Hiding from the Marauders
By Matelia-legwll
Summary: What happens when Lily accidentally runs across a certain room on the seventh floor by herself? R&R.
Genre: General/Romance JP/LE
Rating: K
Setting: This takes place in late fifth year. It could possibly be related to the OWL Pensieve Scene, but it might be the next day or something like that. Lily has just been out on the grounds of Hogwarts, and doesn't want to think about certain people.
I stormed back into the castle and almost all the way to Gryffindor Tower, before I stopped abruptly in a seventh floor corridor. Going back to the dormitories wasn't going to solve anything. Not where I had books for other tests to study for that would nag at my conscience. Studying for Transfiguration wasn't going to get James Potter and all of his antics out of my mind. Even worse, my thoughts would be more focused on him. Darn him and his skill at Transfiguration. Maybe Potions... no, definitely not Potions, that would bring Severus to mind.
I started pacing up and down the corridor. What I needed was somewhere I could get my mind off of school, escape. The idea of music popped into my head, just before the stretch of wall I was pacing next to changed into a door. I stopped, startled. I wondered if the wall was pretending to be a door. I hadn't fallen for that antic since first year. I tiptoed to the door, looked around at the deserted corridor and turned the handle to see if it was locked. It turned easily; I took one last look at my surroundings before disappearing inside.
Six hours later the portrait hole to the Gryffindor Common Room opened and I slipped inside.
"Where were you, Evans?" called a voice I knew too well the instant I set foot in the common room. I sighed. Who else, but James Potter, the boy I had exploded at earlier. He sounded more anxious than anything else, so I decided to face him and explain myself as calmly as possible.
"I was cooling down my temper," I said shortly. I surprised myself with my own coolness. Apparently I was still quite mad at Potter.
"How?" burst out Potter. "And where?"
I tilted my head and thought for a moment. "I'm not exactly sure where I was; I've never been there before." I admit I was being extremely vague, on purpose. I felt that he should be as vexed as he made me be.
A wave of satisfaction washed over me as I saw that Potter looked as exasperated as I had felt.
"I looked everywhere for you, Evans. Everywhere. I even —" Potter cut himself off, biting his lip nervously.
"Even what?" I asked, curious now.
"Even, er, went to Hogsmeade to look for you," admitted Potter in a half-whisper.
To my intense curiosity, one of Potter's mates, Peter Pettigrew, opened his mouth to say something, but Sirius Black, Potter's best mate, trod on his foot. Now, I wondered as Pettigrew winced, what brought that on?
Realizing suddenly that Potter was looking apprehensively at me for a response, I hesitantly asked, "Why did you look for me in Hogsmeade?"
Potter let out a muffled sigh, of relief, I suppose. Then he shrugged and started rambling, "Well, you weren't in the castle anywhere. I thought that maybe you had found one of the secret passageways to Hogsmeade. But you weren't there either. You disappeared so completely that I started to worry that you had been attacked and died." By this time, Potter had grown so agitated that he began to pace in front of me. I watched in dazed horror as he babbled on. "I thought that perhaps you had gone into the Forbidden Forest, so I g — ran around for ages looking for you in there. I asked Hagrid to look for you. I even asked Filch to look for you, but he just stared at me. I think he thought —"
I had raised my hand to stop the overflow of information, and he caught sight of that gesture and cut himself off mid-rant, to look at me expectantly for my explanation.
"Hang on. Back up Potter," I said. "Of course I was in the castle."
"But you weren't," insisted Potter. He is rather stubborn. "I looked everywhere for you."
I held back a smile as a thought occurred to me. "Even the girls bathrooms?" I asked skeptically.
I expected him to start in surprise, or look guilty or ashamed that this had slipped his mind; I never expected him to nod firmly and say, "Of course I did." I must have shown my shock and surprise, and perhaps the odd looks his friends gave him contributed, for he added, "Well, Myrtle helped me with the girls bathrooms."
"Moaning Myrtle?" I asked weakly.
"Of course. She, kind of, fancies, er, Padfoot. It comes in handy sometimes," replied Potter.
"Get to your point, Prongs," encouraged Black. "Not everyone needs to know about who Myrtle fancies."
Personally, I was shocked that Sirius Black and Potter's other friends had all stayed quiet until this point.
Potter had a resolute gleam in his eye. "All right, Evans. You managed to avoid a determined Marauder for over six hours. Where were you?" demanded Potter.
I sighed again. The topic looked unavoidable this time. "If it is any of your business, I was on the seventh floor, in the room across the corridor from the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy."
James Potter couldn't have looked more confused if he had tried. "Who the what?"
Indulging myself with rolling my eyes, I slowly replied, "The tapestry of the bloke who was trying to teach trolls ballet and failing miserably at it."
