“She’s going to be okay, right?”
“Of course she is! I’m telling you, the next time I see that stupid Bella-bitch-”
“Shh! I think she’s waking up!”
Voices swam in and out of Lily’s head as she tried to open her eyes. She felt extremely groggy and could feel a dull pounding in her head. She groaned and opened one eye to see Alice’s and Anne’s faces swim in and out of focus.
“Anne? Alice?”
The two girls heaved a sigh of relief.
“Lily! Thank Merlin, you’re finally awake,” Alice whispered in a shaky voice.
“I told you that she was okay,” growled Anne, who was very pale in the face and looked extremely relieved.
“What happened? Where am I?” Lily tried to sit up, suddenly realizing that she was in a bed.
I must be in the hospital wing, but why the heck am I in here? Lily thought confusedly. She slowly opened the other eye, and the images of her friends’ faces and her surroundings began to sharpen and take definite form.
“Hey! Don’t get up, that was some curse that that snake put on you and Potter.”
Anne’s words jogged Lily’s memory, and she remembered in a flash everything that had occurred on the train. She suddenly sat straight up in her bed, causing Anne and Alice to jump back in surprise.
“What happened to Potter?” Lily’s heart was beating very fast. What if something serious had happened to him? It would be all her fault if he had gotten hurt. He had been trying to protect her. The very thought of it made her heart race, as if she had been dropped off an edge of a cliff.
“Don’t worry, James is fine. See, look for yourself,” Alice pointed to the bed right next to Lily’s.
She twisted her head to find James sleeping peacefully next to her. The gash Bellatrix had given him had vanished, returning his cheek back to its remarkably smooth and lustrous look. Lily let out a deep breath. He was okay.
Lily sank back into her pillows and took a closer look at her surroundings. Besides a couple of lighted candles dotting the walls and the pale moonlight flooding in through the arched windows, the hospital wing was thrown in darkness. None of the other beds were occupied.
“And Bellatrix, what happened to her?” Lily inquired after a moment.
At the sound of Bellatrix’s name, Anne scowled, and Alice’s normally happy and cheerful expression melted into anger.
“She’s not getting punished,” they muttered darkly.
“WHAT?”
“Yeah. We don’t get it either. I think that snake has some pretty powerful connections that we don’t know about,” Anne said shrewdly.
“It’s not fair! That curse she put on you and James nearly choked you guys to death, punctured a big hole in the train’s wall, made a bunch of other kids sick-”
“Other kids? Are they okay?” Lily asked in a worried tone. Alice and Anne beamed.
“They’re all fine Lily, so don’t go worrying your pretty little head off.” They were extremely used to Lily’s caring nature. That very characteristic was what had united them in the first place after all. Lily grinned sheepishly.
“So how long have I been in here anyways?”
“Not that long actually. I think the feast is still going on. Don’t worry, you’ve been excused from your duties for tonight,” said Anne, reading Lily’s worried expression correctly.
“Good,” Lily sighed, “I suppose Dumbledore brought us here.”
“Yeah. That’s another weird thing. Dumbledore knows it’s Bellatrix, but he didn’t do anything to her! Not even a bloody detention!”
Anne was about to go ranting on about how Dumbledore was going senile, when the door to the hospital wing slammed open, and the dark shapes of three seventh year Gryffindor boys framed the doorway. Their bodies cast an impressive shadow that stretched across the length of the hospital wing. The sudden burst of light that had erupted from the open door made the three girls squint blindly.
"Prongs!" they all shouted in unison. The tallest of the boys glanced over at the limp form of his best friend laying on the bed next to Lily's. He, followed by the other two boys, marched over to where James lay. As the group huddled around James, they seemed to form a protective barrier, a solid wall; nothing seemed capable of penetrating their sturdy forms.
Lily knew that group all too well. They were the Marauders, James’ gang of fellow mayhem wreakers. Apart from the fact that they ganged up on others occasionally, Lily couldn’t help but admire the loyalty and strong bond that seemed to pulse through them.
There was handsome Sirius Black, James’s best friend and partner in crime. Even though he was Bellatrix’s cousin, his personality was completely the opposite from hers. For one thing, he wasn’t a power-hungry, blood-obsessed Slytherin. He was very loud, out-going, and arrogant-- but his arrogance had lessened significantly over the years. He was actually growing out of the habit of coaxing on James to hex people and hexing students himself.
Second in line was Remus Lupin, an equally charming but much less arrogant Marauder. Lily had gotten to know him better while serving as a prefect with him. However, two things about Remus puzzled Lily.
One was his relationship to Anne. Lily didn’t know exactly why or how, but Remus and Anne had always been very close. They seemed to be able to read each other’s mind. Their personalities were so different and yet, they fit perfectly together. The chemistry and teamwork between the two were amazing sometimes. They were easily the among smartest students in the whole school and were known to be seen together in the common room studying late into the night. Other than Lily and Alice, Anne hung out with Remus the most. Most of the time Lily would see them chatting happily, but sometimes they would just walk silently together as if words were not important to them, and all they needed was each other’s company. They looked like two innocent and pure doves in those moments.
Lily never understood why they never went out-- they seemed destined to be. Lily had questioned Anne about the issue once, but all she had said was:
“If you don’t ask me about Remus, I won’t ask you about Potter,” Lily had never brought up the subject again.
Lily was also interested in why Remus disappeared once a month. He claimed it was because of a sick relative, but something still seemed fishy.
