Lily Chapter 58: He's BAAAAACK!, a harry potter fanfic

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The Lily Series

Chapter 58

"Yeah, well, you also said that detention was going to be fun!" Lily said nervously, standing just outside the range of the Whomping Willow's branches.

Remus was leaning up against a nearby tree. "Lily," he said exasperatedly, "I don't understand you. You already know the tree can freeze if you press the knot, so why are you so scared?"

"I'm not scared, I just don't think it's very safe for him to scurry through there to the trunk. He could get clubbed all the way to France by one of those branches!"

This ping-pong conversation had been going on for at least ten minutes, and Sirius was getting very tired of it. "Listen, if you hold us up any longer, someone could see us out here and report us for another detention."

"So?" Lily snapped. "What do I care? You do, after all, deserve it."

James grinned. "You realize that they'd probably report you, too, right?" This, of course, set all four of them off.

"Alas, another smirch on your record!"

"And in such rrrapid succession!"

"You'll be cleaning owl poop for weeks on end for this one!"

"They'll most likely give us all separate detentions – we won't be there to get you out of it!"

"You'll have to repeat this year just for that!"

"All right!" she yelled, staunching the flow of teases. "But don't blame me if you get yourself killed going through there!" She handed Peter's wand back to him so that he could transform into a rat. As she watched, it suddenly occurred to her that he didn't really need the wand to be a rat.

The electric-blue ball hummed through the empty corridors of Hogwarts, going towards the sound of owls hooting. Sure enough, he turned a corner and found it, but Lily wasn't there. Instead, there was a tall, very angry-looking black-haired woman standing in the middle of the vaulted room, ranting and raving to herself. He transformed quickly into an owl and fought for a perch as he listened carefully to the woman.

"Of all the nerve, after I explicitly told them no magic, what in the world could they have been thinking, so obviously doing a Cleaning Charm with an extra coat of varnish over everything, it's like they were being smart-alecks right to my face, I'll find them, oh, yes, I will!" She stormed towards the door, chuckling a little bit disconcertingly and still muttering. She pushed the door open, and all of a sudden, a bucketful of liquid wax (obviously magically melted; it wasn't hot) poured onto her and hardened instantly.

A half hour later, McGonagall was still stuck there, having been powerless to stop a few owls from flying out of the room, some of them landing on her. All of a sudden, an owl with startlingly blue plumage soared past and landed a few meters away on the floor. It looked around, and, seeing nobody but the human candle, changed forms into a large blue hound dog and began sniffing for a trail.

The Marauders each took a handful of dust and started plastering themselves with it. "Come on, join in, Lily!" called Peter.

She glared icily at them. "I'm very, very, very allergic to dust mites, and I don't have a handkerchief. Are you trying to kill me?"

"Allergies are all in your imagination, everyone knows that!" said a very grey Sirius.

Quickly, Lily changed tactics. "Even if they are, it's just filthy! The Shrieking Shack must be centuries old; who knows how long that dust has been collecting?"

"Oh, don't be such a….such a prefect, will you?"

Looking at James with his hair even more askew than usual, streaked with dust, and still grinning like an idiot, Lily couldn't help but break into a smile. "Look who's talking! You're a prefect, too!"

"At least I don't act like it!" He picked up an old dictionary, covered with the fine grey powder, and closed it with a puff of dust…right in Lily's face.

The coughing fit that ensued knocked Lily back next to the open trunk behind her. "That was – cough – uncalled for!" She didn't really mind, though.

"Ever so sorry," he joked, extending a hand to help her up. "Actually, it's not really my fault…you only imagined the allergy, so you just imagined that you coughed, so maybe you're not really on the floor."

Lily picked up one of the old, dusty comforters that she had fallen on and heaved it towards James, clambering out without any help. "Well, in that case, maybe that blanket isn't on you."

Quite at a loss for anything to say, James stuttered for a second, then said, "Erm…maybe it is."

Sirius was laughing silently and scribbling on a piece of parchment. He folded up the parchment and put it in his pocket, watching the pair staring at each other, just trying to figure out some kind of response to James's last comment. "Jeez," he couldn't help saying, "James, this is torture for me, you know that, right?"

