One Thing Left to Hide

Chapter 3

"Ah me, all mine.

Is it safe to say that we've waited patiently?

Call me on time,

And recall the tune that has placed us gracefully

All into line.

There's a garden grave and a place they've saved for you.

I'll fall by your side,

Though your silver-haired mama throws 'told you sos.'

We're laying in the shadow of your family tree,

Your haunted heart and me.

Brought down by an old idea whose time has come.

And in the shadow of the gallows of your family tree,

There's a hundred hearts or three,

Pumping blood to the roots of evil to keep it young."

[TV on the Radio//Family Tree]

Somebody shoves past me, knocking me, quite literally, out of my reverie. I realize that I'd been staring, quite intently, at James, Sirius and Lily. I'm still standing there are the base of the stairs, one of my small hands gripping onto the railing. There's a bustling of activity that comes with the nearing end of the lunch? - yes, it looks like lunch - hour. Students are milling about, reluctantly standing, taking their time stuffing books and parchment and wands back into their school bags - anything to further delay their inevitable return back to their classrooms.

I stand there, frozen. Completely unsure of how to proceed. We haven't spoken in... I can't even remember, it's been so long. Not since the great Snape debacle. That's for sure. Lily hadn't known about that. One day, James somehow caught wind of Snape's undying, obsessive love for Lily Evans. Seriously, he must have been blind, not to have noticed before. Snape's devotion to that girl was etched painfully into his every movement when he was around her. An intensity of rebuffed longing - a desire for something he had been informed would never be.

Regardless of whether or not he knew about it before, there came a day when James decided he would tolerate Snape's obsession with Lily - HIS Lily, no longer. So it began, the plotting and the scheming. Sirius, sworn enemy of Severus Snape since the day they laid eyes on eachother, was the mastermind. I don't even remember how I found out, but I did. Their hunched backs and bowed heads curved toward one another in an attempt to protect their hushed whispers. I heard them. I couldn't believe what I was hearing - but I did. I told them they were sick, told them that they were morons, that they should just leave the kid alone.

"Naw," they laughed. "We just wanna scare him a little."

They told me to keep quiet. Told me to keep Lily in the dark - if she knew, all hell would break loose. I didn't. And they were right. It did. She ended it with James over it for a while - it wasn't just a stupid prank. He was smart enough to know the difference by now. James redeemed himself at the last moment by trying to put a stop to it - intervening before Remus could rip Snape to shreds. Reg rolled his eyes when he heard. Sirius stopped speaking to me, James too. Lily still wasn't speaking to Sirius. And from the looks of it, neither was Remus.

I catch a glimpse of his shaggy, sandy-colored hair as he walks past me, hands clenched tightly around the straps of his brown book bag, brow furrowed in concentration as he stares intently at the ground. He's walking too quickly to not be watching where he's going - one of the few actually eager to

return to his studies. There's a pang. A miniscule ache compared to the other behemoth I've been carrying around with me inside my chest all morning, but strong enough that I feel it. I miss him.

Suddenly, there's a pretty mass of soft red hair in front of me. I take a quick, shocked breath, inhaling a pleasant mouthful of Lily's unmistakable scent. Floral, with a hint of sweetness. Gardenias and vanilla, maybe. Another pang. I'd missed her, too.

"Hey..." Her words are careful, cautious. She's looking at me the way she might look at an ill-tempered beast in a cage - like I might snap at her and take a limb off at any second. I can't say I blame her. My sleep-heavy eyes are slow to move in my head as a shift my gaze to her. I attempt a smile, but I'm fairly certain I can't pull off much more than a contorted curvature of the lips at this point. It most certainly doesn't reach my eyes.

"Hey." She repeats herself this time, more to make sure I'm actually paying attention - hearing the words she's so kindly speaking to me.

"Are... are you alright? You weren't in class, and... nobody'd seen you. I was worried."

Another pause. Am I supposed to say something? I give moving my tongue a try; it's still glued to the roof of my mouth. Completely unwilling to cooperate. God, Evie, say something.

She starts again, "When you didn't show, I... well, I sort of asked..."

Finally, she cuts to the heart of it.

"I heard what happened." She gives a sort of shrug of her small shoulders, and swings her chin in the direction of the Slytherin table - something I'd mercifully managed to avoid looking at until this moment.

He's impossible to miss; standing heads taller than anyone else around him. She's there of course, tossing her brambles of twisted black hair this way and that, practically quivering with the delight of her imagined triumph. Over me, over him. I don't know what she's so smug about. This is how it's supposed to be, anyway. She reminded me of that every chance she got. He had, too. Whether he knew it at the time, or not.

"We'll never be able to tell Mother about this, you know." He easily envelops one of my comically undersized hands within his own. I make a face of disapproval. I'm not sure if he saw it. He's too busy gazing at our intertwined fingers and palms, marveling at the shape they create. Pale flesh on pale - mine tinged with hints of pink, his more greenish-gray. Like he was genetically pre-dispositioned to coordinate exactly with the colors of our Slytherin uniforms. I wouldn't put it past her, either. Walburga. Or, "The Burg," as Sirius calls her. Anything for her "perfect" son. The one who would never leave her.

After Sirius rejected his role of crowned Prince of the Noble House of Black, the burden of each and every one of Walburga's heavy expectations fell upon Regulus's shoulders - a responsibility he took very seriously. He described it to me once, the day she came to him. She sat him down, took his hands, already well refined from the years of piano lessons, within her own bejeweled, thick fingers, and explained to this ten-year-old boy how it was all up to him now.

"You're all I have left, now, son," she told him. Then, she leaned in and pressed her lips, withered from years of venomous, disapproving frowns - most of them directed toward Sirius - against his smooth, bewildered forehead. A mother's kiss - one that would prove to be the kiss of death for Sirius and Regulus's relationship.

I had never met the woman. I still haven't. But I don't have to. I can see her so clearly in my mind. Large, bulbous in all the wrong places; draped in full sheaths of the most expensive of fabrics, each one a varying hue of the same base shade of putrid green. Painted red lips; gaudy baubles and tassels abound - completing the effect of the woman looking like a large, flagrant Christmas tree gone horribly, horribly wrong. No, I've never met her, and I don't have to. I don't have to meet her to know that I'd absolutely despise her.

Because, I already do. I hate her. I hate her for each and every outrageous demand shrieked at Regulus.; for every insult spat in Sirius's face. For the rows of the severed house elves brazenly mounted along the hallways in her home. For making me, a girl she's never met feel unworthy of her son. For the piles of hideous, brassy gold jewelry stuffed with glittering green rows of teardrop emeralds - jewelry she would absolutely adore to see dangling from the skinny throat of Bellatrix Lestrange. The very girl who everybody knows is the one who's supposed to marry her prized son - the crowned Prince of the Most Noblest House of Black.

Yes, after Sirius left, Regulus inherited all of the familial obligations, including perpetuating the purity of the Black bloodline. Nevermind the fact that they're cousins. Nevermind the fact that she's older. Nevermind the fact that they have nothing in common. Nothing but a name. But, apparently, that should be enough. And so, the arrangements were made. A date was set. And the ancient, arcane tradition carries on. Only The Burg could be crazy enough to believe that mating with blood-thirsty, sociopathic Bella could in any way be "pure." They're perfect for each other. Bell-UH and The Burg. Two of a kind. Both of them cut and patterned from the same sadistic cloth.

So, there it was. The inevitability of Regulus and Bella's matrimony, staring me in the face, big, wild and black, like the irises of my beloved's intended's eyes. It was always there, hovering and lingering in one of those adamantly unspoken of areas of my mind. But it was there. Nevertheless. Tinting and tarnishing any foolishly happy thought of our imagined future together that managed to bubble up in my idle thoughts, and momentarily unguarded daydreams.

But that's me. Stupid me. Staring this living, breathing, undeniably real obstacle to our relationship - just one of many, even - and ignoring it. Hoping everything would turn out for the best. Closing my eyes, turning my head, selectively blinding myself to it. Constantly telling myself, "it'll all work out; it'll all be okay." And then, his lips would reassure me, assuaging all of my doubts with kisses and softly spoken words and promises; even though everyone else around me was screaming (sometimes literally) to the contrary.

