Prelude to Destiny

Chapter 7

The Movements of the Heavens

Memorizing the astrological meaning of stars never endeared itself to Lily. When studying this particular aspect of Astronomy, Lily felt too much similarity between Astronomy and Divination, the latter of which she did not trust. As a Muggle-born girl with sensible parents and a sceptic sister, Lily found it difficult to distinguish between fortune telling and fairy tales.

She stacked her notes and exhaled her irritation. Why did she need to know that when Mars and Venus were close, people took it to mean that it would rain? Stargazing in order to predict the future was ridiculous. Lily let her eyes travel away from her book and over to the other person at her little table: James Potter. Why he insisted on joining her during these study sessions, she did not know. Why he silently read beside her, she could never guess.

At first it had been unsettling, the silence. Now, it was almost comfortable, which made it even more unsettling. Did that make any sense? No, but Lily knew it was true. To feel comfortable with James Potter meant that she was letting her guard down, and that was never a good idea around him. Then he would start hexing you or break your heart, depending on the day.

He looked up and met Lily's gaze. Then he smiled and Lily started in her seat, shocked. Then her eyes scanned the rest of the library, trying to spot Remus or Sirius Black or Peter Pettigrew. This had to be a prank. She looked back and saw James' smile even bigger.

"What?" Lily asked, suspicious. then she wanted to throw a hand over her mouth in horror; had she really initiated conversation with James Potter? After nearly three months of silent Wednesday night study sessions, why did she suddenly want conversation?

"You look like a trapped Hippogriff," he explained. He leaned closer to her and she leaned backwards. "I'm not going to curse you. I don't actually own a book called One Hundred Way to Hex People."

Lily blushed remembering the incident. He had bumped into her in the hall and ropped his book and she had accused him of owning a book- oh nevermind. She had nothing to be ashamed of. He might have own a book like that. So she replied, "What book was it, then, Ways to Embarrass My Peers?"

"No. It was The Merchant of Venice."

"You're reading Shakespeare?" Lily asked, shocked, as she crossed her arms.

"I have to for Muggle Studies," James replied.

"You're in Muggle Studies?"

"Is that so hard to believe?"

"Yes."

"Because I shouldn't take such an easy course?" He smirked knowingly at Lily and she resisted the urge to laugh at him. He thought understanding Muggles was easy? Lily was raised a Muggle and she didn't know everything about them.

"No. Because you don't actually care about Muggles," said Lily.

"I care," he said defensively.

Not knowing what to say- or more precisely not knowing what to say without insulting him- Lily nodded and turned her eyes back to her paper, lists and lists of possible retorts jumping around her brain. But instead of being mean and spiteful, Lily reopened her notes and began riffling through them, feeling stupid for talking to him at all. Why was he still at her table, anyway? Why was he at her table and not speaking? Why wasn't he being his usual chatty self, gabbing on and on about himself?

"Could I use you for a Muggle Studies project?" James asked, quite startling her out of her bitter thoughts.

"Excuse me?"

"I have an assignment to ask a Muggleborn student what it is that they miss most about the Muggle world and what it is that they think they gave up to attend Hogwarts." Surprise rippled through Lily's arms and down into her fingertips. What a question. "Don't worry. You don't have to answer. I already wrote the essay, I just need a Muggleborn name to put on it."

"Why?" asked Lily, feeling vaguely disappointed that he did not care about her answer.

"Because the professor said she might check up on the sources." The fact that James could have asked a friend to lie for him was not lost on Lily. "So can I use your name?"

"Why not ask Remus, isn't his father a Muggle?"

"Yeah, but I thought the professor might find it suspicious if I used a friend's name." And I'm not your friend, Lily thought, hurt though she knew she shouldn't be. She would never ever list James as one of her friends.

"Sure. Use my name," Lily said, shrugging.

"Really? I didn't think you'd say yes."

Then why'd you ask Lily thought to ask. Instead, she shrugged and turned back to her notes.

"Do you want to know what I wrote about?" James asked her.

"What?" Lily replied, looking back up at him.

"In my Muggle Studies essay. Do you want to know what I said you would miss the most?" James elaborated. Lily shrugged and motioned for him to go ahead. "I wrote about televisions, telephones and whipped cream in spray bottles-"

"Whipped cream?" Lily asked, looking at him like he was crazy. "You think I regret giving up whipped cream?"

