Elusive Scarlet

When Lily Evans realizes the true purpose of her remote boarding school for orphaned girls, she begins to plot her escape from a life of constantly giving birth in a loveless marriage to an aristocrat in her final year of school—a week before her graduation, to be exact. On one of her test runs, she meets wealthy lord James Potter. Will he help her escape? And if so, what waits beyond the school's walls are more dangerous than anything Lily imagines. James x Lily, Sirius x OC. Love in the midst of danger!

DISCLAIMER: Toast to Queen Rowling!

Chapter One: Dead Eyes

Your mind is on track

For the games we play these days

With every path we take

The only risk is that you'll go insane

-Flume feat. Moon Holiday, "Insane"

"LILY EVANS!"

The jarring shout bolted Lily out of her half-asleep pose and out of her hard-backed seat to fall gracelessly in a wild sprawl on the musty carpet. Her pencil and paper that had her "notes" (a ridiculous scrawl of doodles) followed her soon after, clattering unceremoniously to the floor. Amid the malicious titters from her snooty classmates, Lily, with a glower directed at no one in particular, dragged herself back into her chair; head whipping towards the doorway where she knew would stand the headmistress, Headmistress Bulstrode.

No teacher in the entire Young Ladies' Boarding School had an aversion to Lily quite like the headmistress did. None of the teachers liked Lily to the smallest degree, but none of them loathed her like Headmistress Bulstrode did.

"LILY EVANS!" the headmistress screeched once more. Lily turned at a slug's pace in the headmistress' direction, her most carefully crafted stare of bored indifference painted upon her face.

"Yes, Madame Bulstrode?" Lily replied sweetly, her tone verging on poisonous.

"To my office. At once." The puce-faced headmistress pointed a shaking finger down the corridor, her mouth set in a thin, angry line. Lily wanted to laugh, for seeing Headmistress Bulstrode furious was like watching a cartoon come to life: the tomato shade seemed almost unreal and the hairy upper lip suggested a moustache. The headmistress was short, stout, and relatively nasty when it came to dealing with students whom she despised.

Lily sighed inwardly, although she tried to keep a wicked grin from latching itself onto her lips. This time, Headmistress Bulstrode likely had an actual reason for yanking Lily out of class: three days ago after Bulstrode had whacked Lily's knuckles with a ruler for "speaking out of turn" until they were bleeding profusely, Lily snuck into the Headmistress' private quarters and put woodland bugs she had gathered in the most remote areas of the grounds into Bulstrode's bed and underwear drawer. The punishment Lily knew would follow felt almost worth it to hear the terrified shrieks of the vile headmistress the previous night.

Shoving her way past the door with the gold-lettered plaque reading HEADMISTRESS D. BULSTRODE, Lily plopped in a very unladylike fashion into one of the hard, wooden chairs. Bulstrode's desk appeared the same as always: a festoon of paperwork and manuscripts all with her cursive signature of Dorea V. Bulstrode and random knickknacks scattered haphazardly over the desk's surface. Lily picked up a curious timepiece that was inlaid with gold, history lessons flying to the forefront of her mind.

In her History class, Madame Riley had pulled out a timepiece she said was named a "watch" and that before the lethal virus destroyed the majority of the population, nearly everyone wore a watch. The watch for the impromptu show-and-tell that day had also been gold, another extremely rare substance Madame Riley told the girls had been more common in the "old days."

Lily pulled the timepiece closer to her face, examining it thoroughly. It was indeed the same watch, but what was Headmistress Bulstrode doing with it? Instead of numbers along the edges like most of the watches, Madame Riley had mentioned very little of why this one had astronomical constellations lining the edges.

The door slammed open. Lily threw the timepiece back onto the headmistress' desk right before the toad-like woman sat down, an ugly, furious stare in her beetle-black eyes.

"I know what you did," hissed the headmistress. There was a slight scuffling sound from the wall and she leapt up, slapping herself all over. Operation #30, named the Bug Blasting, is rendered successful, Lily thought triumphantly as she fought to keep a straight face while the headmistress began to frantically slap her own bottom as if there were insects swarming over her body.

A small snort escaped Lily when the headmistress had seated herself once again. She tried to cover it up with pushing her features back into their blank mask.

Headmistress Bulstrode's eyes narrowed as she shouted, "Why, you insolent, wretched little brat—"

For the second time that day, the door smashed back open. The headmistress, who had been up in Lily's face and snarling profanities at the red-haired girl, quickly drew herself back into her seat and sat up poker-straight. "Is there something you needed, Fleet?"

Fleet glanced around the office. Lily noticed his Adam's apple bob twice before he replied shakily, "Ma'am, there's been an, ah, interruption—" He coughed as to indicate Lily's presence. Lily fought the urge to yell, I'm still sitting here!

Headmistress Bulstrode's mouth thinned again and something akin to panic appeared in the lines of her pudgy face. "What interruption? Where?" Her voice grew sharper with every word.

"The, uh, wing. . ." Fleet's voice was heavy with implicated meaning. Bulstrode must've picked up on it, Lily observed. The headmistress shot up from her seat as fast as she could and waddled out the door. Fleet followed her sheepishly. But just when Lily thought the headmistress was off to the enigmatic "wing" Fleet mentioned, her face popped back into the doorway.

"And you, Evans, don't you move a muscle," snapped Bulstrode, her face screwed up like she had been fed a dosage of the school's infamous onion broth. "You shall wait for your punishment until I arrive back."

"Duly noted," Lily muttered to a seemingly empty room. She listened closely to the muffled whispers filtering down the hall, identifying one voice as Headmistress Bulstrode's and the other as Fleet's.

What wing? Lily thought, her mind whirling. There aren't any wings at this school. . . Or are there?

In an impulsive decision, Lily darted out of her uncomfortably hellish chair, poking her head into the hallway. At the first turn, she could see the headmistress' toadish figure stomping ahead of Fleet, who awkwardly trailed in her wake.

A bolt of strong curiosity lit in Lily. The wing. . . I can find out what the wing is if I follow Headmistress Hell. Checking the corridor once more and finding it still empty, Lily ran soundlessly after Bulstrode and Fleet. She skidded to stop after going down the right fork like the headmistress and Fleet. Inhaling sharply, Lily held her breath when she noticed that the two people she wanted to notice her the least were a mere ten feet in front of her. She froze, praying that they wouldn't turn around.

Lily released a breath once they went down the curve of the hallway. When she followed them, she made sure to go slower instead of wildly sprinting after the headmistress and Fleet. When Lily reached the curve of the hall where Bulstrode and Fleet had been just minutes before, she pressed herself against it as the pair continued down the hall and out a pair of French doors with the school's insignia, a burst of roses crossed by a bouquet of tulips carved into the wood.

Lily cautiously pushed open the doors a crack. Through the thin sliver, she could see Bulstrode and Fleet traversing down the grounds to a small building where the windows were clumsily boarded up. She stared at it, her gaze running over the weathered wooden walls and the thick, steely chains wound around the door handles.

How have I never known this has been here? Lily wondered. A few schoolgirls were milling aimlessly about the grounds around the horizon, but none of them seemed to pay any attention to the mysterious wing, the headmistress fiddling with the lock, or Fleet, who had pulled out a key from his pocket.

In the midst of her musings, Lily realized something: Fleet was going to lock up the wing's doors before Lily arrived and then she would never get to see what disturbance had occurred in the wing.

Lily considered her options, her brain racing to figure out a solution before Bulstrode ordered Fleet to lock up the doors again. I could run over there and stick something in between the doors so they're jammed. I could jam the lock itself. I could. . .

"Lock them, Fleet." Headmistress Bulstrode's voice carried over to where Lily was peering out from behind the cover of a thick tree trunk.

No! Lily wanted to yell. Don't lock them, Fleet, don't listen to her—

But of course Fleet listened to the commanding headmistress. It was obvious that he was frightened of her and would gladly and eagerly do whatever she asked of him. Lily snorted despite the predicament. But once her small spout of amusement vanished, her panic began to rise steadily. She could do nothing but watch, eyes wide in despair, as Fleet locked the doors. The key was firmly in his pocket; Lily had no hope that she might've been able to nick it off him. The doors shut with a resounding rumble and Lily's spirit sagged.

