Tripping Down the Aisle
Chapter Eight: The Shock of Reality
****
It was hard to say whether the talking or the current uncomfortable silence that James and Gideon Prewett were sharing was more torturous. While the Arrows and the Wasps were certainly providing more than enough entertainment, James usually enjoyed the company of his friends when he watched a Quidditch game. If Sirius were here, he'd be shrieking obscenities at the players and the referees while drinking steadily, which, of course, caused the obscenities to grow louder and more colorful as time went on. Peter would be monitoring the goalposts, muttering instructions to the Keeper and Chasers, and swearing under his breath when they didn't follow his directions. Remus would be studying each player, occasionally murmuring, "Great form...top of his game, he is..." and then suddenly letting out a string of curses that sometimes made even Sirius stop and stare.
Gideon Prewett did none of these things.
He hadn't sworn once.
He was drinking water.
And it wasn't vodka under the clever guise of a water bottle. James had checked.
Prewett was just leaning back in his chair, arms folded over his chest, watching the spectacle go on in front of him as though he saw this everyday and was getting quite bored of it. Every once in a while, he put his fingernails in his mouth, but James thought that that was only because Prewett was one of those people who chewed on absolutely anything that you put in front of them, not because he was particularly excited when Appleby Chaser Corbitt easily intercepted a pass from Wimbourne's star Keeper, Chessly, to their famed Chaser, Aughton, who looked baffled when Corbitt made an easy goal and did a victory lap around the pitch.
Actually, James thought, taking his attention away from Prewett and centering it on the game, Aughton was really.... off today. James had seen quite a few Quidditch games in his lifetime, and he had never seen anyone fly so badly, especially not in a professional game. And Aughton was actually supposed to be a very good player; recruited straight out of Hogwarts at the age of eighteen and had been playing for the Wasps ever since. It was very curious, the way that he kept fumbling with the Quaffle as though he hadn't a clue what to do with it. Every time his teammates would pass him the ball, he would fly aimlessly around the pitch for a while before eventually throwing it back to the teammate who threw it to him, or to a Chaser from the other team.
James glanced at Prewett, who was studying the Wasps' Seeker, a man in his mid-thirties by the name of Chester Kensington. Clearing his throat, James commented, "Aughton's rather off- form today, don't you think?"
"Not as much as Kensington," Prewett responded, which surprised James. He hadn't noticed anything unusual about Kensington at all.
"What do you mean?"
"He's marking McMasters," Prewett replied shortly, pointing to the Appleby Seeker, Ewen McMasters, who was, indeed, being tailed closely by Kensington.
James shrugged and reached for his Omnioculars, which he had kept in his robe pocket. "Yeah, so? Lots of Seekers prefer to follow rather than look for the Snitch on their own. Plus it hacks off the other Seeker, which throws off their concentration."
Gideon glanced at him.
James shrugged again and focused his Omnioculars on Kensington and McMaster's. "I used to captain."
Gideon nodded slowly, then said, "Well, Kensington never follows. He's got the fastest broom in the world, see? His Nimbus flies circles around McMasters' Comet, even if it is top of the line. Kensington's usual technique is to circle the top of the stadium, then go over to each goalpost and hover there for a while, then go straight into the middle of the action and circle, then repeat the whole thing. Works a lot of the time, too."
James looked up from his Omnioculars at Prewett. "You have a lot of time on your hands, don't you, Pretty-Boy?"
Prewett scowled. "I used to play," he responded curtly. "I studied the best Seekers in the world so I could emulate them."
"Did it work?"
Prewett didn't look up from the game. "Of course it did. I don't do anything half-assed, Potter."
"D'you still play?"
"No," Prewett replied shortly. "Wrist injury when I was twenty. I can't fly half as well as I used to."
"How come?"
Prewett sighed. "I can't navigate well." He paused, then said, "What the hell is Kensington doing?"
James turned his attention back to the game. Kensington seemed to have stopped, right in the middle of the field, and had drawn out his wand. He pointed it directly at Ewen McMasters, and as James focused the Omnioculars more finely on the Wimbourne Seeker, he saw his mouth form the words 'Avada Kedavra'.
There was a flash of green light, and Ewen McMasters fell seventy feet from his broom, hitting the ground after what seemed like hours.
