| -=Lily's Seventh Year; Chapter Three=- |
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| They landed in the common room, three inches away from the fire. Quickly, Lily somersaulted over the fender; and, exhausted, they let themselves lie full-length on the Gryffindor rug in front of the fireplace. “Whew,” James admitted. “That did not go down well.” Lily raised herself up on her elbow. “I would never have guessed. What, in the name of all evil, made you make that noise?” ”What noise?” he defended himself. “I moved my foot!” “Oh, help me, Lord,” Lily mumbled as she started hitting her head against the carpet. “I told you that elf-nymphs have much better hearing than ordinary humans, and Tom is part elf-nymph…I did tell you that, didn’t I?” James nodded. “You did…but I didn’t think…” ”You didn’t,” she agreed. “Let me look at where he got you—what curses did he use?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of them before, though—it wasn’t Avada Kedavra or the Cruciatus. I know that much. It didn’t sound pleasant, so I was glad I’ve been on the Quidditch team for several years---hey, what’re you doing?” She had knelt down next to him and pulled out the small phial made of the solidified litaleter. Uncorking it, she let a dropful of the liquid inside pour onto her finger, which she ran over a large scratch on James’ cheek and a burn on his arm. “What’s that?” ”It’s something Tom gave me for Christmas in—fifth year, I think. It should help heal pretty well—“ She stopped. The effect on the burn on his arm was more visible than on the scratch; almost like a zipper, the sound skin kept widening, shrinking the red mark till it vanished, which happened in a surprisingly small amount of seconds. “Okay. It does heal pretty well. Let me see your hand—did you scrape that or did Tom?” He shook his hand out of her grasp. “I don’t think you understand the big picture—That Lord Voldemort, that you call Tom—he’s going to be moving on to England now.” Lily pushed a strand of matted hair out of her eyes. “Of course. You didn’t think that I’d forget that, did you?” ”No,” he admitted. “That’s why I was so surprised when you didn’t look as if it had bothered you.” She gave a short laugh. “I never lose control if I can help it.” The next morning, both of them had to be shaken awake; Lily by Lora, who had been quartered in a different dormitory, and James by the combined efforts, ice, and water balloons of Sirius, Remus, and Peter. Lily couldn’t help suppressing a laugh as she saw his face as he glared at his friends at breakfast. Every day, in the Daily Prophet reports, something was printed in the bottom right-hand corner of the front page about a ‘shadow in the East,’ which was warning wizards to be careful about their chosen vacation spot and informing readers about the Ministry’s actions. What they hadn’t revealed yet, Lily noticed, was that he was slowly growing stronger and planning to move his people to England. All that she could make out from the papers was that he was an outcast that attacked everyone that came too close—not a word was said about anything else. James was more nervous than usual; he jumped when someone spoke to him, and once he had drawn his wand on an unsuspecting first year that had tugged on his sleeve to ask him the way to the nearest bathroom. Naturally, Sirius, Serena, Remus, and Peter had noticed that something was wrong, but James kept tight shut about everything that had to do with Lily or Tom, and, much to the chagrin of his friends, he refused to say anything. Severus had cast several glances at Lily’s paler face and at his edginess and assumed something that was, as usual, quite off the mark, but he didn’t say anything, remembering the time when he had assumed something and had nearly been killed as a result of it. Lily’s voice still chimed in his head when it was quiet; the few sentences about being in James’ debt…He squirmed almost every time he thought of it—who on earth would want to be beholden to James Potter, of all people? Slytherin slaughtered Hufflepuff in the first Quidditch match of the season; as they had lost their captain, the Hufflepuff team was terribly coordinated, and their moves were jerky and badly practiced. The game would have been won easily if the winner was also ordained by gaining two hundred points before the other team, but as the Snitch was flitting around and especially hard to find, it lasted longer. Halloween was coming up quickly; after the match, time seemed to fly by. This Halloween feast was to be even more grand and decorative than other years; after all, it was the one thousandth year of Hogwarts’ existence. An amazing amount of butterbeer had been ordered from the Three Broomsticks, as James and Sirius found out. They had sneaked into Hogsmeade for some candy, and Sirius had suggested that they stop by the post office and send a letter to his parents, who were asking him what his friends wanted for Christmas, as they planned to go to the Netherlands and to Italy. After picking out a hooting little owl to send off with his message, James had decided that he was thirsty, so they slipped over to the Three Broomsticks. Behind the counter, a man