Comedy/Tragedy: The Story of a Doomed Existence

Chapter Eighteen: The Marauderette

Who should come out but Apolloyon Pringle? He was leading James by the boy's ear and grinning evilly. Potter seemed to be in a lot of pain; as they passed, Lily saw that Pringle was pinching his ear to the point where it was red and almost dragging him by it.

Knowing that he would be regarded as an outcast as well, Lily smiled at him in a hopeless sort of way. He half-returned it, but didn't have time to complete the portrayal of friendly emotion because Pringle gave an extra-hard tug on his ear before pulling the tousle-headed boy out of sight.

As they walked along the next corridor, Lily distinctly heard Pringle say, "I'm going to make you wish you'd never been born, boy!"

She felt another emotion dance up her spine; it angered her so much when people went to violent terms to prove a point.

"I'd be very much mistaken if I said that he doesn't come back tonight injured," Lily told the empty hallway. The emotion prancing on her spine intensified; what Pringle was doing was just as wrong as the discrimination of Sir Dasting. Once again, the redhead had to wonder about the staffing at Hogwarts.

If Professor Dumbledore really were such an amazing man, who had achieved so many things and was the best headmaster Hogwarts had ever seen, then why did he make such stupid decisions? Professors Dulcissa and Hurley, Pringle, and Dasting were horrible people! And Lily had spotted the gamekeeper, an old and grumpy man named Ogg, kicking his dog when it refused to chase a squirrel. If this were the most prestigious Wizardry school in Britain, then why did the headmaster stand to have filth like Dulcissa, Hurley, Pringle, Ogg, and Dasting at his school? It was just so unreasonable!

Angry at a number of things, mainly Dumbledore and Pringle, Lily kicked the wall. It didn't seem to be hurting enough...she kicked it harder. No, her foot wasn't numb yet...

Kick, kick, kick...

"Ow!" Lily exclaimed.

"You know, you really shouldn't be surprised. Normally, when one kicks solid objects, it tends to hurt a bit," a voice told her helpfully.

Lily whirled around to glare at whoever had been speaking. Her eyes widened.

"Remus?"

"Hullo," the peaky-looking boy inclined his head in recognition. Before Lily could reply, two more boys stepped out from behind him.

"Hello there, Lily," Sirius smirked. "How's it going?"

"Erm -" Lily didn't know what to say. He wasn't supposed to talk to her like this, not in front of Peter and certainly not as though they were old friends! She didn't know much about Pettigrew, though she had deduced that he was a bit spoiled, looked like a rat, and hero-worshipped James.

"Not a very polite greeting, m'dear." Sirius grinned again. Lily glared at him, trying to tell him to stop acting like they didn't hate each other, but he avoided her eye.

Finally very annoyed, Lily whispered a soft, hissing reply.

"What are you doing? He," she indicated Peter, "can't know about us!"

"Are you implying that there is something to know?" Sirius asked smugly. "I mean, we could make it that way if we wanted, but I don't think that James would be too happy -"

"Oh, knock it off." Lily rolled her eyes at him, but she smiled slightly. She wiped it off her face as soon as she could, and continued. "I thought no one was supposed to know about the hurl thing!"

"Oh, come off it, Evans. Not everything is about you - I understand that you didn't want to be discovered, but why do you care that much? For someone to whom popularity supposedly doesn't matter, you seem to worry about it a lot."

"Hey, I'm not self-centered!" Lily told him angrily. "And I don't care about popularity!"

"Then why does it matter if people know you spearheaded the Hurl campaign?"

"Well, I -"

"That's what I thought," Sirius told her happily.

"I guess you can tell him. I don't care about popularity," Lily told him once more, just for good measure.

"It's all right, Lily. I already -" Peter took this moment to take a huge slurp of some kind of lollypop, "- know. James told me."

"And I was wondering how James knew." Sirius' chocolate-brown eyes snapped back to Lily.

These eyes reminded her of the golden retriever who used to live in Number Ten, back at home. Right now, they were filled with slightly accusing curiosity, which also had the strange effect of making Lily think of dogs. Shaking her head at her own silliness, Lily listened to his question.

