Chapter 3 ~ Simply Lily



The colors swirled in front of her, a private show of the Northern Lights dancing inside her eyelids. Then she realized the bright floating dots weren't figment of her imagination, but real people. As she chose one thing to focus on the color drained form that area, concentrating the light in another space.

The only thing she could make out before fainting was the leering face of the Professor over her, yelling silent words at those around her, and then the pain from the stones beneath her which cut into her skin.

And then she saw no more.

* * *



"The girl, what has happened to her?" Lily fought to see, but she couldn't. Unseen power shut her eyes as she heard this conversation.

"An accssssident, my Lord."

"Who caused it?"

"The Potter boy." 'The Potter boy'? she wondered. Who was that? Sirius was the one who had knocked over the potion.

"Potter?"

"Yesssssss, his ssssson."

"Well, then, something will have to be done. If I wish to rise to power little issues like these must be taken care of."

"What musssssst be done?"

And evil eyes blazed, frightening Lily and making her scream. "Dispose of them."

* * *

Lily continued to scream, flailing her arms madly. Students down the hall began to wonder if all the rumors about the new nurse were true. Did she really torture everyone who went in there? They quickly hurried past the Infirmary, never looking back.

Really, Madam Pomfrey was kneeled over Lily, shaking the girl frantically. Her first real day on the job and already there had been a fiasco. "Open your eyes!" she begged, wishing it to herself. The Potions master -- Professor Pravus -- had explained the nature of the problem. But Lily had been in the Infirmary for over a week and this was the first sign of consciousness that Madam Pomfrey had gotten from Lily. And under the circumstance Madam Pomfrey almost wished that Lily was still asleep. Again, she fervently begged, "Please, Lily, open your eyes!" She had cuts up and down her arm from where they had lashed into the bedside table, deeper than they would have been on any normal child.

Lily widened her mouth to scream, emitting no sound. She convulsed then quieted, her senses finally coming to a rest. Madam Pomfrey rubbed an ice cube she had just conjured on the back of the girl's neck, immediately wakening her.

Lily's eyes fluttered open, "What happened?" Madam Pomfrey couldn't bring herself to tell the girl the truth.

"You had an accident, child." She wasn't harsh, she was endearing. The poor, poor girl, she thought.

"Oh. When can I go?"

"I'm afraid there are a few…complications to be worked out before you can leave. What's important now is getting some rest, so I will spell you to sleep soon." A dreamless sleep, she added in her head.

And as Madam Pomfrey spelled her Lily fell asleep contented. She would never remember the conversation she had heard taking place thousands of miles away, she would never remember its significance towards herself, and she would never recognize those evil eyes. They were wrapped up as quietly as she was right now, thoughts lain to a deep slumber hopefully for a long, long while.

Madam Pomfrey left, she had other business to attend to. But one person lingered in the room, a student who hadn't been so fearful as to pass right by a door with a screaming person inside. He watched her, saw her sleep after thrashing about. And he saw her lips move yet while she lay there. 'The Potter boy,' she said. 'The Potter boy.'

He backed away; eerily aware that something, something had happened in that room just now, something that he couldn't comprehend. And it frightened him, though he wouldn't ever show it. For he knew the Potter boy, he knew him very well, in fact.

For 'the Potter boy' was him.

* * *

"Hey, hey! You guys I'm back!" Sirius sauntered into his dorm room with a grin the size of England plastered across his face.

"What, the great prat Pravus didn't give you a detention? You got off completely free?" his roommate Peter said in awe.

"Oh, yeah, I did get three detentions, but you should have seen that bugger's eyes pop out. It was wicked!"

"Three detentions already Sirius? I would have expected a bit more from you," another boy in the dorm, Remus, commented. He obviously thought Sirius should have exerted a bit more self-control. Sirius, however, saw it a bit differently.

"I know, I really should have gotten four, but I wasn't the one deciding, Pravus had that one. But really you guys, his eyes were about to pop out, and there was this little vein pulsing like mad on his neck, it was great!"

At this point Sirius' other roommate stood up. "Don't you even care?"

Sirius looked at him quizzically. "What do you mean?"

