During the weeks before the Christmas Holidays, Lily Luna and Cass created, for themselves, a routine.
The friends would wake up early each morning, careful not to rouse the other two first year girls who they roomed with. They would then sneak out into the common area, bringing whatever book they had decided to study that morning with them. There, upon their favourite, dark green leather couch, the girls read the many different ways people had found to tell the same story. It was a story about a boy who grew up with his Aunt, Uncle, and cousin who all hated him, but, then he received a letter, finally delivered by Hagrid, the groundskeeper, himself, at age eleven, telling him that he had been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The rest of the stories were usually filled with magic, war, and, according to Rita Skeeter's version of Harry Potter's life, a great deal of sobbing emerald eyes and snogging. In each of the books, excepting Skeeter's, of course, Voldemort was defeated by Lily Luna's father, who, through this, proved himself to be the hero.
The reading in the early mornings was not only helpful for Lily's understanding of her father, mother, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, but it also brought the redhead and her best friend closer together. While Lily had always known she lacked many things in common with Cassiopeiea Elizabeth Burke, she had never taken the time to find out about all of the things that were alike about the two of them. The one on one time they now spent with each other on such a regular basis was eye opening for the both of them, even if both of them had their eyes trained on a page from some strange, giant book.
Lily Luna Potter learned many things about Cass during those mornings. The redhead learned that, even if her best friend lived in a council estate, it did not deter from the fact that she was still raised in an old Slytherin family and was slightly annoyed with muggles and muggleborns. But, it was made up for by Lily's incessant disgust for Cass's cousin, in at least some form of relation, Scorpius Malfoy, a third year Ravenclaw.
This hate for her relative became Cass's favourite thing to laugh at her best friend about, telling the redhead such things as that the two were meant to be, simply because of their corresponding second names.
"Think about it, Lils." Cass would say, "Luna is moon and Hyperion is sun. You can't get much more 'meant to be' than that."
"I'm sorry Cass but, your cousin is just not my cup of tea." Lily would always reply quickly, as a slight blush rose into her usually pale cheeks, "I find him simply beastly."
"Oh, well aren't we being incredibly posh today!" The black haired girl exclaimed during one of these instances before popping another stick of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum into her mouth and beginning to chew it noisily.
"Hmm…Quite…" Lily had replied without looking up from her book
"How did you become such a swot?" Cass asked her friend with a roll of her eyes
"Years and years of practice"
"Lils, you're only eleven…"
That was when the redhead looked back up at her best friend in the world and told her simply, "I'm a prodigy."
After this exchange, Cass never questioned Lily about her early morning word usages again much to the freckled girl's relief.
It was not until the girls had finally gotten into the sixth volume in the multi-part biography written about Lily Luna's father that any of what the smallest Potter was reading clicked in her brain.
"Merlin's pants!" Lily breathed and Cass looked over at her questioningly, "This is all true, isn't it? All this, about my dad?" The raven-haired Burke raised her eyebrows at her friend who only continued, "It's just that it doesn't really feel true. My dad is…well…he's my dad! And this boy named Harry Potter, he's a hero!"
"Well, get it into your head." Cass told her, "Your dad is bloody famous as hell!"
Later that week Lily and Cass sat before the black marble fireplace in the Slytherin common room after finishing the final book out of the sixteen that Madame Pince had checked out to them. Their faces would have been laughable, if there had been anyone awake at that hour to actually see them. But, there was not, and that was how the girls wanted it anyways. They did not want anyone to see their astonished expressions. They would hate for anyone to snicker at how their eyes bulged out of their sockets and stared, fixedly, at the flames or for someone to come across them when their mouths were currently gaping open with unhinged jaws.
Finally one of them spoke; to this day, neither would be able to tell you exactly which one said what words, but, they would both swear on their paternal grandparents' graves that these are the exact words spoken.
"Sweet F A…" Breathed Cass…or, perchance, Lily Luna.
"Quite." Replied Lily Luna…unless it was really Cass…with a slight nod.
Of course, the conversation that ensued was much easier to pick out who was saying what as there was apparently and awful lot of, "I can't believe mum never told me that cousin Draco almost went to Azkaban!" and, "Who cares about your cousin and what your mum told you about him? My father has apparently killed a guy!"
Of course, Cass tried to calm her best friend down in any way she could think of.
"It was more of an assisted suicide," she said with a shrug, "without the dead bloke actually wanting to die in the first place."
"That means that it's nothing like assisted suicide!" Lily exclaimed, "Merlin! That journalist who used to work for the Prophet was right! Dad is a murderer!"
Cass sighed and rolled her eyes in frustration, "We just finished reading fifteen books all about how ace your dad is and the only one that you really pay attention too is the sixteenth one? Which is written, I might add, by an old hag who should just go and stuff herself!"
"So," Lily began to wipe her tear-brimmed eyes, "you really don't believe that my dad is a bad guy?"
"Oh, put a sock in it Lils." the black-haired girl told her friend, "We may think your dad's right potty, but even us purebloods can see that he's really a hero."
And that was the end of that discussion.
So, the only things Lily Luna Potter had left to do over the break by the time she and Cass had bid each other farewell at Platform 9 3/4, was to confront her father about his part in the most recent war fought by Wizarding Great Britain and then, to tell her family which House she had been Sorted into.
Lily Luna could not decide which one of these two things sounded more terrifying.