I asked for 10 reviews and got 5, very disappointing guys, BUT since I am such a wonderful, kind, fantastic writer, I'm going to give you this one anyway, XD
Thanks to Wendy for beta reading and to the five wonderful souls who did review (and to Queenie's Broken Heart for reviewing the first chapter). I love you all to bits! This one's for you!
Everyone says "love hurts", but that isn't true. Loneliness hurts, rejection hurts, but love, love never hurts.
Chapter Twelve: The Worst Memory
"Quills down, please!" squeaked tiny Professor Flitwick as the fifth-year students finished their Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L.
Lily let out a sigh of relief. It had been much easier than she'd expected. She had almost laughed out loud when she read Question Ten (Give five signs that identify the werewolf) and automatically thought of Remus. Lily quickly shoved her exam paper and quill into her bag and joined Alice and Vanessa in the throng of people trying to get out of the Great Hall. The three girls made their way down to the lake where they took off their shoes and put their feet in the cool water. None of them saw Avery slink across the lawn and hide behind a bush near the lake to keep a watchful eye on the Marauders.
"Er, guys?" Vanessa said, turning slightly pink. "I want to tell you something."
"What is it, Nessa?" Alice asked eagerly.
"Well, the more I get to know Remus, the more I think I might like him. You know, like him." Lily and Alice, sitting on either side of Vanessa, squealed and hugged her tightly.
"Good for you!" Alice said happily. "Remus is so cute! And he's such a sweetheart!"
"But, I don't know. I mean, he's always so nice to me, but he's nice to everyone. And he's one of the best looking guys in the school! I don't know if I should even hope for a chance with him; he can potentially have just about any girl he wants," Vanessa said, frowning. Lily and Alice looked at each other. It was not like Vanessa to be insecure. Oh, the things a silly boy could do!
"Oh come on, Nessa! You're gorgeous! And smart, and funny, and sweet! How could he not fall for you?" Lily said encouragingly.
"You should have seen him those days when we were out here taking breaks from studying!" Alice said. "Mary and Waverly had their charm turned on full blast, but all he seemed to see was you."
"Really?" Vanessa asked hopefully.
"Really," Lily and Alice said together.
"He's just a little shy," Lily told her. "He'll warm up soon. I know it."
"I hope so," Vanessa said, glancing over to where the four boys sat under their favorite beech tree.
Meanwhile, Avery, seen by nobody, whispered "Imperio" with his wand pointed directly at James.
A few minutes later, James and Sirius were surrounded by onlookers. They were taunting and cursing Severus Snape. Remus stood in the back of the crowd, clearly disapproving of what his friends were doing. Avery stood near the front; his wand was hidden in his sleeve, but it was still pointed at James, whose eyes were slightly glazed over.
"I should never have believed him," Lily whispered when she saw what was happening. Pushing her hurt feelings aside, she stood up and marched straight into the crowd. "Leave him ALONE!"
- - - - - - -
"Lily?" Alice asked timidly. Her friend was sobbing into her pillow in the girls' dormitory.
"Go away," Lily choked out.
"Lily, please," Alice said softly. "Please talk to me. I know you were friends with Sna – with Severus, but I've heard his friends in Slytherin are quite.... bad, and he called you a – a, well maybe it's better...." Alice, usually eloquent, was struggling for the words that would console Lily.
"Better that he ditches me for them?" Lily asked harshly, sitting up. Her eyes were red and puffy.
"Oh, no, Lily," Alice, said, wrapping her arms around her friend and mentally kicking herself for not coming up with something better to say.
"Erm, Lily?" Mary MacDonald said, standing awkwardly at the door. "The Snape boy is outside and wants to talk to you."
"Tell him I don't want to hear anything he has to say."
"I did, actually, but he threatened to sleep in the hallway unless you go talk to him."
Lily sighed; that was the Sev she knew. But she could not be his friend anymore. It was over. She stood up, wiped her eyes and bravely made her way through the Common Room and out the portrait hole.
– Meanwhile –
"James," Remus said angrily, following the other three boys into the dormitory, "we need to talk."
