CHAPTER SIX: Trelawney's Prediction of the Past
4:30
Four and
a Half Hours To Go
James looked at me. I felt eyes roaming up and down me. They sent involuntary shivers up my spine, rattling my head and chattering my teeth. He was looking at me with this irreplaceable look in his eyes. A look that meant sincereness, frivolity, generosity, and...what was that last one in there? Love! Merlin he loved me! I'm so daft! No wait, I'm not daft...he's daft! For Merlin's sake why would he like someone who argued with him! Nevertheless attempt to love! Plus, I hated that stare. It made me shiver and feel uncomfortable. 'Can you please stop that?' I asked with dignity in my voice.
He shook his head. 'Er, yeah sure, L-Lily.' He stuttered my name. Was this boy sick?
I shot him a stern look before returning to a long piece of parchment that I had occupied myself with. So...this is what he does when I'm not looking or watching him. He's watching me! Before I could stop my stupid mouth, I blurt out, 'Why do you even try anymore?'
He looked up, eyebrows raised into his flyaway hair. I so badly wanted to clap a hand to my mouth. I didn't mean to let that slip! Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid... 'What do you mean? I'm lost,' he said.
Aren't you always? My brain spat. I inwardly scowled at my thoughts. 'Why do you even try asking me out anymore?' DAMMIT! Stupid incompetent mouth! I at least managed to retain a half-composed expression.
He frowned. 'Because...because it's a personal matter,' he said. 'What does it have to do with you?'
Oh Merlin...here we go again...with my intolerance of getting shunned so easily and his protectiveness, this was going to be a cat and dog fight. More literally, a cat and stag fight. 'It has everything to do with me because I'M the one you keep asking!' I shouted.
His face remained impassive. Then it went from angry, confused, bewildered, happy, upset and then just plain annoyance in the matter of five seconds. That...that took skill. Even I couldn't manage that. 'Well...because...it's a long long story...'
I looked at the clock. 'You've got four hours...tell.'
Author's Note: since this is James's flashback, this will be in third person, pertaining to James's perspective.
James was tired of all this
commotion. "Move your bloody arses out of my way! I've got a
detention to get to tonight for Filch and I've got a fully loaded
wand at the ready!" James Potter pushed his way past the crowded
corridors, shoving first years out of his way and rumbled past a line
of third years waiting to get into the Great Hall for dinner. Talk
about a huge domino effect.
He had received detention in the West Wing of the fifth floor, scrubbing the floors. Why? He had had a run in with Filch that past Hogsmeade weekend, attempting to smuggle three containers of Butterbeer and eight dungbombs into the castle. Filch, not-so-surprisingly, was enraged that someone would attempt to bring those items into the school, and none-the-less, assigned James detention on the spot. Whereas Filch was torn to pieces when James 'accidentally' spilt a bottle of butterbeer on the newly-polished entry hall floor, Mr. Potter was feeling quite proud of his accomplishments.
He had finally managed his way through the wave of students with grumbling stomachs racing to the Great Hall and up the moving staircases to the fifth floor. He expertly jumped the eighth vanishing step on the second staircase, and happened to get his foot stuck in the quick-sand one above. "Wait a second," said James, catching on to what situation he was in at the moment-
'James! I don't want to hear your story of how you got your foot unstuck from the step, get to the point!'
'Sorry sorry! Just putting in details...'
James got his foot unstuck from the step with a little help from his wand and Peeves the Poltergeist, who was very happy to help a fellow troublemaker, and managed to get his way, unharmed, to the West Wing on the fifth floor. The West Wing was a wing that was preferred not to be visited. It ranked horribly of tea leaves, cooking sherry, and strong perfume. The Divination Tower was here and the scents floated down from the now open trapdoor, the ladder, however; missing. James wrinkled his nose at the unattractive scent and performed a faulty bubble-head charm on himself, the bubble bobbing about.
Scrubbing the filthy floors for about an hour, he had heard quick footsteps coming from the door that led to the Moving Stairwell. James looked up, depositing his scrubbing brush in a bucket of soap suds. Thinking it was Filch coming to retrieve him, thinking the job was finished, James waved his wand once over the slippery floor, avoiding going over to the trapdoor, leaving it still slippery, drying the rest and stood quickly.
However, the mystery guest was indeed not Filch coming to retrieve him. It was the old mad-hatter of a teacher, Professor Cassandra Trelawney, the divination extraordinaire. James snorted. Yeah. Right. And he heard she had a Seer for a daughter too. She was shuffling a pack of Tarot cards in her hands, mumbling to herself, glasses perched low on her nose and when James shot her a shifty look, she looked up, her eyes wide. "Y-Yes? And who might you be?" she questioned.
James decided to have a little fun with this reclusive Professor. "Me Professor? I'm Sirius Black, the pompous idiot from Gryffindor." He exclaimed, puffing out his chest.
'You pretended to be Sirius! No wonder she resigned soon after!'
'Wasn't my fault...continuing on...'
Her eyes widened. "YOU!" she screeched. "You're the little menace of a student who wrote 'Trelawney sniffs Centaur behinds for drugs and the Dog Star Rules Earth!" Cards dropped from her hands, three landing face up on the ground. Her hands were shaking as she pointed at James.
"Er...I am? OH! I mean I am! Yeah...sorry...I did that," James said with a suppressed snigger.
"Sorry!" she bellowed. She shook violently in anger, James shook violently in hysterics, until finally the both of them released the pent up emotions. James was left, sitting, giggling on the newly cleaned floor. Trelawney regained her composition. "Well," she stated with hefty sigh. "Must be off to my tower, I have...Dream Diaries to grade..." She picked up her cards, not realizing she left the three that were face-up behind, and made her way over to her trap door.
James turned her back on her and crawled, still chuckling, to the remaining Tarot cards. He examined them before he heard a plunk on the floor. "Ooops...must have missed a spot," he smiled widely.
"BLACK!" she roared before summoning the ladder, climbing up it with much difficulty and slamming the trap door shut. James returned to the cards with a smile, three cards...Love he knew...but the other two...hm.
'So what did the cards mean?' I asked, kind of actually intrigued by this. 'And what does this have to do with you asking me out seven hundred times a year?'
James smiled. 'Mind you, this was in third year,' he said.
'Yes,' I said, quite exhausted from his delaying of my question. 'The year you suddenly started to ask me out- wait...those cards had something to do with it didn't they?'
'You catch on quickly, young grasshopper,' he said with a smile.
'I'm not a grasshopper,' I mumbled, pouting. 'Now explain.'
'Alright. Well, I asked a student of hers, seeing as she resigned the very next day, and she told me what the cards meant. I can't remember her name, who cares...she told me that the love card meant that in my situation I would have to keep trying for love, another one meant that my love would never die, and the other...well she'd never seen the other one before, but the girl on the card looked just like you.'
Gasp! NO FRICKIN' BLOODY HELL WAY! My eyes went wide and he could apparently sense my awe. 'You took advice from a TAROT CARD on your love life! THAT'S WHY YOU WOULDN'T LEAVE ME ALONE!' I screeched.
My stomach did a number of flip flops, I felt extremely annoyed that he would take advice from cardboard cards, proud that someone liked me that much, and upset over the whole thing. 'Well...' he said, his cheeks pink and his hands stuffed into his pockets. I was standing, my fists shaking, pacing about the room. 'I loved you even before that Lily Evans. And I go by the cards I've been dealt. I'm not giving up.'
And with those words, the bell on the grandfather clock in the corner announced we had three and a half hours to get our act...together.