"Yes."

"You're-" an idiot, Lily finished in her head. But instead of saying that aloud she kept it to herself and then said, "Never mind."

"Don't you miss whipped cream in a bottle?" James asked.

Thoughts of Petunia and Lily's other pre-Hogwarts friends flashed across Lily's mind. Lily remembered the telephone ringing beside her bed and football on Sundays. She thought about travelling the world without fear of Voldemort, without blood prejudice. She recalled her childhood dreams that disappeared when she accepted the invitation to Hogwarts: learning to drive, going to university, finding a safe boy to marry, having her parents understand and help fix all of her problems.

"Yes," Lily said. "I miss whipped cream in a bottle."

For the following Wednesdays before Christmas, James and Lily would remain silent once more. She, bothered deeply by the flippant way he treated her losses, kept silent to spite him. James, on the other hand, remained quiet for a different reason, one Lily would not learn of until months later. And boy would that reason tick her off.

~*~*~

Wearing a sweater over her usual uniform and a cloak on top of that, Lily stood in the Entrance Hall with her hands in her pockets. Sure, living in a castle had seemed like a great adventure when she was eleven years old, but now, at sixteen and with the cold month of December in full swing, Lily wished she had thought studying in the Bahamas had seemed like an adventure.

"Ready to go?" Lily turned to reply to the voice, thinking it was Remus, and was shocked to find Matt McGrath walking into the entrance hall, hands casually in his pockets.

"Matt?"

"Hello, Lily," he replied, smiling.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm replacing Remus on your patrol."

"Why?" asked Lily, burrowing her hands deeper into her pockets as she rocked forward and backward to gain warmth.

"Because he can't make it and you needed someone to accompany you. As I am head boy, that dubious honor falls to me," Matt said, walking up next to her.

"Dubious? More like coveted. People would pay galleons to be in your place right now," Lily said, smirking. Matt's smile grew.

"Whether the honor is dubious or highly coveted, it's mine. Let's start walking and warm up a bit." With that, Matt reached out and took Lily's elbow, directing her down one of the main corridors. As their footsteps echoed off the walls and shadows cast about their feet, the light from their badges shown brightly.

"Why couldn't Remus be here?" asked Lily, more to fill in the silence than to actually hear the answer. Remus always missed classes and the like- he was obviously rather frail and susceptible to disease.

"He said he had a pressing obligation at home," Matt replied, opening a door in order to peek inside a room to their left.

"Then why didn't he reschedule the patrol?" asked Lily, staying in the hallway and not really feeling up to looking for students right then.

"Diana and I didn't want the prefects swapping patrol times anymore. One swap requires hours of work on our part," Matt explained as he left the room behind and rejoined Lily on their walk down the empty hall. "I think I mentioned this to you after the last meeting."

"Oh. That's right. I remember now," Lily said.

"You would have known about it before then if you ever bothered to pay attention in the meetings," Matt said.

"And give up making food castles? Are you kidding?" Lily replied. She was unsure whether her was teasing or actually chastising her, but she did not really care either way. The meetings were boring.

"Las year I took such careful notes at each and every meetings, and then I posted them in the Ravenclaw common room."

"And that is why are you head boy and I never will be."

"I should hope not," he said, his tone implying that he had no doubt that Lily would never receive the position.

"Hey! I'm a little insulted. I wouldn't exactly destroy the castle," Lily retorted. "I might blind a few people, but aside from that I think everything would work out for the best."

"I meant that you could never be head boy," Matt explained.

"Ah. So now I feel stupid."

"That's all right."

"And if I were made into a head, I would let prefect switch patrols whenever they liked. Especially Remus. He normally switches the times almost immediately. If you ask him before you make the schedule, I'm sure he could tell you the nights he can't make it," Lily said, rubbing her hands together as she glanced down a corridor to her left, straining to hear any odd noises coming from that direction.

"He knows in advance?"

"Most of the time."

"That's interesting," Matt murmured before going silent. His eyes unfocused and Lily didn't know what to do. Should she bring him back from the daydream or just let him o with it? It couldn't hurt him to lose focus unless there was a suit of armor immediately in front of him. Then again, Lily was not about to let this conversation end. Nights of silent pacing next to Remus had taught her to value all discourse.

