Chapter 5: The Whomping Willow
James took out his wand and muttered, “Lumos.” He heard Lily follow suit behind him.
“Stay close and keep up,” he said. “We’re not that far behind the others.”
Indeed, he could hear raised voices along the tunnel, and hoped they hadn’t started the conversation without him.
“Its not illegal, where you’re taking me, is it?” Lily asked. James looked over at her. She looked pretty frightened.
“Don’t worry. No one will know we’re here. I’ll look after you.”
Lily sighed. “I can look after myself. I just don’t want to end up in trouble.”
“Then you shouldn’t have followed me!”
“Followed you? You forget, Potter, that out of the two of us, you have the reputation for being a stalker, not me.”
“Look Lily, I just saved you from being battered until all your bones were broken back there. The least you can do is be civil.”
When she didn’t answer he repeated: “Stay close and keep up.”
They walked in silence after this for a further 20 minutes, until James couldn’t stand the tension any longer.
“Look Lily, we’re almost there-“
“Thank heavens!”
“-and the others wont be too happy that I’ve brought you along. So just stay cool and let me do the talking, ok?”
She nodded, and James sighed. “I didn’t mean to blow off on one back there. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine, Potter. Don’t worry about it.”
The tunnel widened, and light flooded from ahead. “We’re here,” James said.
The passage opened out through a door onto a landing, from which they climbed a staircase and entered a room to the left. Inside were Sirius, Remus and Peter.
Sirius didn’t need an invitation to start speaking. “Last night, I went looking for you, James, and instead I caught Wormtail out of bed, being threatened by Bella.”
“Your cousin Bella?” Remus asked.
“Well yes, of course, my-“ he stopped as his eyes fell on Lily. “Prongs, what in heaven’s name is she doing here?”
“She has a name,” Lily pointed out.
“Lily saw us going into the Willow and got attacked by the branches. The only way to help her was to pull her in,” James explained.
“You do realise-“ Sirius started, before James cut in.
“Lily won’t tell, you can count on that, right Lily?”
Lily’s eyes cast around the dishevelled room and the Marauders, landing finally on James. “You have my word.”
“Good.”
“That doesn’t mean we can trust her with what I’m about to say!” Sirius interjected.
“Well, you pretty much just gave away the punch line,” Lily pointed out.
Sirius sighed. “Fine then. Wormtail, would you like to explain what you were doing in the presence of that witch? Or do you think we will believe that she randomly caught you wandering the corridors at night and thought it would be fun to threaten you by the scruff of your neck?”
Peter’s eyes shifted between the occupants of the room. “I didn’t mean… I never knew… it’s complicated!”
Not one of the others looked like they thought that to be an acceptable answer.
“We’ve got time, Peter,” James said. “Tell us, we’re your friends. We can handle Bella.”
“You think you can but you can’t! She has powers beyond levitating presents up a staircase, James. You don’t know what she’s like.”
“Then tell us.” This from Remus, who had dusted off an upturned chest of drawers and sat down.
“The Dark Lord… he… he has an army…” Peter faltered.
“Yes we know that part. Skip to the bit where you were dangling in the air,” Sirius interjected, clearly impatient.
“She wanted information.” Peter stumbled as he said this, as if it caused him great pain. “On… on Dumbledore.”
The Marauders stared at Peter, shocked expressions on their faces. Lily, however, stepped forward. “Hang on a minute. I never saw you go into the tree, Peter… where did you come from?”
“Lily, now is not the time for that,” Sirius said. “Tell us about Dumbledore, Peter.”
Peter looked to the floor as he began talking. “I don’t know anything about it. All I was told was that Bella wants to know what Dumbledore is up to. She wanted me to find out by using James. Because he’s Head Boy.”
He looked up as he said this.
James stared. “Why you? Why is she after you?”
“Scrawny, pathetic Peter,” he said. “He’ll break under pressure. You want a snitch? Peter’s your man. That’s what they all think.”
Sirius laughed. “Is that all they’ve got? You-Know-Who must be desperate. Trying to dig for information on Dumbledore by using the Head Boy of Hogwarts? Dumbledore’s not stupid enough to trust a student with any kind of top secret information.”
“That’s not it,” Peter said, looking at Sirius. “Its Bella’s idea, it didn’t come from You-Know-Who! You just assume she’s a Death Eater, just because she practices dark magic!”
Sirius laughed, but Remus cut across him. “So why were you talking about his army? If he’s got nothing to do with this, why mention him at all?”
Peter looked scared. “She… she threatened to tell him I was disloyal.”
“You idiot, Wormtail. You say Bella isn’t in league with You-Know-Who, yet you believe she would walk straight up to him and say ‘Hey, Voldie, this kid at school doesn’t do what I tell him, go finish him off!’ No wonder people think you’re stupid.”
“That’s enough,” James said. “The point isn’t whether Bella is a Death Eater or not. Personally I don’t think You-Know-Who is likely to trust school kids with anything. But the way Bella’s going, she could end up there one day.” He sighed. “Look Peter, she’s just looking to stir something up. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
Sirius shook his head. “You weren’t there, Prongs, she had him cornered in the middle of the night in a dark classroom. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t turned up.”
“Oh that’s right,” Peter spat, angry now. “Sirius the brave one. Sirius the good-looking one. Sirius who can do no wrong.”
“It seems to me this has got nothing to do with Bella’s threat anymore,” Lily said. Her presence almost forgotten, she made the Marauders jump. Everyone looked at her.
“Well,” she explained, “if you think about it, that’s just an incident that happened which has no real danger. We all know its not that important, that Bella is never going to unleash a great plan of Dumbledore’s and go running with it to the Death Eaters. That’s why you’re all stood here arguing about trivial things. Because it’s not an issue. The issue is that Peter’s jealous of Sirius, and Sirius has problems with his cousin. That’s what this is all about.”
The logic and sense of these words hit the others, and Remus nodded. “She’s right, let’s just get out of here. The mystery’s solved. We found out what happened to Peter, and we’ll keep an eye on Bella from now on.” He stood.
James motioned to Peter. “Come on Wormtail.”
Peter followed Remus out of the room, muttering something that sounded like “I’m not jealous.”
“Sirius?” James said. “You coming?”
Sirius’s face relaxed. “Yeah. Yeah let’s go play some Quidditch.” He passed James and Lily through the door.
James smiled. “Sorry you got caught up in that. It all seems a bit silly now, really,” he said to Lily.
“It’s fine. You can’t be too careful nowadays, what with the war and everything.”
“So we really are in a war, then?” They began walking out of the room together.
“Guess so. Don’t worry, Potter, I’ll look after you.”
“You will?” He smiled hopefully.
“In your dreams! Come on, lets get out of here.”
They followed Remus, Sirius and Peter out down the stairs, and back into the tunnel of darkness, where five wand tips lit up and led them back to Hogwarts.
Love Conquers by dumbly_dorr
Chapter Notes: An immediate follow-on from the last chapter when James and Lily entered the Whomping Willow. Deep in the Shrieking Shack, the others discover what Bella was up to when she threatened Peter...