Can only apologise for the delay.
Still working on the chapter titles. Sorry!
Hope you enjoy.
EDIT: As of the 26/06/15, I have an apology to issue... In my keen-ness to publish what I thought was a pretty good chapter back when I was first writing this story, I appear to have skipped a fairly significant plot point, which is now becoming relevant again as my story progresses. At the risk of ruining the subtle elements of my story, I have re-edited this chapter to include a paragraph that was somehow lost in the original posting.
I can only apologise, I hope it doesn't ruin your reading and I hope that you stick with me and my story.
I also have to note that it was thanks to a very helpful review that I noticed this missing piece of the story, and so thank you for your review, they really do help!
Thanks and Sorry and enjoy the story...again!
Lily's legs stopped hurting gradually, and by the time Slughorn announced his first big Slug Club party a week later, she could no longer use the injuries as an excuse. It was to be held on the Friday. Normally, he gave more than two days warning, but he told her that it was a quickly arranged one and that he regretted not having thrown a Halloween party.
"I meant to throw a little get together in the week after Halloween, you know I always think that there is a bit of a lull. Not quite Christmas time, but when Halloween is over, it's a little dull."
"Hmm..." Lily tried not to speak. She thought that she wouldn't mind a bit of dullness, a bit of a break from the rapid-fire succession of disasters that she had been dealing with since returning to Hogwarts.
Slughorn took her silence for agreement.
"Well, Miss Evans, I'm hoping to see you there. Have a good breakfast, Potions today will be a tricky one, though not for you, I'm sure!"
He chuckled and strode off, forcing the students making their way up the hall to dive to either side to avoid being flattened. She managed about three steps down the corridor, before someone tapped her on the arm. She looked around and saw Pandora, a fourth year Ravenclaw, who whispered to her in an undertone.
"I'd try and hide if I were you, Lily."
"Why?" She was taken aback by what appeared to be seaweed in the younger girls hair, but she knew better than to ask what it was.
"I saw Rita looking for y-"
"Lily!"
She turned and made a noise somewhere between a gasp of surprise and a groan. Pandora had been right, but a little too late to be of any help. Rita Skeeter was barely two inches from Lily's face, a strand of Lily's hair had flicked across her face and Lily had to pull it and free it from her blonde, lacquered curls.
"Lily!" her voice was falsely conspiratorial, as if they were best friends and Lily had kept a secret from her. "I thought you would have told me your big news!"
"What is my big news?" Lily moaned, almost past caring about the latest rumours. Pandora took a step away from her, staring at the ceiling as if she hadn't just been warning Lily about this very situation.
"My turn to ask questions!" Rita chided, she wasn't really the sort to answer questions.
"Rita, I'm busy, I have to go! Bye, Pandora!" She skirted quickly around Rita and started off down the corridor. Rita shouted after her, not one to surrender a subject while they were still free of tears.
"Can I assume you'll be bringing the new boyfriend to Slughorn's party?"
"She's a bloody nightmare, that Rita! Now, every person I talk to at that party is going to be in the frame for my new boyfriend. I wouldn't be surprised if she's taking odds on it!"
"Nah, no chance! She's not in it for the money, she just enjoys ruining people's lives." Jac was shaking some crumbling leaves into her cauldron, and Lily dived across the desk to stop her before she added too many.
"Well, she's not exactly ruining my life, just complicating it. Slughorn always expects us to bring someone along, and now I can't ask..."
"Who? Who were you going to ask?" Jac jumped on the issue excitedly.
"Dunno, I just mean anyone... No one's going to want to go with me."
"I'll go!" Jac smirked. "We could really start a rumour!"
At that, Karen laughed loudly from the other side of the table, and a few of the tables around them looked over, some reproachfully, for Slughorn had been right and the potion was very complex, others curiously.
"Shh!" Lily hissed, looking apologetically up, but failing to keep the smile from her face.
"Don't shush me, Lily! You'd better get a date, it's starting to be sad, first Hogsmeade, now Slughorn's party!"
