Beyond Hogwarts -Chapter Twenty

-=Beyond Hogwarts; Chapter Twenty=-

He didn’t quite see why, but he obeyed, much to Lily’s relief. This was one of the charms hardest of all to remember, mostly because the Latin was purposefully incorrect, something Lily was quite aware of. She had taken a few self-taught courses of Latin while she was at Hogwarts-the library wasn’t there for nothing, had been her point of view-and it was her private belief that the idiot that invented the countercurse just had a very poor command of Latin and hadn’t bothered to ask anyone with an extensive knowledge of the language what the correct words were.
   From association with James and his friends, as well as the entire library, she knew that once one had discovered the magic itself, one could fit it to words. It was hard to do, definitely, and it drained one of strength for a few hours-say, forty-eight or so.
   The smoky, hovering sphere had hardly changed, but, as Lily kept staring at it, eyes fixed firmly on its center, it started to waver in its density-and slowly, ever so slowly, it started to dissolve-first, the aquamarine dust blew away from the whole, spreading itself over the rug and disappearing a moment after. The red smoke started drifting upwards, towards the ceiling, losing its color and finally vanishing as it touched the chandelier. And, when Lily looked back down, the orange and golden colors had been whisked all over the table, only to fade, fairy dust-like, instants later.
   “Very nice,” James commented. “In fact, now I’m actually starting to appreciate the fact that you’ve memorized every book in existence, instead of loathing that idea. Are the charms gone now?”
   “Apparently so,” a drawling voice behind them threw out lazily, “since I was called here.”
   Lily and James whirled around to find Lucius leaning against the doorframe, black robes draped immaculately around his frame.
   “A very nice job, Lily, I must say,” he grinned, “but, unfortunately, you’ve got a rather pitiable dunce of a husband. I believe that the reddish smoke would have had a spot of brown in it.”
   “And it Summoned you here whenever anything was done to the case, I assume?” Lily rationalized. “Clever, really.”
   “Er-hum!” James said noisily. “If you want to say something, by all means get it over with.”
   Lucius laughed contemptuously. “I seem to be creating an aura of unwelcomeness, don’t I?”
   James snorted, shoving his hands into his pockets. “If any part of ‘sod off, you slimy bas tard’ didn’t get through your eardrums, I’ll be happy to pierce them for you.”
   “I will abstain,” Lucius said smoothly. “Contrary to popular opinon, I entertain no arousing daydreams involving your shoving a skewer into my ear.”
   “You two!” Lily snapped. “Contrary to what seems to be the universal opinion, I’m in no mood to be entertained by your bickering.”
   Lucius nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll make the point of my visit short, then.”
   “In a little less than a half hour,” he continued, “you two are going to owe me two hundred Galleons, or the Ministry is hearing from me. And I’ve decided that you’ve only got two weeks to hee-haw over this.”
   “Even though that makes no sense,” James pointed out, “since you could get loads of cash from us that way-“
   “It’s halfway reasonable,” Lily cut in; she had seen an interesting smirk at the corner of James’ mouth, something that generally meant that he was about to deliver a rather well-thought-up, sarcastic, and generally insulting remark. With a flick of her wrist, she caught up the silver wafer case from the table, throwing it at Lucius. “Here. Take it back; it’s a bit useless by now.”
   “It certainly is,” James grinned. “The candy’s all gone. And an empty box with the Malfoy seal on it is somewhat disgusting to the eye.”
   “And you wonder why Lucius is trying to blackmail us?” Lily snapped, trying to conceal a smile. “Last time I checked, it wasn’t because he was just bored stiff.”
   “Well, bored, maybe, but he’s definitely shoved something up his rearend making him terribly stiff. I put my money on a large, pointy pike.”
   Lily couldn’t help it; she started snorting, throwing unsuppressable giggles into the range of sounds. It was true that the gentlemanly posture all of the Malfoys had drummed into them since they were six minutes old made them look uncommonly above the rest of the people they came into contact with, but she’d never quite noticed the resemblance between that and James’ remark.
   Lucius drummed his nails on a nearby table, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “When you’ve quite finished,” he said loudly, clearing his throat.
   “Oh.” Lily sobered instantly, kicking her husband behind cover of the dressing gown’s long skirt. “Right. Sorry.”
   “Much better,” he drawled. “Let’s say that that little remark cuts your time down to tomorrow night. Which is more profitable to me, too, since as soon as you can waddle around to your Ministry friends, telling them that the rumors about my possessing illegal substances are nothing but a large figment of your imagination, I’ll be better off.”
   “Why a large figment of my imagination?” James queried warily.
   Lucius smirked. “Because the amount of imagination it would take to think that up would use up almost all of yours. Not to mention your brain’s been incredibly overtaxed by this whole business. It’s really only good for dodging Bludgers.”
   James grinned. “I think you’re still hairy about the fact that Gryffindor slammed Slytherin into the mud during our seventh year.”
   “I,” Lucius corrected, “am not hairy. Unless you would like to bring up the unredeemable slop you like to consider as fuzz, I suggest not to speak.”
   Lily sighed, letting herself fall into an armchair sideways. “If you two would like me to hire a secretary to write down your ever-humorous bickering sessions, tell me, but for right now, I refuse to be dictated to.”
   “Very well. I’ll leave you two, then, to think this over.” With an absurdly overexaggerated bow, Lucius Disapparated, leaving James looking rather disappointed.
   “I think it’s best that he left when he did,” Lily remarked; “it wouldn’t have done us any good if you said what I think you were going to.”
   “Oh?” His eyebrows rose. “What would that be, then? Didn’t think you were capable of reading my mind.”
   “Something rude.”
   “Oh.” James looked graciously embarrassed. “Yes, well, that’s only a generalization.”
   “Try a deduction,” Lily grinned. “You know, I think we’re in pretty deep trouble, as far as Lucius goes.”
   “I agree wholeheartedly,” he nodded. “Unless there’s something embarrassing you can drag up out of his past. Has he ever walked around the house wearing an oversized, white, frilly outfit looking like it belonged to a hired clown?”
