Major help in this chapter from Cici. Everyone say "Thank you Cici." Ok, I'm trying to use the metric system, but I'm not very comfortable with it so stay with me. For us stupid Americans, a meter is slightly over 3 feet so thirty meters is a few feet over 90.

James hurried into the Infirmary following on very panicked looking Severus Snape who in turn was chasing after his two friends who had entered the infirmary a few minutes earlier. James did not know why he was checking on the Slytherin's Seeker. He suspected it was the sportsman ship his father had forced into him as a young boy where when your opponent gets hurt you make sure they're ok.

"I thought they tried to discourage girls from playing Quidditch!" Madam Pomfrey yelled not noticing that Severus and James had entered the room. "They cannot take this abuse on a daily basis."

"Li has taken it for the past four years and this is the first time she has ended up in the hospital wing, she's not some delicate girl," Lucius argued.

"Girls? She?" James said confused. His face screwed up in an expression of one trying to comprehend the information given and why they have not been in the light of it before.

"Yes, girls, you prat," Lucius snapped. "Now get out of here!" James didn't move. He was still wrapped up in his thoughts. Lucius waved a hand in front of the Griffindor's face. He didn't even flinch. Lucius tried to shove James but the confused statue still would not move.

"Not delicate? Not delicate? Look how skinny she is!" Madam Pomfrey exclaimed. She removed the Quidditch robes leaving a pale blue tank top and shorts. "How much does this girl eat? You sure she eats?"

"She eats enough to feed the whole school in one meal. Severus makes sure she eats her vegetables," Lucius defended his friend.

"She can't take this kind of sport, she's not strong enough! She's a girl!"

"Why the bloody hell should that matter? She loves to play and she's a brilliant player!" Lucius retorted. Li opened an eye slightly and winced at the bright light. The other occupants in the room were wrapped up in a conversation except for one, who appeared to have turned to be petrified.

"No matter! Quidditch is a dangerous sport; it's a wonder they haven't banned it yet! It's like what those muggles do, bungee jumping," the nurse exclaimed.

"Oh yes, don't bother to check if I'm awake while you all go jabbering on why don't you?" Li said.

"You're ok!" Lucius cried. He ran over to give her a big hug, knocking down James in the process and waking the Griffindor from his long contemplation. "That was a bloody long fall, you sure you're ok? You need anything?"

"I thought you had lost consciousness," James stammered. "That fall was enough to put someone in a comma." The shock from the fact that he no she had survived a fall from very far up and the fact that the guy James had thought was a he for six years was actually a she. These two thoughts tried to penitrate James' mind at the same time and left him with trouble speaking.

"Come on, I might be a girl, but I'm not that weak," Li argued not noticing the amount of stuttering. "Anyone who says I am can go flying." Li winced as she sat up. "Well, maybe tomorrow they can go flying, I don't think I would be able to grip my wand at this moment. So did we win?"

"Want me to get it for you?" Lucius asked worriedly.

"You will have no need for it Evans," the nurse informed her.

"She fell over a twenty bloody meters, if she wants her bloody wand she gets her bloody wand or any other bloody thing in this bloody world then no bloody person is going to take her bloody wand or any other bloody thing away from her and if you think you are going to bloody well take if from her, then you're bloody mad, you're all bloody mad," Lucius said.

"Wow Lucius, I think you just made a new record for the most amount of bloodies used in a sentence," Li joked. "Did we win?"

"Oh shut up," Lucius laughed. He leaned over to give his fallen friend a hug. "Now I'm serious, if there's anything you want just tell us and don't let this bloody nurse bug you." They both smiled. "What the hell do you think you were doing?" Lucius asked, changing tones quickly. "I mean really. Forget the fact that you are the best bloody seeker our team has ever had and maybe the best the school has ever had, but didn't you think about what would have happened had you not survived? Common sense Li! You don't go chasing a snitch at speeds of a hundred kilometers per hour while hanging upside down on your broom with no hands and doing looped de loops. Did it ever occur to you that it might not be a good idea? You were about twenty bloody meters above the ground! Do you have a death wish?"

"I've jumped worse," Li replied nonchalantly. "Once again I ask, did we win?"

"yes we did win. With your capture we won 175 to 120. And no you haven't. Third year does not count! Jumping ten meters on a dare from a third floor classroom does not count. This was twice that amount and Severus and I had made the ground soft! The bloody ground of the Quidditch pitch is hard, plus you were going at fast speeds."

"Was not that much of a difference, I ran that time. You forgot I jumped in fourth year as well," Li reminded him.

"You're mad, you're bloody mad." Lucius' smile took the sting out of his words.

"Alright, I want all of you out of my hospital room right now!" Madam Pomfrey cried. "You're upsetting my patient."

"I am not upset, I am arguing, there is a difference!" Li protested.

"Screaming at the top of your lungs counts as being upset," the nurse argued.

"I wasn't screaming, I was yelling," Li retorted.

"Doesn't matter," Madam Pomfrey told her. She herded the boys out. The doors closed behind them leaving Lucius, Severus and James all alone in the corridor. Lucius and Severus shrugged and started off toward their dungeon. James just stood there. What had happened?

James tried to review what he knew. Number one: Li Evans was a girl. James tried to think what would be number two but gave up. How had someone pulled off being taken for a guy for six years and why hadn't the Marauders found out? Had Li been posing as a girl when James had met Elaina. Had James really fallen for a Slytherin. James gained a disgusting look on his face. James realized he had a headache and gathered this was because he had been walking without knowing it and had walked into the wall. James aimed himself in the direction of the Griffindor tower and continued walking.

