Falling From the Ground

Chapter Five

On the train ride back to school Lily made sure that Sabine knew everything she had heard her parents say. Lily wanted desperately to pet her cat as she was telling the story but Marduk had disappeared somewhere along the lines and was nowhere to be found during the troubling conversation.

"What do you know for sure?" Sabine asked skeptically.

"Not much."

"Then why are you worried?" Sabine didn't seem to understand. She didn't seem to have the same instinct as Lily, pulling at her insides, pleading with her to find out something solid. She needed to know why her mother was so scared.

"My mum has never sounded that worried."

"Even when Petunia disappeared for a day? Even when she took you to meet her parents? Of course your mum has been this worried before and she will be again. Even if something were happening your mother is emotional. Besides, you probably dreamed up the conversation. Your room is quite a distance from theirs you know."

Lily let it drop, knowing that though her friend meant well she could not understand. There was something deeply troubling about hearing your parents voice quake and knowing that it was because they worried about your future.

"Will you help me look for information though?" Lily asked and Sabine nodded.

They went on to discuss their holidays, for it had been the first time in their lives that they hadn't seen each other in over two weeks. And after talking about presents, and classes, and their families, they found themselves in a silence that lasted the rest of the trip to Hogwarts.

~*~*~

Over the next few weeks and months Lily found herself in a whirlwind of activity that left no time for her to hunt for her families past. Sirius dragged her to Quidditch matches every month or so, which was much more exciting than anything she thought she could have experienced before. High flying, fast moving, and amazingly dangerous, Lily was instantly hooked.

She also found herself liking Sirius more with every moment they spent together. He was fun-loving kind of guy that Lily could instantly identify with. His enthusiasm was contagious and Lily soon found herself laughing more than ever before. He and James could make even Professor Binns chortle on occasion.

That day, Lily, Sabine, and Cleopatra were walking back from a Quidditch match with Remus and Peter. Sirius and James had run off somewhere and Lily wished that they hadn't. It wasn't that she didn't like Remus and Peter. She did. They were very nice and always understanding, and Peter was great for making fun of people, but it wasn't either of them that she knew very well. She only really knew them through Sirius.

"You were fantastic! Cheering for one side the one minute and the other the next! Go Hufflepuff! Go Slytherin!" Peter imitated Lily.

"Like you were any better," she responded lightly. "You tried to eat a rock."

"I don't think that Quidditch is a good sport for either of you," Sabine piped in. As the conversation progressed (or digressed) to the point at which they were talking about each action individually Lily laughed long and hard as Peter began debating with himself over strategies with an air of educational knowledge that mere first years had in no subject except Quidditch.

"Where'd the other two get off to?" Sabine asked, breaking through the Quidditch discussion that left her feeling useless.

"James and Sirius probably stayed behind to talk with the captains. Pay their respects and all," Peter said.

"James and Sirius? Pay respects? They harass every single professor that we have. And then they get into trouble before they manage to work their way out of it," Sabine acknowledged. But the two boys just shrugged as though this was perfectly normal, and Lily was surprised to find that it was.

~*~*~

April Fools day came around and Lily hadn't told anyone that it was her birthday. She received presents from her parents, the Lowerys, and her grandparents (a gold gilded volume of Important Magical People: Who to Know), but when she came downstairs she was greeted with every sort of explosion that she had ever heard of.

"Sirius! Don't you think that was overdoing it just a little?" Remus voice screamed in the silent room. He appeared to have lost his hearing, and so had everyone else.

"You want me to do it again?" Sirius yelled back.

"NO!"

"Oi! Shut up! And greet the birthday girl. Happy Birthday Lily!" Sirius called out to her as she stood stock still on the stairs. She grinned and looked around at the decorations that adorned the common room in wonder. They had done this for each of the first years (even Tim in January), but she had never thought that the group would do it for her.

She couldn't help but wonder what the older students thought of this display. She walked downstairs to receive all of her Birthday hugs. All of the first years had come out in the early morning to put glittering streamers all over the common room. Tim had appointed himself director and Sirius had been using a lot of self-control not to punch him.

"This is so nice of you!" she said, hugging everyone in turn. She did feel a little uncomfortable about the whole thing. It was a rather large party for such a small first year. Luckily Sirius and James were right there to make everything easier.

"Don't worry about it," James said.

"We were planning on having a party anyway and just incorporated your birthday into it to make it louder and better," Sirius concluded. "By the way congratulations on being born on April Fools."

"Our present to you was that you didn't have to help us put up to decorations," Peter finished. Lily smiled again at each of them in turn before Sabine shoved her present in her hands and Sirius added his to the pile. The other girls in Lily's dorm, Cleopatra and Aleen, also added presents to the pile and soon Lily was weighted down.

It was an unlucky thing that her birthday (and consequently April Fool's Day) happened to land on a Thursday because none of Hogwarts seemed to know what to expect on an April Fools day with James, Sirius, Peter, and Remus. You could tell the staff was terrified because no one except Professor Dumbledore and Professor Alsop seemed to be prepared.

The wizened old Professor came out at breakfast wearing a party hat and Professor Alsop had charmed an invisible barrier around herself that couldn't be penetrated by anything magic (dung bombs especially). The only things that could get through her barrier, Sirius discovered toward the end of the class, were muggle things thrown in a muggle fashion. Soon Alsop found herself pelted by small candies. It was one of the best birthdays that Lily could ever remember.

~*~*~

Over the rest of the year Lily spent so much time meeting new people, making new friends, delving face forward into Quidditch, and studying that she hardly remembered why there was a small pang her stomach. She spent only a little time in the library, between finishing her homework and sleeping, reading up on every book that focused on prophecies and genealogy. And everything was going fine she felt, until she decided to venture a question for the librarian, "Where can I find information about the Cavanhol family?" And then every friendship she had made with a Slytherin had seemed to dry up.

The Slytherin house, famous for their ambition, was a shrewdly secretive group and for the life of her Lily could not find what she had done wrong, except to ask about her grandparents (and she hadn't even mentioned that they were her grandparents, but merely that she wanted some information about the Cavanhols).

The friends that she had made in that household had been some of the smartest people that she had ever known, bright enough that when they started staying away from her she got worried. Why would they want to stay away from her? How could she threaten them that much that they thought it would be dangerous to be associated with her?

There was one boy in particular that bothered her. He tended to stare unwaveringly at her with a glare that could have burnt through steel while she was in the library. He wanted something from her and she needed to know what it was, but he would never say. All he would do was glare and frown. His name was Severus Snape and from what she learned about him through Sirius he was a pruney boy with an evil side. No one really liked him, Sirius said, except an "elite" few in his own house.

After two days of the silent treatment from the Slytherins, Lily decided not to research for at least a week. This hesitation in her research did not affect her very much, mainly because she had only ever worked during freetimes, so pausing for a week didn't seem a very big set back. And gaining back the friendships she had made with Slytherins seemed more important that a little family background. When the old friends came back it was with more hesitation than Lily would have like. She felt cautious around them and they did their best to do nothing to allay her fears.

~*~*~

It was Thursday, two weeks before the end of school when things got a tad bit out of hand concerning pranks. They were in Charms and things were not progressing as smoothly as Lily would have liked for them to. It did not seem to be a hard charm, just one that made things spin.

"Professor?" Sirius called out, not bothering to raise his hand. It was almost thirty minutes into class and he was finding it difficult to make his feather spin more than one rotation. "I think that one spin is technically spinning, and should still be marked as such on the final exam."

"Oh! Thank you so very much for your insight Mr. Black. Mr. Potter, do you or Mr. Pettigrew have anything to add?" Professor Alsop asked, and seeing as Remus wasn't there it wasn't odd for her to leave him out.

She did not bother to look away from the area immediately in front of her when she spoke. She was controlling five of her different flying pigs. They each left a different color behind them, almost like a jet, having them spin continuously in place. She tended to do this often during class, demonstrate the charm they were using with her pigs. As if she had to prove to the students that she really had the skill with which to teach them. Or maybe it was because she was bored.

"Actually!" James said, still staring at his feather with a mixture of wonder and frustration, "I was wondering what the purpose of this charm was. When are we really going to have a job in which our boss says, 'hey! I really need that thing spun could you get on top of that?'"

