The next morning at breakfast Sirius was bragging a bit too loudly about the prank he was going to pull on Bellatrix, while James and Peter sniggered, and Remus pretended not to hear what was going on. Lily rolled her eyes. “If he keeps going on like that, Bellatrix will find out,” she said to her friends.
Alex thought about this statement. “You’re right. Hey, Sirius!” she called.
Sirius looked over. “What?”
“Shut up. Bellatrix is going to hear you!”
“No, she won’t,” cut in James. “It’s brilliant. Besides, what could she do?” he smirked. “What she thinks is her wand is just a stick, remember?”
Alex and Cadrian laughed. Lily sipped her milk and looked the other way. She had been blatantly avoiding James and his friends ever since they arrived back at Hogwarts; she felt that if she didn’t, James might end up headless, so it would be better all-around for her to stay out.
“What, Evans? You don’t think it’s a good idea for revenge?” asked James.
Lily did not deign to reply. She concentrated on buttering her toast.
“It’s not revenge for Sirius,” said Alex. “It’s for me, remember?”
Sirius looked slightly disconcerted for a second. “Well…yeah…” he took a bite of toast, then said, “But the prank idea was all mine.”
“Exactly,” said James. “Which gives you the bragging rights. So go ahead. The Slytherins don’t care about first-years’ conversations.”
Sirius laughed and then resumed his prideful boasting.
Lily rolled her eyes and drained the last of her milk. She got to her feet, swinging her bag over her shoulder. Alex reached out and grabbed onto the strap of her bag as she passed by. “Wait up, Lils,” she intoned, stuffing an entire blueberry muffin into her mouth. She gestured to Cadrian, then got up. “Okay, let’s go.”
The three girls left the Great Hall together, heading to class.
* * * * * * * * * *
Back in the Great Hall, Sirius was discussing last-minute details of the prank with James while Peter was cleaning up his glass of spilled pumpkin juice and Remus was absent-mindedly reading a Herbology book. “How are you going to get all the copies?” James asked. “Of the diary, I mean.”
Sirius shrugged. “There must be some hex. We can look it up at break,” he suggested.
James nodded. “Perfect. So at break we get the spell, then tonight we make the copies, and later tonight, we sneak out and spread the papers around.”
The two boys smiled wickedly. It was a perfect plan.
* * * * * * * * * *
All day, Lily was troubled by the prospect of the boys’ prank. In her gut, she knew that nothing good was to come of it.
Also, her thoughts kept wandering to when she’d been in the Slytherins’ compartment. Lucius had offered to help her get James back. Had he been sincerely offering? At the time, Chris’s words had turned her away from the idea of revenge. But the more she was around James, the more she thought that Chris was just being stupid.
The Slytherins played dirty. They’d be sure to help Lily get something good on James, something much better than she’d be able to think of herself. But she’d have to talk to Lucius before James and Sirius spread Bellatrix’s diary around the school. Which meant that she’d have to talk to him soon.
* * * * * * * * * *
During lunch, Alex and Cadrian were working diligently (or rather, Cadrian was working and Alex was gossiping with some other girls) on a nastily long Potions essay that Lily had already finished. She glanced around to see where Lucius was-surrounded by other Slytherins, of course. Hmm. This was a potential problem.
Uncertainly she got to her feet. Nobody seemed to really take much notice of it.
Could she really just walk up to Lucius and ask him for his help?
His gang of Slytherins suddenly burst out laughing. Lily sat down. She was too much of a coward to walk over to all of them. But she would ask him. Soon. In between some class, maybe.
Her chance came sooner than she’d expected. She was roaming the empty corridors, clutching a note in her hand. The note was from Professor McGonagall, and she was taking it to Slughorn. It was so quiet that her footsteps echoed off the high ceiling. She shivered; the hallways were a bit creepy. She picked up the pace, and her feet were so loud that she didn’t hear footsteps behind her.
