Comedy/Tragedy: The Story of a Doomed Existence

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Most Promising Generation

The side entrance to the library had remained the same as when Lily had rushed out of it. Exactly the same, for no one had moved at all. Lily carefully dragged her trunk into the shrubbery where it would be less obvious to all of the Muggles if they happened to suddenly regain movement. She wasn't sure how adept the conjurer was at magic. Even though he had appeared to be weak, Lily knew very well that judging based on appearance was a big mistake. The Impediment Charm supposedly wore off after a short period of time, but Lily wasn't sure what the definition of 'short' was in this situation.

Once the trunk was in a far less obtrusive location, Lily went in search of Aristotle. She really needed to get that letter to Professor McGonagall while the weather was partially decent; heavy clouds on the southern horizon suggested that Lily didn't have long before London would be blanketed in the swirling madness of another storm.

But the owl's gray plumage was nowhere in sight. Neither was, apparently, the letter. Lily was rooting around in the bushes for it when four almost simultaneous cracks caused her to stand up abruptly. She hadn't really looked where she was going, however, and now wound up with her torso sprouting from some kind of holly bush. Oblivious to the holly leaves scratching her already-ruined sweater, Lily twisted around.

"Oh, dear Lord!" A blonde witch had Apparated directly next to the two dead Muggles and gave a start when she saw what state they were in.

"A minor did this?" a gray-bearded man asked incredulously, looking around at the damage wrecked.

"So that's why Applegate said we should come! I thought he was mad to send people from such esteemed quarters of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes in order to deal with something as simple as underage magic," the third wizard, a younger man with a funny-looking bowler hat, announced. He seemed to be overly proud of his involvement in such a department.

"Oi! There she is!" The fourth arrival, a Black witch, pointed in Lily's direction.

"Stay where you are! I am a trained Hit wizard!" The gray-bearded man held out some sort of badge.

Lily stayed. She probably couldn't have moved anyway; the holly had now cut into her skin and seemed to be doing its personal best to eat her alive.

"No! Wait, Cornelius, don't go near her!" the blonde witch called nervously as the man with the bowler hat started toward Lily. "Not while she's in the bush...who knows what kind of weapons she's got. What has been going on?" She, too, was surveying the frozen people.

"Yes, that's right...come out of the bush, you! Come on, Red, come out!" called the man who had been referred to as Cornelius.

'Red' frowned at him. "I can't - the stupid bush - it's trying to - eat me or something." She gestured around at the shrubbery.

"This you're being funny, do you?"

He was interrupted when there was a soft clack. One of the last people Lily had expected to see had just landed with a slight jolt on the sidewalk, his index finger balanced against an empty cardboard box and his high boots hitting the sidewalk forcefully. As soon as his boots made contact with the cobblestones, the box began to fall. Hogwarts's Headmaster caught it deftly.

"Dumbledore! Sir! Thank Merlin you're here, we're trying to deal with a very tricky criminal! Look, the Impediment Charm and she's killed these Muggles! And I don't even want to know what she's doing in that -"

"That would be one of my students," the silver-bearded man interrupted. He surveyed the area and his mustache quivered as though he were trying not to laugh, though his amused expression faded to grimness as his blue eyes lit upon the two dead people. He strode across the steps, gracefully avoiding the frozen Muggles and the bamboozled Ministry of Magic officers.

"Miss Evans?" Dumbledore offered Lily a hand to help her out of the bush she had fallen into or rather out of. Lily gladly accepted this and wormed her way out of the brambles, blushing fiercely.

"Cornelius, Sheila, Rupert, Millicent," Dumbledore recited. It seemed as though he was trying to show that he knew each one.

"Thank you cordially for your efforts, but the Department for Magical Accidents and Catastrophes is not needed any longer. This is a matter of Hogwarts and I must concede that I am more than capable of dealing with this myself. I will leave you the enjoyable task of cleaning up, but I would request quite reasonably that Miss Evans is not to be taken in to the Ministry. She has obviously been through a horrible ordeal and I very much doubt that she has any involvements in the deaths of these poor people. I would hope," he called, holding up a hand as the four wizards and witches reluctantly turned away; Cornelius opened his mouth to protest Dumbledore's previous statement, though he was shushed by one of his superior colleagues. "I would hope that the Daily Prophet does not get a hold of this information."

He seemed to be speaking mostly to the blonde witch as he spoke. Her three comrades nodded distractedly, but she had already Disapparated. Dumbledore frowned as the other three left in the same fashion and turned away from Lily, muttering.

"That'll be tonight's headline..."

