Beyond Hogwarts cont; Chapter Thirty-Two

-=Beyond Hogwarts, cont.; Chapter Thirty-Two=-

The nine days until the planned mission sped by quickly, to Lily’s delight. Both she and James were home at nine o’clock on Friday evening, and nine-thirty found them packing happily.
   “We’ve got to have black hooded robes for the journey, black shirt, shoes, and pants underneath the robes-Gideon’s got our badges…do we have any extra pairs of hooded black robes?”
   “I’m sure we do somewhere,” Lily said, frowning at a pile of colored and black cloth that she had dumped out of the chest of drawers. “Did you go out and buy tents?”
   “At a Muggle store, just as you asked me to,” James nodded. “Black. One for us and one for Padfoot, Moony, and Wormtail-well, actually, it’s more of a backup tent, since we’ll probably be sleeping in the same one.”
   “We are very lucky tonight isn’t a full moon,” Lily sighed, rummaging through the pile of robes. “It would thoroughly distort any plans we might have for a werewolf to suddenly materialize amongst us.”
   “It would scare the Death Eaters out of their minds, though.”
   “Yes,” she admitted, “there is that, but I doubt if we’d be safe.”
   “Safe?” James asked, sounding insulted. “Excuse me? Moony is perfectly safe!”
   “To a couple of Animagi, yes. Not to the rest of us. Oh, honestly, I’m not scared of him, but you know perfectly well that he’s a werewolf, and that werewolves are ferociously violent.”
   “I maintain that even a werewolf can be tamed with Chocolate Frogs,” James said pompously, drawing himself up to his full height of six feet one. “Speaking of which, has Slenka been told to pack any of those in the picnic basket?”
   “She probably has anyway,” Lily murmured, finally grabbing two pairs of hooded black robes and levitating them, folded, into an overnight bag. “You know her; the Omniscient House-Elf.”
   “I will remind her,” James decided, heading for the door. “Pick out some black things for me to wear, will you?”
   “How about a skirt?” Lily called after him, laughing. “I’d quite fancy seeing you in one!”
   A loud and resounding “NO!” echoed down the hallway, and a “Don’t you dare!” followed it speedily.
   They were ready at ten-thirty, complete with two small overnight bags, two brooms, the tents, a picnic basket crammed to the brim with food, and clothed in black shoes, socks, pants, long-sleeved shirts, and hooded robes. Lily’s hair was secured tightly behind her head in a knot, and she was wearing a black kerchief to cover her head in case her hood took it into its fabric to fly off of her head.
   James was wearing black jeans underneath the robes, even though Lily had warned him that he would be dastardly uncomfortable if he got those pants wet. “They take ages to dry, and they will stick to you and shrink,” she maintained. James, however had refused to wear any sort of pants with the label “dance” or “jazz” on them, and he had prevailed.
   “Okay,” Lily said quietly. “Who’s Disapparating first?”
   “You go,” he whispered back. They were standing on the landing of the staircase, with all of the lights around them off; the entrance hall and staircase were both as dark as their robes. “I’ll follow in a few minutes with our brooms.”
   “See you at Benjy’s, then,” Lily nodded, and, picking up her overnight bag and the picnic basket, she Disapparated with a small pop.
   The room that Lily Apparated into was, as advertised, reasonably large, and clean, even though it was a basement. About fifteen people were there already, and Benjy was shaking hands all around and passing out tankards of hot butterbeer to everyone in sight. Lily looked around briefly, spotted Eva standing next to Lora, and drifted over through the mild crowd, dropping her bag at her feet.
   “Hullo,” she said in a cheery whisper. “Up for a long flight?”
   “I haven’t been on a broom in years,” Eva murmured, “and I do hope my dinner will stay down.”
   “Oh, buck up,” Lora said brightly. “It’ll be fun. Cold, but fun.”
   “Yes,” Eva admitted, “I hope we won’t be flying through clouds.”
   Lily grinned. “Why not? It’s a cold shower on-the-go.”
