One-shot Prompt: Marauder Generation. All six main characters must be in it. [James, Sirius, Remus, Peter, Lily, and Severus] Must be at least 1k words but no more than 6k. Setting is on the lawn near the Whomping Willow. Must have the following words: carrots, teddy bears, applesauce, purse, and flashy.
Flashy Carrots
By Matelia-legwll
Setting: It is the Marauders third year. All six main characters from that generation are on the lawn near the Whomping Willow.
Summary: Fun, misunderstandings, and conversations. Teddy bears, applesauce, Bertie Botts, and purses thrown together with the Marauders, Lily and Snape. Prompt challenge. Dialogue-focused.
Rating: K+ or PG
Genre: Friendship/Humor
Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, and James Potter were purposefully walking across the grounds of Hogwarts, chatting and joking with each other, but they were noticeably heading in the direction of the notorious Whomping Willow. Peter was the first to bring up the tree that they were headed toward.
“That’s the tree, eh?” asked Peter uncomfortably.
“It wouldn’t be any other,” said Remus, raising his eyebrows.
“Kinda flashy, don’t you think?” said James, ruffling his hair thoughtfully.
“You think the tree is flashy?” joked Sirius incredulously.
“How is the tree flashing? I don’t see any lights.” Peter sounded confused. In fact, he looked utterly bewildered.
“Flashy, Peter. Not flashing,” corrected James.
Also on the grounds enjoying the moderately pleasant day, Lily Evans and Severus Snape sat across from each other cross-legged, with numerous books surrounding them. Unfortunately for them, they happened to be sitting within earshot of the same tree that the four Gryffindor boys were approaching.
“So did you already do the homework for Flitwick?” asked Lily.
“Yep. All I have to do now is Binns’s essay,” replied Severus.
“Golly. Do we have to sit so close?” complained Peter loudly as James and Sirius proceeded to sit down within five feet of the Willow’s limb span.
“We’re observing. Gathering information,” stated Remus. He sounded thoroughly amused by the plan.
“On two subjects,” interjected James.
“Three actually.” Sirius corrected absentmindedly.
“Just have to be precise about everything, don’t you Sirius?” accused James.
“Just wanted to make sure you don’t forget about the third one.” Sirius smirked.
“Yes, because you’re so involved in that one,” muttered James mutinously.
“Precisely. Because I am.” Sirius widened his eyes, false sincerity pouring from them.
“Stop with the creepy looks, please, Sirius!” cried Peter.
“Oh go hug your teddy bear, Pete,” murmured Sirius.
“I do not have any teddy bears!” protested Peter.
“Yes you do.” James, Sirius, and Remus deadpanned together.
Peter stubbornly looked from one face to another, and finally relented and tried to save face as best as he could. “Fine. But at least I don’t sleep with him, like you sleep with your purse, Sirius.”
“Ooooo. Some accusation Pete’s brought up,” grinned James.
“Completely inaccurate,” said Sirius loftily.
“I do wish they’d be quiet for once,” groaned Lily, rubbing her temples as she stared at the parchment in front of her.
“Not very much we can do about that, Lily,” replied Severus, glaring over at the foursome seated on the grounds. He looked like he wished that his statement was just the opposite.
“I know. It’s just… Why did they have to choose today to come out here and be noisy on the grounds?” asked Lily, not really expecting much of an answer.
“Same reason we’re out here studying, I guess.” Severus tried to focus himself back on his studies, knowing that it might just be a matter of time before the four boys saw them and decided to interrupt.
“I solemnly swear,” said Sirius, “to not lie.”
“So, you completely deny that you sleep with a purse?” Remus pretended to hold a pad of paper and a quill.
“Absolutely,” said Sirius, in the same arrogant tone as his previous denial.
“Do you deny that you own said purse?” inquired James. He too was pretending to be a reporter interviewing Sirius.
Sirius paused, and James mouthed the words ‘Potential Blackmail’ to Remus and Peter.
Sirius caught sight of the interchange, and carefully said, “I do not own it.”
“Do you possess one?” James quickly rephrased his question.
There was another pause. “You know, I really hate my cousins sometimes,” mentioned Sirius offhand.
“Is the purse flashy?” asked Peter, trying his own hand at the “reporting” fun.
“Is your teddy bear flashy?” retorted Sirius.
Noting that Sirius had not denied the answer, James asked, almost exasperated, “Sirius, why the newt are you in possession of a purse?”
“You don’t want to know.” Sirius lowered his voice creepily.
“Watch out!” shouted Peter, curling to avoid a swinging branch of the Whomping Willow.
The only problem was… “That was nowhere near close to us.” James pointed out.
“Yes it was!” defended Peter.
“Do you need your eyesight tested?” asked Remus.
“No,” pouted Peter.
“Now they’re just being stupid,” commented Severus. He had been unable to concentrate on Binns’s essay, and his eyes kept returning to glare at the four Gryffindor boys.
“Well, they are boys after all,” sighed Lily. She turned to look at the boys herself and Severus resolved not to make another comment about them. It was bad enough that Lily had to be housemates with the lot; Severus wasn’t about to persuade her to pay attention to them during the short moments the two of them found to be together.
“Did they really learn nothing from Gudgeon’s experience?” asked Lily. Potter and Black had started to weave closer to the branches of the violent tree while the other two watched.
“Why would they?” muttered Severus, trying once more to concentrate on his essay. “Lily, I don’t remember Binns ever talking about this,” he complained.
“Oh, he didn’t,” agreed Lily, turning back to Severus and the books. “But he thinks he did because that day’s notes got interrupted by Potter and his lot turning the desk into a giant dog.”
“Ah the memories,” sighed Sirius dramatically, flopping himself down next to Remus and Peter again.
“It was just yesterday,” said James, also seating himself once more. “Really, applesauce doesn’t usually evoke this type of reaction from you.”
“But it’s applesauce that was involved in a prank, James,” pointed out Remus.
“True. That does make a difference,” acknowledged James. “But usually he reserves that tone for something he actually liked—”
“I’d like some applesauce right now,” interrupted Peter.
“Wait, you lot think I’m talking about the applesauce prank?” asked Sirius, coming out from his memories.
“If it wasn’t applesauce, what were you talking about?” asked Remus.
“Not that, for sure. That one was sort of lame. Of course, coming from Peter…” Sirius trailed off, suppressing a shudder.
“What? I liked the applesauce prank.” Peter started to giggle, remembering. “Did you see that Ravenclaw’s face?”
“Yes, we did, Pete,” said James wearily. He perked up a moment later. “Sirius, I think it’s time to move onto phase three of the plan.”
“I suppose we could,” agreed Sirius. “No reason to keep away anymore.”
Peter started to look anxious again. “Wait, we’re not going to keep away from the tree any more? I mean, you two were doing great dodging between the branches but I don’t think I could do the same. I don’t want to get smacked by tree branches—don’t you remember Gudgeon? Not one of us knows where the knot is; besides Evans and Snape are watching, so we couldn’t use it even if we knew where it was—plus I’m feeling hungry now. I’m not in the best shape anyway—”
“Peter, stop. Please, stop,” requested Remus, rubbing at a temple like he had a headache.
“Yes, besides, Remus here knows where the knot is,” reminded James.
“We weren’t talking about the ruddy tree,” said Sirius bluntly. “Phase three involves Carrots and Snaps over there.”
“Wait, you mean Snape, right?” said Peter. “Who is Carrots?” he asked more to himself, checking out where Snape was sitting. “Evans? You’re talking about Evans?” This question sounded shocked.
Lily’s head involuntarily turned when she heard her surname. She let out a sigh, murmuring, “It was just a matter of time…”
“What was?” asked Severus absentmindedly.
“Potter and his lot noticing we’re over here,” replied Lily.
Severus looked up, and noted the three pairs of eyes that were focused in their direction from the group by the Whomping Willow. He slowly reached toward his pocket, inching his hand closer to where his wand was.
“Severus, stop.” Lily had noticed the movement, and she touched a hand to his arm to stop him from drawing his wand. “If they try to cause trouble today, they will find out what trouble really is. I figured out how to do that Stinging Hex we saw that fifth year use. They’ll never know what hit them.”
Severus gave a wan smile. He waited until Lily looked down again at her charm work to finish drawing his wand. Severus had a few curses waiting up his sleeve as well. Just in case trouble materialized in the form of the Marauders.
“So, I’m betting that James thinks Carrots is flashy,” suggested Sirius.
“Are,” corrected Remus. “Carrots are flashy.”
“But there isn’t more than one Carrots,” protested Sirius.
“Then stop putting the S at the end,” proposed Remus.
“It doesn’t sound right without the S.”
“It doesn’t sound right with it.”
“How can carrots be flashy James?” asked Peter, tiring of watching the argument confused.
“Er, ah, well…” James trailed off, ruffling his hair.
“Ha! You owe me two Sickles, Remus,” Sirius informed the werewolf.
“How does that work?” asked Remus. “No one took you up on the bet.”
“But you were the one that spoke first, therefore, you took me up on the bet,” defended Sirius.
“James, you still haven’t told me,” whined Peter.
“Carrots are flashy, Pete. I can’t explain it. They just grab my attention and hold it,” said James.
“But there’s no light in the skin of the carrots,” protested Peter. “How can something be flashy when it doesn’t give off light?”
“It does, Peter. It’s not the kind of light that you can see, but it does give off light. And I bet Carrots could even shine in total darkness,” said James.
“No they can’t. Can they, Remus?” asked Peter disbelievingly.
“A special type of Carrot, I presume, might do exactly as James suggested,” offered Remus. “Don’t you agree, Sirius?”
Sirius grinned. “James will have to find that one out all by himself on that variety of Carrots. Although I can’t understand why something that flashy would be able to sneak up on you all the time.”
“What do you mean?” asked James, narrowing his eyes in confusion.
Sirius gestured over the lawn that was in between where the four boys were sitting and where Snape and Evans had been seated. Except that Snape and Evans had somehow disappeared. James started to look around ignoring the joke that Sirius made about him wanting Carrots and Peter’s laughter. The sky was grayer than he remembered. He had just started to feel slightly worried, when he heard Lily’s voice from a much closer place than he expected.
“Potter! Black! Don’t you lot want to come in before it rains?” called Lily over the wind that had slowly been picking up speed.
James jumped. “Sure! Can you wait for us? We’ll only be a second,” he called back, apparently ignoring Severus Snape who was waiting for Lily a few paces away from her.
“You wish, Potter!” Lily shook her head, then headed back to the castle with Snape.
“I could have told you that would be her answer, mate,” said Sirius.
“Not exactly, word for word,” protested James.
“But come on, Snivellus was right there. There was no way she was going to let us walk back with him there,” reasoned Sirius.
“You’re right. I hate Snivellus!” huffed James, glaring at the back of the Slytherin walking into the castle with the redhead.
“Aah! The tree’s trying to attack me! Again!” cried Peter, cowering behind Remus.
A few minutes earlier, Lily had sat looking up at the darkening sky. “We should probably go in now, Sev.”
“Hm?” Severus replied finishing off a sentence.
“It won’t be much longer before it starts to rain,” said Lily.
“Ah. We should probably go in then,” Severus suggested.
Lily started to giggle. “That’s what I just said.”
“Sorry,” said Severus, smiling at his repetition. The two friends started to pick up their things. Lily finished first and glanced over at the Gryffindor boys.
“It doesn’t look like the boys have noticed, though,” she murmured, half to herself.
Severus glanced at the four as he and Lily stood, and worked hard to keep his resentment from his voice. “A good rain won’t hurt those four.”
“But I should probably warn them at least,” said Lily as the two began to walk to the castle. “I know I’d hate it.”
“What?” asked Severus curiously. He had only caught the last part of what she had said over the wind. What would Lily hate?
Lily’s gaze focused on Severus. “Wait for me, will you?”
Severus nodded, still curious and a little confused. “Of course. What are you going to do?”
Lily never answered him. She walked a few paces away and called to that Potter. And Potter had the gumption to try and get her to wait for him. As if Severus didn’t exist. As if he wasn’t right there waiting to walk with Lily to the castle. Severus felt the resentment boil inside of him. It was all that he could do to stop himself from interfering and blasting that arrogant toe-rag into a million pieces.
Lily came back to him though, and the two friends started walking back to the castle.
“Why did you do that?” asked Severus after a tense silence.
“Do what?” asked Lily innocently.
“Talk to Potter,” said Severus darkly.
“Oh. I don’t know. I guess I just thought it would be a nice thing to do,” replied Lily.
“Nice thing to do?” repeated Severus incredulously. “Since when do you do nice things for Potter?”
