Lily managed to awake in time to go down to breakfast with the other girls in her room the next morning. According to them, they had tried to wake her but she could not be roused. This made sense to Lily who had always been a heavy sleeper and she had been quite tired after the travel up from home – and it's always easier to sleep on the full stomach that occurs after the start of year feast. She walked down to breakfast with the girls and sat between them and Remus, although she tried to avoid eye contact with the marauders (especially James). After eating her food, she headed to her first lesson of the day – potions – with Remus.
"Do you think we'll get our essays back today?" He asked, he looked nervous and his face was even paler than the previous day. Surely he couldn't be that stressed about potions on the second day back.
"You'll have done great. I doubt we'll get them back today anyway, but still, don't worry about it." Lily shrugged her shoulders as the pair descended the steep stone steps into the dungeons. Despite the darkness of the dungeons, Slughorn's classroom always seemed strangely light in comparison – probably due to the large amount of fires that flickered away under cauldrons containing huge quantities of different potions on one side of the room.
By the time they made it to the desk, Lily was half carrying Remus who seemed like he may collapse at any moment and then he fell onto his stool.
"Are you ok?" Lily asked, worry in her eyes. Remus simply nodded but he looked as though he may be sick if he opened his mouth.
Today was a theory lesson and so Professor Slughorn was simply lecturing them on the side-effects of polyjuice potion and drawing crude diagrams on the blackboard with his wand. Lily was taking notes and trying to take in as much information as possible – as it may come up in her NEWT exams next year – but kept getting distracted by Remus who was sat still with his head in his arms.
The classroom emptied quickly as the bell rang for the end of lesson except for Lily who was quickly and quietly packing up both her things and Remus'. Something was definitely wrong with him, she thought, and after slowly rousing him and helping him to stand, she decided to take him up to the hospital wing.
Half supporting Remus made the walk upstairs long and slow as Lily struggled under the weight of her tall friend. However, half way up the second staircase she got some help in the form of James Potter who had run down the stairs to meet them.
"What happened?" He demanded, glancing at the semi-conscious Remus and placing one arm over his shoulder. The support helped a lot and the three of them managed to speed up a bit.
"Dunno." Lily panted, the walk from the dungeon was taking a toll on her. "He half passed out in lesson and I thought I should take him straight up here."
The effort necessary to move three people up the stairs between two – although easier than moving two with just one person – was still difficult and therefore there was no talking until Remus was safely on one of the beds. Madam Pomfrey appeared out of her office almost as soon as they walked through the doors and guided them to a bed which had already been made before she shooed the two of them out of the room.
On the landing that downstairs or into the hospital wing, James grabbed Lily's hand and led her to a small alcove with a large window that looked out towards the lake in the grounds. The two of them sat down and James undid a curtain to give them a little more privacy in case anyone came upstairs.
"You're doing astronomy, aren't you?" He asked, in a hushed tone.
"Yeah, what does that have to do with anything?" Lily answered but James spoke without a pause.
"Just, tell me about the moon tonight." Lily gave James a confused glance. "Please." He begged and, with a sigh, Lily got her astronomy book out her bag and began to study her notes.
"It's a full moon-" she started, looking at James but his expression told her that that was nowhere near enough information. "And it's a pretty big one, moon rises at about eight tonight. Strange, the sun won't set until half past. Hmm. And it will be up until about five tomorrow morning – if my calculations are correct." She looked up and saw James' face was as white as a sheet and he was staring off into space with a concerned look on his face. "What's wrong?"
James shook his head. "I need to find Sirius and Peter." He said and began looking through his bag in a hurry, pulling out books and pieces of paper.
"Well, they're not in there. Come on let's go look for them." Lily stood but James stayed sat down, searching until he found a blank piece of parchment.
"Swear you won't say anything." He said, taking his wand out of his pocket and staring at Lily through his glasses. Lily nodded and raised her hands slightly in fear. He took his wand, pointed it at the parchment and muttered something that Lily didn't quite hear but suddenly ink appeared in twirling patterns all over it and some words which she didn't have time to read before James unfolded it.
"Is that-"
"Yes, A fully comprehensive map of Hogwarts with everyone's locations on." He said, not even looking up as he scanned the map for Peter and Sirius' names. "Ok, Peter is down at the greenhouses, in Herbology, and Sirius is in the library. Ok," Finally he looked up at Lily. "do me a favour please and go and get Sirius from the library, I'll get Peter, and meet me in the common room. Thank you." And after a quick kiss on the cheek for Lily, James disappeared down the stairs. Lily was struggling with figuring out what was actually going on and sat for a moment, bewildered, before running off herself towards the library.
Lily soon found Sirius sleeping in one corner of the library and tapped him on the shoulder.
"You know, when James told me to come and get you from the library I thought that you might be working. But sleeping…I think that makes more sense actually." She laughed as he slowly stood up. Lily stopped laughing and looked down. "It's Remus. James and I had to take him to the hospital wing. He wants to meet us in the common room." But before Lily had chance to finish her sentence he was off, and Lily was trailing behind trying to keep up.
In fact, Lily only just managed to sneak into the common room before the fat lady shut behind him.