"The girl, you idiot. Don't you even care about what you did to her?" Now Sirius wasn't the sort of guy who would sit around and be criticized by people he didn't know very well. And he didn't appreciate how this other boy came in and acted all high and mighty as if he was important and Sirius wasn't. Sirius had actually though the other boy was pretty cool, of course he couldn't really remember his name, but that didn't matter anymore, for this boy was definitely not cool in his books anymore. Sirius was supposed to be the center of attention, at least from his point of view, and he didn't appreciate the cheeky little roommate, not at all.

"Listen you—you—" he faltered, searching for this boy's name.

"James Potter," he answered smugly, reveling in this other boy's fault, yet feeling badly at the same time. He had thought that he and Sirius were friends, they had gotten on great at first, but things weren't exactly looking up anymore.

"Fine. James, why don't you just bug off? You do us all a fat lot of good."

"Hey, Sirius, James has got a point you know." James looked at Remus, the speaker, with a thankful glance. Well, as thankful as an eleven-year-old boy gets, which is really just limited to a small nod, mostly masked by James' massive amount of wild black hair. But Remus saw it and nodded back, gratitude received. Sirius noted this and tried a different angle.

"Why Jamsie here seems to have a little crush on Lily, now doesn't he?" Sirius asked, really only questioning to himself while grinning smugly.

"Listen, I didn't even know what her name was—"

"Work fast don't you?"

"No!" he growled. "But I did hear her screaming in pain from down the hall, and I saw her bleeding, and I saw her robes with holes cut through them all over. And I saw the way the nurse looked at her and I know that whatever it is, whatever you did, it won't go away easily, and it's not just some everyday problem."

Sirius' conviction seemed to falter a bit at that statement. "Well, aren't you just the little know-it-all?"

"I know some things better than you. But you probably know some things better than me," he said fairly.

Sirius didn't like to sit around and be on the wrong side of the argument. Not only did he not like losing, but James was making him look bad while he was beating him! So he took yet another angle. "It wasn't even my fault. If you remember, I was talking to you while the accident happened."

This stifled James as he remembered. He had been talking to Sirius during Potions; they were making fun of Pravus. Now suddenly his argument seemed off, and Sirius saw that too. But before he was allowed to take advantage of the position he was in James had grabbed Sirius' arm and was dragging him down the stairs and out of the Common Room, Sirius fighting the stronger boy all the way. Finally he broke off.

"Hey, what gives? What's the matter with you, dragging me all over the castle?"

"You're just going to visit her, you just have to see her, and then you can go." Sirius considered this, and then agreed. No harm could come from just walking in the room. And so they walked to the Infirmary and slowly opened the door in case the nurse was right inside. When they didn't see her they cracked it open more and walked inside. Sirius made a big show of turning in a big circle then started to walk out. James grabbed his arm again.

"Hey!" Sirius cried in indignation, still trying to keep his voice low. "I came, I looked, and now I'm leaving." James just pulled him back and pointed to the dresser Lily had hit against. When Sirius looked down he couldn't really see anything at first against the dark cherry of the wood, but then he noticed it, blood. And he saw the bandages on Lily's arm. James pointed out the robes that he hadn't consciously noted, yet remembered clearly. And Sirius just gaped at the girl. Shed had been fiery, he remembered. And as he went to go look at her she stirred, her eyes slowly fluttering open.

"Who are you?" she asked groggily.

"You don't remember?" Sirius feigned hurt and James just scowled when she smiled. 'Doesn't this guy have trouble at anything? Well, not everyone is going to like him. I certainly won't,' he resolved. He watched as Sirius continued, "I was the frightfully coordinated partner of yours who got all that lovely potion spilled over you," he said, oozing charm that actually seemed to work on this girl. And Lily couldn't help it, boys certainly hadn't ever flirted with her before, and she really couldn't acknowledge that he was actually flirting with her so she tried to ignore it.

"Oh, is that what happened? You know, I can't remember a thing."

"Of course!" he exclaimed with glee. "What else could explain you forgetting my name?" Lily just stared back at him before saying shyly. "I can think of lots of reasons why I would want to forget your name. Number one, you're in the process of giving me a dreadful headache." James had slunk behind a dresser and from there he smiled, and then quieted. Nothing changed the fact that something was just wrong about her. It scared him that she had been talking about him, yet it nudged at him, urging him to find out why. But he just ignored it, figuring it would go away, and he wouldn't have to have anything to do with this girl Lily ever again.

And before Sirius could answer the voice of Madam Pomfrey came from the back room. "Lily, is that you dear, are you awake?"

