Hi, all. This is my third jump into writing James/Lily and it was borne from me watching far too much Supernatural. I've been working on this for about a week, so I hope it's okay. This was originally supposed to be a oneshot, but the idea kind of ran away from me, so now it'll most likely be between two and five chapters - I haven't finished planning it yet so I'm not sure how long it's going to be, despite knowing where I want it to end.
Disclaimer - I don't own Harry Potter, or Supernatural which is where the idea and the title came from.
Written for: OTP BC Challenge using 'Carcass', Favourite Hogwarts House BC Challenge with 'Ghosts', Favourite Friendship BC Challenge, prompt being 'Case', The If You Dare Challenge using the prompt 'Nasty little blighter' and the Connect the Characters Challenge with James Potter as my character.
The coach house was alive with the sounds of computers buzzing and the low, incessant tones that hunters spoke in out of force of habit. From her position behind the gleaming mahogany bar stocked with shelf over shelf of alcohol, Lily Evans was able to see the main entrance doors open and a pair of tall, black haired men stagger in, arms locked around each other, as if supporting the other's weight and the one on the left had blood trickling down his face and into the collar of what had once been a dark blue hoodie. The other reached up to push a pair of rectangular glasses up the bridge of his nose and virtually dragged his friend across the room to stand in front of Lily, a small grimace gracing his features when he came to a stop, using the back of one of barstools to balance himself.
"Where's Fenwick?" He asked, scrubbing a hand over his face and sighing heavily as he jostled the arm over his shoulders into a more comfortable spot.
"Downstairs, in the back room. Potter, what happened?" Lily wanted to know, leaning forwards so she could brush hair out of the bloodier man's face, wincing at the deep gash running along one of his cheekbones.
"It was worse than we thought." Potter muttered, pushing away from the chair and starting to pull the other man towards the door that led to the stairs, the grip on his friend's jumper making the material bunch up, revealing another nasty looking bruise.
Lily was two steps behind, catching the other arm as Potter reached the top step. He turned to look at her quizzically and she rolled her eyes. "You look as if you're about to collapse, James. I couldn't exactly let two of the best hunters we've got die, now could I?"
Despite the severity of the situation, James gave her a half-grin, his lips pulling upwards and cracking painfully. He wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve and coaxed one of his friend's feet down onto the step below. "You flatter me, Evans."
She scoffed as she shifted her weight forwards. "Get your head out of your arse, Potter. It wasn't a compliment, it was a fact." She didn't stop the smile that spread across her face when James laughed, although she did hide it by ducking her head and concentrating on manoeuvring the man in front of her without causing anymore damage.
-xoxo-
The basement of the coach house was split into three main sections; the generator room, the kitchen and the infirmary. Once they'd reached the bottom of the stairs, James had run off to find Fenwick, leaving Lily holding onto a barely concious Sirius Black. By the time James came back, closely followed by a tall man with very short, dark brown hair that was being protected by a clear hairnet, who was wearing a pristine white lab coat, Lily was struggling to keep Sirius upright. His head was leant against the wall behind them and his eyes were open, blinking wearily at his surroundings as he tried to focus on where he was.
"Black, can you hear me?" Fenwick asked as they approached, stepping aside as James reached his friend's side and resumed his position, easing some of the weight off of Lily.
Sirius groaned in response, his tongue heavy in his mouth and his stormy grey eyes swivelled from where he'd been staring at the ceiling to Fenwick's face.
"You're coherent and responsive, at least to an extent. That's good. Move him to one of the beds and I'll get around to seeing him treated when I can. Meanwhile, patch up anything that isn't too serious." The doctor hurried off in a different direction, calling out to one of the nurses who had been sat behind a beaten, rickety desk in one corner to follow him, which she did with a roll of her eyes.
James and Lily hauled Sirius the other way, passing four occupied beds, pushed against one of the walls that made up the narrow room until they reached one that looked like it hadn't been touched in a while. They lowered Sirius onto the mattress and Lily immediately moved away to collect necessary medical supplies; returning with an armload of bandages, antiseptic and syringes. With an ease borne from years of practice, the female hunter quickly removed the hoodie and the t-shirt Sirius had been wearing and hid a wince at the sight of three massive scratches down his chest and across the right side of his ribcage, a massive purple and black bruise wrapping around his opposite hip and what looked like a mild burn spreading from his bellybutton to his sternum.
