AN:- Hogwarts Retold. We're back again. Hopefully a few less mistakes, hopefully a little more characterisation, hopefully a little more drama.
Chapter One: Back to School
"I'm not sure about this Lily."
Selene Moon wasn't usually a nervous woman, but her daughter was pushing her comfort zone pretty far. They had spent the day in London, going in and out of muggle shops buying clothing, and now they were standing outside the London Underground, staring at the escalators as they carried the muggles up and down.
"Come on," Lily said, nudging her mother with her elbow, "it'll be an adventure."
"That's what got me out into the muggle world in the first place," her mother grumbled.
"And you've had fun, admit it."
Lily's friends thought that she could give a good disapproving eyebrow, but it was nothing on her mother. A solitary black line arched towards her hairline and she gazed down at Lily with a look that would have made McGonagall proud. "I have had a day," she said quietly, "and I am glad I spent it with you," she held up the shopping bags she was laden with, "I only wish it hadn't involved quite so much, ah, denim."
"I like denim," Lily said defensively, "it's the first muggle clothing Lisa and Sally got me, so I want to wear it all the time."
"Of course dear." Selene took a deep breath and stepped forwards onto the moving staircase, Lily following with a big smile on her face.
After several seconds when the tension was visible in her mother's shoulders the older woman relax, "it's not unlike Dumbledore's office." Selene said.
"How so?"
"Oh, have you not been to Dumbledore's office yet?" Selene looked back with a smile lighting her face, "he has a marvellous moving staircase that leads you right to his door."
"Of course I haven't been to Dumbledore's office, only the real troublemakers get sent there," Lily's eyes widened, "when did you get sent to Dumbledore's office?"
All she got in return was a light and airy laugh, and then they were stepping off and approaching the ticket gates.
Despite her mother's reticence, she proved to be remarkably capable when it came to working the machines, and they were soon on the other side. "I've seen some of our people get so confused," she said, settling herself into a seat, "they don't understand the money, or the electronic things. As if the money could be confusing, it has the numbers printed on the top for you to read!" She laughed again, and Lily smiled as well. She loved hearing her mother laugh, it sounded so carefree, so different to how she normally was.
Her mother had an important deadline approaching for her next book to be published. The Adventures of Alec Thorne were being adapted into a radio play, and her publishers wanted the new book to be released at the same time as the play. For most of the summer holidays Selene had locked herself away in the attic, where she did her best writing. Her father was fun as well, but not in the same way that her mother could be. He was a lot more grounded, and his own work took up a lot of his time. Nimbus had recently released the Two Thousand and One series, and his office had been involved in putting them together, weaving spells into the woodwork.
At the very least they hadn't had to spend any time with the Malfoy's or the Greengrasses. When the invitation to the traditional family summer celebration had arrived, her parents had politely RSVPed in the resoundingly negative, citing work commitments. Of course, on the actual day they had taken Lily to the seaside and spent a day enjoying the sun, but the Malfoys weren't to know.
Normally they would have been invited round several times, but for some reason that hadn't been the case this year. Lily wondered if maybe Draco had told his father about her friends, and Lucius had decided to give up on the whole family for good. Not that anyone of the Moons minded, they were quite happy with their cosy little house on the outskirts of Trowse, spending their days doing what the Moons did best, reading big books of magic and having quiet nights out in the village.
Lily missed her friends very badly though, and she did sometimes wish that she had been able to spend more time with them, even if they were a little mad at times. They had managed to meet up for a week at the beginning of the holiday, staying round Lisa's house, but then Sally's family had been off to Seychelles for a fortnight, and after that Lisa was visiting her grandparents, and between one thing and another it had reached the end of August and they had hardly even managed to write.
She tried hard not to be paranoid, but it was in her nature. She was the odd-one-out in their little group, the Slytherin who had turned her back on her house to be friends with the Ravenclaw and the Hufflepuff. Part of her, a tiny little voice at the back of her head, wondered if Sally and Lisa had decided that it was too much effort to be friends with her. It was sometimes quite hard to ignore that little voice.
"What's wrong darling?" Her mother's voice broke into her thoughts, bringing her back to the present, where they were sitting on the train as it rocked back and forth with the rhythm of the tracks.
"I'm just thinking about my friends." She said, forcing a smile.
"You're worried they're not your friends anymore," her mother had the uncanny ability to pinpoint exactly what was wrong. Her father often said it was the reason he had wanted to marry her.
Lily squirmed uncomfortably in her seat, "maybe a little."
"You have nothing to worry about." Selene said matter-of-factly, leaning back in her seat and looking out of the window, "you'll see when you get back to Hogwarts, they'll still be there, and you'll still be friends."
"How can you be sure?"
"Oh please darling," her mother's smile was kind and comforting, "I saw the three of you together at Christmas, and the amount you talk about them? If they feel even half as much as you do then they'll still be your friends."
