The Next Great Adventure (A Marauders Fan Fic)

Chapter Forty One

Chapter Forty One

James wasn’t exactly good at keeping his new relationship under wraps and soon the whole school knew about him and Lily; it wasn’t that he was shouting it from every tower in the castle but when he held her hand as they walked through the corridors and wrapped his arms around her at mealtimes it took a very oblivious person not to notice.

Whispers followed Lily through the corridors but, for the most part, they never erupted into outright snide comments; if they did then they were confined to the small hushed circles of girls which loitered in the corridors and common rooms and thus Lily, protected twofold - both through her own popularity and her relationship with James - never heard anything about it; not even the cruellest and most envious girl would risk damaging her chances with James by insulting Lily, either to his face or to hers, and many of them had heard of the girl he kicked out of the Gryffindor party - after that it hadn’t taken long for the knowledge that she had insulted Lily prior to that to spread and for anyone with designs on him to take heed. By virtue of her friendship with Cassie and Cassie’s relationship with Sirius Lily’s immunity was strengthened even more - their group of friends was almost completely integrated into the Marauders and, whilst none of them noticed or cared, others did and it made the girls untouchable as well, no matter how jealous people were of them. It didn’t matter that Alice was going out with Frank Longbottom because he too was friends with the four boys and so was she; anything done to Alice, any whispered insult about Lily or Cassie, would find its way back to all of the Gryffindor seventh years.

The only person who was prepared to confront them about this was Snape but he, after his disastrous attempt to stop them in Hogsmeade, was wary of this; the story of James asking Lily out reached even his ears and the discovery that she had agreed to be Potter’s girlfriend after he had specifically told her not to in The Three Broomsticks made it clear to him that Lily wanted nothing to do with him; he liked to think that he had accepted it years ago but this final development had effectively quashed the last little ember of hope which had been burning in his heart. Everywhere he went he saw them laughing together, enormous smiles plastered on their faces as they embraced and kissed, saw them sitting side by side and working, enjoying just being near each other, saw Lily being disgustingly friendly towards people she had professed to hate, saw her joking with Black and chatting to Lupin and Pettigrew; he saw of all this and the hatred for James Potter which he held inside him was nurtured by the coldness of the Slytherin common room where he retreated to spend most of his time.

Lily, of course, couldn’t care less; she was blissfully happy.

One morning, during one of her free periods she was working by the fire, taking advantage of Alice’s disruptive influence being removed - she had been forced to go to the library to check out some books for an essay - and had just finished an essay for Herbology when Cassie burst into the common room and raced upstairs to their dorm. Without thinking about it, Lily chased after her, leaving her parchment, textbooks and quill scattered around the sofa. “Cassie?” she called cautiously when she got up to the dorm. “Are you okay?”

“No.” Lily could barely make out the reply from the pillow under which Cassie had buried her head.

“Why not?”

“Sirius is refusing to tell me anything about what he and the others get up to and I know I should be fine with it - they’re boys after all - but I just… I’m not Lil, I want to know what’s going on,” she babbled.

“Oh… Well I’m sure it’s nothing important Cass,” she replied. “Do you want me to try and it sort it out or…?”

“No it’s okay thanks Lil,” she mumbled, “I just wish Sirius would trust me.”