Chapter 3
Dear Mum, Wow, it's only been a week since term started, and already so much has happened here, I don't think this parchment is long enough to tell it all! I'll try. =) You were right, Mum, the Magical World is incredible - I almost fainted when I saw that Hogwarts was a castle. Can you believe it, Mum? I'm living in a castle! Everyone here is really nice, and I've already gotten to know some of the teachers: Professor Binns (he's a ghost!) teaches Muggle History, Professor McGonagall teaches Transfiguration, Professor Jacobi teaches Potions..they're all very interesting! McGonnagall's the Head of Gryffindor House too - that's the House I'm in - and I share a dormitory with two other girls: Joyce and Margaret. I really hope we'll be friends. Oh, and not to worry, Mum, I'm not the only Muggle-Born this year! There's another one: his name is Severus--
"Lily? We're going down to breakfast. Coming?" Margaret called from the Gryffindor Common Room, and Lily looked up from her four-poster to catch her roommate's bellowing voice (Margaret took singing lessons). Lily set her parchment down, shouted back an "Okay!" and ran all around the room in her fluffy slippers to find pieces of her school uniform.
"Joyce?" Lily called.
"Yeah?" came another voice.
"I can't find my Gryffindor robes!"
"Oh no! Lily, I tried them on - thought they were mine - go look on my bed!" And so the little redhead dug into Joyce's monstrous pile of clothes, finally pulling out her wrinkled robes and throwing it over her back, running across the dormitory hall and down to the Gryffindor Common Room.
Joyce snickered.
"What?" Lily asked, and Joyce pointed to her feet. She was still wearing her lime-green slippers, and the little girl's face was starting to blush.
"Come on," Margaret urged, "Breakfast is almost over, Lily, no one'll notice."
"Oh...I don't know..maybe I'll just..." "Come ON!" Joyce and Margaret pulled Lily by an arm out of the Common Room before she could think twice, and the girls ran (and shuffled) towards the Great Hall to catch the last ten minutes of breakfast.
Filch, the Caretaker, must've scrubbed wax onto the marble floor during the night, because Lily had nearly slipped before making it to the Great Hall. Fortunately, the Hall was practically empty when the girls arrived, and they quickly found seats near the food table.
To save more embarrassment, Lily walked with her socks as she made line for the food, but the boy in front of her stepped on her foot by accident.
"Ouch!"
"Oh sorry! I'm so sorry!" squeaked Peter Pettigrew, and without even seeing who he stepped on, he scampered meekly over to his friends.
"Good God, Peter, she'll live." Lily heard another boy say rather sarcastically off in the distance, while she rubbed her foot with her other one. Before anyone could possibly notice her barefootedness, she grabbed a few muffins with juice and tried to make it to her table, with a slight limp.
"Hey, Black! Look what I found!"
And before she even took a seat, Lily's face flushed from color, seeing none other than James Potter waving one of her lime-green slippers as high as his arm could reach. He must have spotted them under the Gryffindor Table! Lily thought in a panic. The few people in the Great Hall were now beginning to turn their heads over at the stupid boy.
Sirius Black held his arms up further down the table, as if offering a catch, and James slung his hand back to toss.
"Give them here, James." Margaret reluctantly stood up next to Lily.
"Why?" James' eyes glinted through his round glasses. "Are they yours?"
The students around them looked straight at her then, with deep interest.
"No, they're.....someone else's," Margaret was feeling a blush herself.
"Well, Finders-Keepers!" James sang at her face.
Chuckles started along the rows of table, and all Lily wanted to do was limp out of the Great Hall.
"'Know what, Black?" James summoned again. "I think a yellow polka-dot color looks much better on me, don't you think?"
Black laughed, "Go ahead!"
James took out his wand from his robes, pointed it to the slipper on his hand, opened his mouth---
"Stop!" Lily's voice squeaked suddenly, as she recalled the slippers being a Christmas present, but the laughing didn't stop then. She just looked up at the slipper held, to avoid the James' deadly grin coming at her.
"Yours?" he asked smiling, having way too much fun to dull a moment.
The little girl's foot began to hurt even more.
