The Forbidden Forest!
The next morning, Lily woke up to Mary folding her clothes, before the window creaked open from behind her bed. Lily turned her head only to see that same mincino sneaking in.
"Mary!" Lily sleepily shouted, Mary swivelled around quickly, before pulling a Pokeball from the desk next to her.
"You're mine!" Mary declared. The Pokemon gasped and tried to flee, but Lily had already shut the window. The mincino then jumped from bed to bed, even hopping on a sleeping Marlene's stomach. "Bubble beam!" Mary called, releasing piplup. The pokemon used a continuous bubble beam which kept missing.
Eventually, the pokemon reached the blanket which was wrapped around Mary's egg. The pokemon sniffed the egg before cleaning it with it's tail. Mary gently crept over before tapping a Pokeball on the minccino which shook three times before it was caught.
"Finally!" Mary shouted, loud enough to wake up Marlene. Marlene sat up with a confused expression and rubbed her eyes. The other two girls explained that Mary had caught minccino and Marlene gave a lazy thumbs up before heading to the bathroom.
She was in there for about five minutes before walking out with something that none of them had expected. Lily and Mary both froze in their place as Marlene walked out with a short, shaggy wolfcut and a huge amount of blonde hair on the floor behind her.
"Why? What happened!" Mary ran up to Marlene and ran her hands through her short blonde hair.
"I lost the battle contest, so I needed a new me!" Marlene gave a toothy grin at the two girls. Lily thought it looked good, so she just smiled at her from across the room.
The three girls began making their way to the great Hall together, minccino on Mary's head and a jealous piplup on her arms staring it down.
"Woah! Your hair!" Peter gasped as Marlene approached the table.
"Woah! My hair!" Marlene mocked before scoffing and loading up her plate. "I want another pokemon, this isn't fair!" Marlene groaned as she slammed her head onto the table. Lily awkwardly laughed as she patted Marlene's back.
"You have to take action then!" James declared from beside her before lowering his voice into a whisper, "Tonight, me, Sirius and Peter are going into the forbidden forest to find some rare pokemon!"
"What about Remus?" Lily scoffed judgingly before swallowing a mouthful of scrambled egg.
"He said he feels super sick, and he's way more snappy than usual." Peter added as he swallowed and they all glanced at Remus from across the table who was sat alone staring angrily at his food without eating.
"Hey, Remus!" Sirius shouted from across the table.
"Shut up and die!" Remus shouted back, so uncharacteristically angry for no reason.
His pokemon were sat next to him and eating their food silently.
"Anyway, let's go tonight!" James asked.
"I'm down." Marlene added.
"Why not, as long as my parents don't find out." Mary smiled softly. That made Lily think about Remus for a second. What was an eleven year old doing boarding the train in Hogwarts alone? And why does he have so many scars? Lily shook the thoughts away and rejoined the conversation.
"No way, I'm not getting expelled!" She folded her arms and pouted.
"I heard you guys are going to the forbidden forest for Pokemon? Can we join?" Pandora said softly as she approached the table. All of her friends were with her, less inviting than Pandora.
"Hey Lily." Evan calmly smiled and waved at her. Lily pursed her lips and waved back. "Cool hair." He said to Marlene.
"Twins!" She joked, looking up at Evan.
"Of course you can come, but Lily won't join, she's such a worry wart!" Mary huffed and everybody looked at the ginger haired girl.
"Please come Lily, I promise we'll be back by midnight!" Pandora said, her hands clapped together as if she were begging.
"Fine, but I'm not interested in catching pokemon." Lily rolled her eyes at everyone.
"Folded under zero pressure." Marlene snickered to Sirius.
Remus slammed his hands down on the table and began walking out of the door wordlessly. He was probably going to the infirmary if he was feeling unwell.
The day sped by like seconds, and soon enough, Lily was dressed in her own clothes and heading down the stairs of her dorm with her friends. Lily was in a white jumper and grey joggers, whilst Mary had a pink shirt and flared jeans, and Marlene had baggy jeans and a red baggy shirt layered over a black shirt.
The boys (except for Remus) all told them to hurry up as they snuck out of the dorm room and over to the exit of the school, where Barty, Evan, Pandora, Regulus and even Dorcas were waiting.
"You have new hair." Dorcas stated looking at Marlene before walking away with her friends.
"Was that a compliment?" Mary chuckled as she walked away as well.
It took the group about twenty minutes to reach the forbidden forest. The sky was pitch black apart from the silver full moon which shone brightly overhead.
Everyone with fire types took their pokemon out and told them to light a flame, before they all got into groups with one fire type in every group. Lily and Sirius were with Pandora, Peter with Mary, Marlene with Evan, Barty with Dorcas and James was with Regulus.
"Finally, let's go!" Marlene declared as they all split off into seperate directions.
"We should go to the shrieking shack." Pandora suggested whilst clutching onto Lily's arm.
"What's that?" Lily questioned.
"Have you not heard? Apparently, there's an abandoned shack near here that students have been hearing screaming from for the last few months." Pandora eerily said with an innocent giggle at the end.
"Couldn't hurt, should we go in?" Sirius asked them, and Lily nervously agreed after a few seconds pause.
On their way to the shack, Lily could've sworn she saw a pink, cat-like pokemon that went invisible quickly, but it must've been her imagination. The three climbed through the cracked door of the shack and made their way through the dark building. Fennekin was being clutched tightly in Lily's grip, whilst Sirius' tepig was shaking on his head. Pandora's chikorita had it's vine whip wrapped around her arm as it walked beside her.
Suddenly, there was a noise that made their hearts stop. It was an agonizing scream, followed by floorboards shaking so hard above them that dust fell onto their heads. Lily felt her face pale as she stammered back, grabbing her friends and running out of there with them.
