This chapter is dedicated to the marvellous lunaly-lovely for taking the time to review every single of my chapters! You are absolutely fantastic. And thank you so much to those of you who review, I know I don't reply to them, but they are absolutely and completely appreciated, and they keep me going with my writing! And now to end the cliffie...
"Pride and dignity would belong to women if only men would leave them alone." – Egyptian proverb
Lily was staring at me, eyes wide with terror. Who knew what James would think upon finding her under his bed? And if we were discovered, there was a high chance that the boys would attribute the new flooring and design of their dormitory to us. Lily and James' new co-existence was tenuous at best, and could easily be shattered before it had even got underway. I watched, my heart racing as James' arm reached out to sweep under the bed, his head now level with his mattress, with the bed frame, now mere millimetres of wood separating his line of vision from Lily...
"Mate!" echoed a shout from the bathroom. "What's this?"
James clambered to his feet, still inches away from Lily, and I watched as his socked feet pattered over to the bathroom. Seeing a chance for our escape, I looked pointedly at Lily and then motioned to the door. She began to shuffle towards the edge of the bed when the dormitory door opened again and in walked Remus (battered shoes, although obviously well-cared for) and Peter (small feet, Velcro straps rather than the loafers or shoes with laces that most others wore).
"Prongs? Padfoot?" called Remus. "Are you guys in here?"
I watched as Sirius' and James' feet walked out of the bathroom.
"Hey Mooney! Look what I found on the floor of our bathroom! Do you have any idea what it is?" questioned James excitedly.
"It looks like a girl's hair tie to me." replied Remus.
"A hair tie? How did a girl's hair tie doing in our bathroom?" Peter sounded puzzled.
"Either there was a girl up here and she dropped it or it must have caught on someone's clothes." was Remus' logical answer.
"But why would a girl be up here?"
"Well Peter," began Sirius, "There are several excellent answers to that, the first being that..."
"Alright Sirius," cut in Remus, "We don't need any anecdotes of your recent exploits."
"I'm just joking Remus. Besides, I haven't had a girl up here recently so that can't be it and since it wasn't there this morning and I have been the only person to go in the bathroom since, and I was only wearing boxer shorts, I think that rules out that it got caught on our clothes."
My eyes whipped round to Lily, who had been sprinkling the grass seed in the bathroom.
She pointed to her dishevelled and loose hair, indicating the lack of a hair tie which I knew she had been wearing earlier.
Meanwhile, the boys were still debating over the origins of the hair tie. Peter suggested that perhaps it had been there this morning and hadn't been noticed, and James made the joke that it was Sirius'; his hair was probably just about long enough to pull into a hair tie anyway (it just about grazed the collar of his school shirt, and Professor McGonagall was forever bemoaning him to have it cut, even to the point of once arranging an appointment for him, but he merely smiled at her every time and told her that it was one of the one things from his parents which he actually liked. She couldn't argue with that).
"We could do an identity spell to work out to whom it belongs." put in Remus.
Again I felt my heart rate begin to speed up, and my throat to close up; if the boys found out that the hair tie belonged to Lily they would surely attribute the prank to us. I heard a muttered spell and closed my eyes to await the inevitable realisation.
"So who does it belong to then?" asked James.
"The spell takes twelve hours to work, so I guess we'll know at... 8 o' clock tomorrow morning."
"Mmm. Well, I think I'm gonna hit the shower." came Sirius' voice, and his bare feet padded their way, around a trunk and over his shirt, back into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
My heart rate was just beginning to settle down again when James' feet began to make their way back over to his bed. Soon enough, his knees came into view. I don't think I have ever felt so stressed in my life. Just as one crisis is averted, another begins to raise its head. I didn't know how much more I could take of it.
James' arm swept under the bed, his head once more decreasing its distance from the floor when I saw Lily push his shoe into his sweeping arm. Upon retrieving it, he grabbed it, pulled his arm out from under the bed and pushed himself up off the floor.
I sagged in relief, and could see from Lily's expression that she was experiencing the powerful release of tension as well.
Minutes later, Sirius came out of the shower, and blocked off my view from Lily by pulling the curtain round the bed to change. Fortunately, Lily soon came into view again and after James and Remus having showers as well, they all decided to head down to the common room.
Lily and I perked up at the news, anticipating our imminent freedom, but were disappointed when Frank came into the room (large shoes, well-made albeit bearing the marks of various walls and objects which he had walked into/dropped onto himself), announcing that he was just going to sit and read in the dormitory for the evening.
