Look at me, I'm on fire! This is a short one, but there are more coming, I promise. I don't own Harry Potter! And I like feedback :)
The article appeared in the Prophet several days later, taking up all of the front page and a double-page spread in the middle of the paper. "Look, Lily," said Hugo over breakfast, "It's you!"
Evangeline snatched it from him and began to read. She snorted loudly, spraying bits of porridge over the table.
"What?" asked Lily.
"'Lily Potter is, some might think, an unlikely choice as Hogwarts champion,'" read Evangeline, adopting an uncannily reminiscent pout and high-pitched voice, "'But of course, being the daughter of the great Harry Potter must have its benefits. It would, however, be fair to say that Lily has very little of her father's heroic nature, and one would be foolish to expect a Hogwarts victory from a champion whose family history has got her thus far."
"But that's ridiculous!" exclaimed Hugo, grabbing the paper back from her, "Everybody knows the Goblet chooses the champion, and it's an unbiased judge. It doesn't give a hoot who Lily's father is."
"Yeah, but you're reckoning without the average intelligence of Rita Skeeter's readers," said Evangeline, "Which would probably make a flobberworm look brainy. They'll believe anything she writes."
Lily nodded. "But it doesn't really matter what she writes about me, does it? I mean, the more hopeless she makes me seem, the better I'll look after the first challenge, assuming that I don't totally flop – and anyway, if I do, at least nobody will have been expecting better of me."
"That's one way to look at it," said Hugo. "Although I hope you know that we're expecting better of you."
The days were beginning to gather pace at an alarming rate: alongside her worries about the Tournament, Lily had a gargantuan amount of homework, which she and her fellow sixth years were struggling to keep on top of. The teachers seemed oblivious to this and kept giving them more, docking points from anyone who dared point out that their NEWTs weren't for another year and a half.
The year's second Hogsmeade weekend provided a rare opportunity for free time. Lily had hoped to spend it clutching a steaming Butterbeer in the Three Broomsticks, as the temperature had dropped abruptly over the last few days. The other Gryffindors, however, had different ideas: Hugo and Caius absented themselves speedily for reasons she suspected had something to do with Rosamond Ellis; Carter went to the Quidditch shop with Oonagh; Monica and Susie dragged Anthony along with them to Melusine's Sartorial Emporium; and Evangeline went in pursuit of fresh Dungbomb supplies.
"Surely you have Dungbombs coming out of your ears by now?"
Evangeline tapped her nose. "Enough Dungbombs is never enough, my friend. Coming?"
"No thanks, my uncles pretty much gave me the whole shop for my birthday."
"True. See you later then."
They went their separate ways, and Lily found herself in search of company. She strolled down the high street, which was beginning to show traces of frost, until she came across Ruth Douglas and a huddle of other Ravenclaws. "Hi Ruth," she called.
"Oh! Hi, Lily. Where are you heading?"
"I'm not actually sure," she admitted, rubbing her hands together for warmth. "You?"
"I was going to Weasleys' with these guys, but to be honest I could pass." Ruth glanced in the direction of the shop with distaste.
"Not much of a practical joker?"
"No, not really. No offence to your uncles," she added, and Lily assured her none was taken, finding this attitude refreshing compared with her family's survival-of-the fittest mentality.
"So do you want to go to the Three Broomsticks or somewhere?"
"Sure," smiled Ruth. "I'll see you later," she said to her friends, and they set off down the road together. "Actually – why not go to the Hog's Head? It'll be less busy."
"Good thinking." They changed course, doubling back and heading down a side road until they reached the pub's tattered faҫade.
As they approached the door, something caught the corner of Lily's eye and she turned to look. A girl with long, pale reddish hair and soaring legs was walking down the opposite side of the street – in their direction, without having seen them. "Dom!" she yelled. "Dom!"
Her cousin stopped dead for a moment, assuming an expression like a startled rabbit's. Then she rearranged her features and crossed the road. "Lily! What a surprise. What are you doing here?"
"It's Hogsmeade weekend."
"Oh, of course."
"What about you?" asked Lily. "You look nice," she noted. Dom's habitual dress code was jeans and a brightly-coloured shirt, but today she appeared to be wearing a dress – rather an elegant dark green dress, accompanied by a pair of heels.
"Do I?" Dom responded vaguely. Lily restrained herself from rolling her eyes: with her Veela genes her cousin looked, as usual, breathtakingly beautiful. "I'm just up here for an appointment."
"What kind of appointment?"
" Nothing very interesting, I'm afraid."
"Oh. Well, you should join us for a drink afterwards. This is Ruth, by the way. Ruth – my cousin Dominique."
