To Be Loyal

Chapter Eight

Disclaimer: HP is J.K.'s.

A/N: Hope you enjoy Chapter Eight!

"We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving." —Kingsley Shacklebolt, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"That's what the Marauders are all about, Lily, at our best, at least." —Remus Lupin to Lily Evans, summer of 1976 on the train ride to London from Hogwarts

September 16, 1976

James heard a familiar female voice shout "Incarcerous!" just before his feet left the ground. As he tackled a startled Lestrange, conjured ropes wrapped around the Gryffindor and Slytherin, binding them together on the ground.

James and Rabastan struggled uncomfortably within the bonds, but neither could manage to break free or seriously hurt the other. Lestrange pressed his elbow into James's stomach, but the Slytherin couldn't put any real force behind the blow.

"Get the bloody hell off of me, Potter!" Lestrange snarled.

"Can't," James said shortly. He managed to twist his neck to the right and managed to get a decent view of the battle.

Lily Evans, Alice Macmillan, and Marlene McKinnon had come to the Marauders' rescue, and James couldn't have been happier. On one level, he appreciated the rescue. In addition, however, he thought that Lily Evans had never looked more beautiful than she did at that moment, with her vivid red hair swaying back and forth as she dueled and her bright green eyes full of determination. He grinned momentarily as she hit Rowle with a Knee-Reversal Hex, but his mood sobered quickly when he remembered the hollow, pained look in Sirius's eyes.

James managed to pull his right arm free of the bonds, but the rest of his body was rather uncomfortably tied to a still struggling Lestrange. Nice spellwork, Evans, he thought, then remembered Rosier's wand tucked into his robe pocket. James managed to work his arm in between his right leg and Lestrange's stomach and grab it.

James heard Lestrange draw breath to snap at him and cut the Slytherin off by shouting, "Relashio!"

The ropes fell away, and Lestrange shoved James away before he could get off a hex. James rolled and got to his feet in time to intercept another fiery purple curse from Lestrange's wand with a swift Shield Charm.

James retaliated with a well-aimed Fire-Making Spell that set Lestrange's robes alight, but Rabastan quickly extinguished the fire with a muttered "Aguamenti" and cast a Cutting Curse that James barely dodged. Desperation settled over James as Lestrange pressed him back against the wall with a series of Bone-Breaking Curses. James had little opportunity to return fire as he contorted himself awkwardly to deflect each spell.

Taking a chance, James ducked under the next curse and Transfigured the stone under Lestrange's feet into quicksand. Rabastan's counterattack was off target, allowing James the time to shout, "Duro!"

Lestrange swore as the sand turned to solid stone around his feet. Unable to move, the Slytherin cast a strong shield that deflected James's follow-up jinx.

Just then, a weak red jet of light hit Lestrange in the side of the head, knocking him out cold. Leaving Lestrange stuck in the floor, James hurried over to Sirius as his best mate allowed the arm holding Peter's wand to drop. Sirius's other hand was pressed firmly against his side, and James turned pale when he saw blood trickling through his friend's fingers. "Sirius!" he gasped faintly, falling to his knees beside his friend and trying to pull Sirius's hand away, but Sirius wouldn't let him.

"Prongs," Sirius muttered. "Go help Lily. I'll be okay. Just need a few-"

"Bollocks," James snapped, more out of fear than anger. "Somebody help!" he yelled over the shouts of battle behind them. James had never been good at healing magic, and at that moment, he wasn't sure he'd be able to cast any of the few healing spells he had mastered. So he dragged Sirius's hand away from his side, balled up his friend's robes around the injured area, and put pressure on the wound.

He shouted for help again and glanced over his shoulder in time to see Lily pull Marlene aside and send her back the way she'd come, presumably to get Pomfrey. "Don't worry, Padfoot, McKinnon's going to get Pomfrey," he promised Sirius, whose breathing had become short and pained. Probably broken ribs.

The doors to the Great Hall finally burst open, and Professor Slughorn hurried through, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. "Quite the sealing spell on that door," the Slytherin Head remarked to himself, then took in the scattered bodies and spell damage around the entrance to the Great Hall. The professor gawked when his eyes found Lestrange, who was listing dangerously to one side. "Good Merlin! What happened here?"

