lilium_evansiae | Hogwarts Express, 10 April 1976

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Hogwarts Express, 10 April 1976

Lily has noticed that she hasn't exactly been left alone today.

Her roommates had stuck around her for breakfast and on the way Hogsmeade Station.

Fenton Blane has followed her up and down the aisles of the Hogwarts Express, as she's taken her turns at patroling the corridors. And when he wasn't there, she's seen Sheldon Whelan (Hufflepuff, seventh year) and Iphigenia McGraw (Ravenclaw, sixth year) keeping in close proximity.

Lily both finds it kind of reassuring to know that her fellow prefects are keeping a wary eye on things ... and incredibly worrisome that they appear to think it's necessary.

(With a half-dozen notable exceptions, of course. She passes Marcellus Nott, the seventh year Slytherin prefect, at one point and he leers at her in a way that makes Lily very glad her wand is already in her hand. And that Lettie Lewis, the Head Girl, turns up at that moment to ask "All right, Nott?" and he vanishes back into his compartment.)

Lily looks back over her shoulder and sees Sheldon.

"I'm going to take a break," she tells him.

He nods. "You want to come back to the prefects' compartment?"

"Actually, I think I'm going to go find my roommates. But I'll be back in a bit."

"Be careful," he tells her, and Lily nods and starts back down the corridor.

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There are good and bad things about being stuck on the Hogwarts Express.

The good: there isn't much room for any Slytherin to sneak about without being noticed, and there are three Marauders keeping guard.

The bad: there really isn't much room ... which means trying to hide in nooks and crannies comes to be something of a challenge.

"You know," says Sirius beside James, "I'm actually a bit surprised no one's tried anything yet."

They are currently hiding out in a compartment occupied only by two sleeping Third Years from Ravenclaw, stretched out across the seats.

"We're only a couple of hours in," James points out. "Don't hold your breath. They're planning something. You've seen how they've been skulking down the corridors."

Peter yawns. "I don't know about you two, but I barely got any sleep last night." He looks over at the sleeping students. "What I wouldn't give to be them right now."

James, ignoring Peter, slides the door open and peeks out to track Evans' progress.

Lily has been held up by a small crisis involving a missing cat in the car ahead. The cat in question has now been found -- curled up in the luggage rack three compartments away, though how exactly he got there is one of those mysteries cats will never explain, so there's no sense in wondering.

Momentarily alone in the corridor, she stops and rubs her hand across her eyes. She's had better nights sleep.

Then she continues down the corridor.

She'll pass Potter and Black and Pettigrew any moment now ...

(Not that she knows that.)

"Quick —" James hisses, backing up a step or two into Peter and Sirius and sliding the door shut.

"Ow — blimey!" cries Peter, just as Sirius snaps, "Fuck, Potter!"

James waves a hand.

"Shut up. D'you want to be found out? She's coming this way. Look like you're sleeping or something."

As they hurriedly settle near the Ravenclaws — heads turned away (or downwards) to hide their identities and pretend they're all asleep — James suddenly really wishes he hadn't packed his Invisibility Cloak away.

Lily glances through the windows of the compartments as she's passes, but mostly she's looking for her friends. Or things like smoke. Or flames.

And since all she sees in their compartment is a group of (apparently) snoozing students, Lily continues along on her way.

She thinks Cliona and Mary and everyone are just up ahead in the next car.

James counts to about ten before he opens his eyes.

He nudges at Sirius, who nudges at Peter, who ... seems to have fallen asleep.

Sirius rolls his eyes.

"Useless, this one," he says with a sigh.

"Peter." James shakes the other boy's shoulder. "Wake up."

"Wha — where are we?" He blinks. "Oh. Sorry."

"Come on."

Sliding the door open again, they start to head out.

Lily has passed into the car ahead, and run into Fenton.

Again.

"Hello, Fenton."

"Lily," he says. He looks over her shoulder, like he's checking to see if anyone's behind her.

"All's quiet," she says.

"Making sure," he says, looking back to her quickly and smiling.

"Well, it is our job. Cliona and the others up here?" she asks.

"Second on the left."

"Thanks. See you later, Fenton," she says.

He nods and continues the way she's just come from.

Lily lets herself into her roommates' compartment.

Edited 2011-01-23 04:06 (UTC)

A very short moment later, the car door opens again and James, Sirius and Peter come through.

James sees Fenton Blane and raises a hand in greeting.

"All right, Blane?" James greets.

Honestly, it's a bit suspicious (and vaguely disappointing) that there is a very clear lack of Slytherin slime occupying the corridors.

"Potter. Black. And Pettigrew, right?"

He doesn't wait for an answer, though.

"She's in there," he says, with a gesture behind him to the girls' compartment.

"You lot seen anything?"

James shakes his head.

"Not yet," he reports.

"It's a bit odd, really, that they're lying so low," says Sirius.

"Maybe they're on to us," Peter says, his voice low.

"For what?" Fenton asks. "Walking down the corridor?"

There's something like a wink in James' direction.

"Well, if you've got things here, I'm going to check in with the others."

