Beyond Hogwarts cont; Chapter Thirty-Three

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

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.
   Just after darkness drew its starry cloak over the moor, about twenty dark shapes could be distinguished as they appeared out of almost invisible tents and filed into another tent with a bit of fumbling around in the air, as if they were looking for the entrance. They disappeared from sight in less than two minutes, and there was not a hint anywhere of a group of two dozen people.
   However, the twenty-five very materialistic pseudo-Aurors were convening silently inside the tent, some sitting cross-legged on the four beds-Kingsley, Albus, Minerva McGonagall, and Alastor were sharing the same tent, and they had not opted for bunks-others sharing the four armchairs, and the rest standing, lying, or kneeling on the floor. There was no light except for a small lamp hanging from the ceiling that emitted a dusky, dark grey glow, and all that the members of the Order could see of each other were their not-yet-hooded faces and long shadows on their faces.
   Lily was standing in one of the corners of the tent, hidden by the numerous shadows thrown by the furniture and the occupants of the tent; there were probably more shadows than there was light. Her hood was fully pulled down over her face, and she was thinking; sucking in every last semi-peaceable moment that she could before venturing outside and into chaos.
   “I wonder what will happen tonight,” she mused, folding her gloved arms. “I’m not frightened, and I should be. As long as the-the Death Eaters knew who they were fighting, I could be almost positive that I wouldn’t be hurt-well, not physically. Emotionally, maybe, by having my friends die…but not otherwise. Now…now it’s different. We’re all supposedly official Aurors from the Ministry of Magic, people that Tom-Lord Voldemort-would love to murder. And yet-and yet I like this way better, almost. It’s fairer now; we’ve all got an equal chance, and there’s no prejudice about who’s going to live and who won’t. It’s much more dangerous, too…much more exciting; the danger’s real! And tonight I don’t mind attacking people I used to know…I believe-well, I used to know them; I don’t now. I’m fighting for the lives of everyone in this tent and everyone we know in the Muggle and magical world that isn’t on Tom’s side. The wizards we’ll be battling against are asking us to fight them, and if I want this world to return to the way it used to be, I can’t not fight just because I…because I knew some of the Death Eaters. Karkaroff…Lucius…all the rest of them…and I only hope Severus got my owl and was able to beg absence from this meeting-or else he wasn’t summoned to it.”
   She looked up and let her eyes flash around the room, resting on everyone in turn. Dorcas, Marlene McKinnon, and Eliante were huddled on one of the beds, hands clasped; their heads were on each others’ shoulders. Anne Acutus and Caradoc were sharing an armchair; his arm was around her shoulders and her face was hidden in his robes. Albus, Minerva, and Alastor were sitting in the other four chairs; Albus was muttering something over a nearly unintelligible map, and Minerva was absently checking her wand for possible malfunctions.
   Peter and Dedalus Diggle were listening for noises outside the tent; both of them were visibly shaking. Eva was sitting calmly next to Frank and Amanda on another bed, and Kingsley could be spotted next to the stove, filling up his and the Prewetts’ bottles with something hot and vulgar-smelling. Benjy was sending stealthy glances in the direction of Kingsley, obviously hoping for a canteen with the same contents. Elphias Doge and Edgar Bones were exchanging whispers quietly in the middle of the room; Lily almost failed to recongnize Elphias without his hat.
   Remus and James were kneeling on the floor, examining their Auror badges and re-checking their pockets for their wands, and Sirius was lying, sprawled, next to them, staring at the greyish lamp on the ceiling, and muttering several hundred Latin words under his breath. The atmosphere was so aloof and tense to the point of being frightening that Lily shook herself vigorously, trying to get rid of her very ominous thoughts.
   James, catching her movement out of the corner of his eye, immediately jumped up and whipped over to her corner, taking her in his arms. “Are you cold?”
   “No,” she said quietly. “Just-just playing Professor Trelawney for a bit…predicting evil deaths for everyone.”
