Phoenix Tears
lone astronomer
Summary: Starts where the 3Rs (Rain, Replacements…) left off. A pneumonia epidemic: people get sick, people worry, people die. (People die a lot in my stories, okie?!) Read. Review. That is all.
Disclaimer: No own, no money, no sue. Get it? Got it? Good. For a proper disclaimer, visit someone else.
Note: Sorry this took forever… mind was elsewhere. Last quarter I had 38 hours of school per week. That's almost physically impossible. So… please forgive me.
* * *
…love means its modest
needs its sacrifices
they live for your beauty
and pay for their vices
love will be the death of
my lonely survivors
but their spirits shall live on in
the hearts of their lovers
you're holding court
with your lips and your smile
your body's a halo
their minds are on trial
sure as Adam is Eve
sure as Jonah turned whaler
they're crooked love thieves
and you are their jailer…
-Depeche Mode, Love thieves (Yes, words are wrong. Leave me alone!)
* * *
Remus blanched. "Allya has what?!"
"Bacterial pneumonia, Remus," Madam Pomfrey answered, shooing everyone out of the dorm- including those who lived there. "And she is not to be moved or disturbed, under any circumstances!"
"Um," Lily said, nervously shying away from the half-irate-with-worry school nurse, "What about those of us who have to sleep here?"
Madam Pomfrey just blinked at her at first, wondering who the redhead was to ask such a question. Finally she answered, "Talk to Dumbledore. I'm sure we can work something out."
Lily nodded. If past experiences were to be any indication, the Headmaster would be most sympathetic to the fact that she had to sleep.
By this time, Madam Pomfrey had managed to shoo away the crowd surrounding the stairway, save for Remus. When she finally noticed him, he was just approaching her to ask her a few… prying questions.
"She'll be okay?" His eyes were wide yet with shock and seemed haunted. Madam Pomfrey shivered. She knew that look- that was the look of someone afraid to lose.
"With the proper attention," she said, averting her eyes to the floor so that she'd no longer have to look in his.
Evidently, Remus' idea of attention was not the same as the nurse's. He marched right back up the stairs again, completely oblivious to Madam Pomfrey's protests. If Ally was in trouble, he was going to be right there with her.
"Now that's devotion," Sirius commented as he disappeared from sight. "And incredibly, sickeningly sweet."
Lily snorted in agreement. "Too true. You must promise to shoot me if I ever get like that," she told him, shaking her finger at him. Lily gave him a mock-severe look. "You do know what it means to shoot someone, don't you?" she teased with a grin.
Sirius stuck his tongue out at her. "I know what it means. That doesn't mean I'll do it, though." Someone might get a little angry with me…
"Remus is going to miss DADA," Lily said, stating the obvious.
Sirius gave her a grin as they walked out the portrait hole together. "Yeah, the poor kid's got it bad…" James Potter had been fuming for an entire week. And Sirius had noticed. The time for action was drawing nearer…
Remus was surprised to find that, although only a few moments before Allya had been burning up, she was once again freezing. He could hear her teeth chattering and her lips were blue. She was also making an unattractive wheezing sound with every breath. It was pneumonia, all right.
Remus, being a sentimental person, was still somewhat at a loss. He knew that infants and small children could die of pneumonia, or that there had been some Muggle cases of it happening. He knew that there were several different causes, and he knew that every time he'd gone outside without a jacket after September third as a child, his mother had said, "Remus J. Lupin! Put that jacket on right now! You'll catch pneumonia!"
She said it especially often when it was raining.
So Remus Johannes Lupin had guilt to contend with. Seeing Allya there, alternating between very cherry red and sheet-white, was not doing his conscience any good. Thus, the other werewolf did what he had to do to assuage it-
He climbed into bed beside her, hoping to share some of his warmth and perhaps catch more of her less lucid premonitions ("Boy who lived…" and "betrayal" seemed to be common). Remus' plan backfired, though, because after no more than five minutes they were both sleeping peacefully.
"… Miss Evans. To stun a dragon, which spell would you use?"
Lily's head snapped up off of her desk and Mioré gave her a sympathetic look. "Um, pardon me?" she said, giving Professor Quinn her most innocent look.
