Chapter 26

Lily felt the warm tears trickle down her cheeks, just a few at first but then they came thick and fast. She'd had enough, James and Sirius' pranking had gone far enough and now they'd dragged Remus into it too and possibly Peter, her only friend. She wiped the tears off her face with the back of her hand and stormed out of the room and up to the Common Room, she was going to give them a rather large piece of her mind.

"Something has to be wrong now Anna," Sarah said looking at the clock, "they've been gone fifty minutes, they said it would take twenty!"

"Ok, I agree with you now, something is definitely wrong!" said Anna, looking worried.

"There's only one thing for it! We've got to go after them!" Gemini said couragously, but was replied with answers of "No way!" "I don't think so" and "You've got to be kidding!"

"Fine!" said Gemini, "I'll go alone!" she said and with that grabbed her cloak and left the room. On her way out she bumped into Lily, "Lily you have to come with me, something is wrong!"

"What's wrong? The fact that you tricked me into going to a club that didn't exist, where is James Potter? He is a dead man!" Lily screamed.

"Woah, Lily, calm down! I'll explain everything on the way there, we're all really sorry! But you have to help me!" Gemini pleaded. Lily looked at her, trying to see whether it was just another prank but realised from the sincerity of her former friend that it wasn't and followed her.

"Where are we going?" asked Lily when they reached the staircase.

"To Hogsmeade" replied Gemini.

"What are we going to do?" asked Katie, "If we go out there we're going to be caught and if we stay in here…… I don't want to think what might happen."

"Well, it might help if we had some light," suggested Sirius, reaching for his wand, "L..L…Lumos" he said but because he wasn't concentrating the flame shocked him and he dropped his wand. The effect was instantaneous. The fire sped along the old oak floor and covered the old curtains with dancing flames.

The children were surrounded, out of their depth. They didn't know what to do so they just panicked and started screaming for help at the top of their voices. But because they were out of sight from the rest of the town nobody could hear them and the fire wasn't big enough to be seen so they remained unnoticed.

"Erm, dissendium" said Gemini tapping the back of the statue of the witch. Immediately the gap opened up, she slipped through but wasn't followed. She turned back, Lily looked very uncertain, "Come on Lily! We have to help! We are Gryffindors after all!" and with that the two girls plunged into the darkness and out of the school.

"I don't see them!" said Gemini madly looking around Honeyduke's, "maybe they'd already left, let's go outside!" The girls ran out of the shop and into the darkening street, no one. "They have to be around here somewhere!" said Gemini a sense of urgency appearing in her voice.

"There!" said Lily, pointing to the ground. "There was some sort of scuffle here and there's beans on the ground, maybe they were chased or something!" Lily looked around and sure enough there were more beans, "We should follow them!" she finished decidedly.

"But they leave the town!" said Gemini.

"Yes but Gemini, we are Gryffindors!" Lily smiled and together they ran out of the town and into the hills.