Lily had planned on staying at Hogwarts this year for Christmas, she didn't like the idea of the long journey home on the train sat on her own, nor did she relish the idea of seeing Petunia and listening to her catty comments. She wanted to just stay at school where she could lock herself away in the library, doing her homework and in the evenings she was going to curl up on a chair by the fire and get lost in one of her tales of chivalry and bravery. She longed for one of those stories to be her life. For her Prince to come and save her from this life that she didn't want to face.
'My Prince, ha! That's a laugh.' She thought bitterly as she sat in the empty compartment waiting for the train to leave. 'My Prince is infatuated with someone else. The closest my life gets to one of these things is that it's pathetic!' She threw the book across the compartment, as she did so the train gave a lurch and set off on its journey. Lily sat in silence. It was bothering her but she didn't want to retrieve the book, she would only end up throwing it again. Instead she ended up doing her holiday homework; it was then that the root of her problems entered the compartment. Or at least, some of her problems.
"Oh look at that, the bookworm's doing her homework. Think we should get her to give it to us when she's done?" Lily looked up when she heard this voice, it was Narcissa's, behind her stood Alex.
"Sure," she said. "Evans is always happy to help, aren't you petal?"
Lily glared at the two. "Go away," she said quietly.
Narcissa looked down at her, eyes wide. "Did you just invite us to sit down? How nice of you." She sat opposite Lily, Alex sat beside her.
Lily continued to glare. "What do you want?"
Alex's face twisted into a nasty grin, Narcissa's remained the same, the same look of contempt on her face. Neither spoke though, expecting the other to do it for them.
Lily sighed impatiently. "Well, if you're not here for anything in particular I think I'll go find another compartment and leave you two to it." She stood up, ready to gather her things.
Heading to the door a spiteful voice spoke behind her. "I think you're forgetting something bookworm."
Lily turned around to face the two girls; with a cold glare she said one simple word. "What?"
Alex was skimming through the book Lily had thrown not one hour previously. Narcissa looked at Lily with complete disbelief. "Bit old for this kind of rubbish aren't you?"
Lily shook her head. "You can never be too old to dream. Too old to believe in that sure but not to old to dream. Now, can I have the book back please?"
"What's in it for us?" Alex asked, slamming the book shut.
"What do you mean? It's my book."
"Finder's keepers, bookworm. We found it; we're going to keep it." Narcissa teased.
"Unless you give us something in return," Alex concluded.
Lily's eyes narrowed as she looked at the two with disbelief. Sighing she asked, "What do you want."
Narcissa and Alex smirked, "Nothing much," they said cryptically. "We just want that lovely charm bracelet of yours, the one you got last year."
"I don't have it," Lily said, knowing she wouldn't give it to them even if it wasn't broken.
"Yes, you do," Alex said. "I saw it in that box it came in."
Lily rummaged around in her trunk, determined to show the two that it was broken. She grabbed the box and opened it. She could see Narcissa looking at the box, as Lily carefully took the bracelet from inside she looked at Narcissa once more; her expression was cold and hard. Ignoring the look Lily lay the bracelet on her palm; it lay separated in two parts, its charms dotted around.
"You see, it's broken. You can't have it."
Alex just looked at Narcissa, waiting for her to say or do something. What Narcissa did say isn't what she expected.
"That's fine, you can keep the tacky thing, and we'll just have the box."
"No way!" Lily protested.
"Who said you get a choice in the matter?" Narcissa said standing and taking the box from beside Lily. She emptied its contents and then pushed the drawer back in so that it transformed back to its small shape and could be slipped into her pocket.
Lily jumped to her feet, intending to tackle the box off Narcissa, but Narcissa was too fast for her. With a casual wave of her wand Narcissa stunned Lily and turned to leave the room.
"Alex, give her the book," she commanded. Before leaving she turned to look at Lily once more, she was lying frozen still on the floor. "We'll let you free later, don't worry." With that she left the room. Alex gave Lily one last glance of loathing, threw her book at her and left.
