World Enough and Time – Chapter Three
Meals and Meetings
Come on, Lily. It's only breakfast.
Of the countless times Lily had walked to the Great Hall to eat breakfast this was the first time that she had only made it as far as the doorway. As soon as the cheerful sounds of students chatting and laughing and the clang of silverware had started to reach her, her legs had slowed and eventually stopped until she stood just a few steps from the entrance, frozen with nerves.
How many familiar faces would she see inside? How many did she want to see? Most likely her parents were in that room, Aunt Hermione, Uncle Ron…. The night before when Lily had first realized that she was roughly the same age as her parents and they were in the school with her she had fled to the nearest toilet and lost her supper. It was another shock to realize that James and Al, Hugo and Rose and Teddy and her – none of them even existed yet. Remembering this now as she stood outside the Great Hall Lily shuddered.
She had awoken early that morning, desperately hoping that the events of the previous day had been nothing more than a disturbing dream, the result of too many chocolate frogs before bed. But for the second day in a row she had first opened her eyes to unwelcome surroundings. She had spent the night in the Hospital Wing but since then an extra bed had been placed in the fifth year girl's dormitory in Gryffindor Tower. Lily dreaded going there, not least because she would be sharing a room with a fifteen-year-old Ginny Weasley. Her mother.
Well, not yet, she reminded herself and sighed. She walked over to the side of the large doorway and leaned against the stone wall. She rubbed at her face and exhaustion settled into her. Still not yet ready to face the students in the Great Hall Lily went over her cover story once again.
Hogwarts did not accept exchange students – Lily doubted whether such a thing existed in the magical world – and so the possibility of her previously having attended Beauxbatons or some other magical school was out of the question. But Hogwarts was known as one of the safest havens in existence and times were dark (something else she would have to get used to) so seeking shelter in the castle was not too far of a stretch, nor was it entirely a lie. Lily was safer at Hogwarts than anywhere else at the moment.
And so Lily was now posing as the recently orphaned niece of Professor Minerva McGonagall. She had no other family now her parents were dead and so she was left in the care of her aunt. Previously she had been homeschooled, which was rare for witches and wizards but not entirely unheard of. None of this would raise more than innocent curiosity.
Of course, Dumbledore's plan did require that Professor McGonagall be aware of the current situation. Lily sighed and ran a hand through her perpetually messy hair as recalled their particularly awkward meeting the day before. Immediately upon leaving the Headmaster's office they had made their way to the Transfiguration classroom. It had been so strange to walk through corridors that Lily knew so well and to feel so out of place.
Professor McGonagall had been, understandably, quite disbelieving at first.
"You expect me to believe that this is Harry Potter's daughter from the future," she had asked, her eyes narrowed, her lips thin, anger barely contained beneath the surface.
"Well, when you put it like that-" Lily had started but stopped at the look Professor Dumbledore gave her. He then turned to the irate Minerva McGonagall and said, simply, "Yes."
"Albus, surely-"
"I have my reasons, Minerva. I trust her."
There had been a brief, tense silence before McGonagall nodded and that had been the end of it. The two professors had discussed the finer points of the arrangement while Lily sat at one of the long desks, idly tracing small circles in the wood of the desktop and pretending not to notice as McGonagall stole furtive glances at her.
Lily was not looking forward to Transfiguration class.
She cringed and slid down the wall until she was seated on the floor against it, her knees pulled up to her chest. Her hand searched in the pocket of her robes for her wand, which had been returned the day before, and she felt slightly comforted. It had been unnerving walking around without it.
The uniform she had arrived in had been laundered and returned to her sometime in the night and when Lily woke it was sitting neatly atop a trunk that had appeared at the foot of her bed. A quick inspection of its contents had revealed it to contain a few sets of robes and most of the items she would need for her various classes.
She was just considering the possibility of skipping breakfast altogether when the sound of approaching footsteps caused her to look up. A girl with long, wavy, blond hair and wide blue eyes was standing in front of her, a small smile on her face and nothing in her expression that suggested she found it odd that Lily was seated, alone, in the Entrance Hall.
Lily felt that she should stand but doubted the capability of her legs. The girl standing before her was alarmingly familiar. Although she knew the face mostly from photographs it would be hard to mistake one of her namesakes. One of her first encounters and already Lily was facing someone she knew from her own time. She tried very hard not to panic.
"Hello," Luna Lovegood said pleasantly. "You'll want to be careful of the wrackspurts." She pointed above Lily's head and Lily looked up but she did not see anything there.
"Wrackspurts?" She continued to examine the space above her head but it remained empty.
"Yes," the other girl answered without a trace of embarrassment. "They're invisible so you won't be able to see them, but they must be the reason you're here."
