Beyond Hogwarts -Chapter Ten

-=Beyond Hogwarts; Chapter Ten=-

Lily couldn’t have been happier as she kissed James goodbye the next morning—it was a Friday, her first day at work—they were renovating their house over the weekend, and it was one of the last days she would have to work in a tiny kitchen with hardly any storage space, the last days she would have to wade through mountains of exotic and ancient items to simply get to a bookcase.
   James had wondered why she was so happy at lunchtime, and why she wasn’t still angry, but he put it down to her finding a house, and didn’t worry about it. The last thing he thought she might have done was gotten a job as an Auror, so he wasn’t suspecting anything of the kind.
   He came home for lunch, cheerful and hungry, as he demonstrated by his attack of the garlic bread and spaghetti. Excited, he told Lily about the training for his job—he was learning several languages, defense and attack spells and charms, physical combat techniques, and was memorizing the detailed lives of about ten imaginary people, whom he was to portray.
   As soon as he took his leave and Apparated to the Ministry, Lily quickly pinned her badge to her dark burgundy robes and picked up her folder of credentials, leaving the apartment behind her with a heart skidding with excitement.
   Following Mr. Merriwether’s directions, she found the door supposedly to the handicapped restroom and pushed it open, smiling slightly to herself. After the door fell shut behind her, she looked around the room, and her eyebrows rose in appreciation.
   It was very obviously a training room for novices—a space about as large as a soccer field and at least forty feet high was filled with many different aspects of Ministry work. One corner had about ten desks in it, and basic verb conjugations for different languages were pasted all around a blackboard—Lily could discern a few words of Mermish, some troll, a bit of goblin and a few words of pixie, along with the basics of French, Dutch, Greek, German, Spanish, and Italian.
   A folding wall stretching about twenty feet perpendicular from the main wall separated that area from a wandwork practicing space, where different kinds of wands were piled in boxes and newer magical techniques were taught. Cushions were stacked in a corner, and a cage full of squeaky hamsters took up another; they seemed to be experiment animals.
   The rest of the room, a good half of it, was nothing but something that looked like a gymnastics practice hall. Mats were placed on the floor, against the wall, and on the wall; bars were placed strategically around the room, a tightrope was fastened about twenty-five feet above the ground between two black iron constructions resembling fire escapes. About a dozen different items in the way of boxes, slabs of wood, and tables were positioned in what Lily incorrectly identified as an obstacle course of sorts.
   There was a door marked Showers very conspicuously, one inscribed Restrooms/Changing Rooms, and another marked Storage. Interested, Lily’s eyes followed the articles in the large hall till they landed on an extremely large kitchen. She grinned when she saw four pots of coffee and a tray of rolls spread with butter.
   She started when she felt a touch on her shoulder, and spun around to see a middle-aged woman; her hair already turning grey, but brown eyes as alive as ever. Her face was rather taut, as her hair was pulled back in an extremely tight ponytail, and she was in loose pants and a large shirt, both with obvious amounts of cat hair on them.
   The lady stuck her hand out towards Lily, brushing herself off with her other one. “Arabella Figg, Auror-in-Training Headmaster. Welcome—“
   “Lily,” Lily smiled, shifting her folder to her other arm. “Lily Ev—Potter,” she amended, beaming to herself.
   “Oh, the wonder girl? I heard Robert talking about you yesterday—said you wouldn’t be put off. Say—“ she interrupted herself, her eyes falling on the tray of rolls, “I haven’t had breakfast yet. Go ahead and change, and then we’ll see how many other of my girls we’ve got here.”
   “Er—“ Lily wrinkled her nose—“Change into what?”
   “Oh, we’ve got things in there. Just a pair of pants—and a shirt—and try to scavenge for some ballet shoes. I do need to get some more of those,” she murmured, putting a hand up to her hand and running it through her hair. “That reminds me—did Fred ever get me those leg warmers? I could have sworn…”
   Frowning, she walked over to a crammed bulletin board, and Lily stepped into the changing room. Pushing open the door, she saw two women talking animatedly with each other, one in her mid-thirties, the other about forty. Each of them were tying mid-length hair back in ponytails, and they didn’t bother to turn around when Lily came into the room.
