The Next Great Adventure (A Marauders Fan Fic)

Chapter Thirty Six

Chapter Thirty Six

Lily dragged herself out of bed the next morning with a groan, barely looking at her clothes as she picked them up from where she’d left them in a pile on the floor; by the time she stumbled into the Great Hall she had woken up and her eyes were in focus again with the post-sleep fuzziness that lingered around the edges having disappeared as she plodded down the fourth flight of stairs. She cringed as the noise from the Great Hall assaulted her ears and staggered towards the Gryffindor table; Lily collapsed into a seat beside Alice, ran her hands through her hair and poured herself a mug of tea large enough to drown herself in. Her friends said nothing as she poured the contents of the sugar bowl into it and swallowed a large gulp before resting her head in her hands.

“Tired, Lily?” Cassie said as she stirred her hot chocolate.

“I’m exhausted,” she moaned, cradling her tea in her hands and catching Mary’s sympathetic smile. “How was your patrol?” she asked.

“It was alright,” she managed to groan.

“How was James?” Alice pressed with a knowing grin.

Lily shrugged noncommittally and said, “He was alright,” before burying herself in her tea again. The others exchanged glances and smiled at each other; Alice poured herself another bowl of cereal as she said, “Did we have any homework due in for Defence Against the Dark Arts?”

They settled down into a conversation about what was due today for the last few minutes of breakfast until the pupils started to drift back to their houses to grab their books and get ready for first lesson.

The Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom still retained vestiges of the autumnal sun which floated in through the slanted windows and warmed various combinations of students’ shoulders and backs while they wrote notes on the control of harmful spells through the centuries. “It’s not very interesting, I know,” Professor Beazley was saying, her emerald robes catching the sunlight as she paced in front of the blackboard, “but unfortunately you’re probably going to have to write an essay on this and how it has impacted the governing of communities of wizards over the years; I’ll tell you this now, you’ve got to write one essay worth twenty five marks in the summer and, if you learn this well, you’ll be thanking every lucky star that you can count from here to Pluto if this comes up, because the alternative is usually an essay on the discipline of mind required when duelling. Even Alastor Moody himself would be hard pressed to come up with more than ten points on that by himself. This, however, has so many consequences you could get yourself fifty marks and only just have brushed the surface.” Her voice continued on in the background, a comforting lullaby to those in the class who had given up and begun to daydream. Lily’s head was bent over her notes as she condensed Beazley’s speech down when something hit her on the back of the head. Looking round surreptitiously in case Beazley should see her she caught the eye of James, who was sitting in the row behind her; as Beazley turned back to the board for a moment to illustrate something he mimed casting a spell and she shook her head in confusion. At that moment Professor Beazley faced the class again and both Lily and James’ heads instantly bent over their notes in mock studiousness.

‘Is this alright?’ The messy handwriting which Lily recognised from the few notes he had passed her appeared scrawled in one corner of her parchment.

‘Yeah I guess… What’s so important that you felt the need to drag me away from the founding of Azkaban?’ she wrote back.

‘I was just wondering about this… Hogsmeade thing. Is it still on?’

‘If you don’t want to go with me then you don’t have to.’ Lily had barely got halfway through her sentence when a hurried reply appeared. ‘Of course I want to! I just thought you might have reconsidered in the cold light of day.’