The Life of Lily

by DawnYew2674

Aged 9 Lily Evans knows she's different, she just doesn't know where this will take her. She thinks playing in the park with her friends and going to school with her sister are the best things she can do. After meeting Severus Snape and starting her new School, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Lily can't imagine what will happen over the next 11 years of her life.

3. Chapter 3 - One Small Step

Chapter 3

One Small Step

Lilly watched the television screen with interest. It was a few days since her dancing lesson. In fact it was the 20th of June. A day that was going to go down in history, 20th of June, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

'What do the numbers and things mean?' she asked turning around to her father.

'They're telling the astronauts what is going on in the computer, sweetie. How far they have to go, and that one is counting down until they land.' Her mother answered.

'So we can see what they can see?'

'Yes, Lily,' her father answered, 'this is exactly what the people at the NASA space centre in America can see.'

'Oh, wow,' Lily said in awe.

'Shh, I can't hear what they're saying.' Petunia said. But it was then that the news presenter took over, explaining that this was what the astronauts were saying to each other and they were listening in. The whole family watched in silence as they were shown shots of people all over the world watching the Lunar Module slowly come into landing.

They came back to the astronauts with four and a half minutes to landing. The footage was reasonable poor, it was coming all the way from the moon and Australia so Lily reckoned it was acceptable. All you could see was the white outline of the rocket, a brilliant white fire behind it against the black of space behind them. The moon must have been there somewhere, or maybe it was the moon that was behind them, and the sun was on the other side.

Lily rubbed her eyes; it was past her bed time. But this was history in the making. She wouldn't miss this. You couldn't very well tell your grandchildren that you were asleep when the first men landed on the moon!

The shot changed. It was looking down on the Lunar Module with the crater covered moon behind it.

She giggled as one of the astronauts said 'oh boy' in response to some of the numbers being read out, earning her a glare from her older sister.

At less than a mile from the moon's surface the module was traveling at 92 miles an hour. That sounded quite fast to Lily, but according to the man on the television it was the slowest they'd ever flown in space.

Lily looked around at her family, all their eyes glued to the screen. Petunia was biting hard on her thumb looking worried. Lily wandered whether she was thinking about all the things that people had been saying about the moon's surface. No one seemed to know what it would be like. It could be extremely hot and burn the astronauts. Or maybe it would be so dusty from colliding meteors and asteroids that they would fall right into it and never be seen again. There were so many possibilities. And nobody seemed to know the answers.

The timer came back onto the screen at twenty seconds to landing. Lily chewed on her lip, her father's arms squeezed around her.

The space ship tracked across the screen. Rocks and small craters were passing down the television. They were coming in to land.

6 seconds to landing.

5

4

2

1

Then 'Ok, engine arm is off' and the words 'Lunar Module has landed on Moon' read across the bottom of the screen. Lily started to smile, not quite believing it.

'Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.'

'Roger, Tranquillity, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.'

And then the picture on the television went back to the news reporters. And they were talking about how they couldn't believe it but Lily wasn't really listening to them.

'There are two men, in a space ship, on the moon, right now!' Petunia exclaimed.

'I know!' Lily said her eyes wide, unable to quite believe it herself.

'Will they get out and walk around?' Petunia asked her father.

'I think that's the plan.' He answered a goofy grin on his face.

'Now?' Lily asked.

'No, they have to get lots of things ready before they can do that. I think they might have to sleep first as well.' Her mother said.

'If I was on the moon I wouldn't be able to sleep.' Petunia said, Lily agreed. It would be too exiting; you wouldn't want to waste time sleeping!

Lily didn't remember falling asleep on the sofa but she defiantly remembered her mother waking her up as the camera on the Luna Module was switched on and they could see Neil Armstrong climb down the ladder towards the surface of the moon.

Armstrong stood on the ladder and described the surface to be quite powdery and then the words 'Armstrong on Moon' came across the screen.

The picture itself was grey and grainy, though the contrast was good enough that you could pick out the shape of Armstrong's body as he stood there on the moon. There was a man standing on the moon.

'That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.' Armstrong commented as he stood there, on the moon. The first thing anyone had ever said whilst standing on the moon.

Then, after a few moments, Aldrin joined him on the moon and described what he saw around him as 'Magnificent desolation'. The two of them then carried out several procedures that they needed to do, such as taking photos of the module and the rocks they collected. Lily thought they looked like they were walking on a giant trampoline. Her father explained that it was because the moon was smaller so there wasn't as much gravity pulling them down.

Exiting a it was Lily could not help herself from closing her eyes. It was so late at night. Desperately she carried on watching for as long as she could. Her head drooping onto the sofa arm, she had to watch this.

