The Parents Who Died

The Parents Who Died: Part VI of Tale #1

I’m So Brave, Too Bad I’m a Baby

I’m so green, it’s really amazing

I’m so clean, too bad I can’t get all this dirt off of me.

I’m so sane, it’s driving me crazy

It’s so strange, I can’t believe it

Feels just like I’m falling for the first time

Anyone perfect must be lying

Anything easy has its cost

Anyone plain can be lovely

Anyone loved can be lost

What if I lost my direction?

What if I lost sense of time?

What if I nursed this infection?

Maybe the worst is behind

And it feels just like I’m falling for the first time

--the Barenaked Ladies, "Falling for the First Time"

Shards of pale white light slipped in through the high windows of the library. They slipped around high bookshelves and through chairs and tables, falling every here and there in the cool, calm library.

In contrast the quiet, intent atmosphere of the library, the sounds seeping in from the hall were those of the students returning from Christmas holidays, loud and boisterous.

At the only occupied table in the library two people sat at opposite ends, swimming through piles of old books with Latin titles. Some were English, though, and quite decipherable, and it was these that hinted on their studies: The Dark Side, The Art of Dark Magic, Evil Wizards and Why They Went Bad: A psychological study, and The What-You-Don’t-Knows on the You-Know-Whos.

Both students seemed quite rapt on these musty volumes. The girl on the left side, Lily Evans, was skimming a book called Why Do We Turn Out Like We Do?, a clean piece of parchment spread out on a tiny clear box of space on the table, her right hand holding a loaded eagle-feather quill with its point poised over the paper. Without looking down at this parchment, the red-head still managed to copy down legible facts as she turned pages with her left hand.

On the other side of the table, James Potter, hair messy as always, but now quite dusty too, leaned back casually in his chair, chewing on gum, and intent on the book in his hands. This book was actually a reference book, which was shocking when one considered James’s personality, and its title read The Factors of a Bad Life.

At least, he was intent on his book until he abruptly snapped in shut and sat upright. "I’m bored," he proclaimed, popping a bubble loudly. 

Lily didn’t reply; she chose to ignore him and continued her blind, yet neat, scribbling of notes.

"I am dead bored," James clarified.

"Mm," commented Lily. She muttered something unintelligible.

"What was that?" he wondered.

She didn’t answered. He couldn’t see her, but the sound of her scratching quill clarified that either, a) she was ignoring him wonderfully or, b) she was wrapped into her own world of devils and evil things. 

Unsure of which, he, being the person he was, would find out which. "Are you bored too?"

"Mm," said Lily.

James leaned back on the back legs of his chair, high enough now, to peer over the books. A dark red head of wavy long hair was bent, engrossed, over her work, obviously completely oblivious to him. "Hmm," he said. He let his chair fall back down and looked thoughtful for a moment. He then resolutely stood and placed his hands on his hips to deliberate Lily more closely. "I’m bored," he tested, louder this time.

Madam Pince, who the hearing of...well...the best hearer in the world...looked up from her desk to glare at James. He grinned irresistibly at her and she couldn’t help but smile back and go back to her work. James was disgusted to see she was blushing.

"Ugh," he said softly, shuddering. "I wish my charm would work that well on somebody else."

He was staring at this certain somebody at this certain moment with a look of certain evil on his face. 

He made his way slowly around the table to Lily, still deeply at work. Pulling the chair next to her out, he tugged it as closely to her side as he could without jogging her out of her study-reverie and straddled the chair backwards. "I’m bored," he repeated.

"How nice," Lily mumbled, barely glancing up.

"Let’s play Quidditch," James suggested, eyes gleaming strangely. He leered at her.

Startled at the peculiarity of this proposal, Lily glanced up, finally aware of James’s presence. "Huh?"

James grinned, teeth glittering oddly in the light. "I said, let’s play Quidditch."

"We have a project to do," Lily reminded him, waving her eagle feather in his face and brushing his nose. "Remember? We have to do the best."

With his right forefinger and thumb, James pinched the feather to a stop and looked pointedly at Lily. She retracted it and eyed him with her bright green eyes.

"I’m sick of this project," James told her. "Let’s take a break." He leered at her. "Let’s play Quidditch, Evans. I’m a really good player. And I know you are."

Lily rolled her eyes. "I’m fully aware of your Quidditch skills, Potter," she said. James snorted loudly at this remark, but she was oblivious: oblivious to the snort and oblivious to his statements’ hidden contents. "But right now I need your brain skills. We need to work."

James wiggled an eyebrow at her. "Quidditch is work."

"Besides," said Lily, turning back to her book. "Quidditch is a team sport."

James snorted so loudly this time she looked up. "What?"

"I have a cold." James coughed, but the grin on his face told an entirely different story.

"Right."

"But, really, Lily, we’ve been working at this all morning. Let’s take a break. Play Quidditch with me."

"But our brooms are upstairs," Lily reminded him.

Snort. "Mine’s not."

Lily raised an eyebrow. "Where is it?"

"Right here," James said, patting himself. 

Lily remained oblivious.

"C’mon, Evans, please," James begged, pulled at her sleeve. "I’ll let you play Keeper."

"You always let me play Keeper."

"See? See?" James said.

"Okay..." said Lily.

"I’ll play Seeker," James informer her, eyebrows high and innocent. "And I’ll let you touch my Golden Snitches."

As this sentence was completely beyond the regular ideas of Quidditch, Lily was jogged out of oblivion and into the real world. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth dropped. "You pervert!" she cried, hitting him upside the head with her thick book.

"Ow," James laughed, rearing back. His glasses were askew and his rubbing his head made his hair even messier. "That hurt..."

"It was supposed to, you pervert."

James grinned. "So I take it as you don’t want to play?"

"No!" Lily snapped, smoothing down her ruffled parchment. "Why would I ever want to play with you?"

"You seemed highly contented to do that a week ago," James commented.

Lily turned pink. "That was a kiss. It has nothing to do with what you’re always proposing."

"Oh," James said, smiling, "so you want to snog instead?"

"James Potter," Lily said, raising her book threateningly again, "your mind is in the gutter."

"It always has been," James informed her.

"Ugh," Lily commented, opening her book again and turning back to her page. 

James stood and sidled up behind her. Aware of this and completely out of her studying mode, Lily said, without looking up, "What are you doing?"

His hands snaked up under her hand and began to massage into her shoulders. When he spoke, his voice was soft and just at her ear, "Making my moves."

"I can see that," Lily said weakly, dissolving, unwillingly, into a puddle of mush at his touch. She remained contumacious, though. "Get your hands off me."

He didn’t. Instead, her pulled back her long mane of hair from her neck and kissed it.

"Potter," said Lily shrilly. "I’m trying to study." But along with her heart, her brain was mush too.

James tugged on her arm. "You know you want to," he whispered seductively.

"I want to study."

Her heart did crazy gymnastics out of its mush as his lips pressed to her neck again. Her muscles liquefied and she was unable to resist as he tugged her out of her chair. "Come here," he said, taking hold of her. He eyed Madam Pince, who’d looked up at them and was watching suspiciously. James gave another grin and waved at her. "Need another book!" he called.

She smiled and nodded, turning back to her work.

James, of course, wasn’t looking for a book. As soon as they were safely behind a bookshelf and out of Madam Pince’s line of sight, his lips were on Lily’s in a forcible, delving kiss and his arms were tight around her waist in a tight, locked embrace.

* * * * *

Kaye Song was a pretty girl, and she knew it. She was of Japanese heritage, and had long, manicured black hair, turned-up, dark eyes, a cute button nose, and full lips. Her skin was olive and her figure was perfect. 

So she was one very confident Gryffindor.

After a wonderful vacation with her family, she came back to Hogwarts ecstatic to reunite with her boyfriend, James. Once she’d replaced all her belongings in her room, said hi to Padmavati and Lydia and all her Ravenclaw friends, she set off in search of her boyfriend to greet him with a huge kiss. She liked how James kissed: Risqué and gentle at the same time. He was the only guy she’d even dated who could kiss like that.

She planned on keeping him.

When she found him in none of his usual hangouts (the boys’ dorm, the common room, the Quidditch field), she’d turned to the library as the final place he might be instead of searching for her.

So, against her usual standards, she entered the cool, book-filled room, fighting the nausea she got every time was inside of it. 

She veered far away from Madam Pince, who sent her a dirty look, and took to peering about the library for her boyfriend on her own.

There were lots of bookshelves in this library. It was a wonder Kaye found the right one to look behind. But, eventually, she did.

Behind one bookshelf, Kaye stopped and blinked.

A dark-haired boy was kneeling on the ground, frantically kissing a red-haired girl. Both were obviously very caught up.

"Er," she said. "I’ll be going now—"

But as she turned to leave, she realized that this dark-haired boy sucking face with this red-haired girl was...James Potter.

