But the windows that faced the beautiful gardens outside of Paris in the real chateau were now looking down on the largest pure alabaster basin she had ever seen, and complete with the purest clear water and most beautiful marble statuettes of mermaids and dolphins and the like placed at carefully calculated intervals around it. A fountain in the middle of the oval lake-size pool was made of a slim and supple naiad, whirling in one spot with her marble gown rimmed with gold swirling around her, and with her hair formed of water streams. Streams of water were spurting from her wrists that were raised in the air above her head, and her golden eyes were raised towards the sky.
Every statue had the deepest golden eyes one could ever imagine existed, and the twining rose-trees and trellises that surrounded the pool sported lovely dark red, pure white, and pale yellow buds and flowers. Evergreens and sculptured hedges and bowers formed a large lion spread out over at least three or four acres of lawns, only clear to the eye when viewed from above. And Lily could see the pool filled with about twenty boys and girls her age. Orange-yellow daylilies were placed around the pool, the trees and sculptured hedges, and the statues.
Mrs. Potter swept along the long hall, through the replicated rooms of Marie Antoinette and the King, till she came to an encased sort of bridge, ten feet wide and lined with scarlet carpeting. White-gold banisters twined up to Lily’s waist, and a crystal arch stretched all along the fifty-foot-long hallway. Underneath, Lily could see a patio, with several large scarlet satin umbrellas lined with golden Valenciennes lace placed above beautifully carven stone tables, benches, and chairs.
When they left the hallway, they stepped into a place that made Lily feel as if she had stepped backwards several thousands of years. In the style of the ancient Egyptians, a large banquet hall loomed in front of her. Almost everything in the room was either real gold or fool’s gold. Long golden divans were cushioned with royal purple, sea-green, diamond-blue, and blood-red silken pillows.
The table, a magnificent piece of sculptured teakwood, stretched in a circle thirty feet in diameter, with seats on either side of the five-foot-wide surface. One part of the table, nearest the entrance, had been taken out so as to allow people to enter. The tablecloth was a creamy white linen, and golden fruit dishes adorned the table at intervals of ten feet. Four large golden-bronze pitchers of some drink—probably pumpkin juice Lily, thought—were set at each point of the compass around the table.
Pillars around the room reached up into a ceiling thirty feet high, which was glass tinted yellow with gold, and doorways all around the banquet hall led to other rooms, and lightly waving silk curtains covered the doorways; deep indigo, aquamarine, pale gold, and deep scarlet. Still, though the design was of the ancient Egyptians, there was undeniably a feel of something else to it.
Chocolate Frog wrappers were strewn in one corner, a pile of clothing had been thrown over them, as the owners had gone to the swimming pool, and quite a few books that hadn’t been written during Cleopatra’s time were pushed inside bookcases near the divans. It gave the hall more of a homelike feel; less formal and more like someone actually lived there. If it hadn’t been for the box of Filibuster’s Wet-Start, No-Heat fireworks shoved underneath the tablecloth, Lily would have suspected she had stepped into a museum.
Mrs. Potter led Lily along the corridor opposite the large teakwood doorway, along another of the beautiful crystal and white-gold arches. This time, at the end of the hallway, they pushed aside a scarlet satin curtain, embroidered with a design of golden dragons.
Lily let out another gasp as she entered this new and absolutely different atmosphere. It was one of the most imaginative wings of a house she had ever seen; the whole room reminded Lily of a courtyard. A patio formed out of smallish tan, white, and grey stones stretched out to form the whole floor; in the middle of it an almost delicate gazebo stretched carven vines of mahogany to the ceiling. Around the gazebo a small moat stretched only four feet wide and two deep; goldfish and waterlilies abounded in the clear water.
Small tables were dotted carefully and symmetrically in an almost random design; low and dark, they each had a pot of iced water and a box of tea leaves in a beautiful white porcelain box marked with blue fans. Four bowls of the same material were stacked on each table, and scarlet silken cushions with the same dragons as on the doorway curtains served as seats.
Windows artistically moulded into the stone walls let sunlight stream through pale pearl curtains; the scarlet ones had been drawn aside. The walls were covered with rice-paper paintings and calligraphic writing along with carefully woven wall hangings. Two dragons guarded the main entrance, which, like the other doorways that led to other rooms, had a hanging of strung rice on thin threads that rustled softly when a soft breeze swept through the entrances. A balcony extended around the entire square courtyard, with a beautifully carven stone banister around it, and several doorways could be seen through the banister, with scarlet and rice curtains, some drawn aside, revealing comfortable bedrooms. The roof seemed to be nonexistent; at least, the glass that covered the courtyard was so sparkling clear that it hardly was visible. Sunlight covered the courtyard, making it bright, cheerful, and summery.
