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(This is only chapter one)

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing and everything in here! Try to figure that one out!

1. Not one, but two are hurting.


‘Everything was dark and the edges of the nightstand were only visible because of the moonlight filtering in from a large open balcony, also allowing a small breeze to enter in as well. Stepping towards the balcony and raising her hands to rest on the wooden paneling when arms snaked around her waist. Soft slightly chapped lips touched her cheek with experienced ease. Sighing at the pleasure and delight such a small action brought her, Lily turned to face the man who had performed such an action on her and found it to be just who she wanted it to be and had always been the one to do it; James Potter…’



Lily shot up straight in her bed with sweat beaded on her forehead and now beginning to drip down her temples towards her cheeks and jaw line. Her breathing was quick and shallow, making her chest heave up and down.



“Sweet Merlin, Lils! Are you alright?” Lily’s best mate Victoria questioned, reaching for the lamp and a good portion of the dormitory room was suddenly illuminated, revealing a rather concerned expression on the dark brunettes face. “Dear god, your shaking…Want me to run for James?”



Lily continued to breathe quickly, lifting a hand to her face where James hade placed the kiss in her dream. She was shaking, but couldn’t imagine why at first until it dawned on her why she would be shaking after such an inviting dream. James Potter had proven how much of an egotistical-unfeeling-uncaring-rude-jerk he was; he had broken it off with Lily. Shaking her head so that Victoria knew not to get James, Lily allowed some tears to begin to brim. It would have only been a little awkward to have had her once knight-in-shining armor, or quidditch robes, come in to comfort her after having broken up with her.



“Please don’t get him, Tory.” Lily managed to whisper, even though all she wanted to die rather than have to do or say anything to anyone. “He and I aren’t together anymore…He broke up with me…” Rather than end her sentence the way she normally would have, it ended with a deep sob erupting from her throat. ‘Oh why now?’ Lily asked herself. ‘I’ve been able to refrain from this all day.’ Victoria climbed from her bed beside Lily’s and sat down in from of the distraught red-head with worried eyes.



Oh Lily. I’ll get Lydia to help me make him sorry tomorrow in front of everyone.” She had only had a moment to part her arms to give Lily a hug before Lily fell into them, tears and all.



“Please don’t, Tori.” Was all she said before allowing another rush of tears to fall from her eyes. It was a wonder that the other girls in the room hadn’t awoken yet. Pressing her arms snuggly around Lily, Victoria was unable to stop the on-slaught of plausible pranks and horrible thoughts directed towards the heir to the Potter fortune. Some of the lighter thoughts involved the despair of Andrew and Yvonne Potter about how they would never be grandparents, but didn’t entertain ways of pulling it off incase of the slightest chance that things might become reconciled between the two of them.



It was around five minutes later when Lily’s steady flow of tears seemed to lessen, then appeared to stop, if only for the moment. Her body had stopped shaking as much as it had been before and her breathing wasn’t as bad as it had been.



“Do you want to go to your dorm room?” Being Head Girl did not come without its perks. The Heads, both Boy and Girl, were given their own private common rooms with, much to Lily’s delight, unlimited bookshelf space. There were also fairly large dormitory rooms, one for each of them with quite a bit of space in them, along with beautifully furnished lavatories. It was enough to make most of the students sixth year and below stay in line so that their names might be taken into consideration one of these top positions. Thinking that maybe Lily would want to go where James, nor another other male, could enter.



Lily didn’t speak , something Victoria hoped would not become a norm for her best friend, then felt a nod against her shoulder. “Alright, come and stand up. No matter how much I love you, Lily, I’m not going to carry you there.” Having figured that the Head Girl had demanded to stay the night in the same dormitory as she that she hadn’t wanted to be alone, Victoria held no intention in her heart nor head of leaving the girl alone, especially right then. Soon, both girls were standing in their very immodest pajamas with their robes over them and Lily’s uniform in hand, along with their black school girl uniform shoes on their feet. Twisting the knob on the lamp after picking up her wand from her bedside table and making sure that her vulnerable friend had hers as well, Victoria heard the knob click and the light go out.



“Let’s hurry on down to the common room. I hate the dark almost as much as I hate ancient runes and those thick tomes we have to read.” Victoria commented, trying to lighten the tension a little bit, but if Lily had said anything, she hadn’t heard it. “Let’s go.” She added with a defeated tone of voice. Opening the creaking door, Victoria started down the stairs, her wand at her side and her head turning back and towards the red head every few seconds to check that she was still following.



Once the pair had reached the landing, Lily stopped short when she caught sight of a group of mischievous seventh year boys trying to offer words of encouragement to the Head Boy who had his head bent towards his knees with his fingers gripping the unruly rats nest on the top of his head. It sounded as if, by his breathing and the way his back was moving, that he’d been crying the way Lily had been not less than ten minutes earlier.