At the end of the broad cast, her father took her and Petunia out into the garden. They looked up, watching the moon, knowing that as they watched it there were two men, in their space craft, on the moon.

Lily looked up in wonder, that is the furthest those three men have ever been from home, the furthest any one has been from home. They must feel a little home sick. The slightest problem and they may never get home again. But she didn't think anything would really go that wrong. They wouldn't send people into space unless they thought it was completely safe. They'd sent enough guinea pigs.

The moon landing was all that anyone could talk about for the next few weeks. It was constantly all over the newspapers, and almost every conversation started with;

'Did you see them on the moon?'

'Where were you when you watched the moon landing?'

' 'One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind' !'

And everyone was asking who would be next? Would the Russian's go to mars? How many years before anyone could travel to Pluto? Forget Pluto, could we travel to the edge of the universe?

This generation was going to be the one that pushed all the boundaries of science.

Not just star gazing, actually traveling to the stars.

Leaping of earth.

A new chapter in the history books.

Several weeks passed by and the summer holidays were coming to an end. Lily played out in the garden often. With her friends or her sister or just by herself.

She enjoyed escaping from the house. She could lie on top of the shed and read her book or watch the birds and insects fly around her in the summer air. She had fun, played games. But she couldn't help as more and more often she could make things happen that others couldn't.

At night as she lay in bed she could make her bedroom door open and close without touching it, just but thinking. She could hide from people much better than any of her friends, if she didn't want them to see her, they couldn't see her. And every time unusual things happened, Lily often reaped the benefits.

She wanted to talk to the Snape boy again. To ask him if he really was telling the truth, or lying like Petunia said he was. But she could never find him. It was as if he had disappeared of the earth like the astronauts (though they had come back now). And Lily didn't dare go and look for him. Petunia had said that he lived down by the river, but that was too far away for Lily to walk there by herself and she knew Petunia would not go with her. So Lily contented herself to look out for him whenever she was out. He had to show up at some time.

She spent the remainder of the six week holiday reading. She had just managed to persuade her parents that she was old enough to read The Jungle Book by herself. It was one of her mother's books from when she had ben young and Lily was really enjoying it.

She loved the way that the animals were personified and the way that Mowgli preferred his brother wolves to the humans or other animals who had felt pushed into accepting him. And she found that she much preferred the ending in the book to the one in the film. It was much better that Mowgli killed Shere Kahn and went back to his wolf brothers (yet not the whole pack) than the fairy tale version from Disney.

Lily persuaded her friends to play games based on the book, and it often ended up with them talking Alex's Irish setter dog, Dempsey, out down to the cops of trees down by the river. Lucy didn't approve of these types of games as they often all ended up soaking wet swimming in the river or building dens and painting their faces in mud and catching all sorts of insets which they tried to identify, often unsuccessfully. And so this left Lily and the boys to most of these games.

Eventually, however, the six weeks of sun and fun came to an end and September cam and with it school. Lily was exited. She was in year five now. She was going to be ten in January, double figures. The classes had switched around this year as usual and Lily found herself in the same class as Alex and Matt, but not Lucy. Lily worried that Lucy would feel left out of their friendship group as she was in a class without them. But she needn't have worried. Lucy was in the same maths group as Matt and the four of them spent all their time at play times and lunch together as before. The two classes were often mixed together as a year group for many projects throughout the year and so Lily got to spend plenty of time with all of her closest friends.

All through September and October people kept on wondering about the moon landings and what the Russians would do next. It was rumoured that they would send a man to Mars! Maybe in a few years, defiantly by the time Lily had children people would be living on Mars, if not Pluto. The infinite size of the universe seemed much smaller now.

By the time November was drawing to a close and school was starting to prepare for Christmas. The weather was cold and raining so the children were cooped up inside during afternoon break. Lily, Lucy, Alex and Matt were sitting around a table in Lucy's classroom supposedly completing a jigsaw, but actually discussing what they would most like for Christmas.

'I asked for a rabbit,' Lucy was saying. 'But my mum said that they're too difficult to look after. She said she might get me a cat, though.'

'What would you call it?' Matt asked.

'It would have to have a really good name,' Alex said. 'Not something boring like fluffy or mittens.'

'It would depend on the colour.' Lucy explained, 'and the type of cause. I think a black one could be Bagheera or a tabby as Shere Khan.'

The four of them burst out in laughter.

'That would be a great name!' said Matt. 'And not sissy at all.'

'Yeah, well…' said Lucy smiling at him. 'What are you getting?' she asked changing the subject.

'I want a skate board, or maybe a BMX bike!' Matt said excitedly. 'My brother got a skate board last year but he won't let me borrow it.'

'A bike would be cool though.' Alex said. 'I'm learning how to do tricks on mine, but it's just a normal bike so I can't do all the cool ones.'