"Wands down this instant!" Professor McGonagall shouted breathlessly as she sprinted down the corridor toward the fight. James glanced back over to the fight in time to see Alice floor Rowle with a powerful Stunner that lifted the huge blond Slytherin off his feet. The brown-haired Auror hopeful turned her wand on Rosier, the last Slytherin standing. Rosier wisely chose to drop Remus's wand in surrender. Alice tucked her own wand away with a satisfied smile.

James felt a light touch on his back and tensed immediately. He glanced over his other shoulder and relaxed when he found a concerned Lily Evans behind him. "Can I check on him, Pot-James?" she asked gently. James nodded and moved aside, but he kept applying pressure to Sirius's wound.

"Mr. Black, what happened to you?" Slughorn asked the injured Sirius as he approached.

"He needs Madam Pomfrey, now," James said frantically. He found himself struggling to control his breathing, which had sped up due to adrenaline from the fight. "One of them hit him with something; I don't know what it was."

"I saw it," Lily stated grimly as she cut Sirius's robes away from the wound and cast a spell. "Lestrange used a Reductor Curse. Professor McGonagall!" she called as the Gryffindor Head raced onto the scene. "Black's badly hurt. Multiple fractured ribs and a large number of small gashes."

"A Reductor?!" James shouted. Professor McGonagall laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Ferula," Lily muttered. When she stepped away from Sirius, James could see a white dressing tied around his best mate's chest. Lily then performed a series of complex wand movements that James recognized as a diagnostic charm.

"Something must have taken the brunt of the blast," Lily said, her voice trembling as she examined the glowing runes produced by the diagnostic. "A Reductor to the chest is usually lethal, and I can tell that it was plenty powerful."

"Had a shield up," Sirius mumbled. He seemed to be close to passing out.

For the first time since the battle had started, James fully took in his surroundings. The doors of the Great Hall were chipped and charred by curses, and one of the suits of armor Sirius had animated lay in pieces on the ground. Mulciber, who had a quickly swelling lump on his forehead, was buried beneath the other. The stone tiles of the floor itself were pockmarked with dents created by Sirius and the Slytherins' curses and littered with unconscious and bound bodies. As his adrenaline began to fade, James felt a sudden weariness sweep over him. He tried to shake it off even as he swayed on his feet.

"Is anyone else seriously hurt?" Professor McGonagall asked. Her tone was even crisper than usual, and James realized that she was suppressing her anger at the situation.

"Maybe Selwyn," James answered, remembering the stone shrapnel Sirius had sent flying at the Slytherin. "Oh, no, Remus!" James spun around quickly and rushed to his friend's side, ignoring the dizziness he felt at the sudden movement.

"I'll take Messrs. Black, Lupin, Potter, Selwyn, Rowle, and Mulciber on stretchers," Madam Pomfrey ordered from across the room, where she had been casting spells on Selwyn. James hadn't seen her enter the room. Marlene was checking on some of the other Slytherins and reporting their condition to the mediwitch.

"I need to help Remus and Peter," James protested, cushioning Remus's head with his hand as he eased Moony down from his crumpled position against the doors. James picked up his wand from the ground, but Lily grabbed his wrist to stop him from casting a Reviving Spell on Peter.

James looked up, startled, and was surprised to find sympathy and concern in Lily's green eyes. "Save your strength, James," she ordered, and pushed on his good shoulder to get him to lie down. "You've got a nasty cut and a case of magical exhaustion."

In that situation, most people would have had to Stun James to get him to lie down, but to James Potter, at least, Lily Evans was not most people. He laid down on the cool stone tiles and forced himself to relax, inhaling deeply to try and control his rapid breathing.

James craned his head up to watch while Lily and Alice levitated three of the Slytherins, Sirius, Remus, and finally himself onto stretchers conjured by Madam Pomfrey. Exhaustion was threatening to drag him into sleep, but he forced himself to focus on the kind smile on Lily's face as her Levitation Charm lifted him into the air and set him down on the final stretcher.


September 17, 1976

Lily had always disliked the Marauders.

