Lily Evans and the Marauders Era

Chapter 3: Diagon Alley

    Lily woke up the next morning feeling rather odd. She felt very tense, especially in the legs. She sat up, yawning and went to go look in the mirror when she tripped, and hit her head at the side of Severus’ bed. He wasn’t there, and she could hear voices downstairs, so she had to be the last one up. What time is it? Lily wondered as she rubbed her forehead. She tried to get up, at first thinking that she was just being clumsy, but the moment that she tried to, she understood. Her legs were glued together and she couldn’t budge them, from the leg-locker curse.

    ‘AVERY!’ she yelled, furious at herself to have ever set foot in this house. There was a murmur of laughter coming from somewhere downstairs, along with Ainsley hooting. She tried to sit so she could help herself up with the shelf nearby, containing some old and dusty spellbooks, mostly about potions, whose spines had been torn. Loose pages and dusty parchments with scrawled handwriting littered the floor in front of the shelf. By the time she had finally sat up and started pulling herself up, she found that the shelf wasn’t very supportive. It gave way and so did Lily, barely having been able to pull her legs out of the way in time before the shelf hit the ground. There was a loud bang and Lily heard someone downstairs yell;

    ‘Wow Avery, she’s really got it out for you!’ There a roar of laughter and the sound of Eileen rushing up the stairs to find the source of the noise. Lily rose as quickly as she could and hauled herself onto Severus’ bed just as Ms. Prince burst through the door.

    ‘What is going on here?’ Ms Prince asked. She had a look of extreme exhaustion on her face, but her voice sounded worried and angry.

    ‘It just sort of fell, Ms. Prince,’ But judging by the shocked look on Eileen’s face, her excuse wasn’t very convincing. ‘I didn’t mean to knock it over it jus-’

    ‘It’s fine dear, no harm done.’ she shook her head, ‘Let’s just see now,’ she looked like she was trying to remember something. Then with a flick of her wand she chanted,

    ‘Scourgify!’ Suddenly, the shelf began to move back upwards, all of the books moved in the exact opposite direction of the way they had fallen and within a few seconds, the shelf was exactly the way it was before, minus the rolls of parchment which were now neatly folded and tied together in a bundle, sitting on the top shelf, next to a history of magic textbook that was dated to have been written about fifty years ago.

    ‘Why are you sitting like that dear?’ and Lily realized that Ms. Prince had been watching her.

    ‘Oh, Avery - he, um, hexed me again,’ she mumbled just as the boys had walked into the room laughing, except for Severus, who didn’t seem very pleased. At the mention of this, Avery seemed to take very special interest at a certain spot on the ceiling in the hall, and exited the room.

    ‘Not again,’ she sighed, pointing her wand to Lily’s legs and muttering the countercurse under her breath. Suddenly Lily’s legs seemed to surge back to life again and she stood and stretched them out and then sat down again. Severus looked very angry and left the room to the hall where Avery stood and Mulciber followed after him. They seemed to be having a heated argument, but Lily couldn’t make any of it out. She turned to Eilleen.

    ‘Thanks,’ she muttered, and then a thought came to her. ‘When are we leaving for Diagon Alley?’

    ‘Oh, yes in just about fifteen minutes. Pack your trunk and come down to breakfast,’ she said, then closed the door behind her while leaving. Lily did as she was told, wishing that she could simply use the packing charm, but she knew that violating the underrage wizardry rule meant expulsion from Hogwarts. When her trunk was ready, she went down the creaky oak stairs and sat down for breakfast, reminiscing about the events of last night. When she had been hung in the air, Ms. Prince had walked into the room and immediately set her down. She didn’t punish the boys, but since the incident, she had started keeping a close watch on all of them, especially Avery. Lily sat down on the chair that was closest to her when she had reached the bottom of the stairs, but the second that she sat down, she knew that she had made a grave mistake. Sitting to her right was Severus, and to her left was Avery. He smiled at her maliciously. Lily looked the other way to avoid eye contact. Severus on the other hand, looked irritated. Before she could go to another chair, Eileen came into the room from the kitchen and said;