Chapter Three: Letters

If Remus had to choose one thing about himself that he respected the most (not that anyone would ask him to), he would have a hard time choosing.

He wasn't like James or Sirius, who had enough qualities they admired about themselves that they felt the need to inform the general population about it every day. Rather, Remus thought himself quite a bland bloke with nothing that stood out. He considered himself a shadow, and he quite liked being one.

Shadows always held a high reverence for him. They weren't composed of all dark – no, then there would be no shadow to distinguish. But they weren't all light either. They were just the right amount of both, blended together by an artist's hand to create a smudge behind the main figure. Add too much shade, the shadow fades into the darkness. Add too much light, they become part of the light themselves.

The average person never notices shadows. They concentrate on the first and foremost shape, the one that draws their eyes in and make them gasp in beauty. Rarely does someone ignore or look past the first shape and notice a darker, more mysterious one slinking behind it, with no choice but to follow the first one wherever it went. But the more perceptive people – they notice the sad second-best outline of the first person, and they wonder how the shadow feels, why it's chosen to hide behind another and not make its presence outwardly known. And then they realize that the shadow has no choice; they have to follow something brighter and purer, because essentially, that is what creates them.

But the one thing Remus hated about shadows was that they did whatever their others did – if the object waves, they do too. If the object kisses a girl of his fancy, they do too, albeit a much sadder one. Shadow kisses are interesting. While the solid, physical objects, the ones that can love or choose not to love revel in the bodily pleasure of such an action, two shadows kissing are merely two lonely smoky figures, trying to imitate a warmth-filled one, trying to claim something out of their reach. If the object seduces young girls with smirks and lines about the beauty of their eyes, the shadow does too.

He just had to make that comment, didn't he? Out of all the things he ever wanted to tell someone that had waited inside him, emotions pent-up and frustrated, the one thing he had to say to get on her good side had to be about her eyes. It was sleazy and cheap and it reminded him of manipulative remarks made by Sirius to get a girl into his bed.

He had to go the James and Sirius path, always using lines like that. He didn't deserve her friendship, if all it took to get on her good side was a remark about her eyes.

The harsh sounds of footsteps pitter-pattering down the stone stairs to the Great Hall for dinner jolted Remus out of his reverie all of a sudden and caused him to become slightly unfocused for a moment. By the time the stomping had passed and he tried to recollect his thoughts again, he could only manage to hold onto a sliver of the frustrations he was feeling before.

An empty dormitory was one of Remus's favorite time of their room. He liked the feeling he got knowing that everything was motion stopped suddenly, matching the personalities perfectly of all the boys who lived in the room. Their pranks, their plots, their explosions, even the tiniest breathes that they took as they slept created a wrinkle into the air and molded and shaped it, like a potter would to clay. They carved and smoothed over and continually did it again and again to make sure the room was just the way they wanted.

One could always tell which boy belonged to which bed. As a first year, James Potter was just as confident and ready to face the world as he was today. As the first years crawled their way up the stairs from a long day, James Potter bounded up, attacking them with enthusiasm and babbling his mouth off about the awesome stories his father had shared with him before they left. He flung open the door, upsetting a nightstand beside a desk and jumped onto the first bed on the right, laying spread-eagle and proclaiming it to be his. "It's perfect," he sighed, eyes gleaming. "Father had this bed when he was at Hogwarts, and it's in the ideal location. See, the window's right above me, so I can watch the Quidditch practices and the door's closest too, so I'm the first one someone sees."

The other boys filed in a little more slowly, feeling as if they were lifting cement blocks instead of feet. Sirius Black, a sullen looking boy, came in and immediately headed towards the far corner of the room, getting on the bed and then drawing his curtains around him forcefully. He hadn't spoken a word to anyone during this entire time, whereas James had been shooting his mouth off introducing himself to all the new first years….save for the Slytherins.

Peter and Remus, the last two, filed in the door together. Remus had felt more of a connection with Peter than with any of the other boys. James was too happy for him – too pure and untouched and confident. Sirius was moody and angry, someone Remus felt that he could in no way connect to him and try to reach out and express that he had the same feelings too, without getting blown up at. So that left Peter, small, mousy, timid Peter, who Remus felt like he could relate too, for weren't the two just both outcasts in the end?

Peter dropped his sweater on the bed next to James, looking up at him with wide, adoring eyes, for even as a first year, James Potter was a good-looking boy. "James," he breathed, "tell me about yourself. What do you like to do?" And James, eager for a chance to talk about himself again, immediately dropped whatever he was doing and came over next to Peter.

