BOTH ALIKE IN DIGNITY
By: geekinthepink
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I claim nothing as my own, except perhaps my iPod.
NOTE: As you'll soon see, I've taken out the Shakespearean verse and replaced it with modern day English and the translations aren't exact. In fact, some things will probably be tweaked a little to fit so don't go looking for the exact version of Romeo and Juliet in here.
Chapter Two: Act One – Scenes Three to Five and Everything In Between
Emerald eyes fluttered open and Lily found herself looking at a wall opposite of her that she had never seen before, a bed that she had never slept in and nightclothes that she knew she didn't own. Sitting up slowly, at first she thought that she was in St. Mungo's, having never been there before she didn't know what it looked like but she knew that hospitals weren't as warm as this place seemed to be, nor did hospitals smell like a feast instead of something so utterly sanitary it reeked of hospital.
To the far end of one side of the room there was a set of French doors and she could see a little balcony through the panes of the glass. As she continued to look around she realized she didn't recognize anything in here, not the wooden wardrobe standing in front of her, nor did she know to where the other two doors led to.
A voice in the distance was calling out a name that she couldn't quite make out and she settled back into the pillows and blankets on the bed. Her memory couldn't drag up a single name to place with this room and that simple fact was slowly driving her completely mad.
Without even the slightest warning, a door to her left burst open and two women walked in swiftly, one obviously of a lesser stature than the other.
Lily was too busy looking at their strange attire, the heavy cotton and wool dresses and the strange jewelry coating what she assumed to be the lady of the house's hands and throat, she didn't even notice they seemed to be addressing her.
"Juliet." The woman said curtly in a tone she often heard Professor McGonagall use when reprimanding someone, most often the so-called Marauders.
'Juliet?' her mind questioned with a hint more than just simple curiosity.
"We must talk privately, Nurse aid me with the conversation, if you will. Daughter, I wish to speak to you of –" the elegantly dressed woman cut herself off before continuing again. "What is your opinion of marriage?"
Lily blinked, fearing that she could not do much else. She knew these words, though never before had she understood them so clearly. She had read these words many times, knowing them almost by heart. The aforementioned organ beat painfully in her chest as she inwardly shook away her suspicions. It wasn't possible.
"Juliet!" That bloody name was repeated again and Lily snapped out of her thoughts abruptly. She knew the next line, 'It is an honour that I dream not of', but she couldn't say it, the words seemed foolish and she wouldn't play into this game. This must have been a dream, she must be laying in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts and this dream must be coming simply because she landed on her book.
In that case, it was completely different to answer the woman's question because none of this was real, it was a dream and she's just wake up to find everything the same and an essay that she needed to write waiting for her.
"I haven't really given it any thought." she said. Lily was trying her best to match the woman's politeness as she knew that the Capulets were a family of riches and honour and with that came stern politeness that the 1900's had forgotten completely.
"When I was your age, I had nearly given birth to you." Her 'mother' pointed out. Biting back the remark that things were much different in the 1500's when the life expectancy barely reached to a person's forties, Lily remained silent. "Besides, that noble young man Paris seeks to marry you."
"Such a handsome young man, a fine husband he will make." Nurse boasted.
"I will give it some thought." Lily answered with a small smile towards both of the women. And as she knew he would, a serving man knocked on the door before coming in to announce that the feast had begun. The older women took their leave, letting the redheaded girl sit with her thoughts for a while. "Such a strange dream." She sighed aloud to the room.
Surely this was one of those dreams where it was so realistic that it was unnerving, but dreams were never this clear, you could never feel the warmth of the blankets surrounding your body, you could not feel other people's touch on your skin. Lily refused to believe that this was anything other than a dream, until there was some sort of proof otherwise, that was what she was going to coax her unsettled mind into believing.
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It wasn't the bright rays of the sun that had awoken James from his sleep, no, he had been awake for hours he just refused to greet the day just yet. He had done it again, he had started a fight with Lily Evans only to push her deeper into her hatred of him. Wherever he was currently sleeping, or at least pretending to sleep, he was going to stay there.
"He's moping." A male voice announced. James concluded that it was probably Sirius which was actually more incentive to stay in bed and bury himself deep within the blankets.
"He's just had his heart broken." The voice was too considerate to be Sirius, it was probably Remus. James debated why he hadn't made the sandy-haired boy his best friend instead, he was more compassionate and strangely good at guessing issues. Though he wouldn't have gone so far to say that he had gotten his heart broken.
"He's the one that told her that he loved her." The Sirius person said and had James not been so comfortable in pretending to be asleep he would have lashed out, but wait, he never told Lily that he loved her, he had simply asked her out.
