MY LIFE IN A NUTSHELL
NARRATOR: Ms. Lily Evans
SUMMARY: It's the start of 7th year and things are beginning to spiral out of Lily's control. Follow her day-to-day adventures in this multi-chaptered fic about love, hate, and the many aspects of a 17-year-old witch's life.
RATING: T, for language, some visual imagery, and attempted humor.
Disclaimer: It be not mine, argh.
A/N: Yeah...I said I'd update soon...but at least it hasn't been a year, right? I mean, almost a month. Better than nothing.
This chapter actually had to be split into two cause it was too long, so I have the next part coming up soon!
Lunch was thinking time. But it seemed that Gryffindor was having none of that nonsense.
"I'm just saying that if he had maybe put the kangaroo to the left of the naked mole rat, there might have been a marginally better chance of making it through the fifth basket."
"Right, and I'm a flowering teapot ready to mate."
"Well, I don't know what you do in your spare time – "
"Would you please just shut up!" I shouted at my friends, and Marlene and Miranda simultaneously stopped speaking, blinking at me owlishly in surprise.
"Well someone's got her knickers in a twist," Alice said, poking me with her fork before using it to spear a freshly baked potato slice.
"My pants are not in knots," I insisted crossly, retaliating her fork-jab with a quick elbow to the ribs. She nearly lost control of the baked potato.
"Your pants are in plenty of knots, Lily, and from what I can tell, it must also be riding up very uncomfortably," Marlene smirked. "I haven't seen you in such a state in a very long while."
"I recall," Miranda said false-ponderingly, "the only times she really gets like this is when James Potter has bothered her in some way or another – "
"But they haven't been arguing at all!" Alice cried, catching on to Miranda's tone. "What a curious, curious thing."
"But she's still so bothered," Marlene said, her grin growing wicked. "Maybe bothered in other ways, it seems…"
"Yeah, yeah, innuendo," I said moodily, eating my meal without much energy.
"What's got you down, Lil?" Alice asked kindly, having finished her baked potato, turning toward me and facing me down with an Alice Look.
"Nothing," I lied, not even bothering to hide my scowl. "Anyway, you guys are about done with lunch. I'll meet you up in the common room before charms, alright?"
Alice, Marlene, and Miranda all give me a simultaneous suspicious glance, but I passed it off with a beaming smile. Shrugging, they left the table in a cloud of chatter. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Remus glancing at me with an interested, but innocent expression on his face. I turned to him quickly and raised an eyebrow.
"What's got you all curious?" I asked.
"You," he stated blandly.
Of course he was curious. We were a regular pair of thinkers, we were.
Remus, anyone could tell you, was a quiet bookish sort. He tended to reason and logic his way through life, juxtaposing the outrageous and obnoxious ways of his best friends. It was this reason to why I'd always seen Remus Lupin as the most communicable of the lot. He wasn't so unbelievably out of his mind all of the time.
Not to say that he didn't have his moments. He was a Marauder, after all – but the anti-Marauder for the group, at least, when things got a bit dodgy.
When we had both become prefects in 5th year, I hadn't been entirely despondent, because we had several things in common – an obsessive adoration of all types of literature, a habit of analyzing everything we came across, and a work ethic that frustrated our friends to no end. So as we patrolled the corridors and sat together during meetings, I found myself forming an unlikely but not entirely unexpected friendship with him.
And of course, to my delight, it irritated James to no end. I've never been the type to pass up a perfectly good opportunity to annoy someone out of their wits, especially someone who seemed to delight in doing the exact same thing to me.
So Remus and I enjoyed each other's company, without the pesky interference of his pranksters or my curious friends, at times taking a break from the nonsensical people surrounding us. Patrols were fun and conversation was never difficult, just an easy flow of words between two people who had become fast friends.
But then Remus began skiving off. On a regular basis. And no matter how much I'd ignored what Severus had told me at the time, I couldn't just disregard it any longer.
I remember, distinctly, the night he'd told me. He'd been suspiciously shifty, and it was the week before the full moon – though I hadn't necessarily paid that mind at the time. Though I'd been chatty as ever, he had been decidedly quiet and thoughtful, though not nervous – it was as if he'd come to a decision that he couldn't avoid.
"You like me, don't you, Lily?" he'd said suddenly while I'd been rattling off everything I knew about magical tubas and the like. I stopped abruptly, in the middle of a fascinating fact about euphoniums, immediately growing suspicious at his incredibly out of place question.
"A fair bit, yeah," I said, confused. Jokingly, I asked, "Why? You're not going to confess to me, are you?"
He stuck out his tongue at my attempt to lighten the mood. "James 'd have my head, he's already gone completely mad," he replied, but then paused deliberately. The silence buzzed between us as my confusion grew and he remained still.
"I have lycanthropy."
Er. "You have whatsit?"
He stared at me for a bit as if I wasn't understanding something. Which I knew I wasn't, but it was still a tad irritating nonetheless. "Lycanthropy."