   Lily found that the clothing, though thrown together in a heap, was clean, and she suspected that someone had used a good Cleaning Charm on them after they had been removed that night. Pulling out a pair of black pants and an oversized bright violet shirt, she slipped into them, hanging her robes up on a knob. Ballet shoes were a bit harder to find, but she finally found a pair she shrunk to fit her feet.
   Pushing the door back open and removing herself to the coffee machine, she found that two other women had arrived, both about twenty-eight, and both with mousy-blond hair, though one was extremely petite and the other was rather tall. Murmuring a hello, they resumed their conversation after moving to let Lily reach a mug and the sugar.
   The coffee was very good, Lily admitted, but nothing could really beat ancient Turkish. And the roll she buttered was a bit bland, and in a minute she knew why. Whipping her wand out of the pocket these pants contained, she conjured up a jar of honey, directing it to pour its contents all over the butter. She earned several disgusted looks from the mousy-looking girls and a laugh from Arabella Figg, who immediately swiped the honey from her and repeated the process on her own roll.
   At ten, nine women excluding Arabella were sitting cross-legged on the floor, finishing off remains of butter, roll, and (in Lily’s and Arabella’s case) honey. Wiping her hands on her sides, Arabella harrumphed for attention.
   “All right, then! Early in the morning, everybody’s up, si?”
   A grunted “No!” didn’t seem to penetrate to her brain, and she continued cheerfully, clapping a hand on Lily’s shoulder.
   “We’ve got a new member of our sisterhood—girls, this is Lily, Lily, this is the S.H. I’m pretty certain you’re our baby, but we don’t bite, not till we get into combat, that is,” she winked. “We’ve got lots of things to catch up on with her, so you other girls’ll just have to do without me while I work with her a bit. Just go through the regular routine today, and in an hour we’ll relegate to the languages. So.” She clapped her hands twice. “Stomp, stomp. Off to kick the mats we go!”
   The last comment earned a laugh from the nine, and, walking out to the gymnastic section of the room, they started stretching their muscles, gossiping a bit while doing so.
   Arabella walked Lily through a complicated stretch routine, and, after Lily was thoroughly sore, pulled her over to where mats were piled both on the floor and against the wall.
   “What we’re doing here is basically learning hand-to-hand combat,” Arabella explained, “in case you get your wand knocked out of your hand or in case you don’t have it, and there’s a nasty curse circulation around that knocks your wand out of order, and it’s pretty much trash-can ripe. We’ve not figured out how to block it, as the stupid thing breaks through shields, and we’ve got people working on it, but just in case, this is defense. Right? Riiight. So,” she nodded, lunging forward, “I’ll be demonstrating what I’ll be starting you off as and what’ll come to you naturally in a few weeks.” Kicking off of the ground, both of her feet slapped the wall together, and her knees curled back in, making her land in a half-crouching position.
   “That’s what you’re starting on. This—” she said, repeating the same basic motion but with a sort of twirl built into the kick and a somersault ending in a land instead of the crouching mode—“is what you will be doing to your apartment walls pretty soon for fun.”
   Lily grinned. “I’d better reinforce them, then, shouldn’t I?”
   “You should,” Arabella agreed. “Now. First right position. Lunge.”
   Lily obeyed.
   “Other foot in front; sorry. Okay. That’s first right, other foot is first left. Now, when you kick off, you’ll be pushing off of this heel…”
   That afternoon was exhausting, both physically and mentally. Lily’s muscles were screaming for a hot-water bath, and her mind was throwing a tantrum for a Pensieve. She was behind in the class, and she was juggling the foundations of Mermish, pixie, fairy, elf, star, troll, Dutch, and Italian in her head, and a notebook she carried home with her was crammed with paper denoting the conjugations of verbs and several basic phrases.
   The other women were much farther advanced than she was, and it was taking all her skill to catch up. Fortunately, however, some languages were much the same, for instance, pixie and fairy, and Mermish, underwater, was somewhat similar to elf. Still, she found herself wishing for a Time-turner, so she could make up what she would have missed had she been hired while in actuality she was on her honeymoon.
   When she Apparated to the apartment, she hardly had time to stash her notebook full of notes underneath the sofa before she had to whisk around and point several pans onto the stove. Quickly, using more magic than she usually would have liked to use, she set several knives to chopping up potatoes, which she hurriedly threw into one of the pans, along with several sliced onions and some oil. She pointed ground beef into another pan, stirring it with her wand, which was emitting a thick mushroom cream sauce
   A small thump made her look up quickly, but she turned back to her cooking as she realized it was only Sirius.
