Semele Perdita

Eh…whatever…I had a whim to write something for this…I know I haven't even set foot here in almost a year or something like that…I dunno what made me meander over here really…but here we are I suppose.

Email - xhandwrittenlove@gmail.com

LJ- http://www.livejournal.com/~astarstrucklady

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Semele Perdita

Chapter 16: The Tides of Change

Author: LadyAkako

Rating: PG-13

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From end of Chap. 16:::

We had carefully documented every secret passage way, trap door, and hidden room that we had found onto a piece of paper but we needed a few last charms to complete what we had in mind for it. Although Remus had been working on a charm to help show the locations of people in the castle, he hadn't ever been able to work out exactly how to perform the spell.

That was where Lily Evans fit in as she was the most brilliant witch at Charms that I had ever come across. Not to mention she was very pretty and a bit more sociable than the rest of the Ravenclaws. I could come to like this girl very much if she actually went through with it and helped us. I had never known possible contenders for Head Girl would agree to willingly break the rules.

Of course, that was only a plus.

“Whatcha thinkin' about, Prongs?” Remus tossed a question towards me, looking amused.

I snapped back into a more logical frame of mind, telling myself to quit thinking over the pretty redhead and start thinking more about the Map. Which in all logicality would only lead me to think of her more, but I would tackle that later.

“About the Map, Remus…” I began and all four of us talked of how we would go about getting Lily to do everything we need her to do well into the day.

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[ Lily ]

It was snowing. It was the first thing I noticed when I awoke on Christmas Day and it wasn't without a breath of sadness that I breathed in the crisp, frosty air that permeated through the room.

I was alone in the room of five beds during the holidays; even Meara had gone home and left me here. It had been happening more and more lately: her forgetting about me and me not telling her anything. It wasn't on purpose, it had just started happening and neither of us tried to stop it.

I knew that the two of us were drifting apart but I felt rather helpless to even try to stop it. I had never had a close friend like her before I came to Hogwarts, or at least one that stuck for more than a month, and now that the friendship that had endured us for six years of school was melting apart before my eyes I had no inkling of what to do to prevent it from happening.

I was at a loss as to what to say to her as our time together become tenser everyday we spent with each other. She had begun to withdraw herself even farther from social situations and had uttered no explanation for her slow transformation into a recluse. Although once it would not have taken a second thought from her to head outside to study with me on a sunny day, she now seemed to prefer to stay in the poorly lighted corners of the cob-web infested library.

I knew I could have fought it more, but my attempts at battling the invisible curtain that was rapidly coming between us were feeble at best. I was only half-heartedly fighting to keep my best friend with me, when a year ago I would have done anything to stop this from happening. When did we even start to drift apart? Was there a starting point for that kind of thing?

Well maybe there are starting points there other things, my leaped back to James Potter and the quaint smile he had flashed at me as he darted away right before he left. I had given up trying to figure out what I had gotten myself involved in and now I simply drifted back to the changes that I had seen in James.

He was more charming than I ever really gave him credit for, of course, and wasn't so bad anymore now that he had stopped strutting around the school picking on anyone who looked at him the wrong way.

I couldn't stop thinking about him and oh, had I tried. His easy smile swam in my mind every time I tried to pull out the unfinished Runes essay that he had interrupted me on. I decided it would probably be better for me to just steer clear of library, too, since that seemed to bring unwarranted images of him into my head as well.

In fact, all during Break I had contemplated the cryptic words he had said to me in the hallway.

Why was he asking me to help him, anyways? Remus was a fair hand at Charms, and I couldn't imagine that it was easy for the four of them to concede defeat so completely as to ask someone outside of their quartet, not to mention House, for help.

While my problems with Meara had disturbed me during the holidays so far, they never haunted me like the James Potter's face did. I had had more than ample time to mull over every last detail of both situations and had determined that both were out of my control, but for very different reasons.

There was one thing that I drew from both situations; I knew that the return of Meara, Potter and the rest of the school would bring change like the tides of the sea finally crashing in after lapping at the coast for a few hours.

With this thought, I stared out to the frozen lake on the grounds that had long since frozen over and ceased to lap at its own shores. As far as I could see across the grounds, Hogwarts was buried in glaringly white snow and a heavy sense of loneliness settled in me with this sight of the grounds being abandoned to the winter.

