Comedy/Tragedy: The Story of a Doomed Existence

Chapter Seven: Clash of the Houses

The next thing Lily knew, a large book had collided with the side of her head. She felt a trickle of wetness at her temple, and figured that the book had accidentally skimmed off some of her skin. Preparing herself for a loud, rambunctious Lucy, Lily opened her eyes.

But Lucy wasn't bounding around; she wasn't hurrying the other girls to get up, or bouncing around to the entertainment of the life-size knight painting. No, instead Lucy was snoring slightly, still asleep. Alice was wringing her hands nervously above Lily's head.

"Lil - thank goodness you're awake! I can't get Lucy to wake up, and it's eight forty-five! Herbology starts in fifteen minutes!"

Lily gasped and threw herself out of bed. The knight chuckled as she struggled into a pair of pants (backwards) and tossed her robes on over these. Snatching up her bag, She turned to see Alice roughly shoving some robes over a limp Lucy's head, not bothering to remove the girl's pajamas. Then she indicated Lily come help her.

"Nothing I do wakes her up...we'd better get her to the hospital wing. Hopefully whoever works there will give us late passes or something. Here, help me get her other arm -" she handed the frighteningly limp girl's sleeve to Lily, who draped it over her own shoulders, and the two girls began to support their friend down the staircase, Lily holding all three book bags across her back and Alice supporting most of Lucy's weight.

Suddenly, the castle seemed very big. It took a very long time to get through each corridor, and though time seemed interminably long, it passed very quickly. But luckily, this confusion of time passage helped Alice and Lily to reach the hospital wing in what could be described as very quick time. They probably would have had a good deal more trouble if a boy in the halls hadn't pointed the direction out to them.

The hospital wing was very clean. Lily was reminded strongly of the showers back in Gryffindor tower, except that the caretaker of the ward seemed to have enough sense not to let the scent of cleanser take over. The large, sunny room was lined with small, standardized cots; each of these had curtains so as to be protected from view. At the far end of the ward, there were a few doors, probably storage. To the left of the entrance, there was a sparkling white door, with the words 'Madam Klagensteril' written in gold letters.

It was out of this door that the ancient woman burst out of. When Lily first saw her, she was inclined to scream, though the restrained herself. The woman, who was probably the Madam Klagensteril the door had proclaimed, was rather short and wide, but the sinister part about her was her wrinkles. Her skin, particularly that on her face, was so ancient and shriveled that it resembled maybe a piece of scrunched-up cloth, but Lily had not known that human skin was capable of getting that disgusting. From the look on Alice's face, the round-faced girl was just as surprised at the appearance of Klagensteril as Lily was. Somehow, they had both expected someone as clean as the ward to come bursting in.

When Madam Klagensteril saw the near-collapsing Alice and Lily, she started muttering in German and indicated that they put their friend down on a nearby bed. They complied quickly, Lily continually checking the clock. She cared about her friend a lot, but she didn't want to miss too much of her classes. At the moment, it was seven past nine. Lily watched the second hand find its way to the thirty-second mark, then the thirty-five, forty - a slight tap on her arm distracted Lily from keeping time.

Alice indicated Madam Klagensteril, who was putting a pair of pince-nez on her decomposing nose.

"Ah...I see...a difficult curse to place, especially for a first year...it wasn't done right anyway, that will make it even more difficult to contend with...verdammt die Schüler...all right, you two must get to class..." she spoke in a very haphazard way, fitting German curses in between her phrases. She reached forward to grasp the piece of paper Alice was holding out. Madam Klagensteril's hand brushed the girl's when she grasped it, and Alice gave an involuntary shiver as a few of the old woman's skin cells attached themselves to her hand. She wiped it hastily on her robes, and turned to see the woman bend over the parchment.

While she was encrypting a letter to the Herbology teacher, Lily thought back on what she had said. "A difficult curse to place, especially for a first year..." A prickle of hate ran down Lily's spine; who else could have done this, other than Hana and Leanna? She hadn't gotten the impression that either girl was particularly good with magic, but Klagensteril had mentioned that the curse wasn't done right.