Lily's heart skipped a beat when Luna said this and for one rushed impossible moment she feared that Luna knew the truth about her. But Luna's blue eyes, wide and bright, were looking at her with only mild interest, as though her thoughts were somewhere else.
Lily hesitated. "The reason I'm here?"
"In the Entrance Hall," Luna replied, tilting her head slightly to side. "Instead of in the Great Hall eating breakfast. The wrackspurts have you so distracted you haven't even made it to your table yet. Don't worry, the effect isn't permanent."
Lily let out a shaky laugh and felt her muscles unclench in relief. Standing on mostly steady legs she looked more closely at the girl across from her and noted that her appearance was definitely… odd. Her uniform identified her as a Ravenclaw, a House Lily had always thought to have a tendency towards eccentricity, and her bottle cap necklace and radish earrings identified her as distinctly unusual. Her wand was tucked behind her ear and rather than the customary short, white socks she wore tall ones striped in blue and bronze.
She was every bit as whimsical as Lily remembered her to be from the brief visits Luna had made to the Potter household over the years. This was a comforting thought. With a smile Lily followed Luna into the Great Hall where they separated and went to their respective house tables. Lily ate very little and avoided all social interaction but as the meal came to a close she exchanged a brief wave with the blond over at the Ravenclaw table.
Lily never did get around to eating much breakfast and she found it hard to focus throughout the morning. She paid little attention in her morning classes, sitting in the back and staring at her desk. The professors did not require her to contribute and the students seemed wary of her, which suited Lily just fine. She avoided looking at her mother at all costs.
By the time lunch came around she was still not very hungry and she spent the first fifteen minutes seated by herself somewhere in the middle of the table pushing potatoes from side of her plate to the other. Her feet were scuffing back and forth on the stone floor and Lily imagined her grandmother's voice in her head. Those are new shoes, Lily Potter! Don't go scuffing them up!
This thought brought a brief but genuine smile to her face.
Thankfully there were enough vacant spots at the Gryffindor table that Lily was not forced to carry on a conversation with anyone. The weather was warm and sunny and she supposed other students were taking advantage and spending their break out on the grounds. Perhaps she would do the same later.
Not for the first time Lily wished she could skip out on her classes here and go spend the rest of the day in a secluded area by the lake. But when discussing the oddities of her sudden appearance with Dumbledore he had been quite adamant that she maintain a regular course schedule. She was to act as normally as possible. Lily had said that normal did not even begin to describe her situation. But, once again, Dumbledore had insisted that keeping herself occupied would be good for her and she could not very well argue with Albus Dumbledore, especially as he was the one man with any hope of returning her to her own time.
As she took a few bites of the food in front of her more students began filling the Great Hall, talking and laughing and sound grated on her while she herself was feeling so miserable. She stabbed viciously at a carrot on her plate and sauce splattered onto the table. Absorbed as she was, Lily did not immediately notice when someone took the seat next to her. She felt a tapping on her shoulder and startled, turning to look at the new arrival and she was instantly struck with an overwhelming sense of familiarity.
"Hello," Neville said, his smile faltering at her reaction.
"Hi," she responded automatically, her eyebrows lost somewhere in the vicinity of her fringe. Her fork slipped through her limp fingers and clattered onto her plate. Neville's smile disappeared entirely at that.
"I'm… Neville," he said slowly and at his troubled expression Lily finally realized she had been staring. She blinked and looked away but found that she could not stop glancing back every few seconds. How strange it was to know the boy sitting next to her but for him to have no idea who she was. And he looked so young.
He is so young. He's practically the same age as you.
Neville cleared his throat and looked down at his plate and Lily's brain finally caught up with the conversation.
"Oh, right," she blurted out. "I'm Lillian," she said, grimacing a little at the name. It felt strange on her tongue and she fought the urge to correct herself. It was close enough to her name but it still felt odd to introduce herself as someone else.
Neville smiled and Lily smiled back. "Nice to meet you," he said sincerely and Lily's breathing felt a little easier. A friendly face, even one that looked at her as though she were a stranger, was a welcome sight indeed.
The two of them chatted easily for the next few minutes and Lily even managed to get down some of her lunch without too much of a struggle. Neville refrained from asking anything too personal, about the supposed death of her parents or her supposed aunt and instead asked her things like what she thought of Hogwarts so far and wasn't the castle wonderful and which classes she was looking forward to. As they talked Lily could see more and more of the Neville she knew and she began to relax despite herself.
However all in one moment any sort of comfort Lily was feeling disappeared and she felt as though the food she had eaten had turned to metal in her stomach. Neville was saying something but Lily could not hear him. She could do nothing but stare at the small group of people who had just entered the hall.
