Chapter 11:
Lily trembled as she felt somebody catching her—she hadn't even noticed anybody else there. Though she was frightened of what she might see, she looked up into the startling blue eyes of Professor Dumbledore. Although his eyes were twinkling, as always, there was a look of worry in his face.
"Miss Evans," he said, "thank goodness you're alright. Where is Miss Vance?"
A thousand questions came into her head: How did he know she was here? What exactly had happened? Why are these people killing innocent muggles? But she resisted asking them, and decided to save them for later. "She's right over there, in that shed." Lily told him, pointing her finger at the tool shed across the lawn. She and I survived the attack okay. When we heard Janelle's scream and saw the flash of green light, we decided we better get out of there. I just came up here to see what had happened and I saw that thing." She explained, pointing to the green skull with the black snake coming out of it's mouth.
"Ahh…yes, the green skull, or the dark mark as it known to some." Dumbledore said, staring up at the mark in the cloudy morning sky.
"Do you…err…think anyone survived, professor?" Lily asked, though scared of what the answer would be.
"I doubt it." Dumbledore said, surprisingly calmly. "Muggles rarely stand a chance around these…err…people."
"What about Emmie's parents, they are a witch and wizard." Lily said.
"Yes they were," Dumbledore said, emphasizing the word were, "but they would have been outnumbered by quite a lot."
Lily sat for a while, trying to take in this information—her best friends in the world's parents were dead. Then a thought struck her—would had caused this malice. If any one knew, it would be Dumbledore. "Excuse me, sir, but do you know who is behind all of these attacks?" she asked.
"Ahh…that I cannot tell you, Miss Evans." Dumbledore said, with a mystical tone in his voice.
"But you know?" Lily asked.
"I have an idea." Dumbledore said with the same air in his tone. "But will you do me a favor?" Lily nodded, willingly. "A tall reporter with blond hair and glasses will be coming here along with some others. Please seek her out, and tell her that I told you to give her this." He said handing her a parcel, wrapped carefully in cloth. "Tell her to open it when she gets back to the office. I will go talk to Miss Vance."
Lily went up to the street next to the house and waited there. It was a good ten minutes before anyone arrived. The first person to approach the house a tall, blond, curly haired witch with rhinestone incrusted glasses. She was holding her note book and an acid-green quill as she approached Lily.
Lily, assuming she was the person that Dumbledore was talking about, she went nearer to her, and gave her the parcel. "Here," she said, thrusting it nearer to her "Dumbledore told me to give this to you."
"Dumbledore?" the person asked, searching Lily's face. "Alright then." She said, tucking the parcel in her crocodile-skinned handbag. "Mind if I ask you a few questions?" She asked. "My name's Rita Skeeter, I'm a reporter for the Daily Profit."
"Sure." Lily said, and she proceeded to answer all of the questions that this young reporter asked her.
"PRESENTS!" Sirius shouted as he woke up to face a large amount of presents at the foot of his bed.
"YES!" James yelled, waking up to see an even larger amount of presents at the end of his bed. James moved down to the end of his bed and opened his first present—it was from his mum and dad. James opened it and exclaimed "Awww…" at the same time he heard an explosion from the bed next to him.
"What?" Sirius asked with his face all black.
"Look what my mum and dad gave me." He said, holding up a book entitled A Guide to Understanding the Minds of Teenage Wizards. "Claim that if I read it, I might see how boys my age are supposed to act, and they'll stop getting letters from McGonagall. Think they were sorta disappointed about how I got into so much trouble that I got fifty points taken away from Gryffindor, two detentions and not banned from all future Quidditch games—at least my mum was. My dad probably didn't care, he got into a lot of shit and stuff when he went to Hogwarts."
"Better then what my parents got me," Sirius said while holding up a pink box with black insides and pointing to his scorched face.
"They sent you a bomb? Why?" James asked.
"Have I not explained to you how bad my parents were?"
"Ermm…not really. You said that they were friends with Snape's family—that's gotta be pretty bad though…"
"That's not the worst of it. Snape looks like a Hufflepuff compared to them. Slytherin is the only acceptable house according to them. They're full of that pure-blood crap—I bet you anything that if they were younger, they'd be right up there putting that green skull thing above peoples' houses. Anyways, I never told them I was a Gryffindor, I'm not stupid, but I bet you anything that Bellatrix did. She went home for Christmas and has such a big mouth that if you stuck a brick in it she'd still keep talking."
"Oh…I'm sorry. So you reckon they won't be very happy with you when you return from the summer holidays?"
"Don't remind me…" and with that, Sirius turned and went on opening his other presents.
