Being on Platform 9 ¾ to go back from Christmas break that year felt entirely different than any time Lily had experienced it prior. Interspersed throughout the crowd of students getting on the train back to Hogwarts and parents bidding them farewell were adult witches and wizards in magenta robes which made them impossible to miss. When Lily was not herself transfixed by them, she noted that they seemed to be the focus of everyone else's gaze as well. They were hundreds of miles from Hogwarts, and the Potion Company's security had already made their presence felt.
Soon, she saw magenta covered arms motioning for students to get on the train.
"Really seem to think they're running the place," Lily heard her brother James mutter beside her, before walking past her and getting onto the train.
Before Lily could follow him, Harry bent down, as if tying his shoe beside her, and then whispered so that only she could hear.
"Remember what I told you. Stay out of their way and don't give them any reason to go after you. I'd be lying if I said I thought you and your brothers' last name didn't put a target on your backs," he said.
He then hugged Lily before saying in a more normally toned voice, "Well then Lily, good luck with the rest of your year."
Lily walked over to the train and got on, but as she waved goodbye to her father, she thought to herself that like much of what her father had told her recently, she wasn't especially willing to accept his statement that she must stay out of danger.
Lily began to search for a compartment where she recognized Seth and Jane. It wasn't too long before she saw the familiar duo and slid the door to their compartment open.
"Hello Lily, how was your break?" Seth asked.
"Fine," Lily lied.
"How about you lot's?" she responded.
"Oh you know, same as always, trying to avoid being bored out of my mind at my Mum's family's place in France," Jane answered.
"Yeah, nothing much going on with me either. Well, until the announcement about Hogsmeade and them all at least," Seth said, nodding his head toward the window out of the compartment, where they saw a magenta robed man looking in as he stalked past.
"Bloody hell, I feel like we're prisoners with them around. They're supposed to be keeping the Squib kids safe, right? Why are they so concerned with us?"
"I might know," Lily said, causing Seth and Jane to look at her curiously.
"Well spit it out then, what do you know?" Jane asked.
Lily started to recount what she had seen in the Pensieve and been told by her father, leaving out the conflict between her father and Eve. It didn't feel right to tell Jane and Seth this detail. She felt she owed Eve the right to explain herself first. As she finished, both her friends seemed lost in thought. Seth bore a look of deep consternation on his face.
"That's not good. That's not good at all," he said, shaking his head.
"That's the understatement of the century," Jane commented wryly.
"Maybe your dad can convince Sinistra to get them back out?" Seth asked.
Lily shook her head. "Sinistra was already taking heat for not letting them come for as long as she did. She'd be practically begging to get sacked if she changed her mind again at this point."
"There's got to be someone we can go to!" Seth said. "We can't just stand by while they're at Hogwarts knowing what they are…"
Seth had looked up towards the window of the compartment as he finished his sentence. Lily looked away from him and followed his gaze. Sliding the door open was Zeke Lanza. He looked physically the same as ever, but Lily noted that he didn't seem to be quite radiating the effortless coolness she usually detected in him.
"Hello everyone," he said, his voice cracking a bit. "I was just wondering if I could talk to Lily."
This scenario playing out would've made Lily feel almost nauseous from excitement and nervousness just a few months before. But now, she felt very different emotions, ones that had been marinating since she last talked to him, and which had crystallized in the time since the Ball.
"What do you have to say?" Lily asked with a calmness that surprised even herself.
"Can we talk, uh, privately?" he asked, pointing his thumb towards the door to indicate leaving the compartment.
"Sure," said Lily curtly, thinking privacy sounded perfect for what she wanted to say to him.
He opened the door for her and she walked out, catching Jane and Seth watching from the corner of her eye. They soon slipped into a compartment that was vacant, and Lily wasted no time in getting to the point.
"So, have you and Klara still been laughing at me over break!? Sending owls to talk about stupid little Lily? Is that why you want to talk to me, to make fun of me some more!?" she yelled, letting everything out at once and feeling breathless as she finished.
Zeke seemed taken aback, his usual demeanor completely absent, and the new, angry part of Lily actually felt a twinge of happiness upon seeing it. He held his hands up defensively as he started to speak.
"Listen, I don't know what Klara told you, but I didn't do any of those things," he said.
"So you're saying your girlfriend lied!? I could've told you she'd do that!" Lily responded.
"She's not my girlfriend. In fact, I haven't even talked to her since the night of the Ball," he said.
Lily felt her mood shift right there, her righteous anger replaced by a feeling of uncertainty. Could he be telling the truth?
"Really?" she breathed.
"Yes, honest" Zeke said. "The only thing I told her was that you'd asked me to the Ball. I'm sorry for how everything else happened after that. That's why I went to find you, to apologize.
"Oh," Lily said, feeling stunned. And slowly she began to realize she'd just screamed in the face of Zeke Lanza for the high crime of apologizing to her. She felt her face start to heat up and could only imagine that it was starting to approach the color of her hair as they stood in silence. Luckily Zeke interrupted it appropriately awkwardly, abruptly bringing his head back and sneezing into his robe sleeve.
