I'll Fight For You
By Hazelmist/Summerskies
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to J. K. Rowling.
Chapter 17: I'm Not Crazy
I hate Potter.
I never liked him.
Ever.
I don't care if he's attractive-just a little, I'll admit-or if he's funny-sometimes-or tolerable-rarely-or kind-next to never-or humble-I'm not sure if Potter knows the definition of this word-he's still a prat, one that I hate. Nothing's going to change that, nothing, you hear me? NOTHING.
So what if we played in the snow today? So what if I let him put his arms around me? I was cold, okay? End of story.
It bugs me though, that I would blush in his presence and snuggle with him, that I would allow that to happen, even if it was only because I was cold. I actually felt…happy, happier than I had in a long time. That bothers me. "Potter" and "making me happy" don't belong in the same sentence.
I hate him!
I can't sleep because I keep thinking about him. His face keeps drifting back into my head, appearing on my closed lids and taking over my thoughts. I keep replaying over and over again the snowy childish romp we'd had, which ended with the two of us lying on our backs, snuggled up in the snow, and perfectly content. Who knows how long we stayed out there. It could've been days or it could've been seconds. My sense of time has been so badly shaken that I don't even know the date or the day of the week anymore. When it started to get dark I cleared my throat and, realizing the awkwardness of the situation, sat up and said we better go inside. So we did. I remember vaguely playing a game of Exploding Snap in my room with an infuriated Gracie who kept complaining about Sirius, until she went off on such a rant that she left without even saying goodnight.
So I changed and got into bed because I was tired.
But two hours later, as the witching hour passes, I can't sleep.
Damn him.
I get up, tossing the covers off of me. Throwing on my dressing robe, I quietly slip out of the bedroom. The hallway's deserted and dark save for the flickering light of a candle at the opposite end of the hall. I tiptoe the length of the carpet, praying that I don't wake anyone up, but as the light crawls toward me, casting my own shadow upon the opposite wall, I realize that I sent out my prayer moments too late.
"Come on, Gracie, cut it out!"
I stop dead in my tracks, immediately recognizing the voice.
"James?" I whisper.
James is standing on a staircase, where he'd been gazing down at the landing below. He moves the candle he's carrying from side to side, as if trying to cast me into better light. When he recognizes me, his eyes cloud over with confusion and he frowns.
"Lily, is that you?" he asks, despite the fact that we're a mere ten feet away from each other and he has a candle in my face.
"No, I'm Gracie." I roll my eyes, wondering how he could possibly mistake me for my best friend. I know he has trouble seeing, but the idiot has his glasses on so he should have no trouble identifying me. I mean in the daylight he can spot me from miles away. He stalks me and he stares at me all the time so you'd think that he'd be able to find me in a black hole by now.
"Oh, sorry. I could've sworn I saw Gracie. I heard her walking around and then I thought I saw her go downstairs… Hang on a second…" James pauses, a mischievous grin spreading across his face. "What are you two doing up at this hour? Conspiring? Getting involved in illegal activities?" he asks, wiggling his eyebrows.
"That's your job, James, remember? And I'm sure sleeping alone hardly counts as an illegal activity." I fold my arms across my chest, wondering what he's playing at.
"You're not sleeping now," James points out.
"Well, I was." That's a lie, I wasn't sleeping, but I was trying to.
"No, you weren't." He grins and I blush.
I'm a horrible liar.
"Well, I would've been, if it hadn't been for you!" I snap.
Immediately I want to take these words and shove them back into my mouth, but luckily James doesn't seem to be listening.
"So, is Gracie downstairs waiting for you? And don't even try to feed me that she's-with-Sirius bull crap because I already checked, he's asleep," he says, looking around as if Gracie might suddenly Apparate into our midst-which she can't, because she's not seventeen yet either.
"Well, so is Gracie," I inform him confidently.
"Oh, really? How sure are you of that, because I could've sworn I just saw her sneaking off downstairs…" he trails off, smirking.
"James, I can hear her snoring from here."
