The Queen, The Knight and The Marauders

5. The Marauders

Chapter 5

She ripped the Hat off her head and drew out her wand, aiming at it.

"You little cockroach I'm going to–"

"Now, now, Miss Boot, I am sure there is no need for that," said Professor Dumbledore and Lily hesitantly lowered her wand.

"Speak for yourself," she muttered.

She turned to Frank who was smirking like he just won the Quidditch Cup, no surprise there.

"Shut up," she told him.

"You were a Hatstall. Again."

"I said, shut up," she said, but the smirk on the boy's face only widened.

"And you're a Gryffindor!"

She lost it. She shot a Bat-Bogey Hex at him, too fast for him to evade or block it. She watched with immense satisfaction as big balls of bogey flew around Frank, randomly poking and sticking at him as the boy shrieked.

"I told you to shut up, didn't I?" She smiled sweetly.

"Ah, Miss Boot, if you were so kind and remove that delightful spell off Mr. Abbott, I would like for you to follow me," Dumbledore said as began to walk towards the door.

"Fine," she muttered and performed the counter curse. Frank glared at her accusingly. Lily stuck out her to tongue at him.

"Where are we going, sir?" Frank asked, ignoring her completely. Or Harry did. Whichever.

"I am going to escort you two to the Gryffindor tower, seeing as you are new students and have no idea where it is located, not to mention you do not yet have the password. The Fat Lady is quite strict about the password."

"She isn't when you hold something good enough over her," Lily muttered. The only sign of Dumbledore hearing her was his eyes sparkling maybe a little bit more.

"Off we go, then!"

Dumbledore led them the familiar route to the Gryffindor tower, and Lily felt herself grow anxious. The reality of being stuck in the 70's was finally hitting her. Hard. She was in the frigging seventies! The era of bellbottoms, disco and ABBA. Oh, the horror. What if they used some weird language, she did not have a dictionary of English–The 70's– English with her! Her grandparents were teenagers for Morgana's sake!

Her grandparents were teenagers.

"Frank?"

He looked at her, a questioning look on his face as they walked trough the corridors.

"What is it?"

"What are we supposed to do? We're going to meet them! Not even our parents have met them! Well, met them alive and healthy." Her mind wandered to Frank's grandparents, stuck in St. Mungo's until they would eventually just... fade away and die. They barely recognised their son nowadays. Lily had seen them a couple of times when she had visited St. Mungo's. The couple mostly lay in their beds, staring into nothingness and withering away, slowly but surely.

Her best friend pondered on this. His expression saddened when he realised what Lily meant.

"I don't think we can do anything, Lils," he said, his voice hardly louder than a whisper.
"We could change too much." He looked at Dumbledore, who walked a few steps ahead of them. The old man did not seem to pay any attention to their conversation, but even so Lily lowered her voice into a whisper.

"We have to be able to do something! The Professor said so himself, our future doesn't exist yet! We could make it better!"

"Don't be naïve, Lils. You are better at Arithmancy than I am, you can see the risks as well as I. If we change their future, we change the future of our Dads and through them, our own future. We might not be born! We might lose the war! We cannot save them," he sighed, and he sounded like his hear was breaking.