CHAPTER TWO: "Do they really feed you to a dragon?"

Lily gazed out of the window of the tiny car as it chugged its way through London towards King's Cross station. Silence had permeated the car since they loaded the boot and departed half an hour previously but they were nearly at the station now and Lily was looking forward to getting back to Hogwarts where she could settle back into normality.

After a long battle the evening before, Lily's parents had finally persuaded Petunia to drop Lily off at King's Cross on her way to the opera with her pompous boyfriend Vernon Dursley.

Short and round, Vernon was in the driver's seat, weaving his way through traffic and subconsciously rubbing at the half a dozen or so hairs that had sprouted over his top lip. He seemed to think it made him look more dignified, but Lily had other ideas, finding it more to her amusement.

Petunia had never truly accepted that her sister was a witch and Lily could do nothing but watch helplessly as their childhood relationship crumbled before her, despite her persistence during her first two years at Hogwarts, writing to Petunia every day and sending her gifts.

Finally they pulled up and Vernon looked confused between the sisters, as Petunia sat with a stony look on her face.

"Thank you for the ride, Vernon." Lily said politely to him. "Good bye, Petunia. I hope you both enjoy the opera."

Vernon loaded Lily's trunk onto a trolley and thanking him again, he got back into the car and she left in the direction of platforms nine and ten, where she was due to meet up with Cherie and Amelia.

"Lily!" Amelia waved seeing her best friend approach.

"Hi honey," Lily smiled hugging Amelia. "Good to see you! Is Cherie not here yet?"

"Oh no, she's here alright." Amelia rolled her eyes and hitched her thumb over her shoulder towards the ticket booth.

All Lily could see was the broad back of a tall guy with white-blond hair stooped over with his tongue down…

"Oh…" She smiled. "Well, let's go get her then, before we miss the train."

The two girls pushed their trolleys towards their friend and Lily cleared her throat loudly.

Cherie pulled away from the boy's lips and gently pushed him away from her so she was no longer pinned against the ticket booth.

"Lily!" She exclaimed throwing her arms around her friend. "How was the drive?"

"Could have been worse." Lily shrugged, looking to the boy who she recognized to be Phoenicis Wolf-Rayat, captain of the Slytherin quidditch team.

Phoenicis was the pure depiction of an athlete. He was tall, had strong broad shoulders and if his close fitting shirt was anything to go by, abs of steel. Traditionally the students of Gryffindor and Slytherin houses did not get along, so neither Lily nor Amelia had ever really had contact with him, but Cherie was never one for conforming to traditions.

Smiling and pulling his arms around her waist, Cherie felt the need to introduce them formally. "Lily, you remember Phoenix, yea?"

"Of course. Hi." Lily said, only receiving a grunt of recognition from Phoenix.

"Phoenix," Cherie said pulling his lips back down to her level and briefly touching them to her own before gesturing to the trolley laden with hers and Amelia's trunks and smiling innocently. "Could you? Thanks."

"I didn't know you two were…"

"They weren't." Amelia cut Lily off.

"Well, not before last night when I met him at the Leaky Cauldron…" Cherie smiled mischievously as the three walked through the barrier to platform nine and three quarters where the Hogwarts Express awaited.

As Cherie and Phoenix left the small compartment looking for somewhere more private, Amelia sighed in distress and dropped the heavy textbook onto her lap.

"I still don't get it! I spent half the summer practicing, and I still suck at transfiguration! McGonagall is so going to hate me!"

"You know she won't hate you." Lily said turning her attention away from the scenery going past the window as the train snaked its way through the countryside. "You're practically teachers' pet! You're allowed to be less than perfect in one class, especially when you're the practically at the top of all your other classes!"

"What about my preliminary N.E.W.T. exam last year? I mean, I'm not exactly the biggest fan of toads, but that poor thing is going to be carrying a scar for the rest of its life!" Amelia exclaimed, recalling her last transfiguration exam where, instead of turning a toad into an umbrella, she had just burnt it and caused the large handle of an umbrella to sprout from its mouth.

"You still passed though." Lily reasoned.