"There...that ought to do it...come back to see your friend later...oder durchaus nicht, wei?" she chuckled at whatever joke she had just made. Lily and Alice, now knowing that they couldn't stay, hurried off out of the ward. They were very glad to be free of the woman's hacking and coughing. Just before they left the ward, she called after them,

"die Hetzerei, wie?"

As they raced through the halls, Lily reminded herself to study some German before she had to visit that ward again; it was an odd feeling to not know what someone was saying when they were speaking right in front of you.

The redhead sprinted out onto the grounds and toward the greenhouses; though they had a letter, she didn't think that it would be a good idea to miss too much of the first Herbology class of the year. Alice followed her, though at a much slower rate; the round-faced girl wasn't very good at running. Finally, they reached Greenhouse One, from which a pleasant, rolling voice was issuing. They voice paused, surprised, when Lily and Alice burst through the door.

"Are you -" she checked the roll, "Are you Alice Surrideo, Lily Evans, or Lucy Bones?"

"Yes, we are the prior two. We had to go to the hospital wing; Lucy Bones got into a - spot of trouble - this morning," Lily answered. She glared forcefully at Leanna and Hana, who laughing uncontrollably. "We have a note from Madam Klagensteril." She held up the parchment, which looked nothing short of masticated, for Klagensteril had managed to tear and smear it in several places.

"Ah, you'll be better off telling me what happened. None of the teachers can decipher that old bird's writing...I do wonder why Albus keeps her around. Ah, don't bother explaining where you were, I believe you," the young Herbology teacher said, brushing her very long, frizzy, flyaway brown hair behind her hat. She raised her voice to address the rest of the students, "All right, find a partner and begin to chop off the roots of your dittany, but be careful to follow the process I explained, so that you are not killing the plant, merely pruning it!" she turned back to Lily and Lucy. "I am Professor Sprout; I started teaching Herbology here two years ago. Today, we are studying dittany. Dittany is a very unusual plant that remains unused by the muggle world. Among its nicknames are the 'Flaming Bush,' for though it is inflammable, setting the plant on fire produces a very unusual substance..."

She continued to speak for a good ten minutes. Lily pulled out a piece of parchment and was taking notes as quickly as she could. Finally, when Professor Sprout finished, she carefully rolled up her parchment and looked up to see what the teacher wanted them to do.

"All right; take this dittany plant, it's the only one left. I want you to carefully trim the roots off with this -"she held up a pair of tiny, intricately bladed pruning shears. "and place the roots in this -" she held up a bowl of what looked like water but smelled like peppermint. "When trimming the roots, be sure to only chop off two inches in, at the most. We are not trying to kill the plants, we are trying to harvest them. To remove them from the earth, carefully pull upward. As long as you are pulling at a very direct angle, the special soil I have them in will give way. We are very lucky to be able to work with dittany; it only grows in the summer months and this summer has been very warm."

"And no, we will not be lighting the dittany on fire until third or fourth year; it is a highly dangerous process with which students of your amateur level are not prepared to deal with." She seemed to be speaking to the whole greenhouse when she said this.

Lily and Alice had great fun with the pruning of their dittany. It was a very pretty plant, resembling an orchid. The roots were pale, white, and damp. They were not at all difficult to harvest, and by the end of class Lily and Alice had a good deal more than the people who had started fifteen minutes before them. Professor Sprout awarded them five points to Gryffindor for their dedication and sent them on their way.

Alice was in a good mood all the way up to the great hall; she had done exceedingly well in the Herbology class and was entitled to be proud of herself. The two girls had headed up to the Great Hall with the intention of eating breakfast, but there were two people walking up the stairs that provided an ample distraction.

"What do you say we go teach them a lesson?" Lily asked Alice deviously, grinning with the pleasure she knew she'd get from yelling at the two girls. "I didn't use half of the insults I could think of last night..."

