Lily stooped down, and picked the book up slowly, gazing hard at the year before slowly looking around at the others. Then she marched back down to the dungeons.
"Evans, what are you doing!" James protested as he followed her. "We should stay together, we have no clue what's going on-"
"As if he's ever needed a reason to be around her," Peter muttered to Remus as the whole group followed, Sirius and Regulus trialing at the back reluctantly.
They entered to find Lily already fast at work, with James still talking at her more than anything and Peter and Remus hovering uneasily behind him and still looking anxiously around like they were expecting an attack. Alice and Frank were shifting anxiously in place just as uneasily behind Lily with absolutely no clue how they'd gotten involved in this but deeply regretting whatever this was.
Sirius just perched on a stool as far from everyone as he could while Regulus slumped against the wall even further away, feeling even more out of place than the couple.
Lily ignored them all, running back to the still empty cauldron. She dropped the book back in it and turned to the student supply cupboards and began pulling ingredients out.
"Lily, what are you doing?" Alice decided to try since Potter was being so thoroughly ignored.
"Reversing this," she said flatly.
"You're insane," Frank pleasantly informed her, he knew fellow Ravenclaws who wouldn't dare try such a stunt as reversing this problem without a teacher present. His claim was backed up by Pettigrew.
"He's right, we have no clue what got us here. You're good Evans, but even you're not good enough to create the counter potion for something that more than likely was just invented!"
"Well I'm certainly going to bloody try rather than standing around here doing nothing," she hissed as she began cutting up some roots.
James snatched the book out of the cauldron before she could dump anything on it, and huffed, "well fine, you do whatever you like then. I'm going to see what all of this is about," and he began the iconic first line of the series. The moment he had, the next appeared. "The book's called Harry Potter, and it starts with something as lame as Muggles," James pouted as he again checked the front cover.
"You think anything not about you is lame," Remus rolled his eyes at how this was starting.
"What are you doing anyways?" Alice decided to ignore the boys commentary on how boring this muggle life sounded in favor of asking Evans, who seemed the only one keen on getting them out of this.
"Retro Diebus," she answered without looking up from the spiel she was carefully inserting into a fruit Alice couldn't identify. Then again, she'd never been as good at Potions, or Herbology for that matter, a great disappointment to her head of house she was sure. She would be quite glad to drop both classes if not for her Auror training. It was a good thing she'd found Frank to tutor her, and well...
"I have no clue what that means," she confessed aloud before she could get lost in thought.
"It's going to reverse what Lupin did," she said with utter confidence.
"Are you still blaming this on me?" Lupin couldn't help but yip in protest. "It's not my fault you didn't banish your potion like everyone always does. You're as conceited as you accuse us of being, always keeping samples of your own work to try and improve upon them."
Lily flashed him a look that lesser men would have shrank away from, but James was still ignoring them all and continuing, as well as he really didn't want to see this fight progress. Lily's work thankfully kept her attention as she began stirring ingredients in her very precise method and so didn't take the opportunity to shoot back at Lupin.
She was being diligent as always in this class, even Potter reading about all these mysterious happenings revolving his name or whatever mess was going on. Admittedly she did look up with the same hope the rest of the room felt at the mention of You-Know-Who being gone, but then she dismissed this as whatever insanity was going on with the rest of this castle. Things would make sense if she just finished her work.
However, her hand slipped on her knife she was using to chop up a Nether Wart, and she sliced her finger deeply at the mention of Petunia, and a sister.
"Evans, you okay?" Frank asked in concern as she sucked in a breath and waved her hand frantically to rid the burning pain.
James had instantly dropped the book and rushed to her side, genuine concern in his eyes, but she snapped at all of them, "don't mind me, it's just a cut."
She pulled her wand and prodded the angry flesh, which sewed itself up nicely thanks to her advanced charms work, but then she made a guttural noise of frustration at seeing her brew ruined, smatterings of blood turning what was once a bright white potion now pink.
"You sure you're alright?" Alice insisted after Lily banished her wasted attempt and kept using other curses that weren't magically related.
"I said I'm fine," she snapped, causing Alice to raise her hands in surrender and back off and Frank to scowl heavily at her.
"Hey, don't snap at her just because she's trying to help. No one needs Snape in here."
Lily fearlessly matched his scowl and looked ready to go for her wand again at what she deemed as an insult to her friend. She couldn't understand why Frank would say such a thing, but then to her shock Potter came to her defense first.
"Lets everyone just cool it, we're in an odd situation here." He spoke first to Frank, but then turned to Lily and offered her more roots to begin again. "Here Evans."