James goes quiet, listening hard. I can almost see his ears wiggling and flicking as they try to catch the soft sound that's undeniably Gracie's loud snores. Well it has to be, I mean, where else could she be? And since I just basically put my life at stake here, that better be Gracie snoring in her bed or I will kill her tomorrow.
"I don't believe you," he says stubbornly.
I throw up my hands and march down the hall to Gracie's room. I admit I'm a tiny bit nervous, especially since I can't hear her snoring anymore. I'm right, of course, I have to be right. If I'm not Potter's going to say he told me so and smirk and do his cocky I'm-the-king-of-the-world swaggering dance and never let me live it down that I was actually wrong once. I'll show him.
"Well?" James asks, looking at the door expectantly.
"What?" I ask snappishly.
"Are you going to open it?" He gestures toward the doorknob, which my hand is resting lightly upon but refuses to turn.
"James, she's asleep for Merlin's sake, I don't want to disturb her."
I don't want to find out that I'm wrong. I don't want Potter to be right.
"I can't hear anything," James says in a singsong voice, leaning his ear against the door.
"Fine!"
I turn the knob and open the door…
And breathe a sigh of relief.
Gracie's curled up with her back to us, fast asleep. Her snores are muffled by the fluffy pillows her face is stuffed into, and a trail of black hair streaks across the sheets that are pulled up to her chin. I whirl on James with a satisfied smirk.
"See, she's asleep."
"But I just saw her outside in the hall…" James protests, obviously reluctant to admit that he's wrong.
"It was me, you dolt." I hit him upside the head.
"It wasn't!" James hisses, swatting my arm away like a pesky fly.
"She's asleep, James!"
"No, she's faking it! I saw her! You two are trying to pull the wool over my eyes, but I won't stand for it-" I grab a chunk of his dressing robe, yanking him back.
"What are you talking about?" I whisper, fully aware of Gracie's stirring form and our rising voices.
"You're all lying, she's downstairs-" James continues loudly, wriggling free.
"Shhhh, you'll wake her!" I scold, hanging onto him.
"Why don't you quiet down!" James retorts, raising his voice defiantly.
"S-S-irius?"
I whip around and James freezes. Gracie has emerged from her fluffy throne and raised herself up on one elbow. I hold my breath as she groggily searches the doorway without bothering to open her eyes. Calling out Sirius's name again, she yawns before she even finishes the final syllable.
"No!" I clamp my hand over James's mouth before he can even think of answering.
"S-S-sirius, I - I think I would like to -to - g-go …" Gracie trails off into incoherent mumbling, slumping down wearily upon the mound of pillows.
"Go back to sleep," I whisper to Gracie, pulling James from the room. But judging by the unladylike snores coming from amongst the bob of black hair and marshmallow-like pillows, she never was fully awake to begin with. For some odd reason this causes me to snigger as I shut the door behind us.
I take the liberty to hit James a second time, this time getting a good swipe at his chest.
"What's the matter with you? You just woke her up!" I scold him, trying to hit him again, but James sidesteps me.
"Hardly, she won't remember a thing in the morning, and if I remember correctly, wasn't it your idea to go wake her?"
"Only because you thought we were breaking the law." I snort.
"We can continue this argument downstairs where we won't be waking anyone." He moves the candlestick to his other hand and I feel his fingers close over mine. I had every intention of heading back to my room, seriously, but I know that I can't leave this discussion unfinished. Besides, I want my revenge. I lost two hours of sleep over this insufferable boy. No one messes with my REM cycles, especially not pretty-boy Potter.
I allow James to lead me downstairs, since he's the one who has the stupid candle and in the dark I can't seem to remember the way to the kitchen. That's where I assume we're going or at least that's where I hope we're going. If James has other ideas, so help me I will kick his butt from here to Timbuktu. So anyway, we reach the foyer, and now I remember where the kitchen is; it's the door with the crack of light spilling under it. How nice of them to leave the lights on for us, it's almost as if they're expecting us…
"Sirius is asleep?" I ask again.
"Yeah," James admits hesitantly.
"Maybe it's your mom…"
"Maybe…" he answers with an unconvincing smile.