I must know what lies in that wing. I simply shan't let this be until my curiosity is at rest! But. . . how am I to get in, then? Lily pondered relentlessly. Her eyes drifted to the boarded-up windows on the front side—if they hadn't been shackled with wood, then she could've stolen a quick peek inside them. If they hadn't been hammered in so securely, then perhaps she could've torn a bit of the wood away. But with the situation where it was, each scenario would lead Lily to discovery by Headmistress Bulstrode.

But. . . what about windows in the back? Lily's heart leapt with hope. What if. . . there were more windows but they hadn't ever been boarded up? Or, she considered, the wood binding them might be wetter and flimsier since the wing backs to a forest, which rarely sees much sun.

Lily quickly scampered to the backside of the building. Strangely enough, the majority of windows hadn't been boarded up. In fact, the windows were shining glass panes, free of dirt and debris. The entire backside of the wing was steady grey stone, which led it the look of a research lab Lily had seen in one of the old textbooks while snooping through Bulstrode's office when she was fifteen.

Why did they design the front side to look so. . . dilapidated and run-down and the back sleek and sophisticated? It made almost no sense. Unless. . . Lily could feel the metaphorical cogs whirling. The headmistress has something to hide here. This revelation only heightened her burning curiosity, and Lily ran over to the nearest window. It was the slightest bit too high for her to see into it properly—the bottom of the frame was centimeters taller than the top of her head.

Glancing around frantically, Lily found two bricks lying around the side of the wing. With a wince as her arms protested, she heaved them up and deposited them underneath the windowsill and then stood on them quickly, not bothering to test it they would hold their position underneath her weight or not.

Lily stared at the scene playing out through the window. . . and gasped in horror.

It's a damn hospital.

The mysterious wing is a sodding hospital.

Beds lined the north and south sides of the walls. Moving trays laden with silver, sharp instruments were at every bedside. Most of the beds were filled except for two or three. At first, Lily tried to convince herself that the girls in the beds had gotten ill and had to be quarantined. But her transparent slip of ignorance fell away as she narrowed in on the obvious details.

Every girl had an abnormally swollen stomach. Some of them had tubes and needles that Lily knew were called IVs hooked up to their inner wrists or crooks of their elbows. Each IV traced back to a bag full of clear liquid. Some of the girls looked like they were sleeping, but Lily knew better. The clear liquid wasn't water—Lily could only guess it was a type of painkiller, which she thought was odd. No one used painkillers anymore; Headmistress Bulstrode herself had proclaimed that they were an outdated medicinal practice of the past.

Lily, gaping and appalled, examined the girls more closely. None of them looked very old at all; they could have easily been sixteen to eighteen years of age. A sheen of sweat covered many of their foreheads as they tossed and turned restlessly. Lily could hear the faint sound of whimpering from inside the wing. A piercing scream assaulted Lily's ears as a brunette girl whipped her head to and fro in her bed, her legs trembling as her stomach seemed to rise higher. The woman standing nearest her snarled something incomprehensible and jabbed a needle into the girl's arm. The stout woman looked horribly familiar from the back, and it hit Lily like Bulstrode's rulers across her knuckles: the woman was the headmistress.

Lily could see it clearly now: Headmistress Bulstrode striding from bed to bed and wrinkling her pug nose in distaste at the blood-soaked or vomited-upon linens the girls writhed in. Lily could see her growing swiftly furious at whomever was closest to her—Fleet and a terrified nurse.

Words trickled through the window like mud. "Why. . . given birth yet?!" Lily heard the headmistress shout in outrage.

The nurse quivered in her shoes and whispered something inaudible. Fleet cringed. Bulstrode's face grew redder and redder until it was almost an eggplant shade. Lily, still perched underneath the windowsill, crossed her fingers and prayed that the headmistress would perish through an ugly end like choking.