His bathroom break did give Lily and I the opportunity to shift about a bit: after two and a half hours of lying on my side my arm was numb, and it wasn't exactly pleasant under Sirius' bed. Around eleven o' clock, from what I could see of the time on my watch, the others came up to bed and after giving them half an hour to fall asleep, Lily and I chanced to creep out from our hiding places.
We made our way over to the door, but glancing back I saw that the window we had so strategically left open earlier had been shut, and we would therefore have no way in which to levitate the portable fountain.
Creeping back over to the window, past all the mess of the floor, a half eaten chocolate frog which was still twitching slightly, I leant over Remus' bed to open the window a crack.
The sharp "creak" of the window caused him to mumble and shift under his duvet, and I held myself absolutely still, balanced on one leg with my arm over his body, stretching out to the window.
Luckily, he did not stir again and I tiptoed as quietly as possible back to Lily across the darkened, silent dormitory. We managed to make it out of the dormitory undetected, and crept down the boys dormitory stairs. However, on the last flight before the opening into the common room, we heard voices, and after a hurried conversation, I poked my head around the corner to see two seventh year girls chatting in full sight of the boys' stairs on one of the sofas by the fire.
Lily and I had to sit huddled in the stairway, waiting for them to go to bed. In most circumstances, I would not see anything wrong with a late night chat in the common room with your mates, but after lying under a bed for four hours in constant fear of detection, my patience was wearing thin.
Eventually, after what seemed an age, but was more likely another long half an hour, they got up and climbed the girls' stairs to their dormitory. Lily and I ran down the last flight of stairs into the quiet common room and then up the girls' stairs, bursting into our dormitory.
Katie, Megs and Alice were sitting in a huddle on the floor, looking extremely worried, but upon perceiving us they broke into relieved grins.
"Thank goodness! We thought you'd been discovered or tied up or something!" articulated Katie.
"Or abducted by Slytherins!" added Alice.
They stopped their relieved comments when they saw the look on my and Lily's faces.
"So what happened to the look out? You were supposed to warn us, and instead of a whistle, the only warning we had was the voices on the stairs ten seconds before the boys came into the room! I had to spend four hours lying under James Potter's bed! Do you have any idea how dusty is was down there? I'll tell you – VERY!"
They shrank back from her in terror (you do not want to cross an angry Lily). It turned out that as the boys got up from dinner, Alice had come running up to warn us, only to be apprehended by Frank on the way, asking her about homework, and by the time that she had managed to fob him off, the boys were already up in the dormitory.
I started to laugh at Frank's timing; he and Alice were obviously very keen upon one another, but couldn't work up the courage to ask the other out. I then related for their benefit the story of what had happened in the dormitory, and we all had a good laugh, Lily (as she usually did) coming round to see the funny side of it all.
"And they had no idea that you were under there!" exclaimed Alice.
"Except for the hair tie... Oh my goodness! Lily's hair tie! It still has the identity spell on it!"
It was now past midnight, and Lily and I did not relish the thought of another expedition to the boys' dormitory. It was Katie who came up with the brilliant plan to install the fountain now and grab the hair tie at the same time.
To install the fountain, we had decided upon the window idea, which meant that Megs and I (the only ones who could fly, and I was petrified of heights anyway) were to exit our dormitory via the windows and fly to their dormitory windows.
Grabbing the reduced fountain and my broom, I made my way hesitantly over to the window. I hated flying. Well, I didn't hate it, exactly, it was more the height and the kick off I disliked, but once I was up in the air I always had the time of my life.
I climbed onto the window ledge and hopped on the end of the broom, before opening the window. The cool night air condensed on my hot forehead, leaving me with a clammy feeling. I looked back at Lily's worried face behind me, before taking a deep breath and closing my eyes.
I kicked off, biting back the scream I felt tugging at my lips as I felt myself falling through the air. Then the broom began to lift and I relaxed on the broom revelling in the experience. Megs soon caught up with me and we flew over to the boys' dorm window, locating the slightly open one.
From what I could see of inside of it, the grass had already started to grow slightly, and a few buds were pushing up. Carefully, Megs and I levitated the tiny fountain in through the window and placed it gently in the middle of the dormitory, before increasing it to its proper size.
Megs then cast an Aquamenti spell, which sent water gushing out of the spout at the top, and then she lowered the bag of fish into it with her wand, before completely a severing charm to release the fish from the bag. I accioed the hair tie from on top of the chest of drawers and we hovered backwards to admire our handiwork for a moment. Then, exchanging a high five, we flew off into the night, leaving the window fully opened to exculpate any Gryffindors from blame for the prank. What I wouldn't have given to see the Marauders' faces when they when they woke up in the morning.