Chapter 2: Priceless
Lily didn't have time to play. She didn't have time for games or yelling or jumping or any other thing little kids do. Lily was eight but she didn't quite like most eight year olds. At all the parties, people expected her to be quiet and behave for the adults. She would find a comfortable spot to snuggle with her latest book, sinking into her own little world and reading. She would quietly let her imagination run wild as she became the main character of her book. Lily hated those parties.
Her older brothers James and Albus, loved parties. They let others get in on their rude tricks and games and plotted revenge on the adults. They were thirteen and fourteen but acted years younger. Lily was not amused by the tricks they pulled on her. Tugging on her plaits or stealing her books. Lily wanted them back at Hogwarts. She watched her brothers laugh with the family, eye reaching smiles on their faces. James and Albus were the funny ones. Lily fingered one of her dark curls, tossing it over her shoulder, disappointed. She hated those joy filled parties. She hated her dark auburn curls, and green and gold-flecked brown eyes, her milky skin tone and slender figure, her genius IQ and advanced schoolbooks and her brothers' humor.
But that hatred was exactly what drove her to win—and she always did. It wasn't the intelligence that adults admired, the beauty that others envied, the maturity level beyond her years. None of that mattered. Because for Lily, only one thing in life was valuable: winning—at any cost—and that was priceless.
Lily spent her after school hours on her own. She was free to roam Chelsea, 'learning from life,' as her teacher liked to say. She would walk through the streets of Chelsea, running errands for local shop owners or following the first form girls around. As a result, she came to know something that most children should not have to realize until much later: she was small and insignificant in this big world.
She spent her days in a blaze of activities, never fully enjoying any of them, just concentrating on her duty to win- bringing home prizes and certificates and good grades.
Lily hated her prizes and certificates because her parents weren't exactly proud of them. They loved Lily and were proud of her but they couldn't give their daughter the satisfaction of winning. Her brothers had gone ahead and swept up all of the titles before her. But even James and Albus couldn't give Lily what she wanted most. No one could. It was priceless.