"Oh, shut up! You sound like Potter, there's nothing wrong with being by yourself!" She involuntarily glanced towards where the four boys were working, a table over and saw that James had obviously overheard his name, and was looking straight into his cauldron, with a fixed, frozen sort of expression that suggested he was listening to every word.
The opportunity to wind up James Potter didn't come often, and with all the very serious things that had happened to her, she hadn't been fun in a while. Hadn't she resolved to be more fun?
Now was her chance, if only she could play this right.
Nudging Jac, she raised her voice slightly, not enough to make it clear that she was trying to be overheard.
"Yeah, I heard about that! I don't usually trust any of Rita's rumours, but I kind of believe that one."
Both Jac and Karen looked confused, but followed Lily's glance and saw James, eyes resolutely secured to his potion, and both broke into massive grins. Lily was surprised they had understood so quickly, maybe they were naturally more fun than her. Jac certainly was but she thought that perhaps she was on a par with Karen as far as being dull went.
Still, Karen was having a secret romance, and that was pretty not boring. Lily resolved that she should have a secret romance at some point although really, any romance would have been noteworthy.
Jac chimed in.
"Well, I didn't hear it from Rita, so she's obviously already started her work on spreading it about! You'd think she was getting paid!"
Then Karen added to the effort.
"You know, now that I think about it, I never really hear any gossip about James, he causes trouble but he's never really the subject of rumours..."
"That's because he's not ashamed of anything, rumours only arise when you're private, or when you are the sort of person that people don't know a lot about. Potter's quite open about all the details of his life, so... nothing for people to wonder about, I suppose."
Jac and Karen nodded thoughtfully, then burst out laughing. They were so convincing that Lily almost asked what the joke was, but she dared a glance over at James, who had alerted the other three to the situation and now all four were standing in comic silence, ears clearly straining to hear the conversation.
Lily couldn't resist keeping going.
"But doesn't it make you think about... I mean, you have to wonder..." She raised her eyebrows knowingly. Lily hadn't gotten so far as to actually imagine what the rumour might be, and so she couldn't be specific, but Jac and Karen reacted wonderfully, contributing half-sentences and nearly formed thoughts that betrayed nothing as to the actual story. She was still Lily Evans, and she couldn't abandon her potion completely, no matter how entertaining the torment of James Potter was. She bowed her head and focussed on the book propped up in front of her. Her attention was able to stay on the instructions for about five seconds, as a ball of paper hit her head and fell onto the page in front of her.
She looked up and saw Jac and Karen smiling at one another mischievously.
She unfurled the parchment, and read.
Maybe you could take James to Slughorn's party? Rita's going to tell people about it anyway, might as well commit the crime if you're going to do the time.
She thought about scrunching the paper back up and chucking it at one of her friends but she couldn't decide which of them deserved to get hit more and Slughorn was approaching for his routine check of the cauldrons. She dropped the ball of paper into her open bag with a withering look at Jac and gave the bubbling contents of her cauldron a cursory stir.
The rest of Potions was passed by continuing the game of tormenting Potter and his friends. It was fun to be the one doing the annoying for once, she was so used to being the one with the sinking, panicked feeling of wondering what Potter had done now. Perhaps, she mused as she settled down to her lunch, greeting a pale Mary MacDonald with warmth.
"You okay, Mary?"
"Mm-hmm!" she nodded, her eyelids drooping as she spooned soup into her mouth. "I'm just tired, between Quidditch and classes, I'm barely sleeping..."
Lily felt bad for Mary, she sensed that in a year's time, she would be in a very similar situation. Not playing Quidditch but NEWTs were enough to stress about on their own and when combined with prefect duties and her uncanny knack for attracting stress and drama to her life, she thought that she might very well be the one committed to the Hospital Wing with stress.
She knew it wasn't her place, but as a newly-reconstituted acquaintance and classmate of James, she wondered if she mightn't be able to help poor Mary out.
Jac and Karen had put their heads together to come up with a piece of gossip that matched their reaction, an unusual sequence of events. Lily kept out of it, she knew from Karen's first suggestions that it was very likely going to involve some kind of romantic interest, and Lily was still a bit uncertain about how to convey her not-caring but still interested-as-a-friend-in-his-happiness.