"Not just spun James!" Sirius piped in, "constantly spinning with no notion of slowing down."

"Because that is so much more helpful!" Peter piped in at the end.

"I will give you an example." she pointed her wand directly at Sirius and said the incantation (her pigs flew on). Sirius began to spin like a ballerina, slowly and gracefully. "Say you are a Professor at a magical school and the students do not appreciate the spell you are teaching them, your skill using it, the hours you spent preparing the lesson, or even the entertaining flying pigs that you have charmed with such skill that they fly without your full concentration on them. And maybe to teach those students a different lesson you use this charm at a decelerated speed when you could make them spin much, much faster."

"Point taken Professor!" Sirius called. "Sorry to have bothered you." And the spinning suddenly stopped.

"How about twenty point off?" the professor called looking back at her flying pigs.

"For what?" Sirius asked.

"For deficient assurance in your Professor's instructional capability? Does that sound fancy enough for you?" she asked, looking back at her pigs.

"How about one point off?" James countered.

"How about twenty?" she repeated.

"How about five?" James said staring at his feather. His demeanor was so casual that a stranger could see he bargained like this often.

"How about twenty?" she repeated again.

"How about one and a detention?"

"Alright, Mr. Black as per your friend's request you will be serving a detention tonight and you have lost five points for your house,"

"We agreed on one!" James announced, but Lily knew that he really hadn't expected Alsop to stick to the agreement. They had been bargaining over points almost all year and the bargain was always changed in lack of favor to the Gryffindors.

Sirius muttered something about just taking the twenty points seeing as they were in third for the house cup anyway. The Hufflepuffs, as per usual, stared in wonder at the three (but normally four) boys. Lily, on the other hand, was laughing under her breath. She wondered what any of her classes would be like without them. And although she knew she should be working on ways to make her feather stop flipping and flopping and start spinning, she found herself more engaged in a conversation with Sabine and a Hufflepuff named Sara.

"Well, I have one-hundred and two chocolate frog cards. What about you?" Sara announced.

"I've only eighty, but I am getting there. I think that my mum finally understands what this means to me and she is going to get me a couple of boxes later on this year," Sabine replied.

"Why do chocolate frogs mean so much to you?" Lily asked, making her feathers flipping look somewhat smoother.

"Didn't you hear? When the chocolate frog company started up a couple decades ago they made this promise that they would stop making new cards this year..." Sara began.

"And they said that the first person that can bring them the entire set of cards will win a prize!" Sabine announced, just as a Hufflepuff across the room stood up an announced their success with the charm. This put a new vigor into the class and soon more and more people began proclaiming their triumph. By the end of the class even Peter had mastered the spell.

"Well, I am thinking about writing home and expressing the great joy I have found in Charms class. What with spinning feathers and everything..." James said with an enthusiastic bounce as he, Sirius, Peter, and Sabine stopped just outside the classroom to wait for Lily (Sara was giving her the run down on chocolate frogs).

"Watch out! Look who's coming this way," Sirius muttered when Lily had reached them. She turned around just in time to see Tim walking by. And Lily had no doubt as to why Sirius' shoulders slumped when he saw him. If it was possible for anyone to be annoying all of the time, it was Tim.

He had rarely shown any talent, but that wasn't why people didn't like him. It was because he would never shut up about every single lesson was easy, as though he knew exactly what he was doing the entire time. The hardest part was not even the fact that he thought of himself so highly, but that he was distraught when other people weren't. He did manage to get most spells quickly enough, but it was painful every second before and after the accomplishment.

"That was a rather mundane lesson, was it not? I know that we are only first years but really, we were handling floating feathers on the first day of class. You would think we could all manage to spin them," and he didn't seem to catch Sirius muttering about the things he thought Tim should know.

"Tim?" Lily began offering a warm smile and leading him away from the increasingly annoyed group. "Do you think that you could talk about something other than lessons? Just for the rest of the day?" He nodded, but her doubts were larger than a mere nod could reassure.

