I Am My Own Knight

Chapter Two: Knight in Rusty Armour

Herbology the next day was a complete and utter waste of Lily's precious time. She growled to herself as she hustled up through the castle. As if she didn't have enough to do between homework assignments, preparing for NEWTS, and keeping up with her Head Girl duties, Professor Sprout had the nerve to make them transplant Bobotubers to get them ready for the fourth-years. And seemingly to make up for the fact that she hadn't really taught them anything during the lesson, she'd assigned twice as much homework as usual.

Lily swung by McGonagall's office to drop off a copy of the latest schedule of Prefect duties, and grumbled under her breath as she hustled up to the tower for a quick wash before dinner.

No sooner had she burst out from behind a tapestry into the next corridor, than Lily felt a chill up her back. Something wasn't right. She turned around to find five Slytherins staring her down with uncharacteristic amusement.

There was no reason for them to be up in this corridor, so close to Gryffindor Tower, but Lily was hesitant to say anything. If they had been any other students, Lily would have had no qualms about sending them down to dinner. These students, however, were a little different. They were a mix of sixth and seventh year boys with whom Lily had a rather sour history.

If she said anything at all, it wasn't going to be pretty, and she was rather heavily outnumbered. Before she could make up her mind about how chicken she really was, the boys took matters into their own hands.

"Look what we have here. If it isn't our own little resident mudblood." Severus Snape looked her over with an evil smirk.

"And look how dirty she is." A pimple-faced sixth-year took a mocking step away from her. "I knew mudbloods were filthy, but I thought she'd at least know how to wash."

"You don't have any business in this part of the castle," she told them with the most authoritative voice she could muster. "Head down to the Great Hall now, and I won't report you."

"Of course." Snape threw up his hands in mock respect. "We'll hurry down straight away. Don't worry about us." He waved the group towards the stairs like a crowd of children.

Lily turned to hurry away towards the tower, hoping against hope that would be the end of it, when a spark by her ankle made her jump. Her books toppled to the ground and she spun in place, gripping her wand in front of her. The Slytherins' laughter rang through the corridor. They had no intention of following Lily's instructions.

A wiry haired sixth-year aimed an unknown spell at her. "Protego," she whispered. It bounced back to the boy. He fell to the ground with a shout and great quantities of hair sprouted from his nostrils, quickly covering him with a small furry mountain. His friends looked at Lily, all traces of humour wiped from their faces.

"You'll pay for that," Snape ground out.

"I'll pay for him trying to hex me?" Lily asked, astonished. "I don't think so. Ten points from Slytherin for trying to hex the Head Girl. It'll be fifty once I'm done talking to McGonagall about this."

"Do that. And find out how pleasant we can make your pathetic life at Hogwarts."

Lily was afraid, but she was determined not to show it. "Oh, look at little Snivellus," she sneered, "trying to talk like he's all big and bad around the castle."

Bang! Lily sent up her shield against a flying curse, but she wasn't prepared for the next one. She felt herself snatched by the ankle and hoisted towards the ceiling, accompanied by hysterical laughter from the group below.

"Nice knickers, Evans!" someone shouted. "I never knew you mudbloods wore granny pants. But then again, I guess nobody would ever want to look at them."

Lily flailed her arms helplessly, trying to cover herself, and wishing with all her might that she hadn't dropped her wand. Quite unexpectedly, she slammed shoulder first into the floor. Lily scrambled for her wand and swung around to face the boys, still crouching on her knees.

"Oh, dear," the pimple-faced boy cried out. "She'd going to threaten to report us again."

Snape glared down on her. "Do you really think that I'm afraid of anything you could do to me, Evans?"

The tapestry beside her fluttered and Lily's heart soared when she looked up to see Gryffindor back-up in the form of Sirius Black stepping into the corridor beside her.

"I'd wager you're afraid of me, though, aren't you Snivellus?" he said.

Snape recoiled visibly and hissed in disgust.

Not breaking eye contact with Snape, Sirius took Lily by the elbow, pulled her to her feet and nudged her behind his back. She peered around his shoulder, wand at the ready.

