This is a huge mistake, Lily thought. Nevertheless, she hoisted a large grin onto her face as James led her to his compartment, where Sirius, Remus, and Peter were laughing at a joke one of them had just made. As soon as Lily entered the room, though, all laughter ended and the three boys turned to stare at their visitor. I knew I had racked up some bad karma, Lily thought, the smile still plastered onto her face.
Sirius was the one to finally break the silence. "Wanna hear a joke?" he asked, a smile playing on his lips. "Women's rights!"
The smile remained on Lily's face, but her eyes hardened considerably. "Menstruation," she began in retaliation. "Menopause. Have you ever noticed how all of women's problems start with men?"
Each boy, all having gone considerably redder, looked anywhere but at Lily.
Lily smiled, a real grin warming the rest of her face. I love how boys, no matter how macho they act, never REALLY want to discuss this sort of thing. She suddenly felt more comfortable, and bounced down on the seat as if this had been her compartment the whole time. Next to her, Peter scooted farther down the seat to press himself against the window, as far away from Lily as possible. This might not be so bad after all.
"So where have you been, James?" Remus finally asked, still avoiding looking at Lily. "You've been gone for almost half an hour."
James looked confusedly down at Remus, taking the seat next to his friend and across from Lily. "But I just left!"
Lily coughed, and kept coughing. Frantically she tried to come up with a reason for James's prolonged absence, even though he didn't remember anything after leaving the compartment with his friends. Rolling her eyes at her own stupidity, Lily wished she had also performed a memory replacement charm instead—if she knew how to do one.
James asked Lily if she was okay, and she stopped coughing. Right then she came up with a reason why James wouldn't remember anything after leaving his friends:
"Are you sure you didn't pass by Severus?" she accused, her green eyes flashing. Lily wished there was a way to do this without starting an argument, but she wasn't going to admit to James that she had erased his memory; he would realize that she had erased something she wanted to keep secret, and would try to find out what it was. "Maybe you two got into a duel or something before you came looking for me with that blank look in your eyes."
"Blank look?" Remus asked, curious. He looked swiftly over at James, who was famous for his mischievous expressions. Sure enough, James's face was still slightly confused, as if he had misplaced something that he really wanted to find.
Sirius looked disappointedly at his best friend. "Aw, you tackled him without us, Prongs? That's no fun!"
James shook his head quickly. "I didn't touch him!" he assured Lily emphatically.
Lily gestured at the wand that was sticking out of James's back pocket. "You wouldn't exactly have to, with that thing." She made a gesture that, when accompanied by the correct thought and emphasis, would send someone flying into the air by their ankle.
James continued to shake his head, but it was slower now. "I haven't messed with Snape since last year… at least, I think I haven't messed with him…" James looked questioningly at his friends. "Did we do anything to him today?"
Each of the Marauders quickly assured James that none of them had so much as seen Snape since the end of last year.
"Although I wouldn't put it past Snivellus to modify your memory behind your back," Sirius pointed out. "It's something he might do. He probably thinks it's some great joke, watching someone walk around confused."
"Although we did give him those cupcakes with the memory charms baked inside at the beginning of second year," Remus pointed out. "But that's beside the point. What was James doing for the rest of the fifteen minutes?"
Lily, uncomfortable with the way Remus was looked suspiciously at her, smiled up at James. "I thought we were just going to have a premonition, not play Clue," she pointed out.
"What?" All four boys didn't know what Clue was, and Lily had to spend the next ten minutes explaining the game to them.
"But why would they use a candlestick?" Peter wanted to know. "Couldn't they just use the Killing Curse or something?"
Lily nearly smacked the idiot. "It's a Muggle game," she reminded him.
"But why a candlestick?"
"I don't know! Weapon of opportunity, maybe?"
"But there must have been more than just candlesticks in that room."
"What do you even care, Pettigrew? We're not even playing the game!"
Peter looked embarrassed, and looked down at his shoes. "I just think that the candlestick is a bad choice of weapon, that's all," he muttered softly.
Shaking her head, Lily lowered herself onto the floor and sat with her legs crossed. "Are we going to predict anything or not, Potter?"
James looked up quickly, as if he had been pulled out of a reverie. "Sorry," he apologized, sinking himself onto the floor across from Lily. "I just had a severe case of déjà vu." James placed the crystal ball between him and Lily.
Ignoring the increased intensity of suspicion in the way Remus was looking at her, Lily looked into the swirling mist inside the crystal ball.
"Serpensortia!" A snake erupted from the end of a wand used by a blonde boy whom Harry had apparently been dueling against. The snake was a deep green color, with a hood that marked it as a king cobra.
For a moment, Harry stood there, stunned. Then a much older version of Snape stepped forward, announcing his intentions to get rid of the serpent in a smug voice that slid into Lily's ears like oil. Before Snape could do anything, though, a cocky-looking teacher stepped forth and waved his wand, sending the already angry snake flying into the air with a loud BANG! The snake landed hard on the floor of the Great Hall, hissing madly. It went for a boy wearing Hufflepuff robes, fangs bared to strike.
Another hissing sound caused the snake to pause just before it sank its sharp teeth into the Hufflepuff's flesh—was there another snake in the room, the first one's mate, maybe? No! It was Harry! Harry was hissing at the snake as if he was talking to it like he would to any witch or wizard! But that would mean that Harry knew—
"Parsletongue," Lily finished the thought aloud, coming back to reality to see James looking at her with a mixture of sadness and anger on his face. "Our son is going to be a Parslemouth."
James shook his head, picking up the crystal ball angrily. "No he's not," he insisted, hefting the glass orb up over his head like a basketball player about to make a shot from the foul line as he faced the window of the compartment. "Our son is not going to ever use any dark magic. Ever!" With that, James threw the stolen crystal ball through the window with a loud CRASH! Remus quickly repaired the window with a hurried flick of his wand and a quiet "Reparo!"
Lily stared at James, stunned. He was just as passionate about dark magic as Lily was about hazing! Maybe that was why he always went after Snape… although that still didn't make his actions any better than the greasy-haired Slytherin's.
James looked back down at Lily, panting. "Maybe we were wrong all this time," he suggested, ruffling his hair distractedly with one hand. "Maybe these aren't premonitions… maybe they're just some trick of the light, that makes it look like something in the mist. Professor Ramla said herself that not many people can actually have visions when it comes to Divination…"
"It's not a trick of the light, James," Lily said, surprised by her words. "A trick of the light couldn't have caused us both to see—and hear!—the exact same things. And it's only when we're together! I didn't see anything when I took the Divination exam last year!"
"Then maybe it's hormones or something!" James retracted his statement when he saw the expression on Lily's face. "I don't know what to think! All I know is that my son would never use dark magic!"
Lily shrugged. "Maybe he's not your son."
James scoffed at this. "You even said yourself how much he looked like me!"
"There are many spells that can change a wizard's appearance, James. For all we know, Harry could even have been a Harriet when he started out, but we wanted a boy so we gave him a potion to make him a… him."
James laughed. "Lily, Harry would have had to be at least twelve in that last vision. By that age, any daughter of yours would have started to…"
"Eyes up here, Potter."
James looked back up, looking affronted. "I wasn't looking there!" he insisted.
"Sure you weren't." Lily rolled her eyes, wishing she'd changed into her bulky school robes. Suddenly uncomfortable, she crossed her arms in front of her.
"No, I really wasn't looking there, Evans! I was just thinking—."
"Well that's a new one for you, then, Potter."
James actually looked slightly disappointed with Lily's interjection. He recovered quickly, continuing his sentence where he'd been interrupted. "—that maybe that wasn't even Harry using Parsletongue. Like you said: there are many spells and potions that can change a wizard's appearance. What if that was actually some Slytherin using Polyjuice Potion to look like Harry?"
Lily shook her head, a doubtful expression on her face. "I don't think the crystal ball can be fooled by Polyjuice Potion, Potter. I think that really was Harry, and I think he really is going to be a Parslemouth."
James cursed, and Lily bit back the urge to hit him with something. She'd been mean enough to James for one day, she thought.
Lily left the compartment, announcing her intention to return to her own friends. James hardly noticed her departure, sitting by the window with a pensive look on his face; the other three Marauders looked relieved. Rolling her eyes, Lily made her way back to her compartment, where she found Winola laughing at absolutely nothing.
"What's going on?" she asked, wanting to know what was so funny that Winola would laugh all by herself.
Suddenly, Amissa appeared from under a silvery, fluid cloak, a wide grin on her face. "Look what Potter left behind!" Amissa displayed the Invisibility Cloak, spreading the fabric over her arms to watch its almost liquid movement.
"Give me that!" Lily snatched the cloak from Amissa, but was mesmerized by the feel of the fabric on her bare arms. Lily smiled, her original plan of returning the property to its owner flying out of her head like little yellow birds on a bright sunny day. Maybe it will do James Potter some good to have someone pulling pranks on him, for a change…
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James banged his head against the repaired window yet again, wondering what had happened in those forgotten fifteen minutes that had caused his blossoming friendship with Lily to wilt.
