THIRD YEAR
bit of a sad one
Something was up with Mila, the boys could tell. Since the first day of term she had been sullen, distracted; completely unlike the Mila they knew.
She had avoided them. She had snapped at them. One night James and Sirius had been arguing over which was the best holiday destination to summer in, and which wood was superior for broom-making, and Mila had called them 'pompous rich brats' who didn't have 'real problems', and 'were all talk', and wouldn't know the difference between 'a nimbus broom and a knock-off' if it 'hit them in the face'.
The great thing about James Potter and Sirius Black, was the they would do anything for their friends. The most annoying thing that Mila Lovett could currently think of about James Potter and Sirius Black, was that they would do anything for their friends.
In an effort to cheer her up, each became more competitive in their method.
James and Mila had made the Gryffindor Quidditch team last year, both as chasers. In one of their recent practices, James had convinced the rest of their team to wear red wigs and dress up as Mila while they played. He thought it would make her laugh. It didn't.
Sirius jogged in front of her after one of their classes, sprinkling rose petals in whatever direction she was walking. He searched her face for a hint of a smile, but she got so frustrated that she turned around and walked back the way she came.
The rest of the school population knew not of Mila's sadness. All they saw was Sirius and James making larger and larger gestures for a girl that was brushing them off. They saw it as declarations of love. And maybe in a small way they were.
Mila became more closed off the more they tried. Remus tried to catch her late in the common room one night, asking her what was wrong and trying to give her a more quiet method of relief. Hell, even Peter had asked at one lunch if she was ok.
When the boys were alone in the common room one night, they discussed tactics.
"Dungbombs?" James asked, his hair askew from his constant head-scratching.
"Did that last year." Sirius shook his head.
"We could hide all the furniture in McGonagall's classroom."
Sirius shook his head. "Too difficult, and not that funny."
James persisted. "We could set fire to Snivellus' hair!"
"Too risky," Sirius replied.
Remus peeked his head over the book he was reading. "Or maybe you guys could actually try talking to her?"
James laughed. "Oh Remus, you don't understand women at all."
"My dear friend, what girls love is a grand gesture. Something eye-catching. Something… great." Sirius ended on a flat note.
Remus looked a little doubtful. "A grand gesture? To make a friend feel better?"
Peter waited until James and Sirius nodded, before agreeing dubiously.
Remus thought his two friends were taking cheering Mila up a little two far. About to turn 13, James and Sirius were both starting to grow in certain places. It seems their brains had not yet caught up with their bodies.
"It just seems like-"
"Like what, Remus?" James asked.
"Like you two are trying to achieve a little bit more than helping out a friend." Even suggesting it out loud was uncomfortable.
"Why, Remus, whatever do you mean?" James asked, pulling on his usual bravado.
"Well it's almost like you may… like her?" He voiced it as a question, only because it was the first time he had brought it up. Truth be told, he had noticed their individual feelings for a while now. Prepubescent crushes were no strange thing at Hogwarts, but when you had them on your friends, that's when things got a little weird.
Remus noted how James and Sirius avoided each other's gaze.
"Ridiculous," Sirius said.
"Out of the question," James agreed.
And Remus left it at that.
But when each boy was in their bed at night, their thoughts brought them to some strange places.
What would it be like to kiss Mila? Sirius thought, Adults always do it. Maybe it would be nice.
James was not far behind. Would it be weird? Gross? Would we still be friends after? I used to like her in first year and Mila is so pretty. And she's funny too. And smart. Lily's smart too. Then again, Evans is pretty as well.
I know James has mentioned he liked Mila before, but maybe he's changed his mind. Maybe I have a shot, Sirius thought.
The boys might find it weird if something happened, James thought, But I'm sure they would be happy for me.
Simultaneously, their mind reached the same conclusion. Tomorrow. That's when I'll tell her.
And each began plotting their confession.
Mila was hurting like never before. She'd known a lot of pain in her young life, but a door had been shut for good, and it had crushed her in a new way she never thought possible.
She thought she would be better by now. She wanted to be better. She hated been this sad person, a person who never laughed, never smiled. But the more she tried to be happy, the harder it was. It was pretty safe to say she wasn't dealing with it very well.
