The Next Great Adventure (A Marauders Fan Fic)

Chapter Sixty Two

Chapter Sixty Two

James returned a couple of days later, sporting a couple of cuts that he said he had picked up when he fell into a ditch but otherwise intact; Lily felt her anxiety evaporate when she heard him bang his head, swear and then shout her name. She ran down the stairs and all but threw herself at him, knocking the air out of his lungs.

“What’s this?” he asked as he swung her round, nearly knocking her into the wall as he did so. “Lily Evans is actually glad to see James Potter? Well you’re lucky I’m in such peak physical condition after years of Quidditch training, or I might not have caught you.”

“You know what,” she said thoughtfully, “I just realised that I’m not that glad to see you after all.”

The days were beginning to lengthen when Dumbledore called the next meeting of the Order. Lily spent her days watching the sunlight spread across the garden; when she was reading in the afternoon, stray shafts would illuminate her face, blinding her and transmuting her hair into a fiery halo.

Cassie, Mary and Alice were with her in her sitting room, chatting and drinking tea before they left for London. They had been there all afternoon, and as the sky outside clouded over, they began to arrange themselves and prepare to leave.

“Well I suppose,” said Alice, “that I will see you all later.”

“Be careful,” Mary said, as they hugged goodbye. Alice scoffed, and replied, “Shouldn’t it be me saying that? You’re the ones who are going off to join an underground resistance group and fight You-Know-Who.” She said it lightly, but her eyes betrayed her true thoughts.

“Don’t worry about us Alice,” Cassie said. “We’ll be fine. We’ll be better than fine, we’ll be wonderful.” Alice rolled her eyes but Mary did not look convinced, and as they put their coats on, she frowned, eyeing them all up.

Lily locked the house behind them, and they walked down the path arm in arm. Dusk had fallen: the sky was silver behind the rooftops of the village’s houses and a chill had set in. When they reached the edge of the village, Alice hugged them all again and Disapparated; at the same time the three others vanished, and reappeared on three different streets. Lily and Cassie were near the Order’s headquarters, and Mary was five minutes’ walk from it. Lily strode down the corridor and, as she sat down beside James and pecked him on the cheek, she felt herself begin to defrost.

They were not, however, destined to sit inside in the warmth. Instead, when everyone had arrived at Headquarters, they joined a group of people around one of various Portkeys. James, Sirius and Peter stood by a hairbrush, and Cassie and Lily joined five other people by an old boot and were whipped away to the outskirts of a small village.

As soon as they materialised on the road they were besieged by a number of curses. One of them hit Lily on her upper arm, tearing the fabric of her clothes and carving an inch wide sliver of flesh off. She clutched her arm, feeling blood soak her hand, as she looked around desperately, trying to work out what was happening. The lights of the village shone softly out into the darkness in the distance, but the Order members were surrounded by the coloured flashes of spells. Somehow, they had been deposited in the middle of a fight and, as she peered into the darkness, dodging the spells which came at her, she bumped into Sirius.

“Ambush,” he said, firing various spells off at shadowy figures. “They’re everywhere and they knew we were coming.”

“How?” she exclaimed as Sirius twirled out of the way of a violently green curse.

“I don’t know,” he replied, “but I saw Benjy and Jacques and they said that the Death Eaters had attacked them as soon as they arrived with the first Portkey.” Sirius vanished amongst the crowd and Lily was left alone. As the battle progressed, various people flashed in and out of her line of sight, and she resorted to flinging spells in any and every direction. She could barely tell the difference between the Death Eaters and the Order members - in the darkness, robes were indistinguishable from the Death Eaters’ cloaks, and only the glint of their masks gave Lily any hint as to who was who.