   “Funny,” Eva shuddered, “real funny. I’ll make sure to laugh when I see icicles dripping out of your nose.”
   “Butterbeer, anyone?” Benjy interrupted, holding out a tray loaded with about ten mugs filled to the brim with a frothy, aromatic, hot liquid. “Good for the journey. You’ll be cold, you know, flying so high and everything. Go on, take one. Refills at the table near the door.”
   He floated away, curiously ecstatic, and looking more thin and gangly than ever in his long black robes. However, he was obstructed in a moment by Gideon Prewett, who elbowed his way into the small circle to hand out badges.
   “Badges here, everyone! Badges! Who’re you-that’s right, you’re Milton…got yours right ‘ere. There you go, mate. Eva Longbottom…and Lily Potter…right you are, pin those onto the left-hand side of your robes. Good! Wonderful! Has anyone seen Eliante Medius?”
   “Over there,” Eva said helpfully, pointing to a spot somewhere in the middle of the room. “Shaking hands with Kingsley. Thanks for the badges, by the way.”
   “Absolutely no problem,” Gideon nodded. “I’ll be off, then-oy, Kingsley! Over ‘ere!”
   He waved madly to the Auror, who acknowledged him with a nod, and Gideon immediately pressed his way through another group of people that had just arrived; about twenty-five were now in the basement.
   “’Lo,” James greeted the three, draping an arm around Lily’s neck. “Where’ve you three put your bags?”
   “We’re just sort of keeping them with us,” Lily answered. “They might get lost if we all dumped our things in a pile. Butterbeer?”
   “Oh, yes!” he accepted eagerly, taking a long swig out of her tankard. Finally setting it down, he wiped his mouth happily. “That does hit the spot. Say-anyone seen Albus?”
   “Talking to McGonagall and Mad-Eye,” Sirius informed him, wangling his way towards the ever-increasing group. “He’s covered that bright white beard and hair of his.”
   “That might be why I didn’t see him. Never seen Albus without his white halo as long as I can remember.” James suddenly looked shocked. “Padfoot!”
   “What?” his friend asked tentatively. “What did I do?”
   James gestured extravagantly towards the cluster that included their former teacher and headmaster. “I don’t believe it! We’ve finally got the power to call them by their first names without the danger of detention looming over their heads, and you revert to calling her ‘McGonagall’! The cheek! The utter cheek!”
   “We were given detentions for cheek when you called Albus ‘Albus’,” Sirius enlightened him, grinning. “To the best of my ability, I cannot recall my ever saying ‘Minerva, old girl, what about a spot of tea?’”
   “Oh, I do hope you didn’t,” Lily said absently. “She’d have tried to suspend you for arrogant insolence.”
   “We tried to make Snape do it once,” Sirius said sadly. “But he doesn’t take kindly to being blackmailed.”
   “Seen Moony and Wormtail?” James asked quickly, scanning the crowd and interrupting Lily’s ‘excuse-me-what-was-that-you-said?’ glare.
   “I-oh, watch it!”
   Lily and Sirius were suddenly bowled over into each other, and they landed not-so-gracefully on the floor, Lily letting go of her butterbeer mug and spilling the contents all over Dorcas Meadows’ ankles.
   “What the-“
   “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!” Peter apologized profusely, having just Apparated into their midst. “Here, let me help you up…”
   “I can-oof-get up-ow!-by myself!” Lily grunted, peeved, as she rolled off of Sirius and got to her feet, feeling around in her pocket for her wand. “Sorry, Dorcas; that was an accident.”
   She pointed her wand at Dorcas’ shoes, twiddled it a bit, and a few puffs of steam rose from the formerly wet girl’s shoes.
   “Oh, that’s quite all right!” Dorcas smiled, picking up the mug and handing it back. “Peter, do try to be a bit more careful, won’t you?”
   Peter flushed up to the light brown roots of his hairand shuffled his feet a bit. “So sorry, it wasn’t on purpose at all…”
   “Yes, we know,” James said in a lordlike manner. “Hey-shut up, all, Dumbledore’s up.”
