Not Always
Chapter Four:
Disclaimer: I own nothing that you recognize from the Harry Potter books, the plot and any original characters (Dessing, Rachel, etc.) are the only things belong to me. No profit is going to made off of this, as it is only a way for me to bid my time until HBP comes out, and until something else happens to distract me (:-D)
Oh and THANK YOUUUUUUUUUU to all those lovely people who reviewed! I LOVE YOU! (Thank yous at bottom to EVERYONE who has reviewed so far!)
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BRING!
"ACK!" I screamed. My eyes flew open only for me to find myself sprawled on the ground of James's bedroom completely tangled up in his sheets. Great. Perfect way to start off a mission. Good job Lily, getting scared of an alarm clock? What are you? Three years old?
I heard footsteps rushing over to where I was and the cherry oak door opening.
"Lily! Are you okay?" the concerned filled voice of James Potter came into the room.
"Yeah, I think," I said quickly not wanting him to know that I had gotten scared of an inanimate thing. "I just fell off the bed."
James grinned, "Yeah, I do that quite often. Come and get breakfast soon so we can get a head start, ok?"
I nodded, slowly rising, and wincing at the pain in my rear end. Reminder to self: never fall out of beds. They hurt.
James shot me a slick grin, "You might want to be careful next time, Lil, you know how vicious those alarm clocks can be."
I stood there gaping at him as he closed the door, snickering at me. That little! What audacity! I stood there fuming for about ten minutes before my stomach growled, reminding me that I needed to get ready.
I quickly showered and got ready. I wand-dried my hair and stuck my wand in my back pocket. It was my own little way of feeling armed and dangerous. I knew it was a little stupid, but I nevertheless felt a little more powerful knowing I could whip the wand out of my back pocket rather than carry it defensively like most wizards and witches.
I stumbled out to the hallway and the mouth-watering aroma hit me immediately. As I approached the kitchen I noted, with an inward groan, that James looked absolutely adorable wearing an apron.
He smiled as I sat down at the old oak table. "Well good morning sunshine!"
I growled at him under my breath. "I see you are in a lovely mood today!" he said, his grin resembling a cheeky monkey's.
"Stupid alarm clocks," was all I could mutter.
He chuckled, "Now, now Lily-kins, cheer up. You want some breakfast?"
I glared at him, "Potter, please…can you drop the act? You can laugh at me all you want, you stupid prick."
James nodded in a mock-solemn way before bursting out into laughter. "Oh shut up! Like you've never done that!" I yelled at him, stabbing my fork into my pancakes quite forcefully.
--
"Lils, ready to go?" James came knocking at my door.
"Just a second!" I yelled out, "I can't close my trunk!"
He opened the door and strolled in, "Want any help?"
I nodded, afraid that if I tried to say something it might just backfire on me. My eyes were glued to him, and by glued I mean super-glued. He looked fiiine. I silently thanked god for dark, fitted jeans as James tried to shut my trunk. All of a sudden it hit me what I was thinking. There was no way I could even entertain such a thought in my head! I scolded myself, reminding my brain that James and I had a history, and a very messy blow-up. I had no right to be thinking like this.
"Well," James said, "That's about it. We should get going."
He turned to face me. It occurred to me, suddenly, how close we were. I took a deep breath in. He took a step even closer.
"Listen, Lily.." he started to say.
"Oh look at the time!" I interrupted trying to avoid this situation. "We better go!"
"Lily! Listen to me!" James raised his voice to be louder than mine.
I began pacing around the room gathering my cloak and getting my trunk. Suddenly a very strong hand grabbed tightly onto my arm and twirled me around.
"LILY!" James yelled, "Can you please listen to me! For one stupid second can you stop pretending and just listen to what I am going to say? It's not going to kill you!"
I gulped and nodded; painfully aware of how close we were again and exactly how tightly James's hand was grabbing my arm.
"Okay," he said calming down a bit, " Lily, I understand that this is hard. But it's not only hard for you, but hard for me as well."
I tried to shift my gaze. His eyes were too intense. They held too much emotion-emotion of the past-the past that I wanted desperately to forget.
"Lily, please, just for a moment, hear me out," he said pleadingly and I was forced to look back into those distressing eyes. "I know that what we had in the past-," I had to look away, I was not ready to face this, "-what we had is in the past and it's going to stay there. I want to forget about everything from the beginning to when you left me, behind. For now, at least, I want us to just be you and me, can we just go on this trip without the weight of what happened interfering?"
"I-I don't know," I said softly, looking down. Was he really serious? I could feel my heart beat faster.
"Please Lily," he begged, "I just want it to be normal. To be able to talk to you, and joke, and even, even just to do this mission without our personal affairs coming between what we have to do- what we should be doing."
I could almost feel my heart stop. So all he wanted was to forget about what happened-for the mission.
"I think-I think you're right," I said, still not wanting to meet his gaze.
"You do?" He sounded surprised that I'd agreed.
