Chapter 10 ~ Never the Same

She didn't know how she got there, but she made it—behind the bed-curtains in her own room. She didn't even care that she had run straight out of the middle of class, and an important class at that. One single train of thought flowed through her mind, "Remus tried to kill me, Remus wanted to kill me. No, Remus wouldn't want to kill me. Would Remus want to kill me? Why would Remus want to kill me?" It all came back to one thing—Remus is a werewolf. Suddenly, a whole lot of things started to make sense. Why Remus was always leaving. Why he was called Moony. Why he knew so much about that darned potion; Lily had already concluded that someone had actually tried it on Remus once.  It explained that pained look on his face when he had admitted that the Omedicor Potion can't quite heal everything.  Lily at once reached out to him and recoiled—that pained face was one of a werewolf.

I could be a werewolf too, she thought. If James and Sirius hadn't saved me. I could be like him, leaving every month, having to go through all that suffering. That could have been me! A loud knocking on her door interrupted her sobering thoughts.

"Lily, let us in!" That was Sirius, but she knew that Remus must be there with him. Probably James too. Stall, stall, stall, stall. Her mind told her.

"Who is it?"  She knew exactly who was behind the door.

"It Sirius, James, and Remus. We need to talk to you!" Her hopes diminished. She couldn't look Remus in the face…

"About what?" She tried to sound innocent, but it was hard when she was mid-sob.

"Don't be difficult, we know you know!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Lily was still sobbing, and she didn't really have the faintest clue why. Fright, anger, confusion? She didn't know what it was, but it stirred up her emotions.

"Lily, please?" That was Remus, how could she say no? He had always been so kind to her. But then he tried to kill you—nice guy, really, a voice inside her head told her. "I know you're scared, but we have to talk about this." The voice of Remus still held that compassion that had always been special to it, even though she doubted she could still look at him. And though she didn't want to, she answered.

"Okay," she mumbled and undid the locking spell on the door. It swung open. They still couldn't see her though; she was behind her curtains. Lily's face was buried in her pillows while she tried to get a hold of herself. Someone pulled back her curtains and she tilted her head to see who it was.

"Remus." She gasped, and her brain practically froze—along with the rest of her body. Whether she was paralyzed in fear or surprise she wasn't sure. She just sat there for a few seconds, and then she had to remind herself to let the air back out. She started to hiccup from the sobbing and lack of air, very loudly.

"Lily, I think I gave you a shock." She could only nod. She did it in just the way to make the hair fall over her face so that she wouldn't have to look at him. It seemed very silly, but it helped. After all, she was fighting back the urge to scream. James walked over and sat on the side of her bed. I should probably comfort her, he thought. But that's really more of a girl thing, isn't it? I still feel bad though… James contemplated the thought. He slowly reached a hand towards Lily and brushed away the hair that was clinging to her moist face. He rested his hand on her shoulder and Lily tensed, he was acted just like her Dad, doing some little thing that would just make her feel better. She looked right into his face and smiled, forgetting that she had wanted her hair that way.

"Lily, you probably want an explanation."

"Yeah," Sirius agreed. "We haven't been very honest with you, now have we?" Lily began to laugh at his major understatement, but the sound came out as more of a gurgle from mixing with her silent sobs. She turned on her back and sat partially up.

"I'll say you haven't," she said, looking pointedly at James. "All these lying and secrets, how have you been able to keep them a secret for all these years?" Sirius laughed.

"Remus really isn't that great at keeping secrets. Peter found out first, in our second year, we weren't friends then, he had a lot of free time. He asked James and I about it, we confronted Remus, and the Marauders were born."

"But how…the animals…" Lily was lost for words, this revelation was too much.

"HA!!!" James said triumphantly. "Now I have proof that you really didn't pay attention to my lessons, Lily. I taught you this awhile ago…" James was grinning, and Lily wondered how he could be so jovial at a time like this.

"James, this is no time to prove you're superior to me in Transfiguration. Will someone tell me what is going on?"

"Well, we're Animagi Lil." Sirius said it simply, and Lily tried to remember what they were. She blushed, and realized she hadn't paid much attention to anything he had said at all. Maybe her recent success in Transfiguration really was a fluke.

"Don't call me Lil," she absently reprimanded. She hated nicknames. She racked her brains for information on Animagi. Why did she feel like she had heard of them before? Her brow furrowed, and the corners of her mouth twitched down a bit. She looked so odd that Sirius laughed.

"Don't tax yourself Lil-Y," he emphasized the last syllable and she groaned. "It means you can transform into an animal. It's actually a sort of potion you take along with a special incantation, and, obviously, a lot of power and concentration." He said this, pompously, implying that he was completely capable of doing it.

"So how'd you manage it?"

"James is the Transfiguration King, and I'll admit, the potion was really hard, we got really hung up on that."

"I'm sure you helped with the power and concentration a whole lot, Siri." Lily smiled sweetly, and Sirius' face twitched.

"I was the one who finally got the potion right," he declared.

"After your tenth try," James said under his breath. Sirius turned to him.

"Lots of people took a lot longer to do it than I did. The potion is what takes the longest, and getting there at exactly the right time to put the next part of the spell on was complicated." Sirius was obviously tying to defend himself.

