Post by rachy on May 1, 2010 4:07:13 GMT -8
Title: Coming Home [2/?]
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: Lily returns to Hogwarts, and is stuck in the train compartment with her most favourite people.
---
Chapter 1: Coming Home
I slammed the boot of my parents' car shut, lugging my trunk onto a luggage trolley. Blowing a kiss to my parents as they drove away, I weaved around Muggles to get to the platform. Casually leaning against the barrier, I found myself back in a place that was like home: Platform 9 ¾. I glanced around the mass of students, looking for a blonde or a brunette. I could not spot any of my close friends. Damn. I was alone. Or maybe not. I groaned softly as I saw Sirius Black (and the swooning girls begging for his attention) weaving his way through the crowd in my direction. A tap on my shoulder made me turn. I scowled up at the tall, brown haired guy behind me, then softened my expression when I realized who it was.
"I thought you were Potter. But thank you for saving me from him and Black."
Remus laughed, coughing slightly.
"They are my friends you know, however much you don't like them."
I shook my head at him. "That would be the one thing I don't understand about you, Remus. You're a prefect and get good grades yet still you're friends with those idiots. Oh damn it, speak of the devil." I shook my head as Black came up.
"They have good qualities. You really don't know how good they actually are." Remus slapped Black on the back, giving him a one armed hug.
"Evans. What have you done with our dear mate, Prongs?" Black spoke smoothly, flicking his hair and winking at the seventh years behind me.
"Nothing, Black. Why don't you ask his fan club?"
"Sorry, I thought I was asking a member." He smirked at my angry glare. "Oh, haven't you heard? James's fan club has decided that they are going to dye their hair red, get green contacts, fake Prefect badges and an annoying little prat for a boyfriend in hope that James will get them confused with you."
I glared, quite annoyed now at Sirius. "Did they also try and buy brains? They really sound like they need them. Maybe, once they've bought them, they'll realise what idiots they are."
A shattering train whistle blew through the steam-filled the air. The train was starting. I noticed Black and Remus exchange a worried look, and wondered myself where Potter was. A thought crossed my mind. Had he finally given up liking me, and spending as much time as humanly possible in my presence? I walked away and tried to lift my trunk into the luggage compartment. I struggled with the heavy trunk, and was gently pushed aside when a guy came up beside me. He took my trunk and pushed it into the train. He turned around. It was Potter. I swore mentally. Of course it would be. He had to be my knight in shining armour, didn't he?
"Thanks."
"Anytime, Evans. Help available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But what did you have in that thing? It seemed like you had enough textbooks to fill the library." He flashed a smile that his fan club would have died for.
"My parents don't grasp the idea of using an owl to transport my books."
He nodded. "So are you coming on the train, or did I put your trunk on for nothing? It's just about to leave."
I looked at him. I hadn't noticed that the platform was emptying. I followed his run to the nearest door and jumped on as the train pulled off. Potter reached around me and slammed the door shut. His arm was unintentionally wrapped around me, and I noticed there were barely centimetres between us. I looked up, and met his eyes. His deep brown eyes were looking seriously at me, with a hint of laughter in them. After too many seconds for my comfort, I looked away, forcing myself to wake up. I wriggled out from his arm, putting half a metre between us.
"Told you we nearly missed it." Potter smirked teasingly at me.
"Yeah, thanks for my trunk. I'll see you around."
I walked off in the opposite direction from Potter. Well that was weird. He hadn't tried to ask me out. Except then again, he practically had his arm around me. I looked in the compartments as I went by, but couldn't see any of my closest friends. After walking up and down the train, I realised that my friends weren't on the train. Damn. A prickle of fear started, but I quashed it quickly. My friends weren't dead; they had either caught the Knight Bus or gone back to school early. Voldemort wouldn't attack sixteen-year-old girls.
"Evans. Evans. Oy, Evans." The speaker flicked his hair out of stormy grey eyes. "Evans. Lily Evans, you're currently distracting my view of the rest of the train, including of the gorgeous seventh year chicks in the compartment behind you. Please move, or I will be forced to jinx you, and Prongs will make sure it's the last thing I do."
"What are you on, Black?"
"You weren't paying attention. They could hear me calling your name from Hogwarts, for Merlin's sake. Where are your friends, anyway?"
I shook my head forcefully, getting rid of the thoughts of You-Know-Who. "They're not on. And the girls in the compartment behind me have boyfriends, and I would expect that even you would have enough morals to realise that that is a no go zone."
"Well, Miss Evans, if you're so lonely, why don't you join us Marauders-minus-one?"
"Now, why would I want to do that?"
"Because we're the most delightful company, full of wit, charm and excellent looks and many girls would kill to be in your position at the precise moment." He smiled at me, tossing his hair ever so lightly. God, he could act like a girl sometimes.
"You should really ask one of them then, shouldn't you?"
"Fine, Evans. Don't share our carriage. Be a stuck up snob. Sit with Clarissa Vane, with her non-stop conversation about James. See, we aren't that self-centred to talk about ourselves every single minute of every single day."
"You sound like a little kid, Black. And I am not a stuck up snob." I pushed Sirius aside and entered the Marauders carriage. I ignored Potter and Remus' puzzled looks, and sat next to Lupin.
"Merlin, Evans, there was no reason to shove me that hard."
Potter snorted, shaking his head at me. I glared at him, and he looked away, concentrating on the scenery outside the window. I looked at Remus. He looked tired, again. His eyes, usually torn between laughter and responsibility, were dark and had slight bags underneath them. His face was also in the shadow, so that may have contributed to his rundown look.
"How was your Christmas?"
He shrugged. "Alright. Got presents, ate dinner, felt sick from eating too much, saw family, gave presents. You know the drill. Yours?"
I made a face. "Dinner at home with my sister's latest boyfriend, Vernon. Very bad. She's madly in love with him, and he's awful. Needs anger management, badly. And he has these supposedly funny jokes, and they're lamer than the worst you lot come up with. And he has little rants, one of which was aimed squarely at me for not reading his mind and passing the butter."
"Nice," Potter said. "I'm eternally grateful I am an only child. Mine was ridiculously simple. Plain, boring, the usual spoilt only child scenario."
"Lucky you," Black scoffed. "The best bit of Christmas was flooing to your house for Boxing Day. But then, once I got to yours, it was bloody fantastic." He had a sour look on his face, and I felt pity for him. Some of his family were at Hogwarts, and they were awful. His little brother was all the bad bits of Sirius multiplied several times, and his cousin Narcissa was in our year, and she was foul.
"Where's Pettigrew?" I asked, realising that the annoying little git, resident guinea pig and hopeless case, was absent.
"Peter?" Black questioned. "No idea, hey Prongs, where's Wormtail?"
"Huh?" Potter had been staring out the window, absentmindedly.
"Wormtail. Little guy who wets himself every time we do something extraordinary. Worships us."
"I think he stayed at school." Potter looked thoughtful, for him. "Yeah, think he did. He was really annoyed about you bewitching all his clothes to say that he was in love with Bethany Arnold."
"Gee, I wonder why?" Remus mused sarcastically. "It wouldn't have been because, oh I don't know, it was true?"
Black looked apologetic. "It's not my fault he sleep talks."
I watched this with an amused look on my face. Remus slouched further into his seat.
"Remus, you heard about Voldemort's latest attack?" Potter spoke casually, with anger and worry. He looked at me. I looked away, anything to stop looking back at him and hearing things I probably didn't want to hear, not here, not now. The window held our unlikely reflections, a girl with dark red hair wearing a matching beanie and scarf, a tired guy slouching in his seat, with dark brown hair and a quick smile, to the other side where two good looking guys sat. Potter, with his black hair all over the place, his dark framed glasses obscuring his laughing brown eyes, and Black, his dark hair elegantly swept a smirking grin and wandering grey eyes. A rattling in the corridor drew my attention to the sliding carriage door, and the trolley witch appeared. She looked older, and fear had drawn worried lines in her face,
"Sorry I'm late, dears, would you like anything from the trolley?" I bought some Chocolate Frogs, and the others bought food as well. She walked off, pushing the trolley wearily. I turned my ears back to the conversation, and discovered they were still talking about Voldemort's latest attack.
"Prongs, remember. Your dad would go mental if he heard you. It's You-Know-Who," Black said.
"Padfoot, do you really think I care anymore? He murdered Louisa in cold blood, didn't care that she was pureblood, didn't care that while she was duelling him, she was grieving the loss of a hundred Muggles that had been slaughtered around her. My dad can go mental. I don't care. I'll call him what I want, when I want. If Voldemort gets annoyed about that, he can pick on me instead of innocent people. I'd go down fighting just to prove a point. Don't you guys get it? You can either fight him and die or not fight, hide away, and still die. That's what it comes down to now. Either way, you're still going to leave the people you love behind. You're going to have to watch them die, and no matter what happens you'll still die too. He doesn't care about that; he revels in watching you suffer. I'm going to fight; it's better than just waiting for him to come find me because I don't support him."
Potter shook his head angrily, making his unruly hair ruffle and look messier then before. He turned his face away towards the window and was silent, settling back into the seat. The rest of the compartment was dead silent, and I knew we were all absorbing what Potter had said. I could tell that he wasn't just speaking from grief for the loss of his cousin, but that he had meant every word he'd said about fighting. I opened my mouth to say something, anything. To tell James that I thought he was right, that I felt the same. To reassure him that it wouldn't be just him fighting out there, that others wanted to stop it too. I wanted to tell him that I'd help, if he wanted me to, but it wasn't the time, wasn't my place to say that. I needed to tell him that he shouldn't go by himself. It was too dangerous and he'd be giving his life away, and I didn't want that to happen at all. That would sound like I cared, though. And although I did care if he lived or died, the same way as I cared if Black or Remus did, it would sound too much like I was in love with him, which of course I wasn't. The fact that I didn't love him didn't stop me from caring. If he died, it would be the end, really. The deaths weren't so far away. They weren't really people I didn't know. But how could I tell him I cared for his life, that I really did hope he didn't die? I couldn't tell him that. Not now, anyway.
I closed my mouth, and gazed out the window. I tried to convince myself that it was just the rain pouring outside that was obscuring my view, but when a tear slid down my cheek I couldn't pretend any longer. I couldn't pretend that I was feeling sorrow, and pity and grief for Potter and his family. I couldn't pretend that I wasn't worried about the future, who's death would be proclaimed in the Daily Prophet next. I couldn't pretend that I wasn't worried about who would die next, and whether it would be any of the guys that I was sharing this compartment with who were as close to me as family, even though I didn't really like two of them. It wasn't fair that good people gave up their lives while evil people got away with murder. There had to be something that could be done.
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: Lily returns to Hogwarts, and is stuck in the train compartment with her most favourite people.
---
Chapter 1: Coming Home
I slammed the boot of my parents' car shut, lugging my trunk onto a luggage trolley. Blowing a kiss to my parents as they drove away, I weaved around Muggles to get to the platform. Casually leaning against the barrier, I found myself back in a place that was like home: Platform 9 ¾. I glanced around the mass of students, looking for a blonde or a brunette. I could not spot any of my close friends. Damn. I was alone. Or maybe not. I groaned softly as I saw Sirius Black (and the swooning girls begging for his attention) weaving his way through the crowd in my direction. A tap on my shoulder made me turn. I scowled up at the tall, brown haired guy behind me, then softened my expression when I realized who it was.
"I thought you were Potter. But thank you for saving me from him and Black."
Remus laughed, coughing slightly.
"They are my friends you know, however much you don't like them."
I shook my head at him. "That would be the one thing I don't understand about you, Remus. You're a prefect and get good grades yet still you're friends with those idiots. Oh damn it, speak of the devil." I shook my head as Black came up.
"They have good qualities. You really don't know how good they actually are." Remus slapped Black on the back, giving him a one armed hug.
"Evans. What have you done with our dear mate, Prongs?" Black spoke smoothly, flicking his hair and winking at the seventh years behind me.
"Nothing, Black. Why don't you ask his fan club?"
"Sorry, I thought I was asking a member." He smirked at my angry glare. "Oh, haven't you heard? James's fan club has decided that they are going to dye their hair red, get green contacts, fake Prefect badges and an annoying little prat for a boyfriend in hope that James will get them confused with you."
I glared, quite annoyed now at Sirius. "Did they also try and buy brains? They really sound like they need them. Maybe, once they've bought them, they'll realise what idiots they are."
A shattering train whistle blew through the steam-filled the air. The train was starting. I noticed Black and Remus exchange a worried look, and wondered myself where Potter was. A thought crossed my mind. Had he finally given up liking me, and spending as much time as humanly possible in my presence? I walked away and tried to lift my trunk into the luggage compartment. I struggled with the heavy trunk, and was gently pushed aside when a guy came up beside me. He took my trunk and pushed it into the train. He turned around. It was Potter. I swore mentally. Of course it would be. He had to be my knight in shining armour, didn't he?
