Chapter Five: The Price We Pay (For Being Different)
Lily Evans was sitting quietly in the seat on one side of the table when he entered the room. James paused long enough to watch the door close and hear the firm click of the lock falling into place, then he crossed quickly to the table and pulled out his own seat. He studied her for a moment, eyes taking in her tired appearance. There were dark circles under her eyes and her skin was pale and nearly gray.
He opened his mouth to ask her if she’d been sleeping well, then realized how ridiculous of a question it was, and snapped his jaw shut. Still, he wanted her to look better than this when they went before the Wizengamot. He wanted her to look like…
…well, a bit less like someone from the wrong part of town. Appearances went a long way towards convincing the Wizengamot of innocence or guilt, and she needed to appear to be grieving, but preferably in a pretty sort of way.
He decided to say as much.
“I will get you a different set of robes for the trial,” he started briskly, wasting no time with pleasantries. “If you know your measurements, leave them with me at the end of the day and I will have my assistant get something… appropriate… for you.”
“Does it really matter what I’m wearing?” Evans shot back. “I could be dressed in pure silk and fine jewels or in ashes and sackcloth and it wouldn’t make a difference.”
James gave her a level stare. “It matters. It matters a lot, and I want you to be presentable so that when the Wizengamot sees you, you look more like their daughters and wives than…”
“Than what?” she asked, one eyebrow raised. “A poverty-stricken Muggleborn who just spent too much time in Azkaban? I don’t think we can get away from that one, Mr. Potter.”
James bit his tongue and took a slow breath. Thirty seconds in, and he was already feeling wrong-footed by the conversation.
“Do you want to lose your soul?” he asked sharply.
A flush suffused her face, her skin tinted pink with either embarrassment or anger. But it was her eyes that drew his attention, the way they widened just a little bit at his words, the fear in them obvious. It was gone almost immediately, but for a moment he had seen the terror that lingered just below the surface.
So she had at least realized just how bad the situation was for her.
“Our last meeting was productive, but I want to focus on Lestrange today,” James said, pulling out a roll of parchment and his quill. “I went over some articles and notes from the trial for the murder of Lucius Malfoy.”
“And let me guess,” Evans said bitterly, “you want an alibi for that night, too?”
“I already have your alibi,” James answered, noting with vague interest the way her fingers stiffened, clenching tightly around the end of the table as the topic of conversation turned to Rodolphus Lestrange. “Anyway, you were deemed not guilty of that particular charge.”
“Then why bring it up?” Evans asked.
“You beat Lestrange at his own game. I want to make the argument that he’s out for revenge.”
“Another plan to discredit him?” Evans asked, tilting her head up and studying him for a long moment. “You’re probably right about that one, he is out for revenge. But it won’t help us determine who really killed Remus. Unless, of course, you think Lestrange did.”
“I am not interested in figuring out who killed Mr. Lupin,” James said bluntly. “I’m interested in convincing the Wizengamot that you did not.” Without waiting for her reply “ because he really did not want to get into that particular argument again “ he asked, “Tell me about Lucius Malfoy.”
She started, mouth falling open. It surprised him, how expressive her face had suddenly become. There was anger, and grief, and resentment, but there was something else he couldn’t identify. Something that looked an awful lot like guilt.
She pushed the chair back and stood up, moved away from him. There was no window in the room, so instead she stared blankly at the wall, red hair obscuring her face from view.
“You read the trial reports, you read the articles. You know everything there is to know,” she said softly.
“How did you know him?” James pressed.
She shrugged, and when she finally faced him again, her eyes were blank, her face calm and collected. “He didn’t like me, something he went out of his way to make sure I knew. That’s how I knew him.”
“But why didn’t he like you?”
Lips curved into a cynical smile. “I’m a filthy Mudblood,” she answered, her words filled with scorn. “What other reason did he need?”
James set his quill on the table. “Miss Evans, I read quite a bit about your argument with him. The number of times the two of you were seen yelling at each other… it makes it seem more personal than just a simple matter of him disapproving of your bloodlines.”
“Disapproving?” Evans repeated. “Is that the word you want to use to describe it? And here I was thinking something more along the lines of complete detestation for people he viewed as below him. He saw me as trash, Mr. Potter. As someone not fit to breathe the same air he did. Disapproval is hardly a strong enough word.”
James gestured for her to continue.
She started pacing, her steps agitated. Running a hand through her wild red tresses, she said, “There was nothing personal. He hated me, hated people like me. We were beneath him. I doubt he even realized most of the time that he knew me, that he had argued with me before. To him, I was just another Mudblood to yell at, to mock, to taunt… to bully. He never bothered to keep all of us separate in his mind. Mudbloods and blood traitors…”
She trailed off and sighed, blinking rapidly. James wondered if she were about to cry.