There was absolute silence in the crowd for about a minute.
Then came the screams.
James turned, numbly, from the Omnioculars to Prewett, whose freckles were standing out brilliantly against his grey face.
"Bloody fucking hell," he said, his voice tremblingly clear.
****
Lily was considering the sheets.
Chocolate would be interesting to get off the sheets. Especially with her aptitude at householdy spells. She could get a good Scourgify, but she wondered if even that would get a 64-ounce container of Honeydukes chocolate out of her nice, cream colored sheets.
Lily thought about this as she paced the bedroom wearing the new slip she had bought on a whim a couple of weeks back and had been saving for a special occasion. She had been in Muggle London, having lunch with her mother, and they had decided that a little walk would be in order, as it had been a lovely, sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, truly. As they chattered and window shopped, Lily had spotted this confection in the window of a lingerie shop. She had actually stopped to look at it, and her mother had studied it as well. "The color would work on you, Lily," she had said, which had made her blush, as she didn't want her mother to think of her as someone who bought things like that, even if she was a person who bought things like that. She still got embarrassed when her mother wandered over to the underwear department when they shopped together.
But the slip had been on her mind the whole day, and every time she even thought about James, the slip popped into her mind, and she found herself imagining his reaction to it...among other things.
The next morning, she had gone to the shop and picked it up. Just so it would go away.
Her mother had been right, the color (a light gold that could only be described as 'champagne') did seem to soften her hair and eyes, which Lily always thought stood out too much for their own good. The slip itself was not nearly as risque as some of the things James picked out for her; in fact, by his standards, it was tame. It was a silken fabric, fairly long by lingerie standards (about three inches from her knees) and had no horrible slits or tacky lace cutouts. The neckline did not plunge, or separate the whole thing in half, or show too much. It had very thin straps (she actually hadn't even seen them on the mannequin in the window) and had a nice, cream colored lace bordering the neckline and the back....the back! That almost made her giggle, because there was no back. There were the straps, some lace, and then at her waist, there was the skirt again! She had not seen that part of it in the window, but when she saw the whole thing, it actually made her like it more.
But there had not been an opportunity to show it to James until now. Of course, as soon as he saw it, it would be replaced by chocolate, but she thought that she could live with that.
Lily paced around the room again, wondering if she should just take the sheets off altogether. But then, she reasoned with herself, it would be much easier to get chocolate out of sheets than out of a mattress.
The sheets stayed, she decided.
There was an urgent knock on the door, and it made Lily start, curious as to who could be here. James never knocked; come to think of it, James never even used the door. His friends knew that he was at the Quidditch match, and she had told hers that she would be out shopping.
But maybe James was just trying to be romantic (she almost laughed) and was going to....pick her up as soon as she opened the door or something.
Shrugging, Lily went to the door. "Who is it?"
"It's Remus and Sirius," Remus's voice said from the other side.
"We were just wondering if you happened to be naked," Sirius's voice added.
Feeling a blush spread to her cheeks at the thought that she was pretty close to it, she called, "Hold on, hold on!" and quickly grabbed a dressing gown from the bathroom before opening the door to James's friends.
They entered much as it the house was their own, and both of their faces were surprisingly solemn. "Lily," Remus said.
"What?" Lily asked, confused. "What's the matter?" She caught Sirius's eye. His expression didn't match the joking tone of voice he had used earlier. "What's wrong?" she repeated, a cold feeling spreading from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair.
"I think you need to sit down," Remus said softly, meeting her eyes for a split second then looking away again.
"No, I don't need to sit down," Lily responded tersely, the cold feeling spreading and forming a nice little knot that lodged itself in her throat, causing her to choke on her next words: "What's wrong?"
Remus and Sirius exchanged glances. "Lily, there's...there's been an attack. At the Quidditch match," Remus said, and Sirius looked away, rubbing his temples anxiously and biting his lip.
Sirius, in all the time Lily had known him, had never looked as scared as he did now.
She felt very cold all of a sudden, even colder than she had before. "I....I....where....what's the Order doing?"
"They've sent people," said Remus. "We...weren't allowed to go. Dumbledore said that....he was afraid of what we might find."
He was afraid of what we might find.
"So...so does he think....does he think James is...." she trailed off, her voice shaking.
