Chapter Four
"I just spent the last hour looking for this place," said Tara, stepping through the portrait hole. "I met a poltergeist and he started throwing things and chasing me. I had to run for ages before I lost him. And by the time I did I was completely lost."
"That's Peeves," said Lily, pulling a sour face. "Next time just threaten to go to the Bloody Baron and he'll go away."
"Is there a map of this place?" Tara asked, not wanting to get lost again.
"Nope, and there's no point in making one either," said James lazily. "The castle is almost constantly changing. The rooms appear one day and then disappear the next."
"And the castle can't be put on a map either," added Sirius. "Unplottable."
"You know, the Ministry is Unplottable," said Remus thoughtfully. "But they have a spelled map that changes with the building," said Remus. "It's in the main hall."
"Doesn't Unplottable just mean that a place can't be put on a map? Couldn't we just map the inside of the castle and the grounds?" asked Tara, thinking out loud.
"Hmmmm… I never thought of that," said James. "I wonder how they made the Ministry map."
Sirius took out a piece of parchment. "You know, it would be a great tool for future marauders if we could make a map to show where everyone was in the castle," he said conspiratorially.
"What, like a Marauders Map?" asked Tara, grabbing Lily's attention.
"Errrr…" said Sirius.
"Of course, we're going to have to do a lot of research into it…" said Tara. "Lots of time in the library."
"Ok, but this stays between the five of us," said Sirius.
"What about Peter?" asked Lily.
"We'll owl him about it tonight, see if he has any suggestions."
They spent the next hour planning what was going to go in the map and how it would be designed. Finally they decided and Sirius sent an owl to Peter.
The next morning, when Lily and Tara woke up and went down into the common room, there was an owl passed out on one of the comfiest chairs in the common room, a letter attached to its leg.
Tara untied the note from his leg and scanned it quickly:
Moony, Padfoot, Prongs, Lily and Tara,
Great idea, but what if someone found the map? Writing needs to be hidden, unlocked by a password in case someone we don't want to see it finds it.
Wormtail
"What is it with those silly nicknames?" Tara asked Remus and Sirius as they entered the room, closely followed by James who gave Lily a quick kiss on the cheek.
The three boys looked at each other, with a mutual understanding. "Nothing, we just like them."
Tara doubted it.
But James quickly changed the subject. "Any response from Peter yet?"
Tara held up the piece of parchment. "He said it's a good idea, but we need to protect it from people. Make the writing invisible and giving it some sort of password."
"Come on," said Sirius, his stomach rumbling, "I'm hungry."
After breakfast they went straight to the library and researched all the spells that they needed for the map, which took them up till dinner time.
"MERRY CHRISTMAS!" shouted James, Sirius and Remus, at the top of their lungs, barging though the door on the seventh-year girls dormitories. They bounded into the room and started bouncing on the beds left by Melody Gates and Tess Miller.
"Whaaaaaa?" Tara mumbled sleepily.
"MERRY CHRISTMAS!" they shouted again.
"Give us another hour, we only got to bed at two," said Lily, sounding only slightly more awake than Tara.
"So," said Sirius. "We went to bed at three."
"Let me try this again, get out of here for another hour or I'll start hexing," she said drawing her wand out from underneath her pillow.
An hour later, Lily and Tara gathered up their presents from their trunks and went down into the common room to find all the Gryffindors who had opted to stay over the holidays staring longingly at the large pile of presents on the Floor, James standing next to the tree making sure that no one made a grab for them.
"Great, you're here, time for presents!" said Sirius, moving towards the tree as James went to kiss Lily.
Tara sat down on one of the squishy chairs neat the fireplace. Lily led James to the sofa and they sat down arm in arm.
Remus handed her a present and she put in on the Floor next to her just as Lily did with the present that Sirius handed her.
A second later, James jumped up and helped them dole out the presents from under the tree, obviously as anxious to start opening presents as Remus and Sirius, while the girls sat back and watched the separate piles of presents mounting up.
Three minutes after all the presents had been doled out and as if a starting pistol had been shot they all started tearing into their presents one by one, each pausing to say thank you when they unwrapped a present from one of the others.
"A broomstick polishing kit, thanks Jamsie"
"I needed a new one of these, how did you know?"
"Oh, James it's beautiful, I love it!" (smooch)
"Sugar quills my favourite!"
"Another jumper from mum, she gets me one of these every year."
"Well at least you don't get ones like mum gives me for my birthday! Remember that pink one with the red frilly bits?"
"Remind me, exactly how did it catch fire?"
"Mum sent me a Remembrall!"
"Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans! Yuck, sprouts."
"I love this chess set."
"Acid pops, lovely, want one?"
