Chapter 2

"Now that was a fun ride." I exclaimed as I stepped off of the Knight Bus and onto the sidewalk just outside of the Leaky Cauldron. "Thanks for the lift Ernie!" I yelled to the bus driver as Stewy dropped my trunk next to me on the sidewalk. "And thank you Stewy for the help with my trunk."

"Oh, it was my pleasure Miss Evans." Stewy said as he

"See you later Stewy, see you Ernie." I waved goodbye to the Knight Bus and turned around and walked into the Leaky Cauldron where I was supposed to be meeting my friends Rebecca and Rebecca. Yeah, I know confusing, good news is, they use different nick names. Rebecca #1 likes to be called Rebby, while Rebecca #2 likes to be called Becca. Of course, sometimes I just call them #1 and #2. I met them both on the train my first year at Hogwarts. They were both sitting in the same compartment when I knocked on the door and asked if I could sit with them. They nodded and promptly introduced themselves to my great confusion. They had apparently been planning the conversation ten minutes prior to my knock, trying to find the most fitting way to completely baffle anyone they introduced themselves to. Apparently they decided on talking as fast as possible and practically finishing each others sentences while leaving their victim, i.e. me, no time to say anything. I was confused to say the least. The two still get a kick out of trying to confuse people with their names.

I dragged my trunk into the Leaky Cauldron and looked around for my friends, but I didn't see them. However, sadly, that didn't mean that they hadn't seen me. I walked over to Tom the bartender, and asked for a butterbeer and if he had seen the two girls yet today. Tom retrieved my butterbeer and looked thoughtfully at me for a moment. Then, just as he was about to reply I hear heavy footsteps and a screech behind me. I tried to step to the side or duck or something, but I was too slow.

"LILY!" the two girls yelled as they tackled me to the floor with their overly excited hugs.

"Ow… so, you need to come up with a new way of greeting people, because if I lose anymore brain cells, I won't be smart enough to help you with our potions homework." I replied from my position on the floor. I sat up on my elbows and looked around; apparently getting tackled in the Leaky Cauldron and landing on your back in a spread eagle position attracts a bit of attention, because everyone was staring at me like I had four arms, three eyes, and a tail. With out warning, I grabbed one of each girl's hands and pulled myself off the floor, making them trip forward and almost fall flat on their faces. I brushed my back end off and asked "So how is your summer going?"

This question, of course, gave them the opportunity to be confusing by both speaking about two different things at the same time, with equal excitement and speed. While they babbled about their summers, I took the opportunity to observe them more closely and see how much they had changed since I had last seen them two and a half months ago.

Rebby looked about the same as she had the year before; same long, wavy brown hair with natural blonde highlights, same round face lit up with a constant smile, same hazel-green eyes that sparkle when she laughs. She had grown an inch or two, making her a proper 5'4" tall, though I still had at least an inch on her. She was wearing a short sleeve blue t-shirt with a muggle band logo on the front in black and green. Her extra long legs were covered by slightly faded blue jeans with blue stitching along the hems. She also had on a pair of new red and black checkered converses, of which I was slightly envious.

Becca, on the other hand, had changed quite a bit. She still had the deep blue eyes set into a heart shaped face along with her ever present smirk of amusement. Her clothing choice was expected as well; two spaghetti strap tanks, one blue, one black, layered over top of each other with dark, fray hemmed blue jeans, her old blue, brown, and white sneakers, and a black ¾ sleeve cotton jacket with a blue rose on the front. What was really different was her hair. It had always been long and wavy; nearly reaching her bottom, but now it was much redder than it was its former strawberry blonde. Also, she was now around 5' 7" tall, a good three inches taller than she had been at the end of last school year.

I raised an eyebrow as the two came to a stop at the same time and smiled at me. "You enjoy being bloody confusing don't you?"

"Of course we do! It's what we do best!" Becca replied smiling from ear to ear. "Other than pulling pranks with the-"

"STOP! I don't even want to hear them mentioned today. Today is a fun, Marauder free day." What or who is a marauder? You ask. A marauder is an overly annoying and completely useless group of pranksters who have no respect for the rules or other people's personal space. As a prefect, they were my arch enemy, as a girl, they were, usually, the bane of my existence. "Now lets get my trunk up to the room so we can get on with the fun stuff, shall we?" I said picking up one of the handles on my trunk while Rebby grabbed the other and exclaimed "Tally ho!"

