Unforetold memoirs – Chapter nine
"Speak. Now," she commanded.
Exchanging glances, Cherie nodded and Aiko related, rather succinctly, the events of the past few nights.
"We've tried to stop it from happening, but it doesn't seem to work," added Cherie, frowning.
"We put a binding spell on you but it just disappeared like… like… like magic!"
"And we slipped dreamless sleeping potions in your food."
"And…"
"Stop!" she finally cried, putting a hand to her forehead, "Please stop incriminating yourselves and if anything like this ever happens again, for goodness sake please just tell me about it instead of putting strange substances into my food without my knowing!"
"We didn't want you to worry!" insisted Aiko.
Lily raised an eyebrow.
"Sorry," they mumbled sheepishly.
Lily's annoyance softened.
"Look, I know you meant well," she began, taking the hands of her friends, "But I would really appreciate it if you could just tell me directly when something's wrong instead of trying to go behind my back to solve it, okay?"
They nodded obediently.
"Good. So what was Po… James talking about?"
The guilty pair in question exchanged another hesitant look.
"You went down to the kitchen…" began Cherie.
"I gathered that," replied Lily somewhat sarcastically, mentally berating herself for not keeping her temper in check.
"And you made towards the kitchen knives…"
"Cherie would've stopped you if I hadn't pulled her back," supplied Aiko quickly.
Lily raised an eyebrow.
"Why did you do that?"
They fell silent, waiting. Why had Aiko reacted the way she did?
"I didn't want her to get hurt," she mumbled reluctantly.
"And why would she have gotten hurt?"
Another pause as trepidation filled the atmosphere. The anticipated and simultaneously undesired response hung, unspoken, for just that little while longer.
"Your aura… it radiated intent to kill."
Cherie attempted nervously to laugh it off.
"Not that we thought you would, of course. You know Aiko and her silly gut feelings about auras and whatnot…"
Her voice trailed away into nothingness. Yes they did know Aiko's uncanny ability to detect a person's emotions. They also knew that she was very rarely wrong.
"Well then," remarked Lily, clearing her throat, "What do we propose to do about my situation?"
"Lily… when you're dreaming… What is it that you see?" asked Cherie, a sudden expression of seriousness flickering across her otherwise serene expression.
Lily shuddered.
"That night."
Cherie and Aiko didn't need to know anymore to decipher what Lily was speaking of – they'd experienced it too, in her eyes.
"Moony…"
"What's wrong, Prongs? You haven't been yourself lately," commented Remus, putting down his homework and concentrating on his friend.
"There's something… Something we neglected to tell you," he started haltingly.
"And that would be…?"
James stole a quick glimpse at his friend, the embodiment of calm mannered mildness, a quick mind, and a heart of gold. The streaks of grey in his hair weren't a fashion statement, as the rest of the school had assumed, the air of loftiness wasn't to produce any kind of image, the dark circles beneath his eyes weren't from secret rendezvous, and the injuries were certainly not the battle scars he'd acquired during gang wars. Of all people, why did it have to be him?
"Nevermind."
Remus frowned. Something was up, he could feel it. He just couldn't place what precisely was wrong.
"Prongs," he uttered warningly.
"It's just… just…"
"Just what?"
At that moment, Sirius walked through the door.
"Just that Sirius here has been having some girl troubles and I have no idea how to help him remedy it," he explained a little too quickly.
But it worked, whether temporarily or otherwise. Remus's expression softened, although the wariness never left his gaze entirely.
"Is that all? What's wrong then, Padfoot?"
Sirius blinked in confusion and swallowed his mouthful of stolen chocolate frogs.
"What?"
The screaming, the struggling, the crying.
Where am I?
The knife fell to the ground, stained with blood. Blood, blood, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.
Drink? Blood? What?
Her father collapsed, a scream sounded, splitting across the night sky like a knife, a dagger, an implement with a sharpened side. Like the one that sat beside her.
The knife.
She stared at it as the murderer before her lay, panting, heaving, watching her with a careless glint of malice in his eyes. Would she be next?