"Oh - well - see -" Lily stumbled, reddening a little.

"You're blushing, Evans," Sirius told her. He seemed to find entertainment in watching how uncomfortable she was.

"When did he tell you he knew?" She evaded the question, glancing up at him slyly.

"Oh, ages ago..." Sirius trailed off, his dog-like eyes glittering as he gazed into the distance, remembering.

"I guess it was mid-October, or something..." Peter cut in, still sucking on his lollypop. "After flying lessons...oh yes! The day you and him went into the hall together." He smiled, as though proud of himself for remembering something so obscure.

"Yep, Peter's got it," Remus piped up.

"So what did he say?" Lily asked. She wondered if he would have taken on the personality he had when with Hana, or the personality he had seemed to have in the hall with Lily herself, when he told his friends what had happened.

"Oh, it was pretty amusing, actually," Sirius told her. "He spent a good deal of time yelling about you and how hopeless you were. But when he finally stopped going on about how bloody sick he was of you and your...what was it, mate?" He glanced at Remus.

"Your deprecating - though he didn't use that word, o'course - nature and how you confused him more than anything," the amber-eyed boy rattled off. "It was like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation," he finished. Lily smiled at the reference to a Muggle book.

"Precisely. So after a great deal of cursing, we managed to calm him down. He still says he hates you, the old coot." Sirius smiled in a fallaciously fond way.

"But he hasn't said anything to Hana?" Lily voiced her real concern, glad that Sirius and his friends had not yet noticed her complete equivocation of their question.

"Nope, not a thing. Just another proof of how much he loves you." The tall boy snickered.

"Honestly..." Lily rolled her eyes.

"Honestly what? You're going to honestly answer my question, now?"

He wasn't as dim as he looked, Lily decided. She told him this.

Sirius laughed.

"Damn, do I really put on that successful of an appearance?" He looked quite pleased.

"D-don't curse in front of a lady," Peter spoke up, stuttering slightly. Sirius howled with laughter and Remus chuckled a fair amount.

"A lady?" Sirius asked, once he had partially regained control of himself. "Lily isn't a lady! This is the girl who was thrown down the stairs and lied about who did it, the girl who had a snapping turtle practically bite off her foot - yes I know about that," he said when he spotted Lily's curious expression. "The girl who yelled at McGonagall, the girl who is researching ways to get the Quidditch team to be more fair...the girl who invented H.U.R.L...this is not a lady. She isn't even a girl. She's like a -" He paused, as though trying to think of a word.

"Marauderette," Remus said quietly.

"A what?" It was Lily's turn to snort with laughter.

"Well...a marauder would be male, so you are a Marauderette!" Remus explained.

"What, so I raid, loot, and prowl?" Lily raised an eyebrow. "And who do we know who is a marauder?"

"Well," Remus continued, almost matter-of-factly. "We kind of are, eh, Sirius?"

But Sirius wasn't paying attention, he was staring at Lily.

"Hey, cool! Where'd you learn to do that?" Sirius exclaimed, bending quite a lot so that he was eye level with Lily and her raised eyebrow. "Wicked."

"My father taught me," Lily told him, surprised that he was so amazed by it. "My sister always thought it was very unladylike.

"Well of course it's unladylike!" Sirius roared. "It's Marauderettelike, and calling a Marauderette a lady is most certainly a mistake. A very offensive mistake." He turned to Peter and waggled his finger at the plump boy. "So don't you go calling her that again!" It was an uncanny imitation of Professor Flitwick the day they had learned the Levitation Charm; Peter had managed to send the professor flying, as opposed to his feather, and Flitwick had yelled squeakily at him about how he was pronouncing the spell incorrectly.

Lily laughed with the three boys - the three Marauders - and felt amazed to see that, for the first time since she, Alice, and Lucy had gotten in their fight, she almost belonged.

"Goodness, she's so much better for James than that Hana girl," Peter said once everyone had stopped laughing. Lily caught Sirius shaking his head in warning at the pudgy boy, but Peter took no notice.

"I don't think that you can associate 'goodness' with a Marauderette," Sirius announced in a fresh attempt to distract Lily from what Peter had said.

