Revelations by Solarism

The world never stops spinning. It doesn’t pause, it doesn’t slow down, and it doesn’t speed up. It doesn’t go in reverse and it doesn’t wait for you to catch up with it. It doesn’t love you, it doesn’t hate you, it doesn’t comfort you, it doesn’t hold you in its arms, and it doesn’t harbor grudges, either. It lies to you, but it isn’t out to get you, it gives you sunshine more than it gives you rain, and it changes you in every little thing that it shows you. Every single second, with every single whirling spin, you change.

This is what I have learned the hard way.

When you’re young, you don’t need to think of the future because to you, the future is nothing. Life is vast when you’re young, and no one ever realizes just how quickly it dwindles itself down until they’ve fallen off the edge of it. That’s the reason children run and dance and play through life and never stop to check to see if they’re going to fall off; they ride on life as they ride a carousel, laughing and shouting and waving to their loved ones, mesmerized by the bright lights and the happy melodies, thoughtless, carefree, and trusting. Children don’t need to think of the way that the world spins or the way that every exhale means that they are being inevitably brought closer to death.

This is a secret—the fine print they don’t tell you about when you initially sign on the dotted line.

It’s easy to laugh the loudest when you don’t know what you’re laughing about.

When I was small, I would sit in my mother’s lap in our garden and watch the butterflies float past, gurgling and pointing at them in delight. If they came close enough, I’d try to reach out and snatch them, fascinated by their bright colors and their pretty, fluttering movements. Mother would always wrap her arm a little tighter around me and pull me closer to her stomach, cooing into my hair that it was called a “butterfly” and that I mustn’t touch it, or else it wouldn’t be able to fly anymore.

My sister, Petunia, would tug at her skirt and look up at her with wide, blue eyes. “Mummy,” she’d say, “the baby doesn’t know what a flutterby is! I know what a flutterby is, Mummy.”

“Yes you do, my darling,” Mother would tell her, giving her a fond look. “What are you making with the sticks, Petunia? It looks like you’ve been busy while Mummy’s been showing Lily the butterflies.”

“It’s a motorcar,” Petunia would tell her. “See, it has the windows here and here, and here are the wheels. They are rocks, Mummy. And, ummm, this is the front and this is the back. It’s a motorcar like they drive on the streets, like in London.”

“Just like in London, darling,” Mother would reply with a smile to Petunia, but it was my soft little head she’d kiss as I’d squirm and reach out for another brown and gold butterfly—the very beginnings of what would begin a terrible sibling rivalry. I’d stretch out my plump little arm and open my mouth in joy, gurgling, wishing for all the world that I could run after the butterflies and chase them around the yard.

Mother would laugh and tuck her wispy red hair behind her ears with one hand, holding me firmly with the other, with her eyes on my sister and her mind on my father. Life was happy for me then, but it had already begun to take its toll on my mother. Her laugh wasn’t as lighthearted as it had once been, when she’d lived with Father and when she’d been pregnant, when she’d been to America and seen the Statue of Liberty, when she’d had dreams of being a dancer in a little theater on the corner of St. Margaret’s and Main…

But my mother always held me, and she always smiled for Petunia, and she always told me I mustn’t touch, or else the butterfly wouldn’t be able to fly anymore, and then the butterfly would die.

These are my earliest memories.

I remember that my first toddling steps were in the garden, sure enough in the pursuit of one of the butterflies. I was always chasing the unattainable, and though my mother had warned me time and time again not to touch them, I thought that if I could just get close enough, maybe I could ride the wind as the butterflies did, too. I wanted their wings in that greedy way children have; I wanted to be their color, with their spots and markings, with their curious little tentacles, with their ability to dance on flower petals and escape the garden when they wanted to, to fly over the fence and out of the country.

I wanted to be free.

I remember that the garden was small, and that our house was small, and that both were clean and beautiful. We didn’t live in London because it was too expensive, and Mother said that she hated it there for all the smoke besides, but we had a small little place in the countryside where lots of things would grow. Mother planted lots of flowers—petunias mostly at first, and then tulips, and then marigolds, and then pansies, and then wild roses.

When I was old enough to understand that she’d never planted any lilies, I asked her if it meant that she loved me any less.

She said, “No, my darling. It means that I love you all the more because you’re the only little Lily that I have. I don’t want to share you with the garden because I want you all for myself. You’re very special, you understand.”

And I smiled and hugged her leg and said, “Oh yes, Mummy! I understand!”

Several years later, I heard Petunia ask her a similar question. “Oh, Mummy, why did you call me Petunia? Lily can’t even pronounce it.”

“Petunias are my favorite flowers, love,” my mother answered in a calm, comforting voice. “I wanted to be reminded of them every time I looked at you. You’re very beautiful, just like the petunias in our yard.”

“They have five petals,” Petunia said, somehow doubtfully, as though the number made them somehow less glorious.

“A lot of flowers do,” my mother said with a laugh. She smoothed Petunia’s blonde hair and kissed her forehead. “Mother’s tired now, but why don’t you skip out to the garden and pick some petunias from the yard? We could put them in a bowl in the kitchen so that everyone who comes to lunch will see them and say how lovely they are.”

Petunia’s face lit up and she kissed my mother on the cheek, shutting her eyes and letting her little golden eyelashes hit her cheeks. My sister glowed when she was happy; her skin flushed in a way that mine never really could. She looked like a sweet blonde cherub—like God had given my mother a little body full of sunshine instead of a daughter.

The kitchen door banged shut behind Petunia as she ran out into the backyard.

“Mummy,” I whispered, poking my head around the corner, almost shyly. “Do you love Petunia better than me?”

My mother turned to me, surprised to see half my face creeping round the doorway, and held out her arms. I ran to her and threw my arms around her legs, pressing my plump little cheeks against her thighs, desperately hoping that she would say she loved me best because she’d named me Lily.

She crouched down and threw her arms around me, embracing me and surrounding me with her scent—a soft, lilac sort of perfume scent that was in her pillows and in her clothes—and whispered back to me something to soothe my fears away.

“Lily,” she said, saying my name delicately, “I love you and I love Petunia. I love you differently, but I love you equally. You will always be my little butterfly.”