Her chubby little fingers trembled as she watched him get up and, turning to smile at her once more, kicked the bodies of Mummy and Daddy. Again. And again. And again.
"No… Stop… please," the voice inside her head sobbed, "Leave them alone. Don't hurt them."
The stranger smiled maliciously.
"Don't worry, little girl, they can't feel anything anymore."
When the police arrived, they found the body of the culprit lying on the floor in a pool of blood. His face was contorted with horror and terror almost beyond identification, his body twisted and splayed out on the kitchen floor. The eyes, now glassy and cold, gazed, open. A knife had been run directly through his heart with an inhuman strength.
Beside him lay the corpses of the family in question. But no, there were only two. They lay together, holding each other peacefully, a little girl passed out between them. Further examination discovered that she'd experienced a concussion of some sort, having fainted away long ago. Without the blood, the matted hair, the shredded clothing, the hard tiles of the kitchen floor, it looked almost like a picture perfect family sleeping amongst one another in perfect quiescence.
Lily felt herself scream and bolted upright on her bed, shivering, panting, shaking with fear. But no. This wasn't her bed. She glanced around as she heard footsteps running towards her.
What was she doing in the dungeons?
"There's only two days left," commented Sirius, attempting and failing miserably to sound unconcerned and uncaring.
James made no reply as his friend shuffled about, clearly anxious, and even more clearly unwilling to seem as such. Finally, he set down his pen.
"Sirius, stop moving," he commanded.
Sirius stopped pacing.
"Whatever happens will happen. We can't change that now."
Sirius moaned despairingly, grasping onto James' shoulders and shaking him violently.
"What happens if he does show up? What if Moony's secret comes out? What if he never forgives me?"
"If Snape does show up, nobody will believe what he says anyone. It's Snape. Who listens to Snape?"
"What if he gets hurt? Or killed? Then what? What if…"
"We'll be there so he won't. And don't you dare mention that possibility to Moony – you know how sensitive he is about these things. If he gets a little bruised, we laugh at him for traversing the woods when he shouldn't be."
"What if Snivellus gets turned into a werewolf too? Then what? What'll happen after that? Then everybody will know, and it'll be all my fault, and…"
"Sirius!" snapped James impatiently, "First of all, Moony isn't exactly a Pureblood so he can't turn other people into werewolves even if he wanted to, remember? And even if he did, do you honestly think Snape is going to prance around proclaiming to the world that he's become a werewolf?"
Sirius slumped, guilt eating at him as he felt himself drown in the desperate sorrow of knowing that he could potentially result in the ruination of his friend's entire future all because he was a silly prat who spoke too much about things he shouldn't.
"I'm an idiot, aren't I?"
"Yes you are," affirmed James, returning to his essay.
"It's getting stronger," came the worried remark.
"Yeah, this time she fought back. With all her strength, I might add," returned Aiko, bandaging the deep gash she'd acquired on her arm with her teeth.
"How did that happen?" asked Lily shakily, leaving the bathroom to join her friends, face and hair soaked with water.
"Oh, I was just careless," she replied quickly.
Too quickly. Lily looked at Cherie, clearly demanding answers.
"You pushed Aiko back against one of the guard statues and she cut herself on it," admitted Cherie, extremely unwillingly.
Lily sighed, covering her face with her hands in despair, seating herself heavily on her bed.
"This is getting dangerous," she whispered, "Maybe we should go to the Professors…"
"But that would mean telling them about… the past. Are you okay with that?"
Lily buried her face deeper into her hands.
"I don't know," she groaned, the sound muffled into an incoherent cry of pain.
"Where's Remus gone?" asked Frank, Alice's arm clasped about his.
"His mother's illness took a really bad turn last night," explained James.
Frank nodded understandingly. He'd met Remus' mother and knew of her frailty. It was all due to that horrible encounter with the werewolf King himself. It had cost her the lives of her brother and an unborn child. If it hadn't been for Remus' father and the auroras who came afterwards, the whole social gathering that day would surely have perished. Ever since, she'd suffered from poor health and it was evident that, particularly judging the increasingly weary expressions of her husband himself, she would not last much longer.
