© Ariana Veelagrace and Clara Maplewood, years 2000-2002

A/N: Ya know, we don't need to have one of these every chapter. And there doesn't happen to be anything to say about this one. Ok. Bye.

Unfortunately, you have to put up with one comment: Special thanks to Pamela Vancouver, even though she doesn't really exist, for being the butt of so many practical jokes. Poor kid. Everybody say "Awwwww."

I'll just assume you actually did.

Disclaimer: Remember the Mondo Disclaimer Thingy? Well, just tack Mr. Lyons, Professor Mace, William Baxter, Julia Thomas, and Fiorenza Gadani onto that list. :O)

Lily

Chapter 65

Of course, neither Lily's ankle nor James's neck had actually been broken. About fifteen minutes after they had kissed, Kipper had shown up, cracking out of the disco ball in the form of a giant blue lightning bolt and announcing that he had been at a slumber party, haunting the mirror during a game of "Bloody Mary." A rather tiring round of "Hot/Cold" followed, with Kipper refusing to actually lead them anywhere in the mirror passages. But they eventually found their way back to the common room, then went off to their respective dormitories in anticipation of the Quidditch game to be played the next day.

Three-quarters of the crowd roared as the Gryffindor team flew a lap around the Quidditch pitch, scarlet robes streaming behind them. Lily couldn't help but feel a little disappointed that she would have to sit on the sidelines with the other reserve players for the entire match…unless, of course, Harvey or Eva got hurt. And it just didn't feel quite right to wish for a Bludger to come along and thwack Eva in the shoulder or something. Not quite right. Besides, there was always that odd tendency of a wizard's or witch's wish to come true, simply by virtue of his or her magical ability.

The players settled onto the grass in two lines, Gryffindor facing Slytherin. Even from her perch off to the side, Lily could see the color drain from James's face as the legendary (but until now, unseen) Holly, Seeker and Captain of the Slytherin team, stepped forward to shake his hand.

She was at least six feet tall, with a squarish, muscular torso resting on two sheer columns of muscle that she must have considered to be her legs. As a matter of fact, just about everything about her was square, including the huge hand that engulfed James's. Her eyes were a tannish-brown color, as were her hair and skin. Overall, Holly Smeds was an intimidating enough presence that Lily suddenly felt glad to be benched.

The game began. Ella Bourassa began her commentary, which, as usual, was rather Hufflepuff-centric, even though Hufflepuff wasn't even playing in this particular match. "And here we are on this lovely March day…well, lovely except for the lack of yellow on the field. Y'know, I recommend a moment of silence due to the fact that Hufflepuff has just been slaughtered by those Ravenclaw nitwits, due to UNFAIR TACTICS!!!!" The moment of silence was observed by about .0687% of the crowd, which erupted into raucous cheers (in the case of Slytherins) or groans (in the case of everyone else); Holly had just rammed into Brendan Christenson, the Keeper, preventing him from blocking the Slytherin Chaser from scoring. "Unsurprising," Ella continued gloomily. "She used the same move on poor Adam Morse when Hufflepuff was playing Slytherin. As I was saying, a moment of silence might be appropr-"

Again, the crowd found reason to drown out her magically magnified (but thoroughly useless) voice, as a lot of things happened at once. First, Quinn Baker of Gryffindor took possession of the Quaffle and began to speed toward the Slytherin goal, with Lena Riley and Michael Daehn close on either side of him, ready to absorb the brunt of any Bludger attack. Holly was, of course, hot on their trail, and was about to grab hold of the tail of Quinn's broom when James, who had been hovering near the Gryffindor goalposts, broke into a sharp dive. Holly veered off to interrupt his dive, determined not to allow him to catch the Snitch before she did. Ella finally caught onto the fact that nobody wanted to hear her effuse Hufflepuff sympathy, and began to actually commentate on the game. "Anyway, here's something new! It appears as though Potter's seen the Snitch! Wait…he's pulling out of the dive…" Realization dawned on everyone as James grinned and waved at the crowd like the exhibitionist he was. "Ohh, he was just distracting Smeds! And he's laughing in Smeds's face…not a good move at all…" Holly's scowl was visible even from where Lily sat as Quinn Baker scored ten points for Gryffindor. "Let's see, Michael Daehn catches the Quaffle on the other side of the Slytherin goals and tosses it back to Baker for another ten points! The Gryffindor Chasers are in perfect sync today! Almost as good as Hufflepuff, but seeing as Hufflepuff's out of the running for the finals, I don't suppose anybody cares. In any case, it looks like Smeds has seen the Snitch!"

