Lily Chapter 17: The Thing That 'Never Happened', a harry potter fanfic

A/N- I think you've been waiting for this one for a while....well, most of you, anyways.

Lily

Chapter 17

Mr. Potter flew off, much to Lily's confusion. James just smiled and shrugged. "That happens all the time. Sort of odd, though...He usually doesn't get called in on Saturdays." he shrugged again and flew down to the ground, setting off for the house.

Lily stopped staring off in Mr. Potter's direction and snapped her head around when she heard the door to the house close behind James. "Oh, boy." She filled up her lungs with air and shouted. "JAAAAAMES! GET YOUR REAR END BACK OUT HERE NOW! IT'S NOT VERY NICE TO LEAVE A LADY WHO HAPPENS TO ALSO BE A GUEST UP IN THE...AIR! Oh, this is so not normal." Her voice rather lost from screaming so loudly, she remembered that pointing the broom handle downwards makes you go down. "O.k, mr. broom, can you be nice and not throw me off? Thank you." She put one finger on the handle and poked gently, expecting the broomstick to plummet to the earth, leaving her no more than a spot on the lawn.

Nothing happened.

"You know, it's o.k. to let me down, too," she muttered to the broom. This time she poked a little harder. It dipped a little bit, making Lily flail her arms for balance, but nothing happened. "Hello? Do you speak English? When I do this-" she put both her hands on the broom handle- "You're supposed to do this!" she pushed down with all her might in frustration and found herself breaking the sound barrier as she flew through the air and almost hit the ground. Luckily, James had finally gotten a clue and was waiting out there for her. He reached out an old broomstick and broke her fall. As she tumbled a foot down to the ground, he roared with laughter.

"You screeched, O milady?" he said mockingly. "Thou belongst in a mental institution, methinks, talking to a broomstick..." he broke off nervously as Lily made ready to kick his shins. "Um...let's go make lunch or something." He held out a hand to help her up, but she simply stood up on her own and brushed past him as though he wasn't there.

When he finally caught up with her in the house, she was standing loftily at the counter, spreading peanut butter on a sandwich. He noticed that she had only made one. "O.k..." he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. "One for me?"

There was no response, only a glare from Lily that could have frozen the sun.

"Guess not." So he set about making his own sandwich. Before long, Lily came up to the counter and walked over to the napkins.

James just stood, spreading the jelly, and he suddenly heard her voice behind him. "James?"

He turned around quickly. "Yes?" The world went white as Lily hit him full in the face with a handful of flour. "Jeez!" he reached for the only possible ammunition, which happened to be the open jelly jar. A handful of purple flew across the room, just missing Lily's ear.

She laughed at him. "Haha! Nice try, Potter!" the gob of grape jelly was lobbed back at him, landing right on top of his head. "That was for making fun of me!"

He ducked down behind the counter and grabbed two handfuls of flour. Since he knew the kitchen better than Lily did, he knew that he could crawl around back of Lily and she'd still be watching the counter, waiting for when he would pop up. Two globs of flour later and Lily looked like a ghost. "You ingrate!"

"Come on, Lily, have a little fun! Look, if it makes you feel better, here." he strode over to the flour bag again and mashed three handfuls into his own hair and face. "Is that o.k. now?"

"I guess," said Lily, walking over to stand next to him. "Maybe it would feel better if..."

"If what?"

She heaved the entire contents of the flour sack at him. "If I did it myself!"

This just couldn't be forgiven. They both grabbed handfuls of the newly-fallen flour as if it was snow and hurled it at each other with reckless abandon. They were both on opposite sides of the table now, and James was trying to get around to Lily and whiten her hair a little more. Every time he moved a step to the right, she moved a step to the left. Every time he moved to the left, she moved to the right. Then, he got an idea. He faked by skidding to the right then sprinting left. They crashed into each other at the table's end, and suddenly were locked in an embrace, mostly caused by the mutual need for balance.

"Oh...wow," said James, looking around at the messy kitchen.

"Yeah...wow." said Lily. But neither of them let go. As a matter of fact, it was quite the contrary.

They both turned and faced each other at the exact same time, and leaned forward. Their lips met, and it was instant, if brief, chemistry. After about one and a half seconds, James jumped back as though he had been struck by lightning. "What was that?"

Lily sat down rather hard in a chair. "I think...it was a kiss."

James's stomach gave an uncomfortable turn. "Sorry, Lily."

"No, it was my fault. Sorry."

"You mean you meant to?"

"I don't know, did you?"

"I don't' know, did you?"

