Beyond Hogwarts & More- Chapter 41

-= Beyond Hogwarts & More; Chapter Forty-One=-

“Snape!” James growled. “You—don’t do that quiet, creeping, whispering thing.”
   “I am a wretched creature that is not worthy of your forgiveness,” Severus replied with a sneer, clearly not sorry in the least. “But how lovely to see that your famed Gryffindor bravery holds up even against the most terrifying of dangers.”
   “Oh, shut up,” James scowled, brushing a bit of dust off of Lily’s robes. “What’re you here for, anyway?”
   “Stop it,” Lily hissed. “Severus—I—well, I’m sorry that you caught us at such a bad time, but…er, I’m about to leave, and I don’t know if you’d want to stay here with James—but if you do...”
   “Yes, I know,” he nodded. “You are about to embark on an undoubtedly amusing expedition into the poisonous heart of Knockturn Alley, and your husband is wetting his robes about it. Admittedly, I do not know exactly why you are doing this, but I can make a shrewd guess.”
   “I am not wetting my robes,” James snapped. “How much have you heard, you foul little—“
   “However,” Severus continued, “as I do not intend to remain here, I have come only to offer the use of a certain mixture that may be of use to you.”
   At that, James stopped short in a stream of muttered insults. “What?”
   “You are going to have…a baby,” Severus said, directing his remarks at Lily. “I experiment, as you know, with potion-making, and this—“ he took out a phial filled with a pearl-grey liquid—“is one of my inventions. If you pour four drops of this into any alcoholic beverage, it should burn away the alcohol and successfully do away with any effects that alcohol goes hand in hand with. The idea stems from the principle of using wine to cook with.”
   “Oh, you’re a genius,” Lily gasped. “You—oh, wow. That’s amazing.”
   “Here.” He pressed the sealed phial into her hand and curled her fingers around it. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
   “Why are you being decent?” James asked suspiciously.
   “It is a most uncharacteristic feature, and you may be assured that it will never extend to you,” Severus said acidly. “Good night.”
   With which parting shot he Disapparated, leaving Lily to stare, amazed, at the tiny amount of what looked like compressed clouds, and to wonder, once again, at what exactly that man could do if he really wanted to.
   A half-hour later, dressed in a pair of long, sweeping black robes and a hooded cloak with an intricate silver clasp, Lily opened the bedroom door to Anne, who had just Apparated into the house. The other girl was dressed in a very similar fashion, though Anne was also carrying a snakeskin purse. They could almost have passed for sisters; they both had auburn hair, though Anne’s was slightly browner than Lily’s. Still, they were not leaving their hair that shade, for Lily was too well-known among the former Slytherins and their families, and, as Lucius Malfoy had commented about a year or so ago, it would be more than advisable to cover up the dark red.
   After a few minutes of muttering moderately complex charms, Lily slipped a small money-bag and Severus’ potion into one of the many pockets in her robes, examined her new pale blond hair tetchily, and felt her paler eyebrows with a rueful smile on her face.
   “I do hope this isn’t permanent. I wouldn’t much like going around blonde to the end of my days.”
   “Shouldn’t be,” Anne grinned, quickly pulling her newly brown hair into a knot. “Come on; let’s go. Have you got your badge?”
   Lily held up her Order of the Phoenix badge, complete with a new, fingernail-mark-sized groove. This had been Fabian Prewett’s idea; if the owner of the badge dug his or her nail into the gap, a warning sign would be delivered to the rest of the members of the Order along with a pinpointed location. It was to be used as a call for help or for backup, though it had, thankfully, never been called into use.
   “All right,” Anne nodded; “we’re off, then. Floo powder?”
   “We’d better,” Lily assented after a moment. “Yes; they wouldn’t expect any spies or anything of the sort to arrive in a noticeable blast of smoke.”
   James nodded to both of them from the doorway. “Good thinking. Listen, I’ll…er…well, be safe, all right?”
   “Oh, yes,” Lily laughed. James noticed, uncomfortably, that the old adventurous blaze had begun to boil up in her eyes again. “Come on, Anne—we’ve got a box of powder here…Incendio!”
   As a comfortably blazing fire sprang up in front of them, both women took a pinch of the bright green powder and threw it into the flames.
   “Seven-twenty-three Knockturn Alley!” Anne said clearly, and, with a whoosh of green sparks, she was gone. With a nod to James and a cool repetition of the address, Lily followed her, and James was left behind to poke nervously at the fire, which had resumed its usual shades of orange, yellow, and blue.