She looked around when her two friends fell uncharacteristically quiet and saw that the topic of discussion had arrived. James looked a little reluctant to take the seat next to Jac but quickly got over it and sat down.
He seemed determined to avoid the issue, turning to the girls with an air of casual friendliness.
"So, that potion was a bit of a nightmare, wasn't-"
"What did you hear from Rita about James?" James might have been trying to avoid the issue, but Sirius wasn't so subtle.
Jac and Karen's eyes met and if Lily hadn't still been looking worriedly at Mary, she might have noticed the trouble-making smirk that crossed both their faces.
"What?" Karen blinked innocently, looking as if 'gossip' was a foreign word to her.
"In Potions," Sirius clarified, through a mouthful of bread, "You three were talking about it, sounded interesting! I like to keep up to date with my James gossip, and he hasn't told me anything!"
"Because there's nothing to tell!" James said, exasperation clear in his voice and Lily could tell that James had been subjected to Sirius's persistent questioning from the Potions to the Great Hall.
"Is that so, James?" Jac asked, one eyebrow raised in question.
"Yes!" he nodded, then looked doubtful. "Why, what did you hear?"
"Why? What did you do?" Karen countered, her smirk firmly in place, a smirk that Lily thought, having turned away from Mary to observe her work taking on a life of its own, must have seemed familiar to James. It was the same one he wore when calling her his lucky charm, that 'aren't-I-so-charming-and-witty' smile that drove Lily insane.
"Nothing..." he sounded less confident, and Lily wondered what he had done. She worried for a second that he might be thinking about Remus. If Lily had been a werewolf, she would have panicked whenever someone mentioned any kind of secret.
"You don't sound as sure as you did earlier!" Sirius said. "Oi, Evans! You're the one that brought it up, weren't you?"
James Potter might not have been the sort of person who was easily embarrassed, but Lily was pretty certain at that moment that James was not entirely the unabashed, open person that she thought he was, and that he was wishing that he could apparate away from this painful conversation.
"Look, just tell us, what's the rumour?"
Jac and Karen looked at one another, as if trying to decide whether to do something, the sort of thing that you only did if there was someone else, equally to blame, to take the consequences of it going wrong with you.
"Oh, nothing major, just the whole thing about you and Lily secretly dating."
A sudden urge to lodge her fork in Karen's eyeball overtook Lily, and she choked on the piece of food she had been working her way through.
"What?" Lily coughed, her voice mutinous as she looked furiously from Karen to Jac, realising her idea had just been thoroughly hi-jacked.
She choked out a denial, her face almost hissing as the heat poured out of her skin.
She absolutely couldn't meet the eye of any of the four gawping boys.
"Jac's joking, aren't you?" she said through gritted teeth, a silent threat passed between them, accompanied by a hard kick to the leg.
"'Course I'm joking!" Jac quickly laughed, but Lily couldn't bear it, she had to get out of there. Knowing that the exit would only raise more questions, she weighed her options for a few seconds before grasping the strap of her bag, and sprinting out of the Hall, food still in her mouth that she couldn't swallow because of the lump in her throat.
She had to face the fact that she cared what James Potter thought of her. She didn't fancy him, and she really would have preferred a date with the Giant Squid, but in the same way she had been pleased to hear that he had remembered her words, that she thought he was better than he pretended to be, she couldn't deny that she wanted him to think of her in a certain way.
To be fair, she wanted everyone to think of her in a certain way. She wanted them to see her as kind, and fair and considerate. She wanted to be thought of as strong and brave and dependable. She wanted them not to see the sadness, the sister of a girl who hated her, the best friend of a boy who couldn't see the worth of people like her. She wanted them to see her as a Gryffindor.
She couldn't deny that there had been a slight thrill to hearing Sirius repeating, in his casual, offhand way, compliments that James had paid her. She had needed to know that someone liked her, someone thought of her as something other than a 'mudblood' and a 'freak'. For so long, she had viewed herself through the eyes of Petunia and Severus, their opinions and experiences of her were all she considered herself to be made of. It had been a salve to a battered ego to hear the lovely words that a boy so respected thought of her. It had been nice to think that she was liked.
