I'll Fight For You
By Hazelmist/Summerskies
Disclaimer: It all belongs to J. K. Rowling. Anything that might cause you to question sanity is probably my idea.
A/N: Sorry this is so late! Hope you enjoy and I will do my best to get the next one up ASAP since it just needs to be edited.
Chapter 15: Secrets Resurrected
I hurl my weapon, a mere shard of glass at the red-eyed face. It tears open the flesh and he cries out, momentarily taken aback by this attack. I scramble to my feet, but I'm losing too much blood. My adrenaline driven strength is zapped right out of me and I stumble and collapse long before he uses a spell to trap me in an invisible net.
"Fun's over," he growls.
I'm too weak to struggle or even lift my head. The escape only brought death a couple of breaths closer.
"Hope, silly Moon girl, you still haven't lost that bravery or the stupidity. Your brother pulled that trick on me too, don't you remember?" he cackles into my ear and I shut my eyes tight. "Stop fighting it, the pain will all be over in a few moments and you'll get to see Harry, won't that be nice, a Moon sibling reunion over 20 years in the making."
I drown out the sound of the dark, empty laughter, fighting back the flashing images of a child version of myself running up the stairs, running into that room, the one with the locked door.
"Harry!"
"You seem to have trouble opening up to me. What is it with you Moons?"
"I'll never tell!" I gasp with one final breath.
"Oh no you don't." A flick of the wand and suddenly, I'm breathing again. No! I don't want to be here! Let me die, let me go!
"Harry died on me; I won't be making that same mistake twice," he whispers. "You know there are some things… that are far, far worse than death."
"Death to you!" Gracie giggles.
"No Ms. Adams, you are fatally mistaken, because it is you who's going to be doing the dying!" Sirius answers smugly.
Groggily, I open my eyes wondering if perhaps, maybe, this was all some kind of warped nightmare and that I'd wake up back at my bed at home. No chance, a domed ceiling greets my sleepy eyes. Still trapped in the mausoleum, I see. I prop myself up on my elbows, taking in the sight before me.
The floor is littered with various objects that they emptied once again from their pockets. Gracie and Sirius are sitting across from each other each holding a hand of unusual-looking cards. After watching them for a couple of minutes, I realize that they're playing an old Wizarding card game, a favorite of Tiffany's, called Death Trap. Very appropriate for the situation we're in now, though kind of creepy if you ask me.
"What time is it?" I ask James, who's sitting up beside me, watching them, while turning the mirror over and over in his hands.
James lifts his wrist, studying his watch.
"It's about five in the morning."
Slowly, I sit up.
"That was a malignant error!" Gracie laughs, looking at the card that Sirius just put down.
"Oh, yeah? I'd like to see you try and climb out of this grave!" Sirius challenges her.
"How long have they been at this?" I wonder.
"Since four I think, maybe earlier." James fiddles with the mirror, slipping it into his pocket and then taking it back out.
I raise an eyebrow, wondering how they can be so lively at this ungodly hour.
"Second wind, I guess," James chuckles, clearly reading the look on my face.
Gracie's face splits into a grin that I've seen several times before she announces she's kicked our arse. She's very competitive, and only Tiffany seems to be able to beat her at the game (which is why she likes it so much, because Gracie losing at anything is something extremely rare). That's why Alice and I stopped playing with them.
"HA!" Gracie slaps down a card on the floor, trumping Sirius's best card. Sirius blinks, stunned that he just lost.
The goblet that had been sitting to the side of the empty card box suddenly fills up with a horrible, fiery, disgusting green liquid that tastes so horrible that you swear you're dead for an instant. Several coins fly out of various places from Sirius's cloak and hover in mid-air along side the goblet, offering him a choice. Either way he'll end up a loser. This is the real reason why Alice and I quit playing. It was either drink slug shit or be robbed.
"I win! I win! You're trapped with no way out. Your life is now in my hands!" Gracie does a little dance in place, pumping her fists into the air and bobbing her head. Sirius stares at the cards in disbelief.
