Comedy/Tragedy: The Story of a Doomed Existence

Chapter Twenty-Two: A Very Different Sort of Holiday

Lily awoke on Saturday morning at a very early time. She yawned and rolled over to look at her watch. Five-thirty. The train would be leaving in three and a half hours. After trying to fall asleep for a good twenty minutes, Lily resigned herself to getting out of bed.

She was about to slip into a comfortable pair of her most worn jeans when a sudden feeling came over her; the sort of feeling that she hadn't experienced in many months.

She wanted to impress her parents. She wanted to show them that she was doing great, doing wonderful. She stuffed the jeans back into her trunk and instead pulled out a rather twirly blue skirt that her mother had bought her before coming to Hogwarts. A cream-colored peasant blouse and a warm shower later, Lily was back in the dormitory and dressed. She spent a long time fiddling with her hair; she couldn't decide which way to wear it in order to look the most presentable. She finally decided on a braid down her back; her hair had decided to be more on the frizzy side and less curly, so she couldn't opt for anything that meant her hair would be down. Finally, her robes went on over everything else. She didn't want her clothes to be ruined.

Finally deeming herself respectable, Lily hurried down to breakfast.

"Lily!" James winked at her, and indicated the seat next to him as though it were a throne.

Lily, who could definitely do with some cheering up, took the seat with alacrity.

"You are looking particularly lovely this morning," James told her. Lily rolled her eyes; she was used to this by now.

"You still haven't told us what was in that letter," Remus accused.

Lily's smile faded; Sirius and James glared at Remus.

"Nothing," she was fully aware how defensive her voice sounded. Remus looked a little hurt and gazed morosely at his potatoes.

The few hours that were left passed very quickly, leaving their only trace as the fact that the jumpy Lily was no longer hungry. Instead, she felt a bit queasy. At eight fifty, she stood on the Hogsmeade platform, gazing up at the castle one last time before she would leave. A small flicker of doubt crossed her mind. What would be so wrong with staying, anyways? She would probably have a lot better time with James, Sirius, and Remus than with Petunia.

No. She'd wanted to see her parents and prove to them how well she was doing. She'd just act like she hadn't gotten Petunia's letter.

A whistle blew from the train. Lily looked back down from the swirling gray clouds and the castle.

"Oi, Lily, I got us a compartment!" Peter shrilled across the platform.

Lily looked at his chubby face and felt another sparkle of doubt. Spending the whole train ride with Peter Pettigrew? He was a good friend, certainly, but not one who could carry on anything resembling an intelligent conversation for a period of time outlasting ten minutes.

But she was lucky. Peter fell asleep five minutes into the ride and Lily was free to read for the rest of the afternoon.

Just as she had reached a particularly complicated charm in The Standard Book of Spells, Grade One, a voice that Lily had heard once before came over the loudspeakers, announcing that they would be arriving soon. Lily glanced at her watch and saw that it was only three thirty; apparently the trip back to King's Cross was not nearly as long as the ride there.

Lily poked Peter in the chest, just hard enough to wake him.

"Peter! Wake up, we're here."

He nodded at her and stood up shakily, pulling his robes over his head. Lily removed her own and tucked them safely into her trunk. The train began to slow and soon the scarlet steam engine was safely docked in Platform Nine and Three Quarters.

With much effort, Lily pulled her trunk down off of the train and onto a cart that a smiling wizard rolled toward her. Lily rested the heavy luggage on the rack and smiled back at the man, trying to settle her own nerves. A wave goodbye to Peter, who was trying to cram as many sweets as possible into his pockets, and Lily was facing the exit. She took one deep breath, mopped her sweaty hands on her skirt, and broke into a jog.

She passed through the gate quickly and kept moving so that she would be out of the way of the platform's exit. She closed her eyes for just a second before looking around to see where her family was.

Surprisingly, they weren't anywhere nearby. There were other families who kept casting furtive glances at the wall between platforms nine and ten; though they didn't appear it, they were definitely waiting to pick up their Hogwarts-attending children.

But there wasn't an auburn-haired woman anywhere in the crowd. Neither could Lily spot her tall, blonde father or her long-necked sister. She wormed her way through the crowds, wondering if perhaps her family had gone to talk to another. But she couldn't see them.

"All right, Lily?" Peter grinned at Lily from under the arm of his lank-haired, chubby mother. She was surveying Lily with a look of distaste and she redheaded girl distinctly heard her mutter to Peter, "Don't socialize with people I don't know."

"Fine," Lily assured him, ignoring his mother's less-than-welcoming comments. "I don't see my parents, but I expect that they've just gone to fetch some water or something."

"Oh...okay. Well, happy Christmas!" he told her happily.

"Happy Chanukah," Lily answered curtly.

"Yes, that. See you!"

And he was gone. Slowly, the families dissipated, leading away happy-looking Hogwarts students.