"Is that some sort of rash?" I asked, completely bewildered.
Remus gaped at me for a second. I had clearly not given him the reaction he'd been expecting.
He hesitated for a second, before completely unraveling in a way I'd never seen before. "Lycanthropy," he said, words tumbling from his lips, "is transmitted by a bite from a lycanthrope, and renders one in wolf-like state that only occurs at the peak of the full moon every month. In that state the lycanthrope completely loses its ability to think with human reason and submits to the bloodthirsty ways of the wolf, rendering it completely unable to –"
"So you're saying you're a werewolf," I cut Remus off, in fear of his inevitable death from constant babbling.
"Uh…yeah."
The silence, once again, reigned.
"Well, that's incredibly unfortunate," I said, looking at him rather sadly for a second. "You have to go through that every month? Must be bloody torture, right?"
Remus, if possible, looked even more shocked than he did before.
"You – you don't- you don't mind?" he spluttered rather incoherently.
"Why should I?" I smiled. "It's not your fault you turn into a violent hell-bent human-wolf hybrid every full moon. And I know that you're a fantastic fellow, wolf and all, so don't blow a gasket. Anyway," I said, tilting my head rather thoughtfully, "I'm a muggleborn, aren't I? So in this world we're both a little freaky. It's no big deal."
"You're not freaky. And you don't understand," Remus said. "I've been wanting to tell you this so I can explain my absences every month, but – "
"I understand perfectly," I said, and my tone was no longer light. "But I don't care."
His expression of relief, in that moment, marked down in my mind with the type of permanence a life-changing event usually has. It was as if the emotion flooded through him, as if he'd expected the worst and gotten far better than he could ever have imagined. And it was this that gave me the impression, in that instant – that Remus had much more bottled up inside his logical, reasonable self than anyone had ever really cared to explore.
Except for Sirius, James, and Peter, that is. And for a fraction of a second, I felt gratitude to the Marauders. There was no doubt in my mind that they knew every bit about Remus, especially more than I did, and supported him with more strength than I could even imagine.
Pondering this reflection over a steaming bowl of hot stew, I gazed a little too far off into the distance, and Remus took it upon himself to bring me back to reality.
"Lily – Lily Evans – hello, are you even conscious?"
"Quite," I said, falling out of my reverie and focusing my gaze on the weary blue eyes in front of me. "I'm absolutely fine, sorry Remus."
James suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I reddened immediately, and to my horror, it wasn't out of anger.
"What are you doing? Go away – " I began, but he interrupted.
"Is Lily okay? Does she need to go to the hospital wing? Does she need to lie down? I can take her to the dormitory – " he rushed urgently.
"I'm fine, you fool," I snapped. Remus rolled his eyes. "And I hope you'll never set foot in the girl's dormitory."
"It's actually sort of a lost cause," Sirius said through a mouthful of mashed potatoes. "We make sure to visit at least once a week."
I gaped at him for a second, before deciding to ignore this unpleasantly surprising tidbit of conversation. Glancing back over at James, whose sudden entrance had seemed a little strange, I realized he was decked out in full Quidditch uniform, and his Nimbus was tucked under his arm.
"Off to Quidditch practice again, Potter?" I sighed.
"But of course! The match is only next week, Lily," James replied, mock-exasperated. Instantly perking up, he quipped, "Come watch us fly! Alexander's girlfriend does all the time – " A fifth year clad in scarlet and gold Quidditch robes waved from behind the small crowd of the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
I found myself, already rather flushed, turning a complete and utter tomato red. Watch them practice! As if…as if I was some sort of…
Girlfriend.
As my mind sputtered over that concept, my mouth decided to run loose, and a jumble of "um, err, erk, I mean – " came out before I regained control of my speech.
"I think that's somewhere around a no," Remus said quietly to the side. Sirius sniggered slightly.
James looked heartbreakingly crestfallen. It took all the restraint I had not to leap off of the bench and hug him with all my might. As things were, I squirmed a bit in my seat and, the blush still flaming across my skin, said squeakily, "Maybe another time. When I'm not having lunch."
"But of course, my flower must have her meal," James said gallantly, before trooping off with the rest of the Quidditch players.
"Technically, flowers don't eat," Sirius called to his retreating form. Opening his arms as if they were petals, Sirius basked in the sunlight filtering from the enchanted ceiling, chanting, "Photosynthesis! Photosynthesis!"
Remus and I looked on in amusement. As Sirius continued to photosynthesize, Remus redirected his attention to me once more.
"So, you're acting more than your usual strange," he commented, waving his fork around rather carelessly.
That damn blush, the one that had just begun to fade away, returned full-force. I tried not to think about how James, just by being within feet of me, had made me completely lose my head.
And it was all because of this stupid realization. The acknowledgement of my feelings. Why did I have to do that? I could've been swimming in the river of denial, but instead I was floundering on the shores of blundering acceptance.
