The traumatic events of this morning have forced me to procrastinate on telling you about my passionate hatred of a certain person that normal people like to refer to as James Potter. I, however, am not a normal person and therefore do not call him by the name that his unfortunate parents decided to give him. To me, he is known as King of the Gorilla People. The Gorilla People are his band of followers, more commonly known to normal people as the Marauders. I think that this is a terrible name for them, which is why I dubbed them in second year the Gorilla People.
Some people at my school, girls in particular, would argue with me over James being the King. They would say that Sirius Black is the King because he is, in their words, the best thing that ever happened to them. I say that they are pathetic if they think a boy is the best thing in their lives. Do not get me wrong, I didn't name James as the King in order to compliment him. I named him the King because I hate him even more than Arithmancy, which is saying something because Arithmancy involves math, and I would rather eat the canned pig's eyes that have been sitting on my grandmother's counter for fifty years than do math.
You might have also wondered over my choice of names. I chose to call them Gorilla People because that is what they act like half the time. They run around tackling each other, showing off and acting like immature, spoiled, self-centered brats, which is exactly what they are.
I don’t know what the King of the Gorilla People thinks he is doing when he decides to lift me out of the mud and drag me and my trunk through the barrier. I do have a sense of pride. I am not at all happy about the person I hate even more than Arithmancy not only seeing me sitting nonchalantly in a puddle of mud, but helping me out of it. It is also not very comforting to see he has a very big and gorilla-like grin on his horrible gorilla-like face.
The rest of the female population might think he's handsome, tall, muscular and altogether their dream guy, but I still insist that he looks like a gorilla. After he half drags me through that terrifying brick wall—I've always been afraid of it because there is still that part of me that was raised by Muggles that insists that the brick wall that I'm trying to run through will remain a solid brick wall and have no magical properties except giving me a very, very, big bruise—he stands me up straight and zaps the mud off me himself.
"Well, Evans, you should be glad I'm here. Who knows, the terrifying pile of mud might still be holding you captive if it weren't for me and my supernatural strength." This is why Potter is an immature gorilla. He assumes that he rescued me from violent, man-eating mud.
It is at this point that I realize something horrible and traumatizing; it is my seventh year, I have just gone through the gateway for the last time ever. And I have done it being dragged by the King of the Gorillas. But does Potter notice that I am suddenly even more furious? No, of course not, he is still talking. Does he ever shut-up?
"You know Evans, usually the Night in Shining Armor, which would be me, gets to carry home the Damsel in Distress, which would be you, after he rescues her. So, you owe me a date," he says in a deep voice that he obviously thinks is romantic and 100% guaranteed to get a date. I can tell that he has practiced this voice over the summer, the last time he tried to ask me out with his supposedly romantic voice, I had told him that he sounded like a rat with a head cold. This isn’t much better.
"I think that, by asking me out, you are assuming that I wanted to be rescued and was overjoyed with you dragging me quite irreverently through the barrier? Because I did NOT enjoy it, James Potter! You just ruined the last time I will ever be able to go through that archway!" The King of the Gorilla People looks quite shocked by this comment, as if he had been certain that that his new romantic voice would work.
"And now I'm going to have to do it all over again!" I scream at him. I seem to be screaming a lot this morning. With that comment, I grab my trunk from his hands and march back through the gateway, wondering vaguely if a Hogwarts student has ever before walked back into the Muggle world just for the sake of going through a brick wall.
Upon getting back, I decide that I need to do the entire process again. Do not ask why I felt the need to go back in the puddle of mud and other-things-I-did-not-want-to-think-about, but something about having Potter be the one to rescue me makes me want to do it all over again, just so I could be the one to take the mud off.
Potter follows me through the archway and that's why he is staring opened mouthed with the rest of the people at the train station as I fling myself deliberately into the puddle. I turn around to face Potter as he stares at me completely confused that not only did his romantic voice fail to get him a date, but it has somehow turned me insane enough to jump in a mud puddle in front of about 200 on looking Muggles. As I stare defiantly at him, I decide to show him that not only am I unafraid of mud, but I am more than willing it let it touch me. I grabbed a big handful, raise it to my head and rub it through my hair.