"Oh, him. Yeah. That tapestry." Potter paused for a moment, then added, "But, there's no room across the corridor."
"Well, there wasn't one," I admitted, glorying in his confusion. "But then there was, and as you pointed out earlier, I spent nearly six hours in there."
"Wait, Lily?" This came from Remus Lupin, another of Potter's mates, however, he was also my fellow prefect, and the only one in their group that I have allowed to call me by my first name. "Was the room filled with, well, exactly what you needed?"
I pondered that question for a moment, then softly said, "Yeah. It was perfect. More than perfect."
"What was in —" began Potter, but he was cut off by Remus.
"Wow. Lily, you found the Come-And-Go Room? I thought it was just a myth, a legend," said Remus.
"What's this, Moony?" asked Black.
"You must have been too busy eating when the house elves were talking about it," acknowledged Remus with a questioning glance at Sirius. Black shrugged and Remus quoted, "'The Come-And-Go Room, also known as the Room of Requirement, only appears when someone is in dire need of it. It will fill itself with exactly what the person needs or wishes for.' They said it was Rowena Ravenclaw's special room in the castle."
"Moony, why didn't you tell us about that room when we were writing the, er," Potter threw a glance over at me before going on, "the History of Magic essay?"
After Black, Pettigrew and Remus all looked at me calculatingly, Remus said, "One, I thought it was just a legend, like Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets. Two, I had no idea where it was. And three, the magic of the room would make it unplotable if you needed it to be."
Unplotable? I stared at Remus, trying to understand. Why would that matter? Even though the conversation was getting more confusing, I stayed silent in the hopes that they would say something to satisfy my curiosity.
"Three good reasons," piped up Pettigrew.
"Oh, be quiet, Wormtail," snapped Black.
Of all their nicknames for each other, Peter Pettigrew's nickname was the strangest. I had attempted to either figure out their nicknames or get them to blurt something out this entire year. Admittedly, I had failed. However, trying to get Potter or his friends to do anything they did not want to do was an impossible task. Hence, why I had been unable, so far, to get Potter to stop asking me out. At the most inopportune times, too.
I came out of my reverie to listen once more. "Surely we must have stumbled upon it once or twice. How come we never noticed it?" Black was asking.
"Because we would have only needed a broom cupboard," said Remus dismissively.
"You mean, that broom cupboard we thought we remembered wrong fourth year when it disappeared on us when we went back to look for it the next day, was really this Room of Requirement?" asked Potter, completely confusing me with the run-on sentence.
Remus started, then said, "Wow, Prongs. I think you might be right. Why didn't I see that?"
"Because you're Moony and Prongs is Prongs, that's why," said Black, grinning.
"Thanks for stating the obvious, Padfoot," said Pettigrew.
"You're welcome, Wormtail," replied Black glibly, then moved quickly away from Pettigrew to avoid Pettigrew's almost automatic response to hit Black upside the head.
Potter shook his head in amusement, then said, "You do remember Wormtail is being sarcastic when he says stuff like that, right Padfoot?"
"Of course, Prongs," replied Black with a cheeky grin.
"Argh!" I burst out in frustration. "Enough with the nicknames unless you give me a reason why Potter is Prongs, why Black is Padfoot, why Pettigrew is Wormtail, and why Remus is Moony!"
The four boys stared at me in various states of surprise and disbelief. I wondered for a moment if they had forgotten that I was still there. I felt resentful at this thought. I couldn't very well have left, even if my curiosity had allowed it. During the conversation, all four boys had maneuvered themselves, perhaps unconsciously, into positions around me that blocked my escape routes to the girls dormitory, the fireplace, and back through the portrait hole. Black's position even blocked the boys dormitory.
"Well," began Pettigrew from behind me. He frowned, "I've got nothing."
"Black?" I asked turning to my right to face him.
"Er, nothing," said Black, looking caught off guard.
"Potter?" I said, turning back to him.
"Er," Potter had this look of stunned panic, like an animal caught frozen in a car's headlights. He shot a questioning glance at Remus, bit his lip, and seemed to regain his confidence, for he said, "Can't tell you."
I sighed. I didn't really want Severus's theories to be confirmed, but still the name ripped from my throat. "Remus?" My question hung in the air. I felt the tension in the room rise dramatically as the boy to my left froze.
In the pause, I heard Pettigrew mutter, "Come on, Moony. You can do it."
Remus looked like he was debating with himself. He shook his head slightly then looked directly at me. "The nicknames just . . . fit our personalities," he said clearly, and the tension dropped again as Potter, Black, and Pettigrew roared with laughter at this statement. I could have sworn that they thought this was the funniest thing any of them had ever heard.