“So it wasn’t personal?” James asked in disbelief. “You didn’t know Malfoy that well? You did not interact with him besides these… conflicts?”
Evans shook her head. “It wasn’t personal at all. And most of what Lestrange said in his prosecution, most of what his witnesses testified… most of that was lies.”
James pulled out another roll of parchment and opened it, scanning the notes he had made the night before. “The day after Lucius Malfoy was killed, you had scratches on your face, as though you had been in a fight. Your watch had been smashed at seven minutes after midnight, again, as though you had been in a fight.”
“I was… I drank too much that night,” Evans answered, looking away, eyes falling towards the floor to her right. She studied the ground for a long moment, then said, “I am clumsy, and it is even worse when I’ve had too much to drink. The scratches were from losing my balance and falling into a tree, and that’s when my watch broke as well.”
“That is what you told the Wizengamot last time,” James agreed.
“It’s the truth,” she snapped, eyes flashing as she glared at him. “What’s the point in this, anyway? I’m not being accused of Malfoy’s death again. Can’t we just focus on Remus?”
James sighed inwardly. As he had predicted, Evans was not willing to help him with this line of inquiry, and he doubted she would shed any more light on his questions. He was still convinced that there was something more personal in the hatred that existed between her and Malfoy, and hopefully Sirius would have better luck prying the truth from his cousin.
He point his wand at the Evans’ unoccupied chair, and it slid out a short ways, legs scratching against the ground. Evans glanced at it, then complied with his silent request for her to sit down. She scooted closer to the table and continued to watch him warily, waiting for his next question.
“Where was Mr. Lupin for the past three years?”
“I don’t know,” she answered immediately. “But I already told you that. I’ve already told everyone that.”
“And you are still holding to your story that you were at his place because you received an owl from him telling you that he had returned. When you got there, he was dead?”
“Yes!”
“Miss Evans, surely you understand that this is… well… it is rather unbelievable. The whole story. It is far too easy for Lestrange to claim that you…”
“He doesn’t care about Remus,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t care at all. He won’t even investigate any other possibility because he is only interested in me. And why would he care about Remus? Why would he…”
“Why wouldn’t he?” James asked, leaning forward.
Evans laughed bitterly. “I was so… confused… when I started doing magic. I was young, I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t know… I couldn’t understand why all these strange things started happening around me. Then I got my letter and all of a sudden this other world was open to me. An exciting world filled with… with magic. I remember seeing my first glimpse of Hogwarts and thinking that I could do anything, be anything, that I wanted.”
James had no idea where she was going with this, but he let her talk anyway. There was a wistful quality to her voice, and her lips were turned into a smile, the first genuine smile he had seen on her face. Her gaze was soft, filled with fond remembrances, as she recalled those few happy memories.
Then her expression hardened and she dropped her gaze to the table.
“My sister didn’t like it. Petunia… she was angry. Jealous. She told me I was a freak, she hated me. Hated what I had become, hated this other world… I asked her once, why she couldn’t just accept me. She told me this was the price I had to pay for being different.”
“Sibling relationships can be strained,” James said, thinking of Sirius and his brother.
Evans glanced at him. “Do you have any siblings?”
“No,” James admitted.
Evans said nothing for a while. Then, just as James resolved to ask another question, to turn the subject back to Remus Lupin, she said, “I guess I became a bit disillusioned at Hogwarts.”
“Oh?” James commented, surprised. He’d loved Hogwarts. Everyone loved Hogwarts. How could she not feel the same way?
“The classes and professors were wonderful, but… it was my first introduction to the ideas of blood purity. To the people who thought I was filth, that I shouldn’t even be allowed to have a wand. The price I paid for being different want to be estranged from my sister. But… but for what? For a world that looked down on me?”
“Not all witches and wizards are like that,” James protested.
She gave him a faint smile. “I know. There are some who will stand up and fight back. But if you’ve done your research, then you also know that even though I was acquitted of the charges seven years ago, I was still punished for it.”
“Yes,” James agreed in a hoarse voice, trying to reign in his own anger at the unfairness of what had happened back then. “I read it. It was… it wasn’t right.”
“Remus was different, too. And he had to pay a price as well,” Evans pressed on.
“How was he different?” James asked. He knew Lupin wasn’t a Muggleborn, he’d read that much. He couldn’t remember if he was a half-blood or a pureblood, but it didn’t really matter. After all, they might not be particularly liked by people like Lestrange, but half-bloods weren’t scorned the same way Muggleborns were.
