Chapter 26 : Back to Porridge

It was a week and a half after term had started at Hogwarts, and Lily was struggling with her trunk up to the Gryffindor Tower. She had just arrived by the Knight Bus, and was taking advantage of the fact it was just past noon, and most people were still in class, to quietly nip to her bedroom unnoticed.

Walking along old and familiar corridors she realised how strange everything now felt. She jumped at every creak and sound she heard, praying that a door wouldn't open, praying that she wouldn't have to face anyone… not yet.

She was just walking across the empty common room, her legs starting to ache under the weight of her luggage, when she heard footsteps coming from the staircase just to the left of her. She froze, panicked by the sound. One thought kept running through her head.

'Please let it not be James, please let it not be James.'

She hadn't seen James since the morning after the attack, and so much had happened since then that it felt like a lifetime ago. Things between them at the party had been so perfect, and now… now she was unsure how she would feel when she finally saw him, and she wasn't ready to find out.

"Hello Lily," came the soft voice of Remus Lupin.

"Hello," Lily replied, relief sweeping over her. She stared at him for a moment, not really knowing what to say. Just how much did he know about what had happened?

"Would you like a hand with that?" he asked, indicating her trunk. She nodded, and they silently ascended to the Head quarters.

"So why are you not in class?" Lily asked, thinking it appropriate to make some small talk.

"Wasn't feeling the best," Remus answered.

"Still not better from New Year?" Remus looked at her confused for a moment. "James said you were ill when you were staying with your Grandmother," she added.

"Oh yes… still recovering… Shall I leave you to it?" They had just reached the top of the stairs and were standing watching the sleeping lion cub.

"No, no come on in. I don't think I could carry that case any further by myself." Lily muttered the password and they walked into the tiny common room.

"It's nice," Remus said, as he cast his eyes around the room.

"Oh, have you not been in here before?" Lily asked.

"No," Remus laughed softly. "I think James likes to keep it as a place to get away from us all. He won't tell anyone the password." He dropped Lily's trunk just beside her bedroom door and sat down on one of the armchairs. Lily sat down opposite him.

"I think that might also be because I'd kill him if I found you all sitting up here," Lily added. They both laughed a little at her joke, but eventually the laughter died away and a heavy silence fell between them.

"How was the funeral?" Remus asked softly.

Lily stared hard at the wall in front of her, she could feel a burning sensation in the back of her throat.

"It was… nice," she managed to say with a small smile. "Just how my mother would have wanted it."

Remus looked at her with deep sympathetic eyes and she could think of nothing but escaping their gaze.

"So what have I missed?" It was a simple question asked in a light-hearted manner. She would do anything to change the conversation, and forgot for a moment that it had a much more serious meaning.

Remus gave a little smile for a moment and then got straight to the point.

"Professor Dumbledore gave us all a talk in the Great Hall, the morning we got back, explained the… uh… situation."

"Oh, I suppose everyone's been pestering Caitlin ever since then?" Lily asked with deep concern, remembering how the girls were annoying her before Christmas.

"Not really, no."

Lily was slightly taken aback.

"I suppose it's better for her to be left alone at the moment in any case." Lily noticed Remus give a slight snort at this but ignored it. "I know that's how I feel anyway," she added solemnly.

"Well, I think I'll take that as my cue to leave then," Remus said, getting up from his seat.

"Oh Remus, sorry that's not what I meant! I…" Lily said hurriedly.

"No, no, I've things to do, and I should leave you to get used to the place again," he said with another smile. He looked like he was about to leave when suddenly he walked over to Lily and placed his hand on her shoulder. "Lily, you know, if you ever need to talk."

Lily looked directly at him and forced a smile, and then turned her head away quickly. She was finding it hard to fight back the tears. She felt his hand gently leave her shoulder and heard the portrait close behind him.

She was alone again.