From her first trip on the Hogwarts Express, Potter and Black's arrogant attitudes had grated on her. In the following years, she had quickly grown frustrated with how, from her perspective, they brought out the worst in Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. In addition, after encountering pureblood prejudices at Hogwarts, Lily's disapproval of people who thought they were better than others had hardened into an anger that bordered on hatred. Her determination to keep from becoming prejudiced herself had helped her stay close to her first friend, Severus Snape, but that had also made Sev's slow turn to Voldemort's side hurt all the more.

Severus… Over the past couple of weeks, Lily's former friend hadn't even tried to make amends, and she was losing hope that he would try to leave the dark path he and his Slytherin friends were on. Since Lily had promised herself that she wouldn't make peace with Sev until he did so, she was also losing hope that they would repair their friendship.

That's not the issue at hand, Lily chided herself as she approached the door to the Hospital Wing.

As the years passed, Lily's perception of the Gryffindor quartet had been challenged over and over. For every time Potter and Black had started a fight with Sev, she had seen the Marauders protect a Muggleborn from a pack of Slytherins, which sometimes included her erstwhile best friend. Lily had been furious with Potter and Black for bullying Sev at the end of fifth year, but a conversation with Remus Lupin on the train home had caused her anger to settle down to an extent.

After hearing about the Marauders' midnight adventures on the full moon from Severus, Lily had finally chosen to investigate Remus's monthly disappearances. A surprisingly little amount of research and observation had led her to approach Remus with the theory that he was a werewolf. The following conversation on the Express had gone how she expected until Remus had explained that Potter had found a safe way to help him during his transformations. Although Remus refused to reveal how Potter had done it, Lily had a good guess and was grudgingly impressed by James's ingenuity and determination to help his friend. The fact that Lily couldn't seem to form a lasting opinion on the Marauders irritated her to no end. This year, however, she might finally be on the right track.

Curtains were drawn around three beds on each side of the long room. Divided by House, I'll bet. Lily traded smiles with Madam Pomfrey, who had been tutoring her in healing magic since the start of the year, as she walked over to the right side of the room. She peeked through the curtains of one of the beds and locked eyes with a smiling James Potter.

"Hey, Evans," James said, gesturing for her to come inside the curtains. She took a step closer to his bed and surprised herself by returning his smile.

"It's great to see you," James said sincerely. "Would you mind filling me in on what happened after I was carted off here? Madam Pomfrey won't tell me anything, and apparently I slept for fifteen hours and missed Peter's visit."

"Sure," Lily replied, sitting down in the chair by his bedside and adjusting her robes. "Professor McGonagall thought it would be best to question each of us individually before anyone could come up with a story. She interviewed Alice, Marlene, Peter, and I in her office, while Professor Slughorn took Rosier, Lestrange, Avery, and Travers."

"Did they find out what really happened?" James asked, sitting up in bed.

"Pretty much," Lily said, nodding. "I think that the Professors and the Headmaster also trusted my testimony the most because I'm a prefect and have a history of disagreements with both groups. They believed Peter because his story fit with mine."

"Yeah, a Marauder's reputation isn't always their best asset," James muttered, and Lily chuckled. She went on to explain how the pattern of attacks on Black and the sealed doors to the Great Hall had convinced the Headmaster that the Slytherins were the party at fault.

"They set up the ambush too well for them to not get caught." James agreed. He shifted slightly on the Hospital bed and winced in pain from his injured shoulder.

"Stay still," Lily chided him, and James grinned and seemed to restrain himself from retorting.

"How were they punished?" James asked intently.

"I was just about to discuss that with you, Mr. Potter," Headmaster Dumbledore answered, striding into the Hospital Wing. He smiled at Madam Pomfrey and Lily before conjuring an obnoxiously bright silver armchair at James's bedside and sitting down. "I would like to explain my decision to you."

At James's nod, the Headmaster continued. "Mr. Lestrange has been expelled and was arrested by a pair of Aurors last night. Ms. Evans, Ms. Macmillan, and Ms. McKinnon witnessed Mr. Lestrange cast the curse and have agreed to testify."

"I didn't see the moment it happened, but I saw the-the effects," James forced out, tears welling up in his eyes. Lily put a hand on his uninjured shoulder, and James stiffened in surprise before relaxing under her touch. "I'd like to testify as well, sir."

