My longest chapter yet!
Thanx, as ever, to Kat, for your amzing promptness. It can't have been more than an hour between sending the chapter off and recieving it again. THANK YOU!
Review responses at the bottom.
James's head snapped round to stare at her.
"Are you serious?"
Her own head turned away from the gory sight and she raised one dark red eyebrow.
"James, that's just about the most serious thing I've ever said. I'm declaring my love for you in the middle of a battlefield where there's a pretty good chance that we're going to lose our lives. Does it get much more serious than that?"
James was still staring, and when he started to speak, his voice was soft, but very intense.
"I've been praying for you to say that since first year. It's, well, it's slightly difficult to believe that you actually… did!"
His expression was fairly calm, save his very, very wide hazel eyes. He started to laugh.
"That's really crap timing, you do realize that?"
Lily cocked her eyebrow again,
"Oh? And why's that? Do tell, dear Mr. Potter."
James gave her a somewhat crazed smile.
"Because I'm not really in a good position to leap for joy."
Lily took his hand in her own and gave it a squeeze, before giving him a light kiss on the lips.
"You can leap later. Let's go."
Harry dodged a curse that he had no desire to know the origin of, and was able to turn in time to fire a stunner, which missed its mark, but plowed into the chest of a Death Eater that had been advancing on Voldemort's right. He felt a grim satisfaction in knowing that the man would be out cold for at least a week.
Ciad slid from underneath his sleeve, and began to croon happily,
'Flee, my little piesssee of sssscum
Before my massster claimssss your ssspleen
Yessss, we will break you, ssscalelessss worm'
Harry always found it rather gratifying when his snake insulted his foes in battle, even if she was rather hard to live with the rest of the time. She also had a tendency to claim credit for vanquishing whoever Harry happened to be vanquishing, but a boastful Familiar was better than no Familiar at all.
Harry cursed himself for letting his mind wander, and apparated several feet to avoid a spell that would force him to eat his own arms. He'd conveniently forgotten that the action was impossible, and, as a result, found it fairly easy. The jet of indigo light was absorbed into the enormous golden sphere he'd erected at the start of the duel.
Aiming a powerful cutting curse just above Voldemort's head, he forced the repulsive creature to duck. Taking his opportunity, he slipped his hand under the folds of his cloak. His fingers folded over the leather of Gryffindor's sword, the handle that he'd crafted to fit into every minute contour of his hand. Voldemort raised his wand, ready to fire off another ray of death, but faltered when he saw Harry's faint smile.
In a fluid movement invisible to the unaided eye, the golden blade was suddenly at the Dark Lord's throat. Harry leant forward, and hissed in Parseltongue,
"Do you know who this belonged to, Tom?"
He paused, meeting the blazing scarlet eyes, and then answered his own question, his voice a low hiss,
"Someone who doesn't like you very much."
He switched the blade so that the flat lay against the grey skin of Voldemort's throat. Pressing hard, he slid the flat along the Dark Lord's neck until the very tip lay just below the jutting chin. He let it pause there for a second, and then dropped his right arm to his side.
Seeing his chance, Voldemort raised his wand. A look of pure fury crossed Harry's face, and with a roar, he brought the sword slashing down on the Dark Lord's shoulder. His severed arm fell to the ground, spewing thick, black blood. Voldemort's slitted eyes widened momentarily before the agony overtook him. He let out an inhuman shriek, and in a flash of dark red, a wave of raw magic came rolling off him. It burst outwards, hitting the golden dome and ricocheting off, bouncing back…
And absorbing into Harry's chest.
His body shaking with pain and fury, Voldemort let a jet of flame shoot from the palm of his intact hand, setting a great fire that shot ice blue flames twenty feet into the air. Stepping over Harry's fallen body, he stepped in and was engulfed.
There was a silence for a full fifteen seconds before a high-pitched scream pierced through the tangible air.
"Harry!"
ß
Lily watched, aghast, as the pleasant, witty Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher crumpled to the floor, and the nightmare she'd prayed to never lay eyes on vanished. She watched as the golden dome shuddered – then collapsed, to let Ginny rush, stumbling over every step, to the side of the fallen figure. All at once, the few Death Eaters who still stood burst into action, not on the offensive, but simply to rush into the still blazing column of blue flames. When the last black robe had cleared away, Lily was met with a sight that both shocked and moved her.
Ginny was kneeling on the floor, cradling Harry's head to her chest. She was sobbing, yes, the tiny, tough redheaded teacher was sobbing. What she said in between was mostly hysterical rambling, and some rather unpleasant death threats directed at Voldemort.
As Professor McGonagall hurried forward, looking bruised and tired, Ginny barely acknowledged her until she levitated Harry onto a conjured stretcher. When both Deputy Headmistress and floating stretcher had disappeared down the corridor, she was still kneeling on the spot where Harry had lain, tears pouring down her face, until jerking up, as though an electric bolt had charged through her, and then running like a woman possessed after them.
Lily was still staring at the empty spot on the carpet, when she felt something warm and sticky touch the tip of her finger. She looked down at the hand that clung to James's to see a dark rivulet of blood trickling from under her boyfriend's sleeve. A crimson patch of blood soaked the material that covered his forearm.
"You're bleeding!"
James managed to smile at her.
"Cutting curse. It's nothing, just…" he broke off, wincing, "I think I may have embedded my shirt in it."
Lily shuddered.
"Ouch. We'll find the others first, and then it's the Hospital Wing for you, mister!"
James was inclined to go along with her clearly false cheerfulness, and allowed himself to be steered away in search of friends. Now that it was clearly all over, the fighters were milling around the scene of the battle in search of friends, brothers, sisters and cousins.
Out of nowhere, Alice appeared, her blue eyes streaming. On sighting Lily, she ran toward the other girl and wrapped her in a tight. Lily tried to calm her friend, the expression in her emerald eyes bewildered.
"Alice, what is it? It's not… Frank?"
Alice shook her head, still sobbing,
"No – it's Marnie! She… she got hurt. Really badly."
Lily paled, and her own eyes filled with tears, though throughout this terrible day she'd cried so much that she thought there could be none left inside her. She gripped James's hand as her one means of support, but looked Alice square in the face.
"I need to help find the others. I'll be along to the Hospital Wing soon, I promise."
Alice gave a tentative nod, hugged Lily one more time, and disappeared into the thronging masses of students.
"Prongs?"
Sirius's voice was hoarse, but relief outweighed this unusual quality, so that Lily scarcely noticed. His black eyes had lost their mischief, and his hands shook. He embraced James in a brotherly hug, slapping his best friend on the shoulder, then turned to Lily and hugged her too.
"Have you seen Remus?" James asked of him, his voice tentative, with elements of hope and fear conveyed in those five syllables. Sirius nodded.
"Yeah, he burned himself but he's okay. He's gone to find…"
"I found him," interrupted a familiar voice. Remus emerged from the crowd, pale and haggard, but smiling nonetheless, with Peter at his heels. The rat Animagus looked tired, not to mention scared to death, but the expression on his round face held more than a trace of pride. He held up five shaking fingers.
"Five bastards Pete here brought down before getting himself knocked out," Remus announced cheerfully. Lily noticed a sizeable and rainbow coloured lump emerging on the chubby boy's forehead. James gave a tired grin and slapped his friend on the back, with a 'Good going, mate!' and then winced as his injured arm shot a spasm of pain up to his shoulder and across his collarbone.
"Oops. Maybe I shouldn't have done that."
Lily firmly took hold of his good arm, and applied more pressure than seemed possible for her delicate fingers to produce.
"Hospital Wing. Now." James winced again but then shrugged obediently.
"Might as well all go," Sirius pointed out, "I mean, Wormtail needs his head looking at although that's long overdue," he added jokily, "And Rem's knee is absolutely gorgeous."
Remus gave a slight grin and raised his trouser leg to reveal a blistering burn that spread across his shin and up to his knee. James shuddered.
"Nice."
ß
The waiting room of the Hospital Wing was overflowing with walking wounded, and even from the back, Lily could easily hear Madam Pomfrey saying irritably, "Yes, yes, I'll see you as soon as the Healers from St. Mungo's arrive for Professor Potter."
Lily wondered what ailment could be so awful that the skilled MediWitch couldn't heal it. She could see Ginny hunched in one of the seats, tears running down her face as she twisted a lock of hair around her finger. Her dark eyes were lost, and in a wave of compassion, Lily slid into the seat beside hers.
"Ginny?" she said gently, forgetting the student/teacher gap, "How is he?"
Ginny looked up sharply, but slumped back in her seat when she saw Lily's concerned face.
"Hi," she muttered. For several moments Lily wondered if she'd heard her fully, but then the other girl replied, "Not great."
