Chapter 9: Gryffindor Quidditch

A few weeks later, Lily, Alice and Amelia all sat huddled under a large Gryffindor blanket that Lily had charmed to stay warm against the cold. Gryffindor was beating Ravenclaw 180 to 150 in the first Gryffindor quidditch match of the season, and three hours into the game, the snitch had been spotted a few times, but neither team's seeker had yet come close to catching it. The marauders and Frank were sitting behind the three girls, which Lily honestly wouldn't have minded, except that Potter kept jumping up to shout, "There! There it is. Don't you see it?" and Pettigrew would respond with a cheer. Every time that the seekers did see the snitch but missed it, Potter would jump up and shout something along the lines of "You should have had that you worthless—" at which point Lupin would glare at him and pull him back down. He'd then spend the next five minutes discussing why the current Gryffindor seeker should not have been allowed on the team, with Pettigrew agreeing wholeheartedly and squeaking how much better Potter would be. "No wonder he can't catch it! Look how he's sitting!"("You'd never make that mistake, Jamesy!") or "His grip is all wrong, the broom would turn tighter if he'd just correct his grip." ("Madam Alipes says your grip is perfect, Jamesy!") Lupin and Sirius were rolling their eyes and laughing. After one particularly frustrating near miss by the Gryffindor seeker, Potter shouted, "You have to lean into your dive more! LEAN IN!"

"You could have had that, Ja—"

But apparently, Black had finally had enough, because he barked, "James and Peter, if you don't shut your mouths, I'm going to have Evans put a silencing charm on the both of you!" They both sat down, looking chagrined, but Potter was laughing along with Lupin as he did so. Lily privately thanked Black for saying the threat that she had been considering for most of the match. About five minutes after Madam Alipes had blown her whistle to signal the start, she had begun regretting that she had let Alice and Amelia talk her into sitting down in front of them. She hadn't wanted to sit down by the Marauders at all, but Frank was sitting in front of them, and apparently Frank was going to explain the rules of quidditch to Alice throughout the match. Amelia also seemed to be enjoying herself, as she and Lupin were carrying on an extensive conversation whenever Potter wasn't shouting. Fortunately, both Potter and Pettigrew quieted down after Black's outburst and Lily was able to enjoy the game. About an hour later, she felt a tugging on her cloak.

She turned around to see Potter smiling goofily at her. "Yes?" she inquired.

"I just wondered if you'd found out anything about the bo—"

"SHHHH!" Lily said, putting her finger to her lips. "Don't mention it out here. We got a letter from Alice's grandpa in late November and—"

"What? And you didn't tell us?"

"You two were acting like gits the day we got it, so I didn't tell you then, and I sort of forgot until—"

"Forgot?" Potter interrupted, his voice beginning to rise. "How do you just for—"

"Can you two give it a rest, just for the game, even?" Alice interrupted. "She forgot, Potter. She was going to—" but before she could finish, the Ravenclaw seeker went into a spectacular dive and snatched the snitch out from underneath the hand of the Gryffindor seeker. Cheers erupted from the Ravenclaw section, while the Gryffindors groaned loudly. As Madam Alipes' whistle blew to signal the end of the match, a hulking shadowy figure appeared over the Slytherin spectator section. "The Dark Lord now has the tools he will need to be immortal," a strangely magnified voice said, echoing in the now silent stadium. "Choose your side carefully. You have been warned." The shadow disappeared, and was replaced by the same skull with the snake protruding from it that Lily had seen the picture of in the Daily Prophet.

Lily felt her body go cold. She didn't even notice the chaos that surrounded her. What did it mean? She noticed suddenly that Amelia was crying, and reached out to put an arm around her. Alice was talking to Frank, apparently trying to work out what the voice had meant, Pettigrew looked terrified, and the other three Marauders stood completely silent, staring at the mark hovering over the stadium. Potter's hand was now clutching her shoulder and she wondered vaguely how long it had been there. In other sections, students were shouting and pushing, while the players on the field were running toward the stands.