"What happened out there?" She questioned as they cleaned one of the cuts, the other two wrapped tightly in white gauze. Without the streams of blood surrounding them it was easy to see that they were responsible for Sirius' current state of being barely concious; three cuts, about three centimetres in width and an inch or two in depth ran from just below his left shoulder and stopped just above his right hip. Fenwick appeared to stitch them up once they'd treated the burn and rubbed salve into the bruises covering his lower back and his front, disappearing just as quickly once the final stitch had been put in place, not uttering a word to any of them and nodded at them as he left.
"Things were a lot worse than we first thought." James grimaced, throwing a wad of brown cotton wool into the bin at his feet. "We thought it'd be an easy hunt; the information Dumbledore gave us made us think that it would be a simple salt and burn. Turns out there was more than one of the things, and we don't have a clue who the other one is."
Lily nodded distractedly, opening a new bandage and pressing it to the bottom of Sirius' ribcage, rubbing a thumb against his skin reassuringly when he hissed in pain and murmured quietly to him until he attempted to relax. With confident movements, she rolled the cloth up his chest and let James fix in place with medical tape, her fingers brushing his as they changed roles.
"You got them though, right?" She demanded, her brows furrowing when James didn't answer. "Potter, please tell me you got rid of them."
"It was a bit difficult to kill them when Sirius was bleeding on the floor, Evans!" Potter snapped, visibly calming down when one of Sirius' hands reached over to pat him lightly on the knee. "We managed to burn the one we were there for, but the other one came out of nowhere and vanished before I could get a proper look at it. Besides, I was a bit preoccupied at that point." He directed a pointed look in his best mate's direction and Lily had the grace to look sheepish.
"What are you going to do?" She lifted her gaze from Sirius' face, where she'd been disinfecting the gash on his cheek and he tapped on her hand with his fingertips so she would resume what she'd been doing. He was lying on the bed properly now and was noticeably more alert than he had been.
"Talk to Dumbledore. Try and figure out who the other poltergeist could be. Take you out for dinner." He grinned when she frowned over at him, dark red hair falling into her face and she huffed in frustration as she tried to pin it back with one hand.
"Get rid of the poltergeist, Potter, and you have yourself a deal." Lily gave him a smug smile and sauntered off to find Marlene McKinnon, hoping that the blonde would trade shifts with her. Behind her she could vaguely hear Sirius laughing at James, the sound rough and painful from his bruised vocal chords.
-xoxo-
Albus Dumbledore's office sat at the rear of the building, and the entire room was more or less a huge library; books lined the walls on shelves, took up almost every available surface and there were stacks upon stacks of musty tomes on the worn floorboards. The air smelt like a mixture of dust and parchment, some of the books were that old, and James had always felt like he was both welcomed and that he was intruding whenever he was summoned to meet with his mentor.
This meeting was no different and he had trouble not shifting under the intense gaze of the old man behind a polished oak desk that shone in the afternoon sunshine. Beside him, Sirius sat with his legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles, his arms tucked cautiously against his chest. In the five days since he'd been injured, his wounds had healed well enough that Fenwick had announced he was fit enough to go on minor missions, such as picking up supplies and interviewing witnesses and he wasn't particularly happy about it.
"This whole situation is extremely troubling." Dumbledore said after a few minutes of silence, his blue eyes serious behind his half-moon glasses and James nodded tiredly, the dark circles under his eyes testament to how many hours he and a few others had spent trying to figure out who the other poltergeist could be.
"What I don't understand, sir, is that there are no other reported deaths or mysterious disappearances linked to the grounds, let alone the house." Sirius scratched at the top of one of the scabbing cuts, sticking his tongue out at James when he reached over to slap at his hand.
"Indeed, it is a curious state of affairs. Still, we have faced situations like this before, and I have no doubt that we will again. Maynard Reynolds, as much as records are able to show us, died a perfectly natural death, and as he was unmarried there were no heirs to take over the property. Miss Vance's family have been running the establishment for over a hundred and fifty years with no reports of supernatural activity until a few months ago." They already knew this, had gone over the case files more than once to make sure that they knew the circumstances inside out, but the pair of them nodded anyway.
"There weren't any siblings, were there?" James suggested, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he thought.
"Reynolds was an only kid, remember. So was his mum and his dad had cousins in America that he never met." Sirius muttered back, his feet thumping to the floor and his knees bending. He sighed and rolled his eyes when James looked at him questioningly. "We already know this stuff! The only way we're going to figure out what the bloody hell happened is to go and look around! Prongs, you know as well as I do that they're not going to find anything useful upstairs. We don't need computers, we need action."
"You're right, but you're not coming with me." James retorted, ignoring the indignant splutters that left his best friend's mouth and turning to Dumbledore. "Sir, I need to go back out there. There's something that we're missing, and it's at Hogwarts."