"Very well, James," Dumbledore agreed amicably. "Now, I must ask you to consider what I am about to tell you very carefully. The rest of the students involved in the ambush will receive a week of in-school suspension and a week of detention."

"What!" James half-shouted.

"Calm yourself, James," Dumbledore said gently.

James gritted his teeth but didn't argue. Lily squeezed his shoulder in silent sympathy.

"I have a few reasons for my decision, James," Dumbledore said. "Please hear me out. The first is that we only have you and your friends' testimony that Mr. Lestrange's cohorts used potentially lethal spells. After Ms. Evans and her friends arrived on the scene, Messrs. Travers, Rowle, and Rosier were clever enough to use only Stunners and mild hexes and jinxes." Now Dumbledore's piercing gaze was locked with James's angry hazel eyes. "I could expel them regardless, but from the number of angry owls I received this morning from their parents, I predict that this would lead to Ministry interference at Hogwarts. Several of them hold seats on the Wizengamot. I am sure that your father has told you something about our current political climate.

"Finally, the most persuasive argument to keep these students here, in my opinion, is that if I expel them, they will join Lord Voldemort," Dumbledore stated flatly. "I want to both give them a chance to change their ways and keep Voldemort's ranks from growing. It would pain me to see a sixth-year I expelled fall to an Auror's wand."

"They-they-any one of us could've been killed, don't you get it!" James wasn't shouting anymore, but his voice was angry and pained. "If that Blasting Curse from Rowle had been a bit higher, Remus might've died-Mulciber was firing cutting curses all over the place, could've killed any one of us-and they didn't stop after they almost killed Padfoot!"

Although Lily ultimately agreed with the Headmaster, she was sympathetic to James's position. Trying to console him, she began rubbing small circles on his back.

"Bloody hell, Dumbledore," James croaked, looking up into the Headmaster's sad eyes, "how am I supposed to keep the others safe?"

"I am very sorry, dear boy," Dumbledore said wearily. He almost put a hand on James's injured shoulder but pulled back at the last moment. "I will meet with the Hogwarts staff to discuss ways we can help protect Mr. Black and the rest of you, but I can't promise that you won't have to endure another dangerous confrontation."

"Shite," James moaned, dropping his face into his hands.

"Please share what I've told you with your friends, James," the Headmaster said quietly before sweeping out of the Hospital Wing.

"Are you all right, James?" Lily asked.

"Yeah, well, no," James mumbled. He lifted his head to meet her eyes, and Lily was surprised to discover that he was crying. Changing the subject, James asked, "Why are you being so nice to me, Evans?"

"I meant it when I said I'd give you a clean slate," she stated simply. "Despite what you did to Severus by the lake, you impressed me last year. I know about Remus, and he told me that you found a way to help him."

Lily felt him stiffen in surprise. "And you don't…"

"Disapprove?" Lily smiled teasingly at him. "Not really. Remus was looking a lot better during the second half of last year, and that's worth it. However, I do think that you, Black, and Pettigrew should register as Animagi."

Lily grinned as James's eyes widened and his mouth dropped slightly open, confirming her theory. She didn't see that look on James Potter's face very often.

James quickly got control of his expression and surprised her by throwing his head back and laughing heartily. "You're one of a kind, Evans," he chortled, wiping away the remnants of tears around his eyes. Seeing James bounce back from the helplessness he had obviously been feeling made Lily feel strangely-reassured? Happy, even? She wasn't sure.

"What really impressed me, though, is that you saved Severus's life last year," Lily said seriously, meeting his gaze. "Because he was your enemy, and you saved him anyway."

James blushed and looked down. "My ego's big enough already, Evans."

Lily punched his good shoulder and stood up. "Take it easy, Potter. And it's Lily."

James's eyes lit up. "Thanks for the rescue, Lily," he said, his tone revealing how pleased he was.

"I'm glad we took them by surprise," Lily remarked as she walked toward the exit. "Especially since we sent Marlene off shortly after. Though I did have Alice with me, so maybe we would've been fine anyway."

"I'm sure you would have," James called after her as she reached the door. "That was a wicked Knee-Reversal Hex that you put on Rowle."

"Bye, Potter." Lily left with one last smile.

A/N: Did you like the action in the last two chapters? Dislike it? How about the characters' reactions? Lemme know!