He pointed to the compartment across from the girls'. There's a sign on the door, reading Warning: Dungbombs.

"That one's empty. And I don't think Cliona really set off any dungbombs."

But with Cliona, you never know.

"Yeah. We've definitely got things here," James says, acknowledging that something-like-a-wink with a cheeky grin.

Sirius, meanwhile, moves towards the sign.

"Your Quidditch mate, Cliona, did this?" he asks James, looking impressed. "I hope there are dungbombs in there. We could use this to our advantage."

"If they're in there, help yourselves," Fenton says.

He nods to them, and sets off toward the front of the train.

Sirius beams. "Brilliant."

"You and your stink-jokes," James says, rolling his eyes.

(But really — he sort of has a fondness for them, too. After all, they've managed to cause a stir in Snivellus' life a number of times.)

Sirius is just about to open the door (with a fair amount of caution, in case Cliona has set them off) when the sound of a door sliding open at the other end of the car stops him.

"Oy — Sirius," James warns.

"Yeah." Sirius nods. "I see them."

"What do we do?" asks Peter softly.

"Follow my lead," says James. He keeps his hands loose at his side for easy wand-access. "All right?" he calls out.

The tallest boy, Gibbon, sneers. "Potter." He shifts his steely blue-eyed gaze in Sirius' direction. "Ah, and the Malfunctioning Black." He doesn't even acknowledge Peter, who has taken to standing somewhere behind James and Sirius.

James can hear the sound of cracking bones as Sirius clenches his hands into fists beside him.

"Ah, Gibbon," Sirius greets. "Thought I smelled the stench of three-week old socks — but nope. That's just you and your lot. What is it with you Slytherin and bad hygiene?

"I s'pose that comes from living in the dungeons," says Peter.

"Too right, Peter."

"Childish," the Slytherin girl (the one Cliona referred to as the girl with the 'terrible hair'; and he can see it) to Gibbon's right says, rolling her eyes. Baddock, her name is.

"That the best you can do?" adds Mulciber.

"Was that the best your mum could do when I shagged her last night?" asks James with an incredulous sort of laugh.

Mulciber narrows his eyes. "Watch it, Potter."

"Or what, Mulciber? You'll flail at me with your girly hands?" This is it, he thinks. His hand practically twitches.

But Gibbon holds up his hand, silencing his goons immediately.

"How is dear Lily Evans this afternoon?"

James can feel his temper flaring almost instantly.

"Did she get back to the tower all right? We were concerned."

"You watch what you say about Lily Evans," James warns.

"We were all so disappointed she couldn't stay for the rest of the party," Gibbon continues to goad, smiling as he watches the expression on James' face change. "The blush on that Mudblood's cheeks as she took away all those points from us —"

Before he knew what he was doing, he had his wand out and was shouting, "Stupefy!" in his direction.

Gibbon, with surprising dexterity, dodged the sparks that flew his way.

Immediately, everyone else whipped out their wands.

The fight was on.

Lily, sitting between Mary and the window, breaks off midsentence, and turns to look at the door to the corridor.

"D'you hear something?" she asks.

"No," Perdita says. "Don't think I do."

"Nor do I," Glynis says.

"I should check, though," Lily says.

"I'll do it," Cliona says, standing. "I'm closer and you look beat."

She pulls out her wand and heads for the door.

Red and blue sparks are shot across the narrow corridor, and it smells like magic, if magic had a scent.

Avery has been hit with a rather fantastic set of boils — purple and green, just like Sirius wanted, though they had originally been intended for Gibbon.

Baddock's dark hair has been turned bright shades of pink and yellow, making her look even worse than before.

Peter has gone down from a Stunning curse aimed at him, and while James is apologetic for it happening, he has to admit, he's a bit relieved.

Peter has never been a terribly apt duelist, and James was starting to worry he wouldn't be able to last very long.

"Come on, Gibbon!" Sirius calls. "You'd look fabulous with a set of boils."

"You're a disgrace to your family," Gibbon says instead. "No wonder Regulus wants nothing to do with you."

"He wants nothing to do with me?" Sirius snorts. "Well, that's a laugh, isn't it? Maybe you should get your story straight before you prattle on about things that are none of your fucking business to begin with."

With Gibbon distracted, James manages to send a hex in his direction — an expanded set of nostrils.

"Hah!"

"Nice one, James!"

Cliona steps out of the girls' compartment, closing the door quickly behind her, and looks around, taking it all in the way one might a mildly curious scene at a fair.

"Hullo, James. Sirius."

And then, with the sort of reflexes you develop when you've spent the last three years throwing a Quaffle back and forth to James Potter, she hits a Baddock with a hex squarely in the eyebrows, which almost instantly (and pinkly) grow long enough to cover her eyes. Baddock yelps, and the spell she'd been aiming at Sirius misses its mark and hits Avery.

"Oh, very nice," Cliona says as he sprouts onions out of his ears. "You don't see that one much.

"Well, you seem to have things under control. Carry on, boys," she says, and then steps back into the compartment.

James and Sirius will just be able to hear her say, "Nothing at all going on in the corridor, Lily," before the door closes behind her.

