Comedy/Tragedy: The Story of a Doomed Existence

Chapter Nine: The King and Queen of Gryffindor Tower

Monday morning dawned with nothing to account for the presence of the rain the weekend before. The ceiling of the Great Hall was a milky white color, stretching on endlessly into oblivion. It gave everyone a feeling of great listlessness, though the Gryffindors were not too lethargic to growl at Lily, Lucy, and Alice when they entered the Great Hall. They got so loud that Professor McGonagall looked curiously down the length of the angry table, but the Deputy Headmistress had not had any morning tea yet so really didn't feel like doing anything about it.

Lily held her head high as she ate an orange, telling herself over and over again that she didn't care what these people thought. It was a lot more difficult than she had imagined to not care what people in her own house were thinking. Something arrived halfway through breakfast, however, that tested her will even more than when the boy who had been fawning over Lucy just the day before poured water in the tall girl's lap.

James Potter strode into the hall, Hana a step behind, and the rest of his friends as well as a group of giggly girls that were probably close to Hana bringing up the rear. They looked like some kind of bizarre entourage. Lily eyed the way Hana's feet stepped at the exact same time as James.' She felt a prickle of annoyance at the pair; that is, annoyance that went deeper than the hatred she already felt for them.

What did they think they were doing, acting as though they were...a couple, or something? It was so stupid...they were only eleven years old, for crying out loud! They would have so much more time to deal with that later...

She glared forcefully at them, and James seemed to catch her eye. She couldn't tell, though, because the next minute he averted his eyes and looked up at the milky sky.

"Well, my raven dove," he spoke loudly, gripping Hana's hand as he guided her to a seat. "Today might not be very warm, but the sunny rays of sunshine your heart invokes are completely contradictory..."

Lily noticed, annoyed again, that he spoke in a deeper, mature tone, and used much larger vocabulary, when addressing the Japanese girl.

"Oh, Jamie..." she simpered.

Lily wanted to smack her. Not because she cared that she and James were sitting together...after all, birds of a feather...but still...they were eleven! Lily glared. James looked up a second time, but this time he held her gaze.

Lily decided that it was just about the weirdest expression she had ever seen. A combination of angry, smirking, and indifferent, the tousle-headed boy's gaze was as cold as ice. The expression was so complex, so layered, that it was as though he were speaking to her.

Aren't you jealous? Well, you can't have me. I hate you and you hate me, yet I like you and you like me. You are a stupid, dark-arts obsessed girl, and I want nothing to do with you, though I am telling you now that you are going to regret getting on the bad side of James Potter.

Lily stared back at him, intent on communicating in the same bizarre way he had.

You wish I were jealous, but as I see you and that Suzuki girl, the only thought that goes through my mind is how smart I was to stay away from James Potter's romances. You are eleven years old, and hardly the gorgeous piece of meat that everyone else sees you for. I'm the vegetarian, the smart one, and unlike every other girl in the first year, the very last thing I want is to sink my teeth into you. The bad side of James Potter? Ha. I care nothing of James Potter, and nothing of what he thinks.

Prepare to care, Evans. I'm going to make you care so much.

You wish.

Unfortunately for you, my wishes tend to come true. Or if you can't tell, I'm the one sitting here with the prettiest girl I've ever seen, and you are the one being shunned by all of Gryffindor House.

Wait till Suzuki finds out that what a prat you are.

She's enough of an arrogant berk herself, she won't notice.

Then wait till she finds out what you think of her!

She wouldn't believe you.

You think I'd tell her? No, it will be better if she finds out herself. Which I'm sure she will; unlike fluff-head over there, her banana mush has substance.

You think you are soo funny.

No, I don't. I think you are an arrogant prat, and I think I am behaving quite responsibility, considering how I want to act.

Is that a threat, Lily Evans?

Take it any way you want to.

Why, I oughta -

'Oughta' what? Teach me a lesson? Prove to all of Gryffindor that you actually do care what I think? I'm lucky, I don't give a damn what everyone else thinks of me. That kind of emotion is weak, pointless. Popularity achieves nothing but getting you friends that are even less mentally inclined than you are, if that is possible.

"SHUT UP!" James Potter had shouted the last word aloud to the rest of the hall. His face was very red, and his hair was standing up by itself. He stared around at all the people looking at him. "What d'you want?" He shoved past Sirius, who was staring at him as though he were mad, and ran out of the hall.

