A/N: So this was an extraordinarily random Fanfic. I guess it's to be expected, because I came up with the idea at 10:30 at night and I was tired. Yes, originally it was going to be longer; an Alphabet fic . . . But I changed my mind. Anyway, please R&R!
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
The air was heavy, cold, and damp. Lily sat on her dormitory bed, staring out the window. What a miserable Saturday it was, trapped indoors.
Plip.
It was a raindrop.
Plip, plip.
Lily started counting them . . .
Plip, plip. PlipPlipPlipPlipPlip.
It was getting faster. Lily sighed. Gray Saturdays always put her in a hopeless, depressed mood. Seeking to banish her unsavory mood, Lily went down to the Gryffindor common room. She arrived just as a loud clap of thunder rumbled from outside.
"Quite a storm, isn't it?" Alice questioned, having heard Lily arrive from her perch by the window, watching the dark clouds sidle ever closer.
"Yeah." Lily agreed dismally.
"Oh, right, I forgot you hate the rain. Why is that, exactly?" Alice asked curiously. Lily gave the looming, dark clouds a spiteful glare, then answered.
"Dark. Wet. Chilly. Damp. Muddy." Lily ticked them off on her fingers.
"Okay . . . I guess those are a few reasons -" Lily interrupted Alice's uncertain comment.
"Depressing, joy-sucking, light-lacking, warmth-abandoned -"
"Hey, Lily?" Alice now interrupted her. "Just relax, all right? I'm sure it'll be better tomorrow . . ."
"It's April." Lily said flatly.
"Yeah, okay, but -"
Just then, the Gryffindor Quidditch team burst into the room, chattering, laughing, and soaking wet.
"Bet there was lightning and they had to come in off the pitch." Alice told her friend.
Lily sighed again, shaking her head despairingly. "I'm going down for lunch. You coming?"
Alice shook her head. "No, it's still a bit early for me yet."
Lily shrugged, walking towards the portrait hole. "I'll see you later, then." She called out.
She passed the Quidditch team on her way to the portrait hole, catching a piece of James' conversation as she walked by,
"– Wish we could play like this everyday." There were several murmurs of agreement:
"– So much harder to play in the rain."
And,
"It's so exciting! Thought I'd slip off my broom!"
Lily cast them all baleful glares, then left the room. James, seeing this, wondered what he'd done now.
Lily plunked herself down at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. She started looking up and down the table for something she wanted to eat on such a depressing, gloomy day. There wasn't anything all that appetizing. Suddenly, she spotted someone sitting on the bench to her right.
Lily got up, walked a few paces, and re-plunked herself at the table, this time next to a person.
"Hullo Peter." She greeted, in a somewhat monotonous, happiness-deprived voice. There wasn't anything to eat down here, either.
"You hate the rain too?" asked Peter.
"Yeah." Lily said dejectedly.
"You want some soup?" Peter asked, nodding to a large bowl sitting very near him, so close Lily hadn't noticed it before.
Yes! Soup, Lily thought, would be wonderful. She picked up the half-empty bowl and was starting to ladle it into her own substantially smaller bowl when Peter said,
"Go on. You can just take that serving bowl if you like. This is already my second bowl."
"Thanks, Peter." Lily said, somewhat happily. Things were looking up. Especially, she thought, when she saw what kind of soup it was.
It was alphabet soup. Childhood memories came rushing back to Lily.
She and her sister had the chicken pox together.
Lily with her broken arm after ice-skating with Tuney for the first time.
When the family cat, Bast, died when Lily was six.
All instances had been comforted by a large, hot bowl of alphabet soup her mother would make just for Lily.
"Alphabet soup!" Lily exclaimed. Peter nodded.
"Sure. It's the only bowl though, so you better stake your claim and start eating before the Quidditch team and Sirius get here."
Peter and Lily had a great time during lunch. Once finished, Peter drained his remaining letters into Lily's also empty bowl, so they could start spelling different words.
"Oh, Peter! You gave me all consonants! And a Q! We can't do anything with Q without a U!" Lily said.
