Remember When
Chapter 2 - Rejection At Its Finest
Written By Judy
A/N: I finally picked myself a beta! Thanks to everyone who offered, but my new beta is ShOrTnSwEeT9013, and she beta-ed this chapter for me And don't freak out about the lack of dialogue in this chapter. The details may seem to drag on, but I was mostly worried about character developments for this chapter. I really want to make it clear about how I want to portray everyone.
Edit/June 22: I took out the part describing Lily and Bella, because I feared for Mary Sueness.
Sixteen-year-old Lily Evans jogged down the stairs and into the Common Room looking for her two best friends. As she neared the last few steps, she spotted Sirius Black's perfect hair on the sofa in front of the fire.
"Sirius!" Lily called. Sirius turned around and grinned at his best friend.
"Hey Red," Sirius greeted.
Lily started over towards him. "Have you seen Just Bella anywhere?"
From the floor, Lily heard a groan. "Lily, please, when are you going to stop calling me that?"
Sirius laughed as Lily scrunched up her face in mock-thinking style. "Hm, let me think about that. When do you plan on dying?"
Even Bella couldn't suppress a laugh at Lily's sarcasm.
After meeting on the train, Lily and Bella became best friends. How could they not? They had so much in common. But then, after the first few weeks at school, Lily befriended another: Sirius Black. Most were shocked, including Bella. Sirius Black was a prankster; a troublemaker, and Lily was Gryffindor's new sweetheart. But Lily saw another side to him. When being paired up for projects, they were often stuck together as their last names were one after the other in Gryffindor's class list.
When Bella refused to be Sirius's friend as well as Lily's, Lily threw a fit and wouldn't give in until Bella did.
It was a very memorable day.
Five Years Prior
"AUHHHHHHH!" Lily shrieked, clenching her fists tightly.
"Lily! Stop yelling!" Bella cried.
"Not on your life Just Bella. Be Sirius's friend." Lily bargained.
"No way!"
"AUHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Many people, including the older kids, started looking over at the pair. After all, they were in the Common Room.
"God, ok, fine! Fine Lily, ok? Just stop screaming!" Bella gave in.
Lily immediately ceased all cries. "You'll be his friend?"
Bella sighed. "I guess so. If it makes you happy."
Lily grinned. "Great!" She threw herself onto Bella and wrapped her in a hug. "You won't regret it, I swear."
"I better not." Bella muttered.
That day was just the first of Lily's many fits. Their little trio soon found that Lily could easily manage to get whatever she wanted, seeing as she had the ability to guilt you, feel sorry for her, or make you want to pull your hair out. Sirius often mused that she was like a two-year-old, only taller and more awkward.
And Lily was tall. At full height, she stood at 5'8". Her limbs were long and gangly, but strengthend due to the excercise of her dancing.
..xXx..
"So what're you doing down here Lils?" Bella asked. She did a once over on Lily noticed that her hair was pulled back into a bun and along with her tank top and cut-off shorts, she had her knee and ankle braces on, as well as pink tights. In her left hand she was holding her arch supports.
"You look like you're ready to dance," Sirius commented, voicing Bella's exact thoughts.
Lily grinned and shook her arch supports, "That I am darlings. I came in to ask if either of you have seen my green skirt."
Bella shook her head, but Sirius said, "I have it."
Both heads turned to him in confusion. "Why do you have Lily's skirt?" Bella asked.
Sirius shrugged, "I dunno. It was in my Quidditch bag."
Lily slowly nodded her head. "Right... I'll just use a black skirt." She turned around to go back up the stairs just as James Potter descended the boy's staircase.
"Hey Evans, looking good," he greeted with a wink.
"Sod off, Potter," she replied as she sprinted up the stairs.
"Hogsmeade, next--"
"No," she interrupted. James shook his head in amazement. He noticed that Arabella and Sirius were looking at him and pointed up the stairs. "I love that girl."
"Too bad she doesn't feel the same way," Bella muttered sarcastically.
Sirius kicked her lightly. "Be nice," he muttered. "Hey Prongs!"
James strolled over towards the pair, "Hey Padfoot. What's going on? And Figg, are you jealous I don't feel for you the way I feel for Lily?"
"In your dreams," Bella snorted, at the same time Sirius said, "Not much."
As James opened his mouth to reply to both Bella and Sirius, they heard footsteps on the stairs. All three turned around just in time to see Lily jumping off the third step. Bella rolled her eyes at Lily's childlike nature.
"Hey guys, I'll be you-know-where. Later!" she called.
"Hey Evans! How about--" James started.
"How about no?" she sang as she danced her way out the portrait hole.
James grinned. He turned back to Bella and Sirius. "If you two will excuse me, I have a maiden to win over." He lightly swatted at Sirius's head, "See you 'round mate."
The pair stared after him as he exited through the portrait hole. "You know," Bella started, "I think he gets a weird sort of pleasure from being rejected by Lily."
..xXx..
"Hey Lily, wait up!" James called. He had followed her out the portrait and was now chasing her down the corridor.
Lily shook her head and gave a light laugh, "You just don't give up, do you?"
"Not when I'm talking about the relationship between me and Gryffindor's Sweetheart." James grinned.
Lily stopped and turned to James. "Oh, you mean that relationship where you ask me out, and I deny you every time?"
James blinked as a slow smile curved up from his lips. He tapped Lily in the nose and said, "Well aren't you just the cheekiest of them all," It was more of a statement than a question.