Another magnified voice spoke over the frantic crowd. "Prefects! Take your students back to their houses," the voice, which Lily now recognized as Dumbledore's, commanded. "Wait there for further instruction from your head of house. No student is to leave their dormitory tonight under any circumstances, unless accompanied by a professor." Professor...professor... Lily heard the words echoing hollowly as she looked around for the Gryffindor prefects.

A few rows down, she finally spotted Andromeda and Joshua, calling for the Gryffindors to follow them. Both had their wands out and were letting off sparks to attract students to them. She pulled Potter's hand off her shoulder, as he gave her a look she couldn't discern, and started walking toward the two prefects, the others closely following. Once the Gryffindors had crowded around them, they began leading the students back to Gryffindor Tower, wands still out. Lily felt nervously for hers, and kept her hand on it until they had arrived back at the common room. They all clambered in, and there was a mad dash by the younger students to grab the best chairs. The older students simply found a place to sit and conjured up a chair of their liking. It struck Lily as odd that any other day, chairs appearing out of the ends of wands would have merited a second glance, but not after what they'd just seen.

Alice, Lily and Amelia found a table off to one side of the common room and were promptly joined by Kaylie, Desdamona and Anna. Desdamona's brother, Iago, also stopped by and gave Des a reassuring hug before joining his friends. Lily could not remember the common room ever being so quiet. Even the night she had stayed up late studying for Transfiguration, there had been the snapping of the fire to break the silence. Everyone wore identical expressions of fear and confusion.

As they waited for McGonagall, chatter began to break out in the various groups. Kaylie was certain that it was just some kind of practical joke, and Lily's group began discussing who the perpetrator could be. Lily didn't participate, however. Her thoughts were elsewhere. Something was nagging at the back of Lily's mind, something about what the voice had said, but she couldn't figure out just what. She tried to get her arms around what it was she was trying to remember when Alice interrupted her thoughts. "Lily? Are you okay? Lily?"

"Are you okay Lily?" It was Amelia's voice this time, and she was shaking her arm. 

Lily opened her eyes, and glanced around the room.  For a moment she was confused.  She wasn't in the common room, anymore.  Somehow she was upstairs in her room.  How had she gotten there?  She was lying down, too, but she didn't remember coming upstairs.  She sat up, wondering vaguely if she had fainted.  Alice and Amelia were standing beside her bed, looking at her in concern.  She closed her eyes, trying to clear the fog in her mind.  They'd been at the quidditch match, Ravenclaw had won, and then the voice had spoken.  Suddenly her mind went blank.  What had the voice said?   "What—what did it say?" she asked Alice and Amelia, finally opening her eyes again.

"What did what say?" Amelia asked, confused.

"The voice," Lily said, "the voice, I forgot, what did it say?" 

"What voice, Lily?" Alice asked anxiously.

"At the quidditch match.  The voice!" she stared at them desperately.  There was something that the voice had said that was important.  She had to remember what it was. 

Alice and Amelia exchanged anxious looks.  "There wasn't any voice at the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff game, Lily," Amelia answered.  "And the quidditch game today hasn't happened yet.  It's still morning."  Lily opened her mouth to protest, but suddenly realized that she was wearing her pajamas.  Surely if she'd fainted, they wouldn't have changed her into her pajamas.  She glanced at her watch.  It was only 8 o'clock.  There couldn't have been a quidditch match today.  But then how…?  Had it happened yesterday?  Had she been passed out all night?  But then why would Alice and Amelia be acting like they didn't know what she was talking about?  And suddenly it dawned on her.  It had been a dream.  No mark had appeared over the quidditch stadium.  No voice had made any sort of announcement.  She had dreamt it all.  But the dream had been so vivid.  "It's Saturday morning?" she asked, to clarify. 

Lily suddenly realized that Alice an Amelia were still watching her.  "Yes…It's Saturday morning, Lil," Alice responded slowly.

"Perhaps you should go down to the hospital wing, Lily," Amelia suggested hesitantly.