Lily and Lucy shared an exasperated look as the two boys went off into a conversation about bikes.

'A cat sounds fun.' Lily said as the boy's became absorbed into their own conversation. 'I'm not allowed real pets because Tuney hates animals. She says they bring mud and disease into the house.' She explained scrunching up her face in annoyance.

'You'll have to come around to see my kitten lots then.' Lucy said encouraging her friend. 'Petunia can be such a neat freak some of the time.'

'Yeah,' Lily agreed, and the girls fell into silence finishing up the puzzle as the boy continued their conversation animatedly.

Lily lay under her bed.

She wasn't hiding exactly, more being somewhere on her own, where no one would disturb her. She would have normally gone outside into the garden and onto the roof of the shed, but it was too cold for that really.

She lay on her back, her fingers running u and down the wooden struts only a few inches from her face. She was thinking. Thinking about boys and how peculiar they could be sometimes. Focusing mainly on the one boy. Who tells someone that their a witch and then avoids them for the next five months? Where was he? And why wasn't he talking to her?

Lily had seen him on two occasions since her dancing lesson all those months ago. Once while she Lucy and Alex had been at the park and once on her way to school with Petunia. Both times he had ducked out of sight before she had been able to do more than shout hi. And when she had gone to where she had seen him he had disappeared, as if by magic. Maybe he really was a wizard, like he had said. But why was he spying on her? That was her greatest question. Why spy on her when she already knew who he was, when they had already talked? Didn't he want to be friends? She had thought he had, but maybe she was wrong.

Lily continued to puzzle over this. Her thoughts going around and around in circles until she heard her father calling up the stairs,

'Lily! Petunia! Come and set the table for dinner!'

'Coming,' she replied rolling out from her hiding place. She jumped down the stairs two at a time and walked into the kitchen. From the top draw she collected the cutlery and proceeded into the dining room to lay the table.

Petunia entered a few minutes later with a stack of four plates. As her sister began to spread them out across the table Lily plucked up her courage.

'Tuney, do you remember that Snape boy who was spying on us at the end of last year?' she asked her sister.

'Yes. What do you want to know about him for?' Petunia replied warily.

'I was just wandering how you knew about him? I've never seen him at school.' Lily continued knowing she was far from solid ground.

'That's because he's home schooled. That's what Tom Derk said.'

'Who's that?' Lily asked, her sister had never mentioned his name before

'He's Jessica's brother.' Petunia explained. 'The year above me, he's at Senior School now.'

'Wait I have seen him.' Lily remembered. 'He was at the park the same day that the Snape boy was. You fancy him!' she suddenly accused.

Petunia turned red.

'No, no, I don't. He's Jessica's brother, that's all.' But Lily wasn't buying it at all.

'You do!'

But it was then that her mother called from the kitchen.

'Girls, the table better be clear. Dinner is ready.'

So there conversation was closed for the time being. But Lily was determined to bring it back up and get the truth out of her older sister, about both Tom Derk and Severus Snape.

Lily being Lily, of cause she found the answers to her questions. Although with her sister she knew she had to be patient. Petunia was looking out for Lily to catch her into conversation about Severus Snape and Tom Derk for the next week so Lily left it a good two weeks before she even considered broaching either subject again.

Her opportunity was much better than she could ever have suspected. It came a week before the end of the school term two weeks before Christmas. Petunia and Lily always walked home together, at least they had to appear to do so though Lily occasionally walked ahead with her friends and Petunia with hers. On this particular Friday afternoon Petunia and her friends Mary, Susan, Lisa and Jessica were planning on walking home together. Mary was Matt's older sister and so Lily knew that she would be able to talk to him if Tuney and her friends became too boring. And Susan and Lisa lived close to each other. Jessica, however, was in Petunia's group but they were not close enough for Petunia's little sister to know where she lived.

Lily came out of school and waited at the top of the steps for her sister and friends to congregate. She expected to be waiting alone for a while s her class had been let out slightly early. And if she had been waiting with anyone she would have expected it to be Matt or one of Tuney's friends. Not Tom Derk.

He had been waiting at the school gates but on seeing her, he came over and stood next to her.

'Your Petunia's sister.' He told her.

Lily looked at him for a minute, her eyes slits, deciding whether she should trust him, stranger danger and all that.

'I am, am I?' she replied.

'Yes. I saw you at the park with her in the holidays, remember. She said you were her sister.'

Lily watched him, she wanted him to feel like she was a force to be reckoned with, that she had to be told the truth.

'But I don't know you. I shouldn't talk to you.' She said and turned her head away.

'Come on. I'm friends with your sister. You can trust me.'

Lily folded her arms.

'You've never been to our house before.' She told him stubbornly.

