Lily's POV

It was a strange time to be growing up.

At the same time that I discovered the true goodness of love and happiness, I also encountered the utter evilness of prejudice and injustice. I was learning how capable we were of loving each other at the same I was learning how terrifyingly we could hate and hurt each other.

The Daily Prophet still tried to pretend otherwise, but the desolate and desperate aura enveloping the Wizarding World could not be explained away by weak and meager words from the Minister of Magic. And though not all Professors straightforwardly addressed the coming storm as Professor Maudrick did, they all seemed grimmer and more determined than ever to teach us useful magic.

I thought every day of what this meant for me, my friends, and especially my family. For the first time, I could see how Petunia could call me a "freak". I could see that in many ways, she was right. It was dangerous for her to be connected with such a "freak".

"And what's making my lovely Lily sprint towards old age so pressingly?" James said teasingly. He reached out to smooth the wrinkles furrowed on my forehead.

His charming smile made warmth blossom in my heart. I reached out and took his hand.

"James, have you thought about what you're going to do after Hogwarts?"

"I've been thinking about that more and more often lately," James replied, dropping the teasing tone and becoming serious. "Up until this year, I've always wanted to be an Auror."

"Not anymore?" I questioned. "Why not? It's more necessary than ever."

"Yeah, but it doesn't get to the root of the problem. Being an Auror… is still attached to the Ministry. Everything would have be talked about in… indirect terms. There'd be such a false sense of security to everything because the Ministry has an attachment to its reputation for security, right? And I don't want to do that. I want to do what's really good... in the best, more direct way I can."

His words were so thoughtful and they were so aligned to what I myself had been thinking the last few days.

"But let's just enjoy these last few school days as much as we can, all right?" James said.

When I didn't reply, he smiled again and said, "What I meant by that was to stop worrying, Lily Evans."

The way he said my name made the corners of my lip curl up and then he kissed me and for that moment, I really did stop worrying.


The snow melted into slush and slowly the bright springtime sun came around again.

Two weeks had passed and it was the day of Slughorn's evening party.

Raylynx, Dorcas, Jay Salinger, and I were all going together. We dressed semi-formally and went down to Slughorn's office, which I swear he had somehow enlargened again.

"Ah yes, Miss Evans, Mr. Salinger, and Miss Meadowes, and yes, Miss Kingsley, so good of you to join us tonight! Please help yourself to refreshments and snacks, over there."

We did head to the refreshments table and Raylynx reached over to pour us all some pumpkin juice.

As she did so, I thought I felt someone watching us.

I turned my head to see a pair of solemn silver eyes looking at Raylynx. They blinked when they met my questioning eyes and quickly flashed away. I stared curiously at him. He seemed vaguely familiar… Well, he looked very familiar. He looked like- oh, so that Sirius' younger brother.

I'd rarely seen him before, except occasionally in the hallways and sometimes I'd glimpse him at Slug parties, but we rarely passed each other and we never spoke. To me, his arrogant and cold demeanor was the Slytherin trademark I strove to avoid. I didn't even know his name.

Yet, I couldn't help but notice as we three girls stood around and chatted about schoolwork and the possibilities of the Third Task that his eyes kept returning to Raylynx over and over again.

Finally, I tapped Ray mid-sentence and said, "That boy over there keeps looking at you."

"Who?" she said, and I jerked my head in his direction.

She glanced over and then, when she clearly noticed him, slightly colored and quickly looked away.

"I don't know who you're talking about," she replied. Her pink-tinged cheeks gave me evidence to the contrary. I raised my eyebrows but said nothing, only studied this boy more closely as Jay and Dorcas continued to debate the effects of the Stunning Curse and the Blasting Curse underwater.

He was no longer looking at us, but talking in a bored tone to some other Slytherins, one of them Snape. I immediately looked away from that very familiar face and instead studied him again. Upon closer look, he really did look very much like his older brother. Slightly shorter hair and a leaner build, lighter-colored eyes and a far more uptight posture, but other than that…

Slughorn suddenly joined our quartet.

"Ah, I see you're looking at my photo collection!" he exclaimed happily. We were, of course, doing nothing of the kind, but we immediately pretended to be wildly immersed in it.

"This was Gwenog Jones, I'm sure you've heard of her. Head of the Holyhead Harpies Quidditch Team, you know! Her daughter is here at Hogwarts. She's promised to come by later."

"And Ambrosius Flume, the owner of Honeydukes. Sends me crystallized pineapple all the time, you know! Yes, wonderful man. Very good at Potions, too, mind you, his treats aren't purely candy, there's a good bit of magic we take for granted in them as well."

"Who's he, Professor?" I asked, reaching over to point at a very good-looking young boy in one Slughorn's earliest photographs. He was wearing a Prefect badge rather proudly. As everybody else in Slug Club waved at the camera, he alone stood tall and still.

"Oh, that- Erm. That's Tom Riddle, I believe."

"Tom Riddle?" Raylynx said, suddenly looking up at Slughorn.

Slughorn looked back at her, startled by how quickly she had moved. Slughorn didn't like quick movements at all. He preferred everything to be slow, rhythmic. Of course, Raylynx wouldn't know this.

"And what does he do now?" I asked, trying to diffuse the tension by hoping he would cheer up considerably by reminding himself what famous people he was connected to.

But he seemed utterly frozen.

"Professor?" I said, confused.

Suddenly, he nearly shouted at Raylynx, "You will not tell-! You did not see…?"

"Professor?" Dorcas said hurriedly. "Professor, what's wrong?"

Raylynx joined Dorcas. "Yes, Professor, what's wrong?"

"So then you didn't-? No, you couldn't have, no, no… I… I will leave you now," Slughorn said, evidently incredibly flustered. And with that, he left us without another word.

"What the bloody hell was that about?" Jay asked, confused. Dorcas and I both shrugged and looked at Raylynx. But, she, too, merely shook her head and shrugged.

"I reckon Old Sluggy's just getting a bit, well, old," Dorcas said, and we shrugged off the strange incident. The rest of the party went by without incident and we had a pleasant time, discussing how well Raylynx had done in the Second Task and how wonderful it was that Marlene's family was now together again and whole and happy.

We also planned to sneak into the village at night sometime, just a group of seventh years, to have one last drink amongst ourselves before the year ended. I volunteered to propose this plan to the Marauders as well as Alice and Marlene.

Then, before I knew it, the party was over, and Slughorn ushered us out quickly before we could even offer to help clean up.


I tried to catch Raylynx off guard the next morning, which was a Saturday morning. She had just come out of the shower when I sprang on her the sudden question, "What do you know about Sirius' younger brother, Ray?"

"Sirius' younger brother?" Marlene said, yawning as she woke up. "Why's he the first thing you're talking about on a Saturday morning?"

Marlene stumbled out of bed and effectively ran into her bedside table. She cursed; I laughed. That was generally how our relationship worked. Although I had to say that the long weeks where she and Raylynx had been fighting had been the worst for all five of us. If ever we were to split, nobody had ever dreamed it would be Raylynx and Marlene. Raylynx fighting with anybody was difficult to imagine. But she'd changed. I know she had. None of us would admit it for the world, but we'd all changed. And given what had happened to Raylynx, it was only understandable that Raylynx had changed most of all.

Even now, she simply shrugged and said, "No idea. I'm off to the library." No sly smile. No "it'll take just about five more minutes before your intellectual questions hit my brain, Lily," and rolling over to sleep an hour more.

"The library?" Dorcas moaned, also slowly waking up. "Why? Have we forgotten to do some last-minute homework due today?"

"Dorcas, today is Saturday," Alice said, getting out of bed now. "There is no homework due."

"Right, right," Dorcas said sleepily, and fell back asleep immediately.

By the time she gave a quiet snore, Ray was already out the door.

"What's going on with Ray?" I wondered aloud, mostly to Alice as Marlene was in the bathroom and Dorcas was sleeping. "She seems different, doesn't she? I mean, even moreso than usual."

"She was already worried about the Tournament. But now that her brother's woken up as well, I'm sure she feels responsible for taking care of him. I think she's just incredibly stressed right now. I think its best we leave her be. She'll come around," Alice reasoned.

I wasn't sure if I believed her explanation, but I wanted to think it was that simple and so I did. I let it go. Looking back, I don't know if I should have.


