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Age Twenty Seven, Mentor

Lily Warner did not think that she would go back to Hogwarts until her children attended. She found herself now, however, hand-in-hand with her husband, on her way through Hogsmeade, headed to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a decade after her graduation. A broad smile was plastered across her face, and she had to restrain herself from skipping. "C'mon Scott, walk faster!" she urged, pulling on Scott's hand.

Scott was laughing at his wife's obvious enthusiasm. "Lily, we're not going to be late, don't worry."

The streets of Hogsmeade were filled with Hogwarts alumni on their way up to the castle. They were to all spend the weekend there; giving speeches and spending time with the respective students they were mentoring. This mentoring program had just started this year, and was for the benefit of sixth and seventh years. The headmistress had sent letters to successful Hogwarts alumni with various occupations asking them if they were interested in becoming a mentor for a Hogwarts student. Lily and Scott had said yes, of course, and wrote a general letter to the students explaining their professions. Then, they had received letters back from individual students who were interested in following in their footsteps.

Lily was mentoring Rosaleen, a sixth year Gryffindor who wanted to be a writer when she grew up. She had replied to Lily's general letter a mere two days after it had been sent. The letter had been full of enthusiasm, telling Lily how excited she was to have the advice of such a famous writer. She had seen Lily during her world tour, when she stopped in Ireland. Apparently, Lily was one of the reasons she wanted to become a writer; Rosaleen wanted to tell the truth in her novels, and that was what Lily Warner did.

Scott was assigned to mentor Brody, a seventh year Hufflepuff. He wished to work with the same types of animals that Scott worked with: the kind that could unexpectedly take a lovely little bite of you and send you to the hospital for four days to the detriment of your wife's health.

From Rosaleen's first few letters, Lily got the impression that she was a lonely, mostly friendless girl who poured herself into her writing. Lily wasn't sure if she had anyone to really talk to, so in one of her letters, Lily offered Rosaleen the opportunity to ask Lily for any advice, not just career related. As she suspected would happen, Rosaleen opened up to her and began to write to her about her boy troubles, her family, and the rest of her life. Talking to someone younger than her and giving someone advice felt good to Lily. She wanted to be doing that with her own child, but since that did not seem to be happening anytime soon, it was nice to have someone else look up to her as a role model.

The first few months after she and Scott had that showdown in Lucile and Garrett's sitting room had been absolute hell. They both tried their hardest to stop arguing, but it was easier said than done; they had fallen into such a routine of rowing that it was something difficult to break. At least they had worked together, and now everything was basically back to normal. Those months had also been spent in the offices of healers and Muggle doctors alike. Lily and her husband had been tested and tested again for every possible thing that could be hindering conception. All of those tests added up to one thing: that both Lily and her husband were perfectly capable of creating a child. There was nothing wrong with either of their reproductive parts, and yet they could not seem to have a baby together.

This had been a complicated concept to grasp for Lily. She was glad that they were both able to have a baby, in theory, but she was extremely frustrated that she could not get pregnant. At this point in her life, she wanted a baby more than anything. She wanted to expand her family with Scott. She wanted a little bundle of joy to share her knowledge and love with. They had been to have a baby for over a year now, and it just was not happening. Sure, they had talked about adoption, but Scott was not ready to deal with that yet, so they were still trying to have a baby.

Hogwarts looked the same as it always had. Lily could barely contain her excitement as she and Scott headed up the front staircase of Hogwarts and through the double doors. A few students were inside the Entrance Hall, smiling and pointing all of the mentoring alumni up the staircase and taking their luggage, assuring them it would be placed in their rooms. A smiling Lily followed their instructions and pulled her husband up the staircase.

"I feel old," Lily said as they made their way up the moving staircases to the third floor, following the students placed throughout the hallways, pointing them to where they were supposed to go.

"Why is that?" Scott asked.

"The last time we were here was ten years ago," Lily replied, a little short of breath. She had forgotten how much energy it took to climb these ridiculous staircases. "An entire decade ago."

"Darling, if you feel old at twenty-seven, I can't imagine how you'll feel at fifty."

Lily chose to ignore him, and she said instead, "I'm excited to meet these students, aren't you?"

"I hope that's where we're headed," Scott said. "I don't want to climb all of these stairs for nothing." He wasn't short of breath like his wife because he did so much work outdoors. Lily was envious at that moment.

The last pointing student they ran into was one who pointed them through a doorway and into a richly decorated room, full of students, professors, and mentors who had already arrived. Two-person tables were placed around the room, and there was a buffet table covered in finger foods against one of the walls. A fire roared in the fireplace. Another student, standing in the doorway asked them their names and handed them nametags to attach to their shirts. After that was done, Lily and Scott walked fully into the room, splitting up and searching for their students.

Rosaleen was sitting at one of the small tables, looking awkwardly around the room. She was a timid looking girl with brown hair and glasses. Lily only recognized her by the nametag, since she had never seen any pictures of Rosaleen before; they only sent letters to one another.

