Harry Potter 1. Chapter 1

Warm light glowed from the Gryffindor common room as the portrait swung open.

Remus Lupin stood aside, gesturing for Lily to go in first. "After you," he told her in a jokey tone. Lily giggled and climbed into the room, attempting to be graceful about it. A quick scan of the area showed that it was fairly quiet, which wasn't surprising since it was past nine-thirty and anyone younger than fourth year was expected to be in their dormitory by this time. Lily's face brightened upon spotting her friend, Mary, sitting near the fire. The good seats right in _front_ of the fire were, of course, taken up by the seventh years, but Mary, being a prefect, had enough status to get the second best place in the room (as long as the Quidditch team weren't around). She had a book open in her lap and was twirling a quill between her fingers absently as she read. Peter Pettigrew was sitting in the armchair next to her, bent low over a textbook Lily knew to be the sixth years' Transfiguration volume. Lily suppressed a shudder, knowing she would be doing the same in a few minutes.

"You're back early," Mary commented as Lily and Remus joined them.

"Katharine and David said they'd finish our patrols for us," Lily told her, feeling a swell a gratitude towards the two seventh year Gryffindor prefects. "They heard us talking about the test tomorrow and they must have felt sorry for us."

"That was good of them," said Mary. "Now you can help Peter. I've been trying but I really don't understand half of the stuff in your textbook. OWL level Transfiguration is so much easier!"

Lily sat down next to Mary and Summoned her school bag from where she had left it earlier, under a table. She glanced up at Remus, who was standing over Peter and pointing something out in the textbook.

"Are you going to study with us?" she said expectantly, but Remus shook his head.

"I think I've done enough revision. I'm going to have an early night. See you tomorrow."

Lily shook her head in slight disbelief as her fellow prefect headed towards the dormitories. How on earth did Remus stay so calm before every test? He always seemed to have the work done ahead of schedule and never panicked. She hated to admit it, but Lily was jealous. No matter how much she planned ahead, she was never quite as organised as she wanted to be and many nights had been spent hiding under the covers reading a textbook in the wand light. Her dorm mates probably hated her for it.

"All right, Peter, what bit are you stuck at?" she asked, sitting up straight and trying to get into a studious frame of mind. With any luck, Peter would be revising the same chapters that she needed to look over, herself. Unfortunately, it was soon clear that he was still looking at the earlier chapters which Lily had already covered, and she began to feel frustrated at having to waste time going over material she already knew. She was relieved when he finally seemed to make sense of it and she could turn to her own revision. Five minutes into her reading, Mary slammed her Charms textbook shut loudly and sighed.

"I have to go to bed now. You know, it's really unfair that fifth years have an earlier bedtime than you lot. I'm a prefect! I should be allowed to stay up later," she complained, chucking her homework into her bag forcefully.

Lily smiled sympathetically. Ten o'clock was a rather early bedtime for the fifth years.

"I heard they're thinking about getting rid of the bedtimes," said Peter, glancing up from his notes.

"Seriously?" Mary asked, her eyebrows raised hopefully.

"Yeah, I heard the Head Boy and Girl talking about it in the corridor the other day. It sounds like there's just going to be a curfew for being out of the common room, but once you're in here you can stay up as late as you want. I think a lot of people have complained about being kept awake by their dorm mates."

Lily bit her lip guiltily.

"Great!" Mary stood up and yawned as she lifted her heavy bag onto her shoulder. "Night, you two."

Lily raised a hand limply in reply and sank back into the comfortable seat to continue reading. Over the next twenty minutes or so, the common room cleared until she and Peter were the last ones still up. Lily glanced around and narrowed her eyes.

"It's been very quiet in here this evening. Where have James and Sirius been all this time?"

Peter shrugged and his eyes moved towards the ceiling. "Upstairs, I think."

"Upstairs? Doing what?" Lily asked sharply.

Peter shrugged again. Lily studied his face to see if he looked guilty, like he was hiding the truth, but his expression remained neutral. "Studying, I suppose."

Lily puffed air through her lips, not believing that theory for a second. She decided not to comment on it, though. A few minutes later, Peter got up to leave as well, and she was alone in the common room. She considered moving to the good seat beside the fire, now that it was free, but there was less than ten minutes until she had to be in her dormitory and it just didn't seem to be worth it. She flipped through the pages and wondered if she could get through the last eight pages of the current chapter before bedtime. It didn't seem very likely, but she really didn't fancy finishing her revision in her dormitory after hearing that people had been complaining about that kind of thing.