Twelve cherry blossom trees bloomed, though out of season, at regular intervals in a circle around the courtyard. They were hung with small, round lanterns made out of rice-paper, hung with scarlet tassels at the bottom, and adorned with painted characters; and the same lanterns hung from the balcony, though with small bells attached to the slightly longer tassels.
Mrs. Potter led Lily through one of the strung-rice curtains, through a corridor hung with painted silk hangings, and, after walking up a mahogany staircase, led Lily into a room to her right, where Lily saw her black-and-gold trunk already at the foot of a mahogany divan spread with deep scarlet cushions embroidered with dragons and intricate landscapes.
Several large fans had been hung on the walls over the pale silken wall hangings, and two beautifully folded paper lanterns of the same style as the downstairs courtyard hung at either side of the window that took up an entire wall of the room. It was covered with the rice hangings, and the scarlet satin curtains had been pulled to the sides.
A small potted cherry blossom tree was placed opposite the bed, and a middle-sized fountain in the shape of a small god was in the middle of the room, with a small moat two feet in diameter, with smaller waterlilies planted artistically inside it. There were fish inside this one, also, but they were smaller than the ones in the courtyard.
A large, intricate rug was arranged partly underneath the bed and partly in the area where Lily would step mornings when she swung her feet out of bed. There was a door made of what seemed like carven wooden shutters, and when Lily opened it, it was half a closet with lots of hangers and half a bathroom; but it was larger than any she had seen before. The bathtub, sink, and every other structure were marble with gold streams running through it, while smallish rugs covered the floor underneath the sink and in front of the bathtub and toilet; the rugs in the bath-and bed-room were of a soft, thick, Oriental make; scarlet with bamboo-green and sun-gold driven into them. A rice-paper lantern hung from the ceiling gave more light than three Muggle lightbulbs.
Mrs. Potter smiled at Lily’s amazement. “This is your room, dear. And I would stay and show you around, but I’ve got to get to work. One of our house-elves is fetching—oh, there you are!” She swept towards James’ rather tired figure in the doorway. “James, dear, show Lily around while I’m gone, all right?” She didn’t wait for an answer; merely vanished into thin air.
Lily could tell James had just been dragged out of bed. Sluggishly, he moved towards a small table in her room that had a teapot like the ones in the large courtyard on it. Lily smiled. She pushed him down onto a cushion that had been placed around the table, took a blue-and-white porcelain bowl, dropped a few tea-leaves inside, and poured the icy water over it. Handing it to James, she smiled to see the speed at which he opened his eyes.
“Thanks.”
”Well, sure. I’m staying at your house, right? So the least thing I can do is to make myself helpful.”
He grinned. “You know, you’re so different from the other six hundred thousand people staying here that it makes me want to make them walk the plank or something. They seem to think that they’ve got every right to order our house-elves around as if they were small roaches, which not even we do. And here you are—saying that you’ve got every reason to make yourself helpful. I like that.”
Lily laughed. “Well, I don’t know if their parents would like your making them walk the plank, but—“
“But.” He set his tea bowl down and stood up. “So, you ready to see the rest of the house?”
She smiled. “Sure!”
“You’ve already seen Versy and Cleo?”
Lily frowned. “I’ve already seen what?”
”Oh, sorry.” He herded her out of the door. “Versailles and the Egyptian wing. It’s what I called them when I was smaller, mainly because it’s faster.”
“Yes, I’ve seen those.”
”Well, first off—“ James was leading her around, showing her these things as he did so. They stepped into the Hall of Mirrors. “Mum and Dad’s guests stay in the Versailles wing; we’ve got Mum and Dad’s offices there, too; and all the awards and trophies and things my family’s won—like Head Boy badges and Awards for Services to the School that they let us keep, and stuff for bravery while working at the Ministry is also there in a big glass case. The family records and portraits are there, too—they’re usually painted when you turn eighteen.
“My guests live in the Japanese courtyard, which is mainly a guest house. And the Egyptian wing is for bigshot entertaining. We’ve hosted several Ministry feasts, and that’s where they take place. We’ve got another wing that’s sort of in the style of Hogwarts—it’s a medieval castle, that is. It’s mostly for relatives, but it usually smells good, since the kitchens are located there. And then we have the main living area—in the style of the ancient Grecians. It’s got our library, the family dining room, my miniature menagerie, and our bedrooms that we use when we don’t have guests. And then there’re the huge gardens that take up so much space I’m glad I’m not a house-elf. The wings are basically arranged in a pentagon—the gardens stretch all around the pentagon. Then, of course, there’s the swimming pool—it’s directly in the center of the pentagon, and huge.. There’re fifteen feet of patio and lawn between the pool and the different buildings, which is where we’ve got lawn chairs and things. And every wing is connected by one of those overdressed bridges. So.”