A tall, white blonde-haired boy sneered at her as he passed. Lily made sure to get out of the way of him and his father; both looked as though they would like nothing better than to walk over her instead of around her. Amelia Hawthorne and her older brother, a very short Gryffindor sixth-year, scowled at Lily as they passed. Apparently, neither had forgiven Lily for losing Gryffindor all of the house points. Quite frankly, she didn't care. It was better this way; she would much rather be friends with the Marauders than with Amelia. Or with Lucy and Alice.

Almost as though Lily's thoughts had been reality, Lucy chose that moment to walk past with her incredibly young parents and a seven-year-old brother. Lucy's parents and sibling smiled warmly at Lily, but Lucy scowled and pulled her family members away from the girl who had previously been her close friend, so that they wouldn't have to look at her. The abandoned girl stared after them, wishing that Lucy might have found it in her heart to forgive. She quickly erased such a thought, however, remembering that she was mad at Lucy and Alice.

Letting her eyes sweep over the area once more, Lily saw crowds of tourists and such people, as well as a few early commuters, returning home, but she couldn't see a single Hogwarts student - or her parents.

Maybe they got caught up in traffic, she thought. Perhaps there was some unforeseen car buildup, or possibly Petunia had caused some sort of trouble to prevent Lily's parents from picking her up. Though that didn't make sense; wouldn't the blonde want her parents to be there bright and early, so that they could all see that Lily hadn't come?

"Well, who knows? Maybe they are just running late," Lily said aloud.

A moment later, however, she was distracted from her musings. A tall red-haired man slammed into her and she fell back onto her ankle, cracking it unpleasantly. Her heavy trunk slid considerably across the polished floor, Aristotle's cage rolled away and Lily's cart spun out of control. The man continued walking as though nothing had happened, oblivious to Lily's anger.

But before Lily could do anything to gather up her possessions, or to restrain the temper that longed to go scream at the man who had knocked her over, a business oriented-looking woman tripped over the trunk and lost her dignified aura as she landed with a clunk on the floor. She scowled fiercely at Lily, as though it had been her fault that the trunk was lying there. Lily, in her turn, glared at both the woman and the man, thoroughly annoyed now. She had had enough trouble getting the trunk onto the cart in the first place, and that had been from a higher elevation! What was she supposed to do now?

Mainly so that no one else would trip over her trunk, Lily dragged her cart in front of it and sat down on the trunk's top after insuring that Aristotle had returned to his previous position on the cart's handle. Luckily, he was just about the soundest sleeper Lily had ever seen. Even after the red-haired man had crashed into the cart and knocked the owl's cage onto the floor, he still had not been aroused from his slumber.

Time passed very slowly when one was sitting on a trunk in the middle of the thoroughfare between platforms nine and ten. After about six more people had bumped into Lily's bizarre luggage collection, she began the slow and tedious process of dragging these items out of people's way. The only advantage of undertaking such a venture was that it was a distraction from time's snail-like process. After about forty minutes, Lily had finally managed to move all of her items from where anyone could step on them. She was right in front of a wall; the very wall, in fact, that provided entrance to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

The unofficial guard of the wizarding world's platform sat and waited for many more hours. She considered getting out a book, but the lighting was so poor and the noise so great that Lily determined it really wouldn't be worth it. What she dubbed 'rush hour' came and went, even though it was a Saturday, and before Lily knew it the clock overhead read eight o'clock.

Clicking noises on the polished surface of the floor interrupted Lily's thoughts. She looked up into the face of a station guard, noticing vaguely that the station itself was a good deal emptier than it had been at any other time so far. In fact, other than the occasional group of people, the station near to Lily was completely empty.

The guard stopped in front of her, shiny black shoes tapping impatiently on the smooth surface that they rested upon. Lily maintained eye contact, fairly sure that she knew what was coming.

"I'm sorry, little girl, but King's Cross station requests that there is no loitering. There are numerous signs around, but I suppose you have to be a little older to understand. No loitering means that you really oughtn't be out here for such a long time period, especially without a parent or guardian. Are you lost, honey?" She bent down and looked into Lily's eyes, her tobacco-scented breath arousing coughs in Lily's chest.

"I can read," Lily told the woman through clenched teeth. She wasn't that young!

"Oh, what an achievement! I'm sure that your parents are very proud. Now then, where are they? Your parents?"

"Erm...I don't know. They were supposed to pick me up from the train that brought me back from boarding school."

"Which train?"

Lily gulped and looked around the station for inspiration.

"The - um, the train that came into Platform Ten at four forty-five," she improvised, wisely determining that mentioning the Hogwarts Express or Platform Nine and Three Quarters would not merit any help or understanding.

"That's curious." The guard clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth in a very annoying way. "Very curious, considering that I saw you in the station at three thirty, Platform Ten did not have a train come in until five fifteen, and it only does inter-London trips.