James decided to open Sirius present next—dungbombs. "Thanks for the dungbombs!" he said. After that James opened a present from his dad, it was a package of supplies for havoc. It consisted of "Invisible Slippery Solution", dungbombs, obviously, "Filibusters No-Heat Fireworks", stink pellets, and random trick-sweets. One box of cookies would turn you into a pig, and no magic could turn you back, you had to wait for it to wear off.
James opened an envelope next, expecting it to be money from his grandmother or something. I turned out to be a note from Remus that read:
Hey I hope you enjoy your Christmas Present!
-Remus
Go down six sets of stairs
Walk down the stairway
Keep on going straight
Then go into the set of double doors
Go to the back of the room
And look for F TRO
"Have you opened your present from Remus yet?" James asked.
"No, haven't seen it." Sirius said, reading a note from somebody. "Oh, and by the way, thanks for the dungbombs."
"No problem." James shrugged. "Open your present from Remus." He handed Sirius an envelope that looked suspiciously like the one that James had received from Remus.
"So, he wants to find something called F TRO? Sounds sort of weird…but that's Remus for you." Sirius shrugged.
"Don't you get what that room he's talking about?" James asked. "Go down six flights of stairs. We're on the eighth floor, what's on the second floor that we've been trying to avoid the whole year?"
"The Library?" Sirius exclaimed in disgust. "Bloody hell! Remus has got to learn that we're not Evans and we never will be."
"You're right. Let's go find him!" James said, heading for the door. "Wait where is Remus? He didn't return yesterday like he said he would."
"Dunno," Sirius shrugged, "but I still got more presents to open."
James went back to his presents too. He got one more thing from his dad—tickets to every Wasps game that summer. Unlike his mother, his father sympathized with him, claiming that he'd had a teacher like McGonagall when we went to school. There were three tickets for each game, one for his father, one for him, and one for a friend. 'This summer is gonna be great,' he thought.
From his mum, he got some candy and other treats. From his brother, he got some rat treats. 'Why did his parents insist on letting Alan pick out what he wanted to buy for people' James thought. He completely remember his birthday last year. They had been eating out in a restaurant and his brother had bought him a toy man with his shirt off, who sang a song, proclaiming his love for James so that the whole restaurant could hear.
He then opened the last parcel on his bed, it was candy from Rachel. He hit himself hard on the head. How could he have forgotten to buy something for Rachel? "Sirius!" he exclaimed urgently. "I forgot to buy something for Rachel! What should I do?"
Sirius shrugged, "I didn't buy anything for Elizabeth."
"You mean Kaitlyn?"
"I didn't buy anything for her either."
"Do you think that you're really gonna get away with this?"
"Away with what?"
"Going out with Elizabeth and Kaitlyn at the same time?"
"Neither of them are that smart…" he reasoned. "Anyways, have you talked to Elizabeth yet for me?"
"No, and I don't plan to. I don't support it, but I won't stop you. If you want to go out with her you can ask her out yourself." James said, stubbornly.
"You sound like Remus." Sirius said, and when James didn't answer he added "Fine! I'll go ask her myself!" With that he exited out the portrait hole.
Remus came back a while later, with the news that he had been hit by the knight bus and had to stay in bed an extra day. He had bruises all over his body, because he had rolled down a hill after it had hit him. James couldn't help but notice that he looked extremely pale—much more so than usual.
"Did you find my present?" Remus asked, when he came in the door.
"Yeah, yeah—the library, we know. HAHAHA." Sirius said sarcastically.
"Did you really for one second think that we were going to follow that hint thing to the library?" James asked. "Why do you want us to go to the library anyways?"
"Erm…not necessarily to go to the library, it was a scavenger hunt, your presents were at the end." Remus explained.
"Oh…we thought that you were trying to get us to study during Christmas and we're like 'hell no!'" James explained.
"No. Well, anyways, did you get any further on finding out how to get into that room?" Remus asked.
"Oh yeah!" James said excitedly, "We found another entrance!"
"Seriously?" Remus asked.
"Yeah," Sirius said, "you have to do this secret code thing where both James and I bang our heads on the table at the same time."
When James saw the confused look on Remus' face, he said, "We'll show you tonight."
That night, the three boys got under the invisibility cloak and went down they went down three sets of staircases and onto the fifth floor—the floor above the secret room. They then went into the empty classroom and quickly found the table with the candlesticks and the clock on it. James and Sirius threw off the invisibility cloak and stood next to each other, across from the table. They then leaned over and banged their heads hard.
