5
It seemed to be like the perfect thing for you and me
It's so ironic you're what I had pictured you to be
But there are facts in our lives
We can never change
Just tell me that you understand and that you feel the same
This perfect romance I've created in my mind
I would live a thousand lives
Each one with you with you right by my side
But yet we find ourselves in a less than perfect circumstance
And so it seems like we'll never have the chance
Ain't it funny how some feelings you just can't deny, oh
And you can't stop move on even though you try, oh
Ain't it strange when you're feelin' things you shouldn't feel
Oh, I wish this could be real
Ain't it funny how a moment could just change your life, oh
And you don't want to face what's wrong or right, no
Ain't it strange how fate can play a part
In the story of your heart
Sometimes I think that a true love can never be
I just believe that somehow it wasn't meant to be
Life can be cruel in a way that I can't explain
And I don't think that I could face it all again
I barely know you but somehow I know what you're about
She toddled tentatively into the colossal hall with a feeling of déja vú. Her head whizzed for a minute, and she was no longer herself. A servant caught her before she fell, but she didn't feel the old woman's touch on her; she stood watching the scene in confusion. For a moment, she thought she had died, and panicked. She knew that she must have been imagining it because she was standing right in front of herself. It must have been a reflection. She looked around, but the 'reflection' kept on progressing to the large cathedral doors. Suddenly she noticed something. Her double was clad in a medieval style wedding dress robes. Her own robes were a light periwinkle color and she had a purple cloak tied around her waist. Was it her wedding? No, she wasn't prepared! She did not want to get married to Snape, she wanted someone like Jame-wait-wait a second...
Lily glanced at her clone again. There was definitely an deeper, more symbolic meaning to this. What did that Muggle psychologist say about weddings in dreams? What was his name? Froad? Fraud? Yes, that's it, Fraud! What did he say about weddings? Snakes? What did snakes mean? Slowly, the snakes in Lily's dream slid toward her groom. For some reason, her heart sped. She could see it beating under the silk cloth of the gown. Strangely, she didn't want the her fiancé to die—or atleast she thought he was her fiancé. The man turned toward her, and she screamed. She did not see her to-be husband, but her clone had, and she started to run. To her surprise, her clone did not do so—she smiled and hooked hands with him. Looking down, she saw her own feet move swiftly underneath her. Lily shook with a sudden feeling of dread and imagined that she was about to fall from a ten-story building. Too soon, she woke up with those familiar arms around her waist.
"James-" she gasped; she felt the sudden urge to describe to him her dream. Unfortunately, there was but a wide grinning face in front of her blurry vision. She blinked a few times. It was not James. She looked at her waist to find the ugly purple cloak that Bell had coaxed her into wearing tied around it. She was in the familiar lobby seat in the Leaky Cauldron. Then who was—
"Those are what the muggles call Freudian Slips," so that was the guy's name-Freud. And this was undoubtedly Sirius that was speaking. She recalled something.
"Hey, Sirius, do you remember what dream-analysis is?" During seventh year, Lily and Sirius did an extensive term paper about Muggle Studies. Apparently muggle doctors (A/N: remember this is the '70s/80s) studied the science of psychology enough to detect Memory Charms and counter them.
"Yeah, why?"
"I dreamed about a wedding," Sirius' smile seemed to broaden, "and snakes attacking the groom, and I was running away from it."
"You remember who the groom was?" he twitched his eyebrows suggestively.
"Sirius!" Behind Sirius's kneeling figure the sunlight filtered through the curtain making little flower shadows on the smooth marble floor.
"Ok, Ok, so describe it to me." Lily thought for a few seconds, trying to recollect all the remaining thoughts about her eccentric dream.
"There was a large cathedral, with gothic stained glass windows, and I had on a pale white wedding dress,"
"Describe the dress." Lily frowned at the interruption, but explained it as best as she could.
"It was long and had angel sleeves...It looked kind of antique and old, you know?" Sirius' lips twitched at the ends when she said this. Lily kept going, with a faraway look forming on her face,
"It was silk, I think, and it parted right in the middle, and split into a sheer layer that was about six or seven feet long and trailed behind me," Lily studied Sirius's reaction. He had taken up the Dumbledore look, like he knew something she didn't, and she guessed it had something to do with James. It always was these days, as much as she wished it wasn't.