Teachers had taken her aside, tried counselling her and lightening her work load. She resented their pity, though she knew it was unfair to do so.
She also knew it was unfair to push the boys away, but they were not helping in the slightest.
Young boys did not understand young girls very well. James and Sirius thought her sadness would just pass easily if they tried hard enough. They could not see how much she was really suffering. They were only trying to help, but she was not used to confiding in others. Even after everything that had happened between her and her friends, she still felt like she needed to go through things alone
Plus the rumours were driving her mad. Maybe she would have accepted their comfort if they didn't do it so… publicly.
Instead, one night, the first help she accepted came from the most unexpected place.
As she was getting ready for bed, she felt eyes on her back. The girls in her dorm room had been treading around her carefully, but the stares had been obvious and frequent.
She snapped, turning to the culprit. "You get a good enough look yet?"
Lily Evans met Mila Lovett's anger unflinchingly.
"As a matter of fact, I did. Thank you."
Mila scoffed, intent on ignoring her very scrutinising roommate. But Lily wasn't about to leave her alone.
"You mind telling me when I can expect you to get that attitude in check?" Lily asked.
Mila took the bait. "Attitude. Right. And when can I expect you to be less patronising?"
Mary, a quiet girl who stayed out of other peoples business, and the only other girl in the room at this point, leapt up off her bed nervously. "I-I think I forgot something in the common room."
Any other day, Mila would have found that quite funny. The other three girls in Lily and Mila's dorm were used to them fighting. Lily thought Mila was just a female version of James, whom she despised, and Mila thought Lily was an uptight goody-two-shoes.
Once Mary was gone, Lily replied, "You've been acting out, Mila."
Mila's eyes narrowed. "Acting out? I've been doing that since first year. You know that as well as anyone."
"It's different. It's not trouble with the school. It's trouble with your friends, with yourself."
Mila sat down on her bed. "Why, Lily Evans, I thought you would be happy at the idea of me making new friends."
"But you're not, Mila, you're just isolating yourself from your current ones."
Mila shook her head angrily. The worst part about Lily, was that she was often right.
Lily sighed, sitting next to Mila on her bed. That was about as close as the two girls had ever gotten.
"You can tell me what's wrong?" Lily said softly, "The boys don't have to know, but you must tell someone. It's eating you up."
Mila clenched her fists tight, ready to push her away, ready to make another rude remark. Instead, she unfurled her fingers so they no longer ached.
"Do you have a family, Lily?"
Lily looked taken aback by the question. "Uh, yes I do. My parents and my sister."
Mila nodded slowly. She didn't know where to start. "I never had that. I only had my Mum. And not always, not… all the time."
Mila hadn't cried yet. The last person she wanted to do it in front of was Lily Evans. She also hadn't talked about what had happened, so when she began to tell Lily everything, it was too hard to stop the tears falling from her eyes.
The next morning, Mila woke up feeling lighter, but still uneasy. She looked anxiously over to Lily, still asleep in her bed. She didn't know how she felt about confiding in the fellow redhead. Lily know knew something personal about her, something the boys, her best friends, had no idea about.
Mila had messed up priorities.
Shaking her head, she rose and got dressed. She first in her room to do so, which almost never happened. As she headed out the door, she heard Lily stir.
"Wait for me!" Lily said, bounding up to get ready.
To Mila's surprise, she made herself wait. Two years she'd known Lily, and Mila couldn't remember that they had ever gone down to breakfast together. But there was a first time for everything.
She thought about running a few times, leaving Lily behind. Mila was humiliated to have cried in front of her. Mortified. She didn't like people knowing she wasn't as strong as she seemed.
Finally, when Lily was ready, they walked together to breakfast.
Mila hadn't seen the boys in the common room. That meant they were already eating breakfast, or were still asleep. She had bets on the latter.
She made her way downstairs, determined to have a decent day, or at least, a less miserable one. Lily was quiet beside her, which Mila was grateful for. It seemed Lily was rather tactful around someone she knew was upset. Mila should have expected that of her.