Lily was about to answer until Sirius clamped his hand over her mouth, crouching next to her bed. Madam Pomfrey came out through the door and Sirius ducked underneath the bed. 'If he liked detention so much,' James thought, 'he might as well throw himself out in front of her and do a jig.' Yet James crouched lower behind his dresser as well, the adrenaline rush from close calls returning as it always did. But he peeked and he saw Lily do a very good impression of waking from a very deep sleep, rubbing her eyes and yawning convincingly; enough so to make him yawn as well.

Madam Pomfrey came over and sat on the side of Lily's bed, right over where Sirius was underneath. James laughed to himself and wondered how n earth Sirius was going to get himself out of this mess. 'This should be entertaining' he thought. "How do you feel now after your rest, Lily?" Madam Pomfrey asked.

"Oh, just fine—OUCH!" Lily tensed and James could just see Sirius pushing at her from underneath the bed. Madam Pomfrey looked horrified.

"What's wrong? Where does it hurt?" she asked frantically, obviously very distressed.

"Oh, just a…um…back spasm," she said, improvising a malady. 'And not a very good one,' thought James.

"A back spasm?"

"Oh, yes, I get them all the time," Lily assured the frazzled nurse who didn't look too convinced.

"Well then," she started slowly, "is there anything I can get for you?" the nurse asked Lily. James thought to himself, 'Something to make her leave, something to make her leave,' over and over. Thankfully, Lily had the same idea.

"A glass of water would be nice."

"A glass of water for your back?" the nurse asked, very confused.

Lily tried rather unsuccessfully to cover the awkwardness of her request. "Well, as I said, I got these things all the time, and my mum would always give me a glass of water to…um…help with the…um…strained muscle and all that."

Madam Pomfrey scrutinized her patient for a second. "Well, if you want it." And with a wave of her wand she had conjured a glass of water. Lily masked her disappointment quickly thinking up a new plan, she wanted something that would make Madam Pomfrey leave. She pushed the glass away and said, "You know, possibly that tea would be better, you know, the kind we had on the first dinner here." And before Madam Pomfrey could get in a wave with her wand Lily continued leaned back in her bed, pouting drastically and sighing theatrically and said, "and could you go down there and make sure that its done right, with just a pinch of sugar, not steeped too long, please, about two minutes maybe." James looked incredulously at this girl, 'She is smart!' he thought. 'She gave Sirius ample time to get out of here and away so that we won't get caught.' He wasn't sure that he would have come up with such a good plan.

"But I thought you said that you always had water?"

"Well, I never said that it worked, and besides, that tea was pretty good." Madam Pomfrey just looked at the girl, rather piteously, he noticed, and agreed, walking briskly out the door. Sirius jumped quickly from under his bed.

"That was brilliant! Absolutely marvelous! Hey James," he called bringing James out of his hiding place and in front of the girl he didn't want to meet, "wasn't Lily great?"

He just stared, noticing her large sparkling green eyes. "Yeah, brilliant."

Sirius noticed the direction of his gaze and looked at Lily as well. She blushed under their stare. She returned to her old shy self for a moment and said quietly, "Maybe you better go."

James immediately agreed and started to walk away but Sirius just stood there. "You know Lily, you look kind of good without those glasses covering up your face." And if it was possible, Lily blushed even more. She muttered a weak bye and Sirius and James turned to leave. As soon as they were out the door Sirius turned to James, "Wasn't that great? Being so close to getting caught but then pulling away in the nick of time?" And as much as he didn't want to agree, James did.

"I know exactly what you mean. There was this time when I colored my neighbor prize-winning rose bushes blue. She was over at my house almost before I was and—"

"That? You call that a close call? There was one time for me when…" and he continued his story while rounding the corner, James thoroughly intrigued, and the two boys becoming fast friends. When they returned to their dorm both alive their other room mates were relieved. Too bad they had absolutely no clue what was in store for them.

Back in the Infirmary Lily had pulled herself out of bed, making her way over to the mirror. "I just don't understand," she said to herself. She wasn't wearing her glasses, yet she could see. Normally she was half-blind without them. But now she didn't need them at all. And then there was Sirius…

What could she say about him? He was certainly a bit odd, but otherwise rather nice. His friend however, she didn't know what to make of him. "he doesn't even know who I am and he stares at me like I'm some sort of freak,' she thought sadly. 'I guess some things never change.'