"Lil, I don't think that's a good idea," Alice told her, turning toward the Great Hall.

"What?!" Lily yelped indignantly. She wanted to make Hana and Leanna pay for what they had done.

"I said, I really don't think it would be smart to go do that to them."

"Don't you care about what happened to Lucy?" Lily started off across the hall; Alice's kindness wouldn't save those girls, not this time.

"Lily, don't," Alice grabbed the redhead's arm to stop her from running after the girls. "Think for just one second, okay? They did that to Lucy, I know they did, you know they did, they know they did, and I'd imagine Lucy knows they did. But we don't want to give them an excuse to do that again. Do you understand?"

"I understand that you are completely off your rocker. Totally bonkers. If we don't do anything, they'll think they can walk all over us!" She pulled against Alice's grip on her arm, but the round-faced girl was surprisingly strong. "Let me go!" Lily nearly shrieked.

"Lily, calm down. You're getting all hot and bothered. Come on, ignore them. Don't do something rash. Let's go eat, okay? We've got a free period; double Potions doesn't start until after lunch. Come on," Despite Lily's continual attempts to get out of her grip, Alice dragged her friend into the hall and shoved her down in a chair. When Lily tried to get up again, thoroughly disgusted with her friend's behavior, the equally dismayed Alice picked up a jug of water and threw its contents in her friend's face, hoping to cool her off.

It did the trick. Lily, though still mad, felt the familiar pulse of anger retreat from her temples. She sat down again, and, though dripping wet, felt a lot better.

"Thanks for that," she smiled at Alice. "I just get - carried away - sometimes. It's a habit I'm trying to break."

"You're welcome. Lucky McGonagall wasn't there; I bet she would be pretty angry with us for throwing water around the Great Hall." Alice and Lily laughed, the redhead picturing what the Transfiguration teacher's face would look like if someone threw water in it.

"Hmm...so where is everybody?" Lily looked around the Great Hall. There were a couple of students sitting around, but otherwise the hall was nearly empty.

"In class, I'd imagine," Alice answered. "Not everyone has second period off."

The two girls enjoyed a nice, uninterrupted breakfast. Then they went to visit Lucy, whose condition hadn't changed a bit. It was a good deal disconcerting to speak with someone who was asleep, and Madam Klagensteril's constant coughing gave them a headache, so the left fairly quickly. Both were still quite mussed-looking from their sleep and their sprint to the greenhouses, so instead the girls opted for showers. They spent the final minutes before Potions writing up essays for Professor Sprout on the finer properties of white dittany.

Finally, it was time for the final class of the day. Lily had been really looking forward to Potions, just like all her other classes, so she rushed Alice down to the dungeons fifteen minutes before it started. They waited inside the classroom, for unlike Binns' it remained unlocked. The rest of the class slowly filtered in. Lily saw a number of people she didn't recognize, but, upon checking her schedule, she realized that they were Slytherins; this class was a double period, and all first-year's double periods were shared classes. All the class was settled by the time the bell rang.

Seconds after its noise had finished reverberating around the dungeon, a woman with curly blonde hair and a dimpled face bounded in and skidded to a halt in the front of the classroom, grinning wildly.

"HELLO, KIDS!" she didn't need to shout. Lily raised her eyebrows at the woman's overdone buoyancy.

"I'm Professor Dulcissa! And I'm here to teach you all about the wonderful wide world of potions! But don't worry, with me by your side, we won't get into any difficulties! Now, Professor McGonagall doesn't want me to tell you this," she told them in what was apparently supposed to be a devious tone. Lily rolled her eyes and looked around the dungeon for someone else as disgusted as she, but there wasn't one person; they were all staring avidly and the smiling teacher. "...but Professor Hurley, that charming Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher of yours, is my husband! We teach together here, isn't that fabulous? He's told me all about you Gryffindors from the first lesson you had yesterday, but it'll be my turn to tell him about the Slytherins! Wonderful, don't you think?"