"Or perhaps your dad…" I suggest.
James shrugs, discarding this idea with a murmur about work and sleeping.
"It's probably just Faye, I mean Teddy. Well, Faye always left the light on. She was always ready to get us a snack if we needed one; she was like Sirius's personal chef." He laughs softly and then smiles wistfully at some fond memory. "I wish you could've met her," he whispers. Perhaps he's talking about the house-elf Faye or maybe he's talking about someone else - a particular aunt whose image was also triggered by the happy memory. I squeeze his hand and he gives me a smile, pushing the door open.
The kitchen's empty.
I frown and step inside. James sets the candle down on the table, and immediately finds a lone coffee cup sitting at one end of the table. A sliver of steam floats up from the milky depths; a scent of coffee beans, hazelnut perhaps, accosts our sensitive noses.
"Perhaps Gracie's been here after all," James laughs, nodding at the still steaming coffee cup.
"Nah, she hates coffee." I take a seat across from the mysterious cup, and James moves toward the stove where a kettle sits still boiling hot.
"I know, I hate coffee, too. It's all Sirius's fault." I raise my eyebrows and he shakes his head with a laugh. "It's a long story, but basically Sirius decided that it might be nice to replace my coffee with something else…"
"What was it?" I ask curiously.
"You don't want to know." James wrinkles his nose in disgust and I shudder. He picks up the bag of hazelnut with a puzzled expression, before replacing it in one of the polished cabinets. "Tea for you?"
"Do you even have to ask?" I grin and James chuckles, busying himself with the tea. I tap my fingers on the countertop, wondering who would be coming back for the cup, which was obviously only poured a minute or two before our arrival.
"Here." He hands me one of the teacups, sliding into the seat beside me.
"Thanks." I smile up at him gratefully and take a sip of the warm tea. Mmmm. James, though he can be a down right git, sure knows how to make tea perfectly.
"So what's all this about a conspiracy and illegal activities?" I ask, putting down the cup with a sly grin.
"Don't look at me like that, Lily," James sighs.
"Like what?" I ask.
"Like you don't know what I'm talking about!" he elaborates.
"But I honestly don't know what you're talking about! You're ranting like a lunatic about Gracie being downstairs, when we just saw her in bed, fast asleep!" I say, frustrated.
"But I saw her!" James suddenly points toward the doorway where a wide-awake Gracie suddenly saunters into the kitchen to reclaim her steaming coffee.
"Gracie!" I gasp.
"Bonjour!" Gracie greets us, raising her coffee mug in an over exaggerated toasting gesture. She takes a hearty sip of it, and lowers it with a grin-a strange, unfamiliar grin, one that I've seen before but seems oddly out of place on my best friend's face.
"I didn't know you knew French," I laugh.
"I don't." Gracie shrugs sheepishly.
"What are you doing up?" I ask conversationally, since Gracie's obviously not quite awake, because she's not acting like herself at all. Her voice sounds funny, her eyes look too dark and her hair even looks different, though I suppose it could be blamed on the lighting or bed head.
"I couldn't sleep," she replies, her dark eyes darting around the room.
I snort into my teacup, spitting out tea all over the table.
"That's a lie, Gracie. You were sound asleep seconds ago."
"No," Gracie tilts her head to the side, surveying me with one of her foreign looks, one that I've seen before but I can't remember where. "I've been up for almost an hour."
"Gracie, don't try to deny it!" I giggle, wiping the tea off of the table. "You were snoring."
"I don't snore," Gracie says seriously, the grin fading from her lips. I laugh again, the rest of my tea nearly sloshing out of my teacup and onto my dressing gown. I turn to James, but James has left his seat and is standing behind me, staring at Gracie as if she's suddenly morphed into a hippogriff.
"Yes, you do," I argue.
"You don't know that," Gracie counters with that serious tone of hers which almost has me fooled, almost.
"I do. Gracie, I've roomed with you for almost seven years; trust me, I think I would know if you snored or not," I laugh.
"I don't even know you."
