The Marauders: Year One | #Wattys2016

Departures and Lies

"I'll see you on the train," Sirius said.

James nodded, "Same compartment as always," he confirmed, then Madam Pomfrey chased him out of the hospital wing, all a dither.

Lily Evans was standing outside, looking concerned. "Is Sirius alright?" she asked, falling into stride beside James as he walked down the corridor.

"Spiffing," James answered with a sigh, annoyed by her presence because she was distracting his thoughts from trying to figure out what could've happened to Sirius's hand. He hoped it hadn't been anything that could've been avoided if he, James, had only woken up when Sirius tried to stir him. He felt frustrated with himself and, therefore, with Lily's presence as well.

She trotted to keep up with him, "What happened to him?"

"Dunno, Pomfrey kicked me out before we could really talk much on what happened," James replied, "You might've noticed I wasn't in there very long?"

"Well, yes," Lily replied, surprised at the attitude of his voice. "But --"

"It's his hand," James said, shrugging, "He's done something to his hand. It's all wrapped in bandages. Pomfrey had a bottle of something or other she was about to use on him, so I'm sure she'll have him all mended up shortly enough. He said he'd be on the train later and she didn't correct him, so..." James and Lily had paused at the mouth of the stairs. "Anyways, have a good breakfast," James said, and he jumped onto the moving staircase and dashed off toward the tower before she could ask him anything else.

Lily sighed and made her way back downstairs, just as frustrated with James as he'd been with himself and, as a result, her. She thought briefly of going back to the hospital wing and talking Madam Pomfrey into letting her keep Sirius some company - mainly so she could find out what really happened - but she decided it was best not to try and show James up, and so she went back down to breakfast. Besides, she thought on her way down, she could ask Remus what was going on with Sirius Black.

But Remus wasn't at the breakfast table.

Peter Pettigrew was just getting up from the table, but he was twitchy as ever and Lily knew if she started a conversation with him he would stay and stare at her the way he sometimes tended to do, and it always gave her a bit of the creeps when he would do that - something about the way he did it made her very uncomfortable - so she let him go without comment.

She lingered in the Great Hall, hoping to see Remus, but he never came and she was forced to believe he must've already eaten and returned to Gryffindor common room, so she started back up to the tower. Students were filling up the entrance hall, gathering to have their things taken down to Hogsmeade Station and on home for the holidays. Lily watched from the top of the stairs for a moment as Filch jostled his way to the front of the hall and let the students through one by one, checking them off a long list as they went. She felt funny not being one of the students down below, but she was staying at Hogwarts this holiday.

Mr. and Mrs. Evans had been most disappointed by her letter, she knew, but she doubted Petunia had been upset at all, and it had really been Petunia who had caused Lily to make the decision about it. Ever since she'd written home about getting on the Quidditch team, every letter she'd received had been simply gushing on about it and she knew that being there would only make that worse. Remembering Petunia's aversion over the summer to her parents' constant raving about Lily and magic and all that, she decided to give Petunia the best Christmas-slash-Birthday present she could think of: Not having to deal with Lily's presence until Summer. Then Petunia would simply have to deal with it.

She just hoped the holiday wouldn't prove to be an awful, lonely experience at Hogwarts.

There did seem to be a lot more students spending the holiday at the castle thing year, though, she noticed, passing a couple Ravenclaws in the hall as she walked back to Gryffindor tower. She knew of three other Gryffindor girls who were staying - one of them being Ali Prewitt, who said that her family had insisted she stay because London wasn't nearly as safe lately as Hogwarts was.