Coercive Measures
By Dimantrien
AN- I'm sorry I'm late for the nth time… Even though I promised I would come out with a chapter earlier than last time (which I technically fulfilled—I was six months late, last time—now it's just five months XP), for various reasons, like… oh, never mind, I know you all don't care about me…All you guys want is the stuff below this note anyway...
Chapter 6: Conspiracy (in which Lily loses all hope of ever knocking sanity into everybody's brains)
In retrospect, Lily was starting to regret that she had always underestimated the rumor mills. She was never inclined to listen to the rumors before, thinking them useless strings of information extrapolated from true-to-life anecdotes and continuously appended with sensationalized details until they metamorphosed into tall tales that barely resembled the original fact. She had always thought it rather silly that people constantly hungered for these manufactured pieces of half-truths, and that it was pretty stupid of them to concern themselves so much with other people's personal business. And, of course, her passive observations had led her to believe that all rumors had an expiration date ranging from a day to a fortnight at most—it greatly depended on how fast the news spread and how entertaining it would be for the listeners. Old rumors would die out and a new, fresh rumor would replace them, serving the same purpose, only with a different plot.
As she discovered quite recently, her knowledge on rumors had some definite inaccuracies. One was that there were certain rumors that could last more than a fortnight—indeed, the current rumor circulating Hogwarts had been ongoing for a little more than a month, and this she remembered with much annoyance. Her second mistake was that rumors didn't just spread at the rate of wildfire in a forest; they had the capacity to spread at the speed of light. And this she found out right after her traumatic ordeal in Muggle Studies class…
The sound of the bell signaling the end of the current class was still reverberating through the halls when Lily dashed out of the classroom, and if she had been amazed at the speed she had just moved, she was no less shocked when only a second later a swarm of people coming from other classrooms immediately assaulted her.
"Is it true that you and Potter are back together?"
"Leena told me that you two made out right in front of Professor Schwartz!"
"I heard from Sinclair that Professor Schwartz was the one who ordered you two to do it!"
"And I heard you initiated it!"
"Eh? Nobody told me that!"
"Evans, I never knew you were so aggressive!"
"I never knew Potter liked the dominatrix type…"
"Oooooh…"
"Potter what?"
"SILENCIO."
All inquisitive and exclamatory chatter ceased as Midori calmly pocketed her wand and steered Lily (whose face was so red it looked quite possible that all the blood vessels in it would burst) through the throng, paying no heed to the dirty looks that Lily's audience kept throwing at her. The two Gryffindors' steps echoed down the hallway, as the other students had wisely decided not to pursue them and haggle for more firsthand information. After a few minutes of chaos as the other Muggle Studies students poured out of the class and spilled all relevant (and sensational) details to the waiting gossipmongers, the crowd dispersed, half of them wondering where James Potter and his gang disappeared to and how the four managed to slip through their clutches.
"…is it safe?" a disembodied voice echoed through the seemingly empty Muggle Studies classroom a few moments after Professor Schwartz had left.
"How am I supposed to know?" another voice retorted irritably. "You turned me into a wall clock!"
"Oops. Sorry," the first voice said sheepishly, and in an instant a chair at the far end of the classroom glowed for a moment, and with a popping sound, turned into James Potter. He first tiptoed to the door and peeked out (and as he did, three peeved voices coming from the wall clock, a quill on the floor and a round pincushion that looked out of place on the teacher's desk simultaneously shouted his name exasperatedly), making sure that the corridor was completely deserted before closing the door behind him.
"Hurry up and change us back!" the wall clock, whose two hands were turning rapidly in opposite directions, said impatiently.
James waved his wand and muttered a long string of words under his breath. He pointed his wand first at the quill on the floor and after the same glowing effect and popping noise, Remus Lupin reappeared, his hair in disarray. James then waved his wand at the pincushion and it slowly transformed into a panicked-looking Peter Pettigrew. Lastly, he directed his wand on the wall clock (which was complaining about being the last) and waited as it changed into Sirius Black.
He failed to remember that wall clocks were usually hung on walls and that a normal Hogwarts classroom's walls were almost two stories high—this resulted in Sirius hanging in midair for a split second before falling with a painful thump onto the marble floor.
Sirius glared at James as he picked himself up, wincing slightly. "What the hell was that for!" he bellowed, touching his sore arm (which he used to break the fall) gingerly.
"Sorry, sorry!" James said hastily. Sirius merely scowled and sat on the teacher's desk, his arms folded (after he made sure no bones were broken) across his chest.
