Lily Chapter 61: The Big Date, a harry potter fanfic

Lily

Chapter 61

A/N: O M G, this is so late! We originally planned on having this out two weeks ago, but due to circumstances beyond our control *Clara coughs: EVIL TEACHERS!!!* and a bad case of the giggles and writer's block combined, it was delayed quite a bit. However, fear not; we're on prescription (peanut butter M&M's) for the writer's block, and the teachers are…*grins evilly as muffled screaming is heard from the closet* …indisposed. J/k, of course.

Enjoy the chapter!

DISCLAIMER – We own the plot, of course, but the setting is all JKR's. As are most of the characters. Juno, Jessica, Anna, Professor McBride, and all the wonderful personalities. We'd like to give a shout-out to our muses, even though they haven't helped a goshdarn bit. So, if y'all can hear us from that locked closet, we hope that you cough up the keys soon. And when you do…watch out. J

After Sirius had been prodded into retrieving Peter, he cleared his throat, getting the attention of the small group assembled outside the Great Hall.

"Excuse me! I know I told you all that we'd be taking a new secret passage, but I was about halfway here when I decided against it. I think we deserve a…classier entrance." He took out his wand, looked down the corridors for any Prefects or Professors, and grinned. Two spells later, the motor on his bike was silenced and James's Invisibility Cloak could have covered a four-poster. He climbed aboard, motioning for Anna to sit behind him. "Accio!" he said with his wand pointing at the Invisibility Cloak.

All of a sudden, Sirius's plan seemed to settle in. "Oh, don't even think about it!" James just barely had time to yell before the motorcycle was invisible, inaudible, and probably halfway to the Three Broomsticks.

Remus sighed and gestured toward James, as though giving him the floor. "Well, where's that secret passage?"

The passage was blocked by one of the purple banners that hung vertically outside the Great Hall. It was heavy material to shift to begin with, but then a slightly complex spell had to be performed that involved touching one's nose with the tip of one's tongue, and that took a good ten minutes to achieve. Once the stone wall was made permeable, the spell had to be performed again to erase all signs of entrance. "We've got to be really careful, though," James had warned, "Because if we don't do it right the second time, then the banner gets sliced in half, and it says right across the entranceway, 'secret corridor right through here.'"

They had been walking through the magically lit underground tunnel for five minutes when a thought suddenly struck Lily. "How do we know?"

"What?"

"How do we know that the spell's right? The one that can slice up the banner, I mean?"

James stopped abruptly in his tracks and looked back down the passage. He appeared to be thinking a great deal about whether they had indeed performed the spell correctly, then he turned back with a worried look on his face. "I…I guess I never really thought about that before." There was a long, uncomfortable pause in which everyone had visions of Filch cursing and screeching with delight when he found a secret passage that six students had used to sneak off the grounds.

"I don't care!" Jessica suddenly blurted. "I came to dance. I didn't come to get my good dress robes filthy, I didn't come to worry about getting caught by that horrid Filch! I came to have fun! I AM NOT HAVING FUN!!!!!!!" Her angry words echoed down both sides of the tunnel as she turned on her heel and marched huffily towards Hogsmeade.

Sirius greeted them with a hearty "What took you so long?" to which James glared at him, leaving it at that (luckily for Sirius). Then they sat down at the table that Sirius had saved for them, ordered a round of Butterbeers, and admired the decorations.

Madam Rosmerta had truly gone all out for this party. There was, of course, a charmed sprig of mistletoe that kept popping out of sight and reappearing between likely 'suspects.' The round tables were draped with Christmas-patterned tablecloths and pushed out of the center so that there was a large dance floor cleared off. A huge, extravagantly decorated pine tree seemed to be crooning the most popular dance tunes, but Lily was certain that it was only a Transfigured wireless, as she had never heard a tree that could impersonate so many famous singing witches and wizards (not to mention a few classical orchestra pieces). Fairy lights and frost twinkled from every corner of the room, while Madam Rosmerta flirted and served customers (more the former than the latter) in mildly scanty yet dazzling red, white, and green robes.

All of Jessica's animosity faded when they entered the beautiful pub, and she warmed up to Peter quite a bit, her words like the purrs of a tamed lion. She beamed at her date with an expression much more suited to her round, slightly chubby face and tossed her shoulder-length blonde hair over one shoulder. "This is much better than any of the school dances, Peter."

"Er…" he seemed to be too baffled by her hasty personality change to get past 'er.'

Anna was smiling broadly over Sirius, whose eyes were glued to his feet as they continued dancing exuberantly to a wizarding band called "The Bludgered Bananas." Juno, Remus, Lily, and James didn't quite feel like dancing yet, but were content to engage in a four-way debate about The Bludgered Bananas. Juno stood on principle; any social protest band was fine with her, but the fact that the Bludgered Bananas were five attractive young wizards, certainly didn't cool her feelings towards this band in particular. She admitted, however, that their name was sort of odd. Remus agreed that the lyrics were thought-provoking and significant, but he didn't really like their musical style. On the opposite side, James said that he'd listen to Muggle garage band music if the words were good enough. Lily, however, took issue with that.