   James smiled wryly and hugged her more tightly, and Lily unfolded her arms and clasped them around his neck. Neither of them spoke for a few minutes.
   “If anything happens to either of us tonight,” Lily whispered, breaking the pause, “I want you to know that I love you. I always will.”
   Touched, James lifted her chin up with one of his hands, so that their eyes were inches apart. “If anything happens to you tonight, count on me to follow you. Anywhere.” He kissed her. “I love you.”
   Both of them stood in the corner for awhile; Lily’s face was buried in his robes, and both of them were holding on to each other as if they were about to be separated by a whirlwind of a hurricane.
   Sirius’ watch chimed eleven-thirty with a series of quiet, metallic bangs, and everyone in the tent looked up, startled out of an almost-trance.
   “Very well,” Albus said quietly. “Good luck.”
   He said no more than that, but no more was needed. Everyone pulled his or her wand out, yanked their hoods over their eyes, and trooped out of the door onto the moor. However, before Lily could leave the tent, Sirius tugged almost imperceptibly on her sleeve.
   “Lily!”
   She whirled around. “What?” she whispered.
   He took a deep breath. “Listen, Lily, I-“
   “We’re going, Sirius!” Remus hissed, and Sirius dropped his sentence. He stared at Lily for a split second, and then pulled her into an almost fiercely tight hug.
   “Take care of yourself, all right?”
   “Yeah,” Lily promised. “You too!”
   “Let’s go, come on!” Remus urged, steering both of them towards the door.
   It was almost completely dark outside, and except for the rapidly vanishing lights of a small Dartmoor suburb, nothing was moving except the members of the Order, who were noiselessly heading for a small, almost nonexistant hill covered with the standard undergrowth of Dartmoor. Upon a controlled wave of the foremost figure’s arm, the dark-robed wizards fanned out silently, covered about a half-circle of ground around the hill, and dropped to the ground, wands in hand and blending in perfectly with the shin-high grasses.
   Suddenly, a few minutes later, other shapes began to appear, clothed exactly as the first group had been: black and hooded, with a small golden badge pinned to their robes. Kingsley had calculated their ambush positions well; the real Aurors placed themselves in a guarding position just twenty feet away of most of the Order’s members. Their eyes were mostly fixed on the suspected mound, which was now completely encircled, though fifteen of the forty were unaware of that.
   Lily could see the Ministry-sent Aurors quite clearly through a screen of grass in front of her face. A small procession of ants crawled over her hand, but she dared not shake them off and cause any noise at all. If the authentic Aurors realized that there were any other people present besides them, they had every right to assume that they were enemies. It wouldn’t matter, of course, once the Order started fighting, but just now it was essential to keep motionless.
   None of the members of the Order knew precisely what the Ministry had planned in the way of attacking, and it came as a very large surprise and shock to all of them when a tallish Auror pointed his or her wand at the hill and whispered something, immediately causing a large jet of blue light to erupt from the wand. The light hit the ground with a smoky bang, chunks of earth and grass went flying everywhere, and as soon as the air cleared, a hole about ten feet in diameter had been blasted into the moor.
   Shouts could immediately be heard from everywhere; some were attacking war cries, others were painful yelps as chunks of soil hit them, and the rest were yelling in shock. Before anyone had time to blink, masked, dark-cloaked figures were leaping out of the crater, wands at the ready.
   As soon as the Death Eaters could be seen, the Aurors and the Order of the Phoenix leaped forward, all shouting out different incantations. Cries of “Stupefy!” and “Impedimenta!” were the most common at first, and rays of red light shot in every possible direction.
   Lily had been one of the first to spring to her feet; she wasted absolutely no time in shouting out as many jinxes as she could. She had been looking through her old schoolbooks and notes before flying to Dartmoor, and there were quite a few obscure curses penciled into the margins.