When she had finally hobbled the distance to the mirror she was shocked when she looked into the mirror. Her head spun and she was ambushed with flashes from her memory…

Her sister and her playing…'Come on Lily, let's play princesses.'

Learning to read… 'And the little engine thought, 'I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.''

Her dad giving her swimming lessons… 'Don't worry Coppertop, I wont let you go. I would never let you go.'

And the memories continued pleasantly, she didn't know for how long. Tears streamed down her face, the memories making her miss home more than she had ever thought that she would. And she wouldn't let herself miss home, she wouldn't. She reopened her eyes, still gazing into the mirror and suddenly grabbed her forehead in pain, falling to the floor.

Two bright, yet evil eyes burned into her memory, etching themselves there permanently. She didn't know why she remembered them, from where they came. Yet she knew, she was absolutely positive they were evil. But they held no significance to her, her dream from that afternoon still locked away in slumber. Lily just gasped and fainted dead away on the floor.

And that's what Madam Pomfrey found when she came back in the room.

And that's when she called Dumbledore.

* * *

"Oh, oh Albus, I was so worried, I am so glad that you came—I didn't know what to do—she had collapsed, and, and," she paused to blow her nose loudly, for she had been sniffling and crying rather loudly.

"Calm down, Poppy, I know that you became attached to Miss Evans, but really she will be fine."

"Maybe Dexter didn't explain the problem clearly enough for you, she—"

"I know what happened," he reassured her.

"Well, I just don't see how you can be so calm about it. It's as if you aren't even upset!" she exclaimed rather hotly. She had indeed grown fond of Lily, and Albus just didn't seem to care.

"Why of course I'm not upset."

"What?"

"It's a wonderful opportunity," he added with a small smile.

"An opportunity? An opportunity!?! Her life will never be the same!"

"Do you know of her home life? Do you know of her life as of now?" And Madam Pomfrey couldn't say that she did. "How many visitors did she have?"

"Well, none."

"Any redirected mail from home that was sent up?"

"No." She spoke more weakly this time, it seemed more and more that the Headmaster was right. But he wasn't right about saying it was an opportunity. No, that was not right.

"Any get well soon cards?"

"Honestly Albus! Its just the first week of school, she isn't supposed to know the entire school," she snapped

"But surely her roommates noticed. She's been in the Infirmary for more than a week."

"Maybe they were too shy to visit," she tried to counter, wishing for the girl's sake that Albus wasn't right. He just sighed, and they both knew that he was right. "But surely you will give her some lessons, or at least try to contain it."

"She will be spelled at all times, and watched as well."

"But, you are powerful enough to remove it, I know you are."

"Ah yes, but I do believe this will do Miss Evans some good."

Madam Pomfrey looked gravely at him. "There might be an accident, you know what could happen if there was one." He looked down, acknowledging the risk.

"Yes, I understand completely. But there will be no accidents. She will be too well protected."

"You can't be one hundred percent sure on something like this Albus, there might be an accident." When he didn't respond to her she continued, "You will at least tell the child wont you?" Again, there was no response. "You must be joking! If she doesn't even know, how will we prevent it, how will we prevent anything? What can we do if something happens?"

"Something won't happen," he replied surely.

She looked him square in the eyes and whispered, "But what if there is?"

"If there is, well then, we will certainly be in for a ride, now wont we?"

* * *

Lily returned to her classes the next day, Madam Pomfrey had told her rather gruffly that the Headmaster had deemed it appropriate. She muddled through her morning classes, surprised at how much work she had missed in only a little more than a week. The biggest problem was when she returned to Herbology. Professor Kettleburn walked up to her and from the look on his face Lily knew right away that something was wrong.

"Lily, I'm so glad to see you all better again," he said, sounding suspiciously like he was avoiding something more important.

"Thank you Professsor Kettleburn," she answered.

"Now, this is hard to say, because I've never made a mistake in my teaching before, and I'm sorry to say that the first one isn't something small." Lily looked at him disbelievingly, 'Well, there goes any shred of doubt I had about him not having bad news.'

"You probably realized how your Greeblypuff didn't exactly, er, take to you as the others did." Lily though rebelliously back, 'Oh no, really, I thought the little fur ball actually liked me and just didn't know how to show it. That would be why it bit me.' Needless to say, she wasn't in a very good mood.

