Lily jumped to her feet, causing the plate she’d been balancing on her lap to tip over. Food spilled everywhere, but she didn’t care. Behind her, Alex gasped loudly. Near the door, Cadrian was looking on, wide-eyed and bewildered.
Lily hadn’t learned much magic yet in the few months she’d been at Hogwarts, but she knew enough to help out. “Expelliarmus!!” she yelled, pointing her wand at Chris. His wand flew out of his hand and clattered to the floor noisily. One of the Quidditch players raised his wand and muttered, “Stupefy!” Chris fell limply to the floor.
Lily and Alex ran over to the crowd forming around Chris’s body. “Come on,” said one of the Kestrels to his teammates, “we should take him up to Dumbledore…”
A man with curly black hair nodded and flicked his wand; Chris’s body rose into the air, floating, (he was still unconscious) and when they started walking away it followed.
Lily pocketed Chris’s wand and started picking up the food she’d dropped. Alex bent down to help her. “What in the world just happened?” she asked.
Lily shook her head. “I have no idea.”
* * * * * * * * * *
The next morning, Lily almost overslept. She barely had time to get dressed and run to the Great Hall for a quick breakfast as it was. She looked for Chris in the common room and at breakfast, but didn’t see him anywhere.
“Lily! Sit down!” it was Alex, furiously beckoning her over to where she and Cadrian were seated. Lily edged between the tables and sat. “What?”
“Chris. He tried to kill Aurora Beam!” exclaimed Cadrian.
Lily stared at her friends blankly. “Um…I know. I was there, remember?”
Alex waved this aside. “It wasn’t really Chris,” she said, as if explaining something to a five-year-old. “There was a Dark Wizard controlling him!”
“What?” Lily dropped the piece of toast she’d been buttering. “How?”
Cadrian started to speak but Alex cut her off in her excitement. “Okay. So. There’s this wizard and he hates Aurora Beam for some reason, who knows? He’s just crazy, I guess. He heard she was going to be here for Slughorn’s party, and snuck in somehow, I have no idea how because security’s so tight, but anyway, he used the Imperio curse on Chris-”
“The what?” interrupted Lily, once again showing off her lack of magical knowledge.
“The Imperius Curse,” Cadrian took over. “It’s illegal, and if you use it on a person, you’ll go to Azkaban for life.” (Lily didn’t know what Azkaban was, but thought she’d wait to ask until she knew what this curse was.) “The Imperius Curse, if you use it on somebody, you have total control of them, and you can make them do whatever you want.”
Lily’s eyes widened. “Whoa. And…what’s Azkaban?”
“The wizard prison. Horrible. Run by dementors,” Alex said.
Lily decided she would just look up “dementors” later.
“So, where’s Chris?” she asked.
“In the hospital wing. We can go visit him later,” suggested Alex.
“Okay,” Lily agreed. Then the three friends went to class.
* * * * * * * * * *
They were halfway through some complicated Transfiguration notes when a seventh-year boy entered the classroom. He walked right up to McGonagall and told her something in a low voice that Lily couldn’t quite make out. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good, because McGonagall’s face looked extremely grave. She called for everybody’s attention and said,
“As you all know, the fourth-year boy Chris Periwinkle was Imperiused by a Dark wizard on Halloween night.”
There were nods and a general murmur of assent.
“Well,” said McGonagall heavily, “it appears that we have learned that this wizard is still in the castle.”
Lily, Alex, and Cadrian exchanged glances. The atmosphere in the room changed rapidly. Now Lily could feel the fear that had entered, crawling on her skin, making it prickle unpleasantly.
“Everybody please go back to your common rooms. Do not panic. Go straight to your common rooms,,” McGonagall added sternly, with a pointed glance towards James. He grinned at Sirius.
There was a loud scraping noise as everybody pushed back their chairs and scrambled for the door. Lily grabbed her bag and then curled her hand tightly around the strap of Alex’s so they wouldn’t get separated outside in the sheer madness. She could feel Cadrian holding her bag as well.
Outside the classroom was complete pandemonium. Students were running every which way. Girls were shrieking and boys were hexing them trying to get them to shut up. Lily saw a suit of armor get knocked to the ground and crash; the head rolled away and a second-year-boy tripped on it. Teachers were being ignored entirely, and it was utter chaos.
Lily, Alex, and Cadrian were trying desperately to get back to the common room. They weren’t that far away from it, but the hallway was so crowded that they were making very little progress. Lily was starting to think that the Dark wizard could come and murder them all, one by one, and nobody would even notice.
But then she saw a very reassuring sight.
Dumbledore, making his way down the steps calmly and serenely. He stopped at a landing and peered over the edge of the banister, looking almost amused. “QUIET!” he roared, and silence fell instantly.
“Everybody, to their common rooms, immediately!” he shouted, and suddenly everybody dispersed, quickly, all heading for the common rooms. Lily, much relieved, followed suit.
But there was a big crowd of people waiting at the Gryffindor portrait hole. Alex, of course, pushed through the people to the front. Lily and Cadrian waited on the outskirts of the crowd, occasionally standing on their toes to get a glimpse of what was going on.
Finally Alex reappeared. “The Fat Lady’s gone!” she said. “If she’s not here, there’s no way we can get into the common room.”
“What do you mean, she’s gone?” asked Lily, confused. “How can she be gone?”
“Just visiting a friend or something,” said Cadrian vaguely, which didn’t really help Lily, but she decided to just act like she knew what was going on.
“Well, is she coming back?” Lily asked. “We need to get back in.”
“Apparently Pringle’s looking, but he’s so old it’ll take him years. Besides, I doubt he cares at all if we get in or not. We have to go find her ourselves,” Alex declared boldly.
“Alex,” said Lily exasperatedly. “Hogwarts is huge. We could wander around ages and never find her, and anyway, what about the Dark wizard? He’s loose in the castle!”
Alex shrugged. “So what? Like you said, Hogwarts is huge. What are the chances we’ll run into him? Come on, we’ll be out here all night if we don’t do something.”
Lily didn’t want to go. She didn’t fancy the idea of running into a crazy Dark wizard and knew it could take hours to find the Fat Lady. “If McGonagall finds out, which she certainly will, we’ll be in big trouble! Like, huge!”
“We could be in even bigger trouble if we have to stay out here,” said Alex seriously. “Come on, Lily.”
Lily looked towards Cadrian. “Cadrian, come on. You know it’s possibly the stupidest thing we could possibly do, right?”
But Cadrian was already siding with Alex, deserting Lily again, and Lily couldn’t very well send her two best friends off alone to possibly confront an evil Dark wizard, and definitely confront an angry McGonagall. So she sighed, rolled her eyes, and followed her friends up the stairs.
“Where should we look, do you think?” asked Cadrian as they came to a landing.
Lily shrugged. “How should I know where some fat old lady’s going to go?”
Alex thought. “Hmm,” she said. “Let me think. Okay, my sister Abby said the Fat Lady’s got some friend Violet and that they get together a lot and they like to drink.”
“So where’d they go?” asked Cadrian. “Did Abby say that?”
Alex’s brow furrowed. “Well, logically it’d be by the kitchen. Anybody know where the kitchen is?”
Lily shook her head. How in the world would she know?
“Well, we should look, anyway,” said Alex decisively. Alex liked deciding things. She liked taking control.
“Alex…” protested Cadrian. “Where the heck is it?”
Alex shrugged, a grin spreading across her face. “Let’s just go, okay? I think I have an idea of where it might be, anyway.”
Lily and Cadrian groaned, but Alex was in one of her impulsive moods, and didn’t even notice. “Come on!” she called over her shoulder, racing away. They followed, though somewhat reluctantly.
Alex ran up and down staircases, dashed into every door they passed, pushed aside curtains, and even took down a few paintings to see if anything was hiding behind them. She scrutinized every single painting they passed carefully, searching for a trace of a pink dress, a wisp of the Fat Lady’s curly brown locks. After two hours, they hadn’t found anything, but Alex was undeterred and still running around like crazy.
Lily and Cadrian, on the other hand, weren’t. “Come on, Alex,” Cadrian called wearily. “The Fat Lady’s probably back by now!”
“You don’t know that!” Lily and Cadrian followed Alex around a corner and watched her curls bounce up and down as she descended down more stairs. “Alex, you’re heading for the dungeons!” Lily shouted. It echoed back up to her. “Dungeons…dungeons…”
“So what? We haven’t looked there yet!”
Lily and Cadrian followed more slowly. They could hear distant voices. “What’s Alex saying?” Lily asked. “I can’t make it out.”
“Maybe she’s talking to the Fat Lady!” exclaimed Cadrian. The thought heartened the two friends, and they jumped down the last two stairs and then ran down the dank dungeon corridor.
They skidded to a stop, however, when they saw Alex flattened against the slimy wall, looking terrified. She turned when she heard Lily and Cadrian’s footsteps and put a finger to her mouth, signaling the two to be quiet. They stopped dead in their tracks. “What’s going on?” Lily mouthed.
Alex just shook her brown curls, her dark blue eyes wild with fear. Usually Alex was so bold and fearless; what was causing this fear in Lily’s friend? Lily tiptoed over to where Alex was standing. She could hear Cadrian following her tentatively. “What’s up?” Lily asked as quietly as she possibly could.
Alex pointed. Lily wasn’t exactly sure what she was pointing to. She followed the direction of Alex’s finger but didn’t see anything. She looked back at her friend, a questioning look on her face. Alex jerked her thumb behind her shoulder, motioning for Lily to look around the corner.
Lily stepped in front of Alex and peered around the corner. At the end of the stretching corridor, she could make out two figures. One she instantly recognized as Aurora Beam by her glowing hair. She was cowering on the ground and her mouth was opening and closing frantically, but no sound was coming out.
Standing over Aurora, his wand pointed directly at her, could only be the Dark wizard that had escaped.
Aurora looked up. Lily immediately stepped back around to where Alex and Cadrian were waiting, but she knew Aurora had seen her by the way her eyes had lit up.
“What are we going to do?” whispered Lily. “He’s going to kill her!”
“I know,” Alex said, her voice trembling with fear.
Cadrian peeked around. “What’s he doing?” she whispered softly.
“He’s torturing her,” replied Alex quietly.
“Why can’t she talk?” Lily asked.
“He hexed her, probably, so that nobody would hear her. That’s beside the point. What are we going to do?”
“What can we do? We have to get McGonagall.”
“But then she’ll know we left! Besides, what if he kills her before we get back?”
Lily swallowed and snuck another glance around. Things weren’t getting any better for Aurora.
“But we know hardly any magic yet,” she said.
“Look,” whispered Alex. “We know Expelliarmus, right? If we just take his wand, maybe snap it in half or something, what can he do?”
“Uh…he’s a full-grown man. What couldn’t he do?”
“Come on, Lils. We can’t just stand by while Aurora gets killed.”
Lily knew that Alex was right.
That didn’t mean she liked it.
But she sighed and took her wand out of her pocket. Alex grinned and did the same. Cadrian already had hers out.
The three friends crept as quietly as they could around the corner. But apparently it wasn’t quiet enough.
The wizard turned around and immediately noticed the three girls. With just one flick of his wand, all three of their wands flew out of their hands. He caught them and broke them over his knee.
Lily, Alex, and Cadrian exchanged glances.
Uh-oh.