Chapter 5
I stared pleadingly at Cissa, as she shut the door to the common room. If she told Kate I hadn't been tutoring students at all, I was going to be in big trouble. No, wipe that – HUGE trouble. They'd probably never let me set foot outside the common room again.
"Narcissa, why didn't you fetch your cousin from the library?" Kate asked, rolling up the scroll she'd been marking.
"I went, but Madam Pince said I'd just missed her," Cissa replied, staring hard at me.
I'd been holding my breath, and now I let it out with a sigh of relief. I was safe – for the moment.
"Malvira's on her way." Kate got up from the sofa. "I need to prepare for tomorrow."
Cissa waited till Kate had gone into the kitchen, then she grabbed my arm, dragged me off the sofa, and hustled me into the corner of the room. As far away from Kate as she could get.
"All right," she whispered eagerly. "Who is he, then?"
I looked blank. I'd been expecting her to have a go at me. "Who?"
"You must think I'm stupid or something," Cissa snapped. "I know what you're up to, lying about a study group!"
"You can't say anything to Kate or Mike," I gabbled, panicking all over again. "Remember, I kept Luc a secret for you."
Cissa suddenly looked worried. "He's not a Gryffindor, is he?"
I shook my head. "Ssh! Nothing like that. I've been playing Quidditch with a women's team."
Cissa's eyes widened, and she looked at me as if I was mad. "It's worse than I thought," she muttered.
"It's a proper tournament," I explained. "They're real matches."
Cissa grabbed my arm again. "What's wrong with you, Lily?" she hissed, looking completely puzzled. "If you're going to go to all this bother lying, at least do it for something good! Don't you want a boyfriend like everyone else?"
I sighed, rolling my eyes. Why was it so impossible for her to understand?
"You know, you're quite pretty," Cissa went on, studying my face intently. "If you just did something with your hair and put a bit of makeup on, you'd look all right."
"Leave her alone, Narcissa." We both jumped as Kate came in with a stack of papers and two mugs of tea. "I never put makeup on 'til after I was married. Lily's a good girl now." She beamed at me. "She's studying hard for her NEWTs, and she helped me with my lesson plans last week."
I smiled back at Kate, feeling a bit guilty. Luckily, Malvira arrived just then, which got Cissa off my case. She would never understand why I was going behind Kate and Mike's back to play Quidditch, and there wasn't any point in trying to explain it to her. Just as long as she kept my secret. And it looked like she was going to, thank Merlin.
Malvira was the seamstress who made most of our robes. She bustled round, unpacking her tape measure and chatting to Kate. Cissa stood up to be measured first, while I sat thinking about how I could get my hands on a new broom. I had a bit of money, but not enough for a Nimbus.
"Waist, 25 inches," Malvira muttered, wrapping to tape measure around Cissa. "Under bust, 28 inches. Bust – "
Cissa grabbed hold of the tape measure and pulled it tighter. Kate frowned at her.
"No, that's too tight and rude," she complained.
"Nah, Kaitlyn," Cissa argued. "I want my robes more fitted. That's the style, innit?"
"OK." Malvira pulled the tape measure tighter. "Bust, 34 and a half."
"Tighter," Cissa whispered.
"And how are you going to breathe?" Kate snapped.
It was my turn. I dragged myself up from the sofa. "Kate, I can wear the same clothes all day," I moaned. "Why do I have to wear a dress for the reception? It'll just fall down – can't I wear my dress robes?"
"Your first gown is for when you become a woman," Kate retorted. "Malvira, she needs a full gown with petticoats, as well as dress robes."
Malvira started measuring me. "Bust, 31 inches – "
"No, that's too tight," I said quickly. "I want it looser."
Kate snorted. "Dressed in a sack, who's going to notice you?"
"Don't worry," Malvira said. "In one of our designs, even these mosquito bites will look like juicy-juicy mangoes!"
The three of them burst out laughing, while I pulled a face. But suddenly an idea popped into my head…
"Kate," I began innocently, "I'll need to buy different shoes, then. One pair to go with the gown and the other to go with my robes."
"What?" Cissa said, looking stunned.
Kate turned to her. "You see, she's coming into line," she murmured approvingly.
"I've got a little money – I could probably pay for one pair," I went on hopefully, "but could you give me some money for the other pair?"
Kate beamed and nodded. "You need one black and one white to go with everything."
