III. Hello and Goodbye
Six months in Inverness is a long time. Six months with a wand in your attic, an ebony, dragon heartstring wand that you can't use, and a barn owl in your bedroom. Julie passed the time by reading her new schoolbooks, again and again and again. She learned the names of hundreds of magical herbs, memorized spells, and devoured histories of magic. Names of goblins and giants and sorcerors got jumbled together in her head. She poked through her potion ingredients, until one day she lit a handful of bat wings on fire, scorching the kitchen floor, and Margaret took her potions kit away.
Real life was less important. She played football with the boys at school and scraped by in her classes, but even science, formerly her favorite class, had lost any luster. Why make things blow up with baking soda when you could do it with magic?
Spring slowly turned into summer. Summer crawled by. August arrived, and Margaret bought Julie a trunk, helped her neatly pack her books and robes. Late in the month she sat her daughter down and told her what she needed to know. First, she explained what a Muggle is. (Margaret herself.) Then Muggleborns, pure-bloods, half-bloods. (Julie's father; and this was very odd to Julie, because she had visited him in New York just a year ago, and she had seen no sign of magic.) And then she told her daughter that there was a wizard who started gaining power in Britain, a wizard whose name most people didn't like to use, a wizard who seemed unstoppable. Voldemort.
Julie—eleven. She practiced punches on people she didn't like, and she wasn't afraid of anything.
People are stupid when they're young.
And here she was, on the platform. Looking around, trying to discern her future classmates through the steam. Snippets of conversation floated past her.
"I'm going to need a new broom..."
"Pauline, for God's sake, you can't wear that..."
"...Ministry's completely useless on the matter..."
"CISSY! Over here! Cissy..."
Amy reached over and took Julie's hand, bouncing up and down a bit with excitement.
"All right, well, this is it," said Margaret uncomfortably. "Can you get the trunk on the train yourself?"
"Sure," said Julie, eager to be gone. She stood on tiptoes so her mother could kiss her cheek, hugged Amy haphazardly, and lugged her trunk away, owl cage balanced precariously on top. She turned once and looked back and her family was already gone.
Two boys rushed past her and jumped up onto the train. She could hear an owl screech somewhere.
Julie took a deep breath and started to heave on her trunk. As she bumped it into the train she felt part of the weight lift up—someone had taken the other end. A girl Julie's age, with brown skin and curly hair.
"Hi," she said nervously. "I'm Mary, Mary Macdonald."
"Julia, but people I like call me Julie."
"Nice owl." The owl in question blinked his yellow eyes as he was carried onto the train and edged into the corridor. "Where are we taking this?"
Julie shrugged.
"You can sit with me," said Mary, both politely and nervously. She set the trunk down and let Julie drag it while she went ahead with the owl.
Mary led her about halfway down the train to her compartment. In that time they established that they were both first years, Mary had already put her things in the compartment, and yes, that was a Scottish accent Julie had—"you got a problem with that?"
"No."
There were two girls in the compartment already, a few years older. One of them smiled and introduced herself right away.
"Alice Montague, this is Maggie Porter. We're fourth years."
Alice had a round, friendly face and honey blond hair, while Maggie had dark skin and tons and tons of braids.
They sat down and made themselves comfortable. Alice and Maggie were talking about their classmates, gossiping about who had gone where and done what over the summer.
The Hogwarts Express started with a lurch, and suddenly London was speeding away. Julie and Mary sat silently while the older girls chattered, and the train rattled along. Around lunchtime a witch came in with a cart and Maggie bought Pumpkin Pasties and Chocolate Frogs for everyone, even the first years. They were better than any Muggle candy Julie had ever had.
The door slid open with a bang. A girl and a boy walked in, neither making eye contact with anyone.
The girl was a redhead, Julie saw with interest, but her hair was much more vivid than Julie's copper-gold, and her eyes were brighter as well, emerald green. Her face was slightly flushed and a little puffy, as though she had just been crying. The boy was thin—scrawny, to be honest, with an unkempt look and lank black hair falling over his eyes.
"Is there room for us?" asked the girl.
"No—"
"Sure."
Julie and Alice spoke at the same time. The older girl sprang up, pushing her coat away and nudging Maggie to the side. Maggie rolled her eyes as she moved over, but she was smiling.
"What are your names?" asked Alice kindly. Julie was shocked to see the poisonously scornful look the boy gave her, but his ginger friend didn't seem to notice.
"I'm Lily, this is Sev."
After a long pause, Alice and Maggie started to tell the younger students about the Sorting. Eventually the conversation devolved into a fight about which house was better—Hufflepuff (Alice's) or Gryffindor (Maggie's).
The train sped on, the sun crept across the sky.
That night, the five girls in the Gryffindor dormitory went straight to sleep, tired and full. Lily Evans, Marlene McKinnon, Mary Macdonald, Niamh Fairchild, Julia Fraser. (Three of them wouldn't live past thirty.) An owl circled the tower, beating soft wings, silent as a ghost.
And what else do you need to know? What is Hogwarts like for anyone? There were classes, and feasts, and Quidditch matches. Julie got good grades most of the time, and terrible grades sometimes, and once she accidentally destroyed a library book. There were summers in Scotland, and her mum insisting she learn Muggle history and science, and there were Christmases at Hogwarts, and Marlene burning her fingers every year when they toasted things in the common room fire. And there was sex, starting in fifth year for Julie and Marlene, later for most of the others. And there were worse things—jinxes and hexes and rumors, rumors about certain students with a mark on their left forearm.
We can skip that. Let's begin in sixth year, before the first death.
You know what it's like. The important thing to remember is this: people are stupid when they're young.