   Coughing, the two emerged in the middle of the pub that Lily had visited once before, with Tom Riddle. The proprietors were still apparently the same; the dirt that oiled the walls and the floor had, if anything, thickened in density and worsened in smell. If Lily had felt the slightest bit inclined to do so, and she positively did not, she could have pressed the palm of her hand against the wall and come away with a blackened, grimy mixture of soot, grease, spittle, splashes of old drinks, and worse.
   With one eyebrow raised, Lily wound her way through the feet of several rowdy customers until she found a free seat near the bartenders. Apparently, the condition of the tavern did nothing to dissuade business; it even seemed to encourage it.
   “This is disgusting,” Anne whispered under cover of waving a hello to a heap of robes and smoke that sat, snoring, on the floor, then shrugging her shoulders in a very motherly manner. “How do these people stand this place?”
   “Wait till you try the drinks,” Lily responded coolly. “I’m growing more and more appreciative of Severus every moment for giving me that stuff; we’re going to need it.”
   “Well, what did Albus say?” Anne sighed. “We’re supposed to watch out for a group of five or six wizards inclusive of Rodolphus Lestrange. I’ve never seen him before; you’ll have to point him out to me.”
   “Will do,” Lily nodded. “I asked Sirius for a photograph, and it seems that the woman that was fighting James in Dartmoor is his wife.”
   “Oh, pleasant,” Anne snorted. “Say, how would Sirius get—“
   “She’s family,” Lily said briefly. “I never found out much about them, but from what James told me, Sirius is the family outcast because he’s one of the only ones in that clan that don’t want to weed out Muggles. James said that he’d been to Sirius’ house once, and it was disgusting. Decapitated elf-heads all over the walls…and his father was a horrid man; he kept asking James about the method of Muggle-tore that James thought was best.”
   Anne stared. “You’re joking.”
   “I could do better than that if I wanted to make a joke. No; it’s quite true. Sirius wouldn’t let anyone other than Peter, James, and Remus meet them, either, and he never talked about them.”
   “That’s terrible,” the other girl said quietly, shaking her head. “To have parents like that…I wonder Sirius has turned out the way he has.”
   “Chalk that up to James and his family,” Lily smiled. “His mum simply adores Sirius. Excuse me—yes, waitress?”
   A heavily creased old witch, modelling a moustache adorned with wads of snuff, snorted heavily and turned to face the two. “Wha’chew be wantin’, then?”
   “Have you added anything to your repertoire?” Lily asked in a peculiar, mincing manner. “We haven’t been here for about a month, you see,” she explained.
   “We hain’t got nothin’ new but the ‘ouse special, love.”
   “Well,” the partly hooded brunette interrupted, “what is the house special, exactly?”
   “Ah, cain’t tell ye that, ‘xactly,” the waitress said slyly, “but hiss’ got a name for bein’ a fine bit of poison, it does. Will ye be wantin’ two o’those, then?”
   “We’ll be wantin’ two o’those, then, love,” Lily put in, mimicking the woman’s Irish brogue. “And I’d much appreciate it if you’d actually give me a clean glass this time; I could see fingerprints on it last time I was here.
   Much to Anne’s surprise, the woman actually didn’t throw vitriol into Lily’s face at the quite outspoken and priggish rudeness. Instead, she turned around instantly, bustling towards the bar, flicking bits of snuff out of her moustache as she went.
   “That was suicide,” Anne gasped, agape. “You…you…”
   “Oh, they think you’re someone special if you act as if they’re smushed worms. It’s a Malfoy trick, actually,” Lily shrugged. “So now I suppose she’s under the impression that we’re from wonderfully respectable old wizarding families with millions in gold that we spend solely to keep the article about our frequent friendly fraternizations with the former Minister of Magic out of Society’s Sobrieties, or something.”
   “Oh, wonderful,” Anne snorted. “You know, I have never even opened that magazine.”
   Lily grinned. “The former Serena Sikora certainly did. She had stacks of them underneath her bed, and they were dog-eared at about every other page. Who The Well-Dressed Witch Is Shunning was one of her favorite columns, I believe. My name must have been directly at the top.”
   “Shht!” Anne waved suddenly. “There’s a group of people over there—near that hag with the fur cap.”
   “Behind me?” Lily asked casually, tilting her head to one side.
   “Yes.”
   “Um. Oh—oh, thank you, yes,” she beamed, examining her glass of a murky green substance that the waitress set down on the table. “Lovely. Try working on the appealing nature of the color, though; it’s a bit revolting. And you’ve got a sort of nest above your lip—right there, yes—do remove that before you serve us again, will you? Thank you, darling.”
   “I’m waiting for the lightning-bolt to strike any moment now,” Anne muttered as the woman moved away, apparently not in the least insulted. “In the form of a flash of green light, of course.”
   “I promise you,” Lily said dryly, “we will walk out of here alive.” Dexterously, she slipped Severus’ small glass phial into her hand and let four drops of the mixture fall into her cup, hidden by her wide sleeve. She then handed it to Anne, along with a very visible Galleon, and she received it back a few moments later along with some small change. Neither drink had undergone any visible transformation, but as Lily lifted her glass to her lips, she could smell a faint burning odour.
   “Whoof,” Anne gasped, forcing down a swallow, “this is absolutely horrible stuff. Who likes this kind of trash?”
   “I don’t know,” Lily responded, holding back a shudder. The beverage that was probably correctly described as containing poison had a rancid, acidic taste to it, and there were clumps of something mudlike scattered throughout the thickish consistency. A sprig of some bitter-tasting plant decorated the top of the glass, and, altogether, Lily felt that the best thing to do with the substance would be to blast it apart and then hang the maker.
   “Keep watching those people, though,” she continued quietly. “The glass is clean enough so that I can see them in it…”
   “You can’t hear them, though, can you?”
   “I can, actually,” Lily whispered, her slightly pointed ears unobtrusively leaning towards the group’s conversations, “but they’re all speaking at once. I can’t make out what they’re talking about.”
   A lull in the talk emitting from the booth next to theirs preceded the leave-taking of the two elderly men that had sat there, and the black-robed, heavily jeweled, amiable men that were the focus of Lily and Anne’s visit could now be overheard with much less trouble.
   Lily thought she recognised one of them in the reflection from her glass—a bearded face and a silver ring with a large, dirty. glimmering garnet set in the centre of it appealed strongly to her memory, though she wasn’t sure where she had seen him. Albania, she thought, or Dartmoor. Either way, they’re certainly the ones we’re looking for.
   “We’ll be staying here late tonight,” she predicted under her breath, taking another swill of the venomous garbage.
   As Lily realised as the night drew on, this pub was definitely not used as a regular meeting-place—it was much too obvious and far too public. It was simply used as a reconnaissance area, but there was hope that they would let fall a few sentences at least about their endeavors; it was not exactly a secret that Knockturn Alley contained the dregs of the wizarding world, and that no one there would be likely to even think badly of an episode of Muggle-torture.
   The only flies in the ointment were the facts that, even with their talkative neighbors gone, Lily and Anne could still only catch a few sentences here and there, and that Lily did not recognize the distinctive . Finally, Lily drained the last of her glass, dispirited, and in possession of no more than the words: “That Muggle-born brat didn’t squeal nearly as loudly as that dratted cat of hers; almost had a mind to Engorge her mouth and throw the cat inside,” which were not savory in the least, but also were not informative in any way whatsoever.
   “We’ve got to do something,” Anne murmured at one-thirty. “We can’t just stay sitting here; we’re gaining absolutely nothing.”
   “I know,” Lily sighed. “Desperate measures coming right up, then?”
   Anne blinked. “I don’t know. Depends.”
   “We’ve got to talk to them. Albus won’t let us repeat this anytime soon, because this pub doesn’t have regulars, and we’ve made ourselves noticeable enough. So…well, the only way is to try to get something out of them.”
   “Okay,” Anne sighed. “I’m not really a good actress, but I’ll try.”
   Frowning, Lily fingered the stem of her glass. “You don’t have to, you know. I can do it by myself.”
   “I am also a member of the Order, thank you!” Anne retorted, aggravated. “I’m not being kicked out by someone younger and less experienced than I am!”
   Raising an eyebrow, Lily slid out of her seat. “Fine; have it your way.”
   “Yeah, I will, thanks,” Anne snapped. “You do what you want to; I’ll go my way. And you don’t need to instruct me—how old are you, anyway—fifteen?”
   “Twenty in June,” Lily glared.
   “Good for you. I’m twenty-six. I’ve got more authority than you do, and I’ll be damned if you keep trying to order me about, you rich little twit.”
   With that, she spun around, robes and cloak billowing, and made for the door. However, before she made it out of the pub, she crashed right into one of the Death Eaters, was thrown against the wall with a cry, and crashed to the floor.
   Exclaiming an apology, the man that she had thrown herself into bent down and heaved her to her feet, which she regained with a shaky composure.
   “Oh, Merlin, that hurt,” she groaned, holding her head. “What—oh, ow.”
   “Sorry, miss,” her supporter offered, “didn’t see you there. Lord, but you don’t look good.”
   “Yeah, thanks to her,” Anne glared, jerking her thumb towards Lily, who was standing at the bar, aloofly watching the proceedings.
   “Why?” her new acquaintance asked, “what’d she do?”
   “We had a fight. She’s a horrid little thing, convinced she’s better than me…God, my head is spinning. Let me sit down, will you?”
   Doctoring a fresh drink, Lily tipped it to her lips, wincing at every move Anne made. These weren’t the sort of people that would confide anything to an apparently drunk girl—they were more likely to hunt after someone disinterested. They weren’t particularly high-class, the few that she knew did not have large fortunes, were not outstandingly talented or intelligent, and they did not have an old family. Likely they were used as emissaries, and they were positively not as high-ranking as the Malfoys, or the Blacks. They were of the sort whose recommendation was a sadistic trait that was encouraged to flourish among the Death Eaters, and they were the ones that usually did easy jobs, such as simple, heartless, random Muggle-killings.
   “Which one’s your friend?” one of the friends of Anne’s stranger wanted to know, and Lily found herself staring right back at two glittering, deadly, and interested eyes before she could think of what to do. However, she met the situation, staring levelly back at him before shrugging and lifting her glass to her mouth.
   She kept on watching Anne for the next ten minutes, but she found out nothing—did not so much as get an opening into the desired conversation. But, unwilling to abandon both Anne and Albus, Lily ordered another drink and reached for her purse to pay for it. When she looked up, the same man that had asked which one she was stood beside her.
   “You move quickly,” she commented, placing two Sickles down on the counter.
   “You’re watching us,” he said coldly. “Why?”
   The question came astonishingly quickly, and it was just as well that she had had an answer prepared. Still, she was quite aware that she had misjudged at least one of the men—this was no mere murdering instrument.
   “My friend has draped herself over one of yours,” she explained detachedly. “I’d rather she makes it home in one unharmed piece.”
   “She said that you had been in a fight.”
   “She is drunk,” Lily said shortly. “If she really had intended to fight with me, she could have done much better than that. Besides, I don’t get offended easily.”
   “I see,” he nodded testily, curiously staring at her for a few moments. Then his accusatory mask dropped, and a semblance of friendliness relaxed his muscles. “Rabastan Lestrange, at your service,” he said, holding out a hand.
   Lily twisted her mouth into a short smile and shook his hand. “I’ve heard of you, of course.”
   Her mind was whirling. According to Albus, Rodolphus Lestrange was to be here—and she knew that Rabastan was his younger brother. She could not see any resemblance between Rabastan and the other four men—he was tall, lean, and dark, with a peculiarly edged bone structure that she knew ran in the family, having examined Rodolphus’ photograph. The other four were paler, more stereotypically English, and shared the same casuality of movement that was absent from Rabastan’s figure.
   “You haven’t mentioned your name,” he said bluntly.
   “Yes,” she agreed. “I didn’t want to.”
   A twitched smile appeared on his mouth. “You’re interesting, at any rate. The waitress had quite a lot to say about you.”
   “Did she?”
   “From the way she described you, I’d say you were a Malfoy,” he grinned, fingering his short, dark beard. “You are, aren’t you?”
   “No, I’m not,” Lily answered, deciding not to lie unless absolutely necessary—if she stumbled and let him know that she wasn’t telling the truth, it would go worse for her.
   “You’re not?”
   “No.”
   “Married?”
   Lily frowned, then turned that into a laugh. “Yes, I am. Why?”
   He pointed to her white-gold wedding ring. “I wasn’t sure if it was an engagement ring or not.”
   Her fingers flew to her ring, which she had forgotten about. “Oh—well, no, it isn’t.”
   Taking her arm, he ushered her away from the bar. “I think your husband wouldn’t like your being here—and you’ve had enough to drink.”
   “I’m not drunk,” she said indignantly. “Do I look drunk?”
   “No,” he replied. “But it’s what I intend to prevent. Who’s your friend?”
   “A friend,” Lily shot back. “Listen, I don’t know what you think makes you special enough to take me home, but I’d rather you took your hands off of me. Now.”
   “Our family does not take pride in ravishing married women, as you should know,” Rabastan said slyly. “I quite assure you, my actions are all in the name of seeing two women of good name and position home safely from a rough area.”
