Chapter 26

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Around a week later, the fifth-year Gryffindors were sitting near the fire in the Common Room, struggling through an essay Professor McGonagall had set for the following day. With a flourish, Lily added a full stop to the end of her parchment, and pronounced, "Finished."

"Me too," James said, and stretched before leaning back against the sofa Lily and Chrissy were sitting on.

"Give me thirty seconds," Carrie muttered, scribbling at top speed.

"Twenty," Remus added. They all found that they got through work much quicker when there was competition: nothing was actually at stake, of course, but it made the time pass more quickly. Chrissy was the next after Remus and Carrie to put down her quill, followed by Jess a couple of minutes later. Sirius had given up long before, and Peter was still writing, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth. Christina nudged Lily and gestured towards Peter. Lily grinned.

"Right then, what's next?" Remus asked.

"More homework?" James moaned.

"Oh, no," Chrissy said. "I can't take much more."

Carrie looked down at her homework planner (they had all been presented with one at the beginning of the year, but Carrie and Peter were the only two who used theirs) and said, "There isn't really anything else we need to do yet. There's a Potions assignment for Thursday, but not much else really. We've already done the Divination and Charms."

"I still have Ancient Runes to do," Chrissy sighed.

"When's it for?" Lily asked.

"Friday."

"Don't worry about it," Jess said, mimicking James as she leant against Remus's chair.

"We can do something fun now, then?" Sirius asked.

Not directly addressing Sirius, Lily said, "I know! Who's up for a bet?"

"On what?" James asked, interested.

Lily grinned maliciously. "What Van Spyk wears to bed."

"What?" Carrie asked incredulously. "How are we supposed to find that out?"

"I'll happily find out," James said innocently, and Chrissy whacked him one from behind. He gave a disgruntled "Hmph," and rubbed his jaw.

"No need," Lily said, grinning and giving Chrissy a high five. "I already know."

"How?" Remus asked. Lily tapped her nose, and Carrie snorted.

"Don't tell me she was in her pyjamas when you went to see her that time?"

"Yup," Lily said.

"Fantastic!" Jess exclaimed. "How much are we betting?"

"Three sickles," Lily said immediately.

"Three sickles? I can't afford three sickles!" Chrissy said.

"Don't question the girl with the knowledge," Lily reprimanded her. "Besides, I know for a fact that you've got ten Galleons in your underwear drawer." Almost everyone (barring Chrissy and Peter, who had only just stopped writing and was trying to work out what they were talking about) laughed, and Lily pulled a piece of parchment from the arm of the sofa. She quickly scribbled everyone's names down the side, and then pronounced, "Right, people, anyone who wants to take a guess can cough up."

Everyone apart from Lily got to their feet, and the girls and Sirius headed off to their dormitories to collect their money. James and Remus dug in their pockets, and Peter began rifling through his bag. Lily could never understand why the boys tended to keep money on their person at Hogwarts, but then it occurred to her that they might do this kind of thing much more than your average Hogwarts student. Either that or they were in the habit of buying items from older students that Mr Filch or any of their Professors would definitely have confiscated.

Once they were all seated again, Lily said, "Who wants to go first?"

"Me," Jess said, putting her money onto the coffee table between them. "I reckon she wears a nightie with teddies on." Lily raised an eyebrow and wrote down 'nightie with teddies'.

"Remus?"

"Red satin."

"Red satin what?"

Remus grinned. "Now there's a choice…I think I'll go with one of those skimpy little negligee things."

Lily rolled her eyes but dutifully noted this down. "Peter?"

"Flannel pyjamas."

As Lily was writing this down, Remus said, "For heaven's sake, Peter; are you a reptile?"

Peter looked confused at this, so Carrie said, "He means 'Are you cold-blooded?' I'm going for PJs with bunnies on them or something."

"Sirius?"

"Some kind of weird PVC bondage thing."

James high-fived Sirius, and said, "Well I reckon she sleeps starkers."

Lily started laughing, while Jess looked disgusted. "Ew, Potter, that would mean Lily being in an office with a naked Van Spyk. Ew,"

"Well, I think it's quite a nice image…" James said, looking put out. This time it was Lily's turn to whack the back of his head. "Ow!"

"Are we all done?" Lily asked, looking around. There was a general nod, and a few positive murmurs, so Lily sat up. "Well, I can tell you that she doesn't sleep in any kind of sexual thing."

"How would you know what's classed as a sexual thing? You're female," Remus muttered.

"Give the girl some credit," Chrissy said. "She may be straight, but that doesn't mean she doesn't know when a woman looks damn attractive."

"Fine," Remus said, still looking slightly disbelieving, or just disappointed. Lily smiled as she thought that she had probably just shattered one of his fantasies.

