A/N: I must admit, I did let this story fall by the wayside. It was a nice surprise to find a few reviews and additional follows/favourites when I checked it the other day, and it has reignited my passion for writing it! So, here you go!
Story rating: M
Chapter rating: M (physical violence/mild torture, mild language, dark theme)
Disclaimer: All characters, settings and the general fantasy world belong to JK Rowling. I claim no ownership or profits whatsoever. The only purpose of this story is for my own enjoyment, and hopefully the enjoyment of those who visit this site.
When Lily first woke up, everything was white. The bright lights of the hospital wing gushed through the narrow black pupils of her eyes, causing pain to sear through her head.
Lily grunted in pain and rolled onto her side to escape the devilish light. She lay still, listening carefully to her surroundings as she waited for the dancing blotches behind her eyelids to subside.
The first thing to pop into her head, once the vision blotches and pain no longer served as distractions, was the very last thing she happened to see before losing consciousness. Her stomach flipped violently at the memory, of seeing so much blood and more bodily insides than one would ever care to see.
Lily was not sure she would ever be able to erase the horrific image that was now seared onto her brain like a tattoo, and hoped that their was some kind of potion or spell that could push it far back into the recesses of distant memories - where the spider webs dwelled and the dust gathered by the plenty.
Before long, she picked up on the voices of her friends, Mary and Marlene, approaching. They were talking in hushed, serious voices, and Lily could not prevent her ears from pricking to attention.
"I hope she is okay," whispered Mary fretfully. "Apparently, they had to give her a sleeping potion because she woke up in a panic."
"It must have been bad. I mean - did you see the look on Snape's face? I thought his face was frozen on indifference," said Marlene.
Lily felt the corner of the bed dip as one of her friends sat down. She tried to roll with the movement naturally, so that they didn't suspect that she was awake. Lily was not sure why she was pretending to be asleep, but she was now in that awkward position where one feels as though they must finish what they have begun, and so she kept up the facade. Perhaps it was the fear that her bad acting of 'waking up' would give her away.
So she listened to her friends carry on with their chatter, at first with patience and then, after ten minutes of discussing the oh-so-perfect shade of Craig O'Reily's hair, not so much. When it became clear that they did not plan on leaving any time before her unfortunate demise, she resolved to give the acting a go and 'wake up'.
Just as she had worked up the courage to flutter her eyelids open, yawn widely and stretch her body out like a panther, a new voice suddenly added itself to the mix. Curious, she pressed pause on her little plan until she found out who the newcomer was.
"Has she woken up yet?"
Lily froze. The voice was decidedly male, extremely familiar, and belonging to someone unfairly attractive. She tried not to gulp, even though her mouth had mysteriously become as dry as a year old sponge cake.
Mary and Marlene did not respond immediately, both shocked (and perhaps a little embarrassed) to find their discussion on Craig O'Reily's hair interrupted. Marlene was the first to recover, being more immune to the powers of teenage hormones and attractive maleness, of which Mary was slave to.
"Not yet," Marlene hedged, "though I think she is starting to wake up because she is moving around more."
Darn it! thought Lily. She had thought, in her really-bad-at-acting mind, that moving around would have seemed more natural. How wrong she apparently was.
"Good. Tell her not to worry about patrolling tonight if she's not feeling up to it."
Then, just as unexpectedly as he had come, he unexpectedly left after the most basic and minimal conversation Lily had ever heard. She created a picture in her mind of a scoreboard with one side saying 'normal guy' and the other saying 'creepy weirdo guy'. With her imaginary hand, that had nails painted an imaginary sunny-orange colour, she drew a single line on the 'creepy weirdo guy' side of the scoreboard.
A giggle escaped her at the silly thought, completely forgetting about how she had been pretending to be asleep. She stopped very suddenly and cringed - now she couldn't even pass it off as laughing in her sleep.
"Lily?" Mary questioned, sounding a little shocked.
Lily kept her eyes closed but answered: "Yes, my sweet?"
"You weren't even asleep were you?" exclaimed Marlene, diving suddenly on top of Lily and prodding her in the ribs through the thin duvet.
Lily laughed, squirming away from Marlene's merciless tickling-machine claws and sat up in the bed. She looked at her best friends sheepishly, shrugging her shoulders in order to convey that even she thought her own behaviour was odd.
"You are such an alien," scoffed Marlene, shaking her head in wonderment.
"Would you have me any other way?" asked Lily sweetly, batting her eyes.
"Definitely not," smiled Marlene, who leaned forward to ruffle Lily's wild, red hair.
Silence ensued the hair ruffling, all knowing what was about to be talked about, but none feeling comfortable with bringing it up. Despite having spent at least half a cowardly hour pretending to be asleep, it was Lily who managed to muster up the legendary Gryffindor courage so acquainted with their house.
"So," she began uncertainly, " I suppose you want to know what I saw."
Mary and Marlene exchanged quick looks before nodding their heads at Lily in unison. Lily racked her brains on where to begin - they didn't teach you how to describe the stuff of nightmares in the daily lessons of Hogwarts. She decided that, like anything you want to avoid, you should get it out of the way as quickly as possible.
"I saw a severed head," she rushed in one breath.
"A severed head?" repeated Mary slowly, trying to digest an answer she would never have thought to expect.
"Without a body," Lily added unnecessarily.
There was another silence as Mary and Marlene tried to wrap their minds around something so terrifying.
"So - they were all sent -" Marlene paused, looking at Lily for clarification. "They were sent people's heads?"
"I don't know what were in the other boxes. I only looked in one," said Lily, trying to quell the queasy feeling beginning to build in her stomach at the memory.
"There was a poem remember," supplied Mary thoughtfully, her eyes glazed over as she teetered on the brink of understanding. "It said something like 'Good luck putting Cygnus together again'."
Lily, who had forgotten about the voice that had resounded around the Great Hall, gasped as it all came flooding back to her. Mary was right - there had been a poem and if Mary's recollection of the words were correct...
"Eww," breathed Marlene, looking as thought she was going to be sick.
"You really think - those boxes - they all were -" stuttered Mary in horror, looking at Lily with wide eyes.
"All Cygnus Black," finished Lily.
It had been three whole weeks since the incident in the Great Hall, but the corridors were still alive with whispered speculations and rumours. Lily could barely walk one step without curious eyes following her, as though hoping that she might make some kind of public announcement. Their hopes were, of course, wasted.
Lily had only told Mary and Marlene about what she had seen that night, and had been careful to keep the gruesome details to a minimum. She could tell that her friends had wanted a little more explanation than 'severed body parts', but Lily could not stomach thinking about it long enough to provide a vivid description.
Despite Lily's reluctance to talk about what she had seen, there was one fact of which everyone was certain: Cygnus Black was dead.
The news that yet another person of pureblood descent had been murdered came as a big shock to the whole wizarding community. There had always been the unspoken assumption that pure blood witches and wizards were safe, that they were untouchable. The death of the prosperous and influential Cygnus Black was, indeed, a sign of changed times.
Although Lily would never admit it openly, even to Mary or Marlene, she found herself rather enjoying this new shift in power. It wasn't that she took pleasure in seeing the pureblood elitists fearing for their lives - Lily was never one to wish that upon anybody - but rather the fact that somehow, at some unplottable point in time, the invisible barriers between social class and blood purity had disintegrated. They were all in it together, fearing for their lives in a war that favoured no one. Lily had never felt more included in the magical world than she did right then.
Just as certain as everybody was that Cygnus Black was dead, everybody was also certainly uncertain as to who had done it. Nevertheless, whispers of the Order of the Phoenix's involvement crept into the halls of Hogwarts as ivy creeps along the decaying walls of haunted castles.
Lily tried to stop herself from being sucked into the thrill of tall tales and conspiracy theories, but her efforts were in vain. She, like so very many of the Hogwarts population, spent many a night huddled with her friends asking the well tread question: Who are the Order of the Phoenix?
It was this very question that plagued her as she wandered through the dimly lit corridors of the second floor, alone. Curfew was long gone and it was, thankfully, nearing the end of her patrol slot.
The castle was eerily quiet, but Lily liked it that way. She had been secretly glad when the fifth year prefect, Eleanor Geoffrey, had cancelled on her last minute due to an impending essay deadline. Lily used the rare quiet to daydream the time away, being a girl whose head and heart belonged to the clouds.
Lily looked down at her watch and upon seeing that she had ten minutes left of her patrol, decided to walk slowly back in the direction of the Heads Common Room. When she reached the end of the second floor corridor, however, a pair of hands appeared from behind a classroom doorway and dragged her into the room.
She was pushed roughly against the wall, fingers digging painfully into her shoulders. Lily looked up to find herself faced with a person wearing a silver mask that had decorative black swirls on it.
"Don't try anything, Evans. I won't think twice about slitting your neck," a voice hissed menacingly though the pin hole where a mouth should be.
"What on earth -" cried Lily, her voice wobbling with fear.
"Shut it!" the voice spat. "We're asking the questions. Understood?"
It was then that Lily noticed another figure stood behind the first. This person was dressed exactly the same, wearing a black cloak and a mask to cover their face. In their hand, they held a jagged shard of glass towards her threateningly. The only thing that Lily could guess about either of their identities was that they were both male judging by their height and build.
She nodded mutely. Terrified.