"You'd be better off reading poetry, if words are all you listen for in music," she said.

"Thank you!" Remus said, as though Lily was siding with him.

Lily raised her eyebrows at him. "Who said I thought you were right? Songs where people wanted to put words to the music, both things have to work out. Both things have to…" she looked down at the table like she expected the right words to be written there and waited, half hoping that someone would finish her sentence for her. Then, the perfect word rolled into her head, bounced off of her vocal cords, and through her teeth.

"Click," she and James said at the exact same time. She turned to him, blushing and smiling from ear to ear. At that moment, Lily could think of no greater danger in her world than the possibility that her self-control would break and she'd let loose with the giggle that was building up inside, threatening to shrill out of her chest like a seven-year-old girl on the playground.

Whoever won the argument, it was quickly a moot point when The Bludgered Bananas' song gave way to one Lily had never heard before. Everyone else in the pub apparently had, however, if one could judge by the raucous cheer that ripped through the patrons at its beginning. The tables quickly emptied as everyone made their way to the dance floor. James waved at Madam Rosmerta, who winked back before joining the dance, then caught Lily by the hand and started to follow the crowd. "She really knows when to break out the big guns, get everyone dancing. C'mon, let's go."

Lily stared at everybody, desperately trying to remember whether she had ever heard the song or seen the dance. It sounded like a combination of swing, jazz, folk, and rock, except that the beat was placed so strangely that Lily couldn't even tap her foot to it. "James, I don't think…"

"What?" they were on the dance floor now, and they had to shout to be heard.

She raised her voice and stood on her tiptoes so as to be closer to his ear. "I don't think I know this one!"

For a second, he looked puzzled, but then it dawned on him. "Ohh! I forgot! You've never heard the Fortossa before because you're Muggle-born!" He grinned and pulled her further onto the dance floor, now yelling at the top of his lungs over the roar of the music. "Don't worry, you'll pick it up in a few seconds. It's one of the oldest wizarding dances in the world, and it's impossible for Muggles to dance to it…not that you're a Muggle! Muggle-borns who've never heard it have trouble, too! But like I said, you'll catch on!"

"I'll take your word for it!" Lily managed to say between gasps for air. This dance was so fast-paced and confusing that she understood how some people found it 'impossible' to dance to. Gradually, though, she managed to 'catch onto' the complicated sequence of stomps, clamps, twirls, and infinite combinations of steps. By the middle of the song, she felt relatively confident that she'd make it to the end without getting trampled. "How long is this?" she shouted to James.

"Just another five minutes," he said, as though five more minutes of the wild dance was no big deal.

They finished a complex spin as Lily sighed wearily. It was fun, but how could anything this long stay fun?

What seemed like a billion moves later, time wasn't bothering Lily anymore. The Fortossa wasn't stress, it wasn't anything new, it was natural. She felt like she had been dancing this since she could walk. The cadence seemed as simple as taking a breath. Just when Lily had decided that she could go on dancing forever, the song ended abruptly.

She looked around. Was there some sort of problem with the Christmas tree? Maybe a snowstorm had blocked the wireless up? The way the dance had ended didn't feel like it ended. She was about to ask these questions when the next song, a much slower one, started.

"I forgot to tell you about the ending," James said. "Even I still get surprised. I think everyone does."

After three more songs, Sirius started a mosh pit by shoving a rather large wizard as hard as he could. The huge man gazed severely at him through bespectacled eyes and shoved him right back. Luckily for Sirius, the crowd behind them managed to catch him, then began to shove each other. Lily and James managed to escape the shove-fest, taking refuge at the table while Madam Rosmerta tried to break up the mosh pit.

Lily sipped the Butterbeer and hesitated before tapping James on the shoulder. "D'you want to keep doing this?"

"Keep doing what?"

"Keep being more than just friends."

"Oh!" It looked like he knew exactly what he wanted to say, but wasn't sure if he should say it.

For some reason, she thought that he was trying to think up a way to let her down easy. "Never mind," she said hurriedly.

"No, wait, I'd really love to. It's just…wouldn't you say that we're friends, Lily?"

"Well, yeah."

"Maybe I'm just being stupid, but I think it might be hard to keep being friends if and when we stopped being more than just friends." James laughed nervously at himself. "I know that doesn't make too much sense."

"No, it makes a lot of sense." There were a few seconds of silence as Madam Rosmerta dragged Sirius off the dance floor by the ear and gave him an extremely thorough talking-to. She punctuated her chastisement with a stern smack upside the head. Apparently, Sirius's brain cells were already too dull to feel the pain, because he just shrugged and went back to the dance floor without causing any trouble. Lily looked back at James. "I think we should at least try, don't you?"

