The Next Great Adventure (A Marauders Fan Fic)

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Three

Lily was just about to go to sleep when Cassie collapsed in the bed next to her. “How was it?” she asked, knowing that Cassie had just seen Rob.

“Awful,” she muttered. “I tell you, he’s kind of nice and all but since I started going out with him… I just can’t stand him. He’s so… possessive.”

Lily allowed herself a small smile as Alice threw a pillow at Cassie and said, “I do think I can say ‘I told you so’ now!”

“Maybe you should just dump him,” Lily suggested. “I thought that you said you could never be bothered with relationships.”

“Exactly,” she replied as she threw herself back on her pillows. “I’m so bored of him! Is that bad? He’s not even nice. Well, I mean he is but he has so many other flaws that they don’t really cancel each other out.”

“Dump him Cass,” Mary mumbled from around her toothbrush. “It’s way more effort than he’s worth. Besides, Potter’s going to want you out on the Quidditch pitch pretty much every day now.”

“Oh god,” Cassie sighed, “Quidditch. I can’t be bothered with this right now.”

The next morning Lily trudged down to Herbology, her robes dragging in the snow which was still piling up on the grounds. She shivered and clutched them tighter around herself with the one hand which wasn’t carrying her books, burying herself in her scarf. “I don’t understand why it’s still so cold,” she moaned to Alice as they picked their way over the hills, “it’s so unnecessary.”

Suddenly the air was knocked out of her by something which smacked into her back, throwing her forwards and into the snow; Lily picked herself up and dusted herself off, desperately trying to get all of the now rapidly melting snow out of her sleeves and neckline. On top of the freezing snow that the front of her robes had been soaked with she could feel a large sodden spot on her back where the offending snowball had hit her. “Potter!” she shouted, her voice carrying magnificently across the empty grounds. Once she was vaguely snowless she span around violently, preparing to confront the culprit. Behind them, closer to the castle, she could see Sirius and Peter laughing while snowballs flew down the hill, towards her and Alice but also towards James, who was running at full pelt towards them. As she watched him James leapt over a hummock and landed face first in the snow; he surfaced moments later with snow dripping down his glasses and white clumps sticking to the tufts of his hair; Lily barely had a chance to sigh before he was standing in front of her. “How did I know it would be you Potter?” she asked.

“Lucky guess,” he chanced. “I’m really sorry Evans, I wasn’t aiming for you, I just… overshot it a bit.”

“Whatever.”

He wiped the snow from his glasses with his sleeve and said, “I really am sorry.”

“Yeah well I really am cold now. And my stuff’s all wet. I don’t even have the energy to yell at you.”

“Oh you wouldn’t yell at me, would you Evans?” he pouted. Lily had half a mind to tell him that he looked ridiculous but she just restrained herself.

“I would if I hadn’t just been dumped in the snow,” she spat, crossing her arms and shivering.

“Here, look,” he said as he waved his wand at her, drying her off and warming her up. He stooped down and picked her books up, drying them all off too before he handed them to her. “Don’t want you to be cold or get ill, do we?”

“I could have done that myself,” Lily muttered stubbornly as James rummaged around in his robes for something. She could have sworn that she saw a hint of a smile on James’ face at that but it vanished as soon as she looked at him.