Potter gapes at me. I can just imagine what was going through his gorilla shaped head: "Lily has been cursed by You-Know-Who and now she is completely insane. Why else would she put mud in her hair?" Or simply: "What the heck happened to Lily over the summer?" Neither one of these thoughts manage to improve my mood at all. I stand up, glare at him, and drag my trunk through the barrier with what I think is an intelligent and all-knowing look on my face.
I’m rather proud of myself, really. Not only have I refused to date the King of the Gorillas, but I had shown him that I would rather humiliate myself and put mud all over my carefully chosen outfit than be anywhere near him.
Just as this happy thought passes through my head, Clarissa comes up to me squealing excitedly—what is it with us girls and squealing?—when she notices that I am covered in mud.
"Lily, what happened to you?"
I glare at her. Maybe it is rather mean of me to glare at my best friend, but I am rather mad that she does not recognize the mud for what it is; a triumph, NOT a mistake.
"Potter." I mumble at her grudgingly.
"Potter pushed you in the mud?" she asks skeptically, knowing exactly how much the King of the Gorilla people likes me, and how unlikely it is that he would push his Dearly Beloved into the mud.
"No, he helped me out of the mud, so obviously I had to go back in." She stares at me as if what I’m saying doesn’t make perfect sense, but it does. Clarissa takes a deep breath, closing her eyes as if it’s unimaginable that I would fling myself into a puddle of mud on the first day of school. Apparently, she decides to ignore my odd behavior and hopes it would go away before any of the guys she fancies came along. I get my wand out and regretfully wash off the marks of one of my best successes.
We start walking into the train dragging my extremely heavy trunk behind us. I honestly do not know why my trunk is so heavy. It isn't like I brought that much stuff. Not nearly as much as Clarissa, or another one of my other best friends, Guinevere, who both packed their trunks with make-up and other unnecessary items that they think for their own strange reasons makes them look better.
We finally manage to drag my stuff into the compartment where Guinevere and my fourth best friend; Sybill Trelawney are. Guinevere jumps up to give me a hug, yelling greetings the whole time.
"LILY! I'm so glad to see you! I've missed you so much! And I've missed Hogwarts! And I've missed our pranks! And I missed procrastinating on homework with you! And I missed dumping water balloons on you! And I missed the BOYS!" Guinevere said this loud and fast. Guinevere has the strangest passion/obsession for boys that I find I am unable to understand.
"I've missed you too, Guin!" I say. Guinevere hates her name. She says she was named after some old boring princess that nobody really cared about except for a great aunt of hers who insisted she be named it. Great Aunt Seleania is 98 years old and in Guinevere's words, "still refuses to die."
I turn to the other girl in the room. Sybill does not jump up and start screaming like Guinevere did. Instead she stands solemnly and shakes my hand slowly and majestically.
"Sybill! I haven't seen you in forever!" I say, abandoning the handshake and giving the brunette a hug.
"Yes, it has been a very long time," Sybill says solemnly. "I am afraid to tell you that the Darkness is closing in."
"The Darkness is closing in?" I say in a falsely concerned voice. I’m quite used to her predictions of death by now. "Why, whatever does that mean?"
"It means that Death is drawing closer and that the light is being stomped out. It means doom will soon befall us. And I am sorry to admit that we may not survive these dark omens." Sybill says this all in her regular mysterious voice. I stifle a laugh.
"Oh, come now, Sybill, it can't be that bad. Why don't you be a bit more cheerful for once?" Clarissa exclaims impatiently.
"Because, Clarissa, the forces of life have not chosen to bestow on me light, unimportant matters such as happiness."
We all roll our eyes. We are quite used to this by now. We all know that she isn’t a true Seer, but don’t want to break poor Sybill's heart. She loves predicting people's deaths. If that privilege was denied then she would probably transfigure herself into a cockroach, or something else horrible like that.
It is at this point that Valerie walks in. Valerie is the fifth member of our group and the most drastic of us. In terms of style that is. It looks as if Clarissa is about to faint by just looking at what Valerie has done to herself.
