Chapter Twenty-Five

Goodbye Luci

After that, the last few weeks of term seemed to fly by. After Friday and the weekend to do as they liked, the second years were back in lessons on Monday, much to Mac's delight; he hadn't liked his friends all being out enjoying themselves whilst he was still hunched over his books in the library.

One morning, in the last week of term, Lily and Mia approached Mac in the courtyard.

"Fancy hosting one of your barbeques again?" Lily asked him.

"I've only ever hosted one barbeque," Mac reminded her. "It's not like I have them all the time."

"We know," Mia said. "But we want to throw a leaving party for Luci, and we thought making it a barbeque would be fun."

"Oh yeah, she's not coming back next year, is she?" Mac said.

Mia shook her head. "She's going back to Switzerland with her family... So, will you host the barbeque?"

"Alright," Mac agreed. "I'll ask Cooky, but I'm sure she'll say yes when I tell her what it's for. So, when do you want this barbeque?"

"Wednesday?" Lily suggested.

"You do realise we're going to have to invite Ilonka and that lot," Hugo said that evening, once permission had been granted, and plans were in full swing.

"Why?" Lily demanded. "Why will we have to?"

"Because they're Luci's friends too," Hugo said. "You can hardly have a leaving party for Luci and not invite all her friends."
"Yeah, I guess you're right," Mia sighed, not looking forward to having Lily and Ilonka in close proximity for any length of time. "I'll get Ruby to ask them, maybe, cuz I doubt they'll even listen to me."

"And you'll be civil to Ilonka, Lily?" Hugo asked pointedly.

"Only if she's civil to me," Lily scowled.

In Charms the next day, Mia asked Ruby to invite Ilonka and her sheep to Luci's leaving party. Ruby agreed, albeit reluctantly.

"You don't really want Ilonka there, do you?" she asked Mia in an undertone – Luci was sat at the other end of the row, and they were making it a surprise party.

"Not really," Mia agreed, "but she's not Luci's friend, so she ought to be there."

"I guess so..." Ruby said. "Alright, I'll ask them."

On Wednesday, everyone headed down to the lakeside immediately after lessons, apart from Lily and Mia, who'd been tasked with delaying Luci, and then bringing her down to the party once the others had had time to set up. After Charms, Mia stopped to ask Professor Flitwick some questions about her exam paper, and asked Lily and Luci to wait for her. Once she'd finished, they'd given the others almost a ten minute headstart, but they knew that wasn't enough, so as they walked down the stairs, Lily hung back slightly, pointed her wand at Luci's bag and muttered, "Diffindo."

Luci's bag split, and books, parchment, quills and ink all spilled down the stairs. Several ink bottles smashed, and covered books and parchment in ink. Mia had to hand it to Lily – she knew how to cause a delay.

The three of them set to work collecting up all of Luci's stuff, trying not to cut their fingers on the broken glass, and siphoning off ink from the sodden books and rolls of parchment. Almost before they'd started, Peeves was on the scene. The Poltergeist appeared to be magnetically attracted to chaos, and he was soon swooping around the three girls, sending papers flying further down the stairs, all the while giggling gleefully. By the time they finally reached the Entrance Hall, it was almost half an hour after the end of lessons. Mia looked at Lily and nodded slightly. It was time for phase two of their plan.

"Let's go for a walk in the grounds before dinner," Lily proposed.

"Why not after dinner?" Luci asked. "I'm hungry."

"But it's so sunny out there," Lily said, looking out of the oak front doors which were wide open, bathing the Entrance Hall in natural light. They had indeed been fortunate with the weather – it had been bright sunshine all day, and the slight breeze meant that it was warm, but not too hot, in the sun. "I bet it won't be this sunny once we've finished eating. Just a quick walk?"

"Alright," Luci conceded.

"Mia? Are you coming?" Lily asked.

"If you two are, I will," Mia replied, and the three of them headed out into the grounds.

They took the long way round, approaching the chosen party spot – a secluded corner of the lake where there was a natural beach – in such a way that the others had plenty of time to see them coming and hide behind a clump of bushes before Luci could see them. Everything went according to plan, and when they reached the beach, everyone jumped out and yelled, 'surprise!', and the Mac walked forward, grinning,

"We're throwing you a leaving party, Luci."
Luci was definitely surprised. She looked around at the group – the entirety of the gang had shown up, as well as Ilonka and her friends, and half a dozen first years, mainly Gryffindors and all recruited by Ailie Abercrombie. "You all came for me?" she asked eventually.

"Sure," Mac shrugged, as everyone else gave their noisy assent. "Now why don't you come and give me a hand with the barbeque?"

As Luci followed Mac over to the barbeque, Ilonka came over to Lily, her 'sheep' following.

"Just so we're clear, the only reason I'm not hexing your right now is because this is Luci's party," Ilonka said.

"Ditto," Lily scowled. "So tomorrow we can just go back to hating each other, right?"

"Right," Ilonka agreed, stalking off again.

"I will never understand you and Ilonka, Lils," Louis grinned. "How come you can agree to be civil to each other now, but the rest of the time you're always at each other's throats?"

"Because they're idiots," Hugo grinned. "Besides, if Lily didn't hate Ilonka, where else would she channel all her negative energy?"

Lily thumped him as they all laughed.