She couldn't figure out what she'd said although. Lily decided she wouldn't tell her stubborn friend that she thought the groom might have been James. She would never hear the end of it—also—'fat chance' she told herself, remembering past incidents with him. What was she afraid of anyway? Oh yes, how could she forget? James would probably be the first one to run away. It sometimes scared her how afraid of commitment he was. A lump came to her throat. Here she was, her parents dead, her loved ones dead, or threatened to be dead, and she was in hiding from a fantastical evil maniac, again here she was, and she was thinking of love.
She could laugh out loud at how funny it was.
"Then what happened?" Jolted to reality, Lily tried to describe exactly how the clone thing worked.
"It was like I was watching myself go down the isle, but when 'myself' looked at the groom, I screamed. My other self just went on happily getting married. She looked like she was in heaven, but I don't know if I could ever go on like that after who I thought the groom w—oh crap."
"Who was the groom?" How much could he torture her anyway, she decided.
"I thought it was James, but you know, it was just a dream, and that's why I—" Sirius started laughing so hard his stomach cramped. He was crunched up on the ground, gasping from so much of the giggling
"WHAT?! What's so funny! Padfoot, tell me...please?" Sirius's eyes were dancing merrily.
"It was nothing, Lils, James was saying something exactly like this—that he kissed you or something, and then you ran off to the lobby and fell like you were hexed...and then he said you said his name in your sleep and—" Lily's eyes widened with every word, but Sirius noticed this.
"What? What? What else did he say?"
"Wouldn't you like to know..." he winked slyly.
"Oooh, Padfoot, I'm going t—" So that was how the greatest boy/girl wrestling match ever began.
Many tickles and headlocks later, Sirius and Lily lay on the ripped up sofa in the lobby as the customers for the night started to arrive. Most of them recognized one of the Blacks or the Head Girl of Hogwarts at once, but some...well some were quite...scared of the duo. Tom, the innkeeper, banned them to their rooms in the nights.
In the midst of the confusion, James stood watching their over-friendly exchanges (in his opinion). He started muttering and went straight to bed (or the little sofa in the boys' room because the other two were occupied by Remus and Sirius). He was found still cursing to himself under the blankets in the morning by Remus's girlfriend, who never approached him again of her own free will.
"He is a bit looney, isn't it he?" Remus replied simply when Lina informed him. They were all a bunch of lunatics, she decided (A/N: no pun intended on that one if you got it ^_- gaaah! I'm going crazy).
Meanwhile, Sirius began on his quest to get Lily and James together. He scratched out a little to-do list on a piece of imported parchment (courtesy of Leaky Cauldron ©) and was currently showing it to Remus, having already tried to do the first two steps of the procedure.
Step 1: Get Lily to admit that she likes James
Step 2: Make James jealous
Step 3 : Get it all on Recording Parchment
Step 4: Convince Remus to get James to the Magical hospital
Step 5: Give Lily Cockroach Clusters
Step 6: Lock Lily and James in the...
"Er, Sirius, what is this?" Lily's petite figure stood stooped over Sirius and the piece of parchment. Maybe it wasn't—
"Too late. What the hell goes on in your mind stubborn canine? There's no chance we're getting together!" Lily laughed forcedly.
"He just wanted to get you together, Lils, don't get mad." There was Remus the diplomat to the rescue once more.
"Its okay for the Werewolf to call you 'Lils' but not me?" Lily flipped around to see the owner of the voice, though she had a faint idea already. James stood in close proximity to her, and when she turned, her long hair whipped him in the face. He looked like a lovestruck idiot. The other two snickered in glee. Lily scowled at them so that they promptly shut up.
"No, you didn't give me any chance to protest."
"I heard Sirius calling you the same thing atleast 10 times that yesterday."
"That's just because your an ass. Anyway, you were spying on me? I thought you weren't talking to me Potter." Lily narrowed her eyes at James. He was at a loss. Once again, he found something churning at the pit of his stomach, threatening to spew out through his ears. 'Control yourself, control yourself, control yourself, control yourself,' he repeated to himself. History was not exactly on his side with this one.
"Oh this is ridiculous. Lily—" Sirius and Remus turned their attentions to James, thinking that he couldn't possibly be about to confess his feelings for Lily.
"Yes, Potter?"
