A Change of Heart

Chapter 14

Lily stepped back slightly surprised. She had been expecting it to happen but it didn't make it less shocking. She held her fingers on her lips and felt Sirius' eyes on her, watching her intently for her reaction. He looked worried for a moment, but her smile, unfaltering and kind made him feel at ease. Inside, she was a storm of emotions. She had just been kissed by the boy she had liked for over three months and she couldn't stop herself from thinking that James' kiss had been better. She had long learned how to appear calm to others without actually feeling confident at all. She looked at Sirius who was looking at her smiling and she felt herself smiling back. This was who she wanted, not James, with his million and one pranks and mean jokes. She wanted someone who didn't always use other people as punching bags and she also wanted to get back to the castle urgently, now. She needed to talk to Hannah or Sarah. They would help her make sense of things. She walked with Sirius back to the castle holding hands and when he offered to wait for her to come down for dinner, she refused, eager for some time alone with her friends.

"Today is the Halloween feast," he reminded her. "Don't be too late."

She looked at the calendar as soon as she had gone up to her dormitory. She had completely forgotten about Halloween.

'No chance of seeing Sarah or Hannah right now then. They'll be circling the halls working up an appetite,' she thought mildly annoyed.

She paced around her dormitory for a good half hour before starting to feel alone and confused, got up to go to the library. She didn't want to stay in her room doing nothing. So she headed downstairs, walking briskly towards the portrait.

***

James walked around the halls feeling very dejected. He had seen it; all of it. He had even pushed Peter into Sirius to keep him from kissing Lily at Honeyduke's. Their date had gone great and he regretted having followed them around in his Invisibility Cloak. Well, he had followed them almost everywhere. He had lost all motivation to follow them into Madam Pudifoot's, but then he had seen them again when he had been walking back to the castle. He had heard Sirius speaking to Lily about them. He also saw them kiss. His stomach had never squirmed so much. He still couldn't wrap his mind around the idea of Lily and Sirius together.

He walked until he reached professor Munin's classroom. He went in, intent on talking with the old teacher. He often went to Professor Munin, for the sake of talking and for listening to any news about Voldemort. Professor Munin was very much involved in the work being done to fight against the Dark Lord. Right now, that was what he needed. He needed to think about something else. He needed to get the image of Lily and Sirius out of his mind. He found Professor Munin looking in a cage at some doxies.

"Er. Professor Munin? How's it going?" he asked moving to look at the fairy closely.

"Ah! James, just the person I wanted to see!" he said happily, turning to look at the boy. "Look a new shipping of doxies for my third years. What do you think?"

"They look more vicious than last year's, professor. Good stock," he said, inspecting the little creatures who tried to bit his hand when he put it on the cage. He moved his hand away and tried to grin. "You're starting a new subject with the third years then? I thought they'd never get past the grindylows. So many of them needed tutoring."

"Oh! Thank you for reminding me. I've been meaning to speak with you since the beginning of the week, but the subject kept slipping my mind. Would you mind terribly beginning on another student for me? You did so great with some of the third years, I thought you might help me again," he said, completely delighted about the idea of having James as a tutor.

James thought about it for a second before the image of Lily popped back into his head, "I'd love to help, Professor. When would I begin?"

"Excellent. I knew I could count on you James. You'd start on Monday, here at seven. Trust me you'd never find a better student, she's very hard- working," Professor Munin continued smiling whiling looking around his desk for some papers.

James was about to ask who he was supposed to tutor when Remus rushed in through the door. "Hey-need-to--talk-to-you."

"Okay," James said apprehensively. "So Monday then, Professor? I'll be here."

"Marvelous James, thank you," Munin said delighted.

***

James followed Remus out of the classroom, outside to the hall very confused. "What's wrong with you?" he asked intrigued.

"Hannah Spinnet just came to me with a problem. She said that she thought she saw your floating head near Hogsmeade," he said worriedly. "She was quite scared to say the least. I had told her before you would be in the library all day."

"Oh man! She saw me? Did anyone else?" James asked worriedly.

"No, just her. But I think you should talk to her. Calm her down. I convinced her not to tell anyone else about it either..." Remus said nervously.

"That's good. I'll go talk to her right now," he said starting to walk towards the Gryffindor common room. "Why did she ask you what I would be doing all day?"

"We were talking yesterday and she asked me if I was going to be hanging out with you," Remus said plainly. He stole a glance at his friend's furtive smile. "It's not like that! She just hasn't had anyone to talk to everyone seems so busy. I mean, Lily. and you've seen Sarah haven't you? She's always with a different guy. I don't remember her being that way last year. I wonder what's up with her."

"She's probably just exploring her possibilities. Sirius and I have been doing that for the past three years." he said with a smirk. "That is, before-nevermind. So Hannah then? She's nice. Always a quiet one."

"I knew I'd never hear the end of it," he said as they reached the portrait.

Just then, the portrait swung open and a head of red hair tumbled into James, knocking him to the ground. Lily fell down on top of James and felt her confusion flare up again as she realized who it was she had knocked to the ground. He looked into her brilliant green eyes and recognized her immediately. His face dangerously close to hers, she scrambled to get up as though she were touching fire. He seemed to notice something was wrong with her because he reached to touch her.

"Lily? Are you okay?' James asked concerned.

Remus watched as Lily's eyes flickered with an expression he couldn't pin down. She wasn't giving James the same familiar annoyed look she had given him the last six years.

"Lily?" Remus asked after she didn't answer.

"I'm fine. I'm sorry," she said timidly before rushing down the hall.

"What was that?" Remus asked confused.

"Your guess is as good as mine," James said thoughtfully. "But if Sirius did anything to hurt her."

"You know he wouldn't," Remus said benevolently.

"Come on, let's go find Hannah. Maybe she can also tell us what's wrong with Lily," James said, concerned, before going into the common room to search for Hannah Spinnet.

***

Lily rushed as far away from the common room as possible. 'Oh boy, just what I needed,' she thought to herself. 'All I needed was to bump into James.' His eyes haunted her. His deep hazel eyes had been etched with concern. For the umpteenth, she seemed to be unable to erase him from her mind. 'Maybe I should find Sirius,' she thought wretchedly. She didn't really feel like anything. She wanted to make sense of her thoughts. Hannah. She needed to talk to Hannah. Sarah would only start jumping in and out of her wits about the whole thing. She loved Sarah like a sister, but she wasn't the most serious person she knew. She walked in direction of the Great Hall to search for her friend. Instead she found Sarah making out with a Ravenclaw.

"Sarah!" Lily said appalled. "What are you doing?"

"Oh! Lily!" Sarah said, pushing the boy off of her.

Lily pulled Sarah by the arm while Sarah struggled to wave coyly at the boy.

"What is this? What's going on with you?" Lily demanded, for once forgetting about boys for the first time in five months. "This is so unlike you Sarah. You know I thought it was just a couple of boys, but it's not is it?"

Sarah avoided her friend's eyes and guiltily stared at the floor. She cursed to herself for being caught like that by her best friend.

"Well? Sarah, please explain this to me!" Lily said again, exasperated.

Sarah glanced at Lily and then again at the hall where they were at. "Not here, let's go somewhere to talk."

"Fine. Outside, by the lake," Lily said pulling her friend through the halls until they were outside, in front of the castle, heading towards the edge of the lake as the sun started to come down. "Come on, how about now?"

"It's just plain ol' fun Lily," she said embarrassedly. "Look, I just don't want to go through life thinking I never took advantage of the time I had."

"What-why-why would you even think this way?" Lily asked, taken aback.

"Too much time with Professor Iris?" she tried smiling lamely. When Lily didn't accept her excuse she sighed heavily. "I never told you. I never told you my family comes from a long line of Seers. They're rare too, as you well know. Not one of my brothers and sisters seemed to have inherited this gift. Well, no one except me. I've developed the gift during all these years. I've gotten quite good at prediction. Too good. I don't like it. Not at all." Her last words seemed mumbled, more as though she were speaking to herself. "It seems silly to spend so much time on boys. to think of them as just a toy, I know. But I had this vision a couple of weeks before we came back. It was a vision of-of well, You-Know-Who, and he sent an order to kill someone. It felt like a dream. Like I knew what was going to happen and I knew who it was going to happen to--"

She stopped then, as though terrified of what she may say. Tears were welling up in Sarah's bright eyes. The joy and light that shone in them was shaded by the memory of what she was remembering. Lily put an arm around her consolingly and urged her to go on.

"I don't know if it's true. I told Professor Dumbledore about it. He doesn't know what to think of it," she said sadly. "It's a girl, our age, and a wizard."

"Oh my God," Lily said slumping down on the grass. "Is it-is it someone we know?"

Sarah knew what Lily was asking. She sat down in the grass next to her, watching emptily as the sun fell over the mountains.

"I don't know. All I know is that they're important," she said gravely.

"Sarah. It can't be you can it? It couldn't-right?" Lily said, scared.

"I don't know, Lily," Sarah said, looking at her friend.

Lily suddenly felt like a little child who had a bad dream, asking her mother whether the monsters underneath her bed were real or not. Sarah, who usually would have made a joke in this situation, seemed different. She looked older; she looked somewhat wiser. It was as though the secret of being able to see into the future was finally taking its toll on her. She would've liked to share her little secret with her friends. However, her parents had always told her it would be for the best if she kept her gift to herself. She had also never, in a million years, thought she would have to see something like she had. She never thought she'd have a vision where she was a Death Eater, taking an order from the Dark Lord, to kill a fellow student. Maybe even herself.

"Does Hannah know?" Lily asked quietly. Sarah shook her head. "Are you going to tell her?"

"I don't think it would be a good idea considering what happened with her aunt. It's still-I don't think it would be good for her to know yet," she said, looking down at her hands gingerly. "I'm sorry Lily. I know this is a lot to take in. I mean you just had this fabulous day with Sirius and then this--"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to go through this by yourself. I should've asked you before. You're like a sister to me Sarah. I'm sorry I've been too distracted to ask you," she said, ashamed.

"Distracted? You've been distracted. I've played tonsil-hockey with the better part of the seventh year boys. Except the Slytherins," she said, giving her friend a smile.

Lily tried to smile but the thought of one of her friends dying--the idea made her stomach churn.

"Professor Dumbledore said we have nothing to worry about yet. Professor McGonagall tried to reassure me that the only thing that-that m-man is scared of is Professor Dumbledore," Sarah said in a more positive tone. "Don't worry Lily. Really don't."

"Are you going to stop? With the boy parade I mean," Lily asked, standing up to approach the water.

"Yeah. I think I will," she said thoughtfully. "On the plus side this means no more teasing from you."

She smiled happily at her friend and ran near to where Lily was standing and splashed water her way. Lily retorted by kicking water in her friend's direction.

"But maybe Hannah's right. Maybe you wanted to make Troy jealous!" she yelled out before drenching Sarah with water.

They continued the water fight until they heard the clatter coming from the Great Hall, where the feast had already began. They walked together, wet and slightly more at peace, to the Gryffindor Tower to change. They had resolved to hope for the best, no matter what. They weren't going to fear the 'what could be.'