"Oh - oh, I meant at three forty-five, I must've gotten the numbers confused. And the train came in early, see?"

In answer, the guard raised her eyebrows. "What school do you go to, little girl?"

"I'm - I'm not allowed to disclose that information," Lily told her finally. What else was she supposed to say? Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?

"Hmm." The guard clicked her tongue again. "Well, if you don't tell me, I'm afraid we'll have to remove you from the premises."

Lily stared up at her and thought, for a moment. What could she do if she couldn't stay in the station? She needed to wait for her parents, she had nothing to do if she couldn't stay here! No Muggle money, no plausible excuse for the police if they decided to look in her trunk of spellbooks and potions ingredients.

I'm not a helpless little girl, Lily thought fiercely to herself. I can handle myself. This isn't a desperate situation. All I need to do is send an owl to Professor McGonagall so that I can get back to Hogwarts. I don't think that Mum and Dad are going to come pick me up.

Suddenly, a dawning comprehension swept over Lily.

"I'm such an idiot!" she yelled. A minute later she covered her mouth; she hadn't meant to say those words out loud.

"Yes, dearie, that's it," the guard smirked. "Now that you have figured out what we both know, are you going to tell me what school you are from?"

Lily ignored her and went back to berating herself. So the letter had been real! Her family was in Germany, and she'd been too thick to comprehend that! She suddenly had an overwhelming urge to slam her head into something hard numerous times. Like Petunia had the brains to come up with the idea of the letter, or had enough courage to touch Aristotle for the time necessary to send it.

How could I be such a prat? Lily asked herself hopelessly. She shook her head half-heartedly.

"You aren't going to tell me?" Apparently the guard had taken Lily's gesture to be an answer to her previous question.

Lily didn't answer, she was too busy digging her nonexistent nails into her palms to prevent herself from slamming her head into her trunk.

"Very well. Leventhal! Schwartz!"

The woman's pouchy face broke into a rather evil-looking smirk as she watched two other guards, both clumsy and rather stout, sprint over to their superior and stand at attention.

"Yes, ma'am?" the bearded one asked her.

"Remove this imbecile," she told him sniffily.

"This 'un?" The second guard looked around as though expecting to see some sort of rough-and-tumble scoundrel, as opposed to the small redheaded schoolgirl sitting in front of him.

"Yes, that one, you dim-witted slug!" The female guard glared at him. "Do you see anyone else around who has been blatantly disregarding station rules all afternoon and evening?" And with these final words, she stomped back to her newspaper-strewn chair, where she turned to the obituaries and smirked evilly at what she was reading.

Lily shook her head at this display of the woman's cruel nature and turned to look back at the two men standing over her.

"Nope, I don' see a single 'imbecile'," the second guard muttered out of the corner of his mouth. "Not a single 'un." He glanced in Lily's direction.

"Hmm, Jake, do you see a fat hag who has nothing better to do than bother innocent travelers?" The first guard chuckled unmercifully. Lily didn't blame him.

"'Ello there." The second guard's attention had been diverted back to Lily. "I'm Jake Leventhal, and this is me mate, Frank Schwartz. And, apparently, we've been assigned to remove you." He winked, apparently finding the whole situation amusing. "Erm...I wouldn't bother, 'cept that Longhorn'd hang me by her long belt if I didn't follow an order."

"The same goes for me, I'm afraid." His comrade smiled as well.

"Oh...it's all right," Lily assured them. "I don't mind, not really."

"That's the spirit!" Frank said, but he glanced sympathetically back at her. "Now, Jake, help me with the edge of this trunk..."

Despite the heaviness of Lily's trunk, it did not take long for Jake and Frank to remove it and Aristotle's cage to the car park outside of the station. Both looked curiously at the sleeping owl, but other than a few raised eyebrows they did nothing. When they were sure that the female guard wasn't watching, Jake snuck one of the station's carts outside, so that Lily would be able to move about without worrying about how heavy her trunk was. Lily followed them somewhat resolutely, more aware than was normal of both the chilliness of the air and the obvious night that was settling around her.

Where was she supposed to go?

"Well, there you go, little miss," Frank grinned at her.

"Thank you," Lily answered distractedly. She wasn't even paying enough attention to glare at him for calling her 'little miss.'

Another nod sent the two station guards on their way, though both looked slightly concerned.

"Will she be okay out here?" one of them whispered as Lily slowly wheeled the cart away.

"No way we could really 'elp 'er, mate," his friend answered. "She's a tough 'un, she'll be all righ'."

But despite their optimistic view, for the rest of their night shift, neither could help glancing toward the doors and wondering about the strange little girl they had been forced to remove from the station.

