"Your first dawn blinded you,
Left you cursing the day
Entrance is crucial and it's not without pain
There's no path to follow once you're here
Climb up the slide and then you'll slide down the stairs."
-This Side, Nickel Creek
Chapter Four
Breakfast was interrupted very messily by every single goblet at the Slytherin table, exploding onto their faces at precisely eight forty-seven. Though there was no doubt to the culprits of this attack, evidence was needed. So angry and finger-wagging, McGonagall put a Priori Incantatum on each of the four boys' wands.
James and Sirius didn't seem to mind the detention, in fact, they were proud of their accomplishment, swaggering into Double Herbology. Remus followed behind, a ghost of a smile on his stony face, and Peter ran in behind them, giddy with excitement. They saddled into their respective seats and a few Gryffindor girls swooned (the Slytherin girls tried their best to look uninterested). Lily took no notice of them, choosing instead to work on her plant and ignoring everything else. James scooted over to her with his plant and began pouring gravel into it.
"Did you like the entertainment this morning, love?"
Lily snorted. "No, I thought it was juvenile and not the least entertaining." If James was upset by this disclosure, he didn't show it. He continued to pour gravel into his purple plant and shoot glances over to Lily.
Elsewhere, the topic of conversation was the latest news in the Daily Prophet. Some dark wizards had broken into the Department of Records in the Ministry of Magic and stolen something, but, as there was a record of every single thing that happened in the magical world, it would take some time for them to sort through and see what was missing. Lily had a hunch that it had to do with muggles or muggle-borns because they were quickly becoming the victim of choice.
She was becoming more and more nervous reading the Prophet these mornings; it all seemed to be bad news about this new wizard, Voldemort, who was killing people left and right. It gave her a sick feeling every time someone even mentioned his name; his crimes were becoming too heinous. He was taking this whole 'pure-blood' idea to a radical new level, and what was more scary was that pure-blood families were jumping on the bandwagon as well, voluntarily.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a tense silence punctuated by the Slytherin giggling. Professor McGonagall, the head of Gryffindor, had just came into the greenhouse. Lily's breath had stopped, fearing the worst, but all eyes were focused on a girl in Lily's house, Jennifer Hayden.
James was murmuring under his breath. Lily turned to him.
"What?"
"Her dad worked in the Department of Records," James explained. Jennifer's eyes were tearing up and she was shaking her head. McGonagall helped her out of the room, her face white. The Slytherins continued to snicker and whisper among each other.
Professor Sprout cleared her throat and the class looked to her. Her voice, usually boisterous and happy, was unusually calm.
"Please continue repotting your plants, students."
Lily didn't return to the common room, but she headed straight for her thinking spot. She was completely surprised to see her stag friend waiting for her there. Which was good, because she had a lot on her mind.
"And here I thought that you had given up on me," she said. "You seemed so upset when I talked about Remus, that I thought you had left me."
Never, Lily, never. James trotted over to Lily and stuck his head out for her to pet. She complied readily.
"I don't think that the whole 'Remus' thing is going to work out, anyways. He's been, shall we say, politely giving me signs that he's not interested." Lily laughed a little.
Always knew I liked that boy.
Lily stopped petting James and looked down at her hands. She held them tightly because they were shaking.
"I get so scared sometimes." Her voice was now shaking. "I think that maybe some day McGonagall is going to come into the classroom and say that it was me. No one is safe anymore, not even Muggles."
James reached forwards and nudged her in the shoulder.
"They've all got that Slytherin mentality," Lily growled. "Pure blood and all that nonsense. It's completely crazy. I'm so thankful that my family are Muggles so that they can't see any of this. All they hear are my grades and that's it. It's so difficult trying to hide all of this from them. They'd never let me come back if they knew that I was being treated the way I was."
She gave a little laugh.
"I still remember my first train ride. I was so terrified of the whole ordeal. I was so shocked when the wizard came to my house to explain to me that I was a witch, I'd forgotten how to get on the train, so I had to write back Professor McGonagall to ask her if she had made a mistake on the platform number, and then she wrote me back with explicit instructions on how I was to get through. Still, I remember walking up to the column and staring at the bricks, wondering if this was all some wonderful joke."
James noticed that her voice was becoming more spiteful. "Then I had my first encounter with the pure-blood types. I think his name was Malfoy, he graduated a few years ago."
Slimy git. James sure enough remembered Malfoy. He was exceedingly rich and exceedingly arrogant. He and one of Sirius's many cousins were rumored to be dating or married, he wasn't sure which.