Their stop arrived and Selene led the way once more through the crowded station until they were standing out in the warm August sunshine. "So I take it you have plans to meet up with them when the letters arrive?"
Lily nodded, "in the Leaky Cauldron."
"Well then, you'll see them soon enough, the letters should be arriving tomorrow, if my sources are accurate."
"Your sources being Mrs McClelland from the Ministry."
"You take your information where you can find it, ah! Here we are," and she hurried across the street into the Leaky Cauldron, nodding to the bartender and heading for the fire.
"Okay darling, you first."
Lily pulled her little pouch of floo powder out of an inside pocket and threw it onto the fire, stepping into the green flames and intoning clearly, "Vincent's Folly."
Every wizarding house had to have a name; otherwise it couldn't be reliably connected to the floo network. When they had moved in her father had chosen the name before her mother could object, and it had stuck. Lily whirled in the fireplace for a few seconds before her living room came into view and she stumbled forwards onto the mat that had been carefully laid down to catch any stray ash. Her father looked up from his newspaper and smiled, "hello Lily, was it a good trip?"
She held up her arms to display the bags strung along them and nodded, "it was great fun."
A moment later her mother was unfolding herself from the fireplace, brushing a stray fleck of coal dust from her shoulder. Lily still didn't know how her parents were able to emerge from a floo trip looking neat and presentable; she supposed it just took lots of practice. Selene deposited her own bags onto Lily and smiled, "well, go on, up to your room."
Staggering under the added weight, Lily made her way up the stairs to her bedroom, right at the far end of the house. Kicking open the door she heaved the bags onto one end of her bed and flopped down next to them.
Her room was a wild mix of tastes and styles, none of them quite overlapping. The general theme seemed to be books and the storing thereof but here and there flashes of something else poked through. On one bookshelf her small collection of stuffed toys stood guard over the children's books within, looking out at her with their button eyes, while on another shelf her school textbooks stood in regimented rows, a scarf and tie laid out neatly beside them.
Her room was, and always had been, painted pale grey, but recently touches of pink had crept in courtesy of her friend Sally. Having seen the explosion of pink and red that was Sally's room Lily supposed she should have been grateful that it was only a splash or two of colour from presents instead of every wall and surface. Her gifts from Lisa were a little more conservative, and mostly lived in her closet. She had never even heard of denim before going to Hogwarts, and now it was all she wore.
Next to her bed was the stack of books she was reading. Two textbooks and two fictions. The textbooks were for Potions and Transfiguration, which were Lily's weakest subjects at school, and the fiction books were both muggle books that Sally's mother had recommended for her. She had quite enjoyed the Jill Murphy books, even if they had obviously been meant for children. They were a pretty unnerving reflection of her own experiences sometimes.
And soon she would be going back there. Smiling happily she pulled open one of her bedside drawers to examine her wand, which had been sitting untouched for most of the summer. It wasn't that she didn't want to use it, because if she had her way she would have been casting spells from dusk until dawn¸ but the letters were pretty clear. No using magic outside of Hogwarts, even if you were from an all magical family that used magic on a daily basis and was never visible by muggles.
When she had gone round to Lisa's the year before, her mother had thrown up all sorts of defences, and they had been able to practice some magic over Christmas. Thinking about that now, and all the times they had been able to sit outside Hogwarts charming whatever caught their eye; Lily sighed and wished the days could go faster. Resisting temptation had been easy at the start of the holidays, but now she was opening the drawer several times a day, waiting for the time when she could take her wand out again.
Shutting it again, she emptied the bags onto her bed and started piling her new clothes into her trunk, which was standing open again waiting for the start of term. Smiling, she folded t-shirts and packed them in around the robes that were already here. It was less than two weeks until they went back now, and she couldn't wait.
Sure enough, when she went down to breakfast the next day there was a letter sitting at her place at the table, the elegant green writing and bright red wax stamp telling her exactly where it had arrived from. She almost tore the letter inside in her excitement to get it open, and scanned the list of new books hungrily. Her mother pushed a plate of toast over which she ate absently while turning the parchment over in her hand.
"We're getting all of Gilderoy Lockhart's books this year," she said, frowning. Her mother knew Gilderoy, they shared a publisher, and none of their conversations about the man had ever been complimentary.
"That old loon?" Vincent looked up, "I suppose your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher must be a fan." He muttered something else that sounded suspiciously like, "probably a woman," and Selene whapped him round the head with her copy of the Daily Prophet.
"What was that darling?" She asked cordially.
"Nothing dearest," he said with a very fake smile, turning back to his notebook, which he had been doodling in for most of the last week. There were new contracts coming in and he needed to start planning runes and formulae.
"All of Gilderoy Lockhart's book?" Selene took the letter and examined it, her eyes widening, "well then, all of Gilderoy Lockhart's books." She gave Lily the letter back, "anything else?"