"Mental issues, see," Sirius told everyone. Their gaze had turned to him now that James was gone. "The boy's never been right in the mind, and sometimes the pressure gets too much for him and he starts yelling at the voices in his head."

Very few people seemed to understand his humor, but this did not disappoint the tall boy. He slouched back down in his chair, seeming very proud of himself for confusing everyone around him. Lily felt a surge of appreciation for him; anyone who strived to upset and confuse the Anna Bananas deserved high marks in her book. A few moments later, however, she remembered that he was Potter's best friend, and her grin faded.

She turned back to Lucy and Alice, both of whom were staring at her. Jerking her head toward the exit, she signaled they follow her. Both complied immediately; Alice had no more distractions now that she was so angry with Frank, and Lucy had grown tired of trying to entertain people who wouldn't look at her.

"So, what was that?" Lucy asked as they reached the Charms corridor. "I don't know if anyone else noticed, but you and Potter were staring at each other for a good five minutes in there."

"I saw," Alice confirmed Lucy's suspicions. "You haven't made up with him, have you? Not after what he did, and not now that he's made sure that all of Gryffindor hates the three of us?"

"Of course not! You think I would make up with Potter," Lily discovered that his name was very easy to spit off of her lips with anger, and felt very glad that his ancestors had been involved with terra cotta. "Me. The one person who hasn't been so dense as to hero-worship him the moment I saw him. The one girl who didn't want to lick his shoes, to lovingly feed him grapes the rest of his life. The person who yelled at her friends because they thought she did like him. No, most definitely not."

She felt glad that she could say a lot without explaining anything. Grinning inwardly at the appeased expressions on her friends' faces, she held open the door to Charms for them.

However, the rest of the week was horrible enough to make Lily's face look as though a smile had never touched it. No matter what she told Potter, Lily couldn't help but care a little what other people thought of her. Particularly when Professor Flitwick, the tiny Charms teacher, called her name off of the roll and fell off of his stack of books in fright. Apparently, even the teachers had heard the rumor of Lily's dark witchcraft. If was also near impossible to stay in a good mood after she had been shoved down the marble stairs five times in a row. Each time someone passed her, they would jostle her into something, or call her a nasty name, or else squeal in fright and run away. Lucy and Alice didn't get much better treatment, but Lily was supposedly the inner core of their organization, so that was to be expected.

As for James, he had simply explained away the Great Hall incident by telling everyone that there had been a mosquito in his ear and it was really bothering him. Everyone had believed him, of course. Lily, however, felt a different range of emotions for what had happened in the Great Hall. First, she felt a great sense of self-satisfaction for being the one to win what she called their 'staring contest.' She was also glad that James wasn't perfect, that he did have a temper she hadn't witnessed before he stormed out of the hall. And finally, Lily was confused by what they had exchanged. She knew it wasn't telepathy, but there was something about the way they 'spoke' that seemed to fit, to belong. The fact that she noticed this scared her, so Lily did her best to pay attention to James' worst aspects.

There seemed to be many of these lately; Hana did not help to quench his love for himself the way Lily's constant down-to-earth comments had, and so his modesty was virtually destroyed. There was constantly a hand mussing his hair, for reasons Lily couldn't fathom until she heard him entertaining a few second-years in the common room, Wednesday afternoon.

"Your hair looks - so, so realistic! How does it get so messy?" One of them had simpered.

"See, Reagan, I'm a star Quidditch player - everyone who sees me play says I'm a natural. I'm the best eleven-year-old this country has ever seen! And I ride my broomstick so much that my hair is always messy. I'm too cool to rearrange it, so it just flops all over itself." He checked out his hairdo in an elaborate gold mirror that Lily noticed he always tried to sit in front of.

"Oh, well it looks so windswept - so carefree! Can - can I touch it?" The other girl had practically wet herself with joy when James had allowed her to touch one strand of his messy dark hair.

The watching Lily had turned back to her Charms homework, wishing that she were studying spells to prevent one from vomiting.

Hana, too, acted as though she owned the school.

A support group of squealing, giggling girls constantly surrounded her. Of course, Leanna was at the center of this mob, always talking animatedly and acting as Hana's right-wing woman. Strangely enough, though Hana was quieter and smaller, she was obviously the leader. She loved to toss her hair over her shoulder, and only spoke in her icy voice when it would bring someone else pain or suffrage.

The only person who met the nice Hana was James himself; whenever the two were together - which was very frequently - she would simper over James, petting his hair or imploring him to explain Quidditch to her again, for she was a muggleborn like Lily. James loved this treatment, and in exchange he would covet Hana; buying her expensive chocolates or disappearing for a few hours and returning with armloads of butterbeer, the most popular drink of Hogwarts students, which he got from who-knows-where.

They made Lily sick. Eleven-year-olds were not supposed to act like that, and the fact that the two were so imbalanced with one another did not help. Despite the fact that they were so young, they ruled the Gryffindor common room. Older students constantly talked about how 'cute' they were, and younger students followed them everywhere, fitting in compliments wherever the young duo had not yet received any. (One girl even told Hana that her pinky finger was the most lovely she'd ever seen.)

Lily did her best to ignore them. Sometimes this was easier than others, for the two first-years acted as though they alone regulated what happened in the corridors of Hogwarts. So Lily immersed herself in her studies, the one thing that distracted her from the poor treatment the rest of the school gave her and the disgusting behavior of the 'king and queen of Gryffindor'.

But not all of her classes proved the desired distraction Lily wanted. She loved Charms, but Flitwick seemed slightly frightened of her. Herbology was okay, as Professor Sprout thought Lily was too smart to be involved in any of that 'nastiness.' McGonagall, of course, thought that the way the rest of her house regarded Lily was entirely unacceptable, but there was nothing she could do other than be nicer to Lily and give the redhead encouraging smiles whenever they passed in the halls. Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts were the worst. Professor Dulcissa, though as honey-sweet as ever, didn't give any more points to Lily, not even when the redhead managed to cut up fifty perfect sets of daisy roots one potions class.

As for Hurley, the professor believed everything Hana said, so of course he hated her. As they did a worksheet on the ways to counteract poisons in Thursday's class, he breathed down Lily's neck the entire time, clearly trying to catch her using some dark magic. But Lily finally grew tired of his slightly minty breath in her face, so she slammed her finished paper down and walked around the table.

"Professor, I clearly understand what I'm doing," Lily indicated her completed chart, "so would you mind terribly if I requested that you go look over someone else's shoulder?" She spoke in a polite tone, but she could feel her blood boiling and the familiar pulse of anger in her temples gave her a headache.

The next thing Hurley did, however, completely caught her off guard.

He leapt around the desk like a wolf hunting a rabbit, and in one swift movement tugged Lily's robes right off of her head.

"AHA!" he had shouted, clearly thinking that he had found something dangerous.

Lily looked down at her clothes; a pair of jeans with rips in the knees and a shirt with a giant redwood on it that said 'Save the trees!'

"Um, professor? Is there something wrong with my being environmentally aware?" Lily asked him. She was very angry, and heard the temple pulse return to her head even stronger than before. What if she hadn't been wearing any clothes? It wasn't required when the robes covered your entire body, as Lily's did. What Hurley had done was disgusting - it was harassment!

"Well - er - yes, there is! How do we know you aren't...what's the word? Ah, can't think of it...how about, unfriendlilyly...lily 'environmentally aware'?"

Lily snorted at the teacher's obvious lack of vocabulary.

"Or what if -" a look of shock came over his face. "What if this is just code for something entirely evil?" he paused to allow for the gasp Lily knew would never come, but three-quarters of the class let out loud yelps of astonishment. Lily tried incredibly hard not to explode.

"Evans, I do not like the message you are implying with this shirt. You will go to the nearest restroom and take it off. I will accept it from you, or I will not hesitate to take fifty points from Gryffindor. Now, go!"

Lily snatched her robes from him and she went, but she wasn't quiet about it. She hated that man so much! She couldn't decide who was worse: him or his wife. Banging purposefully into every suit of armor she passed, Lily stormed into the nearest girl's restroom and stomped into a stall. She pulled her shirt off angrily, her hair exploding out of her ponytail as she did.

"Stupid - man, could've - taken my shirt - off - I'm going to - kill him, I am, I don't care - what they think of me - he - is - going - to - pay!" she spoke in quick gasps, unaware that tears were spreading down her face.

She loved Hogwarts, more than anywhere else she had been, but the way things were going were most certainly not perfect. If James and Hana weren't here, that would make the school ideal. It was their entire fault anyway, where she was; James and Hana's. She sat down on the stone floor and sobbed, unconstrained, into her shirt. If James hadn't made her so mad, she wouldn't have yelled at Hana and Leanna in the first place, so they wouldn't have cursed Lucy, so Lily wouldn't have cursed Leanna, so James wouldn't have set the entire Gryffindor house on her back. The worst part of going over this in her mind was that she came to one main conclusion, other than the fact that she wanted to kill James and Hana. It was as much her fault as it was theirs. She'd started it all, and continually lost her temper. The stakes got higher and higher until here she was, all alone in some dirty girl's bathroom, having a complete emotional breakdown. It was more her fault than it was James'. Hana was no more to blame than Lily was. Leanna had done nothing compared to what Lily had.

Thinking these thoughts did not improve her mood at all; Lily just cried harder. She was very thankful no one could hear her until -

"Wow, someone more miserable than me," a glum, gloomy voice carried through the simple chamber. Lily looked up to see the ghost of a plump, bespectacled girl gliding toward her.

Lily had seen other ghosts in the castle; Peeves, in a way, was a ghost, then Nearly Headless Nick had met her a few days ago, assuring her that she wasn't evil. She'd seen other ghosts gliding past hallways, occasionally, but never had she seen this glum girl before. Lily hated it when people watched her cry, so she hastily rubbed her hand across her face and dabbed the dampness onto the wet shirt she was still holding.

"Who're you?" she was too upset and preoccupied to use proper grammar or comportment.

"I'm Myrtle. It figures you don't know me," pearly tears appeared behind her glasses. "Moaning Myrtle, they call me. Just because I'm a little sensitive!"

"Oh - er - sorry," Lily didn't really know how to answer. She wanted to get back to crying and feeling resentful toward herself.

"Hmph," Myrtle looked surprised that Lily had apologized to her. "Well, let me just say, when I'm feeling down, I always like to sob near the U-bend. Nice and secluded, see. But I guess you can't fit there..." she surveyed Lily's clearly living flesh. "I know a lot about human nature, as I was tortured all through my own Hogwarts years," she continued wisely. "I may not let on much, but you look pretty desperate. Someone torturing you? Like that awful Olive Hornby did me..." she shuddered.

"Y-yes, kind of," Lily told her. Hana was torturing her, even if it was Lily's own fault that she were in the predicament. And Hurley...

"Well, let me just say it's always wonderful to get revenge. Teach them a lesson. Anything from jumping out at them from behind statues, to poisoning their food, to elaborate practical jokes, to things that are eloquently planned. I know them all, because they've all been done on me. But don't follow my footsteps; I chased Olive for years - and got my revenge, mind - but she complained and the ministry told me to come back here," Myrtle sighed. "No, if you decide to take out revenge, plan it well. Make sure that, even if it could be traced back to you, you can't really be punished. Set up an alias that's always willing to help you. Come up with flawless reasons for why you did what you did. Olive always had the perfect ways of torturing me, she never got in trouble. I didn't have either of those, but the fact that I was a ghost made it irrelevant. But you're so pretty you won't have any trouble." She stared almost longingly at Lily's red curls, which were at the moment cascading down her bare back.

Feeling self-conscious, Lily pulled her robes on over her head and looked back up at Myrtle.

"Wow...thanks," she told the glum ghost. "I'll keep what you said in mind, I'll come up with a plan to make them pay."

"Good luck," Myrtle called as Lily turned toward the door, shirt in hand. "Be sure to have fun with this - revenge is far sweeter if there is time to laugh!" she didn't smile, but the edges of her gray mouth moved in what wasn't a completely desperate way.

Lily gave Myrtle one last smile and turned to walk out of the washroom. She thought about all the ghost had said as she walked along the corridor outside, trying to think of all the ways she could get revenge. But Myrtle was right; she couldn't get caught. She didn't care what the Gryffindors thought of her, of course, but she didn't want too many more detentions, and she decided the ghost was also right about planned revenge working out better and having a more positive effect. She stopped outside Hurley's classroom, hand about to turn the handle, when she had a revelation. She'd thought of the perfect way to make him pay!