Lily had spent the next few hours sitting on her bed, catching up on some work and writing a letter to her sister. She hated not writing at a desk, but her room was the only place in the entire school that James couldn't get into, and so it was there she would have to stay.

During the week after her mother's funeral, Lily had had to spend a lot of time clearing things out of her house and tidying things up a bit for her father. She had used this time to do a lot of thinking, and had come to realise that for the past seven years, the only cause of any real drama in her life had been James Potter. In fact for the past four months her whole life had revolved around him. But now…

In a very short time Lily had gone through two events that would alter her life forever. The first was to have her simple teenage life cruelly snatched away from her, when she was almost killed by the darkest wizard modern times have ever known. The second was when the love and sense of safety of her childhood was destroyed, when only three days later her mother died. Beside this, her silly love affair with James simply paled into insignificance.

"Whatcha doin'?"

Lily looked around her bedroom in complete confusion, and realised it was now dark. She had fallen asleep, and had been woken by muffled voices coming from outside her room. She recognised the first as Caitlin's.

"Sitting in the dark," came James' reply.

"Uh… why?"

'Good question,' Lily thought.

"Thought I better wait here in case Lily needed something. Remus said he left her in here about half twelve, and she hasn't been out of her room since."

Lily had to admit she was touched by his concern.

"Well Sirius is looking for you, he sent me up here to get you. Go on downstairs. I'll go in and see if madam is ready to face her public!" Caitlin said chirpily.

Lily closed her eyes tight and pretended to be asleep. She heard James get up and leave, and heard Caitlin quietly enter her bedroom. Next thing she knew there was a loud thud, and she opened her eyes to find Caitlin's face pressed up against hers.

She gave a slight jolt.

"Good evening," Caitlin said brightly and sat back away from her.

"Ugh… What… time… is it?" Lily gave her best impression of someone who had just woken up.

"About six," Caitlin replied. "Come on now, get up! You've been locked away in this room all day!"

Lily reluctantly got up and started to brush her hair.

"So how have you been?" she asked Caitlin carefully. There was something not quite right about her behaviour.

"Great!" came the surprising answer. "I've moved in with Sirius, did you hear?"

"Uh no. I haven't been in touch with anyone." Lily really didn't know how to act, and thought it best not to try and ask Caitlin about her parents.

"Not even James?" Caitlin asked slyly.

Lily shook her head.

"But at the party…" Caitlin paused and Lily was sure she was going to mention something about the events of that night. "… I thought you were getting on so well?"

"We were," Lily agreed. "I mean we kissed."

Caitlin gave a squeal.

"I just knew it! Oh this is so exciting! I mean, I knew you had of course, I can read you like a book, but no one would tell me for definite, not even Sirius, and James would have told him for sure, but what are you…"

"Caitlin, can we just not do this right now?" Lily interrupted. "I don't really feel like it."

"Fair enough," Caitlin shrugged. "Come on, let's go downstairs then."

Lily felt another wave of fear sweep over her, the same she'd felt when Remus had walked in on her in the common room.

"No Caitlin, I really don't think I can."

"Look, I got Sirius to clear all the boys out to the Quidditch Stadium, so there's only Alice and Scarlet down there. They haven't seen you in almost two weeks Lily," she reasoned, and Lily felt for the first time since she had entered the room that she was showing her some compassion.

Lily descended her staircase a few moments later, Caitlin's arm interlocked with her own, to find Alice and Scarlet sitting in the armchairs beside the fire. There were only a few others in the common room, mainly much younger students, who gave Lily a fleeting glance and then got back to whatever they were doing. Lily felt quite relieved that she was handling being back in public again so well.

Alice and Scarlet offered her some casual greetings as she sat down beside them, and following Caitlin's lead, seemed to treat Lily's absence as nothing more than a simple holiday.

Lily sat, barely joining in their conversations, absolutely flabbergasted. It was true that she did prefer to be treated as normal, rather than fussed and cooed over, like the girls had treated her before Christmas, but for the fact that her mother had just died to be completely ignored. Lily was sure there was something not quite right here.