"Yes," she mouthed.
"Where did you find shoes like these?" James asked. They hadn't come from Diagon Alley, he certainly knew that already.
"Th-they're not shoes," Lily admitted, and then a bit downhearted, "They're slippers--"
"For goodness SAKE, James, give them back to her!" Joyce then attempted from the other side of the table.
"But I've never seen slippers that fluffy before," the boy said with an edge of tease.
"My---my parents gave them to me," Lily spoke in monotone, praying no one could hear.
"Really? Do they shop in Muggle stores often?" James asked suspiciously. His voice seemed to get louder, especially with the word 'muggle'.
She wanted to lie. She wanted to pretend this little scenario was not happening. She wanted to find an excuse and make herself sound like she didn't know anything about a Muggle World until now, make it sound reasonable, and true.
But Lily's heart stopped there, and the emerald eyes nervously moved up to meet the boy's dark brown.
Her mum, her dad, even her sister...the most important people in her life...how could ever she think badly of them..as an embarrassment...when they hadn't done anything wrong?
"Give them back, Potter!" Margaret demanded, and attempted to snatch the one off his hand, but failed.
James only stared down at the little redhead, eagerly watching her face turn bright pink. Lily could hear Black laughing at the corner of her eye, which to her sounded more like a witch's cackle, and she could only imagine what was coming....James, that stupid, boy, he was going to call her something...something terrible...maybe that same word Malfoy had used---
"You'll have to CATCH me first!" James laughed, and Lily's mind whooshed back to reality, gasping as the boy took off in the opposite direction with both her slippers swinging on his hands.
And Margaret went after him in circles around the Great Hall, extremely fed up.
The little redhead just stood, flabbergasted.
She was almost sure James was going to spill the beans about her family - she could tell that he had figured out she was Muggle-born, by that black- maling look on his face. But why was he stalling? This didn't make any sense.
Lily thought Malfoy's evil looks in the hallways would have driven her to madness after that first week, but Sirius Black and James Potter seemed to be challenging that spot right on. All her life, she had never met people so....so....annoying! And extremely overbearing, to say the least.
Yesterday they had managed to put a charm on Margaret's brush so her hair would get frizzy when brushing, and the day before that they placed toad skins under Joyce's pillow!
Why in the world did the Sorting Hat put them into Gryffindor??? was what Lily wondered time and again, and this - when her Muggle-Born identity was just seconds away from forcefully being told - this was definitely taking it to a personal level. Margaret was panting as she went around the entire Hall for the seventh time, which told Lily this had gone far enough....
She started to pick up where Margeret left off, chasing James around the Gryffindor table as he passed it again, her limp quickly disappearing.
"Hmm...let's see....yellow polka-dot? Or perhaps red and gold stripes...." was all James could say as he passed Sirius again, who was almost falling off his seat from laughing so hard. Pettigrew was hiding behind Blake Dawgins, the only Prefect in the room, but he also seemed too amused to stop an entertainment before class.
"Over here, James!"
"Lily, get him!"
"Potter, you big prude---"
The little redhead heard people call on them as they went around the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables like a Figure-8, and that's when James decided to run out the Great Hall doors to see if Lily followed.
She did, exhausted.
"J---J---" Lily jogged with her socks, while the boy was very much ahead with his shoes.
"James-Potter----I'll-KILL you----"
"Ms. EVANS!"
Lily squeaked, almost slipping to the ground as she heard her name.
A strong, clear voice that could only be of Professor McGonagall, broke her train of thought. The woman appeared from the room Lily had just passed in the hallway, and the girl caught her breath before she said anything.
"Oh! Professor, I--I didn't mean---"
"There's no need to run in the corridors, Ms. Evans," the woman said to her firmly. "And mind your mouth."
Lily blushed, feeling tons and tons of guilt on her shoulders.
"But I didn't mean it, Professor, honestly," she said, gripping her hands to ease the anger she felt with Potter.
"What aren't you wearing any shoes?" McGonagall asked rather skeptically.
At that question, the girl looked down at her feet, totally unprepared.
"Um...I..you see..." her eyes glanced ahead at the corridor to try and spot James somewhere.
" Well, wherever they must be, put them on at once! Goodness, you'll fall and hurt yourself."
"Yes, Professor," Lily nodded.
"Alright, then. I'll see you this afternoon," and with a sharp turn of her heel, Professor McGonagall walked down the corridor Lily had come from.
Lily exhaled, as if she'd been holding her breath for a minute. The hallway was suddenly very quiet, and she looked ahead helplessly.
She did notice James' small figure, waving her slippers on one hand, and then taking off further down in the hallway.
Extremely put out, Lily walked towards the Gryffindor Commons to get ready for class. All she could think about was how to snatch those slippers from Potter's grip the next time she saw him. If it takes a 'manosimente' spell to get them back, she thought, I'll most definitely do it. Those slippers were worth more than all of Black and Potters' jokes put together, she thought, opening the door that led into the girl's dormitories... and if they did ANYTHING to them...one tiny polka dot.... she'd go straight to Dumbledore and ask him to transfer them to another school immediately.....
"Did you get them?"
"What?" Lily asked as she walked into the dormitory.
"Your slippers." Margaret spoke again. "Did you get them?"
"Oh. No, I didn't," Lily said, and Margaret growled in frustration.
"God, that stupid Potter....here, I brought you a muffin." Joyce held out her hand.
"Thanks," Lily received the muffin, and stuffed it into her robe pocket for later, as her appetite was gone.
"Man, " Joyce threw her arms wildly, "Can you BELIEVE he almost told everyone that you're...well....you know?"
"Honestly Lily, if I were you, I'd kill him." Margaret started making her bed neatly.
"And he almost got me into trouble!" Lily went over to her fourposter to make her own bed. "McGonagall....oh I really hope she doesn't think badly of me..."
"Quit worrying. She won't!" Joyce said as she rummaged through her pile of clothes.
"Really, Lily, you're such the sweetheart, and trust me, if that Potter ever tells anybody about....you know...I'll kill him." Margaret gave her firm face of determination, and Lily laughed, which made her feel much better.
"Thanks, but, I don't...know...is it really bad to say that you're Muggle- Born?"
"Some people think it's strange," Margaret said moderately, "and the Wisps - there's no telling what they might do."
"Oh but they've got it on them!" Joyce's face propped out of the pile. "Didn't you hear?"
"What?" Margaret asked.
"SLYTHERIN's got a Muggle-Born too!"
"WHAT?? You're joking!" Margaret sat flatly on her cushion with disbelief, and Lily pretended not to hear.
"No! His name's Snape. Felix heard him talking about going to some concert a few years ago - what was it again --- the Biddles...Battles...."
"The BEATLES!?" Lily couldn't resist, and Joyce looked at her oddly. "You know them?"
"Yes!" but then Lily softened "I mean....well, not personally."
"What do they play?" Margaret asked full of interest.
"Um, mostly Rock and Roll."
"Rocks are instruments in the Muggle World??" Joyce's eyes lit up in amusement.
"No no! Just....electric guitars....that sort of thing."
"Oh that's right - Muggles use ee-lectricity!"
"Wow, Lily, you must really miss home now that you're here," Margaret remarked as she packed her Charms books into her bag.
"I guess.....but if there's a Muggle-Born in Slytherin, does that mean the Wisps won't.....tease me?"
"Beats me, who can possibly know how Malfoy thinks? Just ignore him, Lily, that's all I can say."
"I try, but I always get goosebumps when he's looking at me. I keep thinking he might.well.put me on fire, or something."
"Nonsense!" Joyce remarked as she finally found her hair pin, "but most people are scared of him anyway, if that makes you feel better."
"Hmm....do you know if there are other Muggle-Borns this year?" Lily then asked, after some thinking.
"I'm not sure, but I'll keep my ears open, if you want."
"Thanks, Joyce."
"That's the first bell!" Margaret noted to them. "We better go."
While the girls scrambled out their dormitory, down the Common Room stairs, and out the portrait hole, they had failed to see a boy, with a grin widespread onto his face, unwrap an arm from his Invisibility Cloak and place a pair of fluffy lime-green slippers at the foot of the girls' door.
