- Text Size +
Departures and Lies


James thought it odd that Sirius wasn’t in his bed next morning, but supposed he’d gone to breakfast early. He got Peter up and the two second years got dressed and went down to the Great Hall. But the Gryffindor table was nearly empty, the only one there was Alex Tinnamin, who was absent-mindedly stirring his blueberry oatmeal as he read a book. James sat down, his brow furrowed, and grabbed a plate of bacon as Peter scrambled onto the bench beside him. “Wonder where Sirius is?” he mumbled, concerned.

Peter was too busy buttering his toast and sprinkling cinnamon sugar upon it to think about such matters. “Maybe he’s just gone off to talk to one of the teachers before end of term,” he said carelessly, “I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

James chewed his bacon thoughtfully. Hazy images that teetered on the edge of memory and dream flooded him - Sirius had tried to rouse him the night before, he realized, and he had slept on… A sick sort of foreboding began to creep through him. Had Sirius gone to get blankets for Remus? Had he been lost somehow on the way to the laundry? Gone down the wrong pit in the Trophy Room passageway? Nervous energy clawed at James’s stomach. His chest felt tight. “Peter,” he hissed, “Did Sirius try to wake you last night?”

Peter looked up, “Huh?” Cinnamon butter dripped over Peter’s chin.

James got up, “I gotta go find Sirius,” he said, panicked, louder than he’d meant to. He would get his broom, he decided. He’d search all the pits in that blast tunnel if he had to. He’d probably miss the train from Hogsmeade, but that was less important than finding his friend. He started for the door.

Alex Tinnamin’s voice followed him, “He’s in the hospital wing, didn’t you hear?”

James stopped mid-stride and turned back to look at the seventh year. Alex had put down his book and looked up at James with an apologetic expression. “The hospital wing? What’s he up there for?” James asked, nervously.

Alex shrugged, “Dunno. He was unconscious when Derek found him. I heard that he...”

“Bloody hell,” James interrupted, and he ran off, panic blinding him so that he didn’t even stick around to allow Alex Tinnamin to say whatever it was that he had heard. What kind of horrors had gotten hold on him down those pits? Peter’s far fetched worries about dragons seemed suddenly not so far fetch. James’s feet beat against the carpet of the corridors as he dashed up the stairs, pushing aside other sleepy students headed for the Great Hall. Complaints from Ravenclaws and Gryffindors alike echoed along behind him, a trail of glaring eyes following him along as he moved through the castle.

“Where are you going in such a rush?” Lily Evans’s voice was sharp against a blurry haze of the rest of the students.

“Sirius is hurt,” James replied without any more explanation. He jumped for the landing from the rotating staircases and ran down the last corridor, breathless as he reached Pomfrey’s wing. He burst through her door wildly.

Sirius was sitting up in one of the beds nearest the window, his arm in a great many bandages and a steaming bowl hovering magically before him in the air as he scooped warm broth into his mouth with his uninjured hand. Madam Pomfrey looked up from where she was bustling about at a wide cabinet filled with wildly shaped bottles, an expression of disapproval on her face.

“No visitors!” she said.

But James was already down the length of the ward to Sirius’s bed, his eyes wide, “Sirius! Bloody hell, what’ve you done?” He lowered his voice to a breath, “Did you take the wrong pit?”

Sirius shook his head and his eyes moved to Pomfrey, who had rushed over, “He needs his rest!” she said sharply, glaring at James, “You aren’t going to help him get any better any quicker by being here, Mr. Potter, run along and finish getting ready for the holiday.”

“I’ll see you on the train,” Sirius said.

James nodded, “Same compartment as always,” he confirmed, then Madam Pomfrey chased him out of the hospital wing, all a dither.

Lily Evans was standing outside, looking concerned. “Is Sirius alright?” she asked, falling into stride beside James as he walked down the corridor.

“Spiffing,” James answered with a sigh, annoyed by her presence because she was distracting his thoughts from trying to figure out what could’ve happened to Sirius’s hand. He hoped it hadn’t been anything that could’ve been avoided if he, James, had only woken up when Sirius tried to stir him. He felt frustrated with himself and, therefore, with Lily’s presence as well.

She trotted to keep up with him, “What happened to him?”

“Dunno, Pomfrey kicked me out before we could really talk much on what happened,” James replied, “You might’ve noticed I wasn’t in there very long?”

“Well, yes,” Lily replied, surprised at the attitude of his voice. “But --”

“It’s his hand,” James said, shrugging, “He’s done something to his hand. It’s all wrapped in bandages. Pomfrey had a bottle of something or other she was about to use on him, so I’m sure she’ll have him all mended up shortly enough. He said he’d be on the train later and she didn’t correct him, so…” James and Lily had paused at the mouth of the stairs. “Anyways, have a good breakfast,” James said, and he jumped onto the moving staircase and dashed off toward the tower before she could ask him anything else.