The Great Hall was close by, and Mila could hear loud noises behind the doors. People were chatty during breakfast, and you could always expect the common hustle and bustle, but this seemed different.
Something in Mila told her to gear herself up for what was about to come.
She entered the hall, and stopped short. Lily did the same beside her.
It was pink. Everywhere. The room looked like Valentine's day on a growth charm. There were streamers lining down the lengths of the hall, glitter on everyone who was unfortunate enough to walk in, and James Potter standing in the middle of it all, carrying a very large teddy bear.
"Oh fair maiden, you have finally arrived," James shouted, loving that all eyes were on him.
Mila was too bewildered to form a sentence.
James got up on the Gryffindor table and started to recite a poem. As he climbed he stood on a very tired looking Remus' breakfast.
"Sweet angel of light,
You are as sturdy as a quaffle,
As strong as a bludger,
And as beautiful as a snitch.
To catch you would,
Make me feel really good."
He looked up from the piece of parchment he was holding and grinned at her. There was general laughter around the room, but Mila did not find it funny at all. For the first time in her life she was tired of James Potter's nonsense.
"What in Godric do you think you're doing?" she asked. She started headlining toward the raven-haired boy.
Remus, who had been sitting at said table, muttered under his breath. "Told you this was a bad idea."
James was still under the delusion that this had actually been a rather good idea.
"Why, cheering you up, of course!" he smiled at Mila.
She reached the Gryffindor table, not daring to step up and rise to his level, for fear of what she might do to him.
"You can't just ask someone what's wrong like a normal person, Potter? You have to make a public display so people can see how great you are?!"
Students in the hall were holding their breaths.
"That's- that's not what I was doing." He started to lose confidence.
"Then what do you call this?" She gestured around the room. "You don't make up liking someone, just to make them feel better."
He frowned. "But I do like you, Mila. You're one of my best friends."
Mila closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She knew James didn't really like her, not the way she wanted him to. But obviously he had got the stupid idea in his head that professing his 'love' was going change the way she had been acting. And what if this was a prank? The awful thought fled through her mind. This would be the cruelest prank he had ever pulled, playing with her feelings because he thought it would make her laugh.
She looked at Remus. "Why did you let him do this?"
Remus shook his head, "There was no stopping him. Trust me, I tried."
James finally got off of the table, to meet Mila at eye-level. "Why should he have stopped me? Isn't this what you want?"
Thankfully, Mila didn't have to say anything, because Lily Evans had finally gotten over her shock at the state of the Great Hall and turned on James Potter. The yelling filled the entire room.
"This was a terrible plan…"
"… The ugliest room I have ever…"
"… Can't you see something is bothering her…"
Mila turned away from the scolding James was getting. Lily and James' disputes could go on for hours. The rest of the students had begun to talk loudly. Each giving their opinions on whether Mila was being unreasonable, or James was just an idiot. She didn't want to be the subject of their gaze any longer. She ran out of the Great Hall, wanting to be anywhere but there.
The first person she ran into was Sirius.
She sighed angrily. "I was wondering where you were. Surprised you weren't being his right-hand lackey like usual."
Sirius was holding something behind his back. "Are you ok?"
"No I am not ok. James just embarrassed me in front of the whole school."
Sirius' eyes were wide, "Why, what did he do?"
"As if you don't know," she sniped back on him. Usually the two of them planned everything together.
Sirius' hands grew even tighter around his back. "No, I really don't."
Mila eyed him shrewdly. It was rare one of them pulled a prank the other did not know about.
"What did he do?" Sirius asked, breaking the silence.
"He said he liked me," Mila whispered. It was a weird thing to say out loud.
If Sirius grew tenser, Mila did not notice.
"But he's just saying that because I've been acting… strange," she continued, "And he just wants me back the way I was."
Sirius' face remained passive. He could see James had clearly upset her. Which was unusual considering he had always thought Mila wouldn't mind those words coming from James.
"Mila," Sirius said, "Why have you been so upset?"
She looked at him with watery eyes, wondering if it would be difficult to tell him. She always heard adults say that the more people you told something to, the realer if felt. She didn't want it to be true.
Sirius could see her resistance.