"I can't really blame Rosalind, they didn't really know each other that well, had they?" Yes, so this was why Remus wasn't his best friend, the compassion thing was just a façade. Rosalind? Who was Rosalind? As far as he knew he had been arguing with Lily last. None of this made any sense. "We should probably wake him." The Remuslike boy continued.
If it wasn't strange enough that these people were talking about some girl they didn't know and they didn't quite sound like either of his friends, though he had blamed that on his drowsiness, but the fact that they nudged him instead of spraying him with water or jumping on him was what really gave away the peculiarity of it all.
Prying his eyes open he jumped a little when his suspicions were proved. These were not two of his best friends, definitely not. Although they were looking at him just as strangely as his friends would be right now. And this was most certainly not his dormitory, Hospital Wing or St. Mungo's. Oh Merlin, this was not good. Not good at all.
"Get dressed, we have a feast to attend in a short while. You've slept the day away." The person he had thought to be Sirius told him with a smirk that was really uncanny in a way.
The two of them left James behind, wide eyes and shell shocked. First on his list of things to do was kill Lily Evans, second was to find out what spell she used to do this to him. He was sure she had done this on purpose, punishment for embarrassing her like he had. He didn't quite understand what was happening at the moment as nothing was ringing a bell.
He didn't recognize anything or anyone, and from the way that the other two people had been speaking, they knew him, he just didn't know how or why. Whatever had happened was most definitely Evans' fault and he was going to make sure that the second he figured out how to fix all of this, he was going to hurt her. But the important thing right now was … where was he?
Sighing heavily, he abandoned his worried and moved his hand over the bedside table, almost blindly searching for his glasses. The room came into much sharper focus the second they were on and he found that this room was even farther from anything he knew than he had originally guess through random blurs.
Before long, James had managed to place his feet on the cold floor and find himself sitting next to a really strange outfit that appeared to consist of something that looked like a strange torture device disguised as really small and obviously tight pants. They seemed to be really thin too. He was definitely going to skip putting those on.
Picking up a little too large white flowing shirt off of the bed he looked at it with distaste, obviously he was supposed to be going to a costume party, but really, couldn't someone have asked him first? He would have chose something cooler, a pirate or a ghost or something, not whatever this was supposed to be.
After searching the room for a few minutes without finding any substitutes for this ridiculous garb, he put it on slowly as though the fabric was going to burn his skin if they touched. Finding that no burns were resulting he gave up on his fight and moved on to the next article of clothing. Which he soon found to be pants which he had declared loudly to the room were not pants, one because they were too short, and too because they were a little too tight in some important areas.
Moving on, after some tugging and shifting and cursing later, James found himself looking down at a deep olive colored vest and wondered idly what would happen if he completely refused to do this all together as along with the shirt and funny pants he already felt ridiculous.
Oh well, couldn't let Evans get the best of him.
Once the whole outfit, including the boring black shoes that actually looked like they were apart of his school uniform, was on he wanted nothing more than to claw it off his body and crawl back into the warm bed. Just as he was about too, Not Sirius and Not Remus came back into the room.
"Great, you're ready, now we've got a party to get to." Not Sirius, as he had taken to calling him, told him once he had noticed that James had managed to dress himself though it had not been an easy feat.
The bespectacled boy noticed that the other two boys were dressed in the same manner and he figured that the three of them must have been pulling a Three Musketeers sort of thing where they all dressed alike.
"Right then, lead the way." he told them. It wasn't as though he really knew the way anyways so he let these people do it as obviously he didn't belong here and they did. Evans was really going to get it; this was just completely and utterly wrong. And to think, he, James Potter, was dressed like a fool.
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The hall was already busy with chatting women in lovely gowns and men all wearing the same hideously ridiculous outfit. 'Not much creativity in costumes' James thought infuriately from his side of the ballroom that he had decided to place himself in.
He decided to people watch as there was nothing else he could really do, he wasn't familiar with these dances and the girls weren't really catching his fancy. There appeared to be a much different atmosphere here than there was at any of the parties he had ever attended, there was almost a sense of politeness in the air, for a lack of a better description.
Everyone seemed to know exactly their place, how to hold themselves, how to speak. Well, almost everyone. In his quick scan of the room he thought for a second he had seen a very familiar head of red hair but after telling himself that the thought was ridiculous he continued his scanning, until he fell upon her again.
Her back was turned so he couldn't see who she was, but his curiosity was peaked, that much was easy to see. However, it was not just her hair color that was captivating him, it was the unsure way that she was holding herself, it was like she was trying to play a part in a play she had not been chosen for.
"Who is she?" he questioned the man standing next to him.
"I'm afraid I do not know, sir." The man, who appeared to be a servant, answered politely.
James eyed him for a moment, finding this whole thing to be strange beyond comprehension. He just can't look away from the red headed girl across the room; even just from the back he can tell that she was a beautiful girl. Her gown fit her body well and despite it not showing as much skin as he was used to seeing, he was drawn to her.