The tension broken and a new point of contention created between Lily's mind and heart, the Marauders set about dusting themselves (and Lily) again. When they had all been coated from head to toe, Remus said, "Ready, everyone?"

Three voices said, "Ready!" and one said, "Ready for what?"

"One…two…three!" The four boys started screaming and yelling and making as much horrible noise as possible.

Lily's hands flew up to her ears as she tried to talk above them. "You guys, what are you doing?!?"

Sirius picked up an old vase and, just before smashing it, spoke to Lily in a lowered voice. "Look out the window!"

"What?"

SMASH! "Just go to the window and look out, then keep walking past the windows."

"You're crazy!"

CRASH! BANG! Remus and Peter had just, through a joint effort, toppled the chest of drawers. "Just do it, Lily!"

It was sheer curiosity that made Lily go to the window and peek out, even opening it a little to let the December-chilled night air in. A small crowd of people, all in their pajamas, had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the wrought-iron gate. At the appearance of Lily's ghostly face in the window of the Shrieking Shack, they screamed and ran back into their houses, leaving behind a dog that was – it could have been a trick of the moonlight – bright blue. It threw back its head and howled as though it had found a squirrel, then turned into a stack of huge cue cards.

REMEMBER ME?

THINK MIRRORS

THINK SHAPE-SHIFTER

THINK ANYONE

THINK ANYWHERE

THINK ANYTIME

I TOLD YOU I COULD FIND YOU

Then, the shape-shifter that Lily now recognized as Kipper turned into a faintly glowing gnat and made its way towards the window. She whirled around and yelled to the Marauders. "Stop! We've got to get out of here!"

"Loosen UP! We're not going to get caught!"

"That's not why we've got to get out of here!" She grabbed Sirius by the shoulders and pushed him towards the window, pointing at the speck of quickly advancing blue light. "It's that shape-shifter from the mirrors!"

"Kipper's back?" It was one of the few times that Lily had ever seen Sirius look scared. "Back to Hogwarts, everyone!"

The next morning, a group of first-year Ravenclaw girls emerged from behind a large tapestry, chatting happily. One of them suddenly looked over her shoulder and told the crowd that she had forgotten her Defense Against the Dark Arts book and would be right back. She jogged back to the common room and, when she re-emerged, got a bit lost. Pamela Vancouver was extremely nervous about being in the hallways alone, ever since the incident the other day with the giant chess pawn. She anxiously tried to picture the route to the Great Hall, gawking at an elaborate stone carving embedded in the wall.

"Mmmm Vnnnvrrr! Grrrmmmrrfhrrrr!" Pamela froze. What was making that muffled screaming sound? She turned around slowly and let out a terrified squeak. There was a huge lump of wax just outside the Owlery door, emitting something that sounded like an attempt at speech.

The little girl backed slowly down the adjacent hallway, barely gathering her voice. "P-p-p-professor Sinistra!!! HELP!!!"

The Head of Ravenclaw House, Professor Sinistra, immediately notified Dumbledore of the "huge ugly monster" near the Owlery and divulged her personal opinion that Miss Vancouver had been overreacting when she claimed that it had attacked her. Pamela, for the second time in as many days, was led to the Hospital Wing to recover, and Dumbledore was left to investigate.

He strode through the hall, his wand held casually out in front of him. More than likely, it was some suit of armor playing a joke, or Peeves, perhaps. He rounded the corner and was, admittedly, very surprised. "Why, Minerva…I must say that white is a very nice color on you."

The five suspects were gathered in Dumbledore's office. The Headmaster paced back and forth behind his desk, moving his eyes from one to the other, then sat down. "So, according to your story, you neither used the Cleaning Charm nor rigged that bucket to dump wax on Professor McGonagall."

Sirius shrugged. "All I can say is that I envy the great mind who thought of the wax…not that I would have done that if I had thought of that, because, as you know, I'm not impulsive and troublesome like that."

Lily hadn't said a word the whole time. She felt bad enough about using the Cleaning Charm, but now to lie about it, and to know that the Marauders must be lying about setting the trap, was grinding her conscience raw.