   “Obstupefacio!” she shouted, pointing her wand at the nearest Death Eater. “Ferio! Ferio infra cingulum!”
   She saw, with satisfaction, two Death Eaters crumple as her curses hit them, and one of them keeled over, gasping and slamming his fist into the ground. His mask slipped down as he writhed on the ground, and Lily spotted his face: Igor Karkaroff, the headmaster of Durmstrang.
   “Merlin’s beard!” Fabian Prewett’s voice exclaimed. “What did you do to him?”
   “It’s a curse that strikes below the belt,” Lily yelled back. “Stupefy!”
   A short, squat figure crumpled to the ground just before sending a curse at Fabian. Incensed and extremely excited, Lily plunged into the thick of the fray. Dodging out of the way of a barreling Death Eater with the hem of his robes on fire, she just escaped a Stunner by about two inches. It whizzed past the back of her hood and tore furiously into the ground, fizzling a quite innocent little clump of flowers. Spinning around, Lily sent a double Stunner (“Obstupefacio!”) at a masked figure swiftly moving towards her, but he or she blocked it, and Lily threw herself to the ground as the Stunners flashed back at her.
   Pointing her wand at her attacker, she whispered something, saw a jet of purple light flash out of her wand, and in a few seconds, the Death Eater was howling, hopping up and down as his shoes began eating his feet. Triumphantly, Lily sprang up again, Stunning him neatly. He fell with a very audible thud, and the ring of Death Eaters around the crater now had a crack in it.
   Her eyes lit up, and, with a mischievous smile no one could see, Lily whisked forward, knelt by the opening of the hole, and jumped inside.
   The place had obviously been used for more than just a crude meeting-room; there were more open and closed doors in the place than wall space. A cauldron was bubbling over the flames in a large fireplace cut into the wall, shelves and shelves of bottles sat above the fireplace, and a ring of chairs surrounded a large armchair just in front of the fire.
   Lily froze. A tall, slender figure was sitting in the armchair, long fingers gently playing with a wand. A hood was pulled down over the eyes, but a sardonic, smirking smile made itself felt oppressively.
   “So…an Auror, come to play?” the familiar, cold voice asked.
   Lily’s hood was pulled down too far for him to see her face, but the charms they had cast on the hoods made it possible for her to see through it. Her thoughts were whirling.
   “This is all wrong! This wasn’t supposed to be a major hideout! He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near here. Merlin, I’m in trouble!”
   Lord Voldemort raised his wand slightly and murmured something. Lily ducked, but she needn’t have; the spell wasn’t pointed at her. Above her head, splinters of something clear raced each other in a whirlwind of glass, crystal, or something unknown before closing off the hole in the ceiling. The cracks disappeared instantly, forming a dome that rippled softly and then vanished, but Lily knew only too well that she could not now escape that way. The charm was one she had studied in sixth year; it was used to keep people imprisoned, and it was as unpenetrable as a dragon’s hide.
   With another flick of his wand, the doors flew shut, and Lily heard the clicks as the locks swung into place.
   “Colloportus,” Voldemort murmured, and the doors were irrevocably sealed. “So,” he said smoothly, lounging gracefully in the tall armchair, “how did your completely asinine Ministry of Magic find this place?”
   Lily had to hope that he didn’t recognize her, for she remembered only too clearly his words at the end of her seventh year at Hogwarts: I shan’t kill you-I’d have done so with anyone else, but I owe you a debt, for what you did for Litharelen. I don’t intend ever to kill you, by the way, for the same reason--unless you start fighting for the Ministry and get in my way. And here she was, fighting for the Ministry. Not officially, of course, but it amounted to the same thing.
   She opened her mouth to give a frightened squeak of an answer, but her mind suddenly revolted. If I’ve got any respect for myself, she thought furiously, I’m not going to weasel myself out of a situation instead of fighting it squarely. How would it be if I’d be able to brag that I’d escaped the wrath of the terror of the wizarding world by acting like a worm?
