"Libby, I…" Harry began, but she put a finger to his lips, both seemingly absorbed in their note-taking.
"Don't speak. That's Aphrodite St. Clair." Libby whispered, looking up at their Potions professor, who was smirking back at them. Libby's head bent down and she went 'back to work'.
"Tell me something I don't know." Harry muttered, a bit hurt.
"She used to date your dad and despises your mother." Libby answered, sending him a quick look to shut up.
The smirk on Aphrodite's face was not one of defense, but one of victory… Libby's head hurt as she tried to remember one time when the King and Queen had been together before her very eyes… And looking happy at the same time. Looking back at confused Harry, she decided that her little revelation was bit kept to herself.
James couldn't have… No!
Her Majesty Queen Lily Potter felt a burning pain at the locket around her neck. The locket that had never opened unhooked itself and slid down her sleeve into her hand, where the heat just began to cool. In an eerie silence, it opened in her hand, revealing one picture of a burning Gryffindor palace and the other of an unhappy wedding portrait of her son and Libby.
Lily snapped to attention, not even excusing herself from the women's luncheon and grabbing her traveling cloak. Libby was starting to unravel this master plan of hers, and soon, her unfaithful husband was going to die and her son would know the truth.
Libby's heart hurt, and it was beating hard during the lesson. She wanted the pain to stop. She just wanted the pain to stop. She needed to get out of this lesson and get to the library.
Hmm… What would get you kicked out of Potions?
She nudged Harry and he turned, and she grabbed his face and pulled him into such a kiss that she ended up with her back on the stool.
"Lady Black and Your Highness!" Professor St. Clair snapped, and Parvati came to Harry's defense.
"It was Lady Black that started the disgustingly public display of affection, Professor." Parvati said, acidly sweet.
Aphrodite sent Libby a look. "Write a pass."
Libby's head filled with ideas, and she carefully wrote in the handwriting that resembled the letters having graded her most recent Potions paper. She stood up and handed it to Aphrodite curtly, who signed it without looking down. "Go directly to Professor Dumbledore's office, Lady Black. Your father would have been proud."
Libby got up from her seat and bounced over to Aphrodite's desk, giving her a bubbly smile and as she walked out of the dungeon, sent Harry a coy look.
Simultaneously, the student body and the palace were in an uproar. The Queen was at Hogwarts, and the palace didn't know it.
Libby was not one to obey orders from what she called 'Olympus's whore'. She looked down excitedly at her 'pass' and smiled widely.
"Please allow Lady Liberty Black to check out all books from the Restricted Section pertaining to dimensional swaps and time warps. Professor Aphrodite St. Clair." She whispered allowed, and put on her most innocent face to begin what would change her and Harry's lives forever.
"I am very sorry, Your Majesty, that we could not give you better accommodations at this hour… It's just that with your short notice, we could only give you your old room." The young Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, a handsome young American by the name of Sebastian Greenbaum, gushed, finding it hard to believe the rumors of King James' infidelities. The woman before him, at the young age of thirty-five, was indeed elegant, youthful, and most of all, beautiful.
French-manicured fingertips reached to pull back the hood of her olive-green crushed velvet hood and swept off her sunglasses. Her world-weary, brilliant eyes scanned the room with a pained yet reminiscent fondness. "This will do, Professor. Thank you so much for taking me in at such late notice."
He smiled at her soft, polite words. "Do call upon me when you wish to make an appointment with Professor Dumbledore."
Her dark pink, glossy lips formed a sultry frown. "I shan't need an appointment."
James Potter sank deeper into a mid-afternoon bubble bath, and though it hadn't been scheduled, he definitely needed it. Sirius had yelled at him yet again for continuing with his monstrously public affairs with lewd women, and Lily hadn't smiled at him in quite a long time. Hell, she hadn't put on a real smile in ages.
Harry and Libby were behaving beautifully, compared to just a few weeks before. Dumbledore, thankfully, had looked the other way with all their mischief, but the tabloids hadn't. Libby hated being with Harry and Harry hated being with Libby. Libby had been so often caught with foreign boys on her trips to Europe with her father, and Harry was not at all discreet about his own side dishes. In fact, James could clearly remember hearing them having a fight about who had more conquests. Even James Black, his godson and his namesake, had noticed a good change. Their friends had never liked their rebellious, wild ways, and it seemed as if Lily was the only one who publicly expressed her disappointment and her embarrassment.
Sirius's final question during his lecture was something that James had been troubled with since he heard the simple words. "The only thing I have to ask is, why, James? You've got a beautiful wife who has been utterly devoted to you for over twenty years, who's sense of humor, strength, confidence and poise you often honestly praise and you go around with women who couldn't hold a match to her? Why?"
Quite honestly, he didn't know. He couldn't even look at her without feeling sorry for holding her back all these years. She could've been the British Minister of Magic, or the most famous Quidditch player in the world, a popular designer, anything… And she was a Queen. A wife. A mother. And as much as that was, she had so much more in her.
And he cheated on her.
James sank deeper into his bath, sighing in relaxation. A moment passed, and he wondered how long it would take someone to interrupt his temporary bliss.
A heavy knock came at the door and James groaned, wishing he hadn't cursed himself. He pulled himself out of the bath and lightly dried himself, pulling on a dark blue silken robe that Lily had handmade. "Yes?"
"Your Majesty, Her Majesty is missing."
"Draco, Godric, James, Harry, Regina, Ruby, Ronan, Virginia, Ron, Hermione, but where's Libby?" Lily asked, not looking up from the countless amounts of papers she had to sign, her children and their friends seated in benches near her doorway.
"I'm sorry, Your Majesty, she's studying for her thesis. Odd, she's interested in dimensional swaps as well." Professor Greenbaum reported a surprised sigh. "Madam Pince brought me her excuse."
Lily's eyes rose from behind her jeweled spectacles to look at Professor Greenbaum appraisingly. "Have her brought here."
The professor gave Lily an odd look, but followed her command. Lily sighed in a slight panic after he closed the door. "Dear Lord, she's going to expose us all."