Lily groaned. Today was the day she'd start at the stupid 'special needs' school, which was another way of saying that she had a disability. She rolled onto her stomach, grabbing the prosthetics leaning on the edge of her bed. She leant against the wall as she fastened them onto the stumps where her legs had once been. She could hardly remember what it felt like to have real, proper legs. It had been so long since she'd had the surgery.
"Are you alright in there, Lily? Do you need any help with anything?" Came Mrs Evans' voice from the other side of the door.
"It's been four years, mum! I'm not eleven anymore! I can handle myself, whatever 'Tuney might say." Lily had been very close with her sister before the surgery, but Lily had needed so much attention during her recovery that Petunia had been pushed to the side a bit, and she was still bitter about it.
Lily pulled dark jeans and ratty converse over her prosthetics to somewhat hide them. She put on a blue Cancer Council t-shirt she still fitted from when she'd been undergoing her treatment, and a black, loose fitting hoodie over the top of that. She pulled hair into a messy ponytail.
Once she was satisfied she limp-walked down the hallway, past the wheelchair she'd sworn she'd never use again and into the kitchen.
"Hi, sweetie" said Mrs Evans as Lily hobbled in, "are you excited to be going to your new school today?"
"As excited as one can be when they're about to be shipped away to a boarding school for messed up kids." She glared accusingly at her mother.
"That's not -"
"Not what? Not true? I don't see what's not true about the fact that you're sending me to a school for kids with disabilities! I'm not disabled! I've been trying to tell you people that since I was eleven and they cut my legs off and now you're telling me that I'm not human enough to go to a normal school anymore! Did you ever stop to think about how I feel? No! There is nothing wrong with me!" Lily was yelling. Mrs Evans was crying. Mr Evans had walked in halfway through Lily's rant and was staring bewildered between the two. Petunia was staying at her boyfriend's place.
"Lily. This has nothing to do with -"
"It has everything to do with that! If I hadn't gotten bone cancer they wouldn't have amputated my legs and then you wouldn't be sending me off to the stupid school and 'Tuney wouldn't hate me and you wouldn't be in debt because of my treatment and everything would be better!"
Lily would have stormed out of the room had her prosthetics allowed her to, but due to 70's technology and a lack of money on her parents behalf, they did not. She sat down heavily.
"Lily -"
"Shut up! I don't want to hear your stupid excuses. Let's just get this over with." She got up and limped back to her room, where she picked up the heavy trunk she wasn't medically allowed to carry, not that she cared.
She limped back up the hallway, a lot slower than before, with the trunk weighing her down.
"You know you're not allowed to carry that, Lily," said Mr Evans, rushing forwards to take it off her.
"No. I want to carry it. I'm not disabled. I don't need your help." Lily felt a bit like a broken record. She was not fragile. She wasn't about to let anyone tell her she was. br /br /"Let's go." She said.
"Eat something first,"
"No, I'm not hungry," she said as her father successfully managed to wrest the trunk from her grip.
"You need to eat, Lily"
"No."
""She's your mother," said Mr Evans.
"And it's my body! Shouldn't I have a say in what I do with what's left of it?"
That shut them up.
"Fine. But you'd better eat when you get there."
"Fine."
"Fine."
Lily tried to take her trunk back, but her father was much faster than her. She fell over trying to catch him.
Both her parents rushed forward to make sure she was okay.
"I'm fine. I'm not helpless, remember?"
Mr Evans helped her up anyway.
Lily cursed her prosthetics as she began the tedious task of getting into the car, sitting sideways on the seat, taking her legs off and swiveling properly into the seat. She didn't put them back on because she figured she'd just have to take them off again when they got there, and also because it would be almost impossible to maneuver them on properly in the tiny, cramped car.
Mrs Evans ran out of the house a moment later, carrying ...
"No way! There is no way in hell I'm taking that thing with me!" Yelled Lily.
"You have to take the wheelchair, Lily," she said tiredly, "it's school rules."
"I don't need it! I won't use it," she insisted.
"I know, sweetie. But they still want you to have it, as a precaution"
Lily rolled her eyes, today was certainly not her day.