"I think I'm in love with that girl," says Sirius off-handedly as he glances back towards the compartment Cliona has just disappeared to.

"Oy — concentrate," James says humourously, before adding, "anyway, you'll have to get past Blane if you want to get near her. And I wouldn't count on it. The two of them, they're —"

But James doesn't have time to finish as he ducks an Impediment Jinx.

Avery looks an absolute fright with onions sprouting from his ears, and great bulbous boils set across his complexion. His face has turned bright purple with rage.

Angrily, he shouts a number of jinxes and curses and hexes one after the other.

"I think we made him mad, Prongs."

"I think you're right, Padfoot."

Grinning, James shouts, "Petrificus Totalus!", and Avery goes down like a plank of driftwood, leaving three Slytherin students to finish the duel.

"Really, everything's fine out there," Cliona says, as green sparks go whizzing past the window in the compartment door.

Cliona sits back down next to Mary.

Lily leans forward to look around Mary and give Cliona a slightly incredulous look.

"Um, would you like a chocolate frog, Lily?" Glynis asks. "The trolley was here just before you got here."

There's more shouting from the corridor, and then a loud thud like, well, like a petrified student hitting the ground.

"All right," Lily says, standing. "I have to -- Perdita, what are you doing?"

Perdita has stood and pulled down her suitcase, setting it across the space between the seats.

"I was cold," Perdita says, opening the case. "I wanted my jumper."

"What, right now?"

"Just give me a second."

Perdita rummages until she finds a jumper, and then carefully recloses and replaces the suitcase. Slowly.

"Excuse me," Lily says, trying to get past her roommates and stumbling slightly over Glynis' feet.

"Did you just try to trip me, Glynis?"

"Why would I do that?" Glynis asks, eyes wide.

"Oh my God, you're all in on this, aren't you?" Lily says.

"In on what, Lily?" Mary asks, innocently.

Lily rolls her eyes, tightens her grip on her wand, and opens the door leading to the corridor.

Sirius is chortling.

Gibbon's nostrils have gotten so big, James is almost certain he can actually see the whoosh of air getting breathed in and out of them.

"He'll take up all the oxygen in this compartment, the way he keeps going on," says James, laughing.

Mulciber has been taken down by a combination of James' jelly-finger curse (which has allowed James to kick his wand away) and Sirius' leg-locking curse. He hits his head as he falls, knocking him out cold.

Baddock was a little harder to stop. She managed to graze James with one of her curses, singeing off one of his eyebrows, but Sirius Stunned her just before she could do more damage.

Of course, not before he was hit to one side by an ear-shrivelling curse, courtesy of Gibbon. Sirius' right ear is currently smaller than his left.

"Right. Two more down, one to go," says Sirius, grinning gleefully, looking unbothered by it.

James runs a hand through his hair to get it out of his eyes (he probably needs a cut, come to think of it) and nods.

"You'll leave Lily Evans alone, Gibbon. You and your slimy, useless mates," he says.

Gibbon snarls another curse, wand pointed in his direction, which James recognizes immediately.

Because it'd been used before; and quite recently, too.

On Mary Macdonald.

Before James can move out of the way, he feels his robes constricting over his body, growing smaller and smaller until he starts to gasp.

In the midst of losing all ability to breathe, his vision going hazy, he can hear himself shouting, "Impedimenta!" at the same time that Sirius shouts something.

Then he falls to his knees.

Edited 2011-01-23 16:14 (UTC)

Lily steps into the corridor just as Gibbon crashes backwards against the door of the compartment cattycorner from hers, and is still.

There are five people on the floor, Stunned or knocked out, Pettigrew and the four Slytherins. But she can see from here that they're all breathing.

Potter is on his knees, apparently trying to catch his breath.

And Black is standing in the middle of it, with a shriveled ear.

Oh, yeah. Nothing at all going on in the corridor.

"All right, there, Potter? Black?"

James turns to look over his shoulder to find Lily standing there.

He grins, nods.

"Brilliant," he says, a little breathlessly.

Sirius clears his throat, rubbing his smaller right ear. "Same old, same old," he adds.

James says, "You?"

"Fine, thank you."

There's a very slight emphasis on those last two words, so that they're not quite just an acknowledgement of his question.

Then Lily points her wand at Pettigrew and says, "Rennervate."

She turns back to Potter and Black. "Happy Easter."

And then she steps back into her compartment.

"You're right. Nothing going on in the corridor."

The door slides shut behind her.

James and Sirius turn to each other, exchanging grins as Peter groans from the floor.

"Blimey. I missed the whole thing, didn't I?" he says.

Sirius gets down on his knees to make sure Peter's all right. He pats his shoulder. "Nothing Prongs and I couldn't handle. Well, and that lovely girl, Cliona."

"Padfoot."

"What? I'm not going to go all 'James Potter' on her, if that's what you're afraid of," he says cheekily.

James sighs loudly.

All right. He might be going 'James Potter' on the girl who'd just left them, but at the moment, it's completely, completely worth it.

"James," says Peter suddenly, "you've lost an eyebrow."

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Hogwarts Express, 10 April 1976

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