Lily Potter and the Shadows' Misfortune

Chapter Thirty-Five

                       "Lily! Lily!"

                       Feeling someone's presence right above her, Lily opened her brown eyes, slightly surprised to see Nora leaning over top of her with worried brown eyes. Lily was even more surprised at the fact that she had woken up on a cool, green tile floor of an empty, unused classroom.

                        "She's in here, everyone!" Nora yelled, her voice directed out of the classroom's open door.

                        Confused about the situation, Lily sat up, and the memories of the past night's happenings flooded into her mind as she moved: the venomous argument with Rudy, Ike and Douglas whispering in the night, the mysterious spell caster from the end of the hallway.

                        There was a loud rush of feet from outside of the door to the classroom, and within seconds, Hugo, Eli, and Cassie had skidded into the room, crowding around where Lily sat. Momentarily, Lily wondered where Rudy was, but she quickly concluded that he must have fallen a little bit behind.

                       "Oh my Merlin, are you alright?" Cassie asked, getting down to her knees, out of breath.

Feeling herself flushing a bit sheepishly, Lily responded, "I'm okay. It's fine; it really is."

"Lily, what happened?" Hugo asked, his face etched with worry as he sat down beside Lily. It was one of the few times she'd seen her cousin genuinely concerned, so Lily deduced that she'd given him quite the scare with last night's disappearing act.

"Hugo, it's fine. I'm fine."

                        "It's probably not fine," Hugo said with a resounding assurance. "And whether it's fine or not doesn't matter to me because I need to know what happened, so I can kill those responsible, Lil."

"Hugo, you're starting to sound like James and Al," Lily said before having truly thought about how her brothers probably would react to the situation had they been informed. "You didn't tell them, did you? Please, tell me you didn't tell James and Al."

                        Eli shook his head and opened his mouth to reply, but Hugo pressed on, "Lily, I'm acting like James and Al because you're my baby cousin, and I have to protect you."

Forgetting about the previous night's ordeal for a moment, she frowned at her cousin, "Hugo, I'm older than you by three weeks. I'm not your baby cousin."

                        "But I'm taller by at least a foot," he said with a nod.

                       "Not true," Lily said, knowing full well that her cousin had yet to crack six feet tall. "You're such a liar, Hugo Weasley."

"You just don't want to accept the fact that you're going to be short forever, and that I'm going to soar above you when it—"

"I'm sorry, but can you stop your bickering? I'd like to know what happened last night, and I'm sure that Cassie and Nora would like to know, too," Eli interrupted.

                        "Damn you, McGonagall," Hugo said under his breath. "Why are you always right?"

"Please tell us what happened, Lil," Nora said, giving Hugo a look of frustration.

                        "Okay," Lily said, inhaling, readying herself to start her story but stopping when she noticed that someone was missing. "Where's Rudy?"

She had thought before that he had just fallen behind, but he had never shown. Though confused, she watched as Hugo and Eli made awkward eye contact, "What happened?"