Disclaimer: I-don't-own-anything! Except Chase and Celeste and the plot and Ridgewood and Erin and Keith and…oh well, I guess I do own something after all…
AN – Blondes are not dumb. I'm sorry if I forgot to say that in chap 19! It was a stereotypical reference to blondes, which obviously just means that the people who assigned stereotypes were very prejudiced against them…wait, I'm just making things worse, am I? Anyway, I hope I didn't offend anyone (sorry especially to NicolaPadfoot…I know you overlooked it, thanx), but sometimes (more like always) I'm a total airhead at this stuff.
Chapter 20: Positively Platonic
"What happened, James?" Peter asked urgently. Sirius dropped his book and practically hurled himself to James's bed. Remus picked himself up off the floor and pounced onto James's other side. Peter hurriedly scampered over to them too. After a while of staring at the book, they exchanged quizzical glances.
"Uh, James? Chase is standing right there," Remus said uneasily. If James was having delusions, then--
"There's nothing wrong with her," Peter added. "See? She's smirking and laughing and standing there and—well, she looks normal."
"Is this another attempt for a joke?" Sirius said as he went back to his bed and started reading his book again.
James didn't respond for a while, his eyes still wide. "Noooo, you dolts, you didn't see it…"
"Now you're acting scary," Peter said uneasily.
"Here it is," James whispered almost inaudibly. Peter gasped.
"Merlin's beard!" Remus said aloud. Sirius, by reflex action, jumped out of his bed and crashed into James.
"Whatisitwhatisitwhatisit?!!!" he exclaimed, grabbing the book. He dropped it a few seconds later. "I can't believe it…"
"See, I told you," James wheezed. Sirius sat up properly.
"She's an Animagus," Peter said, quite in awe.
"She can turn into a phoenix," Remus amended in the same tone.
"And she never told us!" James shouted. Martin woke with a start.
"Huh? What are you guys doing?" he said in a sleepy voice.
"Er…nothing, Martin, go back to sleep," Remus said quickly. He muttered something and pointed his wand at Martin, who immediately dropped back onto his pillow, snoring loudly.
"I can't believe Chase is an Animagus, and she didn't tell us," James whispered to them furiously. "Here we are, working hard to turn into animals at will while she can do it already! She could've helped us, she could've told us how to do it easily, she could've—"
"Kept it a secret?" Remus suggested.
James glared at him. "Keep it a secret! Why should she, when it's supposed to help us? When it's supposed to help you? You don't keep those kinds of secrets! That's selfish, that is utterly parsimonious—"
"Say what?" Sirius asked, snapping out of his funk.
"I'm going up there," James announced, ignoring Sirius. "And I'm going to ask her how long she's been an Animagus and how come she hasn't registered herself on the roster--"
"James, calm down, that was what we were planning to do too, remember? We have to be Animagi, but we can't register because we have to keep it secret," Peter said reasonably.
"She must have some reason to keep it from us," Sirius said.
"Or maybe it means she doesn't trust us?" James interjected.
"Give her a break! She's only gotten to know us in months, James!" Sirius argued. "Even you wouldn't totally trust me in just a year just because we're friends."
"I don't think I fully trust you yet until now," James said. Sirius whacked him upside the head with his book.
"See? So that means that she has every right not to tell us—yet," Remus told them.
"Fine, I am officially convinced that she's innocent, now can we go to the girls' dormitory?" James asked. "We still have to ask her how she did it so that we can get the hang of it already—"
"James, no," Remus said sternly. "And what are we supposed to tell her when she asks us how we found out? That we were watching them through an old book?"
"Oh, she won't care. Besides, what's she going to do to us? Hurl a Memory Charm?" James said, waving his hand.
"I do think that Chase is perfectly capable of casting a Memory Charm on us James," Sirius pointed out.
"Say what you want, I'm going up there," James said firmly, leaping up from his bed and sliding the old book under his bed.
"We-ell, if he's going, then I might as well go too," Sirius admitted to them, following James.
