Chapter 24 - Chapter 24

As they made their way to Dumbledore's office, it was starting to grow dark, then suddenly a loud roar of a dragon was heard from the forest, the air grew hot, the trees began to twist and crack from the harsh wind, Lily instinctively went to the forest to investigate while Fred and George went to get Professor Dumbledore. Lily made her way to where the roars grew the loudest and witnessed dragon hunters, Voldemort's followers, in disguise, attacking it, trying to capture it, and make it their own weapon to destroy the school. But the dragon is just a mother who is wanting her children back who haven't even hatched yet, the dark wizards have used her own eggs against her as bait. Lily instinctively went towards the location of the roars, and saw what was going on, drew her wand out, and used all of her defensive spells they were using against the dragon. The dragon saw Lily trying to help protect her and sensed that she wasn't a threat to her and used her fire breath against the others, but unfortunately the chains the dark wizards have on her have so much weight upon them due to the spell they cast upon it. So she couldn't do much to help Lily, Hagrid stepped in to aid Lily and the dragon, before he casted spells at the dark wizards, he shot his umbrella wand up to the air and casted a red spark up to signal for the Headmaster to see. Moments later huge fire circled around the dark wizards, Lily and Hagrid looked in the direction it came from and saw Headmaster Dumbledore furious that the dark wizards were being reckless and bold for coming on to castle grounds and harming a mythical creature. Lily took this opportunity to get the eggs and Hagrid tried with all of his might to get the blasted chains off of the dragon, but to no avail. Dumbledore had disposed of the dark wizards, lifted the spell on the chains, and the chains were able to be removed much easier now. The mother was so exhausted from the chains being on her for such a long time that once her eggs were brought to her, she looked up at Lily with such gentle eyes as for her to say, "Thank you." She dozed off into deep slumber and Lily gently placed her hands on the dragon's head as she slept and was relieved that she and her little ones are safe now. Lily laid against the mother and dozed off with her, both Hagrid and Dumbledore didn't have the heart to wake them, so they headed out to attend to their own matters at hand. Moments to hours have passed both of them awakened from their much needed slumber, the sun gently rose from the horizon, she looked where Lily had placed the eggs, however, they are no longer eggs, but infant dragons. The mother gently nuzzled her nose against Lily's cheek, causing her to lightly giggle in the process. "Welcome to the open world, young ones." Lily said softly to the baby dragons. The mother lifted up from her resting place, picked up her kin, and flew off back to the Hebridean Black dragon territory. Lily made her way back to the school and saw Fred and George were waiting for her outside of the forest, once she made it to the clearing Fred and George bolted up to her and embraced her like there is no tomorrow. Hagrid looked at Lily, said nothing at first as he walked up to the three of them, they let go of each other, and Lily stepped forward a bit creating a bit of a gap between the twins and herself. "Lily, the headmaster would like to see ya in 'is office." Lily gulped as she followed Hagrid, turned her head to look at the twins, and they made their way back to the common room. They made it to Dumbledore's office and Lily walked up to his desk as Hagrid closed the door behind her so they wouldn't be disturbed. "You wanted to see me professor?" Lily asked, ready to accept whatever punishment she was going to receive for her actions, "Lily." Dumbledore began, "You have broken a few school rules regarding The Forbidden Forest, however, I found your actions most commendable, therefore, I think those actions shall be rewarded. I am giving Hufflepuff 60 points for showing outstanding bravery and love towards magical creatures of all shapes and sizes. Now, let's go to the Great Hall for a feast, I am feeling a bit peckish." He said as he led Lily beside him, once they were all in the Great Hall and seated, Professor McGonagall lightly tapped her spoon against her glass, and all of the students looked towards Professor Dumbledore who is now standing up. "Another year gone, but there is much that you all have learned here. Now, I shall announce the houses' place and points. In fourth place is Ravenclaw with 165 points, in third place, Slytherin with 260 points, in second place Gryffindor 270 points, and in first place Hufflepuff with 345 points!" Dumbledore clapped his hands and then parted them, a gentle breeze blew on the banners above and they are the Hufflepuff colors and crest, "Hufflepuff wins the House Cup!" All of the students in Hufflepuff threw their caps in the air and cheered, while some of the Slytherin students slammed their caps in frustration on the table and were angry with the end results. Once the celebration had deceased the students went back to their common rooms and began packing their things, then made their way to the Hogwarts Express, Hagrid is on the platform saying goodbye to some of the students, Lily headed to him, "Thought you'd was goin' to leave without sayin' goodbye, did ya?" Lily softly smiled up at him, "Course I was going to come say goodbye to you Hagrid, why would I not, you have shown me nothing but kindness, to me, Fred, and George." she hugged him as tightly as she could, "Oh! 