Chapter Six: Nighttime Wanderings of a Different Kind (or Nighttime Wonderings of a Different Kind)
Since her resolution to drop the mystery Lily had to find new things to occupy her mind, trying hard not to become obsessive about any one of them. As the year continued it became steadily easier to ignore the dark eyes boring into her back and to throw his letters out the window without reading them and to forget the friend she once had while she made new ones. It also became easier, over time, to forget that there ever were mysterious disappearances of her fellow Gryffindors, and eventually she could look at James Potter without instantly being angered by the secret.
One thing that did not get easier as the year passed was their schoolwork. And while it did not seem as intensely stressful as the incline approaching their OWLs the previous year, the content was significantly more advanced, and each spell or potion or concept took longer to understand and master.
Even over Christmas break the sixth years were not given a reprieve, and each of the teachers seemed to forget that other classes existed as they dolled out enough homework to fill any free time the students had. Lily had essays for Potions, Transfiguration, Charms, and Care of Magical Creatures, as well as spells to practice for Transfiguration and Charms. She had about 30 pages of Advanced Runes to translate, and roughly 40 pages of DADA techniques to summarise from her textbook. Lily was glad she had dropped Herbology, because word was that they had to look after their own sapling snargaluff pods, and that was a job no one envied.
Almost all of the other sixth years were in similar positions, and most of the Gryffindors were staying at Hogwarts over Christmas (all the seventh years laughed at them, claiming they had no concept of what difficult is, or how important breaks are). The pressure was clearly getting to Potter and his friends as well, because when Lily and Mary stayed up late a few nights over the break in the common room writing essays they were there too, sitting huddled on the armchairs next to the fire, clearly not mysteriously vanished.
They started sitting altogether after a few times when Lily went to Potter awkwardly asking his advice on the Transfiguration essay preparing for human transformation (because he was the best person she knew at Transfiguration), and Remus went to Lily asking about the potions essay (on Why the Sopophorous bean is used in the Elixir of Euphoria, Draught of Living Death, and Memory altering potions), and Mary went to tell Sirius off for bragging about his ease of Muggle Studies homework (and then refused to help him with the Care of Magical Creatures essay until he stole her some chocolate from Remus). And it was an awkward comradeship at first, but as Christmas faded into New Year, and New Year turned to January, bringing the return of other students and classes with it, Lily found herself slowly feeling more comfortable around the four boys.
She had already been friends with Remus of course, since their prefect-ships the previous year, but she began to appreciate the misguided humour of Sirius and the generosity of Peter and the thoughtfulness of James.
Only once did she explicitly bring up their disappearances, and it came about completely unplanned. A few days into their tentative friendship she had commented on how much James had changed since their early years while they sat working alone.
"For the better I hope?" He had jokingly replied.
"Of course," she had said with a laugh, "it would have been hard to get worse!"
"Hey! That was uncalled for," he said, mock offended, and she had looked at him with a raised eyebrow. He raised his hands in defeat. "Okay, maybe that was called for. I think, I think getting quidditch captain shook a bit of sense into me y'know? Mellowed me out somewhat."
"Oh I don't think you could ever be mellow," said Lily, shaking her head at the thought.
"Hmm maybe not," agreed James. Then he considered, "Matured me out then?"
"Yeah I suppose, although you still sneak out every night, I mean how is that mature?" Lily said, more snidely than she intended. As James' face fell she instantly regretted her remark. Clearly they weren't up to the joking about it stage. Although, she hadn't exactly been joking about it anyway. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry– I didn't mean to– I didn't– I shouldn't have said that. I didn't mean it to sound so–"
They avoided the hippogriff in the room after that.
January kept December's chill wind, despite thawing its layer of snow, but it failed to thaw the Hogwarts teachers' brutal workload, so just a few weeks after the holidays there were dozens of reminiscent conversations heard from the sixth years, envious of those free and innocent younger students. By the time January crawled to Lily's birthday on the 30th she had practically forgotten there had been a holiday just a month ago.
"Can you believe there was ever a time when we looked forward to being sixth years?" Mary bemoaned on the Thursday evening before Lily's birthday, from behind a stack of textbooks.
"I think it had something to do with the misleadingly named free periods," Lily dropped her wand and quill on the table to emphasise air quotes around the phrase. She dropped her head on her half-written Charms essay, smudging it onto her forehead. "Do you remember how we spent my birthday in second year? When it actually fell on a weekend? Sleeping in until midday, eating chocolate cake for lunch, lounging around next to the lake?"