She kissed the top of my head, burying her soft lips into my shock of red hair, and held me tightly to her body. I breathed a sigh of relief and knew that things would be all right.

My mother’s diplomacy once knew no bounds.

There were darker things than chasing butterflies and picking petunias.

The world kept spinning and kept changing my family—my sister into an older, nosier, talkative young woman; my mother into a sadder, lonelier person who turned to alcohol more than once during the day to solve her problems; and me into someone curious, guilty, and peculiar.

When I was six years old, unusual things began to happen to me, and every time that I escaped a near-death or behaved strangely, my mother would screw up her face and set a drinking glass heavily down on the kitchen counter, both out of unhappiness and relief. I was too young to understand that she wasn’t drinking because of me—too young, by far, to understand the complexities of her life—but the way that she gave me those sorrowful looks made me want to never go to her with my problems again.

I fell out of a high tree once despite my mother’s repeated warnings not to climb it, but instead of breaking a limb, I floated to the ground as though the wind was carrying me in its merciful arms. I’d always wanted to fly—to be like a butterfly, to ride the wind—and when I’d rushed excitedly inside to tell my mother what had happened, I was crushed when she gave me a stern, disbelieving look.

“Why must you frighten Mother with stories like that?” she asked, and I noticed for the first time that her forehead looked far more furrowed than it had when I was younger.

I didn’t know how to answer her, so I ran to my room to hide. Hiding under the covers of my bed would become a frequent event over the next few years. I couldn’t explain the strange things that happened to me—the way I could heat pebbles by touching them at times, even on the coldest winter days—but I felt as though I’d been given a strange, mysterious gift from God all the same.

Once I tried to show my sister the way I could heat the pebbles, but she only glared at me and retorted with a sharp comment. “Anybody can warm pebbles in their hands, dummy,” she told me, feeling quite superior to my lower level of intelligence. “It’s called body heat and everyone has it. You’re not special, or anything.”

“Mummy says I’m special!” I’d flared, dropping the pebbles with shame. I thought they’d been warmer than my hands… I thought that they’d been hot.

“Mum doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Petunia said, rolling her eyes. “She’s distraught that she doesn’t have a Mr. Right and far too busy to care about you, besides.”

“A Mr. Right?” I asked, feeling a slight pain behind my eyes—a frequent occurrence when talking to my sister those days.

“I overheard the neighbors talking,” she sniffed. “They say that mother’s drinking away what little money we have left because she doesn’t have a husband. They look down on us, you know. They say it isn’t normal that a woman should raise two children all alone. We’re the oddballs of the neighborhood because of her.”

“She doesn’t drink,” I said, immediately defensive of the mother I loved so much.

“What about that brown stuff she’s always gulping?” Petunia asked, raising her eyebrows rather cruelly. “Don’t you ever wonder why she keeps it in the cupboard above the stove? It’s because it’s alcohol and it’s dirty. She doesn’t want us to touch it.”

“I don’t believe you!” I said, raising my voice slightly, the pain in my head sharpening itself pointedly. The priest at church always warned children of the dangers of sin—of cigarettes, of alcohol, of sex, of evil. I knew that my mother wasn’t evil. She had never been anything but kind…

I wanted to hit my sister then. I wanted to make her shut up and not say anything more, anything that could make me doubt my mother’s place in Heaven alongside God. My mother was good. I knew she was.

Petunia was only lying. Only kidding. Only being her usual mean self.

Petunia’s eyes went wide. She looked positively wicked as she hissed, “We’re poor, dummy! Haven’t you seen the bills laying around the kitchen? Haven’t you heard the knocks at the door at all hours? Those are the tax men… they want to come in and take Mum away because she doesn’t have a husband!”

Eyes wide, I opened my mouth and began to scream.

“Lily!” Arabella Figg called a little too shrilly, putting her hand on my shoulder and giving me a playful shrug. She laughed a tinkling movie star laugh. “Lily. You’re daydreaming, aren’t you?”

I shook myself quietly out of my reverie. “Mmm,” I said, glancing at her with a mixture of fondness and irritation. “I wasn’t daydreaming, Bella. I was remembering.”

She gave me an indifferent shrug, rummaging around and throwing a few random cosmetic products out of her book bag before pulling out a thin black flask. I recognized it as Arabella’s drinking flask and frowned slightly. She liked her firewhiskey too much. I hoped she didn’t intend to get teary-eyed drunk while we were supposed to be studying.

(It struck me as amusing in a bitter way—I could go away to school but I could never really escape alcohol. It was everywhere. It was the 70’s.)

And then the sun hit her face—just a slight shine—and she was illuminated with the flask to her lips. She smiled as she drank, as the powerful, burning liquid raced down her throat to her gut, and she closed her eyelids with vehemence.

I didn’t understand her. I couldn’t understand her. She was my best friend, but we were fourteen years old. She was always racing ahead—illuminated, glowing, basking in those golden afternoon rays of sunlight—while I was stuck in neutral, still very much an awkward child.

I didn’t drink with her. How could I?

A splendid feeling of isolation hit me as a butterfly floated by.

“You and your silly daydreaming,” Arabella said, screwing the cap back onto the flask and falling backward onto the grass. “You live in your own little world, don’t you?” She laughed, licking her lips slowly, sensually. “It must be nice.”

I tapped my quill absentmindedly against my ink well.

“I wasn’t,” I said.

“Mmm,” said Arabella, a slow, faint, flattering blush creeping into her cheeks.

I looked over to her, trying to determine what made her up—what her molecules consisted of and whether they were made up of drops of alcohol and movie star giggles or not—and realized that I was tired. I was so tired, perhaps of trying to study and getting nowhere, perhaps of Arabella, perhaps of the word alcohol, perhaps of everything.

Sometimes, life got to be much too serious. I felt trapped. Where was there to go but down, down, down the rabbit hole?

Life was swallowing me, even in the bright sunshine next to my best friend in the world. Splendid isolation amongst the butterflies, indeed.

I laid back on the soft grass, strands of my dark red hair mixing with Arabella’s brunette, and closed my eyes to block out the sights and the sounds and the memories and the words.

We were in silence.

Soon, I was asleep.