"Carrie was actually the closest," Lily continued.

Carrie grinned and clapped her hands in a five-year-old-with-Christmas-presents sort of way, and said, "Ooh, what does she wear then?"

Lily grinned again. "Purple PJ bums with kitties on, and a top with 'Meow' written on the front."

Jess burst out laughing, and James said, "Is that normal?"

"Fairly," Lily said. "In the Muggle world, at any rate. Why?"

"Just sounds weird. I s'pose I've never seen what most women wear to bed."

Chrissy laughed. "Well what do you lot wear to bed?"

"Boxers," Sirius said. "Except for Peter, who has Superman pyjamas and grandad slippers."

"Gotta love grandad slippers," Carrie said.

"What about you lot? Spill."

"Pyjamas," said Lily vaguely, and Chrissy grinned.

"Aw, c'mon! You know what we wear to bed, now we get to know what you wear. Fair's fair."

"Lily told you," Carrie said. "Besides, I don't want you lot wanking over the image of us in pyjamas."

"Too late," James grinned, and Carrie paled slightly, but the other girls laughed.

"Well in that case," Jess said, "there's no point in hiding the truth. We actually sleep together in one giant bed wearing black silk underwear."

"Or not," Lily added with a grin.

"Okay," James said, trying to arrange his face into an appropriate expression, "I think I can deal with that." He looked to Sirius to support, but he was having an impromptu and unconvincing coughing fit. Peter, on the other hand, had turned scarlet. Remus was the only one of the four who managed to meet Lily's eye, but she noticed that he couldn't quite look straight at Chrissy.

After a few seconds' pause in which everyone calmed their laughter (or coughing) and mustered some dignity, James said, "Hang on: that can't be right."

"Why not?" Jess asked with raised eyebrows.

"Because I've seen your beds and they're exactly like ours, only with more stuff stuck on them. And Lily wears white pyjamas."

It was Lily's turn to splutter. "What?"

James grinned. "You heard me."

Everyone looked at Lily, then at James, who was looking very pleased with himself. Most looked incredulously amused, but Sirius' look could have cut glass. Lily said, "You have never seen me in my pyjamas!"

"They are white, though," added Chrissy unhelpfully, "unless she's wearing the red and black ones with –"

"Shut up, Christina," Lily snapped.

"No, do go on," said James, and Remus nodded, grinning.

"I want to know how James got into our room without us noticing," said Carrie, looking scared.

"Me too," said Jess, scowling, although this was probably because she had been seen without makeup rather than because she valued her privacy.

"I have my ways," said James, and Lily suspected they involved a certain invisibility cloak, but she couldn't fathom how he had been able to get up the girls' staircase without being dumped unceremoniously on their backsides in the common room. She made a mental note to beat the truth out of him later.

"What's the time?" Carrie asked suddenly.

"Eight thirty," Remus said after checking his watch.

"Gotta run," Carrie said apologetically as she jumped to her feet. "I've got some books to take back to the library. Madame Pince will kill me if they're late again."

"Me too, actually," said Peter, scrabbling through his bag. "Wait up." Carrie waited, and presently the two of them headed off to the library.

Chrissy yawned loudly and said, "I'm sure I shouldn't be tired this early."

"Have a shower," Lily suggested. "That generally wakes me up."

"I might just do that," Chrissy said, and got to her feet, stretching. Sirius also got up, but he scowled and walked off up to the boys' dormitories without saying goodnight.

Lily decided to take a chance to interrogate James. "Oh, I've just remembered –" she said quickly, "- I've got books to take back too. I'll have to catch up with Peter and Carrie." The three remaining fifth-years nodded, and behind Jess's back, Lily jerked her head towards James and then towards the portrait hole. Remus raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment. Lily left, then James joined her in the corridor a moment later, and they started to walk.

"What's up?" he asked.

"I want to know how the bloody hell you got up our stairs."

"A magician never reveals his secrets," James said solemnly, and Lily glared.

"Tell me, or I'll be forced to tell the girl about your cloak."

James pretended to consider for a moment, though Lily knew she had won. "Okay, then. I flew."

"Flew?" Lily asked, wondering what the point was. "Isn't that a complete waste of time and effort?"

"It was a dare," James said, and Lily sighed.

"Does that mean you can fit a broom and at least one person under it?"

"At least two," James said. "Remus came too. I couldn't really go on my own, or I could just have lied about whether I sneaked in or not."

"Why am I not surprised?" Lily said resignedly. "The cloak didn't seem that big, though. Did you have to stretch it?"

"Yeah, a stretching jinx works on my cloak because it's so old. The new ones are jinx-resistant so you can't stretch it, cut it and get two cloaks in one."