   “They looked at one of those mass-produced maps of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,” Lily said rather rudely and unwisely, keeping her voice half an octave higher than it usually strummed at. “Not really first-class brain-work, that.”
   “You are an extraordinarily obnoxious girl,” Voldemort said irritably, keeping his wand trained at her. Lily had the sense to keep her own out of sight, in case he Summoned it out of her grasp. “And you will be writhing on the floor in a moment. In pain. How did your Ministry find out about this location?”
   “I dunno what they found out with,” Lily countered ungrammatically. “They just told us were were flying to Dartmoor and blasting the mess out of Death Eaters, so we all naturally jumped at the chance. I mean, it’s considered top-notch fun for all of us, it is, blowing their knickers onto the moon.”
   Just as she finished her very suicidal sentence, a loud crash came from the invisible dome above their heads. Lily flinched, and Voldemort paused in opening his mouth, which was really quite lucky. Lily had absolutely no doubts whatsoever that he had intended to kill her just a moment before. Not that he still didn’t.
   However, he decided against it, although he didn’t put his wand away, something Lily noted with something not at all related to pleasure. “You have bravery, girl. Mouthing off to Lord Voldemort…not many have that courage.”
   “If I sent myself a present for that, would I look under ‘Congratulations’, ‘Congratulations On Your Brilliancy’, or ‘Good Lord, You’re An Idiot’ in the card aisle?”
   An even louder bang, followed by a hailstorm of several more, came from the dome, and Lily, looking up, could clearly discern the shape of James’ shoes and the heeled, black boots of someone who was obviously a female Death Eater; they were duelling. Or so it seemed, at least, as they were sending jets of light at each other and sending spats of blood flying. Lily’s teeth unconsciously managed to begin chewing through her bottom lip, hoping against hope that James and his duelling partner would not manage to break through the charm was keeping herself and Tom-Lord Voldemort-undisturbed. James was easily recognizable, and even if his hood didn’t fly off, the possiblility that he would shout “Lily!” would be more than a dead giveaway. James was definitely not stupid (on good days, Sirius would have added), but he was liable to do brainless things when shocked.
   “Oh, was that a knock?” Lily asked, plastering a grin onto her face. “Let me get that door. You wouldn’t want to stand up, now, would you?”
   “Stay where you are, you silly brat, and don’t make things worse for yourself. Now, I want some things answered, and you are going to perform that service for me or face the extreme consequences.”
   “Well, it isn’t really as if you’re going to kill me either way, so-“
   “The point is,” he hissed, his catlike eyes starting to emit sparks as he cut in on her sentence, “is that you will suffer excruciating pain before you die unless you answer correctly what I ask you right now! Stay where you are!”
   He seemed to have grown two feet or so during that short sentence, his voice grew increasingly more dangerous and threatening, his eyes flashed murderously, he pointed his wand directly at her heart, and Lily involuntarily quailed.
   “Er, yes,” she squeaked in her too-high voice. “Sir.”
   “Much better.” He relaxed into his chair. “Now. For the last time, how did the Ministry of Magic locate us here?”
   “It was a Muggle-killing report,” Lily spouted off, fabricating as she babbled on. “The Prophet said that two Muggles had been killed mysteriously in Dartmoor, so the Ministry sent people to investigate, and they found out that someone in a black cloak had been seen lately, so they did lots more investigating and finally sent us down here to blast you into oblivion.” She continued to look increasingly upsent. “Thanks to you, the Ministry will shortly feel an intense desire to rip out my ribcage.”
   “Oh, I can remedy that,” Voldemort said smoothly. “You have been helpful-extremely helpful, and I do not underestimate such valuable assistance. I shall even go so far as to save you from the revenge of the Ministry.”
   Lily was not taken in by the familiarly caressing tone. “You’re going to kill me now, you mean?”
