2 September 1975
"Don't you just love pumpkin juice?" Lily set down her glass after a very refreshing first gulp, looking around at her still half asleep friends with a wide smile.
"No." Dorcas didn't look up from her zombie-esque movement of shoving a piece of plain toast into her mouth.
"Did anyone else purposely forget that Evans was a morning person," Sirius (loudly) muttered a few seats over. Lily's four roommates all replied with very exasperated, negating responses.
"Okay then. I shall leave you all to your toast." Lily directed this toward her roommates, but Sirius still sighed appreciatively.
Right as Lily was about to give up on silence and talk to Mary, the nicest of her friends in the morning, a stray owl came flying into the Great Hall. This one owl was immediately followed by a flurry of owls of different colours, sizes, and (in the case of Marlene's overweight tawny owl) shapes. Lily didn't bother looking for her owl, Athena, since it was only the first day back at school. Instead, she looked at her fellow students. Lily broke into a smile at seeing the first years stared up in wonder and shock (and occasional fright). She then proceeded to actually let out a very loud guffaw when an especially large owl ran into a jug of milk at the Slytherin table, spraying all the surrounding students. Lily was especially content to see that prick Nicolai Mulciber sulking even more than usual as he struggled to maintain his dignity (unsuccessfully) while trying different spells to dry his robes.
Alice Fortescue, the fifth inhabitant of the sixth year girls' dormitory, sent Lily a questioning look. She leaned over to speak to her neighbouring Gryffindor, "May I ask what's so funny at this hour of the morning?"
"Oh, nothing, just laughing at other peoples' misfortunes." Lily snuck another look at the still struggling Mulciber and company.
"That's… not very characteristically Lily-like." Alice, with her choppy and short dark brown hair juxtaposing her heart shaped face and large eyes, was the type of teenage girl who looked like she could either be someone unruly and rebellious or someone abundantly sweet. She managed to be both, but mainly the latter around her closest friends. She looked confusedly at Lily, but as soon as she followed the direction of Lily's discreet head nod, a small smile broke out on her lips. Suddenly her attention drifted to the Ravenclaw table, and her smile quickly departed from her face. Alice snapped her head toward someone sitting a couple of seats away from Lily, and pursed her lips thoughtfully .
After a moment of silence, she leaned close to Lily and whispered, "Look at Mary… and well… just, yes." Lily sent a look toward her curly-haired friend, who was looking much sadder than usual and was herself sending secret looks across the table to… Lily followed Mary's eyesight straight towards Benjy Fenwick. Who seemed to have gotten himself a devoted following since the last time Lily saw him.
"Oh no," Lily whispered.
Alice shifted her eyes toward Mary, her espresso coloured hair falling into her eyes. "Do you think that…?" Alice's voice trailed off as she turned back toward Lily, not sure how to phrase her question.
"That…?" Lily snuck another look at her sullen friend.
"That, you know, this is because of… the…" Alice looked emphatically toward the Ravenclaw table.
Lily followed her gaze to the sharp bone structure that had not been there just a few months before. She shook her head, "No." She didn't know why, but she felt that maybe this had been years in the making. She added, to answer Alice's questioning look, "I just, I've always had an inkling about them." Which was mostly true. Though she had never actually spent hours mulling over the thought in her head, part of her had always thought they would work well as a pair.
"Well, apparently, your inkling was only half right." Alice replied disappointedly, her voice falling to ensure that none of their friends, namely Mary, would overhear the rest. "Apparently Mr. Fenwick is a bigger sucker for batting eyelashes than we would have wished." The two friends looked over at the Ravenclaw table together, silently watching as Benjy politely smiled and nodded at something Montaria Jingley was saying.
"I think he's just being nice. He's not the type to be rude to a pack of interested birds," Lily reasoned. Alice took a sip of pumpkin juice, not convinced.
"I mean, you should have seen him in the carriage yesterday; he was so engaged and caring, and truly very nice," Lily reasoned.
"Wasn't this the same carriage ride that you took with Sirius Black?"
"Yes. And?"
"And anyone looks like a gentleman next to that." Alice turned her glance toward the glowering figure of morning-time Sirius Black.
Marlene, who had apparently woken up enough to have an interest in her surroundings, interjected, "wait who's a gentleman next to whom?" She leaned in toward her two friends. But before either Alice or Lily could reply, Professor McGonagall's voice broke out across the Gryffindor table.
