Ok it's been a month! I'm sorry! I have a valid excuse though – I have not been in the country! I have been in Italy, London and Southern Ireland, and before anybody says it, I live in Northern Ireland, and the North and South are two completely separate countries! Completely separate! Different currency and everything!! If anyone wants the full history I will gladly email it to you! So yes I was out of the country even then!
Also I have some bad news and some good news, so I'll give you the bad news first.
I have a little notebook that has the basic plot of every chapter in the story written in it, also all the names of all of the characters I have named so far, what house and year they're in and what subjects they do. The notebook has vanished! I have torn my house apart and can't find it, but anyway this means that the story has changed slightly because I couldn't remember the original way it was meant to go. Anyway this leads on to the good news.
The good news is because I've changed it slightly I can now write a sequel to it so hurrah! Anyway, on with the story.
Chapter 20 : Lily's Wake Up Call
Lily Evans was sick of being nice. Lily Evans was sick of following the rules, caring about other people's feelings, and being a model member of society. Generally Lily Evans was sick about caring about God's creation and all the people in it. It was time to be a bitch. Why not? I mean everyone else was. Her sister was a bitch, her "best friend" was a bitch, and her crush was most definitely a bitch.
She had to tell Sirius what had happened, there was no question of that, it was the decent thing to do. But was she going to use the decent way to do it?
The decent way would be to take Sirius aside, have a quiet word, tell him what she had seen but she couldn't really be sure, and suggest that maybe he should talk to Caitlin about it. That would be the decent way. To take in to account Sirius' feelings. I mean that was what she had always done, cared about other people, stood up for the little guy, even when they didn't deserve it. It was one of her most endearing qualities, and it was why she was Head Girl.
But what did that matter anymore? I mean Caitlin hadn't taken her feelings into account when she had snogged the face off James Potter, the two faced, conniving, scheming bitch! Why should Lily care about Sirius? Caitlin hadn't worried about him when she had cheated on him, doing God knows what with his best friend!
No Lily had decided to tell Sirius in the most vindictive way possible. Caitlin could sort out whatever mess it caused, after all it wasn't Lily's problem! Her plan was to blow off some of the steam that had been building on her over the previous night. She was going to let it all out, no holds barred, and try and hurt and disrupt as many lives in the process!
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She found Sirius Black pondering along the fifth floor corridor, suspiciously alone. She would have preferred there to be more people, so she could make a scene, but now that she had found him it would have to do, after all it had taken her most of the morning.
"Sirius!" she called out to him, as she ran up the corridor. Sirius didn't reply, he had stopped walking now, and was standing, eyes closed, with his head bowed.
"Sirius!" Lily called again. Still there was no response. "Black, what are you doing?"
Sirius opened his eyes.
"Remembering," he replied, a little bitterly.
"Remembering what?" Lily asked softly. She was beside him now, and looking at him with great concern.
"How long it took to make it!" Sirius roared. His sudden outburst knocked Lily back to her senses again. She must be strong! She must not care about other people's feelings! She must say this quickly before she loses her nerve!
"Sirius I need to tell you something," she said firmly. Sirius cocked an eyebrow at her.
"Go on."
"It's about Caitlin and you're not going to like it," Lily continued. Sirius smirked, turned away from her and began to walk down the corridor.
"If you're here to say that you love her, and you're going beg me to let you have her, then that's great Evans, on the condition that I can watch," Sirius answered mockingly. "If you're here to say... something else, then I don't want to hear it."
Lily looked at the back of his head incredulously.
"What do you mean you don't want to hear it? You don't even know what I'm going to say yet!"
"Oh do I not?" Sirius laughed, continuing to walk. "Look, I was already woken up to hear this story at five this morning. The truth was bizarre enough, so I'd hate to think what your take on it is."
Lily felt the anger running through her, causing blood to race to her cheeks, she was almost the same colour as her hair, she knew it!
"But you haven't heard my side! How do you know they told you the truth?" Lily was rooted to the spot with fury, watching Sirius walk further and further away from her.
"Because funnily enough, and this might come as a bit of a shock to you, I am able to trust my best friend. Evans I feel sorry for you that you can't," he replied pointedly.
"Oh so it was Potter that told you this 'truth' then? Well then, I can't blame you for believing him, I mean we've never known Potter to lie about anything have we?" Lily spat. She'd never known herself to be this angry.
"He wouldn't lie to me," Sirius replied harshly, turning on his heel to face her.
"Oh yea?" Lily almost kicked herself after she spoke. I mean what a stupid comeback?! She wasn't used the confrontations like these and it was beginning to show. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing there was no one here to witness this.
Sirius smirked, turned and started to walk away again.
"You know Evans, I don't have to justify myself to you. I believe him and that's it. No amount of your whining is going to change that. Again I feel sorry for you that you have no one you can trust like that."
She had lost and she had lost badly. Instead of putting seeds of doubt in his mind, she had planted them in her own. There was nothing else for it, she would have to do something drastic.
"You're the one I feel sorry for Sirius! I saw them kissing!"
Her words had the desired affect. Sirius stopped dead in his tracks. Without turning to face her he spoke again, only this time he seemed to have lost the authority in his voice.
"Can you honestly tell me that you saw James Potter kiss my girlfriend in a way only I should be kissing her?"
Lily answered honestly, though it pained her to say it.
"No."
Not another word was spoken, and Sirius drifted off round the end of the corridor and out of sight.
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Lily limped defeated back to the Gryffindor Tower. First class was due to start in about ten minutes but she didn't feel she could face it. The anger in her cheeks had been replaced by embarrassment, so she decided to go back to her room and try and sleep it off.
As she entered the portrait hole, past the Fat Lady, three very giggly girls greeted her, all on their way to first class. Lily had already lost one war of words today, but seeing Caitlin's bright, happy face made her want to have another go.
"You!" she breathed. Alice and Scarlet stopped laughing and looked up at her, both eagerly dreaming up ways they could get out of the room. Only Caitlin remained with a supposedly carefree attitude, ignoring Lily's presence. "You know what I hate about you Caitlin Kenworthy?" Lily continued. "Things always go your way. Potter and Black, I mean they're the two most popular boys in the school. You even got James to convince Sirius he's not seeing you behind his back. You'll have to tell us, how did you do it?"
Caitlin threw her one blank look and then turned to Alice.
"Can you wait for me here? I think I've left my quill in my room."
"Don't you run away from me!" Lily screamed, causing Scarlet to jump.
She flew up the girl's dormitory staircase after her, and watched as the end of Caitlin's robes whipped round her bedroom door just before it slammed shut. Lily flung the door open again to find the room empty.
"Caitlin, I know you're here, I saw you come in," she called as she took a few steps into the room. "There's no point hiding from me now."
Suddenly behind her the door slammed again, and she spun round to find Caitlin standing beside it.
"I'm not hiding from you Lils, I'm right here," she said coldly. "And I wasn't running away from you either, I just reckoned that when you came to your senses, you would realise you'd prefer to conduct this conversation without witnesses."
"Why Cait? Are you worried they'll find out what you've done? Are you finally ashamed of yourself?"
"No I'm not ashamed. I just don't want you to make a fool out of yourself in public. You see contrary to your belief, I do actually care about you, Lils," Caitlin replied, in what Lily thought was the most uncaring voice ever.
"You care about me? Ha! Don't give me that! I'll tell you why you don't want me to make a fool out of myself in public Cait, it's so you can have that job all to yourself. You don't like James, I know that, but getting off with him just because I do? That's low Caitlin, that's really low."
Caitlin bit her lip, and then walked over and sat on her bed. Lily was pleased at how well she was handling herself in this argument. Sirius Black was of course the King of Confrontation so she shouldn't really have expected to win over him, but now? Well now she thought she had a definite chance of winning this, but something kept sweeping over her that was telling her she didn't really want to.
"You know what I really hate about you Lily Evans? You always have to be right. Whatever you say goes, and there is absolutely no way of convincing you otherwise. You know, you have absolutely no idea what happened with James and me last night.
"You have no idea that, even though you weren't speaking to me, I went to him last night to try and persuade him not to give up on you, even though you are a stuffy, know-it-all, stubborn cow. You have no idea how we almost got caught by Filch, how I lost that stupid map, or how James' watch got stuck in my hair, leading us to be in the position we were in when you found us last night.
"See you have no idea about any of that, and you probably never will, 'cause in your mind you know exactly what happened anyway. So go ahead believe what you want, I couldn't be bothered with you anymore."
With that Caitlin leaned over the end of her bed, opened her trunk and pulled out a very ostentatious pink and fluffy quill.
"I'm sorry," Lily managed to whisper through the tears that were streaming down her face.
"What?" Caitlin called, still looking through her trunk.
"I'm sorry," Lily said a bit louder. Caitlin sat bolt upright, banging her head off her trunk in the process. "I'm sorry for that too," Lily managed to giggle a bit, whilst watching Caitlin rub the back of her head.
"Oh come here, you daft mare!" she said, stretching her arms out towards Lily. She sat down beside her and they gave each other a hug, Lily still in tears. "I don't know why you're crying, I'm the one with the headaches to end all headaches! First a sugar hangover and now this."
