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flowrs4opheliaTitle: Preludes
Author: me, CatsOnMars
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: James/Lily, Sirius, Remus, Peter, Snape
Summary: Lily and the Marauders are all friends in their sixth year. Lily starts wondering why Remus is missing from school so often, which leads to her getting herself in danger
Notes: This is the last part. If you liked the story, be sure to check out the sequel, "Requiems", which is about the Marauders and Lily in their last year of school.
Chapter 4
Almost two more months went by. Lily was with the boys so often that it was no longer noticeable to others if she had any other good friends. All of them were closer to her now, but especially James, who finally felt that he was a friend to her. Yet a familiar feeling of nervousness always surfaced when he was with her as if they were strangers, which was somehow a good feeling. His world sort of swirled around him out of control when she was there, but he didn`t notice this; he only unconsciously missed this when she wasn`t there, and would sit in class or in the dormitory feeling bothered by something without being able to place what it was that was nagging him.
One day after classes the five were all outside by the lake, James and Sirius sitting on a large rock while the others sat on the ground. James was doing homework like most of the others, digging into a chapter of Transfiguration he was required to read, while Sirius leaned back with one hand on the rock behind him and looked bored while eating an apple.
Lily laughed at something Remus had said. The two were looking over the same textbook, answering questions together. "Except that would be cheating," Lily laughed in response to whatever Remus`s comment had been.
Sirius threw what was left of his apple aside and lay back so that he was curved backwards across the rock and his black hair touched the grass on the other side.
"If you`re so bored then do some work, Padfoot," James suggested without hope.
"I did it in detention," he sighed.
"I`m impressed."
"Sirius, do you know the nine distinctive features of a wood nymph that make it unlike humans?" Lily asked as if to give him something to do. "We have all but one of them."
Sirius held up fingers, counting, as he listed off while still hanging upside-down off the rock, "No pupils, no organs, bad eyesight, unsymmetrical bodies-"
"Oh yeah, the symmetry thing. That`s what we don`t have," Lily said to Remus, and they both scribbled on their pieces of parchment.
"What are the others?" Peter asked, and Lily showed her paper to him.
Sirius sat up and kicked his bookbag a foot toward them. "Mine is finished, if you want to just look at that."
Remus yawned, rolling up his parchment. "Naw, I`m done for now. I can`t concentrate outside."
"No kidding," Lily agreed, though she was still writing without showing any sign of packing up her work, her radiant red hair hanging down in her face so that her eyes were hidden as she bent over her parchment. "It`s such a nice day."
"Has to be hell for the fifth and seventh years," Sirius said. "Getting ready for their tests and all."
"Want to go see if anyone`s in the Hall early for dinner?" Peter suggested.
"Alrighty," Sirius said, springing up onto his feet.
"Now?" James asked, looking at his watch. "Woah, it`s later than I thought."
"Time flies when you`re doing fun homework," Sirius said, slapping his back jokingly.
James went back to reading his chapter and didn`t listen to the others as they got up to walk back into the castle. Therefore he didn`t realize at first that Lily had stayed behind and was still sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of him. She tiredly put her quill down and stretched her arms above her, and James`s eyes flicked up from the pages of his textbook at her and then returned to reading.
Lily stood up, though she didn`t seem to be finished because she left her book open on the ground and all of her work out. She sat on the rock next to James where Sirius had sat before and looked over his shoulder at his book. "You`re still in Transfiguration," she noted. "What do you want to do for a living?"
James rested the book on his lap and shrugged. "I don`t know. Something with dignity to it."
"How so?"
"As in I don`t want some office job at the Ministry. I want to do something that helps people and that not just any person will or can do. Maybe a job where I protect people or something."
"From what?"
"Dangerous people," he said like it was obvious. "Criminals."
"You could be an Auror."
"Yeah, I guess."
Lily laughed. "You make it sound like there`s something serious to protect people from."
"You never know what could happen." James let his open book slide to the ground as he had lost the tolerance to concentrate on reading it.
"What could the world need protection from in our lifetime?" Lily asked.
"I don`t want to protect the whole world. But if I can save just some people from getting hurt, that`s better than typing at a desk for the Daily Prophet. If I can end up saving just one person who I care about then it`ll be worth devoting myself to knowing how to defend people."
Lily smiled at him and he didn`t understand what she was smiling about. She shook her head and said, "I never would have guessed you to be such a heroic type. Before I knew you very well, you just seemed lazy."
"Heroic?" James repeated the word. "No, I`m not."
Lily looked down and was silent for a while. Then she said a little quietly, "You could have been hurt that day."
James was caught by surprise and then realized she was talking about when he had gotten her out of the tunnel the night she found out about Remus.
"I try not to think about what could have happened to me because of how stupid I was," Lily said. "But it could have been you, too."
"I wasn`t worried," James said quickly. "Sirius was holding Remus back away from you. Any of us could have changed and gotten you out."
"But you were the only one who did."
James turned his head and looked at her and something pulled at his heart and stirred in the back of his mind. She was silent now and was staring forward. She was incredibly beautiful. He hadn`t really noticed it before, or at least he hadn`t thought about it. Everyone said that Lily was pretty so he had always kind of taken it for granted that she was and had more importantly regarded her as being kind and sweet-tempered. But in the sunlight outside on such a gorgeous day she was nearly impossible to look away from once he had set his eyes on her.
James suddenly inhaled largely and said, "Lily."
She looked up, her expression friendly and warm. "What?"
He didn`t know if he had meant to say her name. "Huh," he said thoughtfully, tracing a finger along his jawline in thought. "So weird...I feel like I`ve forgotten something."
Lily smiled again, but more to herself. She didn`t tell him that he had said the same thing once before when he was alone with her.
A comfortable silence settled between them, and then Lily slowly reached over to James`s hand that was resting on the rock and took it in hers. He looked down at this in surprise, and then a certain calmness and understanding set into him and he closed his fingers around her hand gently but securely. Before they could even make any kind of eye contact a figure came into view and walked in front of them. Snape was walking right past them toward the side of the lake.
Lily pulled her hand from his immediately and lifted it to her head, looking casual as she ran it through her hair and stared in a direction away from James. It was very awkward. Snape`s eyes seemed to have been attracted to the sudden movement because he was looking at them now with no kind of readable expression, even though he appeared not to have known at first that they were sitting there when he approached the lake.
As soon as he seemed to realize what he was doing, Snape looked away again and walked a few strides toward the shore, putting his hands in his pockets and starting to kick small rocks around to keep to himself. He did not look completely unaffected by what he may have just seen between the two of them, but then again Snape could not help looking dismal by himself no matter what. Lily had tried to stop him from seeing them as they were as if she instinctively didn`t want to give him anything to laugh about, but looking at him now that seemed far from a realistic concern. He had always appeared to hide in the shadows of his Slytherin friends in one way or another so that he failed to be intimidating no matter how many attemptingly threatening things he said. But the sight of him completely alone with seemingly no reason to be wandering by himself was strangely doleful and even eerie. It was almost enough to make the years James and his friends had spent in school tormenting him suddenly haunt him, but at the same time Snape kept his unfriendly appearance that was unable to gain pity, and he was reminded how much he had deserved it all.
