A/N: Let me be honest with you guys. Writing this chapter in particular was a huge struggle. At one point, I even felt like giving up on this project. Thank God for my amazing friends who helped me push through this, and special shoutout to Kristina for all the help and time she spent hearing me bitch about it.
Disclaimer: I definitely don't own the world, characters or relationships. That is all JKR, my friends.
Chapter Four
Or
Eyes Innocent
(Insomnia)
She was sitting at the windowsill, staring at the full moon. It was already three in the morning, and yet sleep would not come. The third night in a row. Well, no, that wasn't true. Lily had managed to doze off for a couple of hours the previous night. She supposed that still counted despite the fact that she had woken up feeling even more tired than she had before falling asleep.
She had Defense class in the morning. (It was a Wednesday.) In about four hours, Lily would get up, and begin her morning regímen. She'd hop in the shower (Lily always took morning showers, instead of late night ones), brush her teeth, comb her hair. She would not worry about her outfit, one of the many advantages of wearing a uniform. At about eight o'clock, she and her friends would head down for breakfast, and one hour later, her day would officially begin. Her routine was simple, uncomplicated. Dependable.
The unopened letter danced between Lily's fingertips. She decided to stash it away for later.
A couple more hours passed her by, hours during which Lily did not move. She watched the sun rise, and when the time came, finally got up from the windowsill.
(Twenty-something hours later)
Mary Macdonald was crying. She wasn't sobbing, she wasn't weeping; her tears were silent as they rolled down her cheeks, her lip quivering. There was no shoulder-shaking, no loud burst of tears. As she leaned against the soft back of a well placed armchair, there was no shoulder-shaking, no quick build-up of tears. She made no noise, she didn't move. Her lip quivered slightly, but that was it
It was late, the common room was empty. Mary Macdonald was crying, and it was Peter who found her.
"Mary?"
"Oh. Hi, Peter."
"Are you okay?"
"Yes," she said quickly, too quickly, "I'm quite alright, thank you for asking."
Before he could say anything else, Mary got up and climbed the stairs to the girls' dormitory. She splashed her face with some cold water and got into bed, missing the way Lily and Marlene glanced gingerly at each other, but noticing the weight on the end of the mattress as her two best friends sat with her and wiped away her tears. It wasn't like her to act this sensitive; she hoped she'd feel better in the morning, and with a little help from her friends, she would.
"I think Mary Macdonald was crying in the common room," Peter announced to his friends, as he too returned to his shared dormitory.
"How come?"
"Dunno. She left before I could say much." The boys were silent for a while, until Peter asked, "You don't think it had anything to do with-"
"'Course not. We didn't do anything to her."
"But are you sure?"
"Yes, we're sure. Go to sleep, Wormtail."
(That morning)
"Talkalot's hosting tryouts today, you know," Sirius told his best mate, who was looking at the Slytherin table with a rather hostile expression.
"Think we can bribe a few third years into spying on them for us?"
"Oh, definitely." Sirius smirked.
"Why is Talkalot hosting tryouts?" asked Marlene in a derisive tone, to which James responded easily.
"Well, Vanity's finished school, so Talkalot's been appointed as team captain."
"Oh, I hate her." Marlene sighed, taking a bite of her scrambled eggs.
"Who?" asked Mary Macdonald, who had just arrived at the Gryffindor table.
"Talkalot. I loathe her."
"Oh, that's lovely, dear." Mary quipped. "But why?"
"She's a Slytherin." Sirius Black answered. "Isn't that reason enough?"
"Surely, not all Slytherins can be that bad." With a trace of bitterness in his voice, Sirius assured her that they most certainly could.
"You know," Marlene continued, as though her friends were still listening, which they were not, "I bet she isn't even a natural blonde."
Lily arrived shortly after, but upon noticing the table's occupants, she declared that she wasn't hungry after all and swiftly left.
Sirius furrowed his brow. "What is up with Evans?
"Hell if we know. Poor girl hasn't slept in days," lamented Mary. James cleared his throat.
"I'm going to go and talk to her," he blurted out.
"I doubt she wants to see you." This, James ignored. At once, he lept to his feet and left the Great Hall.
"I can't talk to you right now," stated Lily, not bothering to look up as he approached.
"I figured as much." James acknowledged, mindlessly folding his hands behind his back.
"Then, would you please do me the favour of leaving?" Carefully adjusting her book bag, Lily pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes.
"I couldn't very well do what you wanted me to, you know that. It might set a bad precedent." Weren't they supposed to be quarrelling?
"Naturally," Lily responded dryly.
I'll apologize if you do. It was on the tip of his tongue, really. He would have said it too, were it not for his train of thought inevitably being interrupted.