"So Mr. Black, what'll it be, poison or extortion?" Gracie laces her fingers together, resting her chin on her hands.
"Give me the cup of death, Ms. Adams," Sirius finally decides mournfully.
"Any last words?" she teases.
"This isn't the last you'll see of the almighty Sirius Black!" Sirius exclaims in theatric voice.
Gracie giggles and hands over the cup. Sirius holds his nose, and drinks the whole thing in one gulp. He grimaces, handing the now empty goblet back to a grinning Gracie.
"Rematch?" he asks immediately.
"You're brave, Black, but I happen to like kicking your arse." Gracie smugly deals out the cards for another game.
"Hello?"
I turn my head at the sound of a faint voice. I glance at James, but he's staring off into space and the voice sounded almost muffled, and too high, almost girlish if I wasn't mistaken. I must be hearing things…
"You wait, this time I'm going to give you a taste of your own poison."
"We'll see."
"HELLO?" I hear someone shout distantly once more along with the sound of barely audible tapping, as if on a window… or any type of glass, such as a mirror, perhaps?
"James?" I ask tentatively. He's lost in space and for the moment, not responding, but he's holding the mirror loosely in his left hand. I take his hand and gently open it, taking the small mirror into my own. I close his fingers, and replace his hand, allowing him to continue with his thoughts undisturbed.
I examine the mirror closely, but it appears to be empty.
"Hello?" I whisper hopefully.
I feel stupid talking to a mirror, though in the Wizarding World they do talk back. I almost went into cardiac arrest the first time it happened. Gracie practically peed herself laughing, until I explained to her and the others that in the Muggle World hearing voices in a mirror is a sign of insanity. Unfortunately, I hear nothing and see nothing, not even my reflection. My breath fogs the glass and I lower it, disappointed once again.
"We're never going to get out of here," I sigh.
"REVEALO!"
Alarmed, I look down at the mirror. My eyes widen. Something's definitely in the mirror now. I see flashes of colors, red, gold, a glimpse of fire and then a woven rug, which I recognize as the one in the Gryffindor Common Room. Someone must've dropped it onto the floor!
"James!" I gasp, tugging on his arm. "James, come look at this!"
In awe I watch as the scene in the mirror spins, and then suddenly instead of the rug, it's the ceiling of the Gryffindor Common Room that I'm looking at, as if someone flipped it over.
"Lily? Hey, what are you doing with that?" He frowns, looking over my shoulder.
"Look!" I squeal, holding up the mirror for him to see.
"HEY! HEY MOONY!" James yells at the mirror excitedly.
The end of a wand pokes at the mirror, and a few orange sparks emit from its smoky tip. The room flips over again, but once again we're looking up at the ceiling of what's undoubtedly our beloved common room.
"REMUS!" I shout, rapping smartly on the glass.
"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS THIS!" a voice answers, one that does not belong to Remus, but still one that I recognize instantly. I hold my breath, and a moment later a familiar face appears on the other side of the mirror.
"TIFFANY!" I shriek. Never in all my life have I been happier to see her. "Tiffany, it's me!" I wave frantically at the smaller version of her face, currently filling the glass.
Her eyes widen.
"Lily?" she gasps. Her eyes flick to the side. "James?" Her jaw drops as her eyes move between him and me.
"But…how?" she stammers.
"It's a two-way mirror, you have Sirius's and we have James's," I explain, though I'm still not exactly sure how it got to be that way.
"Where are you? You're not stuck in the mirror…" Tiffany trails off, confusion clouding her face.
"No, but we are stuck," James says.
"What do you mean stuck?" Tiffany asks suspiciously, as if she knows that it's bad. James and I exchange an uneasy look, one that Tiffany doesn't miss. I hear her sigh heavily as if we willingly got ourselves into this mess, which is inevitably going to come to rest upon her shoulders. "Where are you?" she asks tiredly.