"Standard Book of Spells Grade Two, but nothing else."
"And they're still teaching from that ancient piece of nonsense." Apparently her father was in the mood for a good grumble, and nothing was going to deter him.
"Why is it nonsense?" Lily asked curiously.
"Well all the spells it teaches," he started waving his quill to emphasise his point, "You don't need spells like Alohamora, but Aguamenti? That's a useful spell, and they don't start teaching it to you until second year!" He shook his head, "outdated nonsense."
Lily bit her lip and reminded herself that her parents didn't know about her experiments with older year magic. She had in fact been practicing Aguamenti since before last Christmas, and had even used it to shoot a burst of water into Pansy Parkinson's face. And her friends loved her Lapifors charm, which could turn everyday objects into rabbits, no matter how briefly.
The problem was that the Slytherin Common Room wasn't very well monitored by Professor Snape. So when an older year left their book lying around, or just didn't need it anymore, those books could very easily end up on one of the communal bookshelves, instead of taken back to the library where it belonged. So Lily had taken to browsing the shelves for books that would teach her interesting spells. Sometimes they worked, most times they didn't, but she was acutely aware that she had no business even attempting them.
Her parents were still talking, "Hogwarts has been teaching students for millennia," her mother was saying, "it's the best school in the country."
"It's the only school in the country," her father responded darkly.
Sensing the beginnings of a parent argument, Lily bolted the rest of her breakfast and tugged her mother's sleeve, "so are we going to Diagon Alley today?"
"Have you organised it with your friends?"
"Well we said we'd all go together on the day that the letters came out, and the letters have come out."
"Very well," Selene rose gracefully from the table and made her way towards the stairs to get ready, shooting her husband a look as she left, "this isn't over yet," She warned him.
After she had gone Vincent smiled at Lily, "will I be coming along as well?" He asked.
She nodded, "mother will need someone to talk to while the three of us go off on our own."
"Of course," he nodded, "independence is good for you, and a trip to the Leaky Cauldron is always good for me." He stood as well, stretching some of the kinks out of his back, "well, let me just go and get changed."
She smiled at that. Ever since her friends had introduced her to the delights of muggle clothing, she had then done the same for her parents. In the past they had only ever worn muggle clothing when they went into the small village they lived in, usually only at Christmas or Easter, and their clothes were stiff and formal. The rest of the time they had worn traditional robes. Now her father was never happier than when he had an excuse to wear his favourite checked jumper, a dark silver and green thing with no sleeves. She didn't know why, but whenever he wore it Lily felt automatically embarrassed. She didn't know much about muggles, but she gathered that it was not good when your dad dressed in one of those.
She went back upstairs as well, clutching the book list tightly in one hand and grinning like an idiot. She didn't even care that she was going to be forced to buy and read Lockhart's entire collected works, she was going back to Hogwarts again, and she was going to see her friends.
Diving into her drawers, she finally took her wand out of its resting place, her fingers closing round the handle and feeling warmth surge into her arm, like the wand had just been waiting for her to finally come back to it. She almost flicked it right then and did something, anything, that would remind her of the incredible things it could do, but she managed to restrain herself, instead sliding the wand into an inside pocket before heading back onto the landing.
But she could have sworn that she felt something from the wand as it settled against her chest, something that felt very much like someone whispering soon.
AN:- First things first, The Adventures of Alec Thorne, Bite and Barnabus Stump are all copyright me, so no taking them or the stories attached to them. Alex Thorne is kind of like Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, and is one of my oldest story ideas.
Ilike Selene Moon, especially her interactions with Lily. What I wanted to try and bring across is that Selene and Vincnt have always treated her like an adult, which is why she is (for the moment) a lot more mature than some of the other students.
A 'folly' is the name of a buildling that has no purpose other than as an ornament, but also are often eccentric in design or construction. Vincent knew that leaving the protective fold of the old family money was a foolish idea, so when he had to come up with a name for the new house he was living in, he chose 'Vincent's Folly' a sort of derogatory dig at himself for being a bit of an idiot.
I couldn't think of a good way for the girls to like Gilderoy Lockhart. Lily's mum is a writer, so of course she would know of Lockhart, even if she didn't know him personally, and that would transfer onto Lily. My parents often talk about people that they work with, or know through their work, and because of the nature of my father's work this sometimes means relatively well known people. Most hilariously, it recently involved a man who was suspected of wrongdoing in the News of the World trials over here in Britain. Some other people (I'm trying hard to keep this as anonymous as possible) thought that this man was well worth the money and a good consultant, but my father had always said that he absolutely hated the man, and thought he was a slimy scumbag. Turns out my dad was right.
My little dig not so much at the books but more the videogames. You get to learn absolutely useless spells with only one very specific application early on, but multi-purpose spells like aguamenti or accio get held back for as long as possible.