He stopped near one of the exits that led to the pool, waving his arm over it. “Feel like swimming?”
Lily smiled. “I suppose. I’ll go change.”
He grinned. “Sure. Same here—wait!”
His yell stopped her before she reached the staircase. Lily whirled around.
“What.”
“A warning. Do not wear a bathing suit that can come undone easily.”
“Excuse me?”
”We’ve got Lora here, and her plus me and Sirius and Rem. And Peter. This is a friendly warning.”
Lily smiled. “Thanks.”
“Sure.”
Lily heeded his advice, though it wasn’t as if she couldn’t do otherwise, seeing that her father was rather overprotective when it came to bathing suits. The one she’d been wearing up till the beginning of the summer was black, a one-piece and had sleeves going down to her elbows, for crying out loud.
Well, it was still a one-piece, but the sleeves had diminished to the point of non-existence, it was white, and there was a dip in the back of it. Lily had known better than to push her father any farther than that, so it had remained this way. Sweeping her hair back into a plait, she quickly knotted one of the scarlet and gold towels she had found in the closet around her waist and headed outside, for the swimming pool.
James immediately swung himself out of the water, shaking his hair all over her. “Lily! That was fast.”
“What’s the correct response to that?”
He grinned. “Never mind. Want you to meet Lora, though.” Turning back to the pool, he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Oy! Lora! Quit trying to stick Peter’s toes up his nose and come here!”
Almost seconds later, a head appeared at the edge of the pool, inches away from both of their feet.
It was a rather interesting face; not stunningly beautiful, but rather attractive. The girl James had called Lora had wet, palm-tree brown hair, currently extremely wet, and would have hung down to her lowest rib if it hadn’t been floating on the surface of the water. Storm-grey eyes twinkled beneath thick, brown eyelashes, and the dimples in her cheeks showed even while an evil, mischievous grin was evident on her face. Her ears were small, and the lobes curved around to meet the side of her head. Her cheeks were naturally a sort of peach color, while her nose was usually wrinkled as a side effect of the smile.
Lily took this all in at a flash; she had no time to do or notice anything else, as James snatched her back from the basin’s edge, almost making her lose her balance. Lily was about to say something indignant, when she noticed the more or less annoyed expression on Lora’s face and the hands that had snapped for their ankles withdrawing, empty.
“Lora Agathe Tempesta!”
“You just had to move, didn’t you?” Lora had a mezzo soprano tone to her voice, though it was anything but musical; it was more like a hurricane.
“Well, Lily’s still got a towel on. And, besides, she’s not exactly used to you. Heck, she’s not even used to me, even.”
”I take that as an insult.”
“How so?” Both Lora and James had turned to Lily.
“Well, my friend, it’s not as if you’re so different from the usual that you’re impossible to get used to.”
“Well, you are!”
Lora laughed. “James, honestly, I don’t see what that has to do with it. But hey, Lily.” She stuck out a thin hand and Lily shook it, letting herself be pulled into the water.
“Lora! What was that for?!”
“Oh, James, for Pete’s sake, stow it! Lily wasn’t upset! She let me do that!”
He turned to Lily, who had by now unknotted the towel and thrown it onto a lawn chair. “I did. Come on, James, in!”
Lily met several scores of people from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff that day; she still retained a sort of abstainment from Sheila, but otherwise everyone was completely friendly. Eva was there, but Lily had to admit that, though rather flighty, Lora was a bit more fun to be around than the serious blonde.
Lunch was served in the Japanese courtyard. They had been given a choice of a Japanese menu or an English one, and the majority had chosen the Japanese food. So, seated cross-legged on the scarlet cushions, sipping rather hot green tea, leek soup, and eating shrimp with fried rice and steak bits, the laughing, hot, sunburned and suntanned group of teenagers were busily engaged in seeing whether porcupines liked soy sauce (it didn’t) or to see how high bowls would bounce before breaking. Lily’s won, with fifteen feet, but that was mainly because of the very good Shield Charm she had put on it.