   “As a matter of fact-“
   He never got the last bit of that sentence out, due to the fact that James and his duelling partner had both sent Stunners at each other at the same time; the rays of red light bounced off of each other and flew into the magical, invisible dome. Cracks started to appear in thin air, just below the feet of James and his opponent, and within a split second, both of them, with a terrific crash, had landed inside the formerly secret and whole underground hall.
   James hit the ground badly, on his right knee, which wobbled badly as he tried to sit up. The woman, who had landed more gracefully, immediately swished over to Lord Voldemort’s side and directed her wand at the pair of supposed Aurors. He had not go of his wand, but that did not give him the arrogance to misjudge the seriousness, danger, and utterly unescapable position that he and Lily were in.
   “Damn,” he stated clearly, summing everything up in a pistachio shell.
   “Bellatrix, my dear, you seem to have brought in a guest,” Lord Voldemort said coldly. “What a pleasant surprise.”
   The masked and hooded woman laughed scornfully as she Summoned James’ wand. It flew out of his hand neatly, despite his efforts to keep a tight hold on it, and landed in Bellatrix’s hand. Coolly, she presented it to Voldemort, who placed it in his pocket. “He’s a complete puppet of an Auror, and no use to us. We can kill him; he won’t be missed.”
   “Tomorrow is, as a matter of fact, the three-year mark of your initiation into my following,” Voldemort said softly, looking at her in a fatherly way. “What would you say to an early gift to mark the occasion?”
   Without waiting for a response, he turned back to James, raising his wand.
   Lily and James had only half-heard the exchange. As soon as Voldemort had turned away from them, Lily jerked her chin towards the crater, and James mouthed the words “Disapparate!”. Slowly, Lily slid her hand inside her robes, locating her wand and grasping it firmly.
   Just as Lord Voldemort raised his wand, Lily jerked her own out of her robes. “Accio!” she shouted, and James’ wand flew towards them. She threw the wand to James, and a soft pop just milliseconds before she Disapparated told her that James was gone. Along with the Materialistic Shield Charm that had covered the crater, the Apparition-Barring Spell had also vanished. They had not been completely sure of this; they had simply guessed and hoped that they had guessed right. However, Lily reappeared about two hundred yards away from the fighting with a long gash on her upper left arm, a souvenir of a jet of purple flame Bellatrix had sent at her with a shriek of rage just before she dematerialized.
   She had aimed badly, but that did not prevent a searing pain from spreading through Lily’s body. Biting her lip, Lily sank to her knees, clutching her arm, determined not to make a sound. She closed her eyes and dug her nails into the flesh around the wound, her whole arm and side filled with the sensation of blunt, rough screws sticking themselves through her joints and bones.
   Lily rolled over onto her stomach, the hand of her wounded arm scrabbling itself into the dirt. Clawing, her nails clasped short, wilting grass, weeds, and earth by the roots and scattered it up her sleeve, into her face, three feet away…
   “Lumos-what-Lily?”
   Lora had stepped out of the fray. Quickly, she knelt down next to her friend, worry written all over her face. “Lily, what happened?”
   Lily threw herself onto her back, her eyes tightly shut. Involuntarily, she was twitching horribly. “I-Tom-Voldemort-her-the spell-“
   “Let’s get you back to camp,” Lora said decisively. “Can you walk?”
   “I-“ Trying to get to her feet, Lily attempted to push herself up, but with a cry of pain she fell back again. “I-don’t-think so.”
   “Er…okay.” Lora frowned, very obviously trying to decide something. After a few seconds, she raised her head. “Lily, please, please don’t kill me for this.” She steeled herself, biting her tongue. “Stupefy!”
   Lily only had time to look vaguely puzzled, as Lora’s words didn’t sink in before the Stunner Lora aimed at her did. Limply, she fell back onto the grass, only shuddering slightly every now and then; the twinges were even growing less frequent.
   “What did you do to her?” a hollow, quiet voice asked. Lora whirled around, tensed, but relaxed when she found that the voice belonged to James.