"Isn't it odd that he always leaves without taking his belongings with him though," commented Alice thoughtfully, having just left the boy's dormitory.
James tensed at this and mentally prepared himself for any questions that might follow it. He'd only be gone a few days, it was fine. He left in a hurry. He was too lazy to pack and unpack. No, Remus was never lazy.
"Silly," replied Frank in a light, teasingly patronising voice, "He's going home! Why would he need to take anything with him? He has everything there already!"
"Oh yeah, silly me," she responded, giggling, and, waving, they left James to himself.
His heartbeat slowed and his muscles relaxed. Now why hadn't he thought of that? He'd never been good at being dishonest.
"So how is Remus?"
James jumped, startled out of his reverie. Aiko gave him a look that told him he was acting rather abnormally.
"What? There's nothing wrong with Remus," he insisted pressingly.
"Relax," replied Aiko, arching an eyebrow, "I was just asking after his welfare. You know, with his mother ill so often. It can't be good for his mental wellbeing."
In that moment, it struck her as curious that his mother was so ill so often. Maybe there was something else to it? But, she considered, contemplating her own situation, it might not be something he wanted to share, and, consequently, dismissed it from her thoughts until further notice.
"Oh right. He's fine. I mean, obviously not fine, because, you know, his mother's ill and all, and who would be fine in that case, right? I mean, if your mother fell ill you wouldn't be fine either, right? But he's fine. As in, not fine, but you know…"
She nodded vaguely and disappeared to join her friends, leaving a blustering James behind, almost as confused about her sudden turn of disposition as to the string of incoherent words that had just flowed out of his mouth and fallen over one another. Aiko, on the other hand, hadn't heard half of what he'd said, having spaced out the moment he'd mentioned her mother.
James, breathing a sigh of relief, looked up to see Lily, who'd become a shadow of her former self. The hair was bedraggled, the eyes were sunken, and the movements were slowed, fatigued. He mused over this for a moment, wondering, almost jealously, whether it had anything to do with a boy.
"Have you thought this through?"
Lily nodded and forced herself to smile, reaching out for Cherie's hand.
"Don't worry, okay? You and Aiko seem more stressed than me! It's my burden to share, and, just right now, I can't afford accidentally killing my two best friends during their first ever major exams at Hogwarts," she joked lightly.
"So tomorrow then?"
"Tomorrow," replied Lily firmly.
"Well then at least we only have to spend one last sleepless night tonight and then we'll be free of you tomorrow!" she remarked smilingly, earning herself a light slap on the wrist.
"I thought that was what friends were for!"
Just then, a rather harassed looking Aiko banged the portrait behind her, and seated herself by the window in a flurry of irritation without looking at her friends once.
"Aiko?" asked Lily hesitantly.
"Are you sure?" she questioned softly.
"Positive," affirmed the light nodding of sprightly copper curls.
For a moment there was a long silence.
"I'm sorry we couldn't protect you," she mumbled rather miserably.
They had spent hours and hours pouring over books in the library to find nothing. Short of breaking into the restricted section, there was nothing left that they could uncover. Lily offered the back turned to her a small resigned smile.
"It's the thought that counts. You know I appreciate your efforts. Both of you."
Aiko continued to stare moodily outside. Lily and Cherie glanced anxiously at one another. They understood, of course. They always solved each other's problems. They were always able to come up with solutions, to conceal what needed to be concealed, to protect one another without relying on anybody else. Until this very moment in time.
"The full moon looks beautiful tonight."
Lily and Cherie nodded their agreement.
"Wormtail! Are you ready?" whispered a voice urgently.
A muffled affirmative sounded as Peter struggled to put on his jumper, only to become entirely tangled up in a mess of fabric and sleeves in his haste. James instinctively pulled it into its proper position and ushered his friend under the cloak.
"Now remember! Don't transform until I tell you to!"
"It's not the first time we've done this, Prongs, you don't have to be so strict. It's not Quidditch training," retorted Sirius, though his expression was pallid and there was barely a visible trace of his usual good humour.
James silenced him with a glower and together, the three boys made their way down to the common room only to discover, to their surprise, that Lily had beat them to it.
