Prelude to Destiny

Chapter Two -

The Changing of the Seasons

Settling back into life in the Muggle world became more challenging every year. While Lily did not wish to have a Quidditch pitch on her block or want to go back to class, Lily desperately missed the little things: chocolate pudding the way only house elves could make it; hidden passages and trick steps; and the rest of the everyday things that she wanted instead of the humdrum way of life under her parents carefully designed and kept house.

It was not that Lily did not like being home, she did. It was just different. While at Hogwarts she was one of the prefects whose obligations it was to keep others from venturing out after hours. At home her parents set a strict curfew. At school she had the respect of her professors and peers, at home she had...

"What have you done to our sofa? What have you done?" The piercing voice of Petunia Evans travelled through walls, doors, yards, houses, eardrums, and sanity. Lily liked to refer to it as the most annoying birdsong. It never failed to be the first thing she heard when she woke up.

"What?" Lily asked groggily, trying to rouse herself out of her slumber and into the paranoid world of her elder sister.

"The sofa is green," her sister said, as though that ought to have explained everything. Lily rolled over in her bed, stuffing her head under the pillows. Petunia walked up and yanked the pillow away from her sister. "I have people coming over today, respectable university friends, and the sofa is green!"

Lily grunted, sitting up in bed. "And green's the colour of devil worship and magic?"

"It shouldn't be green! Fix it!" shrieked her sister. Their mother, Faith Evans, came into Lily's room then with a basket of dirt clothes.

"Lily, do you have anything for me to wash?" her mother asked, unaware of the tension filling the room.

"Mum, the sofa is green," Petunia wailed, turning to her mother to support.

"I know. I adore it. Betty told me all about these covers that she uses and I couldn't resist. Do you like the colour?"

"You did it?" Petunia asked, shocked. Her mother nodded. "But I'm having friends over, what will they say?"

"Hopefully that the sofas compliment the curtains perfectly, but they may just hate the idea," Faith said. Lily smirked and Petunia fumed.

"Fine," Petunia muttered, she turned to Lily, "Sorry for accusing you."

"No you're not. You're just saying that because Mum's here."

"Well, fine, if that's how you're going to be. Fine. I was going to ask you to stay and meet some normal people, but I realize now that you are too much of a freak to be able to talk to anyone."

"You mean you don't want me to turn them all into fungi?" Lily inquired sweetly.

"Mum!"

"Lily and I are going to the market in a little while. We'll be away while your friends are here, I promise," her mother offered. "Be ready in ten minutes, and once more, do you have anything more for the wash?"

~*~*~

Following her mother around the grocery store, Lily's mind began to wander. How did magical people shop for their groceries? She thought Hogwarts grew their own food, but all wizarding families couldn't have gardens, could they? Did they conjure their food? Transfigure it? What if they did a poor job of it and the magic wore off while in the stomach? What if that happened to her?

"What are you thinking about, love?" Faith Evans's voice pulled Lily out of her train of thought. She looked over to see her mother reaching to the top shelf for a jar of pickles. She had to stand on the very tops of her toes to reach it and Lily quickly reached over her tiny mother and retrieved the desired jar.

"What's wrong with that jar?" asked Lily, pointing to the jar on the middle shelf, one her mother could easily reach.

"Nothing," her mother replied, taking the one from Lily's hand, "but this one's better. Everything's better if it takes a little effort."

"Like getting along with Petunia?" Lily said sourly, placing her right hand on the cart as her mother put in the jar and began walking further down the aisle.

"Your sister is good person, Lily. She was anxious today to make a good impression on this Peter fellow. Seems she really likes him."

"I can't see why anyone should like Petunia," murmured Lily as she shuffled her feet along the ground.

"It's comments like that which keep you and Petunia from becoming close."

"It's the fact that we hate each other which keeps us from becoming close."

"All sisters hate each other at your ages. You'll grow to like one another."

"Only if she manages to get a completely new voice, face, attitude, personality, and posture," Lily chirped. Her mother lightly pinched her arm.

"It's your fault just as much as hers. We could all do without your snippy little comments that get her all riled up about magic. You goad her."

"It's just because she's annoying," Lily mumbled, bothered that her mother could not manage to see Petunia for what she really was: impossible to get along with.

"Quit complaining and start helping me. I need a bunch of bananas and a bag of oranges," Faith ordered.

"I suppose you want me to find banana and orange trees, because that would take more effort than simply going to the fruit section?" Lily asked. Faith took her hands off the cart for a moment to grab Lily by the shoulders and point her in the direction of the fruit.