Lily straightened out the invisible creases in her slacks, touched the locket around her neck (out of habit) and headed over to the table. For some reason, she was nervous about meeting Rosaleen.

The girl stood up hastily when she saw the famed Lily Warner came to stand by her table. "Hi," she greeted breathily, grabbing Lily's hand and shaking it. "It's so nice to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you too," Lily replied. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Scott was shaking hands with his student as well.

"Um…would you like to sit down?" Rosaleen offered. They both sat down at the table across from one another, Lily smiling broadly, and Rosaleen looking nervous.

"I'm so glad to be here this weekend with you, Rosaleen," Lily said, offering up the start of a conversation to break the awkward silence. "I've been looking forward to meeting you for a long time now. This weekend should be fun!"

"You know, so many people are jealous that you're my mentor," said Rosaleen. "I've been telling everyone about you and there are so many teachers and students that want to meet you." She leaned forward across the table to get closer to Lily and hissed, "I don't know if they've told you, but one of the professors was talking to the headmistress about maybe having you give a speech, you know, since you're so popular." Rosaleen sounded excited to have something that other students envied.

From her letters, Lily gathered that Rosaleen had no one to talk to. She wrote and wrote, and that was all she did at meals, free time, and even during classes. She talked with the professors more than her peers. She liked a boy in Ravenclaw, just as Lily had back in her heyday, but apparently he didn't know she existed. Lily wanted to meet him this weekend. She hoped that Rosaleen considered her a friend by now, after three months of writing letters to one another. At first, Rosaleen had written to Lily to ask questions about becoming a writer, but the questions had soon turned to ones about personal things and to commentary about her life. Lily had shared some aspects of her life, as well, though she did not go nearly as in depth as Rosaleen did. Lily didn't feel completely comfortable sharing her life with a sixteen-year-old she had never met…well, never met until now, anyhow.

Rosaleen offered food to Lily, and the two of them headed to the buffet table. "Mrs. Warner?" called a voice behind her. The Hogwarts headmistress came to stand next to her, a smile on her face. "Mrs. Warner, I was wondering if you would, perhaps, care to speak to all of the children about your career. Many of them are interested in hearing about your success."

"I would love to," Lily replied enthusiastically.

"Fantastic; thank you so much," the headmistress replied. "A few other mentors are speaking as well. We're going to gather in the Great Hall in three hours. If you could prepare to talk for about fifteen minutes, that would be wonderful. Thank you."

Once she left Lily and Rosaleen to their food, Rosaleen burst out with, "See! They all love you, Lily! Hey, would you like a tour of the school? They've said we're allowed to do that."

"Absolutely!" Lily cried. "Just let me tell Scott what's going on." She abandoned the plate that she had not even put any food on yet and crossed the room to where Scott was standing with Brody. Brody was one of those pretty-boys whom all of the girls wanted to date. He had those kind of piercing green eyes full of self-importance when he looked at Lily as she came up behind her husband, hooking her arm in his and stretching her mouth up to his ear. "I'm giving a speech in the Great Hall in a few hours; Rosaleen is giving me a tour of Hogwarts."

During the tour, Rosaleen took her mentor into the Gryffindor common room, which looked the same, and up to the girls' dormitories, which looked the same as well. Lily lay down on her old bed, staring up at the old tapestries. A smile broke out across her face for the millionth time. How she wished to have a daughter lay in this bed some day, staring at these tapestries. She was planning what to say to these children while she followed Rosaleen around. Public speaking was no stranger to her, but she had never done it solely for children. She wanted to inspire them and show them that they could do anything. So far, she had seemed to have done a good job with inspiring Rosaleen: she was already compiling her first novel.

The hour finally came for Lily and Rosaleen to head down to the Great Hall. All day, Rosaleen had been telling her mentor about the drama of her teenage life and the goings-on at Hogwarts. They had passed uncountable students in the corridors, and none of them had even said hello to her Rosaleen. Most of them just stared at her mentor in awe. "Most all of the students have read at least one of your books," Rosaleen told her, though Lily had no idea how she would have come by that information.

The senior undersecretary to the Minister of Magic and the chief healer of St. Mungo's were the two other speakers in the Great Hall. Lily felt like she paled in comparison to them and all of the words she had planned suddenly few from her head. She had been feeling good about this speech she was about to give, but now she wasn't so sure. At least Rosaleen believed in her.

A stage had been set up where the professors' table usually was. The undersecretary got up to speak after the Headmistress introduced him. Lily listened to both he and the healer before she stood up to do so herself. To her surprise, she received the loudest applause when he took her place on the stage.

Harry Potter was the one person that Lily had looked up to for her entire life. She was what he aspired to be, and that has always been the case. She wanted to inherit all of her father's traits, namely courage and headstrongness. She aimed to go out and conquer the world, just as he had. Well, she had at least traveled the world, and she had spoken to hundreds of thousands of people. Still, she was nervous speaking in front of maybe three hundred children.

