Oh Lord, an actual chapter!
And it is a monstrosity of a chapter too. I've edited, and hacked at it to death. Really, I'm just at the point where I cannot look at it anymore, or the words will start dancing in front of me. I tried cutting parts off, but it's still well over two-thousand words. :S
Instead of thanking 'you', I would really love to thank people specifically: loonymarauder, nelma, fudge-butter, Richard Cypher, queenofthefaeries, TheCoolerJackie, emeraldeye, tm7, SuNsHiNe-FlOwErS, randommoment, Franklet, emma, ashley, IAMaMUDBLOOD, GypsiRiddle, DarthRoden aka Carl, Stinkin Sammy Jay, and martha edwards.
Thank you for the kind reviews, and for still being here. :)
Two more chapters...
I own nothing you recognize!
"Moony, don't look at me like that," Sirius hissed, rolling his eyes at Remus's crossed arms, and severe, disapproving frown as he climbed into bed, and hastily threw some covers over his long, outstretched legs, "The damn girl deserved it,"
"That damn girl," Remus repeated acidly, gazing down coolly at the pillow Sirius had placed over his face as a means of drowning him out, "Has a name, Sirius-" (here Sirius roughly tossed his pillow aside with a snarl, and shot Remus a perfectly wounded, 'how-could-you-?' look,)
"And feelings!" Remus added, the corner of his bottom lip atwitch, "If you've the proper sensitivity to notice!"
In the middle of fishing his pillow from the floor, Sirius gave a wild, explosive bark of laughter, "Oh, then do forgive me, Remus! Between her insulting the whole lot of us, and slandering James, those 'feelings'-" Sirius laid an especial emphasis on the word, "might have escaped my notice."
Remus's nostrils flared.
"She was angry, mate! She-"
"She doesn't deserve James, that's what," Sirius finished dryly, scowling, "And I'm right sick of you always taking her side!"
"I don't always—!"
There was the lazy rustle of blankets, and both Remus and Sirius froze abruptly in their simultaneous attempt to wring the other's neck.
"What the bloody hell are you two blithering about so loudly back there?"
"Miss Evans,"
Lily raised her chin immediately at the sudden address, recognizing, with a small, frightened hand gripping her chest, the strong, powerful voice of Professor McGonagall.
The woman appeared to have just woken: thin, feathery wisps of her dark, silvery auburn hair poking out of a slightly lopsided hairnet, the hem of her long, dark emerald night gown trailing behind her, making faint 'shooshing' noises as she gazed up at Lily with wide, noticeably pink eyes.
"Is something wrong, Professor?" Lily prompted, trying to sound distinctly innocent, and not as though she'd just emerge from a hot, and heavy encounter from inside the Boys Dormitory,
To Lily's surprise, Professor McGonagall flashed her one of her rare, faintly motherly smiles.
"I could see why you may be upset, Miss Evans, given the events of this morning-"
Professor McGonagall gently planted a slightly wizened hand on Lily's shoulder, "Douglas Adams-I hear you have a very special relationship with him,"
Lily almost wriggled out of Professor McGonagall's warm grasp, wanting very much to scream a particular word she was sure, had she been at home, would have thoroughly earned her a hearty whack on the backside from her mother.
Professor McGonagall took Lily's slight cringe to be nothing more than mere adolescent embarrassment, and tightened her sympathetic clutch on Lily's shoulder knowingly.
"But perhaps, Miss Evans, what I'm going to tell you next may help you feel a little better."
"What the bloody hell are you two blithering about so loudly back there?" James blasted, blindly groping about for the closest pillow he could grasp to him, a thin line of dribble trailing weakly from his lips as he sat up, glaring blearily at Sirius and Remus, who, for their part, looked as though they were trying very hard to burn a hole into the other's face by simply glowering murderously in the opposite direction.
Promptly retrieving a pillow—he had filched Peter's, and Sirius's not some three hours ago—James fished it out groggily from behind his back, and threw it, with all his might, at his bickering friends.
Sirius caught the pillow only too easily, his dark, overlong hair falling back into a sweeping toss as he did so.
"Pillow talk, Prongs," was Sirius's absurdly cheerful reply, considering the rather sinister vision he still had of gouging Remus's flat, accusing eyes with a toothpick.
He raised the pillow that James had thrown his way, as if to illustrate his point.
Remus's lower lip quivered, not from, Sirius was regretful to realize, affectionate amusement over his little quip.
"Wake up," Remus hurled the command at James so viciously, James was quite sure Remus must have spat on him.
"Well, thanks to the bleeding pair of you I already am, aren't I?" James leaned back sourly against a neighbouring bed-post, folding his arms lazily before shooting Remus a tired glance, "What have Sirius and I done this time?"
Remus stiffened as though struck. He trained brown, reproachful eyes on James.
"It might just interest you to know-"
Here, Sirius flung Remus a warning look. The toothpick... think about the toothpick, mate, Sirius attempted to channel this promise of reprisal telephatically, teeth gritted.
"-that we could have very well gotten Douglas Adams injured."
Good. Ol' Moony here might get to keep his eyes after all, Sirius decided, smiling widely out of relief, whilst on the opposite end of the room, James processed Remus's grave comment with all the dead expression of a flobberworm... mouthing what had been said to him very quietly, and slowly in an effort to better retain more meaning from it. It was six o'clock in the morning.
At 'injured,' James practically shot out of his bed.
"Douglas, injured…?" He seemed to be on the verge of imploding...
"Rock on, mates!"
James pumped a celebratory fist into the air, to which Sirius responded rather inappropriately by letting out a terrific whoop of laughter, and Remus, not surprisingly, by heaving his deepest, most shuddery breath to date.
"We will not rock on, James! We will not rock on at all!" Remus moaned as though in considerable pain, his fists clutching large tufts of his unnaturally thick, chestnut-brown hair.
James made a slight disparaging noise at the back of his throat.
"I should certainly hope not, Moony, that sounds filthy."
Remus, who looked decidedly homicidal with annoyance now, scowled, and yanked his school robe viciously from the bottom of his bed.
Pursing his lips in a surly, obnoxious way that reminded Sirius a little too much of his haggish mother, Remus spun quickly for the doorway, muttering darkly, "Well if the pair of you decide, by some fantastic stroke of miracle, to be a bit more mature, I'll be down at the lake, with any luck, helping out-"
Sirius tried to raise a hand to stop him, "Come off it, Moony,"
Remus merely shirked his hand away, managing to slip both his arms neatly into the long, billowing robe he had hastily thrown over his head, "I should have never agreed to do the prank! If Douglas is seriously hurt-"
The rest of Remus's sentence disappeared behind the door he had shut absently behind him, and Sirius gazed after him wordlessly, a small, familiar disappointment caught in his throat.
"Come on then," He sighed wearily, as James finished shrugging into his own robe, "Reckon we should follow the uppity prat,"
James looked at him curiously, his nose wrinkled.
"Really though? What were you two yelling about?"
Sirius glanced at James sharply, then, for a fleeting moment, at Peter, who was still peacefully snoring beneath an enormous pile of blankets, blissfully unaware of what was going on around him.
Lucky bastard.
He bit his lip hard, thinking with an inward frown that he couldn't very well tell James that he'd, just moments before, made the love of his life cry-even if it was, at least in his mind, entirely provoked.
"Nothing you should concern yourself with, Prongs," Sirius assured his best friend at length, forcing his lips into what he hoped was a very bright, very convincing smile, "Friendly banter, friendly banter."
Before James could voice out his annoyance at being treated like he was bloody four years old, both he and Sirius stopped suddenly in their tracks, rendered momentarily silent by the sight of so many students hanging cheerfully by the windows, pointing, and laughing eagerly at something that had to be, Sirius thought with a pranker's excitement, exceptionally amusing.
The student closest to them, a spindly, blonde-haired boy no taller than Sirius's shoulder, was jumping fiercely up and down as though in an episodic fit, yelling at two girls who were halfway up the Boys' stairway, to quickly come over.
"Blimey, you two! Look! Some spotty seventh-year is having himself a swim!"
James and Sirius exchanged immediate looks of wild, child-like amusement; almost knocking the other down to the floor with the violent jostling of their elbows so great was their haste to reach the window.
The little, blonde-haired boy let out a rather bewildered, "Oi!" as James inadvertently knocked him sideways from one of the common-room windows.
James, a minute too late realizing that he'd actually hit a student, and not what he'd first assumed to be thin air, extended an apologetic hand to the whimpering boy, whilst beside him, Sirius, finally realizing what the entire bloody fuss was about, began slapping his knees loudly in amusement.
"Prongs!" Sirius cried, tears of hilarity brimming in his eyes, "You've got to see this!"
"Oh, Praggie!" cried Belinda shrilly, teetering on the tips of her black, muddied shoes as she tried to stick her neck out as far as her ungainly body would allow, "D'you reckon his broken some ribs? A leg, or two? D'you think the Squid's eaten Douglas?"
Against her, Pragna shivered helplessly in the morning cold.
"Don't be so dramatic!" Pragna wasn't so much as rolling her eyes as she was thrusting them side to side so severe was her shaking, "And if you don't want me to start calling you Belly, I suggest you stop calling me that,"
"You used to like me calling you Praggie, remember?" Belinda's voice was faintly reminiscent,
"And you used to like the color pink," countered Pragna disgustedly, raising an accusatory eyebrow,
"I still like the color pink,"
"Lord, where is Lily?" moaned Pragna in surrender, shifting her weight repeatedly on both legs in a vain effort to keep warm, "A bit awkward, isn't it? Notice we're the only lions around..."
Belinda cast Pragna a quick, sidelong glance, her smile one of uncomfortable agreement before she returned her probing gaze back towards the enormous crowd thronging the water's edge, a crowd that was composed primarily of sixth, and seventh-year Ravenclaws, with the occasional sobbing Hufflepuff interrupting the neat line of cobalt ties.
"I'm sure she'll be here any moment now—with a body bag, no doubt," Belinda assured grimly, gripping her scarf, and despite the slight discomfort of her chattering teeth, Pragna let out a hearty laugh.
"Body bags, more like! I don't think Sirius, and Remus are exactly safe from-"
"Decided to listen to your consciences then have you?"
Stunned, Pragna, and Belinda spun right around at the sound of the indignant voice, their eyes widening as they took in the rather unbefitting sight of Remus, Sirius, and James bounding quickly for the lake.
"Guess she only got to Peter," Belinda mumbled regretfully, confused when Pragna suddenly tore away from her side, and stood rather still, squinting repeatedly at the boys as though they were apparitions.
"Ah, Patil," Sirius beckoned, a large, playful grin pulling at his handsome mouth, "Decided to enjoy the show?"
Pragna purpled with outrage.
"What are you three doing here?"
Remus, of all three boys, had the tact to look remorseful.
"I'm terribly sorry, Pragna... I didn't know what I was thinking, really, agreeing to the whole thing-"
Sirius's dark, fathomless eyes swiveled sharply to rest on Remus's face, his lids narrowing accusingly over the traitorous features.
"That's funny. I seem to recall you saying, and my highest compliments on your rather colorful use of language, 'Let's give that lying, cheating bastard what he deserves,'"
Remus blanched a delicate shade of white.
"Still on about that are you?" Pragna snapped, rounding on Sirius, her voice unnaturally hoarse with derision, "Frankly, you and Potter could have been a bit more original!"
"Frankly," Sirius broke in before James could get in a dissenting word, "Dougie could have been a bit more original—the broom closet, s'got to be the oldest trick in the-"
"Douglas did not cheat on Lily," Pragna's voice had risen dangerously into a full-blown tremolo, her tone resembling that of an emotional toddler who stubbornly refused to believe that there were no such things as 'Father Christmas,' or the 'Tooth Fairy,' "Your wide-eyed tarts for girlfriends might take your word for truth, but I'm afraid to say that we're not so easily persuaded,"
"You mean to say that you lot are just bloody mad about denial," Sirius appeared to be downright abandoning all pretense, his slight, handsome face suddenly refusing to boast its customary smirk.
Remus and Belinda, James saw, were growing increasingly stiff with terror. They seemed to be absorbed in the trodden tufts of dull grass that peeked mournfully at them from beneath the tops of their wet shoes.
Also several people, to James's rising discomfort, had withdrawn their attentive gazes from the lake, and were now staring over at them with eyebrows raised in annoyance, and with lips curling as though with the eagerness to demand what any of them were even doing there.
When James had finally raised his pale face to look beseechingly at Sirius, he was alarmed to find Pragna's hand raised furiously in mid-slap, deterred—not a moment too soon—by a joyful cry from the opposite end of the crowd, "It's Douglas!"
Relief twisting their lips into ridiculously eager smiles, Remus and Belinda instantly snapped their necks up to see who had given the cry, and the five of them saw, with decidedly undecided reactions (Sirius wrinkled his long, arrogant nose in disgust; Pragna clapped her hands together in glee as though she were going out with Douglas, not Lily; Belinda gave a little, delighted titter of 'Thank Merlin!'; and James had kicked the air in front of him so hard, he lost control of his leg quite completely, earning himself a harsh, reproachful glance from Remus who was now rubbing his newly tender arse as a result of his hysterical outburst,) Douglas being led gently into the happy, roaring crowd by a very tearful, and doting Professor Flitwick.
"You will all be glad to know (here Sirius and James openly rolled their eyes in disagreement) that Mr. Adams is back in one piece!" croaked Professor Flitwick, his fat, silvery-white beard dripping wet with his efforts as he attempted to negotiate his way nimbly through the large, roaring crowd, "I must tell Dumbledore the good news!"
"Knew we should've just tossed his bloody arse in without the boat," muttered Sirius angrily beneath his breath, his hands convulsing into fists behind his back as he glared up into the low, grey sky and rocked back and forth noisily on his wet heels.
Pragna sent Sirius a murderous look.
Wrapped in a busily patterned blanket, Douglas emerged gaily from the thick of the crowd, beaming widely at his friends, his initally appreciative expression soon becoming taut with self-importance as he gleefully took in the throngs and throngs of people who had come to wish him well.
This lofty expression faltered considerably when he soon glimpsed James, and Sirius, glaring daggers at him from the water's edge.
It was clear that Douglas was about to say something very unpleasant, but was spared the pleasure of doing so when, all of a sudden, Roberta Bowles came hurtling from out of nowhere, launching herself violently with a triumphant cry into Douglas's unsuspecting arms.
"Dougie! I'm so sorry I wasn't here sooner!" Roberta leaned down to plant a small, apologetic kiss on Douglas's pale lips, and from where James stood, he could hear Pragna's tiny wail of 'no,' before her hand had clapped loudly over her mouth with a fierce smack.
"What're you-" Belinda's heartbroken question was cut short by the sudden presence of Sirius's fingers on her right elbow.
She turned quickly at the contact, and looked up at Sirius with wide, glittering brown eyes that seemed to beg him desperately. When Sirius didn't utter a word, she collapsed against him with a cry so shrill, it was practically inaudible.
Douglas, appearing to relish the look of absolute agony on James's lowered face, returned Roberta's fleeting kiss eagerly, so eagerly, it seemed as though the two were rather intent on sucking the flesh off one another's face.
This resulted in many encouraging cat-calls, and cheerful whistles from his friends, all of whom did not appear nearly as devastated as either Pragna or Belinda did.
James shut his eyes despairingly, not quite believing that something so hideously unjust was happening, that someone as bloody lecherous, and proudly dishonest as Douglas was going to get what he wanted… get away, triumphantly it seemed, without a single snag—and while someone so fiercely trusting, so wonderful, someone so forgiving like Lily was going to—
"Dougie!"
James's eyes flew open. He must have gone mad, because it sounded very much like-
"Lily!" Pragna said, a little louder than was strictly necessary, the shock in her voice easily evident on everyone else's wide-eyed, open-mouthed faces.
Almost unconscious of having done so, James's right hand jumped instantly to harass the back of his hair.
It seemed as though the ground had stirred, trembling helplessly beneath the heels of Lily's shoes.
Apparently, every other male present on the cool grounds appeared to think so too, for each of them were gaping at Lily powerlessly, weakly as though they were all suddenly running a high fever.
Having disentangled himself with some difficulty from Roberta's arms, Douglas stumbled forward stupidly, as though in a deep, drunken stupor.
"Lily, your hair, it's-"
Five feet away from all of them, Lily Evans stood, her hands held loosely at her hips, one ankle tucked behind the other coyly, her hair no longer it's scandalous length of three inches, but devastatingly longer, coming to rest past her shoulders, and just above her hip.
She had also recovered the slight, longish fringe that tickled her eyes.
The effect was startling.
"Grown back?" Simpered Lily sweetly, when Douglas appeared to be no longer capable of speech, "A wonderful observation, Douglas. I often wonder how you come up with them."