   What he meant by ‘up’ was that Albus was clearing his throat very loudly to attract attention, and the room fell silent rather quickly.
   “Thank you,” the elderly wizard said. “First things first-is there anyone in this room without a badge?”
   Dedalus Diggle, the somewhat flighty wizard, and Marlene McKinnon stepped forward quietly and took their badges from Gideon, who dusted his hands and nodded at Albus, as if to say ‘that’s all done’.
   “I would like to thank Gideon Prewett for designing and making the badges, and to Lily Potter for creating the phoenix on the back of the badges,” Albus said, letting his eyes twinkle at everyone in the room. “We are now professional Aurors.”
   Subdued applause filled the basement, but Albus held up his hand a few seconds later for silence.
   “Minerva and I have brought twelve brooms down from the school, in case anyone is in need. If you have spoken to me before now, the brooms that you have asked for are stacked behind Minerva and Sturgis, on my right. We will leave immediately, with only one regrouping stop on the way on the northern side of Salisbury. We had better keep together as a group, and we are flying as far above the clouds as we can, in order to avoid being seen. Pick up your brooms and belongings, please. Benjy, do you have a back door?”
   “Certainly do,” Benjy nodded, gradually turning off the already dimmed lights. “Come on, out this way, please! Better not light your wands. Good. Make a right at the top of the staircase and then straight ahead to the last door on your left. It opens into a garden.”
   They all paraded stealthily out of the basement and into the garden, where the group of thirty mounted their brooms almost simultaneously, hanging their bags of clothing and food over their broom handles.
   “Ready for this?” James whispered next to Lily’s ear, squeezing her hand.
   Her eyes sparkled as she looked up at the cloudy sky with patches of visible stars. “Oh, yes!”
   One by one, the shadowy shapes kicked off of the ground, rose into the air, and disappeared quickly into the nearest layer of clouds, all of them with bundles hanging from their brooms and with determined, serious expressions on their faces.
   Even though it was still fall and ground temperatures had been reasonably comfortable and warm since the summer heat had passed on, a massive round of chattering teeth could be heard as soon as the Order of the Phoenix rose above the clouds. Determined not to make any more noise than she could help, Lily clenched her teeth firmly and pulled her cloak and robes tighly around her shoulders, but the result was simply that instead of her jaw crashing her teeth into each other, her whole head was bobbing oddly from side to side. A glance to her right told her that James was just as uncomfortable, though he grinned quite sportingly when he caught her gaze.
   “It’s bloody freezing,” Frank hissed next to them, his hands fumbling numbly on the school broom he was riding. “Why didn’t anyone think of bringing gloves?”
   “Or a portable heater,” Anne Acutus chattered; obviously, she was a Muggle-born.
   “I wish I’d brought along a portable fire,” James sighed, immediately regretting it as an icy cold wind hissed into his mouth, causing him to cough quite a bit of unwanted, damp air out of his lungs. “You know, those ones you can keep in jars.”
   “It would go out,” Lily said regretfully. “The speed we’re flying at…there’s only one thing I can think of doing…hold my bag steady for me, would you, James?”
   Obediently, James scooted over another few feet to her broom and grasped the handles of her bag, which, having been bewitched to be feather-light, was unfortunately threatening to be blown off of her broom-handle with every change of wind-current. Lily fumbled around in her robes for a few moments before her fingers warmed up enough for her to feel her wand, and, a bit unwillingly, she drew her hand out again from the somewhat wind-protected pocket.
   “All right then,” she shivered, pointing her wand at James’ face. “Tell me if this works.” She twitched the tip of her wand around in a complicated little wave, and a sort of fanatic, shocked look surfaced on James’ face as a stream of hot air shot out of Lily’s wand.
   “I feel reborn,” he gasped. “I had almost forgotten what warmth was. Will it go away if you move your wand?”