Evans expelled a breath and said bluntly, “He was a werewolf.”
James’ jaw dropped. “What?”
“Lestrange knew. But not many others did. Remus didn’t really tell anyone, and for the most part, he only took jobs where he didn’t have to disclose his… status.”
She spat out the last word as though it offended her which, James reflected, it probably did. Although a werewolf did not have to publicly disclose his or her condition, most employers did demand that sort of information, and there was legislation in place to require those questions to be answered truthfully. And there was also legislation in place that allowed people to discriminate against a werewolf in pretty much anyway they pleased.
“When did he learn of Mr. Lupin’s… lycanthropy?” James asked, struggling to come up with a way of referring to Lupin’s status without actually using the word status.
“A couple years after the last trial,” Evans said with a sigh. “It was… it was about four years ago. A little while before Remus left for… for wherever he went.”
James nodded, suddenly no longer wanting to ask questions. They still had a lot to talk about, but he needed time to wrap his mind around what he had just learned. He needed time to make sense of it all. He still wasn’t convinced that Evans hadn’t murdered Lupin, but it didn’t really matter. He wasn’t here to determine if she was actually innocent, he was just here to convince the Wizengamot that she was.
And to do that, he needed to sift through the information he had learned and formulate a plan of attack.
Frank Longbottom glanced up from the pile of paperwork on his desk and raised his eyebrows at the man who entered the small cubicle he called and office. Memos dashed overhead, zooming off to their intended recipients, and the sound of chatter drifted through the air, gossip and work mixing together. The Auror Department was overcrowded these days, but not because the number of Aurors had increased. In fact, very few witches and wizards had been accepted into the highly prestigious ranks of late, but the Department was slowly being filled with bureaucrats and office workers who cluttered up the place.
Frank didn’t like it. As the incidents of Dark magic seemed to be on the rise “ for reasons no one could quite fathom “ the public was clamoring for Aurors, and yet the still wanted the same high standards. It was an impossible task to accomplish, but some people in power were clearly assigning Ministry workers to this particular department in the hopes that it would make it seem as though the number of Aurors was increasing.
He pushed those thoughts away and stood up, extending a hand. He had not had much of a reason to interact with James Potter before, but as the only remaining member of the Potter family, he had a fairly recognizable face.
“Mr. Potter,” Frank said politely. “What can I do for you?”
Potter shook his hand firmly and answered, “I am representing Lily Evans in the trial for the murder of Remus Lupin.”
Frank nodded. “So I’ve heard,” he said quietly, gesturing for Potter to take a seat. He didn’t want to talk about this, not really. He had a pretty good guess where the questions were headed, and didn’t want to delve into the past. There were too many bad memories.
“I was hoping you might be able to answer a few questions for me,” Potter said briskly, unrolling some parchment and withdrawing a quill from his cloak. “Do you have a few minutes?”
“Of course,” Frank said, trying to keep his voice calm and reasoned. His hands clenched into fists underneath the desk, and his eyes darted past Potter to the entrance to his cubicle. Would they be overheard? He did not want his own history to be added to the gossip mill.
Potter looked at him closely, eyes travelling from Frank’s plastered smile to his clenched hands. “Just a few questions,” he said again.
“I am just not sure how much help I can be,” Frank answered. “I haven’t seen Remus in years.” He paused for a moment, then sighed heavily and added, “I guess I won’t ever see him again, will I?”
It was a rhetorical question, said more to himself than to Potter, and the other wizard did not answer.
Instead, he said, “But you were friends with Mr. Lupin and Miss Evans prior to Mr. Lupin’s disappearance?”
“Yes. We were friends,” Frank agreed readily enough.
“When was the last time you saw Mr. Lupin?”
“The night before he left,” Frank answered with a grimace. “That was three years ago. And before you ask, that was the last time I saw Lily, too. Until now.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Remus?” Frank shook his head. “He and Lily had a row, I was only there for the beginning of it. She wrote to me the next day, said Remus was gone and I…” He shrugged haplessly, eyes darting away. He couldn’t explain this to James Potter, not really. It was too complicated, there was too much in his past.
“What did you do?” Potter pressed.
“Nothing,” Frank answered honestly. “I did nothing. I tossed her letter in the fireplace and didn’t think about it again for three years. Until he was found dead.”
“You didn’t care that your mate was missing?” Potter asked a bit skeptically. He jotted a note down on the parchment and then gave Frank another quick, contemplative look. “Can you tell me what happened that night? What was the row about?”
Frank laughed bitterly. “How much time do you have?” he asked.
To his surprise, Potter placed the quill down on the desk and said, “As much as it takes.”