Dear Mum, Wow, it's only been a week since term started, and already so much has happened here, I don't think this parchment is long enough to tell it all! I'll try. =) You were right, Mum, the Magical World is incredible - I almost fainted when I saw that Hogwarts was a castle. Can you believe it, Mum? I'm living in a castle! Everyone here is really nice, and I've already gotten to know some of the teachers: Professor Binns (he's a ghost!) teaches Muggle History, Professor McGonagall teaches Transfiguration, Professor Jacobi teaches Potions..they're all very interesting! McGonnagall's the Head of Gryffindor House too - that's the House I'm in - and I share a dormitory with two other girls: Joyce and Margaret. I really hope we'll be friends. Oh, and not to worry, Mum, I'm not the only Muggle-Born this year! There's another one: his name is Severus--
"Lily? We're going down to breakfast. Coming?" Margaret called from the Gryffindor Common Room, and Lily looked up from her four-poster to catch her roommate's bellowing voice (Margaret took singing lessons). Lily set her parchment down, shouted back an "Okay!" and ran all around the room in her fluffy slippers to find pieces of her school uniform.
"Joyce?" Lily called.
"Yeah?" came another voice.
"I can't find my Gryffindor robes!"
"Oh no! Lily, I tried them on - thought they were mine - go look on my bed!" And so the little redhead dug into Joyce's monstrous pile of clothes, finally pulling out her wrinkled robes and throwing it over her back, running across the dormitory hall and down to the Gryffindor Common Room.
Joyce snickered.
"What?" Lily asked, and Joyce pointed to her feet. She was still wearing her lime-green slippers, and the little girl's face was starting to blush.
"Come on," Margaret urged, "Breakfast is almost over, Lily, no one'll notice."
"Oh...I don't know..maybe I'll just..." "Come ON!" Joyce and Margaret pulled Lily by an arm out of the Common Room before she could think twice, and the girls ran (and shuffled) towards the Great Hall to catch the last ten minutes of breakfast.
Filch, the Caretaker, must've scrubbed wax onto the marble floor during the night, because Lily had nearly slipped before making it to the Great Hall. Fortunately, the Hall was practically empty when the girls arrived, and they quickly found seats near the food table.
To save more embarrassment, Lily walked with her socks as she made line for the food, but the boy in front of her stepped on her foot by accident.
"Ouch!"
"Oh sorry! I'm so sorry!" squeaked Peter Pettigrew, and without even seeing who he stepped on, he scampered meekly over to his friends.
"Good God, Peter, she'll live." Lily heard another boy say rather sarcastically off in the distance, while she rubbed her foot with her other one. Before anyone could possibly notice her barefootedness, she grabbed a few muffins with juice and tried to make it to her table, with a slight limp.
"Hey, Black! Look what I found!"
And before she even took a seat, Lily's face flushed from color, seeing none other than James Potter waving one of her lime-green slippers as high as his arm could reach. He must have spotted them under the Gryffindor Table! Lily thought in a panic. The few people in the Great Hall were now beginning to turn their heads over at the stupid boy.
Sirius Black held his arms up further down the table, as if offering a catch, and James slung his hand back to toss.
"Give them here, James." Margaret reluctantly stood up next to Lily.
"Why?" James' eyes glinted through his round glasses. "Are they yours?"
The students around them looked straight at her then, with deep interest.
"No, they're.....someone else's," Margaret was feeling a blush herself.
"Well, Finders-Keepers!" James sang at her face.
Chuckles started along the rows of table, and all Lily wanted to do was limp out of the Great Hall.
"'Know what, Black?" James summoned again. "I think a yellow polka-dot color looks much better on me, don't you think?"
Black laughed, "Go ahead!"
James took out his wand from his robes, pointed it to the slipper on his hand, opened his mouth---
"Stop!" Lily's voice squeaked suddenly, as she recalled the slippers being a Christmas present, but the laughing didn't stop then. She just looked up at the slipper held, to avoid the James' deadly grin coming at her.
"Yours?" he asked smiling, having way too much fun to dull a moment.
The little girl's foot began to hurt even more.
"Yes," she mouthed.