~*~*~

Final exams were upon the first years faster and stronger than any of them could have anticipated. Potions was hard, simply because people were forced to remember a years worth of boredom. History of Magic was equally as bad. Herbology was easy and fun, as all they had to do was write an essay about how to care, long term, for a plant of their choice also mentioning some of the more important functions of that plant, and then demonstrate some of more obvious safety precautions. Professor Mathews didn't even watch them, he was busy with some new plant he had received as an 'end of term gift'. And much to the surprise of Lily Herbology was turning into her best subjects. The plants seemed to do exactly what she wanted.

Charms was one of the weirdest tests that Lily had ever taken. She was told to do every charm that she could remember on one of her own personal pig statuettes. So she did everything that she could remember from the first day of school. She had her pig levitating, spinning, sparking (which she probably did wrong as it looked more like a neon light bulb flashing than anything else), and laughing all at once. Which, although it was only four charms, was a lot of work. She failed to make it actually move, which she supposed would dock points but all the same she had managed to add her name onto her pig, but when she tried to make the room brighten with sunshine she over did it and the light was so bright that she was temporarily blinded.

Transfiguration was difficult. Not because she hadn't studied but because seemed that all the revising she had done had been on the wrong information. Getting into that testing room she felt her mind go blank and wondered momentarily if McGonagall had done that on purpose. But still she managed the change the things that were asked of her, but only with difficulty and way too much time spent on it.

Defense Against the Dark Arts was everything the Professor had promised at the beginning of the year. They were all forced to use every counter curse they had learned that year, and if they failed to accomplish that the Professor did not undo the curse but let them undue it themselves. If they could not, he failed them. It was grueling and difficult and Lily only barely blocked the spells being shot at her. And when there was a sudden shout from behind she was distracted for a split second too long because she was hit by the last of the curses, and would have thought poorly on herself if it had not been for the Professor's encouraging words, "Many did not even made it this far."

And with those words ended all of Lily's stress. The final exams were over and done with. She was free to spend all of her time over the next week sitting around playing games and simply chatting with her friends.

Her friends, by this point, were more numerous than she would have liked to believe. She had friends in every house, and enemies in only one. She was one of the most popular people in her year with her kindness, drive to do well, and love of life. She walked with a bounce in her step and friends by her side. It was Sirius Black, one of her closest friends, who lead her to the answers she had been looking for since Christmas. But once she found them she wasn't sure what to do.

She had fallen asleep on one of the chairs beside the fire two nights after the end of her exams. She had been reading a book about Quidditch strategy one minute and dozed off the next. She was having a horrible dream. Someone was screaming and she was falling off her broom.

"Sirius watch where you are walking!" a voice whispered harshly. Lily opened her eyes a crack to see who was talk in such a rush and found no one. She was about to go back to bed when she heard the voice whispering his name again. This time Sirius suddenly appeared in the common room right in front of Lily. She was too surprised to scream but she realized that was what she should have done.

"You guys really shouldn't have woken me that way," Sirius said, standing and still talking to no one. Then he disappeared and Lily almost screamed again but calmed herself in time not to.

She heard voices and footsteps move slowly away from her and towards the portrait hole. And as soon as the portrait shut again she pushed her way out and followed the voices. She felt compelled to follow wherever it went and only after hearing a soft meowing at her right did she realize that Marduk had followed her. Marduk had become such a second nature to her walking that she didn't even notice the way she sidestepped sometimes to avoid crunching his tail. She had been walking for a god five minutes behind the footsteps when another voice shattered the night.

"Wee little students are about, precious!" Lily barely had time to register the caretaker's voice when she jumped behind a suit of armor to avoid being caught. She ripped her robes on the right side but didn't really mind. She had jumped straight at a solid wall. And passed straight through it.

Lily felt a chill of fear run through her before she suppressed it. She was standing in the middle of a pitch-black room, hearing no sound other than her own breathing and Marduk's tail swishing; apparently he had followed her in.

She walked slowly forward with her hands outstretched and soon connected with something that felt amazingly like a wall. And almost as suddenly as she had found that room was lighting up, one picture frame at a time. There appeared to be about seven in all. Each picture was like a telly that had only just turned on and was yet to find a channel. She was in a circular room with just about ten giant picture frames covering the walls. And then she heard her name.

"Lily Evans, descendent of the Cavanhols."