Valerie has always tried to defy fashion in the most drastic ways possible. In first year she decided on wearing extremely long, extremely thick, fake eyelashes. In second year she dressed only in purple. She had even bewitched her robes to a bright purple. The teachers had not been very happy about this but Dumbledore just laughed and said something about the joys of being young. In fourth year she died her hair black and refused to cut it at all, not even the slightest bit. She also insisted on straightening it so much that it was completely flat and lifeless.
Clarissa has been at war with her forever over fashion, always insisting that "she could be pretty if she didn't insist on being ugly." Valerie doesn’t listen to her, just smiles that gorgeous smile of hers that I've always been jealous of and continues to paint her nails neon green. But obviously, she has decided to do something special for our seventh and final year here.
She has cut her hair very, very short. She has died it bright orange. She has spiked it up with some very strong hair gel. She is wearing the fake eyelashes again.
Clarissa mouths wordlessly for a full thirty seconds before letting out a screech. "What have you done? I thought we had seen the worst of it with those weird fake tattoos all over the place but this is terrible!"
"Just because my sense of fashion isn't as narrow minded as yours, and isn't controlled by whatever some super model says, doesn't mean that my fashion is horrible. I wanted the real me to not only be on the inside, but the outside as well."
We all gaped at her.
"Then you must be trying to get the image across to everyone that your inside is a freak! This is absolutely ridiculous," Clarissa nearly yells out.
At this point I decide to interfere, before they kill each other. Unfortunately, this pleasure is denied to me by the presence of the Gorilla People walking into our compartment, all four of them.
"Hello, ladies," James Potter says, trying to look cool but failing miserably as Sirius Black is standing right behind him trying to place a sparkly purple tiara onto his head without him noticing.
"Hello, bigheads!" says Valerie. She had never been afraid to express her feelings in the most reckless way possible.
"Nice hair," Pettigrew says, smiling that annoying superior smile that all of the Marauders seemed to have mastered, although I must say he isn't nearly as good at it as Sirius is.
Sirius finally manages to place the tiara on an unsuspecting Potter's head. It seems the Marauders are not content with merely pulling pranks on the student community, but their best friends as well. These guys are an odd bunch.
"Well, we were just stopping in to offer our condolences," Remus states smoothly, trying not to laugh at Potter's ridiculous crown.
"What do you mean, Lupin?" I say in my most dangerously quiet voice. Like Potter, I had worked on this voice all summer, unlike Potter, I manage to succeed with it.
"He means, of course, that we are sorry that you will soon be facing extreme embarrassment due to the fact that your pranks will not be nearly as good ours this year, and you will lose the bet magnificently," Sirius Black says, smirking at us.
The Bet. Those are the two words that have haunted my every thought since the day in second year when we made it. I've always loved to pull pranks. Most people think that guys are the only ones to take pleasure in these activities, but they are quite wrong. You see, if you live with Petunia, you come to desperate measures in order to ensure your sanity. In a household where Petunia literally tries to make everything perfect, I have no choice but to pull pranks in order to make it somewhat normal.
As you probably guessed, most of the pranks were on her, and I can't say I feel any remorse at all for doing them. At Hogwarts, I found Valerie, who liked pranks as much as I did, and we got everyone else in our group to do them as well. Unfortunately, we had competition. Soon we had to try our very best in order to out-prank Potter and his henchmen. Pretty soon, we were at each others' throats and created The Bet: Whoever has the most creative/best pranks at the end of our seven years wins the prize. We'll win. I guarantee it.
Other people might have responded to this mean and egotistical comment made by the King of the Gorilla People in a calm matter. But I am not a calm person, so I decide to do something drastic. I put a spell on them. In all honesty, it was a curse, and I can't honestly say that I wasn't going against school rules. But I have to say that seeing the King of the Gorilla People and his henchmen in elaborately designed white wigs is a sight that I will not forget for a while. I'm sure they won't forget either. As they curse and yell and stumble dumbly about trying to find a spell to reverse it, I slam the door in their faces and lock it with the most powerful locking spell I know.
Everyone starts to laugh, except me. I am still furious. You could say that I am very, very competitive. Guinevere would say that this is an understatement. I just cannot stand the thought of losing this thing. I can just imagine Potter when we're both ninety and in some care home for old people, and he would say something along the lines of; "And you lost that prank war so bad! Ha ha ha. You didn't even come close to winning." And then the old and crazy me would Avada Kedavra him, and I would end up in Azkaban, which I have heard is not very fun. So you see, losing The Bet would not only result in sincere loss of pride but eventual imprisonment as well.
But do my friends recognize the seriousness of the situation? Of course not. They continue to laugh. It isn’t until Clarissa brings up a particular embarrassing and horrible subject, that I finally postpone being mad and competitive.
"Did Lily tell you," she pauses, staring around at us as if to make the moment more dramatic, "that she made Head Girl?" They all stare at me completely open mouthed. I glower at all of them. In my mind nothing is possibly worse than being made Head Girl. When most people get a letter saying they've been chosen as Head Girl, they start jumping up and down and screaming in excitement. That did not happen to me. I simply fainted. That was the first time in my life that I have fainted, and I am determined that it shall be the last. I have made it my life's work to pull pranks and do other things that usually give me The Look from teachers. Especially McGonagall.
The Look is what all teachers practice day in and day out. Once you have mastered The Look, you can scare and control all of your students without even trying. McGonagall has mastered The Look better than anyone I've ever known. I proceeded to tell her that the first time she gave me a detention. She did not think that this comment was amusing at all, and I was simply sentenced to another detention. You see, teachers don't want students to know that they had to practice in order to master The Look, but I knew she had probably practiced for several years to get it down that well, and that is why I told her so. Other teachers, such as Professor Flitwick—bless his heart, I just love that little old man—and Professor Slughorn, cannot do The Look at all. They simply look like they're constipated the moment they try.
But back to the subject at hand. I did not want to be Head Girl, the teachers must have been crazy to make me Head Girl, and there was no way I was going to stay Head Girl. But a bad thing happened. They always seem to happen to me. My parents somehow got hold of the letter telling me the unpleasant news. They were so happy and proud that I just couldn't make myself break their hearts and carry on with my intention of immediate resignation. That is why I have the horrible position right now.
After staring at me in shock for a while, my so-called friends start laughing hysterically at me. Really, what is so funny about me having to endure torture for the rest of the miserable year? There were actual tears of laughter running down Valerie's face.
"Well if you all don't mind, I need to be headed for the meeting itself," I say, glaring at all of them. But did they stop laughing and sympathize with me that I was forced to go to a meeting with a bunch of spoiled, teacher's pet, prats? No, they continue to laugh as I head out to my doom.
As I enter the room that would undoubtedly be filled with a bunch of goody-two-shoes, I take a deep breath and attempt to put up a fake face, something responsible and encouraging, something that tells everyone that I do know what I am doing, even though I have no idea why I’m put in this position. But the moment I walk through the door the whole responsible face changes into a look that probably made me resemble a frog. You know the phrase, "her chin dropped to the floor "? Well that is the exact and only description I will give you about my once-responsible face.
The reason that I look like a frog is quite simple: James Potter is here, and he is wearing the Head Boy's badge. The first thought that goes through my head is, "Dumbledore must have gone insane." I am seriously worried about his mental health at the moment, picking the two most trouble-making and Look-getting people in the school.
But, I am proud to say that after only 40 seconds of me standing there dumbly with my mouth hanging open and acting like a frog, that I put my responsible face on again and turned to the group. The King of The Gorilla People is just as shocked to see me as I am him, so I am happy to say that I am not the only one there acting like a frog. The prefects must not only be worried about Dumbledore’s sanity, but the sanity of their two Heads as well.
After about half an hour of giving instructions out that I don’t really understand to a bunch of good-grade, anti-prank, rule-abiding students, I finally escape. I almost run to my compartment, completely ignoring the King of the Gorilla People as he again tries to use his supposedly romantic voice on me and get a date. After getting to the compartment and again locking the door, I say the first three highly intelligent words that come to my mind.
"I. Am. Doomed."
And what do my so-called friends do? They laugh. They go hysterical, actually. For the second time that day, I am the cause of someone's hysterical laughter. I now know that I will grow up to be a mad-cat-loving-lady, laughed at by all. My future is not looking bright.
Cinderella Was a Redhead by NeLLyRaE
Chapter Notes: Hey everybody! thanks for reading, please review!