“Since now, I suppose,” said Lily defensively, narrowing her eyes. “What does it matter?”
“He’ll take advantage of any weaknesses you show,” prophesied Severus. “He’ll pursue you even more now.”
“You think it’s a weakness to show kindness and thoughtfulness?” asked Lily incredulously.
“You don’t know how his mind works!”
“And you do?” scoffed Lily. “Yes, because being enemies with a person gives you insight into their innermost thoughts.”
“He’ll think that because you thought of talking to him you care about his wellbeing,” argued Severus. “He’ll think that you care for him in a romantic way.”
Lily paused. “Be that as it may, you already know what I think about him. So, again, why does it matter?”
“I guess it doesn’t.” And with that, Severus relaxed a little and dropped the subject.
Three of the Gryffindor boys were currently expending a lot of effort trying to distract the fourth from his glaring at the doors of Hogwarts.
“C’mon James. You know you want to try one,” tempted Sirius, waving a bag of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans around.
“Last time I got a ghost flavoured one,” announced Peter.
“That isn’t possible, Peter,” said Remus.
“Yes it is. I swear I did!”
“What would ghosts taste like anyway? And how would you know what they taste like?” asked Sirius skeptically.
“They taste like freezing cold water. Have you ever had your mouth open when one of them glides through you?” Peter shuddered at the memory. “Awful. Worse than a cold shower. More like swallowing the cold shower.”
“But still—ghost flavoured?” protested Remus. “Are you sure it wasn’t just freezing-cold-water flavoured?”
“Of course I’m sure! I know the difference!”
“No you don’t, Peter,” dismissed Sirius.
Finally the oddness of the topic the other three boys were discussing sunk in to James Potter’s mind. “Ghost flavoured Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans?” he repeated, finally glancing away.
“When they say every flavour, they mean every flavour,” declared Peter happily.
“Here Prongs, have some,” offered Sirius.
“Don’t mind if I do,” said James pulling out a handful. “Hang on, you’re sharing. Where’d you get these?”
“Nicked them,” grinned Sirius.
“I wonder if I could get applesauce, or maybe that ghost flavour again,” Peter thought aloud, and three groans answered him.
“Who did you nick them from?” James asked Sirius, continuing as if Peter hadn’t interrupted.
“Remus,” supplied Sirius promptly.
“What?!” burst Remus, rounding on Sirius.
Sirius laughed, holding up his hands in an innocent gesture. “Just kidding, Remus. Don’t take everything so seriously.”
Remus sighed. “You just did another pun on your name, didn’t you?”
“It was a good one, wasn’t it?”
“If you say so.”
“You sound as if you disagree though.”
James suddenly clapped a hand to his mouth, burst out laughing, and threw himself on the ground, pounding it with a fist while he bellowed with laughter. Feeling that this outburst was a bit much for the mild and very normal verbal sparring he was listening to, Remus, Sirius, and Peter watched him until he had calmed down enough to explain. It took him a few minutes and by then, they were all smiling, though they still didn’t know the reason for his infectious laughter.
“The beans… I got CARROTS!” James managed to say before falling into laughter again upon hearing it aloud. The other boys started to laugh along with him. Soon they were all laughing uproariously for several minutes.
“Flashy Carrots, actually,” James added when the laughter had died down a little.
“What was the difference?” asked Remus.
“Well, it’s kind of hard to describe,” said James, although he decided to elaborate anyway. “I think I got the ghost flavoured one Pete was going on about, along with the carrots, plus a raspberry, lime, parchment, and something that I can only describe as distinctly from the Muggle world—I don’t know what it was. But it sure tasted flashy. Flashy carrots.”
“Only you, James,” muttered Sirius, still chuckling.
The four were still enjoying their laughter when James noticed a bit of wet had gotten on his palm somehow. He held his hand up, testing the air for a moment before he remembered something.
“Hang on, didn’t Evans say something about…” James trailed off as he looked at the sky. Sirius, Peter, and Remus all looked up too. This gave them the interesting sight of watching the heavens break open and the water fall from the clouds hundreds of feet above them.
“RAIN!” shouted all four boys as they tried to make a mad dash for the castle.
“Well, now I know not to wait for you, Potter, unless I want to get all wet,” remarked Lily as the four boys in her year tried to dry themselves in front of the Gryffindor Common Room fire.
Sirius laughed and nudged James. But James decided to ignore that and instead ask the question that had been formulating in his mind since Lily had approached them earlier.
“So Evans, why did you warn us about the rain? Is it because you like me more now?” he asked earnestly.
Lily made a frustrated noise. “Can’t anybody display common decency and it not be taken the wrong way?”
“I guess not,” responded Sirius flippantly.
“Hmph.” Lily had decided not to dignify that with a response as she turned and went up to the girls’ dormitories in a huff.
“Remind me who gave you that purse, Sirius,” said James in a dangerous tone.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, James,” grinned Sirius.
“Yes you do,” inserted Peter. “Remember? We were talking about it earlier.”
“Shhh, Peter, it’s best to just let them get this out of their systems. Then maybe they won’t see a need to prank anyone,” advised Remus.
“Pranking!” exclaimed Sirius. “What a wonderful idea! Who should be our victim?”
“Snivellus, of course,” proposed James. “I’ve got just the spell.”
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Friday, December 11, 2009
Hiding From the Marauders
Hiding from the Marauders
By Matelia-legwll
Summary: What happens when Lily accidentally runs across a certain room on the seventh floor by herself? R&R.
Genre: General/Romance JP/LE
Rating: K
Setting: This takes place in late fifth year. It could possibly be related to the OWL Pensieve Scene, but it might be the next day or something like that. Lily has just been out on the grounds of Hogwarts, and doesn’t want to think about certain people.
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I stormed back into the castle and almost all the way to Gryffindor Tower, before I stopped abruptly in a seventh floor corridor. Going back to the dormitories wasn’t going to solve anything. Not where I had books for other tests to study for that would nag at my conscience. Studying for Transfiguration wasn’t going to get James Potter and all of his antics out of my mind. Even worse, my thoughts would be more focused on him. Darn him and his skill at Transfiguration. Maybe Potions... no, definitely not Potions, that would bring Severus to mind.
I started pacing up and down the corridor. What I needed was somewhere I could get my mind off of school, escape. The idea of music popped into my head, just before the stretch of wall I was pacing next to changed into a door. I stopped, startled. I wondered if the wall was pretending to be a door. I hadn’t fallen for that antic since first year. I tiptoed to the door, looked around at the deserted corridor and turned the handle to see if it was locked. It turned easily; I took one last look at my surroundings before disappearing inside.
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Six hours later the portrait hole to the Gryffindor Common Room opened and I slipped inside.
“Where were you, Evans?” called a voice I knew too well the instant I set foot in the common room. I sighed. Who else, but James Potter, the boy I had exploded at earlier. He sounded more anxious than anything else, so I decided to face him and explain myself as calmly as possible.
“I was cooling down my temper,” I said shortly. I surprised myself with my own coolness. Apparently I was still quite mad at Potter.
“How?” burst out Potter. “And where?”
I tilted my head and thought for a moment. “I’m not exactly sure where I was; I’ve never been there before.” I admit I was being extremely vague, on purpose. I felt that he should be as vexed as he made me be.
A wave of satisfaction washed over me as I saw that Potter looked as exasperated as I had felt.
“I looked everywhere for you, Evans. Everywhere. I even —” Potter cut himself off, biting his lip nervously.
“Even what?” I asked, curious now.
“Even, er, went to Hogsmeade to look for you,” admitted Potter in a half-whisper.
To my intense curiosity, one of Potter’s mates, Peter Pettigrew, opened his mouth to say something, but Sirius Black, Potter’s best mate, trod on his foot. Now, I wondered as Pettigrew winced, what brought that on?
Realizing suddenly that Potter was looking apprehensively at me for a response, I hesitantly asked, “Why did you look for me in Hogsmeade?”
Potter let out a muffled sigh, of relief, I suppose. Then he shrugged and started rambling, “Well, you weren’t in the castle anywhere. I thought that maybe you had found one of the secret passageways to Hogsmeade. But you weren’t there either. You disappeared so completely that I started to worry that you had been attacked and died.” By this time, Potter had grown so agitated that he began to pace in front of me. I watched in dazed horror as he babbled on. “I thought that perhaps you had gone into the Forbidden Forest, so I g — ran around for ages looking for you in there. I asked Hagrid to look for you. I even asked Filch to look for you, but he just stared at me. I think he thought —”
I had raised my hand to stop the overflow of information, and he caught sight of that gesture and cut himself off mid-rant, to look at me expectantly for my explanation.
“Hang on. Back up Potter,” I said. “Of course I was in the castle.”
“But you weren’t,” insisted Potter. He is rather stubborn. “I looked everywhere for you.”
I held back a smile as a thought occurred to me. “Even the girls bathrooms?” I asked skeptically.
I expected him to start in surprise, or look guilty or ashamed that this had slipped his mind; I never expected him to nod firmly and say, “Of course I did.” I must have shown my shock and surprise, and perhaps the odd looks his friends gave him contributed, for he added, “Well, Myrtle helped me with the girls bathrooms.”
“Moaning Myrtle?” I asked weakly.
“Of course. She, kind of, fancies, er, Padfoot. It comes in handy sometimes,” replied Potter.
“Get to your point, Prongs,” encouraged Black. “Not everyone needs to know about who Myrtle fancies.”
Personally, I was shocked that Sirius Black and Potter’s other friends had all stayed quiet until this point.
Potter had a resolute gleam in his eye. “All right, Evans. You managed to avoid a determined Marauder for over six hours. Where were you?” demanded Potter.
I sighed again. The topic looked unavoidable this time. “If it is any of your business, I was on the seventh floor, in the room across the corridor from the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy.”
James Potter couldn’t have looked more confused if he had tried. “Who the what?”
Indulging myself with rolling my eyes, I slowly replied, “The tapestry of the bloke who was trying to teach trolls ballet and failing miserably at it.”
“Oh, him. Yeah. That tapestry.” Potter paused for a moment, then added, “But, there’s no room across the corridor.”
“Well, there wasn’t one,” I admitted, glorying in his confusion. “But then there was, and as you pointed out earlier, I spent nearly six hours in there.”
“Wait, Lily?” This came from Remus Lupin, another of Potter’s mates, however, he was also my fellow prefect, and the only one in their group that I have allowed to call me by my first name. “Was the room filled with, well, exactly what you needed?”
I pondered that question for a moment, then softly said, “Yeah. It was perfect. More than perfect.”
“What was in —” began Potter, but he was cut off by Remus.
“Wow. Lily, you found the Come-And-Go Room? I thought it was just a myth, a legend,” said Remus.
“What’s this, Moony?” asked Black.
“You must have been too busy eating when the house elves were talking about it,” acknowledged Remus with a questioning glance at Sirius. Black shrugged and Remus quoted, “‘The Come-And-Go Room, also known as the Room of Requirement, only appears when someone is in dire need of it. It will fill itself with exactly what the person needs or wishes for.’ They said it was Rowena Ravenclaw’s special room in the castle.”
“Moony, why didn’t you tell us about that room when we were writing the, er,” Potter threw a glance over at me before going on, “the History of Magic essay?”
After Black, Pettigrew and Remus all looked at me calculatingly, Remus said, “One, I thought it was just a legend, like Slytherin’s Chamber of Secrets. Two, I had no idea where it was. And three, the magic of the room would make it unplotable if you needed it to be.”
Unplotable? I stared at Remus, trying to understand. Why would that matter? Even though the conversation was getting more confusing, I stayed silent in the hopes that they would say something to satisfy my curiosity.
“Three good reasons,” piped up Pettigrew.
“Oh, be quiet, Wormtail,” snapped Black.
Of all their nicknames for each other, Peter Pettigrew’s nickname was the strangest. I had attempted to either figure out their nicknames or get them to blurt something out this entire year. Admittedly, I had failed. However, trying to get Potter or his friends to do anything they did not want to do was an impossible task. Hence, why I had been unable, so far, to get Potter to stop asking me out. At the most inopportune times, too.
I came out of my reverie to listen once more. “Surely we must have stumbled upon it once or twice. How come we never noticed it?” Black was asking.
“Because we would have only needed a broom cupboard,” said Remus dismissively.
“You mean, that broom cupboard we thought we remembered wrong fourth year when it disappeared on us when we went back to look for it the next day, was really this Room of Requirement?” asked Potter, completely confusing me with the run-on sentence.
Remus started, then said, “Wow, Prongs. I think you might be right. Why didn’t I see that?”