Perhaps it was the shock of seeing them together but Lily felt tears prickle threateningly at the corners of her eyes and she blinked them away quickly. She could hear Neville's voice next to her but she could not tear her eyes away from her father's face, her mother's smile, the way they smiled at each other. Lily had never missed her parents more than she did at that moment, staring at them and unable to do anything. She was a stranger to them.
Harry and Ginny were laughing about something while Ron and Hermione seemed to be interacting in a cold, cordial sort of way. Lily easily recognized the telltale signs of a row. But the four of them sat together, talking and laughing and piling food onto their plates and Lily wanted to run over to them, to feel her father's comforting embrace and hear her mother's soothing voice.
Instead she sat unnaturally still and stared unabashedly at her teenage parents.
"Another one, are you?"
Finally, Neville's words reached her and Lily started. She turned towards, a small frown on her face and her thoughts still a few places down the table. "Another what," she asked, confused.
"Another fan," he replied with a small smirk. He nodded pointedly at Harry and Lily's gaze returned to her father's smiling face. "Never seen the famous Harry Potter?"
"Never like this," Lily replied faintly, unfazed by Neville's light teasing. He seemed unconcerned with her seemingly star-struck behavior.
"You'll have to get in line, I'm afraid," he said with a shrug and returned his attention to the meal in front of him. Lily did not reply to Neville's comment but his words did give her pause. What a strange idea, having to wait to see her father – her father who always had time for her, who would put off anything for her. He's never made me wait before, she thought and frowned.
Lily looked away and down at her own plate. She stared without seeing it for a moment before she pushed it away. Neville shot a worried look at her that she ignored and the two of them exchanged only idle chit chat for the rest of the meal. They did not talk about Harry again and Lily did not look back to where he had been sitting until he was gone.
"…the time turner three cycles in order to achieve a temporal distance of two hours and fifty seven minutes due to…"
Thud.
Lily let her head fall onto the open book in front of her, her nose pressed in towards the spine, the distinct scent of aged parchment filling her nostrils. She let out a tortured sigh – a combination of frustration and boredom – and slowly lifted her head back up. It was not yet time for supper and the prospect of socializing in the dormitory or common room made her stomach churn so she had holed up in the library for the past hour. The idea had been to get something useful done but her general impatience with anything resembling schoolwork could not be overcome even in the face of time travel. She had spent the last ten minutes reading the same sentence and it made about as much sense to her as Gobbledegook.
Time travel was surprisingly dull in theory.
As she turned yet again to the vast tome before her Lily's stomach let out a rumbling growl and she realized that she was hungry. It seemed her stomach, and practically skipping two meals that day already, was finally catching up with her. Glad to have an excuse to take a break from her research Lily stood, gathered books from her table and hurriedly shoved them onto shelves without taking much care to ensure they were returned to the proper place. She walked briskly from the library, her bag slung over her shoulder, and avoided the librarian's keen stare on her way out the door.
The corridors were neither brimming with students nor entirely vacant and Lily made her way through the halls with ease. Despite being stranded over two decades in the past the layout of the castle was largely the same. Lily was taking any small comforts she could find.
Hitching her bag more securely on her shoulder and brushing her hair out of her face with the other Lily turned into a decidedly deserted corridor when a splitting shriek cut through the air.
"MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM! MURDER!"
Lily froze and her bag fell to the floor with a thud that she did not register. The shouts were echoing within the stone walls. A moment later Lily was running, her wand in hand and her heart in her throat.
She reached the end of the hall and slid to an abrupt halt, gripping the wall and peering around the corner. The door to the boy's lavatory was open and Lily could hear a distraught female voice coming from inside, a voice she thought she recognized as Moaning Myrtle.
Gripping her wand firmly in hand Lily took a few quick steps towards the bathroom but stopped almost immediately when a man appeared in the doorway supporting the body of a boy with stark blond hair and red all down his front. He was covered in blood, presumably his own, and Lily's stomach lurched.
Murder…
But the blond student was almost standing, swaying really, and he was, at least for the moment, alive.
The grim looking professor – for he had to be a professor – started down the corridor towards Lily and the boy groaned in pain at the movement. Lily leaned against the wall, her legs suddenly weak with relief. She did not know who the student was or what had happened but the thought of someone in the school being murdered was unbearable. She watched as the lopsided pair moved as quickly as possible towards her and she took an unconscious step towards them.
The professor, clad in sweeping black robes, snarled, "Get out of the way," and Lily hurriedly complied, leaping back against the wall. He barely spared her a glance but in that moment something like recognition crossed his pasty features and Lily shuddered. His eyes, black and cold and framed by curtains of shiny black hair gazed at her questioningly and he almost stopped entirely.