   “Okay, fine,” Lily gave in. “You can escort us out of the ‘rough area’, but then you will leave us to ourselves.”
   “I will be escorting you to your relatives,” he replied with a sinister smile. “They would no doubt rather have things done my way.”
   Arrogant prat, Lily thought furiously. This wasn’t good. This was in absolutely no way good.
   She had to submit; there was no way around it. She and Anne were surrounded by the five men, none of whom looked particularly merciful, and, much against their will, they were ushered into the sooty fireplace. However, the four rougher-looking wizards had taken hold of Anen, and Lily was accompanied only by Rabastan, who kept a gentle but firm grip on her upper arm.
   “Serpentigena Regium!” Rabastan ordered, stepping into the green flames along with Lily, who was realising quite definitely by now that she was not going to end up at one of the vacation give-away homes that the Daily Prophet held drawings for now and then.
   Anne was frankly terrified. Practically shaking, she was clutching the arm of one of her guards more firmly than he was doing to her, and when, exasperated, he shook her off, her knees almost buckled. Emerging from the fire, she stepped out onto the wide, stone floors of a place she had never seen before—draped and carpeted in green, embellished in silver, and furnished in ebony. Expensive, classical, traditional, and immersed in family pride, the high, vaulted room breathed out fumes of an entirely different world than what Anne had lived in her whole life. Lily, however, immediately knew where she was, and just as immediately felt as familiarly at home as she had the first time she had stepped out of the massive fireplace.
   “Where are we?” Anne asked nervously, trying to shake off her four companions.
   “The Malfoy manor,” Lily answered. “One of the oldest family residences in England.”
   Rabastan released her arm, quizzically examining her. “You know your history.”
   “I have been here before,” she said shortly. “It isn’t, however, my home, and if you’d let us leave, we would both be much obliged, as it isn’t exactly early in the evening.”
   “Oh, we will,” Rabastan said carelessly. “We’re only waiting for—confirmation, shall we say. Although—well, likely we can let you leave, can’t we?” He threw a glance over his shoulder at a stocky tawny-haired man, who shrugged. “Yes, I suppose we could. I think I can answer for satisfaction on your part.”
   “What are you talking about?” Lily snapped. “This is one of the most outrageous things I have ever come up against. I walked into a bloody tavern, not a scene from a murder mystery, and you have absolutely no right to take me anywhere against my will. Or her, either,” she added, pointing at Anne.
   “You’re quite right,” Rabastan agreed. “You four!” he ordered, “take the girl into the drawing-room. Keep her there. He should be home in a few minutes, anyhow.”
   They obeyed momentarily, and Lily was left alone in the entrance hall with Rabastan, nervous not so much for herself as for Anne, for it was plain to see that the other girl was in significant danger, and in much more than Lily was.
   “All right,” Lily ordered, jerking her chin at Rabastan, “what is this about, then?”
   “I’ve seen that girl before,” he explained. “And not with any good crowd, either—I’ve seen her in company of those Ministry-followers, the Aurors…Kingsley Shacklebolt, Alastor Moody…You’re not part of her group, I know. You’ve got a Malfoy air to you, like it or not, and you don’t act much like those heroic, brave, humanitarian idiots. I don’t know what she wanted in that pub or in your company, but it wasn’t anything good. I’ll bet you haven’t known her long, too.”
   “I haven’t,” she admitted truthfully. “But, honestly, we just went out for drinks—“
   “Yes,” he shushed her, almost whispering, “you did, I’m certain, but what about her? That crowd has no reason to come to Knockturn Alley unless they’re looking for something—or someone.”
   “Oh,” Lily murmured. “I—yes, I see. What—what’s going to happen to her?”
   “Nothing at first. We’re letting old Malfoy confront her, so he can see what she’s really after, and if she’s after anything important, or if she’s got something interesting to tell—well, we’ll see, that’s all.”
   He thought she was a Voldemort-sympathizer; that much was certain. Lily knew she couldn’t do Anne any good here, and it seemed that her only hope was to try to warn as many people as she could to help the outnumbered girl, as Rabastan seemed inclined to let her leave.
   “Why Malfoy?” she wondered audibly. “Surely he isn’t old enough to have any real authority.”
   “Oh, not the young one. Not Lucius,” Rabastan hastened to say. “No—Mortifer—the elder. Lucius’ father. He’s high up in the Dark Lord’s circle—very high up.”