   “Yes. Did you ever learn the Heat-Stream Charm?”
   “Flitwick never taught us that,” Frank said, looking puzzled. “Did he?”
   “I d-don’t think so,” Anne answered. “Point your wand at me, will you?”
   Obligingly, Lily aimed her wand over her shoulder, and a whispered “Thank you, dear Merlin on high!” floated to her ears.
   She spent the next few minutes of the flight performing the charm on everyone else’s wands, so that, after affixing her own wand to her broom handle so that it shot hot air directly into her face, she had nothing else to do in particular for the remainder of the flight other than dodging clouds and two very loud airplanes that the Order swung a wide loop around.
   After a few hours, the twenty-five wizards and witches started zooming steeply downwards, having found a cloud-free area through which they could descend. Dismounting smoothly from her broom, Lily pulled her overnight bag from the handle and gratefully breathed in an only somewhat chilly whiff of night air.
   “Oh, it’s nice out here, isn’t it?” she sighed happily to Remus.
   “Compared to our trip, it’s quite like a palace,” Remus agreed. “Say, do you have the tent in your bag or does James have it?”
   “We’ve each got one, in case anything happens,” Lily explained. She unzipped her bag, rooted through it for a few minutes, and pulled out the tent and its accessories. “Help me pitch it?”
   All of the tents were set up within five minutes with magic; there were about eight of them pitched on the moor. Quietly, everyone retreated into his or her group tent, performed a Silencing Charm around the walls, and unpacked the food they had brought. In the tent that included the Marauders and Lily, there was almost a Honeydukes feast, as James had brought the Chocolate Frogs he had nagged Slenka to pack, and Sirius disclosed a pile of Fizzing Whizbees, Ice Mice, Tumbling Toffees, and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. Remus hauled out a sack filled with more Chocolate Frogs as well as Pepper Imps, Jelly Slugs, and Toothflossing Stringmints, and Peter dumped quite a few Licorice Wands, Fudge Flies, and Acid Pops on top of the ever-increasing pile of sweets. Lily fiddled around a bit with the old-fashioned stove, and soon everyone was supplied with a steaming mug of gingerweed coffee.
   Besides the stove, the magically-enlarged insides of the tent only included a few items; it wasn’t nearly as flashy as the one that had been set up during the Quidditch World Cup. Three sets of two-story bunk-beds were placed around two walls, and the stove and a small cabinet had positioned themselves along the other wall. Four loveseat plushy sofas were curled around a small table in the centre of the tent, which the five preferred over the dining table.
   “Is everyone excited?” Lily asked absently, swirling a crumbled Chocolate Frog into her gingerweed coffee with her finger. “I’ve never quite done anything exactly like this before.”
   “Oh, but you’ve gone to Durmstrang and other fun places,” Sirius said dismissively. “Now, me, I haven’t done anything this dangerous since Snape almost got a chunk bitten out of his face, which would really have improved his looks.” He grinned disarmingly at Remus. “I’m rather looking forward to it.”
   “I would not have fancied a trip to Azkaban just because you were being stupid,” Remus said in a tone that, if he had not been in such a relaxed, comfortable, and altogether good mood at the moment, could have been mistaken for a snap. “Being a werewolf isn’t such a joke, you know.”
   “It’s unnerving,” Peter commented. “To see one of our mates suddenly sprouting fangs and fur…”
   “Sharp nails, too,” Remus added.
   “Nah; those are already there,” James said mischievously, glancing purposefully at Remus’ perfectly groomed nails. Remus did not, as James very well knew, undergo any kind of manicures, but teasing was never really out of order for a Marauder. “Just think, Witch Weekly’d offer you an exclusive interview on nail care and upkeep.”
   Remus growled in a very bearlike manner. “Shut up.”
   “Shhht!” Peter hissed. “What if someone out there heard us?”
   “Honestly, Pete, we’ve got a Silencing Charm on the tent,” Lily sighed, stretching and shooting a glance at the clock over the stove. “Anyway, it’s four o’clock in the morning. I’m going to bed.”