"Where did you find shoes like these?" James asked. They hadn't come from Diagon Alley, he certainly knew that already.
"Th-they're not shoes," Lily admitted, and then a bit downhearted, "They're slippers--"
"For goodness SAKE, James, give them back to her!" Joyce then attempted from the other side of the table.
"But I've never seen slippers that fluffy before," the boy said with an edge of tease.
"My---my parents gave them to me," Lily spoke in monotone, praying no one could hear.
"Really? Do they shop in Muggle stores often?" James asked suspiciously. His voice seemed to get louder, especially with the word 'muggle'.
She wanted to lie. She wanted to pretend this little scenario was not happening. She wanted to find an excuse and make herself sound like she didn't know anything about a Muggle World until now, make it sound reasonable, and true.
But Lily's heart stopped there, and the emerald eyes nervously moved up to meet the boy's dark brown.
Her mum, her dad, even her sister...the most important people in her life...how could ever she think badly of them..as an embarrassment...when they hadn't done anything wrong?
"Give them back, Potter!" Margaret demanded, and attempted to snatch the one off his hand, but failed.
James only stared down at the little redhead, eagerly watching her face turn bright pink. Lily could hear Black laughing at the corner of her eye, which to her sounded more like a witch's cackle, and she could only imagine what was coming....James, that stupid, boy, he was going to call her something...something terrible...maybe that same word Malfoy had used---
"You'll have to CATCH me first!" James laughed, and Lily's mind whooshed back to reality, gasping as the boy took off in the opposite direction with both her slippers swinging on his hands.
And Margaret went after him in circles around the Great Hall, extremely fed up.
The little redhead just stood, flabbergasted.
She was almost sure James was going to spill the beans about her family - she could tell that he had figured out she was Muggle-born, by that black- maling look on his face. But why was he stalling? This didn't make any sense.
Lily thought Malfoy's evil looks in the hallways would have driven her to madness after that first week, but Sirius Black and James Potter seemed to be challenging that spot right on. All her life, she had never met people so....so....annoying! And extremely overbearing, to say the least.
Yesterday they had managed to put a charm on Margaret's brush so her hair would get frizzy when brushing, and the day before that they placed toad skins under Joyce's pillow!
Why in the world did the Sorting Hat put them into Gryffindor??? was what Lily wondered time and again, and this - when her Muggle-Born identity was just seconds away from forcefully being told - this was definitely taking it to a personal level. Margaret was panting as she went around the entire Hall for the seventh time, which told Lily this had gone far enough....
She started to pick up where Margeret left off, chasing James around the Gryffindor table as he passed it again, her limp quickly disappearing.
"Hmm...let's see....yellow polka-dot? Or perhaps red and gold stripes...." was all James could say as he passed Sirius again, who was almost falling off his seat from laughing so hard. Pettigrew was hiding behind Blake Dawgins, the only Prefect in the room, but he also seemed too amused to stop an entertainment before class.
"Over here, James!"
"Lily, get him!"
"Potter, you big prude---"
The little redhead heard people call on them as they went around the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables like a Figure-8, and that's when James decided to run out the Great Hall doors to see if Lily followed.
She did, exhausted.
"J---J---" Lily jogged with her socks, while the boy was very much ahead with his shoes.
"James-Potter----I'll-KILL you----"
"Ms. EVANS!"
Lily squeaked, almost slipping to the ground as she heard her name.
A strong, clear voice that could only be of Professor McGonagall, broke her train of thought. The woman appeared from the room Lily had just passed in the hallway, and the girl caught her breath before she said anything.
"Oh! Professor, I--I didn't mean---"
"There's no need to run in the corridors, Ms. Evans," the woman said to her firmly. "And mind your mouth."
Lily blushed, feeling tons and tons of guilt on her shoulders.
"But I didn't mean it, Professor, honestly," she said, gripping her hands to ease the anger she felt with Potter.
"What aren't you wearing any shoes?" McGonagall asked rather skeptically.
At that question, the girl looked down at her feet, totally unprepared.
"Um...I..you see..." her eyes glanced ahead at the corridor to try and spot James somewhere.
