Lily Chapter 48: Mirrored, a harry potter fanfic

VITAL ANNOUNCEMENT FOR ALL THOSE READING THIS CHAPTER: YOU WILL NOT UNDERSTAND PARTS OF THIS IF YOU DO NOT READ THE REVISED CHAPTER 1, BECAUSE A PROLOGUE HAS BEEN ADDED.

A/N: I just love cliffhangers! Lalalalala, hey look at you, you're hanging...off of a cliff! Muahahahaha! *Ariana comes flying out of nowhere and grabs the keyboard from Clara* Get off! Stop scaring them! *The two engage in a rather exhilarating author's duel as the story unfolds*

Lily

Chapter 48

"James?" Lily stared at the spot where James had stood only a moment before. "James, where are you? Are you and Sirius playing some kind of trick on me? You KNOW we're not supposed to use magic over the summer holidays!" There was no answer, only the ceaseless melody emanating from the little music box in her hand. She hurriedly set it down and, just before closing it, moved to put the glass skater back onto the ice. But then..."Oh my God! James!" She blinked, not quite believing what she saw. There, as though a motion picture of him was being played on the mirror, was James! He pounded on the glass with his fists and shouted, but no noise came. Lily's first reaction was pure astonishment that James was trapped in a mirror, then she started to laugh. Apparently, James could see her laughing, because he mouthed a rather rude word from his position inside the music box and started punching the glass again. "Oh, come on, James, you've got to admit that this is pretty funny." More rude words and pounding came from the mirror. Lily sobered up. "All right, all right...I'll try to get you out."

She reached for her wand, but then checked herself, remembering that it was against the rules to do magic over the holidays. In sheer frustration, she placed the ice ballerina back inside the music box, closed the lid, and put it in her pocket. She ran through the upstairs hallway, calling for Sirius. "Sirius! Come here, you aren't going to believe this!" She sprinted down the back stairs, hoping to find him in the backyard. Sure enough, there was a sound coming from the red broom shed. Lily jogged over to it and knocked impatiently on the door. "Open up, Sirius! I've got to show you something!"

"Can't it wait?" came the muffled reply.

"This is kind of a serious situation!"

The door creaked open, and Sirius stuck his head through. "If it's a serious situation, I'm the man to call. What's going on?"

Lily suddenly realized how unbelievable this story was. "Erm...are you prepared to believe me? Whatever I tell you?"

"Depends."

"Well, okay. James is stuck in a mirror."

Sirius rolled his eyes. "He would be, wouldn't he? Okay. What do you want to do about it?"

"Um, get him out?"

"Good plan. How?"

"I don't know!" She reached into her pocket and opened the music box for Sirius to see. "Look! It's not exactly the standard Hogwarts curriculum to teach us how to get people out of mirrors! And besides, we can't use magic! The only person who could help us out is -"

"Mr. Potter," they said at the same time.

Sirius sighed and opened the door a little further. "Okay. I didn't want to show any of you until he got home, but seeing as this is kind of an emergency, here we go." He disappeared back into the broom shed.

Lily imagined he was retrieving some kind of super-fast broomstick. She could feel her stomach heaving already. But she was relieved to see that it wasn't a broomstick...until she realized what it really was.

Sirius emerged from the shed pulling along behind him the largest motorcycle Lily had ever seen. It was jet-black, with a helmet of the same color dangling from the handlebars, and it looked every bit like a normal Muggle motorbike.

"Where...what...I mean, how...?"

He grinned proudly at Lily's reaction, maybe for the first time in weeks. "I inherited it. Seems that my...that my dad kept trying to figure this out, but he never put it together all the way. He just got ahold of these Muggle schematics, but then he scribbled something on the back..." Sirius held out a faded piece of blueprint with several amateur instructions and diagrams on it.

"What are those for?" Lily turned her head to read them, but Sirius whisked them away before she got a chance.

"It's a surprise...I hope it works." Still grinning from ear to ear, he mounted the motorcycle and tossed Lily the helmet.

She tossed it right back at him. "No. I am not getting onto a motorcycle. Do you know how dangerous those things are?"

"Oh, come on, live a little!"

"The last time I heard anyone say that..." Lily shook her head. "Besides, if anyone's wearing the helmet, you are."

