Before they even reached the library, Laila had turned to James and grabbed his hand. Stopping him in the hallway, she stepped close and spoke. “Thanks for helping me out, James. I don’t know how often I’ve said that, but I really mean it. I enjoy the time we spend together.” Laila Albright placed her hand on James’s arm. She took a step closer and disregarded the look of slight confusion on James’s face. “How can I ever thank you?” she continued in a gentle, sultry voice.
James’s breathing got shallower as she got closer. Her hand traveled up his arm and onto his chest. He couldn’t speak, but he did realize that this had happened before. He remembered her being so close… but, no… it was Lily to whom he was close. It was she whom he had kissed in his memories.
Wasn’t it?
Except, that Lily had brown hair and brown eyes, just like the girl before him. But he couldn’t have possibly kissed this girl before. That would have been unthinkable.
So, where did the memory come from?
“Let me thank you…please?” Her voice continued to lure him, and he didn’t move as she stepped forward. Slowly her hand moved up to gently grasp the hair at the bottom of his neck. After she had gained an inch or two by standing on her tiptoes, she gently placed her lips on James’s.
“Forget about Lily… She can’t ever really care about someone like you… She’s not that type of girl. She spent so long hating you; it’s not that easy to forgive. But I’m here for you James,” she whispered against his lips before looking up through her eyelashes. “And I like you just the way you are, hexes in the hallways and all.”
She lightly kissed him again. “She doesn’t deserve you. She’s so plain and ordinary compared to you. You deserve someone who’ll be able to keep up with you.”
As her lips met James’s once more, something connected in the back of James’s mind.
This is wrong… Her lips felt different and her body was shaped differently. She didn’t fit in his embrace like she was supposed. How had she changed?
Perhaps he could make it feel right. He brought one hand to her hip, and the other spread its fingers into her hair, which was thicker and more textured. He responded gently to the kiss.
Not so gentle was the scream that pierced the air of the hallway.
They broke apart, but Laila did not let go of him. He turned immediately toward the scream, and saw the girl who should be standing in his embrace.
How was she on the other side of the hallway?
He looked down at the girl in his arms, and saw the plain brown hair, brown eyes and unremarkable face of… a girl he hardly knew.
He stumbled back, his eyes narrowed in confusion. He turned toward the girl with the red hair he loved so, and saw her head shaking in surprise and hurt. He watched Lily turn away and run down the hall.
“No. Lily!” he cried as he started towards her.
Laila called to him. “James! She doesn’t care for you! She’s just-”
“No. I love her. You’ve done something to me. What have you done? What have I done?” James continued to stumble backwards, away from the girl.
“You’ve done the right thing.”
Her voice was bordering on shrill, and the same naïveté was present. The falseness of it hurt his mind. How had he never noticed it?
“I’m the only person who can truly understand you. Who doesn’t want you to change,” she said, attempting to close the distance.
He shook his head. “I didn’t change for her. I changed because it was right. But I’d do anything for her. She wouldn’t lie to me. She wouldn’t try to trap me…”
He turned and ran full out in the direction Lily had left.
He passed a girl, who pointed the way.
That girl watched as he ran off, then she turned to face her classmate.
The classmate was scowling, her painted-nail fists clenched.
“You’re so full of it, you know that?” asked Lauryn, cocking her head to one side as she looked at the other girl.
“What?” asked Laila, tersely.
“Full of siren blood, are you? Or is it veela? Perhaps mermaid?” Lauryn’s sarcastic tone seemed to anger Laila further, and she was quite happy for the control. “You just can’t resist twisting people around your little finger.”
“How dare you?” cried Laila, flushing.
“Oh, quite easily,” retorted Lauryn. “Anyone who’d stoop to such a level deserves to be taken down. It’s pretty low, using your talents to take someone else’s boyfriend. I pity you. I pity that you have to resort to such cruelty.” She shook her head.
“Simple suggestions aren’t cruel,” Laila said, her chin lifted.
“Suggestions? How so?”
Laila looked at her for a moment, and Lauryn assumed she was judging whether or not she was worthy to become privy to a familial secret. “Suggestions that he’s recently kissed his girlfriend, only minor things are different.”
“Things like hair color?”
Laila raised her eyebrow in response, and the other sixth year assumed she was correct.
“It’s still not right.”
“No!” Laila cried. “What’s not right is the way she suddenly became his! So quickly. How did she do it? Perhaps she’s the one you should be worrying about.” “Lily Evans? Bewitch someone?” Lauryn scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. They fell in love.”
“Why is it ridiculous to think that she could be capable of something like trapping a man into loving her? She’s a smart girl.” Disdain heavily laced with sarcasm dripped from her voice.
