© Ariana Veelagrace and Clara Maplewood, years 2000-2002
A/N: Happy New Year! Lily+Company
enters their sixth year at Hogwarts....will sparks fly, or will yet another
year pass without any satisfaction for you hopeless romantics out there?
(muahahaha)
The Lily Series
Chapter 56
James was Captain of the Gryffindor quidditch team,
so Lily was automatically in (much to her dismay). Her fellow Beater was a
fourth year named Eva Sinclair, who was at least a head taller than Lily and looked
as though she could wrestle three Bludgers with her
bare hands. A wiry seventh year boy,
Brendan Christenson, was Keeper, and James was the Seeker, of course. The three
Chasers were Quinn Baker, Lena Riley, and Michael Daehn.
The first practice was a bit nerve-racking, to say the least. Lily still couldn't
land a broomstick without practically breaking her neck, although
her fear of heights was pretty well under control. Besides, Eva kept cracking
her knuckles and looking at Lily like she was determined to prove which of them
really deserved to be on the team. Lily just smiled tentatively and tried to
stop her stomach from doing acrobatics.
"All right!" James called after everyone had
arrived. "I'm going to cut right to the chase: Gryffindor hasn't won the
Quidditch Cup in twenty-nine
years, and I'll be a Squib if this team makes it a straight thirty! Now, I spent
my summer thinking up new plays, and I took the liberty of making
copies for everyone." He reached into an inside pocket of his robes and
produced six playbooks that looked like the kind of thing that
only Advanced History of Magic students have to read. Everyone groaned.
Quinn Baker scowled as he accepted his copy. "Honestly, Potter, when are
you going to give it up?"
"I'll tell you when I'm going to give it up: In June, when we all look
around and see the Gryffindor colors decorating the Great Hall!"
"Oh, knock it off," Brendan Christenson laughed, leafing through the playbook.
"There's got to be at least a hundred different plays in here!
We can't run half of them this year!"
James looked offended. "For your information, there are twenty-six. And I admit fully that I might have gone a
little overboard with the full-color
sketches and three-page analyses on numbers fifteen through twenty."
"Right. Like I'm going to read all that," Eva said as though
rebelling against a practical joke.
"Yes, you are going to read all that. As a matter of fact, all of you are going
to read all that, and MEMORIZE all that before our first game!"
Lily couldn't keep from a huge smile. James could certainly be a control freak
when he wanted to.
"Something funny?"
She looked up. "What?"
"I said, is something funny?" James was looking at her with one eyebrow
raised.
"Er, nothing really...it's just that..."
She thought up a quick lie. "You misspelled a word on page one hundred
fifty-nine."
"I knew it!" He said, crossing his arms over his chest. "It's
when I'm describing the Licopelli Pivot, isn't it?
Should be the second paragraph?"
He snatched his own copy and began flipping pages urgently.
Pamela Vancouver was a short, slightly pudgy Ravenclaw first year. She was really a half-blood, but had been
raised by her mother, who
happened to be a Muggle. She had always known that she was magical, but she had
never expected anything as exciting as Hogwarts! Moving
portraits and talking suits of armor...even magic wands! The whole thing was
overwhelmingly strange to her.
One can imagine the shock that poor little Pamela received when a giant chess
pawn tapped her on the shoulder as she was going to Charms
class and said, "Pardon me, good lady, but couldst thou tell a poor lost soldier
where he might find a chessboard?"
Needless to say, she fainted on the spot.
The passing Professor Sinistra managed to console
Pamela's hysterical friends, gather her books, and revive her for a visit to
the Hospital Wing.
The pawn in question stood by at attention the whole time,
seeming both concerned and extremely befuddled.
Professor McGonagall strode into the Gryffindor common room. "Black! Potter!
Lupin! Pettigrew! Evans! NOW!"
The Marauders grinned at each other, then sobered up
as they approached McGonagall with the confused Lily.
She slammed the now normal-sized pawn onto the table sharply. "Well?"
Lily had no idea what was going on. "What do you mean?"
