Chapter 5:
Hogsmeade
It was the day of the Hogsmeade trip.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Lily, quite obviously, was in a state of panic.
"Oh my God, what am I going to wear? What if my hair gets messed up in the wind? What if James gets bored with me and goes off to snog some other girl? What if-"
She continued to move her mouth, but no sound was coming out, thanks to Rose and her silencing charm.
Violet looked relieved. "Lily, don't worry. James has liked you for too long to give up on you because he doesn't like your shirt or your hair. You don't have to make any commitment. It's just one date."
Lily appeared to have relaxed, though she was still muttering under her breath.
"Now." Rose stated. "We are going to prepare you for this date. And you are not going to question it. You are to submit to our superior judgment. Is that clear?"
"As mud", Lily muttered. Rose smacked her arm. "Ow! It's clear, it's clear!"
"Just what I thought." Rose said, grinning. "We'll make you perfect…"
By the time they were done, Lily was wearing clothes there was no way she'd have picked out for herself. "What did you do to me! I look like some kind of-"
"James will love her, won't he, Vi? It's almost time for your date, dear Lily, so I suggest you go down to the common room and meet him." Rose said, winking.
"I hate you." Lily muttered all the way through her long, excruciating eight steps to the common room. "I despise you, I detest you, I abhor you, I vilify, abominate, execrate…"
While Lily was becoming a thesaurus, James was waiting impatiently in the Common Room for her. "Do you think she backed out? What if she got a date with another guy? What if she finds me utterly and hideously replusive?" He stopped for a look at his friend. "Put that wand away, Padfoot, I'll shut up now."
At that moment, Lily entered the Common Room, wearing an emerald green tank top and miniskirt.
"You look... amazing..." James stuttered, his eyes bugging out beneath his glasses.
Lily blushed and smiled at him. "Thanks, James."
He blushed a little himself and pulled out a small boquet of lilies from behind his back. "Here, these are for you."
She thanked him with a kiss on the cheek. "They're beautiful."
Violet and Remus were watching their friends from the other side of the Common Room. "Looks like that bet really worked out," muttered Remus, who had been filled in the previous night in the library.
Violet grinned. "Yep!" she said happily. "Looks like Rose is going to lose 20 galleons in a month."
"Won't she be pleased? It's all going to a good cause!"
Violet laughed. "The Lily/James fund!"
They headed out the portrait hole, and Remus put his arm around her shoulders. "Looks like we're going to be spending the rest of the day together."
Vi smiled and snuggled into him. She and Remus headed out of the castle, The Lily/James Fund second on their minds.
In Hogsmeade
Rose was being dragged into Zonko's.
That's not to say that she was putting up a fight, or that she didn't want to go, but in case Lily or Violet asked her later, she was completely unwilling and Sirius had made her go.
"Come on, Sirius! We have to get there soon or the place will be packed!"
Sirius, behind her, was panting. "Slow down! You know I love you, but you're going to be the death of me someday."
Rose laughed. "Nobody ever died of walking too fast, moron."
Sirius grinned. "Well, we'll have to do something about that, won't we?" He picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, spun her around a few times,and set off walking at a normal pace the remaining five feet to the door of the shop, which was, indeed, packed, as Rose had predicted.
"Aww, man..."
When they got out, Sirius decided to go to the Shrieking Shack. Rose agreed, but only if they could go to Madam Malkin's afterward. She didn't actually like the place, but she reasoned that Sirius was only going to the Shrieking Shack to take advantage of her perpetual fear, even after six years at Hogwarts, of ghosts. If Sirius was going to make her suffer, she couldn't just sit back and do nothing, could she?
Meanwhile, Lily and James were enjoying a pleasant conversation at the Three Broomsticks.
Granted, this conversation consisted mainly of family, what they planned to do after Hogwarts, and basically anything polite that had absolutely no actual conversational value. James got an idea.
"Hey, Lil, do you want to do something fun?" She agreed. "Let's go scare Rose and Sirius."
She laughed. "How?"
He pulled out a silvery cloak. Lily gasped. "Is that...?"
He nodded. "An Invisibility Cloak. I know for a fact that Sirius is planning to take Rose to the Shrieking Shack, but only after they went to Zonko's. Sirius always spends," he checked his watch," twenty minutes and thirty-six seconds inside Zonko's. I estimate he's been in there for about fifteen, so if we leave now, we can get there and really spook them."
Lily nodded hesitantly. "Let's go!"
They left the Three Broomsticks arm in arm, discussing the ways to scare Sirius, and, especially, Rose.
"She's afraid of ghosts, and will pretty much scream at any sign of the supernatural. She used to scream at Nearly Headless Nick." Lily filled James in to the odd habits of her pureblooded friend.
James' eyes gleamed. "Sirius doesn't believe that the Shack is haunted, but it'll beamusing seeing how long it takes him to connect the dots."
She punched his arm lightly. About a block from the Shrieking Shack, James stopped abruptly. "Under here now, I think I hear them coming."
Indeed, there was a girl screaming in the distance. "SIRIUS!"
"Yep, that's definitely them." James pulled the invisibility cloak over himself and Lily, savoring for a moment how close they were. "We better get going..."
