Disclaimer: Everything you recognize in this fic belongs to JK Rowling. All the other characters that will eventually pop up belong to me, me, me!!!!
Summary: Lily Evans is as depressed as can be, mostly due to her evil sister, Petunia. That is, until the day the Hogwart's letter arrives. Could this be the end to her torments and the beginning of a wonderful life?
Author's Note: Hello everybody…just wanted to let you know that this is my FIRST FIC EVER!!!! It'll start out slow (no romance till later. sorry gals) So, don't be too hard on me. Hehe, just kidding. Tell me what you think. And don't be afraid to criticize me either. I'll need the help for future writing. Enjoy~*~DanniBannani
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Lily Marie Evans, a pretty red head with emerald eyes, sat at her kitchen table feeling miserable. Any other eleven year old would be out, playing in the sun on this bright summer's day, but then again any other eleven year old was not Lily Evans. Lily only had one reason to be feeling so sad and angry on such a day; her name was Petunia, Lily's sister.
In Lily's eyes Petunia was perfect, with her shiny brown hair and beautiful blue eyes, but Petunia was one to make a baby cry just by being in the same room. Of course, she was a beautiful child, but her inner-beauty was non-existent. At a first glance, Petunia's features were stunning, but soon after meeting her, her smile resembled more of a smirk and her eyes looked more angry than striking. But being the younger sister she was, Lily could not recognize the jealousy her sister held inside of her, jealousy for every other beautiful creature on earth, but mostly jealousy for her younger sister, whom her parents adored. It was at times Petunia's jealousy got the better of her that she took to making Lily share her pain. It was times like these Lily found herself sitting at the kitchen table, watching her cereal become soggy, wishing she were dead.
As Lily sat at the table, an occasional tear gliding down her pale cheeks, she noticed a light tapping on the window. She looked up and saw a large barn owl scraping its claw against the glass. 'How odd,' Lily thought, but still she approached the window and opened it, letting the owl inside. It was then she noticed the letter it was holding in its other claw. She hesitantly took the letter from the owl and opened the envelope that bore the Hogwart's seal. Out fell a piece of parchment with the following message written in small, precise letters:
Dear Miss Evans,
We are glad to inform you of your acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You will find a list of all the books and equipment needed for your appropriate classes below. We are aware that you are a Muggle born student and therefore feel it may be difficult for you to find Diagon Alley, the area in which you will find your supplies. We feel it would not be best to travel by the floo network, and therefore believe it will be necessary to send someone to take you to the alley through London by means of The Leaky Cauldron. Mr. Henry Potter will be arriving at your home around six o'clock in the morning on the 20th of August. If there are any questions or doubts, please don't hesitate to owl us. We hope to see you on September 1.
Yours sincerely,
Geraldine Smith,
Deputy Headmistress
Lily's eyes widened as they scanned over the paper in front of her. 'Witchcraft and Wizardry?' Lily thought, 'But how is that possible? There's no such thing, is there?' Her mind was filling with hopeful thoughts of finally escaping Petunia, making a new start where nobody knew who she was. Lily quickly rushed to find her mother, tripping over an unnoticed piece of candy from her birthday yesterday. She searched around the house yelling, "MOM! MOOOOOM! Where are you? C'mere, quick!"
"I'm up here, honey!" Patricia Evans yelled down the stairs.
Soon Lily was up the stairs and raced into her mother's bedroom, where Petunia was having her silky hair brushed by her mother.
"Mom! You have to read this! Look!" Lily shoved the letter into her mother's hand and watched anxiously as her mother's brows furrowed, then relaxed, then furrowed again.
"Lily, what is the meaning of this? Is this some kind of joke?"
"No mom! It's real, I promise. I was downstairs when this owl started tapping on the window, and then I opened it and—"
"Sounds like Lily is finally realizing the only way she can get her mother to realize her existence is to make up a bunch of LIES!" Petunia interrupted.
"Hush child," Patricia scolded. Petunia slouched down looking disturbed.
"---and, um…" Lily continued, realizing how unreal her story seemed, "well, I opened the letter, read it and came to you. So, what do you think?"
"I think we should tell your father about the letter, and see how he would feel about having a witch in the family," Lily's mother said smiling at her daughter's anxious expression.