"Schedules, everyone." She briskly started walking down the table, handing off schedules with efficiency intimidating to all. "Sixth years, you might have to stay a moment or two later since I have to discuss some particulars with many of you." At those last few words, every sixth year at the Gryffindor table (who was awake enough to know what was going on) felt that McGonagall was staring right at them.
McGonagall quickly reached Lily's end of the table, handing each of the assembled sixth years their respective schedules. Lily quickly read over her schedule to make sure that she didn't have any questions for McGonagall, who was finishing handing out schedules and would soon be swamped with the complaints and queries of many of the students. Content to see that she was enlisted in every NEWT level class she had wanted to enter, she reread the schedule for the actual order of classes, watching out of their corner of her eye as her friends and classmates jumped up and ran toward their head of house. She caught McGonagall's stern voice stating matter-of-factly, "Well, I'm sorry Mr. Pettigrew, but you didn't achieve the level needed on your Transfiguration OWL to enter into the NEWT level class. But I thought you would be happy to see that you made it into Charms and Potions…. Miss Fortescue, you say that you don't want to take Herbology, but I know many an auror who has found it very helpful, and I thought with your O, you might want… No, Mr. Potter, I cannot put him in your class for the sole reason that you want to take every class with your best friends; you can socialize with him in your dormitory… So, Miss Meadowes, are you telling me that you do want to stay in Care of Magical Creatures…" Lily turned her attention away from her teacher and toward Mary, the only one of her roommates who did not have business to take up with the Transfiguration professor.
"What class do you have now?"
"Potions." Mary's glum expression deepened as she read the first class on her schedule.
"I didn't know you were taking Potions!" Lily was well acquainted with her friend's dislike of the subject. In fact, the only one of Lily's friends who had ever liked Potions as much as Lily was Severus. All the rest found it to be useless and boring. Especially Mary. But regardless of how much Mary enjoyed it, Lily would be glad to have one more supportive friend in the cold dungeons in which Sev and she had done so well.
"Ya, well, Mum very pointedly told me how proud she was that I would be able to get into the NEWT class, so I couldn't very well back out. She was top of her class in potions, you know." Mary sighed deeply, a frown on her pretty face as she read her schedule again.
Lily smiled sympathetically. "Well, at least you don't have to take divination." The two friends looked up at the gray-haired teacher that Sirius and James had accurately nicknamed "Crazy Eyes" in third years.
"Oh, yes. That is true." Mary chuckled softly. "Thank Merlin."
"Lily!" Professor Slughorn looked up from the potion he was setting up on one of the lab tables. "We missed you in the little Slug Club meeting on the train ride! But of course, you had your prefect duties to attend to." Here Slughorn broke into an even wider grin than the one that had emerged on his face when he had first caught sight of Lily. "Oh, hello Margaret." He added as an afterthought.
"Hullo, Professor." Mary replied with well masked annoyance. After five years in his class, Mary was unfazed by Slughorn not knowing her name. She walked past Slughorn, rolling her eyes when she was already behind him. She took a seat in the third row, purposefully taking out her new copy of Advanced Potions-Making and straightening it out on the table.
"Hello Professor," Lily said, smiling at Slughorn before walking down the aisle to join Mary at her table. But as she was placing her bag on the table, Slughorn called out.
"Now don't get too comfortable, Lily. I'm sorry to tell you that I'm going to have to be giving assigned seats this year due to some certain… occurrences of last year." Slughorn shrugged in apology and returned to the potion in front of him. Lily sat down next to Mary, leaving her bag closed and ready to be moved.
"Do you think it's because of…?" Mary's voice trailed off, and she motioned to grab a sheet of paper from the pile of parchment in front of her, since she obviously did not want to be overheard by Slughorn.
"Yes." Lily answered before Mary could dip her quill in ink. Lily shrugged in response to Mary's eye roll.
The year before, the Marauders had blown up one too many cauldrons when they should have been working together on classwork, and a nearby Hufflepuff was sent to the infirmary two weeks before exams. Needless to say that Slughorn stopped acting like an indulging grandfather after that.