"You'll pay for this when you're least expecting it," Sirius said, "and I swear that if you ever bother Evans again, James and I will hunt you down and take you apart like a pig sent to the butcher."

"Big words for a pansy blood-traitor."

Sirius shot a spell at the insolent boy by the wall. They boy jumped several feet back and raised his own wand.

Snape grabbed his arm to stop him. "Let me. Black has a lot more coming to him than a few text book curses will clear up."

"Ooh, I'm so scared, Snivelly," he sneered. "You lot clear out now, before you hurt yourselves."

Snape's eyes narrowed, and Lily was sure he was about to launch some horrible curse their way. She tried to move out from behind Sirius to give herself a clear shot, but he pushed her back, gripping her arm painfully.

A gagging noise erupted from the boy buried beneath a mountain of nose hair. In the split second that the Slytherins were distracted by their mate's suffocation, Sirius yanked Lily back through the tapestry and led her at a sprint through the passage. They tore through the next corridor, past McGonagall's office, and up to a rusty suit of armour that jumped aside when Sirius kicked it in the shin. They slipped inside the hidden nook and the armour jumped back into place just in time to hide them from the angry boys on their heels.

The hiding space was tiny and cramped, and Lily couldn't imagine why it existed at all. At that moment, however, she didn't really care. A horrible pain was pinching her side and she could barely breathe for trying to gasp air as quietly as possible. She couldn't remember the last time she'd run so hard.

The Slytherins seemed to have realized that Sirius and Lily couldn't have gone far, and they were opening every door along the corridor. She was sure they were going to be found out. Sirius slapped his hand over Lily's mouth to stifle her pitiful wheezing when footsteps approached the suit of armour. Someone tapped the armour with his wand and muttered an assortment of passwords. Unsuccessful, he shuffled off to follow the voices of his friends down the hall.

Sirius peeled his fingers away from Lily's face. "Are you crying?" he whispered, rubbing his damp fingers with his thumb. The light was dim, but it was enough for her to register the horror on his face.

"Of course I'm not crying. My eyes just water sometimes," she said. "It's an allergic reaction to being humiliated."

"Poor baby." He wiped at her cheeks. "I'd offer you a handkerchief, but I'm not gallant enough to carry one."

"I'm fine." She tried to move her face away from his hands, but found out that there wasn't much space to move at all. In fact, Lily realized that she was in rather closer proximity to Sirius Black than she could ever remember being before. He was unexpectedly warm.

"How do we get out of here?" Lily asked.

"Just sit tight for a minute. I want to make sure they aren't coming back this way."

"What is this place?"

"There's a secret passageway behind us, but we've never figured out the password to enter it from this end."

"It's cramped in here."

Sirius tilted his head towards her ear. "That's the best part about this spot." His hands found their way to her waist.

"Eww. Get off of me Black."

"Sorry, dear. Not enough room. And do keep your voice down. We are hiding, don't forget."

Lily blessed the dim light for hiding the colour burning in her cheeks. There was something undeniably attractive about finding herself in a dark space, wedged up against a handsome man who'd just saved her skin. She desperately needed to distract herself.

"Why are we hiding anyway?" she asked. "Since when do you run away from Severus Snape?"

"Let's get something straight." He met her eyes, nose to nose. "I am incredibly brave, not incredibly stupid. We were outnumbered two to one."

"And you didn't trust me to be able to duel." That was the only explanation for the way he'd kept shoving her to the back.

"I didn't know how much they'd hurt you before I got there. Besides, James would have had my tail if I let them curse you."

"I wasn't hurt."

"When I walked in you were crouched on the floor. You must be hurt somewhere."

"My shoulder will be a little bruised from when they dropped me from the ceiling, but other than that I'm fine."

"From the ceiling? They didn't pull that Levicorpus thing on you did they?"

Lily nodded and sucked on her teeth. Her eyes were prickling again and she looked down.

Sirius swore softly. "I should have known Snape would be low enough to do that to a girl. I'm sure they had a good laugh over it."

