Chapter 17

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Chapter 17

     The halls were dark and silent, lit only by torches hung in brackets every few feet. Albus crept through the shadows, purposefully keeping to the darker parts of the hallway. He'd already almost been caught by a Slytherin prefect, and then his whole plan would've been for naught.

     It was almost Christmas vacation, and it was the only chance he'd have to test his theory. He'd been debating with himself – back and forth, around and around – for nearly a month, running the idea through his head. Would it work? Could it work?

     In short, the looming vacation and holidays that would potentially be spent without his sister were the things that had finally prompted him to act. If he succeeded, his sister would be home in time for Christmas. If he failed... he wasn't sure what he would do.

     Pulling off the invisibility cloak (He'd nicked it from his dad after his parents had informed him that he was to go back to school for the last two weeks of term. Something about catching up on schoolwork, like that was going to happen in the present climate), Albus stood before the blank wall. He knew from James and Teddy that Aurors had guarded the entrance at first – on his dad's orders – in the hope that Lily would come back the same way she had supposedly gone. After a month of waiting however, the Aurors had decided to devote the majority of their force to the search while the rest of them worked on more minor problems.

     Albus sighed and examined the wall as he had countless times before. Since he had returned to the school, he'd spent numerous after-hours hours leaning against the wall next to the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, staring at the wall, willing a door to appear, praying that the room would open or show him an answer to where his sister was. Sometimes he would fall asleep, only to be woken up by a teacher or ghost doing late night patrols of the castle and sent back to his dormitory, accompanied with a sympathetic, worried expression, but most times he would stay awake, keeping a silent vigil over the hallway, simply thinking.

     It was during those hours that his plan had come to him – slowly at first, then all at once. He wasn't sure how it had started to form in his mind, but the ideas had come as he sat staring at the wall. And now he was ready. He just wasn't sure if he wanted to follow through.

     Deciding sooner was better (at least if it didn't work he'd be able to try again, or get a few nightmare-filled hours of sleep), he stood up and went to one end of the hall, then turned back around. He took a deep breath. He walked back and forth across the spot two more times and, pausing where he knew the door would appear (if it would indeed be appearing), gathered himself for a moment before lifting his eyes to the side of the corridor.

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Lily Potter II POV

     I sat by the window on the Hogwarts Express, holding the compartment for my friends while they spent some time saying goodbye to their friends in other years. The reason I was not with them was because, even after the two-ish months I had been in 1976 I had no one to wish a Happy Christmas to other than my roommates, whom I would be making the journey back to King's Cross with and the four Marauders, who would all be spending the holidays at the Potter's house. I really didn't have many friends – especially compared to back home – and that was fine with me. Keeping my secret just between the six of us was already difficult, especially with the large quantity of time the two more boisterous Marauders spent talking about me or asking me questions, even though I had to admit they had toned it down a bit since I'd asked them to cut it out.

     Even after ten weeks in the past, the sheer amount of differences between my life in the twenty-first century and this life with my grandparents was overwhelming. Lessons were the same for the most part, but people acted differently, spoke differently and behaved differently all around me. "Cool" meant something other than what I had learned it to be growing up, as did many other words. The most daunting difference however, was the simple fact that it was the past – it was so similar to my life and yet so completely different at the same time.

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