Comedy/Tragedy: The Story of a Doomed Existence

Chapter Five: King of the Feather Duster

Lily's dreams that night were very odd.

First, she dreamt that she was back in Diagon Alley, and had gone into the astrology shop just like the first time, but this time she had believed the batty Aquarius, and moved in with her and her mother. Just before the dream faded into oblivion, Lily saw herself dressed as a giant fish, holding a sign that advertised Chiron's Healing. The dream in itself was very bizarre, but the part that annoyed Lily most was hearing Aquarius' prediction again. Lily decided that the young woman must be a really fabulous actress to make it sound so convincing.

The dream that followed this was very twisted. The girl who'd been crying in the corner was yelling at Lily for eating James. In the dream, she'd been convinced that Lily actually was a flying purple people eater. Then the crying girl and James, who had mysteriously reappeared as dead people often do in dreams, flew off into the sunset on a broomstick like the one Lily had seen in Diagon Alley. Peeves had then turned up out of nowhere and turned Lily into a flower. The now lily-like Lily had been trying to figure out a way out of her predicament when a large, white, fluffy thing hit her in the face.

"Oy, Lily! Rise and shine, o Queen of the Land of Tangled Blankets!" Lucy's buoyant face peered through the hangings of Lily's four-poster bed, holding up a very fluffy pillow that still bore a slight marking of where Lily's face had been moments before. "It's nearly six thirty!"

"Then why the - devil - are you waking me up?" Lily asked irritably, swinging her feet out of the very tangled covers and over the side of the bed. "Classes can't start for another couple of hours!"

"'Course not! But we have to get down to the Great Hall bright and early if we want good grub!"

Lucy's face disappeared as she went off to rouse Alice. Sighing with the realization that there was no way Lucy would let her get away with going back to bed, Lily stumbled into the middle of the room and stretched, yawning terrifically.

She hadn't had much time to observe the space before, so Lily looked around now. Obviously in a tower, the room was circular and surrounded by windows. The wood-beamed roof formed a peak at the top; Lily assumed that this must be the very highest dorm in all of Gryffindor Tower. Surrounding the room at even intervals were five four-poster beds, hung lavishly with scarlet hangings, and the wooden door. Each bed had a trunk belonging to its occupant at the end, along with any owl cages or other belongings. The walls were done in a nice, dark wood panel, and had few pictures. One of a very muscular knight particularly intrigued Lily. Still trying to rouse her startled senses, Lily observed this for a moment. The knight had removed his helmet and was blinking around the room, his shoulder-length, curly blonde hair shaking slightly as he did so. Lily noticed he was particularly interested in the girl whose bed was directly across from him; she was changing out of her pajamas and into some clothing, and at the moment she was quite naked.

This girl was one Lily hadn't met yet. She had chestnut colored hair and a very developed figure for all that she was eleven and skinny. Lily stopped watching her - unlike the knight, she wasn't very interested in the naked girl's body parts - and turned instead to see Lucy walloping a very bed-headed Alice out of the comfort of her comforter.

"Frank gets up early...and there'll be more types of pie..." Lucy wheedled. Lily laughed as Alice leapt out of bed, a new attitude of urgency portrayed by her round, smiling face.

"You know her too well," she commented to Lucy as Alice began vociferously slipping into her clothing.

In answer, the blonde chucked a peasant blouse, jeans, and robes at Lily.

"This may be the magical world, but the idea is that you put on the clothes. They don't normally walk over there for you!" Lucy bounced around the rest of the dorm room, earning herself several appraising glances from the knight.

"Why're you so anxious to get downstairs anyway? Lily asked as she pulled on her sneakers a few moments later.

"It's a brand new day, a brand new home, a brand new life, and I'm hungry!" Lucy reached down to help Lily get to her feet. Lily was amused to note that the now-dressed Alice was mouthing the words along with her friend.