She, Cissa and Malvira were looking delightedly at me. What they didn't know was that I was planning to spend almost all the money on a racing broom – and that definitely wouldn't go with my new robes or my gown…
"That's the one, Lily!" Abby said gleefully, looking through the windows of Quaffles and Quodpot, the sports emporium in Hogsmeade. The Nimbus 1000 was beautiful, all sleek and gleaming. I had to have it.
Excitement welling up in me, we went in. We'd gone to weekend training, but stayed in Hogsmeade after, so I could buy myself a broom.
"OK, I'll take it," I said at last, finally feeling like a real player as I clutched the Nimbus. I handed over the money, and then took the precious bag. I couldn't stop peeking inside at it. My very own broom!
"Where shall we go now?" I asked, as we came out of the shop.
"Haven't you got to buy some shoes for the wedding?" Abby reminded me.
I pulled a face. "Yeah, but I've only got six Galleons left." The broom had been more expensive than I'd thought.
"What about that place over there?" Abby pointed at a nearby shop called Stylish Shoes. "That looks cheap and nasty."
"Thanks a lot!" I laughed.
It was cheap. I got a pair of black loafers for 4 Galleons, 7 sickles. That ought to shut Kate up, I thought with satisfaction as we left the shop. Now I just had to make sure I kept my new broom out of her way.
"I don't really want to go home yet," Abby said, as we headed back through the side streets. She stopped outside a pub called The Hog's Head. "Let's have a drink."
"I can't go in there," I said nervously. I'd never been there before, preferring to stick to the more reputable Three Broomsticks. "Someone I know might see me."
"Aw, come on, Lily." Abby took my arm and dragged me inside. She sat me down at a table and went to the bar while I looked around the smoke-filled pub nervously. Once I was sure there was no one I knew there, I relaxed a bit.
Abby came back with a mead for herself and a Butterbeer for me. I couldn't help envying her. She seemed so sure of herself. She knew exactly what she wanted to do and where she was going. And here was me, who'd never even drunk alcohol.
"When's this scout coming, then?" I asked her, remembering what she'd said when we were out on the lawns.
Abby shrugged. "Dunno." She lifted her glass and took a drink. "But I hope it's soon. You know what really pisses me off, Lily? There's no money in the women's game over here. We're years behind Europe."
"But we beat most of them in the World Cup," I pointed out.
"That's the blokes," Abby replied. "The girls are different. The Austrian women's team, right, they went on strike to demand they got paid the same as the men." She grinned at me. "And they won! One of our England team is a Knight Bus conductor to pay her way. Can you see Pendragon having to do that?"
I shook my head. "I still can't believe that women get paid for playing Quidditch."
"Gloria Itriwi, one of the Italian players, makes millions in sponsorship," Abby said, a serious look on her face. "And I want to be up there with her. I've got a place in the Department of Magical Games and Sports, but if James does get these scouts over from Europe…" She shrugged. "Who knows?"
"You're so lucky," I said enviously. "I have to go into the Ministry – probably something really boring, like the Floo Network Authority."
Abby looked me straight in the eye. "And is that what you really want to do?" she asked.
I couldn't say anything. I knew what I wanted to do, and it was exactly the same thing as Abby. Go to Europe and become a professional Quidditch player and earn loads of money doing the one thing I loved. The problem was, I knew that I'd never be allowed to do it.
"Kaitlyn, she's back!"
Shut up, Cissa, I cursed silently as I hurried into the common room. Kate and Mike were sitting in the sofa in their office, but Cissa was studying in the common room, so she'd spotted me clambering into the common room. I'd been hoping to come in quietly without any fuss, shoot upstairs and hide my broom under the bed where nobody would see it.
"Liliana!" Kate turned round and stared at me. "You've been gone all day for two pairs of shoes? Come here."
"It's not that late, Kate," I said, edging towards the stairs. "I was looking at other things too, like – "I had to think for a minute " – handbags."
Cissa came across the room, and raised her eyebrows. "Let me see 'em," she demanded.
"Not yet," I gabbled. "I'll try them on with my robes."
I headed for the dorm. I made it halfway up the stairs, but Cissa ran after me and grabbed the carrier bag. I raced down the stairs after her, but she jumped onto the sofa with Mike and Kate, and handed the bag to Kate. My heart sank. I leaned over the sofa, trying to get the bag back, but suddenly Kate grabbed my jacket and pulled me closer. Then she started sniffing me like a mad thing.
"Have you been smoking?" she asked furiously.