"Yes," I said, mustering up enough courage to look back into those eyes, "Its important for the mission that we leave any personal differences behind."
His face fell, "Oh-right. Then good, for the mission we are no longer at odds. Right?"
"Right," I said with a small smile. If he wanted this, then I was not going to back down.
"Then shall we go?" He gestured to the door.
"Sure, wait! We have to change our appearances back!" I said quickly, pulling my wand out of my back pocket.
James grinned, "Nice. I would've forgotten."
"Okay," I said as I finished up the spells, "Lets go Philip!"
"Ladies first, Andrea!" He said, bowing, then we both apparated out of the compartment.
--
Smoke was billowing everywhere. More smoke than I had remembered. Then it hit me that this wasn't the normal gray smoke that came out of the Hogwarts Express, this was black, pitch-black smoke…
"No…"I whispered to myself. "Philip? Philip? Where are you?" But I heard no answer.
Uh oh, I thought to myself. This isn't good. I ran down the platform yelling to see if he was anywhere.
I jogged all the way up to the first booth too but all I found was more black smoke. And then I saw it: the mark. It was fluttering around above the train, almost like a flag.
Forgetting the fake names I screamed, "JAMES!"
I listened for a moment and I heard faint footsteps. Oh no! I had given myself away if the person approaching was the one who put the mark up. I slid behind the platform booth and slowly got on the train.
Whoever had been running up at the sound of my voice had stopped right where I had been seconds ago. I ducked down on the train.
"Lily?" James voice called to me from outside. "Is that you?"
I made a start to get up but then sat back down, what is they were tricking me? I peered out the window slightly to see James-dressed as Philip- searching for me frantically and I let out a breath of air.
I ran to the door and yelled for James. He looked relieved to have found me, but he knew that danger might still be about.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him onto the train. I put my finger up to my mouth and signaled to him to pull his wand out. Quickly, but silently we crept down the corridors of the train, peeking into the compartments to see if anyone was there.
As we neared the end of the train I stopped. The compartment I was looking into was coated. Every inch had been splattered-with blood. I was about to let out a scream when I heard something moving to my left.
I pulled my head out of the compartment (as did James) to see a person with a black silk cape running-no gliding out the corridor and off the train.
"Get him!" James hissed at me and we took off. We raced to the end of the train but no one was there. I got off the train to have a look on the platform incase the mysterious black-cape-guy was lurking around. I heard James call my name and turned to find him looking very perplexed.
He pointed at something through the thick smoke. I couldn't make out what it was exactly but as I squinted to see what it was I could make out a black silk cape lying on the ground, thrown in a manner to show that it was left there on purpose. As I walked towards the cape, still wary incase the psycho was around, I noticed something that made me stop immediately and turned my blood to ice. On the cloak, an emblem of a skull with a lion was clearly visible.
I shuddered and picked up the cloak. The cloak felt cold and almost frozen to my touch but the station was warm. I shuddered again, not liking the prospects of this situation. I folded the cloak up and returned to the train.
James, who was finishing writing a letter to Dessing and one to Dumbledore, looked up at me and sighed, "If this is what happens on the first day, what can we expect over the course of the mission?"
I smiled but then a horrible thought occurred to me, "James? If the person who fled was the one who sent up the mark, then whose blood was in the compartment?"
James looked up at me, his face pale, "Let's call for back up!"
Short chapter I know, but I just wanted to get it out. Fluff will come up, I promise, but I needed some action in there too! Sorry about the delay..will NOT happen again! I promise!
My Thank you's to:
Littlegoober: my first reviewer! Thank you!
Me: haha love the name, thanks!
Liat86: hmm, James as a teacher? A marauder as a teacher? Wait…remus was one too, but remus is a sweety, James would just torture the kids! Hehe, I promise to explain things soon, but it won't be next chapter, or maybe even the chapter after that, but it'll come. I might drop some hints (okay I probably will drop MAJOR, crystal-clear, tid-bits of info) about what went on between James and Lily k? Lets just say that misunderstanding ruin a lot.
Mystikalolo: hahaha I'll try to remember how to spell it: Godric? Oh well….definitely AU, or should it be otherwise? Nah, its more fun AU…def, def DEF Sirius/Bella (obviously) and Lily doesn't know, I know, so I wrote it.
C: see, Sirius hadn't seen Lily for five years (people can change, ya know?), and he was busy with auror/spy work, so if you think about it, why would he be looking for Lily? But I'll explain things later. I'm waiting a little to reveal what happened to you all.
Flame of Desire: nope, I didn't forget! Thank you for the sweet review though, it's the one that made me want to write this!
Amy, Sara, Tiger Lily 21, PonyLuvrGirl, Angelxd14, No name, Elliy, When Bunnies Rule the World (awesome name btw), KasofDaSea, Indu, poopnugget, ChickoftheDarkMoon, Bluetiger94, julyborn09, Chelsea, and kritikitty: Thank you!
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