When she turned to go down to the dungeons, she saw him walk by. Lucius. Her heart skipped a beat and she froze, glancing down the stony stairs. No; the message would have to wait. She wouldn’t get another opportunity as perfect as this one.
So she turned and ran after him. “Malfoy? Er, Lucius?” she asked meekly, coming up beside him.
He looked down at her coldly. “Mudblood,” he regarded her coolly.
Lily ignored the insult. “Look. You know that offer you made me…?”
He didn’t look as if he did. “I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Why would I offer you help?”
Lily took a deep breath. “I know. Weird. But you did, on the train…”
Lucius’s hard gray eyes narrowed in thought. “Fine,” he said, after a few seconds. “I’ll help you get your little revenge.” He smirked. “But for a price.”
It wasn’t like Lily hadn’t been expecting that. “What do you want?” she asked.
“I want to know what Sirius is up to.” He stepped closer to Lily. “Don’t try to lie to me; I know that he’s up to something. So come on, what is it?”
“Well…” Lily wouldn’t look into his eyes. She stared determinedly at the ground. “I don’t know about anything…”
“Really now.” Lucius wasn’t fooled. “Evans, come on, just tell me. What-do you think Sirius will get mad or something? Do you think you have to be loyal to him?”
“Well, I…”
Lucius snorted. “Oh yes, you owe the boy so much loyalty. He stole your concert tickets, turned your skin green. I see why you think so highly of him.”
His words stung like a slap, but they rang true in Lily’s ears. “Oh…” she said softly, as the impact of what he was saying sunk in.
He’s right, she thought regretfully to herself. Still, she avoided his eyes.
“It…doesn’t feel right for me to do that,” she said finally.
Lucius rolled his eyes. “You stupid Gryffindors,” he said dismissively. “Always thinking of others before yourselves.”
Rage burned through Lily. “Oh, yeah, it’s so much better to be a Slytherin,” she said sarcastically, her temper rising dangerously. “Everybody knows you’re all a bunch of Dark wizards!”
Lucius reached for his wand. “You stupid girl,” he snarled, fumbling with his wand, “what would you know about the subject? You’ve only known about magic for six months!”
Lily whipped out her own wand, but there was no way she’d be able to hurt Lucius. “Wait,” she said quietly. “I’ll…tell you what Sirius is doing.” Lucius’s earlier words had a haunting truth to them that Lily couldn’t ignore.
Lucius stopped suddenly. He dropped his wand and it clattered to the ground. He quickly stooped over to pick it up.
“Well, then…out with it,” he said, stowing the wand in his pocket.
Lily hesitated, then poured out the story. “Sirius stole Bellatrix’s diary. He’s planning to make copies of it and spread them around the school to turn everybody against her.”
Lucius nodded slowly. “I’m a bit disappointed, actually.”
“What are you going to do to him?”
Lucius shrugged. “That I don’t know yet. When is Sirius going to pull this prank off?”
“Tonight.”
His expression clouded. “I see.” He frowned, thinking hard.
“Er, Lucius?”
“Yes?” he seemed to be absorbed in his own mind, not paying much attention to Lily any longer.
“What about my revenge?”
That snapped him out of his trance-like state. His lips curled into a cruel smile. “As for that, meet me in the dungeons tomorrow during lunch, and we’ll talk.” He strode off.
Lily didn’t move. Although it was true that Sirius hadn’t always been the best friend to her, she felt bad about betraying him. She only hoped that whatever Lucius did, it wouldn’t be too mean.
* * * * * * * * *
The next morning, as Lily climbed out of the common room, she noticed spare sheets of paper lying on the floors. Groups of people were reading them, laughing. Bellatrix’s diary, she thought, and the anxiety of last night began to ebb away. It seemed that Lucius had left the boys’ prank alone.
She picked up a paper and began reading.
Sirius Black wet his bed until the age of ten, and still is known to occasionally “have an accident.”
Lily gasped. Lucius must have made his own papers and spread them around! Well, then there would still be rumors circulating about Bellatrix…
Lily tucked the paper into her bag and then started searching for one concerning Bellatrix. But all of the papers she picked up spoke only of Sirius, with the occasional mention of James. Lucius was smarter than she’d given him credit for, it would seem.
