Previously, on The Sweetest Things...
" Hello," The strange man said in a rather high, airy voice. " Are you Miss Lily Evans?"
" Yes, I am." Lily replied warily.
" I am Professor Flitwick. May I come in? I'd like to speak with you and your parents, please."
Lily nodded timidly, and let him in.
As he walked through the door, she noticed he was holding what looked like an envelope in his hand. On the cover was a coat of arms, with a badger, an eagle, a snake, and a lion...
The man walked in, and Lily led him through the front hallway to the living room, where her parents were sitting playing a quiet game of cards.
"Mom, Dad, this is ...Professor Flitwick , He says he'd like to talk to you and I about something."
Professor Flitwick nodded a greeting toward them. Lily's dad looked a little startled by the professor's appearance, but was too polite to say anything but " Hello, Professor it is nice to meet you. Would you like a drink?"
" No, thank you. " Replied Professor Flitwick. ", I am here on special business. But a very happy business to be sure."
He smiled at Lily, and she smiled politely back, but she was really very confused. She had never seen this man before, and had no idea what he could possibly want with her. Lily's dad offered the strange professor a seat on the chair opposite her parents. Lily sat down next to her parents on the couch.
" Lily, Mr. And Mrs. Evans, I am here representing a special school Lily qualifies for, which, if she elects to accept, she will be under the tutalage of teachers best suited to mold her and her ,well, special gifts."
Lily's parents looked at each other in surprise, as well as pride.
" Well, we always knew Lily did well at school, but we didn't know that qualified her to go to a special school." Said Mr. Evans
" Not that sort of school, Mr. Evans. My school, of which I am a teacher of by the way, is, well, you may not believe me but there is no other way to say it, a magic school, for witches and wizards. Your daughter is a witch, and will learn how to harness her powers there."
The reaction from her parents was expected , and yet rather understandable.
"What?" Shrieked her Mom.
" Are you raving?" Yelled her Dad.
" It's impossible! I don't believe it!"
"Ido." Said Lily quietly. While her parents had been in an uproar at the professor, Lily had been thinking about it, and she realized she believed him. It made sense with a lot of things.
"Lily! But it's impossible!" Said Mrs. Evans.
" Almost as impossible as me breaking my arm one day, and then waking up the next and it being healed?" Retorted Lily.
Mrs. Evans had nothing to say to this, but Lily saw in the look on her face that she was not convinced. Lily turned to Professor Flitwick and said
" I think you're going to have to show them something, Professor."
Professor Flitwick nodded understandingly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a stick about a foot long. Then he pointed it at a white couch cushion next to Lily. He muttered something, and the next thing everyone new it was floating in mid-air above their heads. Lily looked over at her parents, and saw them both with amazed looks on their faces. Then the Professor muttered something again, and the pillow landed on Lily's lap, and turned into a fluffy, white cat.
"Aw." Cooed Lily. She scratched it behind it's ears, and it purred. Professor Flitwick muttered something for the third time, and the cat turned back into a normal couch cushion.
" So you see, Mr. And Mrs. Evans, the magic and the school are very real, and Lily has magic in her. I'm sure with some training, she will be a fine addition to her school. You said she does well in the muggle one she attends now?"
" Yes, she does ", Said Mr. Evans proudly ", she always-wait, muggle?"
" Oh, I'm sorry ," Said Professor Flitwick ", muggle is a wizard's word for for non- magic people, like yourself, Lily as your daughter , would be called a muggle born student. Not that it matters though, at least not to good, upstanding citizens." Professor Flitwick's voice took a very strange tone when he said that, so strange, Lily almost asked him what he meant by it, but Lily's mom asked
" This school, where is it, how long will Lily be gone?"
Gone! Lily hadn't even considered that! Could she leave her family, and the town she had grown up in to go to some strange school where they taught you to turn cushions into cats?
" The exact location is a little hard to say, but she would be gone the normal school year, and would come home for the normal summer holidays. But you hardly notice the time pass at Hogwarts."
Howarts?!
Hogwarts.
Really, Hogwarts?
"Well, Lily, what do you think? do you want to go?" Mrs. Evans asked Lily.
Lily was about to answer, when word from the past suddenly filled her mind.
She was five years old and telling her teacher:
Like there was a place you could go far away from the rest of the whole wide world, where everything was magical, like a fairy tale."
Then :
Why do I have to be different? Why me?"
" It, means my friend, that you were just born for a special fate. Different than the masses of people living hum-drum, typical lives."
A special fate.
A special fate.
It looked like Lily had found hers.
" Yes. Absolutely. I'd love to go."
Then the front door opened, and Petunia walked in.
" What's going on?" She took in Professor Flitwick, and wrinkled her nose at his mis-matched clothes.
"Professor Flitwick, this is our oldest daughter, Petunia. Petunia, this is Professor Flitwick, he is a teacher at the boarding school Lily will be attending this fall."
" Boarding school? I thought she was going to Locksley High with me. Why does she get to go to a special school?" Petunia asked.
"Well, it's a magic school, to tell the truth. Lily's a witch! We have a witch in the family! Isn't it wonderful?" Mrs. Evans beamed with pride.
That was probably the wrong thing to do.
Petunia freaked " I knew it, I knew it! There was always something freakish about you! That's what you are, a freak. I'm glad you are going away to that school, it'll keep you far way from normal people like me!"