" Well, wherever they must be, put them on at once! Goodness, you'll fall and hurt yourself."
"Yes, Professor," Lily nodded.
"Alright, then. I'll see you this afternoon," and with a sharp turn of her heel, Professor McGonagall walked down the corridor Lily had come from.
Lily exhaled, as if she'd been holding her breath for a minute. The hallway was suddenly very quiet, and she looked ahead helplessly.
She did notice James' small figure, waving her slippers on one hand, and then taking off further down in the hallway.
Extremely put out, Lily walked towards the Gryffindor Commons to get ready for class. All she could think about was how to snatch those slippers from Potter's grip the next time she saw him. If it takes a 'manosimente' spell to get them back, she thought, I'll most definitely do it. Those slippers were worth more than all of Black and Potters' jokes put together, she thought, opening the door that led into the girl's dormitories... and if they did ANYTHING to them...one tiny polka dot.... she'd go straight to Dumbledore and ask him to transfer them to another school immediately.....
"Did you get them?"
"What?" Lily asked as she walked into the dormitory.
"Your slippers." Margaret spoke again. "Did you get them?"
"Oh. No, I didn't," Lily said, and Margaret growled in frustration.
"God, that stupid Potter....here, I brought you a muffin." Joyce held out her hand.
"Thanks," Lily received the muffin, and stuffed it into her robe pocket for later, as her appetite was gone.
"Man, " Joyce threw her arms wildly, "Can you BELIEVE he almost told everyone that you're...well....you know?"
"Honestly Lily, if I were you, I'd kill him." Margaret started making her bed neatly.
"And he almost got me into trouble!" Lily went over to her fourposter to make her own bed. "McGonagall....oh I really hope she doesn't think badly of me..."
"Quit worrying. She won't!" Joyce said as she rummaged through her pile of clothes.
"Really, Lily, you're such the sweetheart, and trust me, if that Potter ever tells anybody about....you know...I'll kill him." Margaret gave her firm face of determination, and Lily laughed, which made her feel much better.
"Thanks, but, I don't...know...is it really bad to say that you're Muggle- Born?"
"Some people think it's strange," Margaret said moderately, "and the Wisps - there's no telling what they might do."
"Oh but they've got it on them!" Joyce's face propped out of the pile. "Didn't you hear?"
"What?" Margaret asked.
"SLYTHERIN's got a Muggle-Born too!"
"WHAT?? You're joking!" Margaret sat flatly on her cushion with disbelief, and Lily pretended not to hear.
"No! His name's Snape. Felix heard him talking about going to some concert a few years ago - what was it again --- the Biddles...Battles...."
"The BEATLES!?" Lily couldn't resist, and Joyce looked at her oddly. "You know them?"
"Yes!" but then Lily softened "I mean....well, not personally."
"What do they play?" Margaret asked full of interest.
"Um, mostly Rock and Roll."
"Rocks are instruments in the Muggle World??" Joyce's eyes lit up in amusement.
"No no! Just....electric guitars....that sort of thing."
"Oh that's right - Muggles use ee-lectricity!"
"Wow, Lily, you must really miss home now that you're here," Margaret remarked as she packed her Charms books into her bag.
"I guess.....but if there's a Muggle-Born in Slytherin, does that mean the Wisps won't.....tease me?"
"Beats me, who can possibly know how Malfoy thinks? Just ignore him, Lily, that's all I can say."
"I try, but I always get goosebumps when he's looking at me. I keep thinking he might.well.put me on fire, or something."
"Nonsense!" Joyce remarked as she finally found her hair pin, "but most people are scared of him anyway, if that makes you feel better."
"Hmm....do you know if there are other Muggle-Borns this year?" Lily then asked, after some thinking.
"I'm not sure, but I'll keep my ears open, if you want."
"Thanks, Joyce."
"That's the first bell!" Margaret noted to them. "We better go."
While the girls scrambled out their dormitory, down the Common Room stairs, and out the portrait hole, they had failed to see a boy, with a grin widespread onto his face, unwrap an arm from his Invisibility Cloak and place a pair of fluffy lime-green slippers at the foot of the girls' door.