Lily smiled, "I know. It's great isn't it?" And with that, she left him standing in the corridor all by himself.
While watching her stroll down the hallway with her ballet gear in her arms, he opened his mouth to speak.
"Don't even think about asking Potter!" Lily called.
"Wasn't gonna!" James yelled back, grinning all the while.
"Lies!" Lily shrieked. She turned around for a split-second and caught James's eye just in time to wink at him, then took off running, giggling the whole way.
James stared after her. "That's my Red," he whispered to himself.
He hadn't forgotten his childhood friend. After that occasion on their first day at Hogwarts, he just stepped back and accepted that she didn't remember him. Instead of pushing her to remember, he watched her from afar. He watched her grow up as Gryffindor's new sweetheart, and he watched every boy in their entire year fall in love with her. He watched all the older kids dote on her for being so sweet, and he watched all the younger kids look at her with admiration for being so kind.
There would be no forgetting Lily. That just wasn't an option anymore. And the way James figured it, who cared about that the doctor said? A slim to none chance of her memory coming back. A one-in-a-million happening. Well damn the doctor. This was that one in that million. Lily was the special case. And her memory would come back and she'd remember how much they loved each other and they would live happily ever after.
Until then, James thought, I'll settle for this.
..xXx..
Demi-plié and straighten. Demi-plié and straighten. Grande-plié, up to relevé, hold, and finish.
Lily's eyebrows furrowed in concentration as she warmed up. Of everything about dance, to her, warming up was the worst part. Sure, it was a necessary part of dancing, but it wasn't dancing. Dancing to Lily was moving across the floor in movements so fluid and sweet that you could feel it in your blood. It was a state of mind, an escape from the real world.
It was life, and all she had ever known.
After doing her last exercise, she looked around her ballet room and sighed with pleasure. In her first year, she hadn't a place to dance and was in desperate need of one. She began sneaking into empty classrooms to practice her passion, until Professor McGonagall walked in on her after hearing the classical music drifting down the hallway. The head of Gryffindor then proceeded to notify Dumbledore, and the Headmaster had a special room prepared for Lily on the fourth floor.
It used to be an abandoned classroom. Now it was every dancer's dream.
The room rectangular. One of the longer walls was a straight mirror all the way down. The adjacent, short wall was a huge bay window overlooking the Quidditch Pitch. In her Third Year, Lily lined the wood of the bench with a small, fluffy duvet and put some throw pillows on the sides.
The back wall was Lily's favorite part of the room. Not the premium wood floor, not the Marilyn Monroe blow-up by the door. It was all the back wall.
It had started out as just a regular, plain old wall with a picture of Margot Fonteyn dancing as Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. Over the years, the wall had become a memory of every great thing in Lily's life.
There were pictures of her parents, her sister, Bella and Sirius, and scenes from her favorite ballets. There were ticket stubs from shows she had gone to see, and bewitched roses from every time she had performed for her friends. There were plaques from her studio back home, and her first ballet shoes. There were chucks of fabric from almost every costume she had ever worn. There were to-do lists, and post-its of her favorite quotes.
It was Lily's whole life, right there on that wall.
..xXx..
"Oh Merlin!" Bella shrieked as the compact in her pocket vibrated. She pulled it out and opened it, not surprised to see Lily grinning madly at her.
"Come dance with me Bell," she said, her emerald eyes dancing.
Bella chuckled, "No way! I still have a ton of homework left."
"Please?" Lily pleaded, "I'll help you with all of that later. I'm lonely!"
"Oh, fine. Alright. I'll be there in ten," she gave in.
"Great!" Lily chirped before her face disappeared.
Bella sighed. I can't ever refuse her, can I?
"If Lily's mirror scares you so bad, why do you carry it with you?" Sirius asked, not looking up from his Quidditch magazine.
Bella glared. "What if she ever fell in the dance room? How would I know she was hurt?"
"If she fell, how would she be able to get to the mirror to get help?"
Bella opened her mouth to snap back, but ended up with nothing to say. Sirius smirked.
For her 14th birthday, Lily had splurged and bought herself fancy looking mirror to hang on her Wall of Life. Despite the creepiness of its purchase, Lily kept the mirror and used it whenever she pleased.
"What makes it so special?" the young redhead asked.
The gypsy woman smiled a slow, almost scary-looking, smile, "It comes with zis." In her left hand, she held up a compact mirror with an engraving on the cover that matched the one on the top of the mirror.
Lily's brow furrowed, "I don't understand."
"You give the compac' to a friend. You stand at your mirror. You sey her name, and the compac' will vibrate. She opens, and you she will see."
Lily's eyes widened. "Like a communicator?" she asked.
"Yes, child." The gypsy said, her accent disturbing Lily to an extent.
"I'll take it!" she proclaimed, reaching out for the mirror.
"Aye!" The woman called, "Not so fest, child."
Lily frowned. "What's the problem?"
"Ze mirror chooses it's owner. Touch the mirror, child." she commanded.
Lily frowned deeper, but reached to the mirror with her index finger. It glowed blue.
The gypsy woman was stunned. "My mirror… you, you child mest have zis mirror."
If it was possible, Lily frowned even more. "But… but why?" she spluttered, "I might not even want it now!"
The lady gave her a grim smile, "Ze mirror has chosen, child. You mest take it. One dey, it will save you life."
