Okay, so it was an hour-fourty-five, not an hour. I'm sorry!

For newcomers: This is a sequel to Shadows: A Tale in Letters. If you do not read that before this, some of the events may be a touch confusing, but I shall do my best to explain them.

Onward!

Lily watched the elk bound away, wisps of mist on its edges, people cowering, realizing that there was something completely unnatural about those footsteps because they weren't students.

"Place it here. Should bring it down," a clear voice says. Lily, heart pounding in her chest, has a sudden bout of courage and creeps from her dorm, slipping open the door.

Three people, on the stairs, a strange device and their wands at ready.

"Get away!" she shrieked, and their eyes, as one, focused on her. Instead of failing like she thought, her courage grew, and she hissed a hex that sent one flying back, tap-dancing uncontrollably while he attempted to juggled with the air. He opened his mouth and the words to "Weasley Is Our King" came pouring out.

The device was dropped. It clacked.

It went off in a flash of light and the entire building echoed with it, the sound of walls blowing out.

It took out the common room.

The stairs went out from underneath her to a woman's triumphant and sneering face and the words to Weasley Is Our King.

"He never leaves a single ring..."

§º§

Lily wakes to screaming.

"Lily! PLEASE wake up! Come on, Lily-mazing!"

She should've know that voice, but her head was groggy and couldn't quite focus on anything, and the screaming didn't help. There was a crushing weight on her chest, but she could raise her head, which she did with regret. Pain lanced everywhere, like a migraine, a headache and falling off her broom on the Quidditch pitch all at once. She blinked several times before she realized that she could only open one eye-the other was sealed shut.

"Lily! You're okay! I was worried that Professor Neville's charm-Lily!" Lucy arm circled her neck gently, and she noticed the nails were rather sharp...

"You've got whiskers, Lucy," she said stupidly. "Why?"

"Cause I'm an animagus because it sounded cool, and I always meant to register but I didn't know what Molly-sis or Dad or Mum would think!"

Her one eye looked at Lucy's face, the slitting eyes and the nose that was a strange pink at the tip and turning into a bit of a muzzle shape, the small dent in her upper lip and the short whiskers, the pointing ears and their fuzz, and all she could say was,

"You got into my stuff, last month. That was private!"

"I'm sorry! Hold still-Professor Neville-He died casting a charm that saved all of us from dying in the fall. But lots of us are still buried." Lucy moved out of her vision, and she was struck by the thought that she shouldn't have been able to see. Shouldn't it have been pure black? "Sorry, can you reach my wand? I can't see what I'm doing!" Her voice raised in panic.

Oh.

She carefully craned her head, finally focusing on a small length of wood glowing blue at its end. "No. Too far."

Lucy's hand stretched out to it in her vision, grabbing it, and suddenly things were thrown into shadow and light. Rocks, panels, rafters, surrounding her, too close. There was a thick beam over them, creating a little tent in the rubble, where Lucy was crouched and her head was located. A crunch and a groan, her chest stabbed with pain, and Lucy pulled her into the tiny space, cramping it. Her entire body ached and seared with pain, but she supposed it was better than feeling nothing.

Wait... She should check, she was groggy. Da's lessons came to mind, calm and cool and collected. She focused on her head first, noting all the aches and concentrating on them. Aware of her head, she spread her thoughts outward. Neck, her shoulders, upper arms, lower arms, fingers... She flexed each finger, smiling at only tiny jolts of pain. Ribs, she counted down as she took careful breaths to no deep tearing pains, her entire torso felt like bruises and tiny cuts but it was just that.

It was here that she realized that everything stopped at the knee. There was nothing. No pain, no feeling, she couldn't even feel the jeans on her legs. She turned her head slowly, silently praising the pains in the rest of herself. Her knees were there. She tried to wiggle a foot. Nothing. She turned onto her back, sitting up and reaching out to place a hand on her calf.

It was like it was someone else's flesh.

"I can't feel my calves," she said conversationally. "So what happened to Professor Longbottom?"

"He-He was torn to shreds, Lily. He was standing only a few feet from it. I was right next to him. The other people were too, the woman's face came off. It was sickening." Lucy sounded in shock. Lily had found that her emotions had locked on her. Nothing. No hurt, no fear, no anger, nothing but a rational mind. Defense. She pretended it was the words of a case report, filing it away. "I'm sorry you had to see that, Lucy." She looked at the ancient timber beam above her. "So. Should we try to dig out? We can't stay down here."

"But we could easily collapse everything on ourselves! And you said so yourself. You can't feel your legs-"

"Part of my legs."

"You can't go anywhere fast enough to escape falling-"

Lily pulled out her wand. "Are you a witch or not?"

She had never heard of any spell for curing her paralysis. She doubted one existed. Of course, something not existing had never stopped her, which is why she had invented the bubble curse back in the beginning of the year. And she didn't need to cure it, she just needed her leg muscles to work. She imagined her legs, the muscle underneath, imagined magic flowing in and tightening them and loosening, and finally dug up a few nonsense vowels and consonants. As Lily had discovered, spells didn't ALWAYS have to be in Latin, they just worked better that way.

"Sor-eh-sus," she whispered, rolling the word around and then putting that in her memory as well. If only she had paper.

If she had paper, she could write a letter, actually. That would be nice. Write to mum, even if she never got to mail it.

Or write to Scorpius.

Scorpius. His common room was underground... Was he alive? Or crushed under rubble? She really desperately hoped not. She had just gotten him, he was finally HERS, she couldn't...

She slid her wand back into the loops holding it to her thigh, beginning to stand. Her calves responded, moving, her feet finding the ground. But she still couldn't feel them there, it felt... So odd. Like she was on stilts.

"Are we going to get out?"

"Hello?" a muffled voice called.

"Who's there?" Lucy yelled back.

"It's Molly Weasley! The second!"

"Molly-sis! It's Lucy and Lily!"

Lucy's image blurred for a moment, body rapidly changing before a little ginger cat jumped up onto a chuck of stone, squeezing through a tiny space. Lily sighed. "Wish I could do that."

But she couldn't. After all, between her friends, and cousins, and annoying Scorpius (And now snogging. Oh, and he was marvelous at it, the way he-ahem) and classes and homework, where was there any time to be animals? She supposed she might be able to squeeze it in somewhere, but now the library was probably ash and rubble, she would have to find other places...

Of course, when Lily thought of the knowledge that had been lost now, all those spells and curses and ideas, buried in dry writing and extra e's, she felt a touch of sadness, but shook it away before the feeling overtook her.

Lucy came back, squeezing into the tiny space. Lily shrugged off the block she hadn't realized she'd been leaning against.

"We have to get Molly-sis! She's in a tiny area, broken arm and in fetal position, it's so tiny! Come on!" Lucy began to carefully shift stones, and Lily watched, almost a bit amazed at the way she stacked the mess so it supported itself but made room. Testing her legs, she limped awkwardly next to her, trying the same thing.

It was as if her hands knew where things needed the support, where she should tuck that little pebble so it supported that beam just enough. It wasn't like she was being told what to do, it was like she knew the answer to a problem, but couldn't explain the steps. She just knew.

It was an impossibly small path, they created, bent double and shifting stones. Before long-was it long?-her arms began to ache with strain, her spine creaking in her ears, even though she knew it was silent. Tiny cuts bled, clotted, bled, and when they finally broke through into the space, all she did was sit down, stretch and listen to the tiny cracks of approval as her bones settled back into place.

Molly really was bent double, curled around her arm, head to her knees. Strands of ginger hair stuck to her face.

"Come on, Molls."

She crawled into the tunnel, and Lily watched the rocks there settled lower to the ground. Snatching the quill lying among the mess, she looked at it. Blue and silver, self-inking, neatly cut and trimmed. "Nice," Lily whispered. She was keeping this. She shoved it into the pocket of her school robes, then looked at her older cousin. "Let me see your arm. James taught me a few spells. After I broke my arm in Quidditch practice last year?"

Molly only whimpered slightly, and she began to run her wand over the afflicted limb, whispering the spell. Within seconds, it began to knit back together.

"There! Rough job, but it will do. I'm sure a school nurse survived!"

"If we get out of here..."

Lucy's gloomy statement was right. There was nowhere to go, no way to get out. Lily drew her knees to her chest, trying to ignore how odd it felt.

'Scorpius...' Her throat closed as she thought of him, that she might never see him again, kiss him, hold him, that she might never get to spend long nights hidden in his arms or bodies crushed impossibly close together.

'Scorpius...'

Yup! Dark right off! Kinda a Shadows reverse, with its laughs right off the bat. I promise that it will be just as good, however!

Review! Comments, predictions, ideas, opinions, tears of blood... Whatever goes!