was stacking crates and crates of butterbeer bottles, and the boys heard her shout to Madam Rosmerta, “Where’d you want these things? You usually don’t get these many.” “No,” Madam Rosmerta called back; “these are for that Hogwarts Halloween thing; Albus’s going all out this year.” “Mighta heard something about that. So where do you want these,” the man asked, trying to keep a crate from falling on the floor. Naturally, the boys, on their return, had spread the information all around the common room, and from there it took hardly any time before the school knew that they were to be served something other than pumpkin juice. However, more efforts to find out what their entertainment was to be didn’t turn out well; the gamekeeper, Hagrid, was pushing the students away from his backyard almost viciously, and he had handed James and Sirius two detention each for trying to blast through the fence he had put up. Still, it was rather common knowledge that there were going to be dishes of truffles and foie gras, which the house-elves were strictly instructed to keep away from the students. James had found out through his friendship with Minky. Lily finally found out why he was on such good terms with her; one of his house-elves had had a small daughter, but the mother had been sacked as a result of gossiping about her family to several other families, and the small baby house-elf had been given to Professor Dumbledore to take care of; he was especially good with house-elves, and the small girl wasn’t eating well. Within a few weeks, however, she had been handed over to the care of a motherly Hogwarts house-elf, and she was doing much better. When James came to Hogwarts, she took to him especially, as she came from his home, and she was devoted to him. James had told Lily this one afternoon, when the rain was pelting the windows and thunder was crackling almost directly above the castle. She had asked why Minky liked him so much, and he had given her the history of the small castle servant. The evening before Halloween, the team was, for once, not practicing on the field; it was raining worse than the standard storms did; the ceiling in the Great Hall was deep indigo and black, with occasional bolts of lightning tearing across it. They were stretched on the rug in the common room, jibbering excitedly about tomorrow’s feast. The decorations were already being set aside in a room off to the side of the teacher’s table, though several peeks inside had only revealed glimpses of black and orange smudges. Remus was talking to Sirius about something, and Lily was playing chess with Peter, who was getting much better at it, though James’ help might have accounted for his improvement. “No, Peter, not the knight; don’t you see her rook?” Peter frowned. “What rook? Oh, right—that one.” He moved his knight back, which made Lily grimace; if James hadn’t intervened, the game would have been hers; instead, he took one of her pawns. “Move.” ”Oh, fine, fine. I officially hate you, Potter,” she grinned. “Again?” he groaned, rolling his eyes in false agony. “Oh, no—the rejection, the pain!” “Shut up,” she told him good-humouredly, giving him a light punch in the arm. Biting her lower lip, she moved her bishop diagonally three spaces. “Check.” James frowned. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t see that. Okay, Peter, the next thing you want to move is—oh, hi, Serena.” The girl had ambled over from the fireside, where she had been tossing her hair behind her back affectedly for the benefit of the seventh year Quidditch team members. Now, however, she let herself down next to James, who offered her the chair he was sitting on. “Here—I can drag that footstool over.” “Thanks,” she beamed. “So, how’s the game going?” “Very badly,” Lily snapped peevishly. They stared at her in surprise. Lily didn’t just lose her temper like that; they were wondering what had happened in five seconds to make her that angry. They were obviously expecting her to explain. She bit her lip again; she shouldn’t have let herself fly off the handle like that. She didn’t know why she had, either—it was something about the pair in front of her that almost drove her wild with frustration, and she didn’t know why they got under her skin so much. “Never mind.” She pushed her chair back and stood, leaving the common room and ignoring the puzzled “Lily! Hey, Lil! What’d we do?”s from the chess table. She was sitting in her bed with the curtains drawn when the rest of her dormmates entered, changed out of their robes, and got into their respective beds after several whispered conversations. Three hours later, she was still sitting bolt upright, tailor-style, eyes wide open, and thinking. “Why did I lose control like that? I never really minded before…well, I was annoyed, but that’s all I was.” She shifted her foot and tucked it underneath her. “I hate this…” Outside, the sliver of moon shone luminously into the circular dormitory, and, amongst the noise of the Owlery, Lily could discern a raven’s caw. The next morning, she was a bit quieter than she normally was, but that was almost expected from James and Peter, who still didn’t know what was going on. Lily had