A Step In The Right Direction

It was during one of the study sessions for our project when I found the answer to all my problems. Lily was just explaining to me something about why some leader or other of the goblins chose to do something that… well, never mind. I wasn't really listening. Although I was amazed at the amount of material that Lily could memorize. Especially in a subject as boring as History of Magic.

She had always remembered the tiniest of details, that's why it was impossible to trick her; she could always dig around in her memory and she would find a loophole in seconds. It was so weird to watch her, knowing that there was a huge hole in her usually impeccable memory, which she couldn't fill in.

There wasn't a time when Lily hadn't shone in classes. She had always remembered everything she read, after barely glancing at the page.

The Slytherin girls used to say after every potions lesson that she was just memorizing everything and that had nothing to do with being smart. That was just a lack of a social life.

I had to disagree.

Besides the fact that Lily had a very active social life (which made me uneasy whenever she decided to wander off on her own), she was brilliant. There was no denying that she was the smartest student in out year…

And that was when it hit me.

"Ouch!" I exclaimed, forgetting that I was in the library.

"Stop being such a drama queen" commanded Lily, leaning back in her chair and observing me with a mildly annoyed expression.

Me!

"A drama queen! You hit me!".

"With quite a feathery quill"

Okay. Maybe I was exaggerating a bit. But I wasn't going to admit it.

"It would've all been fine and well if you hadn't hit me with the sharp end!" I was gaining absolutely nothing by arguing with her. All I needed was for her to get mad and hate me forever…

But she just sat there quietly, smiling slightly as she continued to observe me. It would've unnerved me if it had been anyone but Lily, but seeing as I loved everything about her, including her thinking process, I knew that nothing bad could have been happening.

I sighed in defeat, but I still wasn't going to admit I was exaggerating. She seemed to be reading my mind as she smiled more brightly, her eyes shining with inward laughter.

"What's gotten you all distracted?" she asked after a moment.

Well, I couldn't think of any other solution. Might as well…

And I told her everything.

But not in the exact same way, I was never an idiot.

I used the 'A-Friend-Of-Mine-Has-A-Problem' route.

"… Now she doesn't remember him, she's dating some other guy and my friend doesn't know what to do", I finished, hoping she wouldn't see the connection.

"Well, has he tried telling her the truth?"

Of course she hadn't seen the connection. She was too smitten (falsely so!) to see that her perfect Appleby wasn't so perfect.

"He doesn't want to risk it since her friends had already tried and failed" I explained, starting to feel weird about talking about the whole thing as though it happened to someone else. Even though I wished it had happened to someone else.

"Her parents?" she tried a new approach.

"Too charmed by the new guy" I muttered bitterly as I thought of the owl I had sent them just the week before. I had forgotten that Lily wasn't the only hot-tempered red-head in her family.

Lily sighed in frustration. She seemed really upset about the whole situation.

"Well-" she broke off and her forehead was so furrowed, I though she was going to give herself a migraine. "Maybe I could help".

I raised my eyebrows in surprise.

"Have you ever been to the ministry of magic?" she asked me, looking suddenly enlightened.

I nodded, not wanting to say a word for fear I might burst out laughing for joy.

"There is this amazing li-"

"It's four o'clock"

I looked up and Lily turned around to see (but, of course…) Appleby.

"So?" said Lily calmly.

"Sooo, we were supposed to meet at four"

"I was going to leave in a few moments"

"So you would've let me wait? To spend time with that-"

"I really don't want to hear whatever was going to come out of your mouth just now" her voice was slightly colder and despite the dark atmosphere, I felt suddenly elated. If this were a slightly less serious conversation, it would've looked just like one of our arguments. Lily was definitely still the same person and I was thrilled… but she wasn't fighting with me.

"I wasn't going to swear. Just use a large variety of words, not appropriate for the under sixteen-year-olds population. And some innocent seventeen 'till twenty-year-olds"

Lily would usually, at this point, roll her eyes at me. I wasn't sure if I was happy, or not, that she didn't do the same with Appleby. She simply sighed and began gathering her books.

I could barely stop myself from frowning. Lily gave in…

She swung her book bag's strap over her shoulder.

"I'll talk to you later" she said defiantly.

Or had she given up?

"No, you wo-"

"Yes, I will" interrupted Lily with barely a hint of forcefulness. And they left, his arm, as always, around her shoulder.

I leaned back in my chair thoughtfully, as I rid myself of any thought about how they might be making up after that little row.

Ok, she mentioned the ministry. And something amazing…

I frowned. What could possibly be so amazi-

Ah, of course. The library.

I rolled my eyes with a faint smile as I could clearly hear Sirius berating me horribly about falling for a book fanatic. Although he would probably add some sexually intended sentence, like 'always the quiet ones'. Well, him being a bibliophobic, he would probably get as far away from her as possible before saying or thinking anything.

Getting back to the subject at hand…

Lily thought that something in the ministry's library could help me out? Aside from the fact that I've always disagreed with her in the matter of whether books have the answers to everything or not, the ministry was so incompetent that there was no way that anything coming from there could be helpful.

I was just going to have to wait for her to get away from Appleby and ask her, though it was probably the only way seeing as that's all Lily could come up with.

I was going to go to a library to spend my free time.

Padfoot was going to kill me.

Well, maybe just Avada Kedavra me form afar or get some little first-year to push me off a cliff, since there was no way he would go anywhere near me after I had made contact with books.

I had to find a way to distract him since I was going to have to be around him for a while. With the full moons and the joint custody of the map.

Hmm… something shiny ought to do the trick.