"Miss Evans, you must learn to-"
He was interrupted by a coughing fit coming from the third row. "Are you quite alright?"
Quinn was answered only by more coughing. "By all means, Miss Evans, why didn't you say you were ill?" The normally severe professor seemed quite alarmed that one of his star pupils (whether he liked it or not, Lily was) had taken ill, and told her to go to the nurse without further ado.
"But sir, I'm not sick!" Lily insisted. "I… just… have a cough, is all."
Professor Quinn almost asked her to repeat herself, because he couldn't hear her. Instead, James and Sirius grabbed her under the arms and dragged her out the door.
"But I'm not sick!" Lily protested as Madam Pomfrey stuck the thermometer in her mouth. Actually, because of the thermometer, it sounded rather like, 'Mph hmm hmm hm hm hm!" It was a very quiet, 'Mph hmm hmm hm hm hm,' though, as Lily was sick.
"Pneumonia!" Madam Pomfrey diagnosed, looking worried. It was beginning to look like there might be an epidemic. "James, dear," she said, looking distracted, "please notify Professor Dumbledore that I wish to speak to him immediately."
James, with a worried glance at Lily, left the room silently, wondering if things were really as bad as Madam Pomfrey made them seem. Granted, he'd seen her fret over tiny, insignificant details before, and he'd often been on the receiving end of her overprotective streak- but then, she'd always been raving in such a comical fashion (she never realized it was funny, of course) that she put everyone at ease. 'Calm' was a new face on the school nurse… calm was worrisome, if you asked James.
"He hasn't moved in three hours."
"Can you blame him?"
Mioré and the ghost of Siren O'Maley were just outside the room in which Lily laid, oblivious to the fact that there was always someone else there in the room with her. She slept a lot, although when Madam Pomfrey wasn't watching she tried to get out her homework. Usually on these occasions she would be stopped by James or Sirius, who were keeping constant vigilance over her. Being Lily, she was annoyed rather than touched, especially when James stole her Transfiguration notes away.
"No, I can't blame him," Mioré said quietly, watching her friends. Can I blame him if I'd do the same for him? No.
Madam Pomfrey had given up trying to remove Sirius from Lily's bedside a good three hours ago, when he'd used a Binding charm the nurse had never heard of to keep himself in the room. As she didn't know the charm itself, it was impossible to perform the counter-spell, and so with Lily Sirius stayed. Of course, Madam Pomfrey couldn't know that Sirius had invented that particular charm himself, or she would have stopped trying to remove him from the room several hours before she did.
Siren's ghost gave Mioré a knowing little half-smile. "But you do," she said, and was rewarded with a sheepish Mioré watching her feet with interest. "Anyway, James' shift should start soon."
Mioré nodded. "It's all too complicated, if you ask me," she said, changing the subject. She was still standing in the doorframe and watching, unaffected by the uncomfortable turn the conversation had taken.
"Oh, Sirius has no intention of irking James' wrath permanently," Siren laughed, especially at the look on Mioré's face. "It's for the good of the two of them that he staged this little set-up. Not the nicest thing he could have done," she reflected, "but probably the most productive."
"That manipulative son of a bitch," Mioré said, comprehension finally dawning. A smile spread across her face. "Of course, James and Lil-bug have no idea how they've been set up."
"I assure you, James knows," Siren replied. "And he's fighting it valiantly. But there's really nothing he can do."
"No," Mioré said, "No, there wouldn't be. Poor boy. Horrible argument, that was."
"What was?" James' voice came from behind them. He had his rucksack slung over one shoulder and a Muggle novel under the other arm, and looked rather exhausted, which he well had a right to be; the Quidditch Captain had been awake for going-on thirty hours. Naturally, he'd been skipping classes, too- Mioré and Siren were keeping him informed, as Siren could visit any class of James' that Mioré didn't take. As Sirius was in all of James' classes, he was keeping up as well. Not that it was hard for the two of them.
"Er, nothing," Mioré said, stepping aside as James and Sirius switched spells and places. Amazing how they could forget an argument like that when Lily was in trouble.
It was clear that James didn't believe her, and Siren whispered, "Smooth," into her ear as she floated away, invisible.
"You look lively," Mioré commented to Sirius as he rubbed his eyes and left the hospital wing.
