Chapter 2: Bittersweet Christmas
“Lily!”
Lily glanced up from the rolls of parchment and books at the sound of her name. She marked a page in her textbook, “Sparks and Flight “ Charms Level 5” and set down her inky quill. Her best friend, Carol came through the Gryffindor’s common room, obviously ecstatic over something. Her coffee-colored hair was flipped out at the ends of her shoulder as it always was and she grinned.
Lily smiled back and rushed over to her friend who plopped down over by the closest plushiest couch by the fire. Lily plopped down right next to her.
Carol had something hidden behind her back. “You’ll never believe this, but I got them! Okay. Close your eyes.” She said impatiently.
Lily leaned back and relaxed, closing her eyes.
“Look!” she said in conceded victory. She held two white cards poised between her fingers as if they were poker cards.
Lily flashed open her eyes only to be crestfallen. Blank cards. How anticlimactic.
“I reserved them as soon as I could when I heard they were coming. You wouldn’t believe how fast these sold out!”
Carol looked up at Lily. Apparently she was expecting Lily to share equal enthusiasm about this.
But Lily didn’t dare say a word. The lack of her own excitement dimmed the gleam in Carol’s eyes.
All of a sudden, Carol broke down in laughter. “Ack! I can’t believe I did that! I’m so stupid.” She flipped the cards around so Lily could now see what was on the proper side of them. “My mistake.”
It took Lily a second to register what they were. She plucked one of the cards from her friend’s hand. Tickets to the upcoming “Velvet Rain” concert! Anyone with a vein of magic blood in them knew who the wizarding world’s hottest band was. And Lily and Carol absolutely adored them. “Oh my God! How did you “,”
“Okay wait.” Carol was grinning wide. “You have to see this.” She whisked out a pair of black Velvet Rain spaghetti tops.
Lily jumped up and practically smothered her friend. “You’re the best!”
Carol handed to her friend the gifts. She threw off her thick outer witch robes and slipped on the new shirt. Modesty didn’t cross her boundaries. “We leave in three days for the holidays! Think of it as an early Christmas present.”
Sirius had no idea which direction he was going. The brief relief of warmth quickly waned off. He wouldn’t be surprised if the bubble of air over his head froze over. An unexpected shock jolted his heart at what he was watching.
James.
Two merrows were with him. One was adjusting his glasses over her own eyes; the other had his scarf wrapped around her neck. The garments barely stayed on in their attempt to float away.
Fear swept through Sirius as he saw James lifeless, not resisting against anything the merrows chose to do to please their own childish desires. There was a thick strand of kelp binding his wrist. The other end was wrapped around one of the merrow’s. She giggled and swam around him as if he were a long lost friend that had popped on in for a visit.
“Stup-,” Sirius stopped in mid-spell. He remembered it was forbidden to use magic on the Mer people. Though why he remembered a rule like that in a situation like this was beyond him. “Expelliramus!” The wad of kelp in the Mer’s wrist snapped. Sirius didn’t waste any time in grabbing his friend around his stomach and swimming towards the surface.
A crusty, pale hand rested on his shoulder, another pair of hands stroked his face and hair. “Play with us,” they chorused.
Sirius glared at the merrows, daring them to come any closer. He kicked his legs away from them, and continued swimming with James up to the surface. This was not an easy task. The two merrows watched with amusement before kicking their powerful tails and helping the two towards the surface. They even went so far as to lift them up onto the sandy outer banks.
Sirius’s dark hair was plastered against his eyes but didn’t bother with wiping strands back. “James,” he gritted his teeth and turned him over front facing up. His skin was a distorted pale and he wasn’t breathing. Sirius looked up towards the nightsky for a moment as if praying for a miracle. “Damn it, you can’t let this happen!” He had to get James to the Hospital Wing.
Sirius managed to get James’s limp arms around his own shoulders. His head lulled beside his. Fortunately, a gate to the school was close by. As they approached, James stiffened and coughed up a wave of lake water. Even before Sirius stepped into Hogwarts he was shouting for help. No one was around to hear. He stumbled past, shoes sloshing with sand and water. He yelled again for anyone, cursing upon the thought that curfew had to have been an hour ago.
“Dear, oh dear,” Nearly Headless Nick stopped in mid-float. “Got into some trouble I see.”
“Nick!” Sirius gasped. “Quick, James is hurt. We need to get him help.”
“James Potter? I barely recognized him without his glasses.” Nick was quick to react. “I’ll go fetch Madame Fay.”
Lily sat hunched over her papers once more. Carol had waited for her to come up to the girl’s dorm, but had fallen asleep by the fire. This essay for Professor Flitwick was about as pointless and boring as watching a block of ice try to melt outside.
The Griffindor portal slid open as Remus and Peter stepped through. “Good evening, Lily,” Remus said. Peter shuffled behind him.
“Oh, hi Remus.” Lily had to say out of all the Marauders, she liked Remus the best. He was a kind, respectable person, and not at all arrogant. Speaking of arrogance, she didn’t see Sirius or James with them. “Where are your partners in crime?”
“James and Sirius? Are they not here?”
Lily was surprised. “No, they’re usually with you two. Where were you anyways?” She watched Remus take a seat by the fire, wondering if he was all right. He always seemed sick, now more than ever.
Peter yawned and staggered up the stairwell to the boys’ dorm. “I’m going to bed,” he announced.
Remus glanced up, “Good night, Wormtail.” He closed his eyes for a second time and let the fire’s heat brush his skin. “We were serving detention with Madame Hooch. Washed and polished all the Quidditch robes and broomsticks “ for all the teams.”
