Semele Perdita

Okay well, I did send this off to a beta, but I'm leaving in about 5 hours to catch a plane to L.A. and I seriously doubt I'll have internet connection so I thought I would post this before I left even if it is un-beta'd(and I'm terribly sorry for being impatient.) I'll see you all in two weeks!

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Semele Perdita

Chapter 22: Forgotten Birthdays and Discarded Newspapers

Author: LadyAkako

Rating: PG-13

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[ Lily ]

As it was, I stared at the house a long time before Meara pushed again at my back to guide me gently towards the door. My eyes took in the dearly familiar features of the cozy house that had been my home for the past eight years. It looked almost abandoned and lonely among the bright houses that surrounded it. Even the garden that my mother had loved was dying and brown.

I began absently rooting through my bag to find the long-lost key that would open the door to the house until I heard Meara comment softly, “It's already open.”

I looked up, startled, to see that I had indeed missed that the door was cracked open slightly. Confused, I followed Meara as she began to walk towards the door, pushing it open carefully. It creaked on its hinges, complaining loudly of being opened, but it swung open willingly enough after another push from Meara.

I perked my ears to any sound in the empty entrance hall, noticing peripherally that the once polished cabinets that displayed different awards and honors was dusty with misuse. I studied them sadly for a moment, reading the familiar plaques with a distant curiosity. It was strange for nothing to have changed in the house except for it acquiring a new layer of dust, it seemed like the house should have been empty…haunted by the ghosts of the people that had made it so cheerful.

Meara suddenly shoved my arm, her whole body had tensed and she pointed silently to the hallway that led to the kitchen and I suddenly became aware of voices chatting in the distance. Someone was here.

I once again strained to hear and was startled to realize I recognized one of the voices. The high, nasally voice was unmistakable. Petunia.

A million reasons raced through my mind as to why she would be here but none of them made any sense. She had made it a point to me that she would have nothing more to do with the house until I had moved all my stuff out of it. Had she gotten rid of my stuff while I was gone?

I crept towards the swinging door that led to the kitchen and pushed it open gently to see a young couple nodding along brightly to what Petunia was saying. I swallowed hard when I heard what she was saying.

“Yes…the kitchen is top-of-line, my father was always updating it with the latest things. This icebox was actually only bought about a year ago,” she was saying primly, with a smug look on her face. Suddenly, her eyes focused on me and her face contorted in rage. “What are you doing here?” she hissed.

“It is my house too, you know,” I said, gathering myself from the shock I had experienced from seeing her there. “I just got home from the train and though I might come get some things.”

Petunia smiled nastily and glared at me then turned back to the young couple, pasting a completely fake grin on her face and telling them to continue looking around the house while she talked to me. She headed straight towards me and practically pushed me out of the kitchen, causing Meara to stumble behind me into a wall.

Petunia, who hadn't noticed Meara until then, tensed and gave her a wary glare. She seemed to be looking for a wand or something to tell her that Meara was a witch but she wouldn't find one with her eyes. Meara looked the part of a Muggle easily with some help from me.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed, her eyes narrowing to slits in her horsey face.

“It's my house too,” I challenged, glaring back at her. “Who are those people?”

“For your information, those are the people who are buying the house,” Petunia said frigidly, crossing her arms across her chest and staring down her nose at me.

Her words set me back for a minute I felt my eyes widen ridiculously. I swallowed hard and fought back the sudden urge to cry. Sell the house? How could we sell the house?

Before I knew it, I had voiced these thoughts out loud and Petunia snorted in disbelief.

“You know just as well as I do that neither of us plan on living here. I'm doing you a favor by selling it, you'll probably need the money since no one will hire you or anything, you freak,” she spat out quietly, careful not to be overheard by the couple perusing around in the kitchen. My mother's kitchen.

The anger that welled up inside me caught me by surprise and I didn't even bother checking it from showing on my face.

“How could you even think about selling this house?” I asked emotionally, battling with my tears. “We grew up here. They put their whole lives into this house!” I raised my voice to a shout, almost wanting to be heard by the couple. I wanted them to know we were arguing, that they weren't welcome here by me.

“I am selling this house, for your information,” she said primly, straightening up, “for the better. It's time we put this house in our past and quit hanging onto it needlessly.”

“I will not let you sell this house!” I screamed hoarsely, my voice throaty from the burning tears that were causing my face to flush a violent red by now.

Meara cleared her throat loudly before Petunia, whose cold eyes were now flashing dangerously at me, could respond to me. She angled her head towards the entry hall behind us and Petunia and I both turned to see the young couple, who now looked decidedly uncomfortable.

The man, who looked to be in his mid-twenties was edging his hat around with his hands and shuffling his feet, looked incredibly nervous to be under such scrutiny. The woman was only a bit more collected and ran her fingers through her blonde hair, looking at the man instead of us.

