Once Upon a Miserable Girl's Plight...

A/N- Hey! This chapter is dedicated to Lacey, as today is her birthday and it is apparently not going so well. So here's to Lacey! She's a great person who should be having a wonderful birthday!

-Kait

Disclaimer Read this and weep, for I am not J.K. Rowling and thus have no secrets to give you about anything concerning Harry Potter. The plot is mere speculation on my part and the characters most definitely do not belong to me.

Chapter Seven: Full of Surprises

November, Sixth Year

This is the first time in a long time, mind you, that I have gotten myself up so early. I think it was because I had some funny dreams last night that I really wish could just be banished away but instead, they are burned into my memory. The torturous nightmares I had once had about my mother were now replaced by odd dreams about a boy and a girl whose faces I could never seem to place. I suppose if I confided these dreams into Professor Trelawney during Divination she would determinedly tell me in that feigned foggy voice that this meant I was go to be killed by a giant broomstick, whacking me in the back of the head every time I mentioned something about going to the bathroom.

But I digress. The common room is fairly quiet and undisturbed at the moment. I say 'at the moment' because James Potter has just clamored through the portrait hole and rarely anything goes undisturbed by him when he is around.

He is surprisingly quiet, though. It's almost as though he doesn't notice I'm in the room. Perhaps he doesn't, as he is a bit busy examining his arms as I watch him wander over to a couch on the other side of the room and groan as he tries to sit down slowly. Maybe Potter is literally beginning to feel what a pain in the arse he is. Though, thinking about it, I wouldn't want to get my hopes up.

My thoughts are interrupted as I watch him more closely; he is acting curiously. This whole year in particular, he has been quieter about things. For one thing, he has made life easier for Prefects since he has stopped hexing people for no reason in the corridors. Alice says it's because I taught him a lesson last year down by the lake. But I know better than to believe that. Since when do boys like Potter care what girls like me think? They'd no soon sell their broomstick than listen to something we said to insult them.

I turn my gaze, which has wondered to the window to watch the sun rise up brilliantly, back to Potter. As some light begins to pour into the room through the windows, I looked at him in shock. He was nursing bruises on his battered upper arms. I felt my demeanor change softly. I knew Potter wasn't liked by some, but why hadn't he defended himself?

Watching him try to lighten the bruises with a spell while he grimaced in pain, I started to feel pity for him. I felt like I should go over and help him. Help him? Why would I want to help him? I didn't want anything to do with him. Nonetheless, I felt my feet dragging themselves toward him and there was nothing I could do to stop myself.

"Do you want some help?" I asked, my feet halting a few lengths in front of him.

He jumped up in shock and covered his arms with his robes that I knew he must be in intense pain right now. I backed away cautiously; James did not look angry but I just had this feeling that he was going to begin hexing people again, starting with me.

To my surprise, he started backing away too. "No, I'm," he choked to get the words out, "—Fine… Just got pummeled by the Whomping Willow."

"At breakfast?" I inquired, glancing at my watch and then back at him. His face looked anxious and contorted. It was one of the oddest things I had ever witnessed. I supposed it must be because I was so used to it looking haughtily at me.

"A friend and I…tried to get past it—Stupid idea," he said trying his best to give me a sheepish smile but failing.

I opened my mouth to continue this curious conversation but with that he rushed out of his seat and up the dormitory steps.

Well, if I hadn't been wondering before, now I certainly was.

Walking with Alice to Potions class a couple days later, I started explaining again what I had seen to her. Maybe she could sort it out better than I could.

"I don't know, Lily," she said, biting her lip nervously, "Whatever he was doing, though, it must have been dangerous."

I nodded at her. It was nice to have someone to confide in. I had been quite lonely since, well, since my mom passed away. Alice and I had been writing letters over the summer and now we spent lot of our time looking up hexes to curse my sister Petunia with. She had been very mean the day Alice came to visit me but me Dad on the other hand, was more cheerful than he had been in ages. He just kept saying that he was glad I was learning to "move on." I suppose I had, in some ways, but some people I believed still couldn't be trusted. But that was a whole other story for a different day.

"I'd never seen bruises like that," I started but Alice hushed me and pointed a finger in the direction of James and his friend Sirius who were hurrying down the hall behind us, talking in low tones as well.

I took her by the arm and ushered her quickly into the classroom. There was no thinking what James and Sirius might have in mind for me, if they saw me in front of them. We took our seats quickly behind a couple Slytherins as James and Sirius walked through the room, their eyes narrowing slightly as they spotted me. What, did they think I knew too much? The only thing I knew was that I had never seen purple bruises like the ones I saw on James' arms.

They took their seats just as the bell had rung and Professor Slughorn strolled into the room.

"Today," he said enthusiastically, "We are going to start a complex potion known as the Polyjuice potion. Does anyone know its properties?"

I watched as two hands went in the air. Alice's and Severus Snape's.

"Yes?" he asked knowingly, pointing at Snape.

"It allows a person to transform into looking exactly like another person. Its effects only last for about an hour, of course."

"Ten points to Slytherin." Professor Slughorn went on genially, "I'm going to arrange you in groups of two to concoct the potion over the next month and at the end of it, we shall see just who knows what it takes to walk in another's shoes."

I heard a couple of people laugh and listen intently as he put us in pairs.

"Pettigrew and Black, Nott and Lupin, Avery and Crabbe, Potter and Walsh, Evans and Snape…"

I stopped dead and whirled around to look at Alice. Snape She just looked back at me hopelessly. I knew there wasn't anything Alice could do. I just, well, I think I'd rather work with Potter than Snape. Not that you would ever hear me admit that to James' face.

"Just ignore anything he says to you," Alice advised me as she hurried over to James and Snape brought his cauldron over to mine.

I still hadn't forgotten what he had said to me, down by the lake last year. I had not really thought about how him calling me a "mud-blood" made me feel. I decided that I didn't care. He was a slimy git, and he didn't seem to care that people called him that.

Potions, for the most part was thoroughly unentertaining and uneventful. Except for the few occasional disagreements about instructions I got through the class without any major complaints. But as I walked out of class and waited for Alice, I was taken aback to see that she had a smirk on her face.

"What happened?"

She continued down the hall with me, smiling. "He couldn't stop talking about you."