For the next week or so Lily was possessed with a manic energy as she rifled through fragmented ancient languages and history books looking for anything to help her in her project. Soon the sight of a tall slender girl walking down the corridor with a frame under her arm became a regular occurrence. Although few knew it was Lily Evans.
She spent night after night in the library surrounded by hastily scribbled notes she'd made and reference books spread all over the table wedged open at specific pages with numerous paperweights that she'd borrowed from people. A small ball of light that shone out from a floating glass orb she'd charmed hummed round her head illuminating her face. In the centre of the table, propped up, was the frame.
As the end of another fruitless night's search came to an end she stood up awkwardly, stretching her limbs to rid them of the stiffness. Walking to the thin window behind her she looked out towards the forest. Her eyes often turned in this direction nowadays. The soft glow from the crescent moon illuminated the canopy of leaves in the motionless forest. And, despite her tiredness and the stillness of the night, she felt restless.
Lily could be patient but this was getting ridiculous. The number of hours she'd spent on this translation and still she was getting absolutely nowhere, no wonder it hadn't been translated before. She ran a hand through her long hair in frustration and sighed heavily.
"I won't let it beat me!" she said out loud, ignoring the call of the forest that was a regular nagging at the back of her mind, she sat back down at her table.
There was a loud bang as the library doors were pushed open violently, swinging back on their hinges and hitting the wall. Lily looked up, disapprovingly and stood up to go and tell whoever it was off, she was tired and frustrated and she wasn't a prefect for nothing. She marched purposefully round the corner of the bookshelf that had been screening her and looked around.
Four figures ran down a row of books, she followed. Turning the corner she saw them sit down at a desk, hastily pulling books from the shelves.
"Was it necessary to make such a lot of noise?" she demanded crossly as she stood behind them, hands on hips.
They looked round.
"Sorry," grinned James. Sirius and Peter were obviously trying to unsuccessfully stifle laughter while Remus was doing rather a better job of keeping a straight face.
"You don't look very remorseful," she admonished, crossing her arms.
"That's cos we're not," blurted out Peter, laughing.
She narrowed her eyes.
"And you wouldn't be either if you'd just showered Snape with a barrel full of extra slimy slobberslugs!" added Sirius, beaming at her as if he had just won the lottery.
She snorted derisively and turned her back on them.
James caught a glimpse of her silver nails, he reached out quickly and caught her hand, "You're Lily Evans aren't you?"
She froze and glared at him, he wasn't supposed to remember her name. No one was unless she wanted them too. How did he know? She knew she'd remembered to renew her charm only this morning.
"What's it to you?" she snapped back, pulling her hand out of his grasp.
He shrugged, "I just seem to have inordinate amount of difficulty in remembering you and it irritates me."
"He prides himself on having the memory of an elephant," Remus said with a smile.
"It's just a shame that he's less intelligent than them," added Sirius, punching James playfully on the arm. James rolled his eyes at his friend and turned back to Lily.
"So are you?" he persisted, "are you Lily Evans?"
She sighed irritably, she was tired and stressed and she did not need this. "Yes," she finally replied shortly.
"That wasn't so hard now was it?" he said, smiling.
Lily glared at him, she did not like to be patronised. And what right did he have to be so cheerful anyway? 'I'm going mad,' she though to herself, faintly amused at her irrationality.
There was another loud bang and the library doors swung open heavily for a second time that evening. In stormed Snape followed by Professor Trudgill, the Slytherin head of house. Snape was covered in greenish grey slime from head to toe, several long fat slugs clung on lazily to the back of his robes and his face was contorted in fury.
"There they are!" he yelled, pointing to the four boys sat in front of her. Sirius snorted and covered his face with a book called, 'The Medicinal Properties of Rootflower'. Remus and Peter hid grins beneath their hands and looked studiously down at the open books in front of them. James grinned cheekily at her before copying Sirius as Snape and Professor Trudgill walked over to them.
Lily sighed and picked James' book from his hands turning the right way round before returning it to him. He smirked and she looked archly at him.
"Severus tells me you four have been up to your usual tricks," Trudgill said, as he stood before them, his arms crossed across his chest. "I think this time I might even manage to wrangle a Quidditch ban." He smirked nastily.
Before Lily could stop herself she said, "I'm afraid you're mistaken Professor, they've been helping me with my dissertation."
He looked sceptically at them.
"Remus is top of his class in Ancient Runes and he was helping me to try and decide what language the text was written in." she said, pointing to the book he held which, owing to some amazing chance of fortune was, 'The Finer Points of Neolithic Anglo-Saxon'.
Trudgill stared at them for a while before nodding and turning away, "Come Severus."