Third, and most definitely last of all, was Peter Pettigrew. Lily thought he was nice little boy but didn’t understand why he hung out with the Marauders. Small, mousy-looking, and definitely not as intelligent as the others, he seemed oddly out of place with the three most popular, good-looking, and sought-after students of Hogwarts.
The three boys had crouched down around James’s bed.
“WHO THE HELL DID THIS TO PRONGS?” shouted Sirius. Madam Pomfrey shot a threatening glare at him from her office window.
“Calm down, Padfoot. I don’t think it’s such a good idea to go screaming your head off right now,” Remus said placatingly.
“I don’t care! I want to know and curse whoever did this! Who would have the damn nerve to touch a Marauder?” cursed Sirius, even though his tone was now much lower.
“Wow Padfoot. You have one hell of a loud voice,” James grumbled, as he blearily opened his eyes.
“James!” squeaked Peter. Remus gave a relieved grin, but Sirius was beside himself.
He grabbed James’s collar and whispered dangerously, “Who did this to you? Tell me so I can go curse them good.”
“Sirius, you’re going to choke him!” Peter trembled.
“BACK OFF!” Sirius had a crazy glint in his eyes to match Bellatrix’s. “Was it her? Was my good for nothing cousin?”
“It was,” Anne answered, giving Sirius a serious look, “as you might have heard, your loving cousin attacked Lily and Potter on the train.”
Sirius let go of a very hassled looking James and rushed over to Anne. He looked her straight in the eye.
“So it is true. Well, then, that settles it,” he said after a while. Everyone gave Sirius a questioning look.
“LET’S GO KICK HER ARSE!”
He tried to fling himself towards the door, but Anne quickly grabbed the neck of his robes. Sirius choked and landed hard on the floor, knocking the wind out of himself.
“We’re not going to go kick anyone’s arse, no matter how much we want to. We’re going to stay here and look after our friends,” Anne said coolly, peering down at the gasping Sirius.
“Anne, we have to go though. We have duties tonight,” Remus reminded her.
“Oh that’s right! I forgot. Sorry Moony,” Anne grimaced. Besides the Marauders, Anne was the only one allowed to call Remus by his nick-name.
“Duties? What duties?” Lily started to ask, but then gasped as she spotted the shiny prefects badge attached to Anne’s robes. “Oh Anne, you’ve been made prefect! Congratulations! Why didn’t you tell me?” Lily questioned in an excited, but slightly hurt tone.
“I wanted to surprise you. I was going to meet you in the Heads Compartment, but that stupid Black, no offense Sirius-," Sirius, still flat on the floor, gave her a thumbs up,"- ruined my plans.”
Lily smiled. Anne was notoriously well-known for coming up with her “plans.” Sometimes her plans were formulated to get revenge, but most of the time it was to give a nice surprise to people.
Sirius raised himself from the ground, rubbing his neck.
“I still don’t know why we can’t go and beat the crap out of her, after what she did to James and Lily. If I had only been there! I would have-”
But they never found out what Sirius would have done because Madam Pomfrey had stormed out of her office.
“OUT! Out now, you five! These two need rest, not violent plots of revenge! Out!” And with that, Madam Pomfrey conjured two large fly-swatters that smacked the whole group towards the door.
“Bye you guys,” called James and Lily. They were answered by a lot of “OW’s!” and curse words. The door slammed behind them, and Madam Pomfrey huffed back to her office.
“Our friends, ya gotta love’em,” grinned James.
“Yeah. They’re great,” Lily beamed.
They looked at one another, and a sudden awkwardness arose between them. Lily’s heart skipped a beat, and she was pretty sure that it wasn’t because she was injured.
“Er, so you’re okay, right Evans?” asked James tentatively.
“Yes. Um, look. You shouldn’t have jumped in like that. It’s-it’s bad to start fights, and you know it! Besides, you could have really gotten in trouble or hurt or something…” Lily voice trailed off as she stared at James. A beam of pallid moonlight was glinting off of his glasses.
Dear Merlin, he’s fine. Wait! No- he‘s not, he‘s not, he‘s not…
“Why, you’re welcome Evans. I was glad to save you from being hexed into oblivion, and I am very happy that you’re thanking me for it,” James joked.
“Oh shut up Potter,” Lily grumbled guiltily. James continued to smile.
“Oh all right, all right. Thank you Potter,” Lily said in a mock sweet voice.
“You are very welcome Lily darling.” Lily’s stomach did a small flip.
“Wait, did you just call me Lily?”
“Huh? No!” James hesitated, then laughed. “You’ll always be Evans to me.”
“Good,” Lily said in a threatening tone. But for some reason, she felt disappointment filling her.
“But…” James spoke suddenly, “I sort of wish that I could call you Lily. I wish that I could always protect you. And I still hope that that day will come Evans.”
Lily felt her heart jump to her throat. For a second, she wanted to tell him something other than that he was an arrogant know-it-all, to tell him that she didn’t know why she was constantly running away, but she quickly gave herself a mental slap.
“Don‘t say things like that Potter. You… you don‘t mean it.” After a slight pause, she whispered, “You can’t catch me.”
She heard James swallow.
“I’m sorry,” he rolled over and fell silent.
Lily felt her heart sinking down into the depths of her stomach as if pulled by quicksand.
Me too
A/N: A lot of talk, not much action. As I said, things don’t fully start until the next chapter. I’m very fond of this chapter’s title. It reminds me of a Bruce Lee movie- “Enter the Dragon”. But anyways, please review and tell me what you think will happen! I’m curious to know!