Chapter Four
Hi everyone! Sorry it took so long. I'm not a fast writer…
Thanks to all the reviewers! You rock! If you haven't reviewed, would you please review? Even if you just said "Nice story" it'd be greatly appreciated.
"Crack". I jumped. Even though I've known about the wizarding world for six years now, the sound of someone apparating still makes me jump. I glared at Sirius, Maya, Remus, and James who were all laughing at me and then turned to greet Cassie and Jon who had just appeared.
"Hi! I'm soo glad you're here!" I said excitedly as I hugged Cassie. Another pair of arms hugging Cassie along with an excited scream, alerted me of Ellie's presence.
"Omgd! I can't believe you're actually here! We're going to have so much fun!" that was Ellie.
"I know! Isn't it great!" Cassie exclaimed. "Hi Maya! How are you?" she said untangling herself from Ellie and me. "Do you remember Jon? You've met him before." Cassie said with an impish grin at both Maya and me.
Me because I'd had a huge crush on Jon the year before, and Maya because when we invited Cassie to stay the rest of the summer, Maya had not-so-subtly asked if Jon would like to come.
Like Cassie, Jon had dark brown hair that was slightly ruffled from apparating. He had a great sense of humor, and an easy smile. Unlike Cassie, Jon -while quiet- wasn't shy.
As I looked at him, I expected to feel the familiar flutter in my stomach that always happened when I was within a mile of Jon. Instead, I felt nothing. Not even the hint of fluttering. Maya on the other hand, looked like she was experiencing more than "flutterings". Even though she showed no outward appearance of nervousness, after being such good friends, I could tell she had fallen for Jon; hard.
"Where're the guys?" asked Cassie.
"They were on the porch." I answered.
"Why don't we go find them?" suggested Ellie. "Then I can give you the official tour of the house."
"Actually, I can't stay." Jon said apologetically. "I'm meeting some friends that I haven't seen in ages for lunch. But could you give me the "official house tour" later?"
"I might be busy, but I'm sure Maya would be happy to give you the tour." Maya shot Ellie a dark look.
"That'd be great!" Jon said with a smile at Maya. "I have to go now. Do you want me to pick up anything? I'm meeting my friends at Diagon Alley, so it'd be really easy to stop by and do some shopping."
"Some chocolate would be nice!" Ellie said brightening.
Cassie, Maya and I noticed the warning signs, and Cassie and I quickly steered a protesting Ellie towards the house, while Maya told Jon to get the Orange and Raspberry chocolate.
Ellie is dangerous around anything to do with chocolate. If you don't get her out of a "chocolate situation" fast, she'll go crazy.
There was another loud "Crack" and Jon disapparated. Maya hurried to catch up with Ellie, Cassie and me.
"I didn't know Jon could apparate. When'd he pass the test?" Ellie asked Cassie.
"A couple of months ago. I'm envious of Remus. How come he gets to apparate when he's only sixteen like the rest of us?"
For some reason, Remus had gotten "special permission" to apparate at the beginning of the school year at Hogwarts. When we all had interrogated him further, he simply said he was granted "special permission". I knew it couldn't be because he was a prefect, because I was a prefect also and I got no "special permission". I was determined to find out how he got it.
"Okay peoples. Time to start making dinner! And no-" Sirius said shooting us a look. "we are not going to get tricked into making dinner again like last time."
Ellie and I cracked up. We had our communal dinner last night, except that Ellie, Maya, and I tricked the guys into cooking dinner by themselves with the help of a handy spell called "bindtagerlo". I
t had been very funny watching James, Sirius, and Remus struggle with having to cook dinner while we drank lemonade on the porch. For some reason, Sirius, James and Remus had decided that the dinner did not count, that we would have to help with dinner for another night.
"Actually, technically you didn't make dinner. Technically you made… Burnt mush." Maya laughed.
"Only the Marauders would be able to take pasta and have the end result being a green, burnt, mush that faintly resembles the food they eat on planet Mars." Ellie put in.
"Yeah, yeah. You would know wouldn't you? Having been born, and brought up on Mars, I mean. And I bet you couldn't do any better." Sirius muttered.
"We'll see. And FYI I'm not from Mars, I'm from Pluto! Can't you ever get it right?" Ellie said with a teasing grin. "And I bet, the only reason that this dinner doesn't turn out worse than last night's is because we saved it. Face it: You have absolutely no cooking talents. You couldn't do any better if your life depended on it."
"It sounds like we have a bet going on here." Cassie turned to the rest of us. "What do you all want to bet."
"You had better bet on me. Actually, you have to bet on me. Because my bet involves us." Ellie said.
"How's this. You bet on her, I'll hex you into oblivion. You bet on me, I promise not to hex you for a week." Cassie, Maya and I looked between Sirius and Ellie.