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They come back today, was the first thing that ran through my mind that morning. It was snowing again and this time I didn't note it with the same tinge of loneliness that had blanketed me during on Christmas Day, but with a new hope for the change that I had felt coming that day was on its way.

I hurried down to breakfast with an unusual breakfast, ready for it to be over and done with so the Hogwarts Express would arrive earlier. It was due to get to Hogsmeade at exactly noon and I felt a strange sense of urgency towards the train.

I brought along my book bag with a new determination to finish off that Runes essay that she had dawdled around all during holidays. I would not be caught unprepared tomorrow in class with an unfinished essay that could have been done weeks ago. I mean really, what would I have told my professor? `Uh, sorry Professor Flores, I couldn't concentrate on my Runes essay because I kept thinking about James Potter'? Yeah, that would have gone over well.

I lingered at breakfast as long as I could, loitering at the table trying to wheedle away the time. I stared at the ceiling of the Great Hall, watching as the colors of the sky shifted ever so subtly to hint slightly that time was passing. I finally began to wander outside the Great Hall and into the corridors eventually finding myself in the very hallway that had been the place of James Potter and mine's last conversation.

Briefly, as I looked around, reflecting on that day I realized that I had not been able to singularly refer to him as `James' or `Potter' since that day and he had been simply James Potter to me. I pondered what I would call him when I next saw him, but I didn't have time to delve deeply into this before I heard ever-increasing chattering voices filtering into the hall. It was that time already.

I started myself from my thoughts and began to trudge back towards the Ravenclaw Tower, realizing I still hadn't quite completed that essay yet.

I was almost to the Tower when I heard a voice calling my name behind me.

“Lily! Lily! Wait up!” I turned to see James Potter sprinting up to me and I managed a small smile. He grinned hugely, looking satisfied about something but before I could wonder what it was, he had grabbed my arm and begun to guide me in the opposite direction.

“Come on, we need to talk,” he said simply, as an explanation of this new route.

We walked for several minutes in silence with his hand still lightly resting on my arm, gently showing me which way to go in the dusty corridors he chose to go through. After going up a floor and entering a new set of hallways that were unfamiliar to me, I finally spoke.

“How were your holidays, James?” I inquired as lightly as I could, testing out the new way of addressing him delicately. He paused for a moment and then looked back at me with a slow smile and shrugged.

“Fine, I suppose,” came his reply a moment later.

“Just fine?” I asked good-naturedly. “I thought when you four all got together in one confined place you always had a grand old time.”

“Oh…well. It wasn't that, it's just…you know. Some news kind of rattled us all a little, but we had fun…yeah.” He shrugged again and offered a half-hearted smile to me that had a look of sadness in it. I swallowed the words stuck in my throat as our eyes caught in a look together for a moment.

The eye contact was broken with a loud clatter from down the hallway which caused me to jump out of surprise and for James to whirl around with his wand drawn.

“Who's there?” he asked to the darkness that enveloped the other half of the hallway.

“It's just me, Prongs,” the familiar voice of Sirius Black reached my ears, just as his lanky figure became silhouetted in the shadows. “A bit jumpy today, aren't you? Up to something you shouldn't be with a certain Ravenclaw Prefect, eh, Prongs?”

Sirius gave me a prodigious wink and I shook my head at him, with a total loss of anything to say. Luckily, James was used to the jibes of his friend.

“Just because you have to snog with every girl you lead down a hallway doesn't mean I have to, Sirius,” James retorted, the traces of sadness that I had seen him just moments ago tucked away, out of sight.

“Well, anyways, even if you don't take advantage of such an opportune situation, it's about time you got here,” Sirius commented. Dropping his voice, he added, “We've been waiting here forever for you two. It's going to be too late to go if we don't leave soon.”

“Right, let's go then. Where are Moony and Wormtail?” James agreed. He grabbed onto my arm again as I glanced between the two, trying to make out what they were talking about.

“Already left…they'll be waiting for us,” Sirius replied quickly.

James nodded and began to follow after Sirius, guiding me with hand, but I stopped him about halfway down the hallway having finally found the words to say what I was wondering.

“Where are we going?” I whispered to him.

He grinned at me in that quirky half-smile again and leaned down to mutter in my ear, “I guess you'll see when we get there.”

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Okay, end of whatever chapter this is. Review! Even if you are furious that it's been forever and year since I wrote something for this.

:-D

--Julie