Stealing Sheep

The next dream was what did it. It made her angry, furious even, with herself. How could she think up such things? Had she got some sort of illness that made her hallucinate ridiculous scenarios? She had almost convinced herself.

Lily was determined not to dream about him. She had come up with a plan- sleep in the common room. Granted, this did not sound like a very effective method of ridding her mind of images of James Potter but it made sense to her. Although extremely comfortable the armchairs were not designed for being slept on so she would be uncomfortable and, therefore, be unable to sleep. She knew that she would feel dreadful in the morning but she thought it was worth it if she could last one night without Potter invading her dreams - even if it did mean getting no sleep at all.

She curled up uncomfortably and dozed in a fitful, dreamless sleep for a few hours, until she was woken by the sound of someone carefully, but still audibly tiptoeing down the stairs of the boys dormitory. Lily knew she was only just in the shadows so kept perfectly motionless with her eyes shut and her ears straining, hoping that she could blend into the background convincingly.

She was startled by the familiar but unexpected voice whispering back up the steps to what must have been his waiting companions. "No one's here. Let's go!" Remus Lupin stealthily crept across the room. Lily heard the soft creaking of the floorboards suddenly stop about a foot from her chair.

"No!" Another voice whispered and ,strangely enough, it belonged to Sirius Black. "Someone's here - Look!"

Uh. Oh. They had spotted her. 'Keep calm! Don't breathe too quickly,' Lily mentally ordered herself, desperately, as more gentle footfalls approached her.

"It's Lily. She looks so pretty when she sleeps and her nose crinkles up in that cute way she has, like she's just swallowed a lemon." His voice softened and took on a dreamy quality as he muttered to himself with what sounded suspiciously like a sigh.

James Potter sighing? Over her? It was all Lily could do not to cringe uncomfortably under his searing gaze as it felt like it was burning her very soul. Now the situation was both absurd and completely confusing. Lily was so shocked that she almost forgot herself and joined in with the 'huhs' and 'whats' being feverishly tossed around the room alongside the occasional ghost of a snigger.

"Leave her. She won't know." What a shock it was to hear little Peter was involved with those buffoons!

As they slowly made their way out of the common room Lily was undecided as whether to follow them or not. She should not be out of bed wandering about by herself in these dark times - the castle simply wasn't safe at night and if she got caught she would be in serious trouble.

Then again, she was immensely curious to know what their secret was, once and for all. She could finally settle that bet she'd had with Leila - were the boys conducting naked devil worshipping rituals, or secretly dressing in drag and calling themselves 'Betty-Sue and the Gangbangers'?

But, if they found her spying... well, you know what happened to the cat that got a bit too nosy for it's own good.

Anyway, if she discovered their secret and it was ridiculously incriminating, embarrassing, or both, she would have the power. 'Ah,' she thought with a grin, 'the delights of blackmail!'

Yes, that definitely was the better option. Nothing dangerous would really happen to her - all those warnings about evil stalking the halls had obviously been grossly exaggerated in order to scare little first years into sticking to the rules.

Lily kept a discreet distance behind them and, secretly amazed that they hadn't discovered her, followed the boys as they took the longest, creepiest labyrinthine corridors in the whole castle. Lily suspected that they knew she was there and just wanted her to suffer. If this was the case, it had worked, she was suffering - her legs throbbed from hurrying after them for what must've been miles, her eyes had become gradually sorer as she strained to see in the darkness ahead of her, and she battled against the weariness threatening to overcome her.

After trailing them for what seemed like years she felt she was slowly going out of her mind with boredom. They had each other to occupy themselves with, but she had no one - she couldn't even eavesdrop on their conversation for entertainment as their voices were too hushed.

Just as she was nearly reduced to tears from the mind-numbing monotony, the shuffling footsteps came to a halt. With a start Lily realised that they had finally reached the Great Hall.

'Why didn't they just take the normal route?!' she fumed soundlessly at the thought that it should have only taken two minutes to get from Gryffindor Tower to the Great Hall, which would have saved her from a lot of pain and tedium.

Lily ducked down under one of the long house tables and luckily for her the dark green cloth placed upon it (presumably to stop dust or scratches or... for a convenient plot device) flowed down past the table and reached the floor, obstructing her from view. She had to peek out from under the table t see the four boys giggle madly and stop in front of the large tapestry adorning the whole of one wall.