"I have an idea. Why don't you tell your bets in secret to me?" Cassie suggested. Maya and I whispered our bets into her ear.
"No fair!" Sirius protested.
"It certainly is fair. Come on, we have a bet to settle." Ellie said with a grin.
We walked into the kitchen to find James and Remus surrounded by cookbooks stacked a foot high.
"Okay. We've finally settled on what to make. We've decided to go for something different. We have rigatoni; we have challah for our bread, some weird cheesy balls, and for dessert tiramisu. Oh yeah. And in case of emergency we have some mac-and-cheese."
"You do not seriously expect us to make all of that!" I asked in disbelief.
"And what exactly is challah anyway?" asked Maya.
"It's bread made by the Jewish people, that's eaten on their Sabbath. It's really good!" answered Sirius. We all looked at him surprised. How in the world did he know that? In truth, I was a little surprised that Maya didn't know, Cassie was Jewish, and we had eaten challah at her house before.
"What? You think that just because I goof around all day, I don't know anything?" Sirius asked.
"Yes Sirius, that's exactly what we think." James answered.
"For your information, my cousin Andromeda married a Jewish guy. I spent a summer with them, and…" he shrugged. "I actually managed to learn something."
"We're getting a little side-tracked here peoples." I said.
"You're right. Let's get started. Okay, the main dish shouldn't be that hard, Sirius's made challah before, and the tiramisu and cheese balls shouldn't be that hard either."
"I hate to be ignorant, but what's tiramisu?" Maya asked.
"It's a milky, cakey, dessert. It's also really good!" James said with a grin. "People these days! They hardly know a cow from a sheep!"
A little while later
"James! James!" I screamed hysterically "It's on fire! Help!"
"Well what do you want me to do about it!" James said as he hurried to turn off the stove while at the same time lifting the pot I was supposed to be stirring from the stove, maneuvering it over above everybody's heads and then dousing it in water.
He and I had been paired to work together along with Remus.
We were working on the main dish, and preparing one of the tiramisu sauces, while Maya and Cassie were working on the cheese balls and another part of the tiramisu, and Sirius and Ellie were working on the challah plus the other part of the tiramisu.
Needless to say, it was a bit hectic around here. Ellie's house had a huge kitchen but it still could not contain all of us, so we had decided on shifts. James, Remus and I were cooking first, and then we would switch with the others.
"How's it going over there Remus!" I called out.
"Do you call having absolutely no clue of what you're doing, "good"? If so, then I'm doing good!"
"What is with you two? Can't you go five minutes without burning anything?" asked James
"Two of the smartest people in Hogwarts can't even manage to cook dinner." James sighed dramatically.
"I'll have you know, Mister James Potter" I put on a haughty voice "that I am doing perfectly well."
"Yes Miss Lily. I see that you are. I just have one question. Is that sauce supposed to be as thick as porridge?"
"Damn damn damn!" I yelled quickly stirring the pot. I heard a similar yell coming from outside.
"I'm going to go check on the others. Who knows what they're doing without us watching us." Remus hurried outside shaking his head.
I let out another string of curses as I saw that the water still hadn't boiled. The recipe clearly said that you had to get the pasta by the time the sauce is set. Why wasn't anything going right!
"Lily" James came up behind me. "Calm down. It's not the end of the world. I promise you, the water will be boiled by the time the sauce is set. And I also promise you, that I will do whatever I can to make sure Sirius doesn't win the bet."
Seeing my puzzled look he clarified. "As much as Sirius is my best friend, he has absolutely no cooking abilities. I didn't bet on him. Although, if you didn't tell him that, I would be rather grateful." James came up closer behind me, and placing his hand over mine, started stirring.
"If you keep stirring the way you were before, nothing will happen. You need to stir like this."
"Since when did you become Mr. Cooking? You did a pretty good job of botching up dinner last night." I said laughing and trying to ignore the slight shiver that happened when he placed his other hand on my waist and whispered into my ear.
"Don't tell anyone, but I found this spell to make you better at cooking in one of the spell books upstairs."
As I felt that fluttering again, I thought It must be the heat. Sometimes people shiver when it's hot.
Evil Me cut in unwelcomingly You never shiver when it's hot. And it wasn't that hot until James came so close to you.
Stop stop stop! I quickly shut that thought away in the tiny box in my mind that I throw away all unwanted thoughts, and locked it, flinging away the key. Or at least attempted to fling away the key. Unfortunately just as the key was about to hit the ground Evil Me caught it. I think you're falling for James! Evil Me said triumphantly
That's ridiculous! Why in the world would I like a self centered bastard? Good Me heroically defended me.
He may be a bastard, but he's certainly a hot bastard. I refused to even acknowledge this comment by the rebellious side of my brain.
"I'm going to go check on everyone. Will you make sure nothing burns? Thanks." I pulled away from James and rushed out the back door, leaving a confused guy in my wake. I found Ellie, Sirius, and Maya sitting on the covered hot tub while Remus and Cassie sat on the porch steps.
