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To The Top of The Tower


“EVANS!!! … YOOHOOO… LILITH JENNIFER EVANS!!!!”

The voice was magnified, echoing off the walls of the girl’s dormitories.

“LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLY MY LOVE, COME DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT!”

Lily blinked awake, her eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness of the night, the pale moon coming through her window. She wondered for a moment what it was that had woken her.

“LIE-LILY-LIE-LILLY-LIE-LI!!!!”

She rolled out of bed and pulled on a soft blue dressing gown, tying the sash about her waist, covering up her pyjamas, and pushing her feet into fluffy pink slippers. In the hall, several doors were opened, Annalee and Ali both sticking their heads out, “Is that Sirius Black?” Ali asked. “Is he alright?”

“LILLLLLLLLITH DARLING, MY PET!! MY LOVE!! I HATH NEED OF THEE EVAAAANNS!!!!”

“I don’t know… he sounds drunk; don’t worry, I’m taking care of it,” Lily said, hurrying toward the stairs, tucking her wand into her pocket.

“Make him shut up,” Annalee snipped.

“I said I’m taking care of it, Annalee!” Lily snapped and she glowered back over her shoulder as she reached the top of the stairs and muttered under her breath, “Your highness, so sorry your precious slumber was disturbed, Merlin knows you need all the damned beauty sleep you can get with a face like that…”

She came ‘round the bend and stood at the top of the stair well. Below, dangerously close to the bottom most step, was Sirius Black, holding his wand to his throat with one hand, a bottle of firewhiskey in the other, his hair an absolute mess, wearing nothing but his undershorts and his leather jacket, his eyes closed as he laughed and stumbled a bit, sloshing the firewhiskey, “LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!! LOVE!!!!!!! I’LL THROW MYSELF FROM THE ASTRONOMY TOWER IF YOU DON’T COME TO ME!!!!!”

“You imbecile,” she hissed, running down the stairs and smacking his wand away from his throat, “What the bloody hell are you doing?” She nearly choked on the smell of alcohol on his breath. “Merlin’s beard,” she gasped. “How much of that have you drank? You reek of it!”

“NOT YET ENOUGH, MY LOVE!” Sirius cried, and he grabbed onto her hand, spinning her about, “DANCE WITH ME, LILLITH JONES EVANS.”

“Sirius!” she cried as he whipped them about, laughing loudly and manically. “Sirius, stop!” He stumbled to a halt at this and took another pull from the neck of the firewhiskey bottle.

Lily only just kept her balance. “What are you drinking for? Where’s James? Or Remus or Peter?”

“Left me, haven’t they? GONE… Gone… all gone, they’ve all gone, like leaves in autumn, falling from the branches of a pathetic dead tree… Evans, I am the tree, they are the leaves… on to… to better things… like… like sheep on a grassy hill, migrating to the next grassy hill, they’ve… all left me…”

“What?”

“THE FULL MOON EVANS, IT’S THE FULL MOON! They’ve gone... SHHH. Big secret, you know. I told it last month and I’ve fucked everything up for it!”

“They all went to the Shack without you?”

“ARROOOOOO!!!” Sirius howled loudly.

“SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” came the shrieking voice of Annalee McKinnon from upstairs.

“YOU SHUT UP, ANNALEE BITCHFACE!” yelled Sirius back, “I’LL BLOODY SHUT UP WHEN I’M DEAD AND NOT UNTIL!”

“Sirius, shhh,” begged Lily.

“Not you, too, you’re shutting me up, too?” Sirius looked at her.

“Not shutting you up, just… please, be a bit quieter,” she begged.

Sirius spun himself about and put the firewhiskey bottle down on the homework table, and, as though he’d forgotten the shut up conversation already, he announced, “Lillian Willomena Evans… I’ve a plan… an absolutely brilliant plan and I require your assistance with carrying it out. What says you to that?”

“What sort of plan?” Lily hurried to take the firewhiskey bottle and hid it from his sight, hoping he’d forget he was drinking.

“A PRANK, MY DARLING, A PRANK OF … EPIC… HISTORIC PROPOSITIONS… PROPIT.. PRORPA -- PROP-- PROP--”

“Proportions?”

“THAT’S THE TICKET!”

“SIRIUS BLACK!!!” screamed Annalee McKinnon, “IF YOU DON’T SHUT UP I WILL HEX YOU SILENT! I SWEAR TO MERLIN!!”

Sirius turned toward the stairs, “GO ON AND TRY IT MCKINNON, I’LL BLOODY RIP YOUR HEX THE HAIR OFF YOUR HEAD, YOU VAIN COW!”

“Oh bloody hell, Sirius… c’mon, don’t be like that. Let’s go back to your dormitory and you can tell me all about your plan,” Lily said, reaching for his shoulders and guiding him away from the stairs before Annalee really could come out and hex him… the last thing she needed to be doing was breaking up a duel between a drunken dog and a sleep-deprived vixen… “Come along, Sirius, I’ll sing you to sleep and you’ll have marvelous dreams about… whatever it is Sirius Black has marvelous dreams about.”

“No, no Evans, we’ve a prank to pull.”

“Right now? Tonight?”

“Yessss, Evans, right now - tonight.”

Lily sighed, “Sirius --”

“I’ll throw myself from the astronomy tower if you don’t help me with the prank Evans!!!” he cried dramatically.

“Okay, okay! We’ll do whatever the prank is. What is the prank, Sirius?”

He grinned. “HAVE YOU STILL GOT YOUR BROOMSTICK?”

“My broomstick?”

“YES… YOU KNOW… GREAT TWIG THAT FLIES?”

“Shhhh… Yes, I have my broomstick.”

“EXCELLENT. Because James has left his here and we’re going to need them to get up there.”

