A Chance You Only Get Once

Chapter Twenty-Two
What You Don't Want To Hear

"James, stop it," Lily said sternly, juggling Harry on her hip. James was beginning to think that it was a nervous habit. "How could we not tell Remus? The next thing you suggest will be that we don't even tell Dumbledore that we're switching Secret Keepers." Lily glanced over at him. "Oh you've got to be kidding!" she cried, reading the expression on his face.

"Dumbledore is a great man, Lils," James said simply, "but he has a habit of trusting people that I'd rather not know about this. He's also notorious for doing what he thinks is best."

"Off with his head," Lily mumbled, cooing at Harry as if she were speaking babytalk. She smiled briefly when Harry giggled adorably, and then turned back and frowned at James. She carried Harry over to the chair where her husband was sitting. "Say goodnight to Daddy, Harry," she said, bending down so that James could give his son a quick kiss before Lily took him upstairs to his bed.

When she came back in, she picked the argument up right where they had left off. "You can't not trust anyone, James." She sat down across from him on the ottoman at the foot of his armchair.

James sat forward more as he spoke to her. "We're trusting two people with our very lives. With Harry's life. We're trusting more than anyone should ever trust anyone else. It's a delicate game, but the key is to know whom you can and should trust." Lily wondered at times like these how she could have doubted once that James Potter loved her or doubted that she could love him. Then again, he had grown up so much since then. They had all had to grow up so very fast. Even so, he was such a very great man that it was hard to imagine ever doubting him.

James went on, oblivious to his wife's inner monologue. He continued to list reasons that neither of them wanted to listen to. "He doesn't work, Lily, but he's very busy. He's always disappearing with no explanation or warning. He doesn't report any of his work to the Order. He knows things that we didn't tell him. He knows the things that Death Eaters seem to know. And how is he paying for anything? That stupid half-blood clause took his inheritance when Evelyn's scandal broke. He lost everything when his parents died and his grandmother turned out to be a Muggle. He hasn't been around us very much anymore. He has money coming in that he doesn't get from a job. He's disappearing mysteriously, and not for Dumbledore."

"It's Remus, James," Lily sighed, her shoulders slumping. She felt like the real betrayer for believing these arguments.

"You're not going to want to hear that it's Peter or Sirius either," James told her firmly. "It kills me, but we know it's someone as close to us as only those three are. You know that you want to believe it's Sirius or Peter even less than Remus. And Remus has evidence against him."

"Remus was your friend long before he was mine," Lily said softly, voicing the one argument that would not let her give up hope on Remus fully. "You all once took a huge risk just to ease his pain. He couldn't believe such friendship would ever be offered to him. How do you think that he could ever betray it?" Her heart wasn't in it, however. She knew that she should trust Remus enough. Unfortunately, wishing she could trust him was the most that she could manage to do. What had happened in the intervening years? Why had they had to break apart?

"It wasn't just that he couldn't believe it, Lily; he never really did believe it," James said. "All those years, even in our height, it wouldn't have taken much to convince him that it was all a lie. Even Marissa. He was never even sure of her."

"Marissa loved him," Lily said, the sadness and sense of loss almost overwhelming even after all of these years. "And she was the best judge of character of any of us."

"We all loved him back then, Lils," James replied. "He was a different person back then. Marissa's death destroyed him in more ways than even she could have imagined. But before you assign her god-like qualities for her judgment, think: was she right about Snape?"

Lily stiffened in automatic anger. "That's right," James continued, pressing his advantage. "He stood right in our house and admitted that he was Death Eater. Marissa was wrong about him. She could have been wrong twice. Hell, we know that she was wrong twice. She never would have considered that one of our number had betrayed us. But someone has."

"I don't want to think it's Remus," Lily said, tears in her eyes and her voice.

"I know you don't want to hear it, Lils, but you have to, for Harry," James told her sternly. "I don't like it any more than you do, but it's true. There's a betrayer in our midst. And you know that it's Remus."

"How did it come to this?" Lily whispered, leaning forward until she was lying with her head on James's chest. She adjusted until she could lie against him comfortably. He put his arm around her. She relaxed, feeling protected and safe for one blessed moment. "Why couldn't it just be a straight fight? Why can't we just face him down? Why does it have to be find the spy, catch the traitor, don't trust anyone? Even the people that you thought you knew?"

"That was his plan all along," James said quietly. "And in a way, he's already won. That's why we have to beat him, so that we can undo all the damage that he's done. All the families that he's torn apart and the lives he's ruined. We need to put a stop to it. And we did. We gave the world Harry, and Harry can save them all."

"I can be strong for Harry," Lily whispered. "I can do anything for Harry. Even give up on Remus."

"So can I, love," James said, suddenly sounding just as defeated and depressed as Lily. Lily realized that this was even harder for James than it was for her. It had to be. Remus had been his friend longer. Remus had been the one that needed them. Remus had been the most loyal, the conscience of the Marauders at Hogwarts. It was very difficult to accept that the conscience of the Marauders, who had earned the love of the nearly-idolized Marissa Fletcher, could be a Death Eater. And not only that, a traitor.

But when they had no choice but to admit that someone had betrayed them, they had to look at the evidence. And it pointed to Remus. Now the only thing was to be strong and do what they had to do to protect their son. No matter what it cost them.

* * *

Owl Post winged in every day at the same time. How the owls from all around the country coordinated this entrance was one of those great mysteries that no one ever thought about. Occasionally a bored Muggle-born would look up from a dull breakfast and wonder idly about it. Other than that, it was an unexplained and uninteresting phenomenon.

People were, naturally, far more interested in whether or not there was an owl for them in the formation than how it formed. Once it arrived, they were, naturally, far more interested in the contents of the letter than how it arrived. No one really noticed the owls of Hogwarts except when they had to send a letter themselves. Then they walked up to the Owlery and found them sleeping silently or out hunting. No one cared to think of them doing anything else.

And the morning of the last day of November was no exception in the Great Hall of Hogwarts castle. A few people did, however, take particular note of four or five owls that came in with the rest of the army of owls.

The owls themselves were not remarkable. They weren't regulars, however. Few people took notice of which owls were attached to someone at Hogwarts or the owls of parents and friends who regularly sent them letters. But while no one pondered the simultaneous appearance of the owls, there were several teachers, as well as the Headmaster, who noted which owls regularly delivered to Hogwarts.

It had a great deal of uses. Strange owls brought purchased term papers. Strange owls bore strange tidings, things that the students might need help with. Strange owls came from the Ministry with terrible news indeed. And today's owls bore the strangest and most disturbing news of all.

The letters themselves were solid black. Completely. The ribbon that tied them closed was black. The ribbon that tied them to the owl's leg was black. The back and the front were pure black. There was no writing on them, or if there was, it was the same deep, dark black color as the paper.

They flew to students and disappeared again too quickly to be caught and trapped, and what would the owls have told them anyway? Even if the owls did organize among themselves, they didn't carry messages to humans from themselves. Those that delivered the notes were quite ordinary owls. It was the messages that they carried that were extraordinary.

That is, in a nutshell, why owls will always be overlooked. Their burdens have a far greater effect on wizards' lives.

And the effects of these messages were both immediate and far-reaching. They came to students as warnings and as propositions. They came as tidings of news that didn't reach them for another few days. Each letter was ambiguous by the invisible writing on the paper that seemed to suck all light out of the air around it. But everyone knew who had sent them.

They were also sent as a message to Dumbledore. His precious school wasn't impenetrable. It didn't matter that the walls and Grounds repelled the Dark Lord. It didn't matter that Voldemort would never dare attack Hogwarts, because its students were not incorruptible. Not even his staff were immune. Dumbledore's students and Voldemort's spies swarmed all over his precious school, in all the Houses, and even those who thought that they were safe enough to not fear him could be reached through their families.