“Because you’re Moony and Prongs is Prongs, that’s why,” said Black, grinning.
“Thanks for stating the obvious, Padfoot,” said Pettigrew.
“You’re welcome, Wormtail,” replied Black glibly, then moved quickly away from Pettigrew to avoid Pettigrew’s almost automatic response to hit Black upside the head.
Potter shook his head in amusement, then said, “You do remember Wormtail is being sarcastic when he says stuff like that, right Padfoot?”
“Of course, Prongs,” replied Black with a cheeky grin.
“Argh!” I burst out in frustration. “Enough with the nicknames unless you give me a reason why Potter is Prongs, why Black is Padfoot, why Pettigrew is Wormtail, and why Remus is Moony!”
The four boys stared at me in various states of surprise and disbelief. I wondered for a moment if they had forgotten that I was still there. I felt resentful at this thought. I couldn’t very well have left, even if my curiosity had allowed it. During the conversation, all four boys had maneuvered themselves, perhaps unconsciously, into positions around me that blocked my escape routes to the girls dormitory, the fireplace, and back through the portrait hole. Black’s position even blocked the boys dormitory.
“Well,” began Pettigrew from behind me. He frowned, “I’ve got nothing.”
“Black?” I asked turning to my right to face him.
“Er, nothing,” said Black, looking caught off guard.
“Potter?” I said, turning back to him.
“Er,” Potter had this look of stunned panic, like an animal caught frozen in a car’s headlights. He shot a questioning glance at Remus, bit his lip, and seemed to regain his confidence, for he said, “Can’t tell you.”
I sighed. I didn’t really want Severus’s theories to be confirmed, but still the name ripped from my throat. “Remus?” My question hung in the air. I felt the tension in the room rise dramatically as the boy to my left froze.
In the pause, I heard Pettigrew mutter, “Come on, Moony. You can do it.”
Remus looked like he was debating with himself. He shook his head slightly then looked directly at me. “The nicknames just . . . fit our personalities,” he said clearly, and the tension dropped again as Potter, Black, and Pettigrew roared with laughter at this statement. I could have sworn that they thought this was the funniest thing any of them had ever heard.
“What?” asked Remus, dragging out the word and pretending to pout a little.
“You’ve got to be joking, Moony. That’s the reason you tell her?” asked James, still laughing.
“What’s wrong with that reason?” I asked curiously.
“Nothing, Lily,” said Remus hastily. He paused, then protested to Potter, “Prongs, I couldn’t very well tell her the long reason. Not yet, anyway.”
“True,” acknowledged Potter, sobering up quickly. His frown changed quickly into a smirk, however, when he heard my next question.
“Why not yet?” I said.
“Evans, will you go out with me?” The git had the nerve to smile charmingly at me while he asked.
I, however, glared back at Potter and said, “I’ve barely had the patience to answer that question once today. Do you really think my answer has changed?”
“Hope springs eternal,” was Potter’s response, complete with cute-puppy-dog eyes. I rolled my own eyes.
“No, Potter.” I said firmly.
“And there’s the rub,” mumbled Potter as he ruffled his hair, still with a smirk pasted on his face.
I paused, knowing that he was trying to get a rise out of me, but unable to help my curiosity. “What is that supposed to mean?” I finally asked.
“Nothing, nothing,” said Potter, waving a hand lightly. The hand wave must have been some sort of signal, for Black and Pettigrew immediately walked around me and, with a pat on Remus’s shoulder, over to the ‘Marauder’ armchairs in front of the fire. After a meaningful look between Potter and Remus, Remus followed Black and Pettigrew.
Increasingly aware of the lateness of the hour, the fact that I was alone with Potter and the Marauders in the Common Room, and the fact that all my friends seemed to have gone to bed already, I shifted nervously from one foot to the other, my mind filled with images of making a dash past Potter for the girls dormitories and being hexed or jinxed by Potter. This was most definitely irrational, but I was tired.
Potter, however, was just standing in front of me, one hand back in his hair, regarding me silently. I definitely did not want to admit how nervous that silent gaze was making me feel, so I just said, “Are you going to sit with your friends, or are you going to interrogate me some more?”
James started. I almost smiled at catching him off guard once again, but my months of training myself to keep my expressions bland in Potter’s presence thankfully kept me from doing that.
“Well?” I asked, rather impatiently.
“I just have one more question, Evans.” He paused, and I felt certain he was just dragging the question out for dramatic effect. “What did you find in the Room of Requirement?”
“What?” I burst out, shocked that he had gone back to that. I had, if I can admit it to myself, been expecting him to ask me out yet another time.
“I’m curious,” he said, shrugging.
“All right. Whatever.” I paused, remembering. “I found a room filled with instruments.”
“What, like the instruments in Dumbledore’s office?” Potter asked with a surprised look on his face.
This time I had to stifle a laugh. “No, silly. Musical instruments.”
I let myself drift away from the common room as I remembered the wonder I felt upon opening the door and finding the very things I had been missing. My fingers ached to touch the piano in the center of the large room. There were also stacks of music—every song I had liked to play and more if I desired a challenge.
There were more instruments in there than I could name. My fingers strummed a harp, glided along the curves of a French horn, and held the violin up to my chest. Nothing satisfied me until I sat in front of the grand piano and let my emotions and stress flow out through my fingers into the music.
One scale. . . two. . . I was soon singing along as I played my heart out. I have to admit, it is a marvelous release.
I had hated to acknowledge that I was falling asleep at the piano after six hours. I loved that room, and I told the room to be open for me the next time I needed it.
I was brought sharply back to the present, when I heard Potter murmur something. My cheeks coloured as I realized I had been reliving the experience with delight and the expression surely displayed on my face.
“What did you say?” I demanded, instantly distrustful of him.
Potter blinked. “When?”
“Oh, come on. Just now,” I said, now half wondering if I really wanted to know what he had murmured.
Potter frowned. “Did I say that out loud? Oh, well,” he shrugged. “I can’t tell you.”
“Why not? You just said it,” I protested, now fully wondering what I was getting myself into.
Potter laughed. Drat him and his contagious laugh. It made me smile like an idiot. “And I’ll say it yet again. ‘I can’t tell you.’”
This time I caught the quotes around the words. My face reddened with embarrassment. “Oh,” I muttered. I was now searching desperately for something to say, something to take his attention away from my ever reddening face that was now clashing with my hair. “You can’t tell me what, exactly?” I wanted to slap myself on the forehead, but that would draw attention to my embarrassed skin, and make me look like I wanted to make a good impression on Potter.
Potter opened his mouth to speak, then smirked. “You’re not going to get me that easily.”
I immediately shook my head. “That’s not what I meant to do, Potter. I was wondering what question I had asked that you happened to finally register and blurt out your answer.”
Potter rolled his eyes. “Evans, Evans, Evans,” he said disparagingly. He placed a hand on my shoulder that I had to glare pointedly at before he finally removed it with an “All right,” conceding to my unspoken request. Well, more like my order, however nice it felt to have it there. “But I am not that thick,” he replied to my question. “I was merely reminding myself of the promise I made to Moony — well, that we all made to Moony — when we first took on our nicknames.”
“Remus started the nicknames?” I asked, a little startled.
Potter tilted his head. “Not exactly. He gave us a reason to nickname each other (he never had real good friends before Hogwarts, you know), but the only one Remus came up with was Prongs, for me. I came up with Padfoot for Sirius, Peter came up with Moony for Remus, and Sirius came up with Wormtail for Peter.”
“I should’ve known,” I muttered.
“Known what?” asked Potter, suddenly anxious and interested.
“Only Black would have the gumption to name a fellow human being something like Wormtail,” I proclaimed.
Potter just smirked. And, to my utmost annoyance, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Black and Pettigrew high-five.
“Oh, grow up,” I muttered irritably.
Potter’s smile faded and determination filled his face. “I will tell you, one day. It might just change your opinion toward us.”
“James,” said Remus in a warning tone. I looked over at the three boys. Remus was looking worriedly at Potter. Pettigrew was watching Potter also, but Black was gazing straight at me, and I had the oddest impression that he was evaluating my reaction.
“I know, I know,” said Potter impatiently. “Nothing until she lets me.”
“Let you? How in the world am I in control of what you say, or do, for that matter?” I burst out, rounding on him. “I asked you the question, I’m allowing you the option of giving your answer, but I am not stopping you from saying anything!” My arguments with Severus have made me even more passionate about this subject than I would be normally.
Potter, however, gave a short, sad laugh. “Oh, yes, you asked. But you were already preparing yourself not to believe any extended explanation. You are stopping me from saying anything worthwhile because of your attitude towards me and my friends. If only you could trust us. Trust me. Then I could talk freely indeed.”
“Trust?” I asked skeptically. “You want me to trust known pranksters, liars, and jokers?”
“Sometimes reputations aren’t always true, Evans,” sighed Potter.
I shrugged. “I’ll give you that, Potter. But what about personal observation?” I countered.
“Touché.” Potter paused, then proposed, “Let me prove to you otherwise — that we are worthy of your trust.”
I considered it a moment. “Sure,” I agreed. “But how?”
Potter looked stumped for only a second. “I will take responsibility for everything that I do. I will not avoid the punishments, but take the punishment in full with no complaint. Pranking and joking is what we do, but I can promise a cut down in the number of pranks we will play, and the pranks will only be humorous.”
By the end of this speech, Potter looked quite pleased with himself, but Pettigrew and Black stared at him in horror, and Remus regarded Potter with slight admiration.
“What?” burst out Black.
Potter set his jaw and turned determinedly toward his best friend. “Padfoot, it’s Evans,” he said as if this statement explained everything.
A long pause later, while I was looking between Black and Potter anxiously, Black suddenly smiled. “You’re on.”
Potter turned back to me, grinning. “The only exception to this will be Snape. We won’t go out of our way to fight with him, but I can’t promise we won’t retaliate if he starts it,” he warned.
I stifled a yawn, and said, “As loyal as I am to my friends, even I have to admit Sev starts some of the fights with you four.”
Potter’s and Black’s jaws dropped. “‘Sev’?” repeated James. “And he’s still ‘Potter’?” added Black, indicating his friend.
I rolled my eyes as I started to walk towards the stair. Potter immediately jumped into my path and wouldn’t move out of the way.
“What?” I finally asked, frustrated with his determination.
“Call me James,” said Potter, acting like he was daring me to do something absolutely dreadful.
“What?” I stopped and stared at him in shock.
“Call me James,” he repeated.
“Would you please move out of the way?” I asked as I stepped to the left and he mirrored me.
“Call me James,” he demanded, a smirk finding its way to his face.
Swallowing, I said, “Fine, James,” and went passed him to the stair. Halfway up to the dormitories, I turned and smiled at the four dumbstruck boys. I should hide from them more often.
“What are you looking at, James?” I called, smirking.
James jerked his head up to look at me. “Something that is absolutely beautiful,” he cheesily proclaimed.
I shook my head. “Glad to see you think so highly of your Common Room walls,” I retorted as I climbed the stair again.
“That’s not what I meant, Lily,” muttered James.
“I know,” I murmured, before disappearing into my room and leaning against my closed door.
I slowly recalled everything that had happened this day, and a smile formed that wouldn’t leave my face. I should definitely hide from the Marauders more often.
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By Matelia-legwll
Summary: What happens when Lily accidentally runs across a certain room on the seventh floor by herself? R&R.
Genre: General/Romance JP/LE
Rating: K
Setting: This takes place in late fifth year. It could possibly be related to the OWL Pensieve Scene, but it might be the next day or something like that. Lily has just been out on the grounds of Hogwarts, and doesn’t want to think about certain people.
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I stormed back into the castle and almost all the way to Gryffindor Tower, before I stopped abruptly in a seventh floor corridor. Going back to the dormitories wasn’t going to solve anything. Not where I had books for other tests to study for that would nag at my conscience. Studying for Transfiguration wasn’t going to get James Potter and all of his antics out of my mind. Even worse, my thoughts would be more focused on him. Darn him and his skill at Transfiguration. Maybe Potions... no, definitely not Potions, that would bring Severus to mind.
I started pacing up and down the corridor. What I needed was somewhere I could get my mind off of school, escape. The idea of music popped into my head, just before the stretch of wall I was pacing next to changed into a door. I stopped, startled. I wondered if the wall was pretending to be a door. I hadn’t fallen for that antic since first year. I tiptoed to the door, looked around at the deserted corridor and turned the handle to see if it was locked. It turned easily; I took one last look at my surroundings before disappearing inside.
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Six hours later the portrait hole to the Gryffindor Common Room opened and I slipped inside.
