Disclaimer: All characters belong to J.K. Rowling, the characters you don't recognize are mine. Some aspects of this story is based off of a book called Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals.

A/N: This is it.

Chapter 2:

Lily picked at her food with her fork nervously and cautiously as she heard her other family members scrape their forks constantly against their plates. Her dad made the loudest sound of all, and that clinking sound was soon becoming higher pitched and frequent, louder each time he clanged it. It was unbearable. It was like the sound of nails scratching the chalkboard to Lily, sending shivers down her spine. It was the only sound that uttered in the kitchen than the silence that had fallen onto the dinner table.

Silence that made Lily's years bleed.

Finally, her father put down his fork and knife, abruptly got up from the dinner table took a glass of water and began to chug it down.

'This isn't good,' Lily thought and carefully put down her fork on her napkin quietly and folded her hands on her lap. She stared at her mashed potatoes instead of looking at her family.

Her dad returned to his seat, beads of sweat shining on his forehead.

Lily glanced at her father. He wasn't looking at her; he was trying hard to focus on not getting angry and just eating his dinner like it was a normal day. Except it wasn't. There was always a catch wasn't there?

All because of Petunia. If Petunia hadn't gone into her room. If Petunia had only knocked. If only Petunia just left her alone. If only Petunia didn't open that Applications book.

Hell wouldn't have taken over.

Lily gave a mental sigh and then glanced over to her sister. Apparently, after her father's initial outburst, Petunia was on her best behavior. When her father had yelled at her, Petunia's face had lost all color and was stark white. Fear was the only description worthy of her face.

'She hadn't expected it,' Lily thought, pulling at a stray piece of string already ripping from her jeans. She played with it, wrapping it around her finger till it hurt and then unwrapping it and wrapping it again. 'Her look was full of terror. She didn't expect Daddy to get so mad. She didn't know! She should have butted out of it in the first place! I wish I had hid the book under my bed, at least,' Lily thought. She gave another mental sigh and then rested her head on her hand and used the other to pick at her food again.

'I still wish the silence would stop,' Lily thought bitterly. The silence at the table was overwhelming, save the constant clinking of the silverware and the occasional crunch of teeth chewing on food.

Lastly, Lily glanced at her mother. Her mother had a worried, yet calm face and was trying hard to keep herself from starting a conversation. Her mother was very surprised when Petunia came running down the stairs, clutching that purple book to her chest and flashing it about in front of her parent's eyes, yelling, "MUM! DAD! LOOK WHAT LILY'S GOT!"

And when Lily had ran down and tackled her to the living room floor, her arm outstretched to grab the book before her parents could see it, but had already flown into the air, its pages flipping, falling…

So

Very
































Slowly.

There was a loud thud, as if an anvil had dropped through the ceiling and crashed upon metal. The cover flipped open as the book's message appeared,

It is my great pleasure, Mr. and Mrs. Evans,

To inform you, that your daughter has decided to participate

In the Muggle Born and Pureblood Integration project, where exactly four Muggle born witches and wizards will be hand-picked by the Minister of Magic

To attend the greatest Magic School,

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

This book will give you all information regarding our project, the school and the application process.

Lily Christine Evans is indeed a wonderful and brilliant witch, who meets all qualifications of attending Hogwarts (so far, as she has not completed her application). It would be the

Minster's delight if you would sign the form on the last page.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns,

Please feel free to owl me through your daughter's school.

Sincerely,

The Minister of Magic

And that's when all hell broke loose.

'I hate this silence,' she thought. She wanted to say something, say something that would at least keep the silence at bay, she wanted to do anything, to make any sound than the sound of silence; she wanted to scream. But Lily held herself back, just like her mother and father did. She couldn't do anything until her father said something.

She was practically waiting and dreading for her father to say something.

Finally, what seemed like eternity, her father slammed his fork and knife down and took his napkin to wipe the sweat off his forehead. He then glared hard at Lily. Lily tentatively lifted her head to look at her father, careful to keep her face expressionless. She waited for her father to speak.