   “I-er, I Stunned her. She was in a bit of pain, and I thought that might be the best thing to do. I’ve never taken mediwizard classes, see.”
   “Oh.” James stepped closer, pushing his hair out of his eyes, and Lora suddenly saw that he was incredibly sweaty, that he looked as if he had just overcome an acromantula, and that he had shards of something glass-like embedded into his shoes. His cloak was torn down the back in several small places, which was surprising, Lora reflected. James had been one of the prankster kings at Hogwarts, Head Boy, and an Auror. He was not exactly the kind that presented his back to people to slice open. Well, not his back, but at least his clothing.
   “Hey, are you okay?”
   “Yeah, fine,” James said dismissively. “Where exactly are the tents?”
   Lora jerked her thumb over her right shoulder. “Over there. Want me to help carry her?”
   “I’m okay,” James said shortly, though he obviously didn’t mean in the non-glass-impaled sense. Sliding one arm under Lily’s knees and one under her arms, he lifted her easily, nudging one arm around his neck and carefully avoiding the gash on her other arm.
   “That’s her wand down there, I think,” he nodded, looking at a slender piece of wood in the grass. “Pick it up for me, will you?”
   “Sure.” Obediently, Lora slipped it into her pocket. “Come on, let’s get her to the tents. Yours?”
   “I think Albus’ might be wiser. I can try to remember some Healer tricks when we get there. Come on.”
   They arrived at the tents without any interfering incidents, and James placed Lily carefully on the most neatly made bed in the tent; Mad-Eye’s, as a matter of fact; there were many in the Order that were rather nervous about him, mainly because of his eye. Consequently, no one had sat on his bed and huddled together under his blankets before going outside to the then-future spot of bedlam.
   “Did she tell you what curse hit her?” James asked, taking off his cloak and pillowing Lily’s head on it as Lora pulled a few blankets over the unconscious girl’s body.
   “Nope. Just…well, she said something about…about a Tom-and a ‘her’…and a spell…” She shuddered. “And she said ‘Voldemort’.”
   “Never mind; I know about that. Okay…oh, damn! Good God, I wish I could remember what the spell looked like…”
   “You were there?” Lora gasped. “What-where? Did you see him? Has he been here tonight? Where? What-“
   “I’ll explain later-or Lily will. This isn’t the time.” Frustrated, he ran his hands through his hair, nearly making it stand on end before it collapsed into its usual untidiness. “I need Albus for this, or Mad-Eye. Anatomy class won’t help here.”
   “What if you combined it with Defense Against the Dark Arts?” Lora asked. “I mean, this is clearly a Dark spell, and…well, could you try it?”
   “Anatomy does not mean healing people, Lora,” James said dully, “it means finding out where their intestines are and where not to tickle an unconscious knarl. Besides, we worked mostly on animals.”
   “Oh.” Lora sat down on the foot of the bed. “I’d get Dumbledore, but I think he’s a bit busy just now. Do you think she’ll last a bit?”
   “I think so. She’s Stunned, after all, so she can’t really feel anything.” Sighing, he leaned back against the wall. “That was a rather good idea.”
   “Thanks. So…what, we’ll just sit here and wait for people to come filtering in?”
   “Yeah. We can’t go to St. Mungo’s; they’d know immediately what kind of curse this is, and that’s not really a good thing, because they’d know that there would be only one likely place where it would have been inflicted, and then we’d all be in trouble. So we’ve got to stay.”
   “Okay,” Lora said thoughtfully. “Say, do you know any riddles?”
   “What?”
   “You know, just to pass the time.”
   “This is not a good moment for riddles.”
   “Oh, okay.” Lora scowled. “Spoilsport.”
   James almost made a rather snappish remark, but restrained himself. There was, after all, no real point in fighting with Lora over riddles when Lily was lying, unconscious, on a bed in front of him, with a large gash in her arm made by a Dark curse.
