TO: ember marieclaire, whoo hoo! Thank you for being the first person to review! For the life of me I could not remember what was in Lily's wand and did not have patience to go back and find in book so I decided that I would just have to make it up. Pearls could be magical...gah! Aww, just pretend they are from the mermaids or something! XXx

DARKNESS SPREADS

That night Lily had exactly the same dream and woke up the next day feeling extremely tired and gloomy from spending the night running through the endless spooky woods. Cerise recognized Lily's bad mood immediately and left her well alone opting to go down for breakfast first. Lily was eternally grateful, as she never was quite a morning person to begin with.

Quietly as to not wake the other three girls that she shared the room with she got changed and slipped out. Even as she descended down the stairs that lead to the Gryffindor common room she could hear excited voices.

Barely registering the fuss she intended on slipping past when someone pulled her back by the wrist and she found herself facing the person she least wanted to see so early in the morning.

"Morning, Evans!" James greeted her brightly and gave her one of his trademark smiles, it quickly faded when he saw its effect was lost upon her even more so than usual.

Over the years James had proved on many occasions that he possessed an unnatural flair for provoking the most extreme facets of her personality and today was no different. Lily's irritation flared simply at the sight of him but it was too early to be bickering him with and the lack of dreamless sleep had sapped her energy. "Not today, Potter." She shrugged out of his grip and turned away giving him a distasteful look before leaving the room.

Sirius chuckled after her. "Imagine if you had said 'Good Morning, Evans', do you think she would have slapped you?" He said to James before his attention drifted back to the Exploding Snap that the Marauders had buffed up so that it was louder and much more violent. It was for this reason that the Common Room was particularly crowded that morning. Remus flinched as the equivalent of a firecracker went off in front of him.

"How about giving it a rest, Prongs? Just for a while. I can't remember a day you haven't harassed her." He said and quickly slapped out a flame that had come from the explosion and was making the sleeve of his robe smoke.

James ran a hand through his already messy hair thoughtfully. "Rest? Not a chance mate! This is our last year together! Besides, there's been improvement; she's yet to call me any names."

"But she called you a 'moronic prat' a few days ago." Peter reminded. "Or was it a 'rotting toerag'? I think it was both actually." Peter continued oblivious that he was putting his foot in it

Sirius cracked a grin and Remus almost laughed. James was not impressed and wasn't at all appreciative of Peter's sudden flash of good memory.

"Shut up, Wormtail." He said and headed off to the hall.

---

Lily dropped onto the bench at the breakfast table beside Cerise. Opposite her sat Yoanna Sunbury who smiled at her. Lily returned the smile weakly and pulled a bowl of fruit towards herself, not seeing anything she liked she pushed it away again.

"Here you go." Lily looked up to see a very large red apple held to her. It was James again. The problem with boarding schools was that there was simply no privacy. You would think that in a magical school like Hogwarts where students were known to get lost for days that there would be somewhere for her to hide, but it seemed that James always found her. She had no idea how he did it but it was slightly scary. Like the time in their 3rd year when she went on her first date with a Hufflepuff that no one was supposed to know about but right on cue, Potter and his big fat head turned up. Unsurprisingly her date never asked her out again, in fact to this day he could barely have a conversation with her without looking around nervously expecting an ambush.

"It's for you." He repeated and Lily eyed it warily remembering very clearly the last few times that James had offered her something. James' ego tripled in size and she ended up hexing him when she found out that someone had cast a spell on the back of her robe so that letters spelt "Mrs. Potter" in different colors. It may have been any of the Marauders but it all boiled down to James Potter's fault in the end.

"It's not poisoned you know." He tossed her the apple and she caught it neatly He sat himself down beside her giving her a look that told her that he had every right to sit wherever he pleased. His expression prompted Lily to wonder if James was a Legilimens for he often responded to her as if he could read her mind. Sometimes he had an uncanny sixth sense of when she was about to throw something or hex him, other times like today it was subtler. Lily gave a mental shrug, she didn't care what he was as long as he left her alone, besides if he was any good at Legilimency surely he would have gotten the point by now and found another girl to harass.

"Heads up, morning mail." James said looking up.

Above them a chorus of hoots and cries signaled the arrival of hundreds of owls each dropping packages or letters. James reached out and gracefully caught Lily's copy of the Daily Prophet that would have otherwise dropped in the jug of pumpkin juice.

She took it with a stony silence and he wondered at the source of her extremely bad mood until a soft gasp escaped from her. "Evans?" he peered over her paper. Opposite them Yoanna burst into tears. Further to the right on the Ravenclaw table someone howled. The atmosphere in the whole hall went frigid and James looked to Lily but she just sat her eyes wide and glazed. "Hey Evans!" he reached out and tapped her arm gingerly, worry creasing his forehead.

Lily dropped her paper onto the table and pointed at it. Curious James began to read. After the first few lines he understood what was going on.

Lord Voldemort was attacking the families of Muggle born people. Under a brief description and the views of the Ministry of Magic spokesman there was a list of people that had been attacked.

A list of the dead.

It was surreal, just seconds before he was whole-heartedly absorbed in discovering the reason behind Lily's bad mood and now he was looking at a list of the dead. He scanned the list, his eyes stopping at every name. James could hear whispers among the scared students.

"He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is taking a Blood Revolution in his own hands!" A boy in Ravenclaw cried out to his friend.

"My family are Muggles!" whispered someone else

"You-Know-Who hates Muggles!"

"I'm so scared!"

"-Muggles-"

"-Murderer-"

"-Deatheaters-"

"-Blood Revolution-"

"-Death-"

The Dark Lord's name hung heavy in the air although no one quite dared to say it aloud for fear that his cruelty might spread to them. The fear spread like a wave and soon very few in the Wizarding World dared to refer to him as Lord Voldemort.