Chapter 22

"Thank god!" Lily ran and threw her arms around the remaining Marauders. She was very pale and her hands were shaking.

"We have to take him to the hospital. Please?" Since she looked on the verge of tears, nobody argued, they just followed her up to James's room.

"Jesus!" Sirius whispered.

James was even paler than Lily was and his whole body was trembling.

"Sirius....." Remus said quietly.

"I know. We'll take him now," he replied. They used a spell to stand him up but he kept falling forward. Sirius kept having to throw out an arm across James's chest to keep him upright.

It seemed to take them hours to get up to the Hospital Wing; all of them were trying to think of an explanation. Obviously they couldn't say that he collapsed yesterday and they had been hiding him in his room ever since. Madam Pomfrey would not be best pleased with that!

Madam Pomfrey was behind a screen attending to a first year that had been hexed when they arrived. Sirius was about to yell out for her, but she beat him to it.

"Mr Black, what have you done this time?" she called out. He looked confused, how did she even know it was him?

"It's not me, it's James," he yelled back to her.

"What's the matter?"

"I.............we don't know,"

The matron's eyes widened as she saw James, lying as white as a ghost and shaking. The only colours on his face were the traces of blood around his mouth and the cut on his forehead. Immediately she wanted to know what happened to him, her eyes glaring at them when they couldn't tell her.
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Sirius felt bad leaving Remus to face the full moon alone, but James and Lily needed him. Remus understood, there would always be more full moons.

"I guess we should start," Lily suggested. Madam Pomfrey had told them to write down everything that had happened to James for the past few days, trying to find out what could possibly have happened to him.

"Yesterday, erm........." he said drawing a blank.

"Hogsmeade and Quidditch," she reminded him. While not openly disliking each other, they were never exactly 'close'. Needless to say, they were not looking forward to having to work together.

"Look," she told him, deciding to clear the air, "I know we're not 'ecstatic' about working together, but it's going to help James. So can you just get over it? At least until James is better?"

Sirius thought about it for a moment, given a choice he would much rather work with someone else (Remus or Isabelle preferably) but there wasn't a lot that he wouldn't do for James.

"Still, it could be worse," Sirius, said smiling.

"How?" she snapped.

"I could be Peter,"

"That's a nice thing to say about your friend,"

Sirius shrugged. "But it's true,"

Lily decided to change the subject before saying something that she would regret later.

"Yesterday, Sunday..............."

"What did we do?"

"Sirius, do you have a memory at all?!"

"I'm so sorry that I have more important things to think about than things I have already done!" he snapped.

Glaring, Lily continued:

"First we went to the pub, by the way you may want to talk to Belle. She thinks you fancy Madam Rosemerta,"

"Everyone fancies Rosemerta," Sirius interrupted impatiently.

"You may not want to tell her that," Lily smiled. "Anyway, you bought some drinks, was it something in that?"

"A bottle of beer never hurt anyone. Then you went off together, what did you do?"

Lily stared at him.

"We had a polite conversation about the weather," she told him sarcastically. "What do you think we did?"

Sirius stared at her in disbelief, "In Hogsmeade?"

"Don't act so innocent with me Black, can I ask what you did when you went off with Isabelle?"

"Moving on..............I don't think that it was anything in Hogsmeade that did this to him," Sirius said, quickly changing the subject, "Do I have to remind you who we played Quidditch against?"

"Oh god! This is so hard!" Lily complained. "Wouldn't it be good if we could just have that day over again, then we could notice everything,"

"Yeah it would," Sirius agreed, "But we'd need a time-turner or something,"

"Yeah...........or something," Lily replied, she seemed to be thinking hard. Scampering up to James's room, she was running so fast that Sirius could barely keep up.

"You can't just go through his stuff like this!" Sirius told her as he caught the things she was throwing around.

"Watch me!" she said, distracted by her search.

"Do you even know what you're looking for?"

"Yes,"

"What,"

"A something," she told him before triumphantly pulling out a small box, "This!"

He looked in astonishment at the small dish she had in her hand.

"James has a pensieve? Do you know how rare they are?" he asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, it took me long enough to find one,"

"YOU BOUGHT THIS FOR HIM?"

"Christmas," she said simply. "Anyway we can put what we remember of the day in here and then watch them back,"

Sirius looked like he could have kissed her.

Five minutes and a strand of thoughts later and they found themselves back in Hogsmeade following the Marauders and co.

"She doesn't look too happy does she?" Sirius asked surveying Isabelle as she watched 'him' chatting to Madam Rosemerta.

"Just for the record, girls don't like it when their boyfriends flirt with other women," Lily told him.

"Must be where I'm going wrong," he joked.

Lily had to grab Sirius's collar to stop him following when Lily and James wandered off the main street together.

"Nice try, but you are not seeing that!" she smiled.

They followed themselves for the rest of the day, through Hogsmeade but found nothing that could have injured James. Sirius had become very disappointed when he realised that he couldn't eat anything in Honeydukes.

They were finding it quite amusing to watch themselves, although it did have his bad points: Sirius kept chuckling at his own jokes ("You still laughing at that? It wasn't funny the first time!") and Lily was dismayed to find out what she really looked like.

"I swear that looked good in the shop," she frowned.

"Relax, it looks fine," Sirius told her, intent on watching himself.

"Did you just.................compliment me?" she asked, breaking into a smile.

"I said you look fine, there's a difference,"

They sat quietly until Lily broke the silence.

"Is that really what my hair looks like from the back?"