stayed up all night, unable to fall asleep; she had been reflecting on the past evening. The Great Hall hadn’t been decorated yet when they entered it for breakfast; they could hear the pipsqueaks of bats coming from the room off of the teacher’s table if they listened closely, but otherwise nothing came to light to show that there would shortly be a large Halloween feast in the chamber. Lily perked up a little in Anatomy of Magical Creatures; they were studying the vampire and the reasons that it had a strong desire for blood. Professor Maar told them he would be bringing in a specimen for them to study and learn about, and she was looking forward to that. Several of the girls in the classroom let out disgusted “Eurgh, we’re going to be messing around with a dead vampire?”s, and they were sharply reminded that they had volunteered to participate in this course and that it was not required for their graduation from Hogwarts. Professor Dorvan had informed them that they were to be learning about curses barely known throughout the wizarding world but that were quite popular at one point in history. They weren’t as well known as the Unforgivable Curses, so no one was extremely familiar with them, but they were just as dangerous, having to do with the control of the mind, almost like the Imperious Curse, but these controlled different aspects of a person and were harder to break; one controlled speech, one sight, one the power to make decisions… Sirius kept shooting odd glances at her; James had obviously told her about what had happened that night at the chess table. She didn’t like the funny gleam in his eyes that seemed to say that he knew something that she either didn’t know about herself or didn’t want anyone else knowing. Either way, it wasn’t too good for her. Lora stopped her frequent visits to Gryffindor Tower; one of the Slytherin prefects had followed her through the house-elf corridor she used, and he had taken fifty points each from Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. Lily only saw her friend during some classes and at meals in the Great Hall; Lora was sitting with Sheila and her friends now, who, she revealed with the air of someone pulling a cadaver out of a paper bag, weren’t that bad to be around. Still, she could be found in the hospital wing quite a bit on evenings with Madam Pomfrey, who was rather peeved that the headache medicines she had dosed Lora with hadn’t proven themselves so far. The afternoon before the Halloween feast, their classes had been canceled; the teachers were going to be busy in the Great Hall. Lily was sitting in an armchair, scribbling busily away at a roll of parchment held down with several Arithmancy and Transfiguration books, when James tapped her on the shoulder. She spun around. “Yes?” “We’re supposed to go down to the Great Hall…you know, help decorate. Something about being Head Boy and Girl,” he added in answer to the question on her face. “Oh.” Lily rolled up her essay, then let out an exclamation of exasperation as she realized that the wet ink had smeared every single word she had written for the last ten inches. “Oh! Goodness, that just had to happen, didn’t it? I should really start thinking before I do things…” James coughed. “You need help?” “No,” she waved absent-mindedly,”—no, I’m fine…okay. I’ll be right down.” She swept her books off of the table with one neat motion, saved the ink bottle from hitting the floor with a rapid charm, and drifted slowly out of the common room. When the portrait had shut behind them, James ventured a question. “Hey—Lil—I wanted to ask you something.” “I am not going to let you copy my Transfiguration homework.” “No, no—it’s nothing like that. It’s just—Lily—“ He had been biting his lip nervously ever since he began talking, and, still edgy about the topic of conversation he had picked, he stopped, as did she. “Why did you storm out of the common room like that?” It was her turn to look away. For several seconds, while her brain was whirlstorming frantically, she busied herself with studying the structure of afternoon clouds. “I don’t like Serena much; that’s all. She annoys me terribly, and I don’t like being around her.” ”She never used to bother you that much before.” ”Before what?” ”Oh, just—before,” he ended lamely, waving his hand around for emphasis. “Before—er—well, before.” “I see.” She eyed him warily. “That explains absolutely everything.” “Sorry,” he apologized. “I just don’t know…you didn’t mind her much in fifth year…” Lily shrugged and resumed walking. “That was fifth year.” It was his turn to say “I see” skeptically, and he said it. She didn’t answer; just kept walking down the hallway, fixedly ignoring a sighing mermaid in a picture, chained to a wall, singing something about young love and its fatalities. “Hey—Lil—“ He caught up with her again. “You’re getting much harder to talk to lately…is anything wrong?” ”No,” she said firmly. “No.” “I just mean that I’d like to talk to you more. You’re a wonderful person; you know that, don’t you?” “No,” Lily said again, and this time she sounded as if the next person to give her a compliment like that would have his tongue ripped out by the roots