“Hey, stop thrashing,” a boy’s voice said with strange authority. “What’s her name, Remus? Arabella? Arabella—no, Arabella, stop thrashing. We’re trying to help you here, but you’re going to have to stop moving around like that.”

“You’re tickling me!” Arabella shrieked, laughing her head off, ignoring whoever the boy was with recklessness. “Let go of me or I’ll kick you! I’ll get my wand and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine! You think you’re a match for me? Ha! I’ll show you a match!”

I opened my eyes blearily, the sound of Arabella’s yelping pounding its way into my head. I had the most horrible headache I’d ever had in my life, but I was afraid. I couldn’t see very well—I could only make out five blurry figures, one of them shaking and rolling on the ground a few feet away from me, which I thought was Arabella. I rubbed my eyes quickly, hoping to God no one was hurting her.

“Bloody hell! You are all bastards! I’ll have you expelled! Thrown out! Hexed! To Azkaban with the lot of you, bastards!” screeched Arabella.

She might have sounded more menacing if she wasn’t teary-eyed from all of her drunken laughter.

“What a pain in the arse,” laughed another boy’s voice calmly.

“Bastards!” was Arabella’s only reply.

“Ugh, she knocked my glasses off!” came a third voice.

“I’ve got them—”

“Thank you, Peter.”

“Bastards, bastards!”

I rolled over with a silent groan and sat up. With a jolt, I realized that four boys holding broomsticks were standing over Arabella, who had somehow moved a few feet away. James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew—the Marauders—were in front of me. Suddenly, I had no idea what to do.

“Well, mates, we have to get her to the Tower,” James Potter said to the other boys with a wicked glance at me—apparently, he’d realized I had just woken up—with an air as though he was simply pointing out the obvious. Sirius Black, who could’ve passed for his slightly taller twin, gave him a perceptive laugh, as if to tell him that he was being a know-it-all.

“Right,” Remus Lupin replied, “but if she’d only get up and walk, maybe it would be a little bit easier… We can’t help her if she’s just going to hit us and knock my glasses off.”

Sirius shook his head and offered Arabella a hand up. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said, “you may be cute, but you’re drunk off your arse. May I have the honor of escorting you back to your dorm room?”

The fourth boy, Peter, laughed. James gave him a flick on the ear.

Arabella took Sirius’ hand enthusiastically and he pulled her up with a cringe on his face as she attempted to squeeze his hand off. “Nice to meet you too, sugar cakes,” Arabella said, giggling at him with large, curious eyes. “I’m not drunk at all, and you’re an awful liar if you tell people that.”

James raised his eyebrows at me, still rubbing his forehead with one hand, but I was too shocked over the whole ordeal to make any sort of response. He looked away from me and I suddenly felt that I’d missed my opportunity to make him think that I was interesting. Wonderful, Lily, I thought, you just gaped at him like a goldfish. What a way to treat James Potter, of all people…

“A liar, am I? Well,” Sirius continued with a smile on his face, rather enjoying Arabella’s outlandish behavior, “be that as it may, I think I might just have to walk you back to your dorm room, anyway.”

Arabella reeled, giving him a suspicious look, but before she could fall over, Remus quickly came up behind her and pushed her back upright. She didn’t seem to notice that she’d almost hit the ground again, and instead just shook her head and gave Sirius a huge snort. “If you promise to keep your hands to yourself, I suppose you could walk me back and tuck me in. But only if you absolutely promise! You don’t have a chance with me, I swear it.”

It was Sirius’ turn to raise his eyebrows at me, and again, I stood there unable to think of a response. He said to Arabella, “Listen, princess. I don’t want a chance with you, I just want to help you get off our Quidditch pitch. We need to practice and we can’t bloody well have two girls here to watch us.”

“We weren’t—” I suddenly found my voice, haltingly. “We weren’t going to look at you. We were just doing homework.”

James turned his head sharply and gave me a piercing glance, but didn’t respond. He just shook his head, acting as though I was responsible for all this mess, and turned away to tend to Arabella. “Arabella Figg, right?” he said to her, and I realized as he said her name that his voice was the one I’d heard first. “Can you walk on your own or do you feel dizzy?”

“We could always levitate her,” Peter said to Remus. Remus shrugged.

“I think Princess needs to be carried, or at least hoisted,” Sirius said, giving Arabella a lewd look. He wrapped one of his arms around her waist before she could protest, and nodded at Remus. “Come on, then. Get her other side and we’ll walk her up there together.”

“Whoah,” Arabella hiccupped. “That’s a little close, mister.”

“I promised to keep my hands to myself,” Sirius shrugged, “and, besides, it’s either this or we levitate you. If we levitate you, you’ll get all sorts of nasty bumps are bruises because not one of us will give a damn if your head knocks into doors or walls.”

“Why?” wailed Arabella suddenly, her eyes wide with alarm as Remus wrapped one of his arms around her other side.

“Because,” Sirius said in a light voice, “you’re interrupting our practice time, and we hate to be interrupted.”

“Er—” I started.

Only Peter looked at me. “Hmmm?” he asked.

“I think I can get her to the Tower on my own. She’s not heavy… and I don’t want to interrupt your Quidditch practice,” I told him, glancing nervously at Remus and Sirius, who were getting Arabella to place her arms around their shoulders for support.

“Don’t worry about it,” Peter shrugged. “We’re not practicing for a match or anything. Remus and I aren’t even on the team. We just wanted a romp.”

“Still—I could definitely…” I trailed off as Remus and Sirius began to walk off with a giggling Arabella draped across them, obviously ignoring me.

“I said don’t worry about it,” Peter said, flashing me a grin. He turned and said, “Hey! Wait for me guys! I can help, too.” He gave me a glance and then bounded off, shadowing Sirius’ footsteps.

I was left alone with James Potter.

“Who are you?” he asked, giving me a long, calculating look. My heart sank as he stared at me. I felt as though he was judging every molecule that made me up with his quick, furtive eyes. I didn’t like that I couldn’t see what his expression was—the sun was beginning to set and it shrouded his face, though I knew from his voice that he was probably frowning. He thought that I was irresponsible for letting my friend drink and thrash around the Quidditch pitch. He was annoyed that I was standing there, gawking like an idiot, paralyzed out of wonder and trepidation.

“My name is Lily,” I told him. “I’m in your year.”