"I remember he grabbed me roughly and shoved me out of the way, calling me a 'stupid Muggle.' Then he disappeared. So I followed him. He turned around and gave me a scathing look. 'Mudblood, are you?' and then walked away."
There were tears in her eyes. James was stunned. He knew that Muggle-borns had it bad, but he didn't realize just how bad things got for them. He was thankful that he at least was mostly wizard, for it saved him much grief.
"Hm. So what do you want to do about it?" Sirius asked during lunch. James shrugged and shoveled more food into his mouth.
"Maybe we can start hexing people," James said. "Slytherins, I mean."
"Maybe." Sirius thought about it for a while. "But it might seem like an unprovoked activity. And you know how Evans gets her knickers in a twist whenever you hex someone."
"Yeah," James agreed. Sirius leaned back on his chair and rubbed his chin in thought. He let out a gasp and sat forwards, a lightbulb appearing above his head.
"I've got the perfect idea!" he said.
"Ok, go ahead," James said. Sirius leaned across the table so that no one could hear them.
"This is what you do. You get a girl from Lily's dorm and sleep with her. She goes back, telling Lily that you slept with her, Lily gets all jealous, complains about it to Prongs."
James stared at him. "But how is that going to get me better off?"
Sirius opened his mouth and then closed it, sitting back and thinking. "I dunno, but at least you'd get laid..."
"Well, we have more important things to think about anyways," James shrugged. "Tonight?"
Sirius grinned, "Yup." They leaned in together and began planning when James suddenly sat up, cursing.
"What?"
"What if she goes out there tonight!?" he whispered harshly. Sirius mirrored his expression.
"What if she's been there all along and we've just missed her!"
James counted up the times that they had gone out into the Forbidden Forest and suddenly felt extremely lucky.
"Prongs, you'd better find her and persuade her to not go out tonight." Sirius looked down the table, but Lily was no where to be found. James nodded and left the table, his plate only half- eaten.
Lily went to the library to get a head start on the research paper on the Unforgivable curses for Defense Against the Dark Arts. It was the longest paper she'd ever been assigned, over 13 feet of parchment was expected. Then again, it was supposed to be a year-long research project. Lily figured that if she used up all of her spare time, it'd be done by Christmas, or, at the very latest, Easter. She was already a good five and three-quarters feet worth of research done, and she wanted to make it an even six before Transfiguration this afternoon.
She was so engrossed in her work that she didn't notice James until he plopped down in front of her.
"Hey Evans." James was happy that he had found her here, the only trouble was seeing whether or not she was going out tonight.
"Potter," she nodded, not looking at him.
"Fancy seeing you here," he grinned. She still did not look at him.
"Yes, considering that I've got a giant paper due at the end of the year. And, if I'm not mistaken, you do, too."
"Which is why I'm here!" He motioned to the surrounding books. "What are you doing yours on?"
"The Unforgivable Curses," Lily said, shortly.
"Really? Interested in becoming a Death Eater?" James flirted. Lily glared at him.
"Hardly. I'm actually trying to find ways to prevent damage of these spells."
"Fascinating. Find anything on Avada Kadavra?" James asked. Lily shook her head.
"I don't like researching on that one. It makes me depressed. I can't find anything on someone surviving after that curse." She was subdued now. Just thinking about the hopelessness of the curse was depressing.
"Yeah. I don't reckon anyone's survived it yet, huh?" James was trying to find a way to get to the topic of her evening tonight, but couldn't find the right words to introduce it delicately. To just jump upon a subject that nobody but a deer was supposed to know about would be a tad suspicious.
"What are you doing yours on?" Lily said, trying to move onto a different subject. She hated talking about Avada Kedavra , it always gave her a chill down her spine. It was a spell that a group of wizards liked to use on Muggle-borns such as herself.
"Sirius and I are doing ours on Animaguses." James grinned. Lily jumped at the promise of a lighter subject.
"Animagi," Lily corrected. She clicked her tongue against her cheek and gave James a probing look. "But I wasn't sure that this was a group project."
James sat back. "It's not. But as we told the professor, it's all the same information, isn't it? So we're looking up together and then writing separately."
"The hard part comes with your writing separately. I never see you two do anything separately."
James chuckled and was pleased to see Lily in good spirits. "Lily, I am astonished that you think so low of my dear Mr. Padfoot and I. We will most certainly write our reports separately."
"I'm sure, Potter. I'm surprised Peter and Remus aren't joining in on the bandwagon." True enough, Lily was anxious to see James's response to her mention of Remus. They hadn't been fighting as of late, but, just the same...
"Peter's doing something, he won't tell us, and Remus is researching werewolves," James grinned. If Lily only knew how easy these papers were going to be for them; they'd already done enough research their first three years to fill up ten research papers. Besides, he was going to do a lot more research tonight.
"Werewolves? Interesting," Lily said, putting more emphasis on Remus's than Peter's. To her mild surprise, James did seem a little hackled that she had pointed out Remus.
"I suppose your think that anything he does is interesting," James snorted.
"Why?" Lily asked. "Jealous?" James leaned in close to her and she felt her breath catch in her throat.
"Always," he whispered, looking deep into her eyes. Lily swallowed and cleared her throat, leaning back. She had thought, very briefly, that the rift in the Marauders might have been caused by her affection for Remus, but she wasn't sure. But the question still remained on how James had caught wind of her crush. She had been fancying him quite privately, save for her stag friend in the forest.
"So....a-are you interested in becoming an Animagus?" Lily was desperate to change the subject. She didn't like the look in his eyes, it made her very uncomfortable. She busied herself with turning pages in her book.
"Yeah, Sirius too," he grinned, victoriously. Lily wanted to wipe the satisfied grin off of his face; he hadn't caught her off-guard, he just surprised her, that's all. There was most certainly nothing to be grinning about.
"Have any idea of what you would become?" Lily turned her eyes back to her books, scanning the words for anything of use to her.
"I was thinking something along the lines of a cricket." Lily's head shot up from her book.
"A cricket?" she asked, incredulously.
"Yeah, why not? I could make beautiful music to sing you to sleep." Lily felt heat rising to her cheeks and was very mad at herself. James Potter had never made her blush when he was flirting with her. She flipped the paper with a vengeance and tried to hide her blush.
"James, don't you have an essay to research?" He detected a definite snap to her voice.
"Ok, ok. I can take a hint," James grinned.
"That's a first."
As James watched Lily scurry with her essay, he felt mighty upset with himself. They had talked about everything except what they were supposed to talk about.
"Hey Lily."
"I thought you were taking a hint."
"Where do you go all the time?" James asked, mentally beating himself on the head. The direct route was not what he was going for.
"What?"
"You disappear a lot. Where do you go?"
"None of your business." Lily gave him a glare. The Forbidden Forest was off-limits and she could get detention for going in there as much as she did, so she wasn't about to tell Potter.
She had a thought. If he had seen her going in there, he could hang it over her head.
"Why?"
"Because you shouldn't be going out by yourself," James said, giving her a sincere look.
"James, I am a sixth year and can take care of myself."
"Yeah, but you're also a target." Please don't get mad with me. If you get mad you'll be going to the Forest just when you don't need to be.
"I am not a target," Lily bristled.
"Yes, yes. I was wrong!" James acquiesced. "You are most perfectly capable of taking care of yourself!"
Lily raised her eyebrow at him and leaned over the table. "Is there something that you're trying to tell me?"
James cleared his throat. "Um....What are you doing tonight?"
Lily stared at him. Usually he just popped the question and it was done, there wasn't any of this namby-pamby nonsense before. Something was up.
"Potter, what are you trying to tell me?"
"What are you doing tonight?" He grinned at her.
"If you must know, I have homework to do."
"Oh good. Doing it in the common room, I suppose?"
Lily was suddenly very suspicious. "Maybe, maybe not."
"Do it in the Common Room tonight," James grinned.
"Are you going to throw dung on me or something?"
James laughed nervously and shook his head. "I'm not going to be in the Common Room tonight. You know, got a hot date with a Ravenclaw." If he could, he would have ripped off his leg and beat himself with it. His mouth was running without a license.
"I see. And why is it so important to you that I stay indoors? Are there werewolves running around tonight?"
James laughed very highly.
"Why would you say that?"
Lily looked out the window of the darkening sky. "Full moon."
"Oh, oh yeah." James ran his hand through his hair. Lily turned on him and rolled her eyes.
"Why do you do that?" Lily asked him.
"Do what?"
"Run your hand through your hair?"
"Nervous habit," he shrugged. "So, you'll stay indoors tonight?"
Lily eyed him and then nodded. "I suppose."
Even so, James kept the werewolf away from the special spot all night.