"Bless you," Lily said tentatively. She was thankful to see Zeke smile at her.
"Thanks," he said. "Listen, let's… let's talk again sometime soon," he said. "Hope you and your friends are doing well."
He then walked off in the opposite direction of the compartment, leaving Lily to feel a muddle of different emotions as he went off, the most prominent being the same nervousness she hadn't felt concerning him since the Ball.
As she walked back into the compartment she had left, Seth and Jane looked at her incredulously.
"What was that all about?" Seth asked.
"Oh nothing much," Lily said, eager to change the subject, but suspecting this statement wasn't very convincing to her friends.
The rest of the trip went by slower than Lily would've liked. A few times, she felt close to drifting off to sleep, but as her eyelids drooped she caught a flash of magenta as a Potions company guard walked by the compartment, making Lily feel far too uneasy to achieve slumber.
It was therefore something of a relief when the train lurched to a stop, signifying that they had arrived at Hogsmeade Station.
As they got off the train and walked over to where the carriages that magically took them to the castle were, they ran into Ethan Jordan.
"Did you hear?" he asked.
"No, what is it?" Lily asked first.
"Sinistra is planning a Feast for the start of term," Jordan said. "Supposedly going to give us more information on how things are gonna be with Winikus's people around."
Lily was happy to hear this, but for altogether different reasons than wanting to hear another Sinistra speech in person.
"Maybe Sinistra will clear things up, have a plan to keep the Company people in check," said Seth as they all climbed into one of the carriages, though he looked doubtful as he said this, seeming to be trying to convince himself as much as anyone else.
A few minutes later, the carriages pulled up at the castle doors and they all got out of them and walked into the castle through the Entrance Hall and towards the Great Hall.
"Fill me in on what she says later," Lily whispered to Seth and Jane before walking away from the throng of students as Seth and Jane looked back at her quizzically.
Lily set off along the familiar route to the Hufflepuff Basement. But as she got to the kitchen area, a voice stopped her, "Hey there, where are you going!"
Lily whirled around, expecting to perhaps see an especially exuberant portrait. Instead, she saw a tall, imposing blond man in magenta robes stalking towards her.
"Where are you going?" the man repeated.
"Just back to my dorm," she said, trying to feign innocence.
"You're supposed to be at the feast," he said curtly.
Lily's mind spun, remembering what her father had told her about staying out of trouble. Just a few minutes back at Hogwarts and she wasn't exactly off to a good start. She tried to think of an excuse that would work on the spot.
"There's a fwooper in my luggage I have for a Magical Creatures project. I have to drop it off," Lily said, gesturing towards the bags she held.
"You shouldn't have that," said the man "Let me see in the bag."
"No!" Lily said, pulling it away, then said quickly, "Do you know how dangerous fwoopers are? You'll be permanently brain damaged just like that, if you let it out now. That's why I need to get it down to my dorm, I can't risk it getting out in the Great Hall."
Lily waited breathlessly, seeing if the company man would buy it. Luckily, it seemed like he didn't have the intelligence to see through her story, instead looking fearful and taking a step back from her bag.
"Alright, just be quick," he said gruffly.
"Thanks," she said, walking past but catching him glaring at her as she went. Lily found herself thinking that the situation was already as bad as her father had warned her it would be, if not worse. How much were these company wizards going to be controlling life at Hogwarts?
As she approached the entrance to the Hufflepuff Common Room, these thoughts left her as she focused on the task at hand.
When she entered, she checked around to see if anyone was around, and was happy to see the Common Room empty. Another voice seemed to echo her questioning.
"Are we alone?" it came.
"Yes," Lily responded.
And just as the words came out of her mouth, she saw the fireplace crackle and the familiar form of Eve Sage take shape.
"You got my letter," Lily said with relief.
"Of course. I've been focused on the Hogwarts situation ever since they made the announcement."
Her brow now seemed to furrow in concentration as she continued to speak.
"Lily, what I told you about not trusting anyone, more than anyone else I would apply that to the people from this company. They-"
"Eve, I know," Lily said. "Everything about you and dad and the company, I know."
For a moment everything became silent except the crackling of the fire that Eve's face was part of, as the statement Lily had just made was allowed to sit in the room.
"You mean…" Eve began.
"I saw dad's memory in his Pensieve. So yes, everything," Lily said with finality.
"Lily…" Eve started. "The person you saw in that memory is not who I am."
"But how can you say that?" Lily demanded, feeling frustrated in the same way she had when her father had said something similar weeks before.
"Lily, listen to me. The person in that memory was full of anger. She was directionless and thought correcting some wrong, getting some ultimate revenge, would bring her meaning," she said.
Eve seemed to break off as if anticipating that Lily would interrupt, but Lily wasn't going to this time. Eve spoke again, her voice cracking at times as she spoke..
"I searched, spent years trying to find my parents' killer. Found dead end after dead end. Until eventually I realized I was letting myself become an outgrowth of that horrible act. Getting trapped in anger and defining myself by one horrible thing that had affected me among so many, and trying to replicate that act instead of working to rebuild the world from the destruction done during that time and defining myself by the exact opposite of that act, those I cared about like you and your family. And I realized I couldn't continue on that path. So that Lily, is how I can say that."