"Li…"
Sirius clamped a hand over the mouth of his friend and gave him a look of warning. They were under the invisibility cloak, remember? James nodded and restrained himself as, moments later, she was followed by Lily and Cherie, who watched after her warily. They boys exchanged looks of mild surprise. What were they doing? Nevermind, they had their own problems to worry about now.
"Do you hear something?" asked Aiko, frowning.
The boys paused, hearts racing. Cherie stopped thoughtfully. Yes, she had thought she'd heard footsteps as well, but who knew? Maybe it was just a pair of lovers. In the dead of the night? Perhaps not. Either way, it was best not to risk it.
"No," she replied nonchalantly, signing to Aiko a very loud yes with the secret hand gestures that the three of them shared.
The message was clear. Something was up, and even if it might turn out to be nothing, best be on the lookout. Aiko nodded and they quickened their pace, eager to catch up to their friend. The boys finally felt themselves exhale.
Down the stairs they went, further and further until they reached the ground level. Then Lily did something that she'd never done before. She headed for the door. Cherie and Aiko exchanged hesitant glances. Should they try to stop her now? Cherie nodded and they moved to either side of her friend. Lily paused and gave a chilly smile entirely alien from her usual sense. Then, without warning, she produced her wand and the two girls went flying.
They landed, Cherie crying out with as minimal amount of noise as the pain would allow, Aiko landing on her hands and feet. She ran to Cherie and helped her up as Peter struggled to keep hold of his friends who were even now struggling to leave the vicinity of the cloak.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah. She's become more aware tonight. Whatever's got a hold on her, it's a lot stronger than it was before."
Aiko frowned.
"It must be the full moon. Even those silly muggle fairytales are based on some partial truths. The Dark Art is much stronger during this time because it's deeply rooted in ancient magic."
James and Sirius stopped struggling and the three boys looked at each other knowingly. It could be due the full moon, but more importantly, Hogwart's barriers were always let down during this time for Remus' sake.
"Who's there? Come out!" demanded Aiko, whirling around.
Cherie stood up and warily scanned the room. As far as the eye could tell, there was nobody there. The three Marauders remained still as statues.
"Should we cast an anti-glamour spell to see if anybody's there?"
Cherie shook her head. It would be a waste of time. Whether or not they discovered who was lurking in the shadows, they still needed to keep track of their friend. Instead, she motioned that they should just continue to follow Lily, who had already walked almost to the edge of the lake. Realising this, the two girls left at a running pace.
Breathing again, the boys glanced at each other hesitantly. They didn't notice the shadow that slipped past them and followed the girls out the door.
"Should we follow them?" asked Peter timidly, voicing the very question that was running through the minds of his friends.
"No," replied James finally, "Remus needs us."
"Evans should be safe with those two looking after her," supplied Sirius rather uncertainly.
"Besides," added James, his look darkening as he glanced at Sirius, "We have more important matters to consider."
"Yeah," affirmed Sirius with a low mumble.
Severus stood, leaning against the wall of Hogwarts, watching the three girls walk past him. This was what he was supposed to be afraid of? Three silly Gryffindor girls wandering around and frolicking in the middle of the night. He'd expected more from the disinherited Black. Alas, he'd anticipated too much from someone so simple minded. He had just seemed more intent than usual…
Then again, maybe there was something out there. After all, the girls looked like they were headed towards the woods, not necessarily the ridiculously violent plant that was situated just outside of it. Well he was here already, so perhaps something interesting might appear. After all, it wouldn't hurt to have a look, right?
A rustling of leaves and the sound of snapping twigs distracted him momentarily and he stared fiercely in the direction of the woods directly across from him. For a moment, or perhaps his eyes were merely playing tricks on him, he thought he'd seen a shadow flicker across the treetops. But that was impossible. It must've been the wind. Distracted, he did not notice the ghostly footsteps that momentarily appeared in the grass and just as quickly disappeared in the direction of the Whomping Willow.
Contemplating his current situation, he finally decided to remain close to the shadows and head for the tree himself.
Oh look! I have a fanfic! I'd forgotten its existence for a little while o.O" Sorry!
- Winteresque
