All Tied Up, Chapter 3: Trail of Breadcrumbs
TITLE: All Tied Up
Chapter 3: Trail of Breadcrumbs
Rating: G
Word Count: 5,157
Genre: Romance, humor
Ships: L/J
Status: WIP
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything even remotely related to Harry Potter, except a little bit of merchandise, and I’m making $0.
Summary: Now that she's finally figured out what she wants, Lily's hoping for a more permanent arrangement.
Sequel to The Price of Freedom. #2 in the Freedom Arc.
Notes: Sorry it's a bit of a cliffhanger. It was getting far too long and finals are getting far too close. This seemed like the best place to cut it off for now. Dunno when the next chapter will be up, but I'll see what I can do about making it soon. :)
Back to previous chapter (Interlude I)
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Lily is sitting in one corner of the Gryffindor common room. She is curled up in one of the red, cushy armchairs, and she is alone. She is pretending to be reading one of the veela romances Alice was so fond of, but in reality she is keeping an eye on her mischievous boyfriend.
James and company are planning something, Lily knows. They are currently sitting on the floor, bent together over one of the little round tables near the fire, whispering quietly in that way they do when they are plotting.
This has been going on for ages now. Almost every time Lily goes looking for James, she finds him with the Marauders, whispering and snickering together. At first she tried joining in, or at least sitting nearby-something she’d had no choice but to become accustomed to doing when they were mid-plot unless Lily wanted to go days at a time without seeing James. But now they either stop talking, exchanging awkward glances and hiding bits of parchment away under books or inside pockets, or James makes some excuse to send her away and promises to come find her later.
He always follows through, but their time together is always very short.
It’s worrisome. James is acting weird. He still won’t talk about after graduation. And now she almost never sees him alone. On the rare occasion she does, he’s usually on his way to join his friends. The amount of time they’ve spent together in the last week and a half doesn’t even equate to the amount of time they used to spend together in one day.
But...
But when James kisses her, every time James kisses her, it feels like they’re the only two people in the whole world, like she’s the only thing he knows or sees or cares about. Like she’s everything. Every single time.
But then, those times are pretty rare these days.
Even worse, when she finds James and the Marauders plotting...they look at her. They smile false smiles and chat sweetly for a moment or two before shooing her away, and all the time their eyes laugh at her.
The worst of it is times like now, when she is in the same room with them (be it classroom, library, Great Hall, or common room) and they notice her sitting across the way. Then, in the midst of their plotting, they will glance over at her-sly, knowing glances-and then look away, laughing sneakily (or, in Peter’s case, giggling in a terribly creepy manner), and whispering furiously together.
It’s making her nervous.
Lily watches as Remus, James, and Sirius write furiously on a large piece of parchment, snatching the quill from one another whenever one of them has something to add. She smiles, sadly amused, as the intensity of the “conversation” rises until James and Sirius simultaneously have something vital to write. James reaches to snatch the quill from Sirius, who refuses to give it up. Words are exchanged, with Sirius firmly shaking his head as James tugs more firmly at the writing utensil in their hands. The situation devolves into fighting, both boys clutching a part of the quill with one hand, while shoving hands and elbows, and once even a knee, at each other in an attempt to wrest the quill away. Peter watches in confusion before offering a quill of his own to James. James tackles Sirius to the ground instead, laughing, and Lily hears him say, “Not the point, Pete!”
Remus shakes his, removes a quill from his satchel, and writes something on the parchment while muttering under his breath. Whatever he says brings both his wayward friends to heel, their messy heads popping up above the table again with almost identical expressions of curiosity, chased swiftly by amusement.
Sirius is watching Remus write and sticks his hand down in front of the quill to stop his friend going any further. “That’s not what I said!”
“Get your hand out of the way, Pads, or get your own quill,” Remus tells him.
“I’m with Prongs, it’s not nearly so much fun if we all have our own.” Even so, he surrenders the one he and James were fighting over and accepts the quill Peter is proffering. James looks at the mangled, barely functional quill in his hand and then at Sirius with a betrayed expression.
Sirius, who is rolling his eyes at James, hasn’t moved his hand from the parchment. Remus casually jabs it with the tip of his quill when it continues to block his line of writing.
