Chapter 4- The Hospital

Lily was at the hospital less than twenty minutes later. She went up to the front desk that a nurse was sitting behind. "I need to find my family," Lily said, still frantic, and already in tears wondering what could have happened.

"What is the last name?" The nurse remained calm.

"Evans," Lily said quickly.

"What unit would they be in?"

"I don't know."

"You have to know the unit they would be in, or I can't give you the information," she stated in an as-a-matter-of-fact way.

"I have to find them! You don't understand! I know they're here I just don't know what happened! You have to give me that-"

"Lily?" came a familiar voice from behind her.

Lily turned around quickly to make sure her ears weren't deceiving her. "Dad?" She said when she saw Josh.

"What are you doing here?"

"Mrs. Tanner said you'd be here, and I had to see…to see," Lily broke down mid sentence and started to cry.

"It's alright, Lily, it's okay," He put his arms around his sobbing daughter and led her to the couches in the lobby.

"What happened? What's wrong?" Lily asked.

"Your mother," Josh treaded carefully. "Lily, your mum has cancer."

Lily stopped crying for a moment, in complete shock. "What?"

"Your mother wasn't feeling well the other day, she was trying to keep going and ended up fainting late in the afternoon. They ran tests all day yesterday and found out that she has developed a tumor in her kidneys."

"Both?" Lily asked feeling emotion overcoming her again.

"Yes," Josh told her.

"Where's Petty?"

"She's been staying with her friend Cara," Josh informed Lily.

"What can they do?"

Josh's eyes became filled with sorrow. "It's too late for them to do anything. They could try but the chances of it actually working are less than three percent. Your mum would rather go back home and spend her time with her family."

Lily started to sob again. Josh just sat there for a while rubbing Lily's back and letting her cry. "Would you like to go see her?" he asked. Lily nodded. "There's a girl. No need to worry Fred."

Lily was able to make a small smile. "My name's not Fred."

Josh led Lily up to where Violet lay in a hospital bed. She had an IV in her arm and her skin looked uncharacteristically pale. Lily had stood outside for a moment and stopped herself from crying in front of her mother. She entered the hospital room and put on her best smile. "Hi, Mum," she managed.

"Lily," Violet had a smile spread across her face. "What are you doing here?" Lily went to the bed and bent over to give the frail woman in the bed a hug.

"I went home to tell you something, and ended up here," Lily said,

"What were you going to tell me?" Violet motioned for Lily to sit on the edge of the bed and Josh stood in the door frame, obviously holding back the emotion he had felt for days now.

"They made me Head Girl at my school," Lily said faking a smile for Violet's sake.

"Oh, how wonderful! Josh did you hear that? Our girl!" Violet hugged her daughter again. "Good job, my girl," Violet said. Josh stayed where he was, but had also developed the largest smile he had in days.

"Congratulations Lily," he said from the doorframe.

"Mrs. Evans I'm here to-" a plump nurse came into the room. "Who is this?" she smiled. Lily turned around and the nurse figured it out before anyone could say anything. "This must be your other daughter," she smiled.

"Yes," Josh said, moving so the nurse could come into the room. "This is our younger daughter, Lily."

"My, you look just like Violet! They told me you've been at the beach."

"I was," Lily said, "but my friend and I came into London for the day so we could get some things." Lily lied. "I went home and got this surprise."

"Oh dear, I'm sorry. Didn't they give you a call?"

"The phone line was down at their beach house," Violet made this excuse.

"Oh, well, at least you've come to see her. How are you feeling today?"

"I'm feeling better today," Violet said.

"Good, that means this is a good dosage. Looks like you might be able to go home in a day or two." No one said anything as the nurse took readings and such. "Now, did you want to do the testing today for this one?" the nurse motioned to Lily.

"What do you mean?" Lily asked.

Josh hadn't gotten this far in explaining and he felt it was his duty. "The cancer your mum has is hereditary, Lily. They've already run blood tests on Petunia-"

"And?" Lily asked now more worried than she had been before she had found them all missing from the house.