He could see a sparkling gem in her deep red colored hair and all thoughts of this girl being similar to Evans were thrown out of the window, the delicate stature and almost naivety of this girl didn't match the fiery demeanor that he saw from his fellow Head just about every day.
Had he been so quick to confess love, he would have done it right then. While it appeared that for the most part, this girl was unlike anyone he had met before, there were some things about her that reminded him of Lily Evans, like the way that he could tell that she was playing with her hands, or tugging on her hair or even the slight shuffling of her feet. It was uncanny to say the very least.
'Stupid,' he reprimanded himself, realizing that he was still standing in the corner when the company of the girl was now leaving. 'Just go talk to her, the worst that can happen is that you'll right the spell and never see her again.'
She had remained in the same spot she had been when talking to whomever it had been, staring at a painting on the wall opposite of her. In a stance that James assumed that people always must take when observing art, she held her arms behind her, though still playing with her fingers.
Slyly, he stepped behind her and gently touched her hand with his own in what he assumed to be a flirtatious sort of a way, it had worked before. In surprise, the lovely redhead turned around and gasped as she spotted who was behind her, James however, was absolutely livid.
"Potter, what the hell are you doing in my dream?" she questioned him abruptly the second she had been able to get her mouth to close from it's unladylike lowered jaw form. Without waiting for an answer she closed her eyes tightly. "Wake up Lily, it's just a bad nightmare, just wake up and you'll be in the Hospital Wing and you can go back to hexing Potter within an inch of his life."
"I like to think I fare better than that." he told her in a way that only proceeded cause her to open her eyes just to look at him coldly.
"How did you get here?" Lily demanded desperately as her hopes of this being a dream started to dwindle away into nothing but just pointless hopes that were proving to be of no use at all.
"You hexed me, remember?" For someone so smart, she lost a lot of tact when it came to things outside of recalling things from textbooks. Besides, it was starting to worry James that even she didn't know how they had gotten here.
"Yes, but that doesn't explain how both you and I are now stuck inside of Romeo and Juliet!" she hissed in a low whisper.
"What?" he questioned almost shrilly. Lily was going to point this out for obvious teasing and blackmail reasons but she quickly decided that this wasn't the time or obviously the place for that.
"The people here, they think I'm Juliet Capulet. I don't know how to explain it, I just woke up and it was like the play was acting itself out. I'm still trying to tell myself that it's a dream right now so please excuse me if I start to hyperventilate at all." She finished her statements quickly before taking a large calming breath.
"I knew you fantasized about this." Even though they were now stuck inside of one of the most tragic love stories of all time, he still managed to get a jab in about her and followed it with a smirk.
"Potter, do you not understand? If we don't get out of here, something terrible will happen." She told him harshly.
"Not necessarily, doesn't Juliet kill herself; you simply have the choice not to do it." But as soon as his thoughtful words left his mouth he found Lily looking at him strangely, her emerald eyes wide.
"You don't change Shakespeare." she hissed vehemently.
Throwing his hands up in surrender, James scanned the room again with a cheeky smile on his lips. "So which one of these poor saps is your Romeo?"
She shook her head, "I don't know actually, he's supposed to come over here soon and…" she broke off suddenly. "No!" she said in a quiet, disbelieving voice.
"What?" he questioned her as though she had just sprouted another head from her shoulder.
"Romeo comes over and touches Juliet hand before they spout into a slew of metaphors of love… But… You. You touched my hand." Her eyes were still wide and she had a slightly crazed look about her.
Shaking his head, he tried to shrug it off. "Purely coincidence." Of course, if would be just their awful luck if she had a point. Romeo did come over and touch her hand, and James has as well, but he wasn't about to begin asking her for a kiss.
Lily however, was jumping straight to getting answers. She turned to the person closest to her quickly, who happened to be a well dressed woman chatting with others just like her. She didn't seem to be very pleased with the tapping on the shoulder that the redhead had given her.
"Terribly sorry ma'am, but could you please tell me this young man's name?" she questioned quickly, as though it were a life and death matter, which in fact, it was. Well, at least it seemed like it to her, she couldn't possibly be the Juliet to James Potter's Romeo.
"This young man?" she questioned airily, gesturing to James politely. Without even waiting for so much as a nod from either of the other two she continued on. "I do believe he's a Montague, oh, what's that one's name? Roberto? Richard? Ah yes, Romeo I believe it is." She turned back to her friends not even noticing that the newly named Romeo and his Juliet had both paled considerably.
"We're going to die, and it's not going to be from a tragic love wrought ending either, it's going to be because I'm going to kill you for this and chances are you'll bring me down with you." Lily spat out scathingly.