The two exchanged greetings, but Dom grimaced, saying, "I can't, Lily, sorry, I'm on a tight schedule."
"All right, another time." She exchanged a look with Ruth as Dom clacked away in her surprising choice of footwear. "What's going on?"
"What do you mean?"
"Something's up with Dom. She's dressing weird. Acting weird. "
"Lily, I don't know your cousin, but she seemed pretty normal to me."
"Exactly." Lily glanced back over her shoulder, to where Dom was disappearing round the corner of the street. "I think we need to follow her."
Ruth snorted. "I think we need to get Butterbeers and let her mind her own business. Come on."
Lily was shepherded through the door by her friend, her mind still working furiously. There was a limited number of businesses in Hogsmeade – if she went through them all she'd be sure to find out what Dom was doing. She could find a list on her Hokumputer...
Ruth ordered two Butterbeers, then leaned over, forcing her to meet her eyes. "Everyone deserves privacy, you know," she said, "Even if their last name is Weasley."
Lily slumped back and nodded. "I suppose so. I suppose even the Potters deserve privacy sometimes."
"Somebody should try telling that to Rita Skeeter."
"You saw the article, then." The very thought of it made her groan. "Still – it's the kind of information Fred would pay me for. Dom doing shady dealings in Hogsmeade..."
"I doubt they're at all shady," replied Ruth. "But from what I've seen of your cousin Fred, I'd keep it to myself."
She laughed. All in all, it was pretty sound advice. The waiter arrived with a pair of dusty-looking Butterbeers, and they passed a pleasant hour or so chatting away in the window seats, comfortingly separated from the cold by a sheet of glass.
At length, Evangeline stepped through the door, blowing hot air onto her fingers. "This is where you've been! I've been looking everywhere. Hi," she said to Ruth.
Lily shot her a look, which she hoped communicated that it was socially inappropriate to mention the disappearing body parts. "Didn't they have any Dungbombs?" she asked, gesturing Evangeline's empty arms.
"No. Not the kind I needed." Evangeline was looking faintly disgruntled. "You know what? I'm ready to go back up to the castle, if you are. I have homework."
Lily sighed. So did she – in fact, she hadn't not had homework since the first day of term. "All right then." They said goodbye to Ruth, who went to find her Ravenclaw friends, and traipsed back up the hill.
She considered telling Evangeline about Dom, but then thought the better of it. Evangeline was even nosier than she was, and Ruth had convinced her that the best thing to do would be forget all about it. After all, what was there to tell? They made their way up to the Gryffindor common room in relative silence, then collected their books and nabbed a table in the corner.
"Right." Evangeline flung open an enormous book entitled Divination at NEWT Level: thirty-two ways to predict what's coming. "Let's see... Ouja boards." She sucked the tip of her new quill and started writing.
Lily decided to practise her Vanishing, which was desperately in need of improvement. She read up on the theory first, then took out her wand and spent a good ten minutes trying to Vanish Evangeline's right shoe.
"Hey!" cried Evangeline when she finally succeeded.
"Sorry," said Lily, realising that she didn't know how to get it back.
"For that you can help me with my Divination."
"What? But you know my Inner Eye is all shrivelled and disfigured. Professor Presage told me in third year."
"I want to test the Ouja board on you." Evangeline reached into her bag and pulled out a smooth wooden board bearing the letters of the alphabet in almost illegibly curly writing, and decorated elaborately around the edges with pictures of skulls. A large five-pointed star adorned the top. "Ask it about something in the future."
"Um," said Lily. But she knew what she wanted to ask – of course she did. "What's the first task going to be?"
Evangeline muttered an incantation, prodding each point of the star as she did so. She sat back and waited expectantly.
"It's not doing anything."
"Wait!"
Just as Lily was beginning to wonder whether Evangeline's Inner Eye might be as shrivelled as hers was, she saw the letter 'A' light up with a curious greenish glow. She leaned forward to watch: more letters lit up, flashing one after the other, forming words. Evangeline wrote down each letter as it came up.
Once it had finished, she held up her piece of parchment and read, "'A surprise.'"
Lily burst out laughing, although truth be told she had rather been hoping that it would give her an idea of what was left. "It's certainly got attitude."
"It hates me. The stupid thing actually despises me, I swear." Evangeline began searching her textbooks for a suitable hex to use on the board, but it was saved from her wrath by the arrival of Monica, Anthony and Susie, each clutching a bulging shopping bag.
"Find anything nice?" asked Lily.
"If you're talking about a certain Potions professor then, yes, Monica found him," replied Anthony, scowling. He threw himself onto a chair, kicking the bag he'd been carrying in his girlfriend's direction.