"I quite agree, my boy, and I believe it would be in our best interests to return in order to discover what it is. May I request, Mister Potter, that you take a small team with you. Now that we know that there is another presence there it would perhaps be prudent to be prepared." Dumbledore said, his chin resting on steepled fingers.
"Of course, sir. I'll hold a meeting as soon as possible." With that James stood, nodded to the old man and turned to walk out of the door, ignoring Sirius' grumblings and the many strange and ancient and almost certainly dangerous artefacts that graced the walls and cabinets.
Once they were outside and far enough away from Dumbledore's office, Sirius grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around.
"You weren't being serious about me not coming, were you?" It was proof of just how worried they were that neither of them made a pun about Sirius' name.
James quirked a brow and grinned. "Of course not, you pillock. Just make sure you bring your drugs with you, so you don't start acting like an old man."
"Yes mother." Sirius said, punching the taller man in the shoulder and stalking towards the kitchen.
-xoxo-
"Right you lot, first order of business is this: we've got to go back to Hogsmeade. Dumbledore wants us to go back, but this time take a team with us. That's what we're here for." James spoke to a group of fifteen hunters, none of whom looked all that enthusiastic with the idea of going to the inn. If James Potter and Sirius Black, the best hunters the garrison had to offer had been injured on the hunt, then what chance did the rest of them have?
"Look, we won't need you there to actually hunt the thing, we just need you to do research. Try and find out who it is, what's keeping them here, that kind of thing." Sirius said, leaning heavily on the table, his fingers curled and his knuckles white.
"We want, if possible, two hunters and someone from the research team." James continued, his gaze landing briefly on Remus Lupin, the best researcher they had but he knew the idea was useless; Remus had never been on a hunt as dangerous as this one because of the cystic fibrosis, and James wasn't willing to risk one of his best friend's health over something as trivial as an angry dead guy.
Beside Remus, Lily Evans slowly raised her hand. "I'll do it." At the outbreak of protests she sighed. "Have any of you actually spent any time studying the files? I didn't think so."
"Evans, I don't think-" James started, but she cut him off with a glare.
"Save it, Potter. Remus can't go for obvious reasons and I'm the only other person in this room who has spent almost as much time as he has on the Hogshead case."
Sirius fought a grin and leant towards James to whisper in his ear, "You know she's right, Prongs. The girl's virtually a genius."
"Okay, fine. That still leaves us with two open spots. You're not obligated to go and I know a lot of you have your own shit to do, but if no one volunteers, we can't go back and those people will be ."
From the back of the room, a tall, slim man with close-cropped dark brown hair stepped forwards, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth and and pulling at a stray thread of cotton on the sleeve of his fitted forest green jacket. "I'll go."
"Frank? Are you sure, mate? You don't have to." Sirius said, frowning as Frank reached up to scratch at the bottom of a scar that ran from his forehead to just above the left corner of his mouth.
"I want to." The older man replied, smiling reassuringly and stepping aside as from behind him a lanky woman with equally dark hair and an unusually grim look on her face, stepped out.
"I'm going too." She gave them a challenging look and sniffed. "I may not be the best hunter there is, but you're not going without me."
Alice Fortesque had been a recent addition to the team, but what she lacked in experience she made up in quick reflexes, a thirst to learn more and an inner strength that even some of the most hardened of hunters lacked. It was because of this that James nodded reluctantly.
"Right then, now that that's settled, I've got a message from Filch." At the resounding groans, James grinned. "He wants me to let you know that you're all a bunch of lazy twats and if you don't start cleaning up after yourselves he'll lock you in the Shrieking Shack and skin you. We clear?"
"Crystal." Sirius grimaced. "Forget poltergeists and vampires and werewolves, that image is the one that's going to haunt my dreams."
"Well, if you didn't insist on trying to breed a new type of fungus with the unwashed socks you keep shoved in the darkest depths of your bag, you wouldn't have to worry about it, would you, Pads?" The snickers that erupted had James fighting a smile and he turned to the rest of them, winking as he said, "Sod off, the lot of you. Go do whatever it is you do when you're not pretending to be useful."
-xoxo-
The village of Hogsmeade proper had been built over four hundred years ago, meaning that there were narrow streets, dead ends in unexpected places and extremely small houses and it lay just outside of Cokeworth. The Hogshead Inn was one of the oldest buildings in town, its records dating back to the fourteen hundreds, and as such it had been victim to many rebuilds and extensions over the years, the result being an amalgamation of housing styles from many different time periods. This was the small group of hunters destination, a fact that made Sirius grumble under his breath as they approached the intimidating wrought iron gates, James' lips twitching in amusement occasionally.
