My Silver Lining by First Aid Kit
I hear a voice calling
Calling out for me
These shackles I've made in an attempt to be free
Be it for reason, be it for love
I won't take the easy road
February 27th, 1974
"Ready?" Ivy whispered under her breath.
Regulus and Theya, who sat on either side of her, nodded seriously.
"…And that is why," Professor Harditch was saying. "If you see a four-toed foot, you'd better what?"
"Not stay put," a few students echoed blandly.
Ivy hoped that the rumoured jinx on the DADA position rang true if only so she could stop getting his little rhymes stuck in her head. The learning technique was effective, sure, but it was also annoying.
"Excellent," Harditch nodded. "I expect two rolls of parchment on the nature of hags by next Friday. Class dismissed."
As the second years began putting away their belongings, Ivy packed her things painstakingly slowly. Theya wandered over to chat with Potter, who, like clockwork, told Sirius, Lupin, and Pettigrew to go ahead of him. Regulus was already at the front of the classroom, directing questions he knew the answers to at Harditch.
As the remaining students left, Regulus slowly shifted his position, effectively turning the Professor's back to her. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, Ivy crouched low, weaving between the tables. When she reached the one that had Potter's disorganised pile of notes atop it, she ducked out of sight.
"I thought you might have some Quidditch tips for me," Theya was saying. "I'm hopeless on a broom."
"What kind of Chaser would I be if I helped an opposing team?" Potter asked playfully.
Peeking over the table, she found that Potter and Harditch's backs were still to her. Giving a hand signal to Theya, who didn't look her way, Ivy slid her hazel wand out of her sleeve.
"But I'm not just any Slytherin," Theya batted her lashes.
"Geminio," Ivy whispered, at the same time that Theya released a loud cough.
Potter's notes instantly duplicated and fell into her arms. The parchment made a fluttering sound and he began to look in her direction.
"Please, James," Theya stepped into his personal space, regaining his attention easily. "I really need someone who knows what they're doing."
Ducking beneath the table again, she placed her wand on top of the stack of parchment. Double-checking that she was in the clear, she stood up straight and began walking away nonchalantly, the messy array of notes and her wand tucked against her chest.
"Alright," Potter gave in. "First tip, don't fall off…"
Ivy escaped from the classroom, unscathed and triumphant.
Striding a few corridors down until she located the window that was their designated meeting spot, she sat on the ledge. Shoving her wand back up her sleeve, she leafed through the pages. Wrinkling her nose at Potter's handwriting, she giggled upon noting that it was almost messier than his hair. Almost.
Within a minute, Theya and Regulus joined her.
"Get anything good?" Regulus leaned against the wall with his arms folded.
"Not yet," Ivy flicked through the sheets of parchment. "How about you, Theya? Get anything good?"
"Please," she wrinkled her nose. "I asked Potter for Quidditch advice and he gave me a long-winded story about accidentally getting knocked off his broom."
Ivy and Regulus snickered.
"Then," she added. "He proceeded to tell me that next year he's going to be Gryffindor's Quidditch team captain. I'm shocked that any broom can hold the weight of his massive ego."
Ivy laughed, but stopped short to gasp.
"What?" Theya hopped onto the window sill with her.
Regulus also leaned in closer to get a look, his scent of pine trees wafting towards her.
The parchment was, truthfully, one of the scariest things she'd ever seen. Front and back, the page was covered in doodles depicting Potter's affection for Evans. There were hearts with JP + LE inside, big block letters that read MR. JAMES EVANS, and several poorly written haikus.
"Poor Lily," Theya sounded horrified.
"Roses are red," Regulus read aloud. "Violets are blue, Lily flowers are pretty, but not as pretty as you. Yikes."
Her personal favourites were crossed out: Are you sure you're not a Dementor? Because I'm sure I'd die if you kissed me and I might as well be under the Imperius curse, because I'd do anything for you. She wasn't sure whether the pick-up lines had been used or if Potter had realised how dreadful they were.
"What's that scratched out one?" Theya squinted. "Are you a snitch? Because I'd catch you. That's sinister."
"Wouldn't surprise me if he had a shrine set up somewhere," Regulus wheezed with laughter.
"Well," Ivy giggled. "It looks like I have what I need."
March 1st, 1974
Standing in the Viaduct Courtyard, Ivy hid behind a stone column, out of sight from the enclosed garden. Beneath the covered walkway, she was missing the direct sunlight as early spring was cold against her face. Adjusting her green and silver scarf, she waited with Regulus and Snape, who were crouched behind the stone half-walls.
"Evans is here," Regulus told her.