Lily and James were apparently thinking the same thing, because she leaned to the side and whispered in his ear, "I think it`s his defense mechanism."
James whispered, "What?"
"He`s cruel because he doesn`t want pity."
James stared at Snape in thought. They had long since given up on going out of their ways to get revenge on eachother as they often had when they were younger, with an occasional exception credited to Sirius, but James still hated him. He was cold and uncompassionate, and James had often wondered why Lily would bother being decent to him.
"He doesn`t thank you for being understanding," he said quietly to her.
"But you could leave him alone," she said, "even if you don`t like him."
"Talk to Sirius, not me," James excused in a somewhat childish and unmindful manner.
Lily gave him a chastising look which he ignored, but her expression softened as she seemed to admit to herself that he was right about her preaching to the wrong person. She stood up and collected her things from the ground, and James retrieved his book as she said, "See you later," and walked off to go into the castle and eat dinner. And just like that it was as if what had just happened when they were sitting there together hadn`t happened at all. A delicate, stolen moment that was so fragile that it had ceased to exist with the smallest interruption.
When James looked back up, briefly, at where Snape was standing, he had moved farther to the left of where he was sitting on the rock. He got the strangest feeling that he had been very aware of them the whole time despite looking away, like an eye in the back of his head had watched them. With this uncomfortable thought in mind, leaving him to himself suddenly seemed like a good idea, so about ten minutes later James stood up and headed for the castle.
Chapter 5
One weekend in the common room, Remus was playing a light-hearted tune on the piano and the other four were all goofing off and enjoying having no work to do.
Sirius had grabbed Lily and was pulling her around by the waist in a clumsy imitation of a tango. Everyone laughed uncontrollably as he spun Lily around and then dipped her far back so that her hair almost touched the carpet. Sirius looked just as pretty as her, so when they danced around in such an unmasculine display the result was quite comical.
The only one who wasn`t laughing, but simply forming a small smile while keeping his face pointed downward, was Remus. A full moon was approaching once again. Sirius always seemed almost excited when this observation was lingering unspokenly between the four of them. But for Remus it meant something completely different than it did for the others, and he always somewhat spaced himself apart from them at these times, as if he was feeling especially left out.
When Sirius finally settled down, Lily gave some final laughs as she brushed her now messy and unparted hair out of her face, but didn`t give much care to fixing it again. She sank tiredly into a deep and large red chair that was beside the sofa as Sirius sat down with James. Remus`s music became calmer and slower. Peter, who looked the most tired out of everyone there, said a short goodnight to everyone and made his way up the stairs to the dormitories.
Sirius nudged James`s arm. "So I heard Constantine busted you, eh?"
"Yeah," James sighed. "I was reading your notes in class."
"Sorry about that," Sirius said sincerely. "What`s the deal? We`re supposed to get in trouble together, you know."
James smiled. "Yeah, like the good old days," he said fondly. "Well, he gave me a warning before that, so I have an hour detention."
Sirius winced. "My sympathies, Prongs."
James looked at him, waiting for him to realize his point. "I have to serve it on Monday."
"But you have Quidditch practice, don`t you?"
"Yes. So I have to go and do it later at night." He stressed the last part of his speech in case Sirius was having trouble seeing his meaning.
But Sirius already understood. "Oh. That`s rotten luck. You told Remus?"
James shook his head.
"Hm. It`ll be no fun without you."
He expected just as much from Sirius, for him to treat it so lightly. He always acted like it was about having fun when they roamed the grounds as animals with Remus. And it was, but it was also all they could do to keep their friend from going insane in his other form. Even though the others would be there on Monday night, James felt like he should have been more careful about leaving his schedule open.
Remus started playing the piano part to a sad love song which Lily knew the words to. As if with no premeditation, she started to softly sing along to it while curled up in a relaxed position in the chair. Suddenly it was like she was singing the room to sleep; as soon as she accompanied the song everyone became silent. During a pause in the vocal part Lily stood up to go sit next to Remus on the bench. James had never heard her sing before. Her voice didn`t carry very far but it was pretty and comforting, like the sound of running water. When the song was finishing, Sirius nodded at James in subtle communication of a "goodnight" and then stood up to go up to bed.
Remus stopped playing and Lily lifted a hand to the keys and played some randomly as she talked. "You have to have everything, don`t you, Remus?" she asked him kindly, but not seriously. "A shack all to yourself, a Whomping Willow tree to guard your secret passageway, and a grand piano in the common room. You know this is probably the only thing that`s ever been apparated here since the school first opened?"
He smiled. "Dumbledore has been very kind to me." There was no trace of realization in his voice and it was clear that he already understood this very much.
Lily stood up and said goodnight to both of them before leaving. Then James went over to stand by the piano and explained to Remus that he wouldn`t be able to go down with him and the others to the shack the night after the next.
"Oh," Remus said simply when James was done telling him. "Well, that`s all right. Pretty bad for you, though. You have to go to detention and then be alone around here the rest of the night. Well, I guess if you`re cunning you might be able to find us, if you want to risk sneaking down the tree without the cloak. But in hopes that we`re a little better at hiding than that, I kind of hope you won`t."
James laughed. "I will be able to go the next day before you change back, though. We`ll leave right after school, cause I don`t think any of us have anything to do."
Remus nodded. Then, with a quick afterthought, he added, "Oh, Lily will be here. So you won`t be completely by yourself."
"Yeah," James agreed, but he didn`t really acknowledge the idea. It was typical of Remus to turn the concern to someone else, but he wasn`t exactly worrying about what he would be doing that night.
The next day was Sunday. The boys and Lily finished their homework early in the day and had the rest of it off to be outside. They found themselves at the side of the lake in front of the greenhouse wall, once again accompanied there by numerous other groups of students and Snape`s Slytherins. It was a particularly large group of Slytherins, and today Bellatrix and Narcissa Black were there.
For the first twenty minutes or so Snape and his friends managed to ignore them. Sirius entertained himself by climbing up a tree to retrieve a scarf that was stuck in the branches. On the way up his right shoe fell off and landed in between two braches to get stuck just like the scarf. Sirius swore and tried to climb down to get it back, but only fell out of the tree in the process.
He hit the ground and groaned and the others laughed as he got back up on his feet. He stared up at his shoe that was in the tree just high enough so that he wouldn`t be able to reach it. "Well, now what?"
"If you give somebody a boost up...," James offered.
"Yeah," Sirius said, grinning, and signaled to Lily to come over to him. "Lily, you`re light. Get over here."
Rolling her eyes, Lily walked over and was picked up by the waist by Sirius and lifted high up toward the tree branches. She stretched her hand up and knocked the shoe from the branches so that it landed with a defeated thump on the ground below.
"Yay!" Sirius said in a fake, high-pitched voice as he retrieved his shoe and started to put it back on his foot.
Several students had been watching in mild amusement, and now Bellatrix crossed her arms smugly and called to her cousin, "I`d wash that shoe now if I were you."
Not everyone got the point of her comment, but Sirius understood her meaning right away, and it immediately put him in a not-so-cheery attitude. "Oh, shut up, Bella," he shot back, spitting out her name in pure disgust.