"What? So the only reason that you're talking to me is that you want to add me to James Potter's Master list of all the girls he's ever toyed with?" Lily heard a note of anger enter her voice, but she didn't care.

"No, Lily, see, Peter was just -" Remus began, but Lily cut him off.

"I'm still in school, I want to learn, not deal with some prattish boy who can't deal with himself! If that's all that you have to say to me, I don't have anything to say to you."

"No, Lily, that isn't it!" Sirius bellowed over her shouting. "Would you just shut up a minute and listen?" Though reluctant, Lily shut up.

"We're all outcasts of Gryffindor now, even Jamie-poo, much as he won't want to admit it. The one good thing that comes with that is that his girlfriend won't be following us around anymore." The boy grimaced when he referred to Hana, sending a shiver of delight up Lily's spine. "And you, dear Marauderette, do not deserve to be treated the way you have been," Sirius continued. "You deserve to be friends with people like you - that Bones girl was good, but now she seems to hate you - the git," he added hastily when he saw the expression that passed over Lily's face because of his reference to Lucy. "You've got a backbone, and you need to exercise that - with caution. With no real friends, you could wind up getting into a load of trouble. We're here to stop you from doing that."

Lily raised her eyebrow again at the end of his little speech. Sirius grinned.

"I take that as a yes?" he asked hopefully. "Yes, you're a Marauderette, yes, you'll be friends with us, yes, you'll keep Suzuki away from James?"

"I can't promise anything," Lily told him. "But I'll try my best."

"Fabulous," Remus nodded.

"No, no, no!" Sirius yelled at his friend. "You're saying it wrong!"

"Flitwick again," Peter whispered to Lily. "He loves doing imitations."

"It's faaaaaaaaaaaaab-you-loose, you flobberworm! How many times do I have to tell you?"

All four first-years laughed. Lily's humor got to be so hysterical that she was almost hyperventilating.

"Flobberworm?" Lily hiccupped once she could contain her mirth.

"Completely useless creature, no teeth, rather transparent, smells like old socks," Remus rattled off.

Lily couldn't decide whether to laugh or hiccup, so compromised by having a sort of coughing fit.

"Calm yourself, Lily, you'll cough up a lung!" Sirius clapped her on the back. This did nothing to help, however, for the heavy thuds of his hands on her back propelled her forward a few inches.

"Stop - please -" she gasped, still laughing crazily. An ache in her jaw told her that she was laughing too hard, but she couldn't stop. All three boys stared at her until she could finally stand up again.

"Careful, Lily, you'll give him another ego boost!" Remus whispered, with all the air of someone telling her that peanut butter made him constipated.

"We sure don't want that!" Peter told them happily, munching on a chocolate bar.

A moment later, however, he spat it out and gazed imploringly at Sirius. Now that Lily observed him again, sure that he had done something wrong, from Peter's expression, Lily saw a mischievous light glimmer in the tall boy's brown eyes.

"Cockroach Clusters!" Peter squealed shrilly. "Sirius, you dolt, that's disgusting!"

"Not only that, but full of protein, too," Remus laughed.

"Merlin knows you need it," Sirius chuckled appreciatively at Remus' comment. "Gettin' to be a right tub of lard!"

"That's not very nice," Peter told him sniffily.

"Well, I might not be Mr. Nice, but at least I can charm the ladies!" Sirius glanced knowingly in Lily's direction.

"Hey!" she exclaimed, though she was grinning. It really was nice to laugh so much.

Sirius grinned once more, then fell silent. Lily and his other two friends also refrained from speaking. The corridor, which had been so tumultuous only moments before, was now peacefully silent.

"Mmm...common room open yet?" Remus finally spoke.

"Nope," said Peter, who was still trying to remove the taste of fried cockroaches from his mouth. "Fat Lady's off doing who-knows-what."

"Probably with that knight we met a couple weeks ago," Sirius added. "The blonde, curly-haired one, with a load of muscle?"

"He's in my dormitory!" Lily exclaimed. "Sir Knavekill."

"Knavekill?" Remus raised his eyebrows. "No, that isn't his name - he doesn't even have a portrait in Gryffindor Tower! He's up on the seventh floor, between the Home Wizardry room and the unused classroom that has a secret passage leading to Transfiguration."