And that it did. Holly, with James following close behind, was climbing to a spot just above the Slytherin stands with one hand stretched out to catch the Snitch. Lily squinted and stared up at them, knowing that James could never physically push Holly aside. "They're going right up the side there…It appears as though Potter is trying to bully her out of the chase – ha, good luck there – and Smeds is simply not having any! Wait...what's Potter yelling? 'Barmy'? 'Humvee'? Oh! That's it, 'Harvey'! He's calling for Harvey Locksmire, the Gryffindor Beater who's just recently recovered from a nasty shoulder injury that-" The crowd didn't seem to particularly care – they were too busy cheering Harvey on as he battered a Bludger straight at Holly's outstretched hand. Closer, closer, closer, and finally, with a sickening yet satisfying crack, Holly reeled back, clutching her hand. James grabbed the Snitch seemingly out of thin air and took his victory lap, once again with the entire Gryffindor team tagging along behind.

The next Hogsmeade weekend found Lily, Juno, and the Marauders trucking through the Dissendium passage, as Filch had finally found out about the one just outside the Great Hall. It seems that someone had done the spell wrong and forgotten to seal it up behind them. Lily didn't say anything, but she had a pretty good feeling that it had been Juno and Remus.

After pilfering as much candy as they could carry from the Honeyduke's basement, they slipped upstairs and out onto the street. It had rained buckets for the past day and a half, so the late March air was full of the springlike scents of mud and green. The villagers hurried by, still warily clutching umbrellas as though they didn't quite trust the sun. All was happy and optimistic, though, for the six teenagers walking through Hogsmeade with their pockets full of candy, laughing, talking, and, in Sirius's case, scribbling away on an old piece of parchment every so often.

Lily hadn't been able to keep Lily Junior – who she was now beginning to call Nuisance – at the school, so the cat trailed after them, weaving in and out of Lily's ankles. "Sod off, nuisance!!" she exclaimed after being tripped for the eighth time.

"Li-ly!" Juno gasped as she scooped Lily Junior into her arms. "How could you possibly be so mean? He just wants some attention, is all."

"That cat needs more attention than an infant," Lily grumbled.

"That's what I say," came a boisterous, familiar voice from the exit of Carmen's Cleaning Supplies, "An' that's why I stick with dogs like Fang here." Hagrid lumbered out into the road with a large bucketful of potions and scrub brushes. Fang was jogging along at his side with a smaller bucket attached to his collar.

"H'lo there, Hagrid!" James said brightly. "What's the bucket about?"

"Spring cleanin's comin' up," Hagrid said, shifting the bucket from one hip to the other, "An' no better time than the April holidays, eh?"

"Right…" Sirius looked unpleasantly surprised, as though he had forgotten about the coming holiday.

Hagrid raised his bushy eyebrows and turned back to James. "What's wrong with that one?"

"Nothing, he's just got to stay with his great-aunt and uncle, and they're sort of…well…"

"Prats?" Sirius snapped. "Snobby gits? Idiots? Motorcycle-haters? Or maybe you're looking for something a little stronger, like-"

"Right now, that's enough o' that," Hagrid cut him off.

Sirius ignored him. "They owled me last week and said that they wouldn't allow me to keep the motorcycle there! Where am I going to keep it otherwise? Something always goes wrong when I shrink it down, so I can't very well do that!" He angrily crunched a Mood Marzipan as his teeth turned bright red, a color that was supposed to indicate anger or hatred. "Maybe I'll just stay in the Shrieking Shack or something. Bet nobody there would mind a motorcycle."

"Nobody is ever there," Remus said hastily. "As it's haunted."

Luckily, Hagrid hadn't picked up on the faux pas. "Tell yeh what, Sirius. I'll keep that motorbike in my house over the holiday. That'll keep it safe. An' chin up, eh? Prob'ly won't be as bad as all that anyway. Well, I've got ter be off puttin' these bottles an' such in a safe place."

"Safe?" Lily queried.

