Different Worlds

I remember the first time Lily brought him home. I had left school about a month previously, and she was in her sixth year doing her 'newts', whatever they were. We were friends in the way that people who knew each other many years ago were, only able to talk about things long gone, people long grown. Our interests had changed and there were no mutual friends. We saw each other just three times a year and she and I would often sit in silence, wondering what on earth, we were to talk about. We made the most, of what we had, though. She told me about how 'Muggles' thought all magic things had a rational explanation. Some of these were hard to laugh at-I had been taken in as much as anyone had.

Occasionally in her talks about her school friends, the name Potter came up. The first time I heard about him was after her third year. She was telling me how he and a boy called Black who was really good looking but knew they had thrown this other boy from a house called slither something into the lake, then tried to persuade the giant squid (!) to eat him. At the end of her fourth year, she was telling me how arrogant he was and how he kept asking her out but she always refused. As I had not had a boyfriend even after the Fifth Form, I was a bit jealous. I didn't have such outrageous hair as her, but she had a pair of captivating green eyes with elfish features and a mischievous grin.

That was the summer I heard about Voldemort. Every slight noise had her spinning around, feeling fruitlessly for her wand. Something to do with a punishment for using it. I told her to stop being so paranoid, and she shot back that, since she was Muggleborn, she had a good reason. I got her to explain. Apparently, some wizards think those without pure blood, those without wizard parents, were not as good as those with it. One of those now called himself Lord Voldemort and killed, tortured and maimed those who stood in his way, and did the same to Muggles for the fun of it. Lily explained that she was one of the top in her year and was a Muggleborn, making her and her family a prime target.

The summer after that, she ranted on about the Potter boy even more, as though he were constantly on her mind, and with a faint smile on her face. Once she conceded that, next time, since he was so good looking and he was annoying her, it may be best to just agree to go out with him.

The summer after that, she squirmed about self-consciously on Platform Ten of King's Cross, mumbling that she had a boyfriend, and could she please sