Lily Chapter 47: Never Run the Same Way Twice, a harry potter fanfic

A/N: Ah...this summer's going to be wonderful. Fasten your seatbelts, everyone, and hang on tight to reality!

Lily

Chapter 47

Lily glided across the mirrored ice, her delicate skates never leaving a single mark. A familiar melody rang in her ears, slowly dropping into a sinister, minor key. She tried to get down out of the pirouetting position, but she was completely stuck. It was almost as though she had been cast there, with her eyes being the only things that she could move. Her mouth seemed to be sealed shut, and her hands were stiff at her sides. She started to cry diamond teardrops of frustration, then looked down at herself and realized that she was completely made out of glass. A brown-haired, hazel-eyed two-year-old boy who she had never seen before walked up to her, stepping heavily but easily on the ice, and pushed her over with all of his might. From the outside, she screamed and watched her glass self shatter, the pieces skittering off into the endless void on the edges of the pond, and the little boy was laughing, laughing, laughing...

She woke with a start. She wasn't on a mirrored ice pond, but in the guest room at the Potters' house. She wasn't made of glass, but flesh and blood. The tears on her pillow weren't diamonds, they were real water. After a few deep breaths, Lily calmed down and got up out of the bed. It was probably about five-thirty in the morning, since the sun was just peeking over the horizon and the sky was a very dark blue, but not quite the black of midnight. She dressed in normal Muggle clothes and went down the elaborate staircase to the kitchen.

Lily reached down to open the cupboard where she remembered the cereal being, but suddenly realized that something was wrong. The all-so-familiar sensation of the black bracelet sliding down her wrist was gone, and so was the bracelet!

She spun around and ran back up the stairs, checking for the contrast of the delicate black chain against the marble steps. But it was just the clean white, white, white, all the way up. The bracelet was nowhere to be found in the folds of her blankets, either. Two of her things disappearing without a trace...what was going on?

Mr. Potter came down the staircase and yawned. "Morning, Lily." There was no response, so he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stared hard at Lily. "Lily? What exactly are you doing?"

The couch cushions were strewn about the living room, the recliner was set to the most horizontal position, and the upper half of Lily's body was stuck underneath it, rooting around for something. "Mmf! Mm lrkng frr m'brrslit!"

"You're lrking for your what?"

Lily slid herself out from underneath the old recliner, dust bunnies adorning her hair and making her look much older than she was. "My bracelet. You know, the black one I've worn for about two years now. It's just gone!"

"Holy cats, what else are you going to lose, your head?" He snickered at his own feeble attempt at a joke.

"Tell me about it. I've just got no idea where that glass..." Lily's voice trailed off as she saw Sirius coming down the stairs. Again, she felt that shame of complaining when she had only lost a material possession, and he had lost his family. "Well, I guess it's not that big a deal anyway."

"All righty then." Mr. Potter shrugged, then turned to Sirius, grinning. "Hey! How about waffles? James can tell you how great my waffles are...if he wasn't too lazy to wake up. Oh, Jaaaamesy!" He started up the stairs, calling out in a high falsetto.

Lily laughed nervously and tried to make some conversation with the zombie-like Sirius. "Wouldn't he be great paired with Professor Lollio?"

"Yeah. She'd probably make that match herself, though." He opened a cupboard and took out some cereal.

"Probably." Lily watched warily as he poured the cereal into a bowl, covered it with milk, and started eating. She glanced at the stairs, wishing that James would just wake up already and come down. As she waited, Lily wished that Amelia had never figured it out that Peter was working for Voldemort. If not for that night, Sirius would have probably been at home, showing Amelia how to squirt milk out of her nose voluntarily, not sitting at the Potters' breakfast table and eating cereal. His former gusto for life seemed to have vanished completely.

Luckily, it was about that time that James came staggering downstairs with his hair sticking up at about twenty different angles. It looked as though he was still sleeping; when he finally got to the bottom step, he sat down and started snoring again.

Mr. Potter came whistling along cheerily after him. "He's awake now! Say good morning, James."

The only response was a sound that was somewhere between a cough and a snore.

"Good enough! Well, how about I make those waffles now?"

The next two mornings went something like that, except for two things. First, Sirius got marginally more happy every day, and James a bit more awake. Of course, he still fell asleep on the bottom step, but that started to be like a morning comedy routine, with Mr. Potter dragging him to the breakfast table and insisting that they all eat at least five waffles. Lily still didn't find her bracelet.