He waved his wand distractedly and each of the Muggles around them regained their movement. Each walked past Lily, Hogwarts' Headmaster, and the dead couple as though they weren't there, and the surprised expressions of those who had seen the trunk faded quickly. Another sweep of the wand and Lily's trunk wormed its way out of the bushes, followed by Aristotle's cage, though the owl remained missing.

"Come here, please, Lily," Professor Dumbledore called to Lily, who was standing dumbfounded as even the irritable old couple walked away nonchalantly. "I don't want to know what has happened until we are free of an area where prying ears might hear," he told her softly as Lily opened her mouth to explain, or at least attempt to elucidate some sort of blustering explanation for what had happened.

"The Ministry will be back to deal with those who have been killed, peace rest them." An expression of sadness passed over his face.

Lily, who had her doubts as to how much she liked the Headmaster, for reasons she wasn't even precisely sure of, felt grateful that he at least had the decency to be properly concerned over people who had died. Even if they were 'only' Muggles.

"Or to make it seem as though they have died in some sort of accident," Dumbledore continued. "They are trained to deal with these sorts of things, so I ask that you do not worry about it. Just touch your finger to this." He indicated the mangy old box he was still holding.

Lily complied quickly, wondering for a moment before her naval was jerked away what her punishment might be and what the Ministry might arrange. The next moment, however, such thoughts flew out of her mind even faster than her own legs' relocation and their slamming into a carpet somewhere. Caught by surprise, the redhead stumbled into something warm and peppermint-scented. It did not take long for her to realize that this was Albus Dumbledore's chest. Proper embarrassment and apologies ensued.

"Would you please have a seat?" Though it was phrased as a question, Lily was sure she didn't have a choice. Without so much as glancing around the round room she had just entered, Lily plunked into a seat across a desk from where Dumbledore had seated himself.

"So. Quite an interesting holiday you have had, if I do say so myself," Dumbledore spoke once Lily was settled. "I'm fully aware that you would not find great joy in revealing to me what has happened, but I'm afraid that it tends to be a part of human nature that we don't quite understand what has happened until after we relive it. I suggest that you tell me everything, because the things that you would like to keep hidden not only often wind up being exactly what I need to know, but also have a nasty habit of turning up whether or not you would like me to discover them." He laced his fingers together and allowed his blue eyes to gaze into Lily's, completely devoid of anything but attention toward what she was about to say.

The emerald-eyed first year blinked to restore comprehension to her mind; Dumbledore had spoken quickly and Lily had a strange buzzing in her ears due to what she didn't realize was shock.

For the next few minutes, Lily told Dumbledore everything. She was so involved with her story and her failed attempts to remove the effects of shock from her mind that she even forgot to be mad at the Headmaster over his poor staffing decisions.

The only exception to Lily's unleashed version of what had happened was that she mentioned the Lord Volderwart character, or whatever his name had been, as a cloaked figure that had not revealed itself or so much as spoken to Lily before it had Disapparated. As Lily neared the end of her story, Dumbledore folded his arms across his chest and looked as though he were about to speak, though he let Lily finish before vocalizing whatever it was that was on his mind.

"Very well, Miss Evans. I appreciate your honesty, and encourage you to revise those parts of your speech which aren't entirely true." Lily looked up at him. He knew she'd been lying?

"It is up to you," Dumbledore held up his hand. "All that I can do is remind you that it is often a good deal less awkward if you tell me than if someone else gives the truth. You may do whatever you like; I will not punish you or stop you from concealing what you believe I wouldn't want to know."

Which, of course, left Lily feeling even guiltier. On second thought, she realized that such a feeling was obviously the Headmaster's intent.

"I appreciate what you have told me, and the Ministry will appreciate it as well." He held up a little wooden frog. "A bright student from a few years back made it for me before he graduated; it records sound for me, which is a highly useful tool. This way, you need not speak in front of all of the Ministry members, which I'm sure would be a trying experience for you."

"Now, seeing how you have spent the last night in the freezing rain, I would appreciate it if you would do me the small favor of spending the afternoon, or however long you need, in the hospital wing." He continued speaking. When Lily made a face, he added, "I insist. This way you will allow your fellow classmates to read the Daily Prophet's overly exaggerated and almost entirely false version of the occurrences the past few days." His mustache twitched again.

"Thank you, Professor," Lily told him, secretly wanting nothing more than to get away from his subtly prying gaze, and to be alone in the preferably silent hospital ward to think about what had happened.

"Oh, and my owl -" Lily began to voice another thought.

"Safe in the owlry. It was he who brought your Head of House the letter, but I thought that something of this magnitude - the Ministry thinks that you used underage magic and illegal magic, no matter how much I explain that these holidays, in comparison to the summer ones, have no such restrictions, not to mention the fact that you didn't use any magic - would be better dealt with by me than by the Transfiguration teacher. But, Miss Evans - hospital wing."

