Calla Lily

Chapter One: Dragons and Unicorns

The sun was pouring in through the open dormitory window, and birds were singing. A slight breeze blew a curly lock of auburn hair across lily’s peaceful face, causing her eyes to flicker open. She stretched, sat up, tossed aside her velvety down covers, hopped out of bed, and padded quietly to her trunk.

She quickly changed out of her pajamas and into a pair of jeans and a dark green top, then her school robe. She then awkwardly tried to pull on her classic faded black high top Converse while balancing on one leg. She pulled back half of her thick hair and clipped it in place, before she grabbed her broom that was leaning against the wall. It read Shooting Star in swirly engraved silver letters.

She put her broom over her shoulder and tiptoed carefully past the sleeping figures of her peers. She made her way down staircase after staircase until she reached the Entrance Hall. She pulled open the heavy oak doors and skipped merrily over the lush Hogwarts grounds to her favorite place.

This spot was around a bend in the castle that was slightly visible from the Gryffindor tower, in a patchy area of trees and flowers. She often retreated there to read or fly.

Lily now straddled her broom, kicked off the ground, and and soared straight up into the sky. The air rushed past her ears and hair whipped across her face. Then, when the trees were no more than the size of knuts, she began to spiral downwards and at the last minute she pulled up and flew parallel to the ground.

She began to weave in and out of trees , and when she saw that she was approach a trickling creek on the edge of the forbidden forest, Lily stretched out flat on her broom , reached out her hand and brushed the surface of the cool water.

It was beautiful morning and one of those days where you could not help but feel content.

But after about half an hour of dodging trees and and soaring up into the wispy clouds, Lily returned to the earth with a thud, and tumbled into a tree. She giggled, dusted herself off, and began running back across the verdant grounds and into the great hall for breakfast.

Lily found and empty seat at the Gryffindor table, sat down and began scooping porridge into her bowl. She then fumbled around in her robes until she had hold of her wand.

"Ah, there it is..." she mumbled, "Accio, Return of the King!" Less than a minute later her book came hovering a few inches off the ground, into the Great Hall.

Lily held the hand that was not still holding her wand, under the table, and the book landed softly in her palm. She opened her book and sat reading quietly, pausing every now and then to take a bite of her breakfast.

Then, all of the sudden a mass of of scrambled eggs came whizzing through the air and landed promptly in the center of her porridge; splattering it all over her face. She could hear hysterical laughter coming from the Slytherin table, and most other people in the hall turned to see what was going on.

Lily gave a very forced smile before wiping up the mess that had been caused. Her cheeks went pink as she scrambled around cleaning up the no longer appetizing looking meal. A decent first year girl grabbed her napkin and helped Lily clean up.

"Thank you," Lily said sincerely, after the mess had been cleared. Lily hurried off to the common room.

She wasn’t terribly humiliated, but it was quite annoying. They didn’t usually use her as a form of entertainment, since she kept herself and showed hardly any signs of reaction when they did so.

Their favorite person to pester was a nerdy fourth year Gryffindor, named Bernie Shniglebogen. He snorted when he laughed and was easy to tick off. Lily would have felt sorry for him except he was touchy and super sensitive.

Lily climbed the stairs to the girls dormitory, picked up her book bag and headed back downstairs to her first class, Care of Magical Creatures. Again she made her way across the grounds but this time to an area of benches facing the trunk of a huge tree. It was an area near the lake, a sort of out door classroom. She sat down on the end of the bench closest to the front of the classroom.

"Good day, class," Professor Quinn began. "Today I will be putting you into groups of two, where you will decide upon a magical creature to research. You will then write a three foot long paper about your creature, and prepare an interesting presentation to show your classmates. You will be graded on your paper, and the quality of your presentation."

A series of moans and curses came from the group of students. Professor Quinn pursed her bright red lips and then continued,

"Your projects will be due September 25, that gives you about two and a half weeks to finish. I will now call off the groups. When you hear your name you and your partner will find a quiet area (close enough for me to see you) and decide on your creature. Black and Fig, Shniglebogen and Rasmussen, Evans and Potter..."

Lily stood up stunned. She was James Potter’s partner. She really didn’t know what to think of this, but she had never expected to be paired with him. James was the most handsome, popular guy at Hogwarts, and he knew it. James was also the captain of the Quidditch team, even though he was only a fourth year.

Lily walked over to him shyly over to him and waited patiently for his attention. He was joking with his (rather attractive) friend Sirius, without a care in the world.

"Uhh... excuse me..." Lily muttered.

"Huh?" James looked up at her from his place on the bench as if slightly insulted she had interrupted him. "Oh. That’s right, the project thing. Well, see ya Padfoot," he said as he got to his feet. "So, where are we going?"

"I don’t care," Lily said trying to sound casual.

"How about... over there," he said steering her toward the shade of a tree.

"Okay." It wasn’t as if she had much of a choice.

"All right," James said as he sat down on the ground and leaned his back against he tree, "What creature are we gonna...." James broke of as he watched Lily pull her self into the branches of the tree and sit on a sturdy one and dangle her feet off.

"Or, we could sit IN the tree." James too pulled himself into the branches and sat next to Lily.

Woah, he’s sitting next to me... what do I say? Uhh....

"What creature do we want to pick?" she asked hesitantly.

"Don’t know," James replied dully.

"We could do a--" But Lily was cut off.

"If you say Unicorn, I’ll kill you. That’s all you girls pick--" H too was cut off.

"I was gonna say Dragon," she said boldly. She was actually quite pleased with the look on his face.

"Oh... okay. Dragons are alright."

"Umm, so I suppose we’ll ave to plan trips to the library and stuff..." Lily said nervously, hoping he wouldn’t laugh at her and refuse to help with research.

"How ‘bout, Tuesdays and Thursdays right after dinner? I’m usually fre those nights," James suggested.

"Sure."

"Now lets go tell Professor Quinn what creature we picked before someone else takes it," he said as he hopped out of the tree. "And your names Lily Evans, right?"

"Yep." Was all she said because it was not nessesary to ask for his.

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