   “Hullo,” he said calmly, swinging himself onto a stool. “How was the first day of work?”
   “Hassling and exhausting,” Lily mumbled. “I wish I had the training part over with.”
   “Yep, that’ll get you,” he nodded. “Wish there was something I could do to help, but with my cooking skills I’d rather not.”
   Lily directed her wand towards a cupboard, the doors of which flew open. Several plates and a few glasses followed, and they settled on the counter, along with a bunch of silverware.
   “Set the table for me, would you, please?”
   “Will do,” Sirius nodded, picking up the plates speedily and setting four places before Lily could blink. She smiled gratefully at him.
   “Thanks.”
   “No problem. I’m eating here, after all…there’s got to be something I can do to help.”
   She gave another half-smile, and, just as James Apparated into the living room at six o’clock, she was pointing the potatoes and onions into a bowl, while Sirius was drooling over the other bowl on the table. Remus had arrived in the meantime, and he was leisurely flicking cushions into a pillow-fight.
   Dropping a briefcase with a grunt, James walked over to the kitchen, wrapping his arms around her. “How was your day?”
   “Absolutely marvelous,” she smiled, kissing him. “Let’s sit down, though—Sirius won’t let there be anything left if we don’t.”
   “Very nice idea,” James grinned, plopping down onto a sofa and pulling her onto his lap. “Say, come to think of it, why are you two here?”
   “Lily cooks better than restaurants or we do,” Remus shrugged. “And Sirius doesn’t seem to like my tea.”
   “You’re bloody right, he doesn’t,” Sirius confirmed. “NO TEA!”
   The next morning, Lily was serving toast, bacon, and sausages to a horde of hungry, sleepy movers: the Marauders, Frank, Eva, Lora, John Winters, from the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and Amanda. All were yawning and gulping down mugs and mugs of the coffee supply that was slowly but surely dwindling, Lily, energetic as usual in the morning, was pointing piles and piles of clothes into boxes Lora had provided her with, and she was wrapping dishes in cloaks and pillows.
   In an hour, they set out for the new house through Floo powder—it used much less energy to use the powder than to Apparate. James had scavenged for a large tin of the green powder, and, one after another, they were stepping through the fire, each of them carrying a heavy box.
   The new house’s main fireplace was just across from the front door, and Lily smiled to herself to see that it was already free of the elderly couple’s things. They had kept things unusually neat, and James had paid them extra to be out of the house by Friday, and, as Frank remarked dryly, money always got its way.
   It took a good three hours before they had transported everything in the Ministry apartment to the entrance hall, and then they were surprised to realize just how much the Potters had bought while on their trip.
   “Geez, Lily, what’d you do, buy out the world?”
   “And just how much did you pay for this? I have never seen silk like this!”
   “This is the definition of ‘dirty rich’, and I’d love to live like it.”
   “Stop it!” James grumbled. “If you’re surprised at this, wait till you see what’s still in the boat, which is still docked and hasn’t been unloaded yet.”
   “More?” John asked. “You couldn’t fit it into the apartment?”
   “Try getting the Ministry to let you try to fit two horses in there,” Sirius said dryly. “It’s a good thing James is the richest guy this side of the universe.”
   James snorted. “I am not!”
   Everyone turned to look at him, and he shrugged.
   “Okay, so what if I am, it’s not my fault, is it?”
   They burst into peals of laughter, sinking down on boxes to prevent falls onto the floor.
   It took a crew of professional magical movers to transport everything from the ship onto the grounds, and it was Sunday afternoon before Lily was dreamily wandering around the manor, trying to decide whether the indigo silk curtains would look better in a pale blue bedroom or in a lavender one. Smiling happily as she conjured up a curtain rod, she chose the blue bedroom, arranging the folds of the curtains with a delighted flick of the hand.
   One of her favorite places in the house was the entranceway, where the sun shone down through the beautiful windows and reflected rainbows on the walls as its rays hit the mirrors. The forest-green curtains she hung next to the windows were wonderful imitations of her eyes, but not as enchanting, James remarked when he saw her with four pillows in her arms, standing at a window.