“I assume Padfoot and Prongs didn’t get caught?”
Remus was wide-eyed for a moment at to how she knew their nicknames. But then again, Lily was quite an observant girl. She could figure that much out. “Oh no, they did have their fair share in what happened to the Slytherins. And of course, Madame Hooch suspected it was either James or Sirius, or the both of them together as usual.”
Lily wasn’t at all surprised.
“But Sirius and James told me earlier today how they were busy making “preparations” for tonight. So Peter and I went ahead and confessed before Madame Hooch pointed fingers at anyone else.”
Lily watched him drift off and close his eyes. It concerned her. “Are you feeling sick?” She had asked that question more times then she could count. But he denied it every time and more often than not walked away.
“No,” he said. “Just tired.” He rose from the red couch he was lying on and walked towards his dorm. “Sweet dreams.”
She was right. Lily smiled, “Good night.”
Madame Fay was more jumpy then ever when a patient walked in. “What have you boys been doing this late at night!” she exclaimed. Her fit nearly woke up all her other patients in the wing. She set James on the closest bed and immediately began resuscitating him. He coughed up more water with each breath.
“Is he going to be okay?” Sirius demanded.
Madame Fay was far too busy to listen.
Nicolas, who was still with him, slid in front of Sirius and tried to coax him out of the wing.
Under different circumstances, Sirius would have taken into consideration the spirit's feelings. But he ignored his sweet-talk and walked right through him. “Madame Fay! Is he alright?”
She jolted her head towards him for a second before looking back at her medical cabinet, knocking different bottles and papers off the shelf in her hurry. “Nick, could you get him out of here. He’ll wake the other patients.”
“Sirius," Nick tried. "I’m sure he’ll be fine. Why not check back in the morning?”
Sirius opened his mouth to say something but gave in. He left silently.
Lily skimmed through her parchments of paper, which were stuffed with drawn out sentences and theses. She carefully placed her work away and walked over to wake Carol “ on second thought, she looked very peaceful where she was. Perhaps she’d let her sleep there for the night.
The sound of the Gryffindor entrance opening startled her. She whisked her head around to see Sirius, soaked and tracking clumps of sand on the ornate carpets. He glanced over to see Lily by the fire. Without a sign of gesture or acknowledgment, he climbed the steps to his dormitory.
“That’s odd,” she thought to herself. “Coming from a boy who’s so energetic and egocentric not to brag about the latest events of his night.”
But Sirius came back down; wearing fresh dry clothes while lugging his sopping robes back down. He plunked them by the fire harness. It looked for a moment as if he were going back to bed; but he took notice that there were others in the room. “Late night studying?”
There was a silence until Lily realized she and Carol, who was currently sleeping were the only one’s the room. “Yeah,” she answered, rather embarrassed for the hindrance. “I was finishing that essay for Professor Flitwick due tomorrow.”
Sirius looked confused.
“About the different scenarios for charms and their negative or positive outcomes?” Heaven forbid they were in the same class together.
Lily saw the light flicker on.
“Uhhh,” he groaned. “That stupid essay is due tomorrow?” He let out an exasperated sigh before sinking on a nearby chair. “At least I did that Herbology homework.”
Lily caught her breath in her chest. “What homework?”
“That 5000 word essay, also due tomorrow about the effects of mixing red hair and crushed snake guts together.”
She felt uneasy after that comparison. “You almost had me believing that.”
“You’re no fun,” he said sarcastically.
Silence fell over the common room again, aside from Carol’s snoring. She gazed up to where a wide mantle piece was overhanging the fireplace, and above that was an oblong window. She could see the puffs of snow falling; it relaxed her, almost as much as rainy days did. It took Lily till now to realize something was missing. “Where’s James?” she asked. By now she had moved from the worktable and sat round the fire with Sirius.
“In the Hospital Wing.”
Lily’s stomach had a butterfly caught in it, but her reply to the news was calm. “Why? Was there an accident?”
“It was Snape’s fault.”
“Severus?” She wasn’t at all surprised at his answer and relaxed. “It’s about time one of your pranks on him backfired.”
“No, it was going all well till he threw that broken candle at us.”
Lily cocked her eyebrow at this. “Candles? Are you trying to tell me James was hurt by a flying candle?”
“No, silly.”
“Then what happened to him?”
Sirius laughed all of a sudden, which took Lily by surprise. “Since when did you start caring so much about him?”
Lily blushed a little, hoping it wouldn’t show. “It’s not my concern,” Lily told herself. “His only goals in life are to win the Quidditch Cup and seduce me.” But when that crossed her mind, she only blushed more. It wouldn’t show anyways; she was in the shadows on the fire. “I guess I’m more curious to why you’re soaking wet from head to toe”, she said with composure.
His jovial mood stopped all at once. He was still hardly smiling as if contemplating what she had just said. “I forgot.”
“You forgot?”
“I meant”, he corrected himself. “I forgot I came down here to forget.” He stood up, apparently unsatisfied with Lily’s company. “I’m going to bed.”
Lily watched him stand to leave then turned her head and stared at the snowfall. She allowed her worries to drown. “Carol?”
Her friend sucked in a deep breath and grinned about something. A good dream maybe?
Lily dropped it. No point in awakening her friend, she simply wanted someone to talk to after that uncomforting conversation with Sirius. Before she knew it, she had curled up on some nearby quilts and fallen asleep by the hearth.
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