She sat in a seat next to the window, ignoring or trying to ignore the gigglings and indignant voices raised in pretend anger out in the hallway. For a slight instant, she wished she could be one of those girls, carefree and happy-go-lucky, but then the thought of Serena rose to the top. Being friends with those girls would be impossible unless she first made peace with Serena and Sheila, and she had no intention of doing that. Both of those girls would use their friends mercilessly, and Lily was not the slightest bit interested in being used a second time. She therefore sat upright in her seat, back not touching the cushions behind her, almost as if she were wearing a corset and stays, staring out of the window and thinking back to that morning.
Several loud bangs on her closed door made her wake up out of a half-trance, and in a very bad mood at being startled out of her reflections, she yanked the door open.
James fell in, with Sirius on top of him. Both of them, ignoring the fact that Lily had made them land on the floor, immediately sprang up and slammed the door shut, locking it. Breathing several loud, long, and deep sighs of relief, they sank onto two seats each, only then noticing the strange looks Lily was giving them.
“What on earth?”
James nodded towards the door. Lily turned her head in that direction, and immediately, she saw Serverus’ and Lucius’ angry faces looming two feet away from the glass. When they saw her in there, however, they dropped their wand hands and retired down the corridor, leaving behind two boys who were about to be grilled.
Lily sat back down herself. “I have a funny feeling you two are going to explain this.” Her tone left no doubt that they would, and the boys knew it.
“Well-“ James was still rather out of breath-“well, it’s not exactly our fault that the idiots would even think of putting on shoes with Dungbombs in them.”
Lily was torn between horror and amusement. “You did what?”
“Everyone on this darned train takes off their shoes during the trip, ‘cause it lasts so long. Well, we didn’t know that Lucius would be going to get drinks from that lady with the cart, and so, naturally, we used his shoes as a convenient place to store our Dungbombs. And he ruined a perfectly good dozen of them, too!” His voice was raised in feigned anger, and Lily couldn’t help but laugh behind the hand she held to her nose, imagining the smell of Lucius’ compartment.
They finally left off laughing, though Lily kept bursting into spontaneous fits of giggles for no apparent reason at all. At about noon, Sirius stood up.
"James, I'm going to see what Longbottom's up to. He told me that Malfoy was going to try to smuggle some of the Potion ingredients from Cauldwell's store-cupboard out of Hogwarts, and we're going to see if this can be turned to our advantage. See you two later." He swung out of the compartment, leaving James and Lily behind, both of them feeling awfully embarrassed.
James knew why Sirius had gone, and so did Lily, but James wasn’t aware that Lily knew. And Lily was perfectly aware of the fact that James was under the delusion that she didn't know that Sirius had left to give James some apologizing and talking time, and she intended to keep it that way.
It was always so much fun to listen to people stumble over their words and think of the right ones to say and then embarrass themselves terribly and give the whole thing away…Lily had had an aunt that seemed to see through every lie she was given, so the only option for the guilty party was, to them, to confess, and when they had done so, the aunt would look down at them; "Oh, is that so?" Lily had been caught that way twice, and from then on, she had refrained from coming into her aunt's presence whenever she had something on her mind, innocent or not.
So now, watching James twitch in his seat, she was looking forward to this conversation, which, no doubt, would be an allowance of laughter stretching at least over the Easter holidays. She took out a book; Death on the Nile, by Agatha Christie, and curled up in her seat. She refused to look up at the hinting noises which came from the person nearest the door, preferring to let him squirm.
A quiet cough.
Lily didn't move.
A tactful cough.
Lily's eyes went from one page to the next.
Pause.
Another tactful cough.
Lily flipped the page.
Squirm from James, the removal of a foot tucked from underneath Lily.
A rather louder cough.
Turning of two more pages. Lily was finished with the expository parts of the story.
'"Yes, darling, I'm engaged!"
"So that's it! I thought you were looking particularly alive somehow."'
Several soft sneezes, almost like a kitten.