Lily and Mary sat silently, both curiously looking around at the conflicting aromas coming from all the different tables. It was not long before the rest of their class swooped in around them; each entrance bringing with it Slughorn's cryptic comment about assigned seating. Marlene and Alice came to stand with their two friends (Dorcas had opted out of Potions), leaning on the table and renewing their previous debate about the newest Defence teacher, a favourite topic amongst most students on the first days of school. Lily looked around the class, her eyes falling (without her consent) on the quiet, slouching figure of Severus Snape in the corner of the room. While all her internal organs clenched with the cold feeling of disappointment, Lily quickly turned back towards her friends, ignoring the worried look on Alice's face. She smiled quickly and joined her friends' conversation, adding her own thoughts on the newest addition to the Hogwarts faculty. But though her eyes were paying closing attention to her friends' conversation, her mind was moving to the assigned seating chart. Sev and she were the top of their class in Potions, and Slughorn did think them friends. Lily shook her head (even though it might look odd to all those not privy to her thoughts). Odds of her getting Sev as a partner were… Lily looked around the room, but her brain was too muddled and it was too early in the school year for her to figure out the exact odds. She just figured that they'd be slim. She turned very purposely toward her friends, partaking in their light conversation until the sound of Slughorn's booming voice broke through the ever-increasing volume of the teenagers.
"Ah well, here we are! Another year of learning together! And this year, we shall study the very substances that can control the most human of characteristics and attitudes! It will be hard work, I admit, but the students who have passed through this class have joined the hall of the greatest wizards of this era. Just entering this class has bettered your chance of joining them." Here Slughorn chuckled. "Now, you just have to prove you can! But before you show me how much knowledge you retained over the summer holiday, why don't we change around the seating arrangement? This year, I feel that it might be necessary to have assigned seats… due to certain occurrences of last year." Slughorn reached down for a chalice, purposefully not looking at the Marauders, an action made unnecessary when the students all turned toward the smug Gryffindors anyway.
"Well, let us partner off, shall we?" Slughorn said loudly, as he tried to regain the lost attention of his sixteen year old students.
"First…" Lily focused with every fibre of her being on Slughorn's words. Every time that two students were paired off, and neither were Lily or Severus, she both took a breath that she was not yet his partner and blanched at the smaller drawing pool that they were both in.
And then she heard it. "Severus Snape with—"
Lily's head snapped up.
"Li—"
Lily's stomach seemed to move in 20 different directions simultaneously.
"Linus Sporsky."
A pimply Hufflepuff looked up with a grimace. Lily, for her part, was so lost in her relief that she missed the next name. She gave Marlene a questioning look to make sure it was not her own name, but her unspoken question was answered by Slughorn reading out the next name, "And Lily Evans! This table, over here." Slughorn gestured to a table in front of him, causing two Ravenclaws to begrudgingly give up their spots in the front of the classroom. Lily jumped out of her chair and grabbed her bag, nodding goodbye to Marlene (Mary and Alice had gotten paired together and were sitting across the room), who seemed to be holding back a laugh. Lily looked around during her whisper-filled walk to the front of the classroom. The only other body walking to the front was the loping figure of James Potter, who couldn't be her partner. No. Merlin's pissing beard, no. She reached the front of the room and carefully took a seat, refusing to look at the person sitting next to her. At the person that would be sitting next to her all year long. She listened very carefully as Slughorn read Marlene's name and then Sirius's, not losing focus as Slughorn finished the list of students. Instead of looking at her partner, she stared at a cauldron that Slughorn had placed in the centre of the table.
"Well, I think that is everyone. Now, why don't you all take a moment to acquaint yourself with your tablemate and then we shall start on this Potions lesson!"
Lily cautiously looked to the left, but snapped forward the second she saw an overly familiar head of hair over an (admittedly chiselled) jaw line. Of course. Of course. Why did she doubt it for a moment. The very person who she did not even bother to think or worry about (who she had not worried about for a few, peaceful months) would be just the youth she would be partnered with for the whole year. In debatably her favourite class. Hello, my name is Lily Evans and welcome to my life. Lily sat in horror filled silence as she stared straight ahead, but after a few moments of only hearing the jumble of conversations did she notice that her partner was also quiet. No "some would call it fate, Evans." No "we shall get mighty acquainted this year; be sure of that." No flirtations of any nature. Which eased the blow a little. She snuck another look at her tablemate, who seemed to be doodling absentmindedly in his notebook. Lily took out a novel to read during these few minutes of relative calm, blocking out the sound of Mary and Alice (the lucky bastards) laughing at their table.