The sprawling gardens, that were incredibly impressive in the summer, passed by in a blur as James drove up the long gravel drive, coming to a stop outside a large, two floored building with what was once sunshine yellow paint on the outside and ivy growing up the wall either side of the front door and creeping towards the shingled roof. As they clambered out of the truck and retrieved their bags from the back, James stood next to Sirius, a hand on his shoulder as his friend took several deep breaths.
"You alright, mate?" He asked quietly, ignoring the other three as he focussed on the man next to him.
"I will be. Phantom pains is all it is, Jamie." Sirius answered, doing his best to smile although it looked more like a grimace and he rubbed a hand over his chest absently.
"If you're sure." James muttered, turning to face the others who were standing a few meters away and staring up at the building. "Before we go in, I've got a few ground rules that I need to run by you. Firstly, Alice and Frank, you're job here is to patrol the building and try and keep poltergeist activity to a minimum, or at least away from civilians. Evans, you're with Sirius and I. This thing is going to realise what we're up to, and come after you, so we're going to protect you while you figure out who they are."
The redhead nodded, shifting her bag higher on her shoulder, her face devoid of any emotion. She attempted to return the smile that Sirius gave her, although her eyes gave her away. She was terrified and James wanted nothing more than to reassure her that it was going to be okay, but he didn't because he had no idea what to say to her that wouldn't result in her insulting him and his intelligence.
"Secondly, don't be stupid. Keep your eyes out for trouble at all times, look out for each other and cover each other's blind spots. Don't put yourself in a dangerous situation unless it's absolutely necessary and don't get seperated." This was said mostly to Frank and Alice who glanced at each other and then nodded in James' direction.
"Lastly, keep in contact. We want to get rid of this thing and go home as quickly as possible, but who knows how long that'll be. So, keep us updated on where you are and what you're doing. Just not all the time, there are some things that I do not need to know." Frank and Alice both turned beet red and Sirius stifled a laugh by pretending to cough, whilst Lily hid a smile as she became very interested with her boots.
The dark blue front door opened behind them and a middle-aged woman with hair so dark it looked almost black, which was pulled into a loose bun, stepped out onto the gravel. She moved forward to shake both James and Sirius' hands briskly, murmuring a quiet "I'm glad to see you're feeling better, Mister Black." as she did so.
"Thanks, Mrs Vance." Sirius replied with a grin. He turned and gestured at the others as he spoke, "Mrs V., allow me to introduce Lily Evans, Alice Fortesque and Frank Longbottom. They're going to be helping with the investigation."
"Speaking of which, has anything else happened while we've been gone?" James questioned.
"One of my cleaners was almost killed when she was doing the laundry, but it's been deemed an 'accident' by the police." Mrs Vance sneered at the last word, straightening her dark grey suit jacket and twisting the antique silver bracelet on her wrist. "Other than that? It's been extremely quiet for the past few days."
Behind the house, the sky bled pink as the sun started to set and Lily shivered in her thin hoodie, lifting her hands to her mouth and blowing into them to try and warm her fingers up. Mrs Vance studied her for a few minutes before turning back towards the house. They entered a small reception area, three two-seater sofas sat around a lit fire on one side of the room, and on the other, there was an old counter that held the record books and receipts of payment. Mrs Vance came to a halt next to one of the sofas, a clawed hand resting on the back of it. She looked James in the eye and sighed softly.
"Mister Potter, I'm sorry to say that there is a slight issue with the sleeping arrangements. When you first phoned to say that you were coming back, we had enough bedrooms to comfortably cater for all of you, but we've had a few technicalities pop up. The electrics in two of the guest rooms have blown completely, and as it's a bank holiday, the electrician won't be here until Tuesday."
James blinked a few times, his mind spinning. "Uh, okay. You still have our room though, don't you?" He sighed with relief when the older woman nodded. "Alright, so, Frank can room with me and Sirius, and the two girls can share a room."
"No." Lily said, stepping forwards and resting a hand on James' arm when he looked like he was about to protest. "It makes more sense if I bunk with you two. You said your job was to protect me, right? Doing it this way will make your job a lot easier."
Without a reasonable argument, James could only nod and he didn't miss Mrs V's amused smile. With a shrug he picked up his bag and motioned for her to move onwards. "Lead the way Mrs V."
If anyone can figure out where the hint of the unknown poltergeist is in this chapter, you get virtual internet cookies.
Let me know what you think, yeah?
-V