"I'll come with you!" Peter squeaked.
Remus sighed. Well, you know what they say. If you can't beat them, join them…and head straight for the gallows.
*****
"Eeewwww! Wilkes has a crush on you? That's disgusting! You better give him a Hate Potion, Celes," Lily laughed after she read the parchment letter.
"That's not all. I heard a bunch of Slytherin girls talking about how Nealson fancies you, Lil," Chase laughed. She had flown to the Slytherin Tower and cast an Invisibility Charm on herself to steal the letter from Wilkes' bedside table. Then she had stayed for a while in the dungeon common room just for the fun of it. She found out some very handy information on the Slytherins that she could blackmail them with when they even dared to attack Gryffindors… She was no gossipmonger, but somehow Celeste talked her into it—something she probably wouldn't ever do again after all of her sister's 'dares.'
"No way! Ugh, why do they have to fancy us, when we're supposed to be archrivals? Aren't the girls in their House enough?" Lily said with disgust.
"Probably because the girls there are so ugly," Celeste said, brushing her long brown locks.
Chase dug around her trunk for and withdrew several bars of chocolate. Her crystal ball for Divination spilled out as she brought her arm out of the trunk and it rolled around on the floor.
"We've got company," she observed, picking up the foggy ball in her hands.
"How'd you know?" Lily asked.
Chase pointed at the orb before throwing it back into her trunk. "Divining, what else?"
"You actually see something in there?" Lily said incredulously.
"Hey, Sirius sees stuff in crystal balls, so why shouldn't I?" Chase defensively replied, unwrapping a chocolate bar. "Want one?" she asked both of them, holding out a couple of pieces.
"No thanks," Celeste promptly refused. "That stuff will stay on my hips forever."
Chase smirked. "Unlucky you. I actually lose weight when I eat this stuff," she said, taking a bite. "And I never get any zits too…" she added as she swallowed.
"Showoff," Celeste muttered, balling up the letter in her hands and incinerating it in a conjured ball of fire.
The door burst open and the four marauders came in. It made a pretty loud crash as wood collided with cement.
"Jeez, the least you could do is act like proper guests and not obliterate the door," Lily complained, rubbing at her ears after the loud impact.
"Sorry," Remus said quickly. "See, James here was going to ask—"
"Why you never told us you were an Animagus!!!" James interjected accusatorily at Chase.
Chase's mouth dropped open and she slowly turned at Lily. "You didn't—?"
"I swear I would never," Lily said before she could finish, sitting up straight and looking surprised herself. Celeste reflected the same expression of shocked disbelief on her face.
"You knew?" James howled at her, "You knew and you never told us?!"
"Please, James, you said that you wouldn't get mad--" Peter interrupted worriedly.
"How'd you find out?" Chase inquired. Total silence.
"Uh-oh…" Sirius said under his breath. No one replied.
"How—did—you—know?" Chase repeated slowly, as if she were teaching a bunch of retarded preschoolers.
Silence again. "Well? Are you going to say that you're a bunch of psychics or something?! The fact that she's an Animagus can't have just popped in your mind!!!" Celeste demanded them.
"We—ah—I mean, James was the first to find out," Peter said timidly, uncertainly.
"How?" Celeste asked, looking beadily at James.
James took a deep breath. "Okay, so we found out, but we're not going to tell you how. I have as much right to ask her why she never told us before, when she already knows that Remus is a werewolf and we were planning on turning into Animagi ourselves—"
"But we figured out that Rem was a werewolf," Chase pointed out. "And you were the ones who blurted out your Animagi plans to us, so—"
"We told you, but you never told us that you were already one yourself!" James interrupted.
"And that bothers you because?" Chase challenged, arching an eyebrow.
"Because—because—well, it's not the kind of thing you keep from your friends when they already spilled all there is to say about them! It's not fair, and even though you have the supernormal ability to read people like open books doesn't mean that you can't say anything about yourself--"
"Yeah, but it's your own fault that you're a blabbermouth and you tell all your secrets to others when you don't even know them well enough yet," Chase said, her lips curling into a smirk.