"You're right." And Peter ate Q. The letters remaining were M, L, D, R, P, A, H, F, O, and E. Peter spelled PALM.
"All right, Lily. Use D, R, H, F, O, or E to make a word." Lily studied the letters. She was readying her spoon to arrange the noodles into the word RED when James appeared.
James, Sirius, and Remus entered the Great Hall laughing and joking, James still soaking wet and very much bedraggled from the rain, when the trio suddenly spotted their fourth member and a redhead at the end of a table, leaning over a large bowl.
"Looks like they're practicing for Divination." Sirius joked, noticing the large bowl, the spoon being traced around the inside of the bowl, and the occasional comments being said.
Remus eyed the bowl from several feet away, where they had stopped to analyze Lily and Peter's questionable pastimes.
"It's a soup bowl." Remus stated.
"Weird." James said, watching. "Wonder what they're really doing?"
"Hey, for all you know, it could be divination. That professor, Ismene? She's a mad old bat . . ." Sirius said.
Remus cast him a withering glance. "Divination is with teacups, Padfoot, teacups."
"Yeah, but - "
"I'm going to see what they're doing." James announced, interrupting the oncoming debate.
James walked over, sitting himself next to Lily. "Nice soup bowl, Lily." He said pleasantly.
She glanced over, surprised that a very sopping Potter had squelched down next to her. "Thanks. Mind moving over a tad? I don't really want to get all wet and muddy."
"Yeah, one second. What's in that bowl?"
"Letters."
"Letters?"
"Letters. Here, have a look." Lily pushed the bowl towards him.
Indeed, James saw, there were several letters of the alphabet in the bowl, shoved together to form words. Peter explained what they'd been doing.
"Ohh," James said, realization dawning on him. "So who's turn was it?"
"Mine," Lily answered. "I was just about to go when you showed up." With that, she took her spoon, and again readied herself to arrange her noodles.
James stopped her. "Can I go?" Lily sighed, pushing the bowl and her spoon back at him.
"Wish you'd told me that before." She grumbled.
"Sorry, sorry. I just came up with one."
Lily drummed her fingers on the table.
Peter scraped his spoon back and forth around his soup-less, letter-less bowl.
"Potter, are you done yet?" Lily asked, mildly irritated. It had been her turn. Now James was probably going to leave her and Peter with all consonants, and what would they do then?
"Finished." James announced. "I'll be going now."
Lily took her bowl back; she and Peter were equally eager to say what James had spelled.
James sat down next to Sirius and Remus, both of which had started eating in his absence.
"So," Sirius said, "Divination or not?"
"They were . . . spelling. With noodles." James answered, slightly dumbfounded.
"Alphabet soup?" Remus asked.
"Yeah." James explained Lily and Peter's new game.
"Well, Peter's not exactly stable, and Evans is one odd witch." Sirius concluded.
"Nah. It was sort of fun." James said.
"So what did you spell?" Remus asked.
"Doe?" Lily said. "Arg, I just knew he'd use all our vowels. Well, we're stuck now, Peter. Only R, H, and F are left. Any chance there's anymore soup?"
Peter shook his head. "Not at this table. But we can check the other House tables, I bet they have some."
"Perfect!" Lily said.
So the two friends became a little bit closer, the rainy day seemed a little bit brighter, Lily and Peter went on a noble quest to find more alphabet soup, and James, Sirius and Remus observed them the entire time, writing down all odd behaviors to give to Madam Pomfrey.
"There must be something wrong." Sirius said, though, in fact, there wasn't. Just two bored, depressed, rain-hating friends coming together on a boring, depressing, rainy day.
AN2: Please let me know what you think! And to give credit where credit is due, Peanutbuttercup526 gave me the idea of a Lily/Peter friendship fic, since I didn't know what to write, and she chose to challenge me. That's why it's not my normal romance fic, in case people were wondering.
*Amaryllis*
Original Post: March 8, 2012
Revised: June 12, 2012