“Yes, I know that,” he said, sounding cross. “What I asked was who are you?”

“I’m—excuse me? I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean…” I frowned. I said a silent prayer that he wasn’t really as cross as he was coming off. I’d thought about having a conversation with him so many times, and it felt like a sock in my stomach to hear his voice come out as something so hard.

“Are you a spy? If you’re spying for Slytherin’s team, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. I’m only a Chaser, and this isn’t a team practice by any means,” said James.

“What?” I blinked. “No, no. I swear, it’s nothing like that. I didn’t know that anyone was going to be out here, and even so, I meant to be gone so much earlier than now. I was just doing homework. See? I have my bag. I’m sorry for intruding. I never meant to.”

I was shocked to hear him laugh. “I’m only joking, Lily,” he said through his laugh, his voice once again the jovial, dancing thing I recognized from class. He came closer and stuck out his hand, which was large, and said, “My name is James Potter. Forgive me, I just like a good joke.”

“You mean you’re not mad?” I asked in relief, taking his hand and shaking it lightly. He had a strong grip.

“Not at all,” he said. “Sirius might be a little miffed because he was looking forward to lapping Peter three times tonight—he usually only laps him two times—but other than that, it’s okay, really. The Marauders are always glad to be of service.”

“The Marauders?” I repeated, my eyes sparkling. “So it’s true what everyone says about you four, then? You’re the four that are behind all of the pranks?”

James scoffed. “Of course it’s true. Who do you think turned the Potions dungeon red and gold for a week? We even have the detentions to prove it,” he shook his head. “But—oh, they’re getting far ahead. I really should go now and make sure they don’t take a detour to the kitchens or anything. Remus is usually rather good at keeping Sirius in check, but with your friend in tow, I’m not so sure…”

“Oh! Arabella!” I said, my eyes darting to see how far they’d gone. The boys were walking surprisingly quickly.

Without pausing to say good bye to me or to wait for me to start walking with him, James began to jog toward his friends and away from me.

“Hey!” I shouted at his retreating back. “Wait for me!”

I picked up a shoe Arabella had kicked off, stuffed it in my bag, and started walking quickly after James to the Gryffindor common room. It was going to be a long night.

After we’d been walking much too fast for what felt like much too long to my sore legs, I noticed that the silence had stretched too long to be comfortable. I wanted to say something, anything, that would make me seem interesting or intelligent; I wanted James Potter to see me as someone worth knowing. After three years of watching him from a distance, I realized that now was my chance—my chance to finally speak to the boy with all of the tricks up his sleeve—and I knew that I was failing miserably.

I kept sending him little, timid glances hoping and praying that I would think of something to say to him—anything, just anything to ease myself into his good graces. I wanted so badly then for him to just like me; I wanted him to be able to look at me and think, “Oh, that Lily Evans. She’s all right.”

I wanted to be all right.

As though on cue, James tilted his head to one side, a bit of his hair falling in his eyes. “What’s the story, morning glory?” he asked, a light smile playing across his lips. James was very handsome when he smiled.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, suddenly abrupt, giving him a frown for his efforts at conversation in such a grand contradiction of my feelings. I was being so unintentionally rude—I knew I was being rude; oh, he must hate me, I quickly thought with dread—but he only continued to smile as we walked, sending me quick, quizzical glances every few seconds. He clearly expected there to be more to it than that; more to it than “I don’t know what you mean.”

I tried to shrug off his gaze uneasily, still wishing for something to talk to him about, for some way to show him what I was really like when I wasn’t feeling so self-conscious. It bothered me when people stared at me—when he stared at me, I felt as though I was in the spotlight. James had a wonderful but strange way of making a person think he or she was the only one in the world he cared for at the moment. “I just don’t know,” I said finally. “I guess… well, if you really want to know, I guess we were just talking and she’d been drinking and I was feeling a little unstable. She drinks a lot.”

“Does she really?” he asked inquisitively, and I mentally scolded myself for giving away a secret. Hogwarts students were not supposed to down firewhiskey until they burst. It was breaking a thousand school rules, which was why it was kept quiet. Why were my guards down?

“Erm,” I responded, trying to buy some time. My eyes flicked to the nearest tree, searching its long, wind-beaten limbs for some sort of opportune topic of conversation. I found nothing, and my eyes automatically roved ahead, straining to see Arabella and the other three Marauders. How were they moving so quickly? It seemed I had nothing but questions.

James laughed. He had a warm, friendly laugh that seemed to say that it was okay I was behaving like a right idiot. He tossed his broomstick in the air jovially and caught it again with a flourish, as though we were on a fine spring stroll around the lake.

“They walk fast, don’t they?” he asked, raising his chin ahead toward our friends. He had noticed my nervousness.

“Yes,” I replied, sucking in another breath. “How do you, er, how do you keep up with them?”

“Quite easily,” James said, punctuated with another one of his laughs. His laughs were sporadic. I didn’t understand them. “I’m only sorry that your legs aren’t longer. We could be making so much better time if only you had another six inches on you.”

I felt a blush rush to my cheeks. “I’m not that short,” I protested, though mildly. “I’m quite a good height for a girl, or at least I’ve always thought so. I can walk faster, if you want.”

This was a blatant lie; while James, in good shape from constant Quidditch playing, wasn’t breaking a sweat, I had a cramp in my side and my breath had sped up rather uncomfortably.

James merely shrugged and glanced at his broom. I didn’t know terribly much about Quidditch—I was by no means a fanatic—but I knew that it, the broom, was new, and that it was an expensive model. It shouldn’t have surprised me. Everyone knew the Potter family was rich; everyone knew that James was used to the best. Still, I couldn’t help but stare at the broomstick and imagine how different our childhoods must have been.

James Potter grew up a rich, pureblooded wizard with parents who loved him. They sent him letters every week at breakfast, and since our first year, out of the corner of my eye, I’d seen his face light up every time he read one of them. I doubted very much that he had ever been exposed to alcoholism, to being poor, to having to share toys with his siblings (if he had any), to having to tuck his mother into bed and pray she didn’t die from alcohol poisoning… Even now, taking care of drunken friends was a strange thing to him.

He seemed strangely innocent.

“I don’t suppose you’re any good at flying?” James asked, suddenly breaking the silence. He gave me a hopeful look and slowed his pace, holding up his broom for me to see.

I slowed down too, glad to be able to catch my breath. The bottoms of my feet hurt. “I guess I’m all right,” I said, both massaging the cramp in my side and eyeing his broomstick warily. “Why?”

“I was just thinking. We could both fit on this, I think,” he said, stopping now. With a playful toss of his hand, his broom spun up in the air as it had earlier, but instead of falling back to his hand, it hung there this time, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of a loyal dog.

“You want us to fly on that?” I asked, my eyes wide. I hadn’t flown since flying lessons during our first year. I’d never been the best in our class; that had been, without question, James. Memories came flooding back of my embarrassing attempts at shouting “Up!” at a broomstick, only to be humiliated as it rolled over and rocked with something that looked suspiciously like laughter. James was the natural flier; surely he had to remember how many tries it had taken me to get my broom to even float? It had been three years, but he and Sirius had laughed at me back then; I was sure of it.

“Well, why not?” he grinned appealingly. “Really, I think it’s the least you can do, since you and your friend seem to have deprived me of my Quidditch practice this evening.”

I spluttered. “I—I—I don’t know…” I shook my head, as if I’d said no, as if it was a done deal.

“I won’t go too fast,” James said promptly, clearly wheedling. “You can hang on as tight as you want to, even if you strangle me, and I swear I won’t let you fall. It sure beats walking up these hills, at least, doesn’t it? I haven’t walked these things since my first year. Every time I go down to the pitch, I fly back up. It’s easier that way.”

“I haven’t flown since first year,” I spluttered again, suddenly afraid as his broom made a bucking motion in the air, as if impatient to get going.

“Please?” James asked, and that was when I saw his eyes.

His eyes are deep chocolate brown. They have no ending. They’re huge. You could dive in and never come up for air. Dizzy, dizzy, swirling brown with tiny flecks of black and gold. His eyelashes are the longest I’ve ever seen on a boy, charcoal black and curled perfectly, angelically. Those eyes are controlling eyes. Laughing eyes dance beneath brows of soft ebony…

Perhaps it was the way the sunlight suddenly struck his face, but for the first time in my life, I fell under the spell of James Potter’s dizzy eyes. From that moment on, I was a believer.

“Okay,” I said after a few beats, in a half-choked, half-whispering voice.

“Great!” James laughed, and turned away to hop on the broom. I watched as he moved, always gracefully, and as he swung one leg up and over, sliding perfectly into place. He mounted it naturally, as though he’d been flying since before he could walk. On second thought, I supposed that might not be far from reality.

I stood, still perplexed by his wonderful hazel eyes, until he started laughing again. “Lily? Are you ready?”

He offered a large, smooth hand, and with a sudden rush of recklessness, I took it and let him help me up. I was much less graceful than he was, although my body was smaller, and I hurt myself as I sat down behind him, adding a bruised knee to my growing list of injuries for the evening.

“Are you all right?” he asked, looking over his shoulder with his eyebrows raised.

“Yes,” I lied, deliberately avoiding looking him in the eyes. “I’m great. Let’s go.”

“Well,” James said, his voice laced with joy now that he was going to fly again, “I thought you’d never ask.” He put his sneakers firmly on the ground, truly an expert in every muscle function, and before the logical side of my brain could scream from fright or beg him to let me down, he had kicked off with tremendous force, and we were in the air.

We were flying. James Potter and I were flying…

I tilted my head upwards towards the clouds, drawing in a sharp breath as we twirled into infinity.

There was nothing more.

I clung tightly to James’ waist, watching with unsuppressed awe as the world tilted vertically. I fought the knots growing my stomach that were telling me that any second I would fall off and plummet to my death, trying to keep calm. I desperately tried to remember what I knew about broomsticks. Did they—did this designer model—help keep you on? I could feel the cushioning charm, but there was nothing to cling to except a piece of wood and James Potter’s warm body.

He was laughing, speeding upwards much too quickly and much too steeply, showing off as though he was in the middle of some important Quidditch match. I buried my face into his back, my fear and the unnerving feeling of my legs dangling into nothing overcoming my natural physical shyness. I couldn’t find a voice to scream out, to yell at him to stop or to slow down or to bring me back to earth. I just had to hold on, frozen in terror.

“Yes!” shouted James, still laughing, but before I knew it, we’d leveled out and were hovering in the sky, looking down through the clouds at the top of Hogwarts castle. I took one gasping look down and plunged my face back into James’ back. It was much, much too high… why had he gone so high?

“Did I frighten you too much, Lily?” he shouted again, but this time to be heard over the rushing air that was all around us instead of out of elation. He let out another sporadic laugh. He always seemed to be laughing, at least a little bit.

I opened my eyes and pulled myself only an inch away from him so that he would be able to hear me. I shouted back, “You went up too quickly! It was too steep, too fast! I thought you said you wouldn’t!”

“I’m sorry!” he yelled, but I could tell he was grinning even if I couldn’t see his face. “I had no idea you were so afraid! Loosen your grip a bit, why don’t you, and take a look around? I promised not to let you fall, and I won’t!”

“You swear it?”

“I do!”

My curiosity overcame my terror, and though I clung to James more tightly than ever, I raised my head and took a look around. I’d never been so high up in the air in my life, and it was both strange and wonderful to be floating in the clouds. I felt that I could see in every direction for a hundred miles. Only in the east was the view slightly obstructed by a hazy gray mountain range, the only thing taller than us for miles.

I pressed myself close to James, feeling extremely frightened again as I stared around at the endless blue expanses, truly realizing for the first time how huge the world was. I stared upward and was greeted by warm sunlight cascading through a higher set of clouds. It warmed my face and my hands, which were strangling James’ middle. He looked up too, shaking his hair free of the mist that had settled on it from our burst through the lower clouds, and laughed at the sky, as though daring it to do anything but shine on us.

“James!” I yelled, suddenly very aware I barely knew this boy. “We should go back!”

“Isn’t it beautiful?” he bellowed in response, still laughing.

The dizzy eyes have made him insane, I thought, taking a deep, gulping breath. Our bodies were skin tight and I was beginning to become extremely embarrassed, but I didn’t trust broomsticks or flying enough to give him any room.

