Disclaimer
I do not own any of the characters mentioned below. I have used one of Jewel's songs, "Break Me". Please read and review NICELY. Thank you.
Pretense
"I say, Moony-" Sirius started, as he sat beside Remus on his bed.
"-is it me? Or is James acting weird?"
They both looked over the drawn curtains of James's four-poster bed.
Remus nodded. "It isn't you. He is acting weird."
Sirius smiled strangely. "Bet it has something to do with that red-haired beauty escorting us."
Remus raised his eyebrows. "You think?"
Sirius's smile got bigger. "I know."
Remus shrugged and was about to go back to his bed to rest when Sirius pulled him down on his bed again.
"Hold on, lover boy," Sirius winked, a wicked gleam in his chocolate brown eyes.
"Lover boy?" Remus repeated in disbelief.
"Yeah. What's up with that violet-eyes?"
Remus frowned. He knew Sirius would be on his case all night and all week and all year and all… He groaned inwardly.
"Jamie?" he whispered.
"Yeah. Jamie Kincaid, if I'm not wrong."
"You're not wrong." Remus sighed.
"Don't mind me asking, but isn't that a guy's name?"
Remus glared at him.
The next few days were rather hectic for all of them. They had surprise tests every day of the week that the element of surprise was already negligible.
Everyone was rushing about here and there, so James, Sirius, Remus and Peter, which are also known as the four Marauders, never got to see much of Lily, Melissa, Jamie and Cheryl.
James couldn't find a chance to apologize to Lily. Remus couldn't see his violet-eyes anywhere. Sirius had his hands full of girls, no doubt. Peter couldn't care less.
All four Marauders sat down in the Gryffindor Common Room that evening. Remus and James decided to skip dinner and the other two Marauders followed suit.
"Why didn't you go for dinner?" Sirius grumbled.
James continued staring at the flickering fiery red flames of the fire at the hearth. Remus started doodling on a piece of parchment with his feather quill and didn't hear Sirius.
Sirius resisted yelling out loud.
"Can't anyone hear me?" he half-shouted.
James finally looked up at Sirius and cocked his head in puzzlement, as if Sirius had gone mad.
Sirius grabbed tufts of his black hair, now loose from the neat ponytail, and tugged at them, as if he couldn't believe that he had friends like them.
He turned his attention towards Remus, thinking that at least Remus would have more sense than James. James was getting to be weirder and weirder by the day.
"Hey, Remus!" he said in a cheerful tone. So cheerful that none of the three in the room believed that he was truly happy.
Remus glanced up at Sirius half-heartedly and smiled lazily. Almost dreamily. Then he turned back to his parchment.
Sirius couldn't believe what he was seeing. Two of his best and most sensible friends were positively turning into some weird freaks!
Being impulsive, he snatched Remus's parchment right under his nose. Remus yelled out loud and tried grabbing it back. Sirius was a bit taller than him, and making use of that advantage, he held the parchment beyond Remus's reach.
Remus gave up and sat on the red and gold woolen rug, pouting sulkily, and listened to Sirius laughing his head off.
"Remus and Jamie? All over the parchment?" Sirius howled.
"Stop it," Peter mumbled. "You sound like him," he said as he jerked his head towards Remus.
"I DO NOT sound like that!" Remus half-protested, half-grumbled.
James sighed. He stared blankly at the Transfiguration book in front of him. It was flipped open, no doubt, but the words seemed to be just dancing around in James's head. It went in one ear, and came out from the other.
He saw no point in reading it over and over again when it didn't help at all. Besides, he had already covered that the previous year, in Durmstrang. Everything that was to be tested in the tests, James had already learnt them.
These few days, every time he saw that Kye strutting along the corridor, he couldn't help but scowl at him and in return get either a scowl or a glare back. Sirius, always noticing this not so little action, tried asking James about it, but James was always unwilling to answer.
He always told the other three Marauders about almost everything. But this time, he didn't want to let them know that he grabbed girls by the wrists and made them black and blue. No way would he let them know.
Especially not Remus. Remus hated guys who hit girls. Absolutely loathed them. He thinks that hell would be far too easy on them.