"If I injected. . . . drugs, ma'am. . . die," whispered the nurse. Lily pressed closer to the window in vain, fighting a battle to hear every word and not be seen clinging awkwardly to the window by the puce-colored headmistress, Fleet, and the nurse.

The next shout felt like it shattered both the window and Lily's eardrums. "WELL DO IT THEN!" Lily nearly fell ungracefully off her brick tower, gasping as her ears rang. Inside the wing, both Fleet and the nurse were wincing harder than ever. At a venomous hiss from the headmistress, both were scrambling to clumsily inject the bedridden girl with more of the drug.

Pregnant, Lily realized, gasping slightly in horror. They're all pregnant. But why? It didn't take much thought to trace the pregnancies back to Headmistress Bulstrode; anyone with half a brain could deduce from her violent reaction that the pregnancies were obviously of great importance to her. Except why would she need anyone to be pregnant? Lily wondered, her eyes huge as the headmistress strode from bed to bed, examining some girls' stomachs or their IVs and occasionally snapping at the nurse.

Think, Lily, think! What would cause the need for so many girls to be pregnant? Lily sifted through the corners of her mind. Murder of someone? Accidents? Mass murder? A massacre? Nothing too horrible and devastating came to the forefront of her brain, so Lily settled for trying to figure out who the girls were. Her gaze fell upon the rows of girls, some blonde, some brunette, some black-haired, but all looked vaguely familiar. Like a magnet, the brunette girl who had been whipping her head to and fro drew Lily's gaze once again. There's something about her. . .

And then, in a dazed, sleepy stupor, the girl's eyes opened and Lily inhaled sharply. They were a once-brilliant golden color, and suddenly Lily knew exactly who the girl was.

"I just wanted to say that I've had a wonderful time at the Young Ladies' Boarding School," announced the valedictorian, Marlene McKinnon. Lily looked up at her in awe; Marlene symbolized exactly what Lily herself wanted to be: beautiful, smart, poised, and the valedictorian. "My experience here has been like no other. This is the youngest we'll ever be. This is the most paramount point in my life, and soon, yours. I wish you the best of luck with your futures, and hope to see you soon in the King's Seat selling art or working in laboratories. Good luck."

Lily slipped back out of the memory. Shock and numbness washed over her. Marlene McKinnon, the brightest and best scientist in the whole school, was in the hospital birthing a litter of children for the rest of her life. Realization swept swiftly over Lily as she stared at each of the girls, and suddenly they all weren't pregnant girls she was examining, but they were her elder friends, they were Marlene and Anna and Madison and Alicia and Mia and Jane and Lily found herself breathing in shallow, sharp breaths and panic and fear roared over her. She was going to become one of those girls, with the swollen stomachs and bloodstained bedclothes and dead eyes and drugged bodies. She was going to be the girl that was chained to pregnancy and birth in a vicious cycle until she died. Her future lay not in false lie of science in the King's Seat but a numb life in the hospital until she was disposed of or died from blood loss.

I have to get out of here. Escape pulsed through her system. Lily clambered loudly off her pile of bricks and ran wildly away from the hospital, anything to get away from the headmistress, the blank eyes of Marlene McKinnon, and the empty, coldly unforgiving truth that waited for her in a hospital bed and birthing drugs.

ANOTHER NEW FIC TIME!

(If anyone is wondering why I said 'another', I just uploaded a TMI fic called I'm Falling to Pieces.)

Thoughts on Elusive Scarlet? Also, in case anyone is wondering, James makes his first appearance in the following chapter :)

ANYONE WHO REVIEWS GETS A SNEAK PEEK OF CHAPTER TWO! I REPEAT: ANYONE WHO REVIEWS GETS A SNEAK PEEK OF CHAPTER TWO!

As far as the updates for Dark Clarity, City of the Fallen, Clockwork Academy, Matching Shadows, and any others I've forgotten, tell me the update you guys want to see the soonest and I'll work the hardest on that one.

Also, I have new story ideas up on my bio! Pretty please check them out and let me know which ones y'all are most interested in?