A/N: I hope this goes okay because I really can't write as James well - I thought that there needed to be some more focus on Lily and James. This chapter has been a MONSTER to write, seriously, even with my current favourite song on replay to inspire me (hint: the chapter title. I do this for every chapter, seriously, I'm a music junkie). I've had such bad writers block on this chapter, and I didn't want to just ditch it, so I've spent my weekend writing out both the main plot and individual chapter plots for this story. I have around 8 pages of notes for this now - this is my third biggest project note-wise. 'The Anna Chronicles: Desperate' has been the biggest, with 46 pages of notes, and then 'The Anna Chronicles: Returned' with 31 pages. Yay me! Okay, so insane A/N over now!
Dedication: My laptop, because it has finally decided to allow my memory stick to link up - I don't have to copy each chapter from my laptop to my desktop anymore! Yays! Also, to sea feather-ono (YAY, YOU'RE BACK! I missed your reviews, Elia. Thank you for your love lists also! I shall go review your story now [I was reading it again yesterday]) , CLJR (Thank you for your review! Yes, it was my sixteenth on the 14th and it was great. I've been editing this chapter for so long, you don't even…) to Nithusa (Thanks for your review! You're amazing too!), Future's-Past (Wow, you started to do a love list. Thans for such a detailed review friend! That trilogy is amazing, I had the box set for xmas and I love it!), KatiePotter (Thanks! That is a relly nice thing to say about my music! Nah, I don't like Ke$ha anymore, in case you didn't already notice lol!) and LeilaTheRainbowNinja (As per usual, your review made my on being able to work the reviews system! Thanks for your love list).
Disclaimer: The Potterverse is owned by Jo-Ro. Damnit.
Chapter Ten
And when I get there it won't be far enough
- 'Renegade', Paramore
The day's lessons crawled by for James Potter; sitting next to Lily in Defence Against the Dark Arts after her show of obvious disappointment with him from that morning was less than comfortable - every time he tried to speak, she would shake her head and sigh loudly so that the others couldn't hear what he said. He found it a little childish, but knew that he couldn't tell her what had really happened the previous night while she was still ignoring him.
Her actions irritated him; James couldn't help but wish that she could see how much she hurt him. Every time she turned him down, every time they argued was like a slap in the face. Each rejection stung more than the Hexes that she threw at him.
By the time dinner came, James was determined to talk to Lily. He knew that they had patrol together after dinner and wanted to make sure that Lily wasn't ignoring him then.
Somehow, and he didn't know how because the Marauders had left class first, Lily and the other girls were already at the Gryffindor table. There were empty seats next to them where everyone knew the Marauders always sat. James took the opportunity to claim the seat next to Lily's. She looked at him in surprise for a moment before diverting her gaze back to her steak and kidney pie. James checked around him and saw that all their other friends were involved with conversations so he leaned towards Lily.
"Lily, can I talk to you?" he said quietly. She chewed a mouthful of her pie before turning slowly to face James.
"What about, Potter?" She just sounded tired when she spoke to him now, but the use of his surname made him want to flinch.
"I want to tell you that I lied to you earlier. In the Hospital Wing."
She raised a single red eyebrow. "Oh?" She sounded like she already knew the truth.
"Yeah. I was in the forest last night, but it's not what you think. I can't talk about it right now because people will hear, but I can promise that I'll tell you on patrol tonight." he said, knowing full well that it sounded like he was still lying.
"And you're actually going to turn up tonight, are you? Because it took three hours for me to do our job alone last night."
He flinched. "That wasn't my fault; Moony told me that you know about his 'furry little problem', so you should know that I would be with him last night."
"Now see, I wouldn't know that. You know why? Because Werewolves are banned from being around people when they transform for a reason."
Annoyance flared within him at her comment. "Remus is a good person; he can't help what happens to him! He doesn't know what he's doing. Plus, I wasn't a person last night." Crap. He hadn't meant to reveal the last part this early.
Lily did a double take and then shook her head slowly. "I suppose this is what you want to talk to me about on patrol?" she guessed. When James nodded, she mirrored him. "I figured that."
"I'm getting off topic," he admitted. "This isn't what I wanted to talk to you about right now. What I really wanted to say was that I want us to be friends."
"Friends," Lily echoed disbelievingly. "Right,"
"I'm being serious," James insisted. "We're supposed to show the school that we're united and all that, so being friendly towards eachother would be a step towards actually being a good Head Boy and Head Girl."
Lily considered this. "I guess you're right," she conceded. "But I'll admit it, it's going to be hard to be friends with you after hating your guts for six years. You haven't exactly been nice to me, have you, Potter?"
"If we're going to be friends, I'd appreciate it if you called me by my first name like, you know, an ordinary person," James butted in. "Because, in case you haven't noticed, I have already extended the same courtesy to you."
He had done that. Lily nodded half-heartedly.
"It's going to be a hard habit to break, but okay, I guess it's only fair. James." She added the last almost as an afterthought.
A smile lit up his face at the sound of her using his first name for the first time... Well... Ever. "Thanks, Lily."
"Are you going to eat, or keep talking about inconsequential nonsense?" Sirius asked, nudging James in the ribs as he did so to get his attention.
"It's not nonsense," James mumbled, but he did pick up his fork and begin to eat his chicken dinner. Lily tipped her head sideways, looking up at him, a sardonic smile on her face.
After that, the group of Gryffindors, including Remus, who arrived halfway through dinner from the Hospital Wing, ate their way through their dinners and then trudged sleepily towards Gryffindor tower. After giving the Fat Lady the password ("Fortitudo"), everyone but Lily and James began to play a huge game of chess (they divided into teams) in an effort to wake themselves up a little more. The Head Boy and the Head Girl watched as the game unfolded, cheering on the participants as the game got more and more rowdy, attracting the attention of many other Gryffindors around the room. At half past eight, Lily stood up from her perch on the arm of James' chair and turned to look at him; he raised an eyebrow as if to ask 'is it time already?' and Lily sighed, rolled her eyes, smiling. James felt highly honoured - the second time she had smiled at him in all seven years that they had known eachother, and both had been in the last twenty-four hours.
He pulled himself out of his armchair. The two of them bade goodnight to their friends, as they would be staying in the Head's dorm that night, and set out on patrol.
The halls were still buzzing with students trying to get to their Common Rooms before curfew and some of them greeted Lily and James hurriedly as they passed eachother. There was a silence between them that was slightly uncomfortable that had a lot to do with the fact that they had never been forced to spend time in eachother's company alone before. At nine o'clock, when the final bell rang to signify that all students should be in their common rooms, Lily stopped and turned to face James in the hallway of the third floor.
"You said that you'd explain everything when we were on patrol," she reminded him, folding her arms across her chest. He nodded slowly.
"I did say that," he admitted, gesturing forwards with his hand to signify that they should carry on walking. "So you know about Moony's 'furry little problem'?"
"I do now," Lily answered with a wry smile.
"Well, Sirius and I figured out what was wrong with him in first year; he didn't want to tell us. I don't think that he wanted to loose any of his friends. So we spent four years trying to figure out a way to help him through his transformations and, at the end of Fourth Year, Peter thought of it."
"Wait, Peter thought of it?" Lily interrupted, one eyebrow raised as she pulled open the door of the nearest broom closet, checking to see whether or not it was empty.
"Peter is good at theory Magic. It's the practice he's not so good at," James told the redhead with a smile. "So anyway, he thought of it, and we agreed to try and figure out how to make it happen. It took us the whole summer and up until Christmas in Fifth Year before we finally managed to get the spell to work."
"Stop!" Lily demanded, both hands up as they ducked into a hidden corridor. "Took you six months to do what, exactly?"
"To become Animagi."