And that was when Remus realized that Peter was not like him at all, Peter wanted success and glory and fame and knowing important people, while Remus wanted to be…a shadow. Yes, a lonely shadow, that sounded fine to him.

So with only one choice for him, he ended up with the bed between Peter and Sirius, staring morosely at his pleated pants and expensive sweater, and wondered what he was about to accomplish in this world.

Five years later, the beds had finally adjusted to their owners. James's bed had wrinkled sheets and sloppy pillows that were put together quickly in his definition of "making a bed". His prized broom, the Airborne 3000, was placed on one of the bedposts. That was the only place of his area that wasn't messy – this was a sacred area, and James needed to make sure that every boy knew that. From second year on (after he had gotten the broom), James would dutifully bring out the polishing kit every night, no matter how tired he was or how much homework was assigned or what pretty girl was waiting for him and spend an hour bending over the broomstick, wiping carefully and inspecting for anything that might harm the it or make it go awry in the wind.

The rest of his area was filled with parchment and joke products. James's mind, seemingly never off, was always doing something. He always carried something in his hands, whether it was a snitch, a quill, or a Gobstone, twirling it and playing with it, making it appear and reappear. His parchment was filled with clever ideas and notes passed around during class, observations he would make and scribble it down quickly and shove it into his pocket. Usually when he washed his pants, (which wasn't quite often) he would find soggy remains of the material sticking to the inside of his pockets.

Sirius's bed in the far corner worked out well for him. It was in a dark area, secluded and was the last place the sunlight would reach in the day. During the nights, it provided a perfect cover for the girls he seemed so fond of bringing up.

As messy as Sirius was with everything else, his bed was perfectly made everyday, with hospital corners and whatnot. He folded his clothes neatly, storing them away and always made sure there was no mess left over. For all Remus's life, he couldn't figure out why Sirius was so adamant about maintaining this controlled area while he let the rest of his life go.

Peter had started off making sure that everything was absolutely bloody perfect, but when he saw that James never cared about making his bed, James never cared about washing his clothes, James never cared about cleaning underneath his bed, Peter didn't either. In an uncanny way, Peter's bed was almost the exact replica of James's. However, nothing seemed to be able to bring in James's personality of braveness and wholesomeness into Peter's area. Peter's bed, however imposing he tried to make it look, always hinted at the subtle touches of weakness and flexibility.

The clock chimed seven o'clock, and Remus looked up in shock. He had been up here pondering for two hours already. Groaning, he wondered why he had spent so much time on this when he could've been working on the massive amount of homework the teachers had decided to dump on them. The others would surely be up soon from dinner and questioning why he wasn't there.

As he opened his knapsack to find a spare piece of parchment and a quill, he wondered if there is anyone in this school who looks at shadows instead of James.

"OOF!"

If you had walked into the empty girl's dormitory on a Saturday afternoon, you would've been greeted with a series of grunts and then a painful sounding thump with a string of swear words following quickly after. Had you parted your way through the clothes littering the floor and rounded the first bed, you would've found Lily Evans on her backside rubbing her wounds with a pile of old, crumbling tomes in front of her.

The desk in front of her was aged and chipped, the kind that seem to be universal to all schools older than fifty years old, which Hogwarts most definitely was. In all the magical spells and potions invented, none could even beat old age, or perhaps no one had wanted to waste time on something trivial like that. One look at the surface, and the years that came before her could easily be seen. Brandings scratched onto the once polished maple exterior with trivial readings like: Mary Beth was here. I love Paul. Ryan is a dickhead.

It stood on two fine legs of rickety drawers, adorned with rattling handrails that were stuck between hanging on by their last hinge and falling off whenever someone would yank on it next. Once-sharp edges of the sides now seemed to droop, worn and rounded by years of smoothing.

Sometimes when Lily was bent over writing, the small lamp casting a spotlight upon her area, she liked to stop for a while and look at the wood, the beautiful wood that created this structure. There were maple strips laid next to one another to form a whole. But, if one was to look closely, they began to see differences in the whole. The first obvious one being the borders between the strips, but then the spirals and curves and twists in the actual wood itself began jumping out. Sometimes the spirals would leap from one strip to another and continue to one pattern. They were each like individual rivers, and when there was a knot in the wood, Lily liked to think it a boat, and it was parting the waters as it reached its destination to…wherever it was going. There was one though, that Lily's eyes always caught. It rested near the edge of the table further in, right before the lamp. In fact, it was so close to the lamp that the light cast by it never reached that strip and traveled past it, ignoring it to form the highlight on the other strips, the ones that were in the area that people used. She didn't really know why that one interested her. In fact, it was pretty generic-looking in wood terms. Nonetheless, who was she to argue with her mind?