"Plus, I'm anxious to get away from that knight," Lucy called as she banged the door open and trotted down the stairs, bouncing off of the walls occasionally and singing a song she'd made up off the top of her head.

Lily and Alice followed at a slightly less rushed rate; Lily was still trying wake up, not to mention finish cramming as many books as she could fit into her book bag. Alice was busy trying to get her poofed-up hair to lie flat.

"What's going on?" a voice from behind Lily asked sleepily. The redhead turned to see a very pretty, incredibly tall Pakistani girl staring bemusedly down the stairs where a loud crash and a "Sorry!" had punctuated Lucy's arrival in the common room.

"Good question," the equally sleepy Lily answered. "I think she's trying to figure out how many people she can wake up by herself."

"Well, she's doing a marvelous job," the girl said. "By the way, I'm Nafeesah Andrabi, second year."

"Lily Evans. First," Lily replied. "Look, I've got to get going if you want the common room in one piece. I'll talk to you later!" She waved at Nafeesah and turned down the stairs toward Alice, whose hair had finally cooperated.

The common room looked as though someone had placed another of Lily's Nusquam substantia charms. It took a moment to sort everything out. Apparently, Lucy had been leaping around the common room when Peter, the chubby boy Lily recognized as James' friend, had stepped in her way. Of course, the incredibly smart Lucy had her eyes closed, so she'd smashed right into him.

The two had landed so forcefully on top of an ancient, overstuffed armchair that the furniture had exploded. Little tufts of stuffing covered the entire room. Sirius, James friend and the boy who'd been worried about a Howler the night before, was rolling on the floor, laughing to the point he was almost crying.

Lily grinned at Alice and borrowed her brush; she wanted to put her hair into a ponytail. She turned her back on the greater dramatics of the scene. She and Alice exchanged conversation, pointedly pretending that they couldn't see the stuffing that was falling like snow all around them. Then, from behind Lily, came a familiar and most unwelcome voice -

"Sirius, old friend, you look like you're having a seizure. You've got to do it like this -" There was a loud thump and Lily, curiosity getting the best of her, turned around to see James laughing hysterically, his body draped over an armchair and his head shaking back and forth with the effort of laughing so hard.

Watching him twitch in what was far more like a seizure than Sirius' laughing, Lily wondered if the poor boy had ever been sound in the mind. She doubted it.

James glanced over and saw Lily watching him, so he stood up immediately and strode gallantly over to the amused and frightened redhead.

"Why hello there, my ray of scarlet sunshine. Thine beauty surpasses all in the world many times over. Thine skin - as pale as moonlight and as lovely as ivory. Thine eyes - as green as the stone of their color, and three times as beautiful. Thine hair - oh, what to say about thine hair! Thine hair drops to thine waist, curls silhouetting your lovely -"

"Can it, Potter, you're scaring me," Sirius came up behind him.

"'Can it?' Thine language is so obsolete! So crude! The horrors of it all! Now, my lovely daybreak over here -" he indicated Lily, whose eyebrows had nearly reached her hairline, "She speaks with the knowledge of a thousand words, though her mind may be yet young - hey, watch it!"

Sirius was dragging his friend away from Lily. He was a good head taller than James, though the latter was strong. However, Sirius managed to drag him all the way over to the portrait hole and out into the hallway. Just before it closed, James called once more to Lily -

"Pine for me, my auburn dove, for I shalt not survive in this cruel, cruel world if thine love never reaches my -" The portrait door slammed closed, and though no more of James' words could be heard, there was a great deal of shouting in the hallway.

Laughing along with everyone else, for even though James' personality annoyed her greatly, she couldn't say she wasn't amused, Lily followed Alice and Lucy out of the portrait hole.

James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter were nowhere in sight; Lily presumed that Sirius had forced his friend to leave, and was grateful for it. She joined Alice and the stuffing-covered Lucy, and the three girls walked toward the portrait hole.

"So, Lily! Got yourself a secret admirer? Er...a not-so-secret admirer?" Lucy elbowed her playfully in the ribs.

