If you were to stand at the peak of one of those mountains, feel the wind whipping you all around, feeling the sun rise behind you, silhouette on the ground before you, and gaze down at all the tiny towns, forests that looked like bushes of green and everything would feel infinitely insignificant that stretched all the way as far as you could see, into the horizon. And everything would become little flicks of fast motion and just over there, there…you could feel the tingling warmth of the dawn of another day you, standing on the tip of the world, just beyond the sky.
And flying, you fall onto the waking town of Mary Clamount, and watch another story unfold.
—..— —.
The last time there had been something at least major enough to befall this town of non-major happenings was when the two Evans sisters had a huge shouting match, with the blonde one yelling from the window of the second storey and the feisty red-head yelling equally loudly from the backyard. The women going to the market, with their shopping bags swinging in their arms, the children playing ball or shovelling at each other, the people in suits on their way to work; everyone seemed to stop doing whatever they were doing to gawk at the scene. Those who managed to catch snippets of their conversation were very excited indeed and went around town gossiping with one another.
"—screamed like a ban-shee, guess it runs in the family, that kind of voice." A lady who looked like a banshee nodded knowingly, touching and squeezing the oranges.
"Well, on the topic of genes, they migh' 'ave skipped a generation, ah 'member the mother, wunderful…." the fruit seller said, packaging the oranges,
"Oh, I know the blond one! Absolute crazy little bat! Brat's screamed at me when all I asked her what she was cryin' all about." A man who was clearly eavesdropping added.
"The redhead's off her rocker too! Shoutin' rubbish 'bout warts 'nd doors. Completely lost 'er mind, din' she?"
"—Bleargh!" another man choked on the watermelon he was eating, signalling the end of their conversation as he threw up all over their shoes and everyone was too busy holding their noses and escaping to notice a cat, seemingly unperturbed by the loud swears and stamping and running, slink away.
In the six years that passed since that incident, the Evans sisters had grown quite a bit since then. Petunia, the older one had become something of a blonde stick. Her long blonde straight hair feel way past her waist and she always had a ridiculous amount of make-up on her face, which Lily thought made her look like her 5th birthday's cake, a comment she almost always manage to slip in somehow, infuriating Petunia to no end. But, however caked in cream or monstrous Lily made her sister out to be, Petunia, to the unbiased eye, was actually quite pretty, if not for that air of utter contempt around her, like there was something unpleasant constantly under her nose.
Lily, on the other hand, was short as Petunia was tall, which was very short indeed. Her fiery temper, combined with her red hair, often led to people muttering about her head being on fire when she so much as raised her voice. The only thing Lily truly appreciated about her appearance was her kind, almond-shaped green eyes, which shone through her red hair and alabaster-pale skin like two emerald stones. This was also that marked her off as different from the rest of the Evans family as her mother (red hair and petite with hazel eyes), father (blond and tall with blue eyes) and Petunia all did not have them the same shade and shape as Lily's. The genetic lottery must have skipped a few generations and the green eyes must have landed on her. However, this was not the only thing that marked her uniqueness in the family.
Lily was a witch. Not a ghastly, wrinkled, hunch-bakced old lady (though she must have been young once) with horrible hair and a long nose, forever bent over a cauldron, concocting some evil potion (she did study Potions, but not necessarily evil ones) with a scarecrow for a pet. She was a part of a magical, hidden world with all sorts if mythical creatures that muggles (non-magical human-beings) stereotyped into bizarre otherworldly beings. Some muggles must have caught sight of all those back in the early days and the figure of them had been twisted in the centuries with each telling. Lily had been attending a school called Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry for the past six years and would be going for her final year this September.
The aforementioned Lily Marie Evans was currently lying sprawled on her bed, asleep at the moment, but not for long. Her thick red hair was plastered all over her pillow, around her slightly tilted head with her mouth was wide open with a bit of hair stuck in it. Her limbs flailed like she was trying to fall into the mattress and sleep there forever.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Lily cracked open an eyelid, her eyelashes fluttering as she fought to keep it open and took a glance at the clock beside her. "Eight o'clock?!" she groaned, covering her eyes with the crook of her arm. "That's like, the middle of the night!" Her voice sounded terribly weird, the way voices do after eleven hours of misuse, like there was snot wrapped around her voice box. Or was it her eyes that had the sleepy problem? Probably both, she decided, before sinking back int…
Tap!tap!tap! it ensued.
"Sleeping, mum."
Taptaptap
With a frustrated roar of defeat, Lily wrenched her body off the bed and stood wobbly on her feet, staggering towards the door with her pyjama shirt riding up at the side. Grumbling inarticulately under her breath, she yanked open the door with unnecessary force, allowing it to bounce off the wall behind it.
"Mum, if you woke me up just to ask me where…" her voice trailed off.
The hallway was empty.
"Oh."