   They couldn’t afford to get dressed in pajamas, for they had no way of knowing whether they’d be called out of bed at a second’s notice, so Lily pulled her robes off over her shoulders, hung them on a hook on one of the bedposts, flung back the covers, and curled up underneath them.
   “Goodnight,” she muttered. “Anyone that wakes me up will have to deal with the very bloody consequences.”
   “Sleep tight, then,” James called. “All right, anyone up for a game of Exploding Snap?”
   Lily sat straight up in bed and glared at him with all the force she could muster. “Don’t you dare.”
   Very visibly, the four Marauders wilted.
   “Okay, then,” Peter squeaked. “G-goodnight, Lily…”
   Lily woke up only a few hours later, when the sun was just yawning its hello to Dartmoor. She yawned sleepily, blinked a few times, and sat up, looking around at the tent below her. She had taken possession of one of the top bunks, so that her head was only a few inches away from smacking itself on the cloth roof of their tent. A small, fresh gleam of sunlight, which was sliding in through a tiny hole in the flap-door of the tent, shed a golden glow on everything inside, including the uncleaned stove and Lily’s hair, the latter of which was shining cheerfully as the sun washed over her.
   She was not nervous, excited, or frightened, and she wasn’t tired any more. The past night, Albus had ordered the twenty-five of them not to do anything magical to the outsides of their tents at all; that he would take care of anything that needed to be done. He had also cautioned them against stepping outside their tents during the daytime, as they would easily be spotted with their black attire. But Lily had been bothered throughout her sleep about the safety of the black tents that the members of the Order were all using. Curiosity took over, and Lily pushed Albus’ warning words to the back of her consciousness.
   Feeling very unwashed, Lily quietly shoved back her blankets and slid down the ladder to the bunk bed, landing softly on the floor. Throwing a glance over her shoulder to make sure that no one else in the tent was awake, she stole towards the doorway. The sunlight seemed to grow brighter with every moment, and when Lily pulled aside the tent flap, it burst happily and grew to its utmost, almost making the wilted late-summer moor flowers look alive again.
   Lily almost started; she could see absolutely no proof at all that anyone besides themselves were actually on the moor. Caradoc, the Prewetts, Dedalus Diggle, and Benjy had pitched their tent just opposite the place that Lily was standing, and there wasn’t a blessed thing in sight, not for miles.
   “Oh, no,” Lily muttered to herself. “Oh, no, oh no, oh no!”
   She clasped the cloth doorframe, as if to make sure that it was still existent, but she satisfactorily found the material clamped tightly in her hand. Not caring at all about Albus’ warning, Lily stepped outside completely, looked back over her shoulder, and promptly dropped the tent’s doorflap.
   There was something behind her, but it wasn’t the black tent that had been pitched a few hours ago. A tent the exact color of the sky and ground behind it had taken its place, and from a few feet away, Lily knew that it would look invisible, just as Caradoc’s tent appeared to her.
   She found the door to her own tent, opened it quickly, and disappeared inside it, trying to hide the flash of the tent’s inside that the moor would surely be able to see, though she had seen no one outside. Feeling slightly guilty, Lily conjured up a basin of water and splashed her face quietly. By the time she had Summoned a towel from her bag to dry herself off, she was feeling slightly hungry, and a glance at the table in the centre of the room informed her, to her satisfaction, that the four Marauders had saved some of their hoard of candy.
   Lily pulled her discarded robes over her head, as October was making itself known prominently, dropped Don Quixote onto one of the sofas, and unwrapped several Chocolate Frogs, throwing the wrappers in the bin next to the stove. Intending to sit down, Lily picked up a glass of leftover gingerweed coffee, which she warmed up with a flick of her wand, and almost dropped it when Peter unexpectedly fell out of bed.
   “Ow,” he said groggily, blinking several times. “What was that?”
   “Pete, are you okay?” Lily whispered, setting the coffee down and helping him untangle himself. “What happened?”
