Semele Perdita

*die, gasp, shock* I actually updated…surprised even myself…no seriously my colossal apologies to everyone and I feel horrible but you see I have been deserted by my Muse for quite some time now and I’m deprived of a nice sarcastic person to talk to every day now that so many people are mad at me(both here and RL..imagine that) but I somehow managed to squeeze this from my guilt for you guys and if I take more than a month and a half to get the next chapter out, you may start sending threatening emails all you like. I know this chapter is short, but it’s kind of an in-between chappy. Thanks!

I know it’s incredibly short, but it is something, so….anyways…read on!

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Semele Perdita

Written By: LadyAkako

Chapter 12: Everyone Is Lazy Around The Holidays

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-Lily-

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You could always tell when the Christmas Hols were coming up. Everyone’s eyes were rolled more frequently at the insistence of more homework (it’s preparing us for the NEWTs, our teachers all insisted) and the longing stares out the windows became more and more common during class.

The snow started a bit late this year, therefore when it finally started, it sent the whole school into estatics and the inevitable snow fights. I did my best to steer clear of the grounds this time of the year. Besides the fact that I despised the cold, I did not want to feel any form of snow, charmed, hexed, or regular, down my jumper, as it had a habit of showing up there if you so much as ventured out into the grounds. This may have been due mainly to the fact that it was mostly certain Gryffindor boys out there who always insisted on dumping it in any way they could, on anyone they could.

Our dorm had virtually and literally exploded with the usual holiday fever. Virtually in the sense that everyone was so chipper about going home, conversations I steered clear of carefully, and literally in the sense that all the girls’ trunks in my room had seemingly emptied all their contents on the carpet to be rooted through for certain pieces that ‘they just couldn’t be without.’ Meara and I had a particularly good time hiding Dorcas Meadows’ favorite jumper in the furnace. It had taken her hours to find it and the girl was nearly in tears, thinking she had lost it.

Not that I meant to be mean-spirited, but honestly, a simple summoning spell and she wouldn’t have needed to even spent a moment searching for the blasted jumper. Stupid girl, sometimes I wonder how she even got into Ravenclaw.

I spent most of my time in the common room, reading through a spare book or doing one of the interminable essays that Professor McGonagall seemed so fond of assigning. Not that I didn’t enjoy Transfiguration, it was just that the essays were so pointless sometimes. We spent hours every week going over it and then she assigns us even more work to do on it. You would think that most of the dolts that I have class with would get the concept by then, but I hear some of them resort to tutoring still. Honestly, if they take NEWT level classes, they should at least be prepared to deal with them. Then again, the ones who did that sort of thing were the boys, who might just be into the tutoring for a nice snog session afterwards, seeming how most all the tutors are female and desperate, even if they were smart.

Meara did, on a lark, she had explained to me. I found it riotously funny when she got assigned to Kingsley Shacklebolt, a rather ‘off’ kid from Gryffindor who was a year below us that spent most of his time reading up on various curses and charms and then illustrating them. She didn’t seem to find it amusing and wouldn’t speak to me for poking fun at it for several days.

It was the last day before everyone left, and I was lounging in the dorm, when I heard the only two people I’d ever held a grudge against for a long period of time come into the room, chatting up a storm as usual. Laila and Violet had both equally ignored me, not even acknowledging I existed ever since the “incident.” I was perfectly fine with not registering on their radar; personally, I wouldn’t care if they never spoke to me again.

I learned to be thankful of these periods of ignorance and silence when my sister used to do the same after I had done something to embarrass her. Which was quite often in my childhood life before Hogwarts, now, of course, Petunia and I were on non-speaking terms all year round. It seems just my being in existence was an embarrassment to her now. I wasn’t looking forward to summer when I would have to face her again. With any luck, I would be able to stay at Meara’s home for the most part.

As soon as two aforementioned girls entered the dorm, I packed up the Arithmancy textbook I had lying out on my bed along with many stray papers with scribbles all over them, into my rucksack and headed out of the door without a word.