"We really filled our detention, Headmaster," James said, with a sincere look that even Lily almost fell for. "Afterwards, we went right back to the common room. You can even ask Lily." He turned to her. "Did we put the bucket up there?"

She looked up and stared at James as though to say 'I can't believe you're asking me that,' then looked at Dumbledore. "As far as I know, it wasn't them."

Dumbledore actually looked angry, but his tone was even. "Perhaps, then, you can tell me what this was doing suspending the bucket from a candle sconce." He threw James's Invisibility Cloak onto the desk. Everyone stared at it.

"Very disappointing," Dumbledore said shortly. "First of all, I have no reason to believe that your story is, in any sense, true. Fifty-five points from Gryffindor. From now on, your titles as Prefects are on probation. You three…" he indicated Peter, Sirius, and Remus. "You three have two detentions apiece."

There was silence in the room. Dumbledore was almost as enraged as Lily. The Marauders all looked at James. It must have been him, they all thought. They all knew that it wasn't them, so it had to be James. James just wondered who had stolen his cloak.

Lily shivered and pulled the Quidditch robes tighter around her shoulders. Honestly, why would anyone keep a game scheduled when it was this cold? Miserable grey clouds dragged ominously across the sky, and Lily could see her breath. What if it started snowing in the middle of the game?

"Perfect weather!" James gushed.

Brendan shot him a glare from over chattering teeth. "Perfect? The bloody temperature's below zero!"

"It's going to snow, you know that, right?"

James held up a hand to stop the complaining. "Which is exactly why it's perfect. The air is never clearer than right before a December snowstorm. We'll be able to see for miles around, and we've even been training on foggy days! Attitude is everything!"

"Attitude? I'll give you an attitude!"

"Right, how about a quitting attitude?"

"Or an attitude that says to shut your scientific gob and go talk to the referee about postponing the match?"

"Actually, he does have a point."

Everyone stared daggers at Lily. Eva Sinclair visibly gripped her Beater's club and growled. "Really? Go on…explain."

"Er…well, I just sort of heard once that visibility's always best on cold days…" Her voice trailed off as Eva appeared to be aiming the club at her nose. "Or not."

James threw a broomstick to Quinn Baker. "Are we going to talk or are we going to win this game?"

The team rolled their eyes, and Michael Daehn started towards the field. "Neither. We're about to be the first Quidditch team actually frozen to their brooms."

Red and yellow uniforms fluttered in the gathering wind as the two teams kicked off. James started flying in lazy circles around the Quidditch pitch, as usual. His strategy was always to begin the game as though he was the worst Seeker ever born, then, as soon as he sighted the Snitch, turn into a spectacular flyer.

Ella Bourassa's magically magnified voice rang across the field. "And Lena Riley of Gryffindor takes hold of the Quaffle! She ducks a Bludger and speeds towards Hufflepuff's goals…why isn't anyone following her? Lena Riley of Gryffindor with a CLEAR SHOT at the Hufflepuff goals! HELLO!! YOU MORONS! SHE'S ALREADY SCORED TWICE!!"

The Hufflepuff team, along with the Gryffindor team, was distracted by the fact that their broomsticks had all decided not to move. They tried every trick they knew, but the brooms were simply frozen. Lily was the only one who had noticed the neon blue mist that surrounded the tails of every broom. Michael Daehn cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled to James, "I told you!"

Kipper finally reached Lena Riley's broom, so that every player on the field was simply immobilized. Lily leaned down until she was almost flat on her broomstick and whispered, hoping that Kipper would hear her. "Do you think it was a mistake that we left you in the mirrors?"

The familiar blue ball with a face on it re-appeared with a pop in front of Lily's nose. "Nope. That's why I'm tormenting you." It smiled hugely and turned around. "Hmm…maybe I should just let the brooms go as soon as they're all doing the all-purpose set-in-motion-at-top-speed spell that you're actually not supposed to use…"

"Don't!"

Kipper turned back towards Lily and crossed his newly-sprouted arms. "I think I will…unless you say that you're sorry."

"What are you talking about?"

"You hurt my feelings when you left me in that big scary maze!" He said indignantly. "I think that you owe me an apology!"

Lily sighed. "All right, I'm sorry."