“I don’t know why she did it…” The golden Potter Boy, Quidditch Captain, Head Boy, Wealthiest b*****d in Hogwarts, sobbed. Hearing this caused Lily to gasp, knowing that he was talking about her and slinked to the floor boards of the landing, wide eyed with an angry Victoria standing guard.



“Did what, oh perfect one?” Victoria questioned haughtily, her blue eyes narrowing dangerously towards the four boys, but towards James in particular glad that where Lily had fallen was not in plain view of them. All the eyes in the room turned to her, but the brunette did not back down. Her friend, almost sister, was hurting badly and this would not go unpunished.



“Piss off, you soddy b***h.” Sirius Black started, already on his feet, trying to threaten her by intimidation. It wasn’t working the way he wanted it to, though.



“Sit your arse down, Black, and pretend you know what brain power or a night without a detention feels like.” Victoria commanded of the well know disowned Black. Sirius eyed her for a moment, as if he was trying to figure out if she was serious or not. Then it was James’s turn to stand.



“Is she okay?” His voice was about as hoarse as it was when he tried to speak immediately after snogging with her best mate. Unsure of why he was asking this, seeing as how the perfect Potter boy had broken up with Lily, not the other way around, Victoria sneered at him, her expression hopefully conveying her newly found deeply rooted distaste for him.



“You don’t deserve to know, Potter. Now, if you truly feel the way you are acting, you will take your leave from here and retreat up to the dormitory room that you four, not doubt, share so that I can escort the Head Girl to her own.” Her current demeanor, the one seeming to demand respect, faltered as she caught a glimpse of Lily’s pale and silently weeping form shaking against the stone wall. She had to get her away from James’s voice at all costs, for it seemed Lily wasn’t going to be able to take it much longer. Oh her poor poor friend.



“We’ll leave.” Remus announced, stunning the seemingly bewildered group beyond words. “Be quick about it, though, Victoria. You aren’t the only one with a long and hectic night ahead of you.” Remus finished with an empathetic voice and expression, earning him several severe glares and dangerous looks.



“Thank you for being the sane one right now, Lupin. Sanity is an improvement for the four of you.” Leaving them with that insult, Victoria turned and took the two strides required of her to reach Lily’s side then collapsed down beside her, wrapping her supportive arms around the red heads ******** hag.” Sirius muttered, then was smacked up-side the head by Peter, who had to stand on a chair to be able to do so.



“She is only protecting a hurting friend, Sirius.” Peter commented, but didn’t say anymore, due to their mutual best mate staring intently at the landing of the girl’s staircase where hic-up like sobs were coming from.



“Come on, Prongs. Let Victoria get her down to her dorm so she can recover. You weren’t the only on hurt mate.” Remus tried to convince him, but was shrugged off and advanced towards the staircase where an incoherent whisper was followed by a desperate, “No, I can’t.” Then a flustered Victoria reappeared, blocking his view of Lily and his ability to reach her.



“Leave her, Potter. You’ve done enough damage for today, and by talking to her right now, you’ll only make it worse. The hurt is still so fresh in both of your minds, so I’d have to say you need to back off and let the both of you begin to heal.” Both of her arms were resting on the sides of the landing, not easily movable. James sent her an evil glare and plowed into Victoria’s shoulder with her own, sending her flying to the opposite side of the landing with a surprised expression on her face. His eyes darted about the landing and up the first couple of stairs, resting on Lily.



“Lily? Please speak to me.” His voice was full of remorse as he took in the sight of her. “ I beg you, please.” He had only waited a second before parting his lips to speak again, but was cut off by two pairs of arms entangling themselves around his chest and lower torso, pulling him away from the fragile red-headed beauty. “Let me talk with her, damn it! Let me go! Let me speak with her!” He demanded, beginning to go red in the face from yelling and his lungs being crushed by Sirius’s firm hold on him. Seeing a window of oppritunity, Victoria took Lily’s wrist in her hand and the spare uniform in the other before standing, dragging her best mate up with her, and made a dash for the portrait hole that swung open for them, by which they exited the re and gold furnished Gryffindor Common Room.



Remus and Sirius’s tight holds did not falter, even after the pair had taken their leave. They only broke when a defeated James slumped down, forcing his mates to let go of him. “I had to get her to talk to me. I couldn’t leave it where I had….Where I let her let me leave it.” James’s eyes glazed over in a way that the boys had seen several times that night, but not once before then.