“Where were you, Evans?” called a voice I knew too well the instant I set foot in the common room. I sighed. Who else, but James Potter, the boy I had exploded at earlier. He sounded more anxious than anything else, so I decided to face him and explain myself as calmly as possible.
“I was cooling down my temper,” I said shortly. I surprised myself with my own coolness. Apparently I was still quite mad at Potter.
“How?” burst out Potter. “And where?”
I tilted my head and thought for a moment. “I’m not exactly sure where I was; I’ve never been there before.” I admit I was being extremely vague, on purpose. I felt that he should be as vexed as he made me be.
A wave of satisfaction washed over me as I saw that Potter looked as exasperated as I had felt.
“I looked everywhere for you, Evans. Everywhere. I even —” Potter cut himself off, biting his lip nervously.
“Even what?” I asked, curious now.
“Even, er, went to Hogsmeade to look for you,” admitted Potter in a half-whisper.
To my intense curiosity, one of Potter’s mates, Peter Pettigrew, opened his mouth to say something, but Sirius Black, Potter’s best mate, trod on his foot. Now, I wondered as Pettigrew winced, what brought that on?
Realizing suddenly that Potter was looking apprehensively at me for a response, I hesitantly asked, “Why did you look for me in Hogsmeade?”
Potter let out a muffled sigh, of relief, I suppose. Then he shrugged and started rambling, “Well, you weren’t in the castle anywhere. I thought that maybe you had found one of the secret passageways to Hogsmeade. But you weren’t there either. You disappeared so completely that I started to worry that you had been attacked and died.” By this time, Potter had grown so agitated that he began to pace in front of me. I watched in dazed horror as he babbled on. “I thought that perhaps you had gone into the Forbidden Forest, so I g — ran around for ages looking for you in there. I asked Hagrid to look for you. I even asked Filch to look for you, but he just stared at me. I think he thought —”
I had raised my hand to stop the overflow of information, and he caught sight of that gesture and cut himself off mid-rant, to look at me expectantly for my explanation.
“Hang on. Back up Potter,” I said. “Of course I was in the castle.”
“But you weren’t,” insisted Potter. He is rather stubborn. “I looked everywhere for you.”
I held back a smile as a thought occurred to me. “Even the girls bathrooms?” I asked skeptically.
I expected him to start in surprise, or look guilty or ashamed that this had slipped his mind; I never expected him to nod firmly and say, “Of course I did.” I must have shown my shock and surprise, and perhaps the odd looks his friends gave him contributed, for he added, “Well, Myrtle helped me with the girls bathrooms.”
“Moaning Myrtle?” I asked weakly.
“Of course. She, kind of, fancies, er, Padfoot. It comes in handy sometimes,” replied Potter.
“Get to your point, Prongs,” encouraged Black. “Not everyone needs to know about who Myrtle fancies.”
Personally, I was shocked that Sirius Black and Potter’s other friends had all stayed quiet until this point.
Potter had a resolute gleam in his eye. “All right, Evans. You managed to avoid a determined Marauder for over six hours. Where were you?” demanded Potter.
I sighed again. The topic looked unavoidable this time. “If it is any of your business, I was on the seventh floor, in the room across the corridor from the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy.”
James Potter couldn’t have looked more confused if he had tried. “Who the what?”
Indulging myself with rolling my eyes, I slowly replied, “The tapestry of the bloke who was trying to teach trolls ballet and failing miserably at it.”
“Oh, him. Yeah. That tapestry.” Potter paused for a moment, then added, “But, there’s no room across the corridor.”
“Well, there wasn’t one,” I admitted, glorying in his confusion. “But then there was, and as you pointed out earlier, I spent nearly six hours in there.”
“Wait, Lily?” This came from Remus Lupin, another of Potter’s mates, however, he was also my fellow prefect, and the only one in their group that I have allowed to call me by my first name. “Was the room filled with, well, exactly what you needed?”
I pondered that question for a moment, then softly said, “Yeah. It was perfect. More than perfect.”
“What was in —” began Potter, but he was cut off by Remus.
“Wow. Lily, you found the Come-And-Go Room? I thought it was just a myth, a legend,” said Remus.
“What’s this, Moony?” asked Black.
“You must have been too busy eating when the house elves were talking about it,” acknowledged Remus with a questioning glance at Sirius. Black shrugged and Remus quoted, “‘The Come-And-Go Room, also known as the Room of Requirement, only appears when someone is in dire need of it. It will fill itself with exactly what the person needs or wishes for.’ They said it was Rowena Ravenclaw’s special room in the castle.”
“Moony, why didn’t you tell us about that room when we were writing the, er,” Potter threw a glance over at me before going on, “the History of Magic essay?”
After Black, Pettigrew and Remus all looked at me calculatingly, Remus said, “One, I thought it was just a legend, like Slytherin’s Chamber of Secrets. Two, I had no idea where it was. And three, the magic of the room would make it unplotable if you needed it to be.”
Unplotable? I stared at Remus, trying to understand. Why would that matter? Even though the conversation was getting more confusing, I stayed silent in the hopes that they would say something to satisfy my curiosity.
“Three good reasons,” piped up Pettigrew.
“Oh, be quiet, Wormtail,” snapped Black.
Of all their nicknames for each other, Peter Pettigrew’s nickname was the strangest. I had attempted to either figure out their nicknames or get them to blurt something out this entire year. Admittedly, I had failed. However, trying to get Potter or his friends to do anything they did not want to do was an impossible task. Hence, why I had been unable, so far, to get Potter to stop asking me out. At the most inopportune times, too.
I came out of my reverie to listen once more. “Surely we must have stumbled upon it once or twice. How come we never noticed it?” Black was asking.
“Because we would have only needed a broom cupboard,” said Remus dismissively.
“You mean, that broom cupboard we thought we remembered wrong fourth year when it disappeared on us when we went back to look for it the next day, was really this Room of Requirement?” asked Potter, completely confusing me with the run-on sentence.
Remus started, then said, “Wow, Prongs. I think you might be right. Why didn’t I see that?”
“Because you’re Moony and Prongs is Prongs, that’s why,” said Black, grinning.
“Thanks for stating the obvious, Padfoot,” said Pettigrew.
“You’re welcome, Wormtail,” replied Black glibly, then moved quickly away from Pettigrew to avoid Pettigrew’s almost automatic response to hit Black upside the head.
Potter shook his head in amusement, then said, “You do remember Wormtail is being sarcastic when he says stuff like that, right Padfoot?”
“Of course, Prongs,” replied Black with a cheeky grin.
“Argh!” I burst out in frustration. “Enough with the nicknames unless you give me a reason why Potter is Prongs, why Black is Padfoot, why Pettigrew is Wormtail, and why Remus is Moony!”
The four boys stared at me in various states of surprise and disbelief. I wondered for a moment if they had forgotten that I was still there. I felt resentful at this thought. I couldn’t very well have left, even if my curiosity had allowed it. During the conversation, all four boys had maneuvered themselves, perhaps unconsciously, into positions around me that blocked my escape routes to the girls dormitory, the fireplace, and back through the portrait hole. Black’s position even blocked the boys dormitory.
“Well,” began Pettigrew from behind me. He frowned, “I’ve got nothing.”
“Black?” I asked turning to my right to face him.
“Er, nothing,” said Black, looking caught off guard.
“Potter?” I said, turning back to him.
“Er,” Potter had this look of stunned panic, like an animal caught frozen in a car’s headlights. He shot a questioning glance at Remus, bit his lip, and seemed to regain his confidence, for he said, “Can’t tell you.”
I sighed. I didn’t really want Severus’s theories to be confirmed, but still the name ripped from my throat. “Remus?” My question hung in the air. I felt the tension in the room rise dramatically as the boy to my left froze.
In the pause, I heard Pettigrew mutter, “Come on, Moony. You can do it.”
Remus looked like he was debating with himself. He shook his head slightly then looked directly at me. “The nicknames just . . . fit our personalities,” he said clearly, and the tension dropped again as Potter, Black, and Pettigrew roared with laughter at this statement. I could have sworn that they thought this was the funniest thing any of them had ever heard.
“What?” asked Remus, dragging out the word and pretending to pout a little.
“You’ve got to be joking, Moony. That’s the reason you tell her?” asked James, still laughing.
“What’s wrong with that reason?” I asked curiously.
“Nothing, Lily,” said Remus hastily. He paused, then protested to Potter, “Prongs, I couldn’t very well tell her the long reason. Not yet, anyway.”
“True,” acknowledged Potter, sobering up quickly. His frown changed quickly into a smirk, however, when he heard my next question.
“Why not yet?” I said.
“Evans, will you go out with me?” The git had the nerve to smile charmingly at me while he asked.
I, however, glared back at Potter and said, “I’ve barely had the patience to answer that question once today. Do you really think my answer has changed?”
“Hope springs eternal,” was Potter’s response, complete with cute-puppy-dog eyes. I rolled my own eyes.
“No, Potter.” I said firmly.
“And there’s the rub,” mumbled Potter as he ruffled his hair, still with a smirk pasted on his face.
I paused, knowing that he was trying to get a rise out of me, but unable to help my curiosity. “What is that supposed to mean?” I finally asked.
“Nothing, nothing,” said Potter, waving a hand lightly. The hand wave must have been some sort of signal, for Black and Pettigrew immediately walked around me and, with a pat on Remus’s shoulder, over to the ‘Marauder’ armchairs in front of the fire. After a meaningful look between Potter and Remus, Remus followed Black and Pettigrew.
Increasingly aware of the lateness of the hour, the fact that I was alone with Potter and the Marauders in the Common Room, and the fact that all my friends seemed to have gone to bed already, I shifted nervously from one foot to the other, my mind filled with images of making a dash past Potter for the girls dormitories and being hexed or jinxed by Potter. This was most definitely irrational, but I was tired.
Potter, however, was just standing in front of me, one hand back in his hair, regarding me silently. I definitely did not want to admit how nervous that silent gaze was making me feel, so I just said, “Are you going to sit with your friends, or are you going to interrogate me some more?”
James started. I almost smiled at catching him off guard once again, but my months of training myself to keep my expressions bland in Potter’s presence thankfully kept me from doing that.
“Well?” I asked, rather impatiently.
“I just have one more question, Evans.” He paused, and I felt certain he was just dragging the question out for dramatic effect. “What did you find in the Room of Requirement?”
“What?” I burst out, shocked that he had gone back to that. I had, if I can admit it to myself, been expecting him to ask me out yet another time.
“I’m curious,” he said, shrugging.
“All right. Whatever.” I paused, remembering. “I found a room filled with instruments.”
“What, like the instruments in Dumbledore’s office?” Potter asked with a surprised look on his face.
This time I had to stifle a laugh. “No, silly. Musical instruments.”
I let myself drift away from the common room as I remembered the wonder I felt upon opening the door and finding the very things I had been missing. My fingers ached to touch the piano in the center of the large room. There were also stacks of music—every song I had liked to play and more if I desired a challenge.
There were more instruments in there than I could name. My fingers strummed a harp, glided along the curves of a French horn, and held the violin up to my chest. Nothing satisfied me until I sat in front of the grand piano and let my emotions and stress flow out through my fingers into the music.
One scale. . . two. . . I was soon singing along as I played my heart out. I have to admit, it is a marvelous release.
I had hated to acknowledge that I was falling asleep at the piano after six hours. I loved that room, and I told the room to be open for me the next time I needed it.
I was brought sharply back to the present, when I heard Potter murmur something. My cheeks coloured as I realized I had been reliving the experience with delight and the expression surely displayed on my face.
“What did you say?” I demanded, instantly distrustful of him.
Potter blinked. “When?”
“Oh, come on. Just now,” I said, now half wondering if I really wanted to know what he had murmured.
Potter frowned. “Did I say that out loud? Oh, well,” he shrugged. “I can’t tell you.”
“Why not? You just said it,” I protested, now fully wondering what I was getting myself into.
Potter laughed. Drat him and his contagious laugh. It made me smile like an idiot. “And I’ll say it yet again. ‘I can’t tell you.’”
This time I caught the quotes around the words. My face reddened with embarrassment. “Oh,” I muttered. I was now searching desperately for something to say, something to take his attention away from my ever reddening face that was now clashing with my hair. “You can’t tell me what, exactly?” I wanted to slap myself on the forehead, but that would draw attention to my embarrassed skin, and make me look like I wanted to make a good impression on Potter.
Potter opened his mouth to speak, then smirked. “You’re not going to get me that easily.”
I immediately shook my head. “That’s not what I meant to do, Potter. I was wondering what question I had asked that you happened to finally register and blurt out your answer.”