Lily hadn't called James any bad names since the beginning of last year, but for some reason she was now accusing him yet again of terrorizing Snape, of not thinking, of being witless, and even of being perverted! James wasn't that kind of guy. He wanted female attention, but he didn't want that kind of attention! If he wanted that kind of attention, there was a number of girls much prettier than Lily Evans.
But it was Lily Evans who mattered most to James. Only she ever gave him that feeling—that his heart was beating a million times too fast; that his mouth was going to fall off if it didn't spread into a grin; that anything, even just getting a date with her, was not only possible, but probable. James loved that feeling that he got around Lily, and hated that Lily had thought—even for just a second—that he had been interested in something much more… disgusting.
James went to bang his head against the glass again, but this time Remus grabbed the hair on the back of his head and threatened to put him through the window if he didn't stop. James smiled, knowing Moony would never actually follow through with his threat; it was simply "that time of the month", a time that always had Moony on edge.
But there was something more to Remus's look this time. There was concern, and something a little like sympathy.
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Lily jumped when a hand tapped her shoulder from behind, but turned to see Remus walking behind her. "Hey," she greeted, not sure what he would want with her. Lily looked around for any of the other Marauders, but she couldn't see any of them.
"Let's get our own carriage, shall we?" Lupin gestured to the last carriage in the long line.
Lily nodded, still unsure about Lupin's intentions. Still, she told Amissa and Winola that she and Remus would be riding together—alone—this time. This caused the two girls to laugh hysterically, but they waved Lily off anyway.
Once they were inside the self-driving carriage from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts, Lupin shut the door with a snap and turned to look curiously at Lily.
"What is it that you don't want James to remember?" he asked intently. "Why did you wipe his memory?"
Lily felt her face pale. "What makes you think I did that?" she asked slowly.
Remus listed the reasons: James had gone off purposefully seeking Lily out, and wouldn't have taken a detour even for Snape; the compartment doors are glass, so it would not have been difficult for James to locate Lily on the train; James would not naturally forget any encounter with Lily; Lily was the one who had first brought up the possibility of James encountering Snape on his way to find Lily; Lily had had an adverse reaction when the original question of what James had done with his time had been introduced.
Lily gulped. She didn't want to tell one of James's best friends that the reason why she'd wiped James's memory was because she didn't want him to remember the Truth or Dare question that had led to her admittance of her crush on James Potter. Not that she thought Remus was the type to go blabbing on her; he seemed to be the most sensible of the Marauders. It was just… it was one thing to tell your friends about a crush, and another thing to tell your crush's friend about it.
Lily licked her lips, wrapped her arms around her waist, and tapped her toes against the floor of the carriage. This movement seemed to cause the carriage to take off, but the sudden motion did not seem to dissuade Remus from getting his answer.
"James found out—," Lily stopped herself, and started over. "Potter found out that…" Lily had no clue what to say! There was no way she was going to tell Remus that she had a crush on James… "Potter found out that I have a crush on Sirius."
Remus's head jerked back. Obviously he hadn't been expecting that answer!
"When he found out," Lily continued with the lie, "he took it badly. I think he really does like me, you know." Although it doesn't take a member of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad to figure that one out, Lily added in her thoughts. "So I just kind of wiped away the memory, to calm him down."
Remus nodded, apparently buying Lily's lie. "I can understand that," he murmured. Then he seemed to focus in more on Lily, as if they were two good friends. "Would you like for me to talk to Sirius for you?" he offered.
Lily felt her face pale even more than she thought it ever could. If Remus talked to Sirius about her "liking" him, then Sirius would begin to get cocky around her, which would be unbearable. Not only that, but he would tell James—those two were closer than brothers!—who would then go on feeling betrayed and feeling bad for himself. On the other hand…
If Lily started dating Sirius, it would give her an excuse to be closer to James. And maybe it would give her and James more opportunity for form an actual friendship, as the girlfriend of his best friend. Lily was certain that James would accept the relationship… after a long time of sulking, maybe, but he would still come to accept it eventually. Right now the only times Lily and James ever hung out as friends were during Divination classes, and occasionally at lunch.
Lily looked pleadingly up at Remus. "Would you?"
Author's Note: Okay, I know this isn't exactly my best chapter ever, but the internet is down at my house so I have to post my fanfictions while I am at my job (I work during all of the school breaks) so I don't get all that much time. And then there's the stress that I might've mentioned before (I know I've mentioned it in other chapters and I know it sounds whiney to keep repeating it, but my life has had more than just the usual stress lately so please just bear with me!) so I am having a bit of a writer's block but I have continued to write anywayz... so yeah. Anywho, this isn't my best chapter but I hope you all forgive me for it and continue reading!
