A Little Toil of Love

However, all such thoughts vanished from his mind when he heard the most mystical and haunting sound pouring through the nearby door, which was slightly ajar.

He hesitantly entered the enormous expanses of the unknown room, which gave the first impression of being a ballroom. The surreal music showered on him making him completely intoxicated. He drunkenly lumbered towards its source leaving soft tapping sound on the polished marble floor.

A large platform was glimmering in the light of rainbow-colored torches illuminating a corner of the room, while darkness dominated the rest. A golden harp was playing by itself on the center stage as if invisible hands were stroking their strings. Wavering torches danced along in rhythm. The entire room seemed to come alive and sway along the compelling resonance of the harp.

James felt happiness and pain; joy, angst, and contentment along such severe sadness that reluctant tears formed in his eyes. He was somehow experiencing total bliss and agony simultaneously.

"Oh, not again!" a melodious voice clinched in annoyance.

The music stopped and left the room so empty that if the tears that had formed in his eyes were let loose he would have heard them fall to the ground. The whole atmosphere along with the air, torches, chandeliers, coat of arms and statues seemed to scowl at his encroaching figure for disturbing their secret lullaby.

"Go away! You do not have any business here." The same evocative voice sounded from a dim corner of the room.

It felt as if someone had slapped him hard without a second thought. However his curiosity persisted and got the better of him.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Are all sixth-years as meddlesome as you?" the silky voice enquired, coming a little closer so that he was able to see a hazy but regal silhouette against the twilight sky that spilled through the open window.

"Oh, so that's what happened to Snivellus!" James muttered, realizing the reason behind Snape's blank stare while running his hands through his hair absent-mindedly.

His confidence and charming demeanor soon returned after discerning the fact that he was actually talking to a lady; 'a Mysterious Lady,' he added to himself as an afterthought.

"You are no better than him. I think you are worse." The voice had a tinge of amusement in it.

"Now look here, Miss..." James said awkwardly, raking his mind for something clever. "Your line of thinking sure resembles Evans'," he whispered to himself in dismay.

"Is Evans a girl?" she asked sashaying towards him, revealing her gossamer but imperial profile.

"You are a ghost?!" James gasped in shock.

"What did you expect? A stray banshee?" she asked icily hovering dangerously close to him, her ethereal tresses swelling about her face enchantingly. She was majestically beautiful with almond shaped eyes, stately nose and rose-petal lips encased in a diamond shaped visage.

"You are the Ravenclaw Ghost!" James said in awe.

"Thanks for informing me; I really didn't know," she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes and hovering towards the nearest window.

"Please, don't go!" James pleaded with her.

There must have been something in his voice, which caused her to stay and examine him closely. She studied him as if finding something familiar--hidden under too many folds.

However with her long and hard experience, she was able to judge him instantly. "You are not what you pretend to be, boy. You are too confident for your own good," she said omnisciently, while staring directly at him.

"I'm no boy. My name is James... James Potter," he said diffidently.

She looked at him intently as if deciding something, while he stared at everything except the specter in front of him.

"Let me tell you a story, Mr. Potter. Perhaps you'll learn something important from it."

James became all ears as he listened to her unearthly voice.

"Thousands of years ago, there lived a man, who didn't know that he would leave such a prominent mark on the wizarding world. He had such presence that wherever he went, people followed and looked up to him in awe. Almost everything about him was perfect and enigmatic to the hilt. He had everything anyone could ever wish for: a loving family, wife, friends..." she faltered but continued after a pause, "With the course of time, something happened to that wizard. He became proud of his skills and started looking down upon the same people who almost worshiped him because they thought he was kind and just; which he originally was, but the dark roots of greed and power clouded his heart and mind, and a day came when it completely engulfed his heart with black, power-hungry blood. His downfall came soon after because all his loving companions deserted him. He was left alone and went into hiding, and was written down in the history as a cunning, conniving, evil wizard."

She turned her back to him and continued while looking out of the nearby window, "I was one of those who deserted him forever and now when I think about it, I should have tried to reason with him. I shouldn't have left so soon..." she trailed off with a sigh, absentmindedly reaching for her eyes. She dropped her hand with a derisive laugh.

"I still can't get used to the fact that I can't cry." She gave a dry sob, looking at her splayed translucent hands. That was when James noticed a tattoo at the back of her hand shaped like a coiled snake.

Comprehension dawned on him, as his eyes widened in shock. "Are you the wife of--"

"Shhhh!" She touched his lips with one cold finger making him shudder.

Suddenly he was transported from the ballroom and was going through her life with the speed of light. She was somehow making him glimpse her life that has gone by.

As the sudden flashes slowed down, he was able to see:

Her first chance meeting with the one she loved at a party. She was helping a girlfriend in finding her match with her body-divination powers but happened to come about her own in the form of a handsome prince with jet-black hair and gracious features.

Her wedding day; she, standing proud, looking breathtakingly beautiful along with the handsome wizard who was placing a ring upon her finger...

The married couple drinking wine with friends and toasting away...

She, strolling along with her husband in an immaculate garden over-looking a lake...

She, secretly eavesdropping on a conversation of her husband with his followers...

She, watching from a distance the increasing arrogance of her husband towards his friends in a gathering...

She, writing her last letter to him...

You have gone to a place, from where I can't bring you back. I can't live to see you perish in your own malice. I don't see my Zar in you anymore; the one I loved deeply, the one I married and the one who only lives in the confinements of my heart now... With whom I'll stay forever....

Do not name my tomb as Elaina Slytherin, because she died long before with Zar. The body you will bury would be soulless and grayed by the mere spite of the façade called Salazar Slytherin.

She, standing in front of the same fireplace, where she had laughed with her friends, grasping a small vial and then drinking it in a single gulp, and finally falling to the hearthrug gracefully like the last lap of a prima ballerina...

James keeled over and gasped for air as if he had just been hit by a Bludger square in the chest. He had somehow felt her pain in the short journey that she had allowed him.

Can a loving and normal man turn into a power hungry beast? Does he, himself, have the affinity to become one? Has he offended more people than he made laugh? Such numerous questions throbbed in his mind, while he balanced his posture.

"You don't have to be all-knowing and all-doing to attract anyone's attention, Mr. Potter. I hope you rethink your priorities again," she said and bowed her head in a half curtsy.

"Milady," James bowed, his voice shaking with emotions.

It was almost daybreak when he left the room--which sealed by itself--unaware of the fact that he had stood his friends up. They had made for the dormitory after Madam Pomfrey's visit, sulking with empty stomachs except Peter, and were lying in different states of dishevel in the room they shared.

James could only register the first rays of the sun flitting through the small shafts in the corridor leading towards the Gryffindor common room. The golden beams engulfed him in soothing serenity filling his heart with a new purpose. Giving him hope that someday, he would regain the respect of the one he loved.