I said bluntly.
"They didn't take so kindly to her after she didn't do what they wanted her to. Always was a sharp one with the tongue, Katie was, as is her baby sister." Dumbledore added with a small smile. "They used the torture curse on her. There was nothing we could do, they had it on her too long." I looked up from the strands of ginger hair on my mother's head, so much like my own and Katie's, that I had been staring at, to see more tears streaming silently down Dumbledore's face and into his long silver beard than I could have ever thought possible.
I had seen things in my life and at this school that I never want to see again, but I suddenly realized that Dumbledore had been here when Voldemort had been at this school, when he had graduated. Dumbledore, who had been at Hogwarts before Voldemort had become who he was, had seen or heard about every single death that had happened because of one man. Dumbledore had seen more families torn apart by attacks at this school, than any man should ever have to.
He had seen this man- this thing twist everything around him until people who were of magical decent were bad. He had seen this man blackmail and threaten people into believing the same way as him.
Silently I moved from behind my mum around the desk and without hesitation, I hugged my headmaster. It wasn't awkward for me, like I thought it would be, when my headmaster hugged me back. Mum, however, was in total shock that I had done that. I had never done that to anybody in my life.
When I pulled back and looked to see what his reaction to my random act was, it was not surprised as I had expected. It was happy, and the sparkle was once again back in his eye and there was a genuine look of amusement on his face.
"Not that I don't appreciate the gesture, Miss Evans, but why did you do that?" He asked.
"Because, Professor, you have seen more death and more destruction that this war brings than almost anyone else. No one should have to go through that, especially not you. You care too much about our world and the people in it to have to watch us self-destruct like we are. This war represents a failure to listen. The failure to listen to each other, the failure to co-exist with Muggles, and the failure to realize that we are all human, and that we all bleed red, regardless of who our parents are and where we come from. Though most of this could probably be expected to come from anybody who, like me, is a Mudblood to the core. And all of this started because one man didn't want a child? I know that there are a lot of other people who are like that, but at some point you realize that there will always be people like them. And at some point you realize that not all of us are like that. I may not be that smartest person in this world, but I do know this: we are all equal, men, women, and children, none better than the other. It's the same with purebloods, halfbloods, and Mudbloods; none are better than the others, just different. Each one special in their own way."
"Lily, you have become more grow-up over your years in this world than you should have to be." Dumbledore said." You show the courage to fight that a lot of Muggle-borns so very conspicuously lack. You are a true Gryffindor, Lily. And you are truly and inspiration to a lot of people, all over this school."
"Thank-you Professor. Mum, I'm going outside to get some air."
"I hate you." A voiced hissed at me as my hand touched the doorknob. I had completely forgotten that Petunia was even there.
"And why do you hate me now?" I asked, taking several steps toward her, truly curious to know what the answer was.
"You could have saved her."
"What are you-" I stopped as the door burst open. Though when I saw that it was only James, Remus, and Sirius, I continued as if the intrusion never took place. "On about?"
"You could have saved her, help her!"
"Who, Katie? No I couldn't have Tuney."
"Lily," Sirius said stepping toward me. "What happened to Katie?" Katie and Sirius had been going out for three years, and Sirius had just popped the question to her about a week ago.
I looked at Sirius, unable to talk. My bottom lip was trembling and I started to shake uncontrollably. Fresh, hot tears began to stream down my face at the unfortunate fact that I couldn't ell. James, Remus, and Sirius were at my side before I could blink. As I looked at Sirius he finally read my silent plea to understand. His eyes immediately filled with tears that I knew he refused to cry in front of me.
"This is all your fault, you little bitch!" Petunia screamed at me through her sobs that were matched by only mine and my mothers.
"This is not my fault Petunia! How can you say that?"
"You didn't help her! If you're so great and you're so powerful then you should have been able to save her! I bet you helped them, you helped them kill her!" My mother was no completely silent, as was everyone else in the room.