She didn't like James Potter, but she didn't want him to think he liked her. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew that if she really didn't care about him, it wouldn't have mattered to her a jot what he thought about her, but she dragged her mind away from that rarely-visited corner.
Trying to sort through her feelings had always been a monumental task for Lily, and she felt like there had been a rapid succession of things to care about since she had returned to Hogwarts.
She needed to forget about the James Potter feelings, they were no good to her now, she simply needed to forget about it and laugh it off when confronted with it. She could be casual and cool about the whole thing. She, Lily Evans, was fun and part of being fun was being able to take a joke.
"Is it safe to come in?" Jac's voice was outside the door to the girls' dormitory, where Lily had been lying, frozen, eyes tracing the patterns of the curtains.
"Can't promise anything..." she grumbled, she would have to be a little annoyed, she couldn't let that go, but she would laugh eventually.
"So..." Jac smirked, as she and Karen edged into the room, followed by Lynn. Karen skirted round the room, avoiding passing within strangling distance of Lily's bed, and disappeared into the bathroom. "Sorry about that."
"It's fine." Lily answered sort of honestly. She would have preferred that Jac hadn't forced her to confront her feelings, non-capitalized, which were very different from Feelings, which were generally romantic, dreamy sorts of sentiments. She had feelings about Potter, she did not have Feelings for him.
"Lily?" Jac seemed genuinely worried that she had hurt her friend, and Lily didn't have the heart to pretend she was wounded.
"Jac, don't worry about it! It's a natural reaction, I'm not used to being fun, and my body rejected it, like a bad cold, but I'm okay, I just need to keep being fun, build up some resistance!"
Jac didn't seem entirely convinced, but she was willing to drop it.
"So, seems to me like we ought to keep the fun going?"
"That would be the most sensible thing to do."
"Obviously!"
"Of course... So, what else is fun?"
Jac laughed.
"Is that your exhaustive list of what it means to be fun, making someone think there's a rumour about them flying around the school?"
"When you say it like that, I feel a bit bad!" she ignored Lynn's snide 'of course you do!', and continued, "Maybe I should apologise t-"
"No!" Jac, Lynn and Karen, through the bathroom door all shouted, and Lily jumped at the strength of their reaction, then suspicion loomed.
"Why?" she narrowed her eyes. "What happened after I left dinner?"
"We... ate the rest of our dinner." Jac murmured evasively, suddenly finding the blanket's loose threads fascinating.
Lynn started towards her bed, trying to look tired, a fake looking yawn stretching her face. Lily was a practised faker of tiredness and she knew a fake yawn when she saw one.
"You two! Tell me what happened, now!"
"We... can't."
"Yes, you can, and will."
Suddenly, Lynn darted for the door, employing Lily's earlier tactic and was gone before Lily could decide whether a Leg-Locker or a Tripping Jinx was better to use.
She gripped Jac by the wrist, refusing to let both of them off.
She looked pleadingly at her friend and could see the resolve wavering.
"Look, Lily, please! I don't want to tell you, please just trust me that you don't need to know?"
There was something so sincere, so genuine in her tone that Lily had to surrender. She nodded, if Jac didn't want to tell her, it wasn't her business. A brief, not altogether unpleasant, image of James declaring a deep affection for her to the Gryffindor table flitted across her mind, but she quickly dismissed it.
"Fine. I'll let it go. Just promise me you told Potter that you were joking?"
"I did when you were there! You heard me!"
"Fine." She tried to ignore the burning feeling of embarrassment that scrunched up her chest. There was nothing more to do. "So, what will we do?"
"Well, being fun isn't always about a big plan, it's just about being spontaneous. So..."
"So, what could we do spontaneously?" she mused.
"Kind of sounds like you're planning it. What's the first thing that comes to mind?"
"Let's... I dunno, I have some Herbology homework to do?" The look on Jac's face before she realised it was a joke was to funny and Lily started laughing.