What she planned to do was to turn back to her bed and fall asleep for another hundred years but what really happened was some kind of pirouette on one foot, mad flapping of arms and a slip to the floor on her butt that left her dazed, sore and confused with her legs in the air. Squinting slightly against the sunlight glaring into her room, she saw a large, flapping…thing, which was the source of her waking up too early. Lily scrambled to her feet and hurried to the window as though she were a particularly poor skater (her pyjama bottoms were covering her feet) and opened it. Hurled in a huge bronze mass of feather and attitude was an owl. It landed on her bed frame and pompously began rearranging its feathers with the letter still gripped tightly in its foot. Only when every single feather was completely aligned in the same direction, did it shake its magnificent head disapprovingly at her and stuck out its left claw and handed over the letter, which Lily snatched away eagerly, almost pulling the owl out of balance in her haste.
The grey owl, glaring at her with amber, ethereal eyes, lifted itself into flight from her bed, sweeping its feathers in her face before she could reach over to pat its head. Slowly, she turned back to look at the letter on her lap, and as she was tracing her fingers over the writing on the back, another owl (tawny this time) swooped in through her open window. This one had a whole wad of newspaper stuck in its mouth, which it promptly dropped on the floor at her feet, and she leant over to pick it up. On the front page, stamped boldly, darkly was the title "Three More Attacks on Muggles Last Night".
Something roared inside of her. Spewing the newspaper aside with such force that the pages in between flew out and splattered themselves across her bedroom floor, she picked up the first letter with a red seal of the Hogwarts school crest stamped at the centre of the letter. Lily ripped the letter open, gasped and raced out of her bedroom, leaving the envelope to flutter slowly to the ground, like a falling angel whose wings were torn, split, right through the middle of the red crest that held the letter together.
Lily bounded down the stairs two at a time, jumped the last four and hurled straight into her sister, Petunia, who had a plate of scrambled eggs balanced precariously in her hands. It would have been hilarious, if not for the glare that seemed to slice like razors. Taking a step back, Lily realised how messy it was. Scrambled eggs smashed into a mass of yellow goo that dripped like slime down Petunia's already yellow shirt. Some of it had even managed to fly as high to stripe her left cheek, which was crimson with rage. Altogether not very elegant, Lily had to admit.
"Haha…urm…at least the eggs match your top?" Lily said sheepishly, raising her tone at the end even though it wasn't a question.
With that last remark, Petunia's face darkened a shade further. The piece of egg on her cheek had never been more emphasised. Thrusting her plate at Lily and with one last furious look at her, Petunia ran up the stairs almost as fast as Lily had come down, but naturally gravity won.
After a round of washing up and getting the food on the plates, the family of four could finally sit down and have breakfast, though the atmosphere was rather subdued. Nobody seemed to know what to say. Lily clutched the scroll of parchment tightly in her hand and indecisiveness pumped in her blood like strangling. And so she steeled herself, gathering it all at the throat of speech, took a deep breath and let it out, "I have good news!" Her voice sounded dreadfully cheery. At this, her parents perked up immediately. Another deep breath, "I'm Head Girl!" A pregnant pause. Petunia temporarily froze.
"That's wonderful!" her parents exclaimed at the same time. "Isn't it, Petunia?"
Even the hairs on her blonde head stiffened slightly. And looking as if there was a large rock at the back of her neck, she glanced briefly at Lily and looked back down quickly.
"We are so proud of you, darling!" her mother squealed again, too busy prancing around the kitchen in delight to notice anything. "We want to see your badge! My Lily flower…Head Girl! I can't believe it!"
Lily walked along the corridor, the walls unlit surrounded her in a rectangle and all over them were pictures, of Petunia's graduation from school; her parents together when her mum got a promotion from work; Lily out of kindergarten, Lily receiving top honours in primary school; Lily during her science fair; Lily after her first year at Hogwarts, her second, her third... And she saw everything mapped out before her in pictures of her key events and the light yellow wallpaper peeking out between them felt so solid and cold under her touch, and under the papery feeling she could feel the hollowness behind the walls and knew that in another world, if things had been different, they would have danced to life under the tips of her fingers that now and here never knew hers to have been so long.
Her badge…she had never looked at it long enough before. The way you skim through a book in you excitement to read it to the end. It really was quite pretty, she thought as she turned the cold metal over and over and over and over…
And thump…thump…thump… down the stairs.
Here…here…take it! Her parents spoke words admiration that rang in circles, running round, round, round, round.
And Petunia…Tuney? Click clack click clack…she wasn't looking.
And tick tock tick tock the hands of the clock.
Round, round, round, round.
Tick tock, tick tock.
And watching Petunia, she could sort of see her hair unstraighten into waves, her face softening into the baby roundness of childhood.
And eyes.
Tick tock, tick tock.
Her eyes glancing up at Lily, they surprised her with their blue, wrinkling at the corners with a small secret smile across the table.
Tick tock, tick tock.
And all hands of the clock decided to go left instead and the Sun melted into darkness at Heaven's East gates instead, and all went back to that morning six years ago before her father handed her that yellow parchment letter with a red seal that changed everything.
Tick tock tick