“Shoo! Shoo, I tell you, she’s not yet ready for visitors!” Madam Pomfrey’s sharp voice broke through the fogginess in my head as I stirred and groggily opened my eyes.
“Oh, come on Madam Pomfrey, we wouldn’t disturb her or anything,” Jackie’s voice pleaded with the unyielding nurse. “She’s my best friend!”
“Yeah,” James’ voice broke in angrily, “and she would want to see us!”
“I’m sure she would, and she will see you soon, providing you get out of here and let her rest!”
Struggling to sit up, I licked my dry lips and managed to call out, “No, don’t go! I think I can see them, Madam Pomfrey.”
I heard rapid footsteps coming my way, and quick as a flash the spotless white curtains were whipped away from my bed and a very red and piqued Madam Pomfrey. She wore her usual gray robes and her glasses hanging slightly askew that made her look rather like a stern but kindly grandmother.
“Well,” she sniffed, after examining me for a moment and making sure that I wasn’t “too worn out”, “I suppose you can come in then.” Before the words were all the way out of her mouth Jackie plus the Marauders dashed in inside the infirmary in the most undignified way and crowded around my bed like a bunch of anxious mother hens.
Jackie was the first to get her rushed question out. “Lilyareyouokay?”
I laughed and shook my dark red hair out of my eyes, which Jackie took as a sign of my okay-ness, and promptly jumped on my bed (taking great pains to avoid crushing my legs) and hugged me with all her might. I think I heard a few vertebrae crack, actually.
“Lily, we were so worried about you!” Jackie gasped as she pulled back, her dark curls swinging about her anxious face, but her eyes softened in relief when she saw that I was truly better.
“What exactly happened?” I asked, taking advantage of the Marauders’ silence ( they surrounded my bed with a strange mixture of satisfaction and relief that made me think once again of mother hens).
“It was the Slytherins””
“The charm, it was--”
“You got too much--”
Jackie silenced them all with a single glare, then turned her softened but still grim stare on me. “You fainted.”
I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “Really, Jackie, I had sort of missed that. I fainted? Really! Why, I had no idea!”
Jackie beamed, apparently taking the appearance of my ever-present sarcastic side as a sign of my recovery.
The boys still looked furious, though, and I don’t think it was my sarcastic comment that put that livid expression on their faces. Except Peter, of course; he’s the only Marauder who I’ve never seen angry, not to mention furious. Sirius, though, cracked his knuckles with what he probably thought a menacing expression on his face. Come to think of it, he’s actually pretty good at that expression. Honestly, though. He can be such a drama king sometimes.
James face was dark with fury; if I didn’t know better, I would have thought that he wanted to kill someone. But James, kill someone? Why, the very thought of it was preposterous!
Even Remus, usually mild-mannered and self-possessed (although the quick, dry wit that flowed out of him effortlessly while he was around his friends often countered his calm outer countenance) looked angry.
“To put it bluntly,” Remus said lightly, his face suddenly calm, “a few of our lovely Slytherin friends did some quick, er, thinking…”
“Slytherins can’t think,” Jackie interrupted angrily, a scowl now upon her face as well.
“…and somehow managed to do a repelling charm on the charm Dumbledore put on our breakfast. You know the one”the charm that gave you the headache for thinking about exams?” (at this I nodded impatiently). “Well, really they just did a repelling charm that only worked for their breakfast, and somehow-don’t ask me how, I have no idea-they sent their portion of the charm to a random area of the Gryffindor table.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it was random!” James snorted derisively. “They probably sent the charm straight to Lily just because she’s muggle-born! Stupid Slytherin gits.”
“As you can imagine,” Remus continued as if James hadn’t said a thing. “the effects of Dumbledore’s charm would have given you only a mild headache, nothing serious at all, but the effect of that charm multiplied four times and applied onto one person--well, you get the idea. I gather from Jackie that you had a pretty nasty headache.”
I suddenly remembered that Remus had been in the infirmary recovering from the full moon, and I wondered how long I must have been unconscious for him to appear completely recovered.
“Oh, Remus, I totally forgot!” I exclaimed. “How do you feel after the full moon?”
Remus smiled at my evident concern. “Well, you’ve been out for a full day now, so it’s been three nights since then. Even though the two days right after it were particularly miserable for me, I was pretty quick to recover afterwards.”
“I was out for a day?” I asked incredulously. “That’s impossible!”
“Not hardly, since it’s true,” Jackie put in, a smile quirking up the corners of her mouth.
“Yeah, who knew that Lily Evans could go a full day without studying, reading, doing homework, or doing any other such unnatural activities.” That joking comment earned Sirius a playful swat on the arm from none other than yours truly.
“God, Sirius, can you get any more dramatic!” Jackie remarked teasingly as Sirius danced around the room, wincing in pain and cradling his “injured” arm.
“Oh, sure, this coming from the girl who acts and sings non-stop!” James cried in mock-indignation.
“What, you don’t want her to sing?” I asked playfully, knowing what he would say and what Jackie’s reply would be.
“Of course I don’t want her to sing!” James said in obvious sarcasm. “She’s got such a terrible voice”” just to let you know, Jackie has the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard; it’s not fair for one girl to have that much talent! “”that it would be impossible for me to want her to sing!”
“Well,” Jackie said in a sing-song voice, her large dark eyes twinkling mischievously, “you can’t always get what you want.”
“What eloquence, what wonderful eloquence Mick Jagger has!” I said, shaking my head in solemn yet joking wonder.
“I do believe that is one of their best songs! I mean, really, you can’t get better than a song that starts out with I saw her today at the reception, a glass of wine in her hand. I knew she was gonna meet her connection. At her feet was a foot-loose man. Totally nonesonse lyrics that, when he sings them, make sense.”
