Lily was flipping through the sixth of seven Defense Against the Dark Arts encyclopedias outside, next to the lake, one afternoon, with several rolls tied up in a napkin, when a shadow fell across her book. She ran her eye over the last sentence on the page, then looked up.
“Yes?”
Severus smiled. “Hello. I haven’t seen much of you lately.”
Lily slipped the corner of the napkin inside her book, shutting it and placing it on her lap. “I know—it’s just the exams—the O.W.L.s—“ She stopped, making several irrelevant hand gestures. “I mean—you know how it is.”
He nodded. “Yeah—I know. Well, I guess I came over here to ask, in case I forgot later—I wanted to know whether you were going to visit Lucius—or me—this summer.”
Lily frowned. “Severus—I don’t know. James asked me that, and I told him I had to stay at home, because of my father, but I guess I’d have to see.”
Severus sat down next to her. “Sure. I don’t have to have an answer straightaway.”
Slightly smiling, Lily reached her hand out, dipping it in the lake, and then flung several droplets over the calm surface. They both sat there in silence as the water rearranged itself in a still sheet of silvery blue-green.
“Say—Lily?”
With an effort, Lily detached her eyes from the glittering lake. “Yes?”
“I wanted to ask you this for some time—well, you haven’t spoken to me much lately.”
She shrugged. “We’ve got exams coming up. I’ve been studying.”
“I know. And every time I see you, you’re buried in Volume Thirty-six of Sixty on Extremely Rare Spells that are Extremely Useful in All Sorts of Situations or something like that. But still—I don’t know—you’ve been around Potter and his friends a lot lately. That’s not why you don’t want to see either me or Lucius over the summer, is it?” His gaze was almost painful in its pleading.
Lily was rather taken aback. “Severus—what on earth gave you that idea? I should think you know me better than that! I’ve got more respect for my friends than to let myself be cajoled out of them by a couple of prats.”
He sighed; a sigh of relief. “Good. I was worried there for a bit.”
Smiling, she elbowed him in the side. “You’re not anymore?”
”Nope. Thanks.”
“Sure. Anytime.”
“Coming to see us over the summer?”
“I said I’d see! Listen to me for once, my friend!”
“I do!”
“No, I mean really!”
They were both in much better moods when they parted; Severus going back up to the castle and Lily re-opening her book and taking a bite out of a biscuit.
That week sped by so quickly that it seemed like merely seconds had passed before the one hundred and forty-five fifth years were herded into a section of the Great Hall to take the Ordinary Wizarding Levels. Placed in every other seat, they were first given a long Transfiguration paper to answer, and then three essays to write.
Lily was one of the only ones to be relieved at the short answers; she had gone over them so many times that she could practically recite the two books she had used for extra reading in Transfiguration. It took them until lunch to finish, and when they did, no one wasn’t glad of the existence of ice-cold pumpkin juice, chocolate ice cream, and other cold dishes the house-elves had prepared.
After lunch, they had to stay in the Great Hall, and, one by one, they were called into a room off of the teacher’s table to perform a tricky bit of Charms; bewitching a desk to whistle a tune and dance around the room; bonus points were given for the amount of figure-eights the desk did and whether or not the song was rather intricate and hard or simply “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. Lily, having the Queen of the Night’s first aria running around in her head, blocking out any other thoughts, had the desk sing that, while gliding across the carpet as if on ice skates. Professor Flitwick was very pleased; he gave her a large grin as she exited the room.
Others didn’t do as well, however; Elspeth exited the room with a rather greenish tint to her face. It seemed that the desk had gotten out of control and had done a double flip, wrecking itself and a portrait frame.
That day, everyone felt as if something very large had been taken off of their stomachs; something in the line of iron weights. Next day’s exams were going to be easier; Professor Cauldwell was giving them ingredients to make a potion with from memory; some of the ingredients they needed, some were just there to confuse them. They were to be making an Advanced Draught of Sleeping Death—the one the legendary queen used to try to bury Snow White alive. It had been interesting for Lily to learn that the old Muggle fairy tales had been rooted in wizarding legends—the poisoned apple was actually possible, under the circumstances.
The afternoon was rather dreary; Professor Binns had prepared a long stack of questions on goblin rebellions and the treachery of Cleopatra’s trusted magical advisor, among other things. The Great Hall was stuffy and sticky with suppressed yawns and trapped air; the tall windows on either side of the long tables had been shut and barred; the reason for that being that the open windows might cause distraction.
Not even several secret Alohomoras from James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter all together, pointed at the same window, did any good. Dumbledore had obviously thought ahead.
Relief overwhelmed each and every one of them as they sat down to dinner that night; out of their main subjects, only Herbology, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Astronomy were left—the Ordinary Wizarding Levels didn’t extend to extra classes such as Care of Magical Creatures and Divination, though the N.E.W.T.s did.
The fifth years got more sleep than usual that night—Defense Against the Dark Arts was the only class they would usually worry about, but Professor Dorvan was a wonderful teacher. She had managed to fix the things she taught them so unshakably in their minds that not even Peter could forget them. No one in Lily’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class would ever forget how to tame a dryad after the disastrous occurrence Peter had with their teacher.
Professor Dorvan, the next day, had prepared an obstacle course along with a sort of scavenger hunt inside and outside the castle. They had to start at the beginning of a deserted corridor, and make their way down it, on their way gathering the information they would need to survive underwater for fifteen minutes, besides fighting several creatures, including their teacher. Once at the end of the corridor, they would go through several doors, till they opened one that opened straight into about the middle of the lake; the water was held back magically. They had to swim up to the top of the lake, getting rid of the hinkypunks and other annoying little creatures.