   He’d been carrying a divan into one of two sitting rooms when he saw her gazing at their grounds, and, grinning, he’d placed it on the floor and walked up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist.
   “Whatcha looking at?”
   “Nothing,” she replied dreamily. “Just thinking…of what this place will be like soon.” She smiled. “It’ll have a house-elf, for one thing.”
   “It will?” he asked. “You mean the DHE agency?”
   “The what?” Lily questioned. “You forget, I’m from the Muggle world.”
   “The Discharged House-Elf agency.” He plucked a pillow out of her arms. “What room’s this for?”
   “I don’t know,” she replied. “I was trying to figure that out, and I got distracted.”
   He kissed her ear. “You’ve still got beautiful eyes, I say.”
   “What?” she asked, a bit astounded. “Where did that come from?”
   “The curtains,” he said simply. “They’re the colour of yours, but yours are prettier. They’ve got that enchanting silvery misty thing in them that makes you wonder if you’re looking at a painting.”
   “A painting?” Lily was amused. “I suppose that’s good, then?”
   “It’s absolutely perfect,” James grinned, hugging her tighter. “Say, put those pillows on the divan I’m getting into the smaller sitting room—it doesn’t have any as of yet.”
   Their house was finally furnished by eleven o’clock Sunday evening. Lily had insisted that they wouldn’t have rooms only with Egyptian furniture, others with Chinese, others with only English, so every room was a combination of each. They had magically painted some rooms, and others they had simply ignored when it came to painting walls and had fastened silks, rugs, and pictures to the walls.
   Comfortable couches, plushy poufs, and an expansive bookshelf covering every wall of the library were decorated with soft Persian rugs on the floor; the smaller sitting-room, with at least two dozen pillows decorating sofas, had as a centerpiece a beautiful, round coffee table with several of the royals of the French court in paintings surrounding the edges. Marie Antoinette’s portrait was placed in the centre of the table, rimmed with gold leaf—something Lily had picked up during a stay in Switzerland.
   The larger sitting room had a pair of large, beautiful French doors that opened onto what hopefully would later be an astounding garden, several of the Egyptian divans, Turkish vases heavy with bevies of flowers, peculiarly painted plates, exquisitely covered chairs, and an elaborately carved English plate cabinet that a nobleman had prized above his wife, so Lily had judged it wise to relieve him of it so that his wife could have some well-deserved attention. James had agreed with her.
   There was a regular study, one with empty bookcases and two desks, several lamps, and a few torches and candelabras. Quills were stacked in a smallish vase in abundance, and Lily had tastefully dropped the ink bottle inside a china sugar dish, where the blackish bottle couldn’t be seen. It was a dark red room, and Lily had taken that chance to hang up a pair of golden curtains she had no use for in other rooms.
   The dining-room was a beautiful place; wallpapered a creamy white with hand-painted pink and yellow roses, its stained-glass windows—all of the windows and mirrors in the house matched the grandiose one in the entrance hall—were hung with white silk curtains looped back with pale gold and pink twisted silk. The table was a large, grand mahogany piece that the couple had picked up in Italy during the Renaissance, and the chairs, though from Switzerland, looked made for that table and room, upholstered with white linen and embroidered with pink roses with cornsilk tips. It was a cheery room, with a golden chandelier hung with crystal pieces in the centre of the ceiling.
   The bedrooms were all different from each other; the master bedroom was walled with sandstone slivers from bricks—Lily refused to sleep in a room that looked just like the rest of the house, with ‘inside’ walls. Their teakwood four-poster that James had picked out as a surprise for her one evening when he returned home was hung with dark green velvet curtains, as were the two wide, tall windows in the room, though they had creamy white silk curtains behind them that fluttered out from behind the velvet, swanlike, when a wind blew through the chamber.
   In addition to all the furniture, each room had a magnificent fireplace, which James lost no time in getting connected to the Floo Network—the name of their house was the Hedera Castellum. Lily and Eva had been picking over the abundant supply of bowls, vases, lamps, and boxes for Floo powder holders, and finally they had one picked out for each fireplace in the house, including the kitchen.
