Disclaimer: I own nothing, JK owns everything. I am just the poor, lowlife writer who makes no money off of what she does and sadly, only the plot is mine (although I owe the idea to Tamora Pierce). I wish I owned Harry, though, or at least borrowed him for a night or two………evil gleam

The Unknown Warrior

Chapter 3: Departure and Diagon Alley

It took about a week for Lily's parents to get used to the idea of her being a witch. After Albus Dumbledore had explained the whole thing to them including the school and the entire wizarding world, they were overjoyed with happiness.

The only disappointment they suffered was when Albus Dumbledore told them of the drastic measures they were going to have to take in order for Lily to attend Hogwarts. They reluctantly gave consent only after Dumbledore gave an extensive speech on the necessity for her safety. He didn't mention, however, that it was for their own safety as well.

Petunia had looked at them like they were mad. "Lily? A boy? How could you agree to such a thing! I will be the laughingstock of my entire school! Not to mention the fact that Lily is enough of a freak already!" she exclaimed, stomping her foot down on the ground.

"Petunia! For the love of God control yourself! You must remember that this is a secret, and no one can find out about this. Understood?" demanded her mother in exasperation.

"Like I would tell anyone about my freak of a sister! I would be ruined!" cried Petunia, glaring at her mother and stomping up the stairs loudly as if making sure that everyone in the house clearly heard every step.

"I'm sorry about that, er, interruption Mr. Dumbledore," said Mr. Evans calmly, folding his newspaper neatly and setting it on the cherry coffee table.

Albus Dumbledore took the criticism well, not saying much to or about Petunia. He just sat there smiling seriously with that trademark twinkle in his blue eyes.

"Er, what will need to be done before Lily goes off to school in September?" Mr. Evans wanted to know.

"Oh yes, thank you for reminding me, Mr. Evans," said Dumbledore kindly. "Lily will need to make her transformation before we take her to Diagon Alley to get her school things on that list. There is only one place near here to get that, and that place is Diagon Alley."

"Transformation? So we need to make her into a boy, right? Oh my, that would involve a trip to the barber's, and new clothes, and practice acting like a boy………" Mrs. Evans drifted off when she saw her husband laughing silently at her. "What?" she demanded, eyes narrowing.

"Oh, nothing……….it's just I think that Lily can manage with a pair of new clothes and a haircut. I don't think she needs male etiquette practice," said Mr. Evans, his laughter fading to forced seriousness when he saw the look on Mrs. Evans' face.

"Well, fine. No lessons then. You'll be sorry when she's at school, though………" The conversation progressed like this, Mrs. Evans with her obsessive worrying habits and Mr. Evans with his mock seriousness. All Lily could do was giggle at the sight of her parents' exchange.

Finally after a few minutes of this Albus Dumbledore cleared his throat and rose. "I apologize for my interruption, but I must get going. Your tea was excellent, Mrs. Evans. The best I've had since Abigail Figg treated me to some a few years back, and I pride myself in being both an avid tea drinker and sock collector." Mrs. Evans blushed with pride at this complement, but at the same time looked confused at the sock comment. She chose wisely, however, not to say anything. Dumbledore continued, "Rubeus Hagrid, my entrusted groundskeeper at Hogwarts will be by to collect Lily on July 31 to take her to Diagon Alley and then a room at the Leakey Cauldron. She has a lot to learn about our world, and we are hoping that Hagrid can enlighten her sufficiently. Oh, and your new identity will be that of the boy Liam Weasley. The Weasley's are extraordinarily nice people, and you will meet them once you get to Diagon Alley. With that in tow, Lily, I wish you a happy haircutting and a happy eleventh birthday. Ten days, if I'm not mistaken?"

Lily nodded slightly, smiling with a pleased, "Thanks", and Albus Dumbledore walked out the door and into the dusk with the swish of his cloak, seemingly disappearing into thin air. Lily shook her head to clear what must be faulty eyes and closed the door behind him.

