A/N: Let's see… why, no acknowledgments for this chapter. I was entirely original! Of course, it's terribly short; there will be a reprise later. Now, the next chapter… ooh, not half so original, lots of credits… yet it's one of my favourites in the whole fic.
Chapter IV– Squicked
4 September
Dear Mum and Daddy and Petunia,
I'm OK! Hogwarts is amazing. All the pictures move, like in our book, but only the portraits on the wall talk to us. I was lost getting to Transfiguration yesterday but a picture of a witch tied to the stake gave me directions. Transfiguration is one of the classes. You learn how to turn one thing into another. But we haven't done it yet. There are also ghosts here. One of them is scary, he's called the Bloody Baron, but none of them hurt you. The others are nice. My roommates are named Deirdre, Vivian, Maeve, Trish, and Phaedra. None of them is as good in class as me, even though none of them came from a family of all Muggles. Phaedra's whole family is witches but – and wizards too I suppose – but she does not know how to read or write almost at all. But they are all very friendly and everything. Petunia, you said all the girls would be awful and mean. How do you like your new school? I miss Whitetip. Other students have cats. May I bring him after I come home for Christmas? One of the big boys has a cat who does not like him, so it goes round with everybody else. He is called Greymalkin. The caretaker also has a cat called Mrs Norris and Barbara Wimple who is one of the big girls says that Mrs Norris will tell the caretaker if she finds you breaking any rules. So you see Whitetip would not be lonely. Daddy, do you still remember to take your medicine even without me to remind you? Remember what the doctor said. Maybe I'll find some magic that works on your headaches better while I'm here. I have just been helping Phaedra look over my Potions notes and they say that some people discover new Potions as medicines. But it will take a long time. We haven't made any so far and also haven't learned any spells in class. It's all note-taking. I told Phaedra once we stop writing and start doing real magic she'll be doing better than me because after all she's been around magic her whole life. I haven't spoken to Professor McClenaghan since I've arrived. No one takes Muggle Studies until third year. I see her at meals in the Great Hall. The ceiling of the Great Hall is enchanted so that it looks like the sky and you see stars, the sun, storms, and everything. At meals I have also seen Professor Dumbledoor, who is headmaster. I do not know if I spelled his name right, but he looks like that picture in the book Great-Aunt Katherine illustrated. Only his beard is a little shorter than in the book. There is also someone around who looks like a giant. Also like in the book, one of the teachers, Professor Klingston, has the magical staff of Morgan le Fay in his room. We're not allowed to touch it. I told Phaedra and Vivian all the things about magic and Hogwarts I put in this letter to tell you and asked if I forgot anything. Phaedra said I forgot to tell you about the Houses. But I don't think the Houses are very important, so I'll write you about them some other time.
Love,
Lily
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Lily Evans spent a good deal of her first few months in a state of numbness – some parts of her mind had shut down to delegate their valuable resources to the parts more crucial to everyday functioning. Indeed up until her second year I'm not sure Lily could have told you whether or not she liked or disliked Hogwarts, was glad or sorry to have been a witch instead of an ordinary girl like her old friends from whom she was now sundered… but even at her numbest Lily drew several thrills from the knowledge that were her mother able to witness her experiences, she, Lily, would not have to make the decisions. She would have been out.
The very first thing she did upon arriving in the middle of the place-whose-name-could-not-be-disclosed-Mr-Evans-I'm-sorry was sail across a moat that housed, as she was soon told, a giant squid with a taste for the flesh of firsties. The very second thing was to put on a hat of unknown origin or cleanliness that several other children of like origin had just put on their heads whose cleanliness remained similarly unknown. Lily found it mostly exciting, but definitely a bit scary. Sometimes more than a bit. The ghosts did not creep her out very much, as some of her classmates assumed they would, she being a Muggle-born, but the hat – it took a great deal of Gryffindorism just to put it on! But she did, pulling it down over her the crown of her long red hair, and it very wisely declared her a Gryffindor, which it had just serenaded as the place for "those of nerve and sinew strong."
She knew it would all horrify her mother and sister, and though her father's general maleness would have saved him from horror, he would not have been altogether pleased either. So right from the start she got practice in – not, not lying to her parents, exactly, no, but – well, pruning the truth for prudence's sake. This practice proved useful to her, later.
In Herbology Lily found herself the most conscientious cleaner of her hands after classes and in Transfiguration she required some time to not shudder at this handling of beetles. But it was Potions that most shook her.
Did I mention that Mrs Evans keeps her household scrupulously clean?
Her first two Potions classes were, strictly speaking, uneventful; a professor who could have passed for one of her own father's very Muggle friends (though rather fatter) instructed them in the care and cleaning of cauldron and tools. Lily had eyed the stewing potions made by the fifth-years, bubbling low as they matured in the dark corners, but had not worried about it. Lily was not one to worry. Then the third class came and, just the same as if she had worried, the assignment was to create a potion.
