"Harry, think about it," Hermione Granger snapped, pushing her now-graying, still bushy, hair back from her face with one hand, the other gripping a mug of tea. Sitting in two plump crimson armchairs across from her, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley swapped wry glances. Time had taken its toll on Harry and Ron as well; Harry's hair and beard were starting to get a very salt-and-pepper look to them, while Ron was going bald, slowly but surely. "If you don't send Lily to Hogwarts, where will she go? Durmstrang?" Hermione snorted with derision.

"It's dangerous," Ginny objected, feet drawn up beside her on the couch and shooting an annoyed look at Hermione. "the Death Eaters are still around, and—"

"Death Eaters? Oh, please. Beyond that little cult in northern Ireland three years ago? When was the last time we heard from them?"

"Goyle's son, you know, Bradley, he's going into his second year now."

The men sat there silently. They had long since learned to wait their wives out and interject their own opinions later. No matter how much Hermione and Ginny squabbled, interruptions at this point were only likely to turn them both against the interuptee.

The topic of their discussion, one Lily Minerva Potter, pressed an ear against the sitting room door of Number 12 Grimmauld Place and made a discontented face. She knew very well that her parents, aunt, and uncle were debating her schooling. She also firmly objected to the debate. Just because her mum was paranoid about a few wackos who still blamed her da for the downfall of one of the greatest Dark wizards to ever try to take over the wizarding world didn't mean that Lily should suffer for it. She wanted to go to Hogwarts, learn about magic, and meet real people. It wasn't fair for her to be cooped up in Grimmauld Place all the time.

"LILY!" boomed a voice from the top of the staircase. Jumping, the girl shied away from the door and looked up to see who was calling her. Lily realized who it was and bolted up the stairs. There, she socked Albus Hagrid in the stomach, the only bit of him she could really reach. Even though Al was mostly giant, he was still only twelve feet tall, mostly giant, and still (or so his father claimed) growing. Al was sixteen to Lily's eleven, but had been around the house for as long as she could remember. There was still a lot of prejudice going around the wizarding world against part-humans such as giants, werewolves, and mermaids, even though there had been a lot of work put into stopping it since the War ended.

That was why they were debating letting her go to Hogwarts, why Al was always around, why Tonks lived in one of the spare rooms. It all came down to The War. Even though it had been done long before Lily, Al, or any of the other had been born. They were Children Of War Heroes and Had To Be Treated Appropriately.

Gnome turds, was what Lily said of that. The War was over, it was done with, and it shouldn't be messing with her life. She was not her father, she was not her mother, and her parents had been impractical, sentimental fools when they had named their children.

"Has everyone Flooed in yet?" Lily asked, a bit impatiently. She had inherited the Evans eyes—green as a fresh pickled toad, her mum said when she teased her da. He always blushed peculiarly too. But that was one of the stories she never heard about her parents' days in school. She never heard any of the day-to-day stories. Only the really well-known ones. After so many years of being hero-worshipped, Lily supposed that they had learned that people didn't particularly care about reminiscing. It had never occurred to them, of course, that a tale of the first time her da had kissed her mum might be more interesting than hearing about How Harry Potter Defeated Lord Voldemort For the Second Time or The Treachery Of Severus Snape. It was history, and they didn't seem to get that. Lily could ask anyone on the street to tell her about the D.A. or how her father had set Voldemort back long enough to prepare to defeat him soundly, but she only had a few people who could tell her how things were at school Back Then.

Oddly enough, there was one 'adventure' she never heard. That anyone ever heard, to her knowledge. Nobody really knew what happened that day that Voldemort went down for good.

"Yeah," Al said. His voice cracked as he did so, and Lily laughed. Al blushed and tugged at his budding whiskers. He was so proud of his whiskers, really. He claimed that they made him look like his da. But with neatly cut and combed hair and the pathetic attempt at whiskers on his chin and upper lip, Al didn't resembled his wild-maned father all that much.

The pair quietly tiptoed past Nymphadora Tonks's room, then made it up another flight of stairs to the one disused room in the house. Disused and never touched, not since the day Sirius Black died. Lily's father had always been peculiar about this room. He rarely came up here, but the one time Kreacher (who was still around, even though he was ancient, doubled over with arthritis, and never stopped whining about 'Mudbloods and blood traitors, the whole lot of them') had dared touch anything in the room, he had been livid. For some reason, though, her father didn't mind when the 'children' went up there.

That was the one time Lily had ever been truly afraid of her father. The one time she could see something in him that might, might have, one day, long ago, fought Lord Voldemort was in protection over this room.