She took them carefully, as if fearing they'd take off her fingers next. "I don't need your help, or defense," she snapped at once. Then, she glanced again at Frank who was heavily rolling his eyes, and honestly just to prove him wrong about her and her best friend, as an awkward form of an apology she didn't seem able to spit out, she finally explained herself instead, "err, that was my sister's name. I just, wasn't expecting it to show up-" she stopped herself abruptly and returned to her cutting table, only pausing to say to Frank and Alice, "sorry," before starting her work again.
James simply looked elated at having learned something new about Evans, that she had a sister. He found the idea fascinating, and exchanged a happy look with his mates, but then he remembered why Sirius wasn't quite meeting his eyes and quickly kept going through the awkward silence.
"Knew there was something about that cat," Peter interjected, even if they had already figured this out for themselves. "Not sure why McGonagall of all people is hanging around though."
"If Dumbledore's there, I'm sure we'll get answers to everything," Remus said a little wistfully, wishing their headmaster was here now so they could be getting that sooner.
James read eagerly through the rumors and oddity surrounding his son, Harry. He quite liked that name, he decided, though he wasn't keen on all this talk about what some possible kid of his could have to do with Voldemort. He skipped right over Dumbledore saying the name and ignored everyone else flinching around him like they always did, he found it ludicrous to be so afraid of something like a name, even if he'd yet found anyone to agree with him. Even his best mate, rebellious in all the same ways as him, had it far to ingrained from his parents and still twitched uneasily, though James still refused to look at him now just to mock him like usual.
All of this news was trumped though, when McGonagall said a very simply sentence that meant the world to him.
"Prongs, you okay," Remus prodded him when he just stood there, frozen. "I know this is probably more words than you've read in a lifetime-"
"He's probably overloaded himself," Peter snickered indulgently.
Still there was no reaction, and so Remus once again took it away and easily read up to the part James had stopped, then he too couldn't seem to spit it out with a comically torn expression in place. "Well, err, I'm confident we now have proof these have no bearing on our life."
"What's this?" Peter asked eagerly.
Remus shrugged and tried to read the passage, but James snatched it back and declared as if saying his vows, James and Lily Potter.
Remus gave him a pitying look though, ignoring Lily's splutter of protest and Sirius falling off of his stool from laughing so hard, and asked him, "did you read the rest of that?"
"Eh?" He said in confusion, before finally finishing the sentence and under other circumstances the juxtaposition of his expression would have been hilarious.
"Okay stop, just," Evans raised her hands up as if the motion alone would do this, and it was clearly working. "You've done many insane things man, but claiming us to be married and dead in the same sentence is a new one for you."
"He's not making this up," Lupin defended, while Black was still laughing and Pettigrew looked just as gobsmacked as Potter to be doing anything.
Lily just kept staring at them like she was waiting for a punchline, until Regulus spoke up.
"I can see it."
"Excuse you?" She spluttered.
Regulus shrugged without remorse as he tried to address her, though he was looking just slightly to the side of her, likely from the awkwardness of going from never having spoke to someone to explaining why he'd believe a love story. "I just, I can see you finally caving into someone like Potter, you two are quite the same."
He gave a sideways look at Sirius and didn't elaborate. Sirius' humor had dried up some and he gave his little brother a loaded look right back, he felt there was something off in Regulus' delivery.
Evans just looked scandalized now. "Well I'm so bloody glad you approve!" She missed the look on his face that starkly said something otherwise as she turned back to shouting at Potter. "I however am going to get us out of this insanity and stop fantasizing about Potter knocking me up!"
James honestly looked a bit hurt she wasn't giving this a second of consideration, and turned back to the book miserably. All he could hope now was someone popping up and explaining this mess better than whatever Dumbledore's next tosh was about no one ever knowing.
The only good thing left was Hagrid's arrival and mentioning Sirius, on a motorcycle of all things but that was the least surprising bit he'd heard of lately. He was honestly just happy to even hear of one of his friends in this mess of a story considering everything else that was going on.
James finished the final sentence just as Lily was moving to dump the final ingredients into her cauldron. The pot sizzled for a second, then this time there was a bright flash of light, and all eight of them felt an extraordinary tug upon their very soul and were flashing through nothing, and everything.
So yeah, hope you guys liked! Hope I established everything alright? Any questions you have ask away and I'll likely answer them so long as I feel they're not spoilery for future plot points of this. Can't wait to keep going with this!
As a fun game, I'd love it if you all predicted where the next chapter was going to be, it would greatly amuse me!