Raylynx's POV

In the early hours of the library of a Saturday morning, not a soul was sight (other than Madam Pince, of course). I hurried down to the Restricted Section. Though Madam Pince gave me yet another of her beady glares, she had now seen me so frequently in the Restricted Section that she no longer doubted that I had permission to go there.

The Restricted Section was, oddly, one of my favorite spots in the library. Not because of the book material, but because of the silence that always reigned here.

But today, the most unlikeliest of days, was an exception.

"You know why," someone hissed angrily. It sounded like a boy's voice.

"No, I don't," another voice, a female voice, answered obstinately. "I really don't."

"Can you please stop deluding yourself that you are invincible?"

"Why not?" she insisted stubbornly.

The boy gave out an exasperated groan and finally spat out, "Fine. You want to hear it? Because you're a half-blood."

Instinctively, I gripped my wand under my robes.

"So?" the girl's voice was confident and defiant. "So what? Half-blood and proud of it!"

"Shut up! You are a fool," the first voice growled menacingly. "You're going to get hurt, you'll-"

My feet moved before my brain. I stepped out from behind the bookcase and into the next row, where the voices were coming from. I drew out my wand and said in a trembling voice, "Don't- Don't touch her!"

Two startled pairs of eyes looked up at me.

My own eyes widened as I recognized these two students from Letra Damien- Alexis and…Jared.

I flushed but stood my ground, remembering the time he had asked me to the Yule Ball in such an insulting manner.

Jared's eyes flashed and for a moment, I thought he was going to curse me, but next second he had swept past me and down the long aisle and out of the library.

"You can put your wand down," Alexis said to me gently. "Unless, of course, you mean to curse me, too."

I hadn't realized I was nervously holding my wand out at an opponent who was no longer there.

"No, of course not," I said, and stowed my wand away.

"Are you all right?" she asked me.

"Well, what about you?" I replied.

She smiled, though it seemed duller than her usual smile. "I'm perfectly fine."

"He's foul, isn't he?" I said. "People like him-"

"No, you've got the wrong idea of him," Alexis cut me off. "He isn't what you're thinking of him as."

I looked at her in surprise. She had always seemed to have a logical head on her shoulders, particularly considering that she was in seventh-level Alchemy, and the words I had just heard come out of his mouth clearly indicated that he was a right-

"Raylynx, what do you know about Letra Damien?"

"Not much, I suppose."

"Did you know it's a school that only admits pureblood students?"

"No, I didn't know that."

"It's also the best school for learning Alchemy in the entire world."

"Right," I said, more than a little confused. Where was she going with this?

"I wanted to learn Alchemy at Letra Damien. It'd been my dream since I first learned of Alchemy at age seven. My mother used to be an Alchemist, you see. At first, I didn't understand why she was so upset that I should like Alchemy as well, that I had taken to it and dreamt about becoming an Alchemist and going to Letra Damien. I didn't realize she had had exactly the same dreams, only to be turned away by Letra Damien because of her blood status. She was half-blood too. But then she wrote to her best friend, a lady who'd gone to Letra Damien. The lady agreed to…"

Alexis took me and led to a further corner of the Restricted Section and whispered so low I could hardly make out the words.

"She agreed to forge family relations, to make it look like I was a pure-blood. My mother admitted I was a half-blood to the Headmaster of Letra Damien, but I scored the highest in history on the entrance exam and so the Headmaster agreed I could pretend to be that lady's niece."

I gaped at her.

"And this lady… this lady wasn't just any pureblood. She's the descendant of one of the oldest Wizarding families in the world. At Letra Damien, we don't have Houses like you, just the Greek word for your year embossed on your robes. But there is a sort-of unspoken hierarchy even amongst purebloods. And this lady's son has the purest blood out of anyone. He's in the unspoken, highest acclaimed ranking of the Meraclus."

"So you pretend to be related to him? And no one questions that?"

"No one would dare to question her authority, particularly when the questioning has to do with what gives her that authority in the first place- her blood line."

"And nobody knows? For seven years, you've-"

"Well, her son knows. He's kept my secret all these years."

"Her son knows? And what does he think about it? Are you close to him?"

She smiled at me a little funnily, and that smile clunked things into place in my mind.

First, two different handwritings scrawled themselves over my mind:

You wish I'd just stay away from you.