Potter rolled his eyes. “Evans, Evans, Evans,” he said disparagingly. He placed a hand on my shoulder that I had to glare pointedly at before he finally removed it with an “All right,” conceding to my unspoken request. Well, more like my order, however nice it felt to have it there. “But I am not that thick,” he replied to my question. “I was merely reminding myself of the promise I made to Moony — well, that we all made to Moony — when we first took on our nicknames.”
“Remus started the nicknames?” I asked, a little startled.
Potter tilted his head. “Not exactly. He gave us a reason to nickname each other (he never had real good friends before Hogwarts, you know), but the only one Remus came up with was Prongs, for me. I came up with Padfoot for Sirius, Peter came up with Moony for Remus, and Sirius came up with Wormtail for Peter.”
“I should’ve known,” I muttered.
“Known what?” asked Potter, suddenly anxious and interested.
“Only Black would have the gumption to name a fellow human being something like Wormtail,” I proclaimed.
Potter just smirked. And, to my utmost annoyance, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Black and Pettigrew high-five.
“Oh, grow up,” I muttered irritably.
Potter’s smile faded and determination filled his face. “I will tell you, one day. It might just change your opinion toward us.”
“James,” said Remus in a warning tone. I looked over at the three boys. Remus was looking worriedly at Potter. Pettigrew was watching Potter also, but Black was gazing straight at me, and I had the oddest impression that he was evaluating my reaction.
“I know, I know,” said Potter impatiently. “Nothing until she lets me.”
“Let you? How in the world am I in control of what you say, or do, for that matter?” I burst out, rounding on him. “I asked you the question, I’m allowing you the option of giving your answer, but I am not stopping you from saying anything!” My arguments with Severus have made me even more passionate about this subject than I would be normally.
Potter, however, gave a short, sad laugh. “Oh, yes, you asked. But you were already preparing yourself not to believe any extended explanation. You are stopping me from saying anything worthwhile because of your attitude towards me and my friends. If only you could trust us. Trust me. Then I could talk freely indeed.”
“Trust?” I asked skeptically. “You want me to trust known pranksters, liars, and jokers?”
“Sometimes reputations aren’t always true, Evans,” sighed Potter.
I shrugged. “I’ll give you that, Potter. But what about personal observation?” I countered.
“Touché.” Potter paused, then proposed, “Let me prove to you otherwise — that we are worthy of your trust.”
I considered it a moment. “Sure,” I agreed. “But how?”
Potter looked stumped for only a second. “I will take responsibility for everything that I do. I will not avoid the punishments, but take the punishment in full with no complaint. Pranking and joking is what we do, but I can promise a cut down in the number of pranks we will play, and the pranks will only be humorous.”
By the end of this speech, Potter looked quite pleased with himself, but Pettigrew and Black stared at him in horror, and Remus regarded Potter with slight admiration.
“What?” burst out Black.
Potter set his jaw and turned determinedly toward his best friend. “Padfoot, it’s Evans,” he said as if this statement explained everything.
A long pause later, while I was looking between Black and Potter anxiously, Black suddenly smiled. “You’re on.”
Potter turned back to me, grinning. “The only exception to this will be Snape. We won’t go out of our way to fight with him, but I can’t promise we won’t retaliate if he starts it,” he warned.
I stifled a yawn, and said, “As loyal as I am to my friends, even I have to admit Sev starts some of the fights with you four.”
Potter’s and Black’s jaws dropped. “‘Sev’?” repeated James. “And he’s still ‘Potter’?” added Black, indicating his friend.
I rolled my eyes as I started to walk towards the stair. Potter immediately jumped into my path and wouldn’t move out of the way.
“What?” I finally asked, frustrated with his determination.
“Call me James,” said Potter, acting like he was daring me to do something absolutely dreadful.
“What?” I stopped and stared at him in shock.
“Call me James,” he repeated.
“Would you please move out of the way?” I asked as I stepped to the left and he mirrored me.
“Call me James,” he demanded, a smirk finding its way to his face.
Swallowing, I said, “Fine, James,” and went passed him to the stair. Halfway up to the dormitories, I turned and smiled at the four dumbstruck boys. I should hide from them more often.
“What are you looking at, James?” I called, smirking.
James jerked his head up to look at me. “Something that is absolutely beautiful,” he cheesily proclaimed.
I shook my head. “Glad to see you think so highly of your Common Room walls,” I retorted as I climbed the stair again.
“That’s not what I meant, Lily,” muttered James.
“I know,” I murmured, before disappearing into my room and leaning against my closed door.
I slowly recalled everything that had happened this day, and a smile formed that wouldn’t leave my face. I should definitely hide from the Marauders more often.
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A/N: I hope you liked this. Thanks for reading! And, since I received so many requests from reviewers at Fanfiction.net, this is being made into a two-shot, though it's not finished yet.
Next: Flashy Carrots
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Remus’s Rabbit
Remus’s Rabbit
By Matelia-legwll
Disclaimer: This is fanfiction so I own nothing that is in the Potterverse. Jo owns that.
Summary: Furry little problems and rabbits combine with chocolate and Transfigurations to make this a all-around fun one-shot about Remus.
Rating: K/G
Genre: Friendship/General
A/N: I wrote this story for the November Fanfiction Contest that is a part of the Gaia Online guild called the Haven. The prompt was simple. Remus Lupin. I love the quote from HBP, and decided to explore how that played out. I’ve never before had a one-shot take on a life of it’s own like this. And so, I bow to the characters that insisted I write it this way.
I chuckled to myself as I left the Burrow. A ‘normal’ Christmas indeed. Sometimes Harry reminded me so much of James, and I couldn’t express that thought enough to him. It was not just in looks, either, although that part is rather disconcerting. I recalled my words to him that had seemed to cheer him up momentarily, and the story behind them and chuckled once more.
“Sometimes you remind me a lot of James. He called it my ‘furry little problem’ in company. Many people were under the impression that I owned a badly behaved rabbit.”
It must have been our third year when I first heard James use that term to describe my lycanthropy. I was feeling rather depressed as the moon had waxed and would reach its full hideousness in less than four days. I was sitting in a corner of the Common Room, my head buried in a text, a serious expression on my face. No one dared approach me.
No one that is, except James.
“Remus? How are you this marvelous day?” he said.
“Fine,” I said shortly.
“What are you working on?”
“Potions.”
“Do you want to take a break? We could play some chess.”
“No.”
He was silent for a moment. I felt his eyes on me and turned to meet his gaze. He half-smiled and flung himself into a nearby armchair. The chair rocked, and actually scooted back a couple of inches before falling back into place. I turned back to glower at my book when James tried to start a conversation again.
“Your furry little problem is getting you down, isn’t it, Remus?”
“My what?” I straightened, confusion sweeping through me as I glanced toward him.
He grinned. “You said more than one word,” he started to gloat.
“My what?” I slowly repeated. Surely I had heard him wrong. Surely he wouldn’t choose such an obvious nickname for my condition.
“Your furry little problem,” he announced, quite loudly, to my chagrin.
Biscuits. Exactly what I thought he said.
“Have some chocolate,” James said, holding out a bar of Honeydukes’ chocolate.
How? How does he know? How in Merlin’s name does he know exactly what to say that will both cheer me up and leave me speechless?
“Go on, take it.”
Was he such a natural at friendship, or did he practice these lines? I tried to imagine James sitting around practicing lines to say to me, and a smile found its way to my face. There was absolutely no way that would happen. It must be natural.
“I haven’t poisoned the chocolate, you know. Take it already. My arm’s getting tired,” he started to complain.
I set my Potions book down on a side table, took the chocolate from him, and held it in my lap, looking down at the still wrapped chocolate. When did he figure out my weakness for the sweetest of desserts? I liked chocolate almost as much as I liked a nice juicy rare steak.
“It works for dementor effects, it should work on cheering you up. Even with your furry little problem.”
Was it just me, or were the last three words louder than any other words in that sentence? I winced.
“Stop calling it that,” I requested, fingering the wrapper of the chocolate bar.
“Why?”
The matter-of-fact question took me aback for a moment. “Someone will hear,” I protested.
“No one will guess right. No one ever does,” James reasoned.
“You can’t know that,” I pointed out logically.
“Wanna bet?” asked James in a whisper, leaning closer.
I pursed my lips. If it was about anything other than my secret, I would bet with him, but I wouldn’t want to win that particular bet. I shook my head. James shrugged.
Two weeks later, James mentioned the term in another conversation with me in the Common Room. This of course was during the time when the moon had faded, and almost disappeared in the new moon, so I was quite a bit more cheerful and was playing chess with James at the time.
“So, your furry little problem isn’t acting up now, is it?”
I rolled my eyes, looking up from the chess board. “Again with the name?”
“What? It’s a good codename,” insisted James. “It’s little, and furry, and causes a bit of a problem at times. A furry little problem.”
I laughed, and dropped the subject. James could call my lycanthropy whatever he wished. He never looked down on me for what I was. Although, when I started to get approached a couple of months later after the full moon, I began to wish that he had chosen a different term.
“You shouldn’t worry so much about your rabbit, Remus. You’re looking dreadful. Get some sleep.”
“Your rabbit will be just fine, it always is.”
“You look like your rabbit just died. It’s still all right, isn’t it? Well, I mean, besides the obvious bad behavior.”
“Rabbit giving you problems again? Just lock it in its cage for a day without any water. Clears up any lingering rebellions in those types of domestic animals.”
I was confused by all these comments. Since when did I have a rabbit? And since when did everyone know about a rabbit that I never owned? The clincher came when Lily Evans approached me. I could no longer just accept these really mental comments.
“Remus, have you considered the possibility of releasing your rabbit to the wild? It might be easier for both of you to just let go.”
“Lily, from whom did you hear that I had a rabbit?” The question burst from me, without my consent.
“Emmeline. Why?” Her green eyes bore into my face curiously.
“Er, never mind.” I shook my head, and went off to find a certain girl by the name of Emmeline. I was going to get to the bottom of this ridiculous rumor.
“Emmeline, from whom did you first hear that I had a rabbit?”
“Marlene's the one that told me,” shrugged Emmeline.
Time passed as I tried to track down how the rumor had passed from person to person.
Finally catching up to the latest person, I huffed, “Mary, from whom did you hear that I had a rabbit?”
“I actually heard it from Bertha. Bertha Jorkins.”
Was there any other Bertha? I winced. Just lovely. The entire school knew the rumor if Bertha knew the rumor. Sighing, I went down to the Great Hall to try to find the gossip queen of Hufflepuff.
“He was kissing Florence, I'm telling you. Florence,” she was emphasizing to a second-year Ravenclaw as I approached her table.
“Bertha, from whom did you hear that I had a rabbit?” I interrupted.
She turned around and turned her calculating gaze on me. I leaned onto the table; I was not about to back down for I had been looking for the originator of this rumor for over six hours.
“From whom?” I repeated.
“Frank Longbottom,” she said slowly, drawing out the name in an insolent tone.
“Thank you,” I replied sarcastically.
I turned around and went to find Frank. This was getting way too complicated. The sooner I found the culprit, or at least how this ridiculous rumor started, the happier I would be.
“Hey, Frank!” I called as I found him on the sixth floor and caught up with him.
“Hmm? Oh, hello, Remus.”
“Hello. Let me get straight to the point, Frank. From whom did you first hear that I had a rabbit?”
“Er, Bertha. She’s the first one that told me. How is it doing, by the way? Behaving now?”
“It’s just fine,” I shook my head, feeling confused, “but Bertha just told me that she heard it from you.”
His brow furrowed for a moment, then smoothed out. “Oh. She must have done that ‘protecting her sources’ thing she picked up from the Daily Prophet.”
I felt so much frustration well up inside of me, that I let it out by slamming my hand onto the stone wall of the corridor we were in. When I turned back to Frank, he was looking at me, quite concerned. I understand why, of course. I rarely lost control like that.
“Whatever is the matter?”
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose between my forefinger and my thumb. “Would you happen to know how the rabbit story got out? Why does everyone think that I have a rabbit?”
“Don’t you?” he asked. I shrugged, and he continued, “Well, I think it was because James said—well, I overheard someone say (I don’t remember who it was now) that James said that you had a misbehaved rabbit. But all I heard James say were the words ‘furry little problem.’ So, I don’t know where they heard James say that it was a rabbit. Bertha Jorkins told me that she had verified proof that you had a badly behaved rabbit. I was trying to ignore her though, and so I didn’t ask for more information. Sorry about that, mate.”