"Let's just go to the kitchens."
Jac pulled Lily from her place on her bed and the pair ran down the stairs, shouting a goodbye to Karen who responded through the bathroom door.
As the two girls ran down the stairs, Lily raised a question that she had been holding onto for a while.
"D'you know what's happening with Karen?"
"Nah, she doesn't want to tell us who she's going out with."
"But why?"
"Maybe she's embarrassed? Dunno. Maybe it's Nigel!"
Lily snorted, she couldn't think of a couple less suited than kind, good-natured Karen and pompous, arrogant Nigel, except maybe Nigel and Jac, or Nigel and herself, alright there were a few couples who would be worse.
As they crossed the Common room, Lily refused to look around, not wanting to have to meet Potter's eyes, and she struck up a conversation as they clambered through the Portrait Hole.
"So, Couples that would be less suited than Nigel and Karen?"
"Winifred and Thomas Arthur." Jac was slightly bitter that Winifred, her casual enemy, had been dating the old Hufflepuff captain, who had been widely agreed to be the most attractive boy in the school, until he left two years ago.
"Alright. Although, they're both quite outgoing, and they both like Quidditch, so..."
"Fine..." she searched for another couple.
"Doesn't need to be actual couples, can be fictional."
"Oh! Well, that's heaps more fun. How about Remus Lupin and Rita Skeeter?"
The laugh that escaped Lily at the idea of those two was far too loud. Covering her mouth with her hand to stifle the giggles as they continued naming couples, they rounded a corner and ran straight into the four people Lily would have paid a good amount of money to avoid.
She was so busy trying to be quiet that she physically rammed into Sirius, Jac accidently tackling Peter, and they jumped back in surprise.
Lily let Jac do the talking, she wasn't actually sure whether she would be able to speak without flushing a bright, tomato red and stuttering.
She could have killed Jac for ruining her excellent joke by turning it into a James and Lily issue.
Jac explained, without any hint of feeling the awkwardness that Lily was sure must be radiating from her, that they were on their way to the kitchens.
There was a second of silence in which Lily was working on a way to escape as quickly as possible. She thought that running away from them twice in the same day might alert them to the fact that something was wrong. Not that anything was wrong of course, Lily just didn't like people thinking she fancied James Potter, especially if those people included James Potter.
She was surprised, in her state of black-out panic to hear her name.
"Lily?" She was dragged back to the present. "Lily."
She looked up, and saw that it was James who was speaking to her.
"Do you mind? It'll only take a minute."
What had he asked her. She cursed the way her brain tended to shut down when she was under pressure, with only the most basic of thoughts flashing through it. She had to answer, everyone was looking at her expectantly.
"Sure, okay..." she hesitated, and then, seeing James reach out to her, let herself be led away from the group, and round the corner.
Almost entirely certain that the remaining three of his friends and Jac would be listening intently, she walked a little further down the corridor before turning to face him. She wanted to blurt out immediately: "I don't fancy you and I didn't tell my friends that I did."
Something stopped her, she was completely tongue-tied. This feeling was one that she had experienced around Potter before, but on those past occasions, it had been the result of an actual Tongue-Tying Hex, which he had used on everyone he ran into for about three months after he had learned it in second year.
This was different.
"Lily, listen, about what Jac said earlier."
"It's not true." Good, she was simply grateful that words, any words, were forthcoming.
"Right, yeah, I thought that." He looked a little hesitant, but continued. "Considering that I've never been on a date with you, secret or otherwise. You know, generally that's a big indication that you're not dating someone."
"Right." There was nothing she could say. She couldn't help but wonder what he wanted to say to her. Maybe it was in some way to do with whatever had happened after she had left dinner. She was still, though she wasn't going to ask, curious about what had happened.
"Look, I'm not-"
Whatever James wasn't, she would never know, because at that moment, another group of people whom Lily would have preferred not to run into rounded the corner and spotted the two Gryffindors, both of whom immediately looked defensive upon seeing the green ties and sneering expressions of the oncoming group.