"How are we supposed to win the cup when we're exhausted?" James countered. Several murmurs of agreement went around the room.
"What is that supposed to mean?" he asked looking at everyone.
Cathy stood up, trying to keep peace. "I think what they mean Tommy is that they've been doing a lot of practising lately and they need a break."
"They had yesterday off," he said angrily.
"Yes, but one day isn't enough to recuperate from two weeks of physical exhaustion. We need a break Tommy," Sirius told him. "We're good, you know it, we know, even the other teams know it."
"But we're not the best!" Sadiron interrupted. "We need to be the best."
"And now we're back to my point," James said. "We can't be the best if we're exhausted. I know this is your first year as captain and that you want to make a success of it, but if we get too tired then we're not going to be any good to anyone." Once more murmurings of agreement went around the room.
Sadiron looked unimpressed by this. "Potter, if you don't like it you can leave." James made no attempts to move. "Go on, you're off the team."
"What?" he asked in complete shock.
"You heard me, now, tell O'Connor to get in here when you get back to the castle."
James was going to object but a look in Sadiron's eyes made him think better of it. He just grabbed his broom and trudged back up to the school angrily.
They hadn't come back as promised, in fact after waiting the 6 hour train journey, and then a further hour after the train had stopped, Lily had begun to think she'd be forgotten about and left there for the rest of her life. It was at this point of despair that the snack cart lady had come in to tidy the compartment. When she saw Lily she gasped and let her free, Lily thanked her and ran off the train, all her things flying wildly behind her in her grip. When she got off the train, however, her parents weren't there.
She was upset her parents hadn't waited for her, but the more she thought about it the more she decided they just hadn't got the owl yet, she had only sent it last night after all. She could just phone them, yes that is what she'd do, phone them. Crossing through the barrier she headed for the payphones, it was only when she got there that she'd realised she had no muggle money.
She gave up, sitting on her trunk and poking her fingers though the bars of her owl cage, whilst she tried to think of what to do next. After she had waited for half an hour her parents finally arrived.
"Oh Lily, we're so sorry, we didn't get your owl until this morning and then we had to sort everything out and…Sweetie are you ok?" Katherine asked her as she gave her daughter a hug.
Lily pulled away. "I'm fine, can we just go please?" she responded, not coldly, but not nicely.
Exchanging a look with Katherine, Jack nodded. "Sure, come on, Petunia's waiting in the car."
"Oh, joy," Lily said sarcastically.
"Wake up, wake up, wake up," Peter cried to his friends, hitting each one with a pillow as he spoke. He didn't go near Frank, but his noise had woken him anyway.
"Whaddayuwnt?" a tired Sirius asked.
Remus, knowing what he wanted, was already out of bed and slipping his dressing gown on, Frank was slowly coming to his sense and crawling out of bed. Sirius still had his eyes closed, but obviously was awake because he had spoken. James, though, was still dead to the world. When he slept it was impossible to wake him up, save two things; a foghorn down the ear, or a heavy hit, as opposed to the medium one delivered by Peter.
"It's Christmas," Peter said. "That means presents."
Sirius was immediately out of bed, beating Frank who had somehow got entangled in his covers whilst trying to crawl out of his bed. Remus helped disentangle him, when he was free from his captor, Frank got to his feet. "What about him?" he asked gesturing at James.
Sirius smiled wickedly, "Leave him to me."
Knowing better than to argue, the three boys left the room, on their way down the stairs they heard a cry of agony and a cry issue from James.
"Sirius you sneaky little…What was that for?"
They could hear Sirius laughter and muttered words and then a loud crash, in what seemed like less than half a second later James and Sirius had joined them downstairs.
"Let's get going then," James said eyeing the pile of his presents eagerly.
"Lily, come on," Katherine's gentle voice spoke that same morning.
Lily grunted and turned in her bed, her back to her mother.