Lauryn just shook her head. “You must not be much of a romantic; otherwise you’d know that their story is quite… well, romantic.”
Laila sneered. “Romantic. They have nothing in common; they shouldn’t be in love.”
“Opposites attract,” was all Lauryn said.
Laila shifted her weight from one foot to another and rolled her eyes as she also shifted the topic. “You’re just jealous that I kissed James Potter.”
Lauryn guffawed. “Heh. He’s not my type. Though that breathtaking loyalty he showed right there at the end definitely does raise him in my estimation.” She looked hard at the girl across from her, suddenly struck with a curiosity of Laila’s past. “Loyalty. Perhaps that’s it.” She could hear her voice softening, just a bit. “You haven’t been shown enough loyalty; you don’t know what it is to be devoted and loyal. Do you just think it’s a natural thing for people to leave, so you don’t bother with the possibility of a lasting relationship? The possibility of unconditional love? I really do pity you.”
Laila’s jaw clenched, and Lauryn could see the tension that entered her body.
“I’m sorry for you.”
Laila let out a shuddering breath, as if she was going to say something, but instead she turned and stomped off.
Lauryn realized that there was something else behind that girl’s anger and guile, something that had hurt her. Lauryn frowned briefly, dearly hoping she wouldn’t hurt anyone else. She was just glad that this affair had been diverted before Laila could get too far into James’s find.
Then, her face lightened and she remembered; she had some tutoring to do.
“Lily!” called James, as he stopped at the top of the stairway towards his retreating girlfriend. Lily didn’t stop running. James gave a huff of exasperation and went down the stairs three at a time. At the bottom, he continued running, quickly catching up and attempting to stop her progress with his shoulder. The block didn’t stop her, unfortunately; she let her own shoulder glance off his, and she made to continue to run. However, James grabbed her shoulders and looked into her face.
She lifted her arm and slapped him.
Hard.
He squeezed his eyes shut in pain, sucking breath in through his teeth. James shook his head to get rid of the pain, and when he opened his eyes he recognized where they were standing. Not letting go of Lily, he led her toward a blank stretch of stone wall. James paced three times in long strides while Lily took her anger out on his shoulder. After the third pass, a door appeared in the wall, and James led Lily inside.
He heard gasp as they stepped into the small room. It was lit as if it was an outdoor courtyard, soft sunshine glancing off light stone walls, covered in ivy. A wooden bench faced a small pond. A bed of tulips ran along a wall, and bush of lilacs sent up their lovely smell. James pulled Lily into the room then turned to face her.
“I don’t know-”
“How could you?”
“I don’t know how! I don’t even know what’s been going on!”
“Oh, you pathetic hobgoblin. Why don’t you run back to your study partner and ask her to help you? Perhaps she’s better at understanding betrayal than Accio.”
“Betrayal?” The word left his mouth with all the air in his lungs, and he felt his eyes widen.
“Don’t try to pull that.” Lily pulled her hand from James’s and turned away.
“Please, believe me. I didn’t know what was going on this whole time. The past week and a half�”or however long�”is a blur to me, when I look back on it. I recognize all these memories that I realize never happened. As soon as I saw you just now in the hallway, it became clear to me that there are incredibly blurry parts of my recent memories.”
“You still kissed her, Potter!” shot Lily through clenched teeth.
“I don’t know what happened there,” James cried desperately. “She was just suddenly kissing me! And for some reason I thought she was you. I’m sorry!”
“Oh! Is that supposed to make me feel better?” She didn’t give him any chance to respond. “And you kissed her back! I’ve known the feeling…” Lily swallowed her sob and continued. “I’ve felt it enough to know what it looks like.”
“Lily, all I know is that I have memories of kissing you, but you looked like her.”
Lily cried out. “Kissed her before, have you?”
“No! No, that’s not what I meant. I meant you look different in these memories. And, when I try to think of those memories they fall apart. I don’t know what’s happened.” He threw up his hands, so confused and so wanting her to understand him. His heart hurt, and his head spun.
“You and your excuses!” she cried. “None of that made sense! And what about everything before that, huh?! All those moments in the common room when you were ‘tutoring’?”
“I have been tutoring her! Haven’t you seen that!? You’ve always wanted me to care more for school work, and I can only imagine that you would have rather I spent my time helping others than making up pranks!” James’s voice had risen to an angry octave as he looked at Lily; his eyes were full of incomprehension.
“Tutoring someone is one thing, Potter!” shouted Lily, turning around and kicking out at a short lilac bush. The petals released their scent as they were assaulted. “All those covert little looks and those little touches are something quite different!”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about! I remember trying to teach a rather dense girl simple charms and incantations!”