Lily flung her arms around her mother's neck, "Oh! Really? Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you!"
" I always knew there was something special about you little flower."
When Lily's father heard about the news he was just as supportive of Lily as her mother. The only person who hated the prospect of Lily going to Hogwarts was Petunia. She only saw Hogwarts as another excuse for her parents to love Lily more. She hoped that the school turned out to be a complete joke and that Mr. Potter would never arrive at their house. This of course, didn't happen the way Petunia wanted it to.
As August 20th finally arrived the entire house was in a nervous state: Mr. and Mrs. Evans, along with Lily, were nervous about the letter turning out to be a mean joke; Petunia was nervous because she was afraid Henry Potter would arrive and her sister's dream would come true. Mrs. Potter was just scolding Petunia for teasing her sister when she heard a small pop coming from the living room. She carefully walked towards the room to find a tall man with messy dark brown hair and hazel eyes standing awkwardly by the couch. He looked up, smiled and took a step towards Mrs. Potter introducing himself, " Hi, my name is—"
"Henry Potter," Patricia interrupted. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Lily is waiting in the kitchen. Follow me."
Henry followed the small woman into the kitchen to find a pretty, young girl sitting in the chair looking anxiously towards him.
" Lily, this is Mr. Henry Potter," Patricia explained.
"Oh! Hi! It's a pleasure to meet you, sir." Lily said enthusiastically.
" Oh, you can call me Henry. Sir makes me feel too old."
"Ok. So, when can we go, Henry?"
"Lily, the man barely even got here; give him some time to breathe before you whisk him away!" Patricia directed towards Lily. She then turned to Henry, " I'm so sorry, sometimes her excitement gets the better of her."
"No, it's okay. My son does the same thing sometimes. In fact, he does it all the time! Speaking of my son, is it all right if he comes along with us to do some Hogwart's shopping? You see, I have a pretty busy schedule and I don't get to do anything like this very often with my son, so I was just thinking it might be convenient if he come along since he's starting his first year at Hogwarts and all, and he may bring along his best friend Sirius too, because they always do stuff together and--" Mr. Potter looked at the amused expressions on the Evans' faces "I'm babbling on, aren't I?" Lily honestly answered him, only to be scolded by her mother once again.
"Henry, it would be fine if they come along. I'm sure Lily wouldn't mind, right?"
"Oh, no sir, er, Henry. I think it would be nice to know somebody before I start at school. It may be helpful, since everybody else will have a head start on magic."
" Great! Well, we better be off. Diagon Alley is always crowded around this time of year. The earlier the better."
As soon as Lily and Henry had left the house, Henry became extremely fascinated at everything they passed. He'd point at something such as a mailbox and say something stupid like, "Oh, look it's one of those miniature owl boxes! How interesting!" or maybe even, "Oh wow! Look at that telephonabbie box! How amazing. It's really interesting how you Muggles work without magic!" By then, Lily had begun to understand that Muggles were non-magic people, and everything Muggles had did not exist in the Wizard world.
Somehow, Lily managed to get to The Leaky Cauldron without too many strange events to cover up, other than the occasional outbursts of Henry. When they went inside, Henry said his hellos to many people and Lily realized that Henry was a minister of some sort. Soon they were outside of an ice cream shop, Florean Fortiscue's, waiting for Henry's son and Sirius.
After about 10 minutes of waiting, two young boys came out of the crowd and started walking towards the table Lily and Henry were seated at. Lily immediately recognized Henry's son because of his tousled hair. However, unlike his father, his eyes resembled an ocean of pale blues and grays. The other boy, Sirius, had longish, brown hair and his joyful eyes were like deep pools of chocolate. As they approached, Lily heard the two boys conversing over a very strange topic.
"I definitely think the Cannons will win the cup this year! There's no chance they won't win. It's just not possible!" Henry's son said.
"I gotta agree with you on that one, bud. The Cannons definitely have some potential, especially now that they have Baker--" Sirius agreed.
"—and the new Cleansweeps! They've got to be the fastest brooms ever created. If only I could get my hands on one of those—oh, hello dad, and…err…"
"Lily," Lily informed.
"Yes, Lily. Sorry to be rude, but may I ask what you are doing here?"
"JAMES!" Henry yelled.
"What?" James inquired innocently.
"James, this is Lily Evans. She will be going to Hogwarts with you this upcoming year. She's Muggle born, so she may need some help learning the ropes of the wizarding world. Do you think you and Sirius could show her around a bit?"
"Sure Dad. No problem," James reluctantly said to the idea of having to be with a stupid Muggle girl all day long.
"Well, I think it would be wise to take her to Gringotts first. She'll need to exchange her money for our money, okay? Great. Well son. You know how to get into our vault, so I suggest you be off! I have some work to do at the Ministry, but I'll meet you here in about, let's see, 6 hours? Great. Well…you know the shops already too, so just find what you need and I'll see you in a while okay?"
Before James could answer, Henry Potter had melted into the crowd and headed off towards the Ministry.
"Hey you, with the messed up hair, yes you!" Lily said to James after he pointed at himself, "I know you don't wanna have to deal with me for a whole entire six hours, but I figure we may actually need to do some of this school shopping, that is, unless you wanna stand her staring after your father until he comes back. Oh, and by the way, what's your name?"
"Oh, right. Uh, my name's uh..umm…" James said in shock at the girl's boldness.
"His name's James, and I'm Sirius" Sirius answered. "You know you're pretty cool for a girl. Nobody ever shuts James up that quickly. You've got some serious potential."
"Thanks. Pleasure to meet the two of you. So, we need to go to Gringotts. I suspect it's some kind of bank, right?"
"Yeah," James said, seeming to have found his voice, "It's right over there. C'mon lets go."
James and Sirius moved swiftly through the crowd and Lily struggled to keep up, as she was finding herself thoroughly interested in the small shops carrying wizarding goods. She tore her eyes off the stores long enough to see a huge building in the distance, Gringotts.
They soon entered the bank, greeted by goblins at the doors. Lily walked with James and Sirius to the desk where they exchanged her Muggle money for Wizard money. Then Sirius and James got the keys to their vaults and were led to a door off the hall. Lily, of course, followed. They climbed into a small cart that led into the darkness. Soon, they were spinning deeper and deeper into the ground, getting queasier by the second. Suddenly the cart came to a halt and James got out. He quickly walked to his vault, opened the door, revealing a fortune, and hastily stuffed money into a sack. Lily was in shock at how much money James had, but figured his dad's job must be of some importance.
Next was Sirius's vault. Inside was still a large amount of money, but nothing at all compared to James's. Soon, the three found themselves climbing upwards in the cart towards the entrance. They quickly got out, happy they hadn't eaten any ice cream before the trip to the bank.
After Gringotts, everyone was ready to buy their supplies. They spent the next few hours getting their items: uniform from Madam Malkin's; books from Flourish and Blotts; potions ingredients from the Apothecary; wands from Ollivanders; and owls from Eeylops Owl Emporium.
They had finished all of their shopping with an hour to spare, so the boys found themselves outside of the broom shop, noses pressed against the window, admiring the new Cleansweeps. Lily stood behind them, wondering what was so important about broomsticks in the first place, watching the boys drooling over a piece of wood and straw.
Eventually, the boys gave up on the brooms and wandered back to Florean's. They bought themselves ice cream sundaes and relaxed in the sun enjoying the weather. It was at this time the boys began to discuss quidditch again. Noticing the lost expression on Lily's face, the boys didn't hesitate to explain the rules to her. She soon found herself understanding the big deal with the Cleansweeps, wishing she could see a game of quidditch, and wondering when she would finally get to fly.
Before she would have wished, it was time for Lily to go back to her house and tell her parents all about Diagon Alley, her glimpse at the wizarding world. Henry Potter returned to the ice cream parlor and Lily said her goodbyes to her new friends. She would see them again in about two weeks on the Hogwarts Express, the train that would be taking her to her new school where her life as a witch would begin.
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DanniBannani~
So, what did you think? Tell me by clicking on that little button down there, you know the one that says, SUBMIT REVIEW. It may help out a "writer in the making." PLEASE? ;-) Ok, Ok do whatever you want. * smooches *