"Lils?" Caitlin's voice brought back to reality.

"Mmm?"

"I said I'll just go and get you those notes you missed. Ok? I'll be back in a minute." And with that she trotted up the girls' staircase.

Lily watched the other two watch warily as Caitlin left.

"Ok." She took a deep breath. "Just what the hell is going on?" Lily didn't swear very often, but when she did it was always with just cause.

"Lils, we're so sorry," Scarlet started. "But it's just been so crazy around here since it happened. I mean nobody's really wanted to talk about it much but… Well you've seen her, it's like nothing's happened at all!"

"But that's not normal, that's…"

"It's more normal than you think," Alice interrupted. "She's in denial. So it's been decided that we should all just play along with it, for the time being."

"And who decided that?" Lily snorted. This was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard in her life.

"Sirius," Alice replied. Lily rolled her eyes. "Look at it from his point of view Lily, he was there too. He saw the house destroyed, he was there when she found the bodies. I don't think he's ready to deal with this himself yet, so if this is the only way of keeping Caitlin from collapsing, I guess we better play along."

"Well I still think that's very selfish of him. I mean what if the rest of us want to talk about it, come to terms with it ourselves?" Lily asked, exasperated.

"Well we can," Scarlet reasoned.

"Just not with Caitlin in the room," Alice added in an undertone.

"What are you talking about?" Caitlin had arrived back unnoticed, and Lily was not sure just how much of the conversation she had heard. One look at Caitlin's face told Lily what she had to do.

"Talking about how annoyed Avril was about not being invited to James' party," she lied. She knew Caitlin knew they had been talking about nothing of the sort, but nonetheless the resulting conversation made Caitlin very happy indeed.

At about nine Lily decided to head up to her room again. She told the girls it was because she was still feeling tired from her trip, but in reality it was because she wanted to escape before the boys arrived back to the tower.

The evening had been a strange experience to say the least. Strange in the way how normal everything had seemed. Lily surprised herself at how easy she found it to forget that any of the past two weeks had happened. It was like stepping back in time to when everything seemed a whole simpler, and Lily was just pondering the idea of making people believe that she was in denial too, when another thought struck her. If she was going to pretend the past two weeks hadn't happen then she was going to have to pretend she had never kissed James, and as yet she hadn't decided whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

The next morning Lily woke up early, far too early. It was probably because she had done nothing but sleep the day before. She decided to take the extra time to have a shower and generally make herself ready to face the world again.

She took ages meticulously grooming every last strand of her hair until it sat just right, putting her freshly pressed uniform on, buttoning every single last button, and finally pinning her shiny head girl badge to her chest.

She marched down her staircase feeling better than she had done in weeks, finally glad to be back at Hogwarts. The common room was empty this early in the morning, so Lily took the chance to take her favourite seat by one of the windows, took out some work she had to catch up on, and smiled inwardly at herself. She felt ready for anything… at least at that particular moment in time.

After a while the common room started to fill up around her, the younger students first. She watched as a second year boy ran frantically round the room searching for a text book he had obviously left behind the night before. Next came the middle school students, some gently pushing some first years to the side, trying to show some authority even though they didn't really have any at all. Finally the seventh year students arrived down, bleary eyed and barely awake, over the years they had managed to carefully time their wake up time, so they could savour absolutely every moment in bed.

Lily gave a small wave to Scarlet and Alice as they passed her, and was surprised to see Avril give her what appeared to be a genuine smile. She was sure she would have heard about James and her at the party by now, and thought she would have been seething with rage.

"We'll not stop," Alice practically whispered, Lily looked a bit confused.

"Uh, I've got to speak to Stephanie Beattie, you know, that girl from Ravenclaw in our year," Scarlet added hastily.

"Well I'll stay here with Lily then," Avril said, still smiling away. "Wait for Caitlin to come down."

"No," Alice said sharply, giving her a glare. "Stephanie needs to talk to you too." She then grabbed her arm and led her out of the common room.

"Well, I'll wait here for Caitlin then," Lily shouted pointlessly after them, just as Remus, Peter, Frank and Robbie came quite hurriedly down the stairs. They all came straight over to Lily, briefly catching a moment when Caitlin wasn't there to offer their condolences about her mother.

"I suppose you've been filled in by now?" Remus asked.

"Yes," Lily nodded. "Does anything ever go normally in this school?" she joked.

"Yes well," Frank continued, remaining serious. "I just wanted you to know, even if we can't really express it at the moment, we're all very sorry about your mother." The rest muttered a general agreement.

"Thank you Frank," Lily smiled. She felt slightly like she was being address by a member of the royal family. Then Lily watched as Robbie, Frank and Peter left in much the fashion as the girls had – quickly.

"Remus, why can nobody wait to get to breakfast this morning?" She didn't need to wait for an answer.

A lone girlish giggle echoed down the boys' staircase, and Lily could have sworn that for a spilt second the whole common room fell silent. A moment later the students cast ominous glances at each other and tried to get out of the room as soon as possible.

"Sirius stop!" Caitlin squealed, as Sirius and her stumbled into the common room, practically entwined. Lily noticed some of the last remaining students giggle slightly, whilst others gave looks of absolute disgust. Lily made her own mind up to give the pair the benefit of doubt.

"Uh Caitlin how long have you been up there then?" she asked in a completely non-accusatory tone. She was longing the answer to be 'just a few minutes, I went to wake up Sirius,' but the look on Remus' face told her that that was definitely not the case, and the earlier behaviour of the rest of her year told her that this was not the first time this had happened.

"A while," Caitlin answered annoyingly. Sirius had one arm around her waist, and had an indifferent expression on his face. Caitlin kept playing with his hair.

"Did you sleep up there?" Lily asked, dropping her voice to a whisper.

"Yep," Caitlin giggled, and buried her head in Sirius' shoulder, as if this was a private joke between them, and nobody could possibly guess what had been going on.

"You know that's against the rules," Lily stated, her head girl voice creeping in ever so slightly.

"Lils, don't be so… so…" She was so giddy she obviously couldn't think of a word.

"Rule abiding?" Remus offered. Caitlin ignored him.

"Caitlin you could get in real trouble you know… and I don't just mean with the school," Lily continued, she was trying to disguise her lecture with friendly advice. "I might have to report you," she added quietly.

This seemed to bring Caitlin sharply to attention.

"Awh come on Lils, I thought your New Year's resolution was to break more rules," she laughed, but she didn't sound nearly as giddy and carefree as she had before.

"Yea Lily, this can be your one for the week," Sirius jested, but his eyes were pleading Lily to agree. Again convinced she was doing the right thing for Caitlin she decided to concede. She was just about to let her off the hook when she was interrupted.

"Caitlin," James boomed. "Detention!"

Caitlin and Sirius whipped round to find James standing on the staircase that led up to the head quarters. Lily looked at the ground, half embarrassed because James had caught her shirking her duties, and half because she was afraid if she looked him in the eye she'd realise she just didn't feel the same about him.

"But… but…" Caitlin was spluttering, Sirius was fuming.

"No! That's the third time this week Caitlin, it's not on! I warned you, I asked you, I begged you! One, it's against the rules of this school to have a member of the opposite sex sleep in your dormitory, let alone…" He paused. "Two, it's setting a bad example to the younger students when you openly arrived down here in the morning. And three…" He dropped his voice to a more pleasant decibel level, so he sounded more sympathetic. "…your leading the rest of the house to think you're a slut Caitlin, which I know you're not."

Caitlin said nothing in reply, but simply stormed out of the portrait hole. Sirius stalked after her, but not before James stopped him and whispered something inaudible to him on the other side of the room, whilst Lily still sat with Remus.