They must've ran so deep into the forest that they were ages away from school now, because the only reason that they stoppped was because they slipped and fell down a steep slope. Lily felt her skin being cut as salty blood trickled from her hands and legs. By the time she reached the bottom, there were twigs in her hair which Fennekin picked out with it's mouth.
Lily made sure to shield fennekin from the fall, as did everybody else with their partners.
"A-Are you all okay?" Pandora stuttered out as they all made their way towards each other.
"Yeah, I'm good." Sirius sighed, stroking his tepig.
"Same here, but that was-" Lily started before she was cut off by the noise of water being splashed in behind them.
The group turned around to see a group of noibat and trubbish playing and messing around in a small lake behind them. There was Mist shrouding the icy lake, but that didn't scare the pokemon from messing around in it.
Suddenly, cutting through the fog, there was a large pokemon with deer antlers which showed all colours of the rainbow. The colours shon brightly through the mist, as the pokemon urged for Sirius, Pandora and Lily to get on it's back. They all slowly walked towards the pokemon, having to walk through shallow water for a few seconds. Fennekin was now on Lily's head, Tepig on Sirius' and Chikorita in Pandora's arms. They all stumbled onto the boat with a small struggle, being around five feet and all.
The mysterious pokemon pranced quickly but still graceful. They didn't even have to hold on to know that they wouldn't fall. Although, Lily and the others didn't seem to be able to appreciate the beauty and wonder of this moment, because all of them were still shaken up by the blood curdling scream.
The pokemon took them all the way back to where they had said goodbye to their friends.
"Thank you, xerneas." Pandora said to the pokemon after she had gotten off, stroking its forehead.
Nobody else was there, so the group collectively decided to sit down and wait.
Marlene and Evan came skipping in together rather quickly, both holding a Pokeball in the air.
"Crazy story, right! So there's this zubat attacking a larvitar and I'm all like get off that larivitar! So my chimchar uses some epic moves to scare the zubat away, and the larvitar is super duper grateful and it even wants to join me in my journey!"Marlene squealed it out in basically one breath, not giving anybody a chance to react.
"You caught a larvitar! Epic!" Sirius jumped up, shooting the girls a look which was implying that they need to act normal.
Sirius and Marlene jumped with joy together.
"Right! My turn! So when the zubat got scared off, since Marlene weakened it I just threw a Pokeball and bam!" Evan declared, grinning.
"You have zubat then? That's great!" Pandora sprung towards Evan, holding his hands as she spun him in circles.
Lily felt sweat trickle down her forehead, was she the only one shooken up by this?
The other groups began filtering through, some with no catch and others with new pokemon partners. After the final pair arrived, Peter showed off his rattatta, and they all began to sneak back into the building.
There was a caretaker and some teachers wondering the corridors, but the groups all snuck back to their respective dorms unnoticed. Lily, Marlene and Mary went to bed quickly, all falling asleep in their day clothes rather than changing into their pyjamas.
"Cinno!" Mary's Minccino squealed early in the morning.
"Larvitar!" Marlene's larvitar responded immediately. Lily rubbed her eyes and sat up to see what was going on. It seemed like Mary's Minccino had taken a liking to Marlene's larvitar, whilst that pokemon wasn't as interested.
Both of the other girls were still asleep, whilst everybody's pokemon were playing, full of life and energy. Lily looked at the clock only to notice the fact that it was ten in the morning! Luckily, it was a Saturday. Lily stretched and slid into her slippers before brushing her teeth and changing into a fresh pair of clothes. Her friends were still snoozing whilst their pokemon were running in circles.
Togetic was in it's pokeball, but fennekin was running around with laughter. Lily smiled to herself before sitting at the desk and looking for a book which she enjoyed reading. Once she had found it, Lily sat on the floor near the pokemon and cracked open the book.
"Fennekin!" Lily heard her partner Yip with the others.
"Piplup lup lup!" The noise of Mary's buddy echoed across the room before there was a loud crashing sound.
"You used bubble beam on me in my sleep?" Lily heard Mary shouting as her pipip ran away and took shelter behind Lily.
"Morning sunshine," Lily joked with a snicker as Mary sighed and crawled out of bed.
"Chimchar!" Marlene's partner pokemon was shouting into Marlene's ear, using attacks and doing anything to try and wake Marlene up, but it didn't work.
"There's a contest going on tomorrow, and I really want to enter!" Lily told Mary with joy.
"Oh really? So do I!" Mary replied with a cheeky smile, tying her hair into a bun.
"Speak for yourselves, freaks," Marlene yawned as she got out of bed groggily, clicking every limb inside of her as she walked, "Of course I will watch, though."
"I'll text Regulus, Sirius and Panda to see if their competing." Lily said as she wrote out a text to each of them. She received a reply from Regulus and Pandora almost immediately, but nothing from Sirius.
Reggie: Nope, just going to spectate. You?
Panda: I'm not, I'm planning on watching from a distance! <3
Lily sighed and turned off her phone after replying to both, she then placed a bookmark on her page and stood up to go practice some moves.
Lily had the perfect outfit for the occasion. It was a pink, sparkly dress which stuck out like something out of a cartoon. It was littered in red bows and glitter with white lace and frills.
Lily walked into the courtyard to practice, it had around twenty people minding their own busines or also training.
"Togetic, let's do this!" Lily shouted as she released togetic. The pokemon flew around before nuzzling Lily and Fennekin and then going to its own spot.
"Right, I think togetic for performing and Fennekin for battling, sound okay?" Lily asked her pokemon, who both agreed happily, "Let's begin!"