Lily moved to the bottom of page eleven.
'"I shall die if I can't marry him! I shall die! I shall die! I shall die…"'
Well, Lily thought, raising her eyebrows, that dark-headed little child was rather ridiculous! Dying if she couldn't marry a man…why, the world would go on just the same with or without marriage. It certainly did until they discovered the practice of marriage, and then the whole world just got turned upside down.
Several louder sneezes.
Page thirty-one and moving.
'"You've got to pull it off," his partner said. "The situation's critical."'
Page sixty-seven and the person in the corner was getting rather upset. He accidentally kicked Lily's trunk.
'"…because, you see, as long as it works, I shan't use that pistol…But I'm afraid-yes, afraid sometimes-it all goes red-I want to hurt her-to stick a knife into her, to put my dear little pistol close against her head and then-just press with my finger-Oh!"'
Lily sniffed. Now, really, Jackie, is that any way to act? Why, murder isn't good at all! It awards so little satisfaction. Torture lasts much longer and gives so much pleasure. And so little people can really take torture. I wonder if Serena could. I can find out, though...
James kicked her trunk again, purposely this time.
Page eighty-three, and Sirius had peeked into the compartment, and finding them both silent, he drew away. This departure was missed by neither of the inhabitants; the only difference was that James didn't know Lily had seen Sirius and Lily knew that James didn't know that she knew.
'"What are the usual motives, Monsieur Poirot?"
"Most frequent-money. That is to say, gain in its various ramifications. Then there is revenge-and love, and fear, and pure hate, and beneficence-"'
Lily felt that, personally, her strongest motives for murder at the time would be revenge and hate.
Another strong kick to Lily's trunk, accompanied by a loud cough.
Page ninety.
"I suppose-it's nerves…I just feel that-everything's unsafe all around me."
Such a rumbling noise came from the figure in the corner, Lily thought he must be suffering from several double cases of bronchitis combined.
"Erm-Lily?"
Oh, good, he finally spoke. About time, too.
"Hm?"
"Could-could I talk to you for a second?"
"You already did."
"You know what I mean."
"Prove it."
"Prove what?"
"That I know what you mean."
"Well-you usually do."
"In your perception, I understand what you mean. In the perception of others, however, we do not percieve that you percieve that we comprehend what we mean."
"Huh?"
Lily was talking very fast now, and if one combines logic with big words, a high speed of talking, and a British accent, it makes the speaker look wonderfully smart and leaves the listener with his mouth hanging open. Lily was quite aware of this, and that was exactly the reason she was doing it.
"Every different person has different perceptions, you agree?"
"Huh? Oh-yeah, right."
''It is your perception that I percieve what you mean. And since my perception is different from yours, it is quite understandable that, in my perception, your perception is totally and completely, not to say utterly, incorrect. Therefore, I do not percieve what you mean."
She thought how much like a slaughtered calf he looked, and worse, he didn’t know it. Mouth hanging open, he was still confused.
"Let's take another example. I am God. Please disprove that."
"Huh? Oh-well, you're not."
Lily rolled her eyes.
"Umm-well-well, you're not."
She was getting impatient, and when she got impatient, her tongue generally loosed itself and began saying all sorts of thing; things that she understood perfectly, and that in itself was frightening to some.
"There are two different sides to this argument; the true and the false. If one of them is wrong, the other is correct, you will agree?"
"Oh-sure-whatever."
Lily inwardly laughed outright. This was the beginning of his end. "If you percieve that I am not God, then that is simply your perception. Your task is to prove that your perception is correct, and, technically, that is impossible. But now, if I decide to tell you that I am God because you cannot prove that I am not, what would you have to say?"
"That you're lying. But you're not God."
"But that is simply your perception. And your perception, may I take the liberty of stating, is often incorrect, seeing that perception is based on the senses. And the predominant sense is sight, upon which all other senses are based. Now, if your sight were taken away, then all of your other perceptions would be false, agreed?"
"Well-sort of, yeah."