That horrible reminder was the last straw for Lily. She choked out a sob and started to really cry in earnest. It had all been so humiliating. Sirius pulled her fully against his chest and patted the back of her head in what she presumed was supposed to be a comforting manner.

"We'll get him back," he told her. "Don't you worry. Snivellus knows he's toast. Just wait until James hears about it."

"Oh no, Sirius. Please don't tell him! Don't tell anybody. It's too embarrassing."

"I can't promise I won't tell James, but I won't tell anybody else. I swear."

Lily sniffed and hoped her nose wasn't dripping too much on Sirius' robes. She wiped at her face. She'd never felt like more of a fool.

"Come on," he said. "I think the dungeon rats are gone." He flicked the suit of armour in the back of the helmet and it jumped aside, allowing them to pass back into the corridor. A handful of third year Gryffindor girls froze in their tracks at the sight of them.

"Is that a secret passageway?" The smallest girl inspected the armour curiously.

"Nope, just a bit of a hiding spot." Sirius smiled and winked at her friends.

"Then why were you two in there? Oh...oh!" The girl covered her reddening face while her friends fought back giggles.

"Yes, dear," Sirius said. "We were enjoying a mad snog before dinner. Now you all just scamper off and don't tell anyone. Alright?"

The girls did scamper off immediately, but Lily held no hope that they wouldn't tell everyone they could about her supposed snog with Sirius Black.

"Why did you have to go and say that?"

"It was just a joke. Nobody important is going to take it seriously."

"Sirius. I have a boyfriend."

He nodded pensively, as though he'd just remembered. "You've been running around with that creep Quidditch Captain from Ravenclaw, haven't you?"

"He's not a creep."

"That's all a matter of opinion. Are you going to stand there glaring at me all day, or do you want to go get your books out of the sixth floor corridor before Filch finds them?"

Lily groaned and jogged after him. It had been a very long day.

Before breakfast the next morning, Lily found Richard waiting for her in the Entrance Hall. He didn't look happy. Lily reached up to kiss his cheek, but he stopped her and pulled her off into an empty room adjacent to the Entrance Hall.

"When I went into the Great Hall a minute ago, Black winked at me. He winked at me! There's only two possible explanations for that: either he's gay or he's been fooling around with my girl. And I seriously doubt he's gay."

Lily couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Are you trying to say that you think I've been cheating on you?"

"I don't know what to think. You didn't come to dinner last night. People kept giving me funny looks, and someone said that you'd been upstairs running around with Sirius Black."

"Oh, those stupid little girls. I knew they wouldn't be able to take a joke. They saw us coming out from behind this suit of armour and Sirius told them we'd been snogging. He's such an idiot."

"Why were you behind a suit of armour with Black?"

"We were hiding from a gang of Slytherins that had been bothering me. It was perfectly innocent." Richard didn't look entirely convinced, and Lily decided to try a softer tactic; she traced her fingers down the length of his tie. "Look, I really like you - I love being with you - and I wouldn't do anything to ruin that. But if you're going to believe a bunch of gossipy kids over me, then maybe you don't like me back as much as I thought you did."

She dropped her arms to her sides, but Richard caught her hands up in his. "Don't say that Lily. Come on and look at me. Would I be so jealous if I didn't like you?'

Lily shrugged.

"I trust you. It's all those other guys around here that I don't trust. I can't imagine anybody not wanting you. I want you all to myself."

"It comes down to trusting me, though. Other boys won't get anywhere unless I want them to."

"I know you're right, Lily. I'm sorry."

"So you believe me then? That nothing happened?"

He nodded and pressed his lips to her forehead. "I'm sorry I've been acting like a prat. Sometimes it's hard for me to believe that you're really all mine."

Lily wrapped her arms around his waist and hummed into his chest, smiling. "What can I do to build your faith?"

A warm chuckle emerged from his chest and he held her tightly. "What do you say we skip breakfast and spend some time talking about it?"

"Oh, well, if we'll just be talking, I might as well go on to breakfast."