The Next Great Adventure (A Marauders Fan Fic)

Chapter Fifteen

She let out a heaving sigh and began to scribble a reply to Cassie, leaning the parchment on her knees and digging her feet into the grass to stop the swing from moving; in two weeks they would head down to Cornwall for their holiday and Lily hoped that Petunia would improve then; she had kicked up an enormous fuss about leaving, something about her results and her job – again their mother whispered to their father, “I really do wonder whether it’s this bloke she’s more angry about leaving,” and stuck to her adamant position that Petunia was coming with them to Cornwall whether she liked it or not. “Next year you can do whatever you want,” she said, “and you can come over to visit as much or as little as you want – although obviously more often than not would be nice,” she added, talking about the house in London which Petunia had told them she had lined up for herself and was preparing to take at the end of the summer. “But just this once, this last time, we want to go on holiday as a family.” Lily wouldn’t believe that the whole family was going until they arrived in Cornwall with Petunia in tow; she was scarily good at getting her way.

Sometimes she wished that her life was as easy as Cassie’s; she had visited the Jones family numerous times over the past five years and saw them almost as another set of parents; not only were they amusing but they were every bit as caring as Cassie and, much as she loved her own mother and father, it was nice to be adored by someone else as well. However the thing which she envied Cassie the most, apart from living in a wizarding household, was the fact that she was an only child. Growing up she had loved having Petunia to play with but since she had started Hogwarts her sister had been more of a curse than a blessing and sometimes she found herself wishing that she didn’t have to deal with Petunia’s constant harping.

Two weeks later all four of them clambered out of the car, relieved to have arrived in Cornwall in one piece – throughout the drive Petunia had muttered angrily under her breath before subsiding into mutinous silence and Lily had gazed out of the window and tried not to catch her eye in the reflection as she watched the undulating hills of the countryside roll away and the blackened buildings which surrounded them fall away. The small cottage where they spent some time every summer was just as it had always been, the shingled roof hanging low over the whitewashed walls and brushing the plants which clambered up the walls, wrapping themselves comfortingly around the windows. Not for the first time Lily was glad that she didn’t have to share with Petunia as she dumped her suitcase on the floor and collapsed on the bed, staring up at the familiar warped beams which criss-crossed the ceiling and from which hung a small light that cast a rosy glow over the room. Lily had always loved their cottage, their family’s second home and the house of her mother’s parents before that – secretly she wanted to live in a cottage of her own. Even with the more recent memories of strained dinners and silent walks along the beach the cottage meant happiness to Lily and she couldn’t help but remember the earlier years when she and Petunia had played in the sea, returning soaking wet and smelling of salt as the sun set, their pockets filled with delicate shells. She even loved the grains which of sand which found their way into everything from the beds and shoes to the bottoms of their pockets and their sandwiches as they walked along the shore; to Lily cottages meant happiness and she knew that, if she ever married, she would have to find someone who was prepared to live in a cottage. It was a childish belief and she knew it but somewhere along the way she had convinced herself that she would never be happy unless she lived in one.

Their holidays in Cornwall were the complete opposite to everything that they had at home, where they had a nice but functional house in a horrible neighbourhood – despite the area in which they lived being far nicer than the others it was impossible to escape the louring smog which drifted over from the factory and, whenever one left the house if they headed east, they quickly found themselves in rundown houses which were covered in soot. In the other direction the neighbourhoods were more pleasant but, since Lily no longer went to school there and since Cokeworth – the nearest large town – was also a dank and unpleasant place Lily lumped everything together as ‘not somewhere that she wanted to live’, especially now that she was accustomed to the fresh air and ancient beauty of Hogwarts. In Cornwall, no matter how hard they tried, nothing worked for more than a day. If the boiler and oven were working then the fridge would rumble ominously before turning off and, as soon as that was fixed, they would discover that the boiler had, for no discernible reason whatsoever, ceased to produce any hot water. It was at times like this, especially when Lily was left waiting around in a towel for a bath which was above the point of freezing that she fervently wished her seventeenth birthday would come quicker. However the cottage was bordered by high trees on all sides and similar houses lined the road on which it sat; the whole area was tranquil and filled with the calm which she found so comforting in Hogwarts; when Lily lay on her bed with her window cracked open slightly she could hear the soothing rush of the sea and the whisper of the waves, hissing as they crawled up the shore and they lulled her to sleep each night.

Just like every sleepy village in England there was a small concentration of witches and wizards who lived there and Lily’s initial surprise at seeing someone wandering around in robes a few years ago had quickly abated; now she was welcomed by many of them and known as a regular at the Post Office – it was here that she found herself standing at the desk and speedily scrawling a letter to Cassie. She had already been there to post a letter to Mary when a tapping at the window had alerted her to the glossy owl waiting outside. Doubtless Cassie would laugh when the letter arrived not long after her results – Lily would later find out that they had arrived at exactly the same time, presumably due to the owl with her results very nearly being mauled by an eagle – and mutter that it was, ‘just like Lily to be that organised.’

That done and two more letters dispatched to Mary and Alice asking about their results, Lily wandered back along the winding lanes and to the cottage, grinning happily as she broke out into a skip every few steps, the parchment with her results on clutched in her right hand. The sun had come out a couple of days ago after the typical miserable rain which accompanied summer in England and Lily couldn’t stop smiling; she was going back to Hogwarts in under a month, she would likely see Cassie soon, she had done fantastically in her O.W.L.s and nothing, not even Petunia, could spoil her mood that afternoon. ‘In fact,’ Lily thought to herself with an amused chuckle, ‘I could probably walk past Potter and Black being utter idiots and I would smile and wave at them.’

Both miscreants were celebrating their results too, though in rather a different way to Lily. After seeing her son’s results and Sirius’, Mrs Potter had decided that they needed to have an enormous celebratory dinner, though it was likely she had also had another motive in trying to feed Sirius up and provide him with the mother’s nurturing which he had missed out on – not that he had any shortage of either food or love while he was at the Potters’, just that morning he and James had eaten twenty pancakes between them for breakfast – and she was currently preparing about six different main meals, not to mention double the number of puddings. It was unlikely that even James and Sirius would be able to eat everything that she had planned for that evening but they would try. They, however, were currently out swimming in the river which ran through a meadow not far away from the Potters’ cottage and had taken two of James’ brooms with them so that they could play something vaguely resembling Quidditch but which, as per usual, devolved into them trying to wrestle the other off their broom like some kind of manic human Bludger.

“Congratulations Padfoot,” James said as he lounged on the bank of the river. “We did it.”

 “And to you my friend,” Sirius replied with a grin. “Life is offering itself to us on a plate.”