About two months had passed after the Marauders had moved into their new
apartment in Hogsmeade. Lily, Andrea, and Shelly were over for dinner on
evening. Thankfully, it was Peter that was cooking; he was really the only
one of the guys that could cook at all. The others just conjured up food
when they were hungry, but conjured never really had the same taste and
wasn't as good as homemade.
They had pancakes, bacon, sausage, waffles, and just about any other breakfast food you could imagine. It was a tradition to eat breakfast food for dinner on Wednesday nights at the Marauder residence. After a small food fight had broken out over who got the butter first and James had changed into clean robes, he and Lily decided to go on a walk.
It was warm and the sky was clear with stars twinkling every so often. It reminded Lily greatly of the Christmas Ball a year and a half before.
As they wondered around Hogsmeade aimlessly, they found themselves on the path to Hogwarts.
"It's been a while since I walked this." Lily sighed and squeezed James's hand as she said it. He nodded in agreement. 'Something's different about him tonight' Lily noted to herself as they walked up the hill leading to the gates that would lead them to the past, and everything that Lily had worked so hard to preserve suddenly came flooding back to her.
She remembered the night of the ball when she and James were talking outside, waiting for the guests from other schools to arrive. She couldn't remember what exactly they had been talking about, but she knew it had been some what humorous because she remembered laughing quite a bit.
As James held the gate open for her, she remembered the many times they had snuck out together after they started going out. They had many moonlit walks like the one they were on now; all of them ending in a kiss on the landing of the seventh year dorms. Lily knew that this one wouldn't end that way, but she somehow wished it would all the same.
"It's ok, no one will say anything to us," he said, she suddenly realized that she hadn't gone in yet and she must have looked like such a fool.
"Yeah, I'm sorry I was just wondering about how this place always manages to make my memories sharper and it never seems to change." She said, sighing again.
James smirked and closed the gate behind him, "Don't wonder too far, you might get lost and I don't think I could lose you," he said, taking her hand again as they walked around the edge of the grounds. As they neared Hagrid's cabin, he stuck his head out the door.
"What 'er yah two doin' 'ere?" he asked gruffly, looking mildly surprised to see them there at almost 10 at night.
"Once a Marauder, always a Marauder, Hagrid," James said, shrugging his shoulders and offering a cheeky grin. "We won't pull anything," he added, then thought about that and said "Well, that was quite the oxymoron now wasn't it?"
Lily couldn't help but giggle, and Hagrid seemed to find this amusing as well because he was chuckling, well what was considered chuckling for Hagrid. "Yah two can com in if yah 'ant" he said, opening the door a little more. They graciously took the offer and they were soon sitting around the table in the first of two rooms in Hagrid's hut. They were talking about one of Hagrid's many creatures that he was soon going to acquire, a large boar hound named Fang, when there was a knock at the door.
"'Ello Professor Dumbledore! It's good ter see yah, I was just telling Lily 'en James 'ere 'bout Fang," Hagrid said, gesturing to the table where the two sat, one hoping they wouldn't get send to Azkaban, and the other wanting the Professor to come in and talk for a while.
"Ah, it's good to see that you still have no respect for school rules even it's been almost two years after you left," Dumbledore said with an amused sparkle in his eyes and a smile on his face. James grinned and shook the old mans hand, Lily did the same, only she was slightly more nervous.
"Well I suppose you two will need to be getting along with what it is that you came to Hogwarts to do, I must steal Hagrid from you for a while." Dumbledore said as he gestured to two students behind him who James recognized as Bill Weasely and his brother Charlie.
Lily rolled her eyes, and then followed James out of the cabin, thanking Hagrid for the tea on the way. "Wonder what they got themselves into now?" James asked. "They did always look up to Sirius and I," he said, watching Lily roll her eyes.
"Only because you corrupted the poor boys," She said, laughing lightly. "But then again, who didn't you corrupt?" she asked cocking her head slightly to the side, strongly resembling a curious puppy dog.
"Snape, we didn't corrupt him," James said, as they started walking around the quidditch pitch.
Lily sighed, "No, you just relentlessly tormented Severus," It was James's turn to sigh and roll his eyes. They walked around in silence for a few minutes, each caught up in their own thoughts. Lily was looking up at the Gryffindor Tower, and she saw a light on one of the dormitories. She could also see a person looking at them from within the window.