People around the room nodded. Lily felt sick. How could anyone find this teacher less than disgusting? Even the Slytherins weren't very revolted by her, though they looked less pleased than those of Lily's own house. She half-paid attention as Dulcissa read off the roll.

"Now that we've taken care of introductions, let me just say, welcome to first-year potions! Now, I know that you're all anxious to start making hair potions and things of equal difficulty -" Lily snorted. She'd looked over the potions book, and the potions of physical care were incredibly simple. " - but I'm afraid I won't let you dive right into that! You are baby doves, wanting to leave the nest sooner than you can. But with help from the Mommy bird, we'll get through it all! I'll drop you slowly from your nest when the time is right and watch your soar away, able to make the best potions with utmost ease!" Lily was really starting to feel sick now. Doves, honestly?

"So, I decided that, rather than have you leap right into the world of dangerous potions, we'll start by learning how to prepare our ingredients! Doesn't that sound like fun?" Dulcissa peered around anxiously.

Lily was happy to note that many of the Slytherin's smiles were fading now. She felt a rush of gratitude to the house, despite the fact that it was so well known for turning out dark wizards and witches. Reluctantly, she turned back to see a large chart on the board in front of the class.

"Today, we learn how to skin Abyssinian shrivelfigs! Of course, you won't need them for a looong time - not until third year - but it is a nice way to start the class, don't you think? Now, I'm pretty sure you can all read, but if you can't, please join the Ravishing Readers club I am starting! For now, just ask people near you for help. The directions are simple enough, so let's get started!"

By the time the class was over, Lily decided that Dulcissa was the worst teacher she had ever had, including her alcoholic second-grade teacher. Within the first five minutes of class, Lily had skinned all five of her shrivelfigs. Professor Dulcissa had been most impressed to see how quickly she had done it, but was convinced that Lily needed more practice, despite the fact that Lily's first shrivelfig was perfect. She seemed to have an abundant supply of the plants, so set Lily about skinning more. Fully annoyed, Lily somehow managed to skin these even faster and better than before. Dulcissa was even more impressed, so she gave Lily twenty points to Gryffindor and set her about helping the rest of the class.

Lily was in a very bad mood at the end of the lesson.

Alice saw her frown. "Why are you mad? You just got awarded twenty points from the head of Slytherin! You should be happy!"

Lily didn't know.

She stepped out into the hallway, feeling very preoccupied. She was about to enter a new corridor when a voice there made her freeze. Right now, she did not want to deal with James Potter! But the tone of the boy's voice made her so curious that she couldn't help but peer around the corner.

James was lying on the floor, looking as though he had slid across the floor. He did not look his normal, arrogant self; his hair was flattened as though he had slid headlong into a brick wall. Which, judging from the way he was sprawled on the floor, he probably had. He scrambled up and drew himself to full height in front of the boy who had spelled him. Lily felt quite taken aback when she saw that he was Severus, the boy she'd met in the tree the night before. He looked different than he had in evening's half-light; kind of like a plant that had been deprived of sunlight. He sniffled loudly, wiping his nose with his hand and scrambling around to pick up the books that had spilled from his bag. From the looks of things, James had pulled on his book-bag, for the strap was broken, and then Severus had retaliated by using some curse to slam James backwards.

"You - stupid - Slytherin!" James howled. "What are you doing with this book?" He picked up a book that had been lying on the floor next to him. The embedded black letters caught the light and Lily saw the title 'Mastering the Dark Arts: Curses for the Dangerous Individual.'

"It's none of your business," Severus didn't sound the slightest bit dreamy and hesitant now; his voice was cold and condescending. He snatched the book from James' hands.

"It bloody well is!" James yelled. "It's the whole school's business if you're carrying around books like this!" He pulled out his wand and yelled, "Expelliarmus!" The book shot out of Severus' hand and flew into James.' The greasy-haired boy was thrown a few feet backward with the force of James' spell.

"Give me the book," he spoke in a quiet, angry tone. But then he sniffed loudly and wiped his nose, which rather ruined the effect.