"This is from your chess set, is it not, Miss Evans?"
"I don't know..." She hesitantly reached for it. "Is
it cursed?"
"It most certainly is not!"
"Sorry." Lily picked it up and turned it over. Yes, it was
hers. It even had her initials scrawled on the cork bottom in blue ink.
"Yes, it's mine. Why do you ask?"
Ignoring the question, McGonagall glared at them. "One of you had better
have a very, very good explanation as to why a life-sized version of this pawn
was hopping around the halls this afternoon, frightening a first-year girl half
to death!"
The boys could no longer contain themselves; they all emitted a quick snort of
laughter in unison, then regained their composure.
"Er...it started out pretty much
innocently...."
"Yes, we were studying our Engorgement Charms, really we were..."
"And Lily gave us the pawn to practice on, so...hehe..."
"What were we supposed to do, decline her oh-so-generous offer?"
"That's enough, Mr. Black!" McGonagall's nostrils flared like an
angry horse's. "In order for your story to be true, several unlikely circumstances
would also have had to take place. One, that you four were
studying at all. Two, that all four of you hit the pawn with very potent
Engorgement Charms simultaneously. Three, that you were doing all this out in
the hallway - seeing as the hall is not exactly a favorite chess spot, I'm just
assuming that this is false - since the pawn could not possibly have fit
through the portrait hall when it was enlarged. Thus, you have committed several
transgressions within the space of a day: You must have practiced magic in the
halls; then, the object of the spell was obviously antagonistic; and of course,
we can't forget the fact that you LIED
to my face in order to escape inherent punishment!"
Lily was speechless. She had known absolutely nothing about this, but McGonagall
wouldn't believe her, not when she was this angry. How
had they gotten ahold of one of her chess pieces?
Maybe it was when she and Sirius had been playing chess in the common room the previous
evening...
"Are you listening, Miss Evans?" McGonagall snapped. "Or can't
you see my lips moving above that Prefect badge?"
Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. "I - I - I didn't -
"
"Detention for all of you, and forty points from Gryffindor! I must say, I
am ashamed that five Gryffindor students, two of them Prefects, could
possibly be so careless and negligent!" And with that, she turned on her heel
and slammed the portrait shut behind her.
The four boys burst out laughing as soon as she left. "Did you see the look
on her face?"
"And what was she talking about? 'The object of the spell was obviously antagonistic?'
Who in the heck talks like that?"
"I know! And then she dug into Lily about being a Prefect and - OW!" Sirius clapped a hand to his forehead, where
Lily had hit him with the
little stone pawn.
"Shut...up!" She smoldered from behind gritted
teeth. "You've already done ENOUGH, okay? You stole from me, for one
thing!"
"Hey! I took that pawn out with my knight, and it just sort of...fell into
my pocket."
"I said shut up! And then, you lied to Professor McGonagall! I can't believe
you lied to her! HOW do you look at her face and lie?"
Remus grinned. "Practice."
"DID YOU NOT HEAR ME WHEN I TOLD YOU TO SHUT UP???"
All four of them backed up a step. Lily was ticked.
"I had a perfect record! I have never
had a SINGLE detention in my life! Not even when I was in Muggle elementary
school! And now, you
four have to besmirch my reputation with a STUPID prank -"
"Whoa, whoa, back up....'besmirch?'"
"If you paid any attention in History of Magic, you'd hear Professor Binns say it all the time!"
Sirius cleared his throat. "Professor Binns is a
little bit dead."
"AND YOU'RE A LITTLE BIT STUPID!"
Lily grabbed her pawn off the floor and ran up to her dorm, where the pillow
was soon ripped to
shreds.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Disclaimer: Brendan Christenson, Quinn
Baker, Eva Sinclair, Lena Riley, Pamela Vancouver, Michael Daehn, Juno (not
featured in this
chapter, lol), and everything that's ours is ours.
Everything that's J.K's...is hers. That
clear everything up? Get it? Got it? Good.
Have a nice day. :o)