Ginny glanced at Lily's embarrassed and upset face and said, in quite a different tone,
"Oh, he's going to be okay. He always is."
Curiosity got the better of Lily, and she decided to probe a little further.
"Always?"
Ginny gave a little snort,
"Oh, he bashes himself around all the time. I'm amazed that he's still got all of his limbs intact."
She gazed moodily at the door to the ward, "I swear that boy puts off waking up because he knows I'm going to yell at him when he does."
She smiled at Lily's confused expression.
"I get worried you see, so when he finally deigns to rejoin this world, I tend to give him a bit of an earful. He doesn't mind."
Lily gave her a little smile in return, and leant back in her seat, hazily pondering once again on the mystery of the defense against the dark arts teachers.
ß
It was roughly twenty minutes later that Alice came up, her round face drawn.
"They owled Marnie's parents. But they're not sure. No one's sure."
She broke off, and walked away, head bowed. Lily sat, numb. It had to be serious if they were bringing Marnie's parents, who were both muggles, to the school. And her friend – her bubbly, cheerful, funny best friend was hurt. She bit her lip as the salty tears made damp tracks down her cheeks and fell unchecked, making tiny stains in the lap of her robes. Ginny put an arm around her shoulders, which were gently racking with sobs, then she caught James's eye, mouthing 'Marnie,' and nodding at Lily. Despite his still unhealed wound, he approached them, his face full of concern, then took her trembling arm in his firm, warm grasp and led the bitterly weeping girl quietly away.
ß
When Lily walked down the ward the next day, all the patients were asleep, and there were a fair few of them. Fourteen students and Professor Potter.
Marnie's bed was directly on his right hand side, and as Lily sat down, she noticed Ginny sitting hunched beside his bed with her back to her. Leaning back in the hard wooden seat, Lily idly listened to the words that floated through the thin muslin of the partitioning curtain.
"And I won't be the one to tell Mum you've snuffed it, so you'd better not. I will be absolutely insanely livid with you if you do so. In fact," and here Lily could almost hear the gleam in her deep brown eyes, "If you do cop it, then I will personally find a way to resurrect you, then beat you to within an inch of your life, and then force feed you gnome droppings. Then I'll kill you, resurrect you again, (are you seeing a pattern here, Harry?) marry you, kill you so I get all your money, and then go around dressed in black all the time and people will call me The Black Widow (capitalized, obviously,) and I'll go around frightening small children! Sounds like fun, eh?"
At this point Lily had to stifle a giggle, but Ginny carried on,
"However, if you do wake up, then I really will marry you, and not just to murder you while you sleep. I'll let you propose to me on the top of the Astronomy Tower, and we'll get married this summer. Mione and Luna can be bridesmaids (or maybe even Matron, in Hermy's case,) but we won't invite Phlegm, because she'll just complain about overcooked meat and tell me I have no chest. For the honeymoon, let's go to Sicily, I like Italian food, don't you? And we'll go horse riding at sunset, only I expect you'll be rubbish at it so maybe I'd better just go alone. That kind of defeats the object of a romantic sunset ride, but that's just life, eh, Harry?"
Lily was nearly falling off her seat, shaking with silent laughter.
"Then we'll go and live in one of your houses, and a couple of years later we'll have a gorgeous little girl with my hair and your eyes, so basically, a dead spit of your mum. And we'll call her… well, what d'you think of Lia? Well, if you don't like it, tough. I gave birth to her, I get to name her, seeing as you'll probably be sitting in the pub with Ron while I went through an agonizing seventeen hour labour, instead of letting me break all the bones in your hand like a good little husband."
She continued rambling in this fashion for a good while, and was in the middle of describing every detail of the dÈcor of Lia's bedroom when a sleepy voice piped up,
"Gin, if I promise not to die in the near future, will you please shut up?"
There was a shriek, and then a loud, cracking sound, as though someone (Harry) was being treated to a deft smack across the face.
stars-above: snape was the kid that tipped off the death eaters, they mention him briefly, though not by name.
Elouse Q. Contrary: Way to make me feel guilty Go and do your HW AT ONCE! dont make me come - er, wherever you live.
I think someone asked how many hotel rooms i wrote the last chapter in. the answer is: 6
Soo, that was a long un, and i is v. tired. and my brother is moaning at my to get off the computer so... byes!
luv
missy mee