Bellatrix laughed. "You really are pitiful. What an embarassment to the family. You already amount to nothing as it is, and now you`re hanging around with people like her."
"Oh, just say it," Snape chimed in suddenly. "They know Evans is a dirty Mudblood-"
"You watch your mouth!" Sirius snapped as a lot of people gasped, his temper now fueled to a much more dangerous level. Lily was silent, looking like she very much wanted to sneak away. Remus was attempting to calm everyone down.
"Now, both of you-" he started.
"And what are you going to do to me if I do say that again?" Snape asked of Sirius challengingly. "Wave your dirty shoe in my face that that Mudblood touched? What about you, Potter?" He turned to James defiantly, whose eyebrows were narrowed in an expression of loathing. "You going to let me talk about her like that? If I knew I could get you this mad just by saying that I`d have done it a long time ago."
"Shut. Up." Sirius said it slowly through gritted teeth, practically vibrating with contained rage.
"Guys," Lily sighed in exasperation. "Please. Just ignore him. I don`t want to cause any-"
But Snape pounced on her before she could finish, interrupting with, "You can shut up and stay out of it, you filthy-"
Then he used a word that merited some kind of reaction from everyone who was watching. James made a move as if it go after Snape, though he had done it unconsciously, and he never got the chance to do whatever he was about to do to him because Remus got between them and Snape first. Sirius had lunged forward more than James had and probably would have hurt Snape, but Remus was now holding him back and having to use all his strength to do so.
"Now, stop this! Ugh!" Remus groaned, looking about to buckle from the force with which Sirius was resisting him. "Settle down, all of you!"
Meanwhile Lily was shouting at Sirius for him to stop but was ignored.
"Don't be a girl, Remus!" Sirius shouted at him angrily. "What about you? You`re a prefect! Do something about him!"
"If you don`t cut it out now I`ll give all of you detentions. Now give it up."
Sirius backed off and the Slytherins distanced themselves from the others to be the way they had been before. The five walked back to the castle to get away from them, and on the way Remus had to put a hand on James`s shoulder and tell him to calm down. He hadn`t even realized that his shoulders were stiffened and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides. He relaxed and looked over at Sirius, who appeared to be fully recovered from the incident but was obviously hiding any emotion he was feeling, which he was always good at.
It was Sirius`s hatred for Snape that had made him react to it the way he did; the fact that he was attacking Lily had just given him a reason to get mad at him. His cousin being there hadn`t helped calm his temper, either. It hadn`t really been out of the ordinary for him, but James couldn`t remember ever being so mad at Snape in his life. He had been too angry to even say anything back to him, and now that made him feel even more angry.
When Lily finally talked to them again it was to say she would see them at dinner before going up to the dormitories, and her tone of voice was blank. But the way she didn`t say anything scolding to Sirius or the rest of them showed that she was thankful.
Chapter 6
At 7:40 on Monday night James was at the Quidditch field, flying through the night air high up on his broomstick. He often liked to go out at night and practice all by himself at the field, now that he was old enough to be allowed to do so. James loved Quidditch, but felt that flying by himself was a completely different experience than flying in a Quidditch match; it didn`t feel like racing or a competition but more like pure freedom, like what flying is supposed to feel like. The castle also looked extremely beautiful from far away at night. It always reminded him of the first time he had seen it, crossing the lake toward it in the boats as a First Year.
James pulled his broom upward until he was hanging upside-down with his legs curled up around it and one hand holding the broomstick. He used his free hand to dig into his robes for his wand, which he lit for a moment to be able to read the time on his watch. He sighed, wondering how long the others were going to still be wandering about the grounds and the streets of Hogsmeade before they came back. Immediately after school he had had Quidditch practice and then had to go to Professor Hawkins`s class for detention, so he hadn`t seen Sirius, Peter, and Remus since classes and was starting to wish he had some familiar friends to talk to. If he had to hang around for one more hour by himself he thought he was going to die of boredom.
James flew down to the ground, landed softly on the grass, and stared up at the full moon as he walked back to the school. On his way back he spotted some figures in the distance of other students that were still outside. Once he was inside he could hear loud conversation inside the Great Hall; most of the students were done eating dinner but were still in there studying with their friends or otherwise socializing and being openly unconstructive.
He went upstairs to the portrait hole entrance and went through it with his broomstick over his shoulder. As soon as he was inside the common room he noticed a movement over in front of the fireplace and a flash of red hair.
"James?" Lily asked in surprise, turning to see him where she sat on the sofa. "What are you doing here? You and the others are back already?"
"No. I didn`t go." He walked over to the sofa in front of the fireplace as he explained. "I had to serve detention and couldn`t make it."
"Couldn`t they have waited for you?"
"Sure, if they wanted to lose track of Remus," he answered. "Probably would have been okay, but we don`t like him to be alone when he changes. Never know what could happen or what he`d do differently than usual." James looked around to make sure there wasn`t anyone else in a hidden place in the common room, as their conversation would sound a little peculiar, but found that there was no one. He noticed for the first time that there was very quiet music playing - he was so used to it that it hadn`t seemed odd - and when he looked over at the grand piano he saw the keys pushing down on their own as if played by invisible fingers. "Everybody`s gone."
"Yeah," Lily said. "They`re all in the Great Hall looking at Jeffrey`s new iguana. I got bored with talking to people, so I came up here."
James observed her briefly and found that she wasn`t studying or doing any work. In fact, she had nothing with her, but was simply sitting with her hands in her lap calmly.
"You`re looking a little lonely," he said honestly. But perhaps he would have looked a little strange as well to anyone who had seen him flying on his broom all alone at night, he thought right afterwards.
As if reading his mind, Lily eyed his broomstick. "Did you have detention and Quidditch practice, too?"
"Yeah," James said, putting his broom against a chair and then sitting next to her on the couch. "But I had practice first. I was just flying around." He thought for a moment, and then began, "Um...Lily, I`m sorry about...you know, yesterday."
"There`s no reason for you to apologize," she told him.
"Maybe not. Well, you`d think not. But it was just kind of strange how Snape jumped on the first opportunity to start offending you like that. Usually anything he says or does is against us and he leaves you alone. I just kind of got the feeling he was trying to get me worked up."
"You?" Lily asked. But right after she said it some realization, as if that she had said something that shouldn`t be spoken aloud yet, caused her to ignore the idea. "But that doesn`t make it your fault."
"Well, anyway, I`m sorry we made a big commotion over it. I know that`s not how you wanted us to deal with it. We were just making things worse."
"But that was just Sirius."
"Would have been me, too, if Snape had been standing just a couple feet closer."
"Alright," Lily started in a new unserious tone, "next time, then, I won`t be as easy on you."
He smiled. "Sounds fair to me."
Lily turned her head to look forward and her slightly curled hair moved a little about her neck and shoulders with the movement. James felt something lingering inside of him, as if wanting to get out. He knew he had felt it before. There was something about being with her. She was so lovely but not in the same way as other girls he knew, because it did not make her intimidating at all. That made everyone want to be with her, talk with her. With him it was not any different.
But no, that wasn`t it. There was something else.