"Before you yell at me for hurting Lily, I know," James said, a pained look on his face. "You have to believe me, I did not want to do that, but--all of a sudden--I couldn't think straight. There was this voice in my head telling me that I had to attack Snape. I tried to tell it no, but before I knew it, I was hexing him."
"Wait," Sirius said, confused. "Why would you not want to attack Snape? We do it all the time."
"Lily told me that we could be friends if I left Snape alone," James explained, thoroughly miserable. "I really wanted that, Pad." Before Sirius could say anything, Remus's eyes widened in shock. "Was it like there was a fog in your mind?"
"Yeah, like the voice was all I could hear and all I could do was obey what it said."
Remus started pacing and muttering to himself; the other Marauders catching phrases like "it has to be," and "but who?"
"Any day now," Sirius said impatiently.
Remus stopped pacing and looked at James. "Someone put you under the Imperius Curse," he said gravely.
James stared at him, horrified and shocked. His expression was mirrored on the faces of Peter and Sirius.
"Why?" was all he could say.
"It must have been someone who didn't want you to keep your promise to Lily. Or someone who didn't want her to be friends with Snape." Remus said and resumed his pacing.
"Well," Peter said, "all the girls here would kill to go out with any of you. Maybe it was someone who was jealous of Lily."
"But it has to be someone powerful, someone who wouldn't mind the fact that the Imperious Curse is one of the Unforgivable Curses."
"Maybe old Lucius Malfoy went gay and came back for you, mate," Sirius joked, but went on more seriously, "The second option is probably more likely."
"I agree," Remus said. "It would have been someone who was threatened by the fact that Lily and Snape were friends."
"I heard them talking once--Lily and Snape, that is--in the courtyard!" Peter piped up, happy to have useful information. "She told him that she didn't like his friends, particularly Mulciber and Avery!"
"Don't wet yourself," James, Sirius, and Remus said automatically.
"They must have heard it too. I bet it was one of them," James said.
"But how do we prove it?"
"I don't care about proving it to anyone but Lily." James said fiercely. He stood up and walked down the staircase to the Common Room. Before he had a chance to look for Lily, however, his vision was blocked by Alice Hinton, her huge blue eyes full of rage.
– Meanwhile –
"I'm sorry," Severus told Lily as she came out of the portrait hole.
"I'm not interested."
"I'm sorry!"
"Save your breath. I only came out here because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here," Lily said in the harshest tone she had ever used with Severus.
"I was. And I would have done. I never meant to call you a Mudblood, it just -" he pleaded.
"Slipped out? It's too late. I've made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends – you see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?" Severus seemed to be at a loss for words.
"I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."
"No – listen, I didn't mean -"
"To call me a Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus, so why should I be any different?" His full name felt strange coming from her mouth, since in the past she had only called him Sev. She couldn't take it anymore; the tears were welling up so she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole before he could see them fall.
Severus Snape watched her go. He blinked his beetle-black eyes and – not for the last time – shed a tear for Lily Evans.
– Meanwhile –
"You! You horrible, idiotic, arrogant piece of filth!" Alice screamed at James, words coming freely now. Every eye in the Common Room was on them. "Severus was one of Lily's best friends! So what if you didn't care for him! All she asked was that you leave him alone! That was all she wanted and she would have been your friend! You go on and on about how much you care for Lily! Did you not think that maybe, just maybe you could stop being a selfish prat for one second and realize that she cared about him! Did you not think that hurting him might hurt her too! How would you feel if someone did that to Sirius or Remus all the time!?"
Alice was nothing short of terrifying when she was angry. She was usually so innocent and sweet and childlike that it was hard for anyone to picture her this furious. She looked as if she would just grab James around the neck and strangle him if she were strong enough.
James, on the other hand, did not argue. He just stood there and let her yell at him in front of the whole House, but he did not care; he was miserable enough.
"Why are you not arguing with me?" Alice yelled, still angry, but taken aback at his silence.
