Undefined

AlwaysPadfoot

Prompts: Chapter Title and (35 - Patience)

Challenges: 100K, Uncommon Pairings, MultiChapter BC, etc.

A/N: Please enjoy :)

Prologue

The Colour Of Ice

The corridors of Hogwarts were quieter than usual.

They say that only Gryffindors roamed the halls late at night, something to do with courage, but for Lily it seemed that it was downright stupidity. It was Louis that had coaxed her out into Hogsmeade, he liked the thrill of being a Gryffindor, if only for a second. He had the patience of a Hufflepuff to convince Lily to come, no matter how stubborn she felt like being. Without very little work he could afford to have the brains of a Ravenclaw and still pass his exams.

But he and Lily were Slytherins together so that's why they rarely got caught. It was also why Lily had sent him ahead so that if he got caught she could get away. That made her sound awful, however they both agreed that the less points lost for Slytherin the better.

She eyed the tall blonde boy carefully as he moved further up the second floor corridor, his wand in his hand just in case he bumped into an unsuspecting student. He raised his hand a little beckoning Lily after him. She took one last look around and hurried down the corridor towards him.

"See, Potter, I told you we wouldn't get caught," Louis grinned smugly.

"We'll see, Weasley," Lily retorted, "Still three floors to go."

Lily had no reason to doubt him anyway, they'd never been caught before. Even with Nott as HeadBoy this year, they'd made it through four and a half months without ever being caught and that was without the invisibility cloak or marauders map which Lily's father, Harry had never passed down to her. She understood that Albus was still at Hogwarts, two years her elder, so he had the cloak, but there was no need for her Dad to keep the duplicate copy of the Marauders Map unused in his bedroom draw.

Maybe he was watching her right now, perhaps he could see trouble heading towards them and maybe he felt the tiniest smidgen of guilt that they were practically blind. Lily shook her head and the two Slytherins made their way stealthily to the entrance hall, where there wasn't a teacher or prefect in sight.

"It's weirdly quiet tonight," Louis commented, sensing Lily's apprehension at retreating back to the dungeons.

"It's unusual," she replied, keeping her wand tightly grasped in her hand, "Keep your eyes peeled."

Lily moved closer to Louis' side, feeling vaguely safer as they entered the dark of the Slytherin Dugeons and he smiled briefly as they got closer and closer to the Common Room. They were around the corner from their destination when Lily's ears pricked at the sound of feet up ahead. Louis, who had also heard it, grabbed her arm and took off in the direction of the entrance hall.

She daren't stop to find out whether his instincts were correct, but she did eventually figure it out when a stunner barricaded into the wall ahead of them. They took a sharp turn into the entrance hall and out through the main doors.

The grounds were thick with snow as the two Slytherins sprinted towards the Forbidden Forest. Both Lily and Louis took Care of Magical Creatures and they'd ventured into the forest too many times to count, so much so that they'd mentally mapped it out. They would lose whoever was behind instantly once they made it there. Lily cast a look back over her shoulder, the group pursuing them was lead by none other than Gervais Nott and half the Sytherin Prefects. Sliding in the slow, Lily pushed herself harder to catch up with Louis who was just ahead of her. He had shot up in size during the summer and now had much longer strides than she had, consequently he ran faster.

"I know it's you, Weasley, Potter," Nott yelled after them, "You might as well give up now."

Louis laughed over Lily's small snigger. He should know that Slytherins never give up, particularly when they're avoiding trouble. Detirmination, that was it. Lily almost lost her footing as they descended the steep hill towards the forest, but it was in the space of two seconds roughly one hundred metres from the edge of the forest when things started to go wrong. A stunner knocked Louis into the air, Lily slowed for a small second, just enough time to see Louis hit the snow with a soft thud. She swore under her breath, her legs burning as she exerted all off her energy to quicken her pace. She was going to make it to the forest whether her legs let her or not.

Yells of triumph echoed across the ground behind her as the group found Louis crumpled in the snow, but they knew he was not the only person to find. The group continued forward towards the forest, but it was too late, because Lily had made it to the thick growth of the forbidden forest.

It didn't matter though, because Lily was so nervous they'd follow her in that she pushed on through the undergrowth. The branches tugged at her clothes, clawing at her exposed skin as she urged herself forward. She wasn't really sure why she kept running, she kept running until she couldn't hear anyone behind her. She kept running until she physically couldn't run any further and she collapsed in the snow in a small clearing of the forest.

Breathily heavily, she knelt on her hands and knees trying to catch her breath. The snow wasn't as deep here in fact the the snow was barely higher than three or four centimetres compared to the three feet of snow in the main grounds.

Lily guessed it was because the area had some cover but when she looked up there was no tree cover at all. Getting up off her knees, Lily looked into the clearing where she expected the snow to be deeper but instead the snow was completely melted. Well, not quite.

There was a series of stones arranged in the clearing, a small stream ran between them completely unfrozen yet the rocks around were coated in a thick layer of ice. As Lily shuffled closer she noticed the ice had flecks of colour. Pinks, greens, blues. She frowned as she approached the bigger rock which was coated in an almost purple ice. Underneath the frozen layer she could see runic markings shimmering beneath its surface. She jumped the stream, a little nervous to get any closer. Lily could feel the magic reverberating in the air, but something made her want to get a closer look.

Under the ice were the most complicated runes she'd ever seen, they were advanced further than anything she had studied in her Ancient Runes classes. Reaching out, Lily gently touched the ice to see if she could improve the visability, but as soon as her fingers brushed against the cold all of the colours beneath the ice fluctuated.

Something was most definitely wrong because when Lily backed off, she felt something clinging to her, not physically but rather something was clinging to her magic. Panic gripped her as the rock began to shift and streams of pure magic started reeling from each one colliding with each other to form a circle.

"Oh god," Lily muttered, looking frantically around as the magic surrounded her. She should have left when she realised that this part of the forrest she had never visited before, when she realised that she shouldn't have been here. Now she was trapped, if there was anything she knew was the most was when circles of magic formed like this it would be fatal to break them.

All of a sudden the floor shook violently and Lily barely stayed on her feet as a vicious grinding sound surrounded her forcing her to clasp her hands over her ears. The whole clearing lit up, all the ice on the rocks circled her emulated the coloured streams of pure magic that shimmered in the air above them.

The ice started cracking, falling off the rock in dark blue shards revealing the golden glow of the runics beneath. At a guess, Lily assumed that they could be Celtic, but right now she couldn't really care less. She just wanted everything that was happening to stop.

All of a sudden her vision was obscured by a bright white light and Lily had to bring her arm up to block it as it was getting brighter and brighter. She gasped as the brightness made her head ache and even when she closed her eyes the colours danced behind her eyelids and burned her retinas. Lily fell back onto the ground and the magic forced her eyes to open.

A whirlwind of colour erupted above her, blues, purples, greens. It seemed like she was staring at so much and the more she looked, the more her head throbbed in pain. Lily tried to force herself to look away, but she couldn't. It was lucky that slowly the colours were beginning to dim, not that it quelled Lily's headache much at all.

Of course, then she realised why. The colours weren't getting any dimmer, she was blacking out.

Lily fought to fight the pain overwhelming her, but finally the darkness consumed her and her head dropped backwards. Without any conscious thoughts, she passed out, the magic continuing to ebb around her unconscious form as the night drew to a silent and final close.