Laila’s over exaggerated whisper of, “Her family doesn’t even want her to come home, what a freak,” followed me as hurried out. I felt my hand shaking slightly as I closed the door, tears stinging at the backs of my eyes. I swallowed the stinging response that burned at my throat and just walked away from both of their following eyes, my jagged fingernails biting into my palms in an attempt to calm my nerves. I knew they were watching for a reaction, they always did.

I hurried myself out of the dorms and down to the common room, to see that all the tables and the usual crowd of bookworms and over-achievers occupied comfy armchairs. I sighed in exasperation; this meant I would have to go all the way to the library just to finish a stupid half-inch on the Arithmancy essay. Of course, I could have just glared at one of the first or second years until they vacated their perches, but I wasn’t exactly in a particularly mean mood at the moment. Annoyed, yes, I would even go so far as to say pissed, but not malicious…at least not towards the first and second years. No, I would much rather strangle a certain little miss priss from my own year, namely Laila Geer, but Violet would do. Although, I was really burning to finish the job I had begun the night Laila threw my mother’s gift in the fire. It wasn’t as if it was valuable or anything, it was just a worn out copy of Shakespeare sonnets, but it was one of the only things that was truly mine that my mother had given me. All the rest of it was still at the house, which had probably been completely gutted and all my stuff that was there thrown out, knowing Petunia.

So I soon deduced the only place of refuge left was the library, so off I went. Luckily the library wasn’t far from the Ravenclaw common room, and I didn’t have to switch arms too many times, as I was carrying quite a load. The Arithmancy texts just seemed to get thicker and thicker every year, a real strain on the arm muscles.

I walked quickly, hoping no one would stop me for a chat; I wasn’t up for idle chatter at the moment.

As soon as I reached the library I headed for a table near the back and dumped my load onto the empty surface. My Arithmancy text went skittering across the table and onto the floor on the other side of the table and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Everything was bound to go wrong today, wasn’t it?

The book landed with an audible thud and flipped itself open to a creased page with notes tucked inside that detailed some rune we had studied almost a month ago. They were scrambled in between idle doodles and sandwiched by short humorous sidelines that Marlene McKinnon, a Gryffindor who I sat by, had felt compelled to write on the margins. In Marlene’s neat handwriting that contrasted so much to my own loopy and loose, came phrases such as “Why bother writing down this rubbish?” “Don’t you think Daren looks cute today?” “You need to get a boyfriend you know…” It continued on in that fashion, most of the little notes about Marlene’s crushes and how much she disliked Runes. Even if I religiously wrote notes in Runes (if I didn’t, I would be lost faster than who knows what), I wasn’t too keen on them either, so Maureen’s jokes about the memory acronyms and tricks Professor Sinistra gave us always made me smile.

After reading over the notes for a moment I gathered up the scattered papers and the textbook slowly and placed them back on the table, pulling a few stray sheets out of the binding the text and placing them in a pile to the side. Grabbing the parchment that I had been scrawling my essay on before I had to leave, I flipped the pages of the book until I reached a dog-eared page with title ‘THE GEMINI RUNES.’

“These runes are named for their close resemblance to each other in the shape and meaning. They share the same broad, smooth texture and intricate detail in their images….”

I skimmed the information on the page, already knowing most of it from the last two hours I had spent trying to expand it into a substantial essay. So far, it wasn’t working.

I was really wishing I had Meara around to lighten the burden of this project, as she could actually understand a lot of the stuff in the textbooks that I never can. She was a true Ravenclaw…me? I just couldn’t fit in any other house.

Really if you look at it, I’m a bit snarky and sometimes I admit I can be a bit harsh, but I really don’t have any ulterior motive…I just don’t like some people. But me, sneaky? Yeah right. Mark Slytherin off my resume.

I wasn’t particularly just or fair to everyone. I usually act and speak before I think, something very un-Hufflepuff like. They’re so methodical and careful and I just trapeze through everything. So go ahead and scratch that idea.