Seven minutes to go. Six pages left to read. Lily shifted position on the sofa, curling her legs underneath her. She couldn't quite get comfortable and every time she managed to focus on what she was reading, a little voice inside her head would tell her to look at her watch.

Six minutes to go. Five pages left to read. Something in the textbook contradicted a rule Lily was sure she had heard the Professor mention in class. She pulled her bag towards her and leafed through the neat bundles of hand-written notes for each class.

Five minutes to go. She had been wrong and the textbook had been right: obviously. Lily smiled to herself as she tucked the notes away and settled herself back to read the rest of the chapter in record time. Only before she could even find the place she had left off, she heard someone coming down the stairs from one of the dormitories. She glanced around – she couldn't help herself – and saw that James Potter had appeared in the common room. She watched over the back of the sofa as he strode across the room, wondering just where he thought he was going this close to bedtime. He didn't seem to have noticed her yet. He also seemed to have something bulky in one of the pockets of his robes. It looked like he had a jumper or something stuffed in there. Lily frowned.

"Where are you going? Bedtime's in five minutes," she challenged the boy. James jumped as soon as she spoke and stopped in his tracks.

"Kitchens," he replied quickly. So quickly, in fact, that Lily actually believed him. No one could think up a lie that fast, could they?

"You'll never make it down there and back in five minutes," Lily pointed out.

James looked at her evenly for a few seconds, as though he was trying to work her out. "I know a shortcut."

Lily shook her head. "Come on, do you think I'm an idiot? No shortcut can take you down eight flights of stairs and back in five minutes."

James continued to look calm and collected for another moment and then his face broke into a pleading expression. "Aw, please, Lily, just let me go this one time without reporting me. I swear I'm only going to the kitchens to get a sandwich and then I'll come straight back. I'll be twenty minutes, tops."

Lily frowned slightly and considered it. James must have known she was thinking of backing down because he began to look more confident again.

"Come on...you know if you're going to report me then you'll have to wait up until I get back, and I'm sure you want to get to bed," he pointed out with a hopeful grin.

He had a real point there. _Git_, Lily thought. Rolling her eyes, she lifted the textbook up to eye line, blocking James from her view. "You weren't here. I never saw you," she muttered.

"Cheers!" James called brightly as he resumed his path to the door, breaking into a slight jog as though he wanted to get out of there before she changed her mind. She shook her head slightly and suppressed a smile as she peered over the top of the book at him. As he climbed over the threshold, she spotted what looked like a bundle of parchment in his other pocket. Wonders would never cease. James was actually off somewhere to _study_?


	2. Chapter 2

Lily had briefly considered waiting up to see if James really did come back in twenty minutes or not, but after the first ten minutes passed she realised just how exhausted she was. It had been a long week and she knew if she didn't head up to bed she would fall asleep right here on her textbook. Two of her dorm mates were still up, getting ready for bed, when she crept into the room, so she didn't feel too guilty about disturbing the others. She didn't bother trying to carry on revising under the covers and just hoped to god that nothing from the pages she had missed out would appear in the test. She fell asleep quickly, slipping into an odd dream where James Potter was trying to sneak out of the common room with his duvet and pillows stashed in a pocket.

Their Transfiguration lesson was the first class of the day and after a rushed breakfast the sixth years gathered outside Professor McGonagall's classroom. Lily tried to manoeuvre herself towards Remus so that she could ask him what time James had returned last night, wanting to know if she had been right to trust him, but the corridor was too busy for her to get near him and they were quickly herded inside, so she had no choice but to take her seat. It would probably have been pointless anyway: Remus always covered for his friends when they broke the rules. Anyway, James didn't look unusually tired or anything, so she supposed he must not have stayed out for long. She put it out of her head as the test papers were passed out, face down, and tried to run through a quick list of the spells she had studied as she stared at the blank back page of the parchment. Transfiguration was a subject she really needed to work at to get good marks and she would have given anything at that moment to have an extra day to study. Nothing would really happen if she failed it – like getting kicked out of the class – but she would be utterly disappointed in herself and probably have to suffer through one of McGonagall's infamous lectures on 'effective study habits' and 'prioritising your NEWT courses'. _Yuck_.