"I don't know." Lily sighed. "Whatever it was, that's all, it WAS. It's gone. It never happened, all right?"

"Right," James said, with only the tiniest note of disappointment in his voice. "Never happened."

Mops and wet cloths made shiny trails through the layer of flour that covered the entire kitchen. There was total silence, both of them re-enacting his or her own version of the whole hug+kiss episode mentally, until (dot dot dot) they heard sounds from upstairs.

The hyper-sensitive Lily jerked her head upwards so quickly it hurt. "What was that?"

A smile played on James's lips as he quoted her. "I think...it was a kiss."

"What ARE you talking about?" She was taking herself quite literally about the "never happened" thing.

"Never mind...I don't know what it is." He leaned the mop up against the doorjamb and walked over to the staircase. "I'll take a look. I'll be right back."

She grabbed his arm, but kept at arm's length. "Wait! What if...never mind. Go ahead." He smiled and kept going. She stood, hand still outstretched, and her mouth open in awe at her stupidity. She muttered to herself as she went about cleaning the counter. "Sure, Lily, it's only the darkest wizard in the universe is after you, no biggie, you can be alone downstairs in a strange house when the only other person there is 'investigating' mysterious footsteps upstairs; yeah, that's completely safe." Of course, she was only psyching herself out, she wasn't really serious.

She should have been.

James walked through the upstairs. "Hello?" There was a sound of footsteps at the end of the hall. "Who's there?" He grabbed a small footstool and held it above his head, ready to strike. "I'd advise you to leave! Right now, because I'm armed!"

A voice he knew came out of the room. "Armed?" Bell-like laughter reverberated down the hall. "I'll come quietly, then!" And out of the room, hands above her head in mock surrender came-

James dropped the footstool on his own foot, but didn't react. "Chrissy?"

"The one and only."

"I thought you were- that is, I knew you were-"

"Dead? Life plays funny tricks sometimes, doesn't it?"

"But are you a ghost or something?"

She shook her head.

"You're real?" There was mounting excitement in his voice as the burden of guilt removed itself from his shoulders.

"As real as you are, Potter."

That was almost strange, because Chrissy had never called him "Potter," but his overwhelmed senses had dismissed reason as a thing of the past. "I can't believe it!" He ran forward to hug her, ecstatic that she was alive, but he found himself in the room. He had run right through Chrissy!

Her figure turned around, and the eyes glowed red as a different voice came out of the mouth. "My victims stay dead, Potter. I don't leave anything to chance." Before his eyes, the form of Christina Johnson had turned into a tall, thin, black-haired wizard in his mid-thirties and melted through the floor, laughing maniacally. The laughter echoed in James's betrayed ears as he pounded a fist against the wall in frustration. The door slammed shut and locked itself from the outside.

"Hey!" He rattled the doorknob, pounded on the door, and yelled to Lily at the top of his voice. "Lily! It's him! Get out of the house!" In his pure anger, he wrenched the doorknob off of the door. Utterly exhausted, he slumped down against the wall and held his ears, not wanting to hear the screams.

Lily felt an icy hand on her shoulder. "James, how on Earth did you come down the stairs without making a- Oh, my God!" She had turned around and seen that it wasn't James.

"Easily, my dear. I don't use the stairs." The thin, pale smile seemed to make those ruby eyes glint even more wickedly than normal. "And now...now, it's time to ensure that you never use stairs again." The smile was instantly replaced by an unconcealing sneer as he wrenched her arm behind her back and jerked her head upwards from behind with his wand pressed against her throat. She couldn't move...his body was blocking her...

"Help..." she whispered weakly as her air was cut off by the yew rod at her throat. "James...someone..." The world went black.

Suddenly, as Lily's body went limp in his grasp, his sneer metamorphosized into a look of disgusted amazement. "No...." he backed away, leaving her shallowly breathing form limp on the kitchen floor. "It's only half the magic..." He cursed so horribly that the air must
have been singed in the words' wake. "Where could the other half be?" And within a second, he was gone.

James toppled backwards as the door behind him flew open. A voice rose past him and up out of the house. "Your friend is lucky now...it's not complete...but I will destroy her someday..." and the horrible, piercing laughter chilled his ears yet again.

James was luckier than Lily; Voldemort wasn't around long enough to hear the name James called after him. But then, horrified at what he might find when he got downstairs, he walked slowly towards the kitchen. His father was kneeling on the ground next to a very shaken Lily, but alive. He looked up and saw James. "Oh, hello, James...care to tell me what happened in here?"

James's eyes twinkled as he said, quite truthfully as far as Lily was concerned, "Whatever it was, it never happened."