"Who killed Billius Lestrange and Cygnus Black?" asked the person who was restraining her.
Lily started in surprise, "I - What? How would I know?"
The second figure laughed cruelly, advancing towards her, "Don't play dumb you filthy mudblood. Who did you tell? Who did you get to do your dirty work?"
He pushed the shard of glass against her arm, hard enough to cause pain but not to pierce the skin. Lily winced but managed to keep her voice steady this time.
She looked the second figure in the eye and said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
"We know that the Order of the Phoenix is doing this", he spat, leaning right into her face and and pressing the glass even harder against her arm. She felt a trickle of blood escape, sliding down her wrist and onto her shaking hand.
It took all of Lily's resolve to keep looking the person in the eye, whilst edging her hand closer and closer to the wand that stuck out of her jeans pocket. She knew that, with a wand, the two before her didn't stand a chance.
"You must have told them who attacked you and your pathetic muggle parents," the masked figure carried on, suddenly shoving the glass shard forcefully into her arm.
Lily screamed at the abrupt and unexpected pain, all thoughts of retrieving her wand forgotten. She slumped against the wall as panic set in, rendering her useless.
"Tell us what you know about them!" he shouted in her face, dragging her back up by the hair and forcing her eyes on his.
The door suddenly burst open, flying off it's hinges and Lily was promptly dropped to the floor. Several people rushed into the room at once, sending jets of light towards the two masked figures.
Lily watched as her perpetrators both flew across the room and crashed into the opposite wall with sickening thuds. They crumpled to the floor like rag dolls, now unconscious.
The next thing Lily knew, she was being lifted off the ground and carried out of the room. She tried feebly to get the person to put her down, batting at their arms and trying to push herself away from their chest. She was still in panic mode, and all she wanted to do was run or find a dark corner where she could hide.
"Quit it, Lily," a voice growled down at her.
Her head snapped up at the sound of James' voice and she stopped her wriggling. He looked dangerous at that moment in time, his eyes focused intently ahead as they flashed viciously.
Lily gulped. As much as she didn't want to cross James Potter when he looked to be 'ready for the kill', she just couldn't abide to be carried when she still had two functioning legs.
"I'm fine," she insisted, "can you put me down, please?"
He ignored her and carried on walking, acting as though he hadn't even heard her question. Lily was tempted to start struggling again but, being a little afraid of his reaction if she did, decided that she had had more than her share of fear for the night.
So she relented, staying as still as she could and trying to retain her personal space as much as was possible under the circumstances - unfortunately, the circumstances were not all that good. She tried to stop her body from swaying, but every time James took a step, she would bump back into his chest and her heart would jitterbug with nervousness.
Lily decided that since personal space was a lost cause, she would focus on her surroundings to dim her embarrassment somewhat. Looking around, she quickly recognised that they were nearing the Heads Common Room. She sighed with relief at the thought of being put down soon and allowed herself to relax a little. She was glad that James' hadn't thought to take her to any teachers tonight, but she resolved to report the incident first thing in the morning to Professor McGonagall.
Several pairs of footsteps sounded behind them and Lily wondered who they belonged to. She wanted to look over James' shoulder to see who had bore witness to her fall from grace, but since that required moving closer to him, she decided to give it a miss. It didn't take an enormous amount of imagination to guess who they belonged to anyway.
Finally, they all reached the Heads Common Room and entered. James carried her and instead of setting her down on the sofa like she had expected him to, he sat down and kept her on his lap.
Lily's face flared a fire engine red and she tried to get up.
"Remus, can you sort her arm out?" asked James, holding Lily firmly around the waist to stop her escaping.
"It is in there quite deep, but it shouldn't be a problem," replied Remus, who had moved to bend next to them on the sofa to get a closer look at Lily's injury.
She paused as their words sank in and looked down at her arms. On her right arm, there was a large shard of glass protruding out with sticky, thick blood bubbling around the base where her skin and the glass met.
Lily felt as though her head had filled with cotton wool and her vision started to blur. She flopped onto James from the wooziness, taking deep breaths in an attempt to cling on to consciousness.
"Oh god," she breathed faintly, "I hate blood."
James inhaled sharply upon finding Lily practically laid on top of him. Although fully aware that Lily did not mean anything romantic by it, the sensation of her breath on his neck and her warm body pressed against his was wreaking havoc with his hormones. It was with great difficulty that he managed to keep his mind focused on the problem at hand.
"Remus," he called with a hint of desperation, "Er - get ready."
"Distract me. Sing a song or something," Lily whispered, her face clammy and rapidly turning a pale green.
"You want me to distract you?" James asked, breathing his question on Lily's face which was mere centimetres away.
