"Lily! Lily! Wait!" James shouted, tripping over tree roots that seemingly popped out of nowhere as he scrambled after the infuriated Head Girl.
The trees around the two rustled as the wind skittered and played on the ground, making a leaf float in circles around the empty air. James's foot shot out, and brought the lone pilgrim to the ground. Up his foot went again, and the shoe print framed a cracked, dried red leaf, crumbled amidst the grass.
Lily continued her fast march away from the raven-haired boy. Up the rocks she went, scrambling over the mossy steps.
She felt a sudden prick of wetness on her finger and she lifted her hand to her eye. A rain drop had made its way there - a lonely, fat, wet raindrop. When she whisked the moisture off of her forefinger with a handkerchief found in her pocket, her left fingertips brushed against a lint-covered lemon drop.
Dumbledore, she thought, remembering her conversation with the old, silver-haired headmaster last night. She had to be friends with James, not enemies. In these dark times, especially, it was better to have trustworthy friends than more opposition.
She stopped her fast-paced walk abruptly at the top step. Turning around slowly, she looked down at James. He halted at the middle of the stairs.
"So, Potter," she said in an even, cool tone, her eyes seeming to be a stormy gray in that moment. "Explain yourself."
James winced at the sheer intensity of her dagger-shooting eyes and tilted his head upwards, so he was staring at her hair line.
"It. . . really doesn't mean. . . `Lily Loves Snape'," he said in a small voice.
"I figured," Lily sniffed, and rolled her eyes. James relaxed, if only a little, and focused on her eyes. They were at their usual green, only a little bit darker than before. The floating fall leaves matched her vibrant hair, and James stood, head tilted to the side, watching her.
Lily shifted. She cleared her throat uncomfortably.
"Why is he staring at me?" she thought.
"It means-"James was cut off by the even steps of a tall, dark shadow, contrasting with the yellow light of the opened front doors. The footprints followed each other, one by one, the boots of the tall wizard covered by the flowing star-patterned robes.
"Professor Dumbledore," Lily greeted, surprised by the entrance of the headmaster.
"Dumbledore!" James said as well.
"Miss Evans and Mr. Potter, the hour of the Prefect Meeting tonight must have slipped your minds. I was waiting, until I realized that you seemed to have started the meeting here on the grounds, without I or the prefects," Dumbledore smiled, his ever-clear blue eyes sparkling as they always seemed to be.
Lily coloured, but James didn't seem at all abashed.
"Why don't we have the meeting on our way back to your dormitory? I daresay I remember where they are," suggested Dumbledore, and his eyes seemed to glaze with memories of the adventures of his long ago school years.
James and Lily nodded and walked into the light-flooded school with him. Shadows from the torch danced along the cold stone walls, and Lily saw a pair of gleaming eyes she recognized as Mrs. Norris's, glaring out at her from within the darkness of a suit of armor's shadow.
Lily let out an exhausted yawn as Dumbledore's words flew around one ear, though the meanings of the sounds did not sink in. They went up the main staircases, around a corner, past a painting of an ocean side landscape that seemed to change constantly between sunshine and flashes of thunder, through hand woven tapestries, and through doorways concealed by stone panels.
She turned her head to the far right, where James walked on the other side of Dumbledore. The hazel eyes, underneath wrinkles of thought, were attentive to Dumbledore's speech. She'd ask James what the headmaster had said tomorrow.
The walk seemed to take forever, until the corridor they were walking in abruptly ended at the painting of the Fat Lady. Smoothing her silk dress with one hand, the Fat Lady nodded respectively at Professor Dumbledore.
"Password?" her voice boomed at Lily, startling her from her nearly asleep state of mind.
"Treacle tart," James enunciated, and the portrait swung open. Lily turned around, another yawn seeming to be ready to unveil itself.
"G'nite, Professor Dumbledore," the Head Girl and Boy said. Lily and James stood there, watching the straight back of the headmaster retreat, quietly and very alone, back to his office. The Fat Lady scolded them for keeping her up, so they quickly scrambled into the Common Room.
James and Lily split, separated by the doors that led to the separate dormitories. With a final quick wave and yawn, Lily crept up the stairs, past the rooms of the deep in sleep students. Up she went, past the other years, until she came upon the top of the tower. She reached for the wooden door, slipped in, and collapsed, asleep on the gold-curtained poster bed.
It must have been the deep sleep that made Lily have a particularly odd dream. Lily was in a room of the Daily Prophet, surrounded by clippings of all the chaos. A boy, with jet black hair and extraordinarily long fingers, had caused it all.
Dust formed over the clippings, as if it had been in the far away past. Yellowed with age, they showed a time of dark destruction. How strange it was. Yellow, the colour of sunshine and happy days, was the memory that the bleak times had for remembrance.
"Potter?" she asked the newspapers. The black-and-white pictures seemed to match fair enough.
Lily crept towards the desk with her eyes steadfast on the newspapers. She rifled through the papers, noting the future dates and places. Diagon Alley, Muggle towns - there were attacks everywhere! Even right next to Hogwarts, there was a mentioning of a group of people killed in Hogsmeade. The next morning, Lily woke up with a headache, but with no memory of the dream.
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