"You know, Lily, when your mother did the laundry this evening, she found your pants had a hole in it. Please tell me that you have not, as what I suspect, been ambushed again," her father said in a low and quiet voice, but it was full of the menacing anger behind it all. "And, you might have forgotten to unwrap your fingers," he said pointedly.

Lily sucked in her breath at the question. 'Oh, God. Come on, Lily! Think of a lie! You know you always get holes in your pants, why should this be an exception?'

"I fell."

Oh, what a pathetic lie.

"With blood."

Thunderstruck, Lily just kept quiet. "I, uh, well, I guess I bled when I fell." Her hand consciously rubbed where the pureblood had cut her.

"I see. Well, when I used the bathroom, and went to get some more toilet paper, I found the first aid kit hiding in the drawer. Is there anything you want to say to me, Lily?"

Lily's face was contorted with regret and fear. Her fork lingered over her mashed potatoes and her jade eyes were looking around the whole kitchen nervously.

"I...uhh...ummm...I..." she stuttered, stalling for time. She couldn't think straight. The shock of her father noticing disrupted the order in her brain. She couldn't even think up of a decent truth.

Lily's voice dropped to something like her normal volume to a low whisper as the truth completely poured out of her mouth, surrendering into the web her father had cleverly weaved. "Some purebloods got me."

Mr. Evans nodded his head, looking at Lily's bowed head intensely. He grabbed his plate and glass and walked to the sink. Rose and Petunia quickly got up and did the same, leaving Lily to stare at her food in shame.

"Lily, you leave me with no choice. You are not going to attend that school anymore. You know perfectly well that we can barely afford it and we have been scraping by for last four years."

"Three. I'm still 15," Lily put in. Not a wise comment. Lily winced at it.

"Well, it most certainly has been nearly four years!" Mark, her father, yelled angrily.

Lily sat their quiet, still looking at her plate.

"You are to start Petunia's school next year. There is no chance of you going to that school ever again, you are better off in this world than theirs. Your mother and I are going to find you a tutor for the rest of the school year."

Lily's fork dropped and clanged loudly onto her plate. A look of horror crossed over her already stricken face.

"But, I can't go! I can't! I don't want to go! Please, Dad, just let me stay in this school for at least till the year-ends! You can't pull me out now! I can't do this! I can't just sit in Petunia's school knowing that I'm missing something incredible in my life!" Lily got up from her seat, begging.

"You can't do this to me! I need to go to this school!" she begged, tears on the brink of falling.

Mark Evans looked down on his daughter with eyes set in hard stone. "No." His answer was firm. "You are not going. And if you could only stop hoping to go to that Hogwarts."

Lily's face fell at that statement. "NO! DAD! YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME!" She cried. Her father ignored her comment and walked out the door of the kitchen. Lily grabbed on to his arm and jerked him back, tears now falling freely down her face.

"No! Dad, please I have to go. I have to go. Please let me go! YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME!" she begged, crying at the same time.

"No. That is my final answer. Now let go of me!" Mark cried, prying her grasp off of him and then charging upstairs into his room, where he was to be left undisturbed.

Lily sunk down to her knees on the floor, staring at the stairs her father had stomped on, rivers of tears pouring down her cheeks. "NOO!" She cried, curling up into a ball on the kitchen floor, her head buried in her knees. "You can't do this to me..." she whimpered.

Rose stomped into her bedroom furiously. How dare he put words into her mouth! "Mark," she said in an icy yet quiet tone. "You absolutely have no right to say that I am going to find a tutor for her! This decision was yours! NOT MINE."

Mark rubbed his forehead before looking up at his wife. "Look, it doesn't matter, Rose, there is no way out of this. If she keeps on going, she keeps on getting hurt. And that stupid thing she signed up for!" he said furiously.

"There is no way out in this world either!" Rose's voice ran shrilly in the room and echoed off the walls. "If Lily continues in the Wizarding world, she has at least a chance, even if her path will be full of discrimination. There is nothing we can do about it, we can't protect her from that anymore. We can afford her to be sent to her school, even if we are tight and it is much more less than the cost of tutoring her for a whole year on things she missed since 5th grade! She has no chance in this world ever!" She gasped for breath.

"We don't have the money to hire a tutor for her, and worse yet, Lily doesn't even want to learn in this world anymore. She has no chance, if she is going to stay in this world, she will have to stay inside and never, ever outside," she said coldly. "It is not a wise decision to pull her out from her school."

Mark looked down at his feet, sitting at the edge of his bed. "But that thing she signed up for..."

"That is a different story, as I had just said, it is not a wise decision to pull her out from her school!" Rose said piercingly.

Mark fell silent. "I'm going to bed," he said and walked into the bathroom, leaving Rose alone in the room.

"Lily, I am not sending you to school today. You will stay here and help me with the chores and errands I need to do today," Rose quietly said into Lily's ear. Lily fumbled her blanket and drew the covers over her head. She didn't want to hear that.

"Whatever," Lily whispered.

"You can sleep in," Rose said, hoping that it would cheer her up a bit.

"Fine," Lily whispered again.

Rose left her room and Lily opened her eyes, this time flinging the covers off of her and grabbing the purple book she had nicked when she was sentenced to go to sleep by her father. She flipped through the pages, hoping that the book would make some kind of response after all the ruckus that happened last night.

But the book gave no response. Clearly it was frightened by the anger of Mark Evans.

Lily sighed. She should at least finish…..No.

Lily wasn't going to be able to turn it in on time. If she didn't finish, nor did she actually get to school to turn it in, she would never….

But what would her parents say?

Say that she had turned her back on them?

Lily's fingers trembled as she carefully set the book down on her bed, its silver letters catching the sunlight and illuminating.

What was she going to do? What was she going to do?

Lily's breathing had turned ragged. "Okay, just breathe slowly, you'll get through this. Don't worry. Just finish it. School doesn't end till three, you have enough time to finish this, aim for 10 am." Lily said to herself, rubbing her temples and slowly lifting her pencil to finish the last question.

"Finally," Lily breathed, and shut the purple book. Now, all she needed was her parent's signature. Both of them. Lily looked at the book stunned now that she was reminded of it. How was she going to do that? Let alone even get it to the school?

She needed those signatures. Badly. And if she couldn't turn it in today, the due date the chance she would have at Hogwarts would disappear. So close yet so far.

"Think Lily, think! You might be able to get this in on time if you just think!" Lily kept saying to herself, rubbing her head with the palm of her hands. "When there's a will there's a way…" She whispered to herself over and over again.

"LILY!"

Lily jumped up about a mile off of her bed. She heard footsteps coming up the stairs and coming towards her room. She quickly shoved the purple book under her bed and flung the covers over herself and turned her back toward the door and pretended to be asleep.

"Lily, dear, you need to get up. It's already 10:30, and since you are not going to school today, you are going to help me with chores."

Lily let out an involuntarily groan.

"It won't be much. You'll just need to vacuum the floor, clean up the attic and sweep the garage. Now come on, if you don't finish----------"

Lily flung the covers off her bed and trudged towards the bathroom Petunia and she painstakingly shared.

"Alright, Mum," she said, grabbing her toothbrush and slamming the bathroom door.

Needless to say, Lily did exactly what she was told, silently thinking about how she was going to get her parent's signatures on that stupid purple book and get it to school on time before three.

Lily questioned herself over and over again in her head while cleaning. She wanted to go to Hogwarts badly. She wanted it so bad she would give her life and her family for it.

Lily absentmindly pushed the vacuum all around the living room, thinking about how she was going to get the application in. 'I can't mail it because it would take forever, I can't drive it there because I don't have my driver's license, I certainly can't go out of the house and drop it because Mum would catch me. I also can't turn it in because I have to get my dad's signature in it, not unless I can forge it, but I doubt it because it's a magic contract and it might have an Anti-Signature-Forgery Spell on it…Ack! Lily, stop! You're confusing yourself!' Lily's head was rambling on and on.