   They had a sun-room, too, near the roof of the manor, and its windows were still decorated with the green, gold, and copper leaves twining around vines. Lily had designated this as her reading area, and a bookshelf was placed against the one solid wall not made of glass, filled with her beloved classics.
   The kitchen was obviously designated for several servants, and, consequently, it was nothing short of enormous, with a long stove, two sinks, aeons of counter space, an amount of cabinets to die for, and a large pantry and even a staircase that led down into a wine cellar, though Lily highly doubted they’d be using that too often.
   Every one of them knew that without the aid of magic, this house would still be in partial shambles, with furniture everywhere it shouldn’t be and broken curtain rods and scratched furniture. It wasn’t the first time Lily had breathed thanks for the existence of magic and her own magical blood, and she knew that it definitely wouldn’t be the last.
   Tired beyond relating, the ten were lying in the library, some stretched out over a couch, others sprawled on the floor. They hadn’t had especially abundant amounts of sleep, but even those that weren’t to live in the house agreed that it was worth it. After all, they intended to visit frequently, especially Sirius, Peter, and Remus, who weren’t living in particularly elegant surroundings.
   Eva sighed. “I want to be rich.”
   “Get rich parents, dear,” Lora said lazily. “Easy as marrying Snape--though who'd want to, I can't imagine--"
   “A-hem!” Lily glared, causing Lora to sit up hastily and Sirius to un-wrinkle his forehead.
   “Okay, okay. I won’t pick on him, all right?”
   Lily sat back down, and there was a considerable relief of tension.
   “You know, I think I’m going to invite Severus over here sometime soon. I don’t suppose I’ve thought of him too much, and yet he led me down the aisle.”
   James scowled. “Lily, I don’t want him in my house! He—he’s a Slytherin and a Death Eater!”
   He saw the surprised expressions on the faces around him, and Peter interrupted the silence.
   “How do you know?”
   “Oh—er—“ He caught Lily’s raised eyebrow and hardly visible fierce gaze and amended his statement. “I mean, all Slytherins are. Look at the Lestranges, Avery—that former Slytherin Keeper, Cathryn Clarik, Edgar Hatcher, Nott, Goyle—Macnair even, and Crabbe. They’re not making any secret of it, are they?”
   “No, they’re not,” John agreed. “They were practically boasting of it when I saw them in the Leaky Cauldron a few months ago—something in the area of ‘We’re wanted by the Ministry, want to come and take a few pictures?’”
   “Slytherin slime,” Amanda agreed. “Never liked a one of them.”
   “Muck, that’s what they are, never got any morals at all,” Frank asserted.
   “A-HEM!” Lily glowered. “I could have sworn that I told you not to say anything of that sort in this house!”
   “Lily,” Remus groaned, “we’re honest-to-goodness telling the truth.”
   “I’m going to bed,” she said, disgusted. “You have fun gossiping amongst yourselves.” She stood up, furious, and stalked to the sunroom, filled now with a pearly blue light from the moon. Lily knew perfectly well that most of the magical world was talking just like her friends downstairs were, but it was maddening for them to be prejudicing themselves against people she’d found nicer than tamed rabbits and as interesting as Shakespeare—see as example Severus Snape.
   Lily returned downstairs when she heard their friends leave, and she met James in the kitchen, where he was coldly cutting a watercress sandwich into triangles. Not bothering to look up as she entered, he accidentally smashed an earthen pitcher into smithereens, trying to pour some milk. Frowning, he pointed his wand at it, and the pieces flew back together.
   Kneeling down, Lily took a rag from the counter, mopping up the milk. Irked, he snapped at her.
   “Can’t you just use magic? What are we, some Muggle-crazed lunatics?”
   She sat back on her heels, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear, where it had fallen loose from a rather messy knot.
   “No, I’m just not lazy, that’s all.”
   “You’re calling me lazy?” he retorted, glaring. “At least I don’t stick up for Death Eaters.”
   Lily smacked the rag full of milk on the floor, causing droplets to fly everywhere, including onto James. “Excuse me, My Lord, but I’ve got the decency not to insult your friends.”
   “But they’re Slytherins, Lily. They’re not worth it!”
   Letting her head sink into her hands, Lily grimly wondered how many times she would have to drag herself through this conversation and the pointless task of getting a pure-blooded wizard to get rid of prejudices.