"Maybe if you weren't always snogging in a back corridor you could have given us more warning time to get to the potion," James countered.

"We studied the potion for a year to find the easiest way to do it, the potion only had to simmer for eighteen weeks, if you have done it right we might have been finished before fifth year."

"It took McGonagall almost that long you know."

"She was working by herself, we had four people." James was having too much fun annoying Sirius like this, and Sirius' taunts weren't really affecting James in the least. "And it took you forever to find your animal, too. 'Oh, wouldn't it be great I could get the hair of a Grim?' And we had to look forever, and wait until they completely materialized. Not to mention that Grims are supposed to be a death warrant, it's not safe to go chasing after one, you great dolt."

Remus finally intervened, even though their conversation was extremely entertaining.

"Hey guys, we came up here for a reason, remember? Not to attack each other!" Sirius threw a slightly malicious look at James, but then focused back to Lily. By now she was back to normal, save for some very red eyes.

"How did you guys get up here? I mean, the Professor probably didn't just let you go just because you wanted to." The Potions master was strict, especially with those troublemakers.

"Well," started James, "we told the Professor we had to leave, and he let us go."

"You can't fool me, James. I know the Professor wouldn't just let you leave," Lily accused. James quavered slightly under her vindictiveness.

"We told him we had to visit you."

"And he just let you go?" Lily was doubtful, at the least.

"Yeah, easy as that."

"Ok," she agreed reluctantly. If she knew them, they had some sort of secret. But she let it go anyway.

Lily did know them well because, as is turns out, they were hiding something from her. What Lily didn't know was that they had told the Professor that Lily had spilled some of the Omedicor potion on her and had rushed to the hospital wing. Lily might be getting some unwanted visitors pretty soon.

"Lily, you can't tell anyone about us," said Sirius.

"Why not? You almost killed me, sorry Remus," she added with an apologetic nod in his direction. "It isn't safe for all of you to be running around." Sirius mouthed prefect disapprovingly.

"But we saved you Lily," interjected James. "You'd be a werewolf too, if it weren't for me and Sirius."

"I bet it was you two's idea in the first place, rampaging the grounds at night. It just something you would do." She stumped them there. So, instead of trying to convince her she was wrong they tried another angle.

"We'll get expelled if you tell, Lily." Remus said quietly. "All the Marauders. Animagi are illegal if you are unregistered, and especially if you're underage."

Lily puffed herself up, pretending she didn't give a damn. "Why should I care about you?" The violent words escaped her mouth before she could tell herself not to say them. The boys took it in stride, remarkably.

"Admit it, you miss us if we left," James said with a wry grin that made Lily's stomach lurch. Now is not the time to fawn over James, she reprimanded herself. NEVER is the time to fawn over him, she corrected. Yet she knew she would miss him, she would miss all of them: Sirius, with his jovial personality; James, with his faithful reassurance; Peter, with his willingness to please; even Remus, with his quiet dependable disposition. Yes, she would miss them; she'd miss them terribly.

"I suppose so…" Lily said. They really had gotten to her. She could never tell now, they were just too good to loose. "Just promise me you won't run around again, it was much too close."

"Sure, anything to make up for it." And with Remus' sincere promise, it was sealed. Lily still respected him, but she knew it would be a long time until she was completely comfortable around him. She looked into his serene hazel eyes in which she had always seen such wisdom and forced a smile. Yet now she saw them as she had the night before—bloodthirsty, savage. No, things would never be the same again.

* * *

The next day, Lily rushed into the great hall for lunch, completely livid. She scanned the faces, looking for the guilty party. Those idiots would pay dearly.  She considered herself unbelievably dependable that she had not spilled their secret when she realized what they had done to her, and she also knew that James, Sirius, and Remus were in unbelievably big trouble.

She had been poked, prodded, checked, re-checked, questioned, forced to sleep, slept, been rudely awoken, and had slept again three times over by Madam Lorquette, the eccentric nurse, since the boys had left her room yesterday. Madam Lorquette had rushed over to her room and spelled her to the infirmary. Lily was forced to take a potion that did more damage than help, because nothing was wrong with her.

She had been asked detailed questions that she didn't know the answer to, because nothing had happened. Madam Lorquette had decided that the Omedicor had affected her mind and Lily was losing her memory. Lily hadn't been sure what the potion she had made yesterday had to do with it, and when she asked the nurse as much she just gasped. And Lily was given another potion.

She was checked for where the potion had gotten on her, and Madam Lorquette decided that it must have soaked in and was eating away at her from the inside. Lily convinced her otherwise, but when she complained of stomach pains that were probably from the other potions she had gotten, she was fed some weird pills.

She was told to sleep, but she couldn't. She was given some sleep-inducing medicine 'to help.' Then the infirmary had been flooded with people wanting to see her. By then, Lily was so sick from all the medicine she really did want to be left alone. 

Three young 'gentleman' were noticeably absent from the group of visitors.

That afternoon she was prescribed more medicine for all her new pains from the medicine she had taken before. The same routine was gone through later that night also. After she had slept for over twelve hours from those cursed drugs, Lily was released.

And she left the infirmary and headed to the Great Hall as a lion would from a cage, or perhaps a wolf from a den, even, with her prey in mind.