   “He owns many white silk shirts with elegant ruffles,” Lily said helpfully. “If that aids you any.”
   “Why is he incapable of looking stupid in something I’d look like an utter prick in?” James sighed. “Oh, well. Anything you can think of that he wouldn’t like mentioned?”
   Lily almost shook her head ‘no’, but a sudden memory resurfaced, and one arm fell slack at her side, her eyebrow raised, as she remembered something.
   “Lily?” James asked, waving a hand in front of her face. “Wizarding World to Lily.”
   “Funny,” Lily remarked absently, removing his hand with a slight movement of her own. “I’ve thought of something, actually, but I’m not sure…”
   “Not sure of what?”
   “Not sure if it’s going to work, of course. I don’t know if it still exists-and if it does, I’ll have a hard time proving what I know about it…”
   “When you choose to enlighten me,” James informed her, “I’ll be waiting on the couch.”
   “I was at his mansion for some time during one of my summers, remember?” Lily asked.
   “I remember,” he scowled. “The entire Gryffindor House was extremely insulted that you went to a Slytherin’s place, and that it took persuading for you to leave.”
   “You know, if you’d listen once in a while,” Lily snapped, “you might actually learn something to our advantage. I visited Tom several times while I was there.”
   James’ head whipped around. “What?”
   She smiled smugly. “I thought that would gain your attention. That was the summer I went on raids, trying to bring my mother back to life.”
   “Yes, something I don’t believe you fell for,” he commented quietly. “Anyway, I suspect this conversation has a purpose.”
   “Yes,” Lily told him. “The alleged rumors that you started weren’t all too unfounded. The Malfoys have a hidden compartment underneath the drawing-room floor, and the last time I checked, liquid Avada Kedavra potion was rather illegal.”
   A humongous grin slowly lit up her husband’s face, and he looked unconsciously like the eleven-year-old Hogwarts prankster again.
   “This should be good.”
   When Lily woke up the next morning, James was sitting, very self-satisfied and completely dressed in robes, cloak, and boots, in one of the armchairs in their bedroom.
   She pushed her hair over her shoulder, sitting up. “Hallo. What’ve you been doing?”
   “Waiting for an answer from Malfoy,” he replied, grinning at her. “You look very dashing, by the way. Love that whole hair-spread-over-half-naked-shoulders look.”
   Lily would have scowled if she’d been in a terrible mood, but the falling rain outside had put her in a good humor, and her only response was to pull her nightgown back over her right shoulder. “What do you mean, waiting for an answer?”
   “I owled him at around six this morning,” James explained, “asking him to set up a time and place for us to talk about the whole business. That’s all I said; don’t worry.”
   Lily smiled at him, slipping her legs out of bed and reaching for the green dressing gown. Sliding her arms into it, she ruffled his hair good-naturedly.
   “I wasn’t. It’s raining, isn’t it?”
   “To be honest,” James admitted, “I’ve never actually known you to be in a good mood about rain. Usually you’re just oblivious to it.”
   “Rain is a sprinkling waterfall,” Lily composed very badly. “I am always appreciative of rain.”
   “Yes,” James agreed, “especially when you’re the one breaking the bad news to Slenka that I’ve completely ruined a perfectly good cloak and pair of robes as a result of mud. She may be just a house-elf, but she’s got a nasty glare.”
   “And how, may I ask, have you ruined a suit of clothes before nine in the morning?”
   He didn’t look abashed at all as he shrugged. “I had to chase after the stupid owl; forgot to add a postscript, and was halfway into the centre of the earth before I remembered about Summoning Charms.”
   “In other words, you smashed your face into the dirt,” Lily laughed. “I’ll handle Slenka after I get dressed.”
   She closed the bathroom door behind herself after she emerged fifteen minutes later. Hair still wet, it dampened the back of a very Gryffindor-ish bliaut-a dark scarlet color, with gold cuffs and collar, and a belt of millions of twisted gold threads, knotted low around her middle.
   “Yes,” James said pointlessly, eyeing her. “Any further question on why on earth I married you is hereby answered.”
   Lily smirked slyly, trying to mask a faint blush, but her husband caught it. Grinning, he pulled a small box out of his pocket, handing it to her.
   “What--?”
   “No ask. Open,” he beamed.
   She couldn’t help smiling, but her expression was frozen as James snatched a golden, glittering something from the box, clasping a piece of jewelry with a faint, clanging clink around her neck.
   Thinner, but in the same style as her belt, gold threads wound themselves into a necklace, fastening a few inches below her neck with a magnificently cut ruby, the extra length of the chain hanging down onto her chest. Eyes wide, her hand moved towards the jewel, caressing its shimmering face.
   With a sense of comfort, Lily felt his arms wrapping around her waist, his face mirrored next to hers in the closet door. “It’s a sort of an ‘I’m sorry’ present for getting you into the Malfoy mess.”
   Lily grinned. “Otherwise known as ‘I use hundred-pound bills as toilet paper and had some extra change while walking by a junkyard’?”
   “Okay, so I like buying people jewelry. And Gems and Facets is anything but a junkyard,” he informed her, naming the most expensive jeweler’s shop in the Alley maze. “Would you rather I stop?”
   “No!” Lily yelped, bursting into laughter a minute later. “No, of course not!”
   Just as she finished her last syllable, a large, wet, eagle-like something clawed at both their heads with viciously sharp and untrimmed talons. James, a bit shocked, wasn’t so much so as to forget about ducking, which he did, hurriedly, pulling her down along with himself.
   “OW!” was his first comment, as soon as what really turned out to be an eagle had fluttered out into the rain again. “Ow! Malfoy, you obnoxious, bloody-“
   “James!”
   “Zookeeper, I was going to say,” he finished, getting up off of the floor and picking up an envelope. “That was no owl, that was a bloody eagle. And I could swear he’s trained that beast to do exactly what it did.”
   “What, deliver letters?” Lily asked wryly.
   “That, and claw my hair out while he’s at it.”
   “I see.” Brushing herself off, Lily headed downstairs. “Any news, let me know!”
   “Sure,” he called after her, slitting the envelope open and pulling out a letter, scowling at the silvery tints woven into the parchment and the decorative, silver siding on the left side of the letter.