Lily sighed and made her way back downstairs, just as frustrated with James as he’d been with himself and, as a result, her. She thought briefly of going back to the hospital wing and talking Madam Pomfrey into letting her keep Sirius some company - mainly so she could find out what really happened - but she decided it was best not to try and show James up, and so she went back down to breakfast. Besides, she thought on her way down, she could ask Remus what was going on with Sirius Black.

But Remus wasn’t at the breakfast table.

Peter Pettigrew was just getting up from the table, but he was twitchy as ever and Lily knew if she started a conversation with him he would stay and stare at her the way he sometimes tended to do, and it always gave her a bit of the creeps when he would do that - something about the way he did it made her very uncomfortable - so she let him go without comment.

She lingered in the Great Hall, hoping to see Remus, but he never came and she was forced to believe he must’ve already eaten and returned to Gryffindor common room, so she started back up to the tower. Students were filling up the entrance hall, gathering to have their things taken down to Hogsmeade Station and on home for the holidays. Lily watched from the top of the stairs for a moment as Filch jostled his way to the front of the hall and let the students through one by one, checking them off a long list as they went. She felt funny not being one of the students down below, but she was staying at Hogwarts this holiday.

Mr. and Mrs. Evans had been most disappointed by her letter, she knew, but she doubted Petunia had been upset at all, and it had really been Petunia who had caused Lily to make the decision about it. Ever since she’d written home about getting on the Quidditch team, every letter she’d received had been simply gushing on about it and she knew that being there would only make that worse. Remembering Petunia’s aversion over the summer to her parents’ constant raving about Lily and magic and all that, she decided to give Petunia the best Christmas-slash-Birthday present she could think of: Not having to deal with Lily’s presence until Summer. Then Petunia would simply have to deal with it.

She just hoped the holiday wouldn’t prove to be an awful, lonely experience at Hogwarts.

There did seem to be a lot more students spending the holiday at the castle thing year, though, she noticed, passing a couple Ravenclaws in the hall as she walked back to Gryffindor tower. She knew of three other Gryffindor girls who were staying - one of them being Ali Prewitt, who said that her family had insisted she stay because London wasn’t nearly as safe lately as Hogwarts was.

Lily arrived to the Gryffindor common room just as Peter Pettigrew and James Potter were coming out of the portrait hole. James had his book bag around his shoulders, the sleeve of a pyjama hanging out one end like a tail, and fighting with Peter about the trunk they were lugging between them. “You’re not going for long enough you should need to tote this thing back and forth,” James was complaining, “Can’t you just take a couple things with you? Blimey, it’s heavy. You’d think it was packed with a herd of Hippogriffs!”

“I need it,” Peter was whining, pushing the trunk from the other side of the portrait hole as James pulled it through. “I need all my things!”

“Do you really?” James asked, tipping the trunk onto the carpet and leaning against it, “Or are you simply being a stubborn little -- Hullo, Evans.”

“Hello,” she answered.

“Come to get your bags?” James seemed a lot more friendly now than he had before and Lily marvelled at his ability to run so hot and cold. She thought of the Jekyll and Hyde story she’d told Remus Lupin about and likened James’s unreliable attitudes to the tale. It seemed, for now at least, he was Dr. Jekyll.

“I’m staying here for the holiday,” she answered.

James nodded, “Right. Right. I hadn’t heard. Well, that’s lovely. I hear they have splendid Christmas trees and a feast every year.”

Lily smiled, “Well, that’s lovely. I love Christmas trees. All those pretty lights. They make me happy. If I could, I’d have a Christmas tree all year round.” She watched as Peter crawled through the portrait hole and toppled out onto the floor of the corridor before scrambling to his feet and grabbing hold on the handle of his trunk. “I’m sure you lot will have a great holiday with your families… Sirius is going home, too, you said, yeah?”

“Yeah,” James replied, rolling his eyes as Peter started slugging the heavy trunk off, “Remus is staying, though.”

That had been exactly the information Lily had been hoping he’d share. She was pleased she wouldn’t be alone during the holidays, at least, she’d have somebody to talk to. “Where is Remus?” she asked, “I didn’t see him at breakfast.”

James’s face twitched just the slightest bit, “I - uh, I dunno,” he said, “Some place around, I s’pose.”

“Oh,” Lily said, suspicious. Another mysterious disappearance by Remus Lupin? She tried to recall the last time she’d for-sure seen him, and it occurred to her that, once again, she hadn’t seen him since breakfast the day before. Where did he always go off to?

“Well, I better go,” James said, waving a hand toward Peter, who’d made it maybe five feet down the hallway with the trunk, “At this rate, we’re like to get to the station just in time to come back from holiday. Have a happy Christmas,” he added, and he turned to jog off to help Peter, grabbing the nearest handle of the trunk to lift it up. The sudden ease of the load made Peter trip and fall to his bum.