James slammed the heavy book shut and walked back to his bed. He closed the curtains and lied down, face-down, on his tummy.
These nights, not one thought wasn't dedicated to Lily Evans. And every night, his feelings always got mixed up at some intersection point.
At that particular point, he would feel angry and mad at Lily for making him feel this way. Then he would realize that what he was feeling or going through wasn't really Lily's fault. In fact, not at all. He just couldn't help himself when it comes to this red-haired, green-eyed beauty.
Then, he would punch his pillow, pretending that it was that Kye. He hated his hair color. For many times a day and night, he would tell himself that his hair had the worst color he had ever seen in his whole life. After this somewhat comforting thought about Kye's hair, James's hate would suddenly direct itself onto himself.
He would wonder why his hair color wasn't as special as Kye's or why his eye color was so damn common. Then he would wonder why his body wasn't so muscular as Kye's, even though he knew deep inside that he would beat Kye in any Quidditch match at any time.
Then… one night, he finally got it. He finally got the satisfactory answer he was looking for.
The tests flew by as quickly as they had come.
Sirius, for once in his life, was worried about his results. He remembered his father's last words as he boarded the train to Hogwarts.
"You do something wrong, and you won't be coming back home for a long time."
Sirius had shrugged it off, but now facing new stress and friends that are different in temperament from the past, he suddenly felt like going back home any time. He suddenly felt that his sister was the best irritating sister in the world.
Remus couldn't care less about his results. He knew that he had tried his best, even though he knew himself that most of the time, he had used half of his parchments writing Jamie's name.
No doubt. He was in it deep.
The results came out in lists pasted on notice-boards.
Lily walked towards the lists and ignored the fervent mumbling that passed her by. She looked for the seventh grade's list and saw it. Her eyes automatically darted up towards the number one spot and automatically expected herself to be top.
She gasped in disbelief.
James was top. James Harold Potter.
Sirius laughed out loud and shook his head as he downed another cup of butter-beer.
"You're first again, James," he grinned.
"You're drunk again, Sirius," he frowned.
Sirius looked down at the cup of butter-beer in his hands, as if just realizing that he was holding it, and laughed.
"Hell, it's good." He retorted.
James rolled his eyes and looked around the pub situated in Diagon Alley.
He still couldn't find Lily. He was frustrated, angry, and desperate for a chance to apologize to her. How can he ever do that if Lily wouldn't even see him? it has been at least a week or two, but it felt like months to James, even years.
He felt himself getting old as the time flew by and he still hadn't apologized to Lily. He hadn't said the words that meant the most to him, and he hoped, to Lily as well.
Lily looked at herself in the mirror and saw nothing but two stupid looking ponytails and black rimmed glasses that seemed to make her whole face sink in. She also saw a failure.
How could she? How could she have lost to James? She hated him. He had been in Hogwarts for only a month or two and now, he's top of the seventh grade's list and the school's discussion list.
Today, everyone was out at Hogsmeade, celebrating the end of the tests. She had stayed in her room and went through all her scripts, checking her mistakes.
She had only finished checking her Transfiguration paper when she sighed in frustration and decided to stop checking the last paper, the Charms paper.
It was no use. How could any one make a mistake in grading the papers? No one could, especially Hogwarts teachers.
She started walking around her room, doing nothing, and thought about nothing. Looking out through the window, she saw red leaves falling from trees.
It was fall. Lily always thought it magical that the magical world can be so completely different from the Muggle world, and yet, at the same time, so similar.
There were still things like seasons, that never changed, even in the two different worlds.
Yet there were more things that changed. Lily shuddered at the mere thought of her past and turned away from the window.
She then decided that she couldn't just give up her last hope. She went through the Charms paper carefully and checked through all her mistakes.
Suddenly, she took in ragged breaths as she saw one question being unmarked. That question alone contained ten marks.
"Students, especially the seventh graders, there has been a mistake in the list. Due to a careless mistake, Lily Evans has been placed second. Now that we have corrected the mistake, I announce here that Miss Lily Evans is actually the top student in the entire seventh grade and Mister James Potter the second. Thank you."
