Disclaimer: Yet again I don't own anything here apart from Raisa Ramsey
Sorry for the slow updates. Summer seems to have brought out the worst in my propensity to get ill. Anyway, today is a day for celebrating and this is my personal celebration! Enjoy!!
Hopefully this will be a suitable return to humour for those who requested it last chapter... First bit's a little introspective again but the Raisa/Peter interaction should (hopefully) be good for a laugh
(Please review when done!)
Chapter 19
No one told Lily Evans what to do. She took advice from no one, even going so far as to ignore perfectly good advice on the simple principle that someone else had given it to her.
So, all things considered, James was way out of line.
He was way, way, way out of line. He was so far out of line that you couldn't even see the line from where he was standing.
Work out what she wanted? Lily knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted to be able to go one single hour, minute, second even without having a the inanely grinning face of James sodding Potter flashing through her head like one those neon signs on the outside of bars.
The bleachers on the Quidditch field were cold and uncomfortable and Lily couldn't help but feel this was some kind of horrible retribution for how she had treated James over the years –
A small part of her had always been shocked that as of yet there had been no fall-out from the continual yelling and throwing heavy objects at the bespectacled one. Evidently whosoever controlled the whole 'what goes around comes around' principle was out to get her.
Everyone was out to get her. Even her best friend was getting in on the act.
Lily believed fervently in this theory, mostly because it was the most convenient way of explaining away the fact that she experienced a warm, tingly feeling every time she thought about James Potter. Incidentally Lily had taken great pains to outline this very theory to Alice over breakfast. Alice of course, who saw the best in everyone and so was trying to convince her to forgive Raisa, thought it was simply an excuse to extricate herself from the possibility of a relationship with James Potter.
Maybe she was right. She let out a huff at the unfairness of it all. ...She missed the way that she used to be so certain about everything and she missed the way that everything in her life used to have a place...
"A little birdie told me that you kissed James Potter..."
Dammit. Lily stiffened as the dulcet tones of one Sirius Black drifted into hearing.
"Sod off, Black," she snapped, not being in the mood to deal with someone who held such strong links to James Potter.
"So it's true?" he inquired casually, moving in to sit opposite her.
Lily's gut reaction was to scream out an ear-piercing "NO!" Then she remembered that it was true.
Sirius grinned. "You finally succumbed then?"
Lily made to hit him but his damn boy reflexes were too fast. Looking slightly hurt that someone would dare to deface his model-like features Sirius moved out of arms reach and now
perched on a row of bleachers above Lily – this way he could continue pissing her off whilst avoiding being attacked.
(Shockingly James never seemed to have discovered the merits of the above technique).
"Prongs really isn't that bad," Sirius continued, suddenly feeling very protective of his friend. Granted, when he wanted to be James was one of the single most annoying people on the planet, but in Sirius' eyes he was the only one who had the right to point that out.
"If you get to know him then you just might like him," he affirmed. Then a list of all the pain-in-the-backside things that James had done over the past five years came pushing their way to the front of his brain and Sirius began to regret opening his mouth.
Lily stared at him, slightly aghast that yet another person seemed intent on ramming it down her throat that James Potter was a 'Decent Guy.' Did they not think she had eyes? She was a perfectly good judge of character and not wanting a relationship with James Potter did not immediately need to be written off as a character flaw.
She glared at Sirius: "You sound exactly like Raisa."
At the mention of the very girl he had spent all week ducking into empty classrooms and assorted topiary in order to hide from, Sirius' eyes widened.
He cleared his throat several times, trying to gauge whether he could control the tremor in his voice. "Have you talked to her recently?" -
Just because he didn't have the guts to handle talking to her did not mean he wanted her to be miserable.
The red head scoffed at this feeble question. She had noticed his sudden chance in demeanour when she brought up the Meddling One and was enjoying seeing him squirm for once:
"Have you?" Lily replied, sensing the answer before he spoke.
"Touché," Sirius murmured, nodding his head in approval. He had never been on great terms with Lily Evans – for some odd reason she was under the (misguided) impression that he was a bad influence of James – but he did respect the fact that she was whip-smart, very quick and had a refreshingly blunt sense of humour.
"I know it's none of my business..." he began, before pausing and gazing into the distance at the fog covering the trees of the Forbidden Forest.
"But..." Lily prompted sharply. Somehow she knew that she would not like one bit what Sirius had to say. But, then again when had she ever liked anything emitting from Black's large and far too loose pie-hole.
"It just...it seems to me like you could both use a friend right now," Sirius finished with a sigh. It made him feel more than a little sick inside to think of her having to go through what he had dumped on her alone. He knew that Remus and Alice were looking out for her.
"Just think of it as one less person you have to be mad at," he finished, winking at Lily and starting to make his way down the bleachers for dinner.
Lily, however, was frowning. "What did you do to Raisa?"
Sirius stopped in his tracks. "Come again?"
Lily stood up abruptly. "Raisa apparently needs a friend, so what would make you say that?"
Sirius gulped.
"If you have mentally or physically hurt her in anyway Sirius Black, then I swear that I will hunt you down, castrate you, kill you and then kill you again," Lily threatened evenly with a murderous glint in her eyes.
Sirius winced, but was strangely glad that news of his bad behaviour towards Raisa had not travelled. He was fairly sure that Lily would not be able to carry out her threat, but oddly enough he didn't want to take a chance on it.
"You're not angry with Raisa," he declared. "Not really."
Lily nodded mutely, a little taken aback by the vehemence of her unconscious desire to protect Raisa.
"Are you angry with James," Sirius inquired softly, in the manner that one would to a reticent child.
Lily hesitated here but again shook her head. She shook it slowly this time, as though she now renewed understanding of her feelings. Logically speaking blinding rage equated to hate, and she didn't hate James...not really. He frustrated her not end, but that was just about different.
(...If there was anyone she hated in this whole scenario it was herself...)
"Talk to one of them, please," he sighed. Damn was mediating tiring. Sirius resolved to be much more appreciative of Remus in the future – he now had renewed respect for his abnormally large-brained friend.
"You want to come down with me for dinner?" Sirius asked, holding out an arm to help her off the bleachers.
"Dinner would be great," she replied with a small smile – her first real smile in a long time.
Peter Pettigrew munched on his carrots happily: it wasn't often that he had a pretty girl join him for dinner.
He imagined that this was how Padfoot and Prongs felt every day. For some reason girls just seemed to flock around them, almost like geese. Peter liked geese.
Of course had he been more perceptive the goose-lover may have noticed that his dinner companion looked utterly miserable. As it was, Peter Pettigrew had zero powers of perception.
Besides, it was winter vegetable night at dinner... Peter loved winter vegetables with an unabashed passion that worried his fellow Marauders greatly.
"Did you know that carrots help you to see in the dark?" he remarked conversationally, feeling as though the yawning gap in conversation required filling.
"What?" Raisa looked up from her malaise distractedly. She had absolutely no problem with Peter Pettigrew and found him for the most part to be a fairly okay guy, if a little painfully idiotic at times. However, her frazzled mind had just tried to convince her that Peter had attempted to start a conversation with her about vegetables.
"What?" Raisa repeated as she looked at the small boy in shock.
"Carrots," Peter affirmed, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "Did you know that they help you to see in the dark?"
Sadly Raisa did not have time to reply to this veritable pearl of wisdom as at that moment Lily Evans and Sirius Black walked into the Great Hall and seemed to be coming in her direction.
Raisa's breath caught in her throat. So, after consistently avoiding her for a whole week they had finally decided to stop being cowards...
Thinking on her feet Raisa turned again to Peter who was lost in the magical world of vegetables. No way in hell was she going to make this easy for them. Admittedly James was still not thrilled with her, but at least he was honest and open about it. She disliked being subjected to his hangdog expression, but it was better than no expression at all. She would not give Lily and Sirius the satisfaction of knowing that they had driven her to eat dinner with Peter Pettigrew.
"Quick, Peter!" Raisa hissed, leaning across the table towards the bewildered Gryffindor. "Pretend that I've said something interesting!"
Peter frowned, winter vegetable suspended on his fork - half way between mouth and plate. Truth be told, he was now rather confused. Raisa had barely said a word to him all through the meal and now she wanted to play funny games with him.
...Maybe this was like that 'women being from another planet' thing that Padfoot always moaned about -
Peter felt a sudden rush of pride at being about to join the same metaphorical club as the great Sirius Black.
"Peter," snapped Raisa, now thoroughly peeved that he seemed to have adopted the 'James Potter-like' trait of staring off into space and grinning inanely. She wondered if this was a token trait of all Marauders.
"I love carrots," Peter murmured happily.
Just as Raisa was about to contemplate the logistics of strangling Peter using a particularly long and stringy winter vegetable, there came a polite cough from behind her.
"Pete, can I borrow you for a second?" Sirius interjected tactfully, choosing to pointedly avoid all eye contact with Raisa.
Without giving the Wormtailed One any choice in the matter Sirius proceeded to drag him away from the table by his collar, after stopping for one final moment by Lily:
"It's up to you now darling," he whispered.
Lily gulped sat down next to Raisa with a soft thud. "Having fun with Peter?" she asked, not unkindly, but simply as a way of starting the conversation.
"...Having fun with Sirius?" Raisa replied hesitantly. She was baffled to say the least. Lily was apparently attempting an apology, which was a first for the flame haired girl. She was also consorting with Sirius, which must mean that someone had given her a covert lobotomy.
Lily took a deep breath, opened her mouth and closed it again. Her planned apology was sticking in her throat, but she knew she needed to do something in order to save this friendship. Sirius was right; Raisa was one less person to be mad at.
Also this was good practice for what she knew would soon have to be faced with James, and –
Lily paused here for a second in her runaway train of thoughts, turning to Raisa with a frown:
"Were you and Peter just having a conversation about carrots?"
Raisa was about to bite back with suitably cutting reply, before realising the absurdity of Lily's question out of context. She let out an un-lady like snort of laughter, causing Lily soon to follow. They say laughter is infectious and soon Lily and Raisa were doubled over in hysterics, the laughter proving the perfect tonic to all the anger of the previous few days.
The girls caught eyes and turned to each other, all the anger draining away.
Lily bumped thighs with her friend affectionately. She took a deep breath and decided to voice the words that had been playing on her mind for a while now...:
"I think I'm in love with James Potter,"
Haven't actually read this through because I wanted to keep my promise and get this up today. I will read it at some point though and correct mistakes.
This comes out at 9 pages on Word, so I think I deserve some kudos for a super long chapter!!
Please review and if you want info on how fast the next update will be then I'm sticking the info on my profile as and when I work it out. : )