"What?" asked Remus, dragging out the word and pretending to pout a little.
"You've got to be joking, Moony. That's the reason you tell her?" asked James, still laughing.
"What's wrong with that reason?" I asked curiously.
"Nothing, Lily," said Remus hastily. He paused, then protested to Potter, "Prongs, I couldn't very well tell her the long reason. Not yet, anyway."
"True," acknowledged Potter, sobering up quickly. His frown changed quickly into a smirk, however, when he heard my next question.
"Why not yet?" I said.
"Evans, will you go out with me?" The git had the nerve to smile charmingly at me while he asked.
I, however, glared back at Potter and said, "I've barely had the patience to answer that question once today. Do you really think my answer has changed?"
"Hope springs eternal," was Potter's response, complete with cute-puppy-dog eyes. I rolled my own eyes.
"No, Potter." I said firmly.
"And there's the rub," mumbled Potter as he ruffled his hair, still with a smirk pasted on his face.
I paused, knowing that he was trying to get a rise out of me, but unable to help my curiosity. "What is that supposed to mean?" I finally asked.
"Nothing, nothing," said Potter, waving a hand lightly. The hand wave must have been some sort of signal, for Black and Pettigrew immediately walked around me and, with a pat on Remus's shoulder, over to the 'Marauder' armchairs in front of the fire. After a meaningful look between Potter and Remus, Remus followed Black and Pettigrew.
Increasingly aware of the lateness of the hour, the fact that I was alone with Potter and the Marauders in the Common Room, and the fact that all my friends seemed to have gone to bed already, I shifted nervously from one foot to the other, my mind filled with images of making a dash past Potter for the girls dormitories and being hexed or jinxed by Potter. This was most definitely irrational, but I was tired.
Potter, however, was just standing in front of me, one hand back in his hair, regarding me silently. I definitely did not want to admit how nervous that silent gaze was making me feel, so I just said, "Are you going to sit with your friends, or are you going to interrogate me some more?"
James started. I almost smiled at catching him off guard once again, but my months of training myself to keep my expressions bland in Potter's presence thankfully kept me from doing that.
"Well?" I asked, rather impatiently.
"I just have one more question, Evans." He paused, and I felt certain he was just dragging the question out for dramatic effect. "What did you find in the Room of Requirement?"
"What?" I burst out, shocked that he had gone back to that. I had, if I can admit it to myself, been expecting him to ask me out yet another time.
"I'm curious," he said, shrugging.
"All right. Whatever." I paused, remembering. "I found a room filled with instruments."
"What, like the instruments in Dumbledore's office?" Potter asked with a surprised look on his face.
This time I had to stifle a laugh. "No, silly. Musical instruments."
I let myself drift away from the common room as I remembered the wonder I felt upon opening the door and finding the very things I had been missing. My fingers ached to touch the piano in the center of the large room. There were also stacks of music—every song I had liked to play and more if I desired a challenge.
There were more instruments in there than I could name. My fingers strummed a harp, glided along the curves of a French horn, and held the violin up to my chest. Nothing satisfied me until I sat in front of the grand piano and let my emotions and stress flow out through my fingers into the music.
One scale. . . two. . . I was soon singing along as I played my heart out. I have to admit, it is a marvelous release.
I had hated to acknowledge that I was falling asleep at the piano after six hours. I loved that room, and I told the room to be open for me the next time I needed it.
I was brought sharply back to the present, when I heard Potter murmur something. My cheeks coloured as I realized I had been reliving the experience with delight and the expression surely displayed on my face.
"What did you say?" I demanded, instantly distrustful of him.
Potter blinked. "When?"
"Oh, come on. Just now," I said, now half wondering if I really wanted to know what he had murmured.
Potter frowned. "Did I say that out loud? Oh, well," he shrugged. "I can't tell you."
"Why not? You just said it," I protested, now fully wondering what I was getting myself into.
Potter laughed. Drat him and his contagious laugh. It made me smile like an idiot. "And I'll say it yet again. 'I can't tell you.'"
This time I caught the quotes around the words. My face reddened with embarrassment. "Oh," I muttered. I was now searching desperately for something to say, something to take his attention away from my ever reddening face that was now clashing with my hair. "You can't tell me what, exactly?" I wanted to slap myself on the forehead, but that would draw attention to my embarrassed skin, and make me look like I wanted to make a good impression on Potter.
Potter opened his mouth to speak, then smirked. "You're not going to get me that easily."
I immediately shook my head. "That's not what I meant to do, Potter. I was wondering what question I had asked that you happened to finally register and blurt out your answer."