Still making sure she understood the Headmaster's very long-winded sentence, Lily nodded to him and proceeded out of his round office, which she hadn't had so much as an instant to observe, something that she regretted now that she had realized that it had occurred. The office was particularly famous among the Hogwarts students as being most worthy of recognition. Some people, James and Sirius included, would get in trouble intentionally just so that they could get into Dumbledore's office.

Lily, however, made the wise decision that it wouldn't do to burst back inside only on the grounds that she wanted to see if Dumbledore's decorating skills matched up to his aptitude for prying.

So instead Lily hurried to the hospital wing, attempted to avoid the disgusting Madam Klagensteril, and fell into a cot. It turned out that she was a lot more exhausted and cold than she had thought; she didn't have an instant to ponder what had happened before her shock-ridden brain fell into the blissfully thought-free land of unconsciousness.

A full twenty-four hours' sleep passed before Lily's eyes snapped open. There was no apparent reason for her abrupt arising; the hospital wing was filled with what looked like the light of noontime or some part of afternoon, silent, and unoccupied by anyone other than Lily. She felt a sudden urge to cough, but just as quickly she also discovered that he covers were too tight to even allow breathing. Coughing would be near impossible.

Remembering what she had learned from previous visits, Lily wiggled her shoulders out of the covers and used her knees to brace against the hard mattress and therefore untuck the covers. Once free, she commenced with her coughing.

Then she looked down at herself and discovered that she was dressed in a particularly unpleasant pair of olive-and-cream, pinstriped unisex pajamas. Her hair had been removed entirely from the dilapidated hair tie and was rolling down her back in curls that looked as though they had been ironed in all sorts of bizarre directions. Either that or Lily had been struck by a rather weak lightening bolt; the redhead didn't think that there were many other things that could wreck that much damage even on her own less-than-manageable hair.

More concerned as to whether Madam Klagensteril had come close enough to Lily to wreck this damage than for the damage itself, Lily brushed herself off tentatively. Next she flicked on the lamp by her bedside in the hopes of locating her original clothes and her bearings, though the latter would of course be invisible.

But nothing of hers was anywhere nearby. Lily shrugged and decided to get out of the hospital wing before the nurse could come shower her with German curses and tuttings. The hallways were equally deserted, though they were still lit by low burning torches. Lily guessed that it was somewhere between one and two-thirty.

Lily found the Gryffindor common room quickly; its route was etched into her mind just as easily as it had been since the beginning of the first term. She walked slowly up to the Fat Lady, who was taking an early afternoon nap, and coughed to wake the portrait's occupant.

"Ooh, Miss Evans," the Fat Lady squeaked excitedly as soon as she knew who had woken her up.

Lily raised her eyebrows. Normally the Fat Lady would be nothing short of incensed at being aroused from sleep.

"Let me just say - wonderful job. There is nothing more honorable and noteworthy than someone who will risk her own life for others. Even Muggles. But I won't keep you long; I expect that the Gryffindors will also want to congratulate you. Password?"

"Gobbledegook," Lily recited, remembering the password for the new term. Even as she said this, she wondered at what the Fat Lady might be on about.

"That's the one, dear," the portrait's occupant smiled at Lily, but the roar of noise that came from the common room nearly drowned out her voice.

At least three people reached through the portrait hole to welcome Lily inside. These people led Lily over to a large armchair at the common room's center, and the redhead felt herself being thrown into the chair's depths.

Lily looked around at the people, all of whom were behaving what she considered very strangely. The common room was considerably full for the holidays, but this was probably because at least half of the Gryffindor students had opted to stay for the perfect snow and ice-skating rather than return home. She already knew that this many people had stayed, so that did not surprise her. What struck Lily as unusual was that each student was staring at her with an expression of admiration on his or her shining countenance. And people were talking, too, but Lily couldn't really understand what they were saying. Her ears didn't seem to be working properly.

A few snippets of noise did work their way into Lily's mind, however. Most of these involved the word 'congratulations' or the phrases 'nice job, Lily' and 'how'd you do it?' Lily turned to one of the people who had used the latter and opened her mouth to ask one of the many questions that had poured into her mind the moment she saw the situation before her.

"How did I do what?"

Silence fell immediately.

"Stopped him, of course!" Someone finally yelled.

Understandably, this was in no way helpful to Lily. Someone spotted the confused expression on her face and strode forward to offer something that they presumed would be helpful in allowing Lily to comprehend what everyone was referring to.