I shrugged and sighed again and started to mutter to myself. “The rumor chain at Hogwarts—quite exhausting. Oh well. Shan’t bother about it anymore. I had my—but it doesn’t matter. Hm. That’s one bet I would have lost, then. I’m glad of that.”
“Glad about losing your bet?” Frank questioned, trying to follow what I was saying.
“Yes,” I grinned. “That was one bet that I didn’t want to win.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw messy black hair suddenly vanish down a secret passageway.
“Excuse me a moment,” I said to Frank as I turned to follow my friend through the winding passageway.
I emerged, not yet caught up to James, into a passageway that led to Hogsmeade. If I was correct, I was just behind the mirror on the fourth floor.
“Hello?” I called out. “James?” I looked around, starting to feel nervous. “Sirius?” I had been certain I was following James, but I couldn’t see where he had disappeared to. “Peter?” I called out, half-heartedly, as I pulled out my wand to better see into the corners of the passageway.
I heard a couple of laughs that were quickly stifled. I sighed with relief. “James, Sirius, come out from under the cloak.” I turned around in place, trying to spot where they were hidden under the cloak.
A slight ripple of disturbance in the corner of my right eye drew my attention. I turned towards it, focused, and nearly dropped my wand.
Hopping slowly towards the light was a rabbit, no, two rabbits! A brown rabbit and a white rabbit. The brown one paused and wriggled its nose at me for a moment. The white one hopped forward until it was right by my left leg, and started nuzzling it. As I started to move backward in reaction to the nuzzling, I felt two hands clasp both of my shoulders and force me to remain still.
“Don’t want to startle them now,” came Sirius’s voice from my left.
“They might just start to misbehave if you do,” added James from my right.
I rounded on him. “Your silly rumor—” was all I could get out before Sirius interrupted me.
“Allowed us both the time and space to get you not one, but two animals for your very own.”
James jumped in, “See, look at how they are warming up to you already.”
“Soon you will have a veritable zoo at your command.”
I was easily sidetracked by Sirius’s comment. “Zoo? But there’s just two rabbits.”
“One is a male and one is a female,” declared James proudly. “Dunno which is which though,” he added as an afterthought.
Sirius grinned. “Have you ever heard of how fast rabbits, you know, have little rabbit babies?”
I gaped at the two idiots on either side of me then turned back to look at the rabbits. “Surely you were not stupid enough to get a male and a female, but even if you were,” I winced, “that still is just a whole lot of rabbits, not a zoo.”
“Ah, we haven’t unveiled our greatest present yet, Sirius,” smirked James.
“No we haven’t,” agreed Sirius.
“Let me present, Sirius the Dog!” announced James, spinning me by my shoulders to face Sirius’s show of bowing and blowing kisses to an invisible audience.
My jaw dropped and I said in a small voice, “You know? You already know what you’re going to be? Sirius, I can’t tell you—I’m speechless—Wow. Thanks. Thank you so much.”
Both of them were beaming by the time I had finished talking.
“He’s much too humble,” commented James.
“You actually think that was the only present?” asked Sirius, somehow still sounding disappointed through his grin.
I slowly nodded. Were they implying that there was something else? Sirius sighed and spun me around to face James.
“I have the honor of presenting James the Deer,” said Sirius pompously.
James bowed low, then took out his wand and held it like a trophy. “I would like to thank my Mum and Dad for always being there for me. To my best friend, Sirius: I couldn’t have done it without you, mate. And to my dearest friend, Remus, for giving me the reason and the discipline to achieve this highest of honors,” he said in a high, choked-up voice that was obviously faked, but still touched me just the same. He wiped away an invisible tear.
“You too?” I whispered in shock. “You both know?”
James sobered and both of them just stared at me. “Why d’you think we got you two rabbits?” asked James finally, crossing his arms. “Just for eating them on nights that you have your furry little problem?”
I had burst into laughter as I realized yet again, with renewed relief, that these two very special boys were really my friends and really accepted me for what I was.
A little over twenty years later I was still marveling over that same fact.
I missed James and Sirius, it’s true. But I found laughter and solace and peace in my memories of them. Memories that were sparked by a very special sixteen-year-old boy that was James’s son, and Sirius’s godson. It was no wonder he reminded me of them. “Furry little problem,” indeed. I laughed again, happy once more.
Note: I ended up being awarded second place in the popular vote for the contest. This was fun.
I hope you review and take the time to tell me what you thought. Please, don't hesitate.
Thanks for reading!
Next: Hiding From the Marauders
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
He's My Son
He’s My Son
By Matelia-legwll
Disclaimer: The last “fan” fic that Stephenie Meyer wrote ended up getting lost in cyberspace and then posted on her official website. As this is not posted on her website, and is actually on a fan site rather than floating around in cyberspace somewhere, it would be safe to assume that I am not Stephenie, and am not making any claims to be. The song and title belong to Mark Schultz.
Summary: Pre-Twilight. Dr. Carlisle Cullen’s thoughts and feelings as he is in Chicago in 1918 working nights at a hospital during the Spanish Influenza Epidemic. One-shot song-fic.
A/N: This song got stuck in my head when I was listening to the radio the other night. At first, I thought about doing a Harry Potter fic like I usually do, but then I read a few phrases in the Twilight Saga’s New Moon, this song popped back into my head, and I thought it was perfect for Carlisle and Edward’s father/son relationship. I made this as historically accurate as I could. Note that Carlisle, being who he is, is much more vocal about spirituality and his views of God than Bella is. Also, please don’t fault me for using Carlisle’s own words to tell parts of this story. This is a known hazard for keeping close to canon.
He's My Son
I closed the daily paper, feeling discouraged. All the time, there was talk of how doctors were needed, all over the world. Today’s paper reported:
——
“For the week ending September 28, there were 598 cases reported in Chicago with 176 deaths. During the week ending October 7 there were 6,106 cases reported with 627 deaths. The week which ended October 14 produced 11,239 cases and 1,461 deaths. The total number of deaths from influenza and pneumonia in Chicago during the past three weeks was 2,264 compared with an average of 156 for the same period during the past five years.
“Although the situation is bad in many down state communities, it will get worse before it gets better, according to members of the state influenza commission, which meets daily. The town of Assumption in Christian county, with a population of 1,918 has reported 500 cases and has called for help. There are only four doctors and one registered nurse in the town.
“Greenup, with a population of 1,224, reported 400 cases. Two doctors live in Greenup and both are ill with influenza. Peoria reports 10,000 cases and Rockford 6,000. In Peoria two emergency hospitals have been equipped, and in Rockford, medical help has been loaned from Camp Grant, where the epidemic is rapidly being brought under control.
“More than 1,200 cases have been reported in Kankakee. Cairo reports 500. Marengo, with a population of 1,872, reported 496 and has asked for the help of outside doctors and nurses. Nokomis, which has a population of 1,973 has reported over 600 cases with no hospital facilities available. Bloomington reports 1,200 cases with 11 deaths.”
——
I sighed in frustration as I gently folded the paper open to the page with the article and let it relax once more. Greenup could use my help. Assumption and Marengo have asked for help of outside doctors. Nokomis doesn’t have hospital facilities for over six hundred cases. And still I stay in Chicago, only able to work nights. I resented the fact that, to continue my façade, I couldn’t continue to help through the day and the night. These people could really use me. They needed as many hands to care for these patients as they could get. We were understaffed as it was.
And how many patients would they let you care for if they knew you were a vampire? an annoyingly truthful little voice inside my head reminded me.
It brought my fantasy to mind yet again. In the decades since I had left Italy, I hadn’t been able to find any other vampires that would consent to try out my improved diet restrictions. And so I toyed with the idea of creating a companion of my own. I had been alone in my choice for over two hundred and fifty years. And I had been toying with this idea for years, never willing to force this... life onto anyone I’d met.
However, even when I couldn’t share my whole life with these humans that surrounded me, I still managed to get myself ridiculously attached. It was completely irrational for me to allow myself to get attached to these fragile humans. Especially with the detrimental outbreak that seems to be seizing the entire state and even the world. I must be some sort of a masochist.
But as the green eyes and bronze hair of the mother and son that had wormed their way into my silent and cold heart, floated through my mind, I didn’t know how I should’ve done things so that I didn’t get attached to Elizabeth Masen and her son, Edward.
Elizabeth’s husband had died in the first wave of influenza. Edward Senior had been one of the one hundred and seventy six deaths reported for that first week. He had never regained consciousness in the hospital, and it was easy to avoid attachment with him, although from what I gathered, he had been an excellent gentleman and wonderful father and husband. However, it was impossible to ignore his wife and son who had truly impressed me with their courage, their goodness, their strength. I had made my plans to visit them first when I went back to the hospital. It was impossible for me to do otherwise. I had to make sure that they were all right first.
Time passed slowly. I stood, still as a statue, waiting for the sun to set so that I could go back to the hospital. At least, when I worked nights, I didn’t have to worry about the sun interfering with my work schedule. I glanced again towards the paper, the numbers attracting my gaze. In the over seventeen thousand cases of influenza reported for Chicago, only two had I grown attached to.
Oh, I hadn’t broken any rules. No hint of my true nature had passed from me to these vulnerable humans. But I had allowed myself to care for those two, emotionally as well as physically, when I knew that they were a heartbeat away from death. So much could change for them, while I was kept frozen. Unchanging and unchangeable. During my time in Italy, I had gathered that Caius despised me for my compassion, seeing it as a weakness. But I calculated the number of human lives that were saved by my choice, including the ones that were sick and saved by my enhanced senses, and could feel no remorse.
Finally the sun set, and I was free to leave for work. I took the normal public transportation, elevated trains of all things, wearing my face mask to blend in with the general populace. I wasn’t sure how well this measure of wearing masks in public was actually protecting the humans from the disease. Seeing everything from a vampire’s heightened senses left me noticing how dust motes stirred with every fragile breath, and the disease was too small for even me to see it being transmitted.
I walked into the hospital, nodding a greeting toward the harried receptionist who was muttering, ‘Five new cases in the last ten minutes, I’ll never get out of here. Under control, my foot.’
I walked over to my station, nodding a greeting at the doctor that I was relieving for the night. The tired nurse standing there snapped more to attention as I approached. ‘Here are the names and rooms for tonight, Dr. Cullen,’ she said breathlessly as she handed me the list.
‘How is your family doing, Nurse Jones?’ I asked politely as I slowly read the names. I memorized them instantly, and noted with a surge of gratitude that Elizabeth Masen and her son were still on my list. They had survived the day, now it was up to me to see that they survived the night.
The nurse, probably flattered, expounded on her mother’s latest interference in her life, babbled on about a letter received from her brother that was fighting in the Great War, and hesitantly admitted that her sister had come down with the influenza. I nodded, after she had talked herself out, and suggested that she take a break, perhaps just switching tasks for a few minutes as she worked the last three hours of her shift. I mentioned the receptionist, and she nodded, her expression lightening as she departed for this new task.
I took advantage of her momentary absence to check on my favorite patients alone. Elizabeth was still alert, and still worrying about her son. I even caught her out of her cot, holding his hand as he fought the exhaustion. This worry was hurting her own chances, I told her time and time again, as the dizziness overcame her and I had to help her back to her cot. She was strong, I told her, she could make it through if she would relax and let her body heal. However, Edward also surprised me. Not with his strength exactly, but with the endurance he exhibited. He was so much worse off than Elizabeth, but still he clung to life with a determination that amazed me.
So much of this particular disease frustrated me. The injustice of its pick of victims, the way we couldn’t actually treat the influenza itself but only try to relieve the symptoms, and, most devastatingly, the way it opened the door for other diseases to rack the victim’s body and kill within hours.
Surely a merciful God could see the destruction that was killing these children. I supposed I had to trust in His omniscient knowledge. Trust that this tragedy has sense to it, even if I couldn’t see it. And I certainly couldn’t see it now, looking into the glistening emerald eyes of Elizabeth Masen as I listened to her vitals.
She was still strong, she will survive another day. Edward, on the other hand, I thought, turning to his cot, was steadily getting worse. I ran through the symptoms of the disease that I had observed again in my mind. Chills and fever, headache, backache, pain and soreness of extremities, general tiredness, dizziness, sudden and intense stomach pain and cramps, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, sore throat, cough, inflamed nasal passage, tingling sensation of fingers, and metallic or sulfuric taste in the mouth. Edward’s fever seemed to be the dominant threat tonight; I could feel the heat radiating from his skin before I had even approached.
I did all I could to help reign in the fever, and allow him to relax once more instead of shivering. I left their room knowing that their fate was not in my hands anymore. I would trust that God would hear my prayer to spare them and, in his ultimate mercy, grant the world this gift.