"Matt?" Lily said. She poked him with her finger when he didn't respond.

"Excuse me?" Matt asked, glancing at her.

"Nothing. You just seemed lost in thought."

"I was just thinking about- never mind. Don't worry about it. Tell me, what are you thinking about for your seventh year project?" Matt asked, changing the subject abruptly as the pair began to traverse the wide walk between Charms and Transfiguration. Lily burrowed her hands into her pocket and only briefly wondered why her hands just couldn't warm up.

"I was hoping to research the connection between activation charms and potions," Lily answered.

"What aspect of it?"

"Well, the connection between how an incantation affects both. How they exist in their dormant states, which has more deterioration and the like," Lily said, rattling off the answer she had memorized. If every fifth year was asked about O.W.L.s and third years asked which classes they were taking, every sixth year was definitely asked what their seventh year project would be. It was highly irritating.

"You'll have to focus that a bit more. Seems too broad."

"It is, but as I'm still looking into a number of professions after school, I want to do a lot of research in this field and then see what it is that appeals to me. It'll be better in the long run," Lily said, trying to believe herself. In actuality, the amount of work that lay in front of her was daunting. She almost wanted to take the lazy route and work on perfecting a single, very complex charm. But she would never do that, if only because she represented Muggleborns in general and refused to let people believe them to be either lazy or simpletons.

"I understand. My project is to make a potion form of the Impedimentia charm."

"Isn't Impedimentia a hex?" Lily asked, stopping to let Matt open another door and look for students hiding in the classroom. Remus always took pains to find students out of bounds. Lily secretly thought he was trying to make up for his own violations of the room. For her part, she couldn't care less if students were out after hours. Matt seemed to be more like Remus than like her, and she was fine with that, though it did mean more paperwork later.

"Actually, in the technical sense, it's a charm. Hexes must be solely used to harm- that must be the reason why the spell was created. An example would be the boils hex. No one can ever claim that was made with any intent other than to harm a person. The Unforgivables fall into that category, for example, but Impedimentia was originally used on small plants and animals to preserve them during the winter. Most think that the charm is a hex because they think it hinders a person's ability to move quickly. In reality, it creates a kind of time stop around the person or thing it's used on and creates a kind of stasis," Matt explained when he finished looking around the room and shut the door.

"Why not put the stasis charm on them?" Lily asked.

"This was before the stasis charm was invented. Impedimentia is one of the oldest charms in existence. There are legends about who created it, including theories that it was one of the founders or maybe even Merlin, though no one can either prove or disprove those theories," Matt said. "I'm sorry to be babbling on like this. I'm sure you don't care."

"No. I do care," said Lily, meaning it. I only wish that I cared as much about my project as you do.

"It's all right, not many people like talking about the history of charms."

"Their loss, I guess," Lily quipped, turning left.

And thus the pair continued on their first patrol together. They walked as if they knew where they were going, as if they had traveled these paths before. They walked with conversation dancing in circles around them and for the first time in her two years of prefect duties, the night passed quickly.

~*~*~

"And then the way he pulled his broom up at the very end, just missing the goal post by inches. Wasn't it incredible? He just yanked it up and then- I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It was tactically brilliant too. He distracted the keeper and the bludgers. Beautiful. The keeper got his by the bludger and when the whistle blew! That was hilarious it was a penalty against themselves. I couldn't believe it. And that kid is just a third year. He'll be brilliant by seventh year. Glad I'll be gone by then. Otherwise I might be worried more about Hufflepuff. And-"

"Is she breathing?" Lily asked Sam. Tracy, who was babbling on and on about the Quidditch match between the Hufflepuff and Slytherin teams, didn't notice. She just kept talking.

"I think so," Sam said, rubbing her hands together as the four friends worked their ways down the stairs of Gryffindor tower.

"I'm so glad it's over," moaned Christine, clutching the railing. "It took so long."

"-and in the fourth hour when he did the double back flip and then head straight toward the ground, intercepting the Quaffle mid Mathews-Tuck-Pattern. I've never seen anything like that in my life. Well, in practice once-"

"I'm just glad we're going home tomorrow. I want my mum's hot cocoa," Lily said.