"You're a fucking idiot if you think he's ever gonna go against what his precious Mummy says." Sirius thrusts the potato dangling at the end of his fork, speckled, red, and dripping with gravy, into my face. You could always count on Sirius not to mince words.

"Besides--" he shoves the ill-fortuned potato, along with a sizable hunk of roast into his mouth, "it's not like it's ever gonna go anywhere, since he's a fag and all." He swallows noisily, ending any further discussion of the subject. I look at my own plate, feeling nauseous. Not because of Sirius's tendency to shovel as much food into his face as humanly possible, but because I know he's right. About the first part, anyway.

I knew I could rely on Lily, beautiful, brainy Lily, to provide me with slightly more well-reasoned, rational advice.

"Evie." She sighs as she strides up and down the rows of the DADA classroom, setting cages of hinkypunks in the center of each long, battle-scarred table. I follow behind her, marveling at the fact that Dumbledore hasn't just added her to the payroll yet.

"The Burg's never going to change her mind about the Bell-UH thing. You know she's not. And Reg never goes against anything she says. And I know you say that it doesn't bother you, that you're too young to worry about marriage, etcetera, etcetera..." She stops suddenly to investigate a book on one of the shelves lining the room that's apparently out of place. I nearly slam into her. Coordination has never been my strong point. She turns around to look up at me.

"But I know you, Evie, and I know that it's going to make you absolutely crazy - not getting what you want. You always have to get what you want. And besides..." She cocks her head to the side, studying the irritated face I know I'm making before continuing, "Evie, this is Bell-UH we're talking about, here. She'll probably try and off you in your sleep, or something." She re-alphabetizes a few more books before resuming her harried rounds of straightening, cleaning and organizing. I sigh, and fall into step behind her. You could always count on Lily to be right. About... well, pretty much everything.

And then, there was James. I find him outside, flanked by Peter, pacing back and forth, studying the Quidditch play schematics he has clutched in one hand. He's always in motion, James Potter. I glance down at Remus, James's opposite in so many ways, as he sits, serene and still, a large book propped up against his knees. His quill hovers above a piece of parchment resting on the grass beside him, dutifully awaiting the slight wave of Remus's wand that sends it into a frenzied bout of note taking.

A soft, warm breeze works its way across the quiet grounds, only adding to the widely copied, but never fully duplicated, rumpled effect of James's hair. I breathe deeply, grateful for the momentary warmth of the sun. I'm so accustomed to the frigid temperatures of the dungeons.

"Evie." James looks at me, aghast. Like I just asked him if I should chuck his broomstick at the Whomping Willow. "The guy wears scarves."

I stare at him.

Exasperated at my failure to immediately understand the validity his point, he adds, "When it's not even cold outside, for fuck's sake."

James Potter. Sage, all knowing, perpetual-purveyor of wisdom. You could always count on him to provide the soundest, most thoughtful advice of all. After rolling my eyes so hard I'm afraid I might strain something, I look to Remus. Desperate for at least ONE person to say something I want to hear. Instead, I hear Peter muttering to James, "Totally a valid point, mate." James claps Peter on the back loudly and heartily before climbing back to his feet and resuming his pacing. I want to smack the both of them.

Remus finally looks up from his book. "I think you should just.... Do... do what makes you happy."

I smile at him. He smiles in return before flipping a page in his massive book and flicking his wand. The gentle scratching sounds of Remus's quill attacking the parchment join the crunching sounds of trampled grass under the heavy footfalls of James's Quidditch boots.

And so I did. And I was. Happy. Blissfully, irritatingly, deliriously happy. For nearly the two whole years that we were together. But now...? I wince. I feel my hand wrapping itself around the cool fabric of my wrinkled, white button-down shirt. It's too much. Too soon. Remembering. The laughing, the inside jokes; mocking anyone and everyone around us. The clutching, the grabbing and the kissing. That unmistakable sensation of his fingers cinching around my waist. The poking, the prodding, the pushing of buttons. The incredulous, raised eyebrows, tiptoeing through silent hallways to each other's dormitories. All of it.

Stupid me. Crowned princess of naivety. I thought that would last, too.