"I am not a blabbermouth! That's a title reserved for girls!" James said irately to her.
"Yes, you are," Chase said slowly, her eyes twinkling. "And not all girls are blabbermouths, look at me and Lily--"
"That's because you're the most abnormally perfect person in Britain while Lily's…Lily," James finished.
"Celeste is a blabbermouth," Lily piped up.
"No I'm not!" Celeste admonished, glaring at Lily.
"Yes you are," Chase, Lily and James said in unison.
"Traitors," Celeste muttered darkly. "Subversive, treasonous, perfidious double-crossers."
"Thank you," James said.
"But how did you find out?" Chase repeated for the third time that night. "Jeez, if you're half as smart as you say you are, how come you can't answer a simple question? And I think I have the right to say that I deserve an explanation."
Remus sighed. "James found this weird book in a secret passage and he figured out how to work it. It's a magical book that shows scenes from the present and past, but we're not sure about it showing the future. He was looking at the present scene in the girls' dormitory--"
"The girls' dormitory?! You pervert!" Lily cried at James, whacking his head with her wand.
"Ow! Why do you people always assume that I'm a pervert?!" James whined, rubbing his head.
"Because you are one," Sirius said with a smirk.
"You are obviously much more of a pervert than I ever will be," James retaliated.
"Remus is the most horny," Sirius protested.
"No, you are," Remus disputed, glowering at Sirius.
"I can't believe we fell in love with a band of perverts," Lily said, throwing her hands up.
"You mean, you can't believe that you and Celeste fell in love with a couple of perverts," Chase corrected. The three boys were still bantering and didn't hear her.
Lily's eyebrows raised in surprise. "What do you mean--"
"Break it up, guys, if it'll make you feel better, you're all perverts," Chase shouted at them. They immediately shut up.
"Yeah, but Remus is still the most lecherous of all," Sirius said quietly, and Remus elbowed him in the ribs. "Ouch! Okay, okay, I take it back," Sirius grumbled.
Celeste's hand flew to her mouth. "Omigod! I forgot my Charms homework in the classroom!"
"Why don't you just say Accio homework and it'll come flying to you?" Chase suggested lazily.
Celeste glared at her. "Then I'll just be bombarded with the whole school's homework, you idiot," she jibed.
"If you're so scared to perform a spell outside of class, then why don't you just haul your butt all the way to the Charms classroom and get it?" Chase shot back.
"It's too far away!" Celeste moaned.
"What do you expect to do to get it? Cry and whine and throw temper tantrums until it grows legs and walks half a mile to your bed?" Chase said in an annoyed tone.
Celeste's eyes brightened. "I know! You can just transform and--"
"I am not going to be your personal delivery bird and do everything you say," Chase refused point-blank.
"But if you fly then you'll get there half the time--"
Chase rolled her eyes. "Stupid. Everybody knows that phoenixes are rare. What if Kettleburn finds me and catches me or something? Then I'd have to explain to the school and the Ministry of Magic how come I never registered myself all these years--"
"Pretty pleeeeeaaassse? I really need it, and if Flitwick finds out that I forgot my homework, he's going to think I'm lazy and irresponsible--"
"Good for you, finally there's gonna be a blot in the Schoharie escutcheon," Chase said lazily.
"Yeah, Celeste, don't be so shallow," Lily said. "I did mine in like ten seconds--"
"Only because you're the Charms ace of the whole fourth year," Celeste countered. "Besides, all my notes on the Loss Charm was on that, and we're having a quiz about it on Thursday!"
"Then read Lily's, hers is the most detailed anyways," Sirius suggested. He and James had raided Chase's chocolate stash and were gobbling down a whole box of assorted confections.
"Hey, take the caramel-filled ones only, you greedy sweet-teeth," Chase warned them.
"Awww, don't worry, we'll leave you all the low-fat stuff," James said seriously--well, as seriously as he could while stuffing a dark chocolate truffle into his mouth. "Like all the sugarless ones, that is."
Chase swiped the box from him and tilted all the chocolates into her hands. "Milk chocolate, milk chocolate with strawberry--yuck, you can have this one, James--milk chocolate with wine?--hey, you ate up all the dark chocolate!"
"Don't blame me, Sirius ate all of it," James said defensively.
"Did not," Sirius protested. "That's bitter stuff, that is. You probably wolfed it all down."
"Chase, I need my Charms homework!" Celeste told her.
"Ask Remus to come with you and tell you all the secret shortcuts to Charms," Chase answered, handing James a particularly large strawberry-filled piece of chocolate.
"But they're all dark and stuffy! Besides, they're filled with spiders, and I hate spiders," Celeste whined.
"I thought you hated cockroaches," Sirius said as he conjured a glass of water.
"Yeah, them too," Celeste said, shivering. Chase and Lily exchanged smirks, remembering the night when Chase had set an army of roaches on Celeste to make her come out of the bathroom…
"It's not funny! And I still haven't thought of the most painful punishment to subject you under to pay back for that horrible prank you did, Chase!" Celeste shouted.
"What prank?" Remus, James and Sirius all asked in unison. Chase grinned.
"Great! Want me to do it again?" Chase offered, twirling her wand. "Roacole--"
"DON'T YOU EVEN DARE, CHASE SELENE TARLISE!!!" Celeste screamed.
"--giona," Chase finished, and almost immediately about a dozen cockroaches headed for Celeste.
Celeste screamed, standing up to get away from the insects. "Stupefy! Stupefy! Impedimenta! Stupefy!!!"
All the guys had jumped onto Chase's and Lily's beds to avoid the onslaught of the creeping crawlies.
Chase's eyes were sparkling like mad. "I know another spell. It's—"
"SHUT UP AND MAKE THEM ALL DISAPPEAR, YOU BLOODY EXCUSE OF A TWIN!!!" was the reply.
"Arachnidium," Chase said lazily. A single, enormous tarantula erupted from her wand, spiraling to Peter.
"Auugh!" Peter cried as the giant arachnid landed on his forearm. "Get it off, get it off!!!"
"Sorry Pete," Chase said with a smirk, waving her wand again and letting it ricochet to Celeste.
"Quit it!" Celeste screamed. "Incendio!"
The spider burst into flames.
"Hey, I created that!" Chase exclaimed.
Celeste gave her a death glare. "Find another hobby! Somewhere along the level of non-horribly-disgusting animals such as bunnies and cats and lovebirds. Or maybe you should try the only insect that isn't as hideous as everything else in its family known to man, the butterfly."
Chase smirked. "Too girly. Besides, what's the point in scaring somebody out of their wits if you don't use crawling, hairy and poisonous antennae-toting species--"
"Shut up already," Lily told them, looking slightly ill. "Chase, just put your wand away and stop conjuring those monstrosities. Celeste, quit screaming your head off, it's just a harmless roach--"
"You just said it was a monstrosity," Sirius pointed out, his eyes sparkling with amusement.
Lily glared at him. "What-ever, Mr. I-am-Superior-to-All-of-You. I don't like them myself, but I will make them crawl up your nose if you don't stop acting like an intolerable know-it-all—"
"I'll stop now," Sirius said in a mock-somber voice.
"Chase, get me my Charms homework!" Celeste said exasperatedly. "You owe it to me after that army of roaches you conjured--"
"I'm trying to knock you out of your fear of six-and-eight-legged creatures," Chase said in pretend solemnity. "You should be grateful."
"Grateful?! Grateful that a bunch of filthy, germ-contaminated horrors almost crawled up my leg?! Are you crazy?!!!" Celeste stalked toward her, and Chase jumped off her bed and landed on the thing nearest it--the windowsill.
"Yeah, you should be," Chase said casually.
"And why should I?!" Celeste demanded.