'Fores I forget, I 'ave somethin' for ya." He holds out a book that is engraved with her parents' initials in the middle of it and she slowly opens it to the first page, it's a moving picture of her parents holding her as a baby and making her wave as if she was greeting herself and her mom softly kissed her little hand, tears formed in her eyes as she looks up and Hagrid. "Thank you so much for this Hagrid." She gave him one last hug before heading to the train's door, "Feels kind of strange going back home, doesn't it?" Fred asked, "I'm not going home, not entirely." Lily said before boarding the train and closing the door behind her, she had her head out of the window to wave to Hagrid as the train started making its way back to the station. The train got to the station and all of the students made their way onto platform 9¾ with their luggage at hand looking for their loved ones. Lily eventually made it to the platform, thanked the conductor who was holding the door for her and assisted her luggage down. She was about to head to the wall that is the gateway between 9¾ and the muggle world, until she heard a loud enthusiastic voice call out her name, she looked to see who it was, it was darling Mrs. Weasley spotted her amongst the large crowd. Lily's face lit up with such joy in seeing her again and bolted through the large amount of people as they both were meeting each other in the middle, and embraced each other so tightly, however, Mrs. Weasley is almost suffocating Lily with her amount of strength. Mrs. Weasley let go of her and cupped Lily's face to see how she looked, complexion wise, "Bit pale, come have lunch with us, it'll fix you right up." She wasn't going to hear Lily object in the matter, picked up her luggage, and made her way to the boys. "Come on, back to home sweet home." All of them got to the Weasley's car, which can FLY and turn INVISIBLE, once they made it to the Weasley's home the invisibility mechanism turned off and they parked outside their pig pen. Mrs. Weasley grabbed Lily's luggage and headed inside, leaving the boys to grab their own. Lily cautiously headed inside and saw Mrs. Weasley scuffle her way upstairs in a hurry to put the luggage away, there were fast pacing footsteps coming down, Lily assumed it was Mrs. Weasley again, until- "LILY!" It was her Aunt Nora! Nora squeezed Lily with all of her might, smothering Lily like she was declared dead or something, "I WAS SO WORRIED ABOUT YOU, YOU SILLY GIRL! NOT EVEN A SINGLE LETTER FROM YOU ALL SEMESTER, THEN I GET A LETTER FROM MRS. WEASLEY THAT YOU HAD COLLAPSED AND WEREN'T WAKING UP! DO YOU NOT REALIZE THAT IF SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED TO YOU I'D-" Lily felt her heart dropped with how much pain she put her dear aunt through. "I'm so sorry Aunt Nora, I really am, I was busy with so much school work, keeping my grades up, and just everything slipping by me so quickly, I'm really sorry that I never sent you a letter, but, I think these might help put you at ease a little." Lily said as she grabbed her knapsack and flipped it upside down, suddenly an entire pile of letters with Aunt Nora's names on all of them. "I wrote a letter every single day, but didn't have enough courage to send them especially-" Lily just couldn't bring herself to finish that sentence knowing if she told her aunt about how much danger she was in especially with knowing what truly happened to her parents, no, she didn't want to burden her aunt with digging that up once again after all of these years. "'Especially', what, Lily?" Aunt Nora asked even more concerned but didn't want to shout at Lily anymore after seeing all of those letters. "N-Nothing, nothing." Lily said "Nora, I am so sorry to have made you go through all of that not knowing what was going on at school and such, but when my boys told me about Lily's condition I felt like it was the right thing to do to inform you on such important information regarding Lily's health." Mrs. Weasley said with deep regret in her tone as she said all of that, "Now, I have brought you two here because I thought it would be best to have some nice company instead of just the two of you alone, are you two hungry?" Lily and Nora nodded, "Perfect! BOYS GO CLEAN UP AFTER YOU ARE DONE DE-GNOMING THE GARDEN!" Mrs. Weasley shouted towards the stairs. "MUM! WHY DO WE HAVE TO DEGNOME THE GARDEN?!" the boys shouted back, Mrs. Weasley put her hands on her hips and looked very angry when she heard all of the boys say that in unison, "DO YOU WANT TO WASH THE DISHES WITHOUT MAGIC AS WELL TO MAKE THE CHORES LONGER?!" all of them rushed out to the garden as if they were in a cartoon having nothing but streaks of color behind them, nothing but a blur, and slammed the door behind them, Mrs. Weasley sighed and put her hands down as she prepared food for all of them. The front door opened, "Afternoon Weasleys." a friendly voice was heard, "In here dear! The boys are de-gnoming the garden right now." Mr. Weasley comes into the dining room area and sees Lily and her aunt setting the table after giving his wife a quick peck on her lips, "And who are you two?" Lily finished the side that she was doing and walked up to Mr. Weasley, "Oh, sorry sir, I'm Lily, sir, Lily Snow." "Good lord, are you really? Well, the boys have told us all about you of course, when did she get here?" He asked, "Just a few minutes ago, I brought her and her Aunt Nora to eat and stay with us for a while." Mrs. Weasley said without turning her back on the food, "Did you really, how did it go with the drive?" "It was amazing, she took us on an enchanted car ride, but Fred and George got nothing but earfuls of lectures from Mrs. Weasley throughout the entire ride here. But the scenery was so wonderful from that point of view, and not having to worry about muggles seeing us was comforting, but the boys, the twins, continued to complain a whole bunch." "Now you see what we have to go through Lily in dealing with those two." Lily couldn't help but chuckle hearing Mrs. Weasley and Mr. Weasley said that in unison. Both of them looked at one another and burst out laughing and Nora joined in because their laughter was contagious, it was growing pretty dark and the boys finally finished de-gnoming the garden and washed up for dinner. Once everyone ate their fill all of them made their ways into their rooms, Lily sat on her bed looking at the photos in the book Hagrid gave her, but once she started to feel drowsy, she turned off her lamp, hugged the book in her arms, and went soundly to sleep with a gentle smile on her face.