Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognise. And probably none of the stuff you do.
AN: Written for the 2012 Hogwarts Games, men's football and for HedwigBlack's Weekly Challenge.
As far as Lily Luna Potter was concerned, silence was golden. Silence was a trait that Lily seldom sees, living in a house with two older brothers who constantly fight. It was probably the reason she liked going into the Silence Chamber at Hogwarts so much, no matter what noises were attempted, the chamber just smothered them all. And especially today, Valentines day, away from all the sickening love songs playing through the Great Hall which her cousin had somehow managed to charm to play from the walls.
The Silence Chamber had been installed a few years before Lily came to Hogwarts, a way of dealing with some of the more dangerous and/or sensitive plants that were virtually impossible to grow anywhere else in captivity anywhere else in the world. Little wonder that her Uncle Neville was an expert in these rare breeds.
There were Kisra Roses, a type of deep blue rose that bloomed only once every ten years and the Shanghai Tentacled Vines, a silent hunter that was currently sliding a vine up her leg in a way that would have gotten a boy hexed into the next year by Lily's brothers if he had tried anything like that. Instead she had to simply make do with giving it a silent, satisfying smack.
She pulled out the written instructions once more and frowned as she looked at what they said. There was a series of squiggles and runes that didn't seem actually make any sense whatsoever, but Scorpius was always far too fond of word games and riddles in her opinion and this one was merely the latest in a long line of them. Fortunately for him, she loved then too. Especially ones that involved runes of some kind, an obsession that her mother firmly blamed Lily's Aunt Hermione for. (Not an entirely inaccurate assessment, it had been one of Aunt Hermione's old textbooks that had drawn Lily in at the age of twelve.
With a silent swallow, Lily walked firmly towards the third gate and turned left, hoping that she had properly interpretated the puzzle properly and wondering, not for the first time, why Scorpius hadn't just gotton someone else to write his instructions, or even told her where to go instead of leaving illegible clues on paper. (Although he would protest otherwise, years of experience both from herself and from Albus AND Rose both complaining about the illegibility of Scorpius's writing proved otherwise.)
Unfortunately, with Scorpius temporarily laid up in St Mungo's with a severe case of Dragon Pox, the note was all she really had
She pushed on, walking slowly down the still-expanding pathway until she came to another turning on her left, because although the Silence Chamber was a magical building and theoretically able to be larger on the inside than it was on the inside, the main reason it was so effective was because most of it spent large amounts of time simply not existing, in a way that made Lily's head hurt just to think about.
She drummed her fingers against the table beside her, but the activity failed to make the satisfying sounds it usually made and with a twist on her heel, Lily ignored the turning and simply kept walking down the path. As yet more pathway appeared and the pathway behind her disappeared, she paused and looked at the note once more. Further down the note sat a strange squiggle, a sort of stick man in a triangle that didn't really match up to any runes she knew.
Unless…a grin quickly formed on her face. THIS was what she LOVED about riddles and the like. Reaching forward and leaning over to the Long-Haired Grindle Rose that was sitting in front of her, she gave it a gentle tap with her finger and pulled back as the flower opened to reveal a brace of Lilies floating there and tied to their base was a box of Honeydukes Finest Heart Chocolates. With an amused smile at the thought of what her Uncle Neville would say if he knew what his plant was being used for, Lily practically skipped out of the Silence Chamber. She really DID have the best boyfriend at Hogwarts.