"Only coz, by comparison, my performance wasn't as disastrous as Franks! Filch was so angry when he had to spent the rest of the day trying to clean bits of exploded toad from every corner of the examination room!"

Lily sighed in defeat, knowing that her friend would not be able to rest until she could transfigure with ease.

"You just need to build up your confidence. Here, try starting small." She said, pulling a hair-pin from her hair. "Practice transfiguring it to a worm and back again, while I do 'the rounds'."

With that, Lily straightened her robes and pinned her head girl badge to the front of them before departing the room, leaving Amelia's brow furrowed in concentration as she pointed her wand towards the hair-pin in front of her.

Lily was pleased to see that the train was relatively incident free and there was no reason for her to play the "head girl" card and discipline anyone. The biggest problem she had to deal with was when a wide-eyed first year came up to her, with tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Is it true? Do they hang muggle-borns by their ankles in the dungeon to see if they're magic enough to escape? And if you don't, do they really feed you to a dragon?"

That took ten minutes of consoling followed by a good talking-to to a couple of sniggering pure-bloods.

She soon reached the front of the train and turning around, begun to make her way back to the rear of the train. Lily was wondering how much of a frenzy Amelia had managed to work herself into, when she felt someone at her elbow pull her into a side compartment.

"Scram!"

Lily was surprised to see the command coming from Severus who was glaring at the second years gathered in that compartment. Terrified, they up and left without a word.

"Severus, what on earth do you think you're doing?" Lily demanded, placing her hands on her hips and staring at him as he pulled the door closed.

"I had to see you. We have to talk." Severus said with an apologetic look in his dark eyes as he reached a hand forward and placed it on her shoulder.

"Well maybe I don't want to talk to you!" She shouted, pulling away from his touch.

"Then, please, just listen?" He tried to keep his voice from breaking under the hurt he felt from her icy demeanor. Severus took her silence as an invitation to keep going, so taking a deep breath, he proceeded to try and apologize, yet again.

"Lily, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you that day. I was an idiot and I see that now, I saw that the moment those words left my mouth. I've been trying to apologize to you ever since, but… Can't you just give me a second chance?"

Lily turned her focus back to Severus. Her eyes were glistening as she tried to hold back the tears that dared to fall.

"You called me a 'Mudblood'." She said softly. "You would not have said it, if you didn't deem yourself above me. You would not have said it, if you believed everyone is equal, regardless of their birth. Why should I give you a second chance? Why?"

"I'm sorry. You are a better witch than I could ever be a wizard. I don't know what compelled me to say it. I just wanted them to stop. I wanted him to leave me alone. I wanted him to leave you alone. I didn't mean what I said."

"A 'Mudblood'," she repeated

"Lily, I don't know what to say…"

Severus paused and looked at her, stood before him, in all of her radiant beauty. He knew it was now or never; that the time had finally come to confess his true feelings for her.

Slowly, he drew a deep breath and braced himself for these next few words. "Lily, I'm in l…"

With a loud bang, the door swung open and an all too familiar head peered inside.

"Potter? What are you doing?" Lily asked as James stepped into the compartment.

"Just doing the rounds," he said casually, buffing the golden badge on the front of his robes.

"Head boy?!" Lily exclaimed, looking closer at the badge. "You must've just taken that from Remus. There is no way you were made head boy."

"You know what they say; Dumbledore is a bit of a loon." James beamed. "It looks like you and I will have a lot of work to do with one another this year, Evans."

"Out." Severus focused a withering stare on James.

"I'm just doing my job. As head students, our first assigned task by Dumbledore was to ensure no one gets into trouble on the way to school and to check in on all the compartments."

"But not to disrupt private conversations; Get out." Severus said taking a step forward.

"No." Lily interrupted, stepping forward. "We're done here Severus. Now if you'll excuse me, I have things to do."

She squeezed herself past the two boys and out of the compartment, leaving Severus disappointed and snarling at James who felt proud of himself having irked him so.


A/N - Thank you to anyone who has taken the time to review and for anyone reading that hasn't reviewed, please do, not only is it great for my ego, but it'll help me improve and expand on what you do like and fix what you don't.