It was definitely a relief to be leaving the classroom once it was all over. Lily felt lighter and more upbeat than she had all week. She was almost tempted to skip down the corridor, but skipping was generally considered to mean social death for anyone beyond second year, so she refrained. She _did_ smile cheerfully at Remus when he appeared by her side asking how she got on.

"Great!" she announced, though it was a bit of an overstatement. She had skipped two questions completely and given some rather dodgy answers to a couple of others, but the majority of the test had been straightforward. "I'm just glad it's over. How did you – oh, actually, I need to ask you something. What time did James come in last night?"

Remus looked slightly nonplussed by the sudden change in topic and then he looked at her blankly. "James? He was already in the dormitory when I went up."

"Yeah, but he left again. Just before ten-thirty," she reminded him, suspecting that this was one of Remus's let's-play-dumb strategies to avoid getting his friends in trouble. He probably thought she was just trying to trick him into saying James had sneaked out after bedtime (okay, so she might have tried that once or twice in the past), but this time she had seen James leave with her own eyes.

"Did he? Honestly, I was asleep ten minutes after I went upstairs. I wouldn't have noticed even if he did leave."

Lily pursed her lips and considered persisting with the questions, but quickly decided to give it up. He was probably telling the truth. She briefly glanced around for Peter, since at least _he_ would have been awake for sure when James left. He was even less likely than Remus to tell the truth about when James got back, though, since he had no prefect badge to lose. And as for Sirius, Lily wouldn't even bother asking him. Sirius would deny any wrong-doing until he went blue in the face. Grassing on one of his mates was the most heinous crime imaginable in Sirius's world.

"Never mind, then," Lily said as they headed downstairs. "If he was up to anything he shouldn't have been then someone else can deal with it." They stopped at the bottom of the stairs, in the Entrance Hall. "I've got to go to Potions now. Where are you headed?"

"Care of Magical Creatures," replied Remus, gesturing towards the doors. They opened for a few seconds as someone came inside and a chilling breeze swept through the hall. Lily shivered.

"Rather you than me. Why on earth are you taking that at NEWT level anyway? What use is it?" she asked, wrinkling her nose. Remus just shrugged.

"It's interesting. See you later."

She smiled ruefully as she watched him tug his cloak tighter around him and wrap his scarf securely around his neck before he braved the outdoors. With another shiver at the mere thought of spending an hour outside in this freezing January weather, she headed for the dungeons.

Most people hated this part of the castle. She had heard lots of Gryffindors complaining about the damp, musty smell and the creepy echoing sounds their footsteps made in the corridors, but for some reason Lily liked it. She felt almost as comfortable down here as she did up in Gryffindor Tower. Severus used to tease her about it, saying she really belonged in Slytherin, but she knew that wasn't it. She liked being in the dungeons because she loved her Potions lessons and as soon as she got the first whiff of that smell she always got a little bit excited for whatever she was going to learn today.

These days, though, the excitement tended to be combined with a sense of dread. Pausing in the classroom doorway, she scanned the room and tried to psyche herself up to go in.

"Come on, Lily, you're blocking the door," came an impatient voice. Lily sighed an stepped inside to allow James to walk inside. He glanced over his shoulder at her as he passed, giving her a questioning look. Lily watched wistfully as he took his seat beside her good friend, Gemma, one of the Ravenclaw prefects. Oh, how she wished she could sit next to Gemma for the next hour. She would even take James as her Potions partner rather than the one she had now. Squaring her shoulders, she headed for her usual seat and started to unpack her things, keeping her eyes forward and refusing to look at the person sharing the desk.

"Hello," she said stiffly when she finally sat down.

"Hi," Severus responded dully, sounding equally as uncomfortable. The next minute seemed to tick by incredibly slowly, the silence between them almost pulsing with expectation until the Professor finally addressed the class. As Lily listened to the instructions and mechanically sought out the correct page in the textbook, she wondered for the hundredth time why she hadn't changed seats this year. All through their OWL Potions course, she and Severus had sat together. It had been the most fun Lily ever had in lessons, and the pair of them produced such excellent results together that Slughorn branded them his two best students, much to the annoyance of the other members of their class.