Lily shook her head, trying to laugh.  "No, I—I guess I was in the middle of a dream when you woke me up," she said, now standing up and stretching.  "It just took me awhile to realize that it didn't actually happen."

They looked at her quizzically.  "Must have been some dream," Alice commented.

Lily nodded.  "It was.  I'll tell you about it later.  We're going to miss breakfast if we don't get moving."

Alice's and Amelia's expressions cleared immediately.  "Okay," Alice said.  "Hurry up, then.  We'll meet you downstairs."  Lily started to get dressed as her two best friends walked out of the room.  Something about the dream, about the voice, was still bothering her.  But that was ridiculous.  It was just a dream, and that was that.  She finished getting ready, shook her head one more time, trying to clear from her mind the nagging sensation that she had forgotten something important, and headed down into the common room to meet Alice and Amelia for breakfast.

At breakfast, Lily relayed most of her dream about the quidditch match back to Alice and Amelia, but she couldn't remember what it was the voice had said at the match. Both reassured her that that it had just been a dream, and that there was nothing to worry about. After breakfast, they ran upstairs and grabbed a blanket and their cloaks, and headed down to the pitch for the game. Kaylie and Desdamona had saved them seats in the Gryffindor section, and when the teams came out on the field, Lily was relieved to see that the match wasn't against Ravenclaw at all. Gryffindor was playing Slytherin, and three-fourths of the school had shown up dressed in Gryffindor colors. The Marauders showed up shortly before the whistle blew, and Lily was annoyed to find that they chose seats behind the girls. If Potter's behavior in real-life resembled his behavior in her dream at all, she was sure she'd have a raging headache by the time that the match had ended.

She didn't have much time to worry about this, though, because the whistle blew, and the teams were off. She caught a brief glimpse of a tiny gold ball that resembled the one she had seen Potter playing with on Platform Nine and Three Quarters before her attention was drawn to the action taking place on the field. After a few minutes, Lupin leaned down toward Lily. "What do you think of quidditch?" he asked, looking young and full of energy for once.

Lily blushed. She was sure that the match was exciting, but she had no idea what was going on. She had never been to a quidditch match before. She had skipped the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw game out of guilt that it was her fault the Marauders were not allowed to go, although they hadn't been around all afternoon, anyway. They had arrived back at the common room shortly before the rest of the Gryffindors, cheeks red and in high spirits, and Lily had had the sneaking suspicion that they had put Potter's invisibility cloak to use to attend the game anyway, without being noticed by McGonagall or any of the prefects. "Well, I'm afraid I don't really know what's going on," she admitted.

Lupin gave her an understanding smile, but Potter, who had been bellowing at the keeper to "Circle the posts, CIRCLE them, don't just sit there, you idiot!" paused mid-bellow with a look of mock-outrage on his face. "You don't understand quidditch?" he said in disbelief. "You can't be a proper witch without understanding quidditch! Budge up, come on, move!" he said, now climbing down beside Lily and pushing Alice and Amelia aside as he did so. "I suppose that once again, it will fall to me to educate you, then." He sighed loudly and plopped into the seat now open next to Lily.

Lily noticed with a giggle that Black and Lupin were rolling their eyes, and found to her amazement that she didn't feel annoyed. On the contrary, she was rather looking forward to learning more about the game. She nodded. "All right, then. What's the object?"

Potter's eyes lit up with excitement. "The object," he said, grinning from ear to ear, "is to catch the snitch!"

Potter launched into an explanation of the basic object of the game, and the purpose of each player position. As the game continued, he kept up a stream of chatter about fouls, formations, and techniques, occasionally jumping up to shout how worthless the Gryffindor seeker was, and how much better the team would play if he were on it (to which Pettigrew always agreed wholeheartedly). When Potter was shouting, Lily found that she was a little spooked at how accurately her dream had portrayed his behavior, but chocked it up to how well she knew him by now. Lily was enjoying the match, but still felt a little uneasy. She didn't allow herself to relax completely until they arrived back at the common room after a very disappointing loss to Slytherin. Maybe it had just been a dream, after all.