"Why did you have to transfigure us anyway? You're the one who needs to hide, not us," Remus said, combing his fingers through his hair to try to put it back in place. He grimaced. "Midori stepped on me on her way out…"
Peter made no comments, appearing to be quite traumatized about his recent escapade as a pincushion.
"They would have bombarded you with questions, just like Evans! And I don't think I can trust you two," he glared at Remus and Sirius, "not to make a couple of hilarious remarks that would only fuel those rumor workers' overactive imaginations—not to mention mouths…"
Remus tried to suppress a snicker as James uttered the word "mouths," and James glowered at him after realizing what the werewolf was so amused about. "Don't even say anything, Moony." The bespectacled boy noticed that he was doing a lot of glaring these days...damn Evans, this was all her fault!
"What did I do?" Remus asked innocuously, trademark pleasant smile in place. Sirius smirked and sucked the air in through his teeth in imitation of kissing noises, then sniggered as James rounded on him.
James sighed, rubbing his temples. "Come on, let's just go back to the tower already."
"Yeah, if we're lucky, Lily might still be there and you could give her a consoling kiss after the whole ordeal you two went through today," Sirius said cheerfully, his recent fall completely forgotten.
"Shut up already, Sirius."
IIIIIIIIII
Midori climbed up the stairs towards her dormitory room and found Raine standing outside their door warily like a guard. "Where's Lily? I lost her when I went to the bathroom for a sec."
Raine pointed a hitchhiker thumb behind her at the door. "I think she's massacring her pillows again. Probably restraining her fierce urge to blow up the whole castle. I'm standing here to make sure nobody would be stupid enough to come in and incur her wrath." By "nobody" she clearly meant some of the nosier Gryffindors who would surely come up and pump Lily with more information on the Muggle Studies class that afternoon.
"Well, as long as she's not intending to blow up James Potter, I think she'll hold out okay," Midori said with a shrug. "Think you could classify me as one of the stupid people you just mentioned if I went in?"
Raine smiled. "Oh, we don't count, of course." She pressed her ear against the door and winced as the sound of ripping cloth rent the air. "That was the tenth pillow this week…" Carefully, she opened the door and the two of them filed in quietly.
Midori took a quick survey of the room. "Well, this is nice," she remarked dryly, flicking a white fuzzy particle that stuck itself to the sleeve of her robes. The air was thick with feathers, and pieces of red and gold cloth were strewn at random across the blood red carpet.
Raine's face was scrunched in concentration as she did a complicated motion with her wand and murmured under her breath. After a few moments, steam started drifting out of her wand. The steam spread throughout the whole room and slowly formed into what looked like large, fluffy…clouds?
"What exactly are you doing?" Midori asked quizzically. The cloud effect made the room look like a cross between an ideal scene of heaven and a henhouse gone awry.
"If this is another absurd idea that you got into your head to try to calm me down, then it's not working," Lily said grumpily, flopping onto her bed where a bunch of clouds had settled. Thankfully, artificial clouds weren't made of vapor—they were more like giant clumps of cotton, Lily noticed.
"Well, you stopped ripping our pillows to shreds; it must have had some effect on you. Besides, all the reds and golds in this room can give off a psychological effect of making you angrier than you already are," Raine stated matter-of-factly.
Midori clapped. "After all your practice with Lily, I think you'll make a great anger management therapist," she commented with a giggle. Raine stuck her tongue out at her.
Lily sat up, extracting a few feathers in her red hair. "Well, thank you for making me your practice dummy. I'm deeply honored," she said moodily.
"Oh, come on, Lily… You know that it's your own fault that everyone speculated so much about what happened today. You didn't have to exaggerate the whole CPR thing with James. He's probably cursing you right now for causing him so much injury," Raine said, unable to restrain herself from smiling.
Lily threaded her fingers through her hair and pulled. "Why do I have to go through this? Why is everybody so obsessed with insisting that I'm in love with Potter, of all people?" she wailed in frustration.
"Maybe, dim-witted as you think they are, they can see something that both you and James haven't…" Midori said absently.
"What did you say?" Lily said in a slightly higher-pitched voice, green eyes narrowed.
"What? I didn't say anything," Midori said innocently. "Anyway, what are you going to do now? Everybody thinks that you and James have gotten back together. That means that you and Raine can 'be friends again,' right?"
Lily massaged her temples tiredly. "I don't know. Could you give me the stupid made-up drama story again? I forgot what I'm supposed to be acting like."
Raine stared at Lily, looking impressed. "Wow, Lily, this must be the first time you actually asked to be reminded about your supposed love story with James…"
Lily scowled at her before turning back to Midori. "Give me the short version, then. I wouldn't want to hear it if I didn't have to…"
Midori shrugged. "Let's see…you and James were together for a while and then broke up—" ("supposedly together for a while and thenbroke up," Lily corrected crossly) "…right. Then you were supposed to be not talking to Raine…then those two prefects caught you with your love letter—" ("it wasn't mine!") "—and everyone thought that you were still in love with James, so you took advantage of being his partner in the CPR thing and kissed him in front of everyone."