“Ow! Moony!”
Remus mutters something Lily can’t hear. Sirius scowls at him irritably and mutters something back.
Remus keeps writing, but mildly replies, “If you’d had your own quill to begin with, I would have committed neither the alleged misquote nor the alleged battery-”
“Alleged? The whole blooming common room saw it!”
“Blooming?” James laughs at Sirius’s choice of words.
“Moony thinks I swear too much,” Sirius complains. “He’s started nicking my money if I so much as think about cursing.”
“No one wants to talk to you when every other word out of your mouth is filth, Padfoot” says Remus. “And I don’t steal it. I put it in a jar and am saving it for your future edification. Which says a lot about my faith in you, really. Now belt up. Peter has been more productive than both of you this morning, I swear.”
Peter sniggers.
“That’s cause Pete’s a goody-two shoes,” Sirius sneers good naturedly at their quieter friend, reaching out with the feathered end of his borrowed quill to bat at the one Peter’s been the sole possessor of all morning. Peter bats him away and huffs a little but otherwise ignores him, reaching out instead to add a line or two of his own in the margin.
“And what am I?” asks Remus, sitting back so that his Prefect’s badge is visible.
“Loud, that’s what,” says James, cuffing both Remus and Sirius on the head. He eyes are on Lily, and he smiles sheepishly, apologetically, when their gazes meet before ducking his head back down round the table.
Lily’s heart clenches. Sometimes it feels like she and James have been together forever, but they haven’t. The relationship is still fairly new and, she’s realizes, her trust in him is still fragile.
Lily is really trying not to panic, but she’s not sure she’s succeeding.
~*~*~*~
Lily is studying. She feels like that’s all she does these days. It’s never bothered her before, but she’s never had a boyfriend to be distracted by before. She’s been trying to study in the common room all day (because that’s the only way she catches a glimpse of James these days, although she refuses to admit to herself that that’s the reason she’s there), but every hour that goes by (without seeing James) makes her more and more distracted. Eventually, she decides a change of scene is necessary.
Lily packs all her things into her bag and makes her way to the library. It’s early afternoon and it’s a lovely, warm spring day, so the library is practically deserted. Lily makes her way back to her favorite table anyway, it’s her favorite after all, and besides, she’s in a foul mood. She doesn’t want to risk having to talk to anyone.
Only when she arrives at “her” table, every inch of it is covered in books and parchment. Lily frowns, looking at the mess. There is something off about the books, she thinks, leaning closer to better examine them. The books are scattered almost at random, as though someone’s intention was simply to cover the table. And...Lily leans closer to read some of the titles on the books-they all seem to be on different subjects. Lily tilts her head, frown deepening, trying to get a better look at the books on the far side so that she can see if they’re as oddly mismatched as the ones on this side. (What is this person researching she wonders.) But she leans a bit too far and she has to put a hand down to keep her balance. The moment the tips of her fingers make contact with the table, a small, shining red box materializes in the center of the table with a little shower of blue and gold sparks.
As she watches, a little gold bow appears on top, followed by a tag which swiftly spells the word “Lily” in scrolling golden letters.
“Hello,” she murmurs, reaching tentatively for the little box. “What are you?” She hesitates before touching it, then gently lifts the box from the table. She holds it with her fingertips, turning it this way and that, examining it curiously. When her examination reveals nothing unordinary (except for a little red box that has appeared out of thin air), she turns her attention to the ribbon. She grips it with two fingers, pulls until it unravels, then flips the lid off the box with her thumb.
Inside the tiny box is a tiny roll of parchment. She reaches inside and removes the little scroll, unrolling it with her fingertips. She flattens it on top of one of the many books on the table and reads:
I know it is your time to study
but please don’t be a fuddy-duddy.
Leave this room, come play a game;
your life may never be the same.
Clue number two, the writer vouches,
is in the room with squashy couches.
“What?” Lily stares at the tiny writing for long moments. Feeling confused, she picks up the box again and reexamines it, then does the same for the lid and attached tag. The tag still looks the same: her name in gold and nothing more. Lily thinks for a bit. She’s bored. She doesn’t really want to study. She’s more than a bit grumpy.