In all the excitement of the messages that they brought, the owls were quite overlooked... Especially when one landed at the Gryffindor Table in the middle of the group of sixth years.

* * *

"The Headmaster will ask the advice of the prefects eventually; I want to have an answer ready for him when he does," Valerie Malfoy was saying to the assembled prefects. Marissa wished she felt comfortable enough to suggest that if Dumbledore wanted their opinion, McGonagall might have said something about it in the last five minutes when she had just been sitting there looking at Valerie as if she were pretentious. She would have left off the "pretentious" at the end. It would have been a great way of coercing McGonagall into actually reporting their advice to Dumbledore, however.

Marissa was annoyed with the way that Valerie was treating her. Marissa was the ultimate team player. Even when she didn't quite agree with the team, she could make their work easier. She wasn't the ideal leader - just look at the chaos and dissention that ran rampant in the James Potter fan club she led - but she could help the team. Even when she didn't like the game, like in Quidditch, she found ways to make the leader more effective. She liked stealing the spotlight occasionally, but that didn't mean that it was done to hurt the general objective.

Remus was annoyed for her sake, but Marissa absolutely refused to whisper comments in his ear for him to say instead, as he had suggested. This pact was protecting him now too. She hadn't even known that when she made the pact, but she had saved Remus from a far worse fate than she had been trying to forestall at the time.

"We can't very well open every piece of mail!" Alice exclaimed. "Some of us have lives." She shifted in her seat. She always felt very moody in meetings these days. She had, as Valerie had predicted, proved an unsuccessful unofficial leader of the Unofficial Topple Valerie Un-coalition. She sent a highly ineffective glare in Valerie's direction.

"No, but we can certainly scan for creepy black notes," Marlene pointed out.

"What a stunning vocabulary," Mercedes Meliflua, the fifth year Slytherin prefect, said nastily. Mercedes had been basking in the reflected glory of Valerie all year. Never mind that Valerie couldn't stand her; it was politics. Mercedes took license, and it made Valerie look more powerful to grant it despite her distaste for the girl's words. "Creepy. How clever."

"Oh shut up, Mercedes," Stacy Meirson snapped, almost glaring at Valerie for not shutting her up herself.

"Miss Meliflua, Miss Meirson," Valerie said mildly.

"Whoo! Cat fight!" Jackson Abbott cried loudly. Patrician flicked him on the back of the head.

"Now just a moment, Mr. Abbott," Gilderoy Lockhart began to wind himself up for a good long speech. He already had his self-righteous smile plastered on. It was rather dreamy, all the girls admitted. All of the prefects, however, knew him far too well to be impressed by it. Lockhart was a pretty face and nothing more, the type that was best left sitting somewhere, decorative and silent.

"No one wants to hear it, Gilderoy," Valerie cut him off swiftly. However, when she turned back around, despite the power that was radiating off of her, she looked panicked. Marissa shifted slightly in her chair, catching Valerie's eyes. In them, she saw defeat. She couldn't rule by fear. Prefects had too little at stake in the game. They had to be ruled by loyalty.

"Miss Fletcher," Valerie Malfoy said, holding Marissa's gaze steadily. "As a recipient of one of the notes, what is your opinion?"

Marissa stared steadily back at her, not claiming a victory. After a moment, she spoke, "I don't think that it'd be a good idea to try to censor the letters." She sat up straighter and continued, "Besides the time involved, there are privacy issues, and we really don't want to push Voldemort to try something more subtle."

"Meaning?" Lockhart demanded importantly. Marissa repressed her urge to roll her eyes.

"Meaning we can monitor what he tries through Owl Post. It's public," Marissa replied simply.

"It's intimidation," Valerie put in. "That's his intention as much as anything else."

"What would you know about that?" Gary Bryce put in.

"It's common sense, Mr. Bryce," Marissa answered instead of Valerie. "And you're right, but that's general intimidation. It bonds people closer together because they have the same fear. They only separate if they choose to. What we should fear is when you get a person on their own and try to intimidate them. That makes them alone as well as cornered and afraid."

"I sincerely hope, Miss Fletcher, that you are not speaking from personal experience," McGonagall surprised everyone by speaking.

Remus immediately freaked out. "Of course not," Marissa said quickly. "I would have told you," she said to Remus, looking at him seriously. "No, I haven't, Professor, but I think that the very fact that you know who might be in trouble is proof that we shouldn't try to drive You-Know-Who to other forms of communications, ones you might not know about."

"But what about division?" Alice put in thoughtfully. "Look at how estranged all of the people who received the letters were. Everyone seemed afraid of them, even of Riss here."

"He was sending us quite a message, wasn't he?" Marissa murmured sadly.

* * *

The flurry of the black letters arriving overshadowed every other letter arriving that day. In the shock and near panic of the owl arriving for Marissa, no one noticed that Lily had also received a letter. Lily barely noticed herself until the owl pecked her, and then she just shoved the letter into her bag and went back to worrying about Marissa.

All of them had shadowed Marissa carefully all day. Not until she and Remus had left for the Prefect Meeting did Lily have a chance to pull out her own letter and see what the news from home was. On reflection, she probably shouldn't have left it so late. There would be word of her mother's condition in this letter.

Lily wondered idly if that was part of the reason she hadn't found an excuse to read it during class or when they were sitting in the Common Room. She dreaded what it could and probably did say. So she opened it in the crowded Common Room, half hoping that someone would come along to interrupt her and talk to her so that she could ignore it longer.

The boys appeared to be out wandering, which probably meant that they were going to spy on Marissa and Remus on their way back from the meeting. Lily didn't really see why they were so fascinated with that. They were cute, yes, but they always acted that way around each other. They were walking back in a group of the goody-goodies of the school. She supposed that, in its own way, it was cute of the Marauders to like watching how happy two of their friends were. Remus and Marissa acted more like a married couple of twenty years than people who had really only been dating for a little over a month. It was weird to see how comfortable around each other, how dependent on each other, how attached to one another they both were. Weird in a wonderful way.

Lily sighed. It made her so jealous to see them.

Lily ripped open the letter resignedly. This was enough stalling. She didn't like the feeling of running out of things to think about. It was a full minute before she could force herself to look at the letter, however.

It was from Petunia. That didn't bode well.

Dear Lily,
Mother's condition has -

Crash. Bang. Clang. Boom.

Okay, so the Marauders clearly were in Gryffindor Tower after all. Lily looked up in surprise like everyone else in the Common Room, and then returned reluctantly to her letter when nothing appeared to explain the explosions.

Mother's condition has been steadily worsening since you left. Not, of course, that we feel abandoned by your retreat. We are quite capable of making it, don't you worry about us.

Lily sighed. Only Petunia could make her feel guilty for leaving and also unnecessary in the same sentence.

In fact, we can make it through the holidays quite well without you. Mother has passed out of the realm of awareness. She asks repeatedly why tinsel and evergreen have been displayed everywhere in July. She keeps looking for an eight-year-old Lily and a four-year-old Petunia, disbelieving that her daughters have grown up. Father is the only one that she still recognizes, and she apparently doesn't trust him. She appears trapped in a day in July several years ago when Father didn't have the gray hair he has now.

Father and I have learned to deal with this new Mother, so heavily medicated that she cannot see us through the fog. You, however, would suffer needlessly if you returned home now.

Father and I have our routine. It isn't much at a time like this, but as Mother has lost the holidays this year, we have decided to ignore them as well. You could never do this with us, sister, and thus I request for our sake that you will remain at Hogwarts where you will be free to celebrate Christmas to your heart's contentt. We do not wish to celebrate it this year; it would be too painful. The Evans family only wishes that the holidays would go away.