Peering around the column, she saw the third year standing in the middle of the Courtyard. Evans stuck out like a sore thumb with her auburn hair and was waiting with a slip of parchment in hand. A few students milled about the area, some studying while others were sprawled out on the cold grass.
"This better be worth it, Selwyn," Snape said crabbily.
"It will be."
"Where's Theya?" Regulus asked.
"Plausible deniability."
"Ah," he straightened. "Here they come."
Ducking low to crouch next to the boys, Ivy watched as Potter and his little posse arrived. Pulling the parchment of embarrassing doodles from her pocket, she set it on the ground as Potter and his friends stepped forward to convene with the redhead, who looked furious.
"The note was from you?" Evans yelled, drawing the attention of most everyone in the Courtyard. "I told you to leave me alone!"
"You asked me to meet you!" Potter countered, holding his own slip of parchment. "This is your handwriting; I'd know it anywhere!"
Ivy congratulated herself on her forgery, glad she'd taken the time to steal one of Evans's Muggle notebooks. As luck would have it, she'd found a long red hair stuck in the spiral, which would come in handy when she got the Polyjuice.
Flicking her wand swiftly and precisely, she performed two spells in a matter of seconds. Potter's trousers were yanked down by an invisible hand, leaving him in his boxers, which were white for less than a second before suddenly bearing his own doodles.
This left James Potter wearing underwear that, most noticeably, had I HEART LILY EVANS and MR. JAMES EVANS all over, among the rest of the humiliating things he'd written.
Evans screamed at the same time that Regulus and Snape burst into laughter. Regulus fell onto his side while Snape watched gleefully. Other students in the Courtyard gasped and whispered in horror.
"You sicko!" Evans shrieked, drawing her wand.
"It wasn't me!" Potter insisted helplessly, pulling his trousers up. "C'mon Sirius, tell her!"
"Mate," Sirius looked embarrassed. "That's way too far."
"Anteoculatia!" Evans pointed her wand at Potter.
Antlers began to sprout from his head, growing large and fast, quickly toppling him over. Sirius and Lupin made to help him, Pettigrew lingering back, as Evans went to stand over Potter.
"You disgusting toerag!" Evans yelled. "Don't ever talk to me again! And this time, actually bloody do it!"
As the redhead stormed off between groups of gossiping students, Ivy, Regulus, and Snape took it as their cue to leave before the Gryffindors started looking for the source of the chaos. They sprinted into the castle and past the Great Hall, their boisterous laughter echoing through the corridors.
Once they were far enough away, Ivy stopped running and put a hand against the cold stone wall. She hunched over, giggling breathlessly.
"That-" Regulus was just as out of breath. "That was fantastic. No one is going to go within metres of him for years. How did you do that?"
"A modified Levitation Charm," Ivy said smugly. "A little tricky to work, but after that it was just a quick Switching Spell."
"I'll have your Polyjuice within a month," Snape told her.
"Polyjuice?" Regulus raised a brow.
Ivy just smiled.
April 7th, 1974
Entering the Leaky Cauldron's lavatory, Ivy locked the door behind herself and hung her satchel on a hook. The loo wasn't very clean. Nor was it the ideal location to drink a potion that was rumoured to taste worse than the bottom of a goblin's foot. But she couldn't very well take Polyjuice at Selwyn Estate, so she opened her satchel and retrieved the thermos.
Unscrewing the lid, she pulled a long red hair from a jar. Already nauseous at the thought of drinking hair, she looked away as she dropped it into the potion. When she looked back, the potion had turned a shimmery coral colour and smelled like citrus.
Pinching her nose, she downed the drink, refusing to think about the taste until it was gone. Once done, however, she was surprised to find a pleasant aftertaste of clementines.
Looking up into the mirror, a burning, tingling sensation spread throughout her body. She could feel it from her scalp all the way down to her toes and watched as she transformed.
Her limbs retracted as she shrunk several centimetres and her shoulders widened. Her white hair began to turn auburn from her scalp down to the ends, though it stayed roughly the same length, which was down to her elbows. By the time the transition was done, she was an emerald-eyed witch wearing shoes several sizes too big, and her clothes were baggy on her petite body.
Snape had told her that he'd only been able to get enough ingredients for an hour, but an hour of complete freedom was more than she'd ever had.
Ivy excitedly pulled a hat onto her head, tying up the red hair and tucking it underneath. Putting on a pair of sunglasses she'd nicked, she tied a black scarf around her neck and stuffed all the other materials away.
