The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part Two

Gone Wrong

Lily had gone to make sandwiches for James and to get Remus's textbooks and the quills and parchments she would need for his class, and that was the scene she returned to. She put the bag of sandwiches onto the chair chair beside James and bent over to kiss his forehead. She was running a bit later than she'd meant to and needed to get back down to the hall of floos so she could go and figure out where Remus's classroom was in time to get settled in.

She'd meant to have a bit of time to talk to him the night before, before he'd transformed, but they'd not made it back to the house and by the time they could've done it was too late even for James to try to go out to the Howling House for fear of the wolf getting out, so they'd stayed there at the hospital instead, which was where James's heart would've been even if they'd gone home anyway.

James stirred at the touch of her lips on his forehead and his eyes fluttered open. 

"Morning," Lily whispered. "You stay sleeping. I'm going to go pretend to be Remus for bit and I'll be back after."

"Mmhm," he murmured.

She kissed his forehead again, then added, "I made sandwiches for you so you won't go hungry."

"Thanks Evans."

Lily smiled, then shouldered Remus's book satchel and reached into her pocket, rummaging about for the small vial of polyjuice potion she'd put his hairs into. She was just about to down it, when she heard James's voice from across the room.

"This is why you wanted to do Sunday dinners."

Lily turned around.

James had sat up and was staring at Dora. He paused, then his eyes moved to look at her, a good deal of hurt in them. He shook his head, "Why didn't you just tell me? I could've just... made sure that she was going to her appointments and getting the flint removed properly and taking the methanalyzers and --" he paused, "I could've made sure she was taking care of it properly before it became so bad. That was months of time, Evans..." His voice steadily grew more up set the longer he spoke, "Months that could've been shaved off the damages done, it could've been enough to stop this from being so bad as it is now, she could've had longer if you'd just told me. Why didn't you tell me?"

Lily glanced at the clock - she had a few minutes - she approached James, sighing as she went. "James, honey, I should have."

"Damn right you should have. I have a right to know."

"And she has a right to keep it from you."

"Bullshit."

"She asked me not to tell you, James, what was I supposed to do?"

"Tell me anyway? I'm your husband. Oughtn't that take priority?"

Lily hung her head, "Yes, but --"

"She might not be dying if she hadn't kept it secret so long."

"Minnie and Elphinstone knew what was going on just as much as I did, and they said they thought she was going to her appointments. She would've lied to you as much as she would've done to them," Lily snapped. "You wouldn't have known if she was going or not if they didn't."

"I would've gone with her. I would've helped descale her myself."

"James --" 

"I would have!" he said, he shook his head, then said, "Well, I will now anyway."

"They showed me how so I can help, too."

"It's a lot different doing it on an actual person than doing it on that stupid rubber dummy they have you practice on," he said numbly. "It's a lot different scraping skin and sinew off someone you love while they cry and scream in pain because of what you're doing to them, or to watch some doctor extract it in whole sheets while they grip onto you so tight your hand is fractured."

Lily's eyes filled with tears. "I'm sure it is different, James."

"You should go. I'm too angry right now to be rational... It isn't your fault this is happening, of course, but right now I'm just really pissed off that you didn't tell me sooner."

Lily hung her head. "I thought I was doing the right thing... I was just obeying her wishes, that's all, I thought she knew what she was doing; she was just protecting you, and --"

"Well sometimes people ask you not to do things that should be done," James answered, and his voice trembled as he said it, "Sometimes people think they're protecting others from something... but it's too important, and protecting them is secondary to how important it is to see to it that what needs to be done is done."

Lily nodded. "I'm sorry." She stood up and hurried out of the door.

James sighed, feeling awful, and extricated his hand from Dora's, bending forward to cover his face with both his hands.

Lily cried all the way down the stairs to the hall of floos, and cried as she walked about the campus of Remus's university. She swallowed back her tears and wiped her eyes as she asked for directions to Remus's classroom and, running late, she sprinted through the halls of the big, rather ominous building, and rushed into the classroom,  hurrying down the steep auditorium seating to the empty seat in the front of the room to the right where Remus must usually sit, judging by the fact that every other chair in the room was full. She slid into place and started rummaging in the book satchel for the parchment and quill she'd packed.

She didn't notice everyone staring at her until there was a shadow cast over the parchment she was laying out and she looked up to find what must be the professor standing over her, a look of confusion on their face. 

"Good morning, Professor," Lily said dutifully. 

The moment her voice came out of her mouth, she knew where she had gone wrong.

It was her voice.

Not Remus's.

She'd been so caught up in the argument with James that she had forgotten the most important step of this whole thing.

She was at Remus Lupin's class, but she wasn't Remus Lupin.