Lily took that in for a second, feeling tears brim in her eyes. Finally, she spoke. "Well, that was a hell of a bloody answer, wasn't it?"
/
A few minutes had passed between when Lily and Eve ended their conversation and when the rest of the Hufflepuffs flooded into the Common Room. Lily looked through the crowd before she spotted Jane.
"Jane," she said as she walked over to the taller girl. "Did I miss anything important?"
"Not much," Jane said, shrugging. "Sinistra basically just said what's obvious. The Competition is canceled, but I think we all saw that coming. The Company's people are going to be all around, patrolling halls and in classes. She says it's necessary to protect the Squib kids. Lily, if you really think they're planning something, we need to figure out how we're going to stop them. Soon."
"I…" Lily started to respond. "I need to sleep," she finished. "It's been a long day."
"Is that so?" Jane asked. "Was there anything important I missed?"
"No," Lily said, and she felt she was truly being honest. What she had heard from Eve was not something she thought would be important to Jane. But it was to her. So much was happening so quickly, between the Company being at Hogwarts and her rapidly changing understanding of Eve. She couldn't deal with it all right then, it was too exhausting.
As Lily plopped down into the bed, she started to go over her conversation with Eve in her mind. Did what Eve said really fix things? Lily still didn't feel sure. But the gnawing anxiety about whether the Eve she knew was a complete lie, at least was gone. That was something, she supposed, drifting off with this still on her mind.
She woke up bleary eyed, mentally taking note that her sleep had been dreamless. She saw that Jane's bed was already empty, indicating that her friend had already gotten up. Lily frowned. This was unusual for Jane, who almost always got up after Lily did. She decided to go see if Jane had already gone up to the Great Hall for breakfast. Lily slowly made her way up, hoping to catch Jane and Seth while they were still eating.
When she arrived in the Great Hall and came to their usual place at the Hufflepuff table, she found only Seth, eating alone.
"Good morning," he greeted Lily as she approached.
"Good morning," she said. "Do you know where Jane is?"
"Serving early morning detention with Flitwick. Really been getting on his nerves lately," Seth said.
Lily groaned in response.
"Hey, don't get too upset, it's just for today."
"No it's not that, you just reminded me about my detention with Sinistra," Lily responded.
It was true, Lily had forgotten her sentence from before break. She spent the rest of the day trying to go through the motions in her classes, but having a renewed appointment to do chores with Klara Chang that night was an uncomfortable thing to have hanging over her.
When Lily finally arrived in Sinistra's office that evening, her annoyance seemed justified, as Sinistra immediately told her to organize some more files after she welcomed Lily.
"All those in the upper cabinets are irrelevant and can be removed. Those in the lower ones you can categorize," Sinistra said before Lily started to work.
Lily tried to work, but Klara did her best to frustrate her further, pulling out her wand and silently casting a spell that knocked the files from Lily's hands while Sinistra's back was turned. By the time Sinistra turned around, Klara had deposited it back in her robes and was innocently back to her files.
"Is something wrong?" Sinistra asked.
"No, Headmistress Sinistra," Lily said while gritting her teeth and thinking murderous thoughts.
She bent over to pick the files up. As she did, she saw something strange. The files she had been holding were from the upper cabinet. But one of them had a heading Lily couldn't help but see
URGENT
24th January 2022
To Headmistress Sinistra
"Professor, do you want this removed, it has today's date on it?" Lily asked, holding it up for her.
Sinistra glanced over to her quickly, then said, "I'm not sure I understand what you mean Miss Potter."
Lily cocked her head in confusion. "This letter, it's marked urgent and newer than the other files. I was just making sure you really didn't need it."
But Sinistra looked over at her again and just seemed more annoyed. "Miss Potter, if this is some kind of prank that you've gotten the idea for from the rest of your family, I would like for you to please consider the amount of punishment you already have gotten for yourself."
Klara took the opportunity to laugh heartily. "You see, this is how Potter is, Headmistress, totally detached from reality."
"That's enough, Miss Chang," Sinistra warned, quieting Klara.
"Sorry maam." Lily said, while setting the paper down and trying to hide her confusion.
But as she and Klara continued to work, the strange interaction continued to bother Lily. Finally, when Klara and Sinistra had their back turned to her, she picked up the paper and started to read what was written on it, trembling as she finished it.
And just like that she was flying out, not paying attention to Sinistra's yells behind her. She headed down the stairs, ran down corridors. What room was it? She had to remember. It came to her and she started up the nearest staircase, going up three steps at a time before she reached the seventh floor. Desperately, she saw the classroom that she had only occasionally seen before up ahead.
She entered to find the sandy haired man she sought as the only current occupant of the room.
"Professor... " she started, totally out of breath. "Professor Cobblestone isn't it?"
"Yes," he said awkwardly, seeming somewhat taken aback. "Miss Potter isn't it? What did you come for?"
"I know," Lily said simply.
"I beg your pardon," Cobblestone responded, adjusting his glasses as he spoke.
"I said I know. I know that you're the one who has been attacking the Squibs."