'I'm Jessica's brother. You know Jess right.'

'So you're not really friends with my sister. Your sister is friends with my sister. You don't know me.'

'But I want to be friends with your sister.' He told her. And Lily realised that she now had ammunition. He had said a little bit too much.

'Anyone could say that.' Lily countered. And then 'But you fancy her don't you.'

Tom Derk went bright red, and Lily knew she had hit her mark. She had suspected as much the first time she had seen him, but know she was sure.

'I didn't say that.' He said sounding a little angry.

'No, I did.' She told him smirking. 'Don't worry I'm pretty sure Tuney fancies you too.'

'Really' Tom Derk said scarcely hiding his enthusiasm.

'Yeah, I recon you could probably kiss her now if you wanted to.' Lily said nonchalantly, and then pulled out her ace. 'But know I've told you something, and I said the truth, so you have to too.'

'What do you want to ask?' he questioned.

'Tell me everything you know about Severus Snape.'

'What? What do you want to know about him? You know he lives on Sinners End, right? Spinners End.' He repeated for emphasis.

'That's one thing. You must know more.' She told him ignoring his reaction. 'Or I could just tell my sister you fancy her.'

However, before Tom Derk could answer her they were interrupted.

'Lily!' Matt called as he raced up the steps towards them.

'Is this your boyfriend?' Tom Derk asked venomously.

'No,' Lily replied, 'I'm nothing like my sister.'

Then Matt caught them up and they stopped their conversation.

On the walk home Lily conveyed to her friend all that she had found out from Tom Derk, leaving out Severus Snape. Petunia was walking at the back of the group between Jessica and her brother, supporting an almost continual blush. Lily wondered what they were talking about. But as her sister was not continually glaring at her she hoped and assumed that Tom Derk had not mentioned their conversation. Lily wondered aloud whether Tom Derk would take her advice and kiss her sister. At this comment Matt stopped in his track from disbelief that Lily had actually told him to do that, causing Lily to giggle.

'I was trying to make him say that he really fancied my sister and make him think I was just a stupid nine year old at the same time!' she explained

Matt laughed 'Did it work?'

'I think so, he did say that he fancied her at least' Lily replied desperately trying to conceal her laughter, and Matt pulled a face in disgust.

It was at this point that Jessica and her brother turned off down an alleyway where the others continued on along the road. Tom Derk caught up with Lily and Matt.

'You better not let slip a word of our conversation.' He threatened as if there was much more than just two years separating their ages.

'Only if you agree to finish it.' Lily replied drolly. He gave her a scathing glance over his shoulder as he re-joined his sister who was waving goodbye to her friends. Lily and Matt fell into peals of laughter as soon as the pair were out of sight.

'His face,' Matt managed to gasp. 'Did you see his face?' causing Lily simply to laugh even harder.

There was lots of school years mentioned in this chapter and I just thought for those of you who may not be familiar with the 1960's English school system I should explain it, so no one gets confused in later chapters

You start school aged 4 (those born in the summer months start after Christmas) and the first school year is called Reception after this you go into year 1 then 2 etc up to year 6 (started aged 10 and become 11 during the school year) that was Primary School. (this can be split into Infants (Reception to year 2) and Juniors (year 3 to year 6)

Aged 11 you start Senior School the first year of this was called 'first year', 'S1' (Senior 1) or 'first form' (now called year 7) the years then go up the same as before until fourth year which could also be known as lower forth and then fifth year as upper forth or the years consistently as fourth and fifth year depending on the school. It was possible for brighter children to miss out fourth year and skip to fifth (or upper forth) and complete your O levels (now GCSE's or at Hogwarts OWL's) a year early. After this you go into lower sixth (sixth year) and then upper sixth and complete A levels (NEWT's for Harry) (there were no AS levels then) O and A levels were nationwide exams that are all identical and all students across England and Wales sit them at exactly the same time. It was possible and common for students to drop out from school aged 16 after O levels

Sorry if that's confusing or you knew it already but I'll do a quick recap

Age

4-5 Reception Primary School (Infant School)

5-6 year 1

6-7 year 2

7-8 year 3 (Junior School)

8-9 year 4

9-10 year 5

10-11 year 6

11-12 1st year Senior School (now year 7)

12-13 2nd year (year 8 etc.)

13-14 3rd year

14-15 4th year or lower 4th (some students miss this year out and complete O levels in 1 year)

15-16 5th year or upper 4th O levels taken this year (possible to finish school now)

16-17 Lower 6th

17-18 Upper 6th A levels taken this year (possible to finish school now or go to University)

This chapter owes at least part of its existence to:

Harry Potter by J K Rowling

watch?v=sJv5_y2l5as&list=PL0ADCA6F9DFADA36D

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling