Chapter Five: In which Lily sleeps a little too long
Written by drumer girl

The Round Robin Ducklings thank: Thoth, for being a brilliant newbeta, and not being scared off by the rabid authors, and the readers - who never fail to review.Mucho Gracis!
"I've got it! I've got it!" Sirius exclaimed, early Saturday morning.

No one answered.

Sirius tapped his foot impatiently, glaring at their unknowing faces. "If you don't wake up this instant, I will personally dump ice down all of your backs!"

That got their attention.

"You've got what, Padfoot?" Remus asked groggily.

All four Marauders had stayed up late the previous night, trying to work out a plan for James. Over the past couple days he had become a nervous wreck, and couldn't even go one conversation without bringing up the 'Lily' problem. Everyone was getting quite annoyed.

Sirius sprung from his four poster and bounded across the room to James' bed, then proceeded to jump on top of him and scream at the top of his lungs.

"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL!" James flailed under his covers and kicked Sirius in the back of the knees; making him soar off the bed. (Remus found this rather hilarious and also fell off his bed; though he did it somewhat more gracefully.)

"I have a plan, James! I have a plan!" Sirius uttered painfully from the floor.

"Oh. Sorry, Padfoot."

"That's ok, Prongs." He smiled like a maniac. (It was a bit strange to tell the truth.)

"Good. Now that that's settled; you can tell us what you bloody woke us up for," Remus said with a growl.

In the background Peter snored loudly.

"Why don't you calm down a bit, Remus?" Sirius glared in his direction. "Anyyyyway; this is the most brilliant idea that I've had, since I had that one idea about going to the Hog's Head last month!" Remus and James shuddered. That had not gone well.

"Well, in that case, Padfoot, I'm going to have to go back to sleep and cast a silencing charm on my bed," Remus said, in his best 'I'm a werewolf so you should back off' voice.

He then turned to lie down, but, not surprisingly, Sirius had expertly jumped across the room, (the dog in him resurfaced), and had latched onto Remus' back.

"Reemuss! Pleeease listen to my idea! I promise it's good!" Sirius put on his infamous puppy dog face, whilst Remus tried to shove him off of the bed.

"Fine. But it BETTER be good; or else!"

"Yay! Ok; here's the plan…"

----

Lily groaned at the shouts from across the hall. When would those boys learn that they DID live with other people, and that those other people valued their sleep?

She pulled the hangings back and groped for her wand, which rested on her bedside table.

"Lumos. Ahh, perfect."

Conveniently, she had the bed nearest the door. All she had to do was sit up in bed, move the door aside and WHAM! Shoot a silencing charm across the common room and onto the boy's door.

"I love magic," she whispered, as she rolled over and fell straight back asleep; completely unaware of what time it was.

----

James passed the Entrance Hall impatiently. Lily should have met with him ten minutes ago; and she was never late. Sirius was trying to calm him down.

"Aurgh! I just can not win with her! We're not even going on a date and she's stood me up!"

"James; she has not stood you up. She's hardly even that late!" Sirius sighed, exasperated.

"But she's NEVER late, Padfoot!"

"Come on, Prongs. She would not stand you up for a Head duty."

"Fine. You're right." He sat down and leaned against the stone wall, resting his head in his hands.

Sirius left him and walked a little ways away.

"You think that he's being too dramatic, Moony?" he whispered, glancing around him, wondering if Remus had followed.

"Of course he is," Remus said from behind him. Sirius jumped and turned around, pulling the cloak off the top of his friend's head.

"You know that you don't have to wear that thing yet. It might be a bit easier if I could see you, you know," he growled through clenched teeth. Remus chuckled.

"I know. But I love freaking you out!"

Sirius glared. "Go put on your belly dancer costume, why don't you?" he said testily.

Remus blushed and looked away, as he really didn't have a comeback for that one. All week the guys, as well as various students he didn't even know, had been teasing him and cracking wise cracks about him. Oh - and maybe some of the teachers as well…OK! For Merlin's sake! The whole castle had been going on about it! Sirius especially.

At one point, Remus had decided to mention that Sirius had been the one to put it on him, but that didn't seem to make much of a difference to anyone; as Sirius had denied it wholeheartedly.

"Very mature, Padfoot. Very mature," Remus scorned. He had even laughed at himself at first, but now the joke was just plain irritating.