The silence was deafening; Lily gaped at James, obviously in shock over his words and his confession.
"You're not on the register," she argued vainly. It was clear that her heart wasn't in it - for once, she couldn't argue with the black-haired boy with the glasses.
He ran a hand through his hair absent-mindedly, mild amusement showing on his face. "We're unregistered, of course. If Dumbledore knew... Hell, if Minnie knew! We'd be decapitated!" The look of horror on his face was so real that Lily automatically raised an eyebrow at him.
"You think Professor McGonagall is scarier than Professor Dumbledore?" She had to ask it.
He looked at her as though he thought she was mad. "Of course," he said as though it was obvious. "Don't you?"
She laughed shortly in disbelief. "Of course you would think that. Of course. You've had more detentions off Professor McGonagall that anyone else in the history of the school, probably,"
"You could check in that book of yours that you like so much," he suggested. "'A History of Hogwarts' or something like that, right?"
"'Hogwarts: A History'," she corrected automatically. "Back to the subject at hand... You, Peter and Sirius are... Animagi?"
"Yup," James confirmed cheerfully. "Can you guess what we are?"
"Idiots," she muttered under her breath before clearing her throat and speaking at normal volume again. "You call Remus 'Moony', which I presume has something to do with the fact that he turns into a wolf once every month. That leads me to think that all of your nicknames suggest what animals you turn into..."
"Very good reasoning," James complimented. "Carry on."
"And Peter's 'Wormtail'... A vole?"
James' lips twitched up slightly at the corners. "Close. He's a rat."
"... And Black is obviously that giant, mangy, rabid dog thing - "
" - But we already knew that, so let's skip ahead," James finished for her with an inviting smile. "What am I, young Lily?"
He was quite enjoying this now that he knew Lily wasn't going to explode and fire painful Hexes at him while he ran screaming down the corridor. Of course, the Marauders hadn't told anybody about them being Animagi because no-one would understand the true reasoning behind it - Remus' condition - and besides, the whole school would know within five minutes. Telling Lily, and having her actually playing along, was quite amusing.
She narrowed her emerald eyes, tilted her head to the side and studied the bespeckled wizard in front of her for a moment, deliberating.
"There was a stag there that night," she said slowly, her eyes on his. "And you already admitted to being there last night. Plus, I saw your eyes." She hesitated a second; it was as if she didn't want to say it. "Are you a stag?"
The question was asked to seriously that even James' smile dripped off his face. He nodded slowly. Part of him wanted to savour the moment, the two of them staring so intensely at eachother, but the part of James that held everything it meant to be a Marauder wanted desperately to lighten the mood. That part of him won.
"The others try to decorate my antlers every Christmas," he told her in mock horror and sorrow.
Lily bit back a burst of laughter and instead settled for replying. "Some fairy lights wouldn't go amiss."
James chuckled and opened his mouth, about to say something else, when a scream interrupted him.
"Oh, for Merlin's sake!" Lily shouted in frustration. "Not again! All you seem to hear around this place now is screaming!" She began to hurry down the corridor towards the source of the screaming, but James stopped her with a hand on her arm.
"Wait a second," he told her, fishing out a piece of parchment from his pocket. He tapped it with his wand and said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." From the point where the tip of his wand touched the parchment, ink swept across the cream paper, spanning into all four corners, creating an intricate web of spidery lines. Lily, who had been watching impatiently, felt her mouth open in alarm and awe as she watched the most detailed map of Hogwarts spread out in front of her.
"No-one should be out of bed but us and the other people who are on patrol," he said, eyes jumping from one part of the map to another, expertly folding various flaps down or opening them to reveal more of the corridors underneath. "And we know who should be on patrol right now," he added, fingers flattening out a tiny square which showed a small, stationary dot. "So it should be pretty easy to find out who's been attacked."
Lily had had enough. "Okay, what the hell is that?" she demanded, pointing angrily towards the map. "And secondly, how do we know they've been attacked?"