She could use a distraction.
“Alright, I’ll play, mystery writer,” she murmurs. She reads the note again, thinks for a moment, and then: “Well, the most obvious place I know of with squashy couches is the Gryffindor common room. So I guess I’ll try there first.”
Lily snags the little piece of parchment and rolls it up again, sticking it back in its box and then dropping the box into her bag. Then she heads for the Gryffindor common room.
As she walks, she considers her new puzzle. The handwriting on the tag and the note is familiar-she is pretty sure she knows the author, as she knows the writing well enough to...well, to know that she knows it.
Additionally, she doesn’t know many people who would do this kind of thing. In fact, she thinks with dawning realization, she really only knows four.
The Marauders.
It would explain the familiar handwriting, she thinks. And possibly all the plotting. Although some sort of odd little treasure hunt doesn’t seem quite their style. And what’s the point?
But...Lily pulls the box from her bag again, examines the tag and the parchment inside, and she smiles.
She’s pretty sure that’s Sirius’s handwriting. His parents are pureblood, exacting, and very concerned with doing things the proper way. Sirius taught himself to write with a messy scrawl after the boys made fun of him during first year (Lily remembers clearly the way the other boys ribbed him in the common room the first few weeks about his girly handwriting), but Lily has seen the Marauder’s Map, knows Sirius was the designated scribe for the majority of the required writing. Sirius’s parents raised him “correctly”; his handwriting is beautiful.
Certain she is right, Lily turns her attention to the potential purpose of this little adventure. She hasn’t come up with any particularly plausible possibilities by the time she reaches the common room, so she shrugs it off and goes inside. It’s the Marauders. They’re odd, and they’ve been stealing far too much of her boyfriend’s time lately, but she trusts them. Whatever this is, it will at worst be embarrassing. She can handle being the butt of a little joke on occasion. Although she will have to murder them slowly and painfully if she goes through all the trouble of humoring them and it’s really just a joke.
Lily wanders over to the big sitting area near the fireplace, where all the squashy couches are. She doesn’t see anything at first and wonders what she’s supposed to be looking for. At a loss, she sinks down on the couch closest to the fireplace (her favorite; the one where she and James sometimes cuddle together in the evening) and a bright red envelope, with Lily’s name in gold script on the front, appears almost instantly on the end table beside her.
She picks it up-her name written again in Sirius’s handwriting-and turns it over a few times, looking for anything important that might be on the outside. When she doesn’t see anything besides her name, she slides a finger under the flap and breaks the fancy, gold-colored wax seal holding the envelope closed. She lifts a thick, rectangular sheet of parchment from the envelope (she senses Remus’s hand behind the careful cut of the parchment) and turns it right-side-up so she can read it.
Most people do not like me much. It said, in James’s scrawling handwriting this time.
They claim I tend to make a fuss.
But your red hair I will not touch,
nor with my tears make clothes a muss;
if you will come to visit me,
then I will give to you clue three.
“Hmmm...” Lily muses. She reads the clue several times more, thinking hard. When she figures it out, it’s the “tears” part that clues her in. Only Moaning Myrtle is known to ruin clothes with tears-really, she is the only one who can.
What really concerns Lily is the fact that James and company know so much about a ghost who never leaves the girls’ lavatory.
She decides that’s not something she really wants to think about, so she turns instead to the fact that this particular toilet isn’t one she wants to visit. But...well, clearly Myrtle has the next clue. And this clue clearly says that Myrtle won’t cause too much of a fuss...
Despite those reassurances, Lily steps into Myrtle’s toilet with a great deal of trepidation.
At first, nothing happens. She stands just inside the door and looks around, but sees nothing-no Marauders, no ghost, and no red envelopes. Lily frowns-what exactly is she supposed to do here-as she wanders in a little further. She circles through the open area by the sinks, fixes her school tie after she passes one of the mirrors and sees that it’s slightly crooked, but eventually, seeing no other option, she makes her way to the haunted stall.