"I've got to get to class." There it was. The overwhelming confirmation that yes, they were quarrelling.
He tried to speak to her again, after the lesson, at which point she claimed to be late for Ancient Runes. James wouldn't know. He had a free period.
The first time Lily fell asleep, Minerva McGonagall took pity on her and pretended not to notice. Her friend and housemate, Mary Macdonald, gently woke her up and so the Transfiguration professor found no need to interrupt her teaching. The second time, however…
"Miss Evans," Professor McGonagall called. Lily did not budge.
"Miss Evans," she repeated, her patience growing thinner and thinner each second.
"Lily!" Mary shoved her friend, who finally opened her eyes and apologised to the professor with flushed cheeks, still stifling a yawn.
"Miss Evans," the teacher pressed her lips into a nearly invisible line, although the trained eye could detect some sort of warmth in the old woman's expression, "I wonder how you intend to maintain your grades in my class if you keep falling asleep. You see, I do not generally permit students to nap during my lectures."
"I'm sorry, it won't happen again."
"That's quite alright. But I'm afraid I will have to assign you a detention this Saturday."
"Fair enough, Professor."
"Good… Let's not waste any more time, shall we? Please turn to page fifty-three of your textbooks. According to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration…"
After class ended, the girls made for the grounds. It wasn't yet October and, luckily, it wasn't raining.
They walked by the Great Lake and, as they passed the beech tree, Lily stopped. Mary and Marlene didn't notice and, after a second of absent-minded daydreaming, she shook her head and quickened her pace to catch up with her friends.
"Mary!" A voice called after them. "Mary!"
She turned around, only to find her boyfriend grinning at her. Mary smiled.
"Hello, love."
Bertram acknowledged Lily and Marlene's presence with a quick nod. The two of them exchanged looks, but this went unnoticed by Mary or Bertram, who placed his arm around her shoulders and swiftly pulled her aside.
"What's all of this about?" she asked, looking up at her boyfriend through her eyelashes. He really was handsome, all curly hair and green eyes, with a mole on the left side of his neck. Mary wanted to kiss him there, and so she did.
Bertram laughed and, running his knuckle down his girlfriend's cheek, he asked, "You'll have lunch with me today, won't you, Mary?"
"Actually, dear," Mary admitted, "I was hoping to eat with my friends today. Is that okay?"
Bertram was still smiling, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. He shrugged his shoulders. "Sure. I mean, if that's what you really want…"
"Are you sure that's okay?"
"Quite. Go and have fun with your friends."
However, Bertram didn't appear very satisfied and so she conceded. "All right, let's make a deal. You'll have lunch with your housemates and I with mine, and then I'll eat supper with you at the Ravenclaw table, yeah?"
"Good. I'll see you later, love." He grinned, kissed Mary's cheek, and then walked back towards the castle.
"What was that all about?" Marlene inquired. Lily nodded in agreement.
"Oh, Bertram just wanted to have lunch with me," Lily gave Mary a sort of half-smile, but Marlene appeared thoughtful, "but I told him I'd eat with you girls today."
"He didn't seem terribly happy about that," commented Marlene.
"Well… I might have promised him we'd eat dinner together in compensation."
"Oh, Mary…"
"Mary what?" she snapped.
"Nothing," Lily quickly replied. It was obvious that Mary wasn't up for having that particular argument, at least not for the time being. "He's your boyfriend."
She expertly changed the subject and, after an hour or so, when Mary excused herself to go to the toilet, Marlene took her chance to confess, in hushed tones, that she didn't understand why a girl like Mary would stay with a git like Audrey.
"I do. Sort of…" Marlene squinted in disbelief. "I mean, he's good looking, smart and popular. He might be Muggleborn, but he keeps quiet for the most part and he's a prefect, so he's got some authority. Don't you realise how that could be appealing to someone who was recently attacked?"
"So Mary is letting her boyfriend treat her like crap in exchange of protection?"
"Look, all I'm saying is that she got into a relationship when she was extremely vulnerable. Now she's grown attached to him."
"I know that. It's not healthy."
"No," Lily sighed and looked at the closed bathroom stall, "it's not. But you could try being a little more supportive, you know."
"So just because she's my friend I'm supposed to pat her on the back every time she throws herself into an unhealthy, needy relationship?"
"No! But do you honestly think she'll ever get out of one if she doesn't feel like she's got anyone else to go to?"
Then Mary arrived, a smile tugging at her lips, and so Lily and Marlene's argument was begrudgingly put on hold.
Lily already had her books for the day with her, but Mary and Marlene usually preferred to go up to the dorms after each class. Lily then bid her goodbyes to her friends, under the promise that she'd find them for lunch, but not before non-verbally advising Marlene against speaking with Mary about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
It was, however, a truth universally acknowledged that Marlene McKinnon never dropped the subjects she should have otherwise dropped.
Taking advantage of her newfound solitude, Lily roamed the corridors and, after settling inside an unused classroom, she fished the letter from before out of her book bag and began to read.
Lily, it read,
Next time use the regular post (that is, if you even have to send letters at all). Vernon doesn't know I have a freak for a sister, and I'd prefer to keep it that way.
Petunia.
She crumpled the paper between her fists. Long gone were the days where Lily would let her sister affect her. Hogwarts had forced her to grow a thick skin. Someone entering the room, however, snapped Lily out of her reverie. Of course.
"There's a leaf in your hair." He said it so suddenly, so out of the blue, that Lily forgot momentarily things were supposed to be weird between the pair of them.
"Oh?" She awkwardly patted her head. James found it a rather amusing sight, and so he refrained from plucking the leaf out himself. "Shouldn't you be in class?"
"Vector let us out early. How did you get leaves in your hair?"
"One leaf."
"Right." Lily nodded appreciatively, but offered no further clarification. "Well? How did you?"
"I hardly see how that is any of your business."
"Nice." James crossed his arms.
"That was unnecessarily rude of me. Sorry."
James quickly dismissed Lily's apology with a wave of his hand, which then jumped to his hair. "What's got your knickers in a twist?"
"Potter, I'm not going to discuss this with you."
Yet, of course, she ended up telling him. They were supposed to be at odds, alright, but Lily was frustrated and well… she'd been given someone to vent to, to ramble at, and she wasn't about to toss that opportunity away.
"Oh, I know Mary likes the tosser and I'm sure he likes her too. I mean, how could he not? Mary is really pretty and popular and sweet, even though her cat's a menace to just about everybody else, and I'm going off on a tangent here but the point is he's a git…
"And I'm tired because Mary is oblivious, Marlene is stubborn, Sev is a tosspot and my sister is a prig. I'm quarrelling with just about everyone in my life and, on top of that, now I have detention on Saturday."
Even though his eyes betrayed concern, James' face split into a grin, causing Lily's cheeks to flush with embarrassment. She was always making a fool of herself in front of him, wasn't she?
Looking down, she added, "And now that I've made a proper arse of myself, I'll leave you to laugh in peace."
Then, she turned her back on him and, filled with discomfort, Lily left the room. Again. She was always running away from him these days. James didn't care. He didn't care at all.
(Horrible Judgment)
"You know, I've been itching to do something," said Sirius, as the Marauders strutted towards the Great Hall. It was suppertime.
"Mate, we don't need or want to hear about your new rash," James responded.
"Oh shut up, Prongs… Come on, we haven't pulled anything in ages," complained Sirius.
"We just spiked McGonagall's drink with Alihotsy Draught last week," Remus put in. "Prongs still has that detention to suffer through, and it's only the first month back."
"Exactly! That was last week. Let's flood the Slytherin dorms or charm Filch's hair purple."
"Do you really want a permanent mental picture of the school's caretaker with lavender tresses?" Upon seeing the disgusted - and perhaps, a bit horrified - look on Sirius' face, James continued, "I didn't think so."
"I don't see you coming up with anything," Sirius chastised James.
"You know," announced James, who stopped in his tracks at once. His mind wandered off to a distressed girl with dark red hair and bright green eyes. With a smirk dancing on his lips, he added, "I think I just had the perfect idea."
Mary, who had been waiting at the Ravenclaw table for over thirty minutes now, looked around, desperately trying to locate her boyfriend. However, Bertram was nowhere to be seen and so, with a shrug of her shoulders, she got up from the wooden bench and made her way to the Gryffindor table, in the hope that she could at least find her friends.
Giving the table a quick once-over, Mary spotted a head of dark red hair. Smiling, she walked over, only just overhearing Lily's words.
"They inflated Aubrey's head?" Lily's expression twitched as though she was going to smile. "That's awful." She looked over to the Marauders, who were sitting at the other end of the table. The four boys appeared to be in deep conversation when suddenly, Potter looked up, meeting her eyes. He grinned, and his hand shot up to his ever-messy mop of jet black hair.
"What's awful?" Mary asked, entering the conversation. Lily coughed.
"The Marauders inflated Bertram's head to twice its size," Marlene explained. At first, Mary chuckled. Then, as though she had remembered something terrible, she paled.
"I've got to go."
Somewhere down the table, next to a couple fifth years, were Elizabeth and Susan, the two remaining witches of the Gryffindor sixth year class.