Lily Evans smiled triumphantly as she looked around at all the clapping hands and smiling faces. She heard all the praising voices and turned to give James Potter a smirk when she saw James smiling at her. Genuinely. She had lived through enough to know when a smile is genuine or fake.
James's eyes lit up and Lily stopped her smirk in time. She stared strangely at James and couldn't help wondering if he was mad.
Just then, James held out a hand to Lily.
"Congratulations," he said in that husky voice of his.
Lily looked down at his outstretched hand and then, self-consciously, at her own wrists.
She simply looked up and smiled coldly.
"Thank you."
James felt his heart wrench. Lily didn't even dare to take his hand! He had seen her look down at her own wrists and then she had given him that cold smile of hers. He never imagined that he would see it. Never.
Although he had only known her for a short time, he knew somehow that she was a passionate and kind girl. That there was no coldness or anything like that existing in her.
He never imagined that he was wrong.
Lily went out of Hogwarts and onto the Quidditch Pitch, which was deserted. She pulled her gray robes closer to her body and settled down on a big pile of fallen leaves. The leaves rustled under her weight and she felt like giggling as she sunk deep and got embedded in the pile of leaves below her.
It was dark and way after lights out. The moon was half crescent shaped tonight. Lily raised the sleeves of her robes to see the time. Instead, she saw the dark silhouette of the fading bruises on her wrists.
She sighed. Bruises always seemed to fade away slower for her. They always took about a week or two to fade away completely.
She thought back when James had grabbed hold of both her wrists and left such physical and emotional marks on her. She never felt those emotions for such a long time. She had always gone home, locked herself in her own room, came out for meals and stayed that way until the new school term started.
No one bothered, anyway.
Suddenly, Lily heard the faint rustling of leaves behind her. Behind her, not under her.
She fingered her wand in the pocket of her robes and got ready to defend herself.
She turned around swiftly and saw… no one.
No one, that is, except James.
She looks so pretty… James thought.
Lily's features were even more distinguished in the faint moonlight. For the first time, James saw that she didn't tie her hair back and bind it at the nape of her neck, as always. James thought right. Her hair looked wavier unbound. The red waves resembled the swash and backwash of the shores, except that the latter had foams and was blue. Hers was fiery red, just the way James likes it.
Her eyes intrigued him the most. It seemed to turn into different colors at all times, with different emotions of hers. Usually, it was piercing and it seemed to search the truth out of any one. Right now, though, it looked misty and glazed. But nonetheless, it looked attractive to James. He saw her pull her robes tighter around her curvy body and resisted the urge to just take her in his arms right then.
Lily looked at him briefly and turned her attention back to the moon. She tried to think about the legends about the sky that mystified her; she tried to ponder over the forever beautiful constellations; she tried to name them one by one. she couldn't do any of the three.
James sat down right beside her. She didn't want to sit on the wet ground, yet there was no space to move further away, so she stood up.
"I'm going back. Please don't stay up too late," she said coldly. Her cold tone sent shivers down James's back, but that didn't stop him from pulling her down onto his lap.
She let out an outraged cry and tried struggling out of his grab, but he was obviously too strong for her.
Lily gave up and sat up straighter instead.
"I hope that you don't try to grab me again the next time we meet."
James felt her stiffen in his arms, heard her voice and tried his best not to tear up.
"Are you afraid of me?" James whispered against her red hair.
"No," she continued, "I'm afraid of your hands."
James tried to get around to see if she was teasing her.
"Are you baiting me?"
"No." This time, there was no doubt about it. Her tone was firm and hard, and left no space for hesitation.
James felt her shiver and instinctively opened his coat and covered her with it. To his surprise, Lily did not attempt to stand up even though his arms now hung loose around her.
Lily sighed, and wondered whether it was a sigh of relief or contentment. She wished it were neither.
James felt that it was time to say the words that meant most to him at that moment.
"Lily, I didn't mean to hit you. I would never," he shuddered at the violence he had attempted.
"You didn't hit me," Lily pointed out. For some strange reason, she suddenly felt that it wasn't James's fault.
"Well, your wrists are hurt because of me, aren't they?" his heart hurt at the thought of him hurting her.