It was dusty. A bucket sat in one corner with rat bones in it. On top of the dresser was an old, silver mirror. In the centre of the room sat four other kids of varying ages. The youngest was Lily's brother, RJ. Full name? Remus James Potter. He was nine, going on ten, as he proudly pointed out to anyone who made the mistake of asking. RJ sat on the lap of one of his twin cousins. Twins ran in the Weasley family, it seemed, and though Fred and George had no (known) children, their penchant for mischief seemed to have been passed on to the next generation in Katie Angelina (Angie) and Viktor Seamus (Vik), both of whom were twelve, a year older than Lily, and already begun their Hogwarts career. Susan Luna Longbottom (Sanna) sprawled across the floor, her long braid lying like a snake across the floor.

A motley crew, but with three main things in common. They all had parents who had been in The War, they were all named (embarrassingly) for those who had died in The War, and they were all, save RJ and Lily, Gryffindors at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Vik and Angie had both inherited the Weasley red hair and freckles, although the hair was more bushy than could have been expected. Vik kept his hair cut as short as possible to keep the bushiness of his hair hidden. Angie also kept her hair short, in a boy cut, although she tamed it with massive amounts of magical hair care products. Although she was only twelve, she spent enough time in the bathroom each morning to make anyone completely mad.

The older children were far more calm than the twins. Al had managed to pull an unhuman amount of patience from somewhere. Where, no one was entirely sure. Maxime, his mother, was the fiery Headmistress of Beauxbatons Academy and his father was the equally hot-tempered groundskeeper and Care of Magical Creatures teacher at Hogwarts. Sanna, at fourteen, had pulled good looks from the same place Al had gotten his temper from, it seemed. She looked a goddess in anything, even tatty old dress robes, and spent far less time on her looks then Angie did. Her thin, smooth face and elegant build that was reminiscent of some sort of graceful bird could not have possibly come from her parents, Neville Longbottom and Sally-Anne Perks, who were quite…plain, to say the least.

"They're talking about Hogwarts. Again," Lily groaned, flopping down on the dusty floor next to Sanna. "You all get to go, why can't I?"

"You're the daughter of Harry Potter!" Angie and Vik said, conveying the proper amount of faux awe in their voices to make everyone laugh. It was distinctly odd when the two of them spoke together (although they never finished each others' sentences, thank the gods), but everyone had gotten used to it by now. "You can't possibly be treated like a normal kid," Angie said, popping a Bertie Bott's Bean into her mouth. "I can almost see their point, too. Brad Goyle is a bit of a wart."

"A bit?" Sanna replied, amused. Her voice was lilting and musical "You could say that Binns was a bit boring too, while you're at it."

"Hey, yeah," Vik said, grabbing for the bag of Every Flavour Beans. "Forgot to tell you lot—Turpin's finally taking over History of Magic." His twin smacked him.

"Is Binns still staying on?" Al asked, a bit worriedly. He was probably the only student in at least twenty years who cared about the old ghost and his subject. Even Hermione Granger hadn't been especially keen on it.

"You should know," Sanna replied. "Your dad's on staff, isn't he?"

"Yeah, but he doesn't talk about it much. Was pretty chuffed over my O.W.L.s, though."

"Hey, how did you do with those?" Lily asked. "Sorry, I forgot."

Al and Sanna looked at her with all the superiority of older students. "Bet you won't be forgetting when they're your results," Al remarked mildly. "But thanks for asking. An O in History of Magic and Divination, E's in Arithmancy, Potions, and Herbology, then A's in everything else. Except Muggle Studies, that was a P." The boy frowned. "I just can't understand those Muggle contraptions. Really, the light circuit was what got me, I think."

They would have continued the discussion further, but a yell came from two stories down. "We're leaving in ten minutes! Come on!"

RJ and Lily exchanged wincing glances. "Mum," they said, ruefully.

They all stood, brushed the dust off themselves as best as they could, and made short work of the rest of the Every Flavour Beans. It was before noon, and no doubt that all of their parents would fuss if they knew they were eating sweets already. Honestly, it was as though none of them remembered being children properly. Stampeding down the stairs, they assembled in the sitting room where the adults sat. Hagrid, as they all called Al's father, must have been in the kitchen earlier, for he was now in the sitting room. Ginny Potter was still sitting next to Hermione Weasley on the couch and looking miffed.

At the sight of that, Lily's heart leapt in her chest. If her mum was looking irritable, that could only mean—

"Lily, get yer robes on," Hagrid rumbled. "Yer comin' with us today."

The eleven year old yelped and jumped in the air, racing back up the stairs to her room, although she slowed down again by Tonks's room and passed it quietly. She was going to Hogwarts, just like her parents! This year was going to be positively, absolutely amazing!