The vacuum machine made a strange, icky sound that indicated something was wrong.

"Lily! What are you doing?" her mother called out, who was dusting the foyer. She looked at Lily incredulously, who looked down at the vacuum and saw the impossible, that it was sucking up the corner of the pretty antique carpet on the floor her mother had gotten as a wedding present from Uncle Rod.

Lily gave her mom a sheepish look. "Sorry, Mum." She shut the vacuum cleaner off and yanked the carpet out.

Her mother rolled her eyes. "Lily, why don't you take a break? Go watch TV or something. Dad will be picking us up to go out for lunch today. He'll be here at about one. I know, it's late, but you just ate a half and hour ago." Her mother returned in dusting the foyer.

Lily stiffened. She didn't want to go out to lunch with her dad. Not after last night. Why couldn't they just let her go? She shut the vacuum cleaner off and put it away. She was about to fall back onto the couch in the family living room with the remote in her hand when the phone rang. She flumped down on the floor instead. "UGHHHHHH!" Lily cried in frustration.

She reached for the phone and snatched it. "Hello?"

"Oh, Lily, you're at home. This is Ms. Aki. Are you alright? Are you sick or something?" Ms. Aki asked.

Lily had a perplexed look on her face. "Huh?"

"Oh, so, I can tell the principal that you're playing hooky?"

Lily blinked. "Uh. No. Sorry. I sort of…blanked out on you. Um. Could you give me a second?"

"Sure."

Lily covered the phone with her hand and proceeded to jump up and down. Ms. Aki had called! She could explain! She could try and turn it in somehow! She could-Wait. Ms. Aki probably can't do much about the signatures. Lily sank onto the couch and returned to the phone.

"Okay, back. Um, I'm fine, Ms. Aki."

"Oh, so, may I ask why you are not at school today?"

"Err, well, it's mostly because of what happened last night…." Lily trailed off.

"Your father found out about your application and forbid you to ever return to the magic realm and thus hired a tutor for you?" Ms. Aki offered.

"Whoa."

Lily could feel Ms. Aki grin over the line. "Your father and I have met remember? Orientation and Information night?"

All the color drained from Lily's face. How could she forget? Her dad was practically yelling at the top of his lungs when he went to theOrientation and Information night,when he found out details of what Lily really was. A Muggle-born. Or the bloodcist term for it, Mudblood. Not only that, but he also learned what kind of danger Lily was in. Talk about getting a father angry.

"Erm. Well." Lily let out a sigh. "I should have known."

"Its ok, I understand. So I suppose both your mother and father haven't signed the form yet and since you are not here, you cannot turn in the application?"

"Don't remind me," Lily painfully replied.

"Um. Well, if you do ever get the application signed Lily, and since you are the only student who actually has asked for the application you'll be able to owl it right away to the Ministry."

"What? I can't do that! I don't have an owl!"

"Yes, you can," Ms. Aki said. "Since you're the only one applying, the Ministry of Magic had originally sent an owl to deliver the applications straight away. Unfortunately, since you are currently under house arrest by your guardians, the owl has moved to perch in your backyard."

Lily was truly stunned.

"I just thought you should know. But you didn't hear it from me," Ms. Aki said. "Well, good luck, Lily."

The phone clicked and all Lily heard was the monotonous dial tone. She dropped the phone and leaped from the couch, pulling the shades up from the windows and literally smashed her face against the window to look for the owl in her backyard.

Sure enough a nice, handsome brown owl was perched on a tree branch, hidden among the fall brown leaves. It fixed its glowing yellow eyes at her. It gave a hoot and then ruffled its feathers, the eyes looking away from her now.

Lily let down the shades. This was pure luck.









A/N: This was cut short because I couldn't figure out how I was going to get Lily's dad to sign the form in the lunch scene. Any suggestions are welcome and are SERIOUSLY NEEDED. So it would help if you would either e-mail me or leave a comment. Thank you.