"Hi James, have you seen Evans? Is he ok?" Sirius asked when James entered the tower. James pondered why Sirius cared. Sirius generally wasn't one to be worried when a Slytherin got hurt. James supposed that seeing someone fall through the air like that made one worry.

"I can't believe it, she's a girl.

"What's going on here? Who's the girl?" Sirius asked.

"She's in the hospital?

"Who's in the hospital?

"Evans is."

"He's going to kill you for calling him a girl but he's ok? So who was this girl you were talking about?"

"James has a new girlfriend?" Peter asked uninterestedly.

"James always has a new girl, they never last," Remus replied absentmindedly.

"I thought he still fancied that Elaina," Peter said.

"But apparently he's got a new girl," Sirius told them.

"NO!" James yelled. "Li Evans is really a girl and she's in the hospital wing."

"Oh, that's all this is," Remus said dismissively.

"Wow, you think you know a guy," Sirius said as if in awe. (My friends "AWWWWWWW!" Me "Not that kinda of awe, the other kind." My friends "AHHHH!")

It was several days before anyone was allowed to visit Li, but that left a lot of time for brooding for her friends and for those who were just enlightened to her secret. Lucius and Severus asked hourly when they could come visit, but it was James who, in the end, got to see her first due to very opportune (VOCAB WORD!) sense of time. He was grudgingly admitted into the Hospital Wing while the general population of the school had lunch.

"Fine, you can see her, but if she starts to tire, come and get me right away," Madam Pomfrey instructed. James nodded and went into the hospital wing. He saw Li propped up in the bed reading from the latest Quidditch magazine. When she heard him enter, she quickly hid it before realizing who was there.

"Thought you were that witch of a nurse, got mad when my owl came to deliver the magazine," she explained. "Thought it was too much excitement for the 'poor injured girl' and that I'm 'too delicate for such surprises.' "

"Are you ok?" James asked.

"I'm not made of glass," Li retorted.

"So why didn't you tell me?" James asked.

"Tell you what?" Li asked him.

"That you're a girl," James exclaimed.

"Why should I have told you? I don't owe you anything."

"I'm a fellow Qudditch player. Isn't that something?" James asked hopefully. The fact had been bugging him since he had found out. James sad down in a chair next to her bed and fidgeted like he always did when nervous. He kept having images of Elaina and the Evans he had always known stuck in his head. Both were people to be nervous around though for different reasons. Evans he had known would threaten bodily damage on whoever insulted him and Elaina was simply intimidating and yet very delicate at the same time.

"No."

"But you're so beautiful, why did you hide it?" James asked.

"You think that was me? That was a mask I put on, an act and you feel for it. This is the real me. You think you know me but you don't. I don't want that mask. Masks are so the weak can hide."

"But why?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"I want to know."

"You really want to know why? All my life was called pretty. I was patted on the head. I wasn't allowed to do anything. Then I come to Hogwarts, the 'pretty' little girl. I sit on the train, minding my own business and in come several boys. They tease me and they pull my hair. They dared me to cry and they laughed when I asked them to stop. Then in came in another boy with hair you would later describe as 'greasy.' He told the other boys to sod off and yelled at them until they went away. He told me not to mind what Potter, Black and Pettigrew said. At the sorting, I told myself I would not go into the same house as my tormentors. After I was sorted, I told Dumbledore I wanted to change my name and I didn't want to be called Miss. I became friends with my savior, though he doesn't know I was the same person from the train." Li explained. Her voice held hidden aggression.

James stood there, speechless. He remembered that little girl. He didn't even remember why he had teased her, all he remembered was the fury and hurt on her face. He remembered he had looked for her for several years afterward to try to apologize but he never found her. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it again quickly.

"Let me tell you about my cousin. I only have one cousin and now I don't even have her. Her mum, my mum's sister, died when my cousin Sarah was six. Her father went a bit crazy and we now know he hit her. She never let it show. When I was twelve, she was seventeen. She was dressed for a party and walking in a perfectly normal and safe neighborhood. Witnesses say a man came up to her. He looked desperate. He said someone needed CPR and he didn't know how. She followed him. She was assaulted, raped and beaten. She was missing for weeks. When we found her, she was a quivering mass. She wouldn't talk. She would just sit there all day, hugging herself, staring at the wall and humming a little tune to herself. She wouldn't respond to us, didn't even acknowledge our presence.

"Whenever any man walked into the room she started screaming. She lived like this in our house for a month. During this time she had therapists and mental health workers visiting all the time. They decided they needed to take her away to some happy house. The night before she was to leave, she killed herself. I saw her. She walked down to the kitchen. We hadn't locked the doors since she hadn't moved previously. I was downstairs reading when she came down. She patted my head and pushed me upstairs, she never said a word. I didn't know what she was doing. She locked the kitchen door against me.

"We found her the next morning. Her wrists had been split and she was lying in a pool of her own blood. We found a note when had written in her own blood. She had written, I'm free. So she proved me right just as you had. Being a girl means you're vulnerable. It means people take advantage of you, it means you're weak!"

"Let me ask you a question," Li said. "Why do you care? Why do you feel you need to come the rescue of poor Li. Don't think you need to show me the meaning of life or how to be the real me, cause your looking at the real me."

"But it's not! You need help sometimes." James eyed her wand that was lying on the table. He stared at it like it was going to jump up on it's own and do something horrible to him.

"I'm not some bloody damsel in distress and I don't need some damned knight in shining armor so don't try to all heroic. I can take care of myself," Li told him. Lucius appeared at the door and starting making his way over.

"Can you answer one more question?" Li nodded. "What's your name, your real name."

"Lily," she answered.