Snape threw a disgusted look at her and the others before storming out of the room slamming the door behind him. Lily walked away from the others without a word.
"Why do you think she did that?" asked James.
"Probably dazzled by our good looks," Sirius replied with a grin, stretching out his arms behind his head and yawning.
"You know, I think I might go and see if I actually can lend a hand," Remus said thoughtfully. Peter and Sirius shrugged neutrally and James was scribbling onto a piece of parchment. He nodded to them before walking off in search of Lily.
"What are you doing?" asked Peter, craning over the table.
"Sketching," replied James, his hand moving rapidly over the parchment surface with a piece of charcoal.
Sirius got up and came to look over his shoulder, "who's that?"
"Don't interrupt me, or I'll forget," James said quickly, continuing to draw as fast as his hands would let him. Suddenly he paused and frowned, "Not again!"
"What?"
"I can't remember what she looks like!" He got up and cautiously walked along the rows of books, following the sound of Remus' voice.
"…I don't know, it doesn't look like Ancient Egyptian, the symbols look too much like some kind of rune," Remus was saying thoughtfully, "And it looks like it's going in a cycle, well some of it."
"I know," Lily replied, she pointed to the top part, "you see this bit? Well this is the bit that stays still so I've been concentrating on that. But the middle section seems to be on some kind of a loop. I've counted four different variations." She sat back down on her chair and stared at it, "I just can't even seem to get started."
Remus pulled up a chair next to her and together they watched for the four cycles.
James pulled a few books out from the bookshelf and propped his sketch up on a large wooden gobstone board someone had forgotten. Biting his bottom lip like he always did when he was concentrating, he sketched Lily as she watched the frame opposite him. He wasn't sure what fascinated him so about this girl, she wasn't beautiful- expect for those eyes of course, but she seemed so…ordinary most of the time, but he just had this feeling about her. As if something was not quite right. Sirius laughed at him for what he called his 'project', but oddly James didn't really mind. It didn't occur to him that he now had a small stack of papers on which he had written every conversation they'd had that he could remember, most of which were unfinished. Or that he carried a spare piece of parchment just in case he ran into her and he needed to have a quick way of remembering what she said. Or that currently he was hiding behind a bookshelf trying to sketch her portrait.
It was taking longer than he would have thought possible. Lily and Remus were still sat watching the documents rotation and he hadn't moved, but she seemed to be clouded in come kind of fog. He shook his head and drew out his wand. Silently he cast a spell in her direction.
Lily was so absorbed in discussing her various theories with Remus that she didn't notice James behind the bookshelf or the fact that her charm slipped a little.
James almost dropped the board in astonishment. She looked so…different! It was as if every feature of her face had been enhanced, the effect was- unreal, why did she look so different? Quickly he took up his piece of charcoal, fixed the first drawing and turned over his piece of parchment to begin another sketch.
After about five minutes Sirius and Peter came to tell him they were going to bed. He nodded absently and continued his drawing.
Sirius snorted and muttered something about, 'obsession.' To which Peter laughed and the two of them left.
Finally James rested his drawings against the shelf and opened and shut his fist which had begun to cramp.
"Ready to go?"
He looked up, Remus stood in front of him, "yeah, sure," he replied, quickly scrawling her name at the bottom of his picture before fixing it and rolling it up.
As the two of them walked out from behind the row of books James glanced over to where Lily was gathering her things into piles.
"See you," he called.
She looked up, her eyes bright from the discussions she'd had from Remus. Lily loved being able to discuss schoolwork with people, not ordinary things, the more challenging things. She knew this made her a bit geeky maybe, but in her opinion those who knocked it were those that couldn't keep up with it. Stupid people annoyed her. "Goodnight."
James and Remus walked out of the library, leaving her to carry her stack of books to a large box that the librarian had left out for her to keep her books in so that no-one else would take them out.
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A/N: Ok what did you think? Bless our little artistic James ^__^
I think there was only one question from last chapter, are all the Moonlit Ones women? And the answer is yes, most definitely yes.
Oh yeah, and about them not knowing her in the kitchens, yes that's another Mediocrity Charm thing.
Anyway, I'll try update soon.
Xxx
(People who are also reading 'The White Fire', I don't think I can keep going with that story although I do have a lot more chapters that I can post as in about 200word pages more^__^ but I don't know how to give it a definite ending and also given what happens in Order of the Phoenix, which I am NOT going to talk about for those of you who haven't read it yet (all I'm going to say is I'm in deep emotional pain *sob*), I'm not sure if I can bring myself to write more. But, if you want to see the other stuff I've written I will continue to post it. Thoughts?)
P.S. Reviews make me happy!