"Thanks."
"Anytime, Evans. Help available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But what did you have in that thing? It seemed like you had enough textbooks to fill the library." He flashed a smile that his fan club would have died for.
"My parents don't grasp the idea of using an owl to transport my books."
He nodded. "So are you coming on the train, or did I put your trunk on for nothing? It's just about to leave."
I looked at him. I hadn't noticed that the platform was emptying. I followed his run to the nearest door and jumped on as the train pulled off. Potter reached around me and slammed the door shut. His arm was unintentionally wrapped around me, and I noticed there were barely centimetres between us. I looked up, and met his eyes. His deep brown eyes were looking seriously at me, with a hint of laughter in them. After too many seconds for my comfort, I looked away, forcing myself to wake up. I wriggled out from his arm, putting half a metre between us.
"Told you we nearly missed it." Potter smirked teasingly at me.
"Yeah, thanks for my trunk. I'll see you around."
I walked off in the opposite direction from Potter. Well that was weird. He hadn't tried to ask me out. Except then again, he practically had his arm around me. I looked in the compartments as I went by, but couldn't see any of my closest friends. After walking up and down the train, I realised that my friends weren't on the train. Damn. A prickle of fear started, but I quashed it quickly. My friends weren't dead; they had either caught the Knight Bus or gone back to school early. Voldemort wouldn't attack sixteen-year-old girls.
"Evans. Evans. Oy, Evans." The speaker flicked his hair out of stormy grey eyes. "Evans. Lily Evans, you're currently distracting my view of the rest of the train, including of the gorgeous seventh year chicks in the compartment behind you. Please move, or I will be forced to jinx you, and Prongs will make sure it's the last thing I do."
"What are you on, Black?"
"You weren't paying attention. They could hear me calling your name from Hogwarts, for Merlin's sake. Where are your friends, anyway?"
I shook my head forcefully, getting rid of the thoughts of You-Know-Who. "They're not on. And the girls in the compartment behind me have boyfriends, and I would expect that even you would have enough morals to realise that that is a no go zone."
"Well, Miss Evans, if you're so lonely, why don't you join us Marauders-minus-one?"
"Now, why would I want to do that?"
"Because we're the most delightful company, full of wit, charm and excellent looks and many girls would kill to be in your position at the precise moment." He smiled at me, tossing his hair ever so lightly. God, he could act like a girl sometimes.
"You should really ask one of them then, shouldn't you?"
"Fine, Evans. Don't share our carriage. Be a stuck up snob. Sit with Clarissa Vane, with her non-stop conversation about James. See, we aren't that self-centred to talk about ourselves every single minute of every single day."
"You sound like a little kid, Black. And I am not a stuck up snob." I pushed Sirius aside and entered the Marauders carriage. I ignored Potter and Remus' puzzled looks, and sat next to Lupin.
"Merlin, Evans, there was no reason to shove me that hard."
Potter snorted, shaking his head at me. I glared at him, and he looked away, concentrating on the scenery outside the window. I looked at Remus. He looked tired, again. His eyes, usually torn between laughter and responsibility, were dark and had slight bags underneath them. His face was also in the shadow, so that may have contributed to his rundown look.
"How was your Christmas?"
He shrugged. "Alright. Got presents, ate dinner, felt sick from eating too much, saw family, gave presents. You know the drill. Yours?"
I made a face. "Dinner at home with my sister's latest boyfriend, Vernon. Very bad. She's madly in love with him, and he's awful. Needs anger management, badly. And he has these supposedly funny jokes, and they're lamer than the worst you lot come up with. And he has little rants, one of which was aimed squarely at me for not reading his mind and passing the butter."
"Nice," Potter said. "I'm eternally grateful I am an only child. Mine was ridiculously simple. Plain, boring, the usual spoilt only child scenario."
"Lucky you," Black scoffed. "The best bit of Christmas was flooing to your house for Boxing Day. But then, once I got to yours, it was bloody fantastic." He had a sour look on his face, and I felt pity for him. Some of his family were at Hogwarts, and they were awful. His little brother was all the bad bits of Sirius multiplied several times, and his cousin Narcissa was in our year, and she was foul.
