Cruel Summer
After Remus had taken James, Sirius and Peter out and away from her, she had had a wonderful - peaceful - time. As soon as they had left, Lily had sat down for 10 minutes just taking in the tranquillity of not having 4 idiot boys around her. She decided that she would make the most of James' absence and she would have a nice big bubble bath that every girl deserved once in a while.
Running the water nice and hot, she filled up the tub and got in. The water came up to her chin as she sunk deeper into its depths and she closed her eyes and luxuriated in its hotness.
Mmmm, I could lay here forever.
The gorgeous lavender scent was slowly soothing away all her stresses and was gently summoning her eyes to close. She obeyed instantly and let the water take her. Drifting into…a…nice…deep…slumber.
It was cold.
`Where am I?' she thought, looking around the white room.
She couldn't see anything apart from the brightness of the white walls.
`Are they walls?'
She looked down at the floor, but there was nothing.
She didn't see anything, not floor, not a bottomless pit; just a void, of time, of vision.
There was a smell as well.
Like burnt flowers.
A backwards autumn.
A nothingness.
`What is this?' her mind asked.
Death?
She laughed in spite of herself, but the sound wasn't there.
Then, as if it had been there all the time, the walls started to darken.
Being imprisoned by a kind of force.
A kind of language.
One she couldn't recognise, one that her mind didn't want her to recognise.
The symbols moved until she realised that the white room was an oval, and the words were its prisoner.
Like her, captive and alone.
They circled around her, waiting and taunting. Wanting her to know and angering because she didn't.
It was too much.
They surrounded her essence, blocking it in until she could feel it pressing, closer against the air that suspended her.
The cold was worse now, biting into her and all she could do was wait until it engulfed her.
She felt the air shift as the language neared, felt its icy breath as it sighed its promise, felt it pulse against her; waiting, always waiting.
The pulse was becoming more significant now and it progressed into a loud beat.
A thumping even; the only sound allowed to exist.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
`Sssh,' she wanted to scream, `shut up!'
Bang!
Bang!
Lily jolted awake, violently sloshing water over the side of the bath tub.
`Shit!' she muttered, looking over the side at the wet floor.
Bang! Bang!
She nearly smacked her head on the side of the wall as the sound reverberated through the bathroom.
`Lily!' Petunia shouted, `Get out of the bathroom now! You've been in it for hours and I need the toilet!'
`Ok!' she snapped back, still startled by the weird dream she just had.
Lily looked at the bath full of cold water, the Lavender bath oil on the surface of it, like a nasty scum.
`Lovely,' she thought out loud and looked at the shower clock.
It flashed 02:14.
Groaning about having to take another bath, she lifted herself out of the tub and grabbed the towel that hung on the rack. She wrapped it around her cold body and secured it in place. Lily looked at herself in the oval mirror, picking up her flannel and just wiping it over her face quickly.
After drying herself off, she changed quickly into her vest top and shorts pyjamas and opened the door of the bathroom.
Petunia ambled in, muttering something about stupid people and time wasting, and Lily walked into the hall and then into the secure-ness of her own room.
Unwrapping the covers, and climbing into the soft sheets, she flopped down onto the mattress.
`Lily.'
She shifted in her bed and turned over, groaning a protest.
`Liilllyyy.'
`Go away,' she grumbled quietly, pulling the covers over her head and burying herself under it.
`Evans, wake up!'
Lily opened her eyes, pulled the covers back and squinted around her dark room. She glanced at her alarm clock, only showing the time about 2 hours after she'd last looked in the bathroom.
Who the hell is that?
She grudgingly got out of her warm bed, walked to the window and opened it. The cold night air hit her hard in the face as she looked down onto the grass. What she saw quickly brought the anger she had felt earlier, up tenfold.
`What are you doing?' she hissed at his grinning face.
James looked back at her, still grinning like a Cheshire cat.
`Hey honey, I'm home!' he declared, exploding in a fit of laughter.
Lily nearly died with anger, `Are you drunk?'
James looked at her and laughed again, `So what if I am? Is the Head Girl gonna give me detention?'
She ignored his stupid comment and hissed at him again, `Would you shut it? What if you wake my parents up?'
`The more the merrier!'
`Just shut up!'
James paused and frowned, `I knew you'd do this, I told Sirius that you would!'
`I'm going to kill Sirius!' she shot at him.
James groaned in his drunken haze and muttered something unintelligent, flopping down onto the grass.
Lily pulled herself back through the window, grabbed her wand that was sitting on her bed table and walked out of her room. As she walked out onto the landing she walked over to her parents room to see if they'd woken, but when she looked through the door they were fast asleep as if nothing had happened. She breathed a sigh of relief before closing the door quietly as she heard James call her name again. She trudged down the stairs and walked to the front door, pulling it open. Lily walked over to James' form lying on her front lawn; he was holding his head and talking to himself.
Idiot.
`Get up,' she hissed, holding her wand in her right hand.
James groaned and looked up at her. He turned over and attempted to stand up, managing the task quite ungracefully.
Watching him stumble about, Lily had decided to change her decision about making him sober. She thought that the hang over he would get in the morning would be ideal punishment for the last couple of days.
Couple of days? It felt 5 years already!
`Just get in the house,' she growled at him, `before you wake up the whole street.'
Lily grabbed his arm as he was about to stumble into her Mother's flower garden, and steered him through the front door.
`Where's Sirius, Remus and Peter?' she asked him as he tripped up the stairs.
`Dunno,' he muttered.
Yeah, why couldn't you have gone with them?
Lily led him to the guest bedroom, opened the door and pushed him inside. He staggered over to the bed and sat down on it, trying to remove his Muggle trainers but failing on the account that he couldn't work the laces. Lily sighed and flicked her wand in his direction, causing the trainers to undo and slip from his feet. James fell back onto the mattress and immediately dropped into sleep.
At the point in time, Lily felt a strong urge to curse him into never being able to sleep again.
She hated him.
And for him to just wreck her sleep and then drift so easily into it himself, felt completely unfair and she felt like he needed to be punished…horribly. Considering the rewarding effects of torture, a yawn broke across her face, and she decided to return to her plotting in the morning.
`Don't worry,' she thought, as she walked back into her room, `I won't forget.'
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