He watched Lily roll her eyes and take out her anger at another lilac bush. His mind was reeling. He still had no explanation for the blurry parts of his memory. He realized that in a different situation, Lily’s intelligence would probably be very helpful in his trying to unravel the past week. She would be able to point him to entire sections in the library with information on what had happened. Unfortunately, he figured she’d rather hit him with a Bludger’s bat than tutor him in the ways of a bewitched mind.
Bewitched.
He froze as they word crossed his mind. Could that be the explanation? Had that Laila girl done something to his mind?
Suddenly, he realized quite clearly that every blurry part of his memory (where once were memories of kissing or spending time with A-Lily-Who-Looked-Like-That-Laila-Girl) was preceded by a clear image of Laila’s brown eyes boring into his.
His mind attempted to process this in a few seconds. They had to be connected…
Lily responded to his statement: “Yes, and right in the middle of tutoring you’d stare into each other’s eyes with her hand on your leg! Perhaps those had to do with some incantation for Charms? Or she’d sit so close to you she’d practically be in your lap because that is necessary for some spell?” The derision was clear.
“Lily, I think those moments are important. I just realized that every blurry memory followed an image of her eyes. Perhaps if you stop overreacting, you can help me-”
“Overreacting?” She uprooted a tulip.
He let his head drop to his chest as he exhaled, knowing that “overreacting” was the wrong thing to say.
“Overreacting? Of course I am! How silly of me, not to see that my boyfriend was welcoming these looks that clearly stated that another girl wanted him as her own! I wish I could show all those looks that hurt me so incredibly much!”
Suddenly, a pedestal appeared in the middle of the courtyard. A wide basin sat atop the stand, and James realized that it was a Pensieve. Lily must have thought about wanting to show him something from her thought.
He watched as her eyes narrowed at the Pensieve, and then looked around at the room. James realized that as she had never been inside the Room of Requirement before, she had no idea of its magic.
Before James could start explaining, Lily held up her hand and raised her wand to her temple. For several silent moments, she pulled out strings of thoughts. Finally, she beckoned James over, a fierce look on her pale features. She gestured to the pedestal.
Fearing what he would see�”for the idea of betraying her love and trust cut him�”but knowing that understanding was far from him at the moment, he submerged his head in her thoughts.
He watched as what he assumed was every scene from the past week and a half involving he and Laila played out. Numerous moments of he and Laila staring at each other punctuated the scenes. Those were the moments when she must have planted the false memories, somehow. Harder to bear were the scenes of Remus and Sirius wishing Lily a happy birthday, and Nikeia, Josey and Alice handing her wrapped objects. The realization that he had missed her birthday sliced through his mind and he groaned.
It took several minutes before he withdrew from the Pensieve.
“That I allowed all that to happen… I’m incredibly sorry, my love. I should have realized something was wrong, I know that. Only, I didn’t think anything was wrong.”
“You call me your love, but how could you have let yourself succumb to that if you truly loved me?”
James reeled backwards. The accusation deepened the cut. He gasped. “Magic and bewitchment work that way: they tend to make the person being bewitched unaware that they are bewitched.”
A ball suddenly appeared in the air in front of Lily’s face. She grabbed it and flung it at James. James was caught off guard, and the heavy red ball hit his collarbone. He cried out and cursed.
“Lily! That hurt! Have you ever considered trying out for Chaser?!”
“Potter!”
“I’m asking you to believe that I haven’t been myself, not because I wanted to, but because I had no choice!”
He wished she would believe him. It was almost like the previous years, when nothing he would say would make an impact on her. She had toughened her mind to his requests then, and the same was happening now. He knew that she was hurting; he would be the same if he saw her in the arms of another man.
His voice dropped to a whisper and he stepped closer. She didn’t move away, but would not catch his eyes. “If you can forgive me, for even a moment, perhaps we can figure out what happened to me. There must be an answer to all this.”
She pulled away from his attempt at touching her arm, and started for the door. “The only answer is that I have to go. I have patrolling to do. I’ll take the lower floors if you’ll take the upper.” She opened the heavy wooden door and left the courtyard.
James cried out after her and then cursed loudly. He was angry at her for not understanding, and then angry at himself for assuming she would forgive him for that kiss with another girl so quickly.
He threw back his head and sighed loudly in exasperation. Unexpectedly, and seemingly without source, a deluge of water poured onto his face. He gasped as he whipped his head up and wiped the freezing water out of his eyes. He figured the attack had been Lily’s last wish as she walked from the room.
He passed a hand through his hair and groaned. He would have to find the answer by himself. Perhaps once he had that, Lily would understand that the very idea of being parted from her made turned his stomach and caused an iron band to ensnare his heart and choke him.
Brushing his hair back once more, he stomped from the room and headed towards the fourth floor.