James looked down at her patiently. "This is the Marauders Map. We made it a few years ago, it shows everything and everyone within the Hogwarts grounds. Secondly, we have to assume that. I mean, two different people have screamed since we came back to school, and both of those were being hurt in some way or another. My dad - " he cut off, his voice suddenly lost. He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath, and then continued. "My dad always said that to be a good Auror, you need to assume the worst has happened to be able to pursue the correct course of action." He stopped, waiting for Lily to respond; to his surprise, she didn't say a word, just studying the map between them.
"Ellen Lockford," she read from the tiny label beside the dot. "She isn't meant to be out. It's her, it's got to be. But where is she?"
James returned his gaze to the parchment in front of him and folded the edges of the square out. They both peered at the name of the corridor that Ellen Lockford's dot was situated on.
The fifth floor corridor.
( I'm a renegade, it's in my blood )
Evan Rosier never thought his triumphant grin would disappear; he was hailed as a hero in the Slytherin Common Room that night. The memory of hiding in the dark, waiting for that dim-witted blonde Ravenclaw, Ellen Something-or-other in the fifth floor corridor, would always stay with him. The feeling of extending his arm, wand clutched in his right hand, and shooting the Cruciatus Curse at her would be something that he would never be able to get enough of. He had focused six years worth of hatred at her when he had performed that Curse, six years of hating what the stupid Mudblood-loving Ministry had done to the Wizarding world; she felt his resentment in the form of absolute agony. He stifled a laugh at that.
Vixie Brown, the first person in the House who had performed an Unforgivable on another student, was sat on the sidelines of the euphoria. Evan watched her out of the corner of his eye. Her default expression (anger, condescension and a sneer to match) was firmly in place on her face, but her eyes showed an emptiness that Evan didn't like the look of. He had no idea what was missing, but there was something wrong with the girl.
Evan turned his head and, sure enough, found Leilani King and Josiah Thomson sat together on the opposite side of the Common Room. Josiah had an arm around Leilani's shoulders and he seemed to be comforting her. From across the room, Evan noticed Vixie's dark, spiteful eyes narrow at the sight. So that was it, then, Evan thought. She's jealous of Leilani. She fancies Thomson and she wants him all to herself.
Clayton Mulciber broke through the wildly cheering crowd to clap a celebratory hand on Evan's shoulder. A proud grin dominated his features as he congratulated Evan.
"Well done!" He extended his hand and Evan, feeling foolish, shook it. "Welcome to the team," Mulciber added, clapping the slimmer boy on the shoulder a few more times before weaving off through the crowd again.
Evan put his hands up, a placating smile on his face, and attempted to follow Mulciber; he had had an incredibly long day, what with planning the whole night out in advance, and just wanted to go to bed and get some sleep.
"Let the man through," a loud and demanding voice demanded from behind him. He spun around so quickly that his surroundings were a whirl of colour for a moment before being able to focus on the person who had spoken.
"He's had a long day and, believe me, that Curse takes a lot out of you." Vixie Brown added onto her previous sentence, allowing Evan a brief, albeit very icy, smile before folding her arms over her chest and glaring at the other students until they parted like the red sea to let him through.
She stalked towards him, stopping for a second beside him to say, "Try some Dittany on your Mark," before walking off again. He froze for a second (he hadn't even thought to look at his new Dark Mark) before putting on another smile and hurrying through the gap made for him.
As the darkness closed over his head when he finally crawled into his four-poster, Evan wondered grimly if Vixie Brown was the ice queen that she always made out to be.
A/N: So there we go. I ended it too early (at the end of the first section) and had no idea what to write to make my word count go up, so I decided to go with some Slytherin action there. It adds to some of my future plot anyway, so it all worked out fine! Please review some more, I love reading them and they make me a very happy writer. Oh, and feel free to wish me a happy sixteenth birthday (FYI it's on the 14th April)!
- Lauren