"Here, Lily, it's all in here," Kelsey Mullet handed Lily a newspaper, grinning madly.

Lily thanked her and opened up the well-wrinkled issue of the Daily Prophet. Her mouth dropped at the large photograph in the right-hand corner. It was of her, and it was moving! Where had they gotten this? But then Lily remembered that Kelsey and some of her friends had gone around with cameras in the beginning of the year, taking photographs for what they said would be a tribute to Gryffindor Tower and would be put up at the end of the year. Each of this particular group of fifth-years was very involved with what in the Muggle world might be known as school spirit. Lily didn't even want to know what it would be called in the Wizarding world.

She stared at the picture, in which she was sitting on Hogwarts' lawn and reading a book as the sun set behind her. It was a quite good picture, but Lily, who maintained that she wasn't photogenic and had been known to hide from cameras, would have admitted this to no one. What she really wondered was where the Daily Prophet had gotten the picture from.

"Wicked, isn't it?" someone asked from the vicinity of Lily's left eyebrow. His comment led the girl to realize that she hadn't even glanced at the article yet; Lily's curiosity allowed her to remedy this very quickly.

The Youth of the Nation - what are they teaching at Hogwarts?

Many parents have asked the age-old question: What does my child learn at school? And their concern is, of course, understandable. Britain's esteemed magical classroom changes with the teachers, and is very different from how it was when we were young, due to headmaster Albus Dumbledore, who has been at Hogwarts for a good number of years and has what many consider radical ideas. Most parents worry that their children aren't learning enough, but your reporter has discovered that it is quite the opposite.

Only this Christmas break, Lily Evans of Hogwarts has encountered and dealt with more than most grown wizards do. Miss Evans is a first year.

Due to some confusion and misunderstanding, Miss Evans's parents, who were in Germany at the time, were unable to pick her up from King's Cross station once she had arrived. She waited for a number of hours before some of the Muggle guards kicked her out of the station. Alone in the storms that pounded London on Saturday evening, Miss Evans found partial sanctuary in the side doorway of a Muggle library. Due to the unbearable cold, the first-year girl found consciousness slipping away.

When the girl awoke the next morning, it was to find a crowd of Muggle 'policemen' (law-keepers who are, we can exclusively reveal, no more than the alternative of our own Hit wizards) surrounding her, each holding a 'gun' (Muggle wand that makes unpleasant noises and is used to kill, injure, and threaten). They clearly thought that she was a vagabond urchin and wished to remove her from public sight.

However, before Miss Evans had time to properly wake up and protest the policemen's intentions, an obviously evil wizard showed up. This man was dressed in a ragged black cloak and was a good deal stronger than he let on. His intentions are presumed by all involved to concern the kidnapping of Miss Evans and the killing of the Muggles who had gathered. But the first-year wouldn't have this. She and the evil wizard had a fierce duel, in which he used many killing curses and Miss Evans displayed her astounding vocabulary of spells. Miss Evans was not injured once, and failed to protect only two Muggles from the Unforgivable Avada Kedavra curse. (All other Muggles were hit by the Impediment Curse early in the duel)

Though Miss Evans refused to use any offensive charms and opted instead for those of clever defense, the wear soon began to show on our young heroine. So, despite the fact that it went against her morals and was not what she would prefer to be doing, Miss Evans used a simple jet-of-sparks charm to injure her attacker. However, due to her magical prowess, the young girl's spell did more damage than the simple knocking out which she had been trying to achieve. She managed to give the wizard a mortal wound. While hanging to the last threads of life, the evil wizard, who we can now exclusively identify as Jared Pandanski, the last free Grindelwald supporter, Apparated away to die somewhere in peace.

The considerably distraught Miss Evans was taken back to Hogwarts to recover her strength, and is currently in intensive care in the renowned hospital wing there. Your Daily Prophet awaits Miss Evans' comments later on in the week.

So there you have it. Contrary to what many of us might have thought, Albus Dumbledore is indeed teaching all that our children might need to know, maybe more than they ought. But even if the children are a little too prepared for danger, we must at least be grateful for the compassion and brightness of one of his youngest students. Miss Evans is to be commended for her hard work, and all are reminded that she is only one of the astounding students being procured at Hogwarts. Surely in this age of light, after the evil Grindelwald has been long destroyed, the Wizarding world will find great joy and hope in our newest and most promising generation of witches and wizards.

This Daily Prophet exclusive was brought to you by reporter Andrew Mullet, who would prefer to be defined as 'just another proud Hogwarts parent'. (Kelsey Mullet, year five, and Andrew Mullet Jr., year three.)

