The flower Story chp 26
"Ah Ze City of love...France!"
-Anon

Lily sat silently at the boys' side staring at the floor. She occasionally glanced at either James or Sirius or Remus. McGonogall had taken Peter outside to be questioned about what happened. She had already asked James and Sirius and all who was left when Peter came back was Remus. He seemed to have the saddest look on his face. After McGonogall came back with Peter and finished talking to Remus, she left them after giving them a lecture on being up after-hours, and also apologizing for them having to see that awful thing happen.

"Why her?" Sirius muttered to himself.

"Isn't it obvious?" asked James in a defeated voice "She was a muggle-born. I remember talking to her about it in our first year on the platform. I explained what it was to her and told her she had nothing to worry about. Well, I guess she did after all!" he got up from Lil's side and walked over to a window and looked out over the grounds.

"James you can't blame what happened on yourself! We were all there!" Remus looked over at him.

"What happened?" Tasha blurted out to the boys. She couldn't keep it in any longer but she got a reproving glare from Lily in return for her impatience. "Please?"

James turned toward Tasha and gave her a weak smile. "Do you know who Ginith is?"

Lily nodded "isn't she the brunette in hufflepuff, she plays a replacement keeper on their house team! Why?"

"We were out tonight in the hallways, searching for some law or rule to break as usual" sirius had started "We heard footsteps coming down one end of the hallway but no one was there. But on the other side we saw that Ginith was walking quickly down towards the sound of the footsteps." He trailed off and turned towards the fireplace.

"It only took a matter of seconds to happen but to us it seemed an eternity." Remus picked up from Sirius "The sounds walked towards each other and when they reached the point where they should meet all we heard was some sort of wind and then a large loud thump on the floor"

"We Ran out from behind the suit of Armor we had hidden behind and saw her............just laying there!" James muttered from the window

"D-Dead. She w-was d-d-dead." Peter was rocking back and forth again like he had in the corridor.

Lily and Tasha by now were just staring at the four of them in awe. But they didn't get a chance to say anything to them, because the boys seemed to have a mutual agreement that they didn't want to hear it. So all four of them walked up to their dormitories in silence, just leaving the girls to their thoughts and nightmares.

*-*-*-*
The next day the boys woke to finding that school had again begun. And their first class that day was Transfiguration with the hufflepuffs. The Proffessor had given them a simple talk of the schools loss as Dumbledore had done that morning at Breakfast. It was very sad and everyone had figured that someone had snuck into the school and put an unforgivable curse on her or something. But James couldn't get it out of his head that someone was definitely there.

The girls were not exactly avoiding them, but they hadn't come over to the boys to say hello or anything that morning. So finally Lily went up to James at lunch and plopped herself right next to him. She found a piece of cake on the table, picked it up with her bare hands and shoved it in James' face.

"Lily!" James shouted trying to wipe the cake out of his eye. "Have you gone bloody insane?"

"There's a fine line between genius and insanity James!" She said matter-of-factly.

The rest of Gryffindor table watched and waited for their prefect's answer. But James just sat there staring at her with pink cake on his face until the corners of his mouth had started to crack into a smile. And he burst out laughing. Then a huge pile of pudding had come from the other side of the Great Hall. Sirius looked to see who had thrown it. It was Snape at the Slytherin table and he was smirking like made. So Sirius took a whole pumpkin pie and sent it flying right smack in the middle of Severus' face. That made him laugh like crazy. Even Peter had given a pathetic laugh.

And soon the whole Room was flying with food. All types of food. Pies, sandwiches, pumpkin juice, pudding, tripe, fruit, you name it, and it was probably in the air. Even the staff table seemed to be lightly throwing food at each other. Soon 20 minutes went by and there was no more clean food to throw. So the students filed out of the Great Hall and tried to either eat or wash off whatever was on them.

Dumbledore had called the 6 of them over to the staff table.

"You do realize that you six are going to clean this up?" He asked wiping his glasses of some mashed potatoes.

They all nodded solemnly but on the inside they wanted to die laughing.

"Have fun." Dumbledore said and then was off.

Once they were left alone they all fell on the floor with laughter. Once the wave passed they looked at each other and smiled knowing that true friends will put food in your face.

About a half-hour later they were halfway and done, and Lily noticed someone standing by the entranceway. She walked over to the girl who was drenched it what smelled like a mix of pumpkin juice and tea.