Lily eyed him, “To get up where?”

“TO THE TOP OF THE TOWER!!!” Sirius yelled, waving his arms about, “THE TOP OF THE BLEEDING TOWER!!!”

“The top of the -- Sirius… you’re not jumping off the astronomy tower,” Lily’s voice was a hardline. “I am absolutely putting my foot down on this.”

“It’ll make a tremendous splatter,” Sirius laughed, then, seeing her angry face, he said in an exaggerated whisper, “That isn’t the plan Evans.”

“Well what is the plan, then?” she demanded.

Sirius grinned. “Get your broomstick, Lilith and I shall show you.”




In the Shrieking Shack, Wormtail was cuddled in his hidey hole, curled around his sock, staring out and squeaking in worry as the great stag shoved the snapping, biting werewolf into the wall, holding him there between his giant antlers, pinning him as the snarling teeth raged, trying to grab hold on the flesh of his own legs, trying to tear away the skin. There was blood streaking the floor in places in the dust, dripping from the front shoulder of the stag and from the hind haunch. They’d been struggling against one another since moon rise, when the werewolf had howled itself into being and begin tearing away at his own flesh…

James had found that his antlers were perfectly shaped to peg the werewolf to the wall, but the wolf quickly found that he could slide out from beneath the antlers with a fair amount of ease and then James would have to struggle to pull the points of them out of the wood and work at wrassling up the werewolf once again… an unending cycle… But it kept Remus Lupin from gnawing apart his own body under the terrible moonlight and that was enough to keep James Potter at it…

Anything to keep the werewolf from ripping himself apart… a goal which he seemed most desperate to achieve… after all, any wolf without it’s alpha is a terribly hopeless creature.




“This is madness.” Lily declared. She stood, holding her broomstick in one hand and the roll of spellotape in the other. “You’re insane.”

Sirius grinned, biting onto one end of the duvet and folding the other end in to meet it. He had James’s broomstick straddled between his knees, hovering just a bit off the ground, his eyes glazed with drunkeness. “Yes, yes it is madness, but it’s brilliant maddness,” Sirius cackled merrily. “Oh the looks on their faces, Evans. The looks on their faces!”

“Sirius… we should go back inside and do this when you’re sober,” Lily said, thinking to herself or never, not at all, that’s an option too.

“I DON’T WANT TO BE SOBER!” Sirius shouted, “Fuck sober! Sober is a lie! SOBER IS A WANKER!!!”

“What? That doesn’t even make sense.”

“What does, Evans? What makes sense anymore? OUR LIVES CERTAINLY DON’T!! Oh sweet mercy, our lives make no sense at all, Evans. We’re but ants on this planet, ants to be crushed by the gods! THE GODS ARE BITCHES!!”

“Sirius --”

“C’MON ZEUS YOU MOTHERFUCKER,” Sirius bellowed, “HIT ME WITH YOUR DAMNED BEST SHOT!!!!” He laughed as nothing happened and Lily sighed. “See, Evans? They play games with us, they like fucking us up and seeing where we end up and me -- me, I’m gonna end up up there, spello-taping this here duvet on that spire. And so help me, Evans, I’m going up with or without you.”

She could just picture him up there, drunk and trying to balance on the broomstick, trying to spellotape a damned duvet to a spire, and falling off the broom to his death, laughing like a psychopath the whole way down, and she shook her head. “Fine,” she hissed, “Fine, we’ll do it, but you’re never drinking like this again.”

Sirius laughed and gripped the broom tighter, “UP, UP, AND AWAY, EVANS!!!” and he zipped up, the duvet flapping behind him, the colorful writing on the side of it shimmering in the moonlight.

Lily shook her head, “Oh I am so going to regret going along with this…” and she kicked off the ground, the hoop of the spellotape about her wrist as she flew after him in great spirals, around and around and up and up and up, all the way to the very top of Gryffindor tower, where a tall spire reached up into the darkness, the top a great brass ball that shined, reflecting the moonlight.

The air was thinner and colder up there and Lily suddenly understood why the windows in the dormitories didn’t open - it was miserably cold, and just so far up, she shivered as she made the mistake of looking down and even the covered bridge and the parapets looked small, she could barely see the trees in the Ravenclaw courtyard. Below them, the light in Dumbledore’s office glowed, a golden shape against the dark stone.

“Here Evans… hold this end up there and give me that spellotape!” Sirius called.

Lily flew up and held the end of the duvet to the spire, just below the brass ball, her heart racing as she shook, “Please hurry, SIrius,” she begged, “It’s horrible up here. Please.”

“I’m going!” he laughed and he lowered, spellotaping the bottom corner of the duvet to the bottom of the spire. “Here we are…” and he applied long strips all along the spire, adhering the duvet to the spire quite sturdily and he reached the top and she let go and backed away to give him room, her feet hanging over the courtyard far below, her heart in her throat.

“Oh bloody hell, please hurry.”

“There we have it,” Sirius announced proudly. He backed away, too, hovering beside her in the air, his grin bright and wide, his eyes dancing over the sight of the duvet, flapping in the wind that had instantly caught it, a giant flag… “Look at it, Lilth. It’s beee-eee-utiful, ain’t it?”

“A regular Picasso, Sirius. Can we go back down to the ground now, please?” Lily begged.

Sirius laughed, “Yes… yes we can…” and he led the way, spiraling downward, followed by the grateful-to-have-lived-through-all-that-and-amazed-he-hadn’t-gotten-them-both-killed Lily Evans.

Behind them, high above the castle, fluttered the duvet… dark black letters painted upon it’s brilliant white span in a messy hand, dripping because they had not been allowed proper time to dry…

ITINERARIUM MARAUDENTIUM!