I'm Not in Love

I'm Not in Love.

Lily Evans was staring out into space again. Which was odd for her. Normally, she'd be doing homework at this hour, or chatting with friends, or even turning down yet another of Potter's hare-brained schemes to get her to go out with him. Last week he had jumped her in Herbology, no doubt hoping to surprise her into acceptance. Lily smiled as she remembered how he had looked with a fanged geranium attached to his ear.

Lily was shaken out of her reverie by her friend, Jasmine.

"What are you staring at, Lily?"

"Nothing, Jazz."

"I saw. She was gazing at the Potter," Elinor put in, an evil grin on her face.

"What, the Potter who she hates and despises utterly?" Jasmine asked Elinor, who was known to her friends as Eli, and known to her enemies as 'Noooooo! Please don't hex me!'

"How many Potters are there?" answered Eli.

"Well there is that one in Ravenclaw, you know, the blonde one."

"Jazz, his name is Pauler."

"Oh."

Whilst her friends were arguing, Lily slipped into another bout of deep thinking, meaning that she was staring into space again.

She thought about names. Her friend's names were flower names, as was her own, so their little group was known as the Bouquet. Oh, and Rose. Rose wasn't an especial friend of theirs, but somehow, she had slipped in to the Bouquet, and none of them could slip her out. At least she wasn't in Gryffindor.

The Bouquet followed the basic guidelines for a small group of friends. Though all of them were of above average intelligence, Lily and Jasmine topped Eli. Lily was the short fuse of the group, with a temper to match her hair, and she was also the most righteous. Eli was the mischievous one, who didn't give a damn what others thought of her, but was always trying to out-prank the Marauders. She couldn't, of course, because Lily and Jasmine wouldn't join in, but she was responsible for many odd occurrences in Hogwarts. She could get very put out when her own jewels of havoc-wreaking genius were attributed to the Marauders. And then there was Jasmine, the voice of reason. She kept her two friends under some sort of control. She stopped Lily from physically strangling Potter when he flew up next to the window looking into their dormitory, to ask her out again, when she had just finished her shower. She also managed to keep Eli from getting caught for various misdeeds throughout the castle. Jasmine had a golden record too, and every one liked her. Except for the Slytherins. But then again, they didn't like anyone.

Lily was once again awoken from her thoughts by her friends.

"Look, she's doing it again!" laughed Eli.

Lily spun round. In a falsely light and cheerful voice, she inquired, "Doing what, exactly?"

Eli laughed.

"Ah, I love your nasty voices! You're hilarious, Lily!" Here Lily executed a bow, which looked very strange, as she was still sitting when she did it.

"But anyway," Eli continued, "as to what you were doing, exactly, you were staring at Potter again."

"I was not!"

"Lily, you were," Jasmine affirmed.

"Lies! All lies! Besides, I was staring off into space; I was in fairyland, my head was in the clouds, that sort of thing." Jasmine and Eli looked sceptical. Lily gave an exasperated sigh.
"Do you two go out of your way to bug me?" Her two friends cracked identical evil grins, and Eli opened her mouth.

"No need to answer, it was a rhetorical question!" Lily said hastily. Seeing that Eli was not going to let it go, Lily adopted an air of tragedy.

"Since you cruel and heartless ones will not let me study in peace, I shall leave. I shall remove my presence from the common room, and leave you alone to discuss my various shortcomings. If any should have need of me, I shall be bewailing my fate, in yonder tower. Adieu!" Lily gathered up her things and headed to her dormitory.

She was, however, not fast enough to avoid hearing Eli say, "I think our Lily is growing up!"

'Oh my god!' Lily thought. 'I know they're my friends, but sometimes...!' She droppeddropped dropped her stuff on her bed, and dragged her Transfiguration book out of the heap. She and Jasmine had performed the spell that they had learnt that day, changing a guinea pig into a gerbil, perfectly, and so had no homework, but, as Lily always said, a little extra revision never hurt anyone, and she had nothing better to do. Lily flipped a little further back in the book, and read about how to change an animal into a wood stemmed plant. For example: a tree. Apparently, the user of the spell had to know exactly what type of animal it was, and what type of tree it was going to be turned into. In one example, the book had a case where the user didn't know the details and had turned himself into a perpetually burning bush.

"I wish I could turn Potter into a perpetually burning bush," Lily grumbled. She was feeling uncommonly restless, and quickly became bored with her Transfiguration text. Casting it aside, she picked up her Defense Against the Dark Arts book. She flicked through until she found a suitably scary topic to keep her amused.

Her eyes fell upon a picture of a levitating cloak. The caption underneath read: 'Dementor. Feeds on positive thoughts and feelings.'

She started to read, and what she read sent chills down her spine. She kept reading long after she would really have preferred to look away. She could almost feel the temperature dropping, as the long, half-rotted fingers reached towards her. She eventually came to the second last passage; a Dementor's last and most deadly weapon. The Dementor's Kiss. She read about how the Dementor covers its victim's mouth with some sort of opening, which was normally concealed by its hood. And how it then sucked its victim's soul out. Their soul. The essence of their being. How a person without a soul was a wreck. No thoughts, no feelings, no memories. A shell, full of nothing.

Outside, the moon was setting. It was rather late, and Lily had had a late night last night too. The adrenaline that reading of the Dementors had sent racing through her veins was wearing off. Her eyelids were drooping, and her head was nodding. And one phrase echoed endlessly in her head: Dementor's Kiss Dementor's Kiss Dementor's Kiss Dementor's Kiss.

~~~*~~~

Lily was surrounded by floating cloaks. The air and ground were thick with them. But there actually was no ground. Just cloaks, dark and menacing. They began to swoop at her, each one coming closer, and she felt very cold. Each time a Dementor came close, she felt like a flame, a candle flame, in a draughty room. And she was going out.

One Dementor swooped closer than the others, right up in front of her. It started to stoop, to lift its hood... Then it became Potter, and he was stooping to kiss her.

"No!" Lily cried, only she couldn't move. She could only watch, terrified, as the Dementor flickered to Potter, and back to a Dementor. And it was still stooping, slow but inevitable, stooping forward, to leave her a shell, an existence, a vessel full of nothing. And still it stooped. Just as the Dementor lifted its hood, just before she saw what lay beneath the cowl, Lily screamed. And then she was falling.