Everyone settled down to wait for food off the barbeque – Mac refused to accelerate it magically, supposedly on principle, but everyone suspected it was really because he didn't know how. Whilst they waited, the first, second and third years sat around chatting; played with a fanged frizbee Mac had somehow managed not to get confiscated for another year; and competed on who could skim stones out the furthest into the lake.

A handful of teachers – Professors Longbottom, Cooke and Reuben – showed up just in time to sample the first of the food from the barbeque. After that, everyone sat around eating and chatting, as dusk began to fall.

Luci had started off sitting with Ilonka and co, but when they decided to call it a night, she came over to where Lily, Mia, Hugo, Louis, Zoe and Cassie were sitting – or in Zoe's case, lying with her head in Louis' lap.

"It's funny to think you two hated each other at the beginning of the year," Louis said to Lily and Luci, as he sat absent mindedly playing with Zoe's hair.

"I think that was probably my fault," Luci conceded. "I sort of built up this wall, because... well, it's silly."

"Why?" Lily asked her. "Why did you put up a wall?"

"Because..." Luci sighed. "Because then if you judged me, it didn't matter, because you weren't judging the real me, and if you didn't want to be my friend, then that was okay, because it wasn't the real me you were rejecting."

"That does sound silly," Hugo said.

"Yeah," Luci nodded. "It was, because then I never gave you a chance to see the real me, and judge the real me."

"But now you've let us see the real you, and we do like you," Mia sighed.

"I know it was silly, but I thought that if I acted all unfriendly and grumpy, then at least it was my fault I didn't have any friends," Luci said. "I felt like I could just be nice at any time, and you'd all be my friends... whereas if I was myself, and then you all rejected me, then that would be it."

Mia thought that it kind of did make sense, in a strange way. Having no friends, but entertaining the notion that you could have friends whenever you wanted to was better than just having no friends.

Three days later, and they were all on the Hogwarts Express, heading home for the summer. The gang hadn't got on the train quick enough to secure a compartment all for themselves, so they were spread throughout the train. Mia was sat with Lily, Hugo and Luci – Louis was sitting with Zoe further along the train – and Lily was, once again, describing the bridesmaid's dress she was going to wear to Teddy and Vic's wedding.

"Oh, you're invited to the wedding, by the way," Lily told Mia, as she concluded her description of the exact shade of turquoise the dress was. "I meant to tell you..."

"Lily!" Hugo exploded. "I thought you'd told her ages ago."

"I meant to..." Lily said sheepishly. "Vic told me to invite you when we had the dresses fitted at Easter, but we weren't talking, and then when we were talking again, I just forgot... so, will you come?"

"Sure," Mia said. "I mean, I'll have to ask my parents, but I don't see why not. I've never been to a wedding before."

"Nor have I," Lily said. "Well, I went to Rolf and Luna's – you know, my godparents – but I was only a baby, so I don't really remember it."

Alice and Frankie Longbottom burst into the compartment, both giggling.

"What's up with you two?" Hugo asked with a bemused smile.

"Kieran kissed Frankie!" Alice burst out, and then the two of them resumed their giggling.

"But I thought you both liked Kieran," Mia said – when they'd played truth or dare last summer, Alice and Frankie had both confessed to having a crush on Kieran Finnigan.

Alice shook her head. "Kieran was so last year," she said loftily. "I've moved on."

"So, who do you like now?" Lily asked.

"Andy..." Alice said dreamily.

"Cattermole?" Lily frowned. Andy Cattermole was a Ravenclaw boy in their year, and his older sister, Mary, played Beater on the Gryffindor Quidditch team.

"Yeah," Frankie said, fake-swooning in imitation of her sister.

Lily screwed up her face. "Nope, I don't see it," she said eventually. "Each to her own, I guess."

Alice and Frankie left the compartment. Hugo rolled his eyes. "Girls," he sighed.

Before too long, the train was rolling into London, and coming to a stop on Platform 9¾. Soon, students were spilling off the train, calling out goodbyes and promised to write. Mia stepped off the train and right into Danielle Wood, who was saying goodbye to some fellow second years.

"Oh, sorry, Danielle!" Mia said.

"That's alright," Danielle smiled. "Now then, you better do Gryffindor proud next year – can't have the team falling apart as soon as I leave."

"We'll do you proud," Mia promised. "We've got a legacy to uphold."

"Too right," Danielle grinned, hugging her, and then walking away to find her brothers.

"Well, I guess this is goodbye," Hugo said, turning to Luci.

"You'd better write to us," Mia said, hugging the younger girl.

"I will," Luci promised.

"Luci, I'm sorry I was horrible to you at the beginning of the year," Lily said, taking her turn to hug Luci.

"I'm sorry too," Luci said. "I'm sorry I pushed you all away."

"Friends?" Lily asked.

"Always," Luci smiled.

And that's it! The End of Year Two. Thank you to everyone who stuck with this story, even through my year-long hiatus. As always, please review and let me know what you thought of it.

Year Three has been finished for almost a year, but I still haven't typed it all up - eight chapters to go! I'm hoping to start posting that soon, probably on a more sustainable posting schedule of two chapters a week. Year Three is a long one - 43 chapters and probably around 75,000 words, so it'll take a while to get through, even at that rate. Be sure to follow me as an author rather than just individual stories so you get a notification when I start posting Year Three.

In the meantime, I have ideas in my head for a collection of one shots called "Four Journeys" which introduce four new characters who will be first years in Year Three, so look out for that too - I'm looking forward to introducing you to JJ, Matilda, Archie and Emma.

~ Nat