Briefly glance over at the desk, and it looked like they were all a whole, one equal thing to be used together and were exactly the same, bound next to one another. But let your eyes stick onto the surface for a while, and one could see the different snakes that jumped out, the ones that started moving around and winding and coiling to trap the others, and they became separate identities, separate predators that fought and hunt for themselves and themselves only.

On that particular day, the homework just so asked for information long forgotten by busy adolescent minds from their first year at Hogwarts. It wasn't usually like Lily to forget something. Most of the time, she needed naught books or notes to aid her. She was surprised today then, when she realized that no where in the deep recesses of her mind could she gather up the length of the Hippogriff's tail.

So here she was, a pile of old, unused and forgotten books in front of her that hadn't felt the touch of the pad of a finger running quickly along its neat and precise words for almost the better part of a decade. She got up from her area and shifted through the books, looking for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Oh, there were many lost memories in the pile, her first friends at Hogwarts, ones that she had neglected after she used them and they provided her with the information she needed. Yes, there was Magical Theory, oh, and A History of Magic, she remembered them all. But where was Fantastic Beasts? Frowning, she pawed deeper and deeper into the pile, moving books over to uncover other ones and there was….

Oh…..

…..

She hadn't expected to see this book….

In fact, this book was probably the one that escaped from her mind the most.

Hands surprisingly steady, she reached into the heart of the pile and pulled out a dusty spiral notebook. It had a periwinkle blue cover with little strays of marks mixed into it, almost giving it the appearance of waves. In the middle, protected by a flimsy plastic cover, was a pressed flower, the pink and green from it gone for quite a while now, petals dried and crumbling. She thought back to when she had seen it displayed so prominently in the store, beyond all the rest of the notebooks, dulled in color and looks next to this one. She had reached into her pocket, didn't she, praying silently and quickly that the coins she had would be enough to pay for this one treasure, this one thing of hers.

Lily slowly opened the cover for the first time in five years, hands running briefly and quickly over the surface, trying to once again regain the feeling of trust she had put into this. The inside cover was adorned with the bubble letters of nine-year-old Lily Evans, reading out clearly and painstakingly "My Diary".

The first entry was written in her younger handwriting, still surprisingly and extremely detailed and neat and tiny.

Dear Diary,

Today is July 31st. This is my first time writing in you. A lot of the popular girls in my school have diaries, so I'm going to have one too now. Wait, hold on.

STOP! DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT! THIS MEANS YOU, PETUNIA! IF YOU CHOOSE TO CONTINUE, ALTHOUGH I HAVE ALREADY WARNED YOU, I PROMISE YOU WILL SUFFER HORRIBLE CONSEQUENCES. SO STOP!

I just needed to make sure nobody will read what I will write in here. I guess because I don't really have a best friend at school right now, you'll be my stand-in until I find one.

Lily smiled absentmindedly as she read through the entry. It was so innocent and simple, and in these times of growing unsettlement, she lived for moments like those. Running a hand through her hair, she flipped forward a couple of pages until she found another entry.

Dear Diary,

Today is September 5th. When I prayed yesterday, I asked God if he could give me yellow hair instead of red. I don't really like my hair, and sometimes boys tease me about it. Please help me get yellow hair.

Actually, I would like a mother more than yellow hair. I mean, I really want yellow hair, but if I had a mother, I bet that I would have even more fun.

Mother left when I was really small and I think that's when Father started getting really sad all the time. We kept moving from places to places. The one thing that I can remember about all my homes was that they kept getting smaller and smaller. Sometimes Father brought home ladies from his work. Father always told me that those were the nights I had to go to bed early, because kids under 12 couldn't "entertain company".

Oh well. If I could get yellow hair or a mother, that'd be fine.

Lily was no longer smiling. Instead, her brow was furrowed deeply and the corners of her mouth pulled downwards in confusion. What was going on here? She flipped furiously further into the diary, looking for another entry.

Dear Diary,

Today is November 13th. Something strange happened today, but Father says it's normal, so I shouldn't be worried.

Father came into my room today, and I was reading on my bed. He started talking to me about Mother, and how wonderful of a woman she was. This next part is kind of icky, but then he started talking about her body and how beautiful she was. While he was talking, he started touching me in weird places. He said that it was normal, and that everyone's family did it. Then he kissed me, but not on the cheek like I see Chelsea's father do to her. He kissed me on my mouth. I don't know why though.

It makes me wonder if Chelsea's father did the same thing to her in her own room.