"No one knows, Lily," Sirius told her. She was blinking furiously, and her whole body was trembling. Sirius took her arm and started to lead her to the sofa. "Come on, you need to sit down--"
She threw his arm off. "What happened?" she demanded fiercely, gripping the arm of the sofa (James had bought the sofa the week after he graduated from school, he had gone with his parents on a giant shopping spree for everything he could need for the house--he'd brought her to his newly furnished house the day after, led her to the couch with that trademark smirk on his face, "What d'you say we break it in?" Oh, he was so brash--) tightly to keep from falling over; she felt faint, but she refused to show that to Remus and Sirius. Remus and Sirius, his best friends, were fine. There was fear etched in every single line of their faces, but they weren't falling all over themselves. She could be like them. She would be like them.
Sirius bit his lip and impulsively pulled Lily into a hug. She stiffened against his chest, and didn't make any moves to put her arms around his waist or anything. She just stood there. "They, uh....the Quidditch players went beserk. Pretty much the whole Wasps team...." He inhaled a breath. "It was Polyjuice. Four people on the Wasps team were actually Death Eaters, and about fifty more descended on the stadium later. Just started shooting spells into the crowd. They, um....they blocked the exits, but the Order freed those up and they're trying to fight off the Death Eaters and get people out at the same time."
"Fifty-four Death Eaters is not enough to take on seven thousand people, though," Remus pointed out.
"No, but it's enough to give a good scare to those seven thousand and their friends and families," Sirius said.
***
Lily, still in her slip and dressing gown, Sirius, and Remuus had Apparated to the Order headquarters about an hour ago, and were trying to make themselves useful, with little to no results.
Lily couldn't concentrate on anything, and was becoming steadily more clumsy than she had ever been in her life. She kept dropping piles of papers, running into things, and other similarly embarrassing and stupid things until Molly Weasley, a kindly, motherly sort of woman, gently suggested that she take a 'break' for a cup of tea. Lily did not like sitting around doing nothing when there was...well, when there was something important going on, but she reluctantly agreed that she wasn't of much help in this state.
Molly sat her down at the conference table and bustled around making two cups of tea, which, with the aid of magic (Molly Weasley certainly had mastered the householdy spells that Lily abhorred), took little to no time at all. She joined Lily at the table and pushed her tea towards her, saying, "Drink, it will make you feel so much better."
Lily took a sip and noticed that Molly had liberally shot it with firewhiskey. That almost made her smile. She seemed to remember that she had just had a baby not too far back, and so she politely asked, "So, how is the baby?"
"Babies," Molly corrected pleasantly. "I had twins in April." She sighed. "They are terrors."
Lily's eyes widened. She had never heard anyone refer to their children as anything but 'bundles of joy' and other such sickening things. "Oh," she said, not sure of what to say to that.
Molly smiled. "They just keep you busy, children." She paused, watching Lily sip her tea for lack of anything better to do. "Are you all right, dear?" she finally asked tentatively.
Lily started to nod absently, then slowly turned that nod into the shake of a head. She didn't remove the teacup from her lips, taking comfort in the warm liquid gently swishing against her mouth as she stared at the doorway, which was completely devoid of entrants.
Molly sighed and sipped her own tea. "This is not easy, of course," she said, sighing again as she stirred the tea to have something to do with her hands. "And I'm afraid it doesn't get any easier." She paused, ascertaining Lily's reaction. There didn't seem to be much of one; this information seemed to be things she already knew. "It gets harder, in fact," she continued, unable to stop herself. "You make more friends, and they get into more danger..."
"I know," Lily suddenly broke in. "I knew that...I knew that there was a possibility that this could happen when I got involved, but....I guess I never really expected it to actually happen to me." She set her teacup down and traced the obligatory floral pattern absently with her right index finger. As she continued to speak, she stared down at the cup, as though she were afraid to make eye contact. "And now that it has, I just....I'm really...I'm really scared." She finally looked up at Molly, and her eyes were unusually bright. "Is it okay that I'm scared?"
"It's perfectly okay," Molly replied.
Lily nodded and looked down at her hands, her eyes landing on her engagement ring. Molly followed her gaze.
"When's the wedding?" she asked softly, unable to think of anything else to say. She hated silence.