"Lily Evans, you get out of bed this instant!" Katherine's normally singsong voice took on a more authoritive tone. Still Lily didn't turn around. "You have ruined everyone's holiday so far, you're not going to spoil today as well."
Lily rolled over again, facing her mother this time. "Then leave me up here and you lot go and have fun," she said calmly. She intended to roll again but her mothers hand grabbed at her shoulders.
"You will come downstairs and have fun," Katherine said sternly. "Even if I have to drag you."
Lily sighed and rolled her eyes. "No, I will not."
Katherine let go of her. "Fine, you can stay up here. We'll be going out in a couple of hours, you don't have to come with us, in fact, I'd prefer it if you didn't." She walked out of the room then, leaving Lily in the darkness of her feelings.
She could hear the squeals of delight coming from her sister in the room below her. No doubt she'd just got that diamond necklace she had wanted, 'Creep,' Lily thought darkly. Petunia was always the favourite of them; she got the better room, the better clothes, the better presents. True Lily wasn't exactly hard done by; it was just that compared to Petunia she wasn't as demanding and so got less attention. What she didn't realise was that the same feelings she thought about Petunia as being the favourite, Petunia thought about her. These were two sisters, disliking each other for a reason that didn't exist.
Normally Lily would have been down there with them, joining in with their fun, visiting relatives and enjoying a Christmas dinner, but this time she didn't feel like celebrating the year. Her grandmother was dead, her best friend hated her, her other best friend was slowing losing interest in her and going off with his other friends (not to mention his new sudden liking of Marie), the only good thing she could think of at the moment was the prospect of going to Beauxbatons on the exchange. She could make a fresh start there, away from her home, away from Hogwarts; she just had to get in.
She heard her family leave, they didn't pop their heads in to say goodbye and Lily felt a pang of hurt at how they had just forgotten about her like that. Having barely eaten for the last week, Lily soon began to get hungry. She went downstairs and into the kitchen. Making herself a sandwich she went into the lounge, there stood a tree, decorated beautifully with a simple star at the top; the star she was supposed to put on but refused to come down and do. She supposed Petunia must have done it instead. In front of the tree she saw a small pile of unopened presents, she could see open ones spread around the room, her families, but these unopened ones she knew were hers.
She sat looking at them for a while, she knew her parents would want to be there when she opened them, but they had just left her in the house alone, what did they expect? The fact that she made them go without her did enter her mind, but so did the idea that if they had wanted her to go with them they would have put up more of a fight in getting her out of bed. After several minutes of arguments like these going through her head, Lily gave in and opened the first present.
When she got to the last present she was almost in tears. Everything she had asked for she had received, from a new scarf and gloves set to the limited edition copy of The Summoned Power, there were only 100 copies of the book ever made and still her parents had managed to get hold of it. She thought back over the holidays, how horrible she'd been to them, how rude, how dismissive. She'd acted as though they weren't important, she'd let little problems effect the way she behaved around her family, and not for the better. With tears flowing freely and a shaking hand, Lily reached out for her last present. She pulled off the paper to reveal a jewellery box, in it was her charm bracelet, no longer broken but back together with the charms evenly spaced out, a new one added to the selection; a book. Lily stifled a gasp, now she felt really bad. How horrible she had been and still her parents gave her everything she wanted, and more. She gathered up her presents and took them upstairs. She was going to change; she was going to be better to them, even if it was just so they knew how grateful for them she really was.
AN: I am well aware this isn't my best chapter, so please no major flames at it. I'm not happy with it but I've left it long enough to not post it, and I can't post the next chapter without this one now can I? Smiles to self Yes, that means there's another chapter on the way, should be up today, if not tomorrow. We'll see how late it gets because I still have History homework to do, true I could probably do it at break but I'm not going to risk it. Smiles again I think that's all I was going to say, if I remember anything else I'll put it on the next chapter.
AN 2: Sorry about the way it's come out, I'm not sure what's happened.