"Well, that's because your Greeblypuff wasn't actually a baby anymore. It had matured and so it had already started to move away from you, it's 'mother', and rejected you. Teenage years," he added with a small laugh. When she didn't laugh along he cleared his throat and continued. "So that's why your Greeblypuff wasn't as affectionate as the others."

Finally Lily spoke up. "I don't see much of a problem with that, Professor. It means that the Greeblypuff has already been weaned so there shouldn't be any problem. I did try to catch up a bit on reading while I was in the Infirmary."

"Did you ever find out the one thing your Greeblypuff needs in order to change to the next stage in their development?"

"No," she replied. "I couldn't find that anywhere and I weren't allowed to go down to the Library."

"Well, when a Greeblypuff grows up in the wild its mother takes care of it more three weeks after its birth, nurturing it, caring for it, pampering it. But during the fourth week the mother must nip off the very tip of each Greeblypuff's left ear." Lily gasped but the Professor quickly reassured her, "It doesn't hurt them. If you remember I told you how perceptive the Greeblypuffs are, well, they are that much immune to any physical pain." This calmed Lily down but she was still wary, somehow this was important to her and she didn't wasn't to know why.

"If their ear isn't nipped then they stay with the mother forever, growing with it and never leaving for very long or going very far." Lily suddenly had a sinking feeling…

"You were gone for a week and once the Greeblypuff had come into contact with you it thought you were its mother and no one else could get near it. In other words, its ear was not nipped, and I'm afraid that you now have a new little pet. Your Greeblypuff has been pining away for you, but I have it right here." It sprang from the bag he had been keeping it in and into her arms, nestled itself there.

"But Professor, I don't even know how to take care of it!" she exclaimed. He pulled something else from his bag and handed it to her. It was a book. The Art of Greeblypuffing, the title read. 'Honestly, what sort of word is that, Greeblypuffing.' But she accepted the book as the Professor rattled on his apologies and how she could devote herself to her Greeblypuff studies instead on coming regularly to classes for just a little bit. She could make up the classes in the afternoon, or flip it and take classes with him on how to raise her new companion which would take a considerable amount of work.

Oh joy.

That was the only thing that ran through her mind, with bucketfuls of sarcasm to accompany it. She didn't hear Professor Kettlburn mutter and point his wand at her when she left, and she didn't hear his parting comment. "An extrasensory girl and a Greeblypuff to go with her. Well, I suppose wonders never cease." His spell was to last until her next class, and she was given extra time to get to class. All the teachers had heard about her predicament from Dumbledore the other day, and he felt badly giving her this extra responsibility. But she knew that she was capable, and she was up to the challenge. 'She should be perfectly fine,' he thought.

'How did I ever get stuck doing a thing like this?' was more along the lines of what Lily was thinking at that point. She carried him (for it was a he, according to the Professor, the big ugly idiot) for awhile back up to the castle, she was to set to work right away, but after awhile her Greeblypuff started to hop, dancing around her feet, playful as an ocean breeze. She couldn't help but laugh. She scooped him up again and looked at him, "Now what am I going to name you?"

As she entered the castle she thought of a new name with every step up the stairs. There were lots of steps.

"Whitey"

"Happy"

"Funny"

"Cutsie-pie"

"Fuzzy"

"Hoppy"

"Flopsy"

"Mopsy"

She stopped on the stair and thought to herself, 'I might as well throw Cottontail in for all the luck I'm having. I'll just have to decide later.' And she certainly wasn't about to name her Greeblypuff one of those names. It would be degrading for the both of them. So she just continued quickly to the Library, getting only minimal resistance from the librarian. She seemed to have wanted to say something then stopped.

She sat herself down in one of the Library chairs and opened the huge volume the Professor had given her. Thankfully, he had made it simply trail behind her on her trudge back inside from Greenhouse 6, but if he was trying to compensate for sticking her with her little ball of fluff she wasn't about to buy it. As much as the little animal was cute he was still a nuisance. But she couldn't just leave him so with a heave she opened the first page to The Art of Greeblypuffing. The title made her cringe but she began to read, making it all the way through the introduction. The kept mentioning the Pink Flame but she didn't really understand it much, or really at all. The she decided that she might as well go to the Species section, for there were supposedly many different variations of the Greeblypuff.