"James isn't here yet. Where did you say he was?" He turned to glare at Lily, as if this was all her fault.
"He had to get Peter from Herbology…" Sirius darted over to the window and began staring out of it.
"I can't see them…they might be inside the castle already." He said with a certain amount of assurance in his voice and took a seat on the armchair by the window which he continued to stare out of.
Within minutes, James and Peter came panting into the room and sat opposite Sirius. The three boys formed a semi-circle that was closed towards Lily and spoke in hushed tones. Lily sighed and sat in front of the fire taking out her homework, figuring that she might as well make a start on it – it was what she was planning on doing during her free period anyway.
Ten minutes later, there was movement from the corner and the three boys disappeared through the portrait hole, presumably heading up to the hospital wing to see Remus. Lily sighed again, wondering what had happened during that last hour. At five to eleven, she packed up her things back into her bag and headed off towards charms.
Lily found a seat next to her friend Dorcas Meadowes at the front of the class who smiled at her as she moved towards her and moved her bag off the chair.
"Hi, I'm glad that we have one lesson together, I feel like I've not seen you. I know it's only the second day back, but still." Dorcas told her, Lily smiled as she chatted on about her summer but she didn't speak except to agree in the right places – her brain was thinking about other things.
Just as Professor Flitwick greeted the class, James and Sirius burst through the door and moved towards two empty seats at the back. Flitwick shook his head but smiled, he always had seemed slightly amused by their misbehaviour. He soon set the class to work on charming paper to fly around the room, which was great fun and soon the class was filled with the familiar laughter that often occurred in Charms lessons.
Lily took this as an opportunity and scribbled a quick note asking James to meet her tonight, she sent it flying but accidently dropped the charm just over James' head. She caught his eye and motioned that he should open it whilst Sirius was busy scribbling his own note to someone. James shook his head and hastily wrote a note back to her which she quickly unfolded upon its arrival.
Sorry, got things to do tonight, tomorrow? X
Lily shrugged, slightly disappointed but still turned around and nodded to him, just before Sirius finally sent his essay of a note flying through the air which promptly landed in front of a girl who immediately started giggling to her friends. Lily attempted to catch up with James after the lesson but he disappeared so quickly that she ended up walking down to lunch with Dorcas instead who talked her ear off for the entire hour.
The afternoon was uneventful with a History of Magic lesson and then another free before the majority of the school finished their lessons. However, she saw neither hide nor hair of James – or any of the marauders for that matter. After none of them made an appearance by the end of dinner, Lily decided to go and check on Remus herself – deciding this is probably where they would be.
The sun was just setting as she walked up the mountain of stairs towards the hospital wing, sending beautiful colours through the glass windows and onto the stones below. Most of the school was completely deserted as most preferred to spend the evenings in the comfort of the common rooms, or else spending an extra hour working in the library before it became mandatory to do so. However, just as she approached the last set of stairs she heard voices moving down. Lily moved to hide underneath them and prayed that whoever it was would just move straight past her as being discovered by a teacher could end up in a detention with so little time to get back to the common room.
"Come along, hurry now." Said the voice of Madam Pomfrey as she bustled a boy with dark blond hair through the corridor quickly. Lily immediately recognised him as Remus but said nothing out of surprise and fear of being found. She could have sworn, however, that just as she moved to the open corridor to head back to Gryffindor Tower she felt someone push past her but when she looked, no one was there. There was, however, a piece of blank parchment on the floor beside her foot which she picked up and looked around again. She had a feeling she knew what this was.
Once back at the tower, Lily quickly made her excuses and went up the stairs to her dormitory where she sat on her bed with the parchment and her wand. She couldn't remember what James had said to his piece to make it reveal the map earlier that day but made an attempt anyway, trying any spell that popped into her head, hoping it may be the one that he had used. None of them worked so she tried to beg instead. She tried being polite and saying please but in the end she got cross with it and told it to "Reveal". This spell seemed to work as as soon as she did this, her wand tip lit up and ink appeared on the page.
Messers Prongs, Padfoot, Moony, and Wormtail, it read, would like to congratulate Miss Evans on finding their map.
Messer Wormtail, would like to tell her to keep her dirty hands off of things that don't belong to her.
Whilst, Messer Moony would simply like to tell her that picking rubbish up off of the floor is not recommended and is a filthy habit.
Messer Padfoot would like to remind Miss Evans, that her secret obsession with James does not give her permission to poke her greasy nose where it does not belong.
Finally, Messer Prongs would like to apologise for his friends and hopes that she has a good night's sleep.
She sighed, clearly she knew only the password for the insulting parchment – or perhaps this was something completely different than what James had used before – either way, she had no way of finding where Remus was going with Madam Pomfrey, or of finding James, Sirius, and Peter this evening. Instead, she scribbled a note on a spare piece of parchment she found in the bottom of her trunk.
Found this, thought you might want it back – Lily.
She crept downstairs to the loud common room and then went back up the other stairs to the boys' dormitories. She found the sign saying Sixth Year Boys on a door on the same floor as hers on the other side and slipped the note and parchment underneath the door before heading back to her own room. Lily covered herself in her red and gold duvet and fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the fully fluffed pillow.