“It’s very beautiful!” I yelled. “You’re very lucky you have no fear!”

“No fear?” he yelled back. “I can’t believe you’re afraid! Haven’t you ever been this high before?”

“Of course!” I screamed, scrambling to hold onto him as the wind picked up a little.

“Have you really?”

“No!” I admitted.

He was clearly grinning again. “You have to come back up here! Say you will!”

“No!” I said again.

The wind whipped past us and James let the broom rock a little bit, probably to catch me off guard. “If you say you will, I’ll take us back down!” he offered. “But you have to promise! You have to mean it!” I could tell he was laughing. Why was he always laughing?

“I—I promise!” I yelled, reasoning quickly that I’d never have to follow through with it. Though the sky was indeed very beautiful, I felt sick because of the rocking motion the broomstick was making as it rode the wind, and wanted very desperately to have my feet touch something solid again. “Take me down!”

“Whatever you want!” James yelled, still laughing, and began to dive out of the clouds, going faster and steeper than he had going up.

This time, I did scream at him. “JAMES!” I shouted, feeling sure that he was going to kill both of us. We were hurtling toward the ground in a spiral, going faster than I’d ever seen any Seeker do in any Quidditch match, ever. He was insane. “JAMES, SLOW DOWN! PULL UP! PULL UP!”

With an eloquent twist, he managed to pull up with a good fifteen feet left between us and the ground. I let out a gasp of relief, even removing one hand from his waist to clutch my chest. My heart was going wild, and I was quite convinced it was going to pound its way right out of my body. His crazy flying was giving me a heart attack.

“What are you doing?” I demanded incredulously.

“Hold on,” he said. “We’re a bit farther than we need to be…” He leaned forward on his broom and the broom shot off, this time going level with the ground. I whipped my arms back around his waist and glared at the back of his head, feeling more and more ill. Nothing was worth this torture.

“I’m going to go up to Gryffindor Tower,” James called over his shoulder.

He slowed down and soared gently upwards, heading toward the turret of the unused top of Gryffindor Tower. We passed the stone walls of Hogwarts, sweeping past huge windows that allowed us to gaze inward, doing unneeded loop-de-loops around buttresses, and skimming around in strange patterns all over the castle’s climbing ivy.

We were scaling Hogwarts castle. I couldn’t believe it. Did James Potter do things like this every day?

“You’re crazy,” I told him as soon as he made a graceful landing on the Tower’s turret. I scuttled off of his broom and backed up into the building, banging my back harshly against the stone wall. “I can’t believe you really fly like that. No wonder you made the Quidditch team your second year!”

James twirled his broom much as he had earlier on the grounds, gave me a slight shrug, and nodded toward the door. “Perhaps we should see if this thing will open? I’d really hate to have dragged you up here for nothing, though you must admit the loop-de-loops were rather fun…”

“You mean it might not be open?” I stared at him, taking in his windswept black hair and his lightly bronzed cheeks, not knowing what to think. Somehow, it felt as though we’d forged a bond when he’d taken me up into the clouds, but he still seemed like a perfect stranger to me in every respect I could think of. I wondered faintly if I’d bruised or scratched his stomach, but decided I didn’t really care as my stomach took another unpleasant lurch.

Without reply, he drew his out his mahogany wand and moved closer to the weather-beaten wooden door. I had no idea that until that day that there even was a door at the top of the Gryffindor Tower; I’d always assumed that the room at the top was simply an unusable attic that strange, homely little beasts lived in. Wizarding households were known for their minor beasts, which generally liked dark places, and I’d always assumed Hogwarts was no exception.

As it turned out, we didn’t have to worry about locked doors, because with a wave of James’ wand a muttered spell, the door clicked open. “Ah, good,” James smiled. “Sirius remembered to keep it unlocked for me this time.”

Though I had no idea what he meant, I entered the dark and musty-smelling room as James ushered me in. “Lumos!” I said, drawing my own wand.

“Lumos!” echoed James, and he swung the door shut behind us.

We were greeted by a completely empty room drenched in dust. It seemed that the room had been unused for at least a hundred years. Inches of dust clung to the bare wooden floor and the unfinished walls and made breathing very difficult.

“How disgusting,” muttered James pleasantly. “We should really do some spring cleaning in here sometime…” He looked around for a minute fondly, as though he was speaking of renovating a somewhat out-of-date kitchen instead of the top of Gryffindor Tower, and then glanced upward.

I followed his gaze and saw only shadows, but James seemed to take comfort in the darkness. It seemed as though he had been in the room many times before, though I couldn’t fathom why. It was dusty, uncomfortably stuffy, and it had an odd smell to it. “Is there a way down?” I asked, rather stupidly.

James pointed the light from his wand at the opposite end of the room. A very beat up old door with an ornate knob appeared through the clouds of dust. I coughed and made my way forward, at this point more concerned with getting myself out of this adventure than waiting for James to lead the way. I twisted the knob, feeling a cool crystal-like substance slip beneath my fingers, and opened the door. A twisting staircase led into more blackness.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s a secret passage,” James said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “No one uses it except the Marauders. We don’t think anyone else really knows about it. By the way, by stepping foot here, you’re bound to secrecy. We can’t have any of the older years coming up here to turn it into the new Astronomy Tower or anything disturbing like that. If you tell anyone, I’ll be forced to kill you.”

I stared at him through the dim wand-light. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh,” he said, his face lighting up in a grin, “I’m very serious.” He paused for eerie emphasis. “Come on, then. We have to follow the stairs down. It curves a little, but it’s a very gentle slope, so I don’t think you’ll be very afraid. It ends in a portrait just outside the seventh year boys’ dorms…”

He trailed off as he began to make his descent.

Taking one last quick look around the curious room, I closed the door and followed him. Though I didn’t know it then, it would not be the last time.

“What was that room, James?” I asked as we stepped into the common room, looking perfectly innocent, curiously without a speck of dust on either of our persons. “It was downright strange. What is it? Why do you go in there? Is it some kind of Marauders secret?”

“My, my,” James raised his eyebrows, looking either annoyed or amused, “you’re just full of questions, aren’t you, Lily Evans?”