Lily sucked in a very shaky breath. "June," she said simply. "It's in June."
"That's lovely," Molly said politely. "I was married in June."
Lily looked up and was just about to say that that was very nice when something stopped her.
James was standing in the doorway of the conference room, looking very tired and very...sweaty...but smiling.
Lily blinked, trying to ascertain whether or not he was real. Surely she was imagining this.
He smiled still and said, his voice slightly hoarse but still very James, "Hi."
And Lily stood up and walked to him, her legs shaking a little from the shock. She put her arms around his neck, buried her face in his chest, and found herself breaking into hysterical, trembling sobs.
"Well, there's no need for me, I suppose," she heard Molly say, and soon she felt the other woman brush past her, and heard the door close neatly behind her.
After she had cried for a good five minutes without James saying anything (he never really said anything when she cried; he knew it made her feel uncomfortable), he broke the silence by clearing his throat and saying, "Um, what are you wearing under that dressing gown?"
She laughed thickly and pulled away a little, opening her robe at the neck and allowing him a peek.
"That's nice," he said, pulling her to him again. "When did you get that?"
"A couple of weeks ago," she responded.
"Hm. It's nice; I like it."
There was silence for another couple of minutes until Lily said, "You're never going to a Quidditch game again."
"Oh, I know. I've rather...lost the taste for them, anyway," he said dryly.
She bit her lip. "James, is Gideon...?"
"Oh, he's fine, don't you worry about him," he assured her. "He would've come up, but he rather thought that he'd be ignored."
There was silence again, until she asked, "Was it horrible?"
He was quiet for a few seconds before replying, "It was easily the worst thing I've ever seen in my life."
*****
A/N: I can't say that I'm entirely happy with Lily in this chapter; I can usually picture how she would react to a situation or a line of dialogue or whatever it is that I'm writing, but I couldn't picture her here. Thus, we got OOC!Lily. Sorry 'bout that; hopefully she will return to me for 9.
And as for Remus, he will certainly be making himself more known in the coming chapters...and so will Peter, and I think Master Regulus should be coming back in a much less cutesy manner fairly soon. So stay tuned, minions. :)
Chapter Eight: The Shock of Reality
****
It was hard to say whether the talking or the current uncomfortable silence that James and Gideon Prewett were sharing was more torturous. While the Arrows and the Wasps were certainly providing more than enough entertainment, James usually enjoyed the company of his friends when he watched a Quidditch game. If Sirius were here, he'd be shrieking obscenities at the players and the referees while drinking steadily, which, of course, caused the obscenities to grow louder and more colorful as time went on. Peter would be monitoring the goalposts, muttering instructions to the Keeper and Chasers, and swearing under his breath when they didn't follow his directions. Remus would be studying each player, occasionally murmuring, "Great form...top of his game, he is..." and then suddenly letting out a string of curses that sometimes made even Sirius stop and stare.
Gideon Prewett did none of these things.
He hadn't sworn once.
He was drinking water.
And it wasn't vodka under the clever guise of a water bottle. James had checked.
Prewett was just leaning back in his chair, arms folded over his chest, watching the spectacle go on in front of him as though he saw this everyday and was getting quite bored of it. Every once in a while, he put his fingernails in his mouth, but James thought that that was only because Prewett was one of those people who chewed on absolutely anything that you put in front of them, not because he was particularly excited when Appleby Chaser Corbitt easily intercepted a pass from Wimbourne's star Keeper, Chessly, to their famed Chaser, Aughton, who looked baffled when Corbitt made an easy goal and did a victory lap around the pitch.
Actually, James thought, taking his attention away from Prewett and centering it on the game, Aughton was really.... off today. James had seen quite a few Quidditch games in his lifetime, and he had never seen anyone fly so badly, especially not in a professional game. And Aughton was actually supposed to be a very good player; recruited straight out of Hogwarts at the age of eighteen and had been playing for the Wasps ever since. It was very curious, the way that he kept fumbling with the Quaffle as though he hadn't a clue what to do with it. Every time his teammates would pass him the ball, he would fly aimlessly around the pitch for a while before eventually throwing it back to the teammate who threw it to him, or to a Chaser from the other team.