Eva, Lora, and Lily drew into Lily’s room after lunch—as they said, the pool was too crowded, and Lily’s room was the only one that wasn’t cluttered yet. They said the word “yet” with a very ominous tone that made Lily rather edgy about going to sleep.
Lora rolled over on her stomach on the rug, kicking her feet into the air, while Eva sat down on the bed and Lily perched on the banister outside her sliding window. They were all rather hot and red, and the magical breeze that shifted the curtains felt wonderful.
Giving out a sort of contented sigh, Lora stretched her arms above her head. “Lily, James was right.”
Both Eva and Lily whirled on her. “James?”
“You sound so surprised. He’s been raving about you ever since he got home.”
Eva snorted. “Lily, don’t listen to her. He’s mentioned you about as many times as he mentioned Snape—er—Severus. Not in the same tone, of course, but still.”
Lily grinned. “That’s good.”
Lora sat up abruptly. “Why?”
“I don’t want anyone raving about me. It hurts the ears and annoys the listeners.”
Eva shut her eyes tightly. “Lily. Are you that insane? It’s a natural part of life!” She unsqueezed her eyelids. “Boy sees you, boy goes absolutely stark raving mad, boy stays absolutely stark raving mad and annoys all of his remote acquaintances hopelessly by ranting about you. A natural part of life.”
Lily’s eyebrow was raised. “If that’s natural, then God made a serious mistake.”
“So what? Everyone makes mistakes.”
”Yeah. But that one was worse than most.”
”Oh, bother you. You’re such a hopeless squasher of sentiments.”
Lily grinned. “I might just put that on my coat of arms—if I had any. One and Only Severe Squasher of Sentiments. How does that sound?”
“Perfectly awful.”
“Good.”
Lora laughed, a laugh that made several of the people in the pool look up. “Lily, you’re mad! Wonderful!”
Eva was shocked beyond belief; a smile was flitting across Lily’s face. “Lora?”
“Oh!” She was gasping for breath. “I was scared for a minute that I’d be the only one as nuts as the Marauders. I am not alone! Oh, happy day! Sing a song of celebration to the skies!”
This last part was sung in an obviously made-up tune, and the ‘skies’ part was a screechy high pitch, such as made Lily clap her hands loudly beside her ear so as to make certain she hadn’t gone deaf.
“Lora!” Both girls stared at the giggly figure in the silver bathing suit. “Have you gone absolutely off your rocker?”
That didn’t stop her—on the contrary, Lora, and this time Lily, too, started twitching with laughter. “Off your rocker. That sounds like your grandmother fell off her chair and fell on the cat. Off your rocker!”
Eva, with feigned disgustedness, threw her hands into the air. “I give up.”
Lily laughed. “Seems like you’re going to be doing that a lot from now on!”
Wrinkling her nose, Eva uncrossed her legs. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Around you two, no. Around you two, it’s considered worthy of applause if I keep my sanity.”
”What sanity?” Lily questioned innocently, the wide grin on her face giving the lie to her tone.
That evening, Lily and Lora had become quite close; that is, as close as two terribly sarcastic, sentiment-squashing witches could get. They had had an absurd flash of eccentricity and had decided to eat in the replicated secret rooms of Marie Antoinette; with the apple-green silk covering the walls and the white and gold sculpturing surrounding the edges of the ceiling.
Of course, the house-elves had no idea that they were eating there, and even if so, they would probably have disapproved strongly—they were a rather snobby bunch. So they resorted to hiding greasy loaves of garlic bread, overflowing pitchers of pumpkin juice and hot green tea, buttery sweet potatoes, and large German white sausages in their towels that were knotted around their waists.
Which, of course, resulted in the scarlet and gold towels being shoved secretly, with a lot of giggling, into the room Sirius and James were sharing—not because there was no room; quite the contrary, but the two boys figured that, one, they were more vulnerable if they had two separate rooms, the dimensions of which being fifteen feet by eighteen feet, and, two: it was more fun this way.
Lily, Lora, and Eva agreed to that principle wholeheartedly. They had moved Lora’s bed into Lily’s room, and, though Eva’s didn’t fit around a bend in the corridor, there was still space for a third person.
They spent the evening with lots of practice when it came to Shield Charms. True, they weren’t supposed to use magic during the holidays, but Lora didn’t attend Hogwarts yet, and she hadn’t received a notice from the teacher that had been homeschooling her before not to use magic, so that Eva and Lily were bombarding her with ice cubes and sweet potato insides, trying to see how close they could get to hitting her in the face. Lora was obviously quite good at Charms; she emerged from the room when they had finished with dinner with only several droplets of sweet potato mush in her hair.