"We-er-kind of got trapped inside a mausoleum," I mumble.
"You're inside a WHAT?" Tiffany asks, cleaning out her ear and leaning closer to the glass. I get a close up of her ear and one side of her face. Her eye, I notice is slightly bloodshot and rather puffy and pink around the lids. Has she been crying? Wait - didn't she go to her mother's? What was she doing in the Gryffindor Common Room, with Remus's mirror, at five in the morning when she was supposed to be at her mother's?
"We're inside a Mausoleum," James repeats more clearly. "You know, the big marble tomb where hundreds of dead people can be buried."
"I know what it is," Tiffany says in a far away voice. She seems to lose her trace of thought, as if she's forgotten we're even there. She shakes her head, coming back to us. "What are you two doing in there?" she asks, blinking, as if she's still not sure that she knows what we said, or where she is for that matter.
"We're not alone," I tell her.
"Obviously; they pack `em in there like sardines," Tiffany says with a taste of her old humor, which for some reason makes her sober extremely quickly, rather than giggle as she normally would in this situation.
"I'm not talking about them." I shudder involuntarily, looking around. "I meant Gracie and Sirius are with us, too."
"Gracie…Sirius?" Tiffany seems to have trouble placing the names as if she wasn't really listening to me. She seems to have got lost again.
Hearing their names, Gracie and Sirius, who have abandoned their intense game of Death Trap, call out to her, grin and wave. I hold up the mirror so that she can see them. Tiffany doesn't respond, perhaps stunned by the situation.
"Tiffany?" She's acting so strange, this isn't like Tiffany, but then again it's five in the morning. I can't blame her… and it must be hard to swallow the fact that your four friends trapped themselves in a tomb.
"Tiffany, stay with us!" James jokes and he snaps his fingers.
Tiffany snaps out of it. She glares at the mirror, a scowl crossing her face.
"You're telling me that all four of you are stuck in a mausoleum?" James and I nod. "Is this some sort of sick joke?" she snarls.
"No!" I say exasperatedly.
"I swear we're telling the truth!" James swears.
Tiffany raises an eyebrow and snorts. Next to Sirius, James is about the last person I would expect to tell the truth, and the most likely to pull a joke like this on someone. Not a wise move, James. I shoot him a glare, before turning back to Tiffany.
"Is Remus with you, too?" Tiffany asks skeptically.
"No."
"What about Peter? How about Frank and Alice? And why don't you just throw in ol' McLaggen for Merlin's sake! Party in the tomb!" Tiffany exclaims hysterically and I notice that it isn't the firelight playing tricks on her face, but real tears that are streaming down her cheeks.
"No, Tiff, this isn't a joke, believe me!" James begs.
"Don't you `Tiff' me, Potter! I've got better things to do than becoming your latest prank," she says scathingly and her face suddenly disappears from the mirror.
"TIFFANY!" I scream. "Just listen to me! We need you to owl James's mom and tell her that we're stuck in the tomb! PLEASE! We're going to die down here! YOU HAVE TO OWL JAMES'S PARENTS! Please. Please Tiffany…"
The mirror goes black and a moment later it's just another piece of glass. My breath fogs the glass, I rub it but it remains empty and colorless, void of any reflection of either side. I stare determinedly at the empty mirror, willing her back. My eyes burn with the effort, a strange lump rising in my throat. Something wet slides down my face, dropping onto the mirror. I wipe it clean with the palm of my hand, but another teardrop lands on the mirror, and another and another.
"She's gone," I whisper, my voice breaking.
I feel James's large hand on my back, moving in slow circles. I lean back, resting my head on his shoulder. James's arm encircles my shoulders, alternatively rubbing my back. I let him keep his arm there because I'm cold…yeah…that's it, only because I'm cold.
"Damn her!" Sirius hisses. Gracie clutches her knees to her chest, tracing a pattern in the floor. Sirius looks at her and then leaps to his feet pacing the room. I watch him through half closed eyes as he makes tight circles around and around the place where Gracie sits. Finally he stops.