With that, she turned around and huffed off. Mr. And Mrs. Evans hurried after her, trying to talk some sense into her. Lily didn't. Petunia was always jealous or angry at her for something. This was nothing new, just the latest on the list. She turned to Professor Flitwick , as if nothing had happened and asked nonchalantly
"So, Professor, what do you teach?"
It was now three weeks later. Lily started school in about a week, and she and her parents were finally in Diagon Alley. They had exchanged normal money for wizard money at Gringott's , just as Professor Flitwick had told them. She had gotten everything on her school list, including a wand( ten and a quarter inches long, willow, swishy, according to the slightly creepy Mr. Ollivanders) and now she was sitting with her parents eating a chocolate and raspberry ice cream cone at the ice cream shop.
She couldn't remember being more excited. It was a beautiful day, she was wearing a bright, sunny yellow dress, and everywhere she looked their were witches and wizards going about their daily business.
" Well, it looks like you've got everything you need." Said Mr. Evans, checking her Hogwarts list ", Oh, except a pet."
" What?" Said Lily. She took the list from her father and looked at the bottom of the page where it said
Students may also bring an owl or a cat or a toad
Lily had taken one look at the list asking for aa magic wand, and was so excited hadn't bothered to look further down the list.
"Well, I saw a pet shop down the street, why don't I head down there ,then, and pick out a cat?" Suggested Lily.
" You want a cat? What about an owl ,dear, that sounds very exotic?" Asked Lily's mom.
" An owl?" Said Lily ", is that even legal? Besides, what do you even use them for?"
Neither of her parents could answer this, so they just gave her some money to run down to the pet shop while they finished up their ice cream.
Lily skipped happily down the street, looking every which way around her. She wasn't really watching ahead of her, so it wasn't a surprise when she bumped into someone. It was a someone so big, Lily fell back on the ground. Then she felt rather big hands grabbing her and pulling her up off the ground.
" Yeh all righ' now? Yer not 'urt or nothing?" The someone asked.
The someone turned out to be a rather large, wild looking man who towered over Lily, and everyone else in the street around him.
" Yes, sir ,I'm fine. I'm sorry I bumped into you." Said Lily.
The man waved off the 'sir'.
"Called me Hagrid, ev'ryone else does. And yeh must be a incomin' firs' year, I reckon?" He asked, smiling down at the tiny girl before him.
"Yes, s-Hagrid, I am, how did you guess?" She asked.
" Yeh had that nervous excited look about yeh. I work at the school." He huffed up with pride at this ", and it's a look I see on firs' years all the time. Say, are you hear by yourself? That's dangerous. Yer a muggle born by the look 'o yer clothes. Need any help getting yer school supplies?"
" No, I'm here with my parents, and we've already gotten all my things. But maybe you can explain something to me. Why would my letter say that I could bring an owl to school?"
" Blimey! You are a muggle born! We use owls fer carrying mail. There dead useful pets, and jus' some advice, that's what I would bring to school. Toads haven't been in fashion since I was in school, and cats, well, I don't like cats, they make me sneeze." Hagrid said indignantly.
Lily laughed " Thank you , you've been very helpful. I must be off, I'll see you at school then. What do you teach, by the way?"
" Nothin'. I'm the groundskeeper and keeper o' the keys. I do stuff fer Professor Dumbledore." Again, Hagrid puffed up with pride. "Come see me some time when you get to school, we'll have tea."
" Sounds lovely, well, good bye." Lily said as she rushed off to Eeylops Owl Emporium, which she saw down the She decided to take Hagrid's advice, and bought a barn owl, which she thought was the prettiest.
Lily came back to her parents and told them about Hagrid, and what he said about owls. After some questioning, Lily's parents were very glad Lily had made friends with someone from the school, especially one who was in some authority and could look after Lily at Hogwarts.
Then the three Evans' went home, and Lily got to have the pleasure of seeing Petunia shriek and scream in reaction to Lily's new owl, which Lily named Hermia, in honor of her favorite character in A Midsummer's Night's Dream.
Lily spent the next week in an intense study of her school books. She wanted to be as good as she thought the kids who had been born into all magic families would be. It was this intense study that carried her the next week, and distracted her from her anxiousness to go.
Finally, the day came. All the Evans' clan came to wish her well. After hugging and kissing her parents good-bye, and stiffly shaking hands with Petunia, lily turned toward the wall between platform nine, and platform ten, just as Professor Flitwick had told her. Without giving any warning to her parents, Lily suddenly rushed toward the platform ,and the trains, and to what Lily was certain was her special fate.
Hello, everyone! Thanks for checking out my story. I can't tell you how exciting it was to see how many hits I got. Some exciting things are coming up, rest assired. Please review, and tell me how I'm doing. Before I sign off, I'll give you some hints for whats coming up next.
1. Lily then saw two red-headed boys walking down the hall, one with a prefect's badge on.
"Honestly, Bilus , was that nessesary? The first-years are scared ebnough without you telling them they have to wrestle a troll to get sorted!"
2. "My parents thought it best I not get a pet. " Said Remus ", our house ins't exactly...pet-friendly."
3. " Lily, I just realized something. Your the only girl the hat put in Gryffindor. You're the only Gryffindor girl in our year!"