Daisy Chains
Chapter II
Fractures
Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer. - Louise Glick.
There used to be two of them. The Evans sisters, the girls at school had called them.
There was another, the red-haired girl, the middle sister, but she went to boarding school in Scotland and nobody spoke about her. They were the sort of sisters who linked arms in the street, who waited for each other outside the school gates, who attended Miss Owen's after school ballet classes together and who giggled over gossip columns and followed handsome boys.
They had been those sort of sisters.
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"I don't want to go," she tells Lily that spring. It's the three of them at Bounderby Park again, but this time Tuney isn't there, having left to shopping with Yvonne Jones.
This time it's Daisy who plucks pale petals from the heads of her namesake, and tosses them into the air, watching them scatter in the breeze. Lily is there, and wherever Lily lingers, Severus is not far behind, like an oily haired Labrador.
"It's because of her, isn't it?" sighs Lily impatiently, as though Daisy is trying to argue the merit of keeping a stray pigeon as a pet. "Don't be ridiculous Daisy, and don't listen to a word she says. She's just jealous, isn't she Sev?"
Severus, who spends most of the afternoon with his hook-nose buried in a textbook, looks up at Lily, and nods affirmatively. He does look like a scarecrow, Daisy thinks, knowing Tuney would find the comparison suitably venomous. But Tunney isn't there, and Lily's words, though treasonous in their way, confuse some vital, internal, cog in the mechanics of her mind.
"You'll love Hogwarts," encourages Lily, brightly, suddenly taking an astonishing interest in her little sister. "Won't she Sev? Just wait until you see it, Dais, just wait until you get a wand."
Daisy nods, unearthing more dirt with her fingers, and closes her ears against such seditions. But she is unable to shake the desire that blossoms inside her like a climbing weed, trying to strangle all the other roses.
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On July the third, 1973, she visits Diagon Alley and purchases her first wand.
She had been into London before but had stubbornly snubbed the Wizarding bazaar, instead electing to go shopping with Tuney and their mother, while Lily and their father ventured into the obnoxious unknown.
Lily's boundless enthusiasm is almost as intoxicating as the sights, the smells, and the sounds of the magical street, of the vendors peddling exotic and mysterious concoctions, of the owls swooping about like sparrows, of star-spangled robes and strange bursts of rainbow coloured smoke.
Daisy had made up her mind to dislike the place, had steeled herself to be as uninterested and resentful as possible, to compensate for her presence there. Instead she finds such intentions taking a back seat to intrigue; what are Nose Biting Teacups? Do they really mean every flavour?
Lily guides her by the hand, a whirl of red hair and eager smiles, and the eight year old Daisy, the Daisy who believed in fairies, and goblins, follows eagerly, her sister's infectious smile blooming across her lips.
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Tuney does not see them off that year at the station, much to their mother's disgust. She is attending a lunch date with Evan Gladstone in Nottingham, and at fifteen, there is little her parents can do to stop her.
She leaves a note for Daisy.
Perhaps that is why she spends the entire journey refusing to speak to Lily, and glaring poisonously at all her friends. When Lily remarks upon her sour scowls and takes the time to explain them to her nauseatingly sympathetic friends, Daisy cannot wait until she learns a spell that will burn her sweet sister's lovely red locks to ashes.
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There are no words fit to describe her feelings at the first sight of the castle.
There are three other girls in the boat with her, bobbing atop the lake, but she has not bothered to learn their names. When the castle appears to them though, there is a collective sort of sigh, and universal wonder in their eyes.
They will never forget this moment, Daisy realises, outside herself, and therefore they will not forget each other. It is strange to be so intimately bonded with such utter strangers, but Daisy can no longer find it in her to despise them.
Later, with Lily's green eyes glued to hers with an intensity that could melt ice, Daisy is made to stand up in front of the entire congregation, and a dirty old hat is placed upon her clean, golden-haired curls.
When the voice whispers inside her head, she almost screams. Of course, the thing could speak, she realised that, but it's not speaking to the five hundred strong body of pupils, it's speaking to her.
"Stubborn," it considers, and Daisy fights a mad urge to laugh, disguising a potential fit of giggles as a sneeze. It's a hat. The sort her mother would not even bother the Sally Army with. "Loyal. Oh yes. Loyal."
There are other things it whispers to her, things that make her shiver and wish for something warm and familiar. In the end it makes its decision, but not before it has exhausted other alternatives. Daisy does not hinder the internal monologue but considers the Hat, an extremely fickle creature, considering it sorted the last boy in under half a second.
"HUFFLEPUFF!" it bellows out and Daisy can see the disappointment flickering in Lily's eyes, even as her sister smiles and cheers. She has already failed some sort of hidden test. She puts down the hat and trots over to the table with yellow ties and badgers pinned on their robes.
It is sort of typical, she thinks, that Lily would be a Lioness and she would end up as a common badger.
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Hogwarts, for all its bombastic flairs and magic, is nevertheless still a school, and there's a rhythm to school life that not even magic can disturb.
There are those girls who sit and giggle; those boys who show off; the one person who seems to know everything and take great delight in letting everyone else know it too. There is, of course, the one class everyone dreads, the one teacher who everyone, even the bravest of the brave, knows better than to mess with, the one poor educator with whom everyone messes, and a crotchety old janitor who spends his life cursing the student populous.
Before long, things that had captivated, bewildered, and frightened her become mundane and unspectacular. Daisy is naturally known as 'Lily Evans's sister,' a moniker that gains some friendly nods in the corridors from the third year Gryffindors and some vicious name calling from the third year Slytherin's.
She says Hello to Severus once on the way to Transfiguration. He's surrounded by other boys, who look at her as though she has grown an extra head. As do the girls she is walking to class with, Charity mutters in her ear after, and cannot understand how she, Daisy Evans, knows and associates with Severus Snape.
Severus ignores her entirely. Daisy does not tell Lily but she does write a particularly vicious letter home to Tuney, filled with several unpleasant and descriptive analogies for Severus Snape and his hair.
Perhaps if she can convince Tuney she is still on her side, her big sister will write back.
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Tuney does write. Her letters are not as frequent as their mother's and painstakingly addressed to only Daisy, something which pleases her, and then makes her feel like a horrible human being when Lily notices the single name sprawled across the envelope.
Tuney's letters speak of boys, of school scandals and what Granny Flo said to their mother last Sunday. Daisy replies in half-lies, carefully feeding her sister titbits of gossip while adamantly deploring the world around her.
Any elements of her new world that repel her are immediately exaggerated, the teachers she dislikes become a caricature of eighteenth century tutors with beaky noses and whips. She hopes that these remonstrations please Petunia, assure her that Daisy is merely tolerating her new surroundings, not indulging in them the way Lily does.
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It's after the Christmas interlude that Daisy has the illustrious pleasure of meeting James Potter and his cronies for the first time.
Of course, it's hardly the first time she's seen them; some mornings it's hard to ignore the pandemonium taking place at the Gryffindor table and Daisy has joined her sister in the Gryffindor stands during the Gryffindor-Slytherin matches.
His name is one Lily has mentioned several times, accompanied by the sort of curdling glare normally reserved for Petunia.
Her sister loathes him, despite him easily being the most popular boy in her year and warns Daisy not to give his antics any of her attention. 'His fat head doesn't need any more swelling.'
Daisy is alone and on her way to the dungeons for Potions when one of his friends nearly sends her flying down the cold stone steps descending into caverns under Hogwarts. As it is, she trips two steps and lands on her rear, books soaring, her schoolbag rolling down another couple of steps.
"Oi! Padfoot!" calls a voice, and a hand is proffered to her. "You near killed a firstie!"
Daisy is helped to her feet, her books are collected and a boy – Roland? Roman? – the quiet one, hands her, her schoolbag and murmurs an apology that sounds far more sincere than the one Sirius Black decides to give her.
"You're Lily's sister, aren't you?" asks James, a grin spreading across his face.
Daisy can't really see what's so special about him. Certainly he is a head shorter that Lily and his voice squeaks the same way Alfie Adams's had. He's not as handsome as his ill-mannered friend, but there is something about the way he holds himself. And he has nice eyes, even if they are hidden behind ugly spectacles.
"You're Potter," says Daisy, drawing herself up and spewing as much contempt into his name as possible.
His grin widens and he runs a hand through his mop of black hair, making it look even more like a birds nest. "Evans mentioned me, has she?"
Sirius whistles from a couple of steps above them, a plump boy at his side. "You're getting in there mate, if you ask me."
"Bugger off," she snaps, cheeks flushing madly at her daring.
She turns and walks away as dismissively as possible, imagining she's long-legged Petunia who could quell ignorant boys with a look.
Cat-calls follow her, she imagines she may have made a mistake, a first year swearing at the notoriously popular gang of third year boys.
Lily seems to find her response appropriate though and vows to seek vengeance on her behalf, should Sirius Black or Potter ever dare to annoy her.
Daisy smiles fondly and allows Lily to continue braiding her hair.
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First year ends with shouts and goodbyes at the train station. Charity Burbage and Katrina Cresswell promise to write to her, and Lily has to be dragged away from Mary McDonald and Marlene McKinnon.
Their parents are waiting for them anxiously on the other side of the barrier and both of them are drowned in hugs and kisses. More importantly, Tuney is there waiting for them, and embraces Daisy as though no transgressions have been made.
Later that night, tucked up on the couch watching Top of the Pops, Tunney whispers in her ear, "Was it really that bad?"
Daisy thinks of Charity and Katrina, of Astronomy, of warm Professor Adler with her cups of hot coco at midnight while they watch the stars.
She does not hesitate though.
"You have no idea."
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Apologies for the lack of updates. On the bright side, I've decided to extend this fic from 3 chapters to nine. This will be a prequel of sorts to another story I've had on the back-burner for a while.
R&R
- Moonblue