So Lily got her third wand of the school year, and the three friends served their detentions dutifully. For about a week, they were quite popular within the Gryffindor common room. Everybody thought they’d saved James’s life.
Lily never asked James why he hadn’t told everybody what had really happened in the dungeons. It was so…nice of him. Lily was grateful to him, but also confused. Why would he give up this perfect opportunity to gloat in Lily’s face?
Whatever the reason for James’s kindness, it had been short-lived. After a week of taunts from other boys about having his butt saved by three girls, he was being his old, arrogant self again. In a strange way this comforted Lily. At least now she didn’t have any annoying thoughts about a different side of James.
The following weeks were relatively uneventful for Lily. November came and went, bringing with it cold winds, frequent rainstorms, and a few more Quidditch matches. Lily, Alex, and Cadrian attended all of them, even though one or two occurred in horrible weather. Still, Lily liked Quidditch: it was exciting and fast-paced, and when Gryffindor was playing she could hardly stay on her seat.
December rolled around faster than Lily expected. One morning at breakfast, as the owls came through, Lily received a thick envelope.
“Weird,” she commented. “I never get mail.”
Alex tugged the creamy envelope out of Lily’s hands. “It’s Aurora’s tickets, I bet. See, it’s addressed to all of us: you, me, Cadrian, and James.”
“Oh, right.” Lily tore open the envelope and five bright blue tickets fell out onto the table. She picked one up. “December 27. This will be fun!”
“Yeah!” Cadrian grinned. “Hey, James! The tickets are here!”
James looked up from his breakfast. He was sitting towards the end of the table, but got up and jogged over to where the girls were sitting. “Sweet,” he said, picking two of them up.
“Who are you bringing?” asked Alex.
“Sirius. I asked Remus first, because he’s been looking a bit pale lately…but he said that he couldn’t come, that he’d be busy around then. And Peter’s going on vacation with his family.”
“What’s Remus doing?”
James shrugged. “I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me. He’s a bit secretive at times, really.” He pocketed his tickets and walked back to his seat.
Alex didn’t drop the subject, however. “Remus does act oddly sometimes. Why is that, do you think?”
“Hmm,” mused Cadrian. “I don’t know. It’s weird that he wouldn’t even tell James.”
“It’s obviously none of our business,” cut in Lily. “If he wanted us to know, he’d tell us. He probably doesn’t enjoy nosiness,,” she added, with a pointed glance towards Alex.
Alex shrugged. “I guess you’re right. It’s just strange.”
They dropped the subject, finished their breakfasts, and then walked to their first class, Transfiguration. They snagged seats together and then waited for class to start.
It wasn’t the most exciting class they had ever had. It was mostly a lot of complicated notes, and nobody was sorry when the bell rang.
Lily, Alex, and Cadrian meandered out into the courtyard, where dozens of students were already milling about aimlessly. Lily noticed James and his friends huddled close together on a nearby bench. They looked very conspiratory. Lily heaved a sigh.
“What’s up, Lils?” asked Alex.
“James. Look at him! He’s definitely up to something.”
Alex and Cadrian glanced over at the four boys. “Aren’t they always up to something?” Cadrian asked absently.
Alex giggled. “Lily, he saved our lives and then denied it, making a complete fool out of himself. Can’t you lay off him?”
“No,” said Lily stubbornly. “He’s still a prat.”
Alex and Cadrian rolled her eyes. “Seriously, though!” Lily pressed on. “He’s plotting trouble!”
“If he is, he’ll get detention. End of story,” Alex said. Clearly she was uninterested. Lily decided her friends were right, and dropped the subject.
* * * * * * * * * *
The rest of the day passed uneventfully and Lily forgot all about her earlier suspicions as she and her friends clamored into armchairs clustered near a roaring fire to do their homework. They didn’t have too much work: just a short Herbology essay and a few questions for Potions.
Suddenly Remus and Peter plopped down directly in front of the three girls’, blocking the warm light from the fire. “What do you want?” asked Cadrian.
Remus shrugged. “Just looking for someone to talk to.”
Lily narrowed her eyes. “Where are James and Sirius, then?”
Remus and Peter exchanged glances. I knew they were up to something, Lily thought grimly. “They’re, er…in the library,” said Peter.
Now Lily knew they were lying. She doubted that James and Sirius had been in the library once since the start of term.
“Oh. I see,” said Lily. “Why didn’t you go with them?”
Her question caught the two boys off guard. “Well-er,” said Peter, “see, we already, um, finished our homework.” Remus nodded earnestly.
Alex raised her eyebrow skeptically. “If it was only Remus, I’d believe that,” she said. “But you know, Peter, we see you finishing homework every day at breakfast.”
Peter blushed scarlet and neither of the boys spoke for awhile.