Lily felt her heart plummet when she spotted Severus among the crowd and for some reason, she felt her chest constrict and breathing suddenly became very strained. James noticed the change in her, it would have been hard not to with the way she had suddenly started taking the sort of laboured breaths that one might take after a bout of heavy exercise.
"Oh look! The Muggle and the Muggle-lover, out for a little midnight stroll, are we?"
"It's eight o'clock." James barked, his voice betrayed nothing. He surprisingly wasn't looking his usual self, he didn't look excited to show up a few Slytherins. If anything, he looked reluctant to engage with the group.
The Slytherins seemed to move as a group, closing in on James and Lily. Lily could only imagine that the four round the corner were genuinely out of earshot because it didn't seem like Sirius's style to hide from a confrontation. She noticed among the Slytherins a young boy who looked remarkably like Sirius. She had never taken much notice of him before, but he looked to be a few years younger than them and she had a vague recollection of Sirius having a brother. It seemed like a fault of hers that she didn't know very much at all about a boy that she had shared classes with and known for so long. There wasn't really time for self reflection, when every one of those Slytherins looked ready to attack.
"James?" she muttered, wanting more than anything to get out of the situation. "C'mon, let's go."
"Taking orders from the Muggle, Potter? You're even worse than I thought." A tall boy, in the year above them, who Lily could remember was called Avery, was approaching.
"She's not a Muggle." James said through gritted teeth. Lily was so surprised at the restraint that she hadn't even thought to be insulted by the obvious contempt in Avery's voice. "And if she were, it wouldn't matter. I'd still prefer her to any of you."
"Well, we all know you think that, Muggle lover, but you Potters are as bad as them. Taking in blood traitors like Black, befriending morons like Pettigrew. You Gryffindors are all the same, you're all-"
But the sentence fell apart when the reinforcements arrived in the form of four very angry looking Gryffindors, who stepped out of the shadows, wands already drawn.
"Better looking?" Lily didn't need to turn round to know that it was Sirius who had spoken. She was smart enough to not to let her eyes leave the threat ahead, but she found her eyes drawn to one person in particular. Regulus Black's face was a study in restraint. There was no recognition of the fact that he was standing a few feet from his only brother. Lily couldn't help herself imagining her and Petunia in that situation on such well-defined opposite sides of what was shaping up to become a war.
She hadn't noticed that attention had turned back to her. Though she felt her throat tighten again, she felt undoubtedly safer with her friends by her side. Still, she was sure that it called upon to speak, she would have revealed herself to be terrified, from the tremor in her throat to her incapacity to get a proper breath in.
"So, Evans, how are the scars healing? Didn't think it was possible for you to get any uglier, but those scars don't help." He pointed at the thin red lines running up one arm and Lily felt them prickle painfully. The bandaged arm ached like a fresh wound and Lily was pretty sure that if she looked, there would be another dark stain spreading across the bandage.
Lily was fairly certain that she wasn't going to maintain the presence that she was perfectly able to breathe for much longer, but none of the other Gryffindors seemed willing to step in. Lily was preoccupied with getting air to her lungs and stopping the rising panic, but she was surprised that none of her friends had said a word. They all seemed to be looking to Lily, letting her dictate the response. She wasn't exactly capable of working out how best to extricate herself and her friends before the curses started to fly.
• She, against her better judgment, looked through the Slytherin faces, and found Severus. His face was as cold as the others, a look of distaste on his face but Lily couldn't believe that it was for the same reason.
Everyone else there was disgusted that a Muggle-born like her was allowed to be in their school, in their world and wasn't ashamed or deferential. Severus seemed to be focussed less on her, and more on James, who hadn't left his place by her side.
Come on, Lily, you could take these idiots in a fight. Just breathe.
As if he had heard her think his name, James looked across to her, his eyes losing the glare he had been observing the Slytherins with for the first time. He noticed in a second that something was wrong, she knew that he must have been seeing the greyish, clammy skin, the shaking, unsteady breaths and the fact that her hands were curled into fists at her sides.
He seemed immobilised and Lily couldn't help but wonder why he wasn't slinging insults and hexes towards the Slytherins who he had, in the past, regarded as a sort of target practice.
