Lily Potter and the Uppas of Declome

Chapter Five

Lily was gazing in the direction of the Hufflepuff pool, quite miserably. She was supposed to be studying foor a Transfiguration exam but didn't feel like it.

A fourth-year was drawing a picture of the giant squid, of only whose tentacles had been seen. The girl gave him a rather bulbous head. Lily, deciding she didn't want to mope around anymore, went to the Hufflepuff entance and left.

Her eldest brother, James, was making out with thsixth-year prefect of Hufflepuff, slimky grim that he was. He was a year below her and a Gryffindor, but that didn't stop him from making mouth to mouth with her as if one of them would die if they didn't.

Lily pranced on in disgust. She wondered if Molly could use her help. Molly, also in Gryffindor, and named after their grandmother…though it was doubtful Grandma Molly was like Lily's cousin when she was at Hogwarts back in the sixties…

Rather than Molly, however, the next of her cousins she encountered was Hugo. He and Lily hadn't seen each other much since the school year began, outside the class that Gryffindor and Hufflepuff shared…basically Herbology, taught by Professor Longbottom.

"What's going on, cos? Still bummed out about being in Hufflepuff?"

"A bit."

"Well, cheer up! The Triwizard tournament's beginning…it'll be totally rockin'. Two weeks till the other two schools come with their competing students. Integration and all."

"I've having a tough enough time fitting in at Hogwarts, without a whole batch of other students to worry about."

"You might not feel that way when you hear that Teddy is going to be a judge."

"Teddy? As in our Teddy?"

"What other Teddy is there?"

Lily shrugged. "Isuppose that means we'll be seeing a lot of him."

"Not like you don't see enough of him at your house."

"Yeah," Lily said, though she was quite overcome with sadness. She hadn't been home yet, where her disappointed parents might not even welcome her back…

"I'd steer clear of the second floor if I were you," Hugo said. "Molly's planning something and if Filch catches anyone around the time it goes off, he might find a way to have them punished whether they were involved or not."

"I'll be sure to make a note of it," Lily said.

She watched Hugo stroll away, then headed for the second floor. She didn't care if she got detention or some such punishment. Molly-level excitement was just what she needed.

However after twenty minutes she could only deduce that she was lost. A month and a half of being in this castle wasn't enough to know one's way ariybd without ever winding up somewhere you didn't intend to be.

The room she was in had spikes on the wall. She was very disturbed by this, when she saw a Calico slink toward her. She bent down to stroke its fur. "Thought only owls and toads were allowed for pets," she said. "Though Auntie Hermione did have a cat when she was here. That was before the new rule was made. One girl in the Hufflepuff common room has a canary though. I think she's a third-year, but I haven't asked."

Suddenly Lily felt unhappiness grip her by the nape. In this room, with only a cat to listen to her, and motionless spikes, she could say the thing she needed to say, "I don't want to be in Hufflepuff!"

She yelled this in such a loud tone that the cat was startled and hurried from her. Wiping her eyes, she went to kick the wall. And that was when she saw the Pensieve…

Her father had tok her and Albus to a place to learn about Pensieves the previous summer. "There are some things you only discover at Hogwarts by accident," Harry had told the pair of them. "This is one that I found out about in my time there. I could take the chance that you will fall upon one of your own accord. But I want you to know what it is before you make the mistake of tampering with it. Because you might come to regret it afterward."

James hadn't want to come. Too busy preparing for his songfest with Lisa, most like. They had gone to a shop in a primarily wizarding village in Liverpool. There was a shop full of dim grebe and blue light. A man showed them the basin with swirling, grayish liquid inside. Harry then had taken a gass vial, pulled a string of white memory from his head…and poured it into the Pensieve.

Lily and Albus had both been shocked to see their father do this. But he shook it off and invited them to leap into the basin, which they thought equally as strange…though they did so..

And there they saw their father as a teenager, facing Voldemort in a contest which caused colorful, prismatic sparks to fly from their wands, and a bubble to form in which ghostly figures walked around, goading Harry on…

Then they saw him among his fellow Quidditch players, and then again walking in a circle around with Voldemort glaring at him through snakelike slits for eyes, people watching on tenterhooks, awaiting their battle, and how Harry cast a Disarming Spell and the wand Voldemort held flew toward him in the air…

"The last one is for Lily's benefit," their father had said. And now they watched as he, an eleven-year-old boy, put the Sorting Hat on, and after a minute's deliberation, the hat called out, "GRYFFINDOR!"

So Lily knew it was used to store memories. What she wasn't sure of was why it was hidden in this room full of spikes, which she still didn't know the way out of, let alone how she got there, really.

At first she decided to not entangle herself with it. But after attempting to find an exit to her present location and not seeing one anywhere, she dunked her head into the Pensieve. And felt herself spiraling through someone's memory…

A man who looked to be a few years younger than her father was standing in a room full of old men in white jackets.

"You reckon you can remove the wizarding gene from Muggle-borns?" asked the man in his early thirties.

"Certainly, Abercrombie. We'll purify the wizarding race."

"Good. Though I still doubt that that which wizards cannot do can be accomplished by Muggles."

"Thribilch Genetics Lab has its reasons for wishing to help your cause," said one of the old men. "However, we do object to your name for us. We do not wish to be called the Workers For a Brighter Tomorrow."

"What do you ewish to be referred to as, then?"

"Tell him your thoughts, Kilgore."

An old man with an egregiously grotesque green tie spoke. "My proposal for nomenclature is, I hope, very fitting," he said. "The Uppas of Declome."

"So what do you think, Abercrombie? Does that sound all right with you?"

"It does," said the youngest man in the room. "It also builds secrecy. Should anyone happen to hear the name uttered by a drunken employee, for example, he'll sound like a buffoon making things up ratherthan someone actually working on a covert operation who had accidentally spilled the pumpkin juice."

"No one is to find out about the Uppas until everything is set to occur," said the old man at the end of the table. "If anyone does, well, danger might come to all involved, as well as their families."

"The only man I fear hearing of us is Harry Potter," said Abercrombie. "Without him, the Dark Lord would have triumphed and this gene-removal plot would not have been necessary. However, he isstill living and unlikely to perish for some time. Should he die, though, I would say the Uppas would have no one to fear."

"Could he be killed?"

"Can he? No doubt he can. If you are asking, however, if it would be wise…that is another matter entirely. If we use stealth and Harry Potter dies by a means that can't be attributed to the Uppas, we can have many wizarding families backing us up. That said, though, it must be noted that killing him will have his supporter's anger brought to our doorsteps. Angerhas a much more destructive nature than fear. If they are merely afraid of us, we can still triumph. But arouse their ire, make them infuriated with your organization, and you might find them rallying to put you to death, rather than allowing you to slide into victory."

"The Uppas will be triumphant. The Uppas must be triumphant."

"Then don't make plans to murder Harry Potter."

"We won't do anything that drastic. But he better perish, if he'll stand in the way of our goals."

"With all luck, the Uppas will prevail," said Abercrombie.

Then all Lily saw was gray. She tried to recall what her father had told her, about how to leave Pensieves.

"You have to swim," he had said. "Give several upward thrusts, and you should be free."

She attempted to make the rising motions with her arms but the thought kept interrupting, There are people hoping my father will die.

She didn't feel the arms encircling her waist…she had fallen unconscious, into dreams of the old men in that room wringing her dad's neck, and Abercrombie cackling as out of his wand he shot a beam of green light which was the result of having cast the Killing Curse, and then ensued nightmares ofgoing home not only to see her mother unhappy she had produced a Hufflepuff, but also to walk around the house and feel her father's empty presence…