Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling, Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austen, or anyone else I may allude to in this story.

A/N: Thanks to all of my reviewers, especially Noemi. I did not notice the incongruities in the last name. I will go back and fix that after the story is completely posted (there is only one chapter left).


"Unable to control himself, he began to weep quietly." - Blindness

The class stared in shock at the form of James Potter holding his Gryffindor necktie, poised to strangle Lily Evans. Severus Snape snapped his neck over to look at the real Potter, whose face was white, then over to the real Evans, who could not have looked more surprised. James' voice shook as his boggart double tightened the tie around Lily's neck and her face started to turn red and then purple and her eyes started to bulge. "Ri – Rid – dikkul –" James was unable to finish the incantation because at that moment he did something he had never done before, even after sustaining several bludger injuries – he fainted.

Professor Quesnel rushed to finish off the boggart, which temporarily turned into a Dementor before tripping over its robe and disappearing into smoke, while Lily and Remus rushed to revive James. Samantha, Peter, and, surprisingly, Sirius, stood back, helpless, as Remus whispered, "Enervate," and Lily pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket, and, using her wand and muttering, "Augumenti," pressed the cold compress to James' forehead.

The first words out of James' mouth were, "I'm so sorry, Lily. Are you okay?"

"Of course, I am, silly," she said, looking into his eyes, "it was just a boggart. See, I'm fine." She took his hand in hers, and he sighed, gratefully.

Trying to make light of the situation, now, he weakly chuckled, "Now, there's a blow to my ego: killing my friend and fainting because of it." Lily smiled, telling him he would surely never be able to live it down.


The next day, before Potions, Snape voluntarily approached Lily. "Well, well, well, seems as if someone at least took my warning seriously."

Lily glared at Snape. "You really shouldn't go around putting absurd ideas in people's heads."

"What are you going to do about it, Evans?" he snarled.

"Absolutely nothing . . . at the moment," she said suggestively, feeling slightly satisfied as Snape paled.

"I'll take it under advisement," he replied after he had recovered slightly. He was saved a retort from Lily by Slughorn's entrance and the beginning of class.


Halfway across the castle, in Binns' NEWT level History of Magic class, a seventeen-year-old boy woke with a start as if from a bad dream. James Potter had been dreaming, once again, about being forced to strangle Lily Evans. Fear consumed him every time he saw Lily's eyes begin to bulge, and while this was enough to make him fearful on its own, but when he thought of how it was he himself that was doing this to her, one of his dearest friends. These nightmares had kept him awake well into the morning, causing him to be more inclined to sleep in History of Magic class than usual. Professor Binns, who was rarely distracted by anything, looked up at James' shudder and glared at him. Absentmindedly, James apologized, shocking Binns momentarily, but he recovered quickly and returned to his notes.


That evening at dinner, Lily took out the diary, as she was wont to do at least once a day, claiming that she wanted to know what it said. Frustrated with hearing her say this every day, Samantha exclaimed exasperatedly, "Well, then, why don't you start yelling words at it and hope that it works!" Lily looked pensively at her friend for a moment.

"You know, I just may do that." She then rose from her seat at the Gryffindor table and left, leaving five stunned Gryffindors in her wake.

When James entered the common room thirty minutes later, he found Lily sitting on the floor in front of the fire, surrounded by a pile of damp towels. He chuckled slightly at the sight and her stubbornness. "Try abracadabra" he joked.

"Ha ha ha" she replied, then blushed, "I already did."

They both smiled at that. "Well, let's think, what do we know about Canton?"

"Well . . ." Lily thought for a second, "she was apparently dating Percival Wilkes and leading on the Head Boy, Michael Betancourt. Maybe the password is one of their names." She tried both of them, but the only results she received were two squirts of water to the face.

"Here, let me take a turn," James said, obtaining the book from Lily. "Maybe it's something about her house. Gryffindor rules!" he yelled at the diary and got a face full of water. Lily laughed as she handed him a fresh towel. He repeated the process with each of the remaining houses, including Slytherin, albeit grudgingly.

Lily groaned in frustration, then said with a laugh, "You know, it will be really ironic if Snape was making up what he said he read in the diary, and it's really just a shopping list or something like that like in Northanger Abbey." At these last two words, careful script began to appear on the pages of the diary. James and Lily looked at each other and laughed, then looked eagerly at the first page of the diary. They could almost hear the voice of a young girl as they read the words written so carefully and clearly over one hundred years ago.

"7 February 1872. My Grandmother gave me this diary for my seventeenth birthday yesterday. I have never been very good at keeping diaries, but I guess now that I am of age (in the Wizarding World at least), I should try once more." The young couple continued to read in silence for half an hour, the quiet broken only by the turning of pages. They learned that Elizabeth Canton, had, in fact, been a Muggleborn Gryffindor, and she took her Head Girl duties very seriously because of her heritage and desire not to make a fool of herself. She mentioned Percival Wilkes, the half-blood wizard to whom she was betrothed. Apparently, calling him her boyfriend was something amended in the story to make sense to modern students. The idea of betrothal was not understood to most teenagers nowadays. Elizabeth, though, did not like Wilkes at all, but found herself falling for the Head Boy, Michael Betancourt, whom she would never be able to marry because she was a Muggleborn and he was a pureblood. This of course, was not allowed because it was necessary to keep the bloodlines pure. James scoffed at this, for many still believed it. Michael, at least in Elizabeth's eyes, appeared to return Elizabeth's affections, but they could think of no way to be together. Indeed, as Snape claimed, Elizabeth worried about Perival discovering the developing relationship between herself and Michael, and fretted over what he would do if he did find out. The diary stopped abruptly on the Eve of Halloween in 1873, the night before Michael had supposedly killed her.

When they had finished, James and Lily looked at each other in awe, then James got an anxious look on his face. "Wait a second, did she mention something about a hidden room in the Head Girl's dormitory?"

"I think so. Why? What does that have to do with anything?"

Without responding to Lily's question, James whipped a mirror out of his pocket, clearly stating "Sirius Black!" Lily looked in wonder as Sirius' face appeared in the mirror.

"What's up, Pr-"

Sirius broke off as James shook his head and said pointedly, "Lily's here."

"What do you want?"

"Grab the guys and Samantha and bring the map here to the Head's common room."

"Be right there." And the conversation was over.

"What was that about?" Lily asked.

"You'll see."

Lily did not have to wait long, for five minutes later, Sirius arrived with the parchment they had been looking at the night she had accused the boys of making the noises in her dorm in order to scare her.

James explained about everything the diary had said, especially the part about the hidden room in the Head Girl's dorm room. "You don't think it would show on the map do you?" During the short wait for the others, Lily had realized what James had figured out already: that Michael, or whoever had killed Elizabeth, may have disposed of her body in the hidden room in the dormitory, but she still did not know what map he could possibly be talking about.

"Of course it would," Peter replied, confident in the work of his friends. Both girls were now curious as to what "map" they meant.

The boys looked at Lily and Samantha, and Sirius asked, "Can you two keep a secret?"

The girls nodded in the affirmative, and Sirius opened up the parchment, clearly stating, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." The girls stared in awe at the map that materialized on the seemingly simple piece of parchment. "Can we go up to your dorm?" Sirius asked, and Lily, stupefied, merely nodded.

Up in her dorm, James, who had confiscated the map from Sirius, confidently approached the bookcase. He looked at the map and chuckled, "Well, that's really creative," and with a swish and a flick of his wand, he chanted, "Open Sesame!"

Lily, who was at the front of the group next to James, was the first to see the contents of the room behind the bookcase, and cried out in surprise at what she saw.