"No, I'll take the ones you find in this direction."

Grumpy with the thought of her sister and annoyed at her mother for not understanding how much her sister hated her, Lily stomped off towards the bananas and apples. Her entire holiday had been like this: one of the sisters accompanying a parent on errands so they could avoid one another. It had only been a few weeks and already she and Petunia were ready to draw and quarter one another.

If Lily had been honest with herself, which she normally avoided, she would have acknowledged that she was just as much to blame for her relationship with Petunia as Petunia was. Lily did bait and goad her sister. Lily yelled at her and let Petunia get to her. But in Lily's mind, everything was Petunia's fault: Petunia was the one who blamed her for every small thing that went wrong, who spoke so stupidly, who could not manage to knock before entering a room, who ate so freaking perfectly.

Caught up once more in her own thoughts, Lily was lucky to have made it to the banana area in one piece. Without really looking at the fruit, Lily collected the bananas and headed off to the oranges, only to overhear a most interesting conversation.

"What's this for?" a boy beside her was asking another boy. Lily did not look at them as she walked up and ripped off a bag, twisted the plastic with her forefinger and thumb, then whipped it through the air so as to cause it to poof out.

"Oh!" the boy said. "Muggles have very different ideas."

Lily's head whipped towards him and immediately noticed two things. The first was that he was lightly tapping the dispenser with his forefinger and the second was that he was gorgeous. Absolutely, amazingly, perfectly gorgeous. With a sandy hair cut neatly short and blue eyes that almost hurt to look at because they were so lovely, he was one of the best looking males she had ever seen.

"But if they can't magically make these bags, don't they run out?"

Lily stifled a laugh, making his friend, who had dark brown hair and sharp silver eyes, notice her. He ripped his friend's hands away from the dispenser, his eyes frantically looking around to see if anyone else had heard.

"He, um, grew up in South America... in a tribe... in a rainforest... with wolves," the friend said. Lily turned to look at him as a burst of laughter slipped out of her mouth.

"Wolves?" she asked, shaking her head in amusement. His eyes looked around again.

"His family doesn't go to stores," he tried to fix his mistake.

"Yes we do, Ian," Gorgeous--as Lily had dubbed him--protested.

"Then why haven't you seen one of those before?" the friend said through clenched teeth.

"Because he's--" Lily looked around and saw no one listening. "--a wizard?" The boys's heads snapped towards her when they heard that.

"Thank goodness," sighed the friend.

"You're a witch?" Gorgeous inquired as the same time, helping support Lily's Gorgeous-Brilliant Theory.

"Yes, I'm a witch. I'm Lily Evans," she introduced herself, smiling.

"I am Christian Knowles and this is Ian Tailor," Gorgeous responded, smiling back and making Lily want to melt. Even his teeth were gorgeous. Was that even possible?

"I take it you aren't a Muggle-born?" Lily continued.

"No," Christian shook his head, looking a little embarrassed.

"That's why he keeps running up to things in here and saying, 'How weird.'" Friend-to-Gorgeous, Ian, seemed to have regained his voice. Such a shame.

"But you are?" she asked Ian.

"My family has lived here for generations. Christian's staying for the summer holidays to improve his 'Muggle,' like you would go to Spain to improve your Spanish," Ian explained.

"Are you having fun?" Lily asked, trying not to but inevitably focusing back on Gorgeous simply because she just wanted to look at him some more.

"This place is very different than Bath," he replied.

"Is that where you live?"

"That's where my family lives, but Ian and I both attend a school in France: Beauxbaton Academy."

"France?"

"We went to boarding school in France for primary school and continued there when we turned eleven," Christian explained. "I suppose you study at Hogwarts?"

Lily was shocked by this question; she knew nothing about their school so she assumed they would know nothing of hers, but since Christian was in a magical family, maybe he knew more magical trivia.

"Yes," she replied.

"Do you know Cleopatra Iverson?" Christian asked.

"Yes, I do. She's a good friend of mine."

"She's my second cousin twice removed," Christian announced. Lily had no idea what a second cousin twice removed actually was, though she thought it might have meant she was his uncle's cousin through marriage or something like that. Actually, Lily didn't really care. He was so gorgeous. Then it clicked.

"Oh!" Lily exclaimed. "You're Cleo's cousin! She told me that you'd be staying in Lower Bevendean. Said we ought to get it touch."

"So it's good that we've met," Christian-- beautiful Christian-- said. "Are you in her year?"

"Oh, no. I'm sixteen, turning seventeen in October, so I'm going to be a sixth year."

"We're going to be seventh years," Ian said.