"My head's too thick to crack." He stood up, physically placed Lily on the motorcycle, and jammed the helmet onto her head. As he climbed back on and kicked it into gear, he turned around and said three very important words. "Hold on tight."

Suddenly, icy fear hit Lily. "Sirius?" she shouted above the motorcycle's roar. "How many times have you done this before?"

"Um...none."

"WHAT?" It was too late. Sirius had already taken off and was going down the street with all speed. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Lily screamed.

"WHOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Sirius whooped at the top of his lungs. "ISN'T THIS GREAT?"

"NO!" They went down the street for about five more minutes, and Lily was just starting to wonder what the extra plans were when Sirius said, "ah-ha!" and jerked the handlebars to the left. They were screaming along a forest path, branches thwacking against the helmet's smooth dome and catching in Lily's hair. She shrieked and ducked down, obeying the instructions to 'hold on tight' as loyally as she could.

Sirius must have noticed, too, because he shouted back at her in a breathless tone, "Lily, you're kind of paralyzing my diaphragm! Wouldja mind?" Though the only response was a scream, the answer was quite obviously 'yes.' He took as deep a breath as he could, then flipped a few switches and pushed some buttons. "Here we go!"

"WHERE? WHERE ARE WE GOING?"

Lily didn't hear him say "Up," because she was too busy controlling her sudden nausea. They were indeed going up. The trees grew smaller and smaller until they were only a square of green fabric far, far below them. The sound of the engine quieted to a mere hum, and Sirius sat back a little. "Wow. Was that incredible or what?"

"Ohhhh," Lily moaned. "I think I'm going to be sick." She didn't stop squeezing Sirius's torso, though.

"Well, you can't be that sick, because you've got the strength of a circus freak. Could you get off?"

"I don't think I mentioned my uncanny fear of heights and flying and such?"

Sirius gave a little exasperated sigh. "I don't think you did."

"Well, you certainly could have warned me!"

"Well, you certainly could have mentioned that you get airsick!"

"You didn't exactly have to force me onto this thing!"

"And you didn't exactly have to come!"

"You know something, Sirius Black? You've got some kind of -"

"Some kind of what?"

"Nerve! I told you I didn't want to go on a motorcycle, and here we are probably miles above the ground, and knowing your clumsiness and my luck, we're going to crash."

"I'd agree with you. Except for one thing."

"And what's that?"

Sirius climbed down off of the motorcycle and gestured to the forest floor beneath them. "I landed this thing while you were reaming me out."

"Oh." She looked around and took Sirius's outstretched hand to get down. "Thanks."

"Mr. Potter said something about this area. Maybe he's somewhere around here." Sirius walked to the edge of the forest and started for the street. "Come on, let's ask around."

Lily nodded and headed straight for the most familiar-looking building she knew: the police station.

"Wait! Lily, I don't think we should...oops, sorry, ma'am, I didn't see your foot there...Lily, come back! They're not going to know what you're talking about!"

His calls were to no avail on the sunny street, because Lily had already walked into the building. She walked up to the counter and spoke to the smiling policeman. "Hello. I'm looking for a man by the name of...erm...well, his last name's Potter." It suddenly hit her that she didn't know Mr. Potter's first name.

The Muggle policeman took out a large book and thumbed through the pages until he found what he was looking for. "I've got about twenty Potters in here. Do you know what street he's on?"

"Well, actually, he doesn't live here, he just might be working here...is there any chance that you could send some people to look for him? I really, really need to find him."

He sighed. "Look, Miss. If he doesn't live here and he doesn't work in any of these shops, I can't do anything to help you."

"But you've got to! We have to find him!" She reached into her pocket and, quite throwing caution to the wind, shoved the music box into his face. "Look! His son is in here!"

The police officer now looked extremely frightened. "What?"

"His son! James! My friend is stuck inside the mmmghfmghfmff!" Sirius had arrived and clapped a hand over Lily's mouth.

"Oh, Suzie, I can't believe you just ran away like that! Mum was so frantic, we couldn't find you anywhere!" While Lily tried to bite his hand, Sirius spoke very apologetically to the policeman. "She's sick, you see. Just coming back from the fizzykiatrist's."

