Lily Chapter 10: The Calling, a harry potter fanfic

Lily

Chapter 10

James was picking up rocks and hurling them at the cloud of bats that was closing in on him and Lily. A few dull thuds rewarded his efforts as bats plunked to the ground.

Lily winced, kicked off her shoes, and struggled to her feet. The bats were tearing at her hair and dress like crazy. She grabbed one of her shoes and threw it point-blank into the moving mass. All that resulted was a lost shoe, and she limped as fast as she could in the direction of the pool of light cast by James's wand. She fumbled for her wand, reaching up the sleeves of her dress, where she had kept it during the dance. When Lily finally succeeded in shaking it out onto the cave floor, a bat landed on it and started to carry it away. She lashed out at it and grabbed the wand protectively.

The bat screeched and hopped away from the wand, but it didn't go away. It flew at her and sunk its claws into her left arm, slicing it to the bone. The bat was suddenly knocked to the ground. When Lily looked up, James was holding his wand aloft, as though he had just hit something with it. He extended a hand to her and yelled urgently, "Come on, we have to get out of here!"

Lily couldn't get up. The loss of blood was making her too light-headed to even say "thank you." She took James's hand and tried to struggle to her feet, but a combination of the hundreds of wounds inflicted by the bat's claws and her twisted ankle made her fall back to the cold ground.

Her senses dimmed, but she heard James curse and felt him heave her up by the arms and try to drag her along. She tried the best she could to hop along, but both of them knew that they weren't going to make it. Suddenly, James stumbled and fell flat on his face. The bats descended on them, not quite satisfied yet. Lily groped for her wand in the dark, pointed it in some direction she wasn't sure of, and yelled out a charm she had heard once. She knew it hadn't been said right, because her speech was slurred.

There was an enormous craaaack. The bats shrieked in panic and ceased their attack, giving James time to struggle upright and drag Lily somewhere...boulders falling...crashing noises...going up...blackness.

When Lily had awakened, she felt bandages all over her body. She was lying in a soft, comfortable bed. She opened her eyes and recognized that she was in the Hogwarts Infirmary. Madam Pomfrey was at another bed, tending to another student.

How did she get here? What had happened to James? What made the bats go away? Someone must have taken her out of the cave, but who? James! Where was he? What if he had pushed her through the passage entrance, but gotten crushed by a boulder?

Lily panicked and sat bolt upright in her bed. Her head swam, but she looked over to the next bed. James was sitting there, arguing quietly with Madam Pomfrey as she tried to bandage his hand up. Lily breathed a sigh of relief. James was okay.

There was a knock at the door. Madam Pomfrey opened it, revealing Peter, Sirius, Remus, Chantel, and Chrissy.

Chrissy jumped up, looking over Madam Pomfrey's shoulder, and squealed,"Are you two okay?"

The stern matron shook a finger at them. "Only five minutes, no longer. These two have been through quite enough without you troubling them!"

"Yes, Madam Pomfrey." All five responded. She disappeared into her office with a slam of the door.

The visitors clustered into the space between the beds. "Jeez, you guys got scraped up pretty bad. Did Madam Pomfrey kiss your boo-boos and make it all better?" Sirius joked.

James groaned. "Not funny, Sirius."

"So, what happened?" Chantel was asking Lily, but James took it upon himself to explain.

"Well, we were trying to get into Hogsmeade. We took this one passage that I'd heard about, but it turned out to be this creepy cave. A rat crawled up Lily's leg and she screamed, so we got attacked by a bunch of bats."

Sirius punched Peter playfully on the arm. "Done any scurrying lately?"

"What?" Lily asked, quite confused.

"Nothing! Er, go ahead, James." Remus covered Sirius's tracks as best he could.

"Yeah. Well, Lily tripped and fell, so I tried to help her out of the cave. We couldn't make it through all the bats, so Lily said this spell...I don't know what it was, but it blasted the ceiling apart. She passed out, and I dragged her out through the entrance. Then, I brought her down here."

Remus looked somewhere between worried and angry. "You mean it's caved in?"

"No. Believe it or not, it's still useable. Something must have stopped the rocks falling at some point, so there's a kind of tunnel underneath it. But I'll bet you anything that it's going to cave in sooner or later. Nobody should use it," He made a point of looking at Sirius. "NOBODY."

Sirius saluted. "Yes, sir! Hey, Lily, James saved your life! I think that makes you obligated to call him 'my hero' for the rest of this year, at least!"

"Knock it off, Sirius!" James shouted as Lily turned red.

Madam Pomfrey barreled out of her office, shouting "OUT! YOU'VE BEEN IN HERE FOR OVER TEN MINUTES!"

There was a scramble to escape Madam Pomfrey's wrath, and Chrissy, being the last one out, gave a very giggly "Bye!" as she closed the door.

Lily and James were allowed to leave the Infirmary the next day. They had both missed a day of classes, so there was quite a bit to make up.

One night, Lily was looking up information in the library for Transfiguration class. Lily wasn't really good at that subject. She worked very hard, but she could never quite manage it.

No one else was in the library at the time, it was very quiet and peaceful, just as Lily liked it. When 11:30 came, Lily yawned and decided it was time to put her books away and go back to her dormitory. On the darkened journey out of the library, she heard her own footsteps echoing on the hard wooden floor. Though Madam Pince had even deserted her post at the front desk, preferring sleep, Lily felt like she wasn't quite alone. She shook it off. Probably just old memories of scary stories that Petunia had told her. Interesting, though, that all of those stories had been about witches and wizards.

Suddenly, Lily heard the sound of someone breathing very close by. Her heart pounded with fear as her sweaty palm gripped her wand. The breath caught in her chest as she felt a hand on her shoulder, and a voice spoke.

"Come with me Lily...Join me...the rewards will be great...Meet me in the Astronomy Tower on Thursday night..."

Finally, the hand removed itself from her shoulder, and she started breathing again. That, she thought, could not have been her imagination.
Maybe she was hearing things. Petunia had always told her that she was crazy, but Lily had to question whether taking Petunia's advice was a good idea. She convinced herself that all she needed was a good night's sleep, then the hallucination would go away.

The next morning at breakfast, the voice haunted her again. She was sitting down between Chrissy and Chantel to eat her silver-dollar pancakes, when the high, spectral voice spoke the same lines. All other sounds dimmed in her ears.

"Come with me, Lily. Join me and the rewards will be great. Meet me in the Astronomy Tower on Thursday night."

(A/N): I hope that you liked this one. The next fic will be coming soon. Please review!