and shoved into one ear and out of his nose. James cleaned his nails nervously with his teeth. Then, suddenly, he straightened, with a funny lopsided grin on his face. “Lil?” ”Yes?” If words could freeze steam, hers would have done it. ”Lil, you’d better start talking to me. I paid for those dress robes, didn’t I?” She swung around, but at the sight of his grin she couldn’t say anything. Lily couldn’t help it; she had to smile, too. “Oh, you little—“ His grin widened, and he stuck out his hand. “Hey—let’s make this fair. You talk to me, I’ll stop pestering you about Tom. Okay?” Her face clouded over a bit, which was what he had expected to see; he had thought that that was what she had been checking the Daily Prophets for. Still, she shook his hand. “Deal.” “Can I have a hug?” Trying to imitate the small pout Lily’s mouth had been drawn in, he held his arms open wide like a child of three, eyes the size of saucers. Lily couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, okay, okay, fine!” She hugged him, but, with a mischievous grin she couldn’t see, he grasped her around the waist, lifted her up above his head, spinning her around as fast as he could, she whispering wildly, “James Potter, let me down!” He grinned at her, as her long hair started to fall in both their faces and hit the portraits hanging on the walls. When he started to get slightly dizzy, he swung her down, letting her lean against the banister of a staircase; he next to her, one arm on either side. “You—you—you!” she breathed, trying fruitlessly to repress a grin. “Me,” he stated. “Enjoy that?” ”I’m extremely dizzy. Of course!” She swept her hair off to the side, but then whipped her head back around to face him. “Don’t do that again.” “I promise!” he beamed, eyes twinkling. She breathed again. “At least, not within the next hour,” James added, grinning. Her face fell in mock dismay, but both of them dissolved in laughter moments later. Lily had more fun that afternoon than she had had in a long time, what with putting up the decorations around the Great Hall and helping tiny Professor Flitwick out of the bag of streamers he had buried himself in. It took them a good five minutes to find him, and he was spitting out bits of thread and cloth when they dug him out, laughing almost hysterically, and even strict Professor McGonagall was trying to repress a smile. Lily had fun levitating the confetti. She made the orange and black bits of paper shaped in characters spelling HOGWARTS and 1000 zoom around maniacally between the bats and above them, occasionally dropping onto the tables in miniature tornadoes. The Hogwarts crest, in black and orange, hung from banners draped all over the Great Hall, and silky tassels fell from their edges. The gamekeeper, Hagrid, finally made it into the entrance hall with the surprise he had been hiding behind his fence—four giant pumpkins to set at each corner of the Hall. Roughly, five men could sit down and have a game of cards inside one; they were that big. They also needed a regular fire inside them instead of only candles, but the design Lily got to carve on them of Hogwarts made it worth the dusty fire-building job. James also found out how much fun it couldn’t be to enchant one thousand bats so that they couldn’t use the restroom for twelve hours. He had to catch each one, perform the charm, and let it fly out of the room off of the teacher’s table without letting the others out, but thankfully for him, Lily was in charge of making the bats flutter three feet above the table and nowhere else, say, the girls’ showers. Smaller jack-o-lanterns were placed along the long tables at intervals, and the usually white linen tablecloths had been changed to a cottony cream, and were sprinkled with the same orange and black confetti that was crazily rocketing around three feet above their heads. Tapered beeswax candles were placed in golden candlesticks all down the center of the tables, and the ceiling was quickly turning a dusky blue-grey, shot with good-tempered dark pink and gold. The students swarmed into the Great Hall just as Lily and Professor Dorvan finished packing away the boxes of left-over decorations and the rest of the teachers completed the sweeping up of pumpkin insides, streamer remains, and confetti scraps. Chattering and buzzing with renewed energy, everyone slid into their seats, grasping excitedly at the roasted pumpkin seeds on the tables. Lily reached for a handful herself; she and Petunia had always loved those when they were younger and her mother had made them around Halloween. A sad smile spread over her face as she remembered—but then, emphatically, she shook it out of her head. She wouldn’t remember her mother; she’d only start crying, and who needed to start crying in the middle of a feast? It was a wonderful evening; James and Sirius had refrained from slamming bowls of custard in other people’s faces, the butterbeer wasn’t salted and boiling hot, as it had been when the teachers had asked for refreshment while they were decorating, there were no shredded socks in the steaks, and the peas weren’t stuck together with honey. Peeves had discovered that the last three items ticked more