Something...
James realized that he hadn`t said anything in a long time, but as soon as she turned to him and he looked into her face again he didn`t feel weird about it, and everything was all right. The flickering light from the fireplace delicately illuminated all of her shapely features; a curl resting against her shirt, the gleam of her emerald eyes, the smoothness of her neck. She stared at him for a moment and when her eyes raised to his untidy dark hair she smiled as if she had never noticed it before, and raised her hand to brush a stringy forelock out of his face.
"It kind of does that when I`ve been flying," James apologized with a laughing smile.
Then there was a stretch of silence again. But it didn`t feel like silence. At every moment it felt like they were talking to eachother, even when they weren`t speaking words. It was such a comfortable feeling that James almost preferred the silence to talking to her. Everything about the moment was so warm, just as much because he was this near to her as it was because they were near the fire.
He was for once fully conscious of himself as he said, "Lily..."
She did not say anything but responded with her eyes, gazing into his unbreakingly and waiting.
The flames in front of them crackled and burned quietly. James didn`t feel himself leaning toward her. It was a little like falling very, very slowly, what came over him then. It was happening to her, too.
The distance between their faces was closing as slowly as it takes sunlight to fade to darkness at dusk. Their eyes closed gently and a black curtain fell over both of their minds and they drew closer and closer...
Then the portrait hole slid open.
Lily and James opened their eyes in surprise and whipped around in the couch to see a very troubled-looking Peter rushing into the room behind them.
"Peter?" Lily said with a concerned voice.
"Hey, Wormtail," James greeted. "What`s wrong?"
"It`s Severus," Peter panted, catching his breath from running all the way there. "He`s...Padfoot did something..."
"Severus?" Lily repeated the name, immediately becoming very alert at the mention of Snape. "What about him? Where`s Sirius?"
"He`s down there," Peter said as Lily and James both stood up, and they soon realized he was ignoring her second question. "Snape. He went down there."
"Wormtail, down where?" James asked, raising his voice a little in frustration with not understanding Peter`s point.
"There, Prongs," Peter said gravely. "There. Down the passageway. Under the willow tree."
There was one second of silent realization, like the ticking of a countdown clock stopping right before a bomb explodes. Then James exclaimed in a voice twice as loud as before, "What?!"
As the three of them ran downstairs to get outside, Peter tried to explain everything to James and Lily very quickly. "We had just changed back and come out of the tunnel, and we were about to put the cloak on but I said to wait because I saw Snape coming around a corner."
"What was he doing there?!" James asked in disbelief. "No students go to that part of the grounds, it`s not allowed."
"I don`t know, but he came and walked right by us, and Sirius knew he had spotted us there and was just trying to find something to get us in trouble for. Of course the tree wasn`t moving because it was still stunned and this got his attention. So Sirius told him how we had made it do that. And then he pointed out the opening to the tunnel to him and dared him to go down there."
"He...what?" James was so startled that his pace of going downstairs was slowed for a moment.
"Yeah, and Snape seemed so curious about the situation so I think he knew he would actually do it. And then I guess he thought it would be funny to mess with his head a bit, because before Snape went down there he dissapeared under the cloak as he was looking away for a second."
"And now he`s gone," James assumed.
"Yes. I don`t know where he...He could be anywhere," Peter said exhaustedly.
James cursed and covered his forehead with his hand. He couldn`t believe his friend had gone this far. Had he been in a bad and especially reckless mood and been hiding it well all day? Was he still mad at Snape because of what had happened the day before? Had he just been playing with the idea so he and Peter could have a laugh, or had he really believed that Snape would do it if he told him to?
As they ran across the school grounds, not even worrying about getting caught in the forbidden area near the willow tree, the horrible possibilities were racing through all of their minds. Snape attacked. Snape bitten and turned into a werewolf. Snape killed. And Sirius and Remus both knowing they had done it to him and having to live with it for the rest of their lives.
Once they had reached the tree, James looked around and shouted. "Sirius, you moron! Where are you?! Come out so I can throw you to Moony myself, you idiot!"
"James," Lily said in a quiet, attemptingly calming voice. "I`m sure he`s not here. He probably left and doesn`t even know if Severus went into the tunnel or not."
James turned to Peter hopelessly. "How far down do you suppose he is by now?"
The look in Peter`s eyes turned even more fearful than before. "...I`m sorry," he said pathetically. "I wasted a lot of time running around calling for Sirius myself...It`s been at least fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty."
A terrible silence went over the three of them then, and the complete stillness of the tree was now especially unsettling. James walked right up to it and halted before the gap in the roots that opened to go down into the tunnel. A strange change appeared to go over him then. Standing there completely still he suddenly looked older than usual. His careless and jocular exterior was suddenly shed as he stood regarding what was before him, knowing what he must do.
"...I have to go down there," he said quietly.
Peter`s eyes widened. "Are you crazy?"
"James!" Lily cried desperately. "No. It`s way too dangerous. We have to go get help."
"And then they`ll find out everything and all of us will get expelled, Remus included," James said, turning around to face her and Peter. "If Snape is even still alive by the time they get there."
Lily came forward to him, her expression terrified. "Change. You have to. If you`re a stag, then Remus can`t-"
"How is a stag going to tell Snape to turn around and get out of there? I can`t let him find out I`m an Animagus."
"Who cares if you get in trouble?!" Lily demanded, grabbing his arms. "If you don`t, both of you could just get hurt-"
"It took us three years to do it, Lily! If the school finds out about any one of us being an Animagus, it`ll ruin everything we worked for. I can`t let the others down like that, even if Sirius-"
"James. Please." The way she was holding his arms so tightly, not wanting to let him leave, made him go quiet. Suddenly the selfishness of it hit her in the face; she did not want to let him go, she couldn`t. But there was nothing she would be able to do to stop him from doing the right thing, and she knew that she loved him for it. But she would have given anything to not have to realize this at a moment that he was about to go risk his life.
"Peter!" Lily turned her head to look at him. "Tell him he can`t do it!"
But Peter just stood there and and lowered his eyes to the grass, having nothing that he could possibly say to change things.
"Why do you have to?" Lily said in almost a whisper, facing James again but not looking up into his face. "It isn`t fair. You don`t even like him. You know he would never do the same for you...Why do you both have to be put in danger?"
But there was no stopping it. This had to happen, for reasons they didn`t even understand. She looked up to meet eyes with him, and his expression softened in a way Peter had never even seen before. "Lily, don`t look at me like that....I`m doing this."
There was a brief moment of acceptance, and then Lily pulled him forward, stood on her toes, and kissed him. It surprised James at first but then his shoulders relaxed and sunk a little, and for just those few seconds it was easy for him to forget the magnitude of what he was about to do. It was as if those angel wings that she had to have somewhere suddenly spread out from her back and wrapped themselves around him, protective and hopeful.
She broke away and gave him a quick push toward the tree. "Go," she said. "Hurry."
He backed away from Lily and Peter and then turned around and quickly dissapeared down into the dark opening at the bottom of the tree without looking back. Lily did not feel as scared as she had just a minute ago. She knew he would come back out soon unharmed, and time would stand still until then. For now she understood that this was a beginning and not an end.