"There you escaped to Remus!" I called out. "Were you planning on joining us in the kitchen any time soon?"
Remus grinned. "I was planning on joining you. Eventually. It's really all Sirius' fault you know. He's the one that insisted that I stay and have a drink." Remus gestured lazily with the wine glass he was holding. I plopped down beside Cassie, and took a sip from her glass which was resting on the porch beside her.
"Mmm. That's good. What is it?"
"It's a wine that some friends of my family make. They give us a couple bottles of this stuff every year." Cassie answered. She grabbed the cup back from me and sipped some. After a few moments of contented silence Maya asked. "Do you think we should worry about James being in there all alone?"
"Probably." Sirius answered, not moving.
"Hey! It's your turn to cook anyway."
"All in favor for giving this cooking idea up and ordering in a pizza say "aye"!" Sirius said.
"Aye!" the rest of us answered.
"James is going to reject the idea but…" Sirius stood up. "I'll go try and convince him." He went inside followed by Remus and Cassie.
Once the Sirius and Remus had left, Ellie turned to me.
"You know how I said that I didn't like Sirius?" She said nervously. "Well… I might.. Just a little." After seeing Maya and me give her a look she said. "Okay. Maybe more than a little."
"Oh my god! I cannot believe you like Sirius!" Maya burst out laughing.
Ellie looked apprehensively at me. I could tell she was ready for an angry outburst.
Instead I grinned and said. "He is rather handsome." I had known this was coming. And while I was a little upset about it, I suppose there could be worse people to like. Plus, Sirius wasn't actually that bad a guy. "And he is kinda nice. If you like the pranky, goofy, type."
Ellie looked relieved. "Just because I like him doesn't mean that you have to like him. In fact you can hate him."
"Nope. I don't hate him." It was the semi truth. As long as I didn't think about all the things he had done to me, how hard he had tried to ruin my life, and focused on the present, and how Ellie liked him, I was fine.
"Thank you!" Ellie turned to hug me, and then Maya. Remus and Sirius came out the door. Cassie came out a second later.
"He's not happy about it," Sirius reported "but he says he's "damn tired of cooking", so… What's it going to be peoples? Cheese pizza with pepperoni? Plain cheese? Personally I like pineapple on my pizza but Remus here hates it."
Remus shuddered. "It's nasty. How in the world can you like it?"
"I'm a vegetarian. So no pepperoni for me." Ellie said.
"Me too. Well, I'm an almost vegetarian." I quickly added after seeing Ellie's face.
"Maybe no one's told you, but being a vegetarian means eating no meat. And you, eat cows hoofs, therefore you're not a true vegetarian."
"Ewww. You eat cow's hoofs?" Sirius said incredulously to me.
"Yes she does. And so do you! Gelatin, which is in marshmallows and Jell-O, are made out of cow's hoofs." Cassie explained.
"That's a gross thought." Remus commented. "I mean, eating cow's hoofs! It makes me want to become vegetarian…. Almost."
"Okay. So I do eat marshmallows. And Jell-O, and gummy worms. And I do live by the phrase "Ignorance is bliss". But otherwise I'm a very good vegetarian!" I said. Ellie snorted. This was a very old argument. It was said so many times I had it memorized.
"Do you know how bad the meat industry is?" Ellie asked.
"Yep, I do."
"And would you like it if some smarter-than-us species came and started slaughtering us? Plus the fact that pigs are incredibly intelligent anyway…"
"I know. What can I say? I'm just not a Saint like you."
"You are hopeless. But eventually I'll turn you around." Ellie said with disgusted sigh. The disgust was semi real, but I knew she wasn't mad at me. There would have had to be something seriously wrong for us not to have this argument. It was tradition.
"Okay. So how about one vegetable pizza with pineapple, one pepperoni, and one plain cheese." Sirius said with a strange look at Ellie and me.
"Sounds good."
"I'll go order." Sirius went back inside just as a disrumpled James came out.
"You know, you could have told me you weren't planning on coming back." James glared at Remus and me.
"We know how much you love cooking," said Remus "We didn't want you to miss out on the experience of "Cooking Alone"."
"You realize how much food and money we've just wasted right?" James asked.
"Yep. But at least we learned a valuable lesson: Next time someone has the bright idea of cooking a meal, go out for pizza instead.".
"Well, as long as we've learned a valuable lesson…" James grinned.
"Crack". I jumped.
"Hey, Jon. You want some pizza? It's really good." Asked Cassie.
"What happened to cooking a meal?"
"The plan backfired a little."
"Aha!" came a triumphant Sirius. "I've won our bet!"
"Technically you didn't. Since technically we didn't actually make a meal. There was no meal to ruin and there was no meal to not ruin. Therefore no one wins. Let's call it a draw." Ellie said quickly.