She pulled her hand back from the door handle and stood there for a few moments. If this were going to work, it would require very careful planning.

A few moments later, Lily Evans walked into Hurley's classroom. She handed him the shirt she'd been holding earlier, much to the surprise of everyone in the room, and went back to sit at her seat. Hurley, too, was surprised; he had not expected the girl to comply with what he had asked.

For the rest of the class, Lily stared straight ahead, smiling in a rather creepy, forced way as Hurley talked about poisons. She ignored the curious glances of the rest of the class. Harder to ignore was Alice's constant tugging on her sleeve, but she managed to pull it off. As soon as the bell rang, Lily gave everyone in the class another eerie smile and walked out.

"What are you doing?" Alice asked her when they were finally out in the hall. "Why did you do what Hurley asked? You should've followed Lucy's example and spat in his perverted face!"

"Did you really do that, Lucy?" Lily asked, still smiling.

"Well, to Potter, not Hurler," Lucy told her. "And for Merlin's sake, stop smiling like that!"

"Hurler...ha, nice," Alice laughed appreciatively.

"Well, he his hurl-worthy," Lily agreed.

"So, Lily, what's going on? Why didn't you skive off? Or spit on him, or do some 'dark' hocus-pocus? What happened to the whole 'I don't care what anyone thinks of me' philosophy? Because that Lily wouldn't have given it a second thought if Gryffindor lost fifty points because of her."

"Later," Lily said out of the corner of her mouth. The others might not be able to see, but Lily's height did have one advantage: she could see Hana crouching amidst to passing people, clearly trying to hear what Lily had to say.

"What?" Lucy yelped. "Don't try that with me, missy! I want to know why you didn't -"

"Later," Lily hissed again, dragging her tall friend's arm away from the passing people. "Hana was listening."

"Oh..."

The three girls found an empty classroom, and Lily making sure it was locked before she turned to face her friends.

"So? What's been going on?"

"Okay...well, to make a long story short, I met a ghost in the washroom and she told me to get revenge," Lily started.

"She's already lost me," Lucy rolled her eyes.

"I've been thinking and thinking..." Lily continued as though she had not heard her friend. "I mean, there are tons of ways to get back at Hana and Potter, but it's a lot harder to get reprisal on a teacher. I mean, if it's bad enough, I could get expelled! But I came up with something...I'm not sure it would work, but it's worth trying. The hardest part of the plan is that we have to find someone with a good amount of influence, someone who would never be suspected of being connected to us. And then -"

"If you ever feel like telling us what you actually plan to do, I'll be in the Great Hall, eating lunch," Lucy said impatiently.

"I'm getting there, I'm getting there. See," Lily reached into her book-bag and pulled something out. Both of her friends gasped at what they saw.

"Wait - but, that's - how - I saw you give the shirt back to Hurler!" Alice gaped, using Lucy's new nickname for the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

"I duplicated it. It's a simple charm, only lasts for a couple hours. It's how Leprechaun Gold is made. He's got the fake one. But anyway, I was thinking - if we can get into the restricted section, to find a spell that actually does let you duplicate things, and then we could make lots of these shirts. Then, we could give them to our distributor - that would be the influential person who would supposedly never associate with us - and everyone who hates Hurley could take a shirt! Maybe, we could even embroider 'H.U.R.L.' on the back; which would stand for Hurley's Unfit [to] Rear Learning. What do you think?"

"I think that you think far too much," Lucy answered.

"Great plan, really Lil, but how could we possibly pull it off? No student that fit that description would want to help us, and no teacher would let us into the Restricted Section! Why would we need to go there, anyway? Surely there's a simple copying charm in the rest of the library!" Alice gave her opinion.

"No, see, duplication charms are well-guarded. Some people would want to double money, or food, and that's illegal. Bur Professor Flitwick edged around the fact that we do have a book at Hogwarts that would have that spell in it. But it's bound to be in the Restricted Section...only for students studying for incredibly advanced N.E.W.T.s."

"You know, it's scary how much she knows about the school after she's been here for no more than a week, and from a muggle family, no less!" Lucy said loudly.

"I read a lot," was Lily's impatient reply.

"Too much for your own good," Lucy scoffed. Lily ignored her.

"And I think we just might be able to find a distributor..." Lily continued. "It would take some convincing, certainly, but he might do it..."