I'm down on my knees again tonight
I'm hoping this prayer will turn out right
See there is a boy that needs Your help
I've done all that I can do myself
It was just after sunset a few nights later that my preconceived notions about myself and these humans collapsed.
That Thursday night, I went to check Elizabeth and her son first, as was my tradition for the two that I had grown attached to. I saw at once that Elizabeth had taken a bad turn during the day. The fever was raging out of control, and her body was too weak to fight it anymore. I walked over to her to try to help her body survive.
I had to admit to myself that she didn’t look weak. Not when she glared up at me from her cot as I hovered over her, making a mental diagnosis of her chances.
‘Save him!’ she commanded me in the hoarse voice that was all her throat could manage. Of course, I thought. In all my years, I have never seen a mother’s love surpassed. Even when I worked with those mothers-to-be, their only care is for their child, born or not. And Elizabeth had demonstrated that quality and protectiveness of love even before this crisis. So, I sought to reassure her.
‘I’ll do everything in my power,’ I promised her, taking her hand. This was a calculated risk. Although I had tried to perfect my human role and that included touching the patients from time to time like a human doctor would to diagnose their injuries, I usually avoided touching the patients too often skin to skin, but her fever was so high she probably couldn’t even tell how unnaturally cold my hands felt. Everything was cold to her skin. The heat of her skin burned against my own, but I focused more on her labored, determined words.
‘You must,’ she insisted, clutching at my hand with enough strength that I wondered if she wouldn’t pull through the crisis after all. Her eyes were hard, like stones, like emeralds. They bore into me as she continued. ‘You must do everything in your power. What others cannot do, that is what you must do for my Edward.’
Her words frightened me. She looked at me with those piercing green eyes, and, for one instant, I felt certain that she knew my secret. But how? The question burned in me. Had I been careless somehow? Had I moved too quickly, or been too strong? Had I reflected the borrowed light as I did the sun? Had she been able to register the coolness or the stone-like quality of my skin? The questions rushed through my mind, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from hers as she stared into my very being. Then the fever overwhelmed her, and her eyes closed as she slipped into unconsciousness.
His mother is tired
I'm sure You can understand
Each night as he sleeps
She goes in to hold his hand
And she tries not to cry
As the tears fill her eyes
Her words echoed through my head as I turned to her son. I couldn’t leave the room as Elizabeth’s breathing grew more and more shallow, and her heartbeat slowed and stuttered. There Edward lay, dying also.
Did she truly realize what I was capable of?
—‘What others cannot do.’
Would she have even wanted me to consider the damning idea that was filling my mind?
—‘Save him.’
How could she guess what I could do?
—‘You must.’
Could anyone really want that for her son?
—‘For my Edward.’
Did she think I was some sort of miracle worker?
—‘That is what you must do.’
Didn’t she know that I was a monster by nature?
—‘Everything in your power.’
I gazed at Edward. I had grown attached to him. There was something pure and good about his face. Sick as he was, he was still beautiful, and as a vampire, I was attracted to that beauty, that goodness, that strength. It was clear that he had only hours left before he would follow the thousands of others like him into the uncertain afterlife. Only, Edward wasn’t like those thousands of others. He was someone I cared about. He was someone who I could make like me. He felt like my own son.
This was not fair. I had asked, with all the fervency I could muster, that God be willing to spare these two out of all the lives that would end by the end of another week. Surely He could be satisfied with another thousand souls. He didn’t need to take these two. I believed that He was more merciful than my father had said He was. Truly He was a compassionate God, willing to heal more than to pass judgment.
I may not be all powerful, but I believed that God was. I would not usurp His position as Creator and Healer. I was no Messiah. But if God really heard me, He would create a way to save Edward and his mother. Could He see how good Edward was, could He heal him? If there was some way that I could suffer in his place, I wouldn’t hesitate for one moment. I felt an outpouring of affection well up inside me toward the boy laying next to his dying mother, fighting for his own breath. Couldn’t God see how much I loved him?
Can You hear me?
Am I getting through tonight?
Can You see him?
Can You make him feel all right?
If You can hear me
Let me take his place somehow
See, he's not just anyone
He's my son
I did care for him. Edward’s mother wasn’t the only one that hovered over him as he slept. I, too, had watched as he tossed and turned with the sickness. I would find myself imagining the life he could have lived if he and his family hadn’t been stricken with this dread influenza.
I had overheard enough mutterings from Elizabeth, early on in the sickness, to know that her greatest worry before the influenza struck was that her son would be drafted into the Great War. That horrid war, she called it. He was only one year away from the lowered draft age. Even as she berated herself for the irony, I understood her worry. Just thinking of Edward surviving the influenza only to go on and be killed for his nation’s sense of honor. . . the thought still sickened me.
And so, I had visualized Edward as a strong young man, coming home from a day at work, to a loving wife and family. I was sure that this would be his true heart’s desire, if he knew himself. It echoed my own desire for companionship.
How could Elizabeth have known what I could do to her son? I could provide a route that surpassed all human understanding; I could give him immortality. But perhaps that was glorifying this existence too much. Would I doom him to this life? Perhaps I could persuade him to follow my own strictures, but that would have to be up to him. I wouldn’t, couldn’t, take that much of his choice from him.
But, no, I couldn’t take his agency now. To doom him to a sleepless, thirsting, immortal existence or to watch him die of the influenza within hours. What sort of a choice is that? I didn’t want to make that choice. I feared what I would choose for him out of my own selfishness.
Sometimes late at night I watch him sleep
I dream of the boy he'd like to be
I try to be strong and see him through
But God who he needs right now is You
The best option for Edward, and the least likely to happen, was if he could somehow, through the power and grace of God, survive the influenza. He would be able to live a well rounded human life, find love, find happiness, and grow old in his joy.
He wouldn’t have to live with the fear that ate at me, day after day. The fear of discovery, the fear of not being able to meet the challenges of the coming day, the fear of his own nature.
No, I wouldn’t choose this life for anyone. Not even Edward. Especially not Edward. I cared for him too much.
I heard Elizabeth’s breathing grow more shallow, more labored, and her heartbeat fluttered so weakly. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her son, not even to help ease her last moments.
Let him grow old
Live life without this fear
Edward curled on his cot, gripping his head as another fevered headache pained him. I automatically brushed his bronze hair out of his eyes, trying to soothe him with my cool touch on his face. He seemed to relax slightly.
I stared at him, knowing that the best option for him, my favored dream, would never happen. If I left him here, he would die.
Would I truly be a monster then? Was there no way around this conundrum? I was a monster if I doomed him to a life like mine; I was a monster if I ignored his mother’s wish and allowed him to die a natural death.
Her last wish, I corrected myself sadly, as the silence from her cot overwhelmed me. Elizabeth hadn’t even been unconscious an hour. I dimly registered that it had been fifty three minutes and thirty two seconds since she had made her last request. And now she was gone.
The shock was enough to jerk me out of my trance. I pulled my gaze from her son and focused on Elizabeth once more. Hers was such a tragic death. Unexpected. As much as Edward’s potential death had pained me, I hadn’t expected Elizabeth to die before her son. I hadn’t even considered the possibility before tonight. Black Thursday was truly an appropriate nickname for today.
The color was already starting to fade from her cheeks, but so minutely that only I would be able to tell. The fever that was raging through her at the time of her death had turned and begun the ultimate cooling that happens as every human dies.
The expression on her face was haunting.
Even in death, there wasn’t peace. Her face had not relaxed, and showed no signs of smoothing out as her body prepared to go into the stiffness of death. This was such a horrible death... I slowly shook my head, wanting to grieve properly, wanting to cry, and knowing that it was physically impossible.
Surely I had to find a companion soon; someone to make into my friend. Was Edward this companion? If I let Edward go, would I ever attach myself to anyone?
What was the right choice to make?
What would I be
Living without him here
I looked between the mother and the son, tormented by my thoughts, torn by my desires, Elizabeth’s last demand still ringing in my head.
The memory of a few words I had overheard Edward mutter before falling into a restless, exhausted sleep came to the forefront of my perfect memory. ‘I don’t want to die,’ he had murmured. Elizabeth had been out of her bed during that incident, and stroked his face with a wet rag. She had reassured him that he would live, that he would be happy and joyful. The look of fear that had come into his eyes had vanished at her touch and her words.
He had feared and then been comforted by one he trusted. Who would comfort him now, as he passed ever closer to death? I didn’t know what it was like, to experience the human fear of death. I had been changed when I was young; I hadn’t had any experiences that would cause the slow creeping fear to come upon me. I had still trusted in my youth and invincibility. And then I was made into a creature that was truly invulnerable.
I tried to remember back to my thoughts as I was changed from human to vampire. I remembered the pain, and the fear of the monster that was overtaking me, changing me, making me thirst. I couldn’t pinpoint any time I had felt truly threatened by death.
The concept puzzled me, and I thought on it a moment longer. A moment I shouldn’t waste. But I was still undecided, wasn’t I?
Edward’s eyes suddenly snapped open, and he gazed into mine without truly knowing what he was seeing.
His pain, his fear, radiated from those striking emerald eyes. He had exactly the same shape and shade of eyes as his mother. As he closed his eyes, Elizabeth’s plea rang in my head once more, and I knew my decision was made. ‘Save him!’
He's so tired and he's scared
Let him know that You're there
I knew that I had made my decision on a whim, but somehow that caused me to feel even more resolved in my course of action. Filled with the determination of my hasty decision, not allowing myself to rethink it again, knowing that Edward had only hours left, I hurried as fast as I dared to call for a passenger trolley and get a cart and go back to the room Elizabeth had just died in.
I marked both Edward and Elizabeth as having died from the sickness on their records. My only fear was that one of the other doctors would come in to the room while I was gone, taking Elizabeth to the morgue, and notice Edward still breathing. However, I trusted in the fact that we were dreadfully understaffed tonight. I had learned upon my arrival that three doctors that usually covered the night shift with me had taken sick. I had never before been grateful to be understaffed, but tonight was an exception to all rules. All too soon for my liking, I would be too busy to help in the hospital. I frowned to myself, then nodded as I gently moved Elizabeth’s body to the cart. It was time for me to move on anyway. My decision was ultimately for the best. I could yet keep my promise to the woman whose body I was wheeling to the morgue.
I dropped her body off, making all the necessary, routine steps that identified her body for those that would come after. I carefully arranged her limbs into a peaceful pose, and turned back to get Edward. I had heard no sign of humans in the area of the morgue. It was completely silent of human movements and noises. I thought out my route as I rode the trolley back to the hospital. It must be precise if I expected to continue my charade eventually. And Edward would want to come back, after the change, after he gains control again. He would want the human mementos that his parents would have left him to help him remember the life he lived here.
Edward had slipped back into a light exhausted sleep by the time I made it back to his room. His breathing was shallow, but still steady. His heartbeat kept up a regular rhythm as I carefully loaded him onto the cart, positioning him so that his breathing wouldn’t be nearly as noticeable if someone caught a glimpse of him.
I wheeled him out of that room as slowly as I had wheeled his mother and all those others whom I had been unable to save. I made my way to the morgue, unquestioned, unobserved, and took Edward out of the trolley. His heart pumped weakly against both of our chests, reminding me of how little time there was left, if I was to fulfill my promise. I took one last glance at Elizabeth’s face, and it seemed to me to have gained some measure of peace.
The morgue was still conveniently empty—of the living, at least. I stole him out the back door of the morgue, and carried him across the rooftops back to my home. I paused there, gathering my worldly possessions, knowing that if Edward experienced the excruciating pain that I had gone through, this house was too close to civilization.
Trying to come up with a viable solution, I remembered that soon after being checked into the hospital, Elizabeth and Edward were debating about leaving for their summer home in hopes that the country air would cure their sickness. But they hadn’t specified where that summer home was. I narrowed my eyes in frustration. That would have been the perfect solution.
In my irritation, I said aloud, ‘Where is your summer home, Edward?’ I didn’t expect an answer. Edward had to be completely unconscious by now. However, he once again surprised me by muttering in a weak voice, ‘Senachwine Lake.’
Truly? That was only a few minutes run for a vampire. Each second counted for Edward now and I ran as fast as I possibly could to reach there in time to keep my promise.
As I ran, I thought about my near constant prayers that Edward be spared the death that was looming over him because of the influenza, and was nearly struck blind by the realization that came to me in that instant. What if I was the answer to my own prayers? If Elizabeth was correct, and my decision to save Edward worked, then Edward would not die because of the sickness.
That thought was enough to provide me the extra strength I would need to see through these next few days.