She didn't miss a beat. "And, since you cannot prove that your sense of sight is with you at this very moment in time, all of your other perceptions are false. And if all of your other perceptions are untrue, then your perception of my perception is also false, which leaves my perception to be true, since we agreed farther back that if one perception is true, the other is automatically false, and vice versa. Now, since I have proved your perception to be false, my perception is the correct one. Do you understand?"
His mouth was opening and closing like a goldfish.
"No."
"The conclusion being, after lengthy study of the subjects, that since my perception is the correct perception and that yours is the incorrect perception, that I am God. Any arguments?"
He was obviously beaten. "No."
Lily smirked. This was so darned easy, and so much fun!
Sirius then entered the compartment. "Well, are you two talking again?"
James nodded.
"James, for heaven's sake, shut you mouth!"
He did so, quickly. "We're not talking. She is."
Sirius was confused. "Huh?"
"I have no idea what happened. She started to talk, and by the time she finished, I was convinced that she was God."
Sirius shot a knowing glance.
"Not like that. Logically, I mean. She can prove to you, in very long and confusing logical statements, that she is God, and I can't disprove it. Wait a minute there-" he turned to Lily-"prove that you are God!"
She shrugged. "I don't need to. I am perfectly convinced of that myself, and if I am convinced, there is no need to convince myself further. But the only way something is disproved is if a person has a strong enough disbelief in it to prove otherwise, and seeing that you don't have that, since you can't even argue right, you must obviously believe that I am God. Discussion ended."
Sirius laughed. He laughed so long and hard Lily almost had to clap her hands over his ears. When he finally stopped, Lily couldn’t have been more grateful.
"James, she's really something. And she's an enemy I wouldn’t like to have."
James frowned. "You really believe that you are God?"
"Hah!" Lily tossed her head affectedly. "I am not God any more than you are a permanent and foul-weather friend."
Sirius shook his head. "James, she has a point."
James looked up at Sirius, as if begging him to help him, and to his annoyance, Sirius did just the opposite.
"I'm leaving again, and I don't want pieces of you two blasted all over the floor when I come back. Lily, the wand stays in the trunk." Grinning in response to a scowling James, Sirius left, graciously refraining from slamming the compartment door.
James grimaced at the closed door, and then, as if gathering strength, he squared his shoulders and slipped off of his seat, coming to rest at about six inches away from Lily, who had gone back to Death on the Nile. The wronged ex-fiancée was getting rather stormy after having several (four) double gins, and Lily was enjoying the confrontation.
'Jacqueline swung round in her chair and glared at Simon.
"You damned fool," she said thickly, "do you think you can treat me as you have done and get away with it?"'
"Lily?"
"Mmm?"
"Umm-would you put that book away for a minute?"
Lily, in a granting mood, especially since she had just wiped the floor with James in their last discussion, slipped a candy wrapper inside the pages as a substitute for a bookmark and placed it on the seat next to her. "Yes?"
"I've wanted to talk to you for a while."
"Go on."
"I told you what I wanted to speak to you about on the Quidditch field this morning, didn't I?"
"You did."
"Well-I just wanted to say-maybe I was a bit wrong."
Lily was more than a speck incredulous. "Maybe? A bit?"
"Well, then I was all wrong."
Lily nodded. "I like correctness. Please proceed."
He was plainly exerting a great bit of self-control to smooth over her tartness, and unwillingly, Lily admired him for that.
"Lily, I wish we could be like we were at the beginning of our first year. I really do. I've missed-well, being your friend and I haven't much enjoyed fighting with you."
"You've certainly given a good enough impression of it up till now."
"I'm sorry."
"So 'I'm sorry' makes it all better now?"
"It can help. But Lily, won't you at least try me, and see how this comes out?"
She stared at him, as if divining his thoughts, and she had pushed back the secret door to his most private present fear. "And what about Serena? What'll she do to you if she finds we're friendly again?"