"That doesn't count."

"What?"

"You weren't sincere."

"What more do you want? I'm sorry. I wish that I could go back and change what I said. I would rather go plummeting to the ground right now than live another second with the guilt I feel from leaving you behind. Is that good enough?"

Despite the absence of shoulders, Kipper shrugged. "It'll have to do. I expect a four-page apology written by tomorrow morning, though, and please include the words 'ungrateful wretch' in it."

The irritation disappeared, as did the mist surrounding all the broomsticks. A collective sigh of relief was breathed by the crowd, and Ella Bourassa kept commentating. "Well, whatever the heck that was, it's done with, thank goodness…let's see, Tommy Rillton of Hufflepuff blocks Lena Riley's next shot, throws it to Chaser Irene Hamilton….Irene Hamilton of Hufflepuff intercepted by a well-aimed bludger, hit by Eva Sinclair of Gryffindor! She drops the Quaffle, only to be caught by Quinn Baker, flying quickly underneath her…he dodges another Bludger rather skillfully, tosses the Quaffle to Michael Daehn, and Gryffindor scores again…The score is now Hufflepuff, zero, and Gryffindor, fifty. Well, here's an interesting twist, ladies and gentlemen…the Hufflepuffs seem to have a new strategy. It looks like now they're actually aiming to win. There's a novel idea! WHY DIDN'T YOU THINK OF THAT WHEN LENA RILEY WAS AT THE GOAL, SCORING FOUR TIMES IN A ROW, EH?"

Lily was surprised by the adrenaline rush that came from actually playing in a Quidditch match. A Hufflepuff Chaser, Brittany Morrison, was holding the Quaffle tightly under one arm as she weaved through the Gryffindors towards the goal. Brendan Christenson wasn't quite alert; he was circling the bottom of the goalposts on his broom, not paying any attention to what was going on above him. Lily suddenly realized that his broom had turned blue. She turned around and drew back her Beater's club, her eye fixed on the oncoming Bludger. The angle was right, but Brittany was a long distance away…could she hit it that far? With a fantastic THWAP, the club connected with the miniature cannonball, sending it zooming through the air.

"Great hit by Beater Lily Evans," Ella said grudgingly. "Yes, wonderful job, it's going right at her…OW! Oooh, that's got to hurt…" The crowd let out a collective groan on behalf of Brittany Morrison, who appeared to have a dislocated shoulder. She had dropped the Quaffle, and the game continued. Ella Bourassa, however, seemed more focused on the well-being of the Hufflepuff Chaser. "Why isn't she landing? Oh, that's right…she's all right, folks, Brittany's double-jointed!"

The game continued with Brendan Christenson a bit out of commission because of his "defective" broomstick, and about ten minutes later, when the score was Gryffindor, seventy, and Hufflepuff, ninety, and Lily had thwarted at least six more attempts at a Hufflepuff goal, out of the corner of her eye, she saw James break his orbit.

"And that's James Potter of Gryffindor flying like a maniac over towards the canopy on Ravenclaw's stands! He's spotted the Snitch, and it doesn't look like he's going to let anyone else get at it first! Uh-oh…here comes Matthew Nolan of Hufflepuff, also looking pretty determined! They're neck and neck! I don't know if they're at the Snitch yet, but…"

The crowd let loose with a bellow of "FOUL!" as Matthew Nolan, completely disregarding the Snitch, slammed sidelong into James to throw him off course. James, however, did a 90-degree turn, ducked under Nolan, and sped after the Snitch, which had suddenly streaked towards the Slytherin stands.

"And Potter's all right! He doesn't seem to want to collect on that foul! He's kept his eye on the Snitch, and he's racing for it! He's all the way forward on his broomstick….reaching out his hand…YES! HE'S CAUGHT THE SNITCH!!!!!"

James took a victory lap around the stadium, waving his clenched fist in the air and letting his ego soar on the audience's cheering. Determined to end this ritual, Lily turned around and called to Eva Sinclair. "Come on!" Puzzled, Eva followed her to a position immediately behind James, and before long, the rest of the team caught on. The entire Gryffindor Quidditch team was tailgating on James's ego trip, and he didn't even know it until they landed.