"People never used to do that before?"

"Not really," James said. "People who could afford cloaks could afford as many cloaks as they wanted, generally speaking. There wouldn't have been any point trying to save money; all the old Pureblood families were rolling in it."

"Oh," Lily said, feeling a little ignorant. Well, not ignorant so much as out-of-place. The two of them fell quiet for a minute, then Lily said, "How did we not notice you?"

"I knocked on the door, waited until one of you came to answer it, then slipped through the gap. You were all fully clothed, don't worry."

"That's lucky."

"If you say so."

Another few minutes passed, in which they passed Mrs Norris three times. Lily kept checking her watch, and she was sure that the cat was waiting for curfew o that she could summon Filch and have them reprimanded for being out of their common room. James also seemed to have noticed this, because he whispered, "Next time she disappears, we'll get the cloak on."
Lily hadn't even noticed that James had the cloak with him, but she supposed that he could have shrunk it if he could stretch it too. Sure enough, when the cat turned the corner, James pulled the cloak from his pocket and muttered a spell to return it to its normal size. He threw the cloak over the two of them, and they continued their walk along the corridors, which were now lit by hanging lanterns.

"Lily?"

"Yes."

"What should we do about Van Spyk?"

"Do?" Lily was confused.

"We can't not do anything. She's shagging a Death Eater, and doing Merlin knows what else. She could be really dangerous."

Lily bit her lip. "I don't know, James. She really doesn't seem likely to be doing anything really evil."

"How can you say that?" asked James incredulously. "She's a right cow, and she's a Slytherin. She's in a relationship with a Death Eater: what more proof do you want?"

"She's not a cow," Lily said indignantly. "She may be harsh on you, but you're hardly an angel, are you?"

"Neither are you," James pointed out.

"I hand in my homework, though, and I'm not half as loud as you in her lessons."

"That doesn't mean she has the right to be so…"

"Quick on the uptake?"

"That's not what I meant."

"What, then? As far as I can tell, she's a really good teacher and she's not even unfair towards us because we're Gryffindors."

"Lily, you're ignoring the Death Eater issue."

"She's not a Death Eater; I saw her arm, and there's nothing on it."

"How do you know she wasn't covering it up with some kind of charm to make you think she was safe? She knows we saw her, Lily, and you're the one who's telling me she's not stupid. She could have intended you to see her arm and assume she wasn't a Death Eater just because you couldn't see her Mark."

"You've given a lot of thought to the matter."

"I'm right, though, aren't I?"

"I don't know."

James stopped, and Lily followed suit. "Lily, what if she is a Death Eater? I know you don't believe it, but we have to find out. If you're right, it's all well and good, but if I'm right, we've got to get her locked up before she can hurt anyone here."

Lily bit her lip again, thinking hard. "How do we find out? If she's covered up her Mark, there's no way of telling."

"Follow her," James said simply, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, which it probably was to him, Lily reminded herself.

"What good will that do?"

"We can see where she goes and what she does, and if she sees that Death Eater again, maybe even listen in to their conversations. Anything."

Lily sighed. She knew James was right: they had to find out whether Petra was dangerous, but Lily just couldn't imagine her being a Death Eater. Following her couldn't do any harm, though, as long as they weren't caught… "Fine," she decided. "But we're not doing anything stupid. No ridiculous schemes that'll get us caught. If you're right and she's dangerous, we don't want her knowing that we're following her. Agreed?"

"Yep," said James, looking very pleased with himself. "So, when do we start?"

"Erm," replied Lily, not having given this any thought.

"There's no time like the present!" beamed James, and Lily wondered, not for the last time, what she had let herself in for.

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Lily and James crept down to the third floor where Petra's office was, and stopped in front of her door. Lily whispered, "Do you think she's here?"

"There's only one way to find out," James said, and knocked sharply, pulling Lily away as soon as the sound finished echoing around the corridor. They waited, trying not to make a sound, for at least a minute, before James said, "I can't hear anything."

"Wait a bit longer, she could be in the middle of something," Lily said, but James wasn't listening. He had thrown off the cloak and was examining the keyhole to Petra's office. "James, what are you doing?" Lily said in what was the closest to a shriek she could achieve while still whispering.

"I'm breaking in," James said.

"You don't even know she's not going to be in there! Have you got any idea how much trouble you'll be in if she catches you? And if Filch catches you, you'll have to explain why you're trying to break into her office."

"I'll just tell him I was trying to get back some stuff she confiscated," James said nonchalantly, and continued examining the lock.

Lily could see there was no dissuading him, so she pulled out her wand, tapped the lock, and whispered, "Alohamora." Nothing happened.

