Lily Evans pushed the top of her suitcase down as she zipped it up; she had only just managed to get everything inside. Prior that day her older sister, Petunia, assumed that she would never get everything in that suitcase but there Lily was, proving her wrong.
Never once in Lily's life had she ever found herself questioning her decisions, she was always a girl who was very sure of herself even at an early age. Her Mum always used to remind her that even though it was good to be decisive, it was also good to take your time. Nevertheless, Lily was doubting her own judgement.
Lily never wanted to be different and to be perfectly honest she never really was. She had a normal amount of friends and she never really had any pacific talents as well as her grades being average. Her family also seemed pretty ordinary. Her Dad worked in a garage mending old broken down cars and restoring them to there forma glory, her Mum worked at receptionist in the local library and her older sister was an average temperamental thirteen year old girl with her thug of a boyfriend. On the whole, she was as normal as you could get!
She glimpsed at the mirror on the other side of the room checking she was looking respectable for saying goodbye to her parents and her (maddening) sister.
Red hair bounced of her shoulders as emeralds eyes glimmered in the moonlight glowing just through her bedroom window. She glanced down to her mouth tuning the ends up to form a smile, it again wasn't a massively special smile but it was an attractive one.
Lily studied the small room one last time before the night bus would arrive taking her to her new school, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She memorized when she got the letter informing her that she had a place. Not that she applied of course. Although, a boy Lily knew, Severus Snape, had told her that she was a witch when she was younger. Lily used to think it was a true until she started getting older and decided the Severus was trying to wind her up. Never the less, she was a witch and she had got the letter inviting her to Hogwarts.
It was a small white envelope with her name clearly printed on the front. Within the letter was a long list of things she needed to get and to top it all off, she didn't have a clue were to get most of the items that were listed, books, equipment and uniform she had never heard of before and even if she had she was sure they still weren't sold. Where in this day and age are you supposed to buy a long black robe which has the school's emblem engraved into it? Or where are you supposed to buy a quill with an ivory ink pot? Even so somehow she managed to get hold of the majority of the items.
Her parent's reactions weren't what Lily would have hoped for. They didn't really like the idea that Lily was different furthermore that she wouldn't go to the boarding school they had hoped she would go to as well as that she wouldn't become a lawyer like they planned still she was there daughter and she always would be, even if she was… different.
Gradually, she grabbed the last of her things: a small day bag with basics inside; such as a tooth brush, her diary; in which she wrote her deepest and darkest secrets; a large brown book; marked with the words "Essentials to Witchcraft and Wizardry- First Years", and ultimately her wand. It didn't look anything extraordinary, just a long wooden stick engraved with a few pretty patterns. However, little did a normal human like you or me make out that this odd looking stick contained magic undreamt of!
Lily laughed to herself, only the other day she had turned eleven and like a typical girl she was complaining that she didn't have the right coloured hair, remarking about the new song by the Beatles, quarrelling with her friends over who would win Eurovision and eating soggy chips from the fish 'n' chip shop round the corner on the park swings with her best friend, Severus, and now she was packing to go to some wondrous place where she would learn things beyond her imagination.
Peering at her wand fixed into her hand she thought back to the time when she got it. The whole way there her sister was complaining about why she couldn't have one and why she couldn't be a magical also. At the time Lily would have done anything to switch places with her, she longed to go back to her regular life with her standard school, her average friends and her usual, boring teachers.
How could she go? Of course, her parents always said it was her decision on whether she wanted to go or not and at the time Lily leapt at the idea of a different world, outside her boring life. Now… now it was different. Reality had finally started to sink in. Furthermore, she couldn't tell anyone about her difference except her family. Also she didn't even know if she was good enough to be a proper witch or wizard anyway.
"Lily, hurry up, I want to be able to say goodbye to you before you go" her Mum yelled up the stairs.
"Give me a minute" Lily called back down after she wedged the door open slightly.
A loose smile swam across her face, her Mum always had a little ritual she would do before any relative left, it was as if they were being reminded what they had learnt over the time they had been.
Just before Lily left the petite room she started to examine the peculiar markings on the wand one last time. Funnily enough, they looked just like lilies growing up around the wand and Lily could swear that every time she looked at the wand the Lilies had grown higher and there were more of them. She wondered whether this was magic as well, after all, in the life she was now living anything could be possible.
Who would have thought that something that looked as simple as that could hold such mystery and probability?
In a way, it was just like Lily.