I didn’t know how to respond without being rude, so I settled for biting my tongue and flushing a light shade of red. I scolded myself again for being so rude to someone I barely knew. He did nearly kill you on that broomstick of his, I silently reminded myself, on the other hand.

Before I could dwell on the situation any longer, the common room portrait burst open and the three Marauders burst in with a still-giggly Arabella Figg.

The younger year students’ heads swiveled in their direction, completely oblivious to the fact that James and I had entered at all.

“You are fantastic!” Arabella gasped at Sirius. “I could marry you, you know!”

Sirius smirked at her. “Princess, I don’t marry drunks.”

Remus Lupin let out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a scoff and eased Arabella off of his shoulder, pushing her into Sirius’ waiting arms. He gave Peter a glance before scanning the common room for a sign of James, sighing slightly as he realized that he was yet again stuck looking like an idiot in front of the entirety of Gryffindor. Spending time with James Potter and Sirius Black had that effect on a person—that curious, precarious, clockwork effect of always getting yourself into the spotlight in a very unfortunate way. I felt sorry for Remus indeed.

The sandy-haired boy’s eyes found James and I near the staircase, and I immediately realized they were exchanging a Look.

For the first time, I noticed that Remus’ front was messy with someone’s sick. Three guesses who had thrown up.

With a grin, James shot me a sidelong glance. “Arabella’s all yours, kid.”

And that she was.

A pause on the third stair of the staircase, Arabella attached to my left arm.

“Lily?”

I glanced behind me. “James?”

“I was just wondering. Do you like Butterbeer?”

“Oh, I love Butterbeer.”

A strange, awkward pause.

“Would you like to… I don’t know, go get a drink with me sometime, then, maybe?” A quirked, curious eyebrow.

“I… now?”

“Well. I don’t know. Tomorrow, maybe?”

My heart immediately became discontent with the prospect remaining inside my rib cage. Pound, pound, pound. “I… er. I can’t. Sorry. No.”

“Oh.”

“I have a—well. I have a date with Lucius Malfoy tomorrow. I already, you know. I—yes. No. I mean, I can’t.”

“Right,” James said slowly.

Another awkward pause.

“You should take Arabella to bed.”

“Right.”

“Right then.”

“Good night, James.”

A lingering glance. “Good night.”

I led Arabella carefully through the doorway of the girls’ dorm, the way a mother leads a sleepy child who has become a bit too heavy to be carried, and pushed her gently into a sitting position at the edge of her bed.

“You’re very drunk,” I told her, fretfully, as I did every time that something like this happened. “You’re a mess, and I hope you know it, too. You’re going to wake up in the morning and you’re going to have to relive all this in a quick little stitch, and you’re not going to like it very much.”

Arabella’s bleary eyes blinked up at me trustingly. She’d heard the speech a thousand times before, and she no longer cared. She had no shame in front of me.

It was obvious that her copious consumption of alcohol was finally starting to shut her system down for the night, though I wasn’t sure whether this should come as a relief or a new worry to me. I realized she hadn’t comprehended a word I’d said to her since I’d led her upstairs, and my heart hadn’t been in the familiar words, anyway. Too much had just happened. I was still reeling.

“When you’re drunk, it’s like you’ve died,” I told her in one last attempt to get through to the intelligent girl I knew she harbored somewhere inside.

Her eyes were wide, but she sat in silence, watching me in her ever-curious way even in the middle of her drunken stupor. She had the oddest way of looking beautiful even when she still smelled of vomit; the rosy cheeks she’d earned from her alcohol made her seem perfect in a maddening way.

I knew I would never be as beautiful as she was. I had accepted it years earlier, but it would always be difficult for me to adjust to. It was hard to be the responsible one—the boring one, the bland one—that turned down Butterbeers in order to take care of someone else at night. It seemed unfair; gorgeous Arabella Figg could drink without regret, could throw up on a boy’s robes and still be found absolutely charming by another, could abandon me for my boyfriend and his pretty liquors and still be taken care of in her time of need, could do so many things that I could never do, would never dream of doing…

I envied her very much. We were fourteen years old and she did exciting things that adults did. She drank, she smoked, she’d climbed mountains and molehills, and she’d seen so much farther than I had. Arabella knew life and loved it and claimed to believe very much in seizing the day, but she didn’t teach me to live like she did, and I resented her for it. A resentment sprung up between us every time that she drank, and as I sat and stared back at her darkly, waiting for some shadow of recognition to dawn in her eyes, I could feel it looming over the both of us like a bat getting ready to swoop.

Somehow, no matter how many times Arabella had to be put to bed drunk, the resentment never fully swooped, and so, in that way, we remained friends.

“Lily,” Arabella said, her full lips forming my name in an unfinished request. She stretched out her arms in that damned pouty way of hers, expecting me to help her into her pajamas and expecting me to act out the part of devoted friend and confidant. She always appealed to me absolute trust.

I had an impulse to walk away from her, to run down to the common room and perhaps dash up the boys’ staircase two steps at a time, to burst into James Potter’s fourth year boys’ dormitory, to tell him that yes, I would love to go and get a drink with him, that yes, I would love to, I would love to, I would love to get away from here…

But I was looking at Arabella, and she was pitiful and she was appealing to me, holding out her arms with her little fingers wriggling at me as though she wished I could pick her up and hug her to my chest like her mother had once, before she’d died. Arabella was every ounce an intoxicated six year old.

I shook my head. “Okay,” I said, putting a happy smile on my face so that she could tell I was going to give her the comfort she wanted. “Let me just clean you up a little bit first. Can you sit there for a minute on your own? Do you want me to help prop you against the headboard?”

“I—I don’t know,” she murmured with an unflattering hiccup tacked on for punctuation. Sometimes it was almost as though Arabella acted out the part of a giggly drunk; she was strangely full of clichéd hiccups, snorts, and clumsy kisses. I’ve never liked actresses much, and I think it’s because of Arabella.

“Here,” I held out my hand, “come on. I’m going to shift you so that you can sit up against the headboard. I don’t want you to fall over.”

She let me shift her body as though she couldn’t move at all on her own, rewarding me with a loving grin for making her more comfortable. That was what I was there for, to make her life more comfortable in all respects, and she was there to remind me of the kind of person I both hated and loved at the same time. She reminded me of what I wanted to be and what I spent every day of my life trying to escape becoming. She reminded me of my mother.