He waved his hand, though Lily could tell it cost him an effort. "I don't care about her. I never have and never will."
"That's direct proof that you don’t mean a dust molecule of this. Oh, don't give yourself airs. I know you care for her and I know you always will. And don't think it hurts me to say it; I won't have you acting as if you were making me break my heart, which you're not."
He took a glance at her set, composed face, and read something in that countenance that no other person could possibly have divined: self-accusation, and one thing to be said to his credit was that he tried his hardest to lock up that attitude in the deepest vault he could find, with the intention to keep it there permanently. "Lily, right now that doesn't matter. I know you've been terribly unhappy at times, and-well-I know I've been the cause."
"The amount you know is certainly frightening. Have you been spying on me?"
"Not really."
"What does that mean-not really?"
"Sirius has. But that's beside the point. I don't want to fight with you and I don’t-"
"James, since Sirius left the room, you've used the word 'I' eighteen times. Will you get away from yourself as a topic?"
"All right then. You haven't been happy, and at your age, you shouldn't know a thing of hardships and hate-and you're learning about them all too soon. Please."
Lily, eyes shaded by dark, thick, bristly eyelashes, glanced down and saw the serious, calm, unruffled figure on the floor. Untouched, or seemingly so, by her harsh words, he seemed almost surreal, since all of the people she knew would have flared up if she had thrown that large a torch upon them.
"All right. But you're to stop nagging me about the way I look."
He stood up and bowed, in unconscious imitation of a dancing master. "With pleasure." His eye narrowed suddenly as he saw the faintest trace of pink appear under Lily's eyelids, and he instantly had gathered her in a comforting hug. "Please don't cry-never mind. Cry if you want to-it's the holding back of tears that makes people so terribly hard. Cry if you want to."
Relief flooding her at his last words, she let the indignation, sorrow, hurt, anger, disdain, and pain of the last year flow onto his shoulder, grateful that she need not hold her tears back.
Then, remembering herself, she pulled away, dried her tears hastily, and smiled weakly.
“I’m dreadfully sorry. I didn’t mean to throw myself at your head.”
He grinned. “You didn’t. I hugged you then. But if anything of this gets back to Serena, you might just as well have.”
Lily frowned. “You mean you’re framing me?”
“No! You’ve had enough of that, haven’t you. Don’t answer that one. But anyway, I know enough of Serena to know that she’s the kind that can get mighty jealous. And you don’t want to get caught in her wrath, and frankly, neither do I.”
“Coward.”
“Well, I’m not exactly ashamed to admit it. There are few people in this world like Serena, and Serena’s beautiful to boot. She’s quite understanding and kind and sweet, but she can get terribly angry. And when she does, you don’t want to face her alone.”
Lily sniffed again, though James didn’t notice that it was at his description of Serena. “Like I said, you’re a coward. I’ve faced her before, and she’s not all that frightening. But,” she added, clearly wishing to get off of the subject of Serena, “I am sorry about that. I needn’t have done that-oh, but goodness knows I needed that hug. Do you know, Eva’s been the only friend I’ve had that’s stuck by me all through this year and last? I don’t remember us ever fighting. And you and your friends used to find pleasure in spiting me.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Lily, I’m none too proud of that, and I wish, dearly wish I hadn’t. Even if you do have a temper, you’re about as good a friend as anyone could hope for.”
“Pity you didn’t notice that till now.”
“I know.”
“James, what happened to you? You used to-well-to flare at every hint of a mean thing I said, and now-well, now you’re kind of a rag doll that I’m taking my anger out on.”
“I decided that you need a punching bag. Go ahead, use me as one; I think I deserve whatever pain you can inflict.”
Regaining some of her old amused look, Lily flicked a lock of hair behind her ear lazily. “I can inflict much more than you could ever dream. That is not a wise offer to make.”
“Well, do you want me to take it back?”
Before Lily could respond, the compartment door had slid open, and Sirius was lounging in the doorway
“Oh, good, you two’re talking again. James, next part. Don’t be bashful; you told me you’d do this last night.”