Fin.
Author: me, CatsOnMars
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: James/Lily, Sirius, Remus, Peter, Snape
Summary: Lily and the Marauders are all friends in their sixth year. Lily starts wondering why Remus is missing from school so often, which leads to her getting herself in danger
Notes: This is the last part. If you liked the story, be sure to check out the sequel, "Requiems", which is about the Marauders and Lily in their last year of school.
Almost two more months went by. Lily was with the boys so often that it was no longer noticeable to others if she had any other good friends. All of them were closer to her now, but especially James, who finally felt that he was a friend to her. Yet a familiar feeling of nervousness always surfaced when he was with her as if they were strangers, which was somehow a good feeling. His world sort of swirled around him out of control when she was there, but he didn`t notice this; he only unconsciously missed this when she wasn`t there, and would sit in class or in the dormitory feeling bothered by something without being able to place what it was that was nagging him.
One day after classes the five were all outside by the lake, James and Sirius sitting on a large rock while the others sat on the ground. James was doing homework like most of the others, digging into a chapter of Transfiguration he was required to read, while Sirius leaned back with one hand on the rock behind him and looked bored while eating an apple.
Lily laughed at something Remus had said. The two were looking over the same textbook, answering questions together. "Except that would be cheating," Lily laughed in response to whatever Remus`s comment had been.
Sirius threw what was left of his apple aside and lay back so that he was curved backwards across the rock and his black hair touched the grass on the other side.
"If you`re so bored then do some work, Padfoot," James suggested without hope.
"I did it in detention," he sighed.
"I`m impressed."
"Sirius, do you know the nine distinctive features of a wood nymph that make it unlike humans?" Lily asked as if to give him something to do. "We have all but one of them."
Sirius held up fingers, counting, as he listed off while still hanging upside-down off the rock, "No pupils, no organs, bad eyesight, unsymmetrical bodies-"
"Oh yeah, the symmetry thing. That`s what we don`t have," Lily said to Remus, and they both scribbled on their pieces of parchment.
"What are the others?" Peter asked, and Lily showed her paper to him.
Sirius sat up and kicked his bookbag a foot toward them. "Mine is finished, if you want to just look at that."
Remus yawned, rolling up his parchment. "Naw, I`m done for now. I can`t concentrate outside."
"No kidding," Lily agreed, though she was still writing without showing any sign of packing up her work, her radiant red hair hanging down in her face so that her eyes were hidden as she bent over her parchment. "It`s such a nice day."
"Has to be hell for the fifth and seventh years," Sirius said. "Getting ready for their tests and all."
"Want to go see if anyone`s in the Hall early for dinner?" Peter suggested.
"Alrighty," Sirius said, springing up onto his feet.
"Now?" James asked, looking at his watch. "Woah, it`s later than I thought."
"Time flies when you`re doing fun homework," Sirius said, slapping his back jokingly.
James went back to reading his chapter and didn`t listen to the others as they got up to walk back into the castle. Therefore he didn`t realize at first that Lily had stayed behind and was still sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of him. She tiredly put her quill down and stretched her arms above her, and James`s eyes flicked up from the pages of his textbook at her and then returned to reading.
Lily stood up, though she didn`t seem to be finished because she left her book open on the ground and all of her work out. She sat on the rock next to James where Sirius had sat before and looked over his shoulder at his book. "You`re still in Transfiguration," she noted. "What do you want to do for a living?"
James rested the book on his lap and shrugged. "I don`t know. Something with dignity to it."
"How so?"
"As in I don`t want some office job at the Ministry. I want to do something that helps people and that not just any person will or can do. Maybe a job where I protect people or something."
"From what?"
"Dangerous people," he said like it was obvious. "Criminals."
"You could be an Auror."
"Yeah, I guess."
Lily laughed. "You make it sound like there`s something serious to protect people from."
"You never know what could happen." James let his open book slide to the ground as he had lost the tolerance to concentrate on reading it.
"What could the world need protection from in our lifetime?" Lily asked.
"I don`t want to protect the whole world. But if I can save just some people from getting hurt, that`s better than typing at a desk for the Daily Prophet. If I can end up saving just one person who I care about then it`ll be worth devoting myself to knowing how to defend people."
Lily smiled at him and he didn`t understand what she was smiling about. She shook her head and said, "I never would have guessed you to be such a heroic type. Before I knew you very well, you just seemed lazy."
"Heroic?" James repeated the word. "No, I`m not."
Lily looked down and was silent for a while. Then she said a little quietly, "You could have been hurt that day."
James was caught by surprise and then realized she was talking about when he had gotten her out of the tunnel the night she found out about Remus.
"I try not to think about what could have happened to me because of how stupid I was," Lily said. "But it could have been you, too."
"I wasn`t worried," James said quickly. "Sirius was holding Remus back away from you. Any of us could have changed and gotten you out."
"But you were the only one who did."
James turned his head and looked at her and something pulled at his heart and stirred in the back of his mind. She was silent now and was staring forward. She was incredibly beautiful. He hadn`t really noticed it before, or at least he hadn`t thought about it. Everyone said that Lily was pretty so he had always kind of taken it for granted that she was and had more importantly regarded her as being kind and sweet-tempered. But in the sunlight outside on such a gorgeous day she was nearly impossible to look away from once he had set his eyes on her.
James suddenly inhaled largely and said, "Lily."
She looked up, her expression friendly and warm. "What?"
He didn`t know if he had meant to say her name. "Huh," he said thoughtfully, tracing a finger along his jawline in thought. "So weird...I feel like I`ve forgotten something."
Lily smiled again, but more to herself. She didn`t tell him that he had said the same thing once before when he was alone with her.
A comfortable silence settled between them, and then Lily slowly reached over to James`s hand that was resting on the rock and took it in hers. He looked down at this in surprise, and then a certain calmness and understanding set into him and he closed his fingers around her hand gently but securely. Before they could even make any kind of eye contact a figure came into view and walked in front of them. Snape was walking right past them toward the side of the lake.
Lily pulled her hand from his immediately and lifted it to her head, looking casual as she ran it through her hair and stared in a direction away from James. It was very awkward. Snape`s eyes seemed to have been attracted to the sudden movement because he was looking at them now with no kind of readable expression, even though he appeared not to have known at first that they were sitting there when he approached the lake.
As soon as he seemed to realize what he was doing, Snape looked away again and walked a few strides toward the shore, putting his hands in his pockets and starting to kick small rocks around to keep to himself. He did not look completely unaffected by what he may have just seen between the two of them, but then again Snape could not help looking dismal by himself no matter what. Lily had tried to stop him from seeing them as they were as if she instinctively didn`t want to give him anything to laugh about, but looking at him now that seemed far from a realistic concern. He had always appeared to hide in the shadows of his Slytherin friends in one way or another so that he failed to be intimidating no matter how many attemptingly threatening things he said. But the sight of him completely alone with seemingly no reason to be wandering by himself was strangely doleful and even eerie. It was almost enough to make the years James and his friends had spent in school tormenting him suddenly haunt him, but at the same time Snape kept his unfriendly appearance that was unable to gain pity, and he was reminded how much he had deserved it all.