James glanced at Prewett, who was studying the Wasps' Seeker, a man in his mid-thirties by the name of Chester Kensington. Clearing his throat, James commented, "Aughton's rather off- form today, don't you think?"
"Not as much as Kensington," Prewett responded, which surprised James. He hadn't noticed anything unusual about Kensington at all.
"What do you mean?"
"He's marking McMasters," Prewett replied shortly, pointing to the Appleby Seeker, Ewen McMasters, who was, indeed, being tailed closely by Kensington.
James shrugged and reached for his Omnioculars, which he had kept in his robe pocket. "Yeah, so? Lots of Seekers prefer to follow rather than look for the Snitch on their own. Plus it hacks off the other Seeker, which throws off their concentration."
Gideon glanced at him.
James shrugged again and focused his Omnioculars on Kensington and McMaster's. "I used to captain."
Gideon nodded slowly, then said, "Well, Kensington never follows. He's got the fastest broom in the world, see? His Nimbus flies circles around McMasters' Comet, even if it is top of the line. Kensington's usual technique is to circle the top of the stadium, then go over to each goalpost and hover there for a while, then go straight into the middle of the action and circle, then repeat the whole thing. Works a lot of the time, too."
James looked up from his Omnioculars at Prewett. "You have a lot of time on your hands, don't you, Pretty-Boy?"
Prewett scowled. "I used to play," he responded curtly. "I studied the best Seekers in the world so I could emulate them."
"Did it work?"
Prewett didn't look up from the game. "Of course it did. I don't do anything half-assed, Potter."
"D'you still play?"
"No," Prewett replied shortly. "Wrist injury when I was twenty. I can't fly half as well as I used to."
"How come?"
Prewett sighed. "I can't navigate well." He paused, then said, "What the hell is Kensington doing?"
James turned his attention back to the game. Kensington seemed to have stopped, right in the middle of the field, and had drawn out his wand. He pointed it directly at Ewen McMasters, and as James focused the Omnioculars more finely on the Wimbourne Seeker, he saw his mouth form the words 'Avada Kedavra'.
There was a flash of green light, and Ewen McMasters fell seventy feet from his broom, hitting the ground after what seemed like hours.
There was absolute silence in the crowd for about a minute.
Then came the screams.
James turned, numbly, from the Omnioculars to Prewett, whose freckles were standing out brilliantly against his grey face.
"Bloody fucking hell," he said, his voice tremblingly clear.
****
Lily was considering the sheets.
Chocolate would be interesting to get off the sheets. Especially with her aptitude at householdy spells. She could get a good Scourgify, but she wondered if even that would get a 64-ounce container of Honeydukes chocolate out of her nice, cream colored sheets.
Lily thought about this as she paced the bedroom wearing the new slip she had bought on a whim a couple of weeks back and had been saving for a special occasion. She had been in Muggle London, having lunch with her mother, and they had decided that a little walk would be in order, as it had been a lovely, sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, truly. As they chattered and window shopped, Lily had spotted this confection in the window of a lingerie shop. She had actually stopped to look at it, and her mother had studied it as well. "The color would work on you, Lily," she had said, which had made her blush, as she didn't want her mother to think of her as someone who bought things like that, even if she was a person who bought things like that. She still got embarrassed when her mother wandered over to the underwear department when they shopped together.
But the slip had been on her mind the whole day, and every time she even thought about James, the slip popped into her mind, and she found herself imagining his reaction to it...among other things.
The next morning, she had gone to the shop and picked it up. Just so it would go away.
Her mother had been right, the color (a light gold that could only be described as 'champagne') did seem to soften her hair and eyes, which Lily always thought stood out too much for their own good. The slip itself was not nearly as risque as some of the things James picked out for her; in fact, by his standards, it was tame. It was a silken fabric, fairly long by lingerie standards (about three inches from her knees) and had no horrible slits or tacky lace cutouts. The neckline did not plunge, or separate the whole thing in half, or show too much. It had very thin straps (she actually hadn't even seen them on the mannequin in the window) and had a nice, cream colored lace bordering the neckline and the back....the back! That almost made her giggle, because there was no back. There were the straps, some lace, and then at her waist, there was the skirt again! She had not seen that part of it in the window, but when she saw the whole thing, it actually made her like it more.
