In the Way

By Dimantrien

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!"

~Sir Walter Scott

Chapter 2: Musings

"That is evil. Really evil. I bet even Dumbledore will throw a fit once he sees what you did, I can't believe you'd really do it…" Sirius said in an annoyingly pious voice as the marauders made their way to the Great Hall for breakfast.

James sighed. Honestly. Sirius, the prankster extraordinaire, the one who had lost his naïveté ever since he and James made their first prank back when they were eight, the person who was the biggest rule breaker in the history of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was playing the role of James's conscience. James thought that his best friend had lost his conscience along with his sanity ever since he had hexed Nami Tzu in their first year, "just for the fun of it." James would have been sorry for the girl if she hadn't cursed Sirius with a number of foreign-sounding spells during their first flying lesson out on the grounds, which unfortunately took place after she had recovered her wits from being nearly scared to death by close contact with more than a three dozen fat, slimy worms on her head.

He noted that the violent (at least where Sirius was concerned) Oriental girl was another of Lily's close friends, and didn't improve his impression on Lily's ability on choosing her mates at all.

"You mean you actually went through with it? You pulled a prank on Lily Evans?" Peter squeaked in a terrified voice, glancing from James to Sirius to James again.

"What is wrong with you people? It's as if I told you guys to join me to go out kicking puppies for fun. It wasn't that bad, I just did the mildest thing we ever do to the people we prank on—turn her hair into an embarrassingly different color," James said defensively, still disbelieving that his friends, who always went alongside with him during pranks, were so strongly against him.

"I'm not so sure about this, Prongs. I mean, why would you pull a prank on her in the first place? She's a Gryffindor, and a girl at that—you know we never prank girls unless they're a particularly nasty Slytherin—and she's so nice to us. Heck, she even asks us nicely to stop doing pranks whenever she catches us, when you know very well that any other prefect would blow up if they saw us stepping over the line," Remus said matter-of-factly.

Sirius stopped berating James and addressed Remus. "But you're a prefect, aren't you Moony? Then if you catch yourself doing a prank or breaking the rules you'd have to give yourself a telling-off!" He burst out laughing at this and James let out a sigh of relief; at least he wouldn't be forced to feel guilty anymore by Sirius the Psychotic "Angel."

Remus rolled his eyes. "Simply brilliant, that mind of yours, Padfoot," he said sarcastically. "I wonder sometimes what it would be like for you to be sensible and sane for once…"

Sirius immediately stopped sniggering. "Hey! I can be serious if I want to!" he said indignantly. He paused, as if thinking something through. "Wait, I already am Sirius, aren't I? Then I can be me all I want!" He started chortling again.

"That you are, Padfoot. That you are," Remus responded dryly.

***** 

The marauders were already nice and settled in their places at the Gryffindor table, and James was peering around eagerly for a sight of a certain redhead.

"She's not here yet," he said disappointedly as he sat back down in his seat. He glanced down at his plate, which Remus had emptied of food when he was busy scanning the Hall. "Oi! Hands off my bacon, Moony!"

Remus grinned and pointed at his closed mouth, which was full of food, presumably James's breakfast. James grumbled incoherently as he started to pile liberal amounts of food on his plate again.

"You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you liked Lily," Sirius spoke up. "Look at you, you're all excited to see her first thing in the morning…"

"I thought we've already clarified that I have no feelings whatsoever toward her? Unless you're opting for intense dislike, which would be right off the mark," James said impatiently. This I-know-she's-your-crush-and-you-can't-deny-it act from Sirius was getting a little old.

"Why do you hate her?" Peter asked curiously.

James said, "I don't hate her, I just don't like the way she looks so perfect at everything" at the same time that Sirius commented, "Ahhh…there is a thin line between love and hate, Prongs m'boy…" James put a Silencing Charm on Sirius, who shrugged and grinned, looking irritatingly happy that he had managed to piss James off in a short span of time.

"Why don't you like her because she's perfect at everything?"

"No, she's not perfect at everything, she just seems like that, and that's what's so annoying."

"Why is her being seemingly perfect so annoying?"

"Because it's so phony, Wormtail, and I'm the only one who seems to realize it."

"Why do you think it's phony and why are you the only one who seems to realize it?"

"Because—argh, you're being just as annoying as Padfoot!" James cried in vexation, gesturing accusingly at his silenced best friend.

Peter smiled satisfactorily. "Good. I was imitating him, didn't you know?"

James was looking at him with a mixture of disbelief and irritation when Remus interrupted.

"Well, that short interrogation explains a lot, but I still disagree with you on having to hex such a kind girl as Lily. How did you get to her dorm room anyway? You know that the staircase to the girl's dormitory turns into a slide whenever a boy steps foot on it."

"I used my broom to get in through the open window. I made the curse so that it'd work on the first person who gets under the doorway of the shower, and it'll only be activated when she's five feet into the Great Hall, so that she can't attempt to change it back in the privacy of the dorms," James explained, looking satisfactory at his simple yet effective plan.

Remus frowned. "Isn't there a one-to-five chance on that? Any of the other girls could enter the bathroom before Lily."

James waved the small detail away. "Oh, it'll be her. She's the early riser among all of them, remember? She has to look all perfect and composed before gracing all of us with her divine presence," he said cynically, rolling his eyes.

"What reasonable excuse have you got against her?" Remus pressed. "It's not enough to say that you're annoyed with her when she didn't do anything wrong. You know that." Sirius tapped him on the shoulder, pointing at his voiceless mouth and giving the werewolf the puppy dog look. "No, Padfoot, you're much more tolerable when you're mute."

"I'm trying to prove a point, Moony. I just want her to get irritated for once. She annoys me all the time, why can't I do the same?" James challenged.

"Because she doesn't know that she's annoying you. She's just being herself," Remus tried to reason. But James shook his head stubbornly.

"No way. If that's her normal self, you might as well call her a goddess." James frowned. "Nobody's perfect."

Remus smiled gently. "And Lily isn't. She's just amiable." Beside him, Sirius nodded vigorously in agreement.

James racked his brain for a way on how to effectively explain his thoughts and get his point across. "Maybe she is, but—" His statement was interjected by a shriek coming from the entrance to the Great Hall. He quickly turned his head to look, cursing that he hadn't seen firsthand Lily's expression when she found out her hair was a different color—

But it wasn't Lily whose hair had turned into a horrible shade of neon green.

"SIRIUS BLACK, YOU ARE DEAD!!!" Nami Tzu screamed furiously, looking ridiculous with her new (and un-improved) hair. "YOU'D BETTER WISH THAT YOU'D NEVER BE IDIOTIC ENOUGH TO TAKE A STEP OUT OF THE CASTLE, BECAUSE IF YOU DO, I WILL BE THERE TO HEX YOU INTO OBLIVION!"

Sirius swiveled around in his chair—Silencing Charms didn't make him deaf—and his face scrunched up and his mouth opened, letting out soundless laughter. All the occupants of the Hall turned to see who was causing such a racket, and almost instantaneously burst into choruses of giggling and chortling.

"Don't even say it," James warned dangerously, glaring at Remus, whose mouth was about to form the words "I told you so." The bespectacled boy bumped his head repeatedly on the table for his stupid mistake.

Peter, who was sniggering along with Sirius (if you could call Sirius' muted actions sniggering), abruptly stopped at once as he stared, terrified, at the shadow that had covered Sirius, who was still in his seat. He looked up and saw blazing brown eyes, so dark that they were almost black, and a shock of long, silky neon green hair. "Er, Sirius…"

Everyone around them started to hush up and stop laughing, awaiting Sirius Black's fate with bated breath. It took a good thirty seconds before Sirius noticed that the whole Hall had fallen silent, and that there was a presence behind him.

A murderous presence.

He turned around reluctantly, deep blue eyes meeting lethal dark brown. He barely had time to say anything (not that he could) when two slender hands wrapped themselves around his neck and started to strangle him.

"You idiot, turn my hair back at once! Water didn't work; I've tried every single countercurse for this that I know, and even finite incantatem is useless, now do yourself a favor and undo this goddamn curse or you'll wish you'd never been born!" Nami yelled at him furiously. Sirius made choking actions, frantically trying to pry the Japanese girl's hands off his neck, but she had a surprisingly strong grip.

"Miss Tzu! Cease that at once! How dare you, attempting to cause bodily harm to another student in front of all your teachers—shouting out death threats—the utter abomination!" Professor McGonagall said in seething and revolted tones, appearing beside the two in seconds and trying to push Nami away from Sirius, who was very purple in the face from lack of oxygen. It took more than that to stop the livid girl, and James and Remus had to pull on each of her wrists—with both hands—to get Sirius some air. Sirius started to gag and gasp (Remus had finally taken pity on him and undid the Silencing Charm before they extracted Nami's hands from his sore neck). Every student (and even a few teachers) shuddered, making a mental note never to piss off a certain Oriental sixth year Gryffindor girl. Angry adrenaline did nasty things to people.

Professor McGonagall continued to reproach Nami, who was still mercilessly giving Sirius the glare of death. "You are a Gryffindor, and a close friend of a prefect, how could you—"

"He asked for it, Professor! I didn't even do anything to him, and he goes out of his way to make me miserable—make him turn my hair back to normal and maybe I'll forgive him—"

"You are in no position to make such demands, Miss Tzu! You have no proof that Black did it—"

"Proof? You don't need proof. Whenever a riot breaks out because a Slytherin grows an extra arm or starts spewing out fungus from his mouth, you immediately assume that this-this imbecile did it. Why would this time be any different?" Nami argued, crossing her arms over her chest and glowering.

Professor McGonagall's stern face appeared to falter for a moment before she said in a snappish tone, "Very well. Black and Miss Tzu, I am giving you both detentions. Be at my office at eight o'clock sharp this evening so that we may discuss it. Thirty points from Gryffindor for abhorrent disregard and violation of the school rules. No objections, Miss Tzu," she added in a warning tone, glaring at Nami who had opened her mouth in protest. "And be grateful it isn't more. Now finish your breakfast and make sure to be on time for classes." With a swish of her cloak, she headed back to the staff table.

Nami stalked heatedly to the farthest seat from Sirius and pulled it back with such force it slammed into the floor. She brought it back with a wave of her wand and sat down, muttering "I get in trouble for being the victim of a prank, and it's all that prick's fault. I was only acting on instinct!" Lily sat down next to her and Chloe across, both with sympathetic looks on their faces, though Chloe's hinted a bit of fright in case Nami decided to explode again. Man, that girl was scary when she was mad.

"It wasn't the worst of his pranks, Nami," Chloe reassured, wordlessly urging her friend to eat. "We've seen worse."

Lily was trying (and failing) to undo the curse, but the horrid neon green simply would not fade back into black. "He must've done a Repelling Charm after the curse was activated; everything seems to be bouncing off it…"

"Then do the countercurse for the blasted charm!" Nami cried, looking like she was on the verge of tearing out her hair.

Lily shook her head. "I can't….you can't just undo charms like this one, you have to wait for the effects to fade…"

"Well? How long is that?"

"It can range from ten minutes to a month, depending on the complexity of the charm," Lily replied patiently.

"A month! I can't live with this hair for a month! I might as well shave my head!" Nami complained.

Lily sighed. "Nami… You sound like Chloe in one of her melodramatic woes…"

That shut Nami up. "Oi!" Chloe cried indignantly.

"Need a hand?" a smug voice said behind them. All three looked up at the source of the voice.

"James Potter," Nami said, her tone inauspicious, "You seem to know something, and if your lunatic mate isn't going to do the countercurse, you sure as hell will. Unless you want to go to Black's funeral much earlier than you expected."

James held up his hands in front of him. "Whoa, take it easy. I was going to help, you know. It's just that I thought that Lily would be able to undo the curse, since she's so brilliant at charms and everything," he answered nonchalantly, smiling innocently at Lily. He could swear that a look of irritation passed her delicate features.

"Well then, I'm sorry I don't live up to your expectations of me, Potter," Lily snapped.

Chloe's eyes widened, and Nami dropped her hands from entangling with her hair. Lily never took on that tone with anybody…and she never called anybody by their last name, even the Slytherins. The only exception were the teachers, and she never forgot to add "Professor" to those, either—a title that most careless students didn't bother to add in when speaking to their friends.

"Sorry. I was just giving you all the credit you deserve—it is true that you're the best in Charms, you can't deny that," James stated, though his tone didn't imply whether he was mocking or being genuinely sincere. Either way, none of them could argue with that.

There was silence for a moment, before Nami spoke up, "Hello? Let's get on with it, I don't want to be stuck looking like Bozo the Clown all day!"

***** 

Lily reached her dormitory room and put her school things aside on top of her trunk. Thank Merlin it was Friday. She didn't want to be burdened with homework when all she wanted to do was be alone and think.

And that was what she did, when she was sure that her friends wouldn't be back for at least another hour and wouldn't wonder where she had gone. She took her cloak and went swiftly down to the common room, past two preoccupied second years who were playing wizard chess ("Go smash that bishop, it'll pay for beating my knight into a pulp!"), and through the portrait hole. The best place she liked to go to sort out her thoughts was out on the grounds, on a nice patch of grass near the lake. Preferably under a tree, where she could huddle under and be blocked from the view of other students who decided to take a stroll outside.

The sky was a dull gray, signaling the coming of rain in a few hours, but Lily didn't mind. She walked to a secluded part of the lake's bank, where she was safe from all other human contact, and sat down, staring over the azure waters.

Everything had become too much for her to handle. What was so unacceptable with doing what was right? Was it so wrong to be friendly, and to top all her classes, and to do her best in everything?

Apparently James Potter thought so, and he seemed to be the only one who did.

Why did he have to bother her? She hadn't done anything to him. She was always polite, she respected his easy command of all the things they learned in classes, and although she quite disagreed with his and his friends' habit of pulling pranks on people, she accepted that it was part of who they were, and she never flew off the handle or got fed up with their endless mischief, but gave them warnings and left it to the higher authorities to handle their consequences.

She always gave it her full effort to be faultless at what she did. She had her reasons. So many people expected much of her…and she did her best to reach those expectations. But the person who had the highest expectations of her was herself. She just had a thirst to prove herself, even though she already had, as her friends tried to assure her many times, but they never really convinced her. Maybe that was what led her to be stuck with this "perfect" image that Potter accused her of. He was so infuriating…

It was all too much; the burden of attempting to be good and acceptable to everyone was too much. Because of that she had snapped and lost her temper over an arrogant person who suddenly decided to poke his head into her business…

If two wrongs don't make a right, did that mean that two rights don't make a wrong? Or do two rights do make a wrong?

She shook her head as if to clear it, all too confused. She was a perfectionist, that much was true. She admitted it to herself, and to her friends, who in turn told her that she wasn't the part at all, because she knew what it was like to be laidback and down-to-earth, and that perfectionists were nit-picking sticklers who were too fussy and intolerable.

But she was a perfectionist, in a light where she wanted her whole life to be perfect. And in a way she had accomplished that. If people took a glance at her they would know that she was a top student who was popular and well-liked, who had a nice personality and got along well with everybody, and was basically golden. But what they didn't know was that…

She wasn't happy.

Despite all the people who would have given anything to be in her position, she wished she had not run her life the way she did. She hated the fact that now she seemed only to be an actress in her own life, where she would wake up and look into the mirror and see somebody else, somebody who appeared flawless, somebody who everybody loved, somebody who wasn't her. Everyday she wished that she could just take off that mask and be somebody who was accepted for her flaws, who didn't have to pull an effort to be so nice all the time. She wished to wake up and for once and make a mistake that everybody would accept. She wished that she could march up to Potter and his friends and yell at them for being such prats and for their refusal to grow up and act mature for once. She wished that she could mess up in class and have her teachers know that she wasn't good at everything and that she wanted to get average marks at something. But most of all, she wished that she hadn't dug herself into a hole by being stuck to this role as the perfect person that she was not.

She regretted shaping her life into a lie. She supposed that she really had become an actress.

After all, an actress is only a girl who has the power to lie, is she not?*

She was tired of lying, but here she was. There was nothing she could do but continue the endless cycle.

But she was sure of one thing. If Potter riled her again, there was no holding back. She had always disliked him, although her actress side pushed away those negative thoughts because it was bad to hold a grudge against someone. But Potter was the one crossing the line here. She kept to her own business, and he decided to interfere. She deserved to let out her frustrations for once, didn't she? She was only human. And that was what Potter wanted, to make everyone see that she could lose her temper.

Well, she could give him that satisfaction. And once she did, he would leave her alone. She would go back to her normal, perfect self. Or at least, her normal, perfect, illusory self. She was Lily Evans, the all-around perfectionist. And she would stay that way.

It was starting to rain. The calm waters that had mesmerized her broke their stillness as fat little droplets broke the lake into thousands of ripples.

She stood up and broke into a run, heading toward the safety and warmth of the castle.

***** 

It was raining hard, but that didn't dampen James's spirits. He had nettled Perfect Miss Evans today, although his prank hadn't worked out exactly as planned. It would have been better if it had been her hair that was enchanted into neon green, it would clash with her eyes. But he guessed he had to make do with what he got, so he was happy all the same.

No, he wasn't trying to be a complete jerk by riling Lily like that; he just wanted to prove that the girl was human. Even her friends didn't know that she was just putting up a mask. He doubted she would admit it even to herself. He shook his head. That redhead certainly had issues. Once she confessed that she wasn't all she was cracked up to be, he would teach her what real living was like, not pretending to be someone you didn't want to be.

Wait a minute. Did he just say that he was going to help her figure this all out? Nope, that was just a slip. He was helping her enough, making her realize that she shouldn't try to be perfect.

There was more to Lily Evans than met the eye. He knew these kinds of things—you could say that he was rather perceptive. He was sure that Lily would probably hate him for attempting to get her mad and all, but someday she would thank him. He didn't like her a whole lot, but she should be glad that he was doing her a favor…getting to pull pranks on her and annoy her was just a bonus… What? It was!

He sighed, feeling a little ridiculous with contradicting himself. He had been sitting in the Great Hall for almost an hour and a half after dinner, just thinking, and finally decided to leave when he saw that only a few gluttonous Slytherins remained, stuffing up all the food at their table before they would magically clear themselves in another half hour.

He walked out of the Hall, halfheartedly thinking about doing his Herbology homework, when he caught sight of the front doors being opened a fraction. He turned and looked, wondering who would be crazy enough to go strolling around in this weather, when who should he see but the great Lily Evans herself, shivering and sopping wet.

"Hullo, Evans," he called, half-amused, as he watched her trailing a rivulet of water in her wake. He decided to call her by last-name terms, nobody but the teachers did that, and she had started doing the same with him after his little quip at breakfast. He just knew that she had a fiery side to her…she was a redhead, after all.

Lily stopped and glanced at him, and he thought he saw a scowl on her face before it returned to an indifferent expression. "Potter." She walked past him in the direction of the Gryffindor tower.

James, not wanting to miss a convenient opportunity to grate on her nerves, trotted beside her. "Nice weather, isn't it? Is that why you were jogging outside?" he commented offhandedly, gesturing at one of the narrow windows lining the hall they were passing through.

"Why, Potter, I would have thought that a person as charismatic and witty as yourself would have better things to talk about than the weather," Lily retorted, wringing out her dripping hair.

James glanced quizzically from her to the mess she was making all over the floor—didn't she know that Filch would throw a fit once he saw that? "Er…Evans, as much as I enjoy taking a stroll through the castle with you, you do know that you're a prefect and you shouldn't be traipsing around and muddying the halls, don't you?"

Lily sighed, as if in resignation, and said in clipped tones, "Frankly, I don't care." She proceeded to squeezing the water out of her robes and cloak.

This sudden change in attitude was more than he had bargained for. "It'd save you a lot of trouble if you just dried yourself magically," he suggested in a slightly patronizing tone, watching Lily wring her sleeves out.

"Well, yeah, I would, you know, except there's this tiny little fact that I don't have my wand with me," Lily shot back, glaring at him.

"I was just trying to help. No need to jump down my throat," he said defensively, while secretly pleased that he was making progress. Lily Evans, glaring…this was priceless, he should have brought a camera… He noticed that her eyes turned a deeper shade of green when she was mad. He caught himself staring at her and quickly looked away. He tried to reassure himself that he had only done so because he—or anyone else in the school, for that matter—had never seen the redhead mad and it was quite an interesting sight.

He wasn't sure that he was completely convinced, though. She was very pretty. Even now, when her whole person was drenched with rain water and she had a scowl on her face, she still managed to look beautiful.

Just one more reason to be irritated with her.

"Isn't that what you want, though?" Lily said quietly after a moment. She must have noticed that she had lost control, and was trying to maintain her indifferent tones. "To get me mad?"

James was taken aback, clearly surprised that his intentions had been found out so easily. "Why would you say that?" he asked in false surprise, though he was a bit unnerved that she could read his purpose in just two days.

Lily was silent and didn't look at him. They rounded the corner into a drafty corridor, where she ran a few paces ahead of him. He didn't bother catching up. A breeze found its way in through the open window and the girl in front of him shivered in her wet clothes.

At that moment he felt as if she were vulnerable, her defenses completely down. She didn't look at all like her usual poised self, where she was completely in control and composed, which was how most people saw her.

He did a complicated movement with his wand and muttered a spell before slipping through a hidden door behind one of the many tapestries lining the walls.

Lily felt warm air coursing around her, and in seconds her clothes and hair were bone-dry. She stood stock-still and turned around, expecting to see James Potter's smirking face that would clearly mean "I just took pity on you, and I'm one up." But there was no one.

The corners of her mouth lifted in a smile and she walked the remaining passages back to the Gryffindor tower.

*****

~ A/N ~

*Aniiston said something like this…I don't know if she made it up or read it somewhere, but I just wanted to clarify that the essence of the statement isn't mine…

Thank you to my reviewers! Now I don't feel like such a loser anymore! ^o^