the marauders: prongs, a jily fanfiction

chapter 23

disclaimer: blah blah blah you all know this already

Lily's POV:

Everything seemed to make so much more sense. How did I not realize this?

I thought back to everything that Teresa had done. I'd figured that Remus was a werewolf. How did I not even suspect that Teresa was a vampire? 

I sank into a chair and thought everything through in shock as Paris choked back tears and rushed out of the room. 

All those nights coming back late into the dorm, with her hair all messed up and her eyes not quite sane. I'd just thought that she was with a guy. The hot red lipstick...used for covering her blood-red stained lips. And using powder to conceal the paleness of her skin. The tiredness, the bags under her eyes, her constant hunger that made her devour her food all at once, and especially her aggressiveness that she just blended into her personality to make her seem like that was just her. And the reason why she had a pardon to never take Care of Magical Creatures. 

I walked over to her bed where she was still in slumber, the weight of her life swinging heavily in my heart like a pendulum. Everything had been removed from her face. Her lips were a deep red, her skin too pale, her eyes hollow and open because nobody could close her eyes since her skin was so cold that it would freeze whoever touched her. Her eyes were shatteringly frightening. They were a glistening, crystal blood-red, her pupils dark black and blended with a stormy gray that made her look extremely scary. 

I closed my eyes in frustration and I sat there for about 10 minutes before the hospital door opened and Adelaide rushed in with 3 bottles in her hand and a bag.

I stood up suddenly, the chair screeching.

"Adelaide!" I nearly wept with relief that someone else was here.

"Lily!" she rushed towards me and collapsed in my arms.

"Adelaide, what happened to her?" I asked, over and over again.

"I don't know, Lily, that's why. If we could find out what happened to her, then we could see what we can do. I've brought some things that we can try that are safe, but I'm not sure that it'll help," she sighed. I could see the toll that the stress of healing Teresa and the others had taken on her. Her eyes were heavy and tired, but I could see in her eyes that she desperately wanted to help. 

"Try," I urged her. 

She nodded curtly and put all the bottles on the drawer next to her, pulling up a chair. She sat down and held one bottle out for me which I realized was a bottle of butterbeer. I took a swig as I watched Adelaide carefully. 

She pulled out a bottle of some misty green liquid that seemed to be half liquid and half gas, another bottle full of swirling purple mist, and another full of a bubbling concoction that popped and fizzed. Adelaide pulled out a small cauldron from her bag, probably one that had no limit in size, and started a small fire where Madam Pomfrey usually made her potions. She slowly added them in, adding quills and teeth and scales of everything, stirring slowly while I waited impatiently, helping her. Adelaide poured in the last potion, added some old dusty powder that was yellow, and stirred counter-clock wise seventeen times while I coughed from the powder. 

I added the dried rose petals on her twelfth stir and poured in some aloe salve with a finely ground herb on her fourteenth stir, making sure to add exactly 3 and a half teaspoons, no more, no less. Adelaide stirred it a bit more and waited for awhile before pouring it into 3 separate flasks. 

"Er-" she hesitated. I'd forgotten that Teresa' skin was deathly cold. 

I was about to say something when James Potter burst into the room.