It was quite exhausting, and not one person was unhappy to find themselves safely under Madam Pomfrey’s supervision at the top, where they would be instantly dried and presented with a flaming hot brew that made smoke come out of their ears and noses. Lily couldn’t help but think that they resembled a cabinet full of steaming teapots.
It would have been rather comfortable on a cold, wintry day, Lily reflected, but when they were under scrutiny of burning rays from the sun, it was less than delightful.
Herbology, held in the greenhouses, involved repotting several bushes that shot fireballs out of their blossoms. Points were taken off for the amount of burns a student had, and points were added for the amount of blossoms a student could paralyze.
No one was happy with Lily when she cleverly froze the organs of the flower that produced the fireballs, thereby effectively disabling it of its weapons. In fact, if she had gloated about it instead of ignoring it, she would have been unanimously hated by the class.
Astronomy consisted of two parts; one involved the calculations of the movements of the stars in the so-far undiscovered wings of the Milky Way galaxy and pointing out their location on the thirty-first of October, 1981, besides determining their size, shape, and color. The other part took place on the top of the Astronomy Tower at midnight, seeing if their calculations were correct, besides locating several stars and pinning down their exact location. Even Lily was frazzled when they finally dropped off to sleep at one-thirty in the morning.
But when they woke up, it was blessedly over—no work, no exams, no anything except lazing around for the entire rest of the week and the next one, till their exam results came out. No one could possibly be more grateful that the exams were over than the fifth, sixth, and seventh years; when the younger students complained of the wracking difficulty of such and such a problem, the older students took a great pride in sniffing patronizingly and saying that that wasn’t anything; just listen to what they had had to do for Transfiguration, and then they’d take a great pleasure in seeing the mouths of the smaller students drop.
The castle, sticky and hot and stuffy, was abandoned by all but the teachers, who were grading the exams. The entire lawns were filled with bodies lying in the grass, reveling in the splashes of lake water the giant squid squirted out at them.
Of course, James, Sirius, Peter, and Remus weren’t going to lie in the grass along with all the rest of Hogwarts; the first day after exams, they had dragged Lily and Eva to the Forbidden Forest, where, undoubtedly, it was much, much cooler, along with being a bit more exciting. Eva was terrified, and she was extremely glad when she could return to the castle for dinner. She couldn’t understand Lily and the boys, who seemed to enjoy Stunning waist-high spiders, and then would go off looking for more to attack.
Of course, Lily, on the other hand, couldn’t understand Eva’s queasiness; after all, as she said: “They’re just spiders!”
Eva would shake her head, as if giving up entirely, and she would continue her tirade consisting of the things she’d do to James’ owl if they let any live spider get near her, which, of course, ended in the boys piling the Stunned and dead bodies of rather large garden spiders next to the rock she had taken refuge on.
Far too soon for Lily’s liking, it was time for them to pack their things and leave Hogwarts—James had asked her if they could wait till summer to visit Tom and Litharelen, as he had heard from his father that the Ministry was going on another raid near the end of June, and he didn’t really want to be caught in the middle of it. Rather reluctantly, Lily had agreed, for she didn’t want to leave her family for several hours without explaining where she was going, and this was the most convenient time.
But she had to live with his request, and she had to admit to herself that she liked the Alendoren Cove better when the air was quiet and smoke-free, and she could ride Svordsja through the friendly waves without bringing her steed in any danger of death, injury, or captivity—that is, more captivity than she was already in, which really wasn’t much. Lily spent the time she would have spent with Svordsja in the Hogwarts kitchens, getting recipes from the house-elves for Petunia to use at home. The house-elves were delighted.
They spent a good day stuffing their things into trunks, and when they boarded the Hogwarts express, she was rather edgy about what she would find at home. She was only fourteen—well, almost fifteen, but still, she wasn’t ready to run an entire household with not much help. However, trying to ignore the worries that were pushing her shoulders towards the ground, she squared them with a smile, pretending to the best of her ability that nothing at all was wrong.
It seemed she succeeded quite well—no one except Severus noticed that anything was wrong, and that was only because he had walked in on her when she was alone in a compartment on the train, hugging a book of her mother’s tightly against her chest. He had no idea how grateful she was when he didn’t make a point of it; simply sat down next to her and stared out of the window till she felt the tenseness leave her body.
When he saw that she was all right, he brought her to the compartment of several of his Slytherin friends, and they passed an extremely enjoyable afternoon with food from the cart, Exploding Snap, chess, and Gobstones. Lily had been named the champion of chess when they arrived at Platform Nine and ¾, and it had become a sort of challenge to see who could get rid of the most of her pieces, since beating her was almost impossible.
She said goodbye to her friends as she wheeled her way through the barrier; on the way out she caught sight of Mrs. Potter—James had said something about quite a number of people visiting his house over the summer. The lady about twenty students were flocking to had long, straight black hair that fell to her waist, and deep violet-blue eyes that made her son’s look rather pale. She wore amethysts in her ears and on a chain around her neck; a silver ring with a deep purple amethyst that must have been worth a fourth of Gringotts’ vaults adorned the ring finger of her left hand. Her robes were a plain black; though she managed to make them look wonderfully stunning, something the Hogwarts students found practically impossible to do.
Lily averted her eyes and bent her energy towards pushing her trolley through the barrier, at which point in time she was greeted with her father’s smiling face and her sister’s rather tired countenance. Her father took the trolley from her and loaded the car with her trunk and Alisande’s cage and occupant, while she and Petunia occupied the passenger and back seats.