"No-o," Lily told her, laughing. "James is just some arrogant prat who finds it amusing to take out his access energy on me."

"Sure..." Lily could tell that Alice didn't believe her in the slightest, and Lucy was rolling her eyes with the blatancy that was so clearly her signature trait.

Lily sighed. "Look, the guy's a bigheaded, egotistical irritation! All he wants is attention, and he only picked me to bother because of something that happened on the train - and the fact that I'm so obviously not interested."

"What happened on the train?" Lucy asked, interested. "And why didn't you tell us?"

"Er...slipped my mind," Lily lied loosely. She knew her friends could see through this easily, but if they didn't say anything else, she wouldn't.

"So...what happened?" Alice prodded when Lily was silent for a few minutes.

Lily explained all about what had happened on the train. Her story was long enough to get them all the way to the Great Hall, where Lucy interrupted Lily's story.

"Oh, no! See, this is why we should've gotten up earlier! All the best food is gone!" she moaned.

"We did get up early!" Lily reminded her. "You just had to explode one of the chairs in the common room!" she slid into a seat at the head of the table, across from two empty ones.

Alice plopped down immediately and began scanning the table as she absentmindedly groped around for food. Lily smirked as she realized that Alice was probably looking for Frank. Lucy sat down too, and instead of carefully choosing what she wanted like Lily was doing, or taking occasional bites of miscellaneous items like Alice, she dumped everything in sight onto her plate, poured maple syrup over it, and dug in.

"Well, youf juff had to hoff a nich, rousfing conffershuffion wiff your boyfrund," she told Lily through a bite of her disgusting concoction. She swallowed. "You just had to have a nice, rousing conversation with your boyfriend," she repeated in a more discernible tone.

Lily was spared answering when Alice tipped her jug of orange juice onto Lucy's meal. She had spotted Frank, and, in her haste of waving at him, had spilled the orange material all over the place.

"Oops! Sorry Luce! It's just, um -"

"Frank," Lily and Lucy interrupted her. Alice giggled and turned back to her love interest, attempting to twirl her short hair and flutter her eyelashes in Frank's direction - with very little success.

"Don't worry, mate, it's better this way!" Lucy told her, taking another big bite of her concoction.

"Eww..." Lily looked down, at the soupy material. "Don't tell me that you're actually going to eat that!"

In answer, Lucy took a huge bite and chewed with her mouth open, lolling the material around. Lily didn't feel very hungry anymore.

"Why? What could possibly be worth poisoning yourself like that?" She shoved her plate away, feeling a little nauseous.

"I'm starved for attention," Lucy answered sagely. Lily glanced behind her friend, toward the Ravenclaw table, where a few people - boys - were watching the blonde with increased interest. "I'd take yours too, if you weren't such a rabbit," she indicated Lily's fruit. Lily rolled her eyes.

Not wanting to watch Lucy's antics or Alice's failed attempts to gain Frank's attention, Lily pulled Magical Theory out of her stuffed book-bag and began to read about ways to hold your wand while performing object transfiguration. This continued for the next several minutes, but just as Lily was about to begin the section on stewing luxwings, a loud hooting distracted her. Far above the small redhead, and streaming in from the open windows, were hundreds of owls. Their coats - contrasting from gray to red to black - stood out against the turquoise sky. One owl, a dark gray with very lopsided wings, was creating quite a ruckus. Putting down her book anxiously, Lily moaned,

"Aristotle..."

"Bless you!" Lucy told her heartily.

"No, my owl - Aristotle -" Lily pointed, but she didn't need to. The owl was already sailing in a very haphazard fashion toward Lucy's 'breakfast.' Before Lily could knock it out of the way or anyone knew what was going on, Aristotle had landed on Lucy's concoction and sprayed the disgusting substance all over the nearest sections of Great Hall. Professor McGonagall, who was handing out schedules to the Gryffindors, swooped down on Lily like a hawk.