"How dare you." My voice was lower than it had ever been when I was in a fight with James. Very few people knew that I got quiet when truly mad at someone. "How dare you try to accuse me of having anything to do with this? How could I have? What purpose would killing my sister serve, other than getting you the fuck off my ass about everything? Tuney, I would have wanted to die myself rather than see my Katie hurt, even if it was a mere splinter. Katie and I were- are twins. We were born identical twins to the core. We came from the same place from the same people. We are that same person. And now that she's gone, I feel like I'm walking around with half of me missing! I loved… love Katie. I love you. I would die for you to without a single thought about it, yet you wouldn't so much as look my way!"
"Lily, I would die for you to."
"No you wouldn't, Katie would. You know what? Forget it, you'll never understand. I'm wasting my breath."
"Why wouldn't I understand, Sis?" Petunia said placing a hand on my shoulder as I turned away from her, to leave. She hadn't called me "Sis" in a number of years.
"You will never understand because you have to want to understand to be able to. I have to go outside now." I said shoving past everyone, and running out of the castle to the cold, snowy, January morning. I waded through the waist deep snow until it started to dull to a light sprinkle of flakes here and there along the shoreline. This was the one place that I didn't want to be at, but was also that one place that I new I had to be at.
This was her favorite spot to come sit at. I sat down in the grass and closed my eyes. Ignoring the cold I silently willed- no begged her o come to me, so that I could see her one last time. So that we could finished that talk that we had started last night before I fell asleep in that middle of it.
There she was. Just as beautiful and perfect as she was yesterday, still dressed in her school uniform. Not a thing about her had change so far, save for that fairly transparent look and the fact that she now floated several inches off of the ground.
"Lily," She said softer than normal. "It's good to see you baby sister."
"It's good to see you to, Katie. I've missed you, so much."
"Honey, I've been dead a few hours." She said with a laugh.
"I need to talk to you. And I need to finish the conversation that we started yesterday."
"All right, sweetie. But, then that's it. We don't want or need you catching a cold."
I could only laugh at this. "Kay-Kay, you sounded so much like Mum just then. Do you think that after we finish I could bring her, Dad, Sirius, and everybody else down so that they could say good-bye to?"
"I think that, that would be okay. Now, what did you want to talk to me about?"
"Tuney blames me."
"Well, of course she does. That's just the way Tuney is. And that's just what she does."
"She says that it's all my fault and that if I was so great than I could have saved you."
"She doesn't understand our world. She doesn't know that there is nothing that even you can do to help the dead. That's why we're dead, because we're beyond help. She's always gonna blame you. You're the only sister she has left to blame, now. You have to understand that, that's just the way she is. Nothing's ever gonna change that."
"Yeah, I guess. I just wish that little miss thing would get her royal arse off her high fucking horse and stop being so goddamn lazy."
Katie laughed at that to. "Now you wanted to talk to me about James. What's wrong?"
"I don't know. I get butterflies when he looks at me, and whenever he touches me, everything gets smushed together. It's gets all complicated because it feels good, too good."
"Sis, you like him! You get the butterflies when he looks at you the way that no one else does, right?" I could only nod. It was true, no one had ever looked at me the way that James did. "And it feels 'too good' when he touches you the way that no on else does, right?" Again a nod. No guy had ever had the guts to touch me like James did. It wasn't like a sexual touch or anything, but he would touch my arm or something and it always feels too good to be all innocent like it seems. "You like him! You want him! You need him!"
Now I knew that she was partially making fun of me. "I don't want to though! I don't want to like him! I don't want to want him! And most of all Sis, I don't want to need him!" The truth way, I knew she was right, but that didn't mean that I had to like it. "Why do I need him?"
"You need him, because I'm not there anymore. You needed me but now I'm gone, he's not. Don't put your life on hold just because there will be some days that I'm here and some days that I'm not. He loves you now, and despite what you want to believe, you do need him, but he needs you a lot more. Don't let him down."
"You left me and you want me to get over it right now! You left Sirius to! How the hell do you think he feels right now?! He almost cried, but being the tough guy that he is, he wouldn't do it in front of me."
"Well, I suppose that's a good thing, that he doesn't do it in front of you."
"That's not what I meant and you know it!" By this point I'm sure I had Hypothermia. Pajamas aren't really the best things to wear in the snow. Especially if they're just a pair of short shorts and a spaghetti strap tank top.
"Lils, if you don't get inside now you're gonna be floating pretty soon to." She aids with a smile, trying to lighten the mood.
"How could you leave me? Why couldn't you do what you were told for once in your life? Or better yet, why couldn't you follow the rules and stay inside the castle?"
"I went because I was supposed to, and I didn't leave you."
"Well you're sure as hell gone." Tears began to once again roll down my cheeks. I love my sister but sometimes she can be so damn hard headed that I don't know how the hell she get along with people. She a bigger bitch than I am yet, she seems to have no trouble at all keeping friends. "How can you expect me to live my life, without you here to help me, and as though you never existed at all?"
"You don't need me as much as you think you do. Yes we are twins, we are the same person, but now the only body that we have is yours. Mine will never be used again. I was more of a guardian angel than a sister for you. I've served my purpose; I have made sure that you make it to your eighteenth birthday. That was what I was supposed to do, I just had a little more fun along the way that I should have. I was never meant to go through all of your life with you."
"My sister is an angel. Wait a minute; our birthday is three days away. How do you know that I'll even turn eighteen now? How do you know that I'll live the life that I'm supposed to?"
"I have faith in you and the people who surround you baby sister. You will not let me down, you never have before, and I've never had a reason to doubt you."
"Why do I now get the feeling that all of the wizarding world will soon depend on a single choice that I have to make?
"A lot does depend on the choices you make in your life."
"Why does everything always fall on me?"
"Go get everyone, I have little time left and I want to say good bye."
I stood, bare feet stinging on the cold hard ground. I nodded at her, then proceeded to fight my way beck through the snow. When I reached the entrance hall I was crushed into hug after hug by almost everyone.
"James I need to talk to you, everyone else wait right here a second." I grabbed James's had a pulled him out of earshot. "While I was out side, I was talking to Katie-"
Talking to Katie, come on Lily."
"I thought you learned that in this world, anything is possible. Anyway, I was talking to Katie and she told me some things that I have a hard time believing. And this may be a bad time to ask you this but who cares. Do you love me? Do you really truly love me?"
"Yes, Lily, I do. I have loved you ever since I met you. Why?"
"I love you to." That might sound lame to some of you, but it was the only thing I could think to say. I couldn't even come up with some smart arse remark to wipe that damn smirk off of his face.
"You love me?" He said, surprised; yet he some how still managed to keep the smirk.
"I just fed you ego for life." I said, more to myself than to him, yet he still nodded his head in agreement. "Don't be a dick headed arsehole. Do you want to see my sister again?" He nodded. "They shut-up."
I walked over to everyone, closely followed by James. "Come with me, guys. There something I want to show you." They all followed me in silence, until we reached the door.
"I'm not going out there!" came the shriek of, guess who. That's right… Petunia. Fine you little pampered princess; be a bitch like that, I don't care if you come.
"No one making you come, Tuney. I just thought you would like to say good bye to our sister is all."
"Oh my god, Lil. Is she really complaining already?" I turned around to see my two best friends Mary and Alice walking over. "That has got to be a record. I have never seen someone start to bitch and whine when they've only been somewhere for like two hours." That was Alice for you, and if you couldn't tell the difference between the two, that was Mary for you to. They were twin to, identical down to the hair on their head. Both total bitches at heart, though that's probably the only reason that she got along with Katie and me.
"I just meant the it's freezing out there." Petunia said trying to defend herself.
"Well, I was out there in what I have on now, for like an hour. I really don't have time to fight with you." I turned and walked once again out into the snow, aware that everyone, even Petunia was following me. It was only then that I realized that I wasn't the only one in pajamas. I seemed that the only people that were properly dressed were my parents and Petunia, while the rest of us were half- naked in our pjs.
"JESUS CHRIST, IT'S COLD!!" James yelled as he stepped into waist deep snow.
We reached the lake and I once again closed my eyes. Just long enough to say good-bye I silently pleaded. The gasps I heard around me told me that it worked, and I opened my eyes to find myself looking at my sister.
"Mum," I said. "Come, here." Mum walked forward so slowly, one would have thought she was walking to the gallows. "Mum, it's okay. She's not going to hurt you… she can't."
"What do you say to a daughter that you're not supposed to be seeing? What do you tell someone who is dead?"
"Mum, Lily brought you all here so that you could say good-bye properly. I know that this isn't easy for all of you, especially you, Sirius."
"Why would it be harder for him?" Petunia always did have a way of making every thing that didn't revolve around her seem bad.
"He was my fiancé. We were going to get married after we got out of school."
"But we're your family!"
"Oh for fuck's sake, Petunia! Not everything is about you!" Mary exploded. "She is your sister yes, but she is the love of his life, the kind you only get once."
"There are very few people that Sirius loves, in any way, and she just so happens to be at the very top of that list." James said.
"You two seem to know a lot about is, Macdonald."
"It's something that happens to come with hanging out with him for over six years." Remus said. "You learn things fast about people after being around them for a certain amount of time."
"It's almost time for me to go" Katie said, catching everyone's attention again. "So if you want to say good- bye you better do it now."
"Bye, Sis."
"Bye, Tuney."
"Bye, Katie."
"Bye, James."
"Bye, Katie."
"Bye, Remmy."
"Bye, Kate."
"Bye, Al."
"Bye, Lynn."
"Mary I told you not to call me that! That's my middle name!"
"Actually, it's the last part of your first name."
"Bye, Baby."
"Bye, Mum."
"Bye, Kit-Kat."
"Bye, Daddy."
"Bye, Love."
"Bye, Sirius."
"Good-bye, Kay-Kay."
"Good-bye, Tiger Lily."
She turned and started to walk, well float away. She made it half way across the lake before she fly back at break neck speed.
"James!" She called.
"Miss me already?" He said laughing.
"Not really. Take care of my baby sister, or I'll come back from the dead just to kick your arse, and then I'll throttle you in your sleep."
"Will do, besides you don't have to worry. Your sister's in very good hands." He said, wiggling his eyebrows ever so slightly.
"That's partially what I'm afraid of." She grumbled sending all of us into a huge fit of laughter forcing us to have to hold on to each other to keep from falling down.
"I'll be fine Kay-Kay. Remus is still here you know. One of their voices of reason may be gone, but the other two of us are still here.
"I'm pulling for you Remus. I feel, bad having to leave you with all of these delinquents. I'm sorry this happened, but this is the way it was supposed to go.
"I just have one more question Kay-Kay."
"What is it this time, Lily?" She asked with a great sigh.
"If you knew that all this was going to happen, why did you except Sirius's proposal? You knew that you were going to die, so why say you would marry him?"
"It was a simple mistake on my part. Marrying him wouldn't have been the mistake, trust me it would have been awesome, but I didn't think ahead like I usually did. That was the happiest moment of my life. Didn't every girl in this school want to be the one that fixed Sirius Black? How many girls could say that they turned that biggest man whore, in all of Britain, into husband material in only three years? Everything happened as it was meant to." With that she turned and floated away, though this time she didn't come flying back.
"Cheer up Sirius," I said, "she would have made a bad wife anyway!" YES!! I knew I could get him to smile at that. "Let's go inside you guys, I'm freezing my arse off."
Dumbledore organized a memorial service that was held later that week. James and I had our first date on Valentines Day. School flew by after that, days turned into weeks, then into months. Graduation day was awesome, the guys even go to pull a prank without getting in trouble.
It's been hard, not having Katie here, but it's also been… refreshing. And even though I'm still completely pissed at her for dieing, I understand why she did it. Though with all the labor pain I'm going through, I think I about ready to just join her. And when Katie died I did lose something I needed, but it helped me find something I needed even more, my husband who's going to be sleeping on the couch for the rest of his life. I don't ever want another child again.
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Authors note: If Katie sound a bit more like a mother than a sister to you, than you reading it right.
And if the end of the last paragraph if confusing to you, then that would be because Lily is thinking a couple of things that aren't related to what happened before in this story. She's having Harry at the end so, yeah.
Leave a review: got an idea you think would make it better, tell me.