Many a happy christmas and New Year greetings to everyone out there in fan ficcer's land! I know i haven't updated for a while...purely due to the season and the entailing festivities (which i will not get into because my head still hurts from it) and i feel really bad for it but... HERE'S A NEW CHAPPIE! REJOICE WITH SEASONAL SPIRIT! Bhaha! Well, anyhoo...This is an explaining chappie, because i realised i was dropping so many hints. eventually Id have to trawl through them all again and answer some. So, read away my filthy monkeys!
DISCLAIMER: My current background on my comp is of me and my bestie in Hogwarts robes, violently brandishing wands. It looks as though it could have been taken at Hogwarts, if you ignore the ugly thorny plant struggling to grow out of a crack in the sidewalk in the background! Well, it fully looks as though we have total domination over HPtm, which is really neat and explains my toothy grin. Yet, alas! We do not. Said photo was taken outside premier of Gof. But perhaps if i flourish it around people will think i own Hptm...think of the riches!
Beguile your senses...
Harry stared at her with a hardened, pained expression. Lily saw his hands spring together and begin to work themselves into knots in a worried manner. He stepped back, surveying them both through those bright green eyes…my eyes. Lily felt her head spin in a nauseous pirouette and clamped a shaking hand to it.
James laid an arm around her shoulders and steered her into the splintered chair. "Look, it's great and everything to meet you, Harry, but could you just stop freaking Evans out? I don't think her delicate spirit can withstand much more."
"I'm not purposely trying to freak you out!" said Harry, in a voice he was so obviously trying to keep steady it made some part of Lily ache. "I just... really need to clarify some things with you guys. And you obviously need clarification!" he pointed sternly at James, who crossed his arms with apparent disdain, and added an eye roll for measure.
Lily noticed there was a glaring difference in the way each boy spoke. Harry had a care-free, lilting rhythm to his voice that demonstrated he was on equal ground with all. Yet James' voice had an upper-class infliction that stretched the vowels and spoke cleanly of a wealthy upbringing.
Harry stared stonily back at James for a second. Then his eyes darted to what he was wearing. "Why are you wearing my clothes?" he asked slowly.
James looked sheepish. "Let me regale you with that story some other time. Right now, I need some answers!"
Harry stepped back from and around James to the door, putting an ear to it and listening intently.
"Look, I think we're going to have to move from here, as this is a direct thoroughfare for the bedrooms and if anyone were to hear anything, they just might gather what's going on and that could be...well, terrible." he finished simply, proffering an arm to Lily which she gratefully accepted.
Harry moved them all up to a spare room on the 3rd floor which was directly beside the one Harry was sharing with a friend named Ron. James commented snidely that the room's position made it highly susceptible to snooping parents -"Or who ever is running things in this house!"- to which Harry calmly replied that there was less of a chance of them being sprung here by 'parents' as the 'parents' are more concerned with the Order's dealings then spying fanatically upon the younger charges personal lives, to which James replied for Harry to shut up.
There was a tense moment as they dashed to the new upstairs hide-out when one of the many doors lining the gloomy, dusty hallways opened unexpectantly a they were rushing frantically past, and Sirius' head had a painful meeting with it. Another head poked out from behind it: a freckled red head with a mischievous face, a toolbox, and a mouthful of nails. He grinned as Sirius stumbled, muttering venomously and slightly-cross eyed.
Spitting out the nails into his hand (James looked revolted), he laughed. "Sorry, guys! You'd want to be a tad quieter. Don't run so much as people can hear you!"
Ginny stepped forward and matter-of-factly kicked the boy's shin. "Ron we've got to run, you prat!" she hissed. "What's with the toolbox and nails?"
"Oh, I'm fixing that damn window in our Plotting Room , Harry. That's the last time I get my arm stuck in there, I can tell you that!"
Harry smiled and Ginny groaned as they caught up to the others, who were already upon the next flight of stairs, not particularly wanting to be apprehended due to the boy's loud laugh and voice.
Finally, they were all shut inside the new room (which James whined unhelpfully was much to small and that teenagers need space to spread out or else there would be territorial fights to the death.) Ginny ducked out and returned a few minuets later arms loaded with fluffy feather doonas and pillows, which she laid out invitingly upon the floor. Lily gave a sigh of delight and collapsed onto the nearest one.
She was all of a sudden over come with a deep sluggish lethargy, and thought if she were to lie undisturbed for a few hours of heavy sleep, the cumbersome weight that had settled awkwardly upon her shoulders since this had all happened would somehow twist into smoke and she'd wake up to her own dormitory, glazed with drowsy early morning light, and tell her friends of this absurd dream she had had...she'd laugh carelessly about it...