   “I thrash around,” Peter admitted, flushing to the tips of his ears. “That’s why I wanted to sleep on the bottom bunk.”
   “Here’s your pillow,” Lily said, handing it to him. “Are you going back to bed?”
   “Er…well, I think I’m awake now…”
   Lily grinned. “All right, then, have some coffee with me.”
   She handed him her own mug, and Peter settled himself on one of the loveseat sofas next to the one Lily had picked out. However, in contrast to Lily, he had yanked his blankets off of his bed and was snuggled underneath them, sipping his gingerweed coffee carefully.
   “Have a Frog,” Lily offered, tossing two at him. “Chocolate is always welcome, don’t you think?”
   Peter grinned, fishing the two candies out of folds in his blankets. “Yeah.” He bit the head off of one of the Frogs and pulled out the card, flipping it over.
   “Gregory the Smarmy,” he sighed. “I always get him. I’ve got about forty of the prat...you want him?”
   “I don’t collect,” Lily shrugged. “Keep it. You might end up getting a record for the most Gregory the Smarmy cards ever collected, who knows?”
   Peter was re-reading the label on the card. “’Famous originator of Gregory’s Unctious Unction-a potion to persuade the drinker that the giver is their very best friend’.”
   “He probably used it to persuade millions of people that he wasn’t a complete berk,” Lily shrugged. “They’ve got a statue of him at Hogwarts, did you know that?”
   Peter nodded. “There’s also a secret passage behind it. Think we found it in our second month at Hogwarts.”
   There was a small silence before Lily spoke up again. “Peter?”
   “Yeah?”
   “Are you scared?”
   Peter looked down. “Well…sort of. I mean, there’s every chance we won’t make it home, knowing what we’re fighting against…but I did sign up for this…” He finished his first Frog and started on the second one, beaming at the druidress Cliona on the card, who winked at him. “I am scared, really. I don’t want to die.”
   “None of us do,” Lily said generously, fiddling with a strand of her hair. “But we’re here to do something more than just fight for ourselves.”
   “I know,” Peter sighed. “That doesn’t make it any less scary, though. I still don’t know what I’d do if someone shot an Avada Kedavra at me. Or what I’d think, even.” He reached for an Ice Mouse. “I’ve never exactly been brave,” he said wistfully. “James and Sirius used to do these absolutely mad things at Hogwarts, like accidentally-on-purpose guiding Remus towards some kissing couple when he was a werewolf, and then at the last minute they’d turn him aside…and then they’d laugh about it later. I helped, too, of course, and I laughed with them, but I kept seeing pictures of what would happen if Remus did get away from us and-and bite someone. They never seemed to see what could happen to them-or to anyone else…and I could. And whenever I’d try to tell them not to do things, that horrible things could happen if they did whatever they were planning to do, they’d call me scared…I guess I was, in a way. I thought I was.”
   “No, you were cautious,” Lily commented. “There’s a difference. James and Sirius came up with completely batty schemes sometimes, and they often were really, really dangerous-remember that time Sirius lured Severus into the passage leading to the Shrieking Shack?”
   “Of course,” Peter frowned. “That was too close. But I didn’t know anything about that one.”
   “I’m not saying you did. I only-well, those two were rather idiotic.” She grinned. “They still are, come to that, but they’re fun.”
   “Yeah.” Peter gazed at Lily quizzically as she popped a Pepper Imp and an Ice Mouse into her mouth at the same time. “You know, I used to think you were really strange.”
   “A lot of people did,” Lily nodded. “People still do, as a matter of fact. Some things don’t change.”
   “You did some of the craziest things-making friends with the Slytherins, disappearing for some hours at a time and we never could figure out where you were…getting top marks on about every exam we took…I was really surprised that James married you. He was so prank-crazy that we all thought he’d settle down with someone-well, someone more sensible than he was. I don’t mean to offend you,” he said quickly, “but you-well, you’re not sensible, not in the way Eva is, or Molly Weasley. You just…well, I was never really sure, when I looked at you, whether you were pretending to be some sort of fairy-thing or not. You never exactly acted…well, real.”