"No!" I gasped. I groaned inwardly, remembering how smoky the pub had been. I must stink of it, and Kate's got a nose like a bloodhound.
"Salazar!" Kate moaned, sniffing me again. "Smoke and drink!"
"Look, I had to go to the loo, so I went into a pub with my friend," I gabbled. "I had a Butterbeer – look, you can smell my breath."
Mike jumped up from the sofa and came around to sniff at me. "She could be right," he admitted.
Kate looked slightly less stressed. That didn't last long though. She opened the shoe box and took out the black loafers. She stared at them in disgust, and Cissa pulled a face.
"These don't even have any heel," Kate pointed out crossly. "How will your gown fall nicely in these?"
"I'll take them back," I mumbled, desperate to stop them moving the box and see the shrunken broom underneath. "Give me the bag."
But it was too late. Kate already had the box out the way and was holding my precious broom with a look of revulsion. "A Quidditch broom," she wailed, and buried her head face in her hands as if she were about to burst into tears.
"You can't take it back, Lily," Abby said firmly. The whole team was on the grass doing sit-ups. We were in two long lines facing each other, and Abby was opposite me.
"I've got to," I muttered. The hassle I'd got was unbelievable. I'd been warned again that Quidditch was out. Luckily, my family hadn't realised that I'd been playing all this time for the Horntails without them knowing, and Cissa had kept her mouth shut too. "Kate told me I had to take it back and get some proper shoes for the wedding."
"Don't worry about it," Abby said between gasps. "Come over to my dorm after this, and I'll sort you out."
"Come on, girls," James yelled. He was standing at the top of the two lines, keeping a sharp eye on us. "Wake up!"
"God, Kate had a fit when she saw the broom," I grumbled. "And I smelt like a bleeding ashtray too. I've got detention with Filch for a week. How the hell am I going to survive that?"
"Yak, yak, yak, Lily!"
I looked up to find James staring hard at me.
"Everything all right?" he asked in a softer voice.
"Yes, coach," I said.
"Training getting in the way of your cosy little conversation?" he enquired.
"No, coach," I said nervously.
"Good!" he shouted, making me jump. "So you won't mind five laps running around the pitch, then. Elbows to knees as you go."
I got to my feet, wishing he hadn't said that. My right ankle was hurting me at the moment, and it had got worse during training. But I wasn't going to argue.
That didn't stop Abby, though. "James, that's totally out of order!" she exclaimed.
"I don't remember telling the rest of you to stop," I heard James shout as I ran off around the pitch, lifting my knees up high. "C'mon, move it! You're doing really well. Just keep it up for the next fifteen minutes."
I carried on running round the pitch. My ankle twinged every so often and I winced. It felt as though I'd sprained it slightly. But I was determined to keep going.
The training session finished just as I was completing my fourth lap, and I watched the other girls going back to the changing-room. My ankle was really beginning to hurt now and I was limping.
"All right, Lily." James came running over to me, looking concerned. "You can stop now."
"No, I'm OK," I panted. "I've just got one more lap."
"I said, Stop," James said sternly. "You're doing yourself an injury." He took my arm. "Come on, let's have a look at you."
"It's nothing…"
"Sit down," James pointed at the grass. "And let me decide if it's nothing or not."
I eased myself down on to the grass, biting my lip. James knelt down and undid my boot, then he slipped my sock off gently. I felt hot all over. I knew I was red in the face, and it wasn't just because I'd been running either.
"Why didn't you tell me you'd twisted it?" James asked. He put his hand on the sole of my foot and rotated it gently.
"I didn't want you to think I wasn't as strong as the others," I muttered. The feel of his warm hand on my bare skin was doing weird things to my insides.
James shook his head. "That's stupid, Lily. Look, my dad was my coach and the scouts kept telling him I was too slight to play, but he kept pushing me. That's how I injured my knee."
"You mean, your dad made you?" I asked softly.
"I wanted to show him I wasn't soft," James replied. "So I tried to play injured." His face shadowed. "He was always a bastard, anyway."
"You shouldn't say that about your dad," I murmured.
James glanced up at me, and my heart started to thunder in my ears. "You don't know my dad."
He helped me up, then put one arm round my shoulder and the other round my waist. I froze, and just about managed to stop myself gasping aloud. It was the closest I'd ever been to a boy before. And I was enjoying it. If Zott or Matthews or any of the others, even Sev, had tried it, I would probably have punched them on the nose. But this was different. The way I felt about James was different.
I was falling for him.
And I couldn't do a damn thing about it.