“Lily,” she said again, this time in a slightly chastising tone. Where was her warm wash rag, she wanted to know? Where were her pajamas and her slippers? Why wasn’t she sound asleep yet?

“I’m going to go get you a wash cloth from the bathroom,” I told her. “Wait just a minute, and if any of the girls come in, just stay quiet and keep laying down, all right? I’ll be back in a minute.”

Walking quickly to avoid Arabella’s drunken little stares—as if she could see through my smiles, as if somewhere inside she knew that my heart wasn’t in it, that my heart never had been in it—I fled to the bathroom. Mechanically, I quickly slid open the second drawer on the left and pulled out a Gryffindor-colored wash cloth, dropping it unceremoniously in the sink. With shaky hands, I turned the hot water tap inward and let the cloth soak.

I knew I should pick it up out of the sink, ring it out, make sure it was warm enough, and bring it back out to Arabella as quickly as I could, but I stood there and stared at myself in the mirror for a moment instead. I saw myself biting my lip, fighting those inner evils—a wave of strange sadness clouding my eyes. Sometimes I couldn’t explain why I got sad, why I got so upset, but it was always apparent in my eyes. The spark went out of them when I felt like crying.

I quietly shut the bathroom door and locked it, unsure of what to do next. As the water continued to stream from the sink to hit the cloth and then zoom down the drain, I pressed my back against the door and let my body slip down it until I was on my knees. I stared up at the counter and listened to the water, regulating my breath as it trickled into the sink, and prayed for some sort of absolution. God, I thought, if you’re listening, I’m here…

“Lily!” called Arabella with one of her clichéd actress giggles.

I pressed my fingers to my eyelids, drawing a deep, shuddering breath. I wanted answers. Why was it always me in the bathroom preparing the wash cloth? Why was it her in the bedroom, drunk out of her mind, waiting for me to attend to her whims?

I knew I was thinking bad thoughts. I knew that I was being a bad friend and pettily envious. It wasn’t Arabella’s fault that she was prettier, or that she was more outgoing, or that she didn’t have as many inhibitions as I did. It might have been her fault for drinking too much, but it wasn’t her fault that I couldn’t go out with James Potter. Most of it, in fact, was far from her fault.

That wasn’t the point. I just needed somebody to blame.

I opened the bathroom door with the warm washcloth in and gave Arabella a large, optimistic smile. “Here we are, darling,” I said in a cheery voice, overcompensating for my dark thoughts. “It took awhile for the water to heat up to just the temperature that you like it. I’m here now.”

“Oh, Lily,” slurred Arabella, “you’re such a good friend. Such a good friend, you know…”

As I sat down on her bed and pressed the washcloth to her forehead, she gave me a pat on the hand, as though I was a good daughter taking care of her in her old age. I shushed her and pressed the cloth to her skin, hoping to both soothe her and scald her at once, to both calm her and reproach her for her habits. I wondered, fleetingly, what she would do without me. It was a self-satisfied idea that she would have no one else willing to help her; I knew, somewhere deep inside, that it was something of a compliment that I was the one at her side in times like these.

I loved her in a curious way despite all of my misgivings, and though I realized that not everyone cared for her the way I did, still, others would be more inclined to help her than I was—our roommates, the other Gryffindor girls of fourth year, were kind. They liked helping people in their time of need. All of our roommates had so much honor.

I wondered, not for the first time, if I was right for this house, for this Gryffindor. I hadn’t chosen to be in it. I hadn’t known anything about Hogwarts when I’d first arrived; I came from the world of Muggles. I didn’t know that witchcraft ran through my veins until shortly before my eleventh birthday, when I’d received a letter by owl…

“I’m so tired,” Arabella muttered drowsily, a slight frown on her face. Her eyelids fluttered shut, and, for a moment, she looked every inch a tortured Juliet, laying there, waiting for death to claim her and take her away to her Romeo.

“I know,” I whispered, still smiling my false smile, gently removing my hand from the wash cloth so that I could smooth her hair behind her ears.

“Lily?” Arabella whispered softly, slurring the two simple syllables together with too much grace.

“Hm?” I asked, my fingertips straying over a wisp of her dark hair.

But she didn’t respond; she wasn’t there anymore—she was asleep. With a sigh, I removed the wash cloth from her forehead and presented her cheekbone with a lingering kiss.

That was all, that was all, that was all… I was finally done for the night.

I could finally watch the stars.

Welcome to my life. My name is Lily and I kick ass.

Author’s Note: Welcome to the completely rewritten version of Deconstruct! I rewrote the story because I was actually rather ashamed of first few chapters of the original version. I started writing this story when I was 12. Three years later, I’ve grown incredibly as a writer. My style and ideas are more developed and complicated now. I wanted this story to reflect those changes, so… I’m changing the story itself. Love it, hate it? I’m not entirely proud of what I’ve done with this particular chapter, perhaps because I’m very critical of my own work, but I think that the future rewritten chapters are leaps and bounds ahead of what I was doing before. I only hope that you’ll all stick with me long enough to see the new version in its entirety. 1 chapter done, 49 more to (re)write. Cheers!

Disclaimer: I don’t own Harry Potter. :/ That belongs to JK Rowling and Warner Bros. However, I do own the plot, and I do own this archive, so, bah. Steal and die. >:[

Dedication: For Holly (everblue3)—my business partner, my peer, my adoptive big sister, and my very close friend—for all of her snark and her occasional pats on the back. Also for Stacey, who has a hand in almost everything I do, and for Tim, who lies in my driveway with me to watch the stars come out sometimes. For you.

Production Notes: I’m rewriting Deconstruct. All of this, as I already stated, is new. I’m staying with the same basic plot and will keep the same basic outline I had before (similar scenes) for the most part. That being said, I’m a Junior in high school now and this year is already hectic for me. I will try my best to upload a chapter of about this size or longer once every 6 weeks. I would like to churn things out more quickly, but knowing me, promising anything shorter than 6 weeks is simply unrealistic. Thank you for your understanding. >:] If you have questions or want updates about how my writing is going, check out my writing LJ over at http://www.livejournal.com/users/deconstructlj.