Her Greeblypuff was supposedly of the species balduvet ordinarius, according to Professor Kettleburn, otherwise the most basic form of the Greeblypuff. She found her species listed with a picture next to the explanation and her little Greeblypuff went berserk bouncing all over the pages, thinking that they were all real. Lily just sighed and read.

Balduvet ordinarius is the most basic type of Greeblypuff. They require the least amount of attention from all other branches of the Greeblypuff family. They have long ears of the color of their mother and a white belly covered more sparsely than the fur on the rest of its body. Such is the fur that is required for handling the Pink Flame (read more on page 2,065). While weaning the mother may leave, a quality that applies to only one other species, but the young Greeble (the term used for a Greeblypuff not yet weaned) will become more dependent on the mother later on. This species of Greeblypuff is defined by its slightly longer ears, its tendency to be rounder in shape and its very pure white underbelly, as mentioned before.

Lily looked at the hyper ball of fluff that was prancing all over the Library table. It certainly wasn't that attached to her, at least not as much as the book made it seem like he should be. The ears weren't especially long either. Lily stared at the book again, 'Well, with a word like Greeblypuffing in the title,' she thought disdainfully, 'how can I count on it to be reliable at all?'

She did a bit more reading, flipping to the page where they talked about the Pink Flame that was mentioned. But she couldn't understand it all at because it kept referencing things from other places in the book. If she was going to understand it she was going to have to read the entire thing.

She didn't want to know about it that badly.

And so she continued her classes that day, becoming very amused when Professor Pravus tried to detain her pet. She handed over a signed note explaining the circumstances of her unusual tag-along. He got a little bug- eyed and Sirius gave her a large grin when she sat down. She found that she had become drastically behind in Potions, and the Professor took advantage of that by asking her questions she didn't know the answer to and then taking points from Gryffindor. It left her very upset at the end of the day and she left the classroom sorrowfully. 'I'm going to catch up if it kills me!' she thought determinedly. 'And then professor Pravus and that stupid boy Blake will have to eat their words.' Thinking of Blake again just fueled her more, 'I'll curse the pants off of him! I'll embarrass him the way he embarrassed me.'

And for the second time that day she sat herself down in front of a large book. She studied intensely that night, and the next, and the next. She started to surprise her teachers by answering so often in class and speaking up as often as she could. Sure, she might have acting a little bit like a know-it-all, but it also gave her more confidence than she had ever had before. People actually came to her to ask for help with their homework, and they didn't pretend not to know her afterwards. People had done that before, taken advantage of her. But it had turned out they really didn't like her at all.

Now, however, she had friends. She had become closer to her four roommates than she had ever been with her sister. They had no notions of popularity or unpopularity, and where Lily usually fell on the social step ladder. Aileene, Eleanor, Cara, Veronica, and Meagan and Lily had become their own little group, and Lily had never felt more a part of anything in her life. She had her friends to occupy her time, and even when strange things started to happen she paid less and less attention to them.

Sometimes, if she closed her eyes tightly or took a firm grip onto something she wouldn't notice these odd things. She stopped having a footstep blast in her ears, or a simple spell of 'Lumos' partially blind her, and most thankfully she wasn't smelling the bathroom that was inhabited by Moaning Myrtle, a very depressed and loud ghost, from five corridors away. She didn't even think that Filch, the custodian and all around rule enforcer ventured into that bathroom. Yes, being relieved of that horrible smell was something she was thankful for.

And she still continued to do better in her classes and to make more friends, though she still retained some of her old ways like reading constantly. Sometimes you could even catch her pulling at her hair and pushing at the bridge of her nose then see a look of realization dawn on her as she remembered that she no longer used glasses. And while some things about her refused to change other aspects of her personality bloomed. Never before had she been mischievous or daring, but they ended up showing themselves in full splendor. She finally did curse the pants off of Blake—literally. She had crept along with Eleanor and Veronica into Blake's dorm and had frozen him from behind then blindfolding him. They had then proceeded to steal his boxers, letting them wave in front of the Great Hall until McGonagall fussily took them down.

Lily was actually rather proud of herself for that (though she still managed to blush whenever anyone congratulated her), she had heard some Slytherin boys talking about it from around the corner, one asking the other for the password to the Common Room. And Lily had recruited her two friends to go on a hunt for revenge, for even though Lily hadn't told them the story from the train (she planned that she never would) they had been trained on the older students stories of 'the horrible Slytherins' and were glad to make fun of one of them.