"Come on, let's go somewhere quiet."
He shoved the letter he was holding under his shirt, and hoped she wouldn't notice.
They ended up sitting by the lake, neither worrying about missing class. They had both done that plenty of times.
The pair were silent, not knowing where to start. It wasn't a particularly sunny day, and there was a chill in the air. A shiver went through Mila though she knew it was for an entirely different reason.
"I haven't really told you about where I come from," she started.
It hadn't hit Sirius what was bothering her. He'd had countless conversations with James about what it could be. Her family had never entered their minds.
"No," he answered, "I guess you haven't."
She glanced at him, noticing the way his hair had grown, and how it curled against his neck with the light breeze. She didn't know how she hadn't picked up on it yet. She had been too preoccupied in what had happened over the summer, that she hadn't really been paying attention to her friends. She hadn't been living her life.
She swallowed, trying to summon some form of that Gryffindor courage. "My mum," she said, "Was a sick person."
Sirius caught on immediately. "Was?"
She nodded slowly, staring at the grass in front of her. "Not sick like how you're thinking. Well, a little I guess. But sick, like, in her head."
"Her head?" he asked, his own tilting to the side.
Mila thought hard about how to explain this. The wizarding and muggle world were very different. Some wizards didn't believe in sicknesses that they couldn't see, that had to do with people's minds. She had always found this odd considering how far advanced they were due to their magical powers. But the muggles had science on their side.
"She could hear voices in her head that weren't hers." She didn't want to get into too much detail. There were too many old memories, too many times she had been hurt. "I never really got to live with her because of it."
"You don't live with your parents?" Sirius asked, and wondered how on earth he had never known this. Mila had done well at keeping it hidden.
"No. I don't know my Dad, and I couldn't live with my mum. So I live in an… orphanage."
Sirius could see the embarrassment on her face. He wanted desperately to tell her that it didn't matter to him where she lived, but he knew that this was not what this conversation was about.
He simply asked more questions, trying to understand. "A muggle orphanage?"
"Yes," she nodded, "I got to visit my mum sometimes, and sometimes she would visit me."
Sirius wondered how a person could be so sick that they couldn't take care of their own child. He could understand indifference, that was how he was treated by his own parents, especially after he had been sorted into Gryffindor and truly started acting up.
"And she-?"
"She passed away this summer."
And there it was. The reason Mila Lovett hadn't been herself. She had lost her mother.
"I feel so stupid." A tear trailed down her cheek. "I barely got to see her, so it doesn't really change anything, but-"
"But, she was your mum." He finished for her. "You're are not stupid, Mila. Of course you're going to miss your mum. Of course you'll be upset."
"I always thought that, one day, she would get better. And I would be able to live with her, for real this time. Like a proper family. Like you and James have. That's all I've ever wanted."
Sirius wouldn't exactly say he had a proper family, but he bit back his tongue, because he wasn't going to take away this moment from her just because he had his own family drama.
Instead, he told her the truth. It was the only comfort he could give her. He reached out and held her hand gently.
"I promise you, Mila, that I will always be your family."
She looked at him shocked, with tearful eyes, but it soon transformed into a small smile.
"Thank you, Sirius."
They stayed like that for the rest of the day, leaning against a tree and talking about nothing of importance.
Mila had missed her friends. She hadn't realised how much she had been avoiding them. Grieving usually involved the sympathies of the people around you, and she had been desperately trying to skip that part.
As they sat with each other, sometimes Mila would make the odd comment about her Mum, and Sirius would nod, and smile at her. He didn't try to push her, he just listened. She tried to recall the few happy memories she had had with her mother. There weren't many.
"I was allowed to sleep over a couple of times where she lived before things got really bad. One morning she woke up and said she was craving chocolate ice-cream. We didn't have much money, but we'd had leftover chocolate from my birthday and Mum went and asked the neighbour if she could borrow some cream." Mila smiled fondly at the memory.
"Did it work?" Sirius asked.
Mila started giggling, and Sirius couldn't help but smile himself. Mila was an infectious person. When she was happy, you were happy, and when she was sad, the world felt dark. Or at least Sirius' did.
