"You are an Alinac....that means you have power, ambition and the capacity to change the world. But a name is only a name, Leila, unless you make it something."
Two young rivals are headed into a war they know will change them forever. The question...
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Some time had passed since Leila lost her notebook, but the anxiety hadn't. She couldn't shake the soft agony of being vulnerable. In the space of a year, she went form only seeing their hateful eyes on the quidditch pitch or stands, to now being everywhere she went. She didn't quite know how to feel about it all, and refused to let herself register the true extent of her confusion.
As she sat in the back of the Defense against of the Dark Arts classroom, a subject she shared with both Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, her mind wandered from their lecture. A few rows in front sat..James. She lost her thoughts, staring at the back of his head. Her eyes clouding over as his jet black waves drew her in. Beside him sat Remus, and Sirius was noticeably absent.
Remus was a werewolf. The idea hadn't quite registered in her mind, despite it making perfect sense. She had always noticed him, his quiet humbleness about his excellent mind. His patience with the endless pranks and punishments he seemed to get up to with his friends. But other than that, she hadn't really noticed him at all.
The marauders were nothing to her. Her entire life, she was focused on only one thing; herself. It was how she was raised to be. If she noticed them, it was only for her benefit - hence the book. A vicious whisper sunk its teeth into the back of her mind. Her défenses were weakening and while she fought to keep her head above water, she couldn't help but think she was losing something of herself in the process.
She watched as James and Remus laughed and scribbled away on their parchment. James shouldn't have stolen it. James shouldn't have judged her. James shouldn't have looked at her with that muted desperation. James shouldn't have forced the truth from her. James shouldn't have heard that she kept his secret. It was all his fault.
Because slowly but surely, since that night, her walls were coming down. The invisible boundary she had set, distancing herself from everyone. Retaining her status as the Pureblood queen, and making sure it was her family, herfather, her name which ruled the sacred 28. But she had confessed to James. In three questions he had drawn more from her lips than anyone else. And in the end, he had used it against her.
She drowned herself over and over again in the darkness of James' hair. She had looked in his eyes, for the perhaps the first time, that night. She had met him, wand for wand, and threw all her violence and vitriol at him and he didn't back down... well until he was forced to. Even with a wand against his throat, he fought.
His loyalty unnerved her. How he gave it away so freely, without abandon. How he threw himself into his friends with reckless passion and love, and didn't care that they knew everything about him, good and bad. James was a blood traitor. but..If she wanted that, if she wished she could experience that, what did that make her?
"Oi Evans, fancy hogsmede this weekend?" James shouted, turning to look at the redhead sat across from him. "I have a jumper which will bring out the green in your eyes, it's yours if you want it"