   “Forget it. Forget everything. Forget that he and Lucius behaved better than Serena at my wedding, and that Severus was the one that joined the Death Eaters because of me, and decently agreed to walk me down the aisle.”
   James sighed. “Lily, it’s not that…”
   “It’s not what,” Lily asked as she started to rummage through the refrigerator and found nothing but packets of watercress, some milk, and a pat of butter. “Junk,” she mumbled.
   “Oh, forget it. It’s hopeless. I forget, you forget. But no Slytherins in this house, understood?”
   Lily started to say something, and he held up a hand. “No. It’s for a reason this time. I’m working with the Ministry now; I’m an Auror. There’s no way I’d let Death Eaters or only those who are friends with Death Eaters into here.” His voice softened as he looked at her. “Especially since you’re alone in the house most of the day.”
   It was a sweet thought, but Lily had to choke back a derisive laugh. So much for his superior, all-knowing ken.
   “I suppose that’s reasonable as far as it goes. But Severus is allowed in here.”
   James’ face crumpled, knowing he’d already lost. “Lil-yyy!”
   “That’s settled, then. Or do you want me to pull a Lysistrata strike?”
   He burst into laughter, a grin replacing the whining look. Leaning over, he rumpled her hair, taking the rag from her and dumping it into the sink. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t, thanks!”
   “I thought so,” Lily said calmly, standing up and shaking her overalls free from dust. “And I still think we’d better go to bed, as—er—you’ve got to get to the Ministry tomorrow.”
   “Absolutely and completely right, as usual,” James agreed with a grin, sweeping one arm underneath her knees and picking her up. “Just do me a favor tomorrow and get something to eat besides watercress. I can’t stand that stuff.”
   Sardonically, Lily rumpled his hair. “What happened to the all-powerful use of magic?”
   She smirked at his crestfallen face as his jaw dropped. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
   “It’s living with a half-Muggle, that’s all. And being spoiled beyond all means when it comes to dinner. Want some food now?”
   “Nah,” he shrugged. “I’m not really good at conjuring up food anyway—neither one of the Marauders are—so I guess if you just summon a tin of biscuits to the bedroom, I can deal with that.”
   “I can do that,” she smiled. “Toasted, buttered, with jam?”
   “All three. Come on; moving makes me tired.” Hoisting her up higher, he closed the kitchen door behind them, admiring the house as he did so.
   “You’ve done a wonderful decorating job, my friend.”
   “I take that as a compliment. Wait till you see what I hung in our bedroom.”
   He swung the door open and let her feet drop onto the floor as a painting on the wall opposite from him caught his eyes. “Lil?”
   “Hm?”
   “You saved this?”
   It was the canvas painting of Lily on the pentacorn that James had done for her back in the summer before sixth year. She slipped her arm through his, admiring it with her head on his shoulder.
   “Of course I did. It’s one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen.”
   “Absolutely,” he agreed. “You’re in it.”
   Lightly, Lily smacked him on the back of the head. “No useless compliments, Potter! It’s long past your bedtime!”
   “You know,” he said thoughtfully, stroking his chin, “I’ve missed my mother telling me that.”
   The next morning, Lily awoke at seven, up before James as usual. It seemed to be a traditional trait of men, this being able to sleep at all hours of the day and doing it, too, and James was a traditional male. Dropping a kiss onto his forehead, she stepped into a pair of slippers. Throwing a green velvet dressing gown around her shoulders, she slipped downstairs to the kitchen.
   When James woke up, he instantly smelled the reason—the aroma of coffee, bacon, eggs, buttered toast, and blackberry marmalade. Eagerly, just like a boy of five, he hurtled downstairs to the kitchen.
   “You went shopping!” he exclaimed.
   “Sort of,” Lily said, plopping a platter of buttered toast into his hands. “I asked Sirius to do that for me, and he said he would, on condition that he gets to have breakfast here.”
   “Again?” James asked, amused. “He’s going to be practically living here, you just wait.”
   “If he does our errands,” Lily grinned, “then I don’t mind. I hate shopping.”
   James nodded. “So you’ve said. Big dining room or small sitting-room?”
   “Small sitting-room,” she decided. “It’s only breakfast.”
   “Fair enough. When’s Sirius getting here?”