At the beginning of this year, Lily had been walked into the classroom on the first day and found that Severus was sitting at their usual desk. With a smaller group taking NEWT Potions, there were plenty of places she could have sat instead, but being the last one to arrive that day meant that all attention was on her. As soon as she had taken a step towards an empty desk, Slughorn had scolded her – _"I can't have my best team split up!"_ – and she had crept into her old seat rather than explain in front of the entire class that she and Severus were no longer speaking. So began the most awkward Potions partnership of the decade.

It could have been worse, Lily mused as she lit the fire under her cauldron with a flick of her wand. At least they didn't argue. In fact, they both tried not to say anything more than they absolutely had to to each other. With another murmured spell, Lily reduced the size of the flames. Instinct told her when they looked the right size to achieve the cauldron temperature she required for this potion. She sent a stream of water flowing from her wand into the battered old cauldron. Without moving her head, she let her eyes flicker sideways to see what Severus was doing. He was a couple of steps ahead, already cutting up some foul-smelling, shrivelled brown plant roots that Lily recognised as valerian roots, since they'd used them earlier in the year for Draught of the Living Death. She didn't remember it being quite so smelly, though, and suspected Severus had soaked them in something to enhance their properties. Lily gave a tiny, inaudible sigh. She absolutely refused to ask him for help.

Her own scent-free roots were soon stewing away in the bubbling water and as she carefully measured out three ounces of beetle eyes, she was taken aback when Severus made a low sound that sounded awfully like _talking_.

"Pardon?" she said politely, turning to face him for the first time.

"Can I borrow some of your beetle eyes?" he asked, not meeting her gaze. "Please."

Lily pushed the jar towards him and that was the end of that conversation, apart from a mutter of "Thank you" when he pushed them back to her side of the desk. It was the most they had spoken in the week that had passed so far this term – the _only_ time they had spoken, in fact, other than when she had apologised for accidentally kicking his chair on Tuesday. Lily slumped back in her chair, feeling very bored and lonely as she waited for her valerian roots to finish boiling so that she could add the beetle eyes. Her gaze roamed the classroom and she sent a half-hearted smile Gemma's way. The blonde girl smiled back, looking quite sympathetic towards Lily, and then directed a dirty look Severus's way. Severus was bent low over his scales and did not notice this; not that he would have reacted anyway. As Lily watched, James whispered something to Gemma and the girl rolled her eyes and shook her head. James laughed quietly and Lily was desperate to know what was being said, but the next second she had to look away when Slughorn appeared in front of her.

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"God, I thought that lesson was never going to end," Lily whined to Gemma, catching up with her on the way out of the classroom and making sure Severus was out of earshot. "I mean, I like Potions but if I had to sit there for one more minute I swear I would have lost my mind and started throwing frog brains at people."

"You could always move seats if you're that desperate. Who cares what Slughorn says?" said Gemma dismissively as they rounded a corner and began climbing the stairs to the Entrance Hall.

Lily nodded, but she knew she would never do it. The idea of embarrassing Severus (not to mention herself) like that was too cruel, even if she _was_ still furious with him. "It's not so bad, most days. It's actually better when we just don't talk. If we go a whole week without saying a word then it's fine, I can just pretend he's not there. But as soon as we have to speak to each other it starts feeling really uncomfortable for the rest of the lesson. Ugh! Maybe I should drop Potions."

Gemma raised her eyebrows and Lily rolled her eyes and shook her head. They both knew that, for Lily, that was never going to be an option. She needed a NEWT in Potions more than she needed any other subject Hogwarts offered. It was stupid; anyone who knew her knew that she was not friends with Severus anymore. Why did she care if the class saw her walking away from him?

_Because then it's final_.

Lily immediately put the thought out of her head, and was actually surprised, when she focused on her surroundings, to see that they had already reached their destination. The pair had had been pounding the same path through the castle that they always took at the morning break: to a small, cosy room on the third floor with a portrait of a rather snooty-looking young witch on the door. Gemma checked that no mischievous first years were listening and whispered the password, and the door swung open.