But there had not been an opportunity to show it to James until now. Of course, as soon as he saw it, it would be replaced by chocolate, but she thought that she could live with that.
Lily paced around the room again, wondering if she should just take the sheets off altogether. But then, she reasoned with herself, it would be much easier to get chocolate out of sheets than out of a mattress.
The sheets stayed, she decided.
There was an urgent knock on the door, and it made Lily start, curious as to who could be here. James never knocked; come to think of it, James never even used the door. His friends knew that he was at the Quidditch match, and she had told hers that she would be out shopping.
But maybe James was just trying to be romantic (she almost laughed) and was going to....pick her up as soon as she opened the door or something.
Shrugging, Lily went to the door. "Who is it?"
"It's Remus and Sirius," Remus's voice said from the other side.
"We were just wondering if you happened to be naked," Sirius's voice added.
Feeling a blush spread to her cheeks at the thought that she was pretty close to it, she called, "Hold on, hold on!" and quickly grabbed a dressing gown from the bathroom before opening the door to James's friends.
They entered much as it the house was their own, and both of their faces were surprisingly solemn. "Lily," Remus said.
"What?" Lily asked, confused. "What's the matter?" She caught Sirius's eye. His expression didn't match the joking tone of voice he had used earlier. "What's wrong?" she repeated, a cold feeling spreading from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair.
"I think you need to sit down," Remus said softly, meeting her eyes for a split second then looking away again.
"No, I don't need to sit down," Lily responded tersely, the cold feeling spreading and forming a nice little knot that lodged itself in her throat, causing her to choke on her next words: "What's wrong?"
Remus and Sirius exchanged glances. "Lily, there's...there's been an attack. At the Quidditch match," Remus said, and Sirius looked away, rubbing his temples anxiously and biting his lip.
Sirius, in all the time Lily had known him, had never looked as scared as he did now.
She felt very cold all of a sudden, even colder than she had before. "I....I....where....what's the Order doing?"
"They've sent people," said Remus. "We...weren't allowed to go. Dumbledore said that....he was afraid of what we might find."
He was afraid of what we might find.
"So...so does he think....does he think James is...." she trailed off, her voice shaking.
"No one knows, Lily," Sirius told her. She was blinking furiously, and her whole body was trembling. Sirius took her arm and started to lead her to the sofa. "Come on, you need to sit down--"
She threw his arm off. "What happened?" she demanded fiercely, gripping the arm of the sofa (James had bought the sofa the week after he graduated from school, he had gone with his parents on a giant shopping spree for everything he could need for the house--he'd brought her to his newly furnished house the day after, led her to the couch with that trademark smirk on his face, "What d'you say we break it in?" Oh, he was so brash--) tightly to keep from falling over; she felt faint, but she refused to show that to Remus and Sirius. Remus and Sirius, his best friends, were fine. There was fear etched in every single line of their faces, but they weren't falling all over themselves. She could be like them. She would be like them.
Sirius bit his lip and impulsively pulled Lily into a hug. She stiffened against his chest, and didn't make any moves to put her arms around his waist or anything. She just stood there. "They, uh....the Quidditch players went beserk. Pretty much the whole Wasps team...." He inhaled a breath. "It was Polyjuice. Four people on the Wasps team were actually Death Eaters, and about fifty more descended on the stadium later. Just started shooting spells into the crowd. They, um....they blocked the exits, but the Order freed those up and they're trying to fight off the Death Eaters and get people out at the same time."
"Fifty-four Death Eaters is not enough to take on seven thousand people, though," Remus pointed out.
"No, but it's enough to give a good scare to those seven thousand and their friends and families," Sirius said.
***
Lily, still in her slip and dressing gown, Sirius, and Remuus had Apparated to the Order headquarters about an hour ago, and were trying to make themselves useful, with little to no results.
Lily couldn't concentrate on anything, and was becoming steadily more clumsy than she had ever been in her life. She kept dropping piles of papers, running into things, and other similarly embarrassing and stupid things until Molly Weasley, a kindly, motherly sort of woman, gently suggested that she take a 'break' for a cup of tea. Lily did not like sitting around doing nothing when there was...well, when there was something important going on, but she reluctantly agreed that she wasn't of much help in this state.