~*~
Kelsey Cooper sat up in her dorm that night; all of her friends were still down in the Common Room. She wasn't feeling well so she said she was going up to get some rest. What she really ended up doing was thinking about the strange dream she had been having recently. It involved two people that she knew before they graduated. She couldn't remember their names, but it had been a long hard summer, so she forgot a lot of important things like that.
She wasn't quite sure what to think of the dreams, but she wished they would stop. She was sick of waking in the night, almost screaming out loud and covered in sweat. Her friends were starting to get worried about her, but she decided that she couldn't tell them until she knew more about it. She sat by the window in the fifth year girls' dorm looking out over the grounds. She expected them to be empty; it was almost ten at night after all.
She saw the headmaster walk out to the Games keepers hut followed by two smaller figures. 'Just going out for detention I bet,' she reassured herself. She was still startled because she had only woken from her usual dream minutes before hand. Her eyes scanned over the rest of the grounds, completely missing two figures out by the quidditch pitch. She sighed and pulled her blonde hair back and crawled back into her bed.
Sooner than she wished, she was asleep and once more caught up in the horror of the dream that haunted her so much in the passed few months.
***It was a clear night, and she was standing outside a normal sized house that she recognized as her own house that she had moved out of after her parents had died. She walked up, and went inside, just as she always did in the dream; even if she wanted to stop herself, she couldn't bring her dream self to stop. Soon she was walking up the stairs where there was a loud crying.
'James will you get Harry?' a voice asked. So that was the man's name. Kelsey looked around; she saw that there were two people lying on a bed, both of them reading something different. The man was reading the paper, and the woman reading a book of some sort. She could only guess what it was.
The man nodded his head and placed the paper on the end table. He walked out of the room that Kelsey soon recognized as her parents room. She walked down the hall, following the man to her old room, which happened to be the baby's, Harry's, room. She heard a small scurrying noise and looked down. She saw a rat, and was compelled to follow it for some reason. It ran down the stairs and out of the house. She followed it as closely as she could as it raced into a small grove of trees out in front of the house.
Suddenly the rat turned into a man. He had blonde hair and blue eyes, he normally would have been cute, but there was just an air of evil about him that made her shudder when she saw him. 'Master, they are occupied, and the baby is there.' The man informed the black figure that had suddenly appeared out of the shadows.
'Very well Pettigrew, I won't need you anymore tonight.' The cloaked figure swiftly walked passed the man that Kelsey suddenly remembered as being a Marauder. She followed the strange figure up to the house where he silently opened the door with a few spells. He entered the house, and a feeling of dread came over Kelsey. She raced after him up the stairs and down the hall to the room where her dream had started out, to the room where she wished it would end, but unfortunately, it never did.
There was shouting and directions from the man to the woman who wasn't in the room as soon as the man had heard the sick creature walking down the hall. The creature, not knowing where the baby was, decided to go to where the shouts where coming from. Kelsey didn't make it in time to see the body fall to the ground, but she could see a flash a green light and the words 'Avada Kadavra" being shouted. The creature then made its way out of the room to find the woman sobbing holding a small baby behind her back.
After a few moments of pleading, the creature narrowed its red, silted eyes and yelled the deadly curse. The woman fell to the floor lifelessly while the creature began to cackle, sending a shiver down her spin.
'Now it's your turn you stupid boy,' Then once more the fateful words were shouted, but Kelsey thanked her lucky stars she never had to see the baby die.***
Kelsey woke with a start, holding back a scream as she had so many times before, and looked straight into the face of her best friend, Brianna.
"You alright?" she asked, her voice was just as concerned as her eyes. Kelsey just nodded her head, and said 'yeah, it was nothing really,"
~*~
Outside, Lily watched the figure in the window of a dormitory. After a few seconds, it stood and then the lights went out. She guessed whoever it was had gone to sleep and then paid no more attention to them. Soon Lily and James had found themselves out sitting on the rock under a tree by the lake.
"You know what I remember?" James asked pulling her closer to him. She looked up at him and said, 'I'm not sure I want to know'. James just laughed. "Well, I'm telling you anyway. Do you remember the night of the ball last year, when we were waiting for the other students to get here?" he asked she nodded her head. "Sitting here made me remember what we were talking about," he said. "And I just wanted to say what words were lost in the wind because more people had arrived. I said that I would always save you from the squid no matter what,"
Lily giggled remembering just how silly their conversation had been.
*** "Once I had a dream that I got eaten by the Giant Squid," James said, adjusting his dress robes.
"Maybe you should see some one about that, Potter," Lily said, trying not to grin. "I had a dream that I was eaten by a dragon, but that was no doubt thanks to you and Sirius telling me about the dragons in the floo system," she said.
James chuckled slightly at that memory, and then went on. "Well if you save me from the squid, I'll save you from the dragon," he said, just making more conversation.
"Deal," Lily agreed, she was going to say something more, but then the other students arrived, and her words were lost, she noticed James saying something, but she couldn't hear him over the cheers. She decided that she would ask later, but later came and went and she had forgotten all about the conversation.
*** "You know, I said something too," she started,"I just can't remember what."
The two sat watching the squid glide across the water in silence. Lily seriously hoped that she never needed to save James from the stupid thing, or that he needed to save her from it either.
"Lily?" James asked quietly, almost shyly in fact.
"Hmm?"
"I really do love you," he started. "And, and I want to spend the rest of- of-of our lives together," he said, stuttering slightly, something Lily had never seen James do before. She was going to answer, but he cut her off. "Will you please marry me?" he asked.
Lily turned and looked at him, her eyes searching him for some kind of joke that this could be. When she found none, and he started to look slightly worried, a tear started to roll down her face. "Oh James," she said, hugging him. "I.I don't know I mean it's all so soon."Lily lost her train of thought however, "Oh hell of course I will!" she said, kissing him hard on the lips. This caught him by surprise, and sent them both tumbling into the lake, attracting the attention of the Giant Squid.
Standing in the shallow part of the lake that they had fallen into, James pulled a soggy box from the pocket of his robes. Still in the water, he kneeled down, so that the water was up to his chest. He showed Lily the ring and the slipped it on her fingers, then pulled her down to kiss her. The both sat in the lake for a few seconds, lost in the sweet bliss of their kiss until something slimy touched James, causing him to scream like a little girl.
Lily giggled and got to her feet, pulling him with her, and then over to the bank where they both scurried out of the water. "I told you I'd save you from the squid James," they both had a good laugh before making their way back to the apartment, still dripping wet but too happy to care.
a/n: that last little bit was so fun to write, and I had no idea that some how the squid conversation would actually come into this so much.. hmmm. Well I guess I'll be going now, lots and lots of housework to do because I spent all day writing this and I didn't do my chores.. opps, well I hope you liked it, and I hope you tell me in a review..hint hint.. ooh yeah and that Kelsey girl, she was just a spur of the moment thing that I thought of. She will have a big part in this story later.. well with that, I will leave you.
thanks to everyone who reviewed!
-Manda
They had pancakes, bacon, sausage, waffles, and just about any other breakfast food you could imagine. It was a tradition to eat breakfast food for dinner on Wednesday nights at the Marauder residence. After a small food fight had broken out over who got the butter first and James had changed into clean robes, he and Lily decided to go on a walk.
It was warm and the sky was clear with stars twinkling every so often. It reminded Lily greatly of the Christmas Ball a year and a half before.
As they wondered around Hogsmeade aimlessly, they found themselves on the path to Hogwarts.
"It's been a while since I walked this." Lily sighed and squeezed James's hand as she said it. He nodded in agreement. 'Something's different about him tonight' Lily noted to herself as they walked up the hill leading to the gates that would lead them to the past, and everything that Lily had worked so hard to preserve suddenly came flooding back to her.
She remembered the night of the ball when she and James were talking outside, waiting for the guests from other schools to arrive. She couldn't remember what exactly they had been talking about, but she knew it had been some what humorous because she remembered laughing quite a bit.
As James held the gate open for her, she remembered the many times they had snuck out together after they started going out. They had many moonlit walks like the one they were on now; all of them ending in a kiss on the landing of the seventh year dorms. Lily knew that this one wouldn't end that way, but she somehow wished it would all the same.
"It's ok, no one will say anything to us," he said, she suddenly realized that she hadn't gone in yet and she must have looked like such a fool.
"Yeah, I'm sorry I was just wondering about how this place always manages to make my memories sharper and it never seems to change." She said, sighing again.
James smirked and closed the gate behind him, "Don't wonder too far, you might get lost and I don't think I could lose you," he said, taking her hand again as they walked around the edge of the grounds. As they neared Hagrid's cabin, he stuck his head out the door.
"What 'er yah two doin' 'ere?" he asked gruffly, looking mildly surprised to see them there at almost 10 at night.
"Once a Marauder, always a Marauder, Hagrid," James said, shrugging his shoulders and offering a cheeky grin. "We won't pull anything," he added, then thought about that and said "Well, that was quite the oxymoron now wasn't it?"