"I never saw you get these! Thank you!"
"Contacts?"
"Dad sent me those comics I wanted."
"They're beautiful, I love these earrings!"
"Look at these? Do you think they suit me?"
"Where did you get these from, you can't go down to Hogsmeade yet!"
"It must have cost loads. Thanks sis!"
"This necklace is beautiful Lily. Thank you."
"It was all James' idea."
"They're not prescription, but you can wear your glasses over them, you can change your eye colour using them though."
"Hagrid's toffee, yum!"
"More sugar quills?"
"Making mischief, a guide to marauding? By Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs?" (laughter)
Finally Tara picked up the last present that she had to unwrap, and read the card.
Dear Tara,
I hope you're having a wonderful Christmas,
Love Severus.
Tara dropped the parcel to the Floor causing the others to look at her in alarm.
"It's from Snape," she said.
"Are you going to open it?" asked Lily.
"I don't know."
"Any idea what it is?"
"No," Tara replied staring at the package as if it had grown two heads.
"Whatever it is, you can bet that he put a lot of effort into wrapping it," said Lily, pulling at a strand of curly silver ribbon. "He's even done it is Ravenclaw and Slytherin colours," she added, the meaning not lost on Tara.
She gingerly picked up the package, and placed it back on her lap, just looking at it, trying to decide whether she should open it or not, or whether it could possibly be a peace offering.
No, her mind told her, he gave it to Professor Slughorn before he left for home.
But she was curious about what Severus had thought she would like. A book on Potions maybe, or Defence Against the Dark Arts, but it was too soft and light to be a book.
Eventually, with a little encouragement from Sirius and James, her curiosity got the best of her.
Tentatively, she pulled on the ribbon, which slowly came undone.
Then she lifted the spellotaped flaps at either end of the package and slowly tore the last bit of tape from the middle, to reveal a plain white box.
She slowly lifted off the lid of he box and set it down on the Floor next to her and looked at the contents of the box.
Inside was he most beautiful set of blue robes that she had ever seen. She lifted them out of the box and stared at them for a moment taking in their magnificent cut.
"Wow," she said.
"He spent ages looking for the right material," ventured Lily. "He must have spent at least ten minutes just deciding on the fabric."
"Are you going to try it on?" asked Sirius, a hint of something in his voice that Tara missed.
Tara looked at Lily and went up to their dormitory, Lily following closely.
Three minutes later and Tara had slipped into her robes. They fit perfectly, figure hugging in all the right places.
"Do robes always fit this well? Are they spelled to do this?"
"If you'd seen James' Aunt Minnie in her robes at his mothers' birthday party, you wouldn't be asking that question."
She slipped back out of the new robes and went back into the common room.
"What? Don't we get a looksee?" asked Sirius, showing obvious disappointment.
"You'll get to see them at Graduation, assuming that Tara wears them," said Lily joining James, who was trying to put the contacts into his eyes, over on the other side of the room.
"There, got them," he said blinking, "they don't feel that bad either."
"Let's see them in action then," called Remus.
"Where's that booklet with the instructions?" asked James putting his glasses back on.
Lily had it, and she was reading the instructions and holding her wand on James, non-threateningly of course,
"Eyes, green," said Lily, aiming her wand at the contacts.
"Wow, they're the same colour as mine now." said Lily, and she held up the mirror in the makeup case that Tara had got her so James could see for himself.
"Nice," he said checking out the reflection of his "new eyes". "What do you think?"
Tara looked at him, and at first she didn't really see any difference in his appearance, but as she got closer...
Suddenly she was in the Gryffindor common room facing James, no one else around, but there was something different about him. There was a scar sticking out from underneath his longish fringe and he was holding glasses in his hand.
"Harry?"
"Who?"
Tara was pulled back into reality, and she mentally shook herself for a moment.
"You just reminded me of someone for a moment, I think he was a friend of mine."
"Was?"
"I don't remember, I remember his name, but I don't remember anything else."
"So what just happened?"
"I saw a boy, he had dark messy hair and green eyes, like yours. We were in a room, but I don't know where it was, His name just popped into my head. It was Harry. I don't remember his last name."
"Want to go and see Dumbledore? Maybe you can draw him or Dumbledore can spell it out of you."
"I can talk to him later, after dinner, it can wait. It's not that far away, only three hours until one, and it's snowing."
They all looked out the window to see the heavy snow falling outside and down at the grass to see a good few inches of snow had already fallen.
"SNOWBALL FIGHT!" shouted James and Sirius simultaneously, Remus just shaking his head, and they raced off to the dorm to put on their heavy cloaks and charmed winter gloves.
"Will they ever grow up...?" asked Lily with a small laugh.
I don't know, Lily, thought Tara absentmindedly, you tell me, after all, you married James.
After an hour of snowball fighting with some Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs (which they won) the five had a small break where they helped a group of first years add some scarves and Santa hats to their snowmen. Then they went sledging down one of the hills near to the Quidditch field.
Tired, wet and cold, they trudged up the common room and dried themselves off in front of the warm fire.
Soon it was time for dinner and Lily got her first chance to use the new makeup case.
"It's so easy to use, it's brilliant, what do you think?"
Lily had chosen a bright blue eye shadow with green lipstick and loads of red rouge. Each of these looked like they had been applied using a trowel.
"I like the mascara, makes my lashes look so much longe," said Lily, fluttering her eyelids at Tara
"It's certainly an... interesting look."
"I think it looks rather nice," she said, turning back to the mirror and admiring her reflection.
Tara walked over to her and looked at Lily's reflection in the mirror and laughed. "Go and look in the mirror in the bathroom."
A moment later there was a scream and Lily stormed out of the bathroom, picked up the case and stormed into the common room. Tara followed. "Sirius Black! James Potter! You'd better sort out my make up case before dinner or I'll make the rest of your lives a misery."
"Don't look at us," said James with is hands in the air. "We went outside with you, we haven't been alone with it."
Lily rounded on Remus. "Moony!"
"Yes?" he asked, in one of those innocent voices, accompanied by an innocent look, that to Tara screamed "IT WAS ME!"
"What did you do?"
"I sat down tired from the snowball fight."
"To my makeup case."
"I added a couple of charms."
"Well you can remove them before dinner or you won't live to see graduation."
Remus took the case from her hands and set to work on it, while Tara took the make up off Lily's face and they went upstairs to change.
After a few minutes Remus knocked on the door and left the case on the Floor, barely popping his hand through the door.
"Let's see if this thing works," said Lily and set about picking the same colours as she had before.
"So how do I look?"
"Much better, I'm sure James will approve."
"Now for you."
Tara looked doubtful, she liked keeping her makeup understated and the colours in Lily's case were anything but.
But when she sat in front of the case all the colours changed to natural shades that would suit her perfectly.
Lily set about picking all the colours and soon the brushes in the case went to work.
"There, perfect," said Lily, looking at Tara once the brushes had finished working.
Christmas dinner was spectacular as usual. The four house tables had been removed from the hall and replaced by one large table, where all the students and staff were seated, passing round the food. There was no less that seven fat turkeys on the table, lots of potato of every kind, boiled, roasted and mashed, golden brown Yorkshire puddings, crisps, boats of gravy and cranberry sauce and platters of stuffing.
There were stacks of crackers placed every two feet down the table. Everyone grabbed some and started pulling them with someone else.
Sirius pointed one end of a cracker at Tara and she pulled, the cracker splitting at his end. The loud bang that from the cracker almost made Tara scream out of surprise. A large pink ladies hat, the brim covered in flowers and a "Grow Your Own Warts" kit fell out of the end. Sirius put the hat on and looked into the end of the cracker and pulled out a piece of paper and read it out loud.
"What do you get hanging from Father Christmas' roof?"
"Tired arms!"
There were several more bangs, which didn't shock Tara quite so much. She held out the end of her cracker to Sirius who took it, and she won again, This time, out fell a chess set and a bright green bowler hat. She pulled the piece of paper out of the cracker and read:
"How does Father Christmas climb up a chimney?"
"He uses a ladder in the stocking!"
As if on cue the others started reading their jokes out.
"Why was the Turkey in the pop group?"
"Because he was the only one with drum-sticks!"
"Who delivers presents to baby sharks at Christmas?"
"Santa Jaws."
And after all the jokes had been read everyone started piling their plates high with all the food that they could fit on it. The hall was quiet apart from the clinking of cutlery and people chewing the food in their mouths.
After dinner came dessert, there was Christmas pudding, trifle, Christmas cake, chocolate pudding and fruit salad, but everyone was too full to have more than a little piece.
After dessert was finished they went back to the common room and sat in front of the fireplace just gazing into the fire. After a little while Sirius managed to coax Tara into a game of chess.
But all she managed to do was anger her pieces and make them hate her.
"I'm about to be taken, do something,"
"No, move him over there."
"Nope, not me, I'm not moving, move him instead."
"No not there, there!"
"Check mate!"
The next game she okayed against Remus, and she won, but only because she got a lot of help from Sirius who her chess pieces seemed to like (the queen even flirted with him).
After that game they both tried to teach her how to play, and it took most of the night. She finally won her first match at midnight against a first year.
At three am Tara went to bed, exhausted but feeling quite content, except for one small nagging thought in her head. Severus.