In any case, she was starting to see spots clouding her vision and was almost grateful to the Slytherins when, apparently deciding the odds were no longer as greatly in their favour, they retreated, throwing a few snide remarks and insults but quickly vanishing back down the corridor they had emerged from earlier.
It was only then that Lily felt her legs give way and then there was a bit of a vague period in which she heard herself hit the floor but felt nothing, and saw her friends gather round her, but heard nothing.
There was an odd, ringing sort of screech in her ears that lasted too long, and she couldn't quite remember how to form the words, or indeed what she might say if she could speak. She needed to remember how to breathe, that was the first thing she knew, that was most important.
It took a moment, barely a heartbeat, when she thought she would never take another breath, but instinct took over, and she gasped, as if resurfacing from water.
She lay shaking on the cold stone for a few moments, and slowly felt her body return to her control. She had a short while of simply being grateful that she could breathe again, before another feeling came creeping in. She became aware, in a way that hadn't occurred to her before, that she had basically fainted at the sight of a few idiotic Slytherins and that she was currently lying on the floor of a corridor, surrounded by James Potter, his friends, and Jac, who, despite Lily's great affection for the girl, wasn't great at keeping embarrassing moments to herself.
Hoping against hope that they might all decide to be considerate and spontaneously leave her to recover, she pushed her hands against the stone floor and heaved herself upright.
Seeing her move, the others, who seemed to have been frozen, sprung into action. Without saying a word, Remus and Peter each grabbed one of her arms and helped her stand. Sirius jokingly made to grab one of her legs, but she kicked at him, and everyone smiled. Jac, James and Sirius walked along behind her, and no one spoke. Lily could barely hear the sound of six pairs of feet scuffing along the corridor, and was still distracted by the fact that she could think clearly. She never mentioned the Hospital Wing, and nor did anyone else but they moved in that direction anyway and knocked on the door.
Madame Pomfrey seemed to be annoyed that Lily had obviously stressed herself out, but when Jac explained it, as Lily certainly couldn't, her attitude changed from irritation to downright anger.
There was a moment when Lily thought she was about to be the first ever person to receive a detention from Madame Pomfrey, but as it turned out, she wasn't angry at Lily.
"I mean, it's quite outrageous! Imagine tormenting a poor, injured girl like her, so soon after a major injury! It's terrible! I have a good mind to go straight to Professor Dumbledore, and report them!"
"Don't!" Lily gasped, the pain in her arm that had radiated out since the bandage was removed was making it, once again, difficult to speak.
Everyone, including Madame Pomfrey, looked at her as if she was insane, and it wasn't altogether impossible, but she knew that if they reported something as small as a few comments in a corridor every time it happened then when something big happened, everyone would just say that they had a vendetta against the Slytherins and were trying anything to get them kicked out of school.
"I don't want to cause problems... I just want to get fixed and go to bed!"
She looked around at their faces and could tell that every one of them was desperate to argue with her, but she was injured and tired and they seemingly took pity on her. Madame Pomfrey bound her arm up and made her drink a potion to help with her sleeping. When she was pronounced healthier than she had been when she came in, Sirius and James took their turn and helped her out of bed and they started the journey to Gryffindor Tower, with a mumbling, quiet conversation taking place between Jac, Remus and Peter that she was too tired to try and overhear.
When they had eventually made it back to the common room, Jac took Lily's arm from Peter, and Remus let her go. The four boys stood looking worried as Jac pulled Lily towards the staircase.
She was only on the first step when she heard the discussion start behind her.
"What the bloody hell happened there?" Sirius asked in his usual loud voice that carried right up the stairs.
"Looked like she panicked when she saw the Slytherins. Snape in particular..." Peter added in a quieter voice. "I don't blame her."
"It seemed like she was in real pain...That wasn't just being scared of a few idiots. Besides when have you ever seen Lily shy away from a fight?"
"When it's with Snivelly? Every day for five years!" Lily almost wanted to march back down the stair and tell Sirius where to go but she let Jac drag her away and the rest of the conversation was lost to her ears.