"I don't think I will!" James shouted triumphantly. "Wonder what Professor Dumbledore will say when he sees this! Stupid Slytherins, you should never get let in here! Go back to your home of Dark Arts, because clearly no one wants you here!"

It was quite true; then only people surrounding them were a crowd of Gryffindors, and each was eying Severus with utmost dislike. Severus scanned the crowd for a friendly face, but everyone glared at him. That is, everyone except Lily. She really couldn't decide how to react, but the one thing she didn't want was for either of the bickering boys to spot her. Unfortunately -

"Emmaline! I didn't know you were in Gryffindor!" Severus had seen her, and as though she were his last hope, he reached out and pulled her arm so that she was standing in the center of the circle. He seemed to want to prove to James that he had friends.

Blushing furiously, Lily looked up at him.

"Um...yeah, well I didn't know you were in Slytherin," she told him in an undertone, barely moving her lips. She didn't want to know what the rest of Gryffindor house would think of her if she were the apparent best friend of a dark arts-obsessed Slytherin. Lily didn't know what she would think of herself, either.

"That's not Emmaline, that's Lily!" James seemed very confused. "And Lily - you know him?"

"Er...yeah, we met yesterday," Lily scuffed her shoe on the stone floor. Get a grip on yourself, Evans, she told herself. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them she didn't feel quite so weak and embarrassed. "Yeah, so?"

"He's a Slytherin! And - and look at his book!" James threw the book into Lily's arms. She opened it to see a very grotesque picture of someone writhing on the floor, and the writing 'Property of Severus Snape. She felt slightly sick; the writhing figure had a wand pointed at it and looked to be in utmost pain.

Lily couldn't help it; she dropped the book. There was something about it; a whispering, a cruel muttering, issued from the book.

"Severus?" James snorted. "That's your name? You know what fits better?" he observed the sniffling boy. "Snivellus."

Sirius chuckled appreciatively and joined his best friend in the center of the circle. Lily didn't really know what to do. She tried to fade back into the crowd, disappear before anyone could take more notice of her, but it didn't work out quite the way she had planned.

"Emmaline, tell this boy that he has no right to address me like that! We had great fun yesterday, didn't we? Don't let him torture me!" Severus pleaded with her.

"HER NAME IS LILY EVANS, NOT EMMALINE!" James shouted furiously. "SHE COMES FROM A PERFECTLY GOOD MUGGLE FAMILY, NOT SOME STUPID DARK ONE LIKE YOURSELF! SO STOP ACTING LIKE YOU ARE AT HER LEVEL BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT!"

He'd said the wrong thing. Severus leapt back from Lily, wiping his hand on his robes as though he had touched some kind of poisonous plant and needed to get the residue off as soon as he could.

"You - you - you're a Mudblood?" Severus whispered, sunken eyes wide with horror.

The reaction in the corridor might be compared to an explosion. A number of fifth year girls shrieked with horror; the crowd had grown considerably since the argument had begun. Sirius growled low in his throat; Alice put her hands over her mouth in horror, and a swift muttering swept through the crowd, which now contained a large number of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws as well. James, however, abandoned all reason and leapt on top of Severus, wand forgotten. The skinny boy disappeared beneath a whirl of James' fists. But nobody felt sorry in the least for Snape, and Lily couldn't understand why. She didn't even know what a Mudblood was! The roar of cheering from the crowd grew louder and louder until Lily could bear it anymore.

"STOP IT!" She shrieked.

Everyone froze. The only sound was the drip, drip of the blood from Snape's nose. James extracted his hand from the greasy hair of the boy he had been pummeling and stood up after wiping the grease on the boy's robes.

"Lily - you heard what he called you -" James spluttered, astounded that Lily wasn't offended.

"I don't even know what it means," Lily told him. "And even if I did - I don't need you defending my honor, James Potter."

"But - but - but -" James didn't understand. "He called you a -" the boy mouthed wordlessly.

"I kind of figured it was an insult," Lily spoke sardonically, casting an eye over the revolted crowd. "But I want less to do with you than I do with him."