Molly sat her down at the conference table and bustled around making two cups of tea, which, with the aid of magic (Molly Weasley certainly had mastered the householdy spells that Lily abhorred), took little to no time at all. She joined Lily at the table and pushed her tea towards her, saying, "Drink, it will make you feel so much better."
Lily took a sip and noticed that Molly had liberally shot it with firewhiskey. That almost made her smile. She seemed to remember that she had just had a baby not too far back, and so she politely asked, "So, how is the baby?"
"Babies," Molly corrected pleasantly. "I had twins in April." She sighed. "They are terrors."
Lily's eyes widened. She had never heard anyone refer to their children as anything but 'bundles of joy' and other such sickening things. "Oh," she said, not sure of what to say to that.
Molly smiled. "They just keep you busy, children." She paused, watching Lily sip her tea for lack of anything better to do. "Are you all right, dear?" she finally asked tentatively.
Lily started to nod absently, then slowly turned that nod into the shake of a head. She didn't remove the teacup from her lips, taking comfort in the warm liquid gently swishing against her mouth as she stared at the doorway, which was completely devoid of entrants.
Molly sighed and sipped her own tea. "This is not easy, of course," she said, sighing again as she stirred the tea to have something to do with her hands. "And I'm afraid it doesn't get any easier." She paused, ascertaining Lily's reaction. There didn't seem to be much of one; this information seemed to be things she already knew. "It gets harder, in fact," she continued, unable to stop herself. "You make more friends, and they get into more danger..."
"I know," Lily suddenly broke in. "I knew that...I knew that there was a possibility that this could happen when I got involved, but....I guess I never really expected it to actually happen to me." She set her teacup down and traced the obligatory floral pattern absently with her right index finger. As she continued to speak, she stared down at the cup, as though she were afraid to make eye contact. "And now that it has, I just....I'm really...I'm really scared." She finally looked up at Molly, and her eyes were unusually bright. "Is it okay that I'm scared?"
"It's perfectly okay," Molly replied.
Lily nodded and looked down at her hands, her eyes landing on her engagement ring. Molly followed her gaze.
"When's the wedding?" she asked softly, unable to think of anything else to say. She hated silence.
Lily sucked in a very shaky breath. "June," she said simply. "It's in June."
"That's lovely," Molly said politely. "I was married in June."
Lily looked up and was just about to say that that was very nice when something stopped her.
James was standing in the doorway of the conference room, looking very tired and very...sweaty...but smiling.
Lily blinked, trying to ascertain whether or not he was real. Surely she was imagining this.
He smiled still and said, his voice slightly hoarse but still very James, "Hi."
And Lily stood up and walked to him, her legs shaking a little from the shock. She put her arms around his neck, buried her face in his chest, and found herself breaking into hysterical, trembling sobs.
"Well, there's no need for me, I suppose," she heard Molly say, and soon she felt the other woman brush past her, and heard the door close neatly behind her.
After she had cried for a good five minutes without James saying anything (he never really said anything when she cried; he knew it made her feel uncomfortable), he broke the silence by clearing his throat and saying, "Um, what are you wearing under that dressing gown?"
She laughed thickly and pulled away a little, opening her robe at the neck and allowing him a peek.
"That's nice," he said, pulling her to him again. "When did you get that?"
"A couple of weeks ago," she responded.
"Hm. It's nice; I like it."
There was silence for another couple of minutes until Lily said, "You're never going to a Quidditch game again."
"Oh, I know. I've rather...lost the taste for them, anyway," he said dryly.
She bit her lip. "James, is Gideon...?"
"Oh, he's fine, don't you worry about him," he assured her. "He would've come up, but he rather thought that he'd be ignored."
There was silence again, until she asked, "Was it horrible?"
He was quiet for a few seconds before replying, "It was easily the worst thing I've ever seen in my life."
*****
A/N: I can't say that I'm entirely happy with Lily in this chapter; I can usually picture how she would react to a situation or a line of dialogue or whatever it is that I'm writing, but I couldn't picture her here. Thus, we got OOC!Lily. Sorry 'bout that; hopefully she will return to me for 9.
And as for Remus, he will certainly be making himself more known in the coming chapters...and so will Peter, and I think Master Regulus should be coming back in a much less cutesy manner fairly soon. So stay tuned, minions. :)