Lily looked like she was about to throw up. "Couldn't you have phrased it another way?" she complained.
"What? But you enjoyed it, didn't you?" Midori said slyly.
Lily frowned at her. "Have you been hanging around Black lately? That kind of perverse thinking will corrupt your brain one day." Then she smirked. "Oh, but I did enjoy inflicting bodily harm on Potter and getting away with it…that was really fun," she declared.
"What about the kiss?" Raine chimed in, smiling innocently.
The redhead scowled again. "That was not a kiss. It's called CPR. And that was the most disgusting thing that I ever did…if you must know, I had to brush my teeth ten times over before I was completely sure that—"
"Why would you need to brush your teeth? It's not like he stuck his tongue inside your mouth," Midori interjected, looking criminally gleeful about their topic of conversation.
"Urgh! Never, ever say disgusting things like that in my presence!" Lily exclaimed, looking aghast.
Midori and Raine exchanged looks. "We're seventeen, Lily. Don't you think we're too old for the whole boys-are-icky concept already?" Raine said in the patient tone of a person who had explained something countless times but had always found it futile for the listener to ever understand.
"I don't mean that kissing, or snogging, or anything of the sort is disgusting," Lily said crossly, immensely irritated at how her friends were deriving amusement at her expense. "But James Potter is a matter unto himself. Everything that has to do with him is detestable, and it's a wonder that he can do that without even trying. He is an arrogant, despicable, loathsome—"
"…ungentlemanly, insensitive, hypocritical clodpoll…" Midori cheerfully supplied, imitating Lily's voice.
"…who abuses his position as Head Boy by wreaking havoc and mischief in the halls with his trouble-making friends…" Raine added, her tone shrill in mmicry of Lily's .
"…and struts the halls as if he were king, when all he is, in fact, is a pompous idiot with an over-inflated ego—"
"—that gives him the delusional notion that girls are inferior to him, the chauvinistic bastard. He is rudeness personified—"
"—seen from the blatant insolence with which he treats his professors and other authority figures. He's—"
"—absolutely contemptible—"
"—a complete waste of human life—"
"—a curse to sensible, practical people who never did anything to deserve his unspeakable immaturity—"
"—the pest whose disappearance would be a blessing to the world—"
"—the perpetual thorn in my side—"
"—the love of my life—"
"WHAT DID YOU SAY!" Lily exclaimed suddenly, her cheeks tinged with pink. She had remained silent throughout her friends' mockery of her usual tirade because it was pleasant to the ears to hear her friends badmouth James purposely, even if it was just for fun, and now this unexpected turn…
"Damn…I was hoping she wouldn't notice so we could've continued that particular discourse," Midori said with feigned remorse to Raine when she managed to contain her snickers.
"We lost the chance of completely modifying Lily's I-Hate-Potter speech…" Raine agreed in pretend sadness. Then they both burst out laughing.
"It's not funny. You know, if you two are just going to deliver your brilliantly humorous Potter jokes, then you might as well leave before I hex you both out of spite," Lily told them, temper flaring once more.
Raine and Midori attempted to repress their giggles with every ounce of self-control they had. "We're sorry, Lily. We promise never to do it again…" Raine vowed with a straight face. The corners of her lips twitched slightly, and to quell it she added, "Why did we end up with this line of conversation again?"
"Because Lily was sharing with us the experience of the passionate kiss she shared with James…" Midori replied, cracking a smile as she started sniggering all over again.
"It was NOT a KISS!" Lily yelled for the second time. Then she took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. "You two are on my side, remember? Honestly… it's as if you want me to be together with him, just like the rest of the idiots in this school!"
At that, Midori and Raine exchanged looks, refraining from replying.
Lily's mouth fell open in disbelief. "You don't mean…"
Both her friends shrugged apologetically.
Lily shook her head. "No. No, no, no, no, no…." All hope was lost. Even her friends… She flopped back down onto her bed, staring listlessly at the ceiling.
"Uh…Lily…" Midori said uncertainly as the mood in the room completely changed. Lily didn't respond, not in the fifteen minutes of silence that ensued afterward.
The redhead's two best friends then decided to leave the room, closing the door gently behind them.
"You know…I reckon Lily's the only one who hasn't caught on that she's really falling in love with James," Midori said thoughtfully.
"And James himself," Raine corrected.