Even more people knew who she was after that, though she was by no way extremely popular. And the weeks passed by, the first flakes of winter fell as the Christmas break approached, signaling an approaching return trip to the home that she had been attached to for so many years and was beginning to pull at her heart with a dull ache, much as she refused to accept that she wanted to go back. Because she really did love it at Hogwarts, she really did. It sounded sappy, but she thought of it as a dream. And every so often she had to take the time to just sit by the Common Room fire and read a book, taking in all that was around her, sitting and thinking, and finding it gratifying that people liked her for just being who she was—simply Lily.

* * *

Yay! How did you guys like that? Good, don't you think? It's by far he longest chapter that I have ever written for either of my two fics (check out Lily's Problems if you haven't already ;) I just wanted to thank you all for being so patient, and for all the reviews. Also, I have come up with a new posting system so that I can figure out how hard to work on this by the readers because that just makes more sense. Plus it tells me if people are actually liking the fics or not. (I was so happy with the reviews I got for the last chapter, 24! I love you guys!) Anyway, heres the deal:

65 reviews or three weeks. Whichever comes first, that's when I will post.

I am just going to try it and see how it works out. And keep in mind that I have exams in about three weeks so if it is one or two days late that will just have to be tolerated, I am very sorry :(

NOTES ON THIS FIC:

The Potions Professor has a rather interesting name, I used an online English-Latin dictionary so there might be some weird complications. This name might reveal something about his personality and his role in the future. Hmmm, I wonder what his middle name is?

And moving on to the Greeblypuff and its species name. Now I take French so I know that bal means ball. And I went looking through my French Dictionary and found that duvet had a rather interesting meaning. Could you guess? Well, it means fuzz, so it basically means fuzball ; ) Don't you think that's cute?

Well, that's it, now just on to the thanks. If you haven't been up to date on my other fic you wont have seen my change in policy in the reviews. I will only respond back to those who I think I should, because I am really pressed for time right about now. But, especially for this chapter I will

Arwen ~ You know me too well! You completely called it, about the glasses and her 'special senses' (which we haven't seen the last of, as I'm sure you can tell) Anyway, thanks for being such an AWESOME reviewer, and I cant wait for HP and the MW! (I know, I know, I'm lazy, but I felt like abbreviating it!)

Britz ~ YAY! Thanks so much for the reviews, the e-mails and everything. I LOVE getting them (especially because you are so nice!) I hope you are satisfied with this chapter after your request for having them longer, its 5,500+ words! Arent you proud, lol? Anyway, luv ya and much thanx!

Cquill13 ~ thanks for reviewing ALL my fics, even that weird English essay. *hugs for cquill* YAY! Anyway, this will be all seven years, maybe five or six chapters a year, but my first priority is Lily's Problems. I'm really sorry this took so long but I hope that you like it!

Parselmouth Majere ~ Did I get your name right? I hope so, anyway, I just was so happy at how you related to this fic. We all feel alone sometimes, I know. I'm glad that you liked it so much, and I hope this chapter is just as good!

Psycheme ~ I cant believe that you think Lily's character is *brilliant* Wow… I cant believe it, I hope that Lily's character change is just as believable, please tell me how to fix it if it isn't!

Stardust Firebolt ~ Thanks for the praise on the Sorting Song, I worked really hard on that and not many people seemed to even notice it ;( Lily in this story is not the same as in Lily's Problems, they are different and I already have most of this planned through her seventh year, though 5th and 6th are a little hazy. Thanks for the review!

Xaviera Xylira ~ Wow! Thanks so much for the great review, I really appreciate it, really I do! This fic will have more romance than my other fic because thankfully I have planned it that way and wont hae to change the plot like I did for Lily's Problems just to put in the teensiest bit! And I just checked out your fic and I feel like a horrible person for not reviewing which I should have done before this is posted. ARg, Im getting my times screwed up! Anyway, thanks for reviewing!

And to Angel, Lindsey, Kim, and Sarah, who I all e-mailed about the update, thanks for letting me clutter your inbox and thanks for reviewing the fic in the first place!

Well, that about does it. Remember, if you want it sooner you can just review!