"Control your owl, Miss Evans!" She surveyed the mess, which had covered about fifteen students, though Lily, Lucy, and Aristotle had gotten the full blast. McGonagall sighed and waved her wand. "Scourgify!"

Everything disappeared, including, Lily was happy to note, Lucy's meal.

"And, Miss Bones, I would encourage you to eat your breakfast like a normal person. It's divided into separate dishes for a reason." She handed Lily and Lucy their schedules and walked back up to the teacher's table.

"It all mixes together in my stomach anyway!" Lucy called after her. "And I'm not normal!" She sounded quite offended.

"Out of respect for the rest of us, do try to convince yourself otherwise," the Professor told her.

Once McGonagall's back was turned, Lucy rolled her eyes, annoyed.

"Oy, Frank-brain!" Alice started, and looked back at her friend. "That's enough ogling for now, too much is unhealthy. Come on, let's get to -" Lucy consulted her schedule, "History of Magic. Come on, Lily!"

"Just a minute!" Lily called after them. "I have to deal with Aristotle."

She looked down at the owl to see what he wanted. There was no letter tied to his leg, but he was still waving it at Lily as though there were. She stared at him for a moment, confused as to what he wanted, but then she remembered. She'd told her mother that she would send a letter.

"Not, now, Aristotle, I've got to get to class. I'll come visit you at the end of the day," she assured the ruffled owl.

Somewhat offended, he rose back into the air and, crashing into numerous other animals on the way, sailed out of the building. Lily chuckled after him, amazed at how human-like he seemed, then grabbed her seam-stretched bag and hurried after her waiting friends.

"So, ray of scarlet sunshine," Lucy sniggered as they started up the stairs. Alice giggled too; now that Frank wasn't anywhere nearby, she was completely attentive to the other two. "So, you thought he was so handsome that you had to go up and sit on his lap? Well, it worked. Nice strategizing, my friend, he can't take his eyes off you. Alice, old buddy old pal, you should take a leaf out of Lily's book! She's got it down!"

Lily turned and looked at her, angry that not even her friends would take her seriously.

"I don't think he's handsome!" She hissed. "I'm eleven years old! I don't need to think about this, or want to think about this, for years! James is just a stupid. Arrogant. Prat. And I want nothing to do with him, understand! Unlike my pal here," she indicated Alice, "I'm not thick enough to think about romance when I'm not even grown up! You know what? You two need to grow up, because you're so mature you're juvenile! Now shut up about James! I don't want anything to do with him!"

She took one look at their faces; Lucy's thunderstruck and Alice's hurt.

"I don't need this. I'm getting to class," Lily told them, storming off.

She stomped off to class, feeling thoroughly agitated. She didn't want to think about love; she was only eleven! She wouldn't need to even so much as consider romance, not until after she'd left the school. She stormed along the third corridor hallway and nearly smashed into someone standing on the other side of a corner. Feeling her neck burn with annoyance and embarrassment, Lily turned to see the very last person she wanted to see when she was in such a bad mood.

His face broke into a grin.

"My ivory princess! You've returned to me! My love, I -"

"Shut. Up. Leave me alone, and don't call me that!" Lily shouted at him. She shoved past a bewildered Remus and trudged to the History of Magic classroom.

She was the first student to get to class, so she sat down outside the locked door, fuming. Once most of her anger had poured off, however, Lily felt really bad. Not for yelling at James - he deserved it, the prat - but for yelling at her friends. Lucy had just been using her normal, joking nature to participate in conversation, and she, Lily, had taken her far too seriously. She'd yelled at Alice in the process, which was incredibly foolhardy: the round-faced girl was the nicest and most sensitive person Lily had ever met, and there was nothing wrong with her liking the strong, simple yet handsome, popular Frank. Guilt rushed down upon Lily's heart. She felt like crying again - not from anger at others, but from anger at herself for being so, well, so mean.

