Dedication: To my own knight who held the ranch tray for me.
Knight in Shining Armor
Any girl can tell you she wanted to marry a knight in shining armor when she was little. Of course, the description may be different for each girl, some saying she he would have brown hair and blue eyes with others wanting only blonde hair and no other hair color would do. The point is that no matter what they looked like, each girl was going to marry a true hero, a boy who would risk everything—especially life and limb—to save her, the only girl for him.
Most girls would never own-up to that fact that at the age of seventeen or eighteen they still want their knight in shining armor to find them. The wish for something like that to happen has been battered and torn by boys from their pasts until the hope is almost lost in the shade of all the bad memories. But the dream somehow clings to existence in the heart of each girl simply waiting to be given a chance again.
I, Lily Sara Evans, at the age of eighteen, admit that it is my dream to marry my knight in shining armor.
It was an off day. Any idiot could have told Lily that, but unfortunately, Lily was experiencing it for herself and didn't need the idiot's opinion on how her day was going.
Everything had started off fine, even though the bacon at breakfast had been slightly undercooked and the orange juice had some pulp in it. If her meal had been the worst of Lily's worries she would have called the day a great success. But good things never last, particularly if you're planning on the good to happen.
As Lily was going to Transfiguration after her fairly normal breakfast, the fairly un-normal happened: her bag seam spilt, spilling the bag's guts down the stairs. Lily chased after her scrolls, books, quills, and inkbottles, finding that they had a liking of rolling down the stairs.
Transfiguration turned out to be no better than her journey there when Lily discovered that the previous occupant of her desk had left their rather sticky gum on the underside of the desk, which consequently attached itself to Lily's knee. And it was watermelon; Lily hated watermelon.
It started to rain in sheets just as Lily went outside to go to Care of Magical Creatures, the fanged geranium bit Lily's hand in Herbology, and being late to lunch because of an impromptu visit to the Hospital Wing, the only thing left to eat was liverwurst sandwich. The library was closed during Lily's free hour due to a chain of dungbomb explosions, Lily's formerly perfect polyjuice potion was ruined when Professor Slughorn ran out of boomslang skin in Potions, and Lily bruised her shin when she tripped on an uneven seam in the wood floor in the Defense Against the Dark Arts room.
Lily officially named the day the worst of her life when Peeves dropped whipped cream-filled balloons on her head on her way to Charms.
When Lily finally got to Charms, after going to the bathroom and trying to clean off the whipped cream with two-ply bark they call toilet paper, there was only one desk left: the one front and center. This was Lily's first tardy, and of course she couldn't even sneak into class without the entire population of Hogwarts knowing she had been late.
As Lily sat her bag on the desk, none too lightly, the left leg let out a loud crack and broke from its station. It would be a lovely thing to say the desk simply toppled over without a fuss, but Lily decided that there would be no more bad-day things happening to her, and tried to right the wrong herself. Lily struggled to keep the desk level as she fumbled for her wand to fix it, but in the end only succeeded in marrying herself to the disaster at hand. All in all, Lily ended up under the desk when it finally decided to fall to the ground.
Professor Flitwick mended the desk easily enough, and Lily sat in her chair, mortified that she had destroyed a piece of school property.
"As I was saying before, uh, the class was interrupted, please separate into your pairs."
At the beginning of the year the class had been paired off according to ability, the best student with the worst and so on in hopes that the better student could help the not better student. Or that was the theory of it. Lily had a suspicion that James was much better than he'd let on in the ability test, but had done Troll-quality work to be guaranteed a spot with her.
"I, er, missed the instructions for the charm we're working on," Lily admitted to James.
"Oh, well, we're just going over any possible charm that could ever even be considered to be on the NEWTS, which means any charm ever invented."
Lily nodded and glanced at her wrist watch to see just how much time she had wasted. Noticing her shirt was wrinkled at the bottom, Lily let out an exaggerated sigh and let her head bang on the desk.
"Long day?" James asked.
"Only the longest I've ever had. I think the fates are out to destroy my sanity. Now the newest of my problems has reared its ugly head: my bottom shirt button is missing in action."
James glanced at the space on her shirt where a white button should have been, then reached into his backpack and pulled out a small bag. Rummaging around for a moment, James let out a triumphant, "Ah ha!" and handed Lily something silver. It was a safety pin.
"Oh, thanks, but I can manage," she replied, but James only held out the pin to Lily with more emphasis.
She took the it and began to fix her shirt so she could maintain what was left of her dignity. Lily asked, "Do you normally keep pins in your bag?"
James smiled smugly and said, "Yes. It's part of my seventy-two hour emergency girl kit. I've got almost anything you could even think of needing. Hey, I'm going to go get one of the revision books so we can study."
Lily glanced after James and smiled. Sure, he hadn't risked his life or limb—though his fingers were in danger of being pricked—but he'd saved her day, and that made all the difference.