"Yeah, and Marly was snatched up by the Giant Squid when she decided it'd be funny to hex it purple," reminisced Mary, thinking fondly of that day.
"Mm! She swears it still has a purple tentacle!"
"And that she still has sucker marks on her leg! She doesn't. I've looked."
"What I wouldn't give for a day like that," said Lily wistfully, thinking of the full day she had tomorrow.
"A day where Marlene gets attacked by a big-arse tentacle monster?" laughed Mary. "I know she was a bit of a terror when she was twelve, but she's grown out of it now. And for our sakes, I don't think that's a good idea! I don't reckon I could bear listening to her complain about feeling slimy for a month again."
"No," Lily giggled at the memory, "I just meant a day off, where we could laze around and do nothing and not have to worry about how a wizard can connect with his wand without speech, the benefits and disadvantages of non-verbal spells," she motioned to her essay despondently. Part of the statement was now mirrored in smudged blue ink on her forehead.
"But instead we have double Trans-damnation and a dozen other tedious hours of 'learning'," moaned Mary, returning dismally to her work.
It was the next day that Lily truly appreciated her newfound friendships.
Having overheard their wishful conversation in the common room, Sirius and James decided to grant Lily her day off as a birthday present. After suitably teasing her about the ink stained ladrev-non imprinted on her head which Mary hadn't mentioned, they set about arranging it.
Friday found all of the teachers rather suddenly ill with a mysterious silencing sickness that rendered them incapable of teaching for 24 hours. All classes were temporarily cancelled.
Not one piece of her looming homework could convince Lily to spend her unexpectedly free birthday catching up on work, and she lounged on the (slightly frosty) grass with Robin and Jas folding paper animals and then magically animating them, she drank tea with Remus, Marlene, and the Giant Squid, ate birthday cake with Sirius and Peter in the kitchens, and snuck into the forbidden forest with James and Mary to find unicorns.
James stood back from the clearing they eventually found, letting her and Mary enjoy their glistening horned company. And while they were being nuzzled by soft white noses James took out a camera he had borrowed from Peter and captured the magical moment, as he had been doing quietly all day.
By the end of her seventeenth birthday Lily was feeling more relaxed than she had for months. And when James presented her with a little album of magically moving photographs he had taken during the day she was overcome with appreciation she threw her arms around him, thanking him for the wonderful day.
Later that night, while she was flicking through the photos happily, she realised two things. One; there wasn't a photo with her and James in the book, because he had been taking all the photos, and two; she wanted there to be one.
This realisation, shocking her slightly, forced her to think about him (not that she was having trouble doing that anyway). Of course she had thought about him before, but this was different. She had recognised that he had grown up and changed since her days with Severus, and she had considered what Mary had suggested about subconsciously wanting to be James' friend, but she hadn't actually realised how much she enjoyed his company. And she really did. She liked being around him, listening to his rambling jokes and funny asides, arguing with him without the malice or anger they once held, discussing friends and school and life. She wanted to be around him more and more, and she wanted to hug him and– and she didn't know what that meant.
She wasn't sure she was ready to know what that meant.
Because he was still frustrating, and he still kept secrets, and he still did all those things she once disliked him for. Because even if someone changes they can't change what they've done.
Despite mentally claiming she wasn't ready to think about how much she liked James (and whether that liking was a different type to the way she felt about Mary or Remus), she couldn't stop her mind from wandering there. Especially after Peter handed her a little moving photograph he snapped when James gave her her album on her birthday. The tiny James and Lily were stuck in a loop of an excited spur of the moment hug and the few seconds after the hug, where they both looked awkwardly away, confused about what had just happened. She stuck the photo in the back of the album. It was the page she turned to most often.
One night she felt particularly contemplative. It was a Saturday, and for most of the day she had been playing as a Transfiguration guinea pig for Mary and Jasmine (Robin had failed her transfiguration OWL, Marlene had dropped it as soon as she could, and James and his friends, even Peter, had quickly picked up the complex spell).
She really didn't enjoy being switched between a bird and a person, and definitely didn't enjoy being stuck as half bird half person for an hour until Mary searched for James to put her right again. Lily had tried her best to convince someone else to be the subject, and had even considered bribing some second years into replacing her, but James had professed that she was the prettiest bird, and then she didn't mind as much.
Eventually though (around midnight), Mary and Jas had got the hang of the spell, and although she could have argued for it Lily couldn't bear the thought of practicing the spell herself. She was sick of birds. As she declared herself done for the night she packed up her feather-covered books and went up to her room. She was promptly followed by her friends who said their goodnight and flopped into their beds.