"Thanks," Padfoot grumbled, not looking at her. "It makes me feel so much better when you tell me how handsome I look."
"Glad to see that your winning sense of humor hasn't left you. Has there been any change?"
Sirius shook his head. "She just lays there, Em. Except when she's reaching for her homework, I hardly even recognize her." He paused a moment. "How's Ally?"
"About the same," Mioré answered, "only without the homework part. Remus says sometimes she'll try to get up, insisting she has to go home, before he comes and it's too late."
Puzzled, Sirius stops dead in his tracks. "Before who comes?"
Mioré shook her head. "That's just it- she never says. And in her more lucid moments, Remus says she can't remember that she wanted to leave."
They walked some more, reaching the common room and flopping down into large, mismatched chairs. "Do we have DADA homework?" Sirius finally asked, tearing his eyes from the roaring fire.
Mioré shook her head. "Snape substituted. It seems Lil-bug and Allya aren't the only ones with pneumonia."
Sirius sighed, and he looked so much older than his seventeen years. "Why do I have a bad feeling about this?"
She's not going to die, he told himself. She can't die, because if she dies, you will die. You will die because you can't live without her. And she won't let you die.
Remus wasn't helping himself much. Even with him there to keep her warm, Allya was freezing. Lips and fingertips had turned blue, yet a sheen of sweat covered her brow. "Please don't leave," he said quietly. "Please don't leave me all alone."
A moment of lucidity crept upon her, and startlingly blue eyes opened blearily for but a moment. Her frozen fingertips caressed his face, causing him to shiver. Allya let out a low whisper, "I could never leave you." Her eyes closed again, and Remus nearly wept with relief, for in that moment, he knew that she would be alright.
He stayed in her bed only an hour more, assuring himself that she would, in fact, live if he removed himself from her side for but a moment. Remus took this opportunity to grab his wand, summon his textbooks and supplies, and catch up on the homework he'd missed in the past three days. He was asleep on the foot of Ally's bed when James and Sirius found him the next morning.
"I know it's in here somewhere," James whispered, rooting through the huge stack of novels stacked haphazardly on Lily's desk. "I know it is-"
"Know what is?" Sirius asked, rubbing his eyes. They'd finally both left Lily's side; although it was James' turn at the moment, he was looking for something and refused to leave until he found it. The reason they were whispering laid in the curtained bed by the window; they weren't supposed to disturb Allya.
"Romeo and Juliet," James answered, legs sticking out from under the desk. "It's her favorite…"
Sirius snorted at the irony of the situation. Lily and James had broken each other's hearts, and yet there he was, looking for her copy of Romeo and Juliet to read to her while she was sick. If it hadn't been so tragic, it would've been hilarious. "Accio Romeo and Juliet," he said.
A battered old paperback flew from under a stack of books, causing them to fall on James' head. "Oh yeah. Forgot about that."
Sirius tossed him the book, admonishing, "Don't be late, now…" A low rasp and the crinkling of parchment could just be heard through the heavy velvet curtains.
James paused a moment. "What's that noise?"
Sirius gave him a knowing look, walked over to Allya's bed, and pulled back the curtain. Allya, still pale but looking healthier than the last time they'd checked in, was the obvious source of the rasping noise. Every time she breathed in, her sleeping face showed a small amount of pain. Remus, on the other hand, provided the rasping. He appeared to be having a nightmare, and every time he moved, he rustled the papers beneath him. Spread out at the end of the bed, he looked more like a guard dog than even Sirius could. "This answer your question?" he whispered.
James half-smiled, then the two Animagi- friends once again- walked back out of the room, shutting the door softly behind them.
If I could only handle a camera, Siren thought, hovering over the girl's bed hours later.
They were both sleeping- she'd been sleeping before he even got there, but it didn't matter in the slightest to him. His head rested beside her hand on her bed, looking unnatural as his body was seated in the chair beside it. Unruly black hair spread out on the pages of Romeo and Juliet, obscuring the words from view. Two white lilies and a rose so red it was almost black laid on the girl's stomach, almost as if it were her final bouquet, which of course it couldn't be. Romeo and Juliet themselves couldn't have hoped for a more beautiful death scene-
Lily Evans and James Potter couldn't die, though. They were forever immortalized in that book.
