Friday afternoon came earlier than expected. The marauders and lily had been preparing, planning, and trying to rally other trustworthy students all week. So far they had the five of them, frank and alice, marlene, mary, hestia, dorcas, and a girl named molly prewett. Not a lot of people. They had been meeting for the past two days down by the lake during lunch, covering different dueling spells and telling them the plan.
And now it was time. The twelve of them walked down through a passage james had told them about. Lily had no idea how he had found it but now wasn't the time to ask questions. It was past four and they had to hurry to get to the ministry in time.
They reached the end of the passage and found that it led just out of the hogwarts grounds.
"Okay." james clapped his hands together "who here knows how to apparate?" lily was embarrassed by the fact she couldn't raise her hand. She hadn't passed the exam. About seven hands went up total. Good. more than half of them.
"Good." james nodded "everybody will have to pick a partner to do side-along apparation with, except two people, of course. They'll have to go alone."
The next few minutes were spent with people picking apparation partners. Lily paired with james, remus with sirius, peter with the girl named molly, frank with marlene, alice with mary, and dorcas and hestia would be going alone.
"On the count of three." frank said. the group counted and lily grabbed james's hand.
"One…"
"Two…"
"Three."
And lily felt a pulling at her navel, and her head spun as the sensation of being squeezed together swept her up.
Before she knew it she was released and they had landed outside the ministry of magic. They waited for the others to arrive. As soon as they were all there they walked in a loosely-knit group to the visitors entrance. It was used for giving tours and such. It was probably where the death eaters would be entering, since you couldn't apparate inside the ministry. Just like you couldn't apparate inside hogwarts.
Once inside they tried to look inconspicuous in the small crowd of people. It was almost four forty. Dorcas and mary stayed by the entrance door. Peter went off with molly to try and get people to leave any way they could. The less people in here the better. Thankfully, the two of them were good at being nosy and invading personal space when called for, and in the next ten minutes they had probably already gotten fifteen people to leave.
Shit. they only had ten minutes left. Lily stomach was doing backflips. Sirius and remus went off with hestia and frank to get as close to the employee's entrance as they could. They were going to try and keep the death eaters out of the rest of the ministry. The rest of them spread out. Before she and james separated lily grabbed james by the front of his shirt and kissed him. Hard. if she was going to die today she would not die without doing that first. She pulled back and james looked awestruck. She had never kissed him like that before.
"Listen," lily said, breathing hard "i love you, james potter. So don't die today, okay?" and she didn't give him a chance to respond before she ran off.
Four minutes.
Three.
Two.
One.
Five O'clock.
Five-o-one.
Maybe they were wrong- maybe they weren't coming-
BANG
The door slammed open and screams of terror rang out at the sight of the dozens of death eaters in their cloaks and masks. Lily had to remind herself not to scream along with the rest of them.
They spread out through the room, pushing people down and firing spells off and random. No green lights yet, though. That meant they hadn't fired an unforgivable. Good. lily waited. She waited for one to get close to her. And then-
Lily held her wand low enough for it to be discrete and whispered the spell.
"Baubillious" a white light shot out of the tip of her wand and hit the death eater, flooring him and actually knocking him out. Lily screamed for effect and looked around, as if looking for who had cast the spell. it worked. A death eater ran right past her and when he did
"Confringo!"
Fire shot out of the end of her wand, hitting the death eater in the back and causing his robes to catch on fire. He screamed in pain and another death eater came over to put the flames out. Lily hexed them both and turned to run away, only when she began to run away she ran smack-dab into the chest of another death eater. She tried to pull her wand up but she wasn't fast enough. He grabbed her wrist and turned it painfully, and lily cried out, dropping her wand into his hand. He pocketed her wand and wrapped an arm around her middle, dragging her across the room to a growing pile of helpless wizards and their families.
Lily kicked and squirmed, but she couldn't manage to escape his grip. He was nearly twice her size.
He threw her down roughly with the others. Lily looked around and noticed gratefully that none of the rest of the group from hogwarts was there. They were still fighting. Lily looked up and saw duels happening all around the room. The twelve of them from hogwarts were putting up one hell of a fight but lily didn't think they could win. Then lily saw a green light and sucked her breath in. she knew which curse it was as soon as she heard the screams.
As soon as the screams stopped the limp body of hestia was dragged over with the rest of them. Lily ran to her and knelt on the ground beside her. She wasn't crying or shaking, just staring at nothing with an expression of pure torture. Lily knew how it felt. She sat next to her and whispered soothing words, rubbing circles on her back until she sat up.
"Are you alright?" lily asked quietly. Hestia simply gave a dull nod. Lily nodded back.
"So what now?" she asked after another few minutes.
"I don't know." lily admitted. They were surrounded by what must have been around ten death eaters guarding them.
Another scream and alice was pushed over with the rest of the victims.
"Alice, are you alright?" lily and hestia both asked. She had been hit with the conjunctivitis curse, by the looks of it. Scabs were growing by her eyes and alice moaned, pulling at them.