Hagrid chuckled. "Yeah, safe. Meanin' far away from that Professor Gadani an' her singing – if'n yeh call it that. More like screechin', if yeh ask me." He looked around, then leaned in close. "Now, I didn' tell yeh this, but word is Dumbledore's thinkin' on firin' 'er. She's been singin' 'round Madam Pomfrey's expensive potions…may they rest in pieces." He walked away, smiling.

Sirius grinned, the Mood Marzipan now coloring his teeth the greenish-blue color of happy gratitude. "Y'know, I don't reckon I'd trust anybody else with my motorcycle, but something about Hagrid…unless Fang drools on it, I'm pretty sure it'll be ok."

That night at dinner, Professor Dumbledore stood up to make an announcement. "As some of you may already know, Professor Gadani will no longer be teaching at Hogwarts." A brief pause. The only person actually sad to see her go was William Baxter, who let out a short cry of dismay. "And I believe that you speak for all of us in that, Mr. Baxter. Aptly put. We will certainly miss her, though her replacement has already been secured and will begin teaching on Monday."

Dumbledore sat down as though the matter was closed, but the indomitable Professor Gadani saw things differently. She swept to her feet, her hair moving through the spectrum of blues today, and straightened her glaring white robes as she took a prima donna-like sip of water. "Thank you so – so – so – sol mi do – so much, Headmaster. It was a true pleasure working here, and I admit that I will be sorry to leave."

"Very nice, Fiorenza," Dumbledore interrupted, feeling a song looming in the very near future. "Now-"

"After all, you have all been ever so delightful to me, even those poor Ravenclaws whose crystal ball I shattered on the first…The first tiiiiiime, ever I saaaaaaw your face…"


Groans resounded through the Great Hall as Professor Gadani began the famous song about forty keys too high. Juno dove under the table and covered her ears. "Call me up when she's finished!" There was absolutely no reason for Professor Gadani to begin, in the middle of the song, a dizzying climb up every scale imaginable, except perhaps showmanship. Higher and higher and higher her voice floated, above even the loudest booing in the Hall, above William Baxter's goofily enraptured face, and above, it seems, the teachers' threshold of tolerance.

At the exact same time, Professor McGonagall on her left and Professor Flitwick on her right leaped up and pushed her back down into her seat. McGonagall quickly pressed a napkin over Gadani's mouth and sat back in her own chair, removing a pair of wax earplugs.

"I tell you something," William Baxter said sadly, taking a sip of his punch. "This school's just not going to be the same without her."

"You've got that right," Juno muttered. "No more needing to know how to use a tourniquet as a requirement for Divination." She brought a hand up to her neck as though to fiddle with a necklace, but stopped abruptly upon finding nothing there. "Er…Lily? Was I wearing a necklace today?"

"No, I don't think so. Why?"

"Nothing…" it was then that Lily noticed that Remus had looked up at Juno's question, too. "I must've just left it in the dormitory, then. Weird, though. I don't remember seeing it on my bedside table this morning."

Lily glanced grimly across the table to Peter, thinking that there was one person who didn't have any problems with taking things – or people – from the girls' dormitories.

Pamela Vancouver was lost. The directions provided by a blue suit of armor had proven to be terribly erroneous, seeing as she was now somewhere in the Arithmancy wing, and nowhere near the familiar eagle statue that marked the entrance to Ravenclaw's common room. She wrung her hands nervously.

Honk! Honk!

Pamela whipped her head around, only to see a neon blue convertible racing down the hall at her. Frozen with shock, she allowed it to pick her up with the curious forklift attached to its front and flip her into the front seat. A chauffer dressed in a blue uniform tipped his hat. "Evening, ma'am. You seem a bit out of your element. Perhaps I can help with that. Where to?" He adjusted the rearview mirror with a mischievous smile.

"Wh-wh-who are you?" Pamela squeaked.

"Long version or short?"

"What?"

"Karilonius Intrilmik Pinrafotat Prelentical Eddiepus Rhadamanthus. You still haven't told me where to," he added.

"Please slow down!" yelled the queasy Pamela.

"Okay." The car stopped dead, the passenger's side door flew open, and the seat rotated so that she could clamber out quickly and easily. Car and driver disappeared with a small pop, leaving in its place a giant blue eyeball. "I seeeee yooooou," came a singsong voice, apparently from the eye.