Nothing happened, and they looked at each other, confused. "Why didn't it work?" Sirius asked.
"Think, think." James said to himself, rubbing his temples.
"Damn it, I can't think. My head hurts like hell!" Sirius said angrily.
"Are you sure this is the right table?" Remus asked.
"Yes, positive." James said
"Then are you sure you didn't do anything else last time that you did this time?" Remus asked again. The two other boys sat there, thinking for at least ten minutes. Remus waiting patiently.
"Err…" James said.
"Wait! Last time, I lifted the candlestick up and set it down." Sirius said.
"Okay then, do your little head banging thing again." Remus coached.
"How about you do it." James suggested, rubbing the spot where he had hit his head last time.
"For four main reasons. Number one, I don't want to. Number two, we know it works for you, we don't, however, know if it works for me. Number three, I might not do it right. And number four, your head already hurts, if you hit it again it'll still hurt. If I hit my head it'll start to hurt, and, between the three of us, we will be suffering more pain than necessary." Remus said.
"Fine, I'll do it." James said gruffly, getting next to Sirius. On the count of three, they banged their heads on the table and opened up the trapdoor so that the three boys rolled down the stone slide and into the secret room.
When they got there, they slipped into the closet in time to hear the end of McGonagall's question. "…the mistake, Albus?"
"The evidence was given to the wrong reporter." Dumbledore said gravely. "It'll be all over the profit now.
"Yes, by golly it will." The woman with honey blond hair and glasses said. "Skeeter got the article. And God help us, because that nosy woman will do everything she can to get the scoop on these attacks. Also, she'll probably turn the mask you found into a bombshell or something. She tends to exaggerate. When she was doing a draft on the death of Sally Harms, she blamed the whole thing on St. Mungos. When it didn't have anything to do with the healers there at all. She also claimed that many people have 'disappeared behind those hospital walls.'"
"Damn it, were dead, if Skeeter got the job." said a wizard with black hair and glasses, who James recognized as his father.
James leaned towards Sirius and whispered "That's my dad!" to him. Sirius looked at him with raised eyebrows.
"Not yet, Thomas. This just means that we will have to be more on the alert. These wizards will now know we know more about them than they think. However, how much we do know, he has no idea. We have to act quicker, for my guess is, after the mask is shown to the public, the attacks will pick up and become more serious—they will probably be attacking wizards next. However, we will discuss what to do about that next Thursday."
"What about Miss Vance and Miss Evans? Are they alright?" Professor McGonagall asked, with a worried air to her voice.
"They are fine. Miss Evans was clever enough to realize what was happening and the escaped to a shed in the backdoor." Dumbledore explained.
"Ahh shucks!" Sirius said and Remus elbowed him.
"However, we must all sympathize with Miss Vance. As you may know, her parents were at the party, they died in the attack."
"Were there any other survivors?" Professor Agrippa asked.
"None." Dumbledore said. "However, I must call this meeting of the Order of the Phoenix to an end. We will recommence next Tuesday, just like always."
Lily's Christmas had been alright. Because of her parents' deaths, Emmie had spent the rest of Christmas break with Lily and her family, much to Petunia's dismay. After she returned from Hawaii, she had been even cruder towards Lily then ever. Whenever Lily or Emmie walked into the room, she made a point of saying something mean about magic. Lily didn't care when Petunia did this to her, however, when Petunia was rude to her best friend who's parents just died, Lily found it incredibly rude. It was clear that Petunia enjoyed being an only child and that she wanted Lily to go back to that school, no matter how wretched she thought it was.
Lily, now sitting on the train, stared out the window looking at the fields rushing past them. Emmie was just sitting there, staring at her hands—she had been doing it a lot lately. Lily didn't exactly know what to do, she had never been close enough to anyone before to have been in the position that she needed to comfort. Lily didn't know what to do so she decided to just sit there for the remainder of the train ride and not say anything.
About halfway through the train ride, Molly Prewett came in to sit with them, she told Emmie that she was sorry about what happened. She also told her that it wasn't her fault that her parents died, and that if she had tried to help them, she would've ended up dead too. It was nice to have Molly come in, it was a good break in the long silence.
A/N: There was chapter 11…I hope you liked it! Sort of depressing, Lily's parents die, but James, Sirius and Remus find out a lot of information. Next chapter you will find the results of the findings of the mask…also you will find out what happens with the whole Kaitlyn + Sirius + Elizabeth thing…when little kids try to have relationships, it never works, I found that out when I was their age sigh
Anyways, please read and review! I really love all your reviews, if you hate my book, think its boring or I made a mistake, PLEASE tell me!