than everyone in the Great Hall off, so he was currently banned from the entire floor surrounding the kitchens. The only thing Lily could have complained about was Serena. She was sitting next to her, and it was getting to be rather disgusting to have to push Serena’s hair away from her plate. The blonde was currently using her sheet of hair as a curtain between Lily and James, who was sitting on her other side, and whom she was engaging in conversation. Lily wouldn’t have minded talking to him at all—they had been on such good terms when they were alone with the teachers, and now that Serena was here, he was only talking to her. Well, that’s what he’s happy doing, Lily thought; if he likes her—heck, even if he loves her, which, at his age, I highly doubt, but if he does, then whatever makes him happy is all right with me. I suppose. He was nice enough to buy me dress robes, and I’m quite thankful for that, but he’d have done the same thing for his sister, if he had one. I’m not to go around assuming and imagining things—he’s practically engaged to Serena already, so there’s no chance of an elopement. Lily slammed her fist against her stomach moments after those thoughts ran through her head—an elopement? Why should she care—why was she thinking that? “Lily, you’re sick,” she mumbled to herself before downing another bottle of butterbeer. “Completely batty. Hospital wing. Immediately.” And, right on cue, her head fell onto her fist. Sirius looked over at her. “Lily, you all right?” “Fine, fine, couldn’t be better,” she mumbled. “I hate treacle,” Lily groaned by way of an excuse. “Oh—stomachache—you need to go to the hospital wing? I can get you there—“ “No,” Lily groaned firmly, “I don’t want to drink another bowl of that hospital wing soup. It’s worse than treacle.” Lora, seated at the Ravenclaw table, heard her and leaned over. “If you’ve got anything to say against the treacle tart, it’d better not be said in my presence!” “I—don’t—like—treacle—” Lily garbled as she slammed her palm on the table to every word. She went to bed early that night with a stomachache as an excuse; what she honestly was doing was sitting in bed, listening to the wind rustle and whistle through the clouds, thinking. James was a friend to her…and Eva and Lora were, too…she and Amanda were growing apart, and Abigail and she never really were all that close…but none of them understood her, none of them had an unmanageable craving for danger and the allure of quick heartbeats—they were all happy here, and they were content, penned up inside these castle walls… Lily wasn’t doing any better than she had been the night she stormed out of the common room. Something closely resembling turmoil was building up inside her, and she hadn’t any idea what it was dealing with; why it was there, and what was happening to make it appear. Every time someone tripped behind her and sent their books skittering all over the floor, her friends saw her start at the unexpected noise and grasp at her throat or at some sort of lump beneath her robes. She sank into several trick steps several times; something that had hardly ever happened before, as she habitually paid attention to where she was putting her feet. Lily had stopped stealing glances at Eva’s newspaper; she had taken out a subscription to the Daily Prophet. Every morning at breakfast found her scanning the heavy pile of parchment and ink, looking for something. She never did find it, her friends assumed, for she laid the paper down next to her plate after she had finished rifling through it, sighing almost inaudibly as it plopped onto the tablecloth. She wasn’t talking to many people anymore. The only ones that were getting through to her were Eva and Sirius; she hardly saw anyone else. Severus had tried sending her owls, but she never replied. He didn’t see her outside of classes, anyway—that is, besides meals, and then they were separated by the whole width of the Great Hall. He was getting more than a little worried; he cared about her, and he knew something was going on that she wasn’t telling anyone. Lily, on her part, hated every single moment she spent around people. She would wake up at two in the morning, with the moonlight shafts falling on her face; her shadow would glide behind her to the window of their dormitory, where it stayed for hours. A restless tigress awakened in her brain and her heart every time she saw the full, endless expanse of sky; something made her want to ride out into a never-ending field of grass, seated on a midnight-colored charger, with the wind rushing in her ears and her hair streaming behind her. The excitement for adventure and life was being repressed horribly by the stone walls she saw day after day, and, slowly, she started to grow thinner with frustration. Tom was doing all right, as she had found out from the Daily Prophets. They informed the reader that several potentially Dark wizards had been incarcerated after being found while brewing illegal potions and performing forbidden spells on animals, but that they were found to be working for someone; the identity of whom was unknown. His plans were going as expected, then, and he hadn’t been captured…yet. |