Lily and James were apparently thinking the same thing, because she leaned to the side and whispered in his ear, "I think it`s his defense mechanism."
James whispered, "What?"
"He`s cruel because he doesn`t want pity."
James stared at Snape in thought. They had long since given up on going out of their ways to get revenge on eachother as they often had when they were younger, with an occasional exception credited to Sirius, but James still hated him. He was cold and uncompassionate, and James had often wondered why Lily would bother being decent to him.
"He doesn`t thank you for being understanding," he said quietly to her.
"But you could leave him alone," she said, "even if you don`t like him."
"Talk to Sirius, not me," James excused in a somewhat childish and unmindful manner.
Lily gave him a chastising look which he ignored, but her expression softened as she seemed to admit to herself that he was right about her preaching to the wrong person. She stood up and collected her things from the ground, and James retrieved his book as she said, "See you later," and walked off to go into the castle and eat dinner. And just like that it was as if what had just happened when they were sitting there together hadn`t happened at all. A delicate, stolen moment that was so fragile that it had ceased to exist with the smallest interruption.
When James looked back up, briefly, at where Snape was standing, he had moved farther to the left of where he was sitting on the rock. He got the strangest feeling that he had been very aware of them the whole time despite looking away, like an eye in the back of his head had watched them. With this uncomfortable thought in mind, leaving him to himself suddenly seemed like a good idea, so about ten minutes later James stood up and headed for the castle.
One weekend in the common room, Remus was playing a light-hearted tune on the piano and the other four were all goofing off and enjoying having no work to do.
Sirius had grabbed Lily and was pulling her around by the waist in a clumsy imitation of a tango. Everyone laughed uncontrollably as he spun Lily around and then dipped her far back so that her hair almost touched the carpet. Sirius looked just as pretty as her, so when they danced around in such an unmasculine display the result was quite comical.
The only one who wasn`t laughing, but simply forming a small smile while keeping his face pointed downward, was Remus. A full moon was approaching once again. Sirius always seemed almost excited when this observation was lingering unspokenly between the four of them. But for Remus it meant something completely different than it did for the others, and he always somewhat spaced himself apart from them at these times, as if he was feeling especially left out.
When Sirius finally settled down, Lily gave some final laughs as she brushed her now messy and unparted hair out of her face, but didn`t give much care to fixing it again. She sank tiredly into a deep and large red chair that was beside the sofa as Sirius sat down with James. Remus`s music became calmer and slower. Peter, who looked the most tired out of everyone there, said a short goodnight to everyone and made his way up the stairs to the dormitories.
Sirius nudged James`s arm. "So I heard Constantine busted you, eh?"
"Yeah," James sighed. "I was reading your notes in class."
"Sorry about that," Sirius said sincerely. "What`s the deal? We`re supposed to get in trouble together, you know."
James smiled. "Yeah, like the good old days," he said fondly. "Well, he gave me a warning before that, so I have an hour detention."
Sirius winced. "My sympathies, Prongs."
James looked at him, waiting for him to realize his point. "I have to serve it on Monday."
"But you have Quidditch practice, don`t you?"
"Yes. So I have to go and do it later at night." He stressed the last part of his speech in case Sirius was having trouble seeing his meaning.
But Sirius already understood. "Oh. That`s rotten luck. You told Remus?"
James shook his head.
"Hm. It`ll be no fun without you."
He expected just as much from Sirius, for him to treat it so lightly. He always acted like it was about having fun when they roamed the grounds as animals with Remus. And it was, but it was also all they could do to keep their friend from going insane in his other form. Even though the others would be there on Monday night, James felt like he should have been more careful about leaving his schedule open.
Remus started playing the piano part to a sad love song which Lily knew the words to. As if with no premeditation, she started to softly sing along to it while curled up in a relaxed position in the chair. Suddenly it was like she was singing the room to sleep; as soon as she accompanied the song everyone became silent. During a pause in the vocal part Lily stood up to go sit next to Remus on the bench. James had never heard her sing before. Her voice didn`t carry very far but it was pretty and comforting, like the sound of running water. When the song was finishing, Sirius nodded at James in subtle communication of a "goodnight" and then stood up to go up to bed.
Remus stopped playing and Lily lifted a hand to the keys and played some randomly as she talked. "You have to have everything, don`t you, Remus?" she asked him kindly, but not seriously. "A shack all to yourself, a Whomping Willow tree to guard your secret passageway, and a grand piano in the common room. You know this is probably the only thing that`s ever been apparated here since the school first opened?"
He smiled. "Dumbledore has been very kind to me." There was no trace of realization in his voice and it was clear that he already understood this very much.
Lily stood up and said goodnight to both of them before leaving. Then James went over to stand by the piano and explained to Remus that he wouldn`t be able to go down with him and the others to the shack the night after the next.
"Oh," Remus said simply when James was done telling him. "Well, that`s all right. Pretty bad for you, though. You have to go to detention and then be alone around here the rest of the night. Well, I guess if you`re cunning you might be able to find us, if you want to risk sneaking down the tree without the cloak. But in hopes that we`re a little better at hiding than that, I kind of hope you won`t."
James laughed. "I will be able to go the next day before you change back, though. We`ll leave right after school, cause I don`t think any of us have anything to do."
Remus nodded. Then, with a quick afterthought, he added, "Oh, Lily will be here. So you won`t be completely by yourself."
"Yeah," James agreed, but he didn`t really acknowledge the idea. It was typical of Remus to turn the concern to someone else, but he wasn`t exactly worrying about what he would be doing that night.
The next day was Sunday. The boys and Lily finished their homework early in the day and had the rest of it off to be outside. They found themselves at the side of the lake in front of the greenhouse wall, once again accompanied there by numerous other groups of students and Snape`s Slytherins. It was a particularly large group of Slytherins, and today Bellatrix and Narcissa Black were there.
For the first twenty minutes or so Snape and his friends managed to ignore them. Sirius entertained himself by climbing up a tree to retrieve a scarf that was stuck in the branches. On the way up his right shoe fell off and landed in between two braches to get stuck just like the scarf. Sirius swore and tried to climb down to get it back, but only fell out of the tree in the process.
He hit the ground and groaned and the others laughed as he got back up on his feet. He stared up at his shoe that was in the tree just high enough so that he wouldn`t be able to reach it. "Well, now what?"
"If you give somebody a boost up...," James offered.
"Yeah," Sirius said, grinning, and signaled to Lily to come over to him. "Lily, you`re light. Get over here."
Rolling her eyes, Lily walked over and was picked up by the waist by Sirius and lifted high up toward the tree branches. She stretched her hand up and knocked the shoe from the branches so that it landed with a defeated thump on the ground below.
"Yay!" Sirius said in a fake, high-pitched voice as he retrieved his shoe and started to put it back on his foot.
Several students had been watching in mild amusement, and now Bellatrix crossed her arms smugly and called to her cousin, "I`d wash that shoe now if I were you."
Not everyone got the point of her comment, but Sirius understood her meaning right away, and it immediately put him in a not-so-cheery attitude. "Oh, shut up, Bella," he shot back, spitting out her name in pure disgust.