Before she knew what was happening, James had grabbed her hand and dragged her up to the boys' dormitory.
"What are you doing?" She screamed at him as he pulled her inside and sat her on the end of his bed. Sirius, Remus, and Peter looked as though they wanted to ask the same thing.
"Listen to me, Alice, please," James said, squatting in front of her so that his pleading eyes were levelled(?) with her angry ones. "I. Did. Not. Want. To. Attack. Snape," he said slowly and carefully so she would not miss a word. Alice only scoffed.
"Please, just hear me out. It's true that I have enjoyed attacking him every single time I've done it in the past. But – as I'm sure Lily told you, from your, uh, speech just a moment ago – it is true that if I was nice to Snape, she would've been my friend. I wanted that Alice, you have no idea how much I wanted that! So I really was making every effort to just ignore him, but today - "
"What? You couldn't go for so long without being an arrogant git?" Alice said harshly.
"No," James said, ignoring her rudeness. "Remus--well, you're going to think we're crazy, but Remus thinks someone put me under the Imperius Curse."
Whatever the boys expected her to do, it was not laugh, but laugh she did. "Is that really the best you, the famous Marauders, can come up with?"
When no one laughed with her, however, she stopped. "You're serious?" she asked, looking around them all. Remus nodded gravely.
"But who?" she almost whispered, her once furious eyes now showing fear.
"Mulciber or Avery," James said, standing up.
"Why?"
"Because," Remus explained, "they knew Lily was trying to get Snape to keep his distance from them. They didn't like that. So they made it look like it was just another one of our jokes. I mean, everyone would believe it. They knew Lily would come to his rescue and that Snape wouldn't like it, at least not in front of his Slytherin friends. I think they were hoping something like that would happen."
"That makes sense," Alice said slowly, trying to decide if she should believe them. She looked around at the four boys, who were usually boisterous but were now solemn. She knew all of this could be a trick, a plot by the Marauders to be able to attack Snape and still give James a chance with Lily, but was Snape really worth the trouble? Alice could not ignore the sincerity in James' eyes when he told her that he wanted a friendship with Lily. And Remus was always honest with people, and this seemed to be his idea. Hoping she was doing the right thing, Alice made her decision. "It's going to take a lot to convince Lily, though."
"She's worth a lot," James said with a small smile. "More than a lot, really."
Alice could not help but smile widely at this. "Do you want me to talk to her for you?"
"Not yet," James said, shaking his head. "I want to try first."
So the five of them headed down to the common room.
- - - - - - -
Lily came through the portrait hole just in time to see James and his friends – tiny little Alice was hidden from view by Sirius – come down the stairs. He tensed for a verbal lashing far worse than Alice's when she approached them; he was willing to take it though, if it meant she would talk to him.
"I believed you," she said, her voice barely a whisper, which caught James off-guard. "For a while there I actually believed you. But no. James Potter could never care about anything more than his precious pranks. But the way you said you meant it and that you were going to try – well, congratulations, Potter, I fell for it. I fell for it! You win, okay? You don't have to pretend to care anymore. The game's over. You can move on to some other poor girl now." James made as if to say something, but Lily cut him off.
"Please, James," she said, her green eyes brimming with tears, "please just leave me alone." And she ran up to her dormitory before the tears could fall.
"So," Sirius said after a moment. "That went well." James gave him a whithering look.
"I'm going to go talk to her," Alice said. "Should I tell her?"
"No. Not yet," James said firmly. "I want to be the one to tell her. I want to apologize."
"But it wasn't your fault," Alice said.
"But I still hurt her. I have to make it right."
"You had better do a hell of a good job, James Potter." Alice said fiercely, catching the boys by surprise. But she smiled and added, "Because if you don't end up with her, I'll cry." And with that she turned and followed Lily up to the girls' dormitory.
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Well, there you have it! I want to know what you think about the whole Imperius Curse thing!
And the next chapter has already been written and sent to Wendy, but I want those reviews this time first. Seriously!
Love Always,
Kayla
Love all, trust few, do wrong to none. - Shakespeare