"You're just excited about the Ball," teased Sam, nudging Lily with her elbow and causing her friend to fall into a tiny first year on her left.

"Sorry," Lily murmured at the unfortunate little girl before turning back to Sam and glaring at her.

"And she should be," chirped Christine. "She'll be in the same room as all of the seven old families. Not to mention all of the most famous witches and wizards in today's society."

"Do you think Dumbledore will be there?" Sam asked.

"He hasn't gone to the Ball in the last seven years, and before that not in twenty years."

"Why do you know that, Christine?" Sam inquired. Christine shrugged as they left the Gryffindor stands, Tracy still babbling.

"Did we invite him to my party?" Tracy asked, breaking her constant one-sided conversation in favor of a question. Lily turned and looked at her brunette friend.

"Who?"

"Gonzalo Ayala," Tracy replied.

"Once more, who?"

"The chaser, Lily, the chaser!"

"Oh. The Hufflepuff? He couldn't have been invited. You made a rule that no one under fifth year could be asked and you never break rules," Lily said.

"I never break rules for normal people, but did you see this kid's Corkscrew Drive? I think I'm going to find and invite him. I'll catch up with you later, Lily," Tracy said, waving as she ran off towards the changing rooms.

Lily turned back to find both Sam and Christine missing. They had wandered while Lily tried to decipher Tracy's incoherent babble. But Lily took it in stride, letting the large crowd (everyone who had gone to the game) lead her back toward the castle. Just as she turned to find a familiar face to chat with, a hand snaked out and grabbed her upper arm, painfully halting her movement.

Trying to wrench her arm out of the grasp of this stranger, Lily only caught a glimpse of the bludger that sped right in front of her- being chased by several boys on brooms and one yelling referee- right where she would have been had that person not grabbed her. She turned to question the person who grabbed her and found... no one. The hand on her arm was gone and the crowd was streaming past her, all commenting on the escaped bludger and speculating as to who had set it free. Who could have grabbed her arm? Had she imagined it? But then why did her arm still ache?

"Hello?" A tiny voice jarred Lily. "Hello, are you okay?"

"Excuse me?" Lily's eyes still searched the crowd for a possible attacker.

"I asked if you were all right." Giving up on finding the person, Lily turn to the speaker and was surprised to find a small boy looking up at her with wide eyes.

"I'm fine, thanks."

"Oh. Good." He smiled a toothy smile and stood in front of her, as if waiting for Lily to say something else. The crowd thinned around them as the rest of the students continued their trek toward the castle as Lily and the boy stood still.

"Did you- see someone grab my arm?" Lily tentatively asked the boy, wondering if she were going crazy. Wouldn't that be just perfect? Insane Lily the Prefect.

"Uh-uh," said the boy, shaking his head left to right. "Did you think someone grabbed your arm?"

"No. I just- I think I'm losing it. Too much work and all that," Lily said, laughing uneasily. The boy nodded.

"You're a prefect in Gryffindor, right?"

"Oh. Yes, I am. My name is Lily, what's yours?"

"Mine's Will," he said. "I'm in Ravenclaw."

"Will?" repeated Lily, looking closely at him and noticing that he looked vaguely familiar.

"Yes."

"What year are you?"

"First."

"You would happened to be related to Tracy or Matt McGrath would you?" Lily asked.

"Yes! I'm their brother," Will replied, smiling that toothy grin again. For the first time, Lily let herself take in the image of this child. His Ravenclaw scarf was already frayed at the ends, his earmuffs were dirty and his shoes her covered in mud. Lily liked this boy; he looked like an eleven year old ought to look, like a child.

"I have heard things about you, Will."

"Good things?"

"Things from Sam."

"Chad's sister?"

"That's the one."

"She lies a lot," he said seriously, his eyes big. Lily laughed. A lot.

"I think, little first year, that we're going to get along," Lily said, slinging an arm over his shoulders and leading him back to the castle.

It wasn't until much later into the night, as Lily was lying in her bed, that she looked on her upper left arm and found a large hand-shaped bruise forming that she began to wonder what had really happened on the journey back from the Quidditch pitch and why a stranger would save her from the path of a bludger and then disappear.