Bellatrix laughed. "You really are pitiful. What an embarassment to the family. You already amount to nothing as it is, and now you`re hanging around with people like her."
"Oh, just say it," Snape chimed in suddenly. "They know Evans is a dirty Mudblood-"
"You watch your mouth!" Sirius snapped as a lot of people gasped, his temper now fueled to a much more dangerous level. Lily was silent, looking like she very much wanted to sneak away. Remus was attempting to calm everyone down.
"Now, both of you-" he started.
"And what are you going to do to me if I do say that again?" Snape asked of Sirius challengingly. "Wave your dirty shoe in my face that that Mudblood touched? What about you, Potter?" He turned to James defiantly, whose eyebrows were narrowed in an expression of loathing. "You going to let me talk about her like that? If I knew I could get you this mad just by saying that I`d have done it a long time ago."
"Shut. Up." Sirius said it slowly through gritted teeth, practically vibrating with contained rage.
"Guys," Lily sighed in exasperation. "Please. Just ignore him. I don`t want to cause any-"
But Snape pounced on her before she could finish, interrupting with, "You can shut up and stay out of it, you filthy-"
Then he used a word that merited some kind of reaction from everyone who was watching. James made a move as if it go after Snape, though he had done it unconsciously, and he never got the chance to do whatever he was about to do to him because Remus got between them and Snape first. Sirius had lunged forward more than James had and probably would have hurt Snape, but Remus was now holding him back and having to use all his strength to do so.
"Now, stop this! Ugh!" Remus groaned, looking about to buckle from the force with which Sirius was resisting him. "Settle down, all of you!"
Meanwhile Lily was shouting at Sirius for him to stop but was ignored.
"Don't be a girl, Remus!" Sirius shouted at him angrily. "What about you? You`re a prefect! Do something about him!"
"If you don`t cut it out now I`ll give all of you detentions. Now give it up."
Sirius backed off and the Slytherins distanced themselves from the others to be the way they had been before. The five walked back to the castle to get away from them, and on the way Remus had to put a hand on James`s shoulder and tell him to calm down. He hadn`t even realized that his shoulders were stiffened and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides. He relaxed and looked over at Sirius, who appeared to be fully recovered from the incident but was obviously hiding any emotion he was feeling, which he was always good at.
It was Sirius`s hatred for Snape that had made him react to it the way he did; the fact that he was attacking Lily had just given him a reason to get mad at him. His cousin being there hadn`t helped calm his temper, either. It hadn`t really been out of the ordinary for him, but James couldn`t remember ever being so mad at Snape in his life. He had been too angry to even say anything back to him, and now that made him feel even more angry.
When Lily finally talked to them again it was to say she would see them at dinner before going up to the dormitories, and her tone of voice was blank. But the way she didn`t say anything scolding to Sirius or the rest of them showed that she was thankful.
At 7:40 on Monday night James was at the Quidditch field, flying through the night air high up on his broomstick. He often liked to go out at night and practice all by himself at the field, now that he was old enough to be allowed to do so. James loved Quidditch, but felt that flying by himself was a completely different experience than flying in a Quidditch match; it didn`t feel like racing or a competition but more like pure freedom, like what flying is supposed to feel like. The castle also looked extremely beautiful from far away at night. It always reminded him of the first time he had seen it, crossing the lake toward it in the boats as a First Year.
James pulled his broom upward until he was hanging upside-down with his legs curled up around it and one hand holding the broomstick. He used his free hand to dig into his robes for his wand, which he lit for a moment to be able to read the time on his watch. He sighed, wondering how long the others were going to still be wandering about the grounds and the streets of Hogsmeade before they came back. Immediately after school he had had Quidditch practice and then had to go to Professor Hawkins`s class for detention, so he hadn`t seen Sirius, Peter, and Remus since classes and was starting to wish he had some familiar friends to talk to. If he had to hang around for one more hour by himself he thought he was going to die of boredom.
James flew down to the ground, landed softly on the grass, and stared up at the full moon as he walked back to the school. On his way back he spotted some figures in the distance of other students that were still outside. Once he was inside he could hear loud conversation inside the Great Hall; most of the students were done eating dinner but were still in there studying with their friends or otherwise socializing and being openly unconstructive.
He went upstairs to the portrait hole entrance and went through it with his broomstick over his shoulder. As soon as he was inside the common room he noticed a movement over in front of the fireplace and a flash of red hair.
"James?" Lily asked in surprise, turning to see him where she sat on the sofa. "What are you doing here? You and the others are back already?"
"No. I didn`t go." He walked over to the sofa in front of the fireplace as he explained. "I had to serve detention and couldn`t make it."
"Couldn`t they have waited for you?"
"Sure, if they wanted to lose track of Remus," he answered. "Probably would have been okay, but we don`t like him to be alone when he changes. Never know what could happen or what he`d do differently than usual." James looked around to make sure there wasn`t anyone else in a hidden place in the common room, as their conversation would sound a little peculiar, but found that there was no one. He noticed for the first time that there was very quiet music playing - he was so used to it that it hadn`t seemed odd - and when he looked over at the grand piano he saw the keys pushing down on their own as if played by invisible fingers. "Everybody`s gone."
"Yeah," Lily said. "They`re all in the Great Hall looking at Jeffrey`s new iguana. I got bored with talking to people, so I came up here."
James observed her briefly and found that she wasn`t studying or doing any work. In fact, she had nothing with her, but was simply sitting with her hands in her lap calmly.
"You`re looking a little lonely," he said honestly. But perhaps he would have looked a little strange as well to anyone who had seen him flying on his broom all alone at night, he thought right afterwards.
As if reading his mind, Lily eyed his broomstick. "Did you have detention and Quidditch practice, too?"
"Yeah," James said, putting his broom against a chair and then sitting next to her on the couch. "But I had practice first. I was just flying around." He thought for a moment, and then began, "Um...Lily, I`m sorry about...you know, yesterday."
"There`s no reason for you to apologize," she told him.
"Maybe not. Well, you`d think not. But it was just kind of strange how Snape jumped on the first opportunity to start offending you like that. Usually anything he says or does is against us and he leaves you alone. I just kind of got the feeling he was trying to get me worked up."
"You?" Lily asked. But right after she said it some realization, as if that she had said something that shouldn`t be spoken aloud yet, caused her to ignore the idea. "But that doesn`t make it your fault."
"Well, anyway, I`m sorry we made a big commotion over it. I know that`s not how you wanted us to deal with it. We were just making things worse."
"But that was just Sirius."
"Would have been me, too, if Snape had been standing just a couple feet closer."
"Alright," Lily started in a new unserious tone, "next time, then, I won`t be as easy on you."
He smiled. "Sounds fair to me."
Lily turned her head to look forward and her slightly curled hair moved a little about her neck and shoulders with the movement. James felt something lingering inside of him, as if wanting to get out. He knew he had felt it before. There was something about being with her. She was so lovely but not in the same way as other girls he knew, because it did not make her intimidating at all. That made everyone want to be with her, talk with her. With him it was not any different.
But no, that wasn`t it. There was something else.
Something...