   A small pop and the appearance of a black-haired, tousle-headed nineteen-year-old spared Lily the answer. He clapped his hands at the sight of the bacon.
   “Ooh!”
   Lily shoved a jar of marmalade and the plate of eggs into his hands. “Follow James. Is Remus coming?”
   “Peter is,” Sirius shrugged. “Remus is having…er…problems.”
   “That time of the month?” Lily grinned. “I forgot. The moon was almost full last night. Where’s he going, though?”
   “Apparating to Hogsmeade, until the Ministry can send him back an answer. Nine months, and they haven’t gotten back to him on that.” Sirius shook his head. “He left last night around two, just for precaution’s sake.”
   “I see,” Lily nodded. “Well, Remus or no Remus, breakfast is getting cold.”
   “So it is!” Peter yelped, who had just appeared. “Bacon!”
   They settled in easily after that small spat, and, a month later, Lily received a pay raise of a Galleon an hour and was out of training; her job consisting mainly of language and culture study of other countries, along with practicing curses and shields. She was at the Ministry from nine to five now, with an hour’s worth of a lunch break, and James started half an hour earlier than she did and finished half an hour later, which she found lucky. Of course, it wasn’t all luck—she had asked Mr. Merriwether if she could have an hour less of a day’s work, and he had grudgingly agreed.
   What Lily had taken to doing was getting lunch ready before she left, and then, in case James got home before she did, she could always tell him that she had popped over to Eva’s to lend her a pound of sugar or something of the sort.
   Eva wasn’t married yet, because she and Frank couldn’t afford an apartment large enough for the both of them yet—Frank was boarding with three other people in a Ministry building for Aurors until he received a pay raise.
   One evening, James Apparated home, into the entrance hall, where Lily was arranging a vase with ivy in it. Grinning, he caught her around the waist as she hurtled towards him, swinging her over his head.
   “Lil—guess what?”
   “What?” she laughed. “It sounds like something good!”
   “Oh, it is!” His eyes sparkled. “I’m being sent on a mission for the Ministry!”
   She caught him around the neck, hugging him tightly. “That’s wonderful! Oh, I—“ Her smile dropped as she realized what he had just said. “A—a mission to do what?”
   “I’m being sent to teach at Durmstrang,” he told her, his face more serious now. “They—they suspect one of the teachers there of influencing the students—of making them sign on to Voldemort—to his Death Eaters. I’ve got to find out who it is, and to stop it.”
   Her lips parted, turning dry rapidly. “James?”
   “Yes?”
   “I—I—“
   “Lily, I’ve only got to find out who it is—I’ve not got to fight him.”
   She bent her head, looking away. “I suppose it’ll be all right, then.” Lily raised her eyes to his. “But—you’ll come back as soon as you can, won’t you?”
   “I promise,” he whispered, kissing her forehead. “Don’t worry, I won’t die.”
   “Good,” she whispered, clenching her fingers around his hand. “Good.”
   He wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about the mission, he confided, but there was no use not telling her, as she would certainly wonder if he was gone for a good month and a half. He was to take a post as the Transfiguration teacher at Durmstrang—the Ministry had asked him the current teacher to retire for a few months, paid, of course.
   The elderly teacher was cleared of all suspicion, as he was from a Muggle family and had taught at the school for fifty-three years, and all that the Ministry knew about the traitor, as they termed him or her, was that he or she was fairly newly employed. However, that didn’t help much, as half of the staff had been replaced three years ago, and none employed since.
   Lily was poring over a book of Greek verb tenses in an office she had received along with her promotion—even though she shared it with three others—when the door opened and Mr. Merriwether entered.
   She closed her book and stood up, taking his hand. “Mr. Merriwether.”
   “Mrs. Potter,” he nodded. “May I speak to you—alone, preferably?”
   Lily looked around at the three middle-aged, curious faces, and she stepped towards the door. “Your office would be preferable, sir, I think.”
   They entered his office, and he locked the door with a wave of his wand, gesturing to a chair with his free hand. Obediently, she sat down, pushing a mass of loose red hair behind her shoulder—she didn’t bother changing the colour anymore; James worked on the opposite side of the large building, and she never saw him.
   “Sir?”
   Pacing back and forth, Mr. Merriwether clasped his hands behind his back. “Mrs. Potter, it has not escaped our observation that your advancement in your training has eclipsed even most of our gentlemen.”