Why do you provoke me like this when you already know that I look to your attention as one of the few things in this world that matter to me most?

I didn't know that. Now I can honestly say I learned something in this class.

Then, that awful encounter with Jared asking me to the Yule Ball:

"I simply think it would be more… prudent for the Champions to go with each other. Less talk will be stirred up that way."

"I mean, wouldn't you like to avoid associating anyone you care about with you as a Champion?"

"I-what?" I spluttered indignantly.

His face reddened the slightest,- no, that's too strong a word for it- he pinkened very slightly.

"I was only suggesting that it may be more convenient for you to accept my offer."

And finally, what had happened just minutes ago:

"Can you please stop deluding yourself that you are invincible? ...Because you're a half-blood."

"So?" the girl's voice was confident and defiant, "So what? Half-blood and proud of it!"

"Shut up! You are a fool," the first voice growled menacingly, "You're going to get hurt, you'll-"

"Jared," I whispered in awe.

I was completely wrong about him this whole time. It's not that his stiffness is a portrayal of his arrogance and disdain for being prejudiced towards those lesser than him. It's because he's constantly trying to strong, to protect the people he cares about.

He loves her. He loves Alexis. It was Jared who Alexis wrote to in the note. He only asked me to the dance because the only other person he really wanted to go with was Alexis but he would risk gossip if he did take her. He didn't want to make her feel sad by taking someone they both knew so he took me, naturally, the other Champion. And he calls her half-blood to beg to her to be prudent rather than as an insult…

I suddenly felt ashamed of myself. I had thought myself against the blood hierarchy only to realize I had so deeply fallen into it that I had stereotyped Jared before I had even begun to know him.

And yet another encounter I had with Jared, one of my first ones ever, rose to my mind:

"Karkaroff, what do you think you're doing?"

An elegant but cold voice reached our ears. We turned as one to see the Letra Damien champion, Jared, come up towards us.

"I told you we are eating at the Slytherin table today. We are waiting on you." Jared's eyes flickered over to me and he asked solemnly, "Has he been bothering you?"

"No, not at all," I replied, locking eyes with Karkaroff. As always, I felt a tremor of fear pass through me at his hateful eyes, but I fought to hold his stare unflinchingly.

"Then we will take our leave. Excuse us", and Jared dragged Karkaroff away.

As they went I heard Karkaroff say, "I was only-"

Jared cut him off, saying in a stern voice, "Karkaroff, you are only to get in my way. Stay away from the other champions!"

That had been in response to Karkaroff insulting me for being a Mudblood.

"Yes," Alexis confirmed. "It's Jared."

"I feel terrible," I told her. "All this time, I…"

"No, no," Alexis said quickly. "Don't feel bad about it. I mean, you weren't supposed to know, after all. And his being insanely noble doesn't excuse him from all his other flaws."

"But when he asked me to go to the Ball, I completely misinterpreted-"

"Oh, was that you?" Alexis said and broke into a fit of giggles. "He told me about what a disaster it had been, though he wouldn't tell me who. He said he'd never felt so embarrassed in his life."

I merely shook my head slightly. Now it was my turn to be embarrassed.

"It's all right, you know," Alexis tried to comfort me a second time. "He knows how it must have sounded to you. Even he admits he didn't quite execute it with enough er… grace. Besides, you can't be too careful, you know. Although I'm sure there are people like Jared, there are also people who are the opposite, people who pretend to be open-minded to gain favor but are prejudicial backstabbers inside. You were right to be wary."

She was right. For every Jared or Regulus out there, there had to be purists hiding under the masks of "blood traitors", waiting until we were out of school to turn traitor. Still, my behavior had been inexcusable and I made a mental note to apologize to him at first chance. But then another question arose in my mind: "Why are you trusting me with all this?"

Alexis grinned a little. "Because I know you're on my side. You burst out from behind the bookcase with your wand straight at Jared. And even before I suspected that- you were on my side, our side, I should say. Jared has more to lose than me if I'm found out."

"Sides…" I repeated the word hollowly, "We're taking sides now, are we?"

"Of course," Alexis said solemnly, her face uncharacteristically grave. "You know, don't you? You can feel it, can't you? The War has already begun. Perhaps it had already begun years ago, whenever Vol… He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was born."