Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter
Chapter Two
Lily
Lily Evans had never considered herself neurotic. But lately she couldn't help but wonder if she really was. She should have known that taking two million different classes, half of them far more advanced than what she should have been taking, would make her perfectionism go into overdrive. She didn't even really understand what motivated her to take so many classes; sure she loved acquiring knowledge, in fact it what was one of her favorite activities, but she was also an incredibly logical person and usually could foresee consequences to her actions. The consequences being utter exhaustion.
Lily supposed it was just the Gryffindor in her. Wanting to prove something. But, as she considered this idea she realized that this wasn't it either. In fact, ironically, this had been her reasoning to McGonagall at the end of last year as to why she had to take so many advanced classes. She managed a half-hearted smile as she recalled the conversation.
"Ms Evans, though I realize that you are an excellent student, I do not understand why you feel that Advanced Arithmancy, or any of the other classes you have chosen, are appropriate classes for a fourth year student. I assure you, you will have plenty of time to pursue them later on," McGonagall paused and surveyed Lily over her spectacles. Lily could barely suppress a sigh of frustration. It seemed that McGonagall was not budging. Lily had realized that it was time for major bull-shitting. Lily cleared her throat and began.
"Professor, as you may realize, I am one of the only muggleborns in my year. I am sure I do not have to tell you how much harder it is for us to prove ourselves as legitimate wizards than the other pure-bloods. I am prepared to take on greater challenges, so this isn't an unrealistic request. After Hogwarts, do you realize how much harder it will be for me to get a job? Even with my grades, there is too much tension about blood to make things easy for me. I have to do the best and most I can in order to succeed." Lily stopped. She wondered how much more of this McGonagall would be able to stomach. She, herself, was trying hard to prevent herself from gagging. She had decided long ago that anything she set her mind to, she would get. It was simply the way she was raised. So all this garbage she was spooning to McGonagall was just utter nonsense. Surprisingly, McGonagall looked as though she were considering it.
"The final word rests with Professor Dumbledore, Ms Evans," she said finally.
Lily had ended up going to see Professor Dumbledore. This time she hesitated before giving Dumbledore her BS story. Dumbledore was not McGonagall and could probably see through her motives better than she herself could. This was not surprising considering she had no idea why she had such a strong need to take advanced classes. But she decided to be more straightforward with Dumbledore. She owned up to being frustrated with the pace of the classes she was in with the other third years. In so little words she managed to get across that she thought that the other students were stupid, and that she needed something more challenging. Dumbledore had been supportive and had worked out a compromise with her: she would take all the "regular" classes (Transfiguration, Charms, Defense, etc) with the students in her year. Any other classes she chose would be at a higher level.
So she was currently preparing to take the Arithmancy OWLs one year early. As well as all of the other fun stuff she was doing. The odd thing was that Lily, nor anyone who knew Lily, would consider her an overachiever. She rarely put thought into assignments. She almost never participated in class. She never appeared to be doing work. To put it plainly, Lily was just smart. She just got things. The teachers had realized this and learned to leave her alone a long time ago. Lily just did things her own way and most people accepted that. Not that most people accepted Lily herself. She was just odd and people had a hard time understanding her.
In terms of social standings, a naive person would say that Lily was popular, since she was, in the sense of the word itself. Everyone knew who she was; she was a little hard to miss with her thick mane of red hair, in fact the only red-head girl in the entire school at the moment. A few people even liked her. But when it came to who was "popular" as in the "cool" kids that everyone wanted to be seen with: Lily most certainly was not one of those people.
Lily's position in school was always a subject of great interest to herself. Lily always had the overwhelming desire to understand the way things worked in order to best benefit herself. It wasn't that she was selfish, she was just incredibly ambitious. No wonder the Sorting Hat had labored over which house to put her in for so long. She had literally been on the stool for a full five minutes before it declared "GRYFFINDOR!" to the impatient hall.
After all Lily was a walking contradiction and half the time did not understand the reasons she did the things she did, only knowing that in some long-run sort of way it would benefit her. This was why she was a little disconcerted as to why her plan of taking a million advanced classes was not working: it seemed to be a gross miscalculation on her part. Instead of savoring the benefits of being far ahead of her peers, she only seemed to be stressed out. What assignment did she have to do tonight? How would she get to Advanced Ancient Runes in time if Potions was as far away from it as possible? Petty things that she had never considered or cared about before, now seemed to be huge.
And yet there seemed to be a security that came with taking all of these classes. She was learning so much. A lot of it seemed to hold no practical use. Why would she need to know about the evolution of Saxon runes? How could that ever possibly benefit her? But she believed that no piece of knowledge was useless. After all you never know what you'll need to know someday. That was what Lily told herself as she tried to calm herself down about her workload.
It suddenly seemed clear to Lily why her need to take advanced classes was so strong. Knowledge gave her a sense of security. This seemed odd to "discover" since it was seemingly so obvious, and yet it made sense. Lily sighed and rolled over. She was currently trying to fall back asleep. She had woken up at about 3:30 AM, a full two hours before she usually woke up (she was an early riser) and couldn't go back to sleep. She had been attempting to coax herself back to sleep but the ever-present study worries just plagued her mind.
But now, that she had come to a definitive conclusion regarding her motives she seemed to feel slightly better. She decided against trying to go back to sleep: it seemed futile now. Instead, she got up and quietly got dressed.
She was very careful not to wake anyone. Her other dorm-mates generally did not like Lily, and nor did she like them. She did not want to give them an excuse to complain about her some more. She could not understand how she could have possibly been stuck with the most obnoxious girls of her year, all in one room. She realized she was not being fair: not all of them were obnoxious. Well, atleast one of them was nice: Artemis Brown. Artemis was the only one of the girls who had never been deliberately rude to Lily. At times she even attempted some conversation, usually small talk, but all the same she was nice.
Lily decided this was because she was the only one of the girls whose name did not begin with a "C." The infamous C's. There were four of them and Lily could never decide which she disliked, no, hated the worst. Camilla, Charlotte, Catherine, or Claire. The four C's. They were Gryffindor's "it" girls. In fact, they were popular throughout the entire school. Artemis was friends with them (Lily could never understand why). Catherine (or Carrie as everyone called her) and Charlotte were childhood friends and usually stuck together. Artemis was best friends with Claire (who wasn't all that bad except for when she was around the others). And Camilla (Lily decided she was the worst), just lorded it over whoever she felt like. She was the current Minister of Magic's daughter, and this made her seem to think that she was equally as important as her father.
Lily did have to give them some credit though. At the beginning of first year they had attempted to be nice to her and pull her into their little group. But Lily, who had never really been friends with other girls before and was a little surprised at how clique-y and materialistic they were, was resistant to them and ended up being an itty-bit rude to them. So she supposed she had asked for their treatment, but still no one deserved to be ignored constantly.
If it weren't for the fact that Lily had other friends, she supposed her "dorm life" would have been a lot more intolerable. But luckily Lily had two best friends, who were also in Gryffindor but happened to reside in the Boy's dormitory. Michael Sullivan and William Gellar. Or Mike and Will. She used to call them "the other two Gryffindor boys" because of the friendship division between them and the other four boys in their dorm, who were all friends with each other. So in a way Lily, Mike, and Will were the "outcast" Gryffindors.
Lily would have been entirely satisfied with this title for them if it hadn't been for the fact that Mike was actually very popular (again, in the literal sense of the word). The thing about him was that he would talk to anybody. Social boundaries did not bother him. His sunny personality perfectly matched his sunshine blond hair. If anyone could have been the opposite of Mike, it was Will.
Lily had known Will much longer than Mike (which was another story in itself). Will was quiet and shy. He rarely spoke to anyone besides Mike and Lily. He was like a little kid. Unlike Mike, she regarded Will as a brother and looked out for him.
Her two best friends at the moment were most definitely sleeping and therefore could not keep her company in the common room where she had taken up an armchair near the window. Lily looked out of the window. It looked like it was going to rain, though the sun hadn't even come up yet. Lily enjoyed rain, but lately she had been craving a nice, sunny day to get her mind off her studies. Lily sat for another half an hour staring out of the window. She realized she was going to regret waking up so early around 1 o'clock in History of Magic when, no doubt, she'd start dozing off. Oh well. She'd deal with that at 1 o'clock.