   Unwilling as I may be to meet you alone, in a position where no one will be able to report that it was I that jammed your teeth into your vocal cords, tonight is undeniably best. I will meet you at the manor at eight o’clock, tonight. For children incapable of Apparating, you may look in the HC section of the Floo Index under Malfoy IX.

--Lucius Malfoy

   Scowling, James crumpled up the letter, then, on second thought, flattened it out and shoved it, along with the envelope, underneath Lily’s heap of blankets, which he folded with a flick of his wand.
   “If that git decides to shut me up in the cellar or something, it’s better she know where I am.” Sighing, he replaced his wand in his sleeve, heading downstairs.
   “Any news at all?” Lily inquired off-handedly, handing him a cup of some of the last Turkish coffee.
   “Nope,” he lied uncomfortably, taking the cup from her. “Just a typical, insulting letter.”
   “Let me read it,” she said, breaking a scone into bits.
   “Er-no,” James muttered. “Can’t. Bloody thing burst into flames.”
   Lily nodded. “Letters from Lucius have a tendency to do that. I remember one he sent to poor Frank back in Hogwarts; it took his eyebrows and eyelashes off and managed to set his nose-hair on fire.”
   He was lying; of course he was. James couldn’t keep up a decent front, not even among his friends, let alone herself. He and Lucius had agreed on something…and, most likely, it was something she wasn’t involved in.
   Unfortunately, the side of character that normally suggests to people the idea of ‘privacy’ and ‘none of your business’ seemed to have dissolved into an interesting garden of flowers, which Lily had partly trampled, partly picked.
   Her understudy was performing for her tonight, Lily decided; she already felt a cough coming. Except that she’d never dare to trouble her dear husband about her illness-things like that just weren’t done. He mustn’t worry; must think that she was performing that night, and sometime in the evening, if he went anywhere, he’d certainly forget his cloak. Well, was it too much for her to risk her health to bring him his cloak? Certainly not; what kind of a wife did anyone think she was?
   Lily smiled brilliantly, lifting a cup of tea to her lips and letting her eyes sparkle at her husband. “Wish me luck at the play tonight!”