Healer's School in France. If you had your mind focused solely on that goal, what would you do? Grades mattered with every little thing. Even if it was only homework that was worth a blasted ten points. Not to mention a good appearance - a perfect record. There was no trouble to be made.

Lily Evans felt like a huge weight was thrown upon her shoulders as soon as she stepped into the castle for her last year at Hogwarts, and now, a week later, she had been right. Teachers constantly were breathing down her neck, checking the latest mistake she had made and another ounce was added onto her loaded homework stack every hour.

Head Girl duties proved to be easier than she had thought they would be, but she still knew patrolling the corridors and giving hoodlums detentions hurt her image. She needed to be perfect. It was not an option to Lily, with success so close she could feel it at the tip of her fingers. It was so close, yet she needed to get through this year, just one more year until she was away from the stress of teachers, homework, peers, and herself.

When Lily stepped into a classroom, she put on a bright smile, looking to everybody as if she was having a great day. Even her best friend was fooled by her masquerade. She was nice to everybody, as long as they returned the favor. It wasn't hard fooling people, Lily learned that at the beginning of her sixth year.

As long as you worked hard in class, got perfect grades, and made friends with everybody, then you were seen as the art of perfection - a goddess maybe. Not really. You had to have all three of those things, plus good looks and a finely shaped body. To Lily, she didn't have any of these things. If she got a good grade, she knew she could get better and when somebody complimented her hair, she spent the next fifteen minutes wondering if they had only been teasing her. To Lily, she didn't have any skills except for one. Struggling was her talent.

She constantly struggled. Even if it was forcing herself not to eat the extra slice of choclate cake when she was going through PMS or studying until one in the morning for a Potions exam the next day. She struggled with her boyfriend, who wanted to be seen with her at every waking hour of the day, even though Lily only wanted to work. The both of them had been fighting with each other too many times to count in the last week or two. Nothing ever was right for them it seemed.

Lily had one set of goals for this year, which she kept written on a spare piece of parchment and it was tucked carefully inside her shoe at all times. Except at night, where it was safely placed on her bedside table. The list only consisted of three simple things.

I1. Get into Healer's School.

2. Get great grades.

3. Do whatever it takes.I

Underneath the three lines of commands, Lily placed one quote, of which she had ruled herself to follow religiously. It was by a famous wizard named Godric Gryffindor, dated back to when Hogwarts first started. She had found it at the beginning of a chapter in Hogwarts: A History.

center"Having courage, being cunning, having brains and being loyal

is only great if you put it all together."/center

She was convinced to put it all together. In the end, everything would work out, even if she felt like she was being taken five hundred leagues under the sea now. She would eventually get enough oxygen to swim, and when she did, she would reach the top in record breaking time.

The only thing that stood in her way were trash to her. The boys looking at her in more than friendly ways were like those old pieces of food rotting at the bottom of the can. She ignored them - thought they were disgusting. Nothing would get in her way. She promised herself that every single time a new piece of trash popped up, she would throw it right into the waste bin, not even bothering to look to see if it was valuable or not.