"And vice versa," Midori added with a grin.
There was a moment of silence. "D'you think Lily's mad at us right now?" Midori asked finally.
Raine shrugged. "No idea. With the way she's blowing up all over the place like an on-off switch, one can never tell for sure."
Midori stared intently at nothing in particular for a moment. "Well, at least we accomplished our original intention."
"What?" Raine asked, brow furrowed in confusion.
"Pacifying her into willing silence," Midori reminded.
Raine smiled. "Oh, right. What do you think will happen from here?"
Midori's smile widened. "It doesn't suit Lily to keep silent for long. Besides, haven't we always found it more interesting when she's ready to spit fire because of something that has to do with James Potter, as opposed to the semi-docile state she's in right now?"
"And your point is…"
"Something fun is going to happen soon. I guarantee it," Midori declared. And without any further explanation, she bounded off down the stairs and out of sight.
IIIIIIIIII
The lake was peaceful that day, with no sign of the giant squid anywhere near the surface. The sky was a clear blue and a gentle breeze found its way onto the grounds. It was a perfect day for a picnic, and some students were taking advantage of the nice weather, strolling around on the grounds to escape the sometimes-suffocating confines of endless schoolwork.
"So…why are we here again?" Sirius asked as he chomped on a fried drumstick.
Midori leaned against the trunk of the tree they were sitting under, glancing with a bit of amazement in her eyes at the food that was spread around Sirius, which was roughly enough to feed ten people. "You're supposed to be here to report on James' progress, not to fill your bottomless pit of a stomach," she answered, swiping a chocolate éclair from one of the plates Sirius laid out and munching on it.
"Prongs' progress?" Sirius repeated, only it sounded more like "Profff—porfesch" because his mouth was crammed with fried chicken. He swallowed before continuing. "On what?"
"On starting to fall in love with Lily, of course!" Midori replied impatiently, ignoring Sirius' appalling table manners.
Sirius didn't speak for a moment as he devoured a slice of chocolate cake. "Ya know, I was wondering about that, judging from Prongs' behavior this morning. I'm starting to think that he never really wanted Lily to fall in love with him so he could get off scot-free on all of our pranks…"
"No, really?" Midori said sarcastically.
"You mean…you tricked me!" Sirius exclaimed indignantly. After a moment he added, "So that's why Moony was looking so smug all the time…"
Midori shrugged in a bored fashion, absentmindedly getting another éclair from Sirius' stock.
"Hold on…then why am I still doing this?" Sirius demanded, waving his fork around in agitation.
"Doing what?"
"Helping you get them together, like you said to me a month earlier!"
Midori stared at him thoughtfully before answering. "…to derive amusement from making our best friends suffer, which really isn't a bad thing since we know they're really head over heels for each other anyway?"
Sirius considered that answer for a moment. "Good enough," he finally announced with a grin. Midori rolled her eyes, noticing that his sugar high was kicking in.
The two of them didn't say anything more for a moment as they worked on all the food that Sirius had brought (Sirius had finished half of all of it before Midori started eating). "Anyway…you never answered my earlier question. What's James progress?" Midori spoke up again.
It was Sirius' turn to look deep in thought for a moment. "I don't know. He's really pissed off at Lily right now, obviously…or is that, for girls like you, a twisted sign that he's madly in love with the person who physically injured him on purpose?"
Midori shook her head. "Oh, they're constantly irritated at each other, those two are…but haven't you ever heard of the saying, 'There's a thin line between love and hate'?"
"'Course I have. But you can't base their relationship on that saying alone," Sirius pointed out.
Midori merely smiled. "I didn't say I was basing it on just that. I just know, Sirius… Both of them are falling for each other. Only, they think that they hate each other too much for something like that to be possible."
"Maybe they really do hate each other too much, and you're just reading too much into things," Sirius shot back good-naturedly.
Midori pretended to glare at him. "Stop antagonizing everything I say, will you? Girls' minds are really more complex than you think. And I've been Lily's best friend for years; trust me, behind all her nasty encounters with James, she's starting to feel something. Both of them are. And because it's a foreign feeling to both of them, they instinctively respond to it by trying to push it away, hence their more active arguing and bickering."
Sirius rubbed his head, trying to process everything the raven-haired girl just said. "That kinda makes sense… I think. Fine, you've convinced me, so what are we supposed to do now?"
"That's what we're here to brainstorm about. All of this stuff that's happening is pretty bothersome to say the least… For two people who're supposed to be the brightest minds of the school, Lily and James can be pretty thick when it comes to themselves," Midori remarked in a long-suffering tone.
