Little Riddle | James Potter

• forty

Turns out it was mostly a lie.

But, at least for a short while,
it was a beautiful one.
    

118 hours. It had been one hundred and eighteen hours since James Potter and Alexis Riddle were no more. That's five days, to spare you doing the math. Five very grim days. Days where it became clear nothing was ever going to be the same, especially not Alexis.

The limited amount of time she accepted her friends' company was more than enough to know gone was the girl with the vivid soul. The fire in her had died. She was cold, showing a strong resemblance to her brother, something that hadn't happened ever since the Marauders walked into her life. Whenever she wasn't taking her obligatory classes or eating her meals in the Slytherin table she was in a hidden room she refused to let anybody else in, making it impossible for her friends to reach out to her. And oh, how they tried.

James, however, didn't look nearly as affected by the breakup as Alexis. It seemed like the distraction he found for himself was effortlessly working. As opposed to Alexis, everyone knew James' whereabouts which were highly publicized. No one knew the official title Marion and James shared but they sure weren't hiding the fact there was something. He had even accompanied Marion to her father's funeral being the considerate boy he was. People wondered if this was all due to Marion's veela powers or James had genuinely turned into quite a remarkable asshole.

Nothing was ever going to be the same and the saddest part of it all was that they never had a chance to enjoy their last moments of normalcy before they got thrown into a spiral of toxicity and pain.

Alexis always had the nagging feeling that something was wrong, which was understandable, but she knew something was more wrong than usual when all her friends sat around her in the Slytherin table during breakfast that Friday morning. Their pained expressions immediately making her wonder if she wanted to hear what they had to say at all.

"We wanted to be the ones to tell you this before you heard it elsewhere," Sirius fidgeted on his seat and looked at his friends for backup, all of them looking extremely uneasy, all of them avoiding eye contact. "Filch caught James and Marion in a broom closet this morning," he shut his eyes closed and muttered that sentence all in one breath. "They—they were—doing it."

A pang of pain in her chest disappeared as fast as it had appeared. And then there was nothing. Numbness. Her silence and stoic expression only seemed to further unnerve her friends. A small cry, a gasp, or even a look of disappointment would've been sufficient for them. Anything was better than nothing. They needed something that proved Alexis was still there. But all they received was an understanding nod from the girl as she gathered her belongings. "See you at the dueling club later today?" She asked unfazed before walking away without waiting for a response. Disappointment rendered her friends speechless, making them pathetically look at her retrieving figure with disheartened spirits.