James looked so nonplussed that Sirius and Lily started to laugh.
“James, idiot, offer her the engagement ring!”
Lily’s nostrils flared a bit in disgust, and James glared murder at Sirius. “Sirius, I never said no such thing, and if you know what’s good for you, shut your trap!”
Giving in, grinning and sliding casually into a seat, Sirius shook his head. “But James, you had the diamond so nicely cut, and now you’re refusing to-“
“Sirius, I said watch it.”
And behind James, Lily was regaining her seat with raised eyebrows. The boys thought she was disgusted, but what she was really thinking was: ‘If any fiancé of mine tries to give me a traditional diamond and gold ring, he’s going to get socked. I’m getting my black pearl in a silver setting or he can check me off of that future family tree.’
They arrived at King’s Cross while it was still light outside, and for the first time in forever, it seemed, Lily had people help her to carry her trunk down. She could actually say goodbye to her friends with a hug, and she was so grateful for that. Walking out of the barrier with Eva next to her, she was greeted with strangling hugs from her parents and cold glares from Petunia, who, once again, had been threatened into coming.
Eva, unaccustomed to Muggle transportation, was nervous and fidgety about getting into a car, and she was even more astonished when the car didn’t transport them instantly to their home.
However, she was slowly reconciling herself to the fact that Muggles were a bit slower in regards to transportation, and she and Lily were soon chatting excitedly about their planned vacation.
When Petunia had seen Eva, she had backed away in fear, and now, when she was sitting next to her in the car-well, Petunia was plainly terrified. When the car finally came to a rest in front of the two-story brick building, Petunia was the first to spring out of the car and race into the house.
When Lily and Eva did finally get their trunks inside, they were astonished, Lily most of all, at the unnatural cleanliness of the house. And when they passed by Petunia’s usually terribly messy room, if Lily had been the fainting type, she would have fainted.
The walls were white and almost blinding, they were so clean, the bed made in hospital corners and covered with perfectly arranged pillows, not a speck of dirt on the new white carpet, and the occasional hanging plant in the corner. There was a pink-and-white rug on the floor, which Lily recognized as one that had been in her room earlier. And several paintings on the walls, paintings that were the height of blandness, or so Lily thought. They had pink flowers in bowls and in gardens, and there was a white vanity table in the corner, the top clean and white, the bottom covered in pale pink ruffles.
Lily finally got past Petunia’s room and got to her own, where she and Eva dumped their things. It suddenly struck her how odd and poor her own home must look, after Eva’s stately mansion, but if Eva was at all displeased with her surroundings, she didn’t show it.
The next day, the two woke up early. Eva had Lily’s bed, and Lily had a mattress on the floor. Eva, not used to twin mattresses, had rolled off, right onto Lily, and they were both sore and bruised.
However, in about two seconds, they were up again, Lily having remembered that Eva had a stack of Filibuster’s Wet-Start, No-Heat fireworks in her trunk. With a mischievous glint in her eye, she and Eva crept over to Petunia’s room, the sound of her snoring coming from within.
Lily, quiet as a breath of wind in mid-afternoon, slipped inside the door, and, knowing Petunia far too well, she simply set two crackers right next to Petunia’s bed slippers. Then, again, noiselessly she crept back out after setting the alarm Petunia had on her white nightstand to go off any minute. It did, too; a shrill, nasty, dinging sound that Lily felt was most eardrum-murdering.
Silently giggling, the girls watched Petunia jump up in bed and, yawning, fling her feet over the side. She looked down, and, almost instantly, let out a shriek more piercing than the sound of her clock had been.
She had spotted the fireworks. Leaping out of bed, still screaming, Petunia ran for the plain white pitcher of water she kept nearby to water her plants, and, dashing back, she dumped the contents all over the fireworks, intending to make them unusable and to put out any hidden trace of a fuse that would set the crackers off.
