The Next Great Adventure (A Marauders Fan Fic)

Chapter Forty Nine

Chapter Forty Nine

Hogwarts dwindled steadily in the distance until their carriage swung round a corner and it vanished from sight, leaving them heading through the dappled green of the woods which surrounded their school. “Do you think this is going to be the last time we’ll ever see Hogwarts?” Lily asked as she peered through the window, hoping for one final glimpse of her old home.

“Probably,” Alice said. “It’ll be nice to get out and experience a larger world though.”

“Yeah,” Mary answered at the same time. “Unless you decide to come back and put yourself through the agonising punishment of becoming a teacher.”

Lily and Alice giggled together as the steep roofs of the first houses of Hogsmeade began to poke up over the trees. Their chimneys speared the sky, leaning drunkenly in various directions, but for once the village wasn’t blanketed in snow. Instead the sun smiled cheerfully down on the houses, bathing the crooked streets in warm summer. As the carriages passed the outskirts of Hogsmeade, Lily couldn’t help but think of all the time she had spent there. “It almost feels like it ought to be raining,” she said, her voice falling heavily into the silence inside the carriage.

“Mmm,” someone agreed as they all stared at the houses which squatted down on the hill. They reached the station and had piled out into the crowd before anyone said anything else.

“Right, let’s get our carriage then,” Mary said, raising her voice to compete with the cacophony which surrounded them. “Excuse me? Excuse me… Oi, get out the way!” she cried as she pushed her way through a group of boys who were shoving each other harder and harder. They turned, their retorts dying on their lips and their frowns fading as they realised she was a seventh year. Mary fixed them with the coldest glare she could muster and breezed past them, weaving in and out of the crowd until she reached the train; behind her followed her friends like a stream of ducklings chasing their mother, moving swiftly through the gaps which Mary made.

Once they were settled safely in their carriage they relaxed, stretching out on the seats and chatting happily while the crush of people hurried around outside their window. As time went by the students began to move onto the train and their laughter preceded them as they strode down the corridors. Every so often some of their friends would pass, either smiling and waving at them as they wordlessly agreed to meet up later on in the journey or when they reached King’s Cross, or they would slide the door open and linger in the doorway for a chat. Not for the first time in her life, Lily found herself thinking how unspeakably glad she was that some freak coincidence in the universe had enabled her to become part of an imaginary world. As they joked with their friends of seven years, the people they had lived with for all that time, she also realised how happy she was that the wizarding world was much smaller than the Muggle one; she was likely to bump into a lot of them without much difficulty. That was, of course, as long as everyone survived… But that was a worry for later.

Eventually their friends would say goodbye, promising to meet up as students one last time on the platform which led to the other world or to send letters every week throughout the summer. Inevitably they would all leave, resuming their search for the carriages where their trunks had been put. Even after seven years of school and multiple journeys to and from the castle, Lily still had no idea how it actually worked and was intrigued by the mystery of it. When she posed the question to the others Alice replied, “Why don’t you ask James or someone? They seem to know more about the castle than anyone else and to have amassed a heap of useless knowledge while we’ve been here.”

“Let’s be honest,” Cassie said from where she was lying, staring at the ceiling, “they’ve probably made friends with more house elves than people here and I wouldn’t put it past them to convince the house elves to magic them  down here with the trunks. It’s the kind of completely pointless thing they would do just because they can.”