"Evans, get up! We're getting our questions answered!" said Sirius' loud voice smugly.
Lily groaned a muffled groan into the smothering doona, and nestled her head face-down into the pillow. She could hear everyone else talking over her.
"Ok! So, what shall we ask them first!" Lily could tell just by James' equally smug voice he was pacing around, circling his prey to make sure they couldn't escape. "Are you really my son?"
"James! Don't waste our question!" snapped Sirius.
Lily heard a relaxed chuckle and the tug of the doona as someone perched themselves at her feet. "Yes, I am. Well, that goes without saying as I am your twin!" came Harry's voice from the end of the doona.
"You are not!" huffed James. "I am an inch taller, you have a funny nose, you don't talk at all like me-" (-"In other words, you don't talk like a snob." Lily heard Sirius whisper cheerfully to Harry.) "And, you have a dirty great scar on your forehead, and you have her eyes!" he finished triumphantly. "See, you are not me!"
There was a slight pause in which everyone sniggered slightly to themselves. "I didn't say I was you. I'm like you. That's all, because you're my fath-"
"Don't say that! Please, if you use that word, I will be prompted into some kind of murderous, bloody rampage that will join the word 'massacre' onto this house's name and make it forever infamous."
Lily heard Sirius snicker from nearby. "Like it already isn't! For one of the Black's to live here would make it more infamous than a massacre ever could hope for in it's wildest dreams. But over 20 generations?" he snuffed in loathsome thoughts of his family. "I'm surprised this place isn't on one of those : 'Most Infamous Places In London' brochures."
"There's a 'Most Infamous Places In London' brochure?" asked an interested Ginny.
"Might be. But I just said that because no-one else is saying anything and I hate silences. What's up James? You had all these questions you were imploding to ask, now you resemble some sort of stuffed elf."
"Ok, then." came James voice from Lily's right. She was glad to hear he had stopped circling Harry in a territorial, animal way. "Where are the Blacks, then?"
"Gone." said Ginny simply from Lily's left. "Your mother died a long time ago, and she was the last one left. I'm sorry." she added sympathetically.
"YES!" trumpeted Sirius. Lily heard frenzied foot taps, and James say in a dignified voice: "Now really, Sirius. Dancing in the wake of such news is socially unacceptable and can be deemed rather rude."
Suddenly, there was a sharp rap on the door. Lily snapped her head up. Sirius ceased his dancing in mid-pose, looking like a rather comical statuette.
"Uh-oh." squeaked Ginny. Quick as a flash, she leapt up from her spot on the floor, seized the doorknob and inched the door open only a tiny bit. She then pressed her eye against it. Lily had stopped breathing. This was it! They were going to be sprung! This was -
"MUM! What - what do you want?"
"Do not take that tone with me, young lady!" chided the voice of motherly-sounding woman. "I heard loud voices, and came to investigate-"
"Well, investigate Ron. He could be an opera singer with those lungs."
"I heard alot of voices!"
"Of course you would have!"
"Oh really?"
"Yeah! Harry and I are role-playing a scene from...a play."
"Wow! She's a quality liar!" whispered an impressed James. Harry smiled slightly.
The mother sounded delighted. "You are, are you? How imaginative!"
"It requires various changes in our voices as there are several characters and Ron and Hermione laughed cruelly at us when we suggested going through it."
"Well, I'll leave you two at it. But I'll have a word to Ron and Hermione about joining in. What fun, a play!" And tittering happily to herself, the mother bustled away from the doorway, leaving a calm Ginny to snap the door shut and resume her spot on the floor.
"That was really something!" gushed Sirius admiringly.
"It's a talent." said Ginny sagely.
"Anyway" prompted James. "Moving away from the midget's acting ability...-" (Ginny glared poisonously at him) "-who's using this place now? Apart- apart from the rodents, it would appear."
"The Order is using it." said Harry.
"That's great!" said James. "Because we know who or what the Order is and everything.."
"There's no need to be rude!" said Ginny rather rudely in James direction. He suddenly quietened down.
"The Order are those working against Voldemort. Their aim is to destabilise him and bring hope and peace to wizards everywhere." Harry said seriously. Lily could tell, just from his voice, he believed so firmly in this Order, giving his life for their cause would not trouble him at all.
Lily smiled into the fat pillow her face was cushioned upon. His loyalty and allegiance of that magnitude must have stemmed from somewhere...and the only thing James was passionate about was Quidditch and making those he didn't like miserable. And she was to have a child with someone like that? Lily scruched her eyes up into the pillow and immediately began to hose down those thoughts before they could ignite and engulf her in a smoke of nausea again.