The students who wanted to hear the guests speak were all seated at the house tables. Right now, they were all looking up expectantly at Lily Warner, world-renowned author. "I have been asked today to speak to you about my profession," she began. Rosaleen was sitting at the very end of the Gryffindor table, staring up fervently at her mentor. It appeared as if she was going to squirm out of her seat in eagerness. "I know that many of you, especially sixth and seventh years, feel pressure to decide what to do with your life; whether to pursue further schooling, or to pick up some other trade. I know you feel that it's extremely important to decide now what your career is going to be, and I know many of you desire to become rich and famous. Well, I'd like to let you all know that it's not exactly imperative to choose your future at this exact moment. I will be the first to tell you that I lived in my parents' house for two years after my Hogwarts graduation. I knew that I loved the English language, but that was all. Becoming a famous writer was a complete accident. I suppose what I'm trying to tell you all is that you should do what you love to do. If you succeed, then that's fantastic, and if you don't succeed, then you should just try harder."

Her tongue loosened now, Lily began to talk about her path to writing and consequently traveling the world and opening a bookshop. She probably talked for too long, but all of the students appeared enthralled with her words, and therefore more words kept spilling from her lips. Rosaleen stayed on the edge of her seat, her eyes wide behind her spectacles.

Once, when Lily was ten years old, her parents had taken her to hear a speaker for three hours. She did not even remember what the speaker was rambling on about, not even the subject of the speech. All she could remember was that it had been incredibly bored and she had come up with a thousand ways to creatively escape the torture that was sitting there for those dreadful three hours. And here were three hundred students from ages eleven to eighteen, listening willing to her drabbling.

After the speeches, Lily, the Minister's senior undersecretary, and the chief healer hung around the Great Hall, talking individually to students and signing autographs. It was late once the stream of students dwindled down. Scott had already gone up to the empty classroom they were sharing for the weekend. The other two speakers had gone to their rooms as well, but some students were still talking to Lily. Brody, the student Scott was mentoring, was the last one left.

"I've read all of your books, you know," he told her, sitting across from her at the Slytherin table. "They're fantastic."

"Thanks," Lily replied for the nth time that night as she finished signing an autograph for him. "Here you go." She slid the piece of paper across the table to him.

"I had fun tonight, listening to you," he said. He was half-smiling at her. "I wish you were my mentor."

"Well you don't want to be a writer now, do you?" she said good-humouredly.

"No, I guess that's true," he chuckled.

There was a pause in the conversation. "It's pretty late, you'd better get to bed, don't you think?" Lily asked. She was fairly tired, herself. She was looking forward to heading up to the forth floor to the room she was sharing with Scott for the weekend. Today had been much to tiring to stay up too late.

"But I so enjoy talking to you," said Brody. "Your speech was so anti-authority, you know; you told us the exact opposite of what all of the professors have been drilling into our heads."

"Uh-oh," Lily said. "I hope I don't get into trouble."

Brody laughed. "Scott is very lucky to have you. You're such an attractive, intelligent, insightful person."

Lily blushed in spite of herself. This was getting to be an awkward conversation to have with one ten years her junior. "Well, I'm tired, so I think I'm going to get to bed," she said. "It was nice to talk to a fan." She smiled at him again in farewell, and pushed herself up from the table. "I'll see you tomorrow; goodnight." But when she stood, she found that Brody was right in front of her, putting his lips upon hers and grabbing her by the hips.

Lily automatically stepped back, tripping over the Slytherin table. She knew that she looked like a complete idiot as she regained her balance, but that was not her largest concern at the moment.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Brody said confusedly.

"Um…" Lily said.

"I just had to do that; I'm very attracted to you," he said. "I got the idea that you were interested in me as well."

"Um…" said Lily, backing towards the door. This situation was too strange to deal with at the moment.

"I'm eighteen Lily. That's only nine years younger than you, am I right?"

"Um…I'm married." Lily was almost to the door. She was walking backwards and feeling for the door with her hands, which were outstretched behind her. Brody was steadily coming closer to her. She felt dirty. Her lips needed scrubbing. There was an enormous knot in her stomach. She needed to throw up.

"I know you are, but I get the feeling that you two aren't right for one another. Reading his letters…I don't think he's really your type."

No words would come out of Lily's mouth. She was merely stumbling backwards out the doors of the Great Hall. This was absolutely unbelievable.

Somehow, she managed to run up the four floors of moving staircases, staggering into her makeshift bedroom and slamming the door behind her. She was breathing more heavily than she ever had. Scott was sitting in the king-sized bed, reading. He looked surprised when his wife slid down the wall, practically hyperventilating. "What's wrong, Lily?" he inquired, quickly getting out of the bed and coming to squat by her side.

Lily didn't even want to tell him what had just happened. Another man's lips had not touched hers for six years. He wasn't even a man. Brody was a boy who had just sprung himself upon her. "Erm…Brody just…" Kissed. She could not say the word. "…he kissed me." I love you Scott, she thought.

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