Lily laughed a bit and tried to dry her eyes.
"I'm sorry I'm a 'stuffy, know-it-all, stubborn cow.'"
"Yea, and I'm sorry I'm a 'cold bitch with a heart of glass.'" Lily threw her an inquisitive look.
"I never called you that," Lily stated, sounding quite indignant.
"Yea, but Sirius calls me it all the time." Both girls resolved into giggles, and fell back on the bed staring up at the posters Caitlin had pinned right above her bed. They lay in silence for a while watching some Wizarding Popstars wave and wink at them.
"I'm sorry I interfered with you and James," Caitlin said finally.
"Yea and I'm sorry I reacted so badly to it."
"It was pretty funny though," Caitlin laughed. "Looking back on it I mean. 'Cause it's sorted now right? We're friends?"
"Yes we're friends," Lily confirmed. "And on that note I'm sorry I'm so rubbish at arguments!"
"You didn't do too badly there," Caitlin protested. "You were just wrong that's all."
"Yea well you should have seen me this morning with Sirius!"
"Oh don't worry about that, he gets plenty of practice with me!"
The girls' laughter was interrupted by a knock on the door.
"Come in!" they called in unison. Alice and Scarlet slowly opened the door and walked into the room.
"We couldn't hear screaming anymore, and thought you might have killed each other so we came up here to investigate," Scarlet explained.
"Nah everything's fine, we're still alive," Caitlin reassured her.
"So you're friends again?" Alice asked. Caitlin and Lily nodded. "Good, because class started fifteen minutes ago!"
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Lily ran down the staircase, telling the others she'd meet them in the common room after grabbing her bag from her room. As she reached the bottom of the stairs a familiar face reached the bottom of the Head Quarters staircase directly opposite. James gave her a look that closely resembled a deer caught in car headlights, and then quickly scampered through the portrait hole.
Caitlin's laughter filled the whole staircase as she walked down to just behind where Lily was standing.
"Well Lils, you may have lost against Sirius and me, but there's one boy who still doesn't want to face you!"
"Should I go talk to him? You know apologise, and maybe explain why I said no when he asked me to the ball?" Lily asked anxiously, failing to see the funny side of it.
"Oh I don't think he was too upset about that," came a voice from someone sitting over beside where Alice and Scarlet had dumped their bags.
"And why, Avril, is that?" Caitlin sneered at her.
"Because he's already asked me."
The pink and fluffy quill snapped in Caitlin's hand.
Well I think that was a bit shorter than usual, but at least I updated! Hope you enjoyed it! Please review!
nightwanderer: It will get better and stop threatening me!
Carmel March: Thank you! Hope you enjoyed that chapter as well!
BurningIce22: Thank you! And yea I think most people on this site are American!
Oliverwoodschic: Lol how can you mean that in a good way? Anyway I'm sorry I didn't actually put that scene in, but I hope you liked what I did do.
I love truegryffindorgrit: You are an eegit! Whoo 40mph down the Hillhall Road at night with the radio on! Oh yea!
Ryuu of the Broken Light: I'm sorry I didn't update. I'll update sooner next time!
elements-of-the-soul: Remember I said 39? Well I think it changed to 41. Anyway it's that long because it's all worked out in my notebook. Don't worry I have it all planned out so it won't get boring. The best is yet to come!
luvsirius: Yes I know I hated the last chapter, but hopefully that one was a little easier to read, it's all leading up to something good I promise!
i cant think of one: Well it's nice that you keep reviewing thank you. I promise I will keep going even if no ones reading it! It just might take me a while!
emtwelvem12: I have AOL because you can get that over here too. Unfortunately I won't be updating my other story for ages cause I'm going to finish this one and then write another sequel before I get to it. In fact I think I might take it down until I'm ready to write it. Anyway thank you for your continuous reviewing!
Snapesucksman: Lol thank you so much!
ebony-plays-the-viola: Yea I like Caitlin as well, she's the one that's most like me, but I would have told Lily about the Marauders being animagi by now!
Hobbit: Thanks! This story is meant to make you laugh! Only there was nothing funny in that chapter :S ! I'll try harder in the one!
lily: Thanks for reviewing! You'll have to wait and see about James and Lily... maybe they won't get together! Wouldn't that be the most ridiculous fanfic ever? If they didn't actually get together in the end? ...Ooooo I might do that!
riotgirl72: Ok now I like the films but they change too much stuff to make it 'Hollywoodised'. JKR said in an interview he was a chaser and that's good enough for me. Personally I think it would be a little corny if he played the same position as Harry anyway!