The actual third step in their directions literally used the word "squelch." As in: "Take a handful a frog liver between both palms. Squelch the liver so that liquids are wrung into the dish. Then add the dried liver into the cauldron. (CHECKPOINT COLOUR: GREY)"
They were also using worms in this potion. The sixth step, and second to last (it was a simple potion): "Add two live flobberworms. (Check to see that flobberworms are sufficiently alive by poking them in both ends at the same time: live flobberworms will react, recoiling and spitting a small quantity of harmless goo.) (CHECKPOINT COLOUR: DARK ORANGE)"
Lily had heard that Professor Slughorn was most accomplished in the area of potions, but she had serious doubts that his fingernails had ever been exposed to frog liver or worm goo nevertheless.
This was the first time Lily considered not being a witch. Although torn by her departure from home, she had been downright enchanted with the idea ever since presented with it. Some snide remarks about Muggle-borns had made her warier than she might have been, but not deterred her. Now she sat back and took account – witchcraft seemed a great deal less centered on waving fairy wands of gently raining glitter than she had imagined. Seven years of this? When at home as a Muggle she would never have to squelch frog liver or check the mortal status of flobberworms, nor be sundered from everyone she knew? She eyed her classmates, or at any rate her girl classmates: surely even born-and-bred witches were grossed out by this? It was an odd occurrence that none in fact were, and had Lily been in almost any other class she would have seen the comforting sight of other girls making faces and handling gingerly. But there were always fewer squeamish girls in Gryffindor House, and in this class there happened to be none, evidently, save her very out of place self.
She swallowed and delved into the frog liver, wincing hard at the distinctly squelchy sound of her squelching, and then smiling at it, however feebly or crookedly. In fact she began to have so much fun that she was disappointed when she had finished wringing out a more than ample amount of frog liver.
It turned out no one else had wrung it hard enough, and Lily's potion was at a state of completion at the end of a class that set on several of her valiant-hearted classmates waving away the fumes of their potions with their hats or desperately throwing anything within reach into their cauldron in hopes of it looking like anything but broiled and sullied water before their professor arrived at their table to inspect. Slughorn was given to hearty praise and it finished off the process of her re-emboldening. She left the class grinning almost too broadly as her roommate Phaedra Bungs relived in increasingly exaggerated detail the misfortunes of her fickle burner.
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Mudblood – a term, currently considered very offensive, referring to a witch or wizard of Muggle parentage; usually refers to a witch or wizard without any wizarding blood at all, but some use it to refer to anyone less than a pureblood; there are incongruities and debates as to whether the child of a wizard and a Muggle-born is a pureblood or a half-blood and therefore the use of this invective term varies, often by locale and class. History and comments: As late as the early 1600's "Mudblood" was considered a matter-of-fact alternative to the more offensive term "Muggle," as Muggle itself once had very vulgar connotations, and also because Muggle-born wizards desired that they not be called Muggles when they obviously had magical powers. Today, however, it is generally accepted that this term is not appropriate in mixed company, and "Muggle-born" is the social norm. It is of interest to lexicographers and word-lovers that "Muggle" has become a more acceptable, and "Mudblood," less acceptable. Speculations on current words which will acquire negative connotations and pass out of decent vocabularies are rampant. Squib is a word some feel will one day be replaced, while others feel that actually is it less insulting now than it ever was. V. Muggle V. & cont. Muggle-born V. & cont. Squib
("Mudblood." The Ingillis Standard Dictionary for the Modern Wizard. Brit. edition. 1967.)
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A few weeks later after the same class Trisha Smethley pulled her a little away from everyone else. Lily had already concluded that Trish was the cleverest of their shared dormitory, but she was also the least fun, and Lily was eager to join the rest.
"Oh, Lily, by the way," Trish, said, lowering her voice a little, "you told us the first night that you're Muggle-born, and we're okay with that and all, but I wouldn't go advertising it, the way you did in there today."
Lily, even when startled, was very direct. "But why wouldn't someone be okay with it?"
"Well, we're Gryffindors, so we don't mind, and so it doesn't matter that your childhood was different because none of us knew each other from before anyway, but a lot of Slytherins are real clannish and, and most of them knew each other through their whole childhood and all, and – and some of them get a little nasty about Muggles. Professor Slughorn's Head of Slytherin, you know."
"But he didn't seem to mind me being Muggle-born!" Lily was astonished that anyone could actually "get nasty" about her. She had wondered if everyone else would already know each other, but never dreamed that people would hate her on that account.
"Well, no, he didn't, I don't think. But some Slytherins, and some other people, would, and I just – I wouldn't go advertising it, if you know what I mean."
Lily wasn't sure she did. She was not the kind of person to do it, and had a sheltered experience not conductive to even imagining it.
She certainly didn't know that come her seventh year she would be a minor celebrity and under a collective social microscope in the midst of an epic war, and that even now the fates had her in preparation, in training for that time, and a time beyond, when –
Anyway. Lily suddenly felt plaintive and angry. "Well, I liked it better too when he thought I was wizard-born. I'm tired of everyone bringing that up all the time. You're all very nice, but can't you just drop it? I'm another things besides Muggle-born, you know."
Trish gave her a peculiar look but humoured her.
"Sure you are," she said agreeably. "Like redheaded."