As I laid him out on a pallet in an airy summer home, I wasn’t sure what had to be done. Remembering my own transformation for the second time this night, I settled for recreating the wounds I myself had received. It was the only way to be truly sure that the attempt would work, and I knew that I only had one chance to make it work, or I’d loose Edward forever.
My teeth cut through his skin like butter, and I tasted for the very first time the sweetness that is human blood. I fully understood now how easy it would be to succumb to the monster inside, but my promise came rushing back to me, and I remembered my purpose. My years of training myself to resist the temptation that was human blood paid off, and I was able to watch with compassion and apologize for making Edward go through this agony, as he began to cry out from the pain of the venom burning through his veins.
Three nights and two days I sat with him, reliving my own pain as we both suffered through his. I counted the minutes as my venom changed him, made him like me, made him a vampire.
Can You hear me?
Am I getting through tonight?
Can You see him?
Can You make him feel all right?
If You can hear me
Let me take his place somehow
See, he's not just anyone
He's my son
As the sun sunk in the sky on the third day, Edward stopped screaming, although he kept his eyes closed. I suspected he had discovered that the burning had begun to fade from his extremities, and that crying out from the pain did not ease it. In the now heavy silence, I wondered how to explain, how to control, how to persuade Edward. It wouldn’t be easy. And so, I started to explain to him right then what he was turning into.
I thought it best to do that before he discovered his newfound strength, and any other gifts he might possess. I talked to him: I told him my story and how I came to be changed into a vampire, told him of Aro and the Volturi, told him of the events leading up to this dreadful changing, of his mother’s last wish, and how I had honored it.
His heart sped up suddenly, and his body arched in pain as the venom worked to suffocate his heart and complete the transformation. I felt a strange combination of apprehension and resignation. I recognized, fully, for the first time that this whole ordeal was out of my hands. Even though I was the creator and the healer, there was a greater Healer and a greater Creator than myself on whose tender mercies Edward and I both relied now. And then, it was over. Edward’s heart had stopped.
For only the duration of one human heartbeat, as twilight faded into darkness, Edward lay still. Then with startling speed, his eyelids flew open and I gazed into the burning, swirling, fiery red eyes of my equal, my brother, my . . . son.
Can You hear me?
Can You see him?
Please don't leave him
He's my son
A/N: Well there it is. My first Twilight one-shot.
Extras: Four facts I learned while doing research for this fanfic:
1) The populace was required to wear face masks while out in public. The board of health considered it cheap and convenient protection against the disease.
2) The newspaper article I included in the beginning was actually printed in the October 15, 1918 Chicago newspaper, and the text that I found will be included in full after the song lyrics. By the way, I disclaim ownership of the article. I am certainly not Edward's age or older.
3) The worst day of the epidemic in Chicago was Black Thursday, October 17, 1918, when 381 people died and nearly 1,200 more contracted the illness in a single 24-hour period. The city ran out of hearses, and had to use passenger trolleys draped in black to transport the dead.
4) There were more victims of the Spanish Influenza epidemic in one year than in four years of the Bubonic Plague, otherwise known as the Black Death. And yet, history remembers the latter and glazes over the former.
Thanks for Reading!
Here’s all the lyrics in one place.
Mark Schultz - He's My Son
From the album Mark Schultz
I'm down on my knees again tonight
I'm hoping this prayer will turn out right
See there is a boy that needs Your help
I've done all that I can do myself
His mother is tired
I'm sure You can understand
Each night as he sleeps
She goes in to hold his hand
And she tries not to cry
As the tears fill her eyes
Can You hear me?
Am I getting through tonight?
Can You see him?
Can You make him feel all right?
If You can hear me
Let me take his place somehow
See, he's not just anyone
He's my son
Sometimes late at night I watch him sleep
I dream of the boy he'd like to be
I try to be strong and see him through
But God who he needs right now is You
Let him grow old
Live life without this fear
What would I be
Living without him here
He's so tired and he's scared
Let him know that You're there
Can You hear me?
Am I getting through tonight?
Can You see him?
Can You make him feel all right?
If You can hear me
Let me take his place somehow
See, he's not just anyone
He's my son
Can You hear me?
Can You see him?
Please don't leave him
He's my son
Thanks for reading!!
Here's the full article in case anyone wanted to read it and learn about Dr. Drake.
THE INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC
(Special to Henry Republican)
Chicago, Oct. 15 -- The results of a state wide survey by telegraph of every Illinois community of 1,000 population or over, given out here tonight by Dr. C. St. Clari Drake, director of the state department of public health, show that 227 cities and towns in Illinois have been hit by the epidemic of Spanish influenza. The number of cases reported in these communities in 55,725 of which 17,943 are in Chicago, and 37,782 down state. There have been 2,264 deaths from influenza and pneumonia in Chicago and 491 in the down state communities which have been reported.
Convinced that the epidemic had reached proportions which required prompt and vigorous measures, the state department of health has ordered that all theaters, including moving picture shows, all night schools, all lodges and all places of public amusement, closed until the epidemic subsides. All public schools which are lacking in adequate medical and nursing supervision were included in the order.
"From the information we now have", said Dr. Drake, "we believe that every community in Illinois will be affected by influenza before the epidemic subsides. On the basis of the reports which reached us today, we estimate that there are now more than 170,000 cases in the state outside of Chicago.
An analysis of the influenza situation in Chicago today shows that the epidemic has not reached its crest here. Fore the week ending September 28, there were 598 cases reported in Chicago with 176 deaths. During the week ending October 7 there were 6,106 cases reported with 627 deaths. The week which ended October 14 produced 11,239 cases and 1,461 deaths. The total number of deaths from influenza and pneumonia in Chicago during the past three weeks was 2,264 compared with an average of 156 for the same period during the past five years.
Although the situation is bad in many down state communities, it will get worse before it gets better, according to members of the state influenza commission, which meets daily. The town of Assumption in Christian county, with a population of 1,918 has reported 500 cases and has called for help. There are only four doctors and one registered nurse in the town.
Greenup, with a population of 1,224, reported 400 cases. Two doctors live in Greenup and both are ill with influenza. Peoria reports 10,000 cases and Rockford 6,000. In Peoria two emergency hospitals have been equipped, and in Rockford, medical help has been loaned from Camp Grant, where the epidemic is rapidly being brought under control.
More than 1,200 cases have been reported in Kankakee. Cairo reports 500. Marengo, with a population of 1,872, reported 496 and has asked for the help of outside doctors and nurses. Nokomis, which has a population of 1,973 has reported over 600 cases with no hospital facilities available. Bloomington reports 1,200 cases with 11 deaths.
The state health department urges extreme care in order to prevent, so far as possible, the needless further spread of the contagion. All persons are warned to keep away from crowds, to avoid the person who sneezes, coughs and spits without covering the face with a cloth, and to consult a physician immediately upon the first symptoms of what may seem to be an ordinary cold.
Thanks so much for reading!!
Please take a moment to comment and review. I want to know how you think I did with this piece.
Next Story: Remus's Rabbit
Monday, February 2, 2009
15 Things
So, Hook, you want to know fifteen things that I'm willing to admit about myself? Let's see how many I can surprise you with.
I) I am diagnosed as having Aspurger Syndrome. It's a mild and very high functioning form of Autism.
II) I like Roman numerals. Especially for lists like these. It makes me think.
III) I am very stubborn about certain things. Ahem, er, pronunciations and such.
IV) I have made myself an expert on various subjects, Harry Potter being one that has held my attention the longest. But also: cheetahs, unicorns, trains, Twilight, Redwall, music, Narnia, Belgariad and Mallorean, math all the way up to Pre-Calc, cats, and the scriptures. Inside Hogwarts, I have also delved into the Marauder years, and practically have everything that is mentioned by JK Rowling about those years memorized.
V) I am currently doing a Role Play where I play Peter Pettigrew and Lily Evans along with my own original character. Speaking of which... I better go check the site and see if I need to write more Lily. We still need a Severus Snape though. We really need someone to play him. It's an site called Gaia Online. We are doing it through the guild, Never Forget. Frank Longbottom and Alice Longbottom nee Prewett are also characters I would like to see claimed. There are also others that could be claimed by anyone brave enough to try, and you also get to include an original character of your choice. (Sorry, couldn't resist the plug. We REALLY need a Severus.)
VI) I have deja vu experiences all the time. Although I have never met someone who has the same format to the experiences. I hear conversations around me, and sometimes I already have heard the same people say the same things, and know exactly how people will say the things they end up saying. I don't think that made sense, but trust me, it makes sense in my head. I use it just as verification that I am on the path I'm supposed to be on. (It usually happens at church functions anyway ^_^ )
VII) I'm not even half done with this list.
VIII) I have three visible scars on my body. Two are from falling down in parking lots. Those two are both on my left side. Make of that what you will.
IX) I have four nieces and one nephew. Ages 5, 3, 2, 2, and 1. Hmm, if you asked me the ages between July 26 and August 21, they would be 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. hee hee.
X) I have a very active imagination, and it fuels my humor as well as my writing.
XI) I have discovered that I am quite an actress. Out of my two theatre classes this year, both of my teachers have complemented me on my acting.
XII) I got a haircut this last week, and gave ten inches to Locks for Love. It's for a really good cause, and I got a free haircut out of it. Everyone says it looks really cute.
XIII) I forgot the number Mariah had mentioned. I'm not perfect, and I'm not afraid to admit that.
XIV) Fourteen is one of my favorite numbers. I don't know why. Nine is one too.
XV) Eh, I'll do an obvious one for this last one: My loves are the gospel, reading, writing, theatre, music, friends, and family.
So, was that good, Mariah? I hope I surprised you with at least one. And I miss you too. We really need to find a way to get together. I should be coming out to Utah in the late July/early August time frame. But you'll probably be home then, won't you? If that doesn't work, we'll just have to keep talking this way. I'll try to get on this more than I have.
I) I am diagnosed as having Aspurger Syndrome. It's a mild and very high functioning form of Autism.
II) I like Roman numerals. Especially for lists like these. It makes me think.
III) I am very stubborn about certain things. Ahem, er, pronunciations and such.
IV) I have made myself an expert on various subjects, Harry Potter being one that has held my attention the longest. But also: cheetahs, unicorns, trains, Twilight, Redwall, music, Narnia, Belgariad and Mallorean, math all the way up to Pre-Calc, cats, and the scriptures. Inside Hogwarts, I have also delved into the Marauder years, and practically have everything that is mentioned by JK Rowling about those years memorized.
V) I am currently doing a Role Play where I play Peter Pettigrew and Lily Evans along with my own original character. Speaking of which... I better go check the site and see if I need to write more Lily. We still need a Severus Snape though. We really need someone to play him. It's an site called Gaia Online. We are doing it through the guild, Never Forget. Frank Longbottom and Alice Longbottom nee Prewett are also characters I would like to see claimed. There are also others that could be claimed by anyone brave enough to try, and you also get to include an original character of your choice. (Sorry, couldn't resist the plug. We REALLY need a Severus.)
VI) I have deja vu experiences all the time. Although I have never met someone who has the same format to the experiences. I hear conversations around me, and sometimes I already have heard the same people say the same things, and know exactly how people will say the things they end up saying. I don't think that made sense, but trust me, it makes sense in my head. I use it just as verification that I am on the path I'm supposed to be on. (It usually happens at church functions anyway ^_^ )
VII) I'm not even half done with this list.
VIII) I have three visible scars on my body. Two are from falling down in parking lots. Those two are both on my left side. Make of that what you will.
IX) I have four nieces and one nephew. Ages 5, 3, 2, 2, and 1. Hmm, if you asked me the ages between July 26 and August 21, they would be 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. hee hee.
X) I have a very active imagination, and it fuels my humor as well as my writing.
XI) I have discovered that I am quite an actress. Out of my two theatre classes this year, both of my teachers have complemented me on my acting.
XII) I got a haircut this last week, and gave ten inches to Locks for Love. It's for a really good cause, and I got a free haircut out of it. Everyone says it looks really cute.
XIII) I forgot the number Mariah had mentioned. I'm not perfect, and I'm not afraid to admit that.
XIV) Fourteen is one of my favorite numbers. I don't know why. Nine is one too.
XV) Eh, I'll do an obvious one for this last one: My loves are the gospel, reading, writing, theatre, music, friends, and family.
So, was that good, Mariah? I hope I surprised you with at least one. And I miss you too. We really need to find a way to get together. I should be coming out to Utah in the late July/early August time frame. But you'll probably be home then, won't you? If that doesn't work, we'll just have to keep talking this way. I'll try to get on this more than I have.
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