You need not see Mother this way. In her more lucid moments, she tells Father not to bring the children (she still believes us very young) to see her this way. That is not how she would want you to remember her, sister. I wish that I had never seen this in her. For your own sake as well as ours, please do not come to see it.

You are, of course, free to do as you wish, but it is our collective wish that you remain at your school. Father would never write this to you; he seems to have quite forgotten the glitch in his pretending that your return would cause, so I write to tell you that it is quite all right for you to remain at Hogwarts for the holidays.

Happy Christmas,
Petunia Evans

Lily had no thoughts for a very long time. She didn't even notice that tears were running down her cheeks until Marissa, whom she hadn't known had returned, came over and put her arm around her. She was looking at her anxiously. "Lily?" she asked quietly. It was an invitation to explain.

Lily didn't want to explain. She didn't want to think. She didn't want to think about this hateful, terrible letter. "The Evanses are skipping Christmas this year," Lily said quietly. She noticed idly that the letter was shaking and wondered why. Was the Common Room unsteady? It did seem to be swimming in front of her. EARTHQUAKE!

Lily's heart sped up rapidly, and then slowed just as painfully fast. What was the matter with her? It was something both more or less damaging than an earthquake. "And they don't want me to come," she said, her heart breaking with the words. She turned to look at Marissa at last with her red, tearstained eyes that looked more lost than Marissa had ever seen her friend.

Marissa gently, then firmly, pulled the letter out of Lily's shaky but desperate grasp. She took it and quickly scanned the letter. She got halfway through with it and looked up to face her best friend, looking nearly as horrified by its contents as Lily was shattered by them. "Lily, you don't think that they really mean - "

"She's gone," Lily said, letting out a sob and diving at Marissa for a hug. Marissa held her as she cried. "She's gone. She's worse than dead. She's left us. She really left us. Somehow I never really thought that she'd be gone. She doesn't even know who we - " Then she was crying too hard to say anything else. It was worse than her mother's death. It was worse than if her mother hadn't wanted her there any more than Petunia did. It was worse than Lily had imagined that it could ever feel. Her mother was gone. And she wasn't coming back. And soon she would die and even her body, the last remnant of her, would be buried in the ground to be eaten by the worms. Lily shuddered and shook at these thoughts. Wherever her mother had gone to, she had left Lily behind forever.

"To think of Dad and Pet visiting her every day and her not even seeing them!" Lily sobbed. "Oh, how could this have happened? Why did this have to happen?" Suddenly, Lily pulled away, her face suddenly fierce. "Why couldn't it have been me in that car crash?" she demanded loudly enough to turn heads. "Why couldn't I have been the one who was hurt?" she screamed. "It should have been me!" Then she was turning and running up the stairs, with Marissa hot on her heels.

Once in their room, Lily turned around sharply and nearly fell. Marissa managed to catch her and hold her again as she sobbed out all of her woes. Marissa whispered calming words she didn't really believe, rubbing her back comfortingly. They stood that for a very long time before Lily quieted and allowed herself to be half-carried to her bed and tucked into the covers. Marissa stayed with her, sitting on the bed, until she fell asleep.

Then she closed the curtains and went back down to the Common Room where she immediately fell into Remus's arms and cried all the tears that she had held back in front of Lily. She was tired of being the strong one. The world was getting too heavy for her to carry anymore.

* * *

Marissa was seriously considering dropping Divination. Forget that knowing the future had lost all appeal for her, Galda MacBone was truly annoying. Whether or not you believed her predictions, the look she had like she was trying to hold something back was frightfully annoying. She was doing it as she read Sirius's tarot cards that afternoon in her stuffy tower room.

"Go ahead, give it to me straight," Sirius said lazily, preparing to ignore her entirely as he leaned back in his beanbag comfortably. "I'm a big boy, I can take it." Marissa stifled a chuckle and relaxed back herself, determined to try to take Sirius's attitude toward the Divination professor who, unfortunately, seemed to be right more often than she was wrong.

"It's only this card ... I believe it is your brother," Professor MacBone said, watching it closely. She flipped another one, looking at it carefully, peering so hard she seemed to not see it anymore. "You have already turned to different paths. You are separated by a great wall," she mumbled almost to herself, flipping another card. "But still connected at the deepest level."

"Oh, that's great to hear," Sirius muttered under his breath. Marissa smiled at him sympathetically. She and Remus had been spending a few of their "dates" searching through the heredity books, and even the old yearbooks, to try and find a forgotten relative of Sirius's. So far, no luck. No one who had turned out well in Sirius's family had made history, or if they had, they had apparently been disinherited.

"I'm so sorry I wasn't doing this right," Marissa murmured back. "I didn't think I'd sic Galda on you."

"There will be tremendous pressure put on him soon," Professor MacBone murmured thoughtfully, oblivious to their conversation. "Pressure that he is not prepared to deal with."

"Are you reading my fortune or his?" Sirius asked drolly, rolling his eyes.

Professor MacBone didn't notice. She was thinking too deeply about the cards she was slowly, systematically laying out before her. "He is strong, like you, but he has a weakness. He will be pressured to betray that one loyalty that he has been taught to honor above all others. Family will be his undoing. He will not betray his family. Even family with whom he has become estranged he will not give up. He would fight you fairly, even to the death, but he would not deliver you into another's hands. Only Blacks can spill Black blood. To any other it is a sacrilege to him. He will die because he cannot betray you."

"Shut it!" Marissa cried suddenly, startling the whole room. The Hufflepuffs that took this class with her and Sirius must have some wild notions about the sanity of Gryffindors after all of their theatrics this past term. "Why would you say such things to him?"

"My dear, the fates have revealed - "

"Well they can go hang themselves, because we don't want to hear it!" Marissa snapped. She had been watching Sirius throughout the professor's last speech, watched him grow paler and paler at the thought of his brother still caring about him. Even paler when he realized that he didn't care for his brother like that anymore. Paler still when he began to wonder if that made him the bigger traitor.

"Why do you think that you can just tell us the future? Let it work it out for itself! It's still going to happen. You're not telling us anything useful like how to avoid the bad things happening!" Marissa cried angrily. "Tell me how to do that and I'll stay in this class, but as of now, I'm out! I can't sit here and listen to you predicting and messing with people's minds!" She leaned over the table, slapping her hands down, looking Professor MacBone in the eyes as she spoke, "The bridge is crossed. One brother is on each side. Let it effing burn. Neither of them is going to cross it again. No matter what you see in a bunch of stupid cards," Marissa said, rising to her feet.

She looked down at Sirius. "Take notes for me, will you? I'd hate to miss any of her dire prophecies," she said sarcastically. "I'm beginning to think that you have to be a sadist to like Divination. Who the hell would want to know when someone was going to die? Or all the awful things that are going to happen?" she said all this as she walked to the trapdoor and threw it open. She swung herself down somewhat carelessly and it wasn't until she hit the bottom that she saw him.

She screamed in surprise, but then gasped in relief. "Remus, for heaven's sake, you've got to stop doing that!" she cried, relaxing and lowering her wand. Sirius poked his head down after her in response to her scream. She smiled and shook her head at him as she closed the trapdoor.

"I can understand you shadowing me yesterday," Marissa told him, not sounding particularly understanding. "I even understood the overprotective measure of dragging me with you to Defense yesterday, but you can't skive off class to guard the door to mine!"

Remus smiled sheepishly at her. "I just like knowing that you're safe. Ever since you got that letter - "

"That letter was a warning to someone else, not to me," Marissa told him sharply. "And this is Hogwarts, Remus. Do you really think that Voldemort would attack Hogwarts? Just to surprise my Divination lesson and carry me off? Please try to be sensible, Remus. I'm safe in Hogwarts."

"That's what I thought," Remus said darkly. "And then you get a letter from Voldemort himself - "

"Remus," Marissa said tenderly, coaxing, "Voldemort has bigger fish to fry than me. He has bigger problems on his plate. Like Dumbledore, for instance."

"I know that," Remus said. "In my head I know I'm being crazy, but..."

"No, you're being terribly sweet," Marissa said with a smile, sliding under his arm. "But try to relax, will you? You're already starting to gray around the temple there. Not that it's not cute, of course."

"Yes, starting to look like a geriatric is really doing wonders for my sex appeal," Remus said sarcastically, as they started to stroll down the stairs.

"Works for me," Marissa said with a smirk at him.

"And that works for me." He gave her a quick kiss. "Now why exactly were you storming out of Divination?"

"Oh, I just dropped it. I've got to go tell McGonagall I don't want to know the future anymore now, I suppose," Marissa replied lightly.

"Great! You can sign up for Muggle Studies with me."

"Remus..," Marissa sighed in frustration.

"What? It's not because I want to keep an eye on you," Remus insisted, a twinkle in his eyes very like Marissa's giving him away. "It's a very important subject, my dear. And it's not like you know anything about it."

* * *

Marissa had never been like this with anyone before. Severus knew that without having watched her for years. She gave him a wide berth. She sat at the extreme end of their table. She did not speak to him. True, they had stopped needing speech to work together months ago, but she had always been the one to extend the olive branch of friendship.

Now she wanted nothing to do with him. Whenever she had to cross to add an ingredient to the potion, she walked on the far side of the table. He wanted to point out that she was only getting closer to two other Death Eaters, Igor Karkaroff and the soon-to-be recruited Annette Penola. He didn't, however. Severus had nothing but self-control.

Marissa felt betrayed, but that was only because she was an idiot. He had been honest about what he was. No, he hadn't told her explicitly, but she had known that he was from an old family and agreed with Voldemort's politics. She had known that he was as ambitious as he was unscrupulous. She should have known that he wouldn't be repelled by the means. He only cared about the ends. That was the big dividing difference between him and Marissa Fletcher.

Snape had stopped trying to talk to her after the iciness with which she had received him on Tuesday. Snape sighed. He missed her and hated himself for that more than anything else yet. Even if he had felt some attraction, even if it had crossed into affection, he should have been able to shake her off. He should at the very least be able to forget her.

What Snape hated most of all was that he now knew how much she had been lying, and not just lying to herself about him. He hated that he was going to tell Lily Evans in the hopes that Lily would be able to get the truth out of her. He hated that when he had seen her receive that black letter his heart had frozen in fear. He hated that he knew what it meant more than she could ever guess. He knew more than he wanted to know, and he hated that he was going to tell her.

He also hated, on a more trivial level, that she was annoyingly not letting him talk to her where it would be convenient. Snape suppressed a sigh. It would be a difficult conversation no matter where it occurred. She would just want to yell at him, and he would have to make her listen. He had to. He hated that.

Snape also hated that she ran off the instant that class ended. She didn't run off with Remus at least. He hoped that she would find the note that he had placed on top of her books. He hoped that she would come. He hated that he hoped in her so much. Damn! He was really losing his edge over this girl.

He followed behind the others of her group. Marissa had apparently run on ahead. Off to take her medicine in private? Snape had to resort to using his wand to drop one of the Mudblood's books to get her to hang back behind her "friends." Snape wondered if Marissa was the only one in their supposedly close group who was really friends with everyone in it. The hypocrites. And how good of a friend was Marissa to them, really, to be keeping this from them? She was a much better hypocrite.

When the Mudblood had waved the boys ahead, and they had run eagerly off without her, to plan some elaborate prank no doubt, Snape walked over and stood over her until she had finished picking up her books. "Snape," she said simply when she saw him, starting to move past him.

Snape really hated how stupid people could be sometimes. "Evans," he returned, trying for Marissa's sake to be cordial. He hated, by the way, that he was still being polite for Marissa's sake when she wasn't even being polite to him. "I have run the analysis on the medication samples you gave me."

Lily stopped and turned to look at him. "Madam Pomfrey told us what those were for when Marissa collapsed," she said, as if he should have known. Of course, Snape had known about the collapse, but it had only made him work harder at discovering the secret. He knew that both Marissa and the nurse, if Marissa insisted, would try to sugarcoat the diagnosis. Snape wanted to know the real one. And he still didn't. "She's allergic to some potion ingredient we're using this year." The Mudblood smiled in relief and shrugged, ready to leave.

"That's a lie," Snape said softly, awed by the simple and bold-faced lie that Marissa had so casually told them.

The Mudblood nearly dropped her books. She looked as if that was what she had feared all along. She turned slowly back to face Snape. "They are not wizarding medicines. They must be something Muggle. You're going to have to convince her to tell you what it is. I can only tell that they're a very strong stimulant, and something else that killed my toxic specimens that I've been trying to find something to weaken for months. It's very strong, whatever it is."

The Mudblood looked as if she were going to cry. "She lied to me?" she demanded of Snape as if he should be able to answer such an absurdly obvious statement. Her face then went from surprise and pain to anger. "Why would she do that?"

"Because my best guess is that she is not well," Snape replied. "She is probably, in fact, dying." The Mudblood looked as if she could have killed him for saying that to her. Snape didn't care. But he hated that his heart was breaking with the thought. He hadn't even known for sure that he had one until it began to break. It was not a welcome discovery.

* * *

Sirius had been shocked to learn that Marissa wanted to meet him here. It was shocking enough in itself to see Remus and Marissa not attached at the hip. It was strange that she would want to talk to him away from the rest of their friends. He and Marissa had been as close as she was with any of the rest of the Marauders, excluding Remus. They had talked alone before, but it was always by accident, at least pretended accident. What was truly strange about the invitation, however, was that it said to meet her in a room right beside the now doubly evil corridor.

When he approached the room that had been his private sanctum before Marissa discovered it last year, he heard a soft music coming from behind the closed door. He opened it, half expecting to see someone else waiting for him, perhaps even a "nice girl" that Marissa wanted to set him up with. He hadn't expected Marissa to be playing the piano.

It was too much. She couldn't play the piano too. What was more, she couldn't be a closet player. Sure, she had a piano in her house, but he had thought that it was for decoration. He stood by the door until she finished and looked up at him, a serene smile on her radiant face for a long moment. Then she blinked and looked up at him, herself again and far more worried.

She smiled to see him a moment later, however, "'Lo, Padfoot," she said. "Come in." Sirius walked over and stood over the piano, watching her curiously. She did not move to play another note. "You've been watching over me nearly as closely as Remus lately," she said simply.

"I'm not in love with you, Riss," he assured her. "I think we've covered that. This summer I was just - "

"Oh, I know why you did that," Marissa cut him off with a little wave. "I also know why you've been watching me. I never got to thank you properly for it either." Sirius sighed, trying not to remember how she had looked only a little over a week ago. "So thank you, Padfoot. You saved me. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't found me. Thank you. And I'm sorry that you had to see that."

Sirius said nothing. He tried to nod, but he was paralyzed by the terrible memory. He had become an expert at repressing the rape memory. He needed to be able to repress this. "Is there anything you'd like to talk about, Sirius?"

"Yes," Sirius said, snapping out of his trance and standing up straighter. "When did you learn to play piano?"