The next day found Lily outside sitting on stone bench in front of her house, usually a place where she sat and read from one of her many books. But today, a few tourists walked by with their cameras, and snapped a few pictures of a Real Live British Girl Reading on a Stone Bench. Lily glared at them, and at the tour guide, but she was used to it. Her town, Naunton, was in the Cotswolds of England where all the old-fashioned stone houses were in the country. People (usually annoying Americans) took tour buses through each town for the day, walked through the downtown area and bought postcards to send back to their families. Living right outside the town, some tour guides took tourists down her street to look at the Quaint Little Houses. The people all trooped by, some pointing at her, and she sighed and stood up, walking up the short cobblestone path and straight into her house.

Petunia was sitting in the living room with one of her friends, a bowl of popcorn in hand. She walked into the room, and took a seat in one of the red-fabric chairs, asking, "what are you watching?".

Silence followed her question.

"I said, what are you watching?" she repeated.

Her friend, Sophie Saxton, tucked a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear, turned to Lily and said in a scathing voice, "She's not talking to you."

Lily looked at her sister, "I see. And when did this start?"

Her sister kept her eyes glued to the TV. "Bye now, Lily. Have fun at freak school."

Sophie turned to her, "I thought she was just going to boarding school?"

"Oh, yeah…" Petunia stumbled, "Well, any boarding school she goes to is a freak school." And then they laughed together, laughing at Lily's expense like they always do.

You just wait, thought Lily. Just wait until I'm a witch, and then we'll see who's laughing at who. Lily sat up, surprised at her own thoughts. She didn't know how much she disliked her sister until today. Before, Petunia had always just pretended Lily wasn't there, but lately she spent every waking moment insulting, laughing at and making fun of Lily. She especially enjoyed doing this in front of other people. Apparently the revelation that Lily was a witch only caused Petunia to treat Lily even worse. Lily sat back into the chair, determined to not let Petunia know how much her words had bothered her by leaving.

Lily and her friends were those girls people always stare at in the street because they look like they're trying to be much older than they are. They always wore their designer and faux-designer clothing, wore make-up and generally…strutted around like they owned the world. Despite Petunia's only being two years older than Lily, she acted as if she weren't thirteen, but more like sixteen. Sophie was the real popular girl in their school, having every boys in school wrapped around her finger, but Petunia followed close behind by being her best friend. Sophie was mainly the most popular girl because she was absolutely gorgeous, with her wavy blonde hair, tanned skin and icy blue eyes. She, unlike Petunia, had matured early and did actually look like she could be sixteen. Petunia, while being pretty, was nothing like Sophie and still looked thirteen. Lily figured she tried to make up for her lack of maturity by acting icy towards everyone around her. She glanced away from American Grafitti to look at her sister, who was eating only one piece of popcorn a minute to maintain her "figure", something she had recently started with Sophie. Lily, who was usually the one to grab the popcorn and hog it, couldn't understand Petunia's body issues, but never said anything to her.

"Lily, honey," her mother's voice floated in from the other room "is that you walking in the door? Could you come and talk to me for a second?"

"Coming, Mum" she called back, getting up from the chair and ignoring the annoyed look her sister had thrown her.

I guess this is how it's going to be between me and her from now on Lily thought, and to her surprise, she was actually saddened a little by it. And with that, she walked away from her sister and into the kitchen.

The days rolled on by, and July 31 approached and arrived before anyone even knew it.

Lily woke up that morning to a loud bang on her front door. She sat up straight in bed, glancing at her wall calendar and fingering her short hair. Today was the day! She bolted out of her bed, threw her new boys' clothes on and threw herself down the stairs to the front door. With a grin she pulled it open to reveal the biggest man she had ever seen. Her mouth dropped wide open and she just stood there, staring.

Rubeus Hagrid didn't seem to notice this odd behavior. His mouth broke into a smile when he saw her and he leaned down and said to her, "Well, yeh must be little Lily Evans!" his voice dropped to a whisper, "Or should I say Liam Weasley? Don't worry, yeh're secrets safe with me," he said grinning. "On'y me an' Dumbledore know yer secret, and we'll make sure it stays tha'way. Great man, Dumbledore t' entrust me with somethin' like this."