Potter rolled his eyes. "Evans, Evans, Evans," he said disparagingly. He placed a hand on my shoulder that I had to glare pointedly at before he finally removed it with an "All right," conceding to my unspoken request. Well, more like my order, however nice it felt to have it there. "But I am not that thick," he replied to my question. "I was merely reminding myself of the promise I made to Moony — well, that we all made to Moony — when we first took on our nicknames."
"Remus started the nicknames?" I asked, a little startled.
Potter tilted his head. "Not exactly. He gave us a reason to nickname each other (he never had real good friends before Hogwarts, you know), but the only one Remus came up with was Prongs, for me. I came up with Padfoot for Sirius, Peter came up with Moony for Remus, and Sirius came up with Wormtail for Peter."
"I should've known," I muttered.
"Known what?" asked Potter, suddenly anxious and interested.
"Only Black would have the gumption to name a fellow human being something like Wormtail," I proclaimed.
Potter just smirked. And, to my utmost annoyance, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Black and Pettigrew high-five.
"Oh, grow up," I muttered irritably.
Potter's smile faded and determination filled his face. "I will tell you, one day. It might just change your opinion toward us."
"James," said Remus in a warning tone. I looked over at the three boys. Remus was looking worriedly at Potter. Pettigrew was watching Potter also, but Black was gazing straight at me, and I had the oddest impression that he was evaluating my reaction.
"I know, I know," said Potter impatiently. "Nothing until she lets me."
"Let you? How in the world am I in control of what you say, or do, for that matter?" I burst out, rounding on him. "I asked you the question, I'm allowing you the option of giving your answer, but I am not stopping you from saying anything!" My arguments with Severus have made me even more passionate about this subject than I would be normally.
Potter, however, gave a short, sad laugh. "Oh, yes, you asked. But you were already preparing yourself not to believe any extended explanation. You are stopping me from saying anything worthwhile because of your attitude towards me and my friends. If only you could trust us. Trust me. Then I could talk freely indeed."
"Trust?" I asked skeptically. "You want me to trust known pranksters, liars, and jokers?"
"Sometimes reputations aren't always true, Evans," sighed Potter.
I shrugged. "I'll give you that, Potter. But what about personal observation?" I countered.
"Touché." Potter paused, then proposed, "Let me prove to you otherwise — that we are worthy of your trust."
I considered it a moment. "Sure," I agreed. "But how?"
Potter looked stumped for only a second. "I will take responsibility for everything that I do. I will not avoid the punishments, but take the punishment in full with no complaint. Pranking and joking is what we do, but I can promise a cut down in the number of pranks we will play, and the pranks will only be humorous."
By the end of this speech, Potter looked quite pleased with himself, but Pettigrew and Black stared at him in horror, and Remus regarded Potter with slight admiration.
"What?" burst out Black.
Potter set his jaw and turned determinedly toward his best friend. "Padfoot, it's Evans," he said as if this statement explained everything.
A long pause later, while I was looking between Black and Potter anxiously, Black suddenly smiled. "You're on."
Potter turned back to me, grinning. "The only exception to this will be Snape. We won't go out of our way to fight with him, but I can't promise we won't retaliate if he starts it," he warned.
I stifled a yawn, and said, "As loyal as I am to my friends, even I have to admit Sev starts some of the fights with you four."
Potter's and Black's jaws dropped. "'Sev'?" repeated James. "And he's still 'Potter'?" added Black, indicating his friend.
I rolled my eyes as I started to walk towards the stair. Potter immediately jumped into my path and wouldn't move out of the way.
"What?" I finally asked, frustrated with his determination.
"Call me James," said Potter, acting like he was daring me to do something absolutely dreadful.
"What?" I stopped and stared at him in shock.
"Call me James," he repeated.
"Would you please move out of the way?" I asked as I stepped to the left and he mirrored me.
"Call me James," he demanded, a smirk finding its way to his face.
Swallowing, I said, "Fine, James," and went passed him to the stair. Halfway up to the dormitories, I turned and smiled at the four dumbstruck boys. I should hide from them more often.
"What are you looking at, James?" I called, smirking.
James jerked his head up to look at me. "Something that is absolutely beautiful," he cheesily proclaimed.
I shook my head. "Glad to see you think so highly of your Common Room walls," I retorted as I climbed the stair again.
"That's not what I meant, Lily," muttered James.
"I know," I murmured, before disappearing into my room and leaning against my closed door.
I slowly recalled everything that had happened this day, and a smile formed that wouldn't leave my face. I should definitely hide from the Marauders more often.
A/N: I hope you liked this. Thanks for reading! And, since I recieved so many requests, this will eventually be made into a two-shot. However, my other story, Cat, Rat and Dog, comes first.