On the third morning, however, a large brown Ministry of Magic owl was tapping officiously on the Potters' window. When Lily went over and undid it, the tawny creature flapped in and deposited a letter in front of Sirius. Then, as she was watching him open the letter, a large black owl with ashes on its feathers flew in and dropped a small package at her feet. She picked it up as the familiar owl flew away.

Sirius was reading the letter silently, but with a tiny flame of excitement growing in his eyes. James, who was now quite awake, tried to peer around to read the letter. "What? What's that?"

"Nothing," Sirius said, folding the letter back into the envelope. "Nothing at all."

"Sirius, the Ministry of Magic doesn't just send a letter to ask how your granny is. What's going on?"

"You'll find out in -" he glanced back at the top of the letter "-about one working day."
There was a teasing tone in Sirius's voice, and when he walked up the staircase into his room, James and Lily exchanged grins. Sirius was coming back, slowly but surely.

"How about you, Lily? What's in that little package?" Mr. Potter gestured towards the little grey felt case, the kind used in jewelry stores.

"I don't know. It's not my birthday...and there isn't any holiday, is there?" When the two Potters shook their heads, Lily shrugged and opened the case gingerly. "Oh! My bracelet!" She took it out and slid it onto her wrist. "But it's got a green locket on it instead of the charm! I wonder - oh, look at that." She stooped to pick up a note that had fallen out of the case and read it aloud. It had been written in a chilling, blood-red ink.

"'Dancing princess on the pond,

That cold pastime that you're so fond,

In a powder, crystal green,

Only what your eyes have seen.

Diamond tears are cold as ice.

Never run the same way twice,

Waiting, watching, just for you,

Debts will be paid before I'm through.'"

"Weird sort of love poem," James put in. "I wouldn't give him a second thought if I were you...hey!" He ducked to one side as Lily threw the now-vacant grey box at him.

"It's not a love poem. It's...some kind of threat, I think."

James crossed his arms over his chest. "Now you're just being melodramatic. You get your bracelet back with a rather nice poem, and you think someone's..."

But his last words were cut off by Lily's shriek. She had taken off the bracelet, opened the locket, and a short rain of crystalline powder had fallen out. "It's her! It's the ice skater! From my music box! What happened? What did they do to her?"

"Calm down, Lily!" Mr. Potter stayed true to his form of being rather 'out there' in normal time, but responsible and efficient in a panic. He walked around the table to Lily and pointed his wand at the small pile of dust. "Reparo," he muttered, and instantly, it rebuilt into the delicate ice princess.

Lily picked it up with shaking hands. "Thank you."

"Noo problem. How about you three try and figure out that riddle while I'm at work?" He moved towards the door and picked up his broomstick from the corner.

"Work? During the summer holidays?"

Mr. Potter sighed. "There are more and more emergencies. You-know-who..." He left it at that and went out the door.

Lily looked from the note to the wide-open locket on the bracelet to the little glass girl in her hand. Who could have done this? Whoever it was stole both the bracelet and the skater, so it must have been someone she knew very well...perhaps Juno? Immediately, though, she felt disgusted with herself at suspecting her friend. How could she? Peter...

"I'm going to go see what Sirius is doing up there." James interrupted her train of thought and got up from the table. "Maybe he'll play a quick game of Quidditch."

Lily nodded. "I'll come up, too. I've got to put her back," she held up the skater.

Right before they went up the stairs, both Lily and James glanced quickly back at the flour bin and smiled inwardly.

"Sirius? Sirius, where are you?" James's calls resounded through the ornate hallway as he trudged back and forth, opening all doors. "This really isn't funny!"

Lily walked into her room and sighted the patiently waiting music box. Reaching for it, she opened the lid and placed the girl on the mirrored ice. Two things suddenly occurred to her as she watched the beautiful dance: One, she never retraced the same path or spun the same way twice, and two, where there had always been two tiny emerald dots for the eyes, it was blank glass.

"Lily?" James was standing in the doorway.

"What?" She snatched up the skater and turned around, not meaning to hold the mirror towards James.

"Have you seen -" There was a flash of light, as though a sunbeam was being reflected off of the mirror, and when Lily opened her eyes, James was gone.