Chapter One
The breeze tugged at her long red hair as Lily sat on the swing, her feet tracing an arc in the dirt beneath her. She could see the low lying grey clouds gathering on the horizon, as if they had decided to mirror her feelings. The summer shouldn’t have been over so quickly, it was still the thirty-first of August and just the day before the sun had shone like a beacon in the sky. Still, Lily looked on the bright side – by this time tomorrow she would be gone, off to a new life, a life filled with things that other people could only dream of, and then give up on; that was her reality, not the small and neat suburban area which was a stone’s throw from somewhere altogether less savoury.
As she absentmindedly swung backwards and forwards Lily thought of the trunk in her bedroom, packed up with her most precious possessions and filled with magical and mysterious objects, foreign books and exotic clothes. In just a day’s time she would be off, off to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and as she thought about it she couldn’t help but whisper it to herself, rolling the words around in her mouth like a particularly precious sweet. She had missed school over the summer, her boring routine at home nothing to the magic of Hogwarts.
She had missed her friends so much, not even their frequent letters and days together helping much: Mary and Alice’s dry sense of humour and especially Cassie’s antics and quirky personality. Lily had even missed her lessons and was desperate to get back to Charms and Transfiguration, Potions and Defence Against the Dark Arts, not to mention the fact that Petunia’s constant moaning and complaining had been driving her up the wall. All she did whenever Lily was home was to sneer at the things she told her parents she had learned, and their enthusiasm to know everything about the magical world they found their daughter a part of. In fact, the only blot on her sunny disposition at having to return to the ancient castle was the knowledge that Potter and his friends would be there.
Lily stopped swinging as she frowned, her thoughts turning dark as she thought about James Potter and his cronies, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew and last, but by no means least, Sirius Black. Just the thought of the four arrogant ‘rulers’ of their school was enough to bring the rainclouds in on her mood and a sour taste filled Lily’s mouth as she remembered the first time that they had met.
She had woken up at the crack of dawn, a mixture of excitement and nervousness running through her veins and turning her stomach over and over, so much so that she could barely finish her bowl of cereal and after a frantic car journey they emerged at the other end, the red bricks of King’s Cross station towering over them.
As they had panicked, unable to find the entrance to platform nine and three-quarters, Lily had heard a tall, raven haired women mutter in a voice cold enough to chill the dead, “This place is packed with Muggles.” Behind her had trailed an equally tall man and two young boys, one of them pushing a trolley with a trunk on. “Hurry up Sirius or you’ll miss the Hogwarts Express!” she’d cried impatiently. In hindsight Lily thought that she should have realised Sirius would have a family like that, all as arrogant and convinced of their superiority as he was.
“Mum they’re going to the same place as us,” Lily had whispered and they began to follow the other family. Suddenly the woman strode right into a wall and without missing a beat her husband and what looked to be their youngest son followed her. Only the boy with the trunk hesitated for a moment before racing through after them.
Their goodbye was hazy in Lily’s memories but she could still recite, almost word for word, her argument with Petunia, not the first of many but the first of Petunia’s constant scathing looks and refusal to talk to her. Even now it still stung and Lily knew that her parents were desperate to heal the rift between their two daughters.
Lily pursed her lips, trying not to think of James and Sirius’ cruel taunting of her oldest magical friend, Severus Snape. It was then that she had realised she never wanted to be friends with anyone so egotistical and self assured that they thought they could walk over everyone and bully whomever they liked without getting into trouble; it certainly didn’t help that almost every girl in Hogwarts had swooned over the pair of them for the past four years and that almost all the boys thought that they were the height of cool.
A small smile returned to her face as she thought of her friend Sev, with his uncoordinated lanky build and endearing honesty. Hopefully this year she could keep him away from those awful Slytherins and stop the Marauders from bullying him. For some reason, ever since that very first day, they had chosen him as their main target and she resented them for that because, without him having even done anything to them and completely for their own amusement, they had made an innocent boy’s life very close to hell for the past four years when he should have been enjoying his time at Hogwarts as much as the pair of them had thought that they would.
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The Next Great Adventure (A Marauders Fan Fic)
Fanfiction(Companion piece to Dwelling on Dreams) James Potter has been Lily's enemy since the first day that they both started at Hogwarts. She has never been interested in his being his friend but, when they and their friends return for their fifth year at...