"Fine, fine, fine. Just promise not to make me look stupid again." He hung his head and pouted.

"Sirius, I hate to be the one to tell you, but you make yourself look stupid. I don't have anything to do with it."

"I'm going to forget that you said that. Now, back to what we were saying before."

"What were we saying before?" Remus replied, all belly dancer remarks forgotten.

"WAIT!" Remus and Sirius jumped as James suddenly shot up, and looked wide eyed at them. "What if she's hurt? What if something's happened to her?"

Remus rolled his eyes. "She's not hurt Prongs. Just try and relax for a minute or so, ok? If she's not here in…." he looked at his watch. "Five minutes, then you can go look for her, alright? But until then, I want you to sit back down and breathe, ok? Good boy."

James sat down and looked around him, hoping to see Lily coming down the corridor.

"Mate, you have GOT to stop stressing, ok? Or else Lily is going to see you all nervous, flip out, and then you won't even get to test out my plan. You got it?" Sirius put his hands on his hips and looked down at James in a motherly manner.

"Like not being able to test out your plan is the worst thing that could happen," he grumbled in reply.

-----

Lily mumbled incoherently as the sun hit her face. For some reason, she felt like she had been lying in bed for hours. You know the feeling you get in your body after you've been sick and you've just been sitting on the couch for three days? Yeah; that was the feeling.

Rubbing her eyes, she straightened up. "Why do I feel so stiff?"

The dormitory was dead quiet as Lily pulled back the hangings, fumbling blearily.

"Oh no."

"Merlin! It's 10:25"

Unbeknownst to Lily, she had fallen back asleep, and had slept for another three hours.

"I'm supposed to meet James in five minutes! That's not even enough time to get to the Great Hall!"

Lily rushed around, haphazardly throwing things on and attempting to get a few swipes of mascara on her lashes. (At some point she put her pants on backwards and was almost out the door before she noticed.) She came back twice, once to brush her hair (as she had caught sight of herself in one of the Gryffindor mirrors, and another time to get her bag of money. Luckily, she had remembered her wand and her shoes; though she had forgotten socks and wouldn't even notice until she was several minutes away from the common room.

Lily cursed her roommates for not waking her up as she flew down flights of stairs, dodged students, cursed Peeves, and tripped over Mrs. Norris (which left her sprawled at the feet of Filch, the caretaker. But she quickly got rid of him by using a strategically placed leg locker curse. Hey! A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do!).

But she met her match when she rammed into the one and only: Malfoy.

He looked down at her sprawled out form with a smirk. "In a hurry, are we?"

She stood and brushed herself off, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She also carefully placed her feet as to give herself more balance. Encounters with Malfoy were rarely without wand use.

"Actually, I am." Lily snapped, and tried to walk around him, but he stepped in front of her.

"Not so fast. You know, Evans, for a Mudblood, you are quite confident in your abilities." He gave her one of his piercing glares (A classic combination of a smirk and a weird eyebrow look). He was famous for them.

"You know, Malfoy, for a Slytherin, you are quiet confident in your 'abilities' to be intimidating. I guess you just haven't mastered the art yet; though you'd think you would have by now. I mean, it has been seven years." Lily gave a smirk of her own.

She probably shouldn't have said anything. She should have just got past him and gone to the Great Hall to meet James. But being a Gryffindor, there was no way that she would pass up an opportunity to insult a Slytherin. Especially Malfoy.

She actually always had been intimidated by him; which was just one reason why she hated him so much. Not very many people could scare her, but this particular bone chilling, suspected Death Eater was one of the select few.

Malfoy's smirk turned into an angry frown. "You should watch your mouth, Mudblood." He pronounced the word as though it was vile and ugly even for him to say.

But this did not faze Lily for a second. Apart from hearing it quite a lot, she was too focused on preparing herself for a fight. It really was unfortunate that she was alone.

He drew his wand, just as she drew her own.

"It really just is not my morning, is it?" she thought to herself.

Author Notes

Hi! Thanks for bearing with me on that one everyone! I've been lost in poetry land for the past six months and have written about zero stories so I'm a little bit rusty. Hope you enjoyed! And before you run off to real life, be a dear and press the little purple button down there. A little bit more to the left….there you go!

Luv u all!

-drumer girl