I look up at her, shocked because there's no hint of amusement in her eyes, or any sign of a grin on her lips. Her eyes are so dark that they look brown-wait, they are brown! She looks strange, funny, oddly familiar, but at the same time, strikingly different.
"Gracie, are you okay?" I reach for her hand, partly to calm my own fears since I'm starting to feel sick because I'm obviously hallucinating.
Gracie snatches her hand from the table and suddenly rises from her seat.
"Stop calling me Gracie. I already told you I don't speak French," she answers.
"Your name's French?" I ask, bewildered at the turn of this conversation. I am. I'm dreaming, or I'm hallucinating because her hair's different now, too. It's longer and curlier… I blink but the illusion isn't going away.
"No, I'm not French!" She frowns.
"But-" I stutter.
"My name's not Gracie."
"Gracie, what's the matter with you?" I ask exasperatedly.
"It's Hope!" she yells, slamming a hand down on the table. Her coffee cup jumps, and my tea cup tips over. The hot tea runs over my hand, pooling on the tabletop and dripping off the edge, but I barely notice any of this. I blink, too stunned to speak.
"What?" James asks in a strangled voice.
She leans across the table, her unmistakably brown eyes level with James' hazel ones.
"My. Name. Is. HOPE!"
I catch my breath and hold it. The room tilts and tips, a wave of nausea sweeps through me. My hands grip the edge of the table and I try to hang on as my world is suddenly turned into a merry-go-round from hell. I could've sworn she just said that she was Hope… Of course, it could be just a coincidence, but I have seen her before and she does bear a resemblance to Gracie, Heather and Hope, the Hope and that girl…
I gasp aloud, my hand flying to my mouth. James shoves me out of the way - I forgot he was even there - and whips out his wand. There's a dangerous light in his eyes and his hand is shaking uncontrollably with barely restrained anger.
"Who the hell are you?" he asks furiously in a quivering voice.
"I'm Hope," Hope repeats with a voice void of fear, but she keeps one eye on James and the other on his wand.
James's eyes flicker. A shudder passes through his body, his wand shaking violently. A strange noise, halfway between a sob and a yell escapes his lips. Suddenly, before I can stop him, he lunges, one hand grabbing her throat, the other pushing her up against the wall.
"Tell me who the hell you really are and why you're playing this sick joke or I will hex you until you don't even recognize yourself or know your real name," he threatens, his eyes sparkling with unshed tears.
"Are you deaf? I already told you, I'm Hope Moon!" she responds angrily, straightening her shoulders and drawing herself up to her full height. "I should be asking who you are James Potter and what you're doing living in my house!"
James loses it at this point.
"JAMES, NO!"
But of course the thick git never listens to me. He fires a hex at her, but she deflects it with her wand, which I'd noticed she'd been discreetly drawing from her pocket.
"STOP!" I cry.
A second spell hits the wall, narrowly missing her head. James is suddenly thrown across the room onto his back. That's it, I've had enough.
"EXPELLIARMUS!" I scream.
Both wands fall at my feet, and I hastily bend down and pick them up.
"Are you okay?" I ask James immediately.
"No!" he replies, glaring at the girl. But he sits up, completely unharmed.
"Did he hit you?" I ask, turning to the girl.
She glares back at James, but shakes her head. Her hair's smoking where the spell just grazed her head and beside her on the wall is a blackened spot where the spell eventually hit.
"Give me back my wand!" James demands. "She's a raving lunatic!"
"Not yet," I tell him quietly. There's something that I need to do first, something that I want to find out before I give James back his wand. I can't help it, I'm curious, and I can't shake the idea that I've seen this girl before, not once but on several occasions. I know her…
"Hope."
Reluctantly she turns away from James and brings her eyes back to me. Again I'm reminded of the many times that I've seen those eyes before, the latest memory sticks out in my mind, but several other hazy images are vying for my attention as well.
I point my wand at the nearest chair, reminding her that I mean business. She frowns, but sits down without protest, crossing her arms defiantly over her chest. I swallow, wondering where to begin. There's so much I want to ask her, and yet she's insane, she has to be.
"You better explain yourself," I suggest quietly, pocketing the other two wands.
"Explain myself?" Hope exclaims, her eyes flashing. "What do you want me to tell you? You're one of many strangers living in my house!"
"This is my house now!" James hisses, appearing at my side.
"Yours?" Hope snorts. "The house has been in the family of the Moons for generations, I've lived here since the day I was born. And now all of a sudden you all drop in as if you own the place, eating our food, sleeping in our beds, attacking me in the halls, disturbing my ancestors-"
"I knew it!" I yell triumphantly because now I know where I've seen her before. I can finally place the memory. In the dark, relying on only the weak light of a wand, looking over the doors…
"I just came over to help you look, James told me…" I tell her, studying her face, which, clouded in shadows, now looks strange and unfamiliar. Her dark eyes flit across my face and slowly she lowers the wand.
"Oh, James did? Okay," she says reluctantly in a voice that doesn't quite sound like her own. She turns around rather quickly, returning to her original position in front of the door. I light my wand and crouch down beside her.
"This is it," she decides after a minute of examining it.
"I'll take your word for it, Gracie."
She gives me a funny look as we get to our feet.
"What?" I ask, feeling slightly uncomfortable under her eyes, which in this light seem unnaturally dark.
"Nothing," she giggles. "It's just that you called me Gr-never mind." She shakes her head, a weird smile crossing her face. I watch her closely as she lifts her hand, passing it over the door. The hand's scratched and scarred, probably from our ordeal, but it looks as if she attempted to heal it, or Sirius, perhaps, judging by how horribly it was done. The door shimmers and opens. She smiles at me and steps through.
"What is it, Lily?" James asks, shaking my shoulders and disrupting the video replaying in my mind of the final minutes in the tomb. I ignore him, reaching for the girl's right hand. She recoils, pulling her sleeve up and over it. I raise my eyes to hers.
"Let me see it," I say softly.
She rolls up her sleeve, exposing the familiar scarred, scratched hand that even now, still remains unhealed.
"Gracie, I watched you open it with my own eyes!" I frown.
"But that was with James," Gracie repeats impatiently.
"No, it wasn't!"
I saw her do it! She was standing here only a minute ago!
"We can argue about this later." Gracie lifts the same hand that I watched her use before, the one that's not holding her wand. She's the only person I know who is left handed, therefore using their left arm as their wand arm. Her right hand moves to the door, and I notice that the scars that were there only moments before have disappeared.
I gape, staring at her hand. I grab at it, but Gracie pulls away.
"What's wrong with you, Lily?" she asks.
"But you - you already opened it," I stammer. "And your hand, it's healed…"
"You were there that night," I realize, running my hands over the scars. Hope winces, and wrenches her hand from mine. "You were there that night, in the tomb, I spoke with you. You were the one who found the door," I whisper.
Hope nods, keeping her eyes on her scarred hand.
"I don't need you to hold my hand Lily, I'm perfectly capable of walking."
"I wasn't holding your hand, I swear!"
"I wasn't hallucinating," I continue softly.
"My eyes Sirius! Lower that thing before you make me permanently blind!"
"I don't even have my wand with me, Lily!"
"Well, then what was it, a ghost?"
"You were there with us and you were the ghost in the graveyard that I saw as we were leaving," I recall, remembering the frightening presence slipping between the tombstones.
"Yes." Hope finally lifts her head, meeting my eyes once more. "I saved your silly arses, Mr. Potter's included, and instead of thanking me, you attack me," she snarls at James.
"I'd do it again if Lily would give me my wand back because you're either crazy or you're a ghost," James growls, leaning over my shoulder and into Hope's face.
"I'm not a ghost!" Hope cries, jumping to her feet, knocking her chair clean to the floor. "I'm solid! I'm alive!"
"That's debatable," I mutter.
"Do I look like a ghost to you? Am I transparent? No. I was drinking hot chocolate, was I not? Ghosts can't drink." She takes another sip of her hot chocolate to disprove this theory. She points at the overturned chair, knocks smartly on the table, and hits James to prove that she can touch him as well.
"Then you're a poltergeist," James insists, but he looks doubtful and confused, like a child that's realizing that Santa Claus may not be real after all.
Hope glares at him. James glares back at her. Then suddenly Hope cracks up laughing.
James and I exchange a worried glance, as Hope rights her overturned chair and sits back down, howling with laughter.
"Laughing like that is a sign of madness," James whispers to me. "I'm going to stun her."
"Don't you dare!" I slap a hand over my pocket, preventing him from retrieving his wand.
"Lily, you can't be serious! She's nuts!" he hisses, furiously gesturing to the wildly laughing Hope at the kitchen table.
I can't really disagree with him.
"She was the one who got us out of the tomb James," I remind him softly.
"Exactly!" James exclaims exasperatedly. "That just adds to the evidence!"
Again I can't disagree with him, but I refuse to allow him to harm her. At least not until I'm able to verify that she is indeed an insane woman claiming to be someone that's dead, that goes around raiding tombs, and seriously needs the help of St. Mungo's Insanity Ward. I'm disappointed to note that laughing wildly for no apparent reason certainly isn't helping our situation.
"You know," Hope giggles, wiping at her streaming eyes several minutes later. "That's what they said too, when I first told them."
"Who?" James asks.
"You know, them." Hope lowers her voice dramatically, making her eyes go round.
You know, I take it back, she has to be insane. Next she's going to start talking about the voices in her head.
"They said I'm not supposed to talk to anyone," she whispers conspiringly.
My suspicions are confirmed. I change my mind. This girl needs some serious help. James gives me a meaningful, pleading look, and against my better judgment I hand him his wand.
"They said you'd react this way anyway," she continues quietly. "But I didn't listen to them. And they were right." She sniffs and wipes at her eyes, which are now filled with tears. She starts to sob loudly, occasionally mumbling and moaning something incoherent.
"…W-where is ever-r-ryone…I don't, d-d-don't like it h-h-ere… " she blurts out between sobs.
"Stun her," James mouths as the girl suddenly becomes hysterical again.
"…TAKE ME BACK! I WANT TO GO HOME!" she screams in a full-range tantrum.
"You do it," I mouth back.
But James cowers, and I realize that I'm going to have to do it. Even though she's screaming and ranting like she's insane, there's something so heartbreakingly familiar about her tears and screams, that I can't bring myself to even cast a full body bind, let alone a harmful stunning spell. As I step closer I remember Gracie, breaking down, mad at the world, and Tiffany…
"I want to go home."
I can't do this.
I kneel down in front of Hope, gently placing the wand down on the ground beside me.
"Hope," I whisper tentatively.
Hope quiets her sobs, looking up at me with a pair of large brown eyes. She's scared, terrified, afraid of me, of James, of all of this. And I know I've seen those eyes before, not in a tomb, but in the form of a child…
"What happened to you?" I ask softly in a voice I would normally use with a very young child because even now, in the form of a teenager probably older than me, I see her as a six-year-old child ready to flee.
"I don't know!" Hope wails, burying her head into her hands. "I don't know."
Neither do I. and there lies the problem. I'm not even sure what the heck she is, because she can't possibly be a ghost. She looks solid. I lay a hand on her shoulder and my hand stays in place. Yes, she's still solid. I lift my hand, recoiling. But then…what the hell is she?
"Get away from her!"
My heart stops at the sound of the unfamiliar baritone. I feel someone grab my arm, pulling me forcefully to my feet. I relax somewhat when I see it's only James who's got me.
"What-"
James pinches me, hard. I shut my mouth and follow his gaze back to Hope. Someone else has joined our midnight gathering uninvited.
James's father.
A/N: Sorry I meant to get this up a lot faster but my computer crashed. I used to laugh at people when they used this excuse but then my sister actually did get a virus on my computer and I didn't use it for weeks until I was finally able to get it fixed. But anyway school's started so updates might be slow though I still have a lot of chapters that are ready to go after edits for this site. Let me know what you think!
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