"And you live close to here?" Lily asked, trying to tear her eyes away from Christian and look at the person she was addressing: Ian.

"Just a few blocks. It's odd we've never run into one another."

"I'd agree, but as we went to different primary schools and yours was in another country, I suppose it might have been more odd if we had run into one another," Lily said.

"I think I've seen you walking around, though. Do you have a dog? A small grey one?" Ian's eyes were looking off down the aisle as though seeing her dog.

"Yes," Lily smiled. "Shooting Star."

"I like dogs," Gorgeous Christian said, coming back into the conversation. Lily looked at him and smirked thinking, Of course you do. You're perfect.

"Really?" she said aloud.

"Yes. I'd like to see your dog--"

"I told you not to get lost," the voice of Faith Evans interrupted Christian's comment. Lily turned and watched her mother approach. "Then I don't see you again for ten minutes. I thought you'd gone out to find those trees."

"I tried, turns out there aren't any banana trees within walking distance," Lily said. Her mother smiled sardonically at her and Lily turned back to the boys.

"If you'd really like to see my dog just owl me sometime and I'll bring her by," Lily said, hoping she was not being too forward and dearly hoping her mother would not say something about her being too forward. Instead of either of those horrifying possibilities, Christian smiled at her, lighting up his face and revealing an even more splendid view than before.

"We will."

"Oh, do you two go to Lily's school?" Faith popped in.

"No, but we are wizards," Christian replied. Then he turned to Lily. "If you just give me your address I'll owl you."

Lily quickly took a pen and paper from her mother, wrote down her name and address, gave it to them, and then said goodbye. As they turned and walked away, Lily stared at their backs, sighing deeply when they turned the corner. Then she felt a tugging on her hand and looked down to see her mother pulling the bunch of bananas out of her hand and holding it up in front of her eyes.

"Wow you got one of your items," Faith said with false pride. Lily laughed and then turned to her mother, her earlier annoyance forgotten.

"Wasn't he gorgeous?" Lily gushed. Her mother turned and went back to the banana stand, replacing the ones Lily had picked with another bunch. "I mean his hair was nice enough, but then those eyes. Ah, they were so blue." Lily feigned a faint as her mother moved on to the orange row and began filling a bag.

"If he doesn't go to your school, how do you know him?"

"He made a comment about Muggles and then fate led his voice to my ears," Lily said seriously. "Again, the eyes, did you see the eyes? So lovely. So blue. So perfect. Do you think he'll owl me, Mum?"

Faith Evans turned back towards her daughter, lifting her bag of oranges and counting them.

"I'm sure he'll owl you. He seemed really interested in the dog."

"I hope he owls me because that would mean that I could see him some more. Just stand there and stare and stare," Lily stated dreamily.

"Well, dear," Faith said, having finished counting and now looking at her daughter, but then her eyes went past Lily and widened when they noticed something behind her. Slowly Lily followed her gaze, rotating 180 degrees, hardly daring to breath, and then she saw... Christian standing behind her looking both embarrassed and proud.

"I just came back to make sure I read this correctly." He repeated the address and Mrs. Evans affirmed the spelling as Lily couldn't speak through her shame. Then he turned and left. Still staring at the spot where he had stood, Lily managed to barely murmur, "Oh eff me."

"Don't curse, dear," her mother said, trying to hide her growing smile.

"I just-- I just-- and he was-- and I said-- and he-- he heard everything. Oh frick. Oh frick!" Her mother laughed and Lily scowled at her.

"Oh, honey. I'm sorry. It was just really funny." Faith leaned over and wrapped an arm around her daughter's shoulders and continued to push her cart as her daughter stared blankly out at nothing.

~*~*~

The moment Lily went into her house she wrote a letter to Cleopatra, retelling the horrifically embarrassing story of meeting Christian. Cleopatra wrote back the day after Lily sent the letter off with her owl named Bob. She said that Christian was vaguely related to her mother through marriage.

He came to large family gatherings like weddings and Christmas parties. He was nice. I'd hoped you two would meet. Glad to hear he's having a good time. Always liked his father, Patrick. One of the nicest, most gentlemanly relations I have. It is odd that you happened to meet him at the market. How is he? Besides looking "fabulously gorgeous" as you put it, is he having fun in school? I haven't seen him in four years. Though, the way you tell the story, he'll never write you, so maybe I should ask someone else. Just joking. I'm sure he'll write.

Good luck with school,

Cleopatra

Sighing, Lily put the letter away. She would write back at some later date, right then all she wanted to do was wallow in self-despair. How could she have made such a fool of herself?

"Get up," snapped Petunia as she barged into the room without knocking.

"Get out, ugly," Lily snapped right back.

"You're such a brat! I don't know why our parents are so proud of you."

"You pretend like you don't care, but I know you read Mum's Daily Prophets. Even if you pretend to hate magic, you can't keep your squinty little eyes away from it." Petunia's eyes got large and she stormed out of the room, slamming the door as she went.

Lily got up to follow her when she heard a pecking on her window. Turning, she saw an owl. She opened the window, took the letter, and threw it on her desk to open later. She was too angry to think about writing anyone right now. Petunia was a gift for dispensing annoyance.

Dinner passed without occasion, both daughters kept their eyes locked on their food, refusing to meet the other's gaze. To bother her sister, Lily ate with her elbows on the table and no napkin on her lap. Petunia twitched a lot.

Coming back into her room considerably happier for having bothered her sister, Lily opened the letter she had received earlier that night. To her complete and utter surprise, it was from Christian. He wrote to ask if he and Ian could stop by to see the dog. Still mortified beyond belief and only slightly reassured by Cleopatra's letter, Lily replied that they could come by the next day at noon.

~*~*~

For all of Christian's talk about liking dogs, he did not seem too terribly focused on Shooting Star that day. As the three teens walked around the block, he kept asking her questions about school, friends, term's end, and things that had nothing to do with the dog. Lily, who had promised herself that she would not obsess over what a fool she had made of herself, spent the entire time beat red as she obsessed over what a fool she had made of herself. Not that that stopped her from realizing just how good-looking Christian was.

"There's a giant lake at on the Hogwarts grounds?" Christian asked as Lily tugged on the leash to keep Shooting Star from stopping to sniff a passing dog.

"And a giant squid, though I've only seen it once when I crossed the lake on the boats in my first year."

"Our school doesn't have anything as frivolous as that," Christian said. Ian elbowed him in the side, though Lily missed seeing it as she coaxed her dog away from a tree; Shooting Star seemed to want to stop. "It sounds interesting, though."

"Does your school have secret passageways?" Lily asked.

"No," Christian replied, looking amused by the idea. "Did you get that from some Muggle book about magical schools?"

"No," Lily said. "Hogwarts is full of secret doors and passages."

"Really?" Ian inquired, excited. "Do you use them?"

"All the time. The fastest way to Potions and Transfiguration involves nearly three different hidden passages and trick doors. It's one of the best things about the castle."

"Don't people get lost?" Christian asked.

"If they aren't careful, some people get stuck in the vanishing stairs." Ian laughed and Christian looked thoughtful.

"So it's for protection, all those passages and stairs and things?"

"I suppose it might have once been to trick intruders," Lily commented, thinking about the origin of the passages for the first time. "But now they're used by all the students, though I don't know of the ones that lead out of the castle like some of the other people in my year."

Lily had been looking at her dog while speaking, but when she looked up she saw that only Ian was standing next to her. She looked at him questioningly. He jerked his head to the left and Lily followed with her eyes. Christian had stopped to stare at a streetlight.

"What's the matter?" Lily asked, coming back towards him. He raised his hand and pointed it at the lights.

"They change colour," he said as the light switched from green to yellow and then red.

"That's how the cars know when to stop," Lily explained. But when he began asking about electricity and conductivity Lily was lost and had to admit that she had always just accepted electricity without question. She glanced over at him out of the corner of her eye and saw that he was looking at her. She blushed. Frick. That was so lame.

"You're very pretty," he said. Lily turned even redder.

"Thank you." Her eyes swept back to his face and look in his face. A smile seemed rare and hard given, his face was not made for them, but his blue eyes were so full of focus that Lily could not keep from loving to look at them. Oh yes, just looking at the boy was amazing.

A bark from Shooting Star grabbed Lily's attention suddenly and led her to look in the direction of the noise. At the end of his lead, he was anxiously prowling a cat on the other side of the street. Ian, standing beside the dog, looked uncomfortable.

~*~*~

Two days after that walk, Christian owled Lily to ask her if she would like to come with Ian and him to a "football game." He put it in quotations and even went on to say that he had never seen the game and could not truly believe anything like what he had been described could be very interesting. Lily wrote back and agreed to go even before she asked her parents, and that was how the majority of her summer holidays passed: agreeing to spend time with Christian no matter the obstacles in the way.

Lily found that doing normal, every day tasks with Christian were some of the funniest experiences in her life, though he saw nothing funny in them. The first time she had eaten over at Ian's house, she had offered to help make dinner. Mrs. Tailor, an old traditionalist, had told her not to be silly.