"Where's Pettigrew?" I asked, realising that the annoying little git, resident guinea pig and hopeless case, was absent.
"Peter?" Black questioned. "No idea, hey Prongs, where's Wormtail?"
"Huh?" Potter had been staring out the window, absentmindedly.
"Wormtail. Little guy who wets himself every time we do something extraordinary. Worships us."
"I think he stayed at school." Potter looked thoughtful, for him. "Yeah, think he did. He was really annoyed about you bewitching all his clothes to say that he was in love with Bethany Arnold."
"Gee, I wonder why?" Remus mused sarcastically. "It wouldn't have been because, oh I don't know, it was true?"
Black looked apologetic. "It's not my fault he sleep talks."
I watched this with an amused look on my face. Remus slouched further into his seat.
"Remus, you heard about Voldemort's latest attack?" Potter spoke casually, with anger and worry. He looked at me. I looked away, anything to stop looking back at him and hearing things I probably didn't want to hear, not here, not now. The window held our unlikely reflections, a girl with dark red hair wearing a matching beanie and scarf, a tired guy slouching in his seat, with dark brown hair and a quick smile, to the other side where two good looking guys sat. Potter, with his black hair all over the place, his dark framed glasses obscuring his laughing brown eyes, and Black, his dark hair elegantly swept a smirking grin and wandering grey eyes. A rattling in the corridor drew my attention to the sliding carriage door, and the trolley witch appeared. She looked older, and fear had drawn worried lines in her face,
"Sorry I'm late, dears, would you like anything from the trolley?" I bought some Chocolate Frogs, and the others bought food as well. She walked off, pushing the trolley wearily. I turned my ears back to the conversation, and discovered they were still talking about Voldemort's latest attack.
"Prongs, remember. Your dad would go mental if he heard you. It's You-Know-Who," Black said.
"Padfoot, do you really think I care anymore? He murdered Louisa in cold blood, didn't care that she was pureblood, didn't care that while she was duelling him, she was grieving the loss of a hundred Muggles that had been slaughtered around her. My dad can go mental. I don't care. I'll call him what I want, when I want. If Voldemort gets annoyed about that, he can pick on me instead of innocent people. I'd go down fighting just to prove a point. Don't you guys get it? You can either fight him and die or not fight, hide away, and still die. That's what it comes down to now. Either way, you're still going to leave the people you love behind. You're going to have to watch them die, and no matter what happens you'll still die too. He doesn't care about that; he revels in watching you suffer. I'm going to fight; it's better than just waiting for him to come find me because I don't support him."
Potter shook his head angrily, making his unruly hair ruffle and look messier then before. He turned his face away towards the window and was silent, settling back into the seat. The rest of the compartment was dead silent, and I knew we were all absorbing what Potter had said. I could tell that he wasn't just speaking from grief for the loss of his cousin, but that he had meant every word he'd said about fighting. I opened my mouth to say something, anything. To tell James that I thought he was right, that I felt the same. To reassure him that it wouldn't be just him fighting out there, that others wanted to stop it too. I wanted to tell him that I'd help, if he wanted me to, but it wasn't the time, wasn't my place to say that. I needed to tell him that he shouldn't go by himself. It was too dangerous and he'd be giving his life away, and I didn't want that to happen at all. That would sound like I cared, though. And although I did care if he lived or died, the same way as I cared if Black or Remus did, it would sound too much like I was in love with him, which of course I wasn't. The fact that I didn't love him didn't stop me from caring. If he died, it would be the end, really. The deaths weren't so far away. They weren't really people I didn't know. But how could I tell him I cared for his life, that I really did hope he didn't die? I couldn't tell him that. Not now, anyway.
I closed my mouth, and gazed out the window. I tried to convince myself that it was just the rain pouring outside that was obscuring my view, but when a tear slid down my cheek I couldn't pretend any longer. I couldn't pretend that I was feeling sorrow, and pity and grief for Potter and his family. I couldn't pretend that I wasn't worried about the future, who's death would be proclaimed in the Daily Prophet next. I couldn't pretend that I wasn't worried about who would die next, and whether it would be any of the guys that I was sharing this compartment with who were as close to me as family, even though I didn't really like two of them. It wasn't fair that good people gave up their lives while evil people got away with murder. There had to be something that could be done.