“Even though you broke it off with her, Prongs?” Sirius couldn’t help but ask. “You’ve never been this way around the ladies before. Why now? You’ve never cared about any of them, once you got your good shagging, the is. So why the change of heart now? What is so special about our red haired terror?” Sirius was up in his face now, Causing James to stand, a flicker of anger crossed his face, getting caught at the edges of his eyes and his lips, hardening them.



“Because I love her. I asked her to marry me and she hesitated.” James announced before slumping to the ground again, his face contorted and full of remorse. “It frightened me that she faltered and I broke it off with her.”

(Chapter 2. This one is incredibly short, and I'm not certain of how I missed that I'd made it this short.)

Chapter Two-How you hurt me.



Upon reaching Lily’s “other” room, Victoria immediately locked the door behind her and cursed it-so that any man who touched it would break out in painful boils all over his body until he let go, in case Potter tried something. As she turned back around to face Lily, she found her dear friend crumpled up on the floor, having not made it to the bed yet.



“Oh love,” Victoria muttered, walking over to help her onto her bed with a heavy sigh.



“I did not want to see him.” She whispered as she crawled onto her hands and knees before hoisting herself up onto the bed. “I really did not want to, Tori.” Her voice was shaky and full of despair.



“Love, you need to tell me what happened exactly between the two of you…Just so I don’t end up decapitating him by accident.” She tried to put some humor in her statement to lighten the mood of her petite friend, but just could not sugar coat the malice in her voice.



Lily shook her head vigorously. “No! I can’t, Tori!” A sob emerged from her throat. “It would be like I was reliving it as I have all afternoon. I can’t…not yet….not again. I just can’t.” Flopping herself down onto the pillows on her bed, Lily covered her face with one and continued her sobbing.



Feeling as if she had brought on this new onslaught of tears, Victoria laid down beside her on the bed and laid her head on the pillow that Lily wasn’t getting damp. Lifting her hand to Lily’s back, she started rubbing it for her, hoping it was comforting her at least a little bit. The two of them stayed that way for a little while, Lily’s shoulders had eventually stopped shaking back and forth from her weeping and her breathing seemed to even out, which indicated to Victoria that Lily had finally gone to sleep. Looking over that the clock, trying to move as little as possible to limit the chances of waking her friend, it read 2:39 A.M., and she groaned. She may love her friend like the sister that was never present, or even born, in her life, but right then Victoria felt likeshe could just slap her for being so resilient. Deciding against this course of action, Victoria closed her eyes as well and rolled onto her side that faced away from Lily and prayed to fall asleep and salvage what was left of the time allotted to her to do so. It seemed like forever had gone by before her body started to drift off, but right on the brink of sleep came a voice:



“He asked me to go with him to Hogsmeade, so I did.” The voice was soft and dreamy, like that of someone stuck in a reminiscence. “We drank two fire whiskeys and got half blasted before moving on to the candy shop and buying new schools supplies like quills and parchment.” Listening intently to the voice, the one belonging to the girl beside her, she knew sleep wasn’t going to win out just yet, “Then he took me to that flower shop, the one with all the pretty fish in the window. He went up to the counter and spoke in hushed tones with the woman who seemed to be running the shop. She smiled at James and handed him a tulip, it had to have been the most beautiful tulip I had seen in a long time, that was on display in the glass part of the counter. Grinning over at me for a moment, he placed something in it that I couldn’t see at first.” Getting a sense of where this was headed, Victoria sucked in a breath.



“James waltzed back over towards me with that walk of his that always gives it away when he is anxious about something, with the tulip in his left hand.” Her voice cracked. “He asked me if I loved him, I told him that I did. He got down,” Victoria sucked the breath back even further, “on one knee and declared his love for me in the way that I had told him many years ago in Divination while studying hypnosis and it was my turn to be under, that it was the way I wanted a man to start his proposal to me.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks now. Victoria sat up and watched Lily’s expression carefully, tears brimming in her own eyes, as she waited for the rest of the account. “I was stunned. I didn’t known what to say…” Obviously still at a lose for words, Lily paused once again, thinking over her story and just how to word it. “He started to get worried, you could see it on his face and in his eyes. Before I could ask him for more time to think or to even accept his offer, he stood up and pulled a ring out of the tulip, pocketing it, and threw the flower to the floor. ‘Don’t you dare come near me anymore Lily if we don’t have a future.’” She seemed to have more to say and wanted to say but was made incapable of doing so by the almost violent sob that escaped her throat after everything before hand had been said.



Quickly wrapping her arms around her friend, Victoria also began to cry. ‘How could James have been so stupid?’ She asked herself through the tears she was shedding in the name of her friend. ‘How did I let this happen to her? I knew all about his plan and I could have prepared her…This is my fault.’