Lily instantly felt at ease, regaining that cheerful feeling she'd had after the Transfiguration test was over earlier that morning. She followed Gemma to their usual seat with a smile on her face and sat happily listening to the garbled conversations going on around her for several minutes, without feeling the need to join in. The room was broken into several small groups, but every minute or so someone would get up from one cluster of chairs and join a different crowd. Everyone who visited the prefects' common room regularly was generally very accepting and friendly, and Lily couldn't imagine how her life would be right now if she had never been given a prefect badge and hadn't got to meet these wonderful people. Four years of being Severus's best friend may have been fun, but she now saw how much she missed out on when she was constantly by his side.

"Lily. Lily! Oi, _Lily_!"

She snapped out of her reverie and blinked at the person calling her name so persistently.

"How was the test?" A seventh year boy with very neatly parted dark hair was asking her, his expression cheerful as always. Lily didn't think she'd ever seen this Hufflepuff without a smile on his face.

"It was fine, Geoff, really great," she replied slowly, feeling touched that anyone remembered about a silly little thing like a sixth year test.

"Did my notes help?" asked the girl sitting next to him with a serious look on her face, pushing her large glasses up her nose.

"They were great, as always," Lily told her sincerely. The girl must have written down every single word that came out of McGonagall's mouth last year, and they had probably bumped Lily's mark from an Acceptable to an Exceeds Expectations (if she was lucky).

"Your notes are always the best, Pamela," someone pointed out and everyone who was listening nodded.

"That's why I only let _certain_ people borrow them," Pamela replied in a manner that some people could have described as haughty. It was just Pamela's way, though, and everyone laughed. A moment later she flashed Lily a rare smile.

Yes, Lily loved these people to death.


	3. Chapter 3

Lily never got round to asking Gemma exactly what James had said to her in Potions that morning. Any time the thought popped into her head again, she was right in the middle of a lesson and couldn't say it without other people overhearing, or else Gemma was nowhere around, and any time she had a moment alone with the girl, she forgot about it until five minutes after they separated again. It was so infuriating. She even started to write a note to herself along the side of her Charms notes, reminding her to ask on the way out of the lesson, but the girl next to her seemed overly interested in Lily's notes and she gave up and scribbled it out. She also completely forgot about finding out when James returned to Gryffindor Tower the previous night. All in all, it wasn't a very good day for her memory. She decided she must have used up all her memory capacity learning those stupid Transfiguration spells for the test, leaving no room for such trivial matters as what James Potter might be up to.

It wasn't until a few days later that something else happened that once again piqued her interest in James's night time activities. It was close to the older students' bedtime once again and Lily was sitting alone in the common room reading (and steadily ignoring the half-finished Defence Against the Dark Arts essay that was calling to her from her school bag). Feeling sleepy, she slid down on the sofa until she was practically lying down. The fire crackled merrily in front of her, making her even more tired, and she blocked out all the activity going on in the common room behind her. She glanced up lazily as the door opened, and watched as James entered with Peter and Sirius. Lily knew that Remus was patrolling tonight; he had swapped shifts with a Ravenclaw, who covered for him recently when he was ill. At ten-thirty on the dot, she stole a glance over the back of the sofa to see who was lingering in the common room when they should be in bed. She really didn't feel like chasing anyone tonight, but it was often the case that the prefects had to send the last few stragglers off to bed. As she could have easily predicted, the only students left downstairs were James and his friends.

_I'll give them five minutes_, she thought to herself. Truthfully, she just couldn't be bothered moving, herself. She really hoped that her act of leniency the other night hadn't given James the idea he could do whatever he wanted without consequence. He was in for a shock if that was the case.

A minute or two later, the portrait hole opened once again and a rather flustered looking Remus came barrelling into the room. Lily watched him in amusement, shifting on the cushion so that she could see him as he joined his friends.

"I got Ravenclaw!" he announced excitedly to the other three boys, pushing his hair off his forehead. His cheeks looked flushed – whether from excitement or from running up the tower stairs, Lily could not tell. She had even _less_ of a clue what he was going about. Got Ravenclaw _what_?

"No!" Sirius cried, his eyes widening. Remus dropped into an empty seat at the small table and Lily saw him pull something out of his pocket, but the other boys all stood up to lean over it and she couldn't see what it was. Lily was intensely curious and gripped the back of the couch as she peered over it to watch them.

"How did you manage it?" she heard one of them ask; she thought it sounded like Peter.