"I go to Italy. I come back. I find that you've all been attacked by Voldemort. Caitlin's parents are murdered. Her house has burnt down. Frank and Alice have been in St Mungo's for two days. Your mother is dead. Sirius is trying to persuade people not to mention any of this, Peter barely talks to anyone any more, Avril smiles now, Caitlin has turned into a slut, you're letting people break the school rules, and James has turned into a model Head Boy. Did I miss anything out?" Remus mused.

"Well, I guess you could say now it's back to porridge," Lily replied, getting up.

"Indeed," Remus said, joining her. They were both about to leave when James caught Lily's arm.

"Can I speak to you?" His voice was much softer than before, and almost apologetic. Remus gave a small wave and carried on without her.

This was the moment Lily had been dreading. She was alone with James. She continued to stare at the floor.

"Lily?" She forced herself to bring her head up slowly and look him in the eyes… and she found it wasn't that difficult. "Are you ok?" he continued.

"Mostly," Lily replied, answering the question for the first time truthfully.

"That's good. Well, Dumbledore told me to ask you to go and see him sometime today, you know any time you're free," he said slightly awkwardly.

"Well, I suppose I could go now then." Lily looked at him and suddenly realised that James had been looking forward to this meeting about as much as she had. They both had no idea what to expect from the other.

"I'll walk you there," James said, slightly too firmly. It was almost like he was trying to tell himself this rather than Lily.

After a few minutes of walking along the corridors, with some general chit-chat, Lily felt much more at ease with James again. She laughed inwardly at herself, realising that she had been foolish to spend all that time avoiding him. She wasn't quite sure if she still felt as strongly about him, but she knew now that she could still have him as a friend. He was still the same old James after all, still the same old sweet, dependable James… with sexy eyes, gorgeous hair and a voice that sent shivers down her spine – yes, she still fancied James.

Her moment of brief reawakening was rudely interrupted however, by the most of the Great Hall finishing their breakfast and heading on to their first class. Caitlin walked past them in the corridor, giving Lily a huge smile, and ignoring James' very existence.

"Suppose I deserved that," he accepted.

"Well, you did put her in detention," Lily agreed. "Maybe you shouldn't have been so harsh?"

"It's been going on all week," James said pointedly. "It wouldn't be too much longer before someone told McGonagall, and then we'd be the ones getting it. Besides, I couldn't keep on giving Sirius detentions for it and letting her get off Scot free."

"You've been giving Sirius detentions!" Lily exclaimed.

"Yea," James laughed. "Well, he's not the one we're meant to be tiptoeing round, is he?"

"Oh yea," said Lily sarcastically. "I forgot about Sirius and his 'let's pretend none of this ever happened' plan'. I don't deny I can see why it's appealing, but honestly James, we can't just go on the way it is now."

"We're not going to though," James replied, as though this was blatantly obvious. "Sirius just thought it would be good to keep like this for a few weeks to stabilise her a bit, and we're going start getting her used to it gradually. You know, start mentioning small parts of it to her. I know you might not thing it's the best solution, but it's the way Sirius wants it done so the rest of us are just agreeing. He's bearing the brunt of this you know."

"I know," Lily said quietly. "Alice said."

"He doesn't really know how to deal with her at the moment, and he's the only person she's got left. The only thing he wants for her now is for her to feel safe and comfortable. You see he's not such a bad guy after all."

Just as Lily was starting to feel really guilty about badmouthing Sirius and his plan another thought flashed across her mind.

"If he's not such a bad guy, then why is he getting her into his bed every night?" she said acidly.

"I think you'll find that it's Caitlin following him into his bed, rather than him 'getting her in'. I mean, Merlin, it's not like he's tricking her in," James spat back, defending his best friend to the hilt. "But I'm not looking down on her," he added quickly, again reinforcing he didn't think Caitlin was a slut. "I mean it's a natural thing. When you experience death so close at hand, the first thing you want to do is prove your alive. And what better way than…" He gave a small cough, and Lily didn't need him to fill in the blanks.

"So you think its ok then, for him to just sleep with her anyway? Even though she's not in the right frame of mind and probably doesn't know what she wants at the moment. You don't think that's taking advantage slightly?" If he was going to defend his best friend's honour, he could expect Lily to do nothing less for hers.

"No, but come on Lily, he's only human! And male for that matter! It would be very hard to say no if you were getting it offered on a plate every night. You'd be hard pushed to find a guy that could, even if the girl's parents had just died." James only seemed to realise how insensitive his words were, in the present company, after he had said them. He just stood there looking at Lily, his eyes wide with horror at his own stupidity, and his mouth slightly open.

"Would that include you too James?"

Lily walked on down the corridor to Dumbledore's office by herself, leaving James to stare helplessly after her.

That wasn't great but I needed to build up a bit of background before I get to the next chapters. Please review!
Red-head Hufflepuff attack: Sorry about the novicane. Thanks for reviewing!

Alantie Mistaniu: Glad you don't want to kill James now, we'll leave that to Voldemort. Things are going to get darker, but not too much.

mello80: Spoke too soon, they're not together yet, but don't worry they will be. Eventually!

Ruinsul: Sorry I took a while to update but I'm really glad I gave you chills. That's what I was going for.

Angela Caldwell: Glad you liked it so much. What does the highly recommended box actually do anyway? Cause I've never seen a story that was 'highly recommended'.

FaNFicMainIAC88: Glad you liked the last chapter so much. Hope that one wasn't a disappointment.

Blinded One: Bet you didn't think Caitlin was going to react like that to her parents death!

LuvonWings: Oh this story is faaaaaaar from over. And if you don't like Avril… well let's just say there's a reason she's smiling so much now.

Xx Willick xX: Being compared to JK Rowling, now there's a compliment. Thank you so much!

BurningIce22: I know how you feel, I'm coming up to exams now so I don't know when I'm going to be able to write this!

elements-of-the-soul: Awh I was looking forward to a prediction, but I don't think you'd have got it right though. I'm sorry I didn't keep up the record breaking updates!

pandawitch1616: Caitlin is a pureblood, her parents were targeted for another reason which you'll find out later. For my favourites click on my name on this page and they'll be in my profile.

DanRadLuver01: Ok first of all thanks for your review, I'm glad your enjoying it. Anyway as to Lily being clueless. Lily doesn't know much about Voldemort or his goings on because she's never really had to. She has picked up various things from Caitlin and from people in school, but they don't really know as much as Harry et al would because it's not happening directly to them. Until now that is. But please keep reading, as she is about to get clued up pretty quickly. As for your other question… no comment.

CompleteGeek: No they're not together, they're in an awkward stage because of what has happened. You know you're the only person who noticed that that was number one! I do plan to write about the other times but not in this story, they'll be in the sequel… if I ever get that far!

sour-peach: You'll probably not find out where Peter was, but he is definitely not a Death Eater yet. Thanks for reviewing!

I love truegryffindorgrit: Shmeh nothing to say… how are you?

MJshunpike: I know! I have 330! Whoo! My goal is to make it to 500, although not before I update next!

Desi-Siriuslovesyou: I like excited reviews, keep them coming! I couldn't kill Caitlin either, so don't worry she will definitely make it to the end of this story.

ebony-plays-the-viola: I'm sorry but Caitlin's parents had to die, and all the chapter's are going to be in Lily and James POV. I've only 14 chapters left now! But there should be a sequel… hopefully. Also the whole thing about your dog… that was a bit weird. Kjajbdsv.zsv;oiwee;

Elwing Mithrandr: Thanks for reviewing!

ruberduckysrfun: I was wondering where you were! I hope to update a few times in the next three months, but don't hold me to it!