Disclaimer: see chapter 1. A/N: Hmm, fanfiction.net's doing something funny, it says I have 1 chapter but I guess I have two of the same. This is my first fanfic so I'm not really familiar with the way things go around here, ran into a tad bit of trouble when I realized I'd forgot the disclaimer and to add spaces between the paragraphs, which is kind for the reader's eyes, I think. Advice is nice in the reviews (if any)!

He was squeezing her hand much too tight, she decided, and frowned at Thomas. She was startled to see that it was her father's face, not Thomas', looking down upon her with a softened yet neutral expression. Lily was about to say something to him, but instead heard a voice.

"Lily's still asleep. Maybe we can take it without her noticing. Are you sure we should be doing this?"

"Shh, not so loud, Shawna, you'll wake her up, and you know how annoyed she-"

"What are you taking from me?" Lily asked into her pillow in a slightly slurred tone.

"See what you did?" Shawna Gerardi scolded her friend, Heather. Heather McDonnell, the girl who first befriended Lily in their first year, yanked back the silk curtains around Lily's bed.

"Morning," she said briskly. "Are you awake enough to hit us?"

Lily groaned. "Probably."

"Darn. Put it back, then, Shawna." Shawna returned Lily's invisibility cloak to Lily's trunk. Lily cracked open her eyes, and immediately leaped out of bed.

"What are you doing?" she shrieked loudly and frantically, snatching the cloak from Shawna's hands. She glared at them worriedly and furiously. How could they? How could they take her father's cloak and expect her to not be furious with them? "Didn't I tell you how important this cloak was to me? How could you take it from me? Look, you guys, maybe you don't get it-"

"Sorry, Lily, sorry, we weren't thinking," Heather apologized quickly. "We're so sorry, I feel so bad now, I-"

Lily shrugged and frowned at her after locking her trunk and slipping the key back onto the chain around her neck. "It's okay," she said finally, if only just to shut her friend up. Heather had a way of rambling aimlessly.

As they made their way through the common room and down to the breakfast hall, several people waved or called their greetings. Not only had Lily proven herself to be separate from her father's failings, but she had also shown herself to be a likable person. She had her friends to thank for quashing any insults or nasty rumors pertaining to her family whispered behind her back.

Lily buttered a piece of toast for herself and sprinkled cinnamon over it, then sugar. She had taken her first sweet, spiced bite of her breakfast ritual when a dark brown dropped a note onto her plate, narrowly missing the pitcher of orange juice.

"Get a new owl, Lily?" inquired another Gryffindor, Matilda Brown.

"No," Lily replied, puzzled. She unfolded the note to reveal large block letters spelling out a warning.

"Don't moan about secrets," she read aloud, then snorted. "Stupid prank letter. Honestly, some people."

Shawna raised her thinly-plucked eyebrow and took a small sip of her cranberry juice. "What do you think it means?"

Heather rolled her eyes. "Maybe it's like a warning. Are you keeping secrets from us? Maybe it was delivered to the wrong person. It was a different owl than usual, unless yours molted funny or flew into a bucket of brown paint. It probably means nothing, you know, just trying to scare you, most likely-"

The only thing that stopped Heather's early morning commentary was a bite of her bagel, which was actually mostly cream cheese with a sliver of bagel. And she wondered why she wasn't as thin as Shawna, who only ate half a piece of dry toast every morning.

Lily chewed her lip and slipped the note into her bag, planning to ponder it later over lunch or in the common room after classes. She peeked at her watch, a Muggle digital one given to her on her thirteenth birthday by Mr. Weasley's father, who treated her as a granddaughter.

"I think it's real," Heather declared after swallowing another mouthful of cream cheese. "I'll bet a Death Eater sent it to you." Her words attracted a few gazes from the surrounding students. "Or someone with a very sick mind."

Lily cleared her throat. "What's in the Daily Prophet today?" she asked Matilda.

"Two Death Eaters captured, Cho Chang - that auror, you know? - was awarded the Order of Dumbledore, high honor, that one - oh, no, look at these horrible pictures. 'Beauxbatons Academy of Magic is now a battleground between followers of You-Know-Who and the old headmistress and various witches and wizards', looks like the other side's winning."

Matilda's voice echoed into silence and Lily's visual perception blurred momentarily. She sucked in her breath and all other thoughts completely left her mind. Thomas was looking her way, and he hadn't turned away yet! Should she? No, she would look away when he did. She saw his eyebrow raise slightly, and she felt the corners of her mouth turn up involuntarily. Her heart skipped about a dozen beats as she gazed at his handsome face. He was still looking at her.

"Lily?" Heather's voice cut in and Lily unwillingly looked away, disappointed. Her shoulders hunched unconsciously.

"What?"

"You okay?"

"I'm fine." She heaved her bag over her shoulder. "Come one, we'll be late for History of Magic, which isn't exactly a bad thing, but we'll probably lose points." She left the breakfast table feeling slightly giddy inside. He knows I exist! Was he really staring at me? Maybe he was staring at somebody behind me, or at Shawna; plenty of guys stare at Shawna for heaven's sake. But he looked as though he were looking at me. Oh, those deep brown eyes. Not like his father's. No, his father is so pale and cold looking compared to him. She was once again lost in her thoughts until she realized she was trying to open the door to a janitor's closet. She shook herself mentally and went to the next one over, finding herself to be the first student to arrive for History of Magic. Professor Binns greeted her with a nod and rearranged his notes while Lily sat in the very back of the classroom and prepared herself for an hour-long nap.

The rest of the class slowly filed in, and Heather and Shawna sat on either side of Lily. Heather was grinning madly about something, but Lily reasoned it was something stupid, like somebody tripping in the halls. Heather got out her supplies for note-taking as usual (the rest of the fifth-year Gryffindors usually copied off her for tests; she was Professor Granger's favorite student, probably because her study habits resembled those of a younger Professor Granger's). She immediately scribbled something on a bit of scented parchment and slipped it into Lily's hand under the desk. Lily glanced down and gasped.

"Thomas asked me out!" Heather had written in curly, capital letters. She dotted the exclamation point with a heart.

So that's why he was staring over there, Lily thought sadly. He was staring at Heather. He wanted to ask her out. It was stupid to think he was gazing lovingly at me. She suddenly cringed. She had smiled like an idiot at him! Now he's just going to think of me as the clueless girl with the too-big smile, she lamented. She wrote "Congrats" on the scrap of parchment and sadly passed it back, pasting a phony grin on her face. She was never good at false faces, but Heather didn't notice in her euphoria.

"I'm so lucky!" she saw Heather writing. "He's such a hottie!" More hearts for exclamation points. Lily felt sadder. All that hard work, studying him, getting to know him. She felt a bubble of anger in her gut. She knew him even better than Heather did! The bubble burst and all that was left was a small air pocket of remorse. But she never took the initiative to tell him, or at least to flirt with him like normal girls did. She vowed to quit secretly watching him and focus on something with substance, like schoolwork.

This thought brought her back to attention. She might as well start now, she figured, so she took out some parchment and a quill. Her friends gaped at her, and she shrugged half-heartedly in reply and began to make a list of important goblins who had done some very important things in the battles of the 250's. She sighed. They'd been studying the stupid goblin wars since their second year.