The book suddenly became scalding hot, too hot for Lily to hold again, too hot for her to continue on. It thudded to the floor suddenly, pages flapping out and spreading out on the cold floor. Through trembling fingers, Lily peered through the room, gasping and wondering what the hell these dreams and diary entries were really about.

Sweetheart,

It's been a while since you've gone. I've sent Petunia off to boarding school, as you wished me to. Lily continues to stay at home with me, although I have been trying to get her going the same path as her sister.

Do you know that I haven't changed anything in the room since that day? That every night before I lay my head down on the couch and briefly close my eyes, but never fall asleep, that I walk into our room?

The first thing I do is look at the door, look at the scratches in there and remember how they got there. Do you remember?

On the nightstand still sits your copy of Romeo and Juliet and my sports magazine. Do you remember that I used to argue with you all the time that instead of reading some old English writing, that you should set that book down and concentrate on me? I tried so hard to distract you, to please you, but I could never seem to tear you apart from your precious readings. You'll be happy to know that Petunia has, of course, taken the same talent.

The mirror has been gathering dust lately, but I haven't the heart to wash it off. Do you know that if I try very hard, I look into that surface and sometimes I can see you standing there next to me, rubbing my shoulders and telling me to come to bed? Do you think that if I wash off all the dust, I'll still be able to see that?

Sometimes I open the drawers and look at your side. Do you remember, when we first moved in, how I begged you to let us use the same drawers, but you insisted on using the left side and giving the right side to me? How I was so adamant on using the same sock drawer but you said that I'd stink up your area? I miss your humor too.

I've moved all of my clothes out, but yours still remain. Did you know that you were wearing my favorite pair of black knickers and bras that day? That they were never returned to me, and everything in there is made of linen.

Afterwards, I looked in your old suitcase, the one with the taped handle, and found the exact same outfit you wore on our first date?

Big floppy sun hat. Those large sunglasses that made you look like an oldies movie star. Your favorite sundress in the blue and pink streaked flower print. They don't smell like you did that day either, a mix of vanilla and citrus and the faint tinge of detergent. The smell of dust and mold has finally affected it, I suppose.

Do you remember how much you loved your red hair? I loved it too, remember? I used to tell you that it was fire in the shade, fire that an artist had captured and used to complete you. If I ever lost you in the crowd of faceless others (which I would never do), I could spot you immediately, bright hair shining like a beacon.

The shower still has strands of your hair on the floor. The expensive shampoo that you absolutely insisted on purchasing for maintenance of your "tresses" still sits there. Lily asked me once if she could use your shampoo, and I got so mad at her that I almost lost it. I almost destroyed her right there.

The bed linens are still fresh from the laundry, and they've retained their sharp creases over the years. The pillows…they still smell like you, did you know that? Do you know that every night, before I even think about dinner for anyone else or doing the laundry or sleeping, I try to capture your essence again, using a pitiful pillow trying to bring back the memory of a woman so strong that I should've known from the beginning it was useless to try to bring back something so powerful with something so common.

The wall-paper is still the ugly sea green that you hated so. I remember, you wanted lilies on your walls. I tried to change it, I really did. But it was the one thing that I remember you would tease me so much about. You got this half-smile on your face, sort of a smirk with hints of love and amusement behind it and always, always radiating how sexy you were.

Lily reminds me so much of you. So much that I must ask for your forgiveness.

I didn't mean to sink down so low after this happened. The alcohol, the others, even Lily was just a distraction, a pathetic grown man trying to chase after something that had long floated off into the wind and beyond where his grasp would ever reach.

I'm so sorry I hurt Lily. But I can't seem to stop myself. She's like a drug, in the way that she looks eerily reminiscent of you. Even her toes look like yours. I want to stop. I want you to help me.

Unfortunately, you'll never get this letter. I'll throw it into the fire again after I finish the last letter and then it'll be consumed again, like all the others before it.

So because you can't ever help me, I'll continue in this. And I know that every time afterwards, I'll weep once again into my hands and wonder where my life has gone. But I can't control it anymore. I feel like a freight train, bound to run and run and run, speeding down lost tracks into the middle of nowhere. But I cannot stop with Lily. For if I do, I may just have to kill her.

Hi. Really sorry this update took so long. I guess I wasn't really too prepared and totally forgot over two weeks the INSANE amount of homework from school.

I'm going to thank each and every single one of you guys for reviewing, but I just really want to get this out right now, so there will be no review responses for this chapter. Sorry!

And now this is going to sound strange, but I definitely still appreciate your reviews, and I would still appreciate it this time if you reviewed, because this chapter took AGES to write and I spent a while thinking of what I was going to write and where I would take the story. Thanks!