Lily couldn't help but giggle, and Hagrid seemed to find this amusing as well because he was chuckling, well what was considered chuckling for Hagrid. "Yah two can com in if yah 'ant" he said, opening the door a little more. They graciously took the offer and they were soon sitting around the table in the first of two rooms in Hagrid's hut. They were talking about one of Hagrid's many creatures that he was soon going to acquire, a large boar hound named Fang, when there was a knock at the door.
"'Ello Professor Dumbledore! It's good ter see yah, I was just telling Lily 'en James 'ere 'bout Fang," Hagrid said, gesturing to the table where the two sat, one hoping they wouldn't get send to Azkaban, and the other wanting the Professor to come in and talk for a while.
"Ah, it's good to see that you still have no respect for school rules even it's been almost two years after you left," Dumbledore said with an amused sparkle in his eyes and a smile on his face. James grinned and shook the old mans hand, Lily did the same, only she was slightly more nervous.
"Well I suppose you two will need to be getting along with what it is that you came to Hogwarts to do, I must steal Hagrid from you for a while." Dumbledore said as he gestured to two students behind him who James recognized as Bill Weasely and his brother Charlie.
Lily rolled her eyes, and then followed James out of the cabin, thanking Hagrid for the tea on the way. "Wonder what they got themselves into now?" James asked. "They did always look up to Sirius and I," he said, watching Lily roll her eyes.
"Only because you corrupted the poor boys," She said, laughing lightly. "But then again, who didn't you corrupt?" she asked cocking her head slightly to the side, strongly resembling a curious puppy dog.
"Snape, we didn't corrupt him," James said, as they started walking around the quidditch pitch.
Lily sighed, "No, you just relentlessly tormented Severus," It was James's turn to sigh and roll his eyes. They walked around in silence for a few minutes, each caught up in their own thoughts. Lily was looking up at the Gryffindor Tower, and she saw a light on one of the dormitories. She could also see a person looking at them from within the window.
~*~
Kelsey Cooper sat up in her dorm that night; all of her friends were still down in the Common Room. She wasn't feeling well so she said she was going up to get some rest. What she really ended up doing was thinking about the strange dream she had been having recently. It involved two people that she knew before they graduated. She couldn't remember their names, but it had been a long hard summer, so she forgot a lot of important things like that.
She wasn't quite sure what to think of the dreams, but she wished they would stop. She was sick of waking in the night, almost screaming out loud and covered in sweat. Her friends were starting to get worried about her, but she decided that she couldn't tell them until she knew more about it. She sat by the window in the fifth year girls' dorm looking out over the grounds. She expected them to be empty; it was almost ten at night after all.
She saw the headmaster walk out to the Games keepers hut followed by two smaller figures. 'Just going out for detention I bet,' she reassured herself. She was still startled because she had only woken from her usual dream minutes before hand. Her eyes scanned over the rest of the grounds, completely missing two figures out by the quidditch pitch. She sighed and pulled her blonde hair back and crawled back into her bed.
Sooner than she wished, she was asleep and once more caught up in the horror of the dream that haunted her so much in the passed few months.
***It was a clear night, and she was standing outside a normal sized house that she recognized as her own house that she had moved out of after her parents had died. She walked up, and went inside, just as she always did in the dream; even if she wanted to stop herself, she couldn't bring her dream self to stop. Soon she was walking up the stairs where there was a loud crying.
'James will you get Harry?' a voice asked. So that was the man's name. Kelsey looked around; she saw that there were two people lying on a bed, both of them reading something different. The man was reading the paper, and the woman reading a book of some sort. She could only guess what it was.
The man nodded his head and placed the paper on the end table. He walked out of the room that Kelsey soon recognized as her parents room. She walked down the hall, following the man to her old room, which happened to be the baby's, Harry's, room. She heard a small scurrying noise and looked down. She saw a rat, and was compelled to follow it for some reason. It ran down the stairs and out of the house. She followed it as closely as she could as it raced into a small grove of trees out in front of the house.
Suddenly the rat turned into a man. He had blonde hair and blue eyes, he normally would have been cute, but there was just an air of evil about him that made her shudder when she saw him. 'Master, they are occupied, and the baby is there.' The man informed the black figure that had suddenly appeared out of the shadows.
'Very well Pettigrew, I won't need you anymore tonight.' The cloaked figure swiftly walked passed the man that Kelsey suddenly remembered as being a Marauder. She followed the strange figure up to the house where he silently opened the door with a few spells. He entered the house, and a feeling of dread came over Kelsey. She raced after him up the stairs and down the hall to the room where her dream had started out, to the room where she wished it would end, but unfortunately, it never did.