   Lily laughed, making Sirius turn over sleepily in his top bunk. “That’s beautiful,” she said, amused. “I’m so glad.”
   Peter looked very confused. “Why?”
   “Because when people say ‘real’, they mean ‘uninteresting’ half the time. They’re much too frightened of anything other than what they’re used to to bother to open their eyes and see that they don’t have to live just like everyone else. Even wizards don’t see that, and you’d think that they’d be the most willing to be different. And I don’t mean ‘different’ in the way that most people seem to mean it-you’re not different if you dye your hair an unusual color; you’re just trying to be something out of the ordinary. You’re not successful, actually, if you only try to be different by what you wear, how you act, or how you look, because individuality isn’t petty enough to be measured by anything worldly. It’s how you think; how your mind works when you’re not trying to think a certain way-it’s what you dream and what you truly believe. It’s what you are when you’re completely uninfluenced by anything else…and I think that the people that are sincerely ‘different’ stay the way they are when they dream.”
   “That’s quite cool, Lily,” Peter said softly. “I think you’re right.”
   They were interrupted by two large yawns emitted simultaneously from the remaining two top bunks, though one of the occupants went back to sleep immediately.
   “Lazy bum,” Sirius said blearily. “What’s going on?”
   “Coffee?” Lily offered. “I can make some more.”
   Sirius sat up, considering. “Coffee with a normal breakfast or coffee with candy?”
   “Coffee with candy,” Lily said decisively. “I’ve only had a few hours of sleep and am too tired to make you four breakfast.”
   “Excellent!” Sirius said happily, all traces of sleepiness gone. “Have you wankers left me any Frogs?”
   “We’ve got a whole bloody crate of them,” Peter said, throwing a couple at him. “Only you and James could eat that fast.”
   “I accept the compliment and the frogs,” Sirius bowed, cadging a seat next to Lily. “Bung me some toffees, will you?”
   Peter obliged, tossing the green-wrapped candies skillfully clear of Lily, who had pulled one of Sirius’ blankets over herself, earning a pleased smile in return.
   They all went back to sleep around ten in the morning, though not necessarily in their respective beds; Lily and James curled up under one of Peter’s blankets, Sirius pushed two couches together and used them as one very large bed, and Peter pulled his mattress and pillow off of his bed, placing them on the ground, not in the mood for another tumble out of bed. Remus was the only one that fell asleep in the bunks, something he did not regret when he woke up without a backache.
   “Ow,” Sirius complained to the rest of them at dusk, when they were all getting ready for the night ahead of them. “Those sofas are anything but long. I feel as if I’ve been locked into a trunk for a year, deformed spine and all.”
   “Tie a hot, wet towel around your chest,” Lily suggested. “Or waist, depending where it hurts. The only potions I have with me won’t do you any good.”
   “Fix me one of those, then, will you, and toss me some Fudge Flies.”
   Lily held back James’ hand; he was about to throw a bag of the required candy at Sirius. “How about some real food,” she asked.
   “You sound like my mother used to,” James groaned. “Go on, let him have the Flies.”
   “I have sandwiches,” Lily swept on, ignoring James’ comment, “tomato salad, deviled eggs, cold chicken, and cold apple pie. Of course, if you will insist on the Fudge Flies, then…”
   Sirius did not, it transpired, insist on the Fudge Flies, and the five spent about twenty minutes at supper, eating cold food to avoid sending smells out onto the moor.
   A definite sobriety was making itself felt in the tent, and the friends did not speak much to each other. When they finished dinner, they began getting ready for the night: polishing wands, pulling on dark socks and shoes, slipping on their hooded black robes, and pinning their counterfeit Auror badges onto their robes. As an afterthought, Lily conjured up a pair of long dark gloves for everyone that they pulled up to their elbows underneath the wide sleeves of their robes.