Sanguis Novus

Chapter Six: A Fireplace Discussion

Holding her breath and her body tense, Lily waited until that Lucius Malfoy person's footsteps could not longer be heard. As they echoed away, she felt her limbs almost melt into the floor, though she had done nothing particularly exhausting. Her head was awhirl...she couldn't stand any longer, his teasing face mocking her...

Is there really anything weird about me? she thought. I don't look any different, and if only that Lucius guy didn't know my last name, then he wouldn't have been able to tell me apart from any...any person they think is normal, I guess. God, why does my name matter so much, especially my last name, which I have no control over anyway? It doesn't tell people a thing about me, so why does Lucius or anyone else care?

"Hey, Lil!" Someone was calling for her. Probably to make fun of me again, she thought venomously. She looked up; it was only James.

"What do you want?" she asked, wondering why he, of all people - a Pureblood (she still wasn't sure what it was, but it clearly commanded a lot of respect)! - would be wandering the halls looking for her, a Mudblood.

"Well, you never came up to the Gryffindor Tower and none of those stupid prefects noticed either, so Remus asked me to go and look for you. God, this place is so weird at night. The candles are so dim it's scary, and I swear I passed a few ghosts on my way here."

"You know your way around already? Hogwarts looked so big from the outside."

"And it's big on the inside too. My dad told me how the school's mapped out," James said with a touch of smugness.

"Oh, I see," she said lightly.

"So...come on then! I don't want McGonagall to catch me in the halls - technically, I'm supposed to be asleep," he whispered, his eyes furtively darting around as if the strict professor was about to appear past the next turn. "We're, uh, not exactly on good terms...already."

"That's right! You had to see her after the feast, didn't you?"

"Yeah, and it wasn't fun."

"What did she do?"

"Just told me I was a troublemaker, that I should lose points, and so on."

"So did you? I mean, lose points for Gryffindor?"

"I told her that when she told me to see her after feast, I hadn't been Sorted yet, I wasn't in any House, and that way, I shouldn't have to lose any points. Thank God it worked, but I don't think she likes me much. Oh, well. I've got a whole year to redeem myself." He grinned. "I don't think I want to, though."

Being lead by James through a labyrinth of staircases and passages, Lily thought she would never be able to find her way around. But that might have been because she was still dwelling on her encounter with Lucius and his threat. With someone as imposing as him lurking over her day after day, she wasn't sure if she could ever do anything. Half-wishing James would continue talking to distract her, she marched on in silence.

"Alright," he said abruptly at long length. "This - " He fancifully gestured to a portrait of a snoring and quite rotund witch " - is the entrance to the Gryffindor Tower. What a shame she's asleep. She's really fun to talk to! Ah, never mind. Anyway, in order to get in, you've got to say the password. Ours is 'Humbug' for some reason."

A loud creak sent Lily shrieking.

"Goodness, darling! My hinges really must be oiled, don't they?" the portrait said, but the portrait was no longer there. Instead, it had swung open, revealing the Gryffindor common room. "It's a bit late to be out, isn't it?"

"Yeah, sorry about that," she said sincerely, hoping that she wouldn't have to bump into Lucius or any mean-spirited Slytherin in the middle of a hallway ever again.

"Not a problem. Well, get along, then! Even paintings have got to sleep."

"Sorry, ma'am," James said soothingly, bowing ridiculously low.

"Oh, Mr. Potter, you!" she laughed. Sending him a surreptitious little wink, she returned to her original position after letting the two students to pass.

"Why did she move out of the way like that?" Lily asked once they were in the confines of the common room. "I mean, neither of us said the password."

"Actually, I did. I guess when I was telling it to you, the Fat Lady, that's the portrait, she heard it and did as she always does when she hears the password."

A slowly dimming fire was still crackling merrily in the corning, even at such a late hour. The shadows it cast about the room danced and twirled about, giving off a sort of welcoming feeling that Lily never felt when around a fireplace. In the low light, she could still see the lush redness of the plush couches that lined the room and the gleam of oak table set in the middle of the room. Stretching and yawning, all that was on her mind was sleep, a deep and blissful sleep -

"Lily!" A dark figure leapt up from a nearby couch. "You're back! Where were you?"

Remus.

As she saw his face, lined with concern, everything rushed back to her, weighing her mind down with matters she wished would leave her forever: the Sorting, the Slytherins' obnoxious behavior, Lucius...oh, everything! Everything! Hogwarts! She wanted that to be erased, that of all things, for it was the root of all that had gone wrong, a deception that had stealthily persuaded her to abandon one life for another.

