The Girl with the Emerald Eyes [Jily]

Chapter 17- A Not-So-Warm Welcome Back

Winter break eventually came to an end, and the Hogwarts Students were forced to return to their school. Lily, however, was looking forward to escaping Petunia and her dreadful boyfriend. Since Petunia didn't want Lily to scare her soon-to-be-fiance away with Lily's "freaky powers", Lily was locked in her room with hardly any contact to the outside world. 

With her trunks packed and wand carefully stowed away, Lily prepared for her penultimate ride on the Hogwarts Express. She met with Marlene and Alice on Platform 9¾, and the trio exchanged stories of what they did over winter break. 

Obviously, the hot topic was the Potter's party, which almost half the school attended. Apparently, Mr. and Mrs. Potter's motto was that a friend of James is a friend of ours, which led to a majority of the Hogwarts students going to the event. 

James, of course, had been saving a compartment for Lily and her friends when the arrived; the compartment had been rigged with listening ears so that the boys could know if the girls talked about them (It was Sirius' idea). He and Sirius had pulled off their "Winter Break Farewell Feast Prank" quite well, which had only boosted their egos. 

"Why hello, Lily! Looking as lovely as usual." James waved and shot a goofy grin at Lily from half-way across the platform. 

"Not to shabby yourself, you bloody idiot." Lily called back and winked at him, which only caused James to blush.

The train ride to Hogwarts was very uneventful, mostly because Lily had to patrol the corridors with some random 5th year Ravenclaw. She hardly saw her friends, and she thoroughly pitied herself. 

"I'm spending one of my last times on the train with this random person?" Lily shot an exasperated look at the short boy next to her. 

Arthur, as he had introduced himself, was reading a book and walking without looking. They passed a compartment with a fight going on, and Arthur didn't blink and eye at it but kept walking. Of course, Lily broke up the soon-to-be fist fight between two Second Years. 

Suddenly, the train screeched to a halt, throwing all of its inhabitants in very awkward positions on the floor. Silence reigned for a few moments, and then a blood curdling scream shook the train. Footsteps thumped toward the first compartment group closest to the front of the train, but Lily shot a spell and forced the students from that compartment group out and toward the back. 

Someone was banging at the now-locked door. Thump. Thump. 

Lily immediately sprinted through the corridors, using spells to lock and protect the students within them. Fleeing from the sound of footsteps, she sprinted forward.

"One more row of compartments. Just one more." She told herself after running past the one filled with her friends. 

Without thinking, she was already jogging to the end of the train. She heard footsteps behind her, and spun around, wand at the ready. The tip of her willow wand was pointed at a boy. James. She lowered it and grinned, asking him to not scare her like that.

Then she realized her mistake. She had locked James' compartment a while back with a spell she had made herself. It was possible that James had cracked the code (it was a fairly simple spell), but she wasn't taking any chances. 

Her fist flew at his jaw bone, and he collapsed to the floor, not expecting the hit. 

"What the bloody heck was that for?" He screeched, and Lily's eyes widened. 

Not caring if that boy was really James, she waved her wand to temporarily paralyze him and dragged him into a small cupboard used to store extra luggage.