"Oh, come on, Anthony, I said I was sorry," Monica said irritably.
Anthony ignored her and continued to the rest of them, "Monica seems to think that ogling her Potions teacher in front of her boyfriend is a nice way to spend her Saturday afternoon."
Lily and Evangeline shot each other panicked glances: it was so unlike Anthony to be anything other than affable that he must be absolutely fuming; and neither of them wanted to get in the middle of a domestic between their two classmates.
"That's not true. It's a joke, and anyway, we barely even glimpsed him!"
"Oh, it's a joke? All right then. It's hilarious. Ha ha."
"He was heading out of the shop as we were going in, so of course I said hi, and you've been sulking ever since –"
"Monica, you were practically drooling on him! And it didn't seem to bother you if I was sulking, you still bought up half the shop –"
"There was a sale on!"
Susie began to edge towards the portrait hole, muttering something about Herbology homework. Lily and Evangeline quickly followed her lead and fumbled for excuses –
"I forgot to reply to Rose's letter."
"I think my cat might be dead, I heard it sneezing earlier."
Their withdrawal barely seemed to register with their two friends, who continued arguing at a mounting volume as they left Gryffindor Tower. They met Hugo and Caius heading in the opposite direction and warned them, so that the four of them ended up waiting out the afternoon in the library – something of a novel experience for Caius.
At dinnertime, Susie appeared with a swollen-eyed Monica and delivered the news in a whisper: "They broke up. She's devastated."
"Oh Merlin." Lily exchanged a panic-stricken glance with Evangeline. "Prepare for the waterworks."
After that, the sixth-years began spending less and less time in Gryffindor Tower. Lily, Evangeline and even the usually solicitous Oonagh found themselves exposed to one too many of Monica's sobbing fits, and resolved to avoid their dormitory except when strictly necessary for sleeping purposes, creeping in and out at ungodly hours in order to leave the onerous task of comforting her to Susie.
"He's such a Neanderthal," she was overheard howling, tearing into yet another box of chocolates. "Why are boys so insensitive?"
Anthony, meanwhile, had entered a phase of sulking so advanced that Caius developed a theory that he'd actually become a Dementor. "He's sucking all the happiness out of me," he told them through a mouthful of lemon meringue pie. "I'm really depressed. Look, I'm not even enjoying this."
"He's unhappy," Hugo protested; and it was true, their friends were both desperately unhappy. But since there was little they could do except supply Monica with tissues – "and learn to cast a Patronus for Anthony," Caius advised – and wait for them to sort it out between themselves, they agreed that the best strategy was to absent themselves as much as possible and hope it blew over soon.
Lily found herself spending more and more time in the library, a favourite haunt of Ruth's, who turned out to be far more useful in helping her prepare for the challenge than the panicky Hugo or the totally complacent Evangeline.
"They won't do anything airborne, because they did Hippogriffs last time and it didn't go down well," she said, dumping a stack of books in front of Lily. "I think your best bet is to look through the records of past challenges and try to prepare from those."
"That's clever," said Lily. "I mean, the Ministry isn't exactly famed for its creativity."
Ruth smiled and flung open a particularly hefty tome. "There hasn't been a water-based challenge in a while, so you should work on casting spells underwater – non-verbally, preferably."
"Ugh." Lily pressed both hands to her forehead. "Don't even joke about non-verbal spells. I haven't started that essay for Professor Quirke yet."
Between mountains of homework, navigating the toxic atmosphere in Gryffindor Tower and attending the marginally less disastrous second Quodpot match, Lily managed to fit in a respectable amount of reading and practice for the challenge – at the cost of what remained of her sanity.
"How can Rose keep sending me photos of her holiday?" she moaned, clutching a photo of her cousin grinning in front of some exotic landmark . "Doesn't she realise I'm suffering?"
"Of course she realises you're suffering," said her cousin Roxanne cheerfully, looking up from the similar letter Rose had sent her. "She hasn't sent me photos. She's trying to make you jealous."
"What? Why?" Lily yelped, feeling betrayed.
"Because she's jealous of you," explained Hugo. "She never got a chance to do the Tournament, you know, and nor do most people."
Lily rolled her eyes. "That's so Rose, to go all passive-aggressive on me." But she got the message. Even if, right now, she would rather be lying on a beach next to her walking brain of a cousin than up to her eyeballs in complex spell theory, being champion was not something to complain about. It was an amazing opportunity which she still couldn't quite believe she'd snagged. And she was going to do whatever she could to be in with a chance of winning the thing.