With a heavy mind and a sorrowed attitude, Lily pulled out Wizarding Events in Early History and began to read. She wasn't paying as much attention as she might, though. In her mind, she kept watching herself yell at her friends. What particularly stood out was Alice's hurt face. Lily resolved to apologize very sincerely as soon as Alice and Lucy showed up.

But the two girls didn't show up for the next fifteen minutes, and Lily, performing a quick spell to see what time it was ("Hora praesentia"), decided to enter the classroom after the ancient, distracted Professor Binns had unlocked the door. She headed over to a set of three nice seats on the left side of the second-to-last row, and, sitting down, pulled out the cardinal-feather quill and the bottle of navy-colored ink that she'd taken from Jacqueline Monique's trunk. Her History book and a nice clean sheet of parchment also found their way onto the desk. Something about the way Professor Binns had designed his classroom assured Lily that the class wouldn't involve much more than taking notes.

Another five minutes passed before anyone else showed up. The girl Lily had seen crying in the dorm last night was one of these. Lily, though still distracted with her owl problems, resolved to ask the girl after class if she was all right. She wasn't bawling like she'd been the night before, but there was a frigid, distant look about her.

Slowly, the rest of the class filed in. They were all Gryffindors; some who Lily remembered from the Sorting and some who looked completely unfamiliar. A few tried to sit in the seats she was saving, but the redhead explained to them that the chairs were taken and they desisted. Finally, when there were only five minutes until nine o'clock, when the class would start, Lucy and Alice walked in.

"Lucy! Alice!" Lily stood up and ran in front of them, for they wouldn't stop walking. "Look, I just wanted to apologize for what I said. I was just getting really annoyed with everyone thinking I liked James - I don't even like him as a person, how could he be my romantic interest? - so I took it out on you. I really didn't mean to hurt you like that, I was just -"

"Do you hear something, Alice?" Lucy looked around and through Lily.

"No, nothing," Alice answered coldly. "And if there were anything there - particularly someone who wanted to apologize - I would tell them to get out of the way and go sit down!"

"Luckily they aren't there, because if they were I'd be inclined to shove them out of the way, like this -" Lucy stepped out, as though to brush aside empty air, but her arm contacted with the 'invisible' redhead and sent her sailing into a table.

She and Alice walked down the aisle, noses in the air, and sat down at two empty seats in the front row. Lily stood up cautiously, wincing as she stepped on her bruised ankles.

I deserved it, she thought sadly. I deserved what I got. It was immature, mind, but I deserved it.

As Lily looked around the classroom, eyes slightly blurry from the tears of guilt, she saw a lot of people staring at her. She was far to distraught to tell them to leave her alone, and the fact that a short, tousle-headed boy had just bounded in did not improve matters in the slightest. Lily stared ahead, apparently very interested in the blank, dusty chalkboard. She hoped against hope that James wouldn't come sit next to her; she didn't know if she could handle it. Luckily, the slightly more sensible Remus dragged his friend up closer to the front of the room.

Lily breathed a sigh of relief and stopped staring so avidly at the faded green front of the classroom. A moment later, the bell rang and Professor Binns stopped shuffling his note-cards.

"Welcome to History of Magic," he said in what was quite possibly the least enthusiastic tone Lily had ever heard. "I am Professor Binns. Shall we begin?" not waiting for an answer, he dove write in to a long, boring lecture about shamans in ancient Arab culture.

Lily, however, was glad for the distraction. She took notes the entire time, glad to have a distraction from her guilt-riddled mind. When the class was almost over, a much-less-welcome distraction presented itself.

James Potter, who had been spending the entire lesson spelling a conjured feather duster to write out the words 'James was here in scarlet letters on the ceiling, yawned loudly and flicked his wand so that it dropped onto Binns' head.

"...and this shaman, who had a most unusual talent for making those he met with sprout hair on their fingernails, was probably Percival Pennyweather, a wizard on the run from - " Binns' stopped speaking as the lime-green cleaning tool landed with a thump on his head and drifted slowly off in James' direction. He looked up, baffled, and saw the feather duster floating lazily toward James.