"Not in the slightest," she answered, "We just ended up with cream that had clumps of half melted chocolate in it. Mum didn't even have a recipe."
"She sounds fun," he encouraged, eager to hear more stories.
Mila sobered up a little, "She could be. I think I was about six, or seven at the time. It was actually the last time they ever let me stay over, and the last time we were unsupervised."
"Why?" Sirius head tilted.
Mila looked scared to tell him, and he smiled reassuringly.
"You have to understand," Mila started, "That she didn't mean to do it. She couldn't help it sometimes."
"Ok," he said gently.
Mila stared at the lake in front of her. Her eyes grew hazy. "When she would get quiet, that's when I know she would be hearing something inside her head. We'd been melting chocolate on the stove, and it was still lit."
She didn't know why she telling him this. She had only told the head at the orphanage after they saw the injury. They had forced it out of her.
"She turned around and just put her hand right on top of the stove."
She felt Sirius still beside her. "Because of the voices?" he asked, "They told her too?"
He was beginning to understand why Mila hadn't been allowed to live with her mother.
"Yes," Mila nodded, her voice strained, "And then she told me- I'm sorry-"
"Its ok, you can tell me."
Mila took a deep breath. "She told me I had to do it too."
Sirius own breath caught in his throat. "Did you do it?"
Mila's lips quivered, and she tried to hide her nerves with a shrug. "She's my mum. I trusted her."
Sirius' heart had never quite felt so broken.
He tried to think of something, anything, that he could say, but they were interrupted when a pair of students were purposefully striding their way.
"Mila, are you ok?" James Potter approached them with a look of intense guilt, and an angry looking Lily trailing after him.
"James, I don't think this is a good idea-" Sirius started, but Mila hushed him by squeezing his arm.
"It's ok, Sirius." She turned to James, "I'm sorry I freaked out-"
"No, I'm sorry," James interrupted. "Lily told me everything-"
Mila's eyes widened and looked at the fellow redhead harshly. Lily shirked back.
"I'm such an idiot," James continued. "A buffoon. A prick. A-"
"Attention seeker?" Sirius suggested.
"That too." James nodded eagerly.
Sirius didn't know how much Mila had told Evans, but he suspected she hadn't admitted the nature of her relationship with her mother, otherwise Lily wouldn't have allowed James to storm over here like an absolute git. And he couldn't imagine that Mila trusted Lily enough to tell her the whole truth.
He tried to catch Mila's eye, to gauge how she was feeling. Maybe she wanted him to get rid of their mutual friend, and Lily too. He didn't want her to be overwhelmed.
Sirius spoke. "James, maybe you should-"
James didn't hear him. "I truly am sorry about your mum, Mila."
Mila was stiff, Sirius could see she had closed up at James' arrival.
"Thank you," she said, not uncoldly.
James should have balked, but he was much too conceited, Sirius thought; unused to having bitter feelings about his best friend. Hell, he had almost made the same mistake today. It was only that James had gotten there first that he was off the hook.
"I've written to my parents," James said.
"What do you mean?" Mila asked.
"I expect they'll reply shortly, and they already love you."
"What are you talking about, Potter?"
She was too annoyed to be upset anymore. Most of it stemmed from the fact that Evans had blurted her secret to James. She knew it was probably because she was only trying to help, but it bothered Mila in a way she couldn't describe.
"I asked them, that from now on, you could stay with us during the holidays." He looked at Mila eagerly.
"Stay with you?"
"As in live with us."
Mila's heart stilled. Live with the Potters? Could she really do that?
"Do you mean it, James Potter? Because if you're messing with me-"
"I'm not messing with you." He smiled. "I know they'll say yes, and you're one of my best friends. Sirius lives there half the time anyway. I'm sorry for what I did. I want to make it up to you."
Sirius watched the cogs turn in Mila's head. He exchanged a look with Evans, who was watching very carefully too.
Mila jumped into James' arms and hugged him fiercely. Sirius wasn't surprised at James' offer. In fact, it made perfect sense. And it meant Mila would be at the Potters' in the holidays when Sirius visited. But he couldn't help but feel a little bitter that he couldn't be the one to give it to her.