"Just ask him!"
"I could never." Susan smiled and looked over to the boy in question. He was with his friends, and they were laughing at something or the other. She sighed and looked back to her friend. "James Potter is going to be the death of me."
"Bertram!" Mary called. Bertram, who walked with angry strides towards the Ravenclaw Tower, slowed down for a moment, but then he continued, pretending not to hear.
"Bertram!" she called again. "Bertram Audrey! You listen to me right now!" Stunned by Mary's tone of voice, (she never spoke to him like that,) Bertram finally turned around.
"Were you ignoring me?" she asked, looking down at her feet.
"Of course not." Bertram smiled sweetly at her. Mary wrapped her arms around Bertram's neck.
"Why are you never with me when Lily or Marlene are around?" Bertram's face fell.
With a honeyed voice, he explained, "I don't think your friends like me that much, Mary."
"Oh, I'm sure they do. They just haven't spent enough time with you."
"What about those Marauders? Do you know what they did to me today?" Mary tried unsuccessfully to stifle her laughter.
"Oh, I heard about it. But it's not a big deal. They're always doing stuff like th-"
"And so you think that's okay? To treat people like that?" Bertram folded his arms across his chest.
"That's not what I said!"
"God, Mary, you've been so touchy today."
"I haven't. Have I?"
"I mean, we're already in different houses and yet it's like you don't care about putting a wedge between us. It kind of hurts my feelings, you know?"
"I'm sorry," Mary apologized. "I'll make it up to you, okay?" Bertram's spirits lifted.
"Okay. I'm going to my common room. We'll take a walk tomorrow, yeah?" He beamed at her. With a small peck on the lips, the couple parted ways, and Mary had to hide her tear-rimmed eyes until she got to the safety of Gryffindor Tower.
The following day, Lily searched all over the castle for one James Potter, but he was seemingly missing. Sure, she only had two classes with him that day (Defence and Charms), but something in her gut told her the little git was hiding from her.
It was five minutes until curfew when she finally found him outside the Fat Lady's portrait.
"Hello, Potter."
"Evans!" His left hand jumped to touch his hair. Anxiously glancing over her head, James exclaimed, "Lovely running into you! I actually have somewhere to go so if you don't mind -"
"You are not going anywhere, it's nearly curfew," interjected Lily, clicking her tongue.
"Right." Potter's shoulders slumped.
"That was quite a stunt you pulled with Bertram Audrey, you know."
"Ah, but it made you laugh."
"You can't just hex people left and right for the sake of it," Lily muttered.
"It was just a harmless prank!"
"It wasn't harmless. Because Audrey got pissed and he took it out on Mary, who for all her faults is an actual angel who accepted the blame and I was the one who didn't sleep a wink last night because I was too busy comforting my sobbing mess of a friend, not that I have been sleeping at all in the first place!"
Then, seemingly satisfied at having gotten that out of her system, Lily appeared to have calmed down. "Look, I'm not angry at you. I meant it when I said I wanted to be friends. But you need to realise your actions have consequences, even if they don't affect you directly."
Seeming dejected, James apologised in a soft voice.
"That's okay," Lily conceded. "Just do me a favour, yeah? The next time you prank Audrey, for the love of Agrippa, make sure you don't get caught," Lily finished with a wink. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight, Evans." She told the Fat Lady the password for that week (bona fide), and climbed through the portrait hole.
It was dark outside, exceptionally so. Thunder rumbled in the sky. It was raining, and Lily really ought to go back inside, but for some reason her feet felt glued to the ground. She was alone, cold, and soaked to the bones. The wind blustered through the air, bringing her red hair to her eyes. Her head hurt, and Lily could feel blood trickling down her forehead.
She heard a noise, and so her head spun quickly, trying to find its source. She considered her options. Looking around, Lily recognized the faint outline of the castle. Numerous bodies lay on the ground; Mary's, Marlene's… Susan and Elizabeth's… The Marauders were there too… Everyone was gone. A flash of green just barely missed her, and she darted into the forest. Lily ran like she never had before, as though her life depended on it, which wasn't far from her reality.
Running in zigzags, she easily managed to avoid the curses. However, she was a tiny girl and whoever was running after her quickly caught up with her. The person was wearing long, black robes and a silver mask; she couldn't recognize them. They grabbed her wrist, and pushed her to the floor. She heard something crack, and pain shot up through her back. Her vision going spotty, she could barely make out the figure raising their wand and –
Lily woke with a start. She liked it better when she couldn't sleep.
A/N: Thank you so much for the feedback! What did you think of this chapter/the characters? Let me know! x