Marissa looked at him for a moment, and then nodded, as if accepting his preference to ignore the situation. "Actually, I don't know how to play. It's a charm. The Living Memory Encantation," she explained. "The charm is complex enough, but Lily figured out how, using a bit of useful Transfiguration, you can not just replay an old memory in a space, but act it out or put it in a different form. This memory is of my mother. I look a lot like her so it didn't take as much spellwork as it might have. Even I can do it.

"It was the last song that she ever played. She used to play it for me a lot. It's called 'Castle in the Clouds,' a song about a little girl who goes in her dreams to a place where she's safe and everything is perfect," Marissa smiled. "I've wondered since I got my Hogwarts letter if this was the castle that she was talking about. The thing about Hogwarts is, unlike Cosette's world, it's a real place, and bad things get in through the cracks. Evil, trouble, sickness, it's all here. It's quite a fall from the clouds sometimes."

Sirius wondered how she had managed to talk to him about what had happened without actually talking about it. "You're welcome, Marissa, I only wish that I could have helped you more," Sirius said quietly.

Marissa smiled at him and half-laughed, "Twice now you've saved me in the corridor just outside of this room. I see how you fear it, how you scorn it. I do too, but it's silly of both of us. This is where you proved what a great friend you are to me, twice. I suppose how high off the ground this castle is depends on how you look at things."

"We might all be much happier if we could look at things your way, Riss," Sirius said with a half-laugh. Marissa smiled.

"So you can come back here now, I hope," she said, standing and starting to walk out. "Play me out, Padfoot?" She did, indeed, dance out of the room as Sirius struck up a song. Sirius smiled; he always found release in the beauty of music. It was such a simple thing that could take all of your attention and focus. He was glad of the gift that Marissa had given back to him: the nerve to return here to his sanctum, even if it meant passing the terrible corridor.

"Where are you going?" he called after her.

"I have another appointment," she replied simply as she slid out of view.

* * *

Marissa was walking along in the woods calmly and trustingly. It only proved how very naive she could be. When she was walking by a tree, a man suddenly jumped out at her, grabbed her around the waist, and surprised her with a long kiss.

Remus pulled away after a moment, his arm firmly around her. "You'd just kiss some stranger in the woods who jumped out at you?" he demanded, raising his eyebrows at her.

Marissa just laughed at him. "Who else but my boyfriend would surprise me in the woods?"

"Nobody now, because you're not walking in the woods without me anymore while you're this trusting," Remus declared.

"You're getting obsessive, Remus," Marissa laughed. "Don't get me wrong. It's very sweet, and I love spending so much time with you, but you do know it wouldn't be a betrayal of our relationship to spend some more time with your friends? Lily and I have been rather selfish with you lately."

"I like being around you, Marissa," Remus said firmly.

"Well, you can't argue with that," Marissa said with a pleased smile. "So why did you want to meet me out here?"

As they walked past the tree where Snape had hidden himself, he watched them silently. Only when Marissa asked her question did he realize that she wasn't just ignoring him and flaunting Remus in front of him. He should have known better. She thought that her boyfriend had written the note rather than stalked her and nearly attacked her in the woods. Curses! What did he have do to get her alone these days? Besides kill Lupin?

* * *

Lily walked slowly over to Marissa's vanity. She slowly extended her hand toward Marissa's cosmetics case. She flipped the catch and slowly opened it. She reached for the bottles at the bottom, reading them and trying to make sense of the labels. She couldn't, but like Snape, she could get a general idea.

It was then that Lily went from very sad and worried to very, very angry.

* * *

Remus and Marissa went on a long walk in the woods, ended up having a snowball fight when they reached the open Grounds, and only split up when they went to their respective Prefects' Bathrooms to clean up. Marissa walked into the bathroom, taking off her cloak and was starting to pull up her shirt the moment that the door closed.

Then she saw him. "GEEZ!" she cried, yanking her shirt back down. "Ever hear of announcing your presence?" she cried angrily, looking flustered and trying to regain her bearings. He wouldn't have been able to see anything, really. All he got to see was her anger and discomfort. Severus Snape wondered if he had ever let himself consider her beautiful before.

"Ever hear of not stripping down without checking the bathroom first?" he returned automatically.

Marissa pulled off the shoe that she had been untying and threw it at him. Snape barely managed to jump in time to spare the targeted region, but it still hit his stomach rather hard. "Oh, silly me! As you're not a girl or a prefect, I should have known you'd be here when I came in." She was untying her other shoe now, sitting on a stool.

"You realize, of course, that you're still technically undressing in front of me?"

"I'm getting more ammo," Marissa said tersely, brandishing her shoe at him threateningly.

"I need to talk to you," he said carefully, seriously.

"And you couldn't find anywhere else to do it?" she demanded. "Not, say, the Great Hall or the Courtyard or, here's a really crazy idea, Potions class."

Snape wasn't used to dealing with this furious, unyielding, sarcastic Marissa Fletcher. He found he only liked her better for it, but it was still unspeakably frustrating. "I needed to talk to you somewhere without the Moroners listening in to every word, just waiting for an excuse to try to break my nose."

Marissa brandished the shoe again. "I have to tell you something, Marissa," he said quickly. The use of her first name stayed her throw. She tossed her shoe ineffectually at his feet.

"Talk fast," she said bluntly.

"Someone near you is talking to Voldemort," Snape said. No point in beating around the bush (not that Snape understood what the hell that phrase meant - it was one of Marissa's).

Marissa's face contorted instantly into fury. "GET OUT!" she screamed loudly, her scream echoing off the bathroom walls. "How dare you!"

"Marissa, yes, I am a Death Eater. That's what that tattoo you saw on my arm means, but listen to me." She was on her feet now and looking ready to hex him. "That's exactly why you should take it seriously when I tell you that someone near you is telling Voldemort everything about you. Your neighborhood, your father, your maid, the shape of your doorknocker, everything. Everything about your friends is known, things that could only be learned from someone close. How else would I know these things?"

"Doorknocker?" Marissa repeated, sounding surprised. Snape wanted to scream just as she had a moment ago. That was all that she had absorbed from his speech? He seemed, at least, to be getting through to her on that point. She looked thoughtful and concerned about that at least.

"Marissa, they know things about you, about your friends. Someone is telling them. One of your friends - "

"Shut up!" she cried, but she looked like she was in denial rather than directly angry. "Shut up! You don't know them."

"Do you?" Snape asked quietly. "How well do you really know Peter Pettigrew, for instance? I notice you don't talk to him that much anymore. He barely talks to you at all. Or Sirius Black? His brother, I know, has joined."

"How dare you," she said, looking at him in disgust and anger, "You stand there with that mark on your arm - "

"You act like I bloody owed you something!" Snape exploded. "I joined before I became your little pet project!" He turned away, pacing in a circle before turning back. "This is what I was brought up to believe, to do. You always knew what I was. I thought with you that there was no 'us' and 'them.' That's why I thought that we could be allies despite sides. I thought that that was why we could be friends across enemy lines."

"Voldemort has declared war on all that is good, Severus," Marissa said, coldly and immovably, her voice like ice. "In war there is always 'us' and 'them.' I just didn't think that you were them. At the very least, not yet." Then she softened suddenly, again looking as if she were close to tears. "My world fell apart the day that I found out you were a Death Eater."

"If...if Lupin hadn't, would you have..?" Snape found himself asking.

"No, not with your arm bearing the same mark that flew over Lizzie Walker's house after she was murdered," Marissa said, the coldness back in her eyes. "I didn't think that you were that, Severus. I suppose I was wrong. You said once that you'd never lie to me. But you did, Severus. You lied about what you were."

Snape grabbed her arm when she moved toward the door. He held her fast when she tried to break away. "Are you any different?" he demanded, pulling the pills out and putting them in her face. "What are these, Marissa, if not a lie? A secret? If you're so perfect, why didn't your best friend know what you were taking? Why did she have to come to me to find out the truth?"

Marissa broke away, snatching back her medicine. She looked livid again. "How dare you spy on me!"

"How dare you hide this! And pretend that you're so perfect!" Snape yelled back.

"You think that you have a right to know before my little brother?" she snapped at him. "Well you don't!"

"You have a brother?" Snape said softly in surprise.

"Perhaps your source isn't so close to me after all for you to not know that," Marissa snapped at him. "But yes. And none of that is any of your business. Nor is what I take."

"And what I do with my life is none of yours," Snape returned. "How about this: I'll tell you why when you tell your friends what's wrong with you?"

"Be ready with your answer after Christmas," Marissa snapped at him, "because I'm telling my brother over the break. Then Remus. Then my friends. My enemies last."

"So I'm your enemy then? Because I picked a different side? Because we don't agree on every point? All that friendship you built just vanishes in an instant?" Snape said. "And because I'm the enemy, you won't trust me? You won't even consider that I might be trying to help you?"

"It's war, Severus," Marissa snapped. "Forgive me if I don't trust the opposing side. Especially when they're the ones murdering innocent people for no reason."

Snape wanted to take her neck between his hands and strangle her. Good. That was how he should feel about the Mudblood. However, he wanted even more to make her understand. He shouldn't feel that way. "The Ministry has become a witch hunt that's not much better."

"I'm on Dumbledore's side, not the Ministry's!" Marissa cried. "And so are all my friends!"

"Fine!" Snape snapped. "Hate me, Marissa. I really don't care. It doesn't look like you'll be around to do it much longer anyway. Whether it's your secret that gets you or the secrets that someone close to you is leaking to the Dark Lord because you refuse to hear it. But listen to me. Please. I've never begged anyone for anything in my entire life, but listen to me when I tell you that you're in danger. I'm begging you to believe me."

"Of course I believe you," Marissa snapped. "But that doesn't mean that I have to like it. I reserve the right to shoot the messenger. Now get out."

"You will-"

"I will watch. I won't promise more," Marissa said firmly. "Now get out before I hex you into next week."

* * *

Marissa really hadn't thought that it was possible to fume when you were floating in the most luxurious bathtub known to mankind, with playful bubbles dancing all around you. It was, however. In fact, once you started, it was nearly impossible to stop. So Marissa cut her bath short and just got dressed and headed straight up to her room, where she would hopefully be able to calm down before any of the Marauders could ask her why she was so worked up.

She especially didn't want to tell Remus that Severus Snape had nearly seen her taking her shirt off. Oops. Those thoughts weren't helping her calm down. And she needed to calm down. Hormones weren't raging any more, but being angry took so much energy, and not even considering the come down after the adrenaline left her, it distracted her body from its vital work of repairing itself and staying together.

At least, that made sense in her mind. Wasn't that why doctors were always saying to rest? Again, it would make sense.

So it was that a seething Marissa that met a furious Lily Evans in their dorm room. It wasn't going to be pretty. Marissa was already preparing to yell at her for going through her things before she saw that her medicine case was open and Lily was sitting next to it. Marissa stopped on the threshold when she saw her best friend sitting by her things as if she had a right to rummage through them.

"How dare you," Marissa said quietly, her voice full of all the fury that she could barely keep in check. The pain that she felt at being asked to suspect one of her friends only increased her annoyance with the double invasion of her privacy and near exposure of her secret. "How dare you go through my things. How dare you give them to Severus Snape." Lily started to retort, but Marissa spoke over her, "If you didn't believe me, then why didn't you ask? Why did you go behind my back and ask Severus Snape? You hate him! You're supposed to be my friend! Come to me if you don't believe something I say. Don't go snooping with your enemy!"

"I did believe you," Lily said, just as much fury radiating off of her. Lily was always frightening like this, visibly powerful with shimmering waves of magic coming off of her. "That's what makes it worse that Severus Snape tells me that he's run an analysis on the pills I gave him before your little lie, and found that they're Muggle pills. So you couldn't possibly be using them to combat a magical allergy. How do you think it felt to have someone that, as you pointed out, I severely hate, be the one to tell me that my best friend lied to me?"

"I didn't lie; Madam Pomfrey did," Marissa snapped. "I just didn't tell you the truth."

"You always hated when people made such fine distinctions," Lily spat back instantly. "You said it proved that they knew that what they'd done was wrong. And in this case it's just a big 'duh' so I hope you do know it!"

"'Duh,' Lily?" Marissa said with a fake smile.

"Oh shut it, Riss," Lily snapped. "How could you not tell me?"

"What was I supposed to do? Stop by this summer at the hospital for your Mum and say, 'oh, and by the way, Lils, since you're not under enough pressure already, God decided to up the tally. I'm sick too' right when your mother was having surgery?" Marissa cried back.

"Oh, and then all these months you've been, what, tongue-tied?"

"I've been trying to spare you any pain!"

"Bullshit!" Lily cried. "That is absolute bullshit even if it's not a lie! Do you think that we wouldn't want to help you through this? That we would want to be lied to all this time? Do you think that we would honestly want you to have to go through this on your own? No! We'd want to be there for you!"

"Yes, and you'd want to coddle me and not tell me anything bad so that I wouldn't be part of your lives anymore!" Marissa yelled back. "You'd treat me like I was made of glass, and start distancing yourselves from me because you were sure you were going to lose me, and start freaking out about everything! I just wanted you to be normal. I just wanted you to be my friends like you always have been!"

"We'll still be your friends!" Lily shouted. "Now tell me what's wrong with you!"

"NO!" Marissa cried, knowing how irrational it was. She slammed the door shut and strode into the room. "I want more time."

"Too bad," Lily said bluntly.

"You invaded my privacy; you went to Snape," Marissa told her. "You owe me. You owe me until Christmas. You owe one last holiday season. After all our years of friendship, you owe me that, Lily Evans."

"You lied to me. You kept me in the dark. You deceived me," Lily answered her. "You owe me the truth."

"If I tell you, you have to promise that you won't tell anyone," Marissa said fiercely.

"Absolutely not," Lily replied immediately. "You owe Remus the truth even more than me."

"No," Marissa said. "I want Christmas, Lily. I want Christmas to tell Gus. Then I'll tell everyone. That's been my plan all along. I just wanted one more term. One more term where everything was normal. Please, whatever you do, don't tell Remus yet."

"To think that I once thought that you were the most selfless person that I know!" Lily cried, throwing her hands up in frustration. "How could you be this selfish? You're stringing along the man who loves you! How can you not tell him this?"

"So that he doesn't ruin our time together brooding about how he's going to lose me!" Marissa screamed back. "You know how Remus thinks," Marissa said more quietly. "He wouldn't be able to look at me and see anything but loss. He wouldn't let himself be happy with me. Then the memory he takes away of me would be all sadness and pain. I want to be remembered as something beautiful. That's all I have."

Lily and Marissa were both crying by this point, unable to contemplate what neither quite had the willpower to say aloud. Their voices were still filled with anger. "You have to tell him. He's planning the rest of his bloody life with you there. He needs to know that he can't have that. As much as you don't want him to, he needs to prepare himself for getting over you. He needs to know not to let himself need you too much," Lily told her. "You have to tell him."

"I'll tell him after Christmas," Marissa replied. "Can you not give us that?"

"How can you not tell the man that loves you that's you're sick? All this time I've been thinking how terribly lucky Remus is to have you," Lily shook her head. "But the truth is that you don't deserve Remus Lupin."

"You think I don't know that?" Marissa cried. "But please, give me another month when he adores me. Please don't let that time be a memory yet."

"He deserves to know," Lily said, unmovable. "If you're not going to tell him, I don't know what to think of you. I don't want to share my room with a person who would do this to someone that they care about as much as you care about Remus. Get out until you've told him."

Marissa had no intention of following these orders, but she found herself being propelled backwards from where she stood. The door swung open, and she felt herself being thrown out of it as it slammed behind her. The force of the magical push sent her tumbling down the stairs, with her only managing to slow her descent by throwing out her arms and legs.

She rolled down to the bottom and spilled out into the Common Room. Luckily, there room wasn't very high up. She stayed there for a moment, drained, before attempting to right herself. Remus was there to help her up before she could begin to stand. She smiled at him and let him lead her where the boys had gathered. She shared a large armchair with him and sat chatting with the Marauders for a few hours before they began to scatter to leave for Astronomy. They didn't ask her how she had come to fall down the stairs.

When Lily came down, she brought Marissa her pillow, a blanket, and her medicine case, but she didn't invite her back in. And Marissa found that she couldn't open the door when she tried. With a sigh, Marissa moved down to one of the couches off to the side of the Common Room and made herself a bed to sleep on. She was exhausted these days, so it didn't take much for her to fall asleep. In fact, it was the first time as far back as she could remember that she didn't just hit the sheets and wake up in the morning. She had always enjoyed winding down into the dream world before the illness. It was yet another thing that had been stolen from her.

The next thing that she knew, she heard a noise as four of her friends made their way back into the Portrait Hole after Astronomy. Once she was asleep again before she could even recognize their voices.

Marissa had chosen a partially hidden couch to settle down on only in part because it was near the fire. Mostly, she didn't want to alarm anyone else. She might even be able to sneak back up to her room in the morning. Indeed, the Marauders would have walked right past her without noticing if Lily hadn't stopped to make sure that Marissa was still all right, or perhaps that she hadn't broken through Lily's charm.

When Remus saw Marissa lying out there, he immediately went over and knelt by where she had her head on her pillow. He gently brushed her hair back from her forehead, knowing that it would wake her up. She shifted slightly and moaned as she was pulled again from sleep. "What are you doing down here?" Remus asked her, stroking her hair lightly to keep her awake.

"I'm sleeping on the couch like a husband who told his wife she looked fat in her dress robes," Marissa mumbled nearly incoherently.

"And what did you do?" Remus asked, sounding amused.

"File that information away for future reference, Moony," James said with a chuckle.

Marissa shifted and mumbled again, "Had a fight with Lily. Kicked me out."

"Why didn't you go back in when we left for Astronomy?"

"Charmed. She's more powerful than me," Marissa's eyes were still closed, and she seemed to be very quickly beginning to fall asleep again.

"Are you going to apologize to get back in?"

"No," she shifted again, trying to find another comfortable position. "I intend to continue being unreasonable."

Remus chuckled softly, shaking his head at her in amusement. "Well, you're not going to sleep down here."

"Yes, I am," she mumbled, sounding as if she dropped off halfway through the last word. Remus only smiled and picked her up, blanket and all.

"No, you're going to get to sleep in a bed," Remus countered.

"Not making up with Lily," Marissa mumbled, her head leaned against his chest.

"You can sleep in my bed, I'll sleep down here," Remus replied.

"I'm not kicking you out," Marissa argued weakly. "I'm not moving. Staying here."

"No, you're not moving," Remus said with another soft chuckle. "I'm moving you. And yes, you are staying here, because you're in our room."

Marissa seemed, at last, to wake up at that. She opened her eyes and looked around, "Remus..," she protested tiredly. "Take me back down."

"Not a chance. You deserve a good night's sleep," Remus said, shifting her in his arms so that he could pull back the curtains to his four-poster. "If anyone in this relationship is going to sleep on the couch, it's going to be me."

"You aren't sleeping in the Common Room because I had a fight with Lily," Marissa insisted, trying to rise weakly. Remus just pulled back the covers and pulled them up over her firmly. "At least with me it had some sense of justice."

"I think I can solve that problem," James Potter said pointedly, leaning against the threshold of the door and looking highly amused. "And while we're all immensely flattered that you'd trust us in here with your girlfriend, Moony, I think that you staying to keep an eye on her would be the best thing for your future sanity."

"He's right, Remus; you're at least sharing the bed," Marissa murmured, already settling against the pillows and beginning to doze off again despite her earlier protests.

James let out another laugh. "I was actually going to suggest the window seat. It has a decent cushion, but if that's where your mind is, Riss, I don't think that Moony here ought to complain."

"Oh, put a sock in it, Prongs," Marissa mumbled. "You know perfectly well you were not going to suggest that."

Now Sirius let out a bark of laughter from behind the drawn curtains of his own four-poster. Remus drew the curtains around Marissa to exclude her from the conversation, hoping that she could start to get to sleep. "She's got your number, Prongs," Sirius called.

"I don't want you giving her a hard time about this tomorrow," Remus was saying, trying to look stern and actually doing a remarkable job of it.

"Moony, it wouldn't be humane to deprive us of this opportunity," Peter said. "Now where's your sense of fairness?"

Remus was about to argue when Marissa said, muffled from behind the curtains, "Just swear them to secrecy, Remus, then come on. They aren't capable of keeping any other promise."

The other Marauders laughed. Remus glared at them. "Well, she's right," James shrugged. "And we won't ever tell. We wouldn't do that to you guys - seriously."

"It would be a very un-Sirius thing to do, actually," Sirius added.

"Oh, for the love of Merlin, stop with that joke!" Peter cried. "It's been done! A thousand times now! Let it die!"

Remus slid through the curtains very carefully, not wanting to disturb her or make her question his intentions. He knew that Marissa had grown up with old-fashioned Christian values, and from off-hand comments she had made throughout the years, she was still very committed to her faith. He had known from the start that sex wouldn't be an issue for a very long time. She had, after all, nearly been raped only a few years ago. He knew that this didn't mean anything along those lines to her. So he was careful, because he didn't want her to think that he would start pressuring her after this.

He stayed on top of the covers, fully dressed, on his side of the bed. Marissa sleepily rolled over until she was next to him, cradled in his arms with her face in his chest. Suddenly she laughed. "Remus! You can take your shoes off!" Her laughter was echoed by more from his friends.

"Yeah, take it all off, Moony!" Sirius shouted over.

"Not a chance," Remus whispered.

"You're being silly," Marissa said. "Thank you," she whispered, immediately dropping into sleep. It had been a tremendous effort for her to stay awake that long. Remus sighed and held her in his arms as he slowly drifted to sleep, thinking as he did that he could do this for the rest of his life. He could do this forever.

* * *

She could tell from the light that spilled through a small opening in the curtains that morning had come and was probably well advanced. She could tell by the straightness of the sheets that neither she nor Remus had moved all night. The curtains were drawn all around the bed, as if enclosing them in their own separate world of dark red hangings. She could tell by how safe she felt that Remus was still holding her.

She had shifted slightly, not worrying about waking Remus as she had heard all the tales of how he slept like the dead. She gently disentangled herself from his arms and pushed back the covers. She poked her head out carefully into the room. It was later than she had thought. The boys were already gone; even James's bed was empty. At the foot of the bed, resting on Remus's trunk were the only folded clothes in the room: hers.

Her medicine case, which they probably assumed was her cosmetics case, her uniform for today, her shoes, and, resting politely beside it, the Invisibility Cloak, which Marissa assumed was how she would be returning back down the stairs unseen. She had worried about that, but she breathed a sigh of relief. They had no classes Friday morning out of respect for the Astronomers, and it didn't look like it was time for lunch yet, but Marissa was rested and it was probably past time for her medication.