James looked at her despairingly, and said, "It's not locked by magic. Everyone knows that charm."

"Oh," said Lily, feeling put-out. "How are you going to unlock it then?"

"With this," James said, pulling out what looked like a boiled sweet from his pocket and popping it in his mouth. Seeing Lily's expression, he said, "Egsphndg gbsthbbr."

"What?" Lily said, trying not to laugh.

"Expanding gobstopper," James said as he took it out of his mouth and shoved it into the keyhole.

"That's disgusting," Lily said, but was intrigued all the same.

"They start expanding as soon as they touch your saliva. It's a big challenge to try to finish one."

"You have to suck it faster than it expands?"

"Exactly." After waiting around a minute, the door gave a 'click', and James said, "Bingo." He reached for the handle and pushed the door open.

To Lily's relief, the room was dark, presumably meaning that Petra was elsewhere. However, that meant that she could return at any time. "What are we looking for?" Lily asked as she followed James across the room.

"Anything," he said, and he began to fiddle with the door that led through to the rest of Petra's rooms.

Lily left James to it and began riffling through papers on Petra's desk. Finding nothing more interesting than test papers and half-marked essays, she opened a drawer. Inside were a couple of shoeboxes which Lily didn't have a chance to open because James yelled, "I'm in!" and beckoned her to join him. She hurried over and stepped through the doorway after James.

The room around her was strangely similar to their dormitories. Petra had a four-poster bed, although it was at least twice as big as Lily's. The covers were a deep purple, and the curtains were the same colour, but with a silver trim. Always the Slytherin, Lily thought, smiling. There were several cupboards built into the wall, which Lily assumed would be wardrobes. James went straight for these, but Lily headed instead for Petra's dressing table. Women kept a lot of personal things there, and besides, it caught her eye.

Lily spent the next ten minutes examining Petra's vast jewellery collection rather than searching for clues of Dark activity, but this wasn't helped by the fact that every drawer she opened contained even more jewellery. When she got to the bottom drawer, however, she found a pile of what looked like letters. Picking them up, she called out to James, "I think I've got something!"

James, meanwhile, was looking at a piece of parchment. Suddenly, he said, "She's coming! Quick, grab whatever you can and get out of here."

Lily scrabbled around trying to pick up all the letters she could, and left James to shut the door behind her. "Shut the drawers!" she said frantically, and heard James slamming the desk drawers as they left.

"Accio!" James whispered, pointing his wand at the lock, and the gobstopper, now five times its original size, zoomed into his hand. "Reparo," he finished, and the lock clicked back into position. "With any luck, she'll think she forgot to lock the door. Come on." And he threw the cloak back over the two of them as they hurried away, so that they were round the corner as Petra came into the corridor.

"Where do we go now?" Lily asked once they had put a few corridors and a flight of stairs between themselves and the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher's office.

"Fancy a trip up to that tower?" James asked. "We can't go back to the common room yet, and I don't want to waste time looking for an empty classroom."

"Suits me," Lily said, "as long as it's not too cold up there."

"Oh, it won't be," James reassured her. "It's easy enough to Summon some blankets or a coat, anyway. Our dorm window is always open, just for that purpose."

"You make a habit of sitting on towers and Summoning blankets?" Lily asked curiously.

"You should know that," James grinned, and Lily's stomach gave a flutter. "Actually it's also very useful for throwing Sirius' duvet out of when he won't get up in the morning."

Lily laughed. "Fair enough."

The two of them made their way up to the tower they had sat on after the ball, and settled themselves leaning against the wall as they had before. Lily pulled the bundle of letters from her pocket and handed half to James.

"Let's get reading."

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First of all, as always (or so it seems), apologies for how long this update has taken. I owe that to all of you, but mostly to Daphna. I promised her I'd have this written before she went away this summer, but it's two months late. I'm so, so sorry. I started to write, and then I had to go back and check a few things, and before i knew it, I was redrafting and rejigging and generally turning everything upside down. I've looked back and seen how much a hate some of the beginning of this story, so I'm going to have to do something about it.

Here's my plan: I want to change the name of this fic, because it sucks. I also want to rearrange it: combine some chapters, maybe add a couple of little bits, but nothing earth-shattering as far as the plot is concerned, just the writing. However, I have no idea if there's any way of replacing and reducing my number of chapters without deleting all the reviews I already have for the chapters that may not exist once I've reshuffled.

Can anyone help me? Ideas for how to reshuffle without losing anything, or (this is the fun bit) the title? I assure you that credit will most definitely be given where it's due, and that anyone who can help will have muchos gratitude and lots and lots of virtual cookies. I would give you real cookies, but they would get broken in the post.

Thanks

Becca x