"And this is their...headquarters?" asked Sirius slowly.
"Yes." replied Ginny, who's voice was unusually sombre. "It's the best place for it, as it has so many concealment charms, et al. You know what I mean Sirius! Installed by your father, weren't they?"
"How did you know that?" asked Sirius in the same slow, careful voice.
"Because you told us." said Harry.
There was a deep, tight silence. Lily could suddenly hear thudding of a hammer downstairs.
"I told you?" gasped Sirius." But I've never...before...you all...I...I know you here?"
Harry took a moment in answering, and when he did, he spoke in a voice cinched with emotion. "You were my godfather."
"Thanks, James. You couldn't handle the responsibility of being a father alone, so you try to foist some onto me." Sirius sighed dramatically. "He wasn't even my kid, and you try to dump parental duties on me! Nice going, Prongs." Harry was silent.
The pair of them are as bad as each other, thought Lily irritably, they can never take anything seriously...
" Well, I see you've obviously done alot of inner work on yourself since you were your age." Harry stated coldly.
"So, where am I right now?" asked Sirius, quite unfazed by Harry's jibe at him.
"You're dead." replied Harry flatly.
Lily heard Sirius spring to his feet. "Dead? You...you cannot be serious? Me? Dead? I...I.." he laughed in a jaggard, panicky manner. "I cannot be dead." he finished pleadingly.
"I'm afraid so." came Ginny's voice, and she too sounded cold. "2 years ago."
"Well, what about us?" cried James. "Where are Lily and I?"
"You guys are-"
"On a mission for the Order." Harry intercepted Ginny swiftly. "You've been gone for about 3 months now while I've been at school. The Weasley's take me during holidays, that sort of thing."
"We just left you!" Lily sat up abruptly and turned over, glaring at Harry. He was sitting by her feet, fingers splayed in his dark hair, glaring stonily back. "I can't believe we'd do that to you! I mean, how awful! We must be terrible mother and father!"
"There we go with those parental-responsibility-implying words again. Can we please just steer clear of them? I've warned everyone already about this..." grumbled James.
"No." croaked Harry, and he gave Lily a taut smile. "You guys are great parents."
"Don't say that word!" hissed James, resuming his defensive circling. "Stop purposely trying to disrespect me! You aren't so great! I've heard things...everyone has something against you because you're some sort of...spy-ie, secretive, spy-like...spy-guy! So, the jig is up! Tell us what you're really up to!"
Harry stared perplexedly at him for a few moments, then Ginny rushed forwards and whispered something in his ear, which made him smile wanly.
"So, you met Scrimgeour and Zeichman?" he asked James, still smiling as Ginny backed away.
"Yes!" James snarled "And that old guy is not pleased with you!"
"Well, why would he be? I've been running around and fighting alot behind his back. Of course he's upset. Upset because he isn't in the thick of things. Upset that the Order is finally getting recognition for their work while the Ministry are left looking like obsolete old toads!" Harry laughed happily, and James and Sirius exchanged mystified looks.
"As for Zeichman, he's the leader of the Heighland Star, the biggest organised auror and dark-fighters syndicate in Europe. He's currently working from within the Ministry to pull others into the Order, keep Scrimgeour from prodding in too far, and perform other little heroic acts I can't account for."
"Well, that's super that you like him so much, because he's 'going to back you!' " said James snidely.
The colour abruptly bled from Harry's face. Ginny jolted erectly upright from where she was lying upon the floor. "REALLY?" she screamed happily, then bounded over to Harry and hurled her arms around his neck. Harry choked, his glasses askew as she joyfully trilled: "Oh! Harry, isn't that wonderful? What are you going to do?"
"I'm sure he'd tell you if you ceased strangling him." Sirius pointed out.
"It's excellent!" Harry gasped. "I really can't believe it...we'll go tell Ron and Hermione now."
"Hey, what about us and our questions?" asked James, standing up in territorial mode again.
"And our dinner." piped up Lily.
But Harry and Ginny had already torn out the door, their happily frenzied voices echoing down the stairs and then growing distant.
"Gits." grumbled James.
Many a gleeful 'teehee's! Im sorry this chappie was'nt as intense as the last one, but bear with me! Well, in generous transports of Christmas spirit, can EVERYONE who reads this please review? Pretty please? You can make it my xmas prezzie! I just LOVE getting feedback,so ...review review review review! Kindly appreciated! Until next time! xoxoxoxoxox