"Alice, no!" lily commanded, grabbing her hands. Picking at the scabs would only make them worse.
"I- i can't see." breathed alice in a panick.
"I know, i know." lily held her hands in her lap "it's okay. We'll get out of here, we'll fix this.
The fight raged on and in the next few minutes molly and peter were both thrown in with the rest of them. Death eaters were dropping too, but at a much lower rate than the hogwarts students.
"We need to do something." lily whispered as quietly as possible to the four of them.
"Like what?" peter asked "we're outnumbered two to one."
"And they took our wands." hestia added
"I know, i know." lily nodded. Then she had an idea.
"Follow my lead." lily said to the rest of them
"Wait- what?" peter asked
"Just do it!" lily urged before-
"Knight's armour!" she yelled at the top of her lungs. She knew the marauders would know what it meant. Fourth year they had been seen in the hall missing from class, and in order to cause a diversion to get away before they were assigned detention they had cast a spell on the suits of armour in the hall to make them dance. They had run away while the teachers were distracted by the medieval show.
A death eater backhanded lily across the face for yelling and lily fell backwards at the sting of it, but quickly sat back up and waited.
A loud crash sounded and lily looked to see that the chandelier had fallen from the ceiling, luckily, everyone else had also looked. Including the death eaters.
"Now!" lily said to the others and jumped on the back of the closest death eater- a small woman who fell over quite easily. Lily grabbed the woman's wand and cast petrificus totalus on her, then again on the two death eaters who had turned to look at her. Thankfully, the rest of them had followed her lead and attacked the death eaters. Even alice had managed to take down one. Lily quickly grabbed all their wands and handed them out to the four hogwarts students. Then she had handed the remaining ones to the group that was cowering there.
"Make yourselves useful." she commanded before rushing off back into the thick of things.
She threw hex after hex. Some of them hit the mark, some of them didn't. Lily ran, looking for james, but just as she spotted him she felt a searing crack in her ankle and fell down with a cry of pain. She sat up as quickly as she could and felt the area gently. Definitely broken. She tried to raise her wand to stop the death eater in front of her, but another came up from behind her and grabbed the wand, holding it over her throat and lifting her up with it. Lily could hardly breath with the pressure that was being put on her throat. She gasped and choked, but it was no good. He lifted her until her feet were off the ground and she was seeing black spots.
"Lily!" she looked to see james running for her, covered in blood, wand raised, but a death eater grabbed him too. They grabbed his wand roughly and held his arms tight behind his back. He struggled against their grip but it was no good.
"Stop! He yelled at the death eater holding her and she kicked her feet limply, trying to get a hold on the floor and release the pressure on her throat that was killing her at this point.
"She can't breath!" james exclaimed and the death eaters simply laughed.
Within the next minute whatever students had been left standing were all captured in the grip of one or more death eaters, and james kept screaming. Lily was only a few seconds from a blackout when
"Igor." a bone chilling voice rang out. "Can't you see the boy is distressed? Let the girl breath." suddenly the wand was lifted from her throat and lily's feet hit the ground with astounding pain in her one ankle. She tried to cry out but all that happened was she coughed violently. The death eater grabbed her hands and pinned them behind her back, holding her up enough for a great pain to be on her ankle still, but not enough to let her fall. Lily stopped squirming when she saw where the voice had come from. It was voldemort himself. The tall, dark-haired man whose gaunt face stuck out from his robes. Terror filled lily at an alarming rate.
"Yes," he cackled "i know that look. The look of fear. Well, thank you, my dear, because i relish it." he walked closer to her and brushed a cold hand down her face. Lily could do nothing but stare.
"Are you the one i've been hearing about?" He asked, taking a few steps back towards james "the girl that turned this man into a blood traitor?" voldemort's hand struck out, fast as an asp and grabbed james's face in a death grip. James struggled against it, but it was no use. Voldemort only tightened his grip.
"He's not only a pure blood, but a peverell. So, so lucky. And yet, here you are, defiling the gift of your blood status for her?" he asked james and then clucked his tongue in disappointment.
"Why would you throw everything away like that? She's not exactly a pain on the eyes, but nonetheless, she is a filthy, disgusting, mudblood. And for that," he continued "she must die." voldemort let go of james's face to grab his wand, pointing it straight at her chest.
"No!" james screamed "don't! Kill me, kill me instead." he begged "please."
Lily tried to protest but her voice wouldn't work. All that came out was a horrible rasping noise. It was a horrible feeling.
"Don't worry, i will." voldemort almost cooed "but first i want you to watch. I want you to watch the life leave her eyes." james only shook his head repeatedly, his eyes filling with tears. Lily's own eyes seemed to mirror his.
"James," she she choked and he looked at her with so much pain in his expression that the tears in lily's eyes began to spill over "i-" she coughed again "i love you."
"I love you too, lily." james's voice broke and lily forced herself to look into voldemort's eyes as he opened his mouth
"Avada-"