They got to the Shrieking Shack a couple minutes before Rose and Sirius. James occupied that time holding Lily close to him and rocking her back and forth. Lily, of course, put this off as the unusually cold 70-degree weather. She snuggled close to him. After all, she reasoned to herself, it was rather cold...
After a long while, Sirius and Rose walked up the path to the Shrieking Shack, their lips swollen. Lily and James raised an eyebrow simultaneously. "Guess we don't have to ask what they've been up to." James remarked to Lily in a whisper.
She giggled. "And Rose was always such a nice girl. Look what he's done to her!"
He smiled that trademark lopsided grin. "What should we do to them?"
She smiled the smile only used when plotting to dominate the world. "Wasn't he screaming something about bookworms earlier?"...
Sirius and Rose were walking up the path to the Shrieking Shack hand in hand.
"All right!" Rose all but shouted, hysterically. "We've come. We've seen the shack. Now can we go somewhere safe!"
"Of course not!" Sirius grinned. He found her fear of ghosts far too amusing.
Rose knew she never should have told him she was afraid of ghosts.
Sirius glanced up at the old house in front of them. "We're here... OH MY GOD! IS THAT A BOOK!"
Rose looked up, disconcerted. A book was, indeed, floating in midair. She vaugely remembered Lily ranting to her once about how James got around the school in his invisibility cloak. She grinned inwardly. Sirius's plan seemed to backfire on him.
"Siiiiiiiiriuuuuuuuus Blaaaaaaaaaack... Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuuuuuuuuuuuussss Blaaaaaaaaaaaaack..." There appeared to be a large worm that resembled a dragon coming out of the book. Lily was currently excersizing a lot of self-control not to burst out laughing. She put a silencing charm on herself, just in case. Thank Merlin for non-verbal spells...
Sirius screamed. Rose doubted her voice went as high as Sirius's did at that moment. He threw her over his shoulder (again, she thought with a resigned sigh) and ran down the path that went away from the Shack as far as his legs could carry him. He ran all the way past the carriages to the school, reversed direction without stopping, and plunged himself and Rose into one faster, Rose thought, than was humanly possible. And she was so hoping to go to Madam Malkin's...
James and Lily (who had taken the silencing charm off herself) were nearly rolling on the ground crying, they were laughing so hard. "And we though Rose would be the one that was scared!" James gasped.
Lily, if possible, laughed even harder. "She knew what was going on! I could see it in her eyes!" She laughed a bit more. "She wanted Sirius to go insane!"
They laughed for another few seconds before getting up and dusting themselves off. James looked at his watch. "I guess we better be getting back to the castle. There's somewhere else I want to go before this date is over..."
While Sirius was getting frightened by bookworms, Violet and Remus were sitting at a table in the Three Broomsticks. "Vi, do you want to go for a walk?" Well, I guess not for long.
"Sure."
They started strolling around Hogsmeade. Having better sense than Lily (or rather, the person who dressed Lily), they had worn warm clothing and felt no need to cuddle. They stopped at a bench and sat down, just enjoying each other's company, before Remus broke the silence.
"I know you could hardly call this a date, but I really did have fun today."
She smiled at him. "I did too."
Wanting to break the overused next part of the scene where Remus stutters into asking her out, she blushes and says yes, and they snog each other senseless, Violet skips ahead.
She kissed him timidly. He stiffened for a moment before relaxing and pulling her closer. They kissed for a few seconds before he pulled away.
"I'll take that as a 'yes'?"
She laughed, and they got back to their previous activity.
James pulled Lily through one of the many secret passages that riddled Hogwarts. "Just a bit further... Yes, we're nearly there."
They entered a room with a vaulted ceiling, enormous windows, a merrily crackling fireplace, candlelit dinner, and loveseat. Lily gazed openmouthed at it all. She then turned her attention to James. "How.. how did you find this place?"
He smiled, not his lopsided smirk, but a genuine, happy smile that gave her the feeling it had more to do with his company than their location. "Wrong turn fromQuidditch practice second year."
They sat down to a remarkable dinner of anything they asked for. Lily had always liked pasta, so she ordered that in no short supply. James laughed at her until she pointed out how many chocolate frog wrappers sat on his plate.
"What? They're GOOD!"
She laughed at his childlike tendency to choose candy over anything else. Then again, she pointed out to herself, if she had realized she could have eaten nothing but chocolate frogs for dinner...
After they finished, they moved to the loveseat in front of the fire, that was almost down to the embers. They discussed life, politics, careers after Hogwarts, and most of all, the prank they had played on Sirius earlier that day.
The fire was dying down, and the sunlight (or lack therof) coming out of the windows convinced them that they needed to get back to their dormitory. If they were caught, they had a reasonable excuse. Patrol duty.
Once inside the Head's Dorms, James kissed Lily's cheek. "Night, Lils."
"Wait," Lily said suddenly. He looked at her hesitantly.
She pulled on his collar so that his head was down at her level. She looked into his eyes for a moment before closing her own and pulling him into a kiss.
James was, to say the very least, startled. If you wanted to qualify for the understatement of the millenium. But, he reasoned, this may happen only once, so might as well enjoy it.
After a few moments, they broke apart, flushed. Lily smiled and walked to her room. "Night, James."
He stared back, unable to believe that had just happened. "Night, Lils."
He was able to retrain the urge to pinch himself the five seconds it took to get into his dorm.