Had Sirius and James seen this yet? “LILY!” a voice yelled. Lily turned to see Alex and Cadrian running frantically towards her. “Lily, look!” Alex was brandishing one of the papers. “Have you seen this?”
Lily pulled the paper out of her bag. “Yes. It’s horrible!”
Alex ripped up her sheet into tiny bits. “So much for revenge. I’d bet you anything that Lucius and Bellatrix are behind this. How did they find out?”
“We told Sirius not to be so loud about it,” put in Cadrian grimly. “He should’ve listened.”
Lead was progressively building up in Lily’s stomach. This was all her fault. “Er. Yeah. Um. Guys, I gotta go,” she said, and sped away from them into the Great Hall.
It was there that she found James and Sirius. Sirius sat quietly, his head down, picking at his food, but James was ablaze, snatching the papers out of passerbys’ hands and ripping them apart. “When I find out who’s behind this,” he started to say menacingly. Lily looked away.
“It was Lucius and Bellatrix, of course,” Lily heard Sirius mutter. Her chest constricted painfully. She longed to yell, “No, it was me!” But that would be like suicide.
She sat down as far away from Sirius and James as possible and tried to tune out the people around her, most of whom were talking about Sirius.
* * * * * * * * * *
By the first-years’ second class, Herbology, Sirius could no longer walk through the corridors peacefully. Sixth- and seventh-years mostly ignored him, but the second-, third-, and fourth-years really let him have it, especially the Slytherins. In Potions, even Slughorn dished out a few jokes, much to the Slytherins’ delight and Sirius’s pain. Stoically, he kept sitting up straight, just staring straight ahead. None of the Gryffindor first-years laughed.
Then came lunch. Lily managed to slip away from her friends by saying that she needed to ask Slughorn a question, then when everybody, including Slughorn, had gone, she crept out of the room cautiously.
“Malfoy?” she called tentatively.
He stepped out of a nearby room. “Oh, Evans. Good.” He smiled. “How do you like what I did to Sirius’s little joke?”
Lily didn’t answer. She had known that something would like this would happen if she gave away the prank to Lucius. But she’d done it anyway, thinking only of getting James back. Well, it looked like Chris had been right. She had hurt Sirius, ruined Alex’s revenge, betrayed her friends. She had been thinking only of her own revenge.
Lucius ignored Lily’s silence. “Down to business, then. What are we going to do about James?”
Lily’s eyes filled with tears as she started to leave. “Nothing,” she replied to Lucius. “I’ve already done enough damage.”
And she ran out of the dungeon.
She didn’t go to the Great Hall. She wasn’t about to show her face there. She went back to the common room and cried.
In a very un-Lily impulse, she decided to just stay up there all afternoon, skip all her classes. She had Defense Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration, and History of Magic. She could miss those for a dose of self-sympathy, right?
A couple hours later, she could hear the common room filling up again. Lily buried her face in her pillow.
Only about three minutes later the door to the dormitory opened. “Lily! What are you doing? Are you okay?” That was Cadrian’s voice.
Lily sat up to face her friends. Her hair was messed up, her face tear-streaked, her eyes red and puffy.
“Lily! What’s wrong?” asked Alex concernedly.
“I have to tell you something,” she croaked, wiping her face.
“What is it? Were you up here all afternoon?” asked Cadrian.
“You know…what happened? With the prank?”
Alex rolled her eyes. “Stupid Slytherins. Sirius shouldn’t have been talking about it where they could hear.”
“They didn’t hear him, Alex. Somebody told them.”
Alex and Cadrian gasped simultaneously. “No! Who?” demanded Alex. “That little rat. Traitor. Scumbag!”
Lily took a deep breath.
“It was me.”
Lily, Blossoming by halfbloodprincess22
Chapter Notes: Sorry this took so long. But it's finally done. Hope you enjoy, and please leave a review!!! :)