I laughed and rolled my eyes at her and started up the stairs to the room. Becca followed behind us saying things like "Getty-up!" and "Andale, mi amigas! Vamos! Rapidamente, por favor!" She has a habit of speaking in Spanish at random moments. Where she learned Spanish, I'm still not sure, but as far as I can tell, she's pretty good at it and her accent is perfect. Fifteen minutes later we had deposited my trunk in the room, fed my owl Malachia, Rebby's owl Whiz, and Becca's owl Hermes some owl treats, let Becca's cat Alasse and Rebby's cat Inkberry out of their carrier cases to play, and walked out the back of the Leaky Cauldron and through the secret doorway into Diagon Alley all the while verbally abusing each other in a good natured way. We decided to go to Gringots first to get some money from our vaults, then to head to Madame Maulkin's for some new robes, and then to stop by the new Ice Cream Parlor for a snack.

By around three o'clock we had collectively finished off a Giant Choco-berry-licious Sundae and were ready to go get our school books and some more potions supplies. First we went into the Apothecary and gather the necessary potion ingredient refills. Then we headed back down Diagon Alley towards Flourish and Blott's and the Leaky Cauldron entrance. As we passed Mr. Olivander's wand shop I smiled and waved at the eccentric old man. His muttered words of "You'll do great things, Miss Evans, especially with charms" echoed through my head. So far they had proven true, I was top of my class in charms, and not far behind in DADA and Potions. Sometime's though, I wondered if all he was referring to were my classes at school. There was something… omniscient about that man.

We spent at least two hours looking around Flourish and Blott's both getting our school books and browsing through the fiction and defense sections. We, being the three of us, had been working outside of class on working out and learning some defensive spells that we weren't going to learn this coming year in class. With He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, I mean Voldemort, yes, with Voldemort running around out there with his followers, his Death Eaters, you could never be too safe. One of the girls in our dorm, Alice Grey, had lost her Aunt to Voldemort, and I had had to console a 4th year I found crying in a corner of the commons one night over the murder of her father. Whether he seems like a real threat or not, Voldemort was slowly reaching out and touching each of us with his icy trail of death and destruction. So we three had decided to bulk up on our defense skills and a few well placed charms and other spells. We were also considering becoming animagi, but not too seriously. The odds of our actually accomplishing it were slim, and it was illegal to try without proper instruction, which we didn't have access too.

Finally at around six o'clock, with our bags incredibly heavier and our wallets extremely lighter, we started back to the Leaky Cauldron. We headed up to our extra large room and dropped off our belongings. After feeding the pets, we decided to go back down to the pub for some dinner before going to bed. Rebby and Becca were leading and I was following right on their heels when suddenly I missed a step and fell head long into the two of them, The force of the impact making all three of us tumble down 5 or 6 steps and crash into the people at the bottom of the stairs.

I ended up on the bottom of the pile with five or six people sitting on my feet, legs, torso and chest. My arms and head were free though, so I used them to try to sit up and see how much destruction I had caused. Rebby and Becca were tangled into the mess of people just as I was. The table and chairs that had been closest to the stairs had collapsed and a couple of chairs had been turned on their sides. Apparently a waitress had also had the misfortune of being caught in our path, because there was pumpkin juice, butterbeer, soup, hamburgers, French fries, and something that smelled distinctly of whisky all over us; 'us' of course being the mass of writhing arms and legs and heads attempting to stand up all at once from the incredibly tangled mess. People from all over the pub were sitting quietly in their chairs gaping with slack jaws and the pile of bodies on the floor. You'd think we had grown three heads and shouted 'I'm a purple pumpkin poodle pickled in poppy seeds' or something. Okay, maybe not the best example, but you get the point.

I heard a groan of pain just to the left of my elbow and looked over to see the messy black hair and deep chocolate eyes of one of my fellow Hogwarts students.

"Oh, great." I groaned in annoyance "It's you." Then I promptly blacked out.