crossroads ✿ jily

Chapter Five - Exhaustion

Somewhere in her overly-optimistic brain, Lily had thought that the worst of the crushing emptiness she felt when she thought about her Mum and Dad would be over when Arabella, Helen, and everyone else came back from the Christmas holidays and life went back to being semi-normal. Over the following couple of days, not only did she find that she'd been wrong, but she also found that things seemed to only get worse.

She hadn't anticipated that class...that speaker. She hadn't anticipated that she would be provided with a clear idea of exactly what happened to her Mum and Dad that night...and the thought of it was making her life almost unbearable. Although she was trying her hardest not to think about it by throwing herself into her studies, she found that no matter what she did she couldn't escape or avoid that few moments everyone has to themselves just before they fall asleep. Seeing as how she invariably couldn't keep from thinking about green light when those minutes came, the few minutes began stretching to several minutes, and then to countless minutes, and then to hours. Before she knew it, she was prone to lying awake all night, beset upon by her thoughts and her quiet tears. This was when she was helpless to defend herself from every ache and every stab of loneliness that had been pushed away throughout the day. She couldn't even say she was really crying... more just letting everything run out of her. No sobs, no wailing...just her, the silence of the room, and her memories.

It usually ended with the sun slowly filling the room with orange light and her wearily getting up to shower and dress before heading to the common room to kill a couple of hours studying while she waited for everyone else to come down.

Because of the fact that she wasn't sleeping at night, or when she was she was only awakened by nightmares of her parents getting murdered, she was consistently weighed down by her complete exhaustion at other times during the day. Now, the lunch hour was always used to drag herself up to the dorms and fall, unconscious, into her bed. After the hour was up she would pry her eyelids open and trudge to class with the rest of the school, only by then they'd eaten lunch and she hadn't. She'd spend the afternoon starving until classes were over...at which point she would have to go to sleep again. At the very least, she could always count on poor Arabella to come in and shake her awake so that she could drag her down to dinner...which Lily wouldn't eat much of because she always felt ill. She could tell that her friends, and indeed many others, were worried sick about her...but she just couldn't straighten herself out.

"I've got to do something about this," she mumbled tiredly on Sunday evening as they were sitting in the Great Hall. She was staring at the fish on her plate, stabbing it over and over with her fork and waiting for any kind of hunger at all to kick in. It was futile, and she knew it...but she kept hoping.

"Lily," Helen said in a low, firm voice, "Just eat it. Shove it in...you can't go on like this! You'll waste away."

"I know," Lily agreed, sending her a pained look as Arabella reached across the table to fill her goblet.

"Here," she said quietly, "At least drink some juice."

Lily obeyed, feeling slightly encouraged that the cold pumpkin juice felt so good going down. After she'd drained the goblet, Helen said, "I still don't see why she can't just get a sleeping draught from Madam Pomfrey."

"Neither do I," Arabella chimed in, her eyes boring into Lily's. Lily simply shook her head again and replied,

"I've told you. I just can't...she'd have to keep me there for a couple days, and I can't afford that. I have N.E. coming up, my head girl duties, and now this class..."

"Sod all that!" Bella said vehemently, "You have to think about your health! I'll tell you, the N.E. aren't going to matter much if you kill yourself."