THOSE DAMN GRIEF STAGES. Why had my friends even brought them up in the first place?
"I'm really not sure who's crazier – you or Sirius," Remus said suddenly, and I realized I had been muttering "tsunami of denial" under my breath through my entire thought process, while Sirius had continued his photosynthesis.
He was still continuing his photosynthesis.
I sighed and turned to Remus, hesitant about actually telling him what was on my mind for obvious reasons. I decided to hedge my response a bit.
"Remus, I need some help," I started.
"You certainly do," he agreed emphatically.
"Listen to me, you dolt!" I cried, flicking the side of his forehead.
"Ouch! Alright," he said sorely, massaging the spot that I'd attacked.
"Say, hypothetically," I started off, "that…someone died."
Well, they were the stages of grief, right?
Remus gave me a horrified look. I guess I hadn't exactly started it off as well as I thought.
"It's all hypothetical!" I cried. "And not even death. Say that…something terrible has happened. And it's been happening for a very long time, but you just didn't realize it for the most part because you were in…in…d…denial."
"Denial," Remus said, tilting his head and looking at me oddly.
"You know what? I give up," I huffed, pushing my now cold stew away and slumping down on the table.
"Well, er, Lily…cheer up, will you? I'm sure it's not that bad," Remus said, sounding as unsure as he possibly could. He gave me an awkward pat on my back. "Be chipper, Lily flower."
I turned and ogled him. "You sounded exactly like James just now."
"Yeah, well, I thought it would work," Remus muttered.
"And why would you think that?" I asked shrewdly, narrowing my eyes dangerously. Remus immediately picked up on the impending doom.
"It's not like I meant anything by it, Lily," he laughed nervously, and as fear of my wrath once again overtook my prey, I began to realize something, quite calmly.
Remus was the ticket.
Remus was the ticket to figuring out the Halloween prank.
But of course! And in the common room – after those exploding puffskeins – Remus had almost given away the prank anyway!
I could feel it in my bones. Remus would be the easiest marauder to break.
"Nevermind what I was saying earlier," I said, shaking my head and waving my hand airily. "I've got other things I have to talk to you about. Emmeline and Robert just told me a couple hours ago that they can't take patrol on the 30th."
"Of October?" Remus said, surprised.
"Yes, what else?" I rolled my eyes. "And I was thinking, as long as you're not up to anything the night before Halloween…"
"PHOTOSYNTHESIS!"
There was a massive commotion as Sirius somehow leapt up on top of the Gryffindor table and began operatically singing with all his might.
"OaaahhAHAHHHHHH! LalaLAAAA!"
"What in Merlin's name?" I yelled, as Sirius pranced over to me and bent down so we were face to face – and for whoever was unfortunately behind him, face to arse.
Maybe not so unfortunate.
Bad thought tangents.
"Lily of the valley, the dearest flower of them all, the fiery, violent vixen of our prestigious school of Hogwarts," Sirius started with a knowing grin. "Are you trying to fool Remus into spilling Marauder-only secrets?"
I was infuriated. Not only because Sirius had caught on so quickly I hadn't even had the chance to weasel anything useful out of Remus, but also because he was so terribly right that I couldn't possibly argue back.
But I could lie.
"How dare you!" I said righteously, standing up from the bench for full effect. Sirius leapt down from the table so we were face to face – or more face to collarbone, given his ridiculous height.
"I believe, on the Wednesday of October 25th, 1978, Lily Evans fully and knowingly attempted to wheedle confidential Marauder information out of our poor, dear, Moony," Sirius stated in a pompous, arrogant tone, chuffing Remus roughly on the shoulders to Remus's displeasure.
"I believe that a certain Sirius Black, at the lunchtime on the noble day of Wednesday, October 25th, 1978, made false accusations against the honorable and innocent Lily Evans," I countered powerfully. "Let it be known that Ms. Evans was just merely trying to rearrange the prefect patrols, and never even touched upon the 'masterful' pranks of the so-called Gryffindor 'Marauders'."
Everyone surrounding us was watching with bemused, albeit rapt, interest. Sirius looked impressed.
"That was quite a defense, Ms. Evans," he commended.
"Why thank you, Mr. Black," I smiled grimly. "You're not too shabby of a prosecution yourself."
"Why don't we settle this in a quieter setting, Lily Flower? One with less spectators, perhaps? You know…a place for decent…alone time," Sirius said, glee edging the innuendo-laced words shooting from his lips.
"Only if Remus comes too," I grinned, relishing in the dirtiness of it all. Sirius barked with laughter as gasps ran up the Hufflepuff table. I giggled slightly, but resumed my straight-faced mask quickly.
"To the Common Room it is," Remus sighed heftily. Sirius and I grinned.
"Lead the way, ol' Moony o' Mine."
A/N:
Review! Please? Next chapter coming up, and I promise, soon!
-.x.