   “I don’t know much about that,” Lily divulged, twisting her wedding ring. “My husband doesn’t tell me much about this kind of thing; he’d rather I wasn’t involved in the political state of things. Besides,” she lied, “if the Ministry ever found out anything about him, he doesn’t want me to be able to tell them anything.”
   “He doesn’t trust you?”
   “Half that, yes. The other half is that he doesn’t want them to be able to have anything against me."
   “I see,” Rabastan nodded, quite convinced by now that she was the genuine article of a loyal wife of a Death Eater. “Well—I suppose there’s nothing keeping you here…”
   “Yes, I’d rather go,” Lily interrupted. “If Mr. Malfoy tells my husband that I was in that girl’s company, home life won’t exactly be filled with bubbles and chamber music.”
   “Leave then,” he half-smiled. “I’ll see you somewhere or another, I’m sure.”
   Lily nodded briefly to him, and then Disapparated as quickly as she could.
   Appearing half a moment later in her own house, she whipped out her Order of the Phoenix badge and forced her fingernail into the small groove as far as it would go. She had not dared to do so while in the company of Rabastan; she was sure that he would have noticed any attempts of hers to do something of the kind, and she needed to give them directions first, which would be impossible if they simply materialized in the middle of the Malfoy manor, for Rabastan was not exactly of the ‘ask-questions-before-attacking’ sort.
   “James!” she called, unsure about whether to dash upstairs or into the lower rooms. “James!—where are you?”
   He answered immediately, appearing at the door of the library. “Lily, did something happen?”
   “I couldn’t help it,” she explained incoherently. “They—Anne’s at the Malfoys’; they’re planning to—well, I don’t know what. But—Rodolphus wasn’t there; his brother, Rabastan was, and they know she’s one of us, but he didn’t think I was; I don’t know why not.” Leaning on his arm, she fought for breath. “I—you’ve got to get there; we’ve got to; who knows what they’ll do to her!”
   “You’ll have to disguise yourself or something,” James said, looking her over. “We might need the blonde you later, because Rabastan obviously thinks that the you he met today is a decent, Muggle-hating citizen with some sort of horrible Death Eater husband.”
   “That was nothing more or less than luck,” Lily assured him. “I’ll go pull on some robes; just a moment.”
   Quickly, she sped up the stairs, just as Sirius and Peter Apparated into the entrance hall.
   “Hullo,” James greeted them cheerfully, “we’re off to storm the Malfoy mansion, by the way. Anne’s in trouble.”
   “Anne’s what?” Caradoc Dearborn roared, catching just the last bit of the sentence. “What—she—what happened, James; is she all right?“
   “I don’t know, James announced to about thirteen people, including the Prewetts and Alastor Moody, although Albus Dumbledore’s white beard and instinctive air of command were not present. “Listen, Lily and Anne got dragged to the Malfoy manor somehow, and Anne’s still there. Rabastan Lestrange was in charge, it seems, and he thought Lily was ‘all right’ from his point of view, so he let her go.”
   “We’ve got to get Anne out of there,” Lily added, slipping down the banister of the large staircase with a new shock of chestnut-brown hair and a pair of James’ black robes. “Rabastan said something about Lucius Malfoy’s father questioning her, and we can’t afford for any of us to be—interrogated.”
   “And then there’s the whole saving-Anne-from-torture-and-a-very-painful-death thing,” Caradoc supplemented, shifting nervously from one foot to the other and twirling his wand apprehensively; he had been seeing Anne for quite a few months and therefore was the least eager of anyone present to have her in the company of vindictive Death Eaters.
   “Dramatics aren’t necessary,” Lily said coolly. “Right, then; we’d better Floo in; no one I’ve ever seen Apparates into that house besides the Malfoys themselves. Come on; we’ve got fireplaces all over the house.”
   “Dominating git,” James teased as they all hurried for the closest pots of Floo powder. “You’re wearing my clothes, by the way, did you know?”
   “I did,” Lily grinned, taking a pinch of the bright green granules. “I was going for the ‘disguised under miles of fabric’ look.”
   “Funny,” James shot back, taking her hand. “I could swear, you know, that you’ve just puked over all of your own.”
   Lily started to yelp “I certainly did not,” but James had pulled her into the fireplace and shouted out “Serpentigena Regium” before she could respond, folded her into a stabile, endearing, and very gentle hug. A few milliseconds later, while they were still whirling through a spinning maze of fireplaces, she had quite forgotten that she was supposed to be angry, or at least vaguely irritated. But then that, after all, was one of the drawbacks to having a husband who was unconsciously capable of being so damn attractive at the most inopportune moments.