There was shouting and directions from the man to the woman who wasn't in the room as soon as the man had heard the sick creature walking down the hall. The creature, not knowing where the baby was, decided to go to where the shouts where coming from. Kelsey didn't make it in time to see the body fall to the ground, but she could see a flash a green light and the words 'Avada Kadavra" being shouted. The creature then made its way out of the room to find the woman sobbing holding a small baby behind her back.
After a few moments of pleading, the creature narrowed its red, silted eyes and yelled the deadly curse. The woman fell to the floor lifelessly while the creature began to cackle, sending a shiver down her spin.
'Now it's your turn you stupid boy,' Then once more the fateful words were shouted, but Kelsey thanked her lucky stars she never had to see the baby die.***
Kelsey woke with a start, holding back a scream as she had so many times before, and looked straight into the face of her best friend, Brianna.
"You alright?" she asked, her voice was just as concerned as her eyes. Kelsey just nodded her head, and said 'yeah, it was nothing really,"
~*~
Outside, Lily watched the figure in the window of a dormitory. After a few seconds, it stood and then the lights went out. She guessed whoever it was had gone to sleep and then paid no more attention to them. Soon Lily and James had found themselves out sitting on the rock under a tree by the lake.
"You know what I remember?" James asked pulling her closer to him. She looked up at him and said, 'I'm not sure I want to know'. James just laughed. "Well, I'm telling you anyway. Do you remember the night of the ball last year, when we were waiting for the other students to get here?" he asked she nodded her head. "Sitting here made me remember what we were talking about," he said. "And I just wanted to say what words were lost in the wind because more people had arrived. I said that I would always save you from the squid no matter what,"
Lily giggled remembering just how silly their conversation had been.
*** "Once I had a dream that I got eaten by the Giant Squid," James said, adjusting his dress robes.
"Maybe you should see some one about that, Potter," Lily said, trying not to grin. "I had a dream that I was eaten by a dragon, but that was no doubt thanks to you and Sirius telling me about the dragons in the floo system," she said.
James chuckled slightly at that memory, and then went on. "Well if you save me from the squid, I'll save you from the dragon," he said, just making more conversation.
"Deal," Lily agreed, she was going to say something more, but then the other students arrived, and her words were lost, she noticed James saying something, but she couldn't hear him over the cheers. She decided that she would ask later, but later came and went and she had forgotten all about the conversation.
*** "You know, I said something too," she started,"I just can't remember what."
The two sat watching the squid glide across the water in silence. Lily seriously hoped that she never needed to save James from the stupid thing, or that he needed to save her from it either.
"Lily?" James asked quietly, almost shyly in fact.
"Hmm?"
"I really do love you," he started. "And, and I want to spend the rest of- of-of our lives together," he said, stuttering slightly, something Lily had never seen James do before. She was going to answer, but he cut her off. "Will you please marry me?" he asked.
Lily turned and looked at him, her eyes searching him for some kind of joke that this could be. When she found none, and he started to look slightly worried, a tear started to roll down her face. "Oh James," she said, hugging him. "I.I don't know I mean it's all so soon."Lily lost her train of thought however, "Oh hell of course I will!" she said, kissing him hard on the lips. This caught him by surprise, and sent them both tumbling into the lake, attracting the attention of the Giant Squid.
Standing in the shallow part of the lake that they had fallen into, James pulled a soggy box from the pocket of his robes. Still in the water, he kneeled down, so that the water was up to his chest. He showed Lily the ring and the slipped it on her fingers, then pulled her down to kiss her. The both sat in the lake for a few seconds, lost in the sweet bliss of their kiss until something slimy touched James, causing him to scream like a little girl.
Lily giggled and got to her feet, pulling him with her, and then over to the bank where they both scurried out of the water. "I told you I'd save you from the squid James," they both had a good laugh before making their way back to the apartment, still dripping wet but too happy to care.
a/n: that last little bit was so fun to write, and I had no idea that some how the squid conversation would actually come into this so much.. hmmm. Well I guess I'll be going now, lots and lots of housework to do because I spent all day writing this and I didn't do my chores.. opps, well I hope you liked it, and I hope you tell me in a review..hint hint.. ooh yeah and that Kelsey girl, she was just a spur of the moment thing that I thought of. She will have a big part in this story later.. well with that, I will leave you.
thanks to everyone who reviewed!
-Manda