She opened the curtain and slid out, closing it again behind her. The question was where to change her clothes. She finally braved the boys' bathroom and put on her uniform hurriedly. She also took her morning medicine hurriedly. She wasn't sure if Lily would let her back in today. She tried to freshen up as best she could, using her wand to clean her teeth. It was a useful spell that she had learned for when she woke up late. It wasn't nearly as good as actual brushing, but it would do wonders for her breath and stave off the cavities for a day or two.

When she emerged from the bathroom, Remus was standing before her, hair tousled, eyes a little blurry, and looking at her in confusion. He said almost accusingly, "So you were going just sneak away without saying a word?"

"Thank you for putting me up, Remus," Marissa replied. "I really appreciate it. I just thought I'd go test Lily's mood, see if she's going to be forgiving anytime soon." Marissa started to move away, but Remus reached out and gently caught her arm. It would be easy to pull away, but she stopped. The truth was, she was close to panicking. She had felt so safe and wonderful when she woke up this morning, and she had wanted to scream and cry that she wouldn't be able to have Remus much longer. Maybe Lily was right, too. Remus needed to start learning to let her go, to stop relying on her so much.

"Are you...upset? Angry? Embarrassed?" Remus asked nervously. "Is it too weird? Do you want to take a few - steps back?" Marissa could tell how hard it was for Remus to say that. It made her angry sometimes how easily Remus could talk himself into "letting her" her break-up with him. "I'd understand if you didn't want - "

"Don't be silly, Remus, I lov - " Marissa began to reassure him without thinking, but stopped dead, her eyes going wide as she saw the expression in his. She had managed to repress her words. Now her tongue froze. Was this how she went about slowing things down? Making sure that he didn't get too attached to her?

A smile was growing on Remus's face, a bewildered and incredulous but wide smile, "Go on," he whispered. "Finish it." Marissa stared at him helplessly, starting to breathe more rapidly. Obscenities. Obscenities. Obscenities! Her mind was too blank to think of any specific ones. "Please finish it," Remus said, the smile shrinking as he grew worried. "Please, before I think I imagined it."

Marissa knew that that would be the worst thing that she could do at this point. So she opened up and told him what he wanted so desperately to hear, what she had longed so desperately to say, "I love you."

Then she turned and fled, barely remembering to grab the Invisibility Cloak and throw it around her as she turned and ran.

* * *

Marissa only had one class on Fridays, as she didn't have Defense or any electives now that she'd dropped Divination, but it was her favorite. So when she didn't even show up to History of Magic, both Remus and Lily were starting to get seriously worried. They didn't like the idea of Marissa avoiding them; Lily because she wanted to yell at her and/or try to convince her to tell Remus, Remus because he had never been so excited to talk to her.

Remus was the one who skived off class to talk to her. He knew exactly where she would be hiding. Surely enough, he found her in the room where they had first had dancing lessons, sitting on the window with music wafting down from the ceiling. She looked up when Remus opened the door, her eyes looked slightly red, as if she had been crying not that long ago. Her cheeks were dry, however, and she looked fairly under control.

"I'm so sorry, Remus," she said, hurrying over and hugging him even as he closed the door behind him. "I shouldn't have run off like that after I told you ... I just - I didn't mean to say it then, like that," she cried as he put his arms around her and pulled her into his tight embrace.

She could feel him exhale in relief, his muscles relax. How nervous had she made him? She sighed herself and pulled away, taking his hands as she did. "Dance with me?" she asked with a smile that seemed tinged with sadness. She pulled him out onto their dance floor with a smirk on her face.

Remus put his hand on her back as she put hers on his shoulder, their other hands staying clasped together. They danced for a while. "I love you, Marissa Fletcher," Remus whispered, looking her in the eyes.

"I love you too, Remus Lupin," she replied with a smile. She stood on her toes and Remus bent down enough that he could kiss her. It was a long kiss that had been a long time coming.

When they pulled away, Remus looked as if he had made a decision, or was hopelessly caught up in the moment. From what he said next, it could have been either, or even both. "Marry me, Riss."

"What?" Marissa cried in surprise, pulling away. Oh, no. This was exactly what she had feared. Exactly what Lily had warned her about. This was exactly what she hadn't wanted to do to Remus Lupin. Obscenities. Lots of them. And for another reason. How much she wished that she could just say yes, that she were free to just say yes and start planning the rest of her life with this man.

"I know this sounds crazy," Remus said carefully, holding her hand firmly as she tried to walk away. "I know that we're seventeen. I know we still have another year of school, for crying out loud. I know that we have no jobs, no anything really. I know that I have nothing to offer you, but I have to offer you everything that I have. I know it's crazy, but we aren't crazy, Riss. We were never crazy. We belong together."

"Remus, don't do this," she pleaded, looking down, tears filling her eyes again. Why, oh why, couldn't fate have just let her have this? "Please."

"Riss, I'll love you my whole life. If you can love me the rest of yours, then just agree to marry me," Remus said, placing her hand against his heart. Marissa was staring down at her feet, terribly afraid of what she would see if she dared to look at Remus. Why did this beautiful moment have to be stolen from her?

"I will love you the rest of my life, Remus," she said quietly, unable to keep it from bursting from her. She could see his smile growing without looking. She could tell what he would say. She tried to speak first but felt herself choking on the words.

She was wrong about Remus's reaction to her words. "Why do I get the idea that that's not a yes?"

At that Marissa looked up, her eyes desperately sad. "Because it's not," she said brokenly, fighting back sobs with all that she had.

"Why?" Remus demanded. "You of all people would never promise that if you didn't know for certain that you could always love me. That you would. Why not make an honest man out of me then?"

Marissa laughed, but it turned into a sob. "Remus, please ... I will love you, but I can't. I can't do this to you."

"It'd work, Riss," Remus told her. "I promise you, it would work. You know that our marriage would work. You know that it's right."

"I do," Marissa said miserably, trying and failing to find the strength to deny what she knew in her heart to be completely true. "I would love nothing more than to marry you, Remus Lupin."

"Why do I get the idea that that's still a no?" Remus asked, starting to feel angry when she didn't deny it. "If you'll love me, why not? If you know the important part, if you know that you'll always love me, if you know that we would work, if you want to marry me, then why won't you?"

He let go of her and turned and walked away a few paces angrily. "Why won't you? Is it because of what I am?"

"Remus!" Marissa cried, shocked. "How could you think that?"

"Was it a lie then?" he demanded, whirling around to face her. "Is it all a lie? Am I just some elaborate project that you had? Like James? Was this Project Remus Lupin's Confidence Builder? Or the Show Moony He's Loved After All Front? But you can't spend the rest of your life feeling sorry for me?"

"Remus, stop it!" Marissa cried, feeling as if she were being tortured as he turned away from her once again and began to stalk to the door. "You know - you can't think - "

"You don't leave me much choice," Remus shouted at her as he flung the door open. "What else am I supposed to believe? You say you love me. You say you want to marry me, but you won't. I'm some elaborate project to you. The thing is, it's only one step above a joke."

He turned to leave. "Remus!" Marissa called desperately, tears flowing freely down her cheeks now. He did not look as if he had heard her.

Marissa took a deep breath, and then said the only two words that could have made not just his feet but his heart stop as well. They were the only words that could have broken his heart more than it felt like it was broken before. The only two words that could have made him turn around to face her. The only two words that could have killed all anger within him. The only two words that could have taken away everything he had felt only a few moments before.

"I'm dying."

©KatyMulvaney4-24-2005