"You're a guest here," she went on to say. "And you'll just sit right there as we finish up. We would've been done but Christian is having some difficulty." Lily went to watch Christian try to cook the Muggle way.

When he tried to peel a potato, Lily was convinced he would end up cutting himself and anyone in the same room. Mrs. Tailor seemed to concur with Lily's assessment as she quickly took over that task and sent him off to make the cookies, something she thought no one could destroy. Christian made amazing cookies. Delicious chocolate and carmel cookies that Lily wanted to steal and take home.

After dinner, Lily said thank you to the host and hostess and said she really ought to be home soon. Christian asked if he could walk her. Not objecting at all to being alone with him, Lily agreed. The walk was marked with all sorts of small talk about the going-ons in the magical community-- who they thought would do well in Quidditch World Cup, scheduled to take place at the end of the summer.

Reaching her door, the two teenagers turned to look at one another.

"Thank you for bringing me home."

"You're welcome," Christian replied. He stared at her a little too long. "Do you think it would be all right if I kissed you good night?"

Lily nodded, not trusting words to come out correctly as she walked to yell, Hell yes! Christian leaned forward at a painfully slow pace. Finally Lily, not wanting to wait until he reached her, leaned forward and went up on her toes, meeting his mouth with hers. And then Lily's head was swimming. Her hands found their ways up to his neck, pulling his face closer as her hands planted themselves on her waist.

"Lily!" came the sharp shout of her father from inside the house. The two teens jumped backwards, glanced at the house guiltily and then looked at each other, smiling.

"I'll owl you tomorrow," Christian said. Mortified by her protective father and ridiculously pleased by the kiss, Lily barely managed to nod.

~*~*~

Thus July was spent split between Lily's family and Christian. It might have also gone to Lily's friends, but Sam had flown to Hungary to visit her uncle all summer, Christine and her mother had gone on a twelve country trip without an owl, and Tracy was apparently unable to get away from her Quidditch captain until the end of August. As it stood, Lily enjoyed spending most of her summer with Christian, a boy who was completely enamoured with her.

He still had moments that made Lily laugh, like when he walked into sliding glass doors or stared at televisions in store displays, reaching out to try and touch the "tiny people in the box."

All in all, Christian was smart (though not street-wise), good looking, and a complete distraction from the one person she was not supposed to be thinking about-- three things that were definitely on her "good" list. Plus it was lovely to come home with a flower he had bought for her.

When July ended and August came, everything in Lily's life seemed to fit like the perfect jigsaw puzzle. She was happy, healthy, and had an adoring boyfriend (she knew to call Christian this because on another one of their dates he had asked if she would be his girlfriend).

~*~*~

"Christian's here again," Petunia said to her sister as she passed her bedroom door. Christian seemed to be the only point around which Petunia and Lily could agree: he was a decent boy. Not that that put Petunia and Lily on good terms, it just gave them a single topic they could both talk about.

Lily looked at her clock in surprise. It was nearly dinnertime and she had not planned to meet Christian. She got up from writing an especially long letter to Sam in order to walk downstairs and into the living room. There sat Christian with her mother, talking animatedly. They got along so well that Lily worried her mother might one day choose him over her if ever they got into a fight, but Lily's loyal father sat quietly in the corner of the room, half glaring at Christian, his baby girl's first boyfriend.

"Hi, Christian," Lily said.

"Hi, Lily," Christian said, standing up, walking over, and giving her a kiss on the cheek. She blushed as her father harrumphed. She could not stop a smile from forming on her lips just at the sight of Christian. He looked so good. He always looked so good.

"We didn't have plans, did we?" she asked, looking up into those blue eyes and wanting to never look away.

"No, we didn't. Ian and his family are going out to dinner and as it's our two month anniversary, I was hoping we might eat together." Lily could see her mother over his shoulder, nodding slightly. Lily, for her part, had not even known they had an anniversary and was very excited to find that they did.

"That would be great," Lily responded. "Let me grab a jacket, then we can go." After he nodded Lily turned and bounded up the stairs, bursting with excitement. She had an anniversary: a two-month anniversary.

She came back downstairs a few minutes later wearing a completely different outfit: a blue skirt that fell nicely to her knees, a black sleeveless blouse, covered black shoes and a blue handbag. Her hair was down and sparkling (it was full of the magical straightening cream her mother had gotten her for Christmas that past year). She was also completely and utterly happy. You see, Lily was sixteen and experiencing, for the first time, what it was to like a boy and have that boy like her in return. She did not think things could get better.