Frank accepted this in silence, then ran a hand through his hair. “I assume by now you know that Lily was once accused of murdering Lucius Malfoy?” Potter nodded, and he continued, “That was seven years ago. After the trial was over… Lily and I got into a few arguments. Remus took Lily’s side, and it… well, it harmed our friendship. A lot. He was a loyal friend to her, and he was so angry at me for the things that had happened between Lily and I… She was forgiving, he wasn’t.”
Potter held up his hand to stop the story for a moment. “Sometimes,” he said thoughtfully, “people are more willing to forgive slights against themselves than they are to forgive slights against people they love. Was Remus…?”
“In love with Lily?” Frank supplied. “Since day one, since the moment they met on the Hogwarts express, they had been close. I don’t think he really realized that he was in love with her until after we left school but… yes. Yes, he was in love with Lily. But then, I think everyone who ever met Lily was in love with her at some point.”
“And the arguments between Lily and you? What were they about?”
“Malfoy,” Frank said. “But I really don’t want to elaborate much on that. It’s in the past, she was acquitted of all charges, and let’s just leave it at that.” He said it firmly, sternly, hoping his tone would convey the fact that this topic was simply not open for discussion. He had no desire to rehash the past, the arguments, all the things he had done wrong and all the mistakes Lily had made.
He had other memories to dwell on, other horrors to relive.
He closed his eyes, drew a slow breath. Even now, he could picture his beloved Alice, her round face and gentle eyes, her smile as she gazed back at him.
“Mr. Longbottom?” Potter prompted softly.
“Four years ago, Lily and Remus started dating,” Frank said, opening his eyes. “I don’t know if she loved him the way he loved her, but she did care about him. He made her happy. And then…” He stopped, licked his suddenly dry lips, and forced himself to relax. The words hovered at the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t say them, couldn’t admit to the memory of…
He pushed back his chair suddenly and stood up, stepping around Potter and out of the cubicle. As he had suspected, a few employees had gathered around his office, hidden by the partial walls. They were listening to his story, eager to glean inside information about Lily Evans, the witch presumed guilty of two murders.
“Don’t you all have work to be doing?” he snapped, his temper barely under control. When no one made a move to leave, he folded his arms over his chest and glared dangerously. “Don’t make me call Moody,” he threatened.
That, at least, got their attention, and they drifted away. But they would be back, that much was certain.
He walked back into the cubicle where Potter was still sitting at the desk, waiting. He wondered vaguely if Potter knew about Remus’ lycanthropy. Had Lily told him? Would it matter? Would it come out at the trial?
Would everything come out at the trial? All the secrets they had kept buried, all the memories no one wanted to talk about anymore… splashed across the newspaper for the world to read because of this trial.
“My Alice was killed,” he said bluntly, sitting down again. Better to say this all quickly, and without hesitation. If he could explain it in a detached and clinical matter, then maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much.
Although he doubted that would work.
“I remember reading about that,” Potter said gravely. “I’m very sorry.” His words were sympathetic and sincere, but it made no difference to Frank. He’d heard it too many times over the years, and those words never did anything to help ease the pain of losing her.
But he still said politely, “Thank you.”
Alice’s death had been the final nail in the coffin for the friendship. There had been other bumps in the road, but that was the one that finally tore them apart.
“It was four years ago,” he explained. “She was killed by Dark magic. They never caught the people who did it. Remus wanted to help fight the Dark Arts, but he couldn’t become an Auror, they wouldn’t let him into the academy.” He didn’t bother explaining why, and Potter didn’t ask. If Potter already knew that Remus was a werewolf, then he wouldn’t need to ask, the answer would be obvious. And if he didn’t know…
Well, he’d probably find it out soon enough.
“So he decided to fight the Dark Arts on his own. Freelance, I guess you would call it. Lily didn’t like it, she said it was too dangerous. He got hurt a few times, and she wanted me to talk him out of it, but… I said no.”
She hadn’t understood. Alice was dead, murdered by Dark witches or wizards, and she wanted him to tell Remus to stop this? He wanted people to be fighting back, even if they weren’t Aurors. But she couldn’t understand it, couldn’t wrap her head around his need for justice, for revenge. She couldn’t comprehend why stopping this kind of crime was so important to him.
“Over the year, it got worse. The last argument was about that. I left part way through, but Lily and Remus were still going at it. She wanted him to quit, he refused… he left. I didn’t see either of them for three years. And now Remus is dead.”
Potter scribbled a few more notes on his parchment and then nodded slowly. “These arguments between Miss Evans and Mr. Lupin,” he asked, “were they ever in public?”
Frank shrugged. “Yeah. A lot, actually. No doubt Lestrange will use that against her in the trial.”
Potter looked disgruntled as he answered, “Indeed.”
She is angry enough to slap him. To completely forget magic and her wand and to physically hurt him. And he is standing there, staring back at her, like he can’t understand why she is asking this of him.
“You want me to tell Remus not to fight the Dark?” he asks, disbelief in his voice.
“Frank,” she pleads, because he is her friend, one of the few she has left, and she needs him on her side. She can’t lose him, but she can’t lose Remus, either. And this is dangerous, too dangerous, and why doesn’t he understand?
“Alice is dead, Lily,” he spits, face flushed angrily. The space between them is tense and charged with emotions and suddenly it feels like there is an insurmountable chasm separating them and she can’t reach him anymore. The rage and grief in his eyes is a reflection of what he has been feeling and she has known all along that there is nothing she can say or do to help him heal.
But she never expected his anger to turn towards her.
He spins away from her and starts pacing, footsteps loud and angry on the floor of his flat. He is shaking with pent-up fury, and there is something dangerous in his eyes.
It has been three years since the trial, only a few weeks since Alice’s death, only a few days since Remus’ decision and she is scared. She will lose him “ both of them “ and she knows it. And she has already lost so much.
“This is dangerous, Frank,” she says, and she grabs the front of his robes, unsure if she meant to hit him or hug him. “Remus will get hurt. Don’t you see that, don’t you understand?”
“These are things worth fighting for,” he snaps back, eyes flashing as he yanks his robes from her grip. “How can you not understand that?”
“I do. I do!” she protests. And she does. But this isn’t about justice, not for any of them. Remus is doing this for revenge and Frank is letting it happen to ease his guilt and it isn’t about protecting society. It is about hurting those that hurt them and it isn’t good and it isn’t right and it isn’t safe.
And she doesn’t want Remus to get hurt.
But Frank turns away from her and says harshly, “No, you don’t. You don’t get it, and you’re only thinking of yourself. Again.”
His words are laced with venom, and she knows he is talking about more than just this argument. She bites her lip to keep from crying, but the tears still come, and as she turns and leaves the flat, she can’t help but wonder how this all went so wrong.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” James announced as he signaled the bartender for a glass of Firewhisky and sank into the seat next to Sirius and Marlene. “Evans and Lupin fought a lot, but it was because Evans though Lupin was doing something too dangerous. She was trying to keep him alive. Lestrange can’t make a case out of that.”
“Long day?” Sirius said with a roll of his eyes, his tone sour and almost petulant. “Maybe you would have preferred to spend it with Narcissa? Remind me never to speak to you again.”
Both James and Marlene ignored him, and Marlene said pointedly, “But he can make a case out of the fact that she was standing over his dead body, covered in his blood.”
James conceded the point with a nod of his head.
“Did you get anything useful from her? Or from Longbottom?” Marlene pressed as she took a sip of her drink.
“Not a whole lot,” James admitted. “Longbottom was more forthcoming then my client, but he still couldn’t shed much light on this. And he refused to talk about Malfoy or that case. Though apparently he and Evans argued over it some.”
“Really?” Marlene asked, eyebrow raised.
“Mm,” James answered noncommittally. “But I’m starting to think maybe she didn’t actually kill Lupin.”
“I think Narcissa was toying with the idea of using me as birdfeed after we were through with our conversation,” Sirius said, still whining. “Chop me up and leave me for the owls.”
“I still don’t get this thing with Malfoy, though,” James said, continuing not to comment on Sirius’ complaints. “I mean, Evans said there was nothing personal, just Malfoy hating Muggleborns and…”
“Wait a minute. Is that what she told you?” Sirius interjected with a frown, this time sounding grim.
James looked up at him. “Yeah. Why? What did your cousin say?”
Sirius shook his head. “Hate to break this to you, mate, but Evans is lying. She knew Malfoy quite well, and their arguments, their hatred… it was personal.”
“How so?” James questioned, leaning forward, unsure if he was excited or afraid to hear the answer. Maybe a little of both.
“Evans knew Narcissa in school. They were friends. Or, at least, they were friendly. Then Narcissa falls in love with Malfoy and he doesn’t want her hanging out with Muggleborns and blood traitors, so…”
“She breaks off the friendship with Evans?” James guessed. “Even turns against her?”
“And Evans blamed Malfoy for that,” Sirius finished with an emphatic nod. “So yeah… I’d say her hatred of him was personal.”
“She’s lying to you,” Marlene said softly. “And if she lied to you about that…”
“…who knows what else she’s lied about,” James finished glumly.
Maybe Evans wasn’t so innocent after all.