Chase smiled. "Because they're right behind you."
All of the glass in Hogwarts may have well shattered from the decibel and pitch of Celeste's scream. Uncountable spiders of every shape, size and color trailed toward her; cockroaches ranging from the centimeter-long to 35-gram variety crawled shortly after the arachnids.
"I'LL KILL YOU! YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS, CHASE!!! INCENDIO, STUPEFY, IMPEDIMENTA, FUMIGATIUS! DON'T EVEN TRY TO--"
Too late. Chase had transformed back into a phoenix and had flown straight out of the room.
*****
James performed the Reticence Spell on Celeste, if only to make her shut up. Sirius and Remus set to work exterminating all the pests; Peter was too terrified to even lift his wand and had resorted to bolting out of the spider-and-roach infested room at light speed; and Lily was too busy laughing her head off to be of any help to anybody. A few moments later, when the two marauders had finally banished the last of the lot (and Lily had even thrown in a few spells of her own after managing to desist her giggles), footsteps were heard thundering up the staircase.
The three marauders scrambled under different beds only just in time. Sirius's prefect sister stood in the doorway.
"What's all this noise about?" Cas demanded Lily and Celeste. Celeste started to speak but still had the silencing charm on her. Lily quickly performed the counter-charm to prevent Cas from suspecting anything.
"Nothing," Lily answered nonchalantly. "Why? Is there a problem?"
"I thought I heard screaming here a while ago…" Cas explained. "And I was on the second floor then."
"Oh! Then you must have heard it somewhere else. We can't possibly scream that loudly," Lily stated. "I mean, not even Celeste could--"
Sirius smirked. He had landed under Chase's bed, where he floor was littered with different sketches and half-used pencils.
"--probably the Slytherins. Really, Cas, that's absurd," Celeste was saying.
"Where's your sister?" Cas asked suspiciously.
"Library, I think," Lily said casually. "She's got some research to do for--um--Transfiguration. Yeah, you know how she never does that stuff…"
"Oh, all right then," Cas said, finally looking resigned. "Have you seen Sirius? I hope he's not up to anything. My gut instinct's telling me that my little brother's about to do something that mum and dad would like to send a Howler for…" She left the room in a hurry, muttering darkly to herself.
Celeste peered around the doorway before turning back to them. "It's okay. She's gone now…"
The marauders crawled out from under the beds. Barely five seconds later a phoenix swooped into the room.
"You!" Celeste screeched, swiping at the magical bird.
The phoenix was carrying something in its golden beak and dropped it on Celeste's bed. It then transformed into Chase.
"That's the way you thank your sister who flew all the way to the Charms classroom to fetch your homework?" Chase asked, plopping down on her own bed.
"That's the way I thank you for conjuring a herd of gross insects and sending them after me," Celeste said grumpily.
"A colony of gross insects," Lily corrected with a grin.
"I have one question," Remus announced. "Since when did you become an Animagus?" he asked Chase.
Chase shrugged. "I dunno…since I was ten, I guess--"
"Ten years old?!" Sirius exclaimed.
"Yeah, so?"
"You can't be an Animagus that young. It's supposed to be extremely hard--you can't just learn it form a book or something," James pointed out.
Chase smirked. "Right, but I got all the help I could get. Do you remember our lesson on Animagi last year, when McGonagall said that there were only seven Animagi in this century?"
All three (not including Celeste and Lily, and certainly not Peter since he already left) nodded.
"One of them, Tamara Godwin, was a neighbor and the third youngest registered Animagi in a hundred years. She was pretty old then, about 80-something years or so…
"Anyway, when I was about eight, my dad had to start doing a lot more stuff at the Ministry and he dropped me off every weekday to Mrs. Godwin's house. She was a nice old woman, and she always told me stories about her animal transformation--"
"What animal could she turn into?" James asked with interest.
"A unicorn," Chase answered, looking at James as if daring him to make a wiseass comment. "Its skin was as silver as her hair. I asked her if it was hard to turn into an animal, and she just laughed. 'It's always hard the first few times,' she used to say, 'but once you get the hang of it, it's like coasting downhill.'"