But of course it did have its advantages, they could talk about their friends without anyone hearing.

"Remus looks a bit pale, don't you think?"

Sirius shifted uncomfortably. Full moon was only two nights away.

"Er................it's.......probably just the.......er....... light in here,"

They waited until everyone had got changed for the Quidditch match, and followed themselves out to the pitch, the amusement of being able to watch themselves was only beginning to wear off.

"Where are you going?"

"To get a seat?" she explained

But Sirius hadn't planned on sitting down in the regular seats. As no one could see them he decided to have a more unusual view of the match. Grabbing Lily's arm, he dragged her down to the centre of the pitch, where they sat to watch the game. Despite knowing that nothing could hit them, they still found themselves flinching as the players zoomed past them.

"Anything here?" Lily shouted over the roar of the crowd. Mia had just taken a bludger to the head, and the school was shouting for a penalty.

"Don't think so. He just dodged a bludger but it missed him,"

Abruptly the game overhead stopped and they walked amongst the teams as James called for time out.

"This is weird," Sirius commented waving his hand through James's head.

"Will you stop arsing around? We're supposed to be looking for stuff,"

"Like that?" he asked, elbowing her gently. A boy was creeping over to the box of balls and had pulled out his wand. One look at his greasy hair and they knew exactly who had caused the rogue bludger.

"The greasy bastard! I'LL KILL HIM!" Sirius roared and actually started walking over to him.

"What you going to do? Walk through him?" Lily asked, struggling to hide a smile. Not that she was laughing because Snape wanted to hurt James, purely at Sirius.

"I bet he cursed him during the game!" Sirius said.

"Under the nose of every teacher in the school? Not even Snape's that stupid,"

"He cursed the bludger!"

"Well if it makes you feel better we'll go and sit by him, just to check,"

So they spent the rest of the match sitting next to Snape, Lily determinedly ignoring Sirius cringing and making the odd comment that usually involved the words 'slime' 'cripple' and 'greasy little git'.

"For god's sake will you shut up?! I'm trying to watch James," Lily snapped. Sirius muttered something about 'stalking' but shut up all the same.

Despite already knowing the outcome of the match they still found themselves cheering together, along with the rest of school when James caught the snitch. Lily got up to leave but Sirius pulled her back down.

"It's not over yet," he reminded her. She didn't need to watch a second time to be reminded of the violent snapping sound James's arm made when the bludger flew into it.

"How did he not notice that?" Lily asked in wonder, as James hadn't even glanced at his arm, he was still grinning around at the school holding up the snitch for everyone to see. Beside her Sirius was frowning, he had had his fair share of broken bones and knew that James should have at least shown some sign of pain.

"That's not right,"

"You honestly expect him to be thinking of something else other than Quidditch at this precise moment?" Lily asked in amazement.

"I guess," he said his frown deepening, but he was not reassured.

"RUN YOU FOOL!" Lily screamed as the bludger came back.

Sirius immediately thought of a hundred scathing comments but ignored them, he was also willing James to run out of the way, despite knowing that there was no way he could tell his friend.

Together they winced as it hit James directly at his chest.

"That was it!" Lily said jumping up.

"It can't be, he's fine. Look he's getting back up," Sirius pointed out.

"But he might have a broken rib,"

"Trust me Lily, you know when you have a broken rib," he flinched as he remembered breaking a couple during his fourth year. That incident was not the kind of thing that you forget. "And besides, if he had broken ribs he would not have been able to do that......"

The rest of the Gryffindors had just run on to the pitch to congratulate the team. James had picked up Lily and was now spinning her around, ignoring her half-hearted screams of protest, in celebration.

"Also if he was badly hurt he wouldn't let you do that either," Sirius commented as they watched Lily light-heartedly slap James in revenge.

"Ok, so maybe it wasn't that," Lily muttered sullenly. She didn't like being wrong. Turning round she found Sirius smirking at her.

"So you were wrong?"

"Maybe," she said defensively. Getting up to leave Sirius pulled her back down again.

"Not before you admit that you were wrong," he smirked.

"You know, you can be a cocky little bastard when you want to be, Black,"

"It's a gift. So............."

"I was wrong," she muttered. Sirius had never looked so pleased with himself.

"And I was................."

"Right," Sirius was about to get her to say it again, but the glare she was giving him was starting to frighten him. If looks could kill.

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Two hours later and they were back in their party. Although it was very unlike them they were standing in a corner. They tried sitting on the sofa but people kept sitting through them, not that it hurt, it was more unnerving and slightly annoying.

"You like hitting him don't you?" Sirius asked watching.

"He was taking the piss,"

"No," said Sirius shaking his head while watching the couple, "He wouldn't,"

"Yeah, well..........." Lily said confused. It wasn't like Sirius to be so thoughtful. Maybe he had another side she never got to see.

'Or maybe not' she changed her mind as she saw James and Sirius fighting.

"You're hitting him just as much as I did,"

Sirius didn't say anything in reply. It was true, he was hitting James just as much as Lily did, and harder too. Even if James hadn't broken anything, he should still be bruised and should be wincing. He decided not to say anything to Lily, he would wait to see if he was right.

"We're getting to the end now," Sirius pointed out, swiftly changing the subject. James was making his way out of the party, presumably going back up to his room. No more than a few seconds later they were pulled back to his room.

"Well that was a waste of time,"

"No it wasn't," Sirius said fairly.

"Really?" Lily replied raising an eyebrow. "We haven't learn anything we didn't know a few hours ago,"

"I wouldn't say that,"

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