Now then Gryffindor…well, I’m not brave at all. I’m terrified of bugs and well…a lot of things. So I really don’t fit the mold there either.

As I’ve mentioned before my house is a house for all the insatiable bookworms and intellectuals. While my wits are much sharper than the majority of my year, I don’t feel a belonging to Ravenclaw either. I really don’t enjoy being buried in books all year round, how boring would that get? Why don’t they live a little?

Not ‘living a little’ as say the Gryffindors would (sneaking out at all hours of the night to get who knows what), or the Slytherins would (playing horrible tricks on anyone who would stand still long enough), and I wasn’t even sure what the Hufflepuffs did for fun, but I would like to see even a nice snowball fight (even if I hated the cold they were fun) occasionally between some of my housemates. I’ve come to realize, over the last year or so, that if I wanted to have fun, like I imagined it, I would have to start making friends with people from other houses.

This was how I met Marlene McKinnon, who later formally introduced me to the Marauders…the troublemakers of the school. I didn’t know them well; just enough to have slightly negative opinions of the four, especially James Potter. I swear his head got so swollen sometimes that he just needed a nice, hard whack across the temple.

Weeks ago at detention, I had admitted to myself after some thought that I had quite enjoyed his spontaneous, if not reckless, sense of adventure. He had shown me a different perspective of the Hogwarts world that night and I was still quite intrigued on how he came to find it. That was something I may never know, as the Marauders were all very secretive on where exactly they get their ‘information.’

I hadn’t spoken to James again after that night, but just as I caught myself staring curiously at the boy, I found him stealing a few glances at me. Maybe it was all in my mind though; it was all some kind of paranoia. I wouldn’t put it past myself these days.

I started suddenly, realizing I had been staring at the same paragraph for quite some time without actually absorbing any of it and instead just letting my thoughts wander as usual. I allowed my right index finger to lazily trail on the yellowing page of the text in swirling lines and random designs.

I was getting nowhere fast on this essay. I sighed and started collecting the scattered papers from earlier, I would have to finish it later when I wasn’t so distracted. It wasn’t due until after the holidays anyways, I had just wanted to get it done early so I didn’t have to do anything over the Hols.

Once I had stuffed everything back into a semblance of a pile, I lay my head on a makeshift pillow of my arms, letting my eyes flutter close for a moment. The last few days’ events were finally catching up with me. I could feel it.

I yawned heavily and stretched my legs under the table, not letting my head leave its precarious position in the cradle of my arms.

It was quite a few minutes before I was disturbed by a deep voice I didn’t immediately recognize calling my name.

“Lily? Lily?” the voice whispered near my ear.

I groaned and turned my head in the direction of the sound, sliding one eye open to see the amused face of James Potter staring down at me.

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…..*blink*…..you know you still love me :-D

thanks to my reviewers:

bondariana – hey! I was wondering where you had disappeared too, thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews and that artwork is amazing. Thanks as always for your support, you really made me smile when I saw you had reviewed after so long of no one saying anything about this story.

Nadine – hey, nice to see you again as well. Hope you keep reading!

Lady In Black – hey, well, tour has come and past but you know…I’m horrible with deadlines.

Alyinat – well, I guess you’ll have to see if it will bloom or not then

Shortcake – thank you for the compliment, I hope this little interlude will satisfy your curiosity for now…

Draco’s Gurl – I thought it was romantic too, really :-D so sorry I made you wait for so many months

PhoenixPheather – we all must wait for the fluff I fear, though I do love writing…so silly and fun…but *sigh* I’m afraid Lily and James will have to go through a few trials before they get together

Also thanks so much to: Anonymous, pottersgirl363, Anonymous, angel_fire242002, Anonymous, GreenEggsandHam, Loswen of Tatharian, KJBridgerton, da understamding reviewer, Anonymous

Now review…or I shall never write again!