Allowing a wry and pained chuckle to escape her, Lily realized she had never really said that word.

"Mudblood," she whispered, ignoring his question and feeling its syllables caress her lips and tongue, only to find that it only left a stinging burn.

"Oh, God," Remus moaned. "Don't say that word. And where were you?"

"Why?" she said in that same apathetic tone, yet again avoiding the question.

"Because." He paused. "You just don't."

"Everyone else does."

Everyone else, she thought blankly, oblivious to the tears that were rolling down her cheeks. Everyone else. Right, that's how it always is, right? It's always everyone else and me. Why isn't there ever anyone to help me and to tell me that I'm right? Like at my old school, and now here, at my new school. No, it's not even my school. It doesn't belong to me, and I don't belong to it.

Her sight a bit hazy, she made her way over to the couch directly in front of the fire, submitting to her mental exhaustion and falling onto its buoyant surface. The velvety hairs brushed up against her cheek, the fire emitted waves of heat, but it was all cold, an ever-shrinking shroud of isolation and loneliness, lonely because of something she couldn't control, lonely because...

"Mudblood," she said again, now consciously feeling the repugnance and disdain of the word, not understanding how anyone could say that word without experiencing a racking guilt and shame.

"Lily?" Remus was next to her, and James sitting nearby, feigning interest in a hanging tapestry on the opposite wall.

"What?" she sniffled, curling herself into a shaking ball wracked with sobs.

"What's wrong?"

"You don't know what's wrong?" she shrieked incredulously, losing control of her immense emotion. "You don't know what's wrong? Okay, I'll tell you then! First, some idiotic moron of a headmaster sends me a letter, asking me to come to this school, all the while knowing that because I'm a Mudblood, I'm going to be made fun of until I bloody leave the school! Then you don't tell me anything, James - " She shot the poor boy a scathing look " - doesn't tell me anything, or Sirius, or the prefects, or the professors! Oh, and while I'm on the professors, did you see them? Half of them were laughing at me. My own teachers, laughing as I was being Sorted!"

"I know, I know," he spoke, deadly calm, laying a hesitant hand on her shoulder. "I already knew that. It's all my fault."

"Your fault? It wasn't your fault that I have Muggle parents, it wasn't your fault that the whole blasted school thinks I'm completely stupid because I haven't been around magic my whole life, and it wasn't your fault...you didn't do anything!"

"It is my fault, Lily." In the short time that they had been acquainted, she had never seen his face so grave nor adamant. Instead of arguing back, she merely shrugged her shoulders. Remus seemed to have taken it as an impetus to explain his mistakes. "You know the saying 'Ignorance is bliss'? Well, see, I basically lied to you."

Lily's faced turned pallid, her skin almost translucent by the firelight. "You didn't," she croaked, not wanting to believe that the one person she trusted had only been a fake, an illusion.

"Well, I didn't directly lie to you. That day in Diagon Alley, when we bought our supplies together, I think I gave you the impression that the Wizarding world is almost exactly the same as the Muggle world except for the fact that we can wave wands around and perform spells. Or if I didn't give you that impression, then you got it from somewhere else." Thinking of The Basic Muggle's Guide to Everything Wizarding and the placid face of the headmaster, it was very difficult for Lily not to beat the old man senseless. "You had to have noticed somewhere along the line that things in the Wizarding world are just a little off. Like remember in Gringotts and that application form?"

"The word 'Mudblood' was on it," she muttered hoarsely.

"You know what that means?" Remus ventured nervously.

"Means I'm not like everyone else," Lily remarked ruefully, eyes fixed on the floor. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "This is going to be harder than I thought," he said.

"What d'you mean?"

"Everything. I've got to explain everything; there's no other way to do it. I own you this explanation. It's the only way you'll ever be able to feel comfortable in the Wizarding world." Through her tears, Lily gave him a look of disbelief, and she wondered if she would ever be "comfortable," as Remus had said, in a world that unabashedly and disdainfully hated her. "Hey, don't look at me like that! I'm being serious. The key to understanding the Wizarding world is to understand its history. You like history, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so," she admitted, not wanting to know how dark this sort of history would turn out to be.

"Then it's storytelling time, Lily. But just a quick warning: I can't guarantee that I've got all the details because I'm just a Half-blood. People like me don't put too much of an emphasis on the past."

"I'll fill those missing details in, if there are any," James volunteered graciously, for once keeping the look-here-I'm-a-Pureblood tone out of his voice.

"Right. Thanks, James. All right...where to start? Well, wizards and magic have been around for just as long as Muggles, even back in those cavemen days. Unlike today, we lived together. You know those early inventions that Muggles supposedly created? The wheel and fire - we were the ones that came up with them, and we ran the early civilizations, the early government...pretty much the whole world. Under cover, though. No one was stupid enough to stand in the middle of the street waving a wand. So some separation was necessary, but not like it is today.

"And everyone was equal. It didn't matter if someone was of complete magical parentage or was just born into it like you. All kinds of wizards were friends, and we were still on good terms with Muggles for probably the only time in history

"However, keep in mind that there were always wizards that thought living so close with Muggles was a bad thing, and they didn't like at all the intermarrying between Muggles and Wizards. That's the one thing. Then a guy named Jesus of Nazareth came along - "

" - and you'd better watch your bloody mouth," Lily finished for him, she herself being proudly Lutheran.

"Okay, I will! I swear I wasn't going to say anything, you know, bad. Anyway, Christianity was born and it, no offense, doesn't have the greatest view of those old superstitions."

"They would be..." she mulled quietly to herself, fearing what the answer might be.

"Exactly. See, even if we were trying to keep low about things, which we were, the Muggles obviously noticed there was something weird about us, and they just couldn't put a word to it was all. Little by little, magic was being abused. Power-hungry wizards promised Muggles that by using their magic, they could make them live forever and those sorts of things. 'Course, they only did it for the money, but some did become pretty famous. This was at the time of the Roman Empire, and when Christian leaders began speaking out against false ways to salvation..."

James ran a finger across his throat in one swift and violent motion, and Lily nodded in shocked comprehension.

"Yeah, so you can pretty much guess what happened - basically, the Muggles took up the Christian cause and killed any wizard they could find in any way they could think of. Sometimes, they accidentally killed other Muggles they accused of 'knowing' magic, the whole thing got so out of hand."

"The Middle Ages?" Lily asked, remember how devoutly Christian people were during that time.

"Uh-huh. It was probably the most important time period for the Wizarding world. First, you've got wizards dying all over the place, but there was also a good thing that came out of it. It was the feeling that we all were magical people and we all had to work together if we were going to survive the crazy doings of the Muggles. Almost everyone figured the best way to do that was to separate completely from them and to gradually erase their memories of wizardry and magic. That way, magical and non-magical people would be able to live on in peace. However, remember the people I mentioned earlier that always wanted to live separately from Muggles? Well, now, their feelings weren't very friendly towards them, blaming them for everything bad that had happened to the Wizarding world."

"I wonder who those people were," said James sarcastically.

Despite her limited (but growing) knowledge of the Wizarding world and its people, Lily somehow knew. "The Blacks," she blurted out.

"As well as the Lestranges, Averys, and the Malfoys, to name a few," James filled in for her, ticking the prestigious family names off his fingers.

"What about you, I mean, your family? I thought you were a pureblood - "

"I never said those families were Pureblood, did I?

"Oh, sorry."

"Don't be, because you're right. Yeah, I'm a stuck up little Pureblood brat, supposedly, but no, the Potters never spoke out against Muggles. Okay, maybe we never spoke out for them, but we certainly didn't go parading around blasting the hell out of every Muggle we saw. I should know; my parents make that point everyday over the dinner table."

"Remus," Lily complained, "I still don't even know what exactly what Pureblood and Half-bloods and..." She paused for a while before saying the word " - Mudbloods are. I've only got a vague idea."

"Just wait a little, all right? Don't worry, I will explain what they mean. Just let me get through the story first.

"Luckily, those families were in the minority - most wizards, even at that time, had some Muggle parentage in them. This was when the Ministry of Magic was set up. Lily, the goal of the Wizarding world, as a whole, is to protect magic and making sure it doesn't die out because that almost happened during the Middle Ages. Hogwarts was set up during the Middle Ages because it was no longer safe to teach children magic at home, where any passer-by could see. Later on, the Ministry finally began inspecting every house owned by a Wizarding family and cast Unplottable Charms and that sort of thing on them.

"It took maybe a century or two for both worlds to separate, but by the Renaissance, the situation was pretty close to what it is today."

"So you're saying, then, that the Wizarding world hasn't changed since the 1400s?" Lily exclaimed, aghast.

"Er, not really. What I meant to say was that the situation between wizards and Muggles was pretty much the same."

"Oh, I get it."

"Now, on the Pureblood's list of priorities, the first thing's done. Get rid of the Muggles. The next thing to do was to get rid of all Muggle influences, and that would mean using a different currency, wearing different clothing, but most importantly, to get rid of those who were brought up in a Muggle environment and then joined the Wizarding community because they were born with the gift of magic."

"Like me," Lily said slowly. "People like me."

"Yeah...sadly."

"Hmph, and you said the Wizarding world hasn't changed..."

"Lily," James cut her off, "can you just let the guy finish?"

Glowering, she allowed him to continue.

"At first, no one listened to the Blacks and the Malfoys. Sure, they were powerful, but popular opinion went against them. The population of wizards had dropped during the Middle Ages and it was still on the rebound, and for many people, it was, above all, most important to increase the number of wizards.

"This made all the powerful families very angry, and using their power, they managed to convince almost everyone that it was better to have a smaller but pure Wizarding community than a large one but with some traces of Muggle-ness. They unleashed this huge campaign to oppress Muggle-born wizards, coming up with words like Pureblood, Half-blood, and...God, I don't want to say the word."

"It's okay, Remus. I know what you mean."

"Now that a lot of people believed in their cause, they were elected into the higher levels of government, and a lot of anti-Muggle-born laws were passed. Luckily, as time went on, most of the laws were repealed." Sighing heavily, Remus sank down on the couch, looking supremely exhausted and worn. "James," he said at last, "could you take it from here?"

"Sure, mate. The laws and crap were gone, but the anti-Muggle feeling still existed, and it carries on through today, largely due to the fact there's this goon who calls himself Lord Voldemort that's going around, gathering supporters."

"And I'm guessing this Lord Voldemort wants to rid the world of filthy little Mudbloods?" Lily yelled violently, the force in her tone taking even herself by surprise.

"Pretty much. His supporters are, who would have guessed, those proud Pureblood families."

"God, what sort of damn place is this?" Furious, she impulsively gave the back of the couch a good punch. "Why didn't anyone tell me it was so backward? I thought...it's not fair! And what kind of sick person is this Voldemort? Why? Why do they have to feel that way, that I'm just not good enough?"

It all made sense now: the jeering Slytherins, the horrified/supercilious reaction when she was called up to be Sorted...but Lily still could not understand why Remus could have just told her this beforehand, before she had to endure such a trial, battling the greatest opposition in the world, prejudice, with the weakest weapon in her armory, ignorance, only because she had nothing else with which to fight, nothing else with which to shield herself. Her mum had always told her that knowledge was power (and she was sure some other famous person in history had said that as well) and that to be kept uninformed and unaware was the cruelest torture any person could endure. And here she had been, skipping around, her aura relatively carefree, actually thinking she would be accepted, that she would be more loved in this world than in the other one...

Ignorance is not bliss, Lily thought sorrowfully. Why couldn't you have just told me?

Yet if he had told me, she reasoned, would I have been able to take it? God knows I would've just...exploded when he did. Don't blame him for anything because all he tried to do was to make you happy. He did nothing.

He didn't make me happy! Ignorance is not happiness! I'd rather have known before I made a total idiot out of myself.

Yes, you were happy. Admit it, you were happy, even if it was for just a short time.

And as she looked into the dark and trying eyes of Remus, radiating nothing but compassion, she felt it fall apart - the perfect Wizarding world she had constructed in her mind since receiving the letter, the perfect Wizarding world that she had clung onto no matter how unlikely it seemed, the perfect Wizarding world that was no more and never was or had been. It fleeted across her mind, now nothing but an infinite void, the image of a happy Lily in a happy world. Oh, how faraway that seemed...

The tears that then tumbled out of her eyes were not those of grief but of deep remorse and shame, shamed that she had allowed herself to be so carried away by her fantastic images and creations that she, in return, had been blind to what was so painfully clear.

"Well, mate," James said uncertainly, standing up and yawning, "it's late and I'm off to bed. Goodnight, then."

Remus murmured an almost inaudible, "G'night," as he turned to Lily, who had proceeded to bury her tear-streaked face in her hands. "Lily?" She sniffled in reply. "The girls' dormitory is off to that side...you should probably go to sleep now," he mumbled, "because I'm pretty sure you're as tired as I am."

"No, Remus! Don't go." He can't leave, she thought despairingly. Then there'll be no one left for me. "Can you stay here with me?"

Reluctantly, he settled back down on the couch, watching onward as Lily placed her head on the armrest, her tears illuminated by the dying fire. She fell asleep almost immediately, but he could do no more than stare at random portraits (also in the midst of resting). With a heave, he walked over to Lily, her face now ethereally calm, the tears having departed at last. Gently, he lifted a loose tendril of her thick red hair and swept it back behind her shoulder. He heard her sigh contently.

At that, unconsciousness overtook him as he slumped back on the couch, snoring ever so slightly.