"That's no fair!" Sirius started to say, but seeing the rest of our faces (we'd all bet on Ellie), he changed it to "Fine. We'll call it a draw. But it's still not fair." He muttered.
"Sirius, you don't ever think anything's fair." Ellie sighed.
"That's not true. I think stuff is fair when it involves good things for me!" Sirius answered. Ellie rolled her eyes. Jon looked confused.
"How'd it backfire? What bet?"
"Oh they made a bet about whether the meal would be totally ruined, except since we never really had a meal… Never mind. I'm confusing myself." Remus said.
Later that night"Okay. Now that we're away from the guys dramatic pause, who's up for playing "How much is she into him!"." Maya asked as we were getting ready for bed.
I was currently brushing Ellie's hair, which was a lighter red than mine (hers was more a combination of blond and red, while mine was what my friends called "fiery red"). I always thought my flaming red hair looked funny with my bright green eyes. Maya took out a brush and started brushing out the knots in my hair as I did Ellie's.
"How much is she into him!" was our little game of questions whenever one of us got a crush on someone.
"Do you think we should wait for Cassie? She said she'd be up in a little bit."
"Nope. Are the contestants ready to play!" I asked with a grin at Ellie.
"Fire away." She grinned back. Ellie was known for getting huge crushes on people, and then forgetting about them the next week.
Of all of us, Maya and probably dated the most. She was blond, athletic (she played on the Gryffindoor quidditch team), and relaxed. Cassie had only had a couple of boyfriends, but they all were serious relationships.
Ellie, on the other hand, got bored with the guys so soon she stopped dating because she felt sorry for the guys when she broke up them only a week or two they started dating. I dated just about as much as Maya.
"Question #1. How long ago did you get a crush on Sirius?" Maya asked.
"I started liking him when he moved in."
"That's long for you…. How much do you like him?" I asked
"At first only a little, but now… I like him a whole lot. More than I've liked anyone else before."
"You think you've got a chance?"
"Yep. I do." Ellie grinned.
"I'm definitely going to go for him. I've never liked anyone this much before. How could I not?" Ellie asked. "Now that we've covered my romantic life, what about Maya's!"
"What about me!" Maya protested.
"Duh. It is so obvious that you like Jon. And that he appears to like you." She added slyly.
"Do you think he can tell?" Maya asked worriedly
"No. Only us. But I think it'd be a good idea if he did know."
"No way! Uh uh. You're not about to convince me to spill my heart out to some guy and then to have it broken."
"It sounds to me as if, you really really like him. If so, you should tell him." Maya opened her mouth but Ellie continued on "But we'll check with Cassie to see if she knows if he likes you. Okay?"
"Okay." Maya said grudgingly.
"Come on! Jon would be an idiot not to like you!"
"Wouldn't it be great if all three of us fell in love this summer? Me with Sirius, Maya with Jon, Lily with-"
Just then Cassie walked in. Her hair was slightly out of place, and her clothes were a little lopsided. Nobody noticed except me. Would Cassie date someone without telling us? Possibly. She was sometimes closed about those things.
"Who do you think Lily should be with?" Ellie asked Cassie.
"James." Cassie said with a smirk.
"How about not? Anyone except James." I said.
"You looked friendly with James tonight. And he has stopped being such a prat. So why not?"
"Do we have to go over this! Don't you remember all the things he's done to me? Dying my hair bright purple? Dying my robes bright green? Toilet paper all over my dorm? Cutting off a foot of my hair," I had stopped brushing Ellie's hair and was gripping the brush tightly.
"Lily," Cassie interrupted. "That was in third year. He's in sixteen now. He's totally hot, mature, and crazy about you. Why don't you give him a chance?"
"He is not mature! And you don't expect me to just forget the years of torture he gave me? Do you?"
"No Lily. We don't. We just want you to give him a chance. Maybe you'll like him?"
"Fine. I'll try and give him a chance. But he always starts all our fights!" seeing Maya, Cassie, and Ellie open their mouths I shook my head "You know what? It's late. Let's go to bed." I dropped the hair brush, and climbed into bed rolling over so that my back was towards them.
I lay in bed seething while they brushed their teeth, changed into PJ's, and chatted before each climbing in their own respective beds that managed to fit in Ellie's room but would be shrunk in the morning, and shut out the light.
Why couldn't anyone understand about James? How he had been a constant annoyance in my life? How he wouldn't leave me alone? How that made me hate him even more?
"Lily" Cassie whispered. "We're sorry. We only want you to be happy."
"Yeah. We're sorry." Maya and Ellie's voices came out of the darkness.
"It's okay. I'm sorry I got so mad. I'll try and control my temper next time."
"That'll be a day. The day Lily Evans learns to control her temper." Maya said wryly.
Hope you like it!
Rachel