If only they could be immortal, Siren thought, and floated up through the ceiling again to talk to the stars.
She didn't know what woke her. Perhaps it was the nagging of her conscience, tugging at the back of her mind and prompting her to sit up with a start. Perhaps it was Remus, who seemed to be having a nightmare on her feet. Maybe, even, it was her innate talent as a Diviner, telling her that it was time to stop sleeping, to stop being sick, to be with him.
Allya watched him for a second before she reached over and touched his shoulder, waking him instantly.
Confusion reigned on his expression for the first few seconds, which turned to relief. "You're alright," he breathed with a relieved sigh, letting his eyes fall closed.
Though still weak, Ally attempted a smile to cover her concern. It almost cheered him up. "I'm more worried about you," she confessed, making a wholehearted (but mostly unsuccessful) attempt to pull Remus into her embrace.
Remus allowed himself to be comforted, albeit after a brief pause. "But I thought-" Remus struggled with the words. "I thought I'd lost you," he said finally, not opening his eyes.
Allya was glad for this, for he could not see the tears she'd shed.
This did not mean that he could not feel them; with her wet cheek pressed against his in the darkness, it was hard to miss. Still, though a phoenix's tears could heal nearly any flesh wound, they couldn't heal Remus' soul. Though it was indeed simply a dream, only time could do that.
"How?" Dumbledore asked tiredly, rubbing his eyes in a vain attempt to ease the throbbing headache he'd acquired.
"Complications," Madam Pomfrey said, her face haggard and eyes red from crying. "He refused to slow down for the pneumonia, but it caught up to him in another form. A Death Eater attack at the Apothecary in Hogsmeade. He thought he'd escaped unscathed, but…" she swallowed. "Slow-acting poison," she finally managed.
Dumbledore winced. "How soon can we arrange a replacement?" he asked.
Minerva McGonagall answered, her own face damp from tears. "We can't. I suppose we could get some of the seventh years to teach the sixth years… but their schedules are too full to handle more than one year. If we really stretched things, we could have some of the sixth years teach the other students…"
"Who's top in Defense Against The Dark Arts for that year?" Dumbledore asked, distractedly watching Fawkes fly about in his cage.
"Lupin and Nightrunner," Minerva responded automatically.
"And their marks in everything else?"
Minerva consulted a file she'd brought along. "Lupin's grades are overall above average… he could probably teach a few classes, if he needed to." She stopped, thinking a moment. "Not the third years, though." Rifling through the papers, she stopped at Allya's name. "Nightrunner, however…" McGonagall wrinkled her nose. "She really can't afford to miss Potions or Herbology. Other than that…"
Dumbledore nodded. "I will take the third years, then," he said.
Minerva gave him a look. "I thought that you had Apparation preparation with the seventh years?"
He sighed. "With Quinn dead, I'll have to cancel it anyway. He was our link to the Ministry's letting us teach it."
"And what shall we tell the students?" Madam Pomfrey asked, a bit ruffled.
"The truth," Dumbledore answered. "My students will hear nothing but the truth from me."
THE END (For now…)
l. a. : Hay caramba! This took a long time. Sorry 'bout that, I nearly forgot I hadn't uploaded it, and then it wasn't quite done, not "tweaked" the way I wanted it to be. There will be only one more sixth year story, which will come out whenever I get my ass in gear.
REMUS: In other words, folks, don't hold your breath.
l. a. : Quiet, you. Anyway, you guys are keeping me away from Jedi Eclipse, so-
REMUS: Star Wars is more important than me?!
l. a. : Never! But it's good practice, the reading. Helps spelling, grammar, good stuff like that…
ALLYA: Well, I suppose quality is better than quantity…
l. a. : They are equally important! And I'm going to go read now!
ARCHER: No! You are not finished Every Wish!
l. a. : I can't post Every Wish until Road of Life is done, anyway (spoilers!), which reminds me-
CLARA: You've almost forgotten about me!
l. a. : I have not! I just needed to um… rest my fingers?
JAMES: We believe you… and while I'm here, let's talk about you killing off-
l. a. : Ooooookay, that's about enough for now, g'night folks!