But not for nothing had they been called Wet-Start firecrackers. Lily and Eva were delighted to see that they lived up to their name. The instant Petunia had soaked the floor with her plant water, the crackers had gone off.
It was a beautiful sight. Blue and green sparks issuing from one, red and orange from the other, and the nice popping sound that went with any Filibuster product. The room, so pleasantly white before, was scorched in some places, where the sparks struck, and it was no longer white and cafeteria-like. When the firecrackers had finally finished, which did take some time, Petunia was still trying madly to get green sparks out of her hair and off of her bed, and when she saw the damage done to her room, she let out an earsplitting wail.
Lily and Eva got back to their room as fast as they could, trying to escape that inhuman sound that penetrated their ears and made them wish for earplugs. Luckily, however, the noise didn’t prevent the large messenger owl from practically making a crack in the window with his beak. Quickly, for fear of more damage to the house, Lily flung the window open. The owl dropped two envelopes and swirled out immediately, not waiting to even take a drink of water from Alisande’s tray.
Lily dashed over to the bed, where the two letters had landed. Picking them up, she read the addresses aloud.
“From Vanessa to Eva. Here.” She tossed the letter over to her friend and turned the next over. “To Lily. I know this writing.” She ripped the envelope open and unfolded a long sheet of parchment; actually, two long sheets.
Lily, I know you were probably very exhausted and sick of everything on the train, and I’m not expecting you to be a saint to me afterwards. Sirius told me I should write this: that when girls are upset, they don’t know who they’re confessing to, just so long as they’re doing it. Sock him, not me. It wasn’t my idea. Anyway, you’re perfectly entitled to be mean to me; it must be terrible for you: the person you’ve been fighting with be the one to hear you break down. I don’t hate you; not anymore.
Come to that, I think I never did. I don’t know why I was fighting with you; and I understand completely that I was being quite a-well, I’ll not say what you have the right to call me. You’d never attack anyone, now like I thought you did, and I’m sorry for suspecting you. Sorry for accusing you and sorry for everything else, sorry for the continual cold shoulders and a terrible year.
I want you to know that you’ll always be one of my very best friends no matter what, and even if you decide to hate me, I’ll still hold you in the highest respect, because I deserve your hate. I know you may think me an awful fool for writing this, and perhaps I am, but I wanted you to know this.
This is getting terribly long, and you're probably thinking, "Good Lord, what kind of an idiot would keep on repeating himself?" The reason for that is that I desperately want you to know how sorry I am. Eva told me you've been having one hell of a year, and that's it's all my fault. I'm not disputing that at all, because, for one thing, when it comes to me, I know the truth when I hear it, even if I don't usually acknowledge it. And now I am, and I wish I didn't have to. That is, I wish I hadn't put myself in the position where I had to say this. Anyway, it's said, or rather written, that I've been an idiot, which you've probably already characterized me as. I don't blame you one bit.
Still, I want to ask you if you can find it in one part of your heart to forgive me. You don't really strike me as one of the most forgiving people-that wasn't meant as an offense-so I should hold your forgiveness even higher than if I was in this situation with someone else. Please. This is the most eloquent letter I've ever written or hope to write, ever, and the strange thing is that, so far, this is my first version. Almost like I could say the same thing to your face if I wasn't so terribly shy of apologizing to a person. It's so much easier to do it in a letter. That's a good piece of advice, if you ever have to say you're sorry. Just thought I'd mention that.
I'm on the middle of the second page now, and I haven't really written much. In fact, all I've written is wind, and so much of it that it's turning into a tornado. But still, I hope you get my point; I've tried my best to say I'm sorry, and-oh, what you said on the train that day was right. I use the word "I" too much, and I'm appearing as a self-centered fool. But then, that's probably what I am. You know what they say-you can always tell what a person is like by the way he writes. And that holds true for me.
But if you can find it in your heart to forgive this self-centered, arrogant, presumptuous, semi-permanent, fair-weather punching bag, I'd be eternally grateful and beyond.
-James