"What are you doing?" he asked in a confused tone. "There are no feather dusters necessary for this lesson -" he looked up at the duster, which was now much closer to the ceiling, and saw James' writing. "James, are you? Mr. James, I do not want household appliances in this class! Those are to remain in your Home Wizardry class, and there only. Now, if you please, we return to the lesson! Percival Pennyweather was a Saxon wizard who had cursed a great deal of Muggles to rebel against a rival tribe in the early days of Europe's civilization. Pennyweather was on the run from the underground Ministry - magic was feared in the United Kingdom's early days, so the ministry was forced to stay even more hidden than - Mr. James, will you sit down?"

James was walking toward the back of the class, whistling obviously, the feather duster floating a few feet in front of him. He didn't answer Binns.

"Mr. James!" Binns sounded very indignant now. "Where do you think you are going? Class does not end for another ten minutes! King of the feather duster you may be, but that does not give you permission to leave my class before it is over!"

Lily was one of the students who laughed at these words.

"My name," James turned, the feather duster smacking him lightly in the head, "Is Potter. James Potter," he winked at the still-snickering Lily, which shut her up quite efficiently, for it is difficult to glare and chuckle at the same time. "And I'm taking the feather duster back to Home Wizardry, just like you told me!" He mussed his hair with his left hand and turned toward the doors again.

Binns was beside himself, both with confusion and anger.

"I did not tell you to go now!" He protested.

"You said that it belongs in Home Wizardry. You said I can't have it here. I haven't learned banishing charms yet, so you've basically told me to go return it to the Home Wizardry class!" he explained philosophically.

Binns was, if possible, even more flummoxed then before.

"But - no, not know! You - you misunderstood me! Mr. Paterson! Stop! Do not set one foot outside of that door!" The professor ran forward and, with a quite purple face, an astounding feat for a man of so little complexion, sandwiched himself between James and the doorway.

However, the next moment, the bell sounded, signaling the sound of break. Binns told James to stay ("But didn't you want me to return the feather duster?") so that they could work out his detention for disrupting the class.

Lily gathered up her things, feeling sad again once she had awakened from the distractions of James and Professor Binns' lecture. She took extra long to gather her things back into her bag; for some reason, she couldn't convince the bag to fit her History of Magic textbook back inside. When she finally straightened up, Lucy and Alice - laughing very hard - were leaving the room. Though she hadn't thought it possible, Lily's heart dropped even farther. She slung her incredibly heavy bag over her shoulder and walked out into the halls. Lucy and Alice were nowhere to be seen, for which she was glad - she didn't know if she could stand seeing them again. James' friends were, however, waiting just outside of the classroom for their friend. As Lily walked past, Sirius called after her,

"I'll tell James you send your love!"

But Lily didn't feel like replying. She just kept walking, with vague intentions of going up to her dormitory to drop off her extra books. She only sped up when she heard a loud slam from the History of Magic hallway; assuming James had come out, turned the corner. Unfortunately, her bag really was splitting by now. She stopped behind a statue of a large, fat pig and removed a couple of her books so that she could carry them instead. While reorganizing her pack, she heard Sirius' voice carry through the hallway.

"Brilliant, James! Two detentions, no lost house points, and the first day isn't even over yet! And one with that Evans girl..." he chuckled knowingly. "Just picture it: romantic dinner while polishing stuff in the trophy room...sneaking kisses while scrubbing the kitchens...or snuggling while deworming nifflers..." his friends laughed appreciatively.

Lily rolled her eyes - some people found pleasure in the oddest things - and stepped out from behind the pig. She breathed a sigh of relief that James wasn't nearby any longer, though, for some strange reason, some part of her wouldn't have minded if James had been there. Shaking herself mentally, Lily hurried back to the dorms. Halfway there, she remembered her resolution to talk to the sad-girl from her dorm, but it was too late now.