Then her jaw hit the floor as she saw them all take out their wands and set to work charming and transfiguring every pixie in the tapestry so that each tiny body, instead of its usual sharp-toothed mushroom of a head, had a sneer upon it strangely reminiscent of -

Snape?

Yes, the wall was now full of Pixie-Snapes all glaring down at the boys with loathing. But they hadn't finished. Oh no, they had only just begun.

Lily rubbed her eyes to make sure what she was seeing was real. It couldn't be real. Those boys couldn't really have just enchanted dancing hearts to swarm around each little Pixie-Snape and made speech bubbles declaring "I'm a Barbie girl!" to sprout from their mouths. Those boys couldn't really have just bewitched the Pixie-Snapes into lifting their tops, flashing the room, all the while glowing luminescent pink. That, childish as it were, combined the most complex magic that they had been taught!

Then Lily couldn't believe her eyes. What had gone before had been unexpected but what happened next sent her into shock. The conspirators gathered around in a circle, stretching out their wand arms do that the tips all touched in the centre and Lily had to squint to make out what was going on in the darkness. However, seconds later the room was filled with a resplendent flash of light, that seemingly originated from the centre of their gathered wands. The sparkling red brilliance arched up and created a fountain of glittering magic over the calm night sky of the Great Hall. As the shimmers slowly fell across the velvety darkness like shooting stars finally losing their vibrancy four scrawled words were left in their wake, still glistening and dancing with vitality.

'Courtesy of the Marauders.'

Lily was struck with a memory. A niggling memory from a dream. Though she was crouched, frozen with utter disbelief she could still recognise that this whole scenario was scarily familiar. The memory was of this, the same as what she was seeing now, except she wasn't her. She was him, it was his point of view in her dream.

Now she was confusing herself. 'Take a deep breath and calm down. Breathe...' she instructed herself then slowly tried to figure it out. The dream, the last one that had her convinced she was losing her mind and had her determined to not sleep at all, the dream was of this. She had seen the tapestry and the Pixie-Snapes, except she had been him. She had seen it as he saw it - hysterically funny - and felt as he had felt - barely able to contain his anticipation for the look on Snape's face when he saw the 'masterpiece'.

Did this mean that she was a seer? Oh God, she hoped not. For one, she could not think of anything worse than being cooped up in that stuffy Divination classroom, looking into her crystal balls that 'magically' told her that she would soon meet and tall, dark and cranky suitor...ugh! Anyway, Lily really didn't want to know anything about the future- part of the fun was spontaneity and not knowing what lies ahead.

Lily heard a soft guffaw came from the direction of the tapestry, that she instantly recognised as belonging to James and abruptly realised what the implications of this 'premonition' were. I she had dreamt this and it had come true then did that mean that her other dreams - nightmares, really - the ones with the fighting and, ugh, kissing were actually visions of the future?

She dragged a hand over her face in weariness, deciding that tonight was not the right time to be worrying about the future, and that she would think it over tomorrow. Tonight she would force her tired legs to carry her back up to her room and have a good night's sleep, dreams or no.

Just as she was creeping slowly out of the Great Hall, Lily glanced back across her shoulder to check that they hadn't noticed her and clumsily lost her footing. She had no idea how it had happened but it seemed that she had tripped over something that she could've sworn had not been there a second earlier.

Lily want down on her hands and knees with an almighty "Thunk!" that reverberated throughout the Great Hall, up and along the great staircase, reaching the straining ears of Argus Filch.

In a panic she quickly jumped to her feet and took off towards her dormitory, trying to get there as soon as possible. In her hurry to getaway, however, she did not realise how much noise she was making, her footsteps resounding throughout the castle and alerting the caretaker to her position.

He caught up with her just as she was rushing along the corridor towards the Fat Lady's portrait. Filch's cold, clammy hand gripped her shoulder and yanked her back, almost pulling her off her feet. For someone who appeared so weakly he had a clamp-like grasp that managed to shock and scare Lily. Her blood pounded and her eyes stung with unshed tears. She had been caught but what horrible punishment would she receive? She hoped that Filch's shackles had been put into retirement long ago.

"Ah... Out of bed after hours! If only they still let me use my manacles..." Filch sneered at her, flashing his grimy yellow teeth, making Lily shudder and pull out of grip in revulsion. "My office, now girl. We'll have to see about a suitable punishment."