"JAMES?" she cried, the edition of Witch Weekly she held in her hands flying into the air in her shock. 

Startled, the couple broke apart, breathing hard, and both looked up at Kaye. Both had very red lips and very ruffled expressions.

"Kay-yay," James said, startled, clamoring to his feet. "It’s, um...it’s not what it looks like!"

Kaye, whose mouth was wide open, looked with huge eyes from James to the girl furiously. "Lily Evans!" she squealed. "You!"

Lily was very rosy. "Um," she said weakly. "Kaye—"

"WHAT?" Kaye roared, backing up into the bookshelf in anger.

Desperately, Lily looked to James. "It’s—it’s all his fault!" she cried quickly, hitting James’s leg. "I told you I didn’t want to play Quidditch!"

"Play Quidditch?" Kaye shrieked. Her eyes filled with tears. "But— You played Quidditch with her?"

James looked incredibly flustered. "Um..." he said.

"I can’t believe you!" Kaye wailed. "We’d been going out for months! We were made for each other!" Angrily, she glared at Lily. "This is all your fault, Lily!"

"My fault?" Lily cried, standing up shakily. "Like hell it’s my fault! Can I help it if your boyfriend grabs me and starts kissing me?"

"He just missed me, that’s all!"

"Um," said James. "Er..."

"I’m never speaking to you again, Lily!" Kaye whimpered.

Lily looked bewildered. "I didn’t mean—"

"Auuugh," Kaye wailed. She hit Lily across the face. "Bitch!" she added, running off in tears.

She left two befuddled people standing there.

"That went well," James said after a moment.

Lily glared at him. She bent down, grabbed Kaye’s magazine, and threw it at him. He caught it. "You are a bastard," Lily informed him, stalking away from him.

"So I take it that the Astronomy Tower tonight is out of question?" James called after her.

"I am never, ever going near you again!" Lily yelled over her shoulder.

"Miss Evans! Mr. Potter! Voices down!"

But Lily was already gone. The door slammed shut behind her.

* * * * *

"Prongs! Buddy! Where’ve you been?" Sirius Black greeted James Potter as he loped into the common room with a bewildered look on his face.

"Huh?" said James, blinking around as Sirius, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew surrounded him.

"You weren’t here to greet us," said Remus, eyes twinkling. "We were very hurt."

"After those long, dawdling two weeks apart, too!" cried Sirius. He cuffed James’s shoulder in a friendly way and led him over to a table circled by four poufs. "Prongs, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you didn’t miss us!"

"I didn’t," James confirmed, plopping down.

"Not—not even me?" asked Peter timidly.

Though James usual was soft and nice around Peter because he pitied him so and was just that kind of sentimental person, he wasn’t nice this time. "Nope. I was plenty busy."

Sirius frowned. "Doing what?"

James began ticking things off with his fingers. "Comforting hot chicks, snogging with hot chicks, studying with hot chicks, trying to get hot chicks to play Quidditch with me—"

"Wheeeee!" said Remus loudly. "Did you score?"

James sniffed. "No. But I almost did."

"Kaye didn’t give in?" Sirius demanded.

James blinked. "Kaye?"

"Um..." said Peter meekly. "That is who this ‘hot chick’ is...right?"

"Er," said James, "no. Kaye went home for the holidays, remember?"

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "Then who was it?"

James grinned. "I’m not saying." He paused, then added, as a hint, "She’ll spank me."

"Wheeee!" said Remus again, jumping. 

"Lily Evans?" Sirius whispered, eyes wide. "You were snogging with her, little miss bitchy hard-to-get?"

James nodded, looking smug.

"How was it?" asked Remus, awed.

Looking thoughtful, James considered. "Better than Kaye."

"Wow," said Peter, who’d always had a major crush on Lily. Though outside he looked impressed, inside he secretly steamed. Another thing Mr. Popular Potter stole from him...

"Knew she liked you," Sirius remarked knowingly. "Knew it all along. There is no girl who can act that rotten and not like a guy."

James nodded. "Sadly enough, I reckon I’ve ruined all snogging rights with Evans, though."

"Why?" Sirius demanded.

"Kaye caught us, blamed Lily, got Lily in a huffy, and now Lily, again, hates me," said James sadly.

"Aw, she’ll get over it," Sirius assured him.

"Hopefully," Remus added.

"Maybe," said Peter hopefully.

"Or not," Sirius finished.

"Thanks, guys, for that bit of assurance," James said sourly.

"No problem," Sirius said with a grin.

James sighed.