Lily just stood there, staring at his massive form. Finally Hagrid looked at her and saw her stare. "Hey, yeh alrigh' there Lily? Lily?" he wondered, waving a hand in front of her eyes. That definitely pulled her out of her trance and she blinked in embarrassment.

"Oh, sorry. Come in, please," Lily said to him politely, sidestepping out of the doorway. Hagrid ducked through the doorframe and stepped one huge boot into the house. At that moment Mrs. Evans came running down the stairs fully dressed but looking disheveled with Mr. Evans in tow with that signature calm look he always had. She got to the bottom of the stairs and looked straight ahead. Her head slowly moved upward and by the time she got to Hagrid's head, she fainted into Mr. Evan's arms.

Mr. Evans seemed a little disturbed by his wife's light-headedness, but not by Hagrid's stature. With one hand he held his wife and the other he held out to Hagrid.

"Welcome! Rubeus Hagrid, I suppose, groundskeeper at Hogwarts?" Mr. Evans asked, shaking Hagrid's huge hand.

"Yep, Keeper of the Keys, that's me. Great man, Dumbledore, great man. Well, I'm here to take little Lil-er, Liam here to Diagon Alley for her clothes and books. Yeh ready, Liam? I better get used ter callin' yeh that. Lily will catch too quickly, and I don' want ter be messin' up any secrets at Hogwarts," he said thoughtfully, "we better get goin' or we'll miss the day, Liam!"

"Er, alright. I'll run upstairs and get my trunk, I guess," said Lily, doing just that. Once she had dragged it downstairs, she bade her parents one last goodbye, didn't see Petunia so she didn't bother with her, and walked out the door.

Their trip into London was, to say in the least, interesting. Hagrid squeezed himself into the trains and took up two seats sitting down. People kept staring at them, but Lily didn't mind too much. She hadn't been into London too often, and on this particular trip she was seeing things she had never seen before, like little shops and she was noticing people in cloaks. Finally, after what seemed like miles Hagrid stopped in front of a grubby little pub.

"Well, Liam, here we are. The Leaky Cauldron. Known on'y by us wizard-folk and such. Yeh'll like it 'ere, no doubt," Hagrid said, saying hello to a few wizards on the way in.

Lily, however, was almost on the point of a nervous breakdown. What if someone noticed she was a girl? Was she being to obvious in how she walked? She tried to swagger a bit like a man until some woman gave her a funny look. Lily quickly reverted to her own inconspicuous style of walking.

"Well, no use dragging this 'ere trunk around anymore. I'm sure an el………and 'ere's one now!" Hagrid said, pointing to a strange smallish creature with saucer-like eyes and huge floppy ears. It was wearing a bleached white outfit and bowed to Hagrid once it got close enough.

"Would yeh take this to Liam Weasley's room fer me?" Hagrid asked the small creature.

The thing smiled, showing whitish teeth. "With pleasure, sir. Nally is taking this to Mr. Liam's room right aways," she (judging from the abnormally high voice) said, taking the trunk from Hagrid and disappearing with the crack of a whip.

Lily cleared her eyes to make sure she wasn't seeing anything. "Did she………I mean, was that………"

Hagrid nodded with a smile. "Yeh, that was a house elf, and a really well-treated one, too. They usually aren' clean like that, but they're always that eager. Strange creatures, house elves. Oh, and yeh, that was magic. House elves can disappear like that when they want. Wizards need a wand, though," he said quietly, looking down at Lily benignly. "Anyways, we oughta get to buyin' yer stuff, eh?"

"Where are we going to find a cauldron and a wand and stuff?" Lily wanted to know. A look from Hagrid quickly silenced her. She was supposed to know about things like this, being a boy from an old wizarding family and all!

"Diagon Alley, 'o course!" exclaimed Hagrid.

A/N: I know, I haven't updated in….well, in about a year. Sorry! I will be updating much more frequently from now on!