"…any ideas?" Sirius asked. He was feeling a little sleepy from eating all that food, so he figured Midori ought to start with something and he'd just add in his own two cents later.
"I was sorting it all out…we need to liven things up a little. Everyone's bound to get bored with Lily and James' 'on-and-off relationship' and I don't think they'll ever get together if they don't have the whole student body persistently egging them on." Midori explained her previous thoughts to Sirius.
Sirius smirked. "Geez, their relationship is really high-maintenance, don't you think? The way you're saying it, they need the whole of Hogwarts' support and us to manage and manipulate their encounters just for them to end up with each other."
"Oh, don't start on all that again. Think of a plan now and leave all your ingenious insights for later," Midori shot back tiredly.
Sirius complied, out of respect of the girl's efforts to get her friend a love life—and possibly long-term happiness. Really, that sort of attitude was quite admirable. "Well…I always used to say that the solution to a boring lull in life is a good party…"
"A party?" Midori repeated, considering the idea.
"Yeah. Prongs and I always plan stuff like that, everybody loves parties anyway, and it gives us a chance to pull a few pranks without attracting too much attention to ourselves," Sirius explained with a slight smirk.
"That could work. Leave the pranks out this time, though… what are we going to throw a party for, then?"
Sirius waved a hand carelessly. "Nobody's going to care as long as there's an excuse to have fun. We could make it a party to celebrate Prongs and Lily's getting back together, or whatever."
Midori grinned. "Brilliant, Black! That's going to perk everyone up, alright…and royally piss off Lily and James. Oh, this is going to be so much fun," she said gleefully.
"I thought you wanted to get them together, not make them hate each other even more," Sirius said confusedly. "You know, you're really inconsistent in the stuff you keep saying. But you're right about my being brilliant, so I guess you make some sense…" he consented arrogantly, smirking.
Midori rolled her eyes. "I know what I'm doing! Now hurry and clean up, we have a party to plan!" She ran off back to the castle, leaving Sirius to tidy up the mess of plates and crumbs.
"Girls' minds are really hard to understand…" Sirius mumbled, clearing away the clutter with a flick of his wand and following after her.
IIIIIIIIII
James decided to leave his dorm room after he had sufficiently recovered from that vicious Evans' blows. Much as he hated to admit it, he needed to talk to her to discuss this latest turn of events (it didn't slip from his mind that it was all her fault, so she had better pay for it) and what they should do to rectify it.
Besides, he was getting a little too annoyed at Remus' quiet snickering from the other side of the room, and he couldn't talk to Peter to distract himself because the poor boy was still in shock after his transformation into an inanimate object.
And Sirius had mysteriously disappeared. He said he was going down to the kitchens to "have a bite to eat" (which translated to devouring a buffet-table's worth of food), but three hours was a little too much time to ingest food into oneself, even for Sirius. There was something very fishy going on… James could feel it.
He had barely reached the top of the last few steps of the spiral staircase leading to the common room, when a blast of amplified music with a lively beat resounded through his ears. A party?Nobody told him about a party, and judging from Remus' and Peter's disinterest to leave their room, they didn't know about it either.
He hurried down the stairs, his wild side a little cross because of all the fun he must have missed while he was busy brooding in his room (he figured Sirius never came back because he was at the party). The sounds of laughter and talking got louder and louder as he descended. He had just hopped down the last step when everyone in the common room stopped what they were doing to look at him. Then, their attention swerved to the sound of footsteps going down the girls' staircase, and a second later Lily Evans emerged, a what's-all-this-commotion? expression firmly planted on her face.
And simultaneously, everyone in the common room (which included several non-Gryffindors who didn't escape Lily's keen observation—they would face dire consequences later, just they wait…) dropped whatever they were holding and jumped up from their seats, with smiling faces exclaiming in unison, "CONGRATULATIONS!"
"What—" Lily started to say, but then James made a choking noise that caused her to notice him for the first time. He was staring, revolted, at the large banner hung over the portrait hole entrance of the common room. Lily's eyes skimmed over it and a similar expression to that of James' spread onto her face.
Written on the banner in curving, golden letters were the words Congratulations on your engagement, James and Lily!
And Lily lost her voice, her previous words dying in her throat. What kind of bloody insane tack did they come up with this time!
IIIIIIIIII
AN- You know…I was gonna include the whole party thing here, but I'm just so tired… Please don't kill me if this chapter was less than satisfactory… I just finished with first quarterly exams and a college entrance test, and I'm due to take another one soon…so…have mercy on my poor brain… I'll try to get the next chapter up ASAP 'cause I already have a general idea of what to put in it. I'll try… but most times trying never really gets me anywhere. Hmph. Someone send me a box of instant inspiration right now… TT