"She said that anyone could be an animal at will if they wanted to, but they were too scared and didn't think they could do it because it was hard. She was the one who taught me how to turn into a—"
"But why did you want to turn into a phoenix, anyway?" Remus interrupted.
Chase appeared to be thinking for a moment. "Well, for one thing, they could fly," she stated. "When I started to really get it, about a year and a half later, Mrs. Godwin told me to practice it every night, it would take me four hours before I could turn into a phoenix—"
"Just four hours?" James said in amazement.
Chase rolled her eyes. "Just four hours. Jeez, why is that so hard to believe?"
"Because you were a ten-year-old," James deadpanned.
"Mrs. Godwin was a full-fledged Animagus. She'd have made a fine teacher at human-to-animal transformations, but no one was brave enough to be her pupil," Chase amended.
"Except you," Sirius added.
"I was eight then. Kids usually jump into some things without thinking of it," Chase said matter-of-factly.
"Was it hard when you were learning how to be an Animagus?" Lily inquired. Chase had never gone this far when she told her that she was an Animagus.
"Of course it was, but Mrs. G showed me in a book that children were the most likely to learn animal transformation the fastest even if they aren't professional wizards. The ages ranging from two to nine are the times where a child's mind learns rapidly the most. The Ministry forbade parents to teach their children though, because they might be stimulated to show others what they could do and reveal our secret to the Muggles…"
"Then why did she teach you?" James prodded.
Chase scowled at him. "What is this, Twenty Questions? She taught me because I asked her to and I promised not to show any Muggles what I could do, and that she would register me when I could completely turn into an animal at will. She never got to register me because a few days before the week she promised we would go to the Ministry of Magic's headquarters, she was struck with Alzheimer's disease and was sent to a wizarding nursing home."
"Oh," James said, taken aback. "Is she still…alive?" he asked in a much quieter tone.
"No," said Chase in a gloomy sort of voice, though it was probably because the old woman was almost like a grandmother to her. She owed her a lot. "She died a few months after that day. She had a brain tumor."
There was silence for a moment. Footsteps were barging up the stairs but none of them took any notice. The door was flung open and Cas came in.
"Aha! I knew you three were hiding in here!" she exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger at the marauders.
"So?" Sirius asked. He was starting to look a little less subdued at the sight of his sister.
"How did you find out?" Lily asked her curiously.
"I was testing a new Finding Charm in the common room," Cas replied.
"Aahhhh, so you were breaking a rule then, dearest sis?" Sirius intoned superiorly with a sly smile.
Cas turned slightly pink. "What are you on abou—"
"No magic outside of class, remember?" James jumped in. "What a shame, a school prefect, defying the laws of the school…"
"Indeed," Sirius added, an expression of feigned disappointment on his face. "I would very much like to hear what mum and dad would say once they find out that perfect prefect Cas broke a school rule—"
"You wouldn't dare," Cas gasped, wringing her hands, her face paling.
Sirius tutted, shaking his head in feigned disappointment. "I know it's hard, but we all have to accept our mistakes," he said in the voice of an over-sympathetic counselor.
"Shut up, Sirius, you sound like an idiot," Lily said with a laugh.
Sirius glared at her. "It's called 'feigning.' Look it up, you're the one who's an ignoramus—"
"I think I'll just go now…" Cas muttered, opening the door before Sirius and Lily could notice.
"I'm going to write to mu-um!!! Don't think you're going to get away with this!!!" Sirius shouted after her before she closed the door.
Chase smirked. "You didn't have to be so hard on your sister—"
"No way. You should have seen her when I was in trouble the first time in school. She was so annoying, tagging along after me like an exceedingly loquacious shadow and lecturing me on discipline and moral principles…"
James grinned. "I remember that time! She and her other wannabe-prefect friends were always at your heel in the hallways, tattling on some teacher or other for every single little thing that you did, like—"
"Excessive eating of mashed potatoes during lunch, too-loud squeaking of sneakers, and vociferous talking in the hallways," Remus added with a snicker.