The boys all grinned and rolled their eyes in perfect unison. Actually, Sirius might have been a bit off. Just by a hair though.
But really, they were all so used to Jackie breaking into song at random moments, they seriously should have seen that one coming.
One thing you should know about Jackie and me; we’re both crazy about music, namely, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and a few random classical pieces such as Mozart’s Requiem. But that’s beside the point.
By now the infirmary had gathered a much more light and happy atmosphere and I was feeling wide awake and not at all weak.
Suddenly, during the easy conversation and joking between us that came only with years of friendship, a thought came to me.
“Hold on, who took my headache away?”
“Dumbledore,” Peter piped up. “He came up to the infirmary immediately after you got here and took the charm off you himself!”
“Well, it’s not as if anyone else could have done it, seeing as they didn’t know the spell Dumbledore used in the first place,” Sirius said, as always, slightly disdainful of Peter’s not-quite-up-to-speed thinking.
“You should have seen James, though, he was so angry at Dumbledore at first that I swear he would have gotten himself a detention for the whole year if Dumbledore had been anyone other than he is,” Jackie put in, her eyes glinting in mischief.
James blushed and protested, “Well, how was I to know that it wasn’t Dumbledore’s fault Lily fainted?”
“Well, really James, I just fainted, it’s not like I was dead or something,” I said, a part of me wondering at James over-protectiveness, another part smiling ecstatically because he was so worried about me.
That’s weird, I thought to myself, suddenly confused. James is always over-protective of me, and I’ve never felt happy about it before! Hmm, must be the after-effects of the potion.
I looked up from my thoughts to find everyone looking at me with amusement, and I realized that someone must have said something. "Sorry,” I said, grinning apologetically. “What did you say?”
“Well,” Sirius said, “we were just wondering if you felt well enough to come out of this stuffy infirmary and go outside with us to enjoy the day.”
“Wait a second,” I said, confused again, and then horrified. “You guys are skipping class to visit me! Go on, you’ve got to get back before you miss something important! Hurry up!”
Apparently they found something funny with my comment even though I was perfectly serious.
“Lily, we don’t have classes!” Jackie exclaimed, a wide grin nearly splitting her face in two.
I smacked my hand to my forehead, feeling utterly stupid, and they all broke out in laughter. Of course we didn’t have classes, that had been the whole point to Dumbledore’s charm!
Pulling my blushing face out of my hands, I turned to glare at the Marauders. “You don’t happen to be laughing at me, do you?” I asked them, my voice icy. Outwardly, I must have appeared furious, though inside I was smiling widely; this trick could be played on them time after time. Well, except for Remus, of course. He always saw through my angry act.
James, Sirius and Peter stopped laughing suddenly, glanced nervously at Remus, who was laughing even harder at their slightly panicked expressions.
“Well, we’d, er, better get going,” Sirius stuttered, turning hastily to leave and motioning the other Marauders. Peter and Remus turned to go, Remus still laughing, but James hesitated a second.
“Yeah, we’ll get the picnic together. You are coming to the picnic, aren’t you Lily?” he asked, still looking slightly nervous, probably expecting a fiery explosion of my mighty wrath and fury.
I snorted and rolled my eyes, dropping my coldly angry mask. If he had been closer, I would have ruffled his already messy hair affectionately. “Of course I’ll come to your picnic, you silly toad, providing Pomfrey lets me out of here.”
At this James broke into a happy grin, then he turned and followed the other Marauders. As they left the infirmary, I heard Peter say to James in confusion, “But I though she was mad at us!”
Jackie, who was now off of my bed and sitting on the chair right beside it, looked at me and we both broke into laughter.
“You don’t think we’re too cruel to them, do you Jackie?” I asked my friend, wiping a tear from the corner of my eye.
“Oh, never,” she replied, her twinkling eyes giving away her grave face. “After all, the two most conceited boys in Hogwarts do need to be taken down a peg or two every once in awhile.”
Giving a little giggle, I threw the covers off of me and proffered my hands so that Jackie could pull me up.
Standing up and obliging me, she pulled her short hair into a quick ponytail and said to me absently, “The picnic really should be fun. It’s a gorgeous day, as you can see, and even though everyone’s outside, I don’t think anyone’s taken our spot by the lake.”
I straightened my clothes quickly, wincing at their wrinkled state, and then looked up at Jackie.
“Hey Jax, you don’t mind if I take a quick shower before going outside, do you?”
“Of course not,” she replied, “But I don’t know how James’ll take it if you’re too late.”
I rolled my eyes in exasperation as we walked outside the infirmary. “Oh, please, Jackie, you’re not still harboring that idea that James and I are madly in love, are you?”
Jackie blushed slightly, but lifted her head confidently. “Of course I am, that boat’s not going to sail away from my harbor until you admit to James while looking him in the eye that you do not like him as anything more than a friend.”
Blushing at the very idea, I picked up our pace a bit but decided not to say anything.
Jackie rolled her eyes at my behavior, then murmured something to herself that I barely caught. “The first symptom of being madly in love: denial.”
I turned and hit her in the arm playfully, and we laughed all the way up the stairs to our dorm as we remembered the Marauders’ expressions when I had pretended to be angry with them.
“They are too gullible, sometimes,” I said to Jackie as she opened the door to our room.
“Well, you must like gullible, because you seem not to mind it too much in dear Jamesie-Poo!”
I threw a pillow at my best friend, then ran into the bathroom before she could retaliate. Just as I closed the door I heard a thud and cackled evilly as I realized Jackie’s pillow must have missed me by a hair.
“And once again Lily Evans triumphs!” I cried out jokingly.
“Ah, but does Lily Evans have any ammunition to use once she gets out of the shower?”
Laughing and shaking my head at my friend’s playfulness, I walked over to the shower and turned on the water.