"I have a brilliant plan!" he announces happily.
"You do?" Gracie asks in disbelief.
"Yep," Sirius nods and plops down close beside her. "As soon as we get back, we're going to kill her."
James groans.
"There's only one thing wrong with your `brilliant' plan. We'll be dead, you dimwit," Gracie points out.
Sirius obviously didn't take that into consideration when constructing his "brilliant" plan.
"So? We'll be ghosts… and we'll, um, scare her or bribe Peeves to throw a suit of armor at her, or drop a chandelier on her…" He trails off, seeing as everyone's stopped listening. "Or we could just sit here and rot…there's always the guilt suicide trip thing," he sighs in defeat.
"We're going to die!" I moan.
"No, no we're not," James whispers soothingly, running his hand up and down my arm (only because I'm cold). "Remus will be back in two days, and if Tiffany found the mirror in the common room then someone's bound to come across it."
"Wait, Tiffany found it in the common room?" Gracie speaks up.
I nod.
"But she's staying with her mother…" She frowns and looks at me.
"That's what I thought, but she was there in the Gryffindor Common Room."
It doesn't make sense. What was she doing at Hogwarts instead of her mother's and why was she crying? And she didn't seem herself, she kept zoning out…
"Only forty-eight more hours," James says optimistically.
"Actually it's more like sixty, maybe more considering it will take Moony longer to recover since we're here and not there to help him transf-" Sirius stops abruptly, and I notice James giving him a wide-eyed warning look.
"Why? Are you like his support group or something?" Gracie asks curiously, obviously noticing the silent exchange between the two boys as well.
"Kind of," Sirius mumbles. His lips twitch as if suppressing a grin when he meets James's eyes.
"We're his best friends. Of course we're his biggest fans," James elaborates, but I could've sworn there was a mischievous glint in his hazel eyes. They're definitely not telling us something.
"How dare her!" Sirius says suddenly out of the blue. "She interrupted our game, I was about to win and she made us mess everything up! Just wait till I get my hands on her…"
"You were not winning!" Gracie protests.
"I was too!" Sirius insists.
"You were NOT!"
"You know I was going to win, you just don't want to admit that I bested you at your favorite game." Sirius puffs out his chest.
"I can see this is going nowhere," Gracie sighs.
"There's only one way to settle this; we'll have to start another game." Sirius deals out the cards again.
"I beat you six times already, give it up, Sirius."
"Never."
"Fine," Gracie accepts the cards, seeing as Sirius is never going to give up on the stupid game. "Good thing I like winning."
They start another round of Death Trap, which Gracie will probably win again. I don't know much about Sirius's card skills, but I think he might be letting Gracie win. Then again, his attention span is much shorter than Gracie's, and he's easily distracted. He spends more time studying Gracie than the cards, and I thought James was bad. Sirius doesn't seem to realize that he's doing it, kind of like me leaning into James… Wait, backtrack. I look slowly to my left.
James's arm is still around my shoulders and I'm still leaning on his chest, fifteen minutes after he originally comforted me. What's wrong with me? I was cold, or at least I thought I was cold, for about a millisecond. I forgot that his arm was there and that I happened to be breaking all the Personal-Contact, Respect-Other-People's-Space rules. Discreetly, I lift my head off his shoulder and slide out from under his arm as if it was nothing, just two people sharing body heat because they had the illusion that they were cold. It's perfectly normal. Doesn't mean I like snuggling up to Potter or anything, just animal instincts. Wait, no, that sounds wrong.
"Thanks for your arm," I thank him stiffly.
James looks at me funny.
"I'm warm now."
A light goes on in his eyes.
"I mean I'm not cold anymore," I hastily correct myself.
"Er-you're welcome?" James looks amused. I turn away so he doesn't notice how my cheeks take on an unbecoming shade of pink.