"Hey, I wasn't the only one, you know. James was always told off by that former-Slytherin teacher who resigned last year—Professor Whatzisname—"
"Professor Witzgromeneirre," Celeste supplied.
Sirius nodded. "Yeah, Professor Witzgo—gro—oh, never mind. There never was a day when he didn't reprimand Jamie for his untidy hair—that guy was so horrible, even worse than Ridgewood—"
Peter shuddered. He was known to be scared of all the Slytherin teachers. "Like the time when he gave me a detention in the Forbidden Forest just because I didn't spell Proxima Centauri right…" he said in a fearful tone.
"That was beyond injustice, all right," Lily agreed, her tone hateful as was usual when they were talking about Slytherins. "He once gave me a detention to wax all the third floor corridors in Hogwarts castle, including the secret passages just for a wrong answer on the distance of the sun from earth in light years!"
"Yeah, as if we could've learned anything about the solar system by looking at a floor all evening," Chase jumped in.
All the others nodded. "Remember the time when…"
That was how they passed the time. It was as if nothing had changed…
*****
Chase and Lily sat alone in the common room that night. They had been there long after their fellow Gryffindors had finished their evening chats and unfinished homework, talking about casual things…and something else…
Lily stared intently at the crackling fire in front of her, contemplating on the right things to say to Chase to make her realize what she had to do. "Hey Chase?"
Chase looked up from her Intermediate Transfiguration book. "Yeah, what?" she answered automatically.
"Do you think you could—you know…" Lily trailed off.
Chase blinked. "Do I think I could what?"
Lily took a deep breath. "Do you think you could get back together with Sirius?" she said quickly, in an emotionless tone.
Suddenly the light went out in Chase's eyes. Lily's heart sank. "Oh," she said, glancing at the fireplace, the armchairs, the floor…anywhere but at Lily's inquisitive face. "I don't know. Probably not."
Lily jumped up from her chair. "But why?" she asked in disappointment. Chase couldn't do that, she couldn't possibly break up with Sirius, could she? Just because of a potion…a potion that a dumb bitch made Sirius drink… "You're not going to let that bi—what happened come between you, could you?" she demanded.
Chase sighed. "I know, I know. It sound stupid, but ever since what happened, it's like something's missing between us—Sirius and me. And I know it wasn't his fault, like you always remind me, but something's just…off. And nothing would be the same with that thing lacking."
Us. She had almost said it. Then that meant that she still cared about Sirius. Then what else is she waiting for? Lily thought. There had to be some way to get them back together… "You can work that out," Lily reasoned, trying not to sound forceful. "Come on, Chase, you know that you love him. You can't do this…not to him. And especially to yourself. It'll just hurt you more in the end—"
Chase snapped her book shut. "Lil, I appreciate how much you care about me, but it's okay. I can't just force things like this. I don't blame Sirius for what happened, but if I think there's something wrong, then it's my decision to break it off." She stood up too. "It's for the better," she added, turning around and heading back to the girls' dormitories. "Good night, Lil," she called over her shoulder.
Lily didn't reply, sinking into her chair again and watching the fires helplessly, as if they held the answers she needed. There was one thing she knew though…there was somebody who had all the blame on this, somebody who was responsible for Sirius and Chase breaking up. Lily needed to do this for her friend, just like how Chase helped her get together with James. Because, like what Chase had realized for Lily…Chase needed to realize that she cared about Sirius. Lily did too about James, but it was Chase who made that clear—to both of them. That was why she was going to do this.
Maxine Eamon was going to pay.
*****
AN – I'm supposed to be studying for my second quarterly exams right now, but at least it's finished. REVIEW, okay? I need some cheering up after I finish a hellish three days of mind-numbing question-answering and equation-computing… School absotively, posilutely sucks. Amen.