   He paused, and she looked at him, waiting for him to continue. Clearing his throat, he fixed her with his stare.
   “The Minstry, with permission of the Minister of Magic, has decided to send you to Durmstrang next week, along with Mr. James Potter.”
   Her mouth fell open partly, and her eyes widened. “Sir?”
   “With your consent, we will be making travel arrangements for you to enroll in Durmstrang as a student. We have a false history for you ready.”
   Lily had been thinking furiously, and only in the last few seconds a sort of calm enveloped her. She hadn’t intended to keep this up forever, only till he saw that she could work well and was a valuable asset to the Ministry, if she could manage that. It seemed that now was as good a time as any to prove her capability to him—and an assignment after only a month’s work was surely a record.
   “Sir, I’d like to accept your offer.”
   “Excellent!” Mr. Merriwether beamed. “If you will follow me to the Minister’s office, we will inform you of the details…”
   When Lily arrived home, her head was in a whirl. She couldn’t tell James before she reached Durmstrang—she knew he’d forbid her to leave and use his influence at the Ministry against her if she refused. There was only one thing to be done, she thought, and that was to let him find out on his own.
   The Ministry had given her a thick envelope with her false history—her name was Franziska von Berlepsch; her parents were Julian and Grete von Berlepsch—her mother’s maiden name was Wrobel. Her parents had moved to Switzerland, but they had died recently, and she was being sent to live with a relative, who had transferred her to Durmstrang.
   She was seventeen years old; her birthday was February 29th; her grades were average, something Mr. Merriwether had stressed when going over the papers with her. She was born in Stuttgart and was currently living with her aunt, Dorothea Wrobel—her mother’s sister—in Bremen. Her appearance was to be changed, since not many people could miss remembering a shade of hair or eyes like hers.
   Those were the main points, but there were hundreds of other things Lily had to remember—the names of best friends in Switzerland, the number of horses on her parents’ farm, the time she had to wake up mornings—just details she found rather unnecessary, but they had to be, she was told.
   The only person Lily told about this was Sirius, who told her to go ahead if she really wanted to. Lily, to be honest, was more nervous about James and his reaction than about the potential possible Death Eater she would encounter, but then again, James was closer and dearer to her than anyone else.
   The night before James left, she practically had to force him into agreeing to leave. An avalanche of worries struck him—and all of them concerned her—what if a Death Eater entered the house, what if someone found out who he was and attacked him through her, what if, what if…
   Sirius Apparated to their house to say goodbye around nine in the evening, and he found an almost hysterical scene. The memories of James’ parents’ deaths had flooded back into his mind, and he was frantic at the thought that he might lose Lily, too.
   Lily was trying to calm him down and at the same time detach his arms from her wrists, where they were coming close to bruising her as Sirius appeared, and James—James was acting like Remus did every month, almost werewolf-like.
   “No! I’m telling you, no! Damn the Ministry! Lily, you’re all I’ve got!”
   “James,” she whispered, “I’ll be fine.”
   “No!” he cried, tears plastering black hair to his cheeks. “God damn it, Lily, no! I’m not going—let them send someone else—I’m not leaving you!”
   “James, they won’t hurt me! Tom promised—remember?”
   “I don’t care what that excuse for a thing said!” he shouted, roughly shaking her. “Do you honestly think I’d leave you here by yourself?—He lies to everyone, why not to you? And who’s to say he warned all his followers not to kill you?”
   If Sirius hadn’t known better, he would have sworn that James was trying to beat his wife to smithereens—but, realising the situation, he intervened quickly, detaching James’ hands from her arms, and not a moment too soon—there were unintentional nail marks engraved on Lily’s upper arms.
   “Holy Merlin, Prongs, pull yourself together!”
   James relaxed suddenly and started crying into his palms. Sirius, gesturing to Lily to stay away, handed James a handkerchief.
   “Blow your nose. You’re not leaving her forever, are you?”
   “I might be,” James hiccupped. “Sirius, protect her for me, will you?”
   Sirius snorted. “Protect Lily? What for?”
   “Well—if some Death Eater came and tried to hurt her—“
   His friend laughed dryly. “If some Death Eater came and tried to hurt Lily, I think I’d have to protect him. Pull yourself together.”