"Yeah, how? I mean, the Ravenclaws usually don't get themselves into trouble and if they do, they're brainy enough not to get caught!" Lily knew it was James speaking that time.

"It was actually quite easy! I can't believe we never thought of it before. I knew the fourth years had a huge essay due tomorrow for Professor McGonagall so I hung around outside the library until exactly ten o'clock and I knew, I just _knew_ some of them would be so caught up in their work they wouldn't notice the time. And yeah, I know normally I would just tell them to leave and let them go back to their common room alone, but I knew we had to get in there so I walked them back, right inside the door past that infuriating knocker, and said I had to make sure they went straight to their dormitories and didn't hang around in the common room to do any more work!"

"Moony, you're a genius!"

"Absolutely brilliant, mate!"

Lily stared at the backs of their heads as they all bent low over whatever Remus had brought with him. She strongly suspected he had stolen something from the Ravenclaw common room, but what on earth could it be to have them so excited? She had half a mind to march over there and demand to see the object so she could return it (and oh, what hell they would be in for when she reported them) but her curiosity won out and she kept quiet so she could hear more. _Besides_, she reasoned, _I might learn more if I just keep listening_. She quickly checked her watch: it was ten minutes after curfew now but it was very rare for Professor McGonagall to pop her head in to check no one was up. She trusted the prefects.

At that moment, Sirius sent a brief glance around the room and Lily ducked low, shielding herself from view behind the back of the couch. When no one said anything, she guessed that she hadn't been seen and it was okay to pop her head back up again, which she did so very slowly until she was sure none of them were looking her way. Her heart was now racing madly, which she realised was silly since she had as much right to be there as they did (in other words, no right at all, since it was now well past bedtime). The boys were all still standing over this thing, whatever it was. The only one whose face she could see was James, and he looked utterly enthralled with it.

"Look, it's really working," Remus said in a low voice and when Sirius replied, he was speaking so quietly that Lily couldn't make out a word of it. A short, hushed conversation followed, and the only words Lily could make out were 'moving', 'girls' dormitory' and 'Jennifer Timmonds', and she couldn't make any sense of it at all.

"This is great! We've got nearly everything now," James announced all of a sudden in a much louder voice, and Lily couldn't help jumping. _Oh come on, please say something that explains all of this_! Lily begged silently. All thought of reporting them had flown clean out of her head, and she really just wanted to know what it was they were collecting.

"I think we should try for Dumbledore's office next," came Sirius's voice.

"You think so? I reckon it would be easier to get into Slughorn's private stores next. How can we get into Dumbledore's office?" asked Peter.

"Come on! Last year at least one of us was called to Dumbledore's office every other week," Sirius pointed out and they all laughed.

"Obviously we've been too well-behaved this year," said Remus, and Lily could just picture the wry smile he was probably wearing. "Not one visit since we started this!"

Lily suppressed the urge to snort.

"Er, James?" said Peter suddenly in a low voice, turning back to the mysterious object hidden from Lily's view. "Look...no, look _here_."

A second later four heads turned Lily's way. With the tiniest gasp Lily dropped low on the couch, thankful that only the very top of her head had been poking up, only just enough for her to be able to see. There was silence for a few seconds. She wriggled soundlessly until she was lying down on her side and hoped the fact that they hadn't yet approached her or addressed her meant they hadn't seen her. Why on earth had they suddenly suspected that someone was here? A second later she heard whispering, though she wasn't sure she was picking up the boys' words exactly right.

"Are you sure this thing's working?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"_Where_, then?"

Footsteps, almost inaudible on the thick carpet, approached where she was hiding. Lily shut her eyes, tucked a hand under her cheek and let her hair fall across her face as though she had just dozed off there. She could sense that one or more of them was standing over her, and she wished they would hurry up and say something.

"Is she asleep?"

"Must be."

"Think she heard any of that?"

"Dunno. Probably not. Lynne says she sleeps like the dead."

"Come on, let's go upstairs before she wakes up and reports us for being up late."

Lily lay there motionless for several minutes after she heard them shuffle off, convinced one would have remained behind to see if she was faking. When she felt brave enough, she made a big show of yawning and stretching as she sat up, but it was soon apparent that she was alone.

_Idiots_, she thought to herself as she gathered her things. _If someone overheard _my_ top secret meetings I wouldn't believe they were sleeping for a second_!


End file.