Remus and Peter’s idle chatter was not pointless. They had been delegated to this task-distracting the three girls-as James and Sirius were carrying on something a bit more exciting.
Behind the girls, James and Sirius were slowly but steadily inching their way up the banister of the staircase that led to Lily, Alex, and Cadrian’s dormitory, careful not to let any part of their body touch the stairs. They knew all too well what would happen if they did.
James reached the top, where the banister straightened out, and swung one leg over the side so that he was straddled on top of it. “Come on, Sirius!” he whispered as loudly as he dared. He scooted up a bit to give Sirius room to come up behind him. Sirius did so.
“Okay,” said James, bringing his other leg over. “Now we have to get inside without touching the stairs.”
Sirius grinned. “Easy. Let’s go.”
James reached for the doorknob and eased it open, praying that nobody was inside. To the two boys’ immense relief, it was empty. “Great,” whispered Sirius. “Let’s go!”
James hoisted himself off the banister and landed safely inside the dormitory. He waited to see if the loud alarm would sound, but nothing happened. He flashed Sirius a thumbs-up and then stepped inside.
Sirius landed with a slight “oomph” a few seconds later, and still the alarm didn’t sound. They closed the door and then looked around.
“Which do you think is Lily’s bed?” asked Sirus.
“Well, this trunk has the initials A.P.”
“That doesn’t make Lily Evans.”
“No, stupid, it makes Alex Parker, and she got a ticket too!”
“Oh, right…well, this one says C.M. Cadrian Michaels.”
James nodded. “So Lily’s must be either this one or this one.”
“What if they kept their tickets in their bags?” asked Sirius. The thought had stricken him quite suddenly.
“We’ll look anyway.” James fumbled with the lock on Alex’s trunk. “She’s locked this. What’s the spell again? Amoholora or something?”
“Alohomora!” Sirius said and the lock clicked open. They knelt down by it.
“Mostly robes and books,” said James, rummaging through Alex’s posessions. “Girl stuff.”
“Well, maybe it’s in her nightstand,” Sirius suggested, and got up and went over to the small table next to Alex’s bed. “Yep, it’s right here!” he announced, waving it triumphantly in the air.
“Oh, good!” James took a slip of paper out of his pocket and placed it on the nightstand.
It looked exactly like the Aurora Beam ticket.
The two boys exchanged devilish grins as James pocketed Alex’s real ticket. “Now just two more,” he said.
Just then they heard girly giggles right outside the door. “It was so funny!” a high-pitched voice said. James recognized the voice as Danielle, one of the other Gryffindor first-years. “Quick, hide!” he whispered to Sirius, and they dove under Alex’s bed.
It was dusty and quite cramped under Alex’s bed, but they didn’t dare leave its safety. Danielle and Jeniece were twittering away. “Can you believe that Lily and them got Aurora Beam tickets?” James could hear the envy in Jeniece’s voice. He and Sirius exchanged grins.
“Well, I’m tired.” That was Danielle. “I’m going to bed. Night.”
“Night,” said Jeniece. The door opened and then closed; presumably Jeniece was leaving.
“Now what?” James mouthed to Sirius.
“Let’s see where she is,” Sirius whispered. He crawled out from under the bed cautiously. Danielle was lying in a bed at the other end of the room. Sirius couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not, but he started looking through the drawers in Cadrian’s nightstand.
There was a rustle of bedcovers, and then Danielle called out a bit shakily, “Is somebody there?”
Sirius’s hand dropped to the floor and he ducked. About five minutes later, he dared to crouch again and resume his search. He found Cadrian’s ticket and put a fake there.
James, on the other hand, had crawled out to help Sirius. “We just need Lily’s now,” Sirius whispered. He could tell by the snores from Danielle’s bed that Danielle was asleep.
“Do you think she’d just leave it out?” James whispered back.
Sirius shrugged. “Let’s look anyway.”
They crawled as quietly as they could to the bed on the end that was surely Lily’s. Her nightstand was much neater than Alex’s. Alex’s was littered with bits of parchment, quills, candy, and other trinkets, while Lily’s merely held a small lamp.
Seeing that Lily’s ticket was not on top, James opened the first drawer. There was a notebook inside titled Lily’s Journal.
Identical evil grins spread across the boys’ faces, but James didn’t pick it up. “Some other time,” he whispered. “We need to get the ticket and get out of here.”
Back in the common room, the three girls were getting quite fed up with Remus and Peter’s antics. “We are trying to work!” Lily yelled after a half hour of their pointless chatter. “Could you please be quiet!”
Remus saw James and Sirius climbing stealthily down the banister. Sirius flashed Remus a thumbs-up, so Remus said, “Fine, if you hate us that much we’ll leave. Come on, Peter.”
Remus and Peter got up to leave.
And James and Sirius stashed the girls’ tickets in their own dormitory.