You're an idiot, Lily.
I spend the next half hour trying to avoid looking, or touching Potter in anyway, which is rather difficult, considering the Fates seem to have found it extremely amusing to strand us on our own little island in the heart of an underground tomb. Enviously, I watch Gracie and Sirius, who got a much larger and spacious portion of the room, and just so happened to have a whole Death Trap game in their pockets. Why? I don't know. They're just lucky or crazy I guess. Not that I would want to play Death Trap with Potter. First of all, I hate the game, and second of all, he'd probably cheat.
"What time is it?" Gracie asks James after she beats Sirius for the ninth time in a row and Sirius finished his eighth cup of slug shit.
"Five fifty-two," James answers, glancing at his wristwatch.
I do some quick mental math in my head.
"Only fifty-nine hours and twenty-seven minutes left."
"Great, plenty of time to catch up with the family," James says sarcastically, looking around at the coffins that surround us.
"I think visiting hours are long past over," Sirius snickers.
Five minutes later, Gracie and Sirius have tired of their card game and are once again bored.
"What time is it?" Sirius asks.
"Five fifty-seven," James informs us.
Another minute goes by.
"What time is it now?"
"Five fifty-eight, exactly one minute later."
"What time is it…now?" he asks James again.
"Five fifty-eight and fourteen seconds."
"I'm bored!" he whines.
"I couldn't tell," Gracie mutters sarcastically.
"I think we all are," James chimes in. "There isn't much to do here," he observes.
"Wow, I wonder why," I grumble. "Maybe it's because the majority of the population happens to be dead!" I roll my eyes.
"Soon to be all of the population," Gracie adds under her breath.
We all pretend like we didn't hear her, even though we did.
"What about…now?" Sirius asks.
"I'm still bored," James replies, stifling a yawn of boredom.
"No, I mean the time, you dolt."
"What do you need the time for?" James asks Sirius, rolling up his sleeve again to look at his watch.
"I have my reasons…" Sirius says secretly, meaning he doesn't have a logical reason for wanting the time. He's just beyond bored and doing everything in his power to annoy us all. Well, at least that's what it seems to mean, at least to me.
"Now come on, tell me what time it is," Sirius persuades James.
James sighs but reluctantly reads the watch.
"Five fifty-nine and thirty-nine seconds."
"And…now?"
"Five fifty-nine and forty-six seconds."
"And…what about…right…NOW!"
"FIVE FIFTY-NINE AND FIFTY-NINE SECONDS!" James bursts out in frustration.
"Nuh-uh, you're wrong. It's six now." Sirius grins.
ROOOOOARRRRRRRR!
All of us jump. Gracie and I scream. The lion must've gotten bored playing statues in the park, because now he runs at us, leaping over Death Valley and lunging toward me, again. I shriek and jump into James's lap. James rolls over, taking me with him. He covers my body with his own, shielding me from the lion's ruthless marble talons. I hear the sound of grinding marble and a weird cracking sound. The floor trembles violently beneath me. Blindly, I cling to James, praying for it all to end.
And it does.
Silence descends upon us like the delicate, noiseless snowflakes that blanketed the ground yesterday morning.
I crack open an eye but James's chest happens to be in my way. Oh no, I played the damsel in the distress again. I am a Gryffindor, not a simpering helpless Hufflepuff! This has got to stop! Though, come to think of it, I probably wouldn't have stood a chance if James hadn't got on top of me. Wow, that sounds wrong, but it's true. The lion/statue/whatever-it-is wouldn't hurt James, but he would hurt me. Even after finding a logical excuse for my fear and cowardly tendencies, I blush in embarrassment.
"He didn't hurt you?" I ask softly, looking up into his hazel eyes.
"Nope, didn't dare touch me." James smiles and I smile back, relieved.
"Scoot!" I tell him, punching his shoulder playfully.
He gets off of me and we stand up, taking in our surroundings, which now look exactly the same as before, except now the lion's back near Gracie's parent's grave and the hole…
"It's gone!" Gracie squeals, nearly knocking me off my feet with a bear hug. I laugh and hug her back, glad that she's all right.
"Oh, Jamesie!" Sirius mocks Gracie in a tearful high voice, as he emotionally runs toward James in slow motion.
"SIRY!" James shrieks in an imitation of a female's voice as he grabs Sirius in a hug. They break apart snickering.
Gracie sticks her tongue out at them, and Sirius makes a funny face at her in response. I roll my eyes.
"Do you think we could try the door again?" James wonders, eyeing the door in question.
"There's only one way to find out." Gracie grabs his arm and drags him off. Sirius and I follow a step behind them. I keep one eye on the lion, which's still watching us-I swear-even if he doesn't technically have eyes.
"Well?" Gracie asks, looking at James. Her hand hovers over the door. James steals a glance in the direction of Sirius and me. He hesitates but lifts his hand, touching hers.
"I suppose we're all going to die anyway," he sighs.
"I love the optimism," Sirius comments, sarcastically.
Their hands quiver, fingers trembling violently as they reach slowly for the deadly door. I glance at Sirius. His face is filled with fear and anticipation. We were lucky once, but the chances of it happening twice aren't good at all. I suck in a sharp breath. Beside me I feel Sirius tense. Our lives are in our friends' hands and Gracie and James are well aware of this. Gracie bites so hard on her lip that she bleeds, and a sweat drop forms on James's smooth brow.
The door flickers, shuddering as it glows lightly around the edges.
Please, please work. Please.
I hold my breath and wait.
And it opens.
I sigh in relief.
"I'll go first."
Gracie lights her wand and plunges into the dark room before her.
"Follow me," James whispers to us, as if he thinks we're going to go off exploring or something, or run back into the ferocious lion's deadly den. Sirius pretends to turn around, just to piss James off, but I seize the back of his cloak and pull him through the door with me. No time for jokes, let's just get the hell out of here before the lion changes his mind about us. Sirius and I follow James's bobbing light as Gracie's light grows larger.
"I don't need you to hold my hand, Lily, I'm perfectly capable of walking," Sirius complains to his left shoulder. I happen to be on his right. Wow, I didn't realize how dark it was in here before.
"Sirius, I'm not holding your hand, I only pulled you out of there because you were goofing off. I haven't touched you since!" I snap. Honestly, this isn't time for these petty arguments.
"Yeah, now you let go," he grumbles.
"I wasn't holding your hand, I swear!" I argue truthfully.
"Right," he says sarcastically, obviously not believing me.
"Damn it!" Gracie swears up ahead. James stops beside her, asking what's wrong.
"The doors, they all look the same. The room's a bloody circle! Which one did we come in through?" she asks desperately, the light flashing briefly on her panicked face.
"I don't know," James admits glumly.
"How are we going to get out of here, then?" Gracie asks him fearfully.
"Er…we can start looking. One of the door's bound to be the right one…"
"We don't have time!" Gracie groans, but she and James frantically start looking over the doors.
Sirius suddenly lights his wand, practically poking it into my face as he runs past me to help them look.
"My eyes, Sirius! Lower that thing before you make me permanently blind!" I order, covering my precious eyes.
"I don't even have my wand with me, Lily!" Sirius growls from beside me, brushing against me to prove that he hasn't moved at all.
"But-"
"See!"
"I can't see, you dolt, I'm still seeing dots from your stupid light!" I grumble, blinking furiously.
"It wasn't mine!" Sirius holds up what looks like two empty hands, but I can't be sure because my eyes haven't recovered yet.
"Well, then what was it, a ghost?" I offer, mocking him.
"Shut up and help us!" James yells to us.
Both of us move toward a light, walking into each other. He mutters something under his breath, and shoves past me in the direction of James's voice, which is growling for us to hurry the hell up. Even though my vision is still marred by giant neon multicolored dots that look like falling space invaders, I notice that he is, in fact, missing his wand. That explains why he took the torch earlier, which we, of course, lost. The lion probably ate it. I hope he gets indigestion!
I stumble toward the nearest light, opposite the path that Sirius took to James.
Gracie sits quietly, running her hands over the door, her back to me. The light shimmers in her hair, making it look almost curly. I touch her shoulder and she jumps about six feet into the air. Her wand is out and pointed at the center of my chest before I can think twice. Whoa, talk about paranoid.
"I just came over to help you look, James told me…" I tell her, studying her face, which, clouded in shadows, now looks strange and unfamiliar. Her dark eyes flit across my face and slowly she lowers the wand.
"Oh, James did? Okay," she says reluctantly in a voice that doesn't quite sound like her own. Gracie turns around rather quickly, returning to her original position in front of the door. I light my wand and crouch down beside her.
"This is it," she decides after a minute of examining it.
"I'll take your word for it, Gracie."
Gracie gives me a funny look as we get to our feet.
"What?" I ask, feeling slightly uncomfortable under her eyes, which in this light seem unnaturally dark.
"Nothing," she giggles. "It's just that you called me Gr-never mind." She shakes her head, a weird smile crossing her face. I watch her closely as she lifts her hand, passing it over the door. The hand's scratched and scarred, probably from our ordeal, but it looks as if she attempted to heal it, or Sirius, perhaps, judging by how horribly it was done. The door shimmers and opens. Gracie smiles at me and steps through.
"Over here! We've found it!" I call to the others.
"Oh, good, James!" Gracie yells from the other side of the room. "I knew you'd find it!"
"It was all you, Gracie!" James corrects her as he and Sirius stumble toward me and out the door.
"Stop being so modest, James!" Gracie jokes coming up behind me. "I would've led us back into the lion's den if it hadn't been for you and Lily working on this one."
"I was stuck with this idiot!" James protests.
"Takes one to know one!" Sirius shoots back in an immature sing-song voice.
I hear them running up the stairs.
"Come on, Lily!" Gracie grabs my arm and pulls me toward the door, which only moments before I could've sworn I watched her step through, after she picked it out.
"Lily?" Gracie asks worriedly. Her eyes shine like deep blue sapphires even in the dim light of her wand. I blink, looking at the doorway, which is now empty, because she's standing beside me. But that doesn't make sense…
"Lily, the door!"
I look up just in time to see the door seal shut in front of us.
"Crap!"
"I'm sorry Gracie!" I apologize immediately. "I don't know why I froze, one minute you were… and then…"
"It's all right, no fuss. Let's just hope I have enough blood in me…" Gracie nervously rubs her hands together.
"You do, I just watched you open it," I assure her.
"Yeah, but that was with James. It's a little different when there's two of you that have it, a person like me, there's always that chance that it might reject me," Gracie brushes it off.
"Gracie, I watched you open it with my own eyes!" I frown.
"But that was with James," Gracie repeats impatiently.
"No, it wasn't!"
I saw her do it! She was standing here only a minute ago!
"We can argue about this later." Gracie lifts the same hand that I watched her use before, the one that's not holding her wand. She's the only person I know who is left handed, therefore using their left arm as their wand arm. Her right hand moves to the door, and I notice that the scars that were there only moments before have disappeared.
I gape, staring at her hand. I grab at it, but Gracie pulls away.
"What's wrong with you, Lily?" she asks.
"But you - you already opened it," I stammer. "And your hand, it's healed…"
"GET OUT OF HERE!" she bellows when I again, refuse to budge. I wake up then, realizing where we are and recalling what the consequences might be if I decided to prolong my stay in the Moon Mausoleum. Dazed, I allow her to pull me from the room and drag me up the steps. I start running then and Gracie lets go of my arm as a dancing light appears up ahead. My heart jumps into my throat when I discover that it's not the boy's wands but the flickering torch from the entrance.
"Hurry!" Gracie urges me.
I put on an extra burst of speed and run out into the cool night air. Behind me I hear a squelching noise as the door rematerializes and seals itself. There's a flurry of arms and voices as Sirius and James join us, each of us checking to make sure that the others came out safe and sound.
"We're alive!" I laugh, hugging James as the four of us walk through the cemetery toward the gate.
"I think we're the first that have ever come out of there with our lives still intact," James chuckles.
"And we'll probably be the last." I smile and pull away, hugging Gracie again.
SNAP!
A twig snaps and something crashes in the trees near us. A startled rat streaks out onto the path and is gone as quick as it appeared. We freeze and hold our breath, but whatever it is, stays hidden in the woods, silent and motionless.
"It's probably a cat or something," Sirius assures us, but he looks around warily.
"I don't like this," Gracie starts backing up, toward the gate. "Come on, I'll race you guys back to the house!" She turns and runs, only stopping for an instant to open the gate, before disappearing in the tree-covered path.
We look at each other and then hurry after her.
James struggles to open the gate with fumbling fingers, as Gracie's footsteps fade, growing further away. I shiver against the cold, glancing over my shoulder for what will hopefully be the last time, at the Moon burial ground. Far away in the distance I can see the glowing mausoleum with its smoldering torch. A dark figure moves among the tombstones. Her scarred ivory hand passing over the tombs, as her black, curling hair unfurls, rippling in a fleeting flash of the full moon. Her eyes are brown and although I can't see them, I know they are hauntingly familiar.
"Come on, Lily!" Sirius says somewhere on the other side of the now opened gate.
But I'm transfixed by the ghostly image of the woman, my heart pounding somewhere in my ears as wild and crazy thoughts scramble noisily through my mind.
The moon slides behind a cloud, the world sliding into shadows and darkness. The woman slips away becoming a part of the night. James grabs my hand, tugging me along.
Theories and notions crash through my mind, smashing and colliding with logic and all lines of sanity. The conclusion that I come to makes me run despite the fact that I have a stitch in my side and I can hardly breathe or keep up with James's long legs (though he slows down considerably just for me). I run away from her.
When we reach the house at last, Gracie and Sirius are sitting at the kitchen table, removing their cloaks and scarves.
"Lily, you look as if you've seen a ghost!" Gracie jokes.
"I think I did," I mumble, but the others fail to hear me as a tapping interrupts all activity. Gracie runs to the window and the owl zips inside dropping a note in the center of the table.
Dear James,
I'm so sorry. You're probably wondering where we are, then again you probably haven't got up yet, but just in case I wanted to let you know before you heard the news that we're fine. We're helping them clean up but hopefully I'll be home shortly.
Mom
"News? What news?" James asks, after he reads it aloud to all of us.
Gracie looks it over with Sirius reading over her shoulder. She frowns but it's broken by a huge yawn. It's almost half past six in the morning and we're all exhausted. The yawning is contagious and before long we're all yawning, too sleepy to think of anything else.
"I'm sure it's nothing," Gracie dismisses it sleepily as we head upstairs.
James nods, but I notice that he seems uneasy even as he gives her a small smile and goes to his room. The rest of us say good night and split up.
The moon never came back out from beneath the clouds, instead a grey glow, the early morning light replaced it when the clouds finally cleared. I shut the shade, blocking out the dawn. I curl up in the bed, my eyes shutting. I'm too tired to change and too tired even to dwell on the mysterious woman and her haunting face which keeps reappearing in various forms and ages, all bearing an eerie resemblance to my best friend, her mysterious adopted daughter and her deceased mother-Hope.
A/N: Haha, I bet you're all glad that they've left the mausoleum. Next up, we find out what James's mother was talking about in her letter, some friends make another appearance, and of course we have Christmas, right smack in the middle of July! Thanks again to everyone that reviewed the last chapter!!! I will do my best to get the next chapter out ASAP!
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