"But - why? I'm not - slimy, or stupid, or Slytherin, or involved with the dark arts, and I'd never -"

"You won't listen to me! You know I hate what you are doing, but you don't care! You keep doing it, just because it makes you popular. I don't like Snape at all - what, do you think I am interested in the Dark Arts - but I like you even less. Don't tax yourself with looking out for me. I can handle it myself."

She picked up her forgotten book-bag and stormed off through the crowd. She didn't really know why she was so angry...just that she hated the feeling of watching as Snape got the life beat out of him for no reason at all. She hated violence; particularly when the person being beat up was smaller or weaker than their attacker. James Potter needed to learn his place in life, because she did not know if she would be able to contain her anger if he picked on someone again.

And then there was that word, Mudblood. It was pretty self-explanatory...dirty blood. Lily presumed it had to do with being Muggle-born. And she didn't know how to handle it, either; she felt inclined to say that it was just a word, nothing more, but words were her own weapon of choice; admitting that it didn't affect her would be like saying her own words did nothing. All in all, she was completely confused. It angered her immensely that Snape had hated her when he found out who her parents were; how could his opinion of her be changed by anyone other than herself?

At the moment, she couldn't decide whom she hated more, James or Severus. She was storming up the stairs when she hit something solid.

"Lily!" Lucy's grinning face shone. "I woke up thirty minutes ago; came looking for you and Alice, but you guys weren't anywhere! I thought you'd wait for me to wake up..." she sounded slightly hurt.

"Oh, who cares!" Lily shoved past her, preoccupied thoughts controlling her voice.

She didn't stop stomping until she had reached a part of the castle she had never been in before. She was on a small landing, in front of a single, solid wooden door. Lily threw caution to the winds and shoved it open to reveal a tightly winding staircase. She climbed for a ways, getting slightly dizzy with the effort. Eventually, however, she reached a smaller version of the door below. She pushed it open, and found herself out on a patio of some sort. The patio had a thick wall surrounding its round surface, and when Lily approached this she discovered that she was not on a patio, as she had thought, she was up in a tower.

Far more westerly than the Gryffindor tower - or any other part of the castle - this structure reached high into the night air, very separate from the rest of the castle. Lily wasn't at all surprised that the staircase had seemed long. Wind rushed very strongly up here. Blowing from over the mountains, it smelled of the rain that Lily hadn't seen for many months. Surely enough, a few minutes later, Lily felt the specks of water lash against her body.

But it didn't feel the slightest bit uncomfortable. The rain was hard, and heavy, but the slight stings it gave Lily made her feel better, not worse. She moved her book-bag into the shelter of an awning above the doorway and went back out into the rain. The skies were a gray color, dark and menacing, but Lily liked it. It reminded her of Aristotle's feathers. Feeling slightly cliché, the already soaked redhead lifted arms and face to the sky and relished in the downpour of rain. The wonderful smell soaked into her senses, warming her though she was very cold.

Rather than resolving her problems, she let the rain wash them away. Thinking of nothing but utter blankness, Lily forgot about her parents, her sister, her friends, her enemies, the opinions of others, and more importantly, Potter and Snape. She sat down, eventually, and took off her robes; they were heavy with water.

Once Lily's robes were gone, she lay back, her giant sleep shirt and backwards dance-pants clinging to the rough brick of the castle's outer building. She stared up into the now purpled-black sky, oblivious to the water splashing in her eyes and the confusion in her mind.

She did not know how long she lay there; no thoughts entered her mind for a very long time. In what seemed like, and probably was, ages later, Lily opened the eyes she didn't know she had shut and stood up. Her thoughts came back in a literal head rush, the most dominant being that she was cold. She looked up into the sky, which had been entirely black for hours and was still emptying an endless bucket onto her head. She was so freezing. She had to get back to the common room.