"The tests will come in sometime next week, as we expect you will both be fine," the nurse said. "But we just want to make sure. If either of you have the same problem, it will probably be more repairable at this stage."

"They just want to take a blood sample and do an x-ray," Violet assured Lily. "You'll have to do it every year to make sure they catch anything that may be amiss immediately."

"Okay," Lily said taking it all in.

"Would you like to do it today? Do you have time?"

Lily nodded her head. She could do the tests and be back to the beach house before dark, hopefully.

Samantha had been nervously flipping from one page to another reading the same sentence over and over again. She finally put the book down in frustration. They had all been sitting around waiting for Lily to come back. "Where could she be?" Samantha asked. She was worried about this since about two o'clock, it wasn't like Lily not to be back exactly when she said, and it was starting to get dark.

James had been slyly finding things out about Lily all day, and he was anxious for her to get back so he could use the information he had gathered. "I don't know. Maybe I should go check on her."

"You don't know where Lily lives," Sirius pointed out. He put his hands on Samantha's shoulders and was massaging them to calm her down. "I'm sure she's fine, there's probably a perfectly good reason why she isn't back."

They all heard a loud noise in the front yard. Remus looked out the window. "Did anyone summon the Knight Bus?"

Samantha got up and opened the door, stepping onto the porch. Lily came off the bus with all of her things. "Lily! There you are! Is everything alright?"

Lily was wearing a periwinkle jacket and had her trunk and even her cat with her. "Yeah, it's okay. My parents just said that they won't be able to take me to Diagon Alley or the train station, so I was hoping I could join you." Lily said as she awkwardly carried her things.

"Sure," Samantha said.

James went onto the front lawn and helped Lily with her things, taking his mother's advice in not being too obvious about the fact that he was doing it. "Thank you," Lily said, appreciative that someone was helping her.

"No problem," James said, and left it at that.

They walked into the house and Lily took off her jacket. They noticed the bandage that was wrapped around her left elbow. "Did you get attacked by pixies or something?" Sirius asked.

"No," Lily said. "Dad was just wanted to give blood, so I went with him," Lily lied.

"Have you been crying?" Samantha asked, noticing that Lily's eyes were a bit red and puffy.

"I'm fine, I just," Lily thought quickly. "I haven't been around the type of weeds that grow in my parent's garden in a while, and they made my eyes water. So what are we doing?"

"We've been waiting for you to come back to decide." Remus informed Lily. "What did your parents think about your news?"

"What news," Lily asked, confused for a moment. "Oh, you mean about me becoming Head Girl. They were proud," Lily faked her best smile. "Mum said they'd get me an owl." The reason for the owl was so that her parents could contact her when necessary, but she wasn't going to bring that up.

"Neat," Sam said. "Should we go to Diagon Alley tomorrow then?"

"Sure," Lily said with half the enthusiasm she usually had.

A/N: Again I know that I post fast, but I had a lot of time today and the story is just coming, so I let it while it can. Hope you like this…and for everyone's information I never write a fully fluffy story, so there is going to be plot. Sorry that it took so long to get to it this time, but I wanted to establish what relationships were like and such, because I have my own view on what Marauders and Lily were like, so the first two chapters were a whole lot of set up. Now we are going to get to the meat of this, though.

Thank you:

CJ: Hope you keep reading, and maybe you'll check out my other stuff too=) I always like having reviews and I feel that I have pieces of fan fic that are just as good, if not better than this.

JamieBell: I was worried there for a while! I was going to call the fanfic squad and make sure you were still alive! Sorry about the finals crap, I know that stuff sucks, but I wish you the best. Thank you for reviewing in your busy schedule. Just breath and you'll be fine. And when I get a chance I'll fix the spelling error!

LadyMeriadoc: I'm glad you think it's different. If it gets cliche at all, please tell me.