"Do you think our Juliet will be ok in there by herself? I mean, do you think she'll get lost?" Remus asked Sirius after they'd teased James a bit more, glad of the fact that Sirius was so busy laughing at James that he didn't notice the forcedness of his own teasing.
"I don't know, maybe we should send Romeo in after her," Sirius grinned.
"You two! I was just illustrating a point," James said defensively.
"Right, yeah, I've enjoyed illustrating that particular point many times with several pretty Gryffindors," Sirius replied smirking.
"About poetry!" protested James.
"Uh-huh, well you know I don't think you quite made your point well enough," Sirius replied grabbing one of his friend's arms and dragging him towards the portrait hole. Remus remembered in time to grin and join in. Together the two of them managed to push a struggling James into the hole. They pushed the portrait shut, laughing.
"Just wait 'til I get my hands on those two!" James muttered, standing up and summoning the ball of light at the tip of his wand, "well, now I'm here I might as well go and find Lily."
He wandered up the passage to find her, his arm held out to illuminate the ground at his feet.
It wasn't long before he found her, she was standing in front of a forked pathway debating which way to turn.
"Left," he advised.
She exclaimed and span round, "oh, it's you!" She smiled a greeting, "have you come to be my guide?"
"Something like that," he grinned and turned her towards the left hand fork. "Quick march!"
Lily laughed as he pushed her along in front of him.
After a while he stopped pushing and came to walk beside her, "so how's that manuscript coming?"
"Slowly," she moaned, "I get the distinct impression it's doing it on purpose!"
"What?"
"Not letting me read it!"
He laughed, "yeah, because parchment frequently has a mind of its own!"
"Well it could!" she protested, "you can invest certain qualities in it to make it more human, say for instance you wanted it to converse with someone or something it could be done."
"Really?" He grinned, "so if I wanted to make a piece of parchment that held something private on it unreadable by others I could also get it to insult them if they tried to read it?"
"If you wanted," Lily replied, lighting her wand as the passageway darkened.
"Groovy," James answered approvingly.
Together they wandered down corridors and up stairs, talking about whatever came into their minds until they came out abruptly in a circular room with four full length portraits hanging on the walls.
"Merlin's beard!" Lily exclaimed, stepping back into James.
"What?" he asked, steadying her with his hands on her shoulders.
Wordlessly she pointed to the third portrait. It hung in between portraits of Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin. A woman with long red hair, and streaks of black mixed in, she was tall and slender with bright emerald eyes.
"That's Rowena Ravenclaw," he told her.
It was as if things were finally beginning to slip into place. The Sorting Hat's words to her, the book Dumbledore gave to her and the way she was the one to break away and speak to her out of all the Huntress's.
Rowena smiled at the pair of them and walked out of her frame.
They both jumped back in surprise, James' hands gripping Lily's shoulders tightly.
Godric Gryffindor laughed from his portrait as he too stepped down into the room.
"What's going on?" James asked, letting go of Lily and stepping in front of her.
"A Gryffindor!" Godric roared with laughter, holding out his hand to James, "I knew it! The moment I saw you and your friends I thought it, but that proves it!"
Rowena smiled and took James by the arm, "It's quite alright, go with Godric."
"Nothing bad will happen to your lady," Godric reassured him, taking a bewildered James away from the two girls.
"Lily's not my lady," James started to say, looking back with concern at Lily all the same.
"Of course not," Godric agreed good humouredly.
"Lily is it? It's nice to see you again," Rowena smiled warmly at Lily, who returned the gesture.
"Again?" James echoed, "I thought you said you hadn't been here before!"
Rowena turned to James as Lily said, "I haven't!"
"Godric, my love, will you take your young charge in hand."
He bowed to her and ushered James into his portrait.
"He'll be fine," Rowena assured Lily noticing her gaze, "now come, there is much to discuss," and saying that she led the way through into her own portrait.
Suddenly Lily found herself stood in a wooded glade. The grass was lush and green underfoot and the verdure of the place all too obvious by the full, ripe fruits hanging from heavily laden branches. A sweet fragrance of apples and honeysuckle filled the air and a gentle breeze rustled the leaves. At the edge of the glade two huge trees had entwined two branches to form a kind of archway. But in the archway itself there was only darkness.
"Come, sit with me," Rowena sat gracefully onto the ground, the long white skirt of her dress billowing gently before it settled perfectly around her.
Feeling awkward and clumsy, Lily sat down on the grass, "I don't understand," she blurted out, "I know portraits can move, but how can you have known about me before if you weren't there that night when you gave me the Horn?"
Rowena smiled, "There are many things in this world that you do not understand yet Lily, some you will come to know all too intimately, and others will always remain a mystery. I am to be your second guide, the Three who have guided you through the first two signs and the first task and I am to be your guide from here, for the next task and the other signs. As for the final tasks…for them you are on your own. For no one can say, few have ever made it that far and those that did… they did not pass the knowledge on."
"What signs?" Lily asked.
Rowena turned her head and called for, "Sim Mai"
At once a small woman ran out from between the archway with large almond eyes, she wore a soft blue-grey kimono decorated with a pattern of falling leaves. Her long black hair was neatly tied back in a bun behind her head, and around her neck she wore a silver necklace with a crescent moon pendant. In her hand she carried a white stone tablet about the size of a book.
Reaching Rowena she held it out, Rowena took it and thanked her. The woman then hurried off back through the archway. Lily was so astonished by her sudden coming and going that she forgot all her questions for a moment.