Departing from the Leaky Cauldron's bathroom, then from the pub itself, she headed into Diagon Alley. It was busy, even for a weekend, so she stuck to the side of the street and walked until she reached Horizont Alley, which intersected Carkitt Market and Knockturn Alley.
She spotted the Squib Rights march passing by Flimflam's Lanterns, a storefront with dirty windows and lighting devices behind the glass. There were maybe thirty protesters, all holding signs. Some of her favourites included: Wizards of quality don't fear equality and I stand with the magicless.
Eyes catching on a head of sandy blonde hair that belonged to Marlene McKinnon, she squinted to read her sign: Squib Rights = Human Rights. Making a point to keep her head down as she moved to the back of the peaceful protest, she stayed as far away from McKinnon as possible.
Unsure of what to do since she hadn't been able to prepare a sign under the close watch of her parents, she walked behind the group. Unsure of herself for quite possibly the first time ever, she tried not to look as awkward as she felt.
"Do you need a sign?" A boy to her left asked.
Turning, she found Benjy Fenwick, a fifth year Hufflepuff with medium brown hair, smiling at her. His sign read: "Squibs don't belong in the shadows" -Angus Buchanan. When he showed no indication of recognizing her as Lily Evans, she let herself relax a bit.
"Oh, yeah," Ivy adjusted her speech to sound less proper. "That'd be great."
He handed her a sign that read: Down with discrimination.
Taking it, a goofy smile wandered over her features. What she was doing felt small but good. At least for a while, she didn't have to be the Selwyn heiress. For all intensive purposes, she was a Mudblood who had no responsibilities.
"I'm Ida." The name wasn't her best work, but it was hard to care when she didn't have to be anybody right then.
"Benjy. Pleasure to meet you."
"And you. Who's Angus Buchanan?"
"He wrote My Life as a Squib," Benjy told her as they marched down another street. "He was estranged from his family for being a Squib and later became famous playing on a Muggle rugby team."
"I don't suppose you know where I could get a copy that has an altered cover?"
Ivy could easily charm the cover herself, but if her parents found her with the book as it was… well, she didn't want to think about what would happen. Her parents had left bruises on her for less.
"I don't," Benjy said apologetically. "Why do you need one that's altered?"
"My parents wouldn't approve."
"Pureblood?"
"Something like that," she decided to be honest since, as far as he was concerned, he would never see her again. "We had a Squib in the family a while ago. My family's reaction was… less than appropriate. That's why I'm here. For her since she couldn't be."
"Huh," Benjy looked at her sidelong. "You wouldn't happen to be related to the Selwyns, would you?"
Looking sharply at him, fear flooded her veins. "No, why?"
"Squibs are really rare."
"I didn't know that," she mentally cursed herself. "What happened with the Selwyns?"
"Can't say for sure. There were rumours going around about a year ago that the family had produced a Squib."
"Oh."
"Yeah, they had this daughter that nobody saw for a long time. They told everybody she was really ill but she died a few weeks after her eleventh birthday. I heard my parents talking about it and they think the Selwyns are covering something up."
"Everyone thinks this girl was a Squib?" Ivy probed carefully.
"It's just a theory," Benjy shrugged.
"Your parents are all for this march, then?"
"My parents are leading the march."
"Lucky," Ivy said bitterly. "My parents would murder me if they knew I was here." The truth of that statement wasn't lost on her. "Much less if they knew I was talking to a halfblood."
Benjy frowned at her. "How did you know I'm a halfblood?"
She opened her mouth despite not having a response, when yelling arose at the front of the march. Thankful when his attention turned in that direction, she held in a sigh of relief. Rising to her tiptoes since she was now unusually short, she tried to see what the commotion was about.
A loud boom shook the ground, the sound reaching her ears just as an explosion threw her backwards.
Ivy's head hit the cobblestone street.
Vision going wobbly, it was a moment before she saw the sky overhead. Watching shadows of people race around her, her ears rang and she smelled smoke. A burning sensation started to crawl through her and she sat up as sound slowly came back to her ears.
Ivy heard screaming and watched people rush past, headed back in the direction of Diagon Alley. Trying to blink away the haze, she realised that not only was the Polyjuice wearing off, but also that there was a horde of counter protestors advancing from four metres away. Their faces were outraged in a hideous way, twisted and shouting as some charged forward, flinging colourful spells that shot over her head.
Reaching up dizzily, she felt blood dribbling down from beneath her hat, which had allowed half of her reddish hair to fall out. As the counter protestors advanced, she felt someone put their hands beneath her armpits, dragging her to her feet.
Now being supported by Marlene McKinnon, Ivy ran, doing her best not to pass out.