"Wow, you know a lot about the castle!" exclaimed Lily, who still had trouble finding the Charms classroom occasionally.

"I told you, we're like marauders," Sirius waved Lily's comment aside and turned to address his two friends. "We should call ourselves that, we really should!"

"Definitely," Remus agreed. "Anyway, this Knavekill you're talking about is actually Sir Snivellus - that's where James got the nickname for Snape."

"Well, that and Snape's rather sniffly, knave-like nature," Sirius winked.

"Snivellus?" Lily laughed, ignoring Sirius' cheekiness. "So why does he have a portrait up in my dormitory?"

"Probably bullied its occupant into leaving so that he could stay there," Peter added, clearly trying to sound as cool as his friends.

The other two 'marauders' made noises of consent in their throats. Lily smiled at the thought of the overly muscular knight's true name.

"Ahh..." Sirius yawned loudly. "Petey, what time is it?"

"Eleven oh six," Peter told him promptly.

"Eleven oh six? Oh no! Not six! Such a travesty! We must be sure to count down to the last minute because, otherwise, horrible things will happen!" Sirius exclaimed loudly. Remus wrinkled his forehead, Lily raised an eyebrow (making Sirius chuckle appreciatively), but Peter burst out laughing.

"Ha, ha, haaa..." he howled. Lily's eyebrow went even higher, and Sirius and Remus stared at Peter. "That was so funny!" Peter exclaimed. However, he finally realized that no one else was laughing like a maniac.

"Oy, she's back!" Remus announced once Peter had calmed down.

Sure enough, the Fat Lady had just reentered her portrait, looking very flustered and with the sleeves of her dress slipping down, for she had clearly been running.

"Where've you been?" Sirius smirked.

"Never mind that, dearies, password?"

"Come on, you can tell us!" Peter added.

"Password?" The Fat Lady said again.

"Tell us where you were, and we'll give you the password," Remus told her.

"But - wait - that's not how it works," she was clearly very confused. "Password?"

"Shant say nothing till you tell us where you were!" Sirius seemed very carried away with his own genius.

"Evanesco!" the Fat Lady called to herself. The portrait swung open, and the three boys seemed surprised that she had the power to do such a thing.

"Oh, come on," Lily muttered, shoving Peter in the back when he and his friends seemed inclined to stay and wheedle their desired information. "Aren't you three too cool to be talking to portraits?"

Sure enough, her words did the ticket. The three boys tumbled in and involved themselves in some kind of bizarre wrestling match; even Remus had cast down his books to play. Lily sat on the edge of an armchair, laughing as the boys engaged in their roughplay.

The common room was by now entirely deserted, as well as clean. Apparently, the other members of Gryffindor Tower had taken McGonagall's words to heart and cleaned enthusiastically. They probably didn't want to risk losing any more house points, Lily elucidated to herself. It struck her as rather ironic that the people at fault for the room's disastrous state had done nothing to help clean it up, but she supposed that the other members of the House had not wanted anyone to mess it up even more.

However, if that were the case, they might as well ban the 'marauders' from the common room indefinitely, because in the past ten minutes the boys had managed to wreck more things than Lily had in her own lifetime. The wrestling continued for a long time; just when Lily was growing very bored of watching the three eleven-year-olds knock over furniture, the portrait hole opened and a very bedraggled boy walked in.

"James!" Sirius exclaimed, tossing an embroidered pillow in his best friend's direction. "Good to see you in one piece, mate!"

But, in Lily's opinion, James was not all in one piece - his spirit seemed to have been stripped from his body. He let Sirius' pillow bounce off of his stomach and staggered into the room, bent over from the effort of keeping his back strait. Sirius stopped pretending to punch Remus and bounded over like an overexcited Labrador. But despite his buoyant body language, concern for his friend etched itself all over his face.

"Are you all right?"

In answer, James moaned and collapsed onto an overstuffed couch. Sirius, Remus, and Peter gathered around him. Unsure of what do to, Lily walked around to the back of the couch and peered over its edge at the pained-looking first year known as James Potter.

"What'd he make you do?" Peter asked nervously.

"Didn't - make me do anything," James wheezed. Though his voice suggested that he had run a long way and now had a stitch in his side, Lily was sure that, in his state, he wouldn't have been able to manage anything more than helpless staggering.

"What, so Sir Cadogan challenged you again?" Remus asked incredulously. Lily decided not to interrupt by asking who this 'Sir Cadogan' was.

"I hardly thing that paintings could to this," James snorted. He tugged his robes off and rolled over, pulling up his muggle sweater to reveal his tanned back.

But it was hardly what Lily might have suspected for the boy. James' back was covered in huge welts that stretched all the way across it, burning bloody tracks in his skin. His friends gasped in sympathy, each boy's eyes tracing the line of a welt. Lily brought her hand up to her mouth in horror, though at the same time she felt even more anger for Pringle. This really was uncalled for, especially in the modern day and age. Surely no one did this anymore! But Dumbledore allowed it. Lily narrowed her almond-shaped eyes in disgust as the watched James wince in pain.

"The git," Sirius said softly. "The bullying, heartless git. What say we do something to his office?" he fingered his wand deviously.

"Not right now, Sirius." James sounded as though still in a lot of pain. Sirius brought himself down to earth from whatever fantasies he was having of pranks to play on Pringle.

"And that's not all he did," James continued.

He pulled his sweater down, wincing again as the rough wool scraped his sores. Sitting upright on the couch, he pulled the legs of his jeans up to his knees. Lily wasn't sure what he was doing until he pulled off his socks and shoes. Then she was quite sure, and again quite angry.

Where James' ankles had been, there were now two masses of chafed, bruised skin. James poked one lightly, wincing again at the pain this small effort brought him. Not only were his ankles swollen, there were a large number of greenish boils. Remus wrinkled his forehead and peered down at them.

"What did he do?" the amber-eyed boy whispered. These eyes widened as Remus surveyed his friend.

"Hung me by my ankles from the ceiling," James muttered angrily. "The bloody manacles had some kind of goop on them, that's what the green things are from." He poked one angrily. "Then Pringle's assistant - we don't see him much, he mostly haunts the dungeons and cleans them - occasionally. Anyway, Filch, I think his name is, stood watch over me and smacked my back with that whip-thing whenever I did something he didn't like. Which seemed to be really frequently, for all that I was hanging from the ceiling in the dirtiest, dankest dungeon and unable to move for fear of hurting my ankles more."

James allowed himself one more derisive poke at his sores ("Ouch...") and shoved his pant legs down again.

"When I get better, Sirius, mate, we're going to have to take Pringle down!" He punched the air in enthusiasm, but regretted this as soon as his sore-covered back stretched painfully.

"Well, mates, I'd better get off to the hospital wing. I don't know how long I can stand this." He indicated himself with a wide sweep of his hand.

"You don't want to be doing that!" Lily exclaimed.

James and his friends jumped; James had not seen the small redhead and his friends had, apparently, forgotten that she was present.

"What're you doing here?" James asked defensively, pulling his robes on hastily. He obviously didn't want her to see his injuries. "And why shouldn't I go to the hospital wing?" he added as an afterthought, a note of panic in his voice.

"It's a long story, James," Peter told his friend squeakily, pale blue eyes still wide from the state he had seen his friend and hero in. "And I don't know what Lily's talking about. Of course he should go to the hospital wing, he's badly injured!"

"No, I'm not," James said quickly. "I'm fine."

Lily snorted.

"You most certainly aren't! And you shouldn't go to the hospital wing because Klagensteril does more harm than help. Believe me."

It was James' turn to snort; clearly he didn't want to believe anything she said.

"Remember your girlfriend?" Lily was unable to prevent herself from rolling her eyes. "She and Leanna got undiluted bubotuber pus on their eyes; that's why they looked like deranged pirates for so long!"

"Suzuki was never my girlfriend," James told her. "Never. I've always hated her, I don't know where you got the idea I thought any differently."

Lily opened her mouth to explain herself with the most sarcasm possible, but Sirius took the opportunity before she had the chance to.

"It's a mystery," the tall boy announced sardonically. He flipped his long bangs out of his eyes and rolled them widely and obviously.

"Okay, so we've established that I might have been friends with Hana," James was determined to not concede any other information. "Now, what do you suggest that we do about my injuries?" he turned so that his back was facing Lily.

"I might know some spells," she explained sweetly, as determined as Potter to not give up.

"You're still here?" James surveyed her as though she were one of the 'flobberworms' Remus had described.

"Aw, give her a chance, Potter!" Sirius mediated, for Lily and James were glaring daggers at one another.

James rolled his eyes, but he protested no further. Smiling to herself, Lily plunged into her book-bag, which happened to be conveniently hidden in a corner and filled with spiders. She snatched up her potions and basic spell textbooks and hurried back to the three boys, who seemed still to be deep in conversation.

"...doing with her, Sirius? You don't still like like her?"

"'Course not, I never thought of her that way. That was your turf, mate! Give her a chance, though, she's all right."

"Ahem," Lily coughed loudly from behind them. James leapt up as though he had sat on one of the tarantulas in Lily's book-bag. Remus and Sirius grinned.

"I've got the books." She held them up for her fellow first-years to see, her emerald eyes glinting mischievously in the dying firelight.

Unawares that the grandfather clock had long since passed midnight, Lily and her fellow first-years rifled through her books and those Remus had dug up from his own dorm. They didn't say much; each was exhausted from the excitement of the day, James more than the other four. It would certainly have been easier to just let James go to the hospital wing, as the tousle-headed boy constantly reminded them, but Lily was glad that she had spared the boy the trying experience of meeting Madam Klagensteril.

Finally, just as it was getting very late and she was fervently wishing that she had just let the boy go, Lily let out a shout of success. She pointed out the spell she remembered, hidden in the footnotes of chapter eleven (hexes and defense), of The Standard Book of Spells (Grade One). Lily explained the spell carefully to Sirius, for though she had tried it before and had little difficulty, the first-year had found that she tended to make simple mistakes in spells when she was under pressure.

It did not take long for Sirius, who was the brightest student in their year if you did not consider James, to master the spell. He said the Latin words almost lazily, waving his longish wand at his friend's injured body parts.

Lily felt rather jealous of the tall boy at the moment. Though she succeeded in all of her classes, she met this goal by studying vociferously. Lily had the top grade in their year, but she was fully aware of the fact that Potter and Black were the brightest students among half of the school's population, not even just the first-years. She knew that, did either care to show up for class or put in the effort, they could easily beat her out. It disconcerted her to know this; though perhaps overly modest, Lily took pride at least in the fact that she could pull off a grade point average of more than one hundred, even in those classes that she hated.

"Oi!" a loud, rambunctious voice burst into Lily's thoughts.

James was bouncing around in front of her, filled with new energy and completely healed. Lily gazed up at him, smiling a bit as she watched his constant motion. When he caught her gaze on him, James stopped jumping and suddenly grew serious. He opened his mouth several times, as though unsure of how to get the words out.

"Fansh," he said finally. It came out as more of a hoarse whisper. Though Lily was sure she knew what he had said, she decided she wanted to be sure of the truth.

"Sorry?"

"Thanks," James repeated in a more legible tone.

A rosy tinge spread over his sun-darkened countenance. He seemed unable to keep eye contact with Lily, so after looking anywhere but at her face, he sprinted off to his dorm. He knocked into an armchair as he left, but he was moving so quickly that the scarlet piece of furniture did not tip over until the door to his dorm could be heard slamming softly.

Remus and Peter hurried forward to right the armchair, though both snickered unmercifully. Sirius gave Lily a rougish wink before walking over to join his chums.

"'Night," he and Remus said at the same time. Peter inclined his head stiffly, and the three boys departed at a speed unrivaled by James'.

Lily watched them go, smiling slightly. James hadn't been a prat tonight, not at all. And Sirius was great fun, Remus seemed to love books (a noteworthy trait in Lily's opinion) and Peter, though a tad annoying, was not horrible company.

They were all right, really, boys, Lily thought to herself as she sank into her own covers a few moments later, having pulled her still slightly spider-infested book-bag into its position by her trunk.

Not bad company at all.