Instead, she hurried up to the dorms. Knowing she wouldn't need her History book, Lily left that on her night table. She consulted her schedule; all that was left for today was Defense Against the Dark Arts after break and Double Transfiguration in the afternoon, so she deposited most of the unnecessary books back on her table. She couldn't help but bring a few for reading material, but she did have the sense to remove the three Dicken's that she had brought to the first class.

She was on her way down the staircase, with the idea of arriving early at Defense Against the Dark Arts, when she remembered leaving her clothes in the bathroom the night before. The tiled room was just as Lily remembered it, though it was, if possible, even cleaner than it had been the night before. The smell of that same, weird magical cleaner pervaded the place, causing Lily to wrinkle her nose in disgust.

Lily snatched her oddly wrinkled clothes up off of the towel racks and turned back toward the doorway. Unable to bear the annoying cleanser smell any longer, she sneezed very loudly, several times in a row. Once Lily's lungs had stopped regurgitating the scent, the redhead heard a loud splash behind her. She whirled and saw the girl from her dormitory, the one who had been crying and whom she'd resolved to talk to later on, trying to retrieve a round soap the size of her head from the water where she'd undoubtedly dropped it after hearing Lily's snotfest.

"Let me help you out there," Lily called across the room. When she reached the other girl, who was even shorter than Lily, (a feat the redhead hadn't considered possible) she discovered that the slight difference in height, and therefore arm length as well, allowed her to salvage what the raven-haired girl could not. Once the soap was back on its rack by the pool, where it pulsed a yellow color contentedly, Lily turned toward the first year she had wanted to meet.

"Hi. My name is Lily, Lily Evans," she spoke friendlily.

"Hello," the girl answered timidly. Her voice was just as icy as the atmosphere around her. "I'm Hana Suzuki - I think we're in the same dormitory."

"Oh!" Lily remembered the girl's name from the plaque she'd seen the night before. "Yes, yes we are."

Thinking that it might not be the greatest idea to tell Hana that she had been really wanting to talk to her ever since she'd seen the girl bawling, for she didn't want to upset the poor girl again, Lily didn't really know what to say. Instead, she let silence infuse the hall for the next few minutes. Hana seemed intent on observing the floor tiles. Lily caught the Japanese girl's aura of uncertainty and scuffed her shoe against the floor. What did get her to move was the fact that a round clock on the wall announced that DADA started in five minutes - and they were probably miles away from the classroom, knowing the school's size. Lily pointed it out to Hana, and soon the two girls were dashing through the corridors. Lily had dumped her clothes on a chair in the common room, in too much of a hurry to bother putting them in the dorm.

"No running in the hallways!" the caretaker, Pringle, yelled as Lily's foot landed in the bucket of soapy water he was using to clean a wall.

Lily shook her foot free and mumbled an apology to Pringle for the filthy water the slopped all over the floor.

"Detention, Miss -" he screeched at her before she continue on her way.

"Evans," Lily helped him out reluctantly. "Go on, Hana, we don't both need to be late," she told the other girl.

"Miss Evans," Pringle wrinkled his abnormally round nose. "Detention. I will have Professor McGonagall work something - painful - out for you to do." He grinned menacingly. "That'll teach you not to mess with Apollyon Pringle, oh yes!"

Lily thanked him grudgingly - she wasn't sure how one accepted a detention sentence. She then ran off - ignoring his shouts of dismay - just as the bell rang.

Feeling worried - what if she wound up with another detention, making it three in a day, when none had truly been her fault? - Lily raced to the Defense classroom and wrenched the door open. A rather tall young man with slicked-back brown hair stood there, pointing to the name 'Professor Paul Hurley,' but he looked up as soon as Lily shut the door, her red hair flying out of the ponytail and her robes falling off her left shoulder.