Wingardium leviosa,” Lily said, aiming her wand at the trunk. It hovered off the ground a few inches. “Happy Christmas, Potter… Peter.” She turned and went through the portrait hole.

“Hey, thanks Evans!” James called. She heard him mutter, just before the portrait hole closed, “Blimey, I never even thought of that.”

After confirming that Remus wasn’t anywhere in the Gryffindor common room, Lily went up to her dormitory and set herself at the little seat by the window, staring out across the snow-covered grounds of Hogwarts, over the Forbidden Forest and the Whomping Willow away on the edge of the castle grounds. She hugged her knees as a little bird flew by and up into the rafters, carrying itself a squiggling worm for a snack. She watched as the bird slipped into a little hidey hole among the bricks on one of the towers and smiled to herself. Looking back down at the ground, she could see Hagrid, the gamekeeper, down by the edge of the forest, cutting down a tree, and she wondered if that would be the lovely Christmas tree that James had talked about just moments before.

Bored, Lily took up her History of Magic book and laid it across her lap, reading about some of the heroes of ancient magic as the sun rose higher in the sky over Hogwarts, and the icicles framing the top of her window started to drip in the afternoon sunlight. She read even past the assignment for winter holiday, caught up in the excitement of the book, and didn’t even notice that it was time for lunch until her stomach growled unhappily, many an hour later. She stretched and sighed as she cracked the tightness in her back and put the book down on the little seat.

Lily was just about to get up and go for lunch when she spotted somebody down on the grounds, by the whomping willow. It was far too small to be Hagrid, who had disappeared from the edge of the woods where she had spotted him earlier before. This was a much shorter person, somebody about her height, probably a student, she realized. But what would a student be doing out there? And by the whomping willow, no less! Dumbledore had called it a very violent tree and the only person she knew that ever went near it was Professor Viridi. She inched closer to the window. The student hesitated at the edge of the shadow under the willow’s branches, looking about the grounds, obviously not wanting to be seen, and then stepped out into the sunlight.

Lily gasped.

It was Remus Lupin!

“What in bloody hell is he doing down there?” she murmured, her palm now pressed against the cold glass as she watched Remus walk toward the castle through knee deep snow.

Quickly, Lily rushed and grabbed her Gryffindor scarf and ran down through the castle faster than she’d ever run before, her hair streaming out behind her. She passed a great many students on the stairs, and even a couple in the entrance hall - including Severus Snape, though she didn’t notice him, even though he stared after her as she passed him by. She pushed her way out the wide doors and onto the steps, just as Remus was climbing the last couple up. He looked up in surprise at her, his face pink from the cold.

“Lily,” he said, “Where are you off to?”

“The - the question is more - wh- where are you coming from?” Lily asked, breathless from her long run through the castle.

Remus said smoothly, “I went to see off James, Sirius, and Peter at the train station.”

Lily shook her head, “You’re lying,” she said.

“Lying?” Remus echoed nervously. He had several cuts and bruises on his hands, she noticed when he lifted his hand up to rub the back of his neck.

She nodded, “James and Peter have been gone for ages and Sirius was in the hospital wing, so they weren’t together when they left. I suspect they’ve been gone for ages, anyway, and I’ve just seen you on the grounds… by the whomping willow.” She eyed him suspiciously. “Remus, what’s going on? Where’d those cuts and bruises all come from?”

Remus swallowed, nerves crawling up from the pits of his stomach. “I - I - I dunno,” he stammered. Then, in an attempt to change the subject, “Why was Sirius in the hospital wing? What happened?”

“I dunno,” she answered, mimicking him. “Why were you by the Whomping Willow?”

Remus replied, “I was… uh… working on an extra credit report,” he fabricated, “For Viridi. It’s - it’s about the willow species and --” He could see the doubt plainly on her face. He stopped talking. He wasn’t sure what to say, how to get out of this. He’d never been spotted before and he’d never thought to ask Dumbledore what he ought to say should he be spotted. He felt sick.

Lily crossed her arms, one eyebrow raised.

He took a deep breath. “Evans…” he made a face, grimacing, obviously fighting with himself internally.

“Remus?”

Remus sighed. “Alright. Alright. Let me get something to eat - I’m starved, Lily, you have no idea how starved I am - and… and then we’ll go someplace to talk. In private. Alright?”

“How much more private could we get?” she asked, waving her arms about, “Who’s going to hear out here? The snow?”

“No, not the snow,” Remus replied, “But he might.” He gestured behind her and Lily turned around just in time to see Severus Snape duck back in the doorway of the castle. She hadn’t even realized he’d been standing there, spying on them - on her - and she scowled. “After I eat, Lily, I promise I’ll tell you everything,” Remus said.