   They waited for about two hours, which James employed in picking the shards of transparent, sharp magical remnants out of his shoes, before Albus strode into the tent, followed by Minerva, looking very worried and extremely purposeful.
   “I did not see you outside. What happened to her?”
   James stood up, dusting off the seat of his pants. “We saw Voldemort,” he said shortly. “And another woman I fought for a bit; he called her Bellatrix. I don’t know which of them shot the curse at her; I Disapparated before it blasted out of their wands. The crater was torn open, and the Apparition-Banning Spell vanished along with a sort of protection shield that Bellatrix and I smashed with our Stunners. She got out okay, obviously, but Lora said she was in quite a bit of pain.”
   Albus frowned. “Please leave me alone with her. Minerva-my medical chest, please.”
   Their ex-Professor McGonagall swept over to Albus’ bag and pulled out a small box with a pearly gem in the middle of the lid. “Here. And you two-“ she pointed to James and Lora-“out! You heard him!”
   “She’s my wife, Professor!”
   Minerva looked very amused. “I have not heard that since your third year. There is no reason for you to start calling me that now. But you heard Albus, go on now!”
   “They can stay,” Albus said, without turning around. “As long as they do not interfere.”
   Triumphantly, James and Lora settled on the bed next to Albus’; James usurped the spot closest to Lily, naturally, and Lora tried many different ways of sitting before giving up and falling into a half-doze.
   She woke up about a half-hour later because of a slight jiggle of the mattress; Sirius had sat down heavily next to her, looking about as frightened as James did. He leaned back carelessly, his hands over his face, and Lora yelped.
   “Ow!”
   “Oh, sorry! Didn’t see you there; you all right?”
   “Yeah,” Lora shrugged. “It’s okay. You just sat on my hand, and I’ve always wanted it to be completely squished by something the weight of England.”
   “I am not that heavy!” Sirius protested, a gleam of laughter coming into his eyes. “And I said I was sorry.”
   Lora changed the subject abruptly. “Will she be all right?”
   The gleam faded as quickly as if had been a bolt of lightning, and he hid his face in his hands; his elbows rested on his knees. His hair effectively fell about his face, hiding what was left of his expression. “Albus won’t say, and I don’t know what to think. He would tell us if he were sure she’d be all right, but he won’t answer to anything.”
   Sympathetically, Lora scooted forward, placing one arm around his shoulders. “It’ll be all right. If anyone can heal her, Albus can, and he’s a better wizard than You-Know-Who is.”
   “Thanks,” Sirius said dully, immediately allowing his head to droop farther down.
   Her attempts at being a comfort apparently hadn’t worked, Lora mused. He did have very elegant hair, even if it was something of a mess at the moment…Lora tilted her head to one side. She had never quite realised exactly how attractive Sirius Black was as a man, even though he unmistakably was. In the first place, his hair…and then, he did look as if his life partner was a fitness centre…and he had that quality that made his robes fit really, really, well and look really, really good on him, something she knew that James Potter quite definitely did not possess. And, as far as she knew, he was not gay…
   She suddenly realised that her arm was still around his shoulders, and she quickly retrieved it, placing the misbehaving limb fimly in her lap.
   “I’m sorry if I was rude,” Sirius suddenly said, elevating his head and looking at her pleadingly. “I didn’t really mean to-it’s just that I...er, well, I really do like her; she’s my best friend’s wife and all…and she’s definitely my friend, too…”
   “Don’t bother; I know how you feel,” Lora said calmly, willing herself not to flush. “Well…almost. Anyway, it’s all right.”
   He looked at her curiously. “Are you okay? You’re all…pink.”
   “Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” she assured him, turning a bit more red in the process. “Just…just exhausted…and a bit hungry...”
   “Hungry?” He reached into his pocket and handed her two Chocolate Frogs. “Here, have those.”
   Lora accepted with a smile. “Thank you.”