"I really, really like you." Gulp. "And I have for a long time, almost ten years, since the year before first year when I moved to your neighbourhood, I've been wanting to tell you for a long time, but I didn't admit that I liked you until third year and we just always assumed that you and Tai were the perfect couple, but after he died you went out with Snape and then, and then, I don't know what happened..." James looked up fearfully. If she rejected him now, he didn't know what he would do.
When the three Marauders looked at Lily to note her reaction, they almost recoiled. Lily glanced murderously from James to the picture of the innkeeper's great-grandfather. When he finished:
"Are you finished?"
"Er...ye-yes?" James offered weakly. This was a very, very bad time to reject James Potter indeed.
"Well then." With that, Lillian Mallory Evans officially created a very bad reputation for herself. Surprisingly, she found she really did not care.
"Guess what Bell?" Arabella sat fumbling over a muggle laptop and its battery, trying to connect it to a small pencil sharpener she had charmed up. She heard that it was much faster to do résumés in that way. They apparently even had a 'parchment' font if one managed to conjure one from the future, which is exactly what the novice witch had done.
"What?"
"That James Potter actually has the nerve to pretend to confess his undying feelings of love for me. I mean, is he trying to remind me that I have no one to call my own?"
"Lily—"
"He mentions Tai and how he died on me, and then stabs me in the back."
"Lily—"
"He tries to tell me that Snape dumped me when I'm still on the rebound. Did you know I ate two tubs of chocolate frogs yesterday?"
"Lily!"
"What?!"
"He does have feelings for you, he's not lying, Tai did die and you know as well as I do Snape dumped you."
"He did not!"
"Yes-He-Did." Bell forgot about fiddling with the muggle contraption and contented herself with shaking the snot out of her best friend.
"O-o-k-k-a-a-y-y," Bell let Lily go, and started cracking up much like Remus and Sirius did. Lily was more than a little put out.
"Why do you all laugh at me? It is not funny!" Lily promptly burst out into tears, remembering her hopeless situation (even though it wasn't all that hopeless if she was only true to her heart).
Lily remembered her parents viscera strewn about the icy sidewalk just a block away from her house. She saw Tai's blood, and him throwing himself at Voldemort to prevent his getting to the rest of the school, came floating to her a memory of Snape, with bloody gashes on his cheeks. She started hyperventilating at all of the gruesome memories. There was Voldemort's red eyes wherever she looked and she started slashing like mad. Bell attempted to calm her down, and when she finally succeeded, Lily wouldn't stop crying.
"Lily...hon, you never told me you were there was so much to this James thing!" Lily paused among her sobs, looking at Bell for any sign of humor or infidelity. There was only concern. The grief-stricken witch proceeded to pour her heart out to her best friend, and Bell widened her eyes in all the right places, cursed You-Know-Who to hell in all the right places, cursed men in all the right places. Later that night, Lily wondered if she really had no one to call her family.
"Lily,"
"Huh?"
"I didn't even know there was so much to this James thing, I'll admit, but you have to give him a chance."
"Bell, I see that you are looking out for the both of us, but he gives me no reason to take a risk. I mean, I'm giving my heart to James Potter, and he's never shown any signs that he won't throw it right down and stomp on it just to see the look of pain on my face."
Bell thought it over. She seemed right, but...
"But Lily, if you could just see the way he looks at you when you're not looking—"
"That's just it, isn't it Bell? He's always looking that way when I'm not looking! How am I supposed to know he's looking at me?"
"But Lily he loves you, and he's scared you'll reject him."
"Can we not talk about Potter? Its depressing. I don't mind talking about his kisses though...ooh, they just make me want to scream!"
"See, that's just what I'm talking ab—hold on, am I missing something?" when Lily was about to reply to the comment, there was a forceful, furious knocking on the door. Arabella rushed to open it, thinking something had gone wrong with some spell that the boys were fiddling with to get James out of his depressed state. It was Remus.
"It's James." Lily rushed to the door at the sound of his name.
"He's gone—clothes and everything, he went out of the window."
"Shit!"
A/N: I have nothing to say. Let's see if you can guess who that person was that sang that song (Dragonfly… *winks*). It's going to be in the next chapter also. As much as I like keeping l&j apart, (evil cackle) I think I'll get the two lovebirds together in the next chapter. It's getting kind of tiring to write this fic when I don't really have anything else going (except that stupid Teletubbies parody), and I can't work that way…