Chapter 5
Sirius really helped me out the next few days. See didn’t I tell you he was the best friend ever? He kept a kinda informal guard around me so that Lily wouldn’t be able to get me on my own. I know that sounds strange, like some weird military operation but it was just so nice to see Remus so happy, we didn’t want anything to go wrong. Luckily I had Quidditch practise on most nights leading up to the game against Ravenclaw. Lily wasn’t on the team so she had no real reason in hanging around, Sirius was so he did. We got in really late at night and crammed homework into the little spare time we had, enclosing ourselves in books.
The night before the Ravenclaw match Sirius had finished his homework and was trying to keep awake. I knew how tired he was and didn’t really want to forfeit our game by having two players not at their best due to lack of sleep.
“Sirius you can go to bed now.” I chuckled as his elbow slipped off of the table. “Look at you, you’ll be falling off your broom tomorrow if you don’t get some sleep in!”
“But-” was his half formed protest.
“Nope - Lily went to bed ages ago, I’m safe, night!” I watched him trail wearily up to bed before getting back to my work. I heard a door open on the landing opposite me.
“James.” I groaned, it was Lily. She walked swiftly down the stairs, came over to my table and sat in front of me.
“What do you want?” I grunted, not lifting up my head.
“Um, I need to talk - no,” she added sensing I was about to cut in “I really do need to talk, no kissing I promise, please just hear me out!”
“Okay, but your staying over there.” I said warningly.
“Yes of course.” she sat there silently for a couple of minutes. I looked up, she was staring straight ahead with her liquid green eyes.
“Umm you were going to say something?” I prompted, eager to get this over with.
“Yes, oh yes, sorry James.” she said fixing her eyes back on me, I looked back down at the book I’d been copying from but didn’t take back up my quill. “Well first I want to say sorry. Sorry for freezing you out and sorry for, well, for what happened the other night.”
“It’s not me you need to apologise to, it’s Remus. I don’t see how you could do that to him. He’s really fond of you, honest he’d do anything for you, and you well, you don’t seem to be very grateful. What were you thinking? I’m one of his best friends!”
“Oh James! Don’t you think I know that?” Lily moaned tears spilling onto her cheeks. “I really though that I loved Remus, truly. And I suppose I still do, but in a different way. I need to end it. But I don’t want to hurt him - anymore than I already have. But oh - it’s just too complicated, please you have to listen to me, all the way through. And without interrupting!”
“Ok” I said still forcing myself to look at my books, quill, knees, essay, anywhere but at Lily.
“Okay, this all may sound a bit strange but bear with me - please. I’m not used to story telling. Well ummm I really don’t know how to start this. I suppose I better start by saying that me and Remus well we were very happy until you -”
“This has nothing to do with me, I was dragged in!”
“James - please! You promised!” I said nothing. “Oh this really isn’t easy, I’m going to sound like a mad woman, but you’ve got to hear this, or I will go mad.
“Okay so me and Remus, we were really happy. When we got here I guess we’d been going out with each other for about - umm four weeks, yes four weeks before term started. Well you know what happened on the train, and that evening, and for about a week after that it was fine. Then I started having the dream. Don’t look at me that way James - I said this would sound odd!
“Well this dream, I first had it about a week after we started term. It was the strangest, scariest but most vivid and real dream that I’ve ever had. It was about me, and it was about you and it was about a baby, our baby I guess. His name was Harry. I really don’t know what happened much in the dreams, I mean, it was just like I was seeing into the future - though I’m not saying I was, mind. They were all different, it was like watching TV - that's a muggle entertainment thing - like watching a soap or something. The characters were the same, but it was a different ‘episode’ every time I saw it.
“Well they were all really nice, and happy but I was too happy in them. And it was you that was making me happy, not Remus. So I decided that I’d shut you out, perhaps then the dreams would stop. Perhaps it was just a sign, that I wasn’t paying enough attention to Remus. So I blanked you, for about two weeks it worked perfectly then...”
“Then it didn’t?” I questioned but Lily didn’t answer. She’d started to cry. She folded up onto the table, head in her arms, crying silently but shuddering as if what she’d been telling me, or what she was going to say, was really hurting her. I was about to reach over and try to comfort her when she stopped. She sat up again, shuddering composed but tears were still shining down her cheeks.
“Don’t James - please.” she croaked. She sat there for a moment, sniffing and trying to stem the flow of tears with her sleeve.
“No, then it just didn’t work. I had another dream. But this, this, oh it was so much worse!” For a moment it looked as if she was going to cry again, but no, she held.
“It was that night last week. I’d been in the library, doing some homework when I dropped off to sleep. Then I had the dream again. But this time it was different. This time it wasn’t like a television, more like a dream, a proper dream. I was standing there, crying holding our baby, Harry in my arms. Oh James, you could tell he was ours, I saw him properly this time and he was older, about 11 months old. He had black hair, thick black hair that was all funny and messy like yours -”
Here I absently reached up to flatten my unruly hair. Lily smiled weakly but didn’t stop.
“And he looked just like you did when you were a baby. Remember in second year, when you and Sirius had a row and he copied that picture of you as a baby and stuck it up all over the school? Well he looked just like that - except. Well except he had my eyes. His eyes were bright green, just like mine. Oh James, he was beautiful, he was mine, he was ours!”
Again it looked as though she might break down. She did cry again, but her tears slid silently down her face, and she didn’t start shaking again. In a moment or two she was composed again.
“And, like I said I was crying, I was howling, and shaking all over, and the baby, he was crying too. But I didn’t know what we were crying at, I knew that I was as sad as I was ever going to get, and more, but I didn’t know why. And then, well my dream camera turned, showing what I was seeing, and, and...” Here she did break down again, crying violently and shaking all over.
“James, it was you, I was crying because... you...you were dead. James, you’d died, and left me and Harry!”
Chapter 6
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