Lily thought about sleeping, but when she closed her eyes all she could see were misshapen, misplaced wings and claws, and she was certain she would just dream about flying (and then being turned back into a person and falling). She did consider doing work, but the thought of using a quill just ruffled her feathers. She didn't feel like talking, and all of her roommates were sleeping anyway. She got up out of bed and tiptoed down to the common room. It was empty and dark.
But because the clock had technically tipped over to Sunday morning, Lily's hair gave off a subtle glow that meant she could forego lumos and still see in the shadowy room. Her hair potion's 'unique results for redheads' illuminated a bright feather lying on the floor that Jas had missed while clearing up.
She picked it up and twirled it between her fingers. It was a shiny rusty red that shimmered with blue in the right light. James had said it was pretty. James had said she was pretty. She looked up the staircase leading to the boys dorms and was momentarily tempted to walk up to his room. But that was a bad idea, she thought, it was past midnight and they would probably be sleeping. And if they weren't sleeping, if they were gone– No. She wasn't going down that road again.
She wandered out of the common room unthinkingly, still holding the feather, into the dimly lit seventh floor corridor. She walked up and up, feeling relaxed now that she was out of Gryffindor tower, although when she realised her feet were taking her to the Owlery she stopped and rolled her eyes.
But she wasn't ready to turn back yet. Her mind was still rolling over and thinking about birds. And James.
She decided to go up to the astronomy tower, hoping she wouldn't get caught out of bed after hours. She knew there wouldn't be a class on right then, and it was such a relaxing room, high above the rest of the castle, close enough to the sky you felt like you could touch the moon.
As she walked up the many steps to the tower after waving hello to Primus Vega's portrait, her mind fell back to James. He didn't exactly say I was pretty, Lily thought, he said the bird was pretty. Why did he say the bird was pretty? Does he not think that I'm pretty? Why does his opinion matter so much to me now? Did he mean that I'm pretty in every form? Why am I obsessing over this?
When she reached the observatory room at the top she only had more questions and no answers. Her hand had tightened around the singular feather as she thought about James. She forced herself to put it out of her mind and focus on the beautiful clear night around her. A large crescent moon lined the sky, spilling light onto the Black lake and the surrounding grounds. Dozens upon dozens of stars twinkled high above the forbidden forest in their familiar formations. But she'd watched the sky a thousand times through the lens of a telescope, so that night she tilted the scope down to the Hogwarts grounds.
For a while she stood, eye to the lens, admiring the dark colours of the night. Wind shuddered through the black grass and created a pattern of ripples on the lake's surface, distorting the reflected sliver of moon. A few daring bats darted out from the forest. A few lights from Hogsmeade glowed eerily in the distance.
A large light shape moved in the trees near the edge of the forest, and a magnificent stag burst out. Lily was enthralled by the sight, the beast strutted up the slope towards the castle. Oddly, it was soon joined by a giant shaggy black dog, who pranced around the legs of the stag. The animals seemed more sentient than usual, with the way they were interacting, but Lily had learned not to be surprised by magical sentience in a world which created edible Peppermint Toads which hop realistically in your stomach!
However, what happened next did surprise her.
She twisted the telescope closer to the ground below her and saw a shimmer of movement, as if in the witching hour of the night reality itself had decided to tear. The tear grew into a flowing cloak, which was pulled aside to reveal Remus Lupin, grinning happily and holding a green quill and a large piece of parchment in one hand, and the cloak in his other.
Before Lily could register her shock at seeing the boy Peter Pettigrew appeared next to him, shooting up from the grass at Lupin's feet. Then, as she was reeling from their sudden appearances, she noticed the stag and dog start racing towards a big rock. With a sick feeling in her stomach, like she'd eaten 16 Peppermint Toads, she watched as Remus and Peter rolled their eyes at the antics of the animals. She shook her head in disbelief when she realised that she'd seen that expression before. It was the lovingly exasperated look that Lupin saved for only two people.
She kept the telescope trained on the two racing animals. Then suddenly they weren't animals anymore.
They were Potter and Black.
"Bloody Merlin's 10 foot beard," she whispered, and Lily's feather dropped to the ground, forgotten. It lay there until late Sunday morning when it was picked up by a disgruntled Filch, who threw it out.
Oh no! The dreaded cliffhanger! I hope the fluff at the beginning (and the extra length) was enough to tide you over, because it'll be angst for another few chapters. Muahahaha!
But really, I am sorry about the cliffhanger (lol no I'm not), but Lily finally knows they're animagi, so that's something at least!
Thanks for reading and I hope you liked it!
Your evil Ravenclaw author