When they arrived at the station Lily tried to ignore the stares she received as she refastened her prosthetics.
Mr Evans got her trunk and wheelchair out of the boot of the car. He used a length of rope to tie the wheelchair to the trunk. Lily tried to take the trunk, but he insisted on taking it.
Lily groaned when her dad insisted on coming onto the train and putting her trunk up on the rack for her.
She waved halfheartedly as the train began to move out if the station. No one had joined her in her compartment, but she was okay with that.
pDigging around in her carry-on bag, an old patterned thing almost as ratty as her shoes, she found The Fault In Our Stars (just pretend it was out in the 70's), a book she'd read over and over in her long stays at the hospital, and began to read it for the hundredth time.
pBefore she knew it (although she had made it the whole way through the book twice) they arrived.
An announcement saying that they were all to leave their trunks on the train and that new arrivals were to meet a man named Hagrid and be put into their houses before they went to the welcoming feast. Lily didn't really understand what they meany by 'sorting' and 'houses', having never read the school handbook, but the man, Hagrid, was easy enough to find.
Hagrid was very large, and had a very long stride, which did not bode well for her chances of keeping up. In the end, the only people slower than her were a tiny blonde girl in a wheelchair and her brother, a short, curly haired fellow who seemed to be buzzing with energy.
She limped along as fast as she could, which was still pitifully slow.
For some strange reason they took boats to the school, which just so happened to have been built in an old castle. As if Lily needed to feel any more removed from the normal world. She doubted there would be reception in the castle.
They were greeted by a teacher named Professor McGonagall, who taught English.
She introduced the school (which someone had stupidly named "Hogwarts") and the houses (Hufflepuff, Slytherin, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw). The hoses were based upon why they were there (Hufflepuff for the kids with varying syndromes and autism, Slytherin for the anger management and attention defict kids, Gryffindor for those with 'physical ailments' and Ravenclaw for the kids with mental disorders.).
Lily zoned out as the names and houses were called, she already knew where she would end up.
They were lead into the hall and directed to their tables. A loud voice said " Welcome to Gryffindor, house of all the poor little kidlets with 'physical ailments'!" The boy who had said it had shoulder-length black hair, a leather jacket, tight black jeans and mischievous blue eyes.
Lily limped over to the table, focusing on not falling on her face, which, of course meant she did just that.
The boy sitting across from the one with the leather jacket stood up quickly, kneeling down next to her. He was tall, with glasses perched crookedly on his nose and impossibly messy black hair.
"I'm fine." Said Lily, turning redder than her hair, "just prosthetics, you know?" She was fairly sure he didn't know. He nodded. He took her hands and helped her up.
"Thanks," she muttered, brushing herself off. He smiled and gave her a double thumbs up, before taking his seat and signing something to his friend in the leather jacket, who laughed.
Lily took her seat at the far end of the table, where the least people were sitting.
After the headmaster gave his speech the feast began. Lily put a tiny portion of food onto her plate, but she really wasn't hungry. She was still burning with humiliation. Could she have possibly made a worse first impression?
She was glad when the feast ended and the heads-of-house lead their respective houses out of the hall. Before they went to the dormitories they grabbed their trunks, although Professor McGonagall, head of Gryffindor, had the boy wearing the leather jacket, carry hers as well as his own. Lily had tried to convince him she was capable of carrying it herself, but he just said, "if McGonagall said you can't do it, you can't do it,"
Lily was lucky enough to get a room to herself. The first thing she did was stash the wheelchair at the back of the top shelf of the bathroom cupboard, where she figured she could forget about it.
_
Author's Note: Hi, I hope you enjoyed reading this (despite the fact that I wrote it up on my phone, and my phone typing is quite frankly horrific). I got the idea after I read The Fault In Our Stars for the first time yesterday. Please review and I'll reply in the next chapter I publish! Thanks for reading!
P.S. This is an updated version of this chapter because for some reason the first time I posted it it put numbers and stuff around the sentenced and messed everything up (special thanks to Radio Free Death who pointed it out to me). If any of you find any more problems please tell me in a review!