Disclaimer: Though I REALLY wish it
weren't true, all of the characters here belong to the oh-so-lucky J.K.
Rowling. Now that that's done, on with the fic.
"All
right, then. We'll see you at Christmas," said her mother with a proud look on
her face. "Have a good time at school. Be sure to wri— I mean, send us lots of
owls," her father said, trying to ignore Petunia's insistent demands to leave
the train station.
Finally, they left-- her parents proud but sad that
they wouldn't see their young daughter for at least three and a half months,
her sister triumphant.
Lily gulped. She wished her parents would've stayed
a bit longer. She felt lost. Come to think of it, she was lost. She
couldn't find the sign for platform nine and three-quarters and time was
running out. She was looking around frantically, squinting her eyes and
contemplating whether or not to take out her wand, when suddenly, she heard a
voice say, "Hogwarts, right?"
She
looked up. Two tall boys, probably in their early teens, were grinning at her.
They also were lugging around huge trunks with an owl cage on top. She self-consciously started smoothing her
hair when she realized that she hadn't answered their question.
"Um, yeah," she muttered. She was always shy around
strangers, especially boy strangers. Around her girl friends, she was perky and
fun, but around guys, she always froze up.
"You just have to go through the barrier over
there," said the one with the glasses, pointing. "And by the way, your hair
looks fine."
Lily realized that she was still smoothing her
unruly hair. She quickly jammed her hands into her pockets and turned as red as
her fiery locks. The boys just laughed.
"Last one through is a rotten egg!" the other boy
yelled. He raced toward the barrier. "Cheater!" the one with glasses yelled,
and proceeded to follow. Lily held her
breath, trying to ignore the curious bystanders. When the boys were just a few
feet away from the barrier, Lily braced herself, anticipating a very loud
crash. She waited. And waited.
But instead of crashing, they disappeared.
Lily blinked, and decided to follow them. She didn't really have a choice,
since there were only five minutes left. She took a deep breath, looked around
to see that no one was watching, and practically sprinted towards the barrier.
When she finally got through, she very shakily
exhaled and looked around. A scarlet steam engine was waiting there, and people
were scrambling around with their trunks, trying to find an empty compartment.
She was trying to drag her trunk into a compartment,
when she heard a familiar voice say, "What took you so long?" It was the two
boys again.
'Oh, great,' she thought to herself. She ignored
them and continued to struggle with her trunk.
"Need help?" asked the one with corrective lenses.
"My name's James, by the way."
Before Lily could say anything, James had taken the
other side of the trunk and started to drag it onto the train. The other boy
came over, too.
"Blimey, what do you have in here? Your barbell
collection?" grunted the boy who Lily assumed was James' friend. "Your trunk
was a lot heavier than this, Sirius," said James.
"Well, duh! Dungbombs and Filibuster's Fireworks
weigh a lot!" said Sirius.
When they had safely stowed away Lily's trunk, James
and Sirius disappeared. Lily sat down by the window, feeling rather lonely. The
train had just started to move when they came back, with another boy who had
light brown hair and nice eyes.
"This is Remus," said Sirius. "Do you mind if we sit
here? This is the only compartment that isn't occupied by a teacher or a
Slytherin."
'Yes, I do mind,' thought Lily, who didn't want to
spend the next few hours with a bunch of jokesters, but she thought that would
be rude and kept her mouth shut. "No," she said.
The three boys plopped down into seats and started
joking around and talking. Lily stayed out of their conversation, but she
managed to pick up that the three were 3rd years at Hogwarts, and
that they were all in Gryffindor. Lily had read through all her books before she
came so she wouldn't be too far behind everyone else. She had decided
that she'd like to be in Gryffindor, but now was having second thoughts about
it. The Gryffindors seemed like mischievous, prankster types, and she was
neither.
'Maybe Ravenclaw would be better,' she was thinking,
when she realized that Remus had asked her a question.
"Huh?" she asked. "I said, what's your name?"
repeated Remus.
"Oh, um, it's Lily," she said.
"Lily what?" asked Sirius.
"Lily Evans," she replied.
"You'll probably be one of the first to be sorted,"
said James.
"Sorted?" asked Lily, who hadn't the foggiest idea
what that was. She hadn't read anything about sorting in any of her books.
"Yeah, sorted. Into one of the houses. You know what
those are, don't you?" asked James.
"Yes," said Lily. Then, cautiously, she asked, "This
sorting thing, it doesn't hurt, does it?"
"Not really," said James with utmost sincerity. "A
few broken bones and bloody noses maybe, but nothing life-threatening."
"He's just kidding," Remus assured the horrified
Lily. "You just have to try on a hat."
"A-a hat?" asked Lily, bewildered.
"Yeah," said James, glaring at Remus. Then, slowly,
he started grinning slyly.
"When you try it on, you have to repeat everything
it says to you," James said. "Talk really loud. Then the teachers will tell you
what house you're in."
For some reason, Sirius started snickering. Lily
couldn't see why; it seemed much less painful than the other version James had
told her. Remus started to say something, but Sirius and James jumped up and
dragged him out of the compartment. Lily sighed and slept for the rest of the
trip.
About an hour later, Lily found herself in the Great
Hall, waiting to be sorted. She breathed a sigh of relief when a teacher, who
had introduced herself as Professor McGonagall, set a wizard's hat down onto a
stool.
After a few seconds, the hat started singing, but
Lily wasn't listening. She was too mesmerized by the enchanted ceiling. She was
busy searching for the constellation Andromeda when she heard her name being
called.
She hurried up to the stool and gingerly placed the
hat on her head. She heard a small voice in her year saying, " Hmm…rather
studious…a nice mind too…perhaps Ravenclaw would be best…but what's this? A
brave heart and a courageous spirit…however…"
The hat continued like this for at least a minute,
debating whether to put her in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. All the while, Lily
repeated everything that the hat was saying to her as loudly as she could.
After a while, she noticed that the teachers and the
other students were laughing at her. She stopped in mid-sentence as Professor
McGonagall whispered to her, "Miss Evans, what are you doing?"
"I-I thought that we were supposed the repeat
everything the hat told us, so that you could sort us…" whispered Lily, who was
on the brink of tears.
"No, we don't sort you. The hat does,"
said Professor McGonagall in a pitying sort of voice. Just then, the hat
shouted, "GRYFFINDOR!"
Lily realized then that she'd been fooled. As she rushed to the Gryffindor table, she heard James laughing. She gave him the coldest glare she could manage, which only made him laugh harder. She vowed that she'd get him back for making her look like an idiot in front of the whole school.
A/N:
BTW, I wrote this before J.K. Rowling slipped that Lily's last name was Evans.
I changed it, to satisfy all those annoying technical nitpickers out there,
(including myself, I admit.) But the sorting thing is a little off now, because
"Evans" most probably wouldn't be first in line, and Lily would have known from
watching other people that she wasn't supposed to talk during the sorting. But
just bear with me, all right? Or pretend that maybe during Lily's year there
wasn't anybody who's last name began with A, B, C, or D, however unlikely.
Thanx J