But her reading was cut short by Slughorn moving to stand in front of her table as he called for attention.
He tapped at a cauldron situated in the centre of the table. "Now who can tell me what this is?"
Lily had been sitting next to the substance for a few minutes already, and the delicious aroma had given her an idea as to the content. Her hand shot up at Slughorn's question.
"Ah, yes, Lily." Slughorn smiled down at her.
"This is amortentia. The most powerful love potion in the world. It is supposed to smell different to every person, according to… according to what they're attracted to." A murmur of intrigued whispers shot up from around the room.
"Very good, Lily. 10 points to Gryffindor." Slughorn nodded happily. "James!" Slughorn turned to Lily's oddly quiet tablemate. "What do you smell?"
Lily turned toward her surprised partner, who had put on a big smile for the sake of his audience. He leaned forward and took a theatrical sniff, "well, I smell butterbeer," he took another exaggerated sniff, "chocolate and…" James's smirk faltered, "ya, butterbeer and chocolate."
Both Slughorn and Lily gave James an odd look for a second before the former turned toward another cauldron and the latter turned back to the amortentia. She was still trying to figure out what it smelled like for her. She had smelled musty old books (the type that still carry the scent of ink), rain (because as much as her friends tease her, she's sure that rain has a smell) and something else… she took another discreet sniff. Yeah, it was dirt. She sighed to herself. Of all possible things to smell in the most intense of all love potions, she smelled dirt. Yes, it at least it was fresh and (relatively) clean, like the dirt that would come in the bags that Professor Sprout gave them in Herbology. But still. Dirt. This was really going to be one of those days, huh.
She looked up to see Slughorn back at the front of the class, and she began to nod in faux-understanding in the way that she had mastered with years of practice (In third year, she had realized that she didn't have to listen to everything the teacher said, and she had then proceeded to master the art of looking up and nodding encouragingly while doodling in the margins of her textbooks. It had grown into an art-form from there). But then out of the corner of her eye she saw James drumming his long fingers on the table as he attentively watched Slughorn. If James was paying attention, either the apocalypse was already beginning or Slughorn had just promised a date with a Veela as the prize for the best potion this period.
Lily actually tuned into Slughorn's words as he was finishing his instructions. "So, you shall have the remainder of the class to brew a Draught of the Living Death, and whoever makes the best one shall win this bottle of Felix Felicis. Begin!" Slughorn stated with a final flourish of his robes. Caught in the fast-paced energy which had grabbed hold of all the students at the promise of liquid luck, Lily pulled out her copy of Advanced Potion Making and immediately opened it to a random page (barely even having time to register what, exactly, Slughorn had promised). When she remembered that she did not, in fact, know what page this certain draught was on, she looked over the Quidditch-begotten shoulder of James Potter (though Lily admitted that James Potter's shoulders were quite muscular, that in no way meant she found them particularly appealing) at his copy. She searched for the page number and quickly turned back to her own copy, ignoring James's eyebrow raise that had come as a response to her close proximity.
Talk about starting the year off running. Lily spent the next hour (it felt longer…and shorter) running around the dungeon, trying to remember where all the needed ingredients were kept, wiping her blurry eyes, debating using her wand to dye the potion to the proper colour, accidently nicking her pinkie, thanking Merlin she had put her hair up and out of her face, wringing out her cramped hand and internally yelling at her Potions textbook for not being straightforward (though debatably not in that order). At the end of class, Lily's face was five minutes away from matching the colour of her hair, and her potion did not seem to have the right consistency. She stood staring at it as Slughorn made the rounds. Lily repeatedly had to remind herself that she's actually quite good at Potions… It was only the first day back after all; she still had to get back in the groove of things… she debated giving the draught another turn with her wand since Slughorn was not looking, but she was too mentally exhausted to even think of cheating. And she couldn't let Slughorn down like that. She sat down sullenly, wondering what a morning like this was predicting for the rest of the year.
"Moping isn't your colour, Evans."
Well. So he speaks.
"I would say smug isn't yours, Potter, but then I would be lying." Lily replied to James, though from the direction of her face it seemed she was addressing Slughorn's desk.
"Yes, because I would be smug about this," James gestured toward the green liquid in his cauldron, "and that," he nodded toward the side of the room, where Severus was being congratulated for a superb Draught of the Living Death.
Lily didn't have the energy (or, admittedly, the will) to respond. She took out her novel, not wanting to pay attention to the sounds of "brilliant, Severus, truly!" They filtered in without her permission. Right when she was finally able to begin concentrating on the words, Slughorn walked up to her table.
"Now let me see. Well, Lily, for your first time making a Draught of the Living Dead this is actually quite good. Of course, I expected nothing less from you. The only problem is that it's a tad too murky. Most years, this would win you the Felix Felicis."
"Wait. Would it actually work, Professor?" Lily looked down in shock at the potion that she had looked at in disgust 30 seconds before, growing embarrassed at her dramatics and surliness of only a minute before.
"Well, let's see." Slughorn pulled out at leaf and threw it into the cauldron, watching as it shrivelled up. "Not as harmful as others, but could still knock an average-sized wizard out for the rest of the day, I reckon. Not bad at all." Lily couldn't help smiling to herself as Slughorn turned to James, a frown forming on his walrus-like face. "Well, James, I see that you didn't set your cauldron to the right temperature, and you forgot to add the root of asphodel. But besides that, this is... good." Slughorn gave James a half-hearted smile before moving to the next table. Lily would have felt bad for her tablemate (and for acting so unnecessarily morose in front of him), if it had been someone else. But since it was James Potter, she remained relatively unbothered.
"Told you moping didn't befit you." James said to Lily once Slughorn had begun to criticize the next pair of students.
Lily turned to answer her messy-haired tablemate, but James was no longer in his seat. She looked around to see where he had gone, since he had disappeared so fast it was as if he had dissapparated. She found him a row down leaning in front of Sirius's cauldron, conniving with his best friend about mischief they were planning (or so it seemed from their laughing and their secretive facial expressions).
Lily turned back around, not wanting James to catch her looking for him, since he might assume it's for reasons other than simple curiosity. As soon as Lily was facing forward again, Slughorn walked to the front of the class and grabbed the vial of Felix Felicis. Lily's stomach clenched in anticipation, since she was both nervous and excited to hear the winner now that she knew she might have a chance.
"Well! This has been a great class! And there were many students who were on the right path. But there was one student who made a near perfect Draught of the Living Death. Will Severus Snape come up to collect his reward?" Slughorn smiled proudly at one of his favourite pupils, who allowed only the echo of a smile to reach his own lips.
"And with that, class is dismissed! For homework, I would like 2 feet on famous examples of the Draught of the Living Death!" Slughorn yelled over the sound of chairs scraping and books being thrown into bags. Lily carefully placed all her quills, papers, and books into her own bag, not willing to admit how bothered she was that Severus had beaten her in her favourite class. She looked up when Sirius, Remus, and Peter walked up to her table to collect the fourth Marauder.
Sirius turned to Lily with a smirk, "Evans, if I were you, I would stay away from Snivellus on the day he takes that Felix Felicis."
Lily responded by staring at him in a mix of confusion and annoyance.
"I'm just being a loyal mate, informing you that, who knows, he might try and rekindle your friendship with the help of that potion. He might eve—" Sirius looked at something behind Lily, shrugged, and headed to the door, not bothering to finish his sentence.
"You're not my loyal mate," Lily yelled to his retreating figure. She wasn't disturbed by Sirius's abrupt departure; one gets used to his oddities (though they never stop being annoying).
"Keep telling yourself that," Sirius replied without turning around. Lily rolled her eyes and waved goodbye to Remus, who was still waiting for James to cram all his things into his bookbag (Peter had scampered after Sirius).
Lily met her friends at the door of the classroom, already mentally prepared for their laughter and teasing about her assigned partner. It came as expected. She debated asking them for their opinions on what Sirius had said about Sev's acquisition of the Felix Felicis, but she already imagined their responses, so didn't see the point (Marlene: Bullshit, he'll probably just try and take a shower that won't leave his hair greasy, Alice: Or to establish a closer bond with you-know-who; hell, he might even give it to you-know-who, Mary: anyway, there's a difference between luck and achieving the impossible). And at any rate, at least one of them would probably be right.
A/N: To anyone whose reading, reviewing, favouriting, etc., you make me smile and I hope to see more of you! Next chapter will hopefully be up sometime soon, and so far I like it much better than this one so that's a plus. Happy Tuesday. Omfg no its Monday. Okay. Time for me to try and get some sleep. Stay classy, San Diego.