He smiled at her. "Yeah. We should."

Halfway down the Charms corridor, a golden mist shimmered placidly from about five feet off the ground. It had apparently been placed there by the Ellernec spell, except that there was just a touch of blue around its edges. Any wizard with an eye for Charms would recognize that this was no ordinary Ellernec cloud.

Divination Professor McBride was a ghastly old crone of a teacher who was quite sick of the students' annoying questions, their incompetence, and most of all, she was sick of how they all presumed that they had the Inner Eye. Sixty-four years she had been teaching, sixty-four years! The first few decades were all right, but it just got old after sixty-four years! The frustration had been keeping the old witch up nights, and it was in another one of these sleepless nights that she stormed out of her office and made her way to Professor Dumbledore, determined to quit.

As she stormed down the Charms corridor, cursing with a heavy brogue, Professor McBride was too preoccupied (or it could have been that she'd forgot her glasses) to notice the Ellernec cloud. It was a long time since she'd studied this sort of thing, anyway, so she had no idea how to reverse the spell once she ran through it and suddenly found the hallway flipped upside-down.

"ACCK!" She screeched at the top of her creaky voice. "AAACK! 'ELP ME! GET ME DOWN FROM 'ERE! SOMEBODY BETTER GET OUTTA THEIR LAZYBONES BED AN' HELP A POOR OL' LADY DOWN FROM THE BLINKIN' CEILING!!! OOOH, CURSE THE DAY I JOINED UP WITH THIS 'ERE SCHOOL!"

Professor McBride went on like this until she was quite hoarse and couldn't speak above a whisper. She stood frozen on the spot, utterly disoriented, and reached back into her long but rapidly decaying memory for a countercurse. After all, this must be some spiteful student's hex, right? The only thing she could bring to mind was an Ellernec cloud, but this couldn't be an Ellernec cloud. Those let their victims down after two hours.

After extensive battling with James, Sirius reluctantly shrunk his motorcycle down to toy-size and carried it back in the pocket of his robes. Oddly enough, her date's 'free spirit' didn't seem to bother Anna; quite the contrary, it was as if she liked him more because of it. Jessica, though thrilled to death by the ornate Three Broomsticks décor, wasn't as absorbed with Peter. She pried Anna off of Sirius's arm once they were back at the castle and pulled her down the hall, shouting something over her shoulder about being able to find their own common rooms and not needing escorts. Anna blew a kiss to Sirius, which he caught and flirtatiously put in his pocket with the motorcycle.

When they had reached the Gryffindor common room, Juno swept up the stairs without a word to Remus. "Hey!" he called after her. "What was that for?"

They heard her yell sarcastically from the top of the stairs, "What? I had fun. If you wanted a kiss or something, you probably should have asked to go as more than friends. Just for future reference!" The dormitory door clicked shut, and Remus turned around, stunned, to face the snickering group.

"I didn't…a kiss, of course not…just…I…" Convinced that there was nothing he could say that would stop his fellow Marauders from laughing, he fell into a blushing silence.

As if on cue, Sirius and Peter frog-marched Remus up the stairs. "Love to stay and chat, but we've got some pillows waiting for us. You two can occupy yourselves…" It might've just been James's imagination, but it looked like Sirius winked at him before disappearing into the dormitory.

They walked over to the couch and sat down. It suddenly occurred to Lily that when Sirius made jokes about her and James, she couldn't say 'we're just friends' anymore. To her surprise, she liked knowing that.

"Did you have fun?" James asked awkwardly.

"Definitely! The most fun I've had in a long time." She remembered, very vividly, thinking those exact words in her first year, when she went to a ball with James as 'just friends.' That evening had ended with them getting attacked by bats. Hopefully, nothing of the sort would happen now…she laughed out loud at how random that thought seemed: 'gee, I hope we don't get dive-bombed by bats.'

"What's so funny?" He smiled; that half-smile that made Lily feel very giggly.

"Er, nothing…I was just thinking."

"That is pretty funny."

She bopped him ruthlessly with a pillow. "That's just mean!"

"Hey!" He grabbed the pillow and stood up with it. "I think I'd better confiscate this. It's as good as a deadly weapon in your hands."

Lily stood up, too, and snatched the pillow back, only to throw it back onto the couch. "Consider it confiscated."

"Are you my girlfriend?" he blurted, completely out of the blue.

"What? I mean, I guess so...only if you're my boyfriend."

"Okay, then. I just wanted to clear that up." They stood completely still for a few seconds. Then James took a step towards Lily. She wondered if he was going to kiss her, but was very relieved when he just hugged her tightly.

Lily closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This had to be better than any kiss. Besides, there was plenty of time for kissing later. They let go of each other. "See you tomorrow, James."

"'Night," he said, walking up the dormitory stairs.

Lily turned around and found her way to her bed, feeling distinctly and pleasantly star-struck.