"Yes, you did, and they still hurt." She was lying; they didn't hurt any more. She didn't know why she had said that.
James immediately held her wrists gently in his own hands and observed her bruises carefully. He gently squeezed her hands and surprised the both of them as he lifted them to plant a tender kiss on each one of them.
Lily gasped and turned around, her attention no longer fixed on the moon. It never was since James came.
One of his fingers tilted her chin to make her look at his gentle blue eyes. She recollected what happened the first night he had met her and what happened the next day. She suddenly got scared. She didn't realize she was struggling against his hold.
Until he said, "Please don't try to run away from me again." His voice was soft, yielding and pleading, all at the same time.
Lily's heart wrenched at the memory of those words.
Flashback
"Please! Father! Don't hit me any more!" Lily sobbed as she tried to cover her puny body with her equally tiny hands.
"How dare you go and be a witch! You're ABNORMAL! You're a DISGRACE!" he continued scolding her hysterically, ignoring her pleas.
"Please! Father!" she screamed as his horse whip found another place on her body.
"NO! Don't beg me! You have thrown our family's face and name into the gutters!"
Lily stopped her pleas but continued sobbing. She swerved out of the way from another of her father's deadly whip and started running. She didn't know where she was running to, but she didn't care either.
"Don't you DARE run away from me again!" her father had bellowed.
End Flashback
By the time the flashback ended, Lily's face was already streaked with tears. That scared the hell out of James.
He knew that he must be hurting her somehow and that he should let her go. Yet he couldn't find the courage and will to release his arms from her.
So he did the contrary thing. He held her tighter.
"Hush," that was the best he could think of; he hoped that he could mask his own fear and confusion. He didn't want to hurt or scare her further.
"I'm sorry," Lily sobbed.
James shook his head.
"It's okay… everything will be all right now… I'm with you…" James soothed her as well as his own fears.
"I didn't mean to cry. I told myself then I wouldn't shed another tear for him again…" James didn't know what she was talking about and he wondered at the same time who was the 'he' she was referring to. But he couldn't bring himself to interrogate her now.
"It's all right…"
Eventually, Lily's sobs subsided, and James thanked everyone alive and dead for it. It was amazing what her tears could do to him. No one's tears had affected him that much, not even from his past break-ups with other girls.
He felt lost and sad, for her and for himself. For once, there was no explanation for the things and emotions that were happening all at the same time.
Lily looked up at James and smoothed out the imaginary wrinkles on his white shirt. She saw the darker tear stains and touched them, too.
"Sorry I stained your shirt."
James didn't even notice that his shirt was wet. He only noticed the smooth movements Lily was making over his shirt and on his chest. He was glad that she couldn't hear or feel his heartbeat, which speed was increasing at an accelerating rate. He was sure that she didn't even know that reaction she was causing in him.
James bent his head down and planted a soft and tender kiss on her full lips. There was passion and love mixed in the kiss. Lily gave passion; James possessed love. The two of them were perfect together.
She is pure. She will always be innocent. She used to be unbreakable. She used to be untouchable.
Now, Lily knew that he had broken her somehow.
Now, James touched her beyond touch. He reached for her beyond reach.
Now, she was his and he was hers.
I will meet you in some place
Where the light lends itself to soft repose
I will let you undress me
But I warn you, I have thorns like any rose
And you could hurt me with your bare hands
You could hurt me using the sharp end of what you say
But I am lost to you now
There's no amount of reason to save me
So break me
Take me
Just let me fill your arms again
Break me
I'll let you make me
Just let me fill your arms again
Feels like being underwater
Now that I've let go and lost control
Water kisses fill my mouth
Water fills my soul
So break me
Take me
Just let me fill your arms again
Break me
I'll let you make me
Just let me fill your arms again
Kiss me once
Well, maybe twice
Oh, it never felt so nice
So break me
Take me
Just let me fill your arms again
Break me
I'll let you make me
Just let me fill your arms again
A/N: So how was it? Good? Bad? Please review! Thanks! Hmm… how about we strike a deal, just between the readers and the writer? How about 7 more reviews before I post the next chapter? *evil cackle* All right, then? =)