Forever and a Day ~ James Potter

Blood Is Thicker Than Water

Chapter Twenty-One

16:30

Eventually, the train arrived back at Hogsmeade Station, and everyone trudged up to the carriages at the edge of the forest, plodding slowly back up to the castle to start the new term. Since they were only coming back from two weeks away from school, there was no large feast or celebration, so the Gryffindors only ate a quick meal - with the option of stew or cottage pie - and headed back up to the common room and began talking once again.

"I must go and visit Severus tomorrow," Lily was saying casually as she lounged in one of the armchairs. "Petunia wouldn't let me write to him since Christmas Eve..."

"Why? He's a slimy old git. That's one thing I agree with Charles Artois on," James said, making Sirius and Pete snicker in agreement. But Lily looked less than pleased with this assessment, especially since she was far from fond of Charles or James.

"Don't be horrible, Potter," Rosie snapped, shaking her head as she defended her best friend.

"As if you don't think the same thing! You laugh when your brother hexes Snivellus in the corridors!" James retorted. Rosie knew that she would regret the gossip sessions she'd been having ith the boys over the past few days. She stayed quiet, not wanting to upset Lily, even though she could hardly approve of the girl's choice of 'friend'.

"I need to see him," Lily continued nevertheless, shaking her head in thought, "because he had to stay here over Christmas, and he must have been terribly lonely."

"Why'd he have to stay here?" Mary asked curiously.

"His parents don't get on so well," Lily sighed, speaking in a lower tone, guilty for telling Snape's enemies about his personal life. "And they don't live in a very nice area... so he decided to stay." She snapped her head around when she heard the boys snickering, "Something funny about that?"

"No," Remus responded quickly for the others, almost shrinking under the girl's strict gaze.

"It's just a bit... sad, isn't it?" James muttered, gulping down his laughter.

"Just because you come from a perfect, rich, Pureblood family doesn't mean everyone who doesn't is sad!" Lily huffed, her volume rising. James only shrugged, keeping the smirk on his face. "Honestly, you are such an arrogant toe-rag, Potter! You're worse than Artois!" she shouted, standing and storming over towards the dormitory stairs.

The girls all stood and began to follow her tiredly, but hearing the boys snicker behind her, Rosie turned around and speed-walked back over to James, gripping him by the collar before he even had time to react. 

"You better keep your mouth shut, Potter," she hissed. "You're beginning to look like one of those supremacist Slytherins!" She pushed him against the back of his seat and turned back after being satisfied with the disgusted look on James's face, following the girls up to the dormitory before he could think of a reply.

Lily entered the room and flopped down on her bed, sighing loudly as tears filled her big emerald eyes. "Honestly, I don't know why we're even friends with them!" The other girls shared a look, all thinking about Lily's insistence on pertaining her friendship with Snape. "And I know you all hate Severus," Lily said, sitting up and looking around at the four girls. "But he's different when he's around me. And it's completely unfair for Potter and Black to bully him about his family because they're wealthy."

"I'd hardly call it bullying, Lil," Alice said reasonably. "But no, they shouldn't have said what they said just then."

"You have to understand why they don't like him, though, Lils," Rosie argued, sitting down on her own bed. "I mean, Slytherins and Gryffindors are set up to hate each other from the start, but even Charlie hates him because of his political views, and not to mention, he's friends with-"

"I know who he's friends with, Rosie! You only remind me of it every time I bring Severus up!"

"Lily, you don't know what those people are like! They're horrible! Look what happened to Mary because of them!" Rosie argued, making Lily look away in shame. "If anyone should know, it's us and Sirius..."

There was an awkward silence – something like this always happened when all five girls talked about Snape, and none of them particularly wanted to get Lily aggravated, but they couldn't help their opinions on the boy.

"Sorry," Lily muttered reluctantly, looking at her crossed legs. "It's just tiring having to defend him all the time..."

Rosie sighed, walking slowly over to the bed to give her friend a reluctant apology, "Don't worry, Lil," she reassured her. "I suppose he's never actually done anything with dark magic..."

There was a loud tap on the window pane then, and all the girls looked around to try and make out the shadow in the dark. Alice walked over and opened the window, pushing it forward so that the owl outside could fly in. It dropped two letters, one onto Lily's bed and one onto Rosie's, flying back out again.

"Oh, Merlin," Rosie groaned, recognising the swirly handwriting.

Lily had opened hers already and read it through, "It's from Slughorn," she explained to the other three. "He's apparently feeling much better now," she clearly didn't believe a word of his lies, just like Rosie. "So he's going to host a dinner to kick off the year for the Slug Club."

"Ugh. I'm glad I'm not smart," Marlene chuckled, dropping down onto her own bed.

"Who else d'you think he's invited?" Rosie asked hesitantly, already trying to think of a way to get out of it. Perhaps, if she blew up her next potion...

"Dunno. Definitely all the snobby ones," Lily said. "Gwenog Jones in Seventh year will probably be there, and she's nice, I suppose."

Rosie flipped over and put her face into her pillow, "So there's only going to be one other person there we can actually stand."

"And Severus might finally get an invite this year," Lily added but looked like she regretted it immediately. Rosie turned her face towards the redhead and raised an exasperated eyebrow. "Alright, I won't get into that again, but you know Slughorn has good connections for after we leave Hogwarts, it will do us good in the long-term," Lily reasoned.

"I don't care about connections," Rosie groaned, sick of the word. "My stupid family has enough of those already."

"Well, my family don't. So we're going," Lily said in a demanding tone. "You've got nearly a week to prepare for it. It's on Saturday evening."

"Well, on that happy note, I'm getting ready for bed," Rosie rolled off of her bed and forced herself up to get to the wardrobe and find some of her own pyjamas. She'd been wearing James's old ones since Christmas.

She wandered through to the bathroom and changed into the long stripy trousers and vest top before leaning over the sink to brush her teeth and wash her face, scraping her hair behind her ears as she did so.

After five minutes, there was a knock at the door.

"Bloody, hurry up! I'm tired! And that stew isn't going down so well!" It was Marlene.

"Coming!" Rosie called loudly before gathering up her day clothes and unlocking the door. She passed Marlene, who was clearly desperate for a wee and threw her dirty clothes into the pile at the end of her bed, which the House Elves would collect at some point in the night.

Suddenly, she felt quite light-headed.

"Ouch!" she heard Marlene shout from the bathroom. The girl opened the door and put out her arm, which an old cut from Quidditch Rosie recognised seemed to have opened.

She heard a scream then and turned around to see Lily pointing at her with her hand over her mouth.

"What?" Rosie slurred, looking down and seeing her top was stained with a growing amount of scarlet-red blood. She reached her hand up then, touching her cheek before looking down to see her fingers sticky with hot blood. "What-" was all Rosie could get out before locking eyes with a panicked Lily, and everything faded to black.