As for the little girl, she wandered slowly through the streets, unsure of what to do next. Above her, the night's frigid air slowly began to dispel hard, cold snow. Lily felt it hit the back of her neck with surprisingly painful speed. This was like the night her parents had described to her: the night she was born, not to mention every birthday she had, for unfortunately, the anniversaries of Lily's birth always managed to be incredibly cold, breaking records May temperatures every year. Lily didn't normally mind the chilly weather, but at the moment, when she was alone with only a cloak and a few sweaters, not to mention no kind of shelter, it was not very pleasant.

She drew her cloak around her, shuddering as the icy wind scaled her pale countenance. Leaning over the bar of the luggage cart helped to center her body heat, but only a little. Lily wished for nothing more than a nice, warm, mug of tea and a spot by the fire. She tried hard not to imagine sitting in the nice, warm common room.

She walked and walked, for what was probably at least an hour, focused only on one thing: moving enough to prevent from freezing. However, the cold was really starting to set in, and Lily couldn't help but wish for a place to sit down and rest, never mind that she'd always been told not to stop moving in such cold temperatures.

As Lily wandered through St. James's Square, a few heads turned through warm living room windows, almost spotting a tiny figure pushing a large cart through the falling precipitation before shadows and snow obscured her. But even one who knew they had seen her had no desire to venture into the raging storm and offer assistance, so Lily wandered on.

In trying desperately to avert her attention from her rapidly freezing limbs, Lily wondered what she ought to do now.

She did know that she needed to send a letter to Professor McGonagall, so, once this idea was fixed in her mind, she stopped on a miscellaneous stoop and pulled a piece of parchment, a quill, some ink, and her wand out of her trunk.

After lighting her wand with the simple Lumos spell, Lily paused with her quill poised in writing position, unsure of how to put her predicament. How much of an idiot would her Transfiguration teacher think her if she knew that Lily had made such a stupid decision as to believe that the letter she had received was fake?

Dear Professor McGonagall,

My parents didn't come to get me after the train and I need to get back to school. Can you come pick me up?

Lily scratched her quill quickly across the note. No, that didn't work at all. How should she put it instead?

And then there was the problem of how to address the letter. Did 'Dear Professor McGonagall' sound inappropriate for relations between a student and a teacher? Lily chewed her lip thoughtfully and dipped her quill into the ink again; the tip had dried when Lily didn't write anything for a few moments.

Hi Professor,

My parents didn't come to get me from the station because I was stupid enough to think that my idiot of a sister was playing a trick on me by telling me they were going to Germany when actually it was the truth: they're in Germany visiting people - not that they bothered to tell me, exactly - and now I'm all alone here. I need some help.

Lily's quill zoomed so quickly across this writing that the tip almost snapped off.

Professor McGonagall -

I apologize for disturbing your holidays, but I'm afraid there isn't much else I can do. I am, at the moment, alone in downtown London. My parents never showed to pick me up after the train arrived here. Upon consideration, I determined that this was due to the fact that they are in Germany; we had some confusion as to whether or not I was coming home for the holidays.

If it is any trouble at all, please do not bother, but I need to get back to school - or somewhere. If the Muggle police come upon me here, I worry to think of what they will do with my trunk of obviously wizard-related items. Perhaps the train can return, or there is some other way of traveling. I shall be -

Lily paused and looked around. Where could she go, to insure that Professor McGonagall, or anyone, for that matter, could find her? Her emerald eyes lit on a large, beautiful building.

- at the London Library.

Thank you so much for your time.

Sincerely,

Lily Evans

Well, that wasn't so bad, she decided. Not at all.

The London Library was, of course, closed at ten forty on a Saturday evening, but this didn't matter. Lily carefully wheeled her cart around the building's side and found another entrance, complete with marble stairs and a small niche that was sheltered from the snow. It took Lily a good while to move her cart up the stairs, but at least the exertion helped her to warm up slightly. She loosened her cloak a bit and opened Aristotle's cage.

"Oi!" she whispered to him. There was no answer at all; she might as well have been attempting to discuss politics with the falling sleet.

"Arisotle!" Lily hissed again, not bothering to keep her voice down.

After all, it wouldn't matter if she didn't whisper; who in the right mind would be out in this sort of weather? And even wrong-minded people wouldn't be able to hear over the racket that happened to be gusting blizzard.

"Oh, come on, get up! Get up, you useless ball of bat droppings! You idiotic treat-guzzler!" Curiously, this worked. One amber eye flicked open and surveyed Lily lazily.

"Yes, doofus, that's it. I need you to deliver a letter." Lily brandished the parchment at her lazy owl.

Aristotle took one look at the raging storm and turned away from Lily.

"Ahh!" Lily screamed angrily, stomping her foot in exasperation. "Come on!" But he wouldn't budge, or even so much as look at her. Lily suspected inwardly that he had gone to sleep.

Lily let the letter sag in her hands and collapsed onto the stoop, head in her hands. This holiday was not going to be fun.