Under normal circumstances, Lily would have either jumped a mile or been reduced to a nervy mess at the close proximity. Being near to fainting, however, Lily did not even realise that he was so close, or pick up on the sudden suggestiveness his tone had taken. So Lily, being completely oblivious to all things subtle at that moment in time, just nodded her head groggily in assent.
James smiled wickedly, apparently no longer caring that his friends were watching the whole exchange. Once Remus was in position, poised with his wand at the ready, James tilted Lily's face towards his own and pressed his lips firmly against hers.
Sirius made a strangled noise from surprise, completely amazed by his friend's forwardness. Even Remus, who was supposed to be healing Lily's wound, found himself gaping at James' actions and had to shake himself a few moments later to get back on task.
Remus swiftly pulled the glass out of Lily's arm and immediately set to work on healing the open wound which was now bleeding freely. He made tiny circular movements with his wand, as streams of a pale pink light seemed to sew the skin seamlessly back together. Once he had finished, he stood up and not knowing where to look, decided to pretend he was examining the common room.
Lily, in the meantime, was dimly aware of something warm against her lips. She did not acknowledge it as anything other than a sensation, her mind still strangely fogged and light from the sight of blood. It took Lily a fair amount of time before she realised that the sensation was not merely warmth, but a body part - a pair of lips in fact. It was quite an alarming realisation to find that she had a pair of lips attached to her own, and what more, that this foreign mouth had the audacity to try and pry hers open.
"Gah!" she cried, her heart beating erratically and arms flailing as she fell backwards onto the sofa.
Her emerald eyes, that were only moments ago fogged with semi-consciousness, now cut into the boy opposite her like sharp flint.
"What the hell?!" she yelled, her face flushing a ferocious red.
James' looked a bit dazed at being unceremoniously pushed backwards, but pleased nonetheless. Despite the rather annoyed red head shooting daggers at him, the boy couldn't take his eyes away from her swollen lips. Lily noticed the direction of his gaze and bristled with anger.
"Done," said Remus quietly, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot with the blood-stained glass now in his hand.
Lily's attention was diverted and she looked up at Remus in surprise, "it's done?"
She looked down at her arm in confusion and ran a finger across the skin where the cut should have been. "But I didn't feel a thing. How did you get it out so fast?"
At this, Sirius snorted with amusement and speedily walked away towards the corner of the room. He stood facing the wall, his shoulders shaking from repressed laughter.
"I - I wasn't that quick," Remus hedged, his eyes continuously shifting away from Lily's in awkwardness.
Lily blushed at his words, quickly realising that James must have been kissing her for quite a while. She looked down at her arm again, pretending to observe the healed skin when really, she was trying to hide her burning face.
"Let me see," said James, shifting closer to her on the sofa.
Lily jumped up like a startled cat and pointed at him accusatorily, "You. Five steps away."
"Wh-what?" laughed James incredulously.
"Make that ten!"
"Have I done something wrong?" he asked with feigned innocence, arching an eyebrow upwards questioningly.
"I said sing, you idiot. Why would you do that?" she shouted, feeling her temper rise. Anger was quickly taking place of the embarrassment and Lily, finding anger to be the more desirable option, welcomed it with open arms.
"Actually, you said sing or something," James countered, relaxing back into the sofa with a smug smile.
Lily stood, speechless. She couldn't believe that he could sit there with such arrogance after embarrassing her that way. Her hand itched to slap that self-important look off of his face, which was surprising enough as Lily was very much against physical violence of any kind.
"What? Are you trying to impress your friends or something?" she snapped sarcastically. "Nothing like kissing unconscious girls to win some cool points."
James laughed heartily at this and leant forwards so that his elbows rested on his legs. "And it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that I actually wanted to?"
His eyes then trailed over her full length suggestively and back up to her emerald eyes. Lily gulped at the look he gave her, it was a wild and hungry look that she was not accustomed to.
She began to feel very uncomfortable and exposed, stood there in front of the fire as he observed her as freely as he wished. Lily wanted to carry on shouting, to put him in his place, but every time she caught a sight of that look, she got tongue tied all over again.
As the silence stretched on, Lily found it all the more difficult to fill it. She racked her brains for some final retort, but found herself at a loss. So she did the only thing she could do under such circumstances and gave him the most scathing look she could muster.
Lily then turned from James to direct her attention elsewhere.
"Thanks for getting that out, Remus."
"No problem, Lily," Remus replied hesitantly, looking a little alarmed at being addressed so suddenly.
With that, Lily turned away from the group of boys and walked up the spiral staircase with as much dignity as she could. Despite the less than desirable turn of events, Lily gained some satisfaction in mentally scratching ten 'creepy weirdo' points onto her imaginary scoreboard.
Take that, Potter!