"Stop!" she cried, now frightened. As the eyeball changed into a cerulean stop sign the size of a tapestry, the sound of a roaring motor came from the other end of the corridor. "Do you hear that?"

"Stop signs don't have ears," he said irritably. Pop! "But elephants sure do."

A little pink convertible, just like the one that had picked Pamela up minutes ago, came zooming down the hallway, chasing after Geoff Thatcher, a Ravenclaw about the same age as Pamela. The woman in the front seat of the convertible donned a bright fuchsia dress with lipstick and sunglasses of the same color, and was laughing a little madly. "YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE! HAHAHAHAHA!!! YOU CHIP MY PAINT, YOU SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!!!"

"If I'm correct," said the blue brick wall placed between the pink car and its prey, "You can Shift right back into a perfect paint job in less than a second."

For a moment, the driver gaped at the roadblock. An instant later, there was a can of pink spray paint in place of the car. It sprayed "Kippette" on the blue wall, then turned into a little pink blob. The wall, likewise, Shifted into a blue blob. The blobs went off down another corridor, leaving Geoff and Pamela in confusion.

"Er…d'you know the way back to the common room?" Pamela asked, blushing.

"Are you sure I wasn't wearing it yesterday?" Juno said the next morning.

"Yes, of course I'm sure. I remember you kept bringing your hand up to play with a necklace, but there was nothing there."

"All day?"

"All day."

Juno slammed shut the drawer that she'd been looking through. "This is like when you lost that little ice skater last year." She fell back onto her bed in frustration. "So not good…"

"Okay, spill it," Lily demanded. "What's such a big deal about it?"

"It was a…a present. A Valentine's Day present."

Lily couldn't hide a grin at Juno's blushing. "From Remus. That's probably the cutest thing I've ever heard of."

"Look who's talking! You and James are probably the cutesey-est couple around. At least Remus and I don't go spreading our cute all over the bloody castle," she said, smiling nonetheless.

"Why do you keep it a secret?"

Juno shrugged. "Just more fun, I guess. Besides, he said something about his mum didn't want him to date. Beats the you-know-what out of me why not, though."

"Probably because-" Suddenly, Lily broke off. She knew perfectly well why Remus's mother wouldn't want him to date, but it suddenly occurred to her that Juno might not know. And even if Juno did know, she might not know that Lily knew, so she might let on that she didn't know just so that Lily wouldn't know that she knew.

Feeling a little dizzied by this train of thought, she went down to the common room and left Juno to look around a little more. In the common room, Julia Thomas and William Baxter chatted in a corner, trying to complete their History of Magic essays before breakfast. Lily glanced sideways at them – had the sofa gotten bigger, or were Julia and William just shorter than she remembered? Come to think of it, Lena Riley and (mercifully) Eva Sinclair appeared to be a little smaller, too. While Lily racked her brain to remember if she had accidentally gotten in the way of an Engorgement Charm or something, the Marauders came down the dormitory stairs. Sirius was definitely at his normal height, and so were Remus and Peter, but James…when James came over to say hello, Lily knew there was something wrong: They were eye-to-eye with one another.

"Whaddya think?" Sirius joked. "James's the Incredible Shrinking Quidditch Captain!"

A/N: Ha. We know you didn't really read the one at the beginning. You were just eager to get to the story, weren'tcha? We know how you operate. We also know that you probably like contests. Yeah, isn't that right? So here is a contest for all our loyal readers and reviewers.

We have the last chapter of this big fat fanfic all written, right down to the last word. We know that JKR (that publicity freakazoid, lol, no offense to her, seeing as w/out her, we would've been bored the past two years) has told all of us that the last word of HP is "scar." *Ariana says, "What? I didn't know that." Clara stops for a second, gives Ariana a funny look, and keeps typing.* Anyway. The contest is as follows: The first reader who correctly guesses the last word in the last chapter of "Lily" gets a cameo!!! We will write you into a chapter. And keep the guesses flowing, but only one guess per review. Have fun!!!

*As the chapter is posted, a small scuffle can be heard as Clara makes fun of Ariana for not knowing the last word yet, seeing as JKR has been saying it for about as long as we've been writing this. At this comment, Ariana says "REALLY???" with wide eyes, and Clara wonders what she has been smoking. The kooky laugh does not help. The authors' duel continues, and the muses take over in uploading.*