Rowena was gently tracing words across the tablet, her long silver nails leaving engraved words, "Lily," she called the younger girl to attention, "this will help you decipher the manuscript, but be warned, I cannot simply give you the answers. There are reasons why you cannot see all at once. So what I give you now is the translation for the first verse- one which tells in the briefest form the Tasks and the Signs. The second begins to tell in more detail what you are to expect." Lifting the tablet she held it out to Lily, who took it eagerly and looked down to read the words.
Green for the world, for life and vitality
Silver for the moon, conqueror of the dark
Red for love, the weapon of the light
And white, for purity- the most sacred of them all.
When all the world's in darkness,
No moon is to be found,
Silver hands will claim the horn
To fill the night with sound.
Things slowly began to click into place as she read the words over and over again. Green…her eyes. Silver…her nails. Two signs. The First Task was obvious enough, and all too clear in what it meant now the event had passed. But would she had known what to do if this had been all she had to go on before? She wasn't sure. But this would surely be enough to get on and start translating the rest. She could compare the two and find common symbols and- she looked up at Rowena, who smiled at her.
"Go ahead, ask me anything that is on your mind my sister, after all, you are one of the luckiest."
"What makes you say that?" Lily asked curiously, laying the tablet carefully to one side.
"Well, for one thing, you have me here to talk to-"
"Didn't the others all have that?" Lily interrupted.
Rowena shook her head, "yes and no. They had a guide of sorts, but none that I know of had their guide on hand whenever they had anything they wished to ask."
"Why not?"
"Did it not strike you as strange that Godric and I could walk out of our frames?"
"Well, yes now that you come to mention it," Lily admitted, "I had thought that that wasn't possible."
"And it isn't," Rowena agreed, "except that we are not really paintings or photographs such as you have seen before. You see when I was young, much like you in fact, Godric was my love, my light," she smiled fondly, but her expression was tinged with sadness, "but things do not always turn out the way you want them to and Godric and I...well it seemed some things aren't meant to be. So I preserved us, our love and our characters within these frames so that we might have some kind of a life spent together, even if it was only an illusion..."
Lily was eager to ask more, but decided now wasn't the best time to pry into Rowena's personal life so she only nodded, her eyes showing her compassion.
Rowena seemed to shake her head, freeing herself from memories, "of course I am in a sense more real than he, for I can travel between here and other places. One of which you can see the entrance to over there," she pointed to the black hole. "Another time you should come and we will go there together. Well, that's enough of that for now, do you have any questions?"
Lily thought for a moment, "I suppose I want to know what exactly it is I'm supposed to do. I hate not knowing what I'll have to do from one day to the next, relying only on my feelings and instincts!"
"Yes, that is hard to adjust to, but you must understand that in a sense it is not one single task that we are sent to accomplish. Neither are we sent to destroy all evil, for that is not possible. Rather our duty is more to reset the balance, to tip it in favour of the light, to reset the cycle."
"Cycle?" Lily sat attentively, yearning to hear something to ease the sense of unease that pervaded every waking and sleeping moment. A feeling that she was a taught bow string always alert and wary.
Rowena settled her hands on her lap, "the best way I can explain it is to ask you to think of life in long days. The daytime is never empty of the dark, it waxes and wanes like the moon, rising to a peak, where it is at its brightest. Then it begins to set and the night creeps in casting the world into shadow. It is when the night is at its darkest that the chosen one is sent to the world, cast out from the brightest source of light amidst the darkness."
"The moon," Lily murmured.
"Yes," Rowena nodded, "We come to give birth to a new day, a time of light once more."
"I see," Lily was silent for a moment, letting this settle in. Rowena waited patiently, remembering herself how she had felt when she had first come into her powers.
Then softly she said, "do not be uneasy that you will do something wrong. We, all of us, make mistakes. You are not expected to be perfect you know," she smiled and reached out a hand to stroke Lily's hair, "be at ease my sister."
Lily felt a weight fall away from her and as felt the beginnings of a kind of peace forming within her.
"You have dealt with much in your first months, as did we all, but there will be a lull now. A time for you to regroup, to train and gather to you those that you will need. Do not fear, you need not be totally alone."
Lily smiled gratefully, "but I thought that, well...that I would have to do this all myself."
"One is waiting for you," Rowena said cryptically, "as he was waiting for me."
Lily sighed, "why does everything have to be so...secret?!"
Rowena laughed, "because you are not always ready to deal with things all at once, it would be overwhelming. And so clues are revealed to you so that as you figure them out you also adjust yourself to their reality."
Lily looked surprised, she had never thought of it like that.
Somewhere in the distance a bell was ringing, Rowena tilted her head, "It is time for me to leave." She got to her feet, "Come whenever you have questions my sister, I will be waiting." And the two of them walked out of the 'painting', back into Hogwarts.
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A/N: Squeeee!! So what did you think?!? This is one of my favourite chapters! What do you think of my poetry? It came to me in a flash of inspiration in bed one night, basically complete. I just tweaked a word or two the next day. There are a few more verses as you should know, I don't really write poetry so I'm really proud of this.
Anyway, one question to ask you guys, some people have said they think that Saffron was right to tell James. I was just wondering whether those who did think it was nice have any brothers and sisters of their own and those who didn't if they do. My sister has a theory about all this and I was just wondering if she was right.
Right, stay tuned for the next chapter 'Too close for comfort' which has some interesting developments for something hinted at already. I shall prepare myself for your shock at it. hehehe