Chapter Eleven
A/N: Thanks to lunalovegood564, BloodPixie140, ClaireBear1982 and Hufflepuff's Princess, my great reviewers.
It was nearing the middle of November, and so the time had come for the first Quidditch match of the season. Gryffindor were playing Slytherin, and even though her House was not involved, Lily was still going along, to support her brother and cousins, who were participating in the first Quidditch team in Hogwarts history to have every position filled by a member of the same family. Despite the fact that she had no interest in Quidditch whatsoever, other than in her mother's former career in the sport, Lily still wanted to support them, particularly as it was James' first match as Seeker, and he was extremely nervous about that fact, though he would not show it on principle, as he never did so.
It took a great deal of time sat in the crowds before the participants in the match were ready to begin, on a bench beside Albus and, bizarrely, his best friend, Scorpius Malfoy, the son of her father's arch rival, Draco, who seemed to take nothing but appearance from his father, if her own father's stories of his school days were to believed, and seemed to be a very nice boy, all in all. On the other side of her sat another Slytherin, Violet Parkinson, the daughter of Pansy, who looked to be very close to pushing the young Hufflepuff from the bench, so that she could move closer to Scorpius, or gain a better view of him, at least. 'She obviously takes after her mother.' the younger girl thought, a little surprised with herself at how snide the remark would have been if she had said it out loud. 'She was always going after Scorpius' father with her claws out.'
Eventually, many minutes later, the whistle was blown, and the scarlet game cloaks of Gryffindor and the emerald ones of Slytherin leapt into the air on their broomsticks, assuming their positions as the match began to unfold. The cheers became wilder and louder at this moment, the spectators using their opportunity to encourage their own House team to achieve an early lead. Lily cheered along with them, not to support her House, as they were not playing, but to embolden her family, so that they could achieve the win they had been longing for since they had first begun to play as children.
It could only have been a minute or two before the Quaffle came into the possession of Fred, who threw it with incredible force through the centre hoop, baffling the Keeper so much with her incredible speed that he had hardly recovered by the time Hugo had evaded the Beaters and flown at him only a half of a minute later, totalling twenty points for Gryffindor in only the first four minutes alone.
After only ten minutes, Slytherin had acquired sixty points, much to the delight of Albus and Scorpius, as well as giving Violet an excuse to wrap her arms tightly around the latter and place a wet kiss on his cheek. However, Gryffindor were sailing ahead with one hundred and ten points, much to the delight of Lily, who had never expected her family to do so well in the competition. She did not know why she had not expected this, as the majority of the previous generations of the Weasleys had been successful Quidditch players, her own mother having had the most illustrious career of the lot of them, as well as her father being the youngest member of a Hogwarts Quidditch team in two hundred years, joining as Seeker in his first year, despite the fact that such young pupils were not permitted to own broomsticks themselves.
However, she had not only underestimated the team as a whole. She had also underestimated James as an individual. It took only another two minutes before her elder brother's hand wrapped around the smooth metallic Snitch, trapping its wings so that it could not fly away. He raised the hand immediately into the air, showing that he had achieved his objective and that the match was ended.
The cheers of the Gryffindor members of the crowd, along with the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff students that had joined them in the celebrations, were deafening, so much so that the young redhead had to resist the urge to clamp her hands down over her ears to drown it out a little, for fear that it would offend James, or any other member of the team that had emerged victorious, something which she could not afford to do, particularly not given the fact that she was sat beside three Slytherin students, although one of them was her brother as well as a Serpent. Nevertheless, she clapped alongside the rest of them, cheering and crying out until both her hands and her throat were entirely raw.
Despite the fact that she had felt like an outsider, being in Hufflepuff while the rest of the Weasleys inhabited the Gryffindor commons, Lily felt instantly that she belonged. She belonged within the students, who cheered on the winners and comforting the team that had lost. She belonged within the school itself, which did not judge or differentiate as the people within it would sometimes do. She belonged within the family, as while they were scattered around the various Houses of the academy, they were still related by blood and by name, something far more important than anything else.
'I don't know why I've always thought that I didn't belong.' the young girl spoke in her mind. 'Because I have always belonged somewhere. At home, at school, with my friends, with my family, whatever happened in the past, or the future, or even right now… I've always belonged, and I always will. Perhaps I just didn't see that at the time.'
Although the Sorting Hat had said that she had not truly belonged in the House that had been in her family's ancestry, and she did believe and agree in the fact that she belonged in Hufflepuff, she certainly belonged at Hogwarts. That was what really mattered.
A/N: I know that Quidditch was a bit of a random setting, but it seemed to be the best idea for the subjects that Lily was thinking about. Please review!