"Glad that you could join us," he told Lily in what was apparently meant to be a sarcastic tone. However, he made it sound like some bizarre clown going through a voice change. "Might you be willing share with the class what it was that you found so enjoyable over break that made it so that you couldn't be here at the beginning of the lesson?" Now he was attempting to sound like a strict teacher, but he failed miserably. His clown-voice just made him seem like a very distraught fool.

Lily snorted, along with a large number of the male portion of the class. The girls, however, seemed too focused on the man's dimpled face to bother with something as trifling as a laugh.

"Yes - er, sorry about that Professor - Professor Hurley. I got into a nasty spot of bother with Mr. Pringle," Lily said. She neglected telling of her being in the showers before that - her hair wasn't wet, so the story would sound very improbable. Professor Hurley looked at her for a while, perhaps wondering if she were telling the truth. Lily worried that something of her partial accuracy was portrayed in her face.

Sure enough, the next words out of Hurley's mouth were disbelieving ones.

"The entire break? It took you that long?"

"Um - well - see - yeah, kinda..." Lily knew that she didn't sound the slightest bit convincing.

"Professor, she's lying," a silky sweet voice came from the front row. It sounded like - but it couldn't be -

The formerly shy Hana Suzuki was standing in front of the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, blinking her long, curled eyelashes at him.

"She was in the showers, during break," Hana continued in her honey-sweet adaptation of the nervous attitude she'd possessed before. "I saw her there."

"Why thank you, Miss -"

"Suzuki."

"Miss Suzuki. I really hate liars. And I really like those students who tell the truth. Five points to Gryffindor," he smiled at her. "As for you, Miss Evans," he surveyed Lily as though she were a particularly large dung beetle, "Detention!"

Trying to contain her anger for James, Pringle, and Hana, Lily stomped over to a chair and sat down.

This is so unfair, she couldn't help but think. I come to the one place I'd rather be than anywhere else in the world, and I'm being portrayed as some kind of stupid, attention-seeking troublemaker. Curiously, her eyes wandered to James. It's not even my fault! If James weren't so foolhardy, if I hadn't tried to help someone who was desperate...I wouldn't be faced with THREE detentions! Sighing deeply, Lily pulled the rest of her supplies out of her bag. As though they were standing in the room with her, she heard her parent's voices filter through Hurley's clown-voice.

"Life isn't fair, honey..."

"Just because it isn't your fault, doesn't mean you don't deserve the blame..."

And above all else, imagined words:

"Honey, I told you we shouldn't send her to that school! She's nothing but a troublemaker and a liar, we should never have trusted her..."

A voice broke through Lily's thoughts.

"Lil...are you okay?"

She looked up through teary eyes to see Alice's round, worried face.

"I thought you weren't talking to me?" She spoke in an equally quiet whisper. A few tears streamed down her face.

"Oh, Lily!" Alice wrapped comforting arms around Lily. "I'm so sorry I got so angry at you...you're under a lot of pressure to do well, aren't you? Well, you can count on me by your side." She hugged Lily a second time.

"You're apologizing?!" Lily asked incredulously. "I'm the one that's sorry...there's nothing wrong with Frank, he's a great guy...you're a little young to think about it, maybe, but I've got no right to criticize you!"

"Lily, you were right. My obsession is scary. He's just...he's such a great guy...I'd love to even just be his friend, anything to get to know him better..."

"I understand. And from now on, I'll support whatever crazy conquests you come up with, one hundred percent," Lily sniffed and wiped the tears from her crystallized green eyes.

The two girls embraced once more before a loud, obvious cough came from above them.

"Look, if you wanted to get...intimate...all you had to do is come up with an excuse to go out into the hallway!" This time, Professor Hurley was attempting to be a 'school chum'. "I'd have honored it...subtlety is the key here, my friends!" He turned back to the rest of the class, meeting the eyes of some of the hopelessly grinning girls.

Lily and Alice snorted derisively at exactly the same time.

"Frank is so much better," Alice announced.

Lily wholeheartedly agreed.