Lily grabbed her book-bag and slipped her heavy robes over her head. Dripping as she walked, Lily went back down the staircase. She had no idea where she had come from, but this part of the castle was so unused and isolated that there was only on direction to go: down. She walked for a long time, and finally found herself in a corridor she recognized. It was one of those that she and Alice had gone through on their way to the hospital wing with Lucy. Through this and up several more sets of stairs; Lily went through one more corridor and she was at the portrait of the fat lady.

"Oh my! Dear, you are entirely soaked!" the woman in the pink dress spoke when she saw Lily's dripping form.

"I know that," Lily said through gritted teeth; she was trying not to chatter with cold. "Please, just let me in! Evanesco!"

The Fat Lady had no choice but to swing forward, though she winced when Lily's wet fingers touched her portrait.

The redhead was oblivious to this; she was nervously awaiting what she might find within the common room. But there was no one there. Lily glanced up at the clock in the center of the room and nearly leapt out of common room through the back of the still open portrait. It was twenty-five minutes past one in the morning! Lily decided that she must have fallen asleep out on the rainy patio. She slipped quietly into the overly clean showers and turned one on, hoping that the sound of rushing water would not wake any other members of Gryffindor Tower. But, luckily, the water was quiet.

Lily enjoyed a similar sensation of that she had experienced only two nights before, after the incident with the lake, though this time was spent with one of the pulsing spheres of soap nearly shoved up her nostril. That clean scent was very aggravating. Finally, Lily came out of the shower. She decided that it would not be a smart idea to leave her clothes in here - not after what had happened last time - so with a whispered spell the clothes were as clean and dry as they had been the morning before. Lily went back into the common room - thinking of drying her clothes had reminded her of those she had left there the night before.

They were not thrown and forgotten in some corner; they were lying on a large plush chair with a piece of parchment pinned to them. Including, Lily noticed, the green shirt she had told Potter she never wanted to see again. Nervous as to what she might find, Lily unrolled the piece of parchment and sat down on the corner of the armchair. She began to read the note, and indecipherable expression passing over her countenance.

Flower of my heart's desire,

---also known as James Potter, Jamie-poo, and my favorite, That Arrogant Prat---

Lily smiled as she folded up the letter. She knew it was the best chance she had at an apology from James, but it was better than nothing, she supposed. She had laughed when she'd read the part about not dating Snivellus - how could she have thought that James Potter would make a contract that did not involve dating, despite the fact that he was eleven years old. And it wasn't like Lily had the slightest inkling to date Snape; she hated the way he had taken her friendship for granted and then, moments later, thrown it back in her face.

The nice thing about the contract - she glanced back at the letter - was that she didn't have to do anything, and she would be free of James' annoyances, for the most part. The names - well, she decided she would find a way to get him to stop that too. She refolded the letter and moved her hand toward the fireplace, with all intentions of burning it, burning any trace of civil communication she had shared with Potter - but somehow, she couldn't. It was as though her body wasn't attached to her mind, for her brain could not control it.

Lily's arms picked up her clothes, her hand clutched the letter, and her feet carried her up the stairs and to her dorm. She felt like screaming at her body, telling herself to stop, turn around, do the sensible thing. But she couldn't, for her mouth had betrayed her too. Her body led her upstairs and placed the letter in a hidden compartment of her trunk. Her feet carried her to the window, and her eyes gazed out across the sheets of water, each barely illuminated from a mysterious faint light source.

The redhead gazed out of the window, daydreaming of sailing to earth with the mobile water. Her mind defied her body's earthly bonds, plummeting even farther away from her body as it flew through the damp night air, pirouetting on the invisible clouds above and swimming in the sea of water below. Her body was now more in touch with her mind; it wanted to be out there too. She leaned forward dangerously, every inch of her soul, body, heart, and mind aching to be out there.

But the awning shooed her aside; it wouldn't let the rain pass and it wouldn't let Lily touch it. She reached out with a pale arm, trying to touch the strands of water, but it was no comfort to feel the lashing on her hand. Her mind sank quickly back to earth and a stifled, sad redhead clambered into a nightgown and sank slowly into the uncomfortable black abyss of slumber.