“Myrtle?” she asks quietly. No response. Lily hesitates, then calls Myrtle’s name again while slowly pushing the door to the stall open with one hand. She jumps back with a startled shout when toilet lid, screaming ghost, and a geyser of water come shooting up out of the toilet. Lily is thrown back against the wall, her arms automatically rising to protect her face and head, and her eyes squeezed shut behind her arms. She huddles in a corner as the wailing and gushing and slamming goes on and on, seemingly forever.
But eventually it does stop. When everything is silent and calm once more, Lily slowly lowers her arms and opens her eyes. She takes quick stock of the situation-wet floor, wet walls, wet ceiling, wet Lily-and turns a baleful gaze on the ghost floating petulantly above the toilet.
“Oops,” she says, but her expression is practically a smirk.
“Oops?” Lily echoes. “What happened to not touching or mussing?”
“Well it’s not like I meant to do it! I didn’t know it was you, did I?”
“Perhaps you might consider looking before drenching. You might get more visitors if you did it that way. Did you drench James and Sirius and-”
“Oh, please don’t tell Siri!” Myrtle suddenly wails. “I promised I’d be nice, and if he finds out, he may never come see me again!”
Lily blinks. “Siri?” She heard everything else Myrtle said, but she really has trouble getting past that nickname.
“Oh, yes. Sirius Black. He has the big grey eyes, and lovely long hair...he’s the handsomest boy I’ve ever seen! And he’s ever so nice. He visits me whenever he needs something kept secret.”
“Secret.”
“Oh, yes! We have many secrets together, Siri and I.”
Lily is torn between laughing and being sick. The Marauders have been planning pranks in a girls’ toilet, and Sirius has been seducing a ghost to keep it secret.
Lily is never going to let him live this down.
“I’m sure,” is all Lily manages to say.
“You won’t tell him, will you? I am sorry. I didn’t mean to get you wet. I expected you hours ago. I didn’t know you’d finally come.”
Lily retrains from rolling her eyes, but only just. She pulls her wand from the side pocket of her bag and casts a quick drying charm. “It’s fine, Myrtle,” she assures the wailing ghost, who looks on the verge of tears (although Lily can see the sly, manipulative gleam behind the tears). “So, no harm done.”
“Oh, good. I’d hate to have Siri angry with me.”
“Well, I won’t tell Siri if you won’t.”
“Siri said you were nice, but I wasn’t sure. Girls often aren’t, you know, and they easily lead boys astray. But I like you,” the ghost decides. “You will come back and visit won’t you?”
“Perhaps, if Sirius and James and the others do,” Lily hedges.
“Oh, James doesn’t come very often anymore,” Myrtle complains, looking disgruntled. “There’s a girl he’s spending all his time with apparently. I’ve heard some awful things about her. She very loose and fairly stupid. I heard,” Myrtle adds, drifting forwards and leaning down in a conspiratorial manner, “that she’s got him under a love potion. It won’t last, and then James will be back.”
Lily keeps a straight face with an effort. “I’m sure you’re right,” she says. “Until then, I suppose Siri will just have to do. Speaking, of Siri,” she adds quickly before Myrtle can go off in raptures about Sirius again, “isn’t there something you’re supposed to give me?”
“Oh, yes!” Myrtle exclaims. Then she frowns. “Well, no,” she says, looking at Lily accusingly, “because I can’t touch anything, you know. Because I’m dead.” She pauses for effect, looking petulant. “But there is something I’m supposed to show you. It’s just there.” The ghost drifts over to the last toilet stall and points down. Lily opens the door and sees a red envelope with a gold seal hovering just above the toilet inside a shimmering iridescent bubble.
Her eyes narrow suspiciously at the sight of that bubble. Sirius, she thinks to herself, still looking at that precautionary bubble, is a dead man. He’d known Lily would end up wet when she came here. Lily does not enjoy being wet. She’s going to cast a never-dry charm on him just as soon as she invents it, she promises herself.
In the meantime, she disperses the bubble with a flick of her wand and retrieves the envelope. Then she says a quick good-bye to the ghost as she makes a hasty exit.
Only once she’s in the safety of the hallway does she open the envelope and read the next clue.
Eating here is just so much fun.
Please eat a lot until you’re done.
We wish you to enjoy your meal,
even when we should serve you veal
Here, you will find lots of num-nums
in the place from which food come-comes.
The note is in Remus’s handwriting this time, but those last two lines are all Sirius, she can tell.
Those last two lines also make this one easy. She’d thought at first it meant the Great Hall, but the part about the place from which food comes makes it rather obvious that it’s the kitchens. Thanks to James, she even knows where that is now (really, there are so many things she knows these days that she’s fairly certain she’s not supposed to because of James).
Lily leaves the second floor and heads for the ground floor. The house-elves, when she makes her way through the painting of the bowl of fruit and down the stairs into the kitchens, are more than a little excited to see her. When she leaves, she is not only carrying yet another red envelope, but also three freshly baked brownies. She eats them, moaning in delight at the fudgy flavor, as she walks along, making her way up to the third floor and thinking about her newest clue.
In here, where feathers often fly,
and short men squeak with voices high,
clue five is where your eyes would be,
if books should fall from on dead tree.
She knows the next clue is in the Charms classroom. “Short men squeak with voices high” is clearly a reference to Flitwick; the reference to feathers makes it obvious the clue means his classroom and not his office. What is puzzling her, however, is the dead tree part. There aren’t any dead trees in the Charms classroom, so it clearly means something else, she’s just not sure what.
When she reaches her destination, she wants to smack herself in the forehead-the room is full of desks, chairs, shelves, and other bits of furniture, all made of wood. Which, once it’s removed from the tree, is technically dead. She reads the clue again, trying to figure out which of the many pieces of “dead tree” she’s supposed to be looking at. At first she thinks it must be one of the many bookshelves in the room. But when she checks the floor near every set of shelves and then, just to be thorough, checks the underside of each individual shelf to make sure there is nothing stuck to the bottom, and still finds nothing, she determines it must be something else. But what?
She looks around the room, thinking hard. Books and wood, books and wood...She turns in place a couple of times, looking for something that fits the description in the clue. Finally, she catches sight of the of the podium behind which Professor Flitwick usually teaches while...
“While standing on books stacked on a chair,” she breathes. She rushes to the front of the classroom and smiles when she reaches the chair behind the podium, Flitwick’s books stacked firmly on top. Now that she’s looking closely, she suspects it’s impossible for the books to fall as she’s fairly certain the professor’s used a Permanent Sticking Charm on them. The top book is too worn by his feet not to have been stuck firmly in place for a very long time.
Lily is pleased as she crouches down beside the chair, feeling a little like she’s been let “in” on her favorite professor’s secret. However, she is feeling significantly less pleased a few minutes later when she looks around and realizes that there is no red envelope in evidence, not on the floor, not under the chair, not tucked under the hollow podium.
“This has to be the right place,” she murmurs. “‘Clue five is where your eyes would be, if books should fall from on dead tree.’ But that’s the floor. And I’m looking at the floor. And there’s nothing here. Except...except this rug. They wouldn’t put it...Yes they would,” she decides, when she remembers who it is she’s talking about. Then she reaches for the corner of the rug, peeling it up to reveal a shiny patch of hardwood floor...
And a bright red envelope.
“Ha!” she exclaims, snatching it up. She carefully smoothes the rug back into place and does a little dance of success. Then she rips the envelope open, eager to figure out the next clever little puzzle.
She takes a moment to consider the irony of that brief thought: first that she’s enjoying herself so much on this little quest, and second, that the Marauders of all people tailor-made it, apparently for her personal enjoyment.
Because the longer this continues, the more certain she is that it won’t end in embarrassment at all. She doesn’t know what the purpose is, but she does know this thing took far too much effort for them to be making a joke out of it. Something this elaborate...no. And they really do seem to have made it with her enjoyment in mind.
Lily loves puzzles.
Not that the Marauders wouldn’t go this far for a practical joke-they certainly would, and had-but not one against her, she knows that much for certain. If James didn’t put a stop to it, Remus would. And she has Peter wrapped around her little finger. Sirius likes her too, but Sirius...Well, Lily knows about fifth year. Sirius is capable of going much too far if not properly reined in. Which he obviously is. And she’s rambling to herself now.
Giving herself a bit of a mental shake, Lily plucks the newest clue from its bright red encasement and eagerly reads. Or tries to. Peter’s handwriting is messy and it takes her a few tries to decipher it.
I am ugly, don’t remind me
Or I may not treat you kindly
Your fear of spiders you must quell
If here you come to say my spell
Your casting motions you must hone
to take your clue from this here crone.
A tiny part of her smiles at the fact that the other boys obviously let Peter do most of the work in writing this particular poem, not just physically, but creatively. Peter is a bit of an outcast even amongst the other Marauders, and he’s often the butt of their jokes, but she knows the other three try hard to make sure he knows he’s welcome in their little group.
The rest of her is busy trying to work out where she’s supposed to go next. It isn’t terribly difficult. It might have been, if it hadn’t been for the word “crone,” but as an official Marauder girlfriend, Lily knows all the Marauder secrets. Or most of them. At least a few of them. So she knows about the statue of the one-eyed witch and how well-traveled the path beneath her has been since the boys discovered it.
Best of all, she doesn’t have to climb any stairs to get there.
The clue was right though, she does have to deal with both spell casting and spiders to get the next clue, which is just inside the witch herself. She has to cast several cleaning charms when she climbs out before she feels clean again.
Then she’s reading the next clue:
I cannot fly, though I have wings
But I can do some other things
I like to sit in the hallway
Come to me on any fair day
Sweetly say to me the right words
And, wingless, you’ll ascend like birds.
Immediately, she’s off for the seventh floor and the entrance to the Headmaster’s office. As the Head Girl, she knows the password to get past the Gargoyle statue guarding the entrance, so she lets herself in and heads up the stairs. Dumbledore twinkles at her behind his half-moon glasses, his gaze shrewd, maybe even a little sly, as he hands her the now-familiar red envelope.
She thanks him politely, accepts the envelope, and leaves before her beloved Headmaster can offer her a third lemon drop. (She long ago gave up trying to explain that she hates lemon drops. She just takes them when he offers ever so insistently and slips them into her pocket. She thinks maybe he knows though because the twinkle in his eye is extra twinkly each time she does it.)
Lily drops the two pocketed lemon drops in a rubbish bin in a nearby classroom, then liberates the next clue from its red prison and drops the discarded envelope in the bin after the sweets.
I am a one with armor bright.
I stand still holding sword so tight.
I make quite an imposing sight-
my job: protecting, wait to fight.
Enemies should beware my might;
I’m first protection for the light.
This clue obviously refers to one of the many suits of the armor scattered throughout the castle. How is she supposed to figure out which one it means, though? She has no intention of looking at every single suit.
Despite her own resolve, she finds herself checking all the suits of armor she passes as she wanders down the seventh floor corridor. She doesn’t find anything, but then she doesn’t really expect to. She does come to the realization that there are suits of armor all through the castle. So there must be something in this clue indicating where in the castle she should be looking.
It takes her awhile. There’s nothing in the wording that jumps out at her, just a lot of general descriptions. It isn’t until she’s coming down the stairs from the first floor and steps into the corridor at the base of the Ravenclaw Tower that she hits upon an idea she thinks might be the right one. She hurries along the ground floor corridors until she reaches the Entrance Hall. Several suits of armor occupy alcoves around the Hall, the most prominent being the two flanking the main entrance-the “first protection for the light.”
Sure enough, there’s a red envelope stuck with spellotape to the back of the shield belonging to the suit on the right.
Lily does another little happy dance. That one was harder than the others have been, and she’s proud of herself for figuring it out before she really did have to resort to checking every suit of armor from the seventh floor down.
Eagerly, she breaks the seal on the newest envelope and pulls out another thick piece of parchment. She reads the poem written in James’s hand and smiles when she figures it out almost immediately.
I can live for ages but I die every year
Here there is green and some blue very near
Protective arms I stretch out above you
Share and support, while the one who does woo
Holds you and whispers sweet words in your ear
Words that, though I sit close, I cannot hear
I’m your best friend, no matter the season
Though in winter, you might end up freezin.
Humming a little, Lily rolls up this latest piece of parchment and drops it in the first clue’s box with all the others. Then, with a happy skip in her step, Lily pulls open the front door and steps out onto the grounds.
She can’t wait to see where this treasure hunt takes her next.
On to Chapter 4