"What are you doing," Lily asked hysterically, her gaze falling to the boy's bloodstained shirt. "He needs to get to the Hospital Wing!"
It was a few minutes before the footsteps died away. Lily knew she should leave – something horrible had happened here and she did not want any part of it. She could be in very serious trouble for poking her nose in where it did not belong, but her curiosity was too strong. She wondered if the grim looking professor would return after the blond boy had been seen to by Madame Pomfrey. Was there someone still in the bathroom – someone who had caused all that blood?
After a few minutes of silent, internal struggle, Lily ducked behind a particularly large suit of armor and waited, keen to find out more but not wanting to be seen. She had a clear view of the bathroom door but felt certain that as long as no one was looking for her, she would remain unnoticed. Just as she settled into her hiding place the black-clad professor returned, his sweeping walk causing his robes to billow out behind him impressively. He walked briskly into the bathroom without stopping and Lily caught the briefest glimpse of the scene within. There was water and blood all over the floor.
The door did not close all the way and Lily leaned forward slightly, straining to hear the conversation going on inside.
"…didn't mean it to happen. I didn't know what that spell did."
That voice. Lily knew that voice. She leaned a little closer.
"Apparently I underestimated you, Potter. Who would have thought you knew such Dark Magic? Who taught you that spell?"
No.
She had not heard correctly. She could not have heard correctly. Potter? Dark Magic?
Lily slumped back against the wall, a strange buzzing in her ears drowning out whatever else was being said in the bathroom. She felt as though someone had punched her in the gut. She had misunderstood. This could not be what it looked like.
Surely, surely, a student would be expelled for something like this? But her father had never been expelled from Hogwarts. So there had to be more to it, something she was missing, something that absolved him of any guilt. But Lily could not bring herself to return to the conversation between her father and that ominous professor. What she really wanted was to leave, to get away from there and pretend that this had never happened. But when she finally gathered her wits together and stepped out from behind the armor the bathroom door banged open and suddenly there was a boy in front of her with untidy black hair and glasses and bright green eyes. He was dripping wet and covered in blood, most of which Lily suspected was not his own.
Lily froze and so did Harry and suddenly Lily's lips felt numb and her chest constricted.
Dad.
Harry shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. He opened his mouth as if to say something, glanced back at the bathroom door and then shook his head. He sprinted off down the corridor without looking back leaving a still stunned Lily in his wake. She watched him go. There were bloodstains on his trainers.
The one thing Lily knew in that moment was that she did not want to be here when her father returned. She glanced once in the direction Harry had gone and then started walking shakily the opposite way. She turned the corner and saw her discarded bag still on the floor. She swung it over her shoulder. She had been on her way to dinner but it seemed impossible to eat now. Confused thoughts and frightening images darted about in her mind and Lily felt dizzy and light-headed and slightly nauseous.
Although she thought it would be impossible to eat anything Lily could think of no better option than to head to the Great Hall as she had originally planned. She was still adamant about avoiding the dormitory as long as possible and, for reasons she did not want to focus on, she could count on Harry being absent from the meal - a small comfort. So she walked there, half in a daze, running her hand distractedly through her mussed hair every few minutes until she arrived at her destination. She stood outside the large doorway looking in, hesitating. It was breakfast all over again.
The different conversations, the jokes, the arguments, they all blurred together to form one chaotic noise. She could see Neville sitting with a few boys who must have been in the same year halfway down the hall. And she saw Luna at the Ravenclaw table taking a large portion of pudding. And Lily stood there feeling the full weight of her situation pulling down on her shoulders. Her first day had been an unqualified disaster and there was nothing to suggest it would get any easier.
Before Lily could bring herself to step into the Great Hall there was a sudden cry from the Slytherin table that made her jump. She looked over to see a girl with short dark hair jump to her feet, an anguished expression on her face.
"What do you mean, hurt? Draco's been hurt?"
And with that the girl hurried from her seat, her thin hair flying about her head, a frightened determination on her pug-like face. When she reached the doorway where Lily still standing, frozen with indecision and now surprise, the two girls made eye contact for just a moment. Lily felt a chill and wondered if this too was someone she knew from her own time. A moment later their shoulders bumped painfully together as the brunette pushed her way past Lily.
Heaving a great sigh and rubbing her shoulder grudgingly Lily finally stepped into the hall and made her way over to the Gryffindor table. She sat alone and piled food onto her plate that she would not be eating and tried to ignore the growing ache at the back of her head.
AN. Chapter three! One of my least favorite actually, but I did the best I could with it.