James realized that he hadn`t said anything in a long time, but as soon as she turned to him and he looked into her face again he didn`t feel weird about it, and everything was all right. The flickering light from the fireplace delicately illuminated all of her shapely features; a curl resting against her shirt, the gleam of her emerald eyes, the smoothness of her neck. She stared at him for a moment and when her eyes raised to his untidy dark hair she smiled as if she had never noticed it before, and raised her hand to brush a stringy forelock out of his face.
"It kind of does that when I`ve been flying," James apologized with a laughing smile.
Then there was a stretch of silence again. But it didn`t feel like silence. At every moment it felt like they were talking to eachother, even when they weren`t speaking words. It was such a comfortable feeling that James almost preferred the silence to talking to her. Everything about the moment was so warm, just as much because he was this near to her as it was because they were near the fire.
He was for once fully conscious of himself as he said, "Lily..."
She did not say anything but responded with her eyes, gazing into his unbreakingly and waiting.
The flames in front of them crackled and burned quietly. James didn`t feel himself leaning toward her. It was a little like falling very, very slowly, what came over him then. It was happening to her, too.
The distance between their faces was closing as slowly as it takes sunlight to fade to darkness at dusk. Their eyes closed gently and a black curtain fell over both of their minds and they drew closer and closer...
Then the portrait hole slid open.
Lily and James opened their eyes in surprise and whipped around in the couch to see a very troubled-looking Peter rushing into the room behind them.
"Peter?" Lily said with a concerned voice.
"Hey, Wormtail," James greeted. "What`s wrong?"
"It`s Severus," Peter panted, catching his breath from running all the way there. "He`s...Padfoot did something..."
"Severus?" Lily repeated the name, immediately becoming very alert at the mention of Snape. "What about him? Where`s Sirius?"
"He`s down there," Peter said as Lily and James both stood up, and they soon realized he was ignoring her second question. "Snape. He went down there."
"Wormtail, down where?" James asked, raising his voice a little in frustration with not understanding Peter`s point.
"There, Prongs," Peter said gravely. "There. Down the passageway. Under the willow tree."
There was one second of silent realization, like the ticking of a countdown clock stopping right before a bomb explodes. Then James exclaimed in a voice twice as loud as before, "What?!"
As the three of them ran downstairs to get outside, Peter tried to explain everything to James and Lily very quickly. "We had just changed back and come out of the tunnel, and we were about to put the cloak on but I said to wait because I saw Snape coming around a corner."
"What was he doing there?!" James asked in disbelief. "No students go to that part of the grounds, it`s not allowed."
"I don`t know, but he came and walked right by us, and Sirius knew he had spotted us there and was just trying to find something to get us in trouble for. Of course the tree wasn`t moving because it was still stunned and this got his attention. So Sirius told him how we had made it do that. And then he pointed out the opening to the tunnel to him and dared him to go down there."
"He...what?" James was so startled that his pace of going downstairs was slowed for a moment.
"Yeah, and Snape seemed so curious about the situation so I think he knew he would actually do it. And then I guess he thought it would be funny to mess with his head a bit, because before Snape went down there he dissapeared under the cloak as he was looking away for a second."
"And now he`s gone," James assumed.
"Yes. I don`t know where he...He could be anywhere," Peter said exhaustedly.
James cursed and covered his forehead with his hand. He couldn`t believe his friend had gone this far. Had he been in a bad and especially reckless mood and been hiding it well all day? Was he still mad at Snape because of what had happened the day before? Had he just been playing with the idea so he and Peter could have a laugh, or had he really believed that Snape would do it if he told him to?
As they ran across the school grounds, not even worrying about getting caught in the forbidden area near the willow tree, the horrible possibilities were racing through all of their minds. Snape attacked. Snape bitten and turned into a werewolf. Snape killed. And Sirius and Remus both knowing they had done it to him and having to live with it for the rest of their lives.
Once they had reached the tree, James looked around and shouted. "Sirius, you moron! Where are you?! Come out so I can throw you to Moony myself, you idiot!"
"James," Lily said in a quiet, attemptingly calming voice. "I`m sure he`s not here. He probably left and doesn`t even know if Severus went into the tunnel or not."
James turned to Peter hopelessly. "How far down do you suppose he is by now?"
The look in Peter`s eyes turned even more fearful than before. "...I`m sorry," he said pathetically. "I wasted a lot of time running around calling for Sirius myself...It`s been at least fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty."
A terrible silence went over the three of them then, and the complete stillness of the tree was now especially unsettling. James walked right up to it and halted before the gap in the roots that opened to go down into the tunnel. A strange change appeared to go over him then. Standing there completely still he suddenly looked older than usual. His careless and jocular exterior was suddenly shed as he stood regarding what was before him, knowing what he must do.
"...I have to go down there," he said quietly.
Peter`s eyes widened. "Are you crazy?"
"James!" Lily cried desperately. "No. It`s way too dangerous. We have to go get help."
"And then they`ll find out everything and all of us will get expelled, Remus included," James said, turning around to face her and Peter. "If Snape is even still alive by the time they get there."
Lily came forward to him, her expression terrified. "Change. You have to. If you`re a stag, then Remus can`t-"
"How is a stag going to tell Snape to turn around and get out of there? I can`t let him find out I`m an Animagus."
"Who cares if you get in trouble?!" Lily demanded, grabbing his arms. "If you don`t, both of you could just get hurt-"
"It took us three years to do it, Lily! If the school finds out about any one of us being an Animagus, it`ll ruin everything we worked for. I can`t let the others down like that, even if Sirius-"
"James. Please." The way she was holding his arms so tightly, not wanting to let him leave, made him go quiet. Suddenly the selfishness of it hit her in the face; she did not want to let him go, she couldn`t. But there was nothing she would be able to do to stop him from doing the right thing, and she knew that she loved him for it. But she would have given anything to not have to realize this at a moment that he was about to go risk his life.
"Peter!" Lily turned her head to look at him. "Tell him he can`t do it!"
But Peter just stood there and and lowered his eyes to the grass, having nothing that he could possibly say to change things.
"Why do you have to?" Lily said in almost a whisper, facing James again but not looking up into his face. "It isn`t fair. You don`t even like him. You know he would never do the same for you...Why do you both have to be put in danger?"
But there was no stopping it. This had to happen, for reasons they didn`t even understand. She looked up to meet eyes with him, and his expression softened in a way Peter had never even seen before. "Lily, don`t look at me like that....I`m doing this."
There was a brief moment of acceptance, and then Lily pulled him forward, stood on her toes, and kissed him. It surprised James at first but then his shoulders relaxed and sunk a little, and for just those few seconds it was easy for him to forget the magnitude of what he was about to do. It was as if those angel wings that she had to have somewhere suddenly spread out from her back and wrapped themselves around him, protective and hopeful.
She broke away and gave him a quick push toward the tree. "Go," she said. "Hurry."
He backed away from Lily and Peter and then turned around and quickly dissapeared down into the dark opening at the bottom of the tree without looking back. Lily did not feel as scared as she had just a minute ago. She knew he would come back out soon unharmed, and time would stand still until then. For now she understood that this was a beginning and not an end.
Fin.