He cleared his throat as well and nodded before saying, “Perhaps we should return some other time?” His eyes shifted between my sister and me before settling on a spot slightly behind us.

“Yes, perhaps you should,” I said frostily with a biting smile fleeting onto my face.

He nodded and seemed to swallow and guided his wife out the door hastily before Petunia could even call out to them to stop. She huffed and turned on her heel to storm into the kitchen.

Meara rolled her eyes and gestured for me to follow Petunia, our argument wasn't over yet. I nodded and breathed in deeply, squaring my shoulders against what was about to come.

I pushed the door open to see my sister leaning against the counter with her back to me, staring out the window above the sink. Her frame had gotten thinner since I last saw her and her hair was a deeper shade of mahogany than it had ever been. I couldn't help noticing that her face had longer shadows in it these days, but just as I was about to break the silence something shiny on her finger caught my eye.

A ring. A very large ring was on her finger.

When did she get engaged? Was she already married?

I found myself transfixed by the ring and walked toward her until I was only a few steps away.

“Who gave you the ring?” I asked quietly, in the most offhand way I could. I was still fighting the tears of earlier and my voice hadn't fully recovered from my screaming either.

Petunia jaw moved slightly in surprise but she didn't look at me, instead she continued to stare out the window blankly. She shook her head and pulled her hand away from my view as if to study the ring herself. Her eyes flickered toward the floor for a split second before returning to the window.

“Vernon Dursley,” she replied almost inaudibly.

Dursley. The name struck a chord in me but I couldn't place a face with the potent name. Suddenly, an image of a ruddy-faced, stocky man swam into my mind. Petunia had been seeing him last summer but at the time it had seemed like only a passing fancy. He was well-off and destined to become successful in the firm he worked at, but our parents had hated him and so had I. But she had been so stubborn about him, sometimes I even believed she wanted to be with him just because we had all hated him.

“Him?” was all I could think of to say.

“Him.” She nodded and sighed. “Lily, we have to sell this house.”

I crumbled at her soft tone and tried desperately to suppress the resentful feelings that rushed inside of me. She was right, but I didn't want to let go of this house.

“Can't we wait a little while?” I asked, trying not to sound like I was pleading.

She sighed again and finally turned toward me. I was shocked to see a tiny pool of tears in her eyes. I had never seen my sister cry before and I looked away to let her wipe away the tears without embarrassing her.

“How long do you want to wait? It's been a year, Lily,” she argued, studying me with the most civil eye she had used on me in a long time.

“Christmas, I want until Christmas,” I said, nodding to myself. I needed to think about this some more and that would be the next time I would be home.

“Christmas?!” she cried out, throwing her arms up at me.

“Christmas. Half of this house is mine too and I need some time to let it go,” I said softly. Petunia clenched her jaw again but finally nodded, giving her consent.

“I'll wait until Christmas, but I don't want to hear anything more about it. Ever. And after this house is sold, I don't want to hear from you either,” she commented stiffly, with a touch of the nastiness from earlier. “I don't ever want you bringing your friends from there here either. Get your stuff out and leave.”

“It's my house too, they left it to both of us,” I said incredulously. What was her problem?

“Get you stuff and get out,” she spit at me, turning her now glassy eyes on me unfeelingly.

“Fine, but I'm coming back next Christmas and am bringing whoever I want with me and then you can do whatever you want with this house. Have it leveled for all I care!” I cried out and spun away from her to go find Meara who had never followed me into the kitchen.

I found her sitting idly on the stairs and staring at a painting on the wall that pictured a vase of beautiful daisies. Her eyes roved over the walls hungrily, drinking in every detail as if she were reading a book and was trying to piece together clues to some mystery that was difficult to unravel.

I just looked at her for a moment, taking in her hair pulled distractedly into a ponytail and the oversized jumper and faded jeans that had been borrowed from my wardrobe and were a little too big on her tiny frame. She too had lost weight, I noticed. I wondered vaguely when she had, I had never noticed her growing so skinny but now she looked almost frail.

“Hey,” I said, leaning against the banister. She looked up in feigned surprise and her forehead wrinkled as she looked over my face. She nodded though and rose, as if waiting for my direction. “Let's go upstairs. It's the first room on the right.”

“Sure,” she agreed quietly and started shuffling up the stairs with me in tow. She opened the door to my old room slowly, taking in the empty walls curiously. I had taken all my posters at the end of last summer, one day I had just felt the need to just tear them from the wall, hating the happy faces that stared at me from them. The only thing still pinned neatly on the wall was a single picture of me with my parents at King's Cross Station right after I had returned from my first year at Hogwarts.

I only glanced at it before tearing it from the wall and placing it on my bed face-down. Meara raised an eyebrow at the action but still didn't say anything. Finally after sitting down next to me on the bed, she leaned against the wall and asked, “What now?”

I stared out in my room, taking in how nothing had even been touched since I left last summer. The drawers were still half-in, half-out with clothes hanging out from them and jewelry was strewn across my dresser among candy wrappers and pens.

“We need boxes,” I groaned in realization. Why hadn't I thought of that before? It seemed so obvious. What else could I put all this junk in?

“And?” Meara asked, unperturbed.

“Umm… I don't know,” sinking back against the wall in defeat.

“So just boxes?” she asked, still incredibly calm.

“Yeah, that's all,” I snapped, annoyed with her indifference.

“Okay,” she said, unaffected by the harshness of my tone. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her pull something from her jumper but didn't bother to look what it was. She obviously wasn't hiding a box under there so it didn't really matter to me at the moment. When I heard her mutter a conjuring spell, I almost hit my head against the wall in surprise. She was definitely not old enough to be doing magic outside of Hogwarts. Was being arrested for underage magic really worth a few boxes?

“What are you doing?” I asked in shock. I almost grabbed the wand from her hands but I was almost impossibly happy to see a dozen boxes lying open on my floor where a minute ago there had only been clutter.

“Getting you boxes,” she replied simply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“I know what you're doing…but what are you doing? You're underage!”

“No, I'm not,” she laughed shortly, almost bitterly.

“What are you…” I started and then trailed off with a gasp. “Oh my…Meara! I'm so sorry! Why didn't you say anything?”

“It's fine, it's just a birthday,” she muttered quietly, picking at my bed sheets.

“No, it's not fine!” I practically shouted. I couldn't believe I had been so blind. I had overlooked my best friend's birthday which I knew was always in the last week of school. How had I forgotten something like that?

“It really is…I didn't feel like celebrating anyways,” she replied with another tiny laugh. She scooted over closer to me and leaned her head on my shoulder. I returned the gesture and sighed, staring at the empty, white walls that surrounded us.

“We're going out to dinner tonight to celebrate,” I said firmly and before she could protest I added, “and you're not going to get out of it no matter what you say. Now come on, we've got to get this stuff put up into these boxes.”

She shook her head at me but then finally consented, taking a look around my room and reaching for her wand again. With a flick and a wave, all of my things were packed neatly away in the boxes and the boxes were pocket-sized on the gray carpet of my room.

“That was much easier than I anticipated,” I said, as cheerfully as I could.

“Yes, well, magic does tend to simplify things,” Meara said, joining in my almost-chipper mood. I reached down to stuff as many of the boxes in pocket as I could and handed the rest to Meara who tucked them away in hers. She patted her pocket and stowed her wand away in her jumper again.

“So where would you like to go for your special birthday dinner?” I asked with a smile, hooking my arms with hers as we left my now empty room. The lights outside were beginning to dim and evening was setting in, we would have to go out soon if we were to make it to Meara's countryside home at any decent hour.

“Well…I have always wanted to go to one of those pizza places you Muggleborns are always raving about…” she suggested with a smile in return. She looked genuinely happy as we walked out the front door to find our trunks and things just where we had left them in the front yard.

“What a coincidence…I know where the best one in London is,” I joked and we set off to celebrate her no longer overlooked birthday.

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[ James ]

After we had gotten off the train and chatted outside for a fair while, the four of us finally parted ways for at least a little while. I knew I would be seeing at least one of my friends, whether it would be Sirius or Remus first I didn't know, within a month, so I didn't stress over the break too much. Peter, I knew, would be joining us after he got home from his vacation in France which would take up a good half of his summer. It was the first time he has ever been out of the country, so we were all happy to let him go even if we would miss his company for a while.

My father was waiting patiently at the station, dressed casually in an unassuming tan trench coat, with his robes tucked surreptitiously underneath. He was holding what looked to be the day's Daily Prophet and his face had acquired several new creases since I had last seen him over Christmas holidays. His skin tone seemed almost gray compared to his tan overcoat and his usual warm smile was replaced instead by an expression that looked like a permanent grimace.

He didn't reply to my greeting just nodded and looked around the station. I studied his profile again and wondered what had happened to harden the loving man that I had always known to be my father. I knew the war was worsening, but I had had no forethought on how it would have affected my family. I couldn't even fathom what kind of state my mother was in if my father was like this all the time.

We walked in silence to the Floo Network and waited there until it was our turn, my father taking the powder and shouting gruffly “Potter's Residence!”

Once we had arrived at home, I shook the ash from my clothes and looked around, thankful to see that at least my home didn't seem to have changed since I had left it. The kitchen was still warm stone and dark wood and the hallways were still covered with pictures of the family.

My father threw the paper he had been holding down on the kitchen table and walked away to his study without a word. I watched him go, deep in thought as to what was consuming him so much. I knew that I needed to talk to him, to tell him about what we had heard at Hogwarts about this war and to ask what else was going on that we hadn't been allowed to hear, but first I turned my eyes to look at the paper that he had tossed on the table.

I was wrong, it was a Muggle newspaper and it was almost a week old. It had two huge pictures of what looked to be colossal train wrecks side by side and a headline that screamed “RECENT TRAIN WRECK IN EDINBURGH MIRRORS SURREY DISASTER.” Curious, I picked up the paper and started to read.

A recent train wreck in Edinburgh has completely stumped local police and experts in the field as to what caused it to derail and tumble into the valley it was crossing, but strangely enough the wreck has been cited to almost exactly mirror the train wreck in Surrey that killed thirty-two people last year in July.

The train wreck in Surrey derailed as well and was sent plowing into a field that the train track followed, but the reason for the train to de-rail was never determined and is still under scrutiny.

Here I stopped…something rang a bell about a train wreck in Surrey. What was it? I remember hearing about it from someone.

Meara. I had heard about it from Lily's friend.

A sudden rush of memories flooded me.

“Her parents died in a train wreck last summer and she hasn't been acting the same since.” Riley's eyes caught mine suddenly, the sadness in them had surprised me. “I've been worried about her, but I never thought she'd land herself in the hospital wing because of it. I thought she was smarter than that.”

“Of course...” I said to myself and picked up the newspaper again, heading to my father's study quickly. I knocked on the door and waited impatiently until I heard him tell me to come in. I burst in with the newspaper in hand and his eyes flickered to it in surprise.

“What are you doing with that?” he asked, his expression darkening.

“Why do you have it?” I challenged.

“Son, I value your curiosity, but it's really none of your business at the moment,” he said, snatching the paper from my hands and putting it carefully on his desk. “If you're interested in the war, I would suggest you find something other than a Muggle paper to read. It won't tell you much.”

“What's so special about those train wrecks?” I asked, moving towards the paper. “There's something special about them or you wouldn't have the paper.”

“Son,” my father started sternly, blocking my path to the paper, “you don't know—”

“I need to know, please,” I broke in, “It concerns someone I know.”

My father's expression changed suddenly and he studied me for a moment, gauging my sincerity. He nodded then and went back to sit at his desk. I sat down in the single armchair on the other side of the desk and waited for his explanation.

“We're investigating the possibility that this new group of radicals, called the Death Eaters as you know, are behind the train wrecks,” he started slowly, idly playing with the edge of the newspaper. “We have reason to believe they were trying to eliminate some very important wizards that were trying to travel on the trains, but we don't know anything for certain yet. Now, why does this matter concern you so much? Is it one of the guys that has a relation to this?”

“No…no, it's a girl I know. Her parents were killed in the first one, I'm pretty sure…” I said, swallowing the information carefully. “I mean…I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure.”

“I see,” my father replied slowly, steeping his fingers in thought. “What's this girl's name?” He asked with a sudden, knowing smile that cracked the grayed features into somewhat of a semblance of his normal, happy appearance.

“No…it's not like that, I mean, not yet. I mean…no, uh—we're just friends.” I tripped over my words, trying to struggle out some sort of explanation.

“What's her name, son?” My father asked again, patiently with a twinkle of amusement in his deep hazel eyes.

“Uh…” I swallowed, gathering myself. “Lily, Lily Evans.”

“You like her?” he questioned, laughing as he did so.

“Um...I guess, I mean…yeah, but uh—she doesn't…I don't know…” I mumbled, staring at my shoelaces. I had never really asked myself that question before, I had just let whatever happened with her happen.

“I'm glad to see you finally taking an interest in something besides Quidditch, James, but when did my little boy grow so old that he started being interested in girls?” The teasing voice behind me startled me, making me jump up from my seat but I composed myself a moment later and a huge grin jumped onto my face.

“Mum!” I laughed and crossed the room to give her a hug.

She swatted playfully at my messy hair and hugged me to her tightly, commenting briefly on how tall I had gotten. I rolled my eyes and played along until she let me go and announced dinner would be ready in a matter of seconds and we had both better get down to the dining room soon or she'd have us for dinner tomorrow.

My father smiled at her and agreed, clapping me on the back as we followed my mother to the dining hall in relative silence. I smiled to myself, glad to be home even if there was a war brewing just outside the walls of our house.

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Leave me lots of lovely reviews for when I get home! ;-)

And a question for everyone: whose summer are you more interested in seeing in the next few chapters? And would you like summer to be several chapters or just 1 or 2 more after this one?

Let me know!:-)