"The what?"

"You know, the Muggle head doctor. Fizzykiatrists, you know what I mean!"

"You're crazier than your sister! And another thing, you two don't look anything alike!"

"Well, we wouldn't, would we? She's Muggle-born, I'm not."

"WHAT?" The policeman pressed a green button and held it down, utter confusion on his face. "I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but we're going to get this straightened out once and for all!"

Ten minutes later, Sirius sat in the corner of the jail cell, smiling sardonically at Lily. "Happy now, Miss 'My friend is stuck in this music box, Mr. Muggle policeman?'"

"Hey, you weren't exactly Security Boy out there, spouting about fizzykiatrists and Muggle-borns. By the way, it's 'psychiatrist.' SIE! KIE! UH! TRIST!" She sat down angrily and turned to Sirius with slitted green eyes. "And THEN, as if it wasn't enough that we were stuck in jail, you had to blow our ONE phone call by getting all excited over the 'neat Muggle gizmo' and punching in whatever number you liked! Man, are you lucky that policeman spoke Swahili, or we could've had a major crisis on our hands!"

"Hey, I'll bet that I was one number off from my fifth cousin! She's a Squib, so she's got a refrigerator!"

"Why would that help us?"

"So we could call her on it!"

Lily leapt up and punched the wall instead of Sirius. "No, you DINGBAT! It's a telephone! Between fizzykiatrists and refrigerators, I'm surprised you and I aren't splatted against the pavement somewhere on this street, and that motorcycle, too!"

"Would you just lay off the motorcycle?" Sirius was on his feet now, and he really looked angry and a little hurt. "Just cut me a break, okay?"

"Okay, whatever." Lily sat down again and took out the music box. "You know, we're pretty lucky they let me keep this."

"Incredibly lucky. If they hadn't, we'd have to call in a bunch of Obliviators to make them think they'd never seen James trapped in there." Sirius looked over at it and then craned his neck to get a closer look. "Wait a minute...did your parents really buy that for you?"

"Of course! One of my first memories is hearing this song. Why do you ask?"

"Well, it just seems kind of odd that your Muggle parents got ahold of a music box that happens to be exactly the same as one that Amelia had when she was a baby."

Lily looked up quickly. "What?"

"I remember, when Amelia was a baby, my mum and dad took me shopping on this street, and there was this old store at the end of it called Mifflebey's. It was already closed, but I remember that there was a little yellow music box with an ice skater inside it, and it was lying right outside on the grass. I ran off, picked it up, and I remember the look on Amelia's little face when I put it into her crib..." He broke off awkwardly and went back to his perch in the corner of the cell. After a moment of very pregnant silence, he spoke again. "But that's not the point. Mifflebey's was a wizarding shop, and they didn't make those anywhere else. They shut down a long time ago. It's just a house now, and Perry Mifflebey lives there. He's the original owner's son."

"What's that got to do with me and this music box?"

"Well...Mr. Mifflebey was into some pretty heavy Dark Arts stuff. Very anti-Muggle, so he didn't want to have his shop at the end of a Muggle street. Er, this is just a legend, so you might want to take it with a grain of salt. Supposedly, his wife begged and pleaded with him, and he gave in. Lots and lots of wizards came in there, but every once in a long while, a pregnant Muggle woman would come in there, and Mr. Mifflebey would turn them away, saying that the store was just closing or under repairs or something like that. Now, I don't really remember why, but there was one of those Muggle women who came in and bought something. One of those," he pointed to the music box in Lily's hands. "And word of it leaked out that a Muggle had done business with Mifflebey. Of course, those Slytherin blokes weren't too thrilled to hear that, so they got stupid about it and started a bunch of boycots and slandered Mifflebey all over the place. 'Course, he couldn't exactly keep the store open for long after that. Mifflebey didn't even stick around to raise Perry...just ran off and was never seen again."

"What about Mrs. Mifflebey?"

"I dunno, probably died of a broken heart or some silly romantic rubbish like that. It's just a story, though. Don't take it too much to heart."

But Lily was now looking at the music box with more interest. She turned it over and saw something written on the bottom she had never seen before: "Mifflebey's Gifts for All Occasions."