Mila was laughing joyfully in James' arms. It looked like all was forgiven. Sirius almost felt uncomfortable, like he shouldn't be watching. He turned to Lily to say something, but she was looking at the affectionate pair oddly too. She caught Sirius' eye and smiled unsurely.
"This is good, right? Mila can have a home now."
Sirius nodded, suddenly feeling like an idiot, "Yeah, it is good."
James had begun to tell Mila all the exciting things they could do over the holidays. Mila was beaming at him, her mood was a hard contrast to what it had been moments ago when Sirius was comforting her.
Lily was still looking at Sirius. "Do you think we should leave them to it?"
Sirius gave them one last look. "Yeah. We probably should."
Mila was finishing the end of the year in high spirits. The day James' had given is phoney confession was months ago, but it had changed everything.
In the end, Mila didn't blame Lily for explaining her secret to James, but it hadn't brought them any closer together. She didn't feel like she could confide in Lily, for fear she might blurt out her secrets, particularly to a certain person. But there was no longer the animosity between the two girls, they simply knew they were both very different people. Nowadays, Mila made a point to be nicer to Lily, and even Snape by extension.
Now that James had experienced Mila's firm dismissal, he had begun to take every opportunity he could to woo Evans, resulting in a harsh rivalry with Snape. More often than not, Mila had stopped the pair of them from hexing each other before things got out of hand. Sirius was usually the one encouraging it, much to Mila's chagrin.
In the final days of third year, Mila wondered what living with the Potters would be like. She'd never had a chance to visit their house before, but she always spoken to James' parents whenever she saw them at the train station each holiday.
They'd agreed to let her stay with them, and had even gone as far as signing up to be her new foster family. For that, she was eternally grateful. And it meant she got to see her friends during the holidays. And it was all thanks to James. He had given her a family.
She put him even higher on a pedestal, which bothered Sirius to no end. To her credit, Mila was well aware of James' flaws, a lot of them matched with Sirius', and even her own. But Mila could never speak ill of someone who had shared their home with her. She would never even come close to repaying him.
When, finally, they were on the train ride home, Mila spent the train ride stirring Sirius up. He had been so kind to her, and for a long time she had been embarrassed for all she had divulged to him, but he never used it against her. He hadn't even brought it up. Instead they had settled back into their usual routine of giving each other a hard time. And that was exactly what Mila had wanted.
She had lifted Sirius' arm and kept smacking it repeatedly into his own face. He was doing his best to ignore her.
"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitt-"
"You've been doing that for the past hour. Aren't you getting tired of it?" Sirius asked, fighting off a grin.
"Nope." She carried on. "Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."
Sirius put his hands on her sides and started ticking her. She began hitting him with her own hand.
"Stop. Stop. Uncle!" she cried.
Remus looked at them amusedly. "Are you two ever going to get along?"
James huffed. "Enough, guys. We need to talk business."
Mila and Sirius sat up.
"If this is about another plan to get Evans to go out with you-" Mila started.
"Why, yes, Mila dear, that's exactly what it is. When we get home, we're starting a step by step plan to get her on a Hogsmeade trip."
Mila beamed. While usually she grew very tired of James talking about Lily, she was just too happy to hear about the 'home' she would be arriving to shortly.
Sirius rolled his eyes. "You're going to have a shit holiday if that's all James cracks on about, Mila."
Mila was too busy laughing. "It's never going to happen, James. I share a room with that girl, and I swear she curses your name every night before she goes to bed."
James looked excited. "You mean she thinks about me before she goes to sleep. That girl wants me, I'm telling you."
"When are you going to take a hint?" Remus argued, with a cheeky grin on his face.
"When is Evans going to admit she's in love with me? There are all questions we must ask ourselves."
Mila turned to Sirius, who was still a little hurt form being ignored. It didn't happen often.
Mila didn't want to hear James harp on about Lily any longer. "What about you, Sirius?" she asked. "Any girl you've got your eye on?"
He forced a grin. "Do you want to hear the whole list, or top ten only?"
Mila rolled her eyes. "I shouldn't have asked."
