Lily Potter and the Shadows' Misfortune

Chapter Forty-One

"So are you finally going to tell us what happened last night?"

After listening to the Sanger twins' revelations and agreeing to help them find their pendants, Lily, Cassie, Nora, and Cecily had walked downstairs to where the boys stood right in front of the very first step to the girls' dormitories. Knowing full well that the common room was much too crowded with people enjoying the last few nights of the school year, Lily had known that she couldn't protect her roommates' secret if she divulged it with so many people around, so she had sent Cassie and Nora on their way and had promised to share the information with Hugo, Eli, and Rudy in the morning on the way to breakfast. Now that it was the morning, the boys were demanding their answers.

Lily looked over her shoulder, and upon seeing nothing but an empty hallway behind her, she motioned her friends to follow her and led them to the side of the hallway—away from any portraits that might eavesdrop.

"Okay, so the things in my dorm that Cecily was talking about were Addie and Romy," Lily said.
Rudy blinked, "Wait, why would they destroy their own dorm room?"

"They were looking for their pendants," Lily said. "They need them to keep up a humanlike appearance."

"Humanlike?" Eli asked. "Lil, you've lost me. Are they not human?"

"They're half-human," Lily said. She looked over her shoulder once more. "They're half-human and half-vampire hybrids known—"

"Vampires?" Rudy asked, his eyebrows rising.

"Half-vampires," Lily said, nodding at her friend, whose eyes were wide with shock. "Anyway, they're hybrids known as Schatten in the Black Forest or Shadows in English."

"I'm sorry. What the hell are you talking about? Half-vampires? Shadows?" Hugo asked. "Are you sure any of this is actually possible?"

"You should've seen them without their pendants on, Hugo," Lily said. "They were paper white and had fangs—fangs, Hugo!"

"They didn't try to kill you or anything?" Eli asked. "What kind of vampire characteristics do they have?"

"They just look like vampires and have an aversion to light is all," Lily answered. "They aren't dangerous at all."

"If they aren't dangerous, then why would they wear the pendants in the first place?" Hugo asked. "That seems kind of useless."

"They wanted to fit in, Hugo," Lily said, shaking her head at her cousin's lack of sensitivity. "Appearances matter a lot to girls, and they didn't want to walk around looking like vampires in a school filled with humans in their first year at Hogwarts."

"Girls," Hugo said with a scoff.

Lily rolled her eyes at her cousin, "Honestly, Hugo, I don't understand how you could get a girlfriend with your ultimate lack of compassion."

"Before you two break out into a fist fight, can you please finish your story about the Sanger twins if there's anything left? How did they lose their pendants?"

"They don't know how they lost them," Lily said, turning her attention away from her insensitive cousin. "Addie thinks they just lost them, but Romy thinks that...their pendants were stolen."

"Like the Sword of Gryffindor and the Sorting Hat and all of that other stuff?" Rudy asked.

"Well," Lily said with a sigh, "not exactly."