"Hello Molly!" Lily told her in a stiff sort of tone

"Lily what you did was completely crude and dirty and messy and-and-" Lily waited to here what was coming "and we must have one of those again!" Molly exclaimed starting to laugh.

Lily was so happy that she leaned over and gave her a huge hug.

"I'm sorry for being such a got Lily, it's just that...this is Arthur's last year and I'm going to really miss him! So I thought if I grew up a bit maybe I'd get to graduate with him! Stupid I know!" Molly turned a shade of pink as she apologized.

"No! Not stupid, I thought you were mad at me for something I had done!" Lily asked

"Never no! Here, lemme help you clean up!" Molly offered as she swung her arm over Lily's shoulder and walked into the Great Hall.

"Thanks!" lily said relieved "We need all the help we can get"

So they all ended up back together and cleaning the Great Hall in a matter of an hour.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

"What are you doing you dolt?" Lily yelled at Sirius

"What? Can't I stretch my coloring horizon a bit?" Sirius had Lily's owl (James) in hand and was about to turn him rainbow colored instead of just red. Lily had grown to love that color red and did not want Sirius to change it now!

"Sirius, get a grip your in sixth year! You know how to change anything to any color and if you want to practice please do it on something other than my owl!" she pleaded

"Since you asked politely" He said sarcastically "Then here you go little feller" He released James the owl and but James had swooped down on him and started to pound him with his beak. Then he flew out the window of the common room towards the library.

*-*-*-*

Christmas holiday was upon them, and Lily still never forgot that offer Molly and Tasha made her to go to Paris.

"Hey we're definitely still open to the idea. We hear the wizards over there are pretty cute." Tasha chirped in

"But you KNOW that there are very handsome wizards here" Sirius exclaimed as he swung his arm around Tasha. She gave him a look but he stopped it with a kiss.

"OOOh that boy can make me melt like butter!" Tasha exclaimed after he went up to his dormitory.

"It'll only be us though!" Molly informed Lily "No boys! No butter melting boys especially!" she said to Tasha's appalled face.

"Let's go! I've always wanted to see Paris!"

Lily was so excited she couldn't stop talking about it. And James was a little peeved already that he couldn't go. But when it came time for them to say good bye it was extremely hard. Lily was sticking her head out of the compartment door to the train and James was leaning over the tracks so they could kiss goodbye. And just as the train was leaving and Lily was watching him fade away. She heard a voice in the back of her head whisper to her

"I love you" she sighed to herself as James' voice rang in her ears. She whispered back in her mind to him "I love you too".

*-*-*-*-*-*

When the train had rolled into Kings Cross Station, Tasha told them that they would have to take a muggle wane to get to get to Paris.

"Plane Tash." Lily corrected "Why though? Can't we use a floo-powder or portkey?"

"No! Nothings working at the moment and the ministry want to keep a low profile! Besides we can't dissaparate. So I have the plane tickets here and the plane leaves in three hours. I think. Lily you have to help us being that we're both from wizard families." Tasha pleaded with her.

They took a cabby to the muggle airport. It seemed James the owl would have to have a sleeping charm put on him because he wasn't allowed to go on the actual plane. He had to be "stored" underneath the plane. Lily helped Molly and Tasha have their bags checked onto the plane, although it was quite hard with Tasha yelling that a Lily had just handed her bags over to a thief in uniform.

The flight was only a couple of hours, but it seemed like days to Lily. Tasha and Molly were being complete children!

"Are we there yet?" Molly asked for 10th time

"I'm hungry" complained Tasha

"Are we there YET?" 11th time

"I'm thirsty"

And the questions kept rolling in until finally Lily couldn't take it anymore and she put two big fluffy pillows on each ear to block their ranting and raving out. Lily was the window seat because the girls were afraid they would fall out of the window. She gazed outside and tried to make the clouds into little shapes without anyone really noticing. But something had caught her eye. She saw far away from the plane but just visible to see, a little black thing flying with a bunch of brown packages flying behind it. Lily dismissed it and thought it was probably just one of those muggle advertisement planes.

*-*-*-*

Finally the two hours were over and Lily Molly and Tasha ran off the plane with smiling faces. Wherever they went they heard those 'Sexy, sophisticated French accents' as Molly had put it. They were able to take a portkey to her Wizard grandfather's house, because he lived a little ways away from the neighboring village. But when that arrived they were very shocked to see James, Remus and Sirius sitting outside on the patio chatting it up with her grandfather.

Tasha squealed and leaped over the table to giver her grandfather a great big hug. And then she leaped onto Sirius' lap.

"OOO, you all made it! But where's-"

"He's in the kitchen!" Sirius told her after kissing her on the cheek

"Hey" Molly stepped forward "I thought we agreed no boys on this trip!" Molly put her hands on her hips and glared at Tasha and Lily

"Hey don't look at me! I'm just as surprised as you are!"
Although Lily seemed just touch happier than Molly was. She had her arms around James and was gazing deeply into his eyes.

"Don't worry Moll, you don't think we'd leave your hunny bun out of the picture did you?" Tasha laughed as Arthur stepped out of the kitchen and ran over to Molly. She was so shocked but so happy that all she could do was melt into his arms.

"Tasha!" Everyone heard a call from the road on the side of the house, where they saw a girl about their age. She had big purple eyes and long blondeish-silverish hair, with a small petite figure.

"Cossette? Where did you come from I had no idea you would be here?" Tasha exclaimed as she ran over to the girl

"Down ze road of curz! And nezer did I!" Cossette said in a 'duh' kind of voice. She then turned to the rest of them while flinging her arm over Tasha's shoulder.

"Allo, I am Tasha's cuzin Cozzette"

"Hello" everyone chimed as they watched the scene unfold. But Remus hadn't said hello. In fact he was just sitting with Tasha's grandfather and was staring at the girl. Amazingly she had noticed him too.

"Why allo to you!" She sat right down next to him in a chair and looked into his eyes "Your cute!" she smiled and everyone laughed at the look on Remus' face.

Lily winked at her best friend and turned to James again.
"James...How did you get here if you didn't travel by plane like us? Molly and Tasha said that we weren't aloud to take portkeys to the other countries. And I heard floo powder wasn't working." Lily asked with an eyebrow arching up.

"Well, you remember sirius' flying motorcycle?" Lily nodded and opened her eyes and mouth wide in anger and excitement.

"James, do you mean to tell me that you flew that horrid thing all the way to France? Was it fun? Are you bonkers? You could've gotten hurt, what if there was a storm-"

But Lily didn't get to finish. He had leaned over and kissed her just get her to shut up. It works quite well he had found.
"Lil, if there was a storm we would've found a way to get to out girls no matter what!" he cupped his hand around her chin and grinned while putting a finger to her mouth, because she was about to go on protesting about something again!

"Well darlingz! It is wonderful to ave you all ere! Come inzide and ave some strong French tea!" Tasha's grandpa spoke up to all the couples! Tasha looked over at him and smiled.
"Papa it's wonderful to see you and Cossete again! I can't tell you how wondeful this Christmas is going to be!"

"Hey Tash, I just realized something! I never knew you were French!" Lily thought to herself as they all walked into the fantastic house. James just rolled his eyes at her and grinned.

As they all walked into the house there were a few gasps at how huge the inside of the house was! Lily took her hand away from James' and put it to her mouth as she glanced up to the beautifully elegant chandelier hanging gracefully from the ceiling. Remus walked up next to her and they looked at each other and grinned. They had often talked to each other about places like this. Magical mansions, Remus had called them. They looked like a common town house on the outside, but on the inside were grand staircases, beautiful carpeting and corridors, mysterious doorways and dark rooms and closets. Their dreams and imaginations were coming true as they walked down one of their mysterious hallways.

Lily pointed out to Remus a grand marble staircase with red and purple carpeting sliding up to the top landing, but it climbed so high that no one saw where it landed. They ventured a little further past the staircase that Lily didn't want to stop staring at. Tasha's grandfather had led them to a bathroom, or an indoor pool is what it looked like. There were three bathtubs with different color faucets surrounding them. It seemed that the boys were a little to overjoyed at the idea of the girls bathing with them at the same time. But sadly grandfather told them if they wanted to dot hat bathing suits were absolutely necessary.

They soon climbed a shorter staircase then the other one, and Lily had noticed that this one seemed to glow a different color every time someone stepped on a different step. By the time they reached the top landing it was a pinkish purple color. Grandfather had shown them to their rooms, he had multiple guest rooms since he always had guests and he let them choose whichever room they wanted. Lily and Tasha picked rooms that were connected by a door. But they both also made sure their rooms were quite close with the boys'.

All of the visiting teenagers were quite content with their sleeping quarters and Lily and Remus were still going on about the structure and the magnificence of this 'dream mansion' as Lily had called it. Soon they were sitting in front of one of the grand fireplaces in the living room, having that strong French Tea!

"Mr. Harris, I can't stop telling you how amazing your house is!" Lily exclaimed for the fifth time

"House is an understatement Lil!" Remus remarked while he was cuddling up to Cossette, who seemed to be very interested in him.

"Pleaze! For ze 10th time, call me Pierre. It iz my name after all!" he said in his very french accent that Lily fell in love with. He reminded her in a way of her father. Lily's father always used to make those little French comments when he cooked dinner. 'Used to make' Lily thought to herself. She suddenly felt extremely queasy at the thought if him, and it seems James noticed because he gave her a concerned look.

"Why, mizz Evanz! You look...green!" cossette commented while staring at her

Lily wished everyone would suddenly be very interested in everything else in the room besides her. She put her hand up to her mouth and swallowed down the awful feeling of regret and pining for the loss of her parents. She looked up and smiled at them all.

"I'm fine! It must be the 'Strong French Tea!'" Lily laughed a little weakly to cover it up.

"Well, I zink it iz time for bed anyway!" Pierre offered his hand to Lily to help her up and she accepted it thankfully. He led her all the way to her bedroom with James following close behind in case she should fall down the staircase or something. When they arrived at her room she thanked him heartily for letting them stay and gave him a kiss on the cheek to say goodnight. James snuck into the room when his back was turned, and the last thing Lily saw was Tasha giving her 'Papa' a big kiss goodnight.

*-*-*-*-*-*

"Lil, are you all right?" James rushed over to her and helped her sit down. She didn't want his help but she liked the feeling of his fingers on her arm, however messed up that was.

"James I'm perfectly -"

"You say fine and I'll smack you now what is up? We all saw it! You had this green awful look on your face!" he interrupted kneeling down in front of her to look her over fully.

"James I'm-" she wanted to say fine but she knew she couldn't lie to him. So she just looked at him with sad eyes, slowly getting the courage up to tell him. Tell him something that she's been wanting to tell him for a long while. She was about to when tasha opened the door and walked over to them kneeling next to James.

"Is she all right?" she asked James

"You know you can ask me! I am sitting right in front of you! You know what I'd rather be lying in bed right now, in my PJ's, staring at the back of my bloody eyelids. So if you all don't mind...please LEAVE!" She pushes them both out of her room and locked the door. She knew it couldn't hold them for very long. She hoped James would be back before morning.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Lily woke on Christmas morning with a wide grin. She saw the most precious sight lying next to her on top of her covers. James had obviously snuck into the room during the night and fell asleep on top of the covers facing Lily. He heard her and opened his eyes sleepily with a sheepish grin.

"Happy Christmas sleepy!" Lily exclaimed while sitting up and crawling out from under her covers.

"Happy Christmas Lil" He sat up and kissed her on the nose sweetly.

The whole day was full of fluff and Romance like this sort. It seemed that during the night Remus and cossette had gotten much more acquainted, for they were already holding hands and giving sweet kisses to each other. Pierre was quite amused and filled with joy at Tasha's choice of boyfriend. He always imagined her to be with a funny sort of boy. But Sirius was downright crazy and made Pierre laugh through out the whole wonderful day.

They spent the day walking about the marketplace in the nearby village, and buying each other more Christmas presents than needed. But it was fun nonetheless. Tasha also got to show off her marvelous French, even though her 'papa' kept exclaiming that her accent was horrifying (just like her boyfriend).

They only were able to stay for one more day because Pierre had business offers coming into town to stay at his mansion.

"I cant ave silly lovezick puppiez walking around in ze houz!" he laughed one evening after Arthur asked to stay longer. He and Molly were getting on quite well together in the city of love! They were all extremley sad when it was time to go back to Hogwarts. The girls were allowed to use a portkey to take them to the train station, and Sirius and the boys had to fly the motorbike back to Hogwarts with their entire luggage. So they parted ways again at Pierre's front gate. Remus and Cossette were quite sad to be parting but she promised to find him over the summer holiday. He was quite happy when she told him this.

"I'll see you back at Hogwarts then?" James said while hugging Lily goodbye.

"Of course, where else would I be?" she smiled at him as they pulled away. Lily started to walk away toward the portkey when she heard James call out her name.

"Lil!" He yelled to her

"Yes?" she turned expectantly

"Nothing, never mind! Have a safe trip!" James said trying to push aside what he didn't have the courage to say.

"Oh" She said with a hint of disappointment in her voice "you too!"

At that they turned and did not see each other until the next day. Both very disappointed with the other and themselves.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Hogwarts seemed very hasty in getting everyone back to work. But Lily had definitely seen a change in the demeanor of the place. Everyone seemed to be walking around with a haunted stare ahead of him or her. Lily had heard terrible things that had happened over the holiday with Voldemort and his followers. Even the teachers seemed a bit more cautious or frightened about something.

Soon Lily and James were called to Dumbledore's office for another training session. Lily started to give up any hope on finding what her powers were. But Dumbledore kept saying that he had no doubt of her being Slytherin's descendant. James was fully into his powers, he had the whole communicating thing through his thought going on. But all Lily had was a bunch of green static sometimes coming out of her fingers.

"Miss Evans there is something I have not tries with you yet, that was most definitely a trait from Slytherin. Do you have strange dreams by any chance?" He asked one day while sitting at his desk. Lily just looked at him funny as she usually did when he asked strange questions like that.

"Don't we all have strange dreams professor?" she asked him back

"Yes but I mean prophetic dreams. Slytherin saw the future in his dreams sometimes. It was mostly quite fuzzy but he knew what they meant.

Lily thought about this a little after taking a glance at James and back to Dumbledore. "Yes actually, I do have weird dreams."

"Well then there you have it Lily, Slytherin did have prophetic dreams quite often. But I'm still waiting for something else to happen with you so I beg you to both be patient! Oh and there was another thing I wished to discuss with the both of you. Remember that alliance of younger witches and wizards against the Dark Forces of today I wished to gather up? Well I'm starting it soon over the holiday in the summer so keep your heads up for some owls!"

He dismissed them shortly after running through James' abilities and sent them back to the Common room.

"I wonder what we're going to have to do in this alliance bit he's gathering up." Lily said thoughtfully

"Probably just gather information on the dark side and try to stop them! I mean we can't exactly fight them can we?" James said as they took out their Potions notes to study for their upcoming end of year exams.

"Maybe we can! Maybe we can't you never know James!" After about an hour of studying sirius and Peter came down form the dormitories. They needed help on their charms work, before going out for their monthly romp in the Shrieking shack with Remus.

"Honestly you two! We're in sixth year and you two can't possibly still need my help in Charms!" Lily said in an exasperated sigh

"We honestly do need help Lil!" sirius sighed right back while flopping down next to her on the couch.

"Please! I-I really need to pass Charms!" Peter asked so pathetically that it made her heart melt for the dear boy

"Oh all right! But this is the last time!" she warned them. After about another half-hour it was already 10:00 at night and they could hear howling in the distance. The three boys set off for the Shrieking Shack, and Lily smiled to what she saw of James. He winked back at her and then covered up the rest of the bodies with his cloak. Lily sighed to resignation. And resigned to her very comfortable bed.

*-*-*-*

The rest of the year whipped by so fast after that day that Lily couldn't actually force her mind to believe they were on the train heading home for the muggle world. She was also quite amazed that she was able to fit all her friends into one tiny compartment!

As they all wished each other a happy holiday. Lily rolled her eyes to Sirius and Tasha. She was sure that she'd be seeing them way too soon. Molly and Arthur ran off after saying goodbye very quickly. That was Arthur's last year at Hogwarts and Molly was determined to spend as much time with him as possible.

Lily put her arm in Remus' and James' and they walked arm in arm to the muggle world bravely, smiling, and merrily.




Authors note: OMG!!!!! I'm ever so sorry how long that took! I know that all of you have given up on me, but I've been restricted form my computer till now! And don't worry I'm already in the process of writing the next chapter. It is of course the summer and the start of (finally) 7th year. See you next time!

Disclaimer: I don't own them leave me alone damnit!