The Marauders: Year Seven Part Two

Where is the Locket?

Lily woke during the night quite suddenly, her heart racing, though she couldn't quite place why. She had an ominous feeling coursing through her. She thought fleetingly that if she were a dog, they would say that her "hackles were raised" by the way she felt. 

Must've had a bad dream, she told herself, and she laid back down. 

She was nearly back to sleep, when she heard a creaking in the hallway and she sat up again, grabbing her wand from the night stand. She held it tight in her fist and snuck over to the door of her bedroom and listened.

There was definitely movement in the hallway. 

Lily opened the door of her room and found herself face-to-face with Vernon Dursley. Vernon stared at her, his wooly walrus mustache twitching. And from behind him on the stairs came Petunia, who stopped and stared at Lily, too. Lily stared back. It was a long pause between them while each waited out the other, waiting to see what the other would do before acting next themselves. Finally, Petunia turned away, pushed silently past Vernon who followed her, and continued on down the hallway, the floorboards creaking beneath Vernon, and snuck into Petunia's bedroom, silently closing the door behind them.

Lily stood in the hallway for a long moment, contemplating what she'd just caught them at, and she shuddered a bit at the thought. She was about to retreat back into her room when she heard - very distinctly - the door downstairs open and then close.

Lily froze.

Firming her grip on her wand, Lily stepped further into the hall and snuck expertly down the stairs, her feet landing only on places that did not creak beneath her weight, and she reached the bottom. The front door wasn't locked, she could see the gently swaying slip chain from the bottom step. Her heart picked up.

Stupid Petunia, she thought, How could you be so stupid?

There was a sound in the kitchen.

Lily closed her eyes, back pressed to the wall, gathering strength a moment. She stepped down off the last of the stairs and, keeping her back pressed to the wall it would be hardest to be seen from the kitchen against, she slid down the hallway, wand at the ready, listening.

Someone was rummaging about in the kitchen, and making quite a racket of it, too. They were taking no caution at all in what they were doing, and Lily could hear silverware and pans and spice jars hitting the counters as cupboards and drawers were opened and emptied. She had never in her life hoped more for a common burglar than she did at that very moment. Please, she thought, just let whoever it is be a muggle. Please let them be a muggle and not a Death Eater.

She paused just outside the kitchen, her nerve very much rattled she knew she needed to choose carefully exactly what spell she would use coming about the corner. What would James do? Well James would do the duck spell, she reckoned, but if it was a muggle then that would do no good against muggle weapons (or would it? would anaticula cause a gun to spit ducks instead of bullets? she had to shake this thought out of her mind to concentrate on the job at hand again). Sirius would cast some stupid spell, Lily thought, he'd tie the burglar up in cotton candy or something, she thought rolling her eyes. Remus, however... Remus, the smart one. Remus would use immobulus. That's the one, Lily thought, and she prepared herself to say the word and stepped quickly into the kitchen.

"Immobulus!"

"Expelliarmus!" 

The two spells hit each other in the middle and the sparks rebounded each on the caster of the spell so that Lily found herself suddenly frozen, unable to move at all, even her eyes which she had three-quarters closed so that everything was blurry.