Chapter 3: Meeting the Potters
Again, not much to say. Read on. :D
"Hello Mr. and Mrs. Potter," I greeted them amiably, shaking their hands as they came in. "Welcome; thank you for coming."
"It's Lily, isn't it?" Mrs. Potter – Lisa – said excitedly. "Goodness, we have heard so much about you from James! How do you do?"
"Just fine, thank you," I said, keeping my voice civil and on-the-surface. "Let me take you to the drawing room." I led them to where my mother and Petunia had been shouting at each other earlier. They were both still there, but now they looked like they had been waiting there all along.
"Hello Lisa!" my mother cried, rushing forward to give her a hug. "And this must be your husband, Brian, and your son, James! I'm charmed!"
"It's nice to see you again, Mrs. Evans," James said smoothly.
"Oh, please; call me Michelle," Mum gushed, beaming down at him. Then she looked at the Potters, dragged Petunia and me up front, and said, "These are my daughters, Lily and Petunia."
"It's delightful to see such lovely young women," Mr. Potter said, smiling kindly towards us. I saw many of James's features in his face and build; it was almost unnerving. He too was muscled with a strong jaw, hazel eyes, and black hair, though his was actually tamed. When I looked over at Mrs. Potter, I saw that James's nose and the shape of his skin-tone had come from her.
"James has spoken of you often, Lily," Mrs. Potter told me conversationally.
"I should only hope you heard good things," I said sweetly.
"We did," Mr. Potter said. "James said you were beautiful and well-mannered; he was quite right."
I had nothing to say to this; I settled for blushing a rosy pink and sidling away to the kitchen. From there, I heard my mother tell James that Petunia and I would take care of him now. I groaned out loud; that was the very last thing I wanted. Petunia had already retired into her room, now that she had met the guests, and I knew that she would not come out again until it was time for dinner.
Sure enough, James entered my kitchen with his usual grin, and I got my first good look at him. He was dressed satisfactorily in blue jeans and a dark green t-shirt, and now that he had made his first impression, his hair was back to its uniform haystack. He laughed when he saw me, and I rolled my eyes at him.
"Look Lily; we match," he said, pointing to my turquoise shirt. Sure enough, he was wearing almost the exact same shade. Joy.
"That's absolutely spectacular, James. Thank you for telling me; my life surely would not have been complete without that essential bit of knowledge." I couldn't help but be sarcastic; I did not want him there, and sarcasm was my way of showing that.
"Of course," he said. "But your mother expects you to entertain me, and I have so far seen no progress."
"What do you want me to do, then?" I asked through clenched teeth.
"We can go up to your room or something."
I had been right; thank goodness I had remembered to clean up my room before he came.
"Fine," I said indifferently, leading the way up the stairs and down the hall.
I opened the door and he walked in, examining everything with a lively interest. He laughed when he saw my collection of stuffed animals lining the top of my room.
"I never knew you liked stuffed animals, Lily," he said.
"I got them all as gifts from various birthdays," I explained irritably, sitting on my bed. "People seemed to think that from the time I was born to when I was about six, I loved stuffed animals. They were cute, so I use them as decorations."
"I see," he said. "Well, at least you didn't have to get books that you would 'grow into' for all those years. My Muggle relatives enjoyed giving me those."
"I got a lot of those too," I said, signaling to the bookshelf in the corner of my room. "But I liked the ones I got, and I actually did grow into them."
"Really?" James went over to the shelf and picked out a few books, reading the covers aloud. "Pride and Prejudice, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights…geez Lily; they gave you these when you were younger than six?"
"My mother wanted that," I said. "She saved a lot of money, since I like reading classics; I have all of them to read and reread whenever I want."
He shrugged. "I guess." He then began to inspect the rest of my room; he looked at all the trinkets I had, as well as all the photographs and posters, occasionally asking me questions about them. When he wandered into my bathroom, he picked up the curling iron and blow-dryer that I had forgotten to put away and asked me what they were.
"They are for fixing your hair," I said with a snort. "This is a curling iron; I use it to curl my hair, like this." I demonstrated how the curling iron worked. "This one is a blow-dryer, used for drying your hair quickly after you've washed it. When you press that button, hot air comes out."
"This is so odd," he said in wonderment, pressing the buttons. "I have to hand it to you Muggles; you get along well without magic. What other strange contraptions have you invented?"
Though I didn't really want to, I was forced to take James on a tour throughout our house and explain how perfectly ordinary things like telephones worked. He had many questions to ask, and insisted upon trying out whatever he could. He had the most fun when I showed him my father's exercise equipment; it wasn't every day that I saw someone fawn over how a treadmill worked.
"This is great!" James told me happily as he ran at ten miles an hour. "Maybe I should have tried all this Muggle stuff out ages ago!"
"Pity for you that you didn't," I said sarcastically, leaning back on the table near me while he continued to play with the equipment.
Throughout the whole expedition, James acted like a three year old child, and I remained hostile. I used sarcasm in every single thing I said to him, and took care to make faces at whatever 'experiment' he did with our Muggle possessions. He didn't care though; he kept fooling around anyway and disregarded my open enmity.
This was going to be much more painful than I thought it would be.
-Sighs- No, nothing in Harry Potter is my own; all of it is the creation of J. K. Rowling. And I still have nothing much to say, so you may move on to the next chapter! Just remember that I love reviews. ;D