Lily blinked as she finished the letter, trying to understand where the reporter had gotten this information. Guns? A duel? Grindelwald supporter? A decent Hogwarts hospital wing? There were many things written in the article that Lily knew were not true. She had no idea where this Andrew Mullet character had gotten such ideas, but she supposed that at least she knew how he had obtained the picture. If he were Kelsey's father, then she could easily have sent him the picture.

"Wow, Lily," Sirius had appeared at her side. "Could I please, please have your autograph? This is just so amazing - I'm friends with 'one of the astounding students being procured at Hogwarts'! Oh, please, please? Can I have a fingernail clipping? Or maybe the next time you get a haircut, I could have a lock of your hair? Or, or you could just let me give you a back massage?" he put on a puppy-dog face.

Lily looked into his dancing brown eyes, grinning at the joy he found in being so dramatic.

"I'm serious!" he yelled at her after she had turned away.

"In one sense, maybe, but I'm quite certain not in the other," Lily retorted. "But here, knock yourself out."

Just for fun, she scribbled Lily Evans on a napkin and handed it to Sirius, who fell over in a faint for what he revealed was because she had told him to knock himself out. Once Sirius had mysteriously come back to consciousness, he and James squabbled over Lily's autograph. Lily rolled her eyes and then turned them back down to the article, highly disturbed by how much the press had distorted the truth.

"Great job, Lily!" someone called to her.

"It's really nice how you cared about those Muggles," a Muggle-born seventh year told her.

"I didn't know she was that smart!" A boy who Lily couldn't for the life of her remember the first name grinned.

"Thanks, everyone, but I didn't -" she started blushingly.

"Didn't deserve the credit, that's what," a cool voice interrupted Lily.

Though the redhead knew that she should ignore Hana, she couldn't help but listen to what the girl had to say.

"But I can tell you what she does deserve. The blame. For those Muggles's deaths. I wouldn't be surprised if she were the one that killed them."

"Oh shove off, Suzuki," someone told her, but Lily was inclined to take the comments more seriously.

Much as Lily didn't want to admit it, Hana was right. Lily didn't deserve the credit for this at all; no one did. But the blame - she did deserve that. Maybe if she hadn't been thick enough to cover her eyes, she could have dueled with that Volderfart and stopped him from killing those people, like the article bragged she had. She, Lily Evans, had stood back while he had killed two innocent people. Lily felt a rush of anger at herself pour down her back, as unpleasant as freezing-cold water. It was her fault. Or even if she hadn't killed the people, she had failed to bother defending them. Wasn't that just as bad? Standing by and letting something that you didn't agree with happen was not only just as bad, it was worse.

The grin that Lily had experienced as a result of James and Sirius' antics faded away, to be replaced with an angry sort of frown. With wrinkled brow and partially squinted eyes, Lily pushed past the students surrounding her and headed in the direction of the girl's dormitories.

"Lily, what's wrong?" Sirius called to her. He got no answer.

"Not this again..." James moaned.

Lily kept walking. She wouldn't have stopped at all, but Remus stepped in front of her and she was forced to halt if she didn't want to bowl him over. Though not sure that she didn't desire to knock him down, Lily stopped. Before she could swerve around him, the pale boy reached out and clasped her shoulders.

"Lily, listen to me. It's not your fault."

Lily ducked her head away so that he couldn't see the tears welling in her eyes. She stood there for a moment or two, attempting to regain her composure. But she was not at all successful, so hurried away with her back to everyone in the common room so that they wouldn't see the tears pouring down her front. She ignored the comments coming from the room she had just left and instead rushed up the stairs.

"What's wrong with her?"

"What isn't her fault?"

"Huh?"

Luckily for Lily, her dormitory was deserted. She ran to her own bed and crawled inside the covers, ignoring the facts that it was midday and she wasn't at all tired. And for what seemed like, and probably was, the umpteenth time this year, she fell into chest-racking sobs. She felt inwardly angry with herself for two things: her allowance of the young couple's death and for her crying. She had long told herself that she didn't cry because it got her nothing, but so far this year that particular philosophy had gone virtually caput.

While Lily was busy crying into her pillow, the dormitory door creaked open and someone stepped inside. Their movement did manage to penetrate Lily's sobs, but she didn't know of anyone in any of the girl's dormitories who could make her feel any better, so she ignored them. They, however, seemed set on whatever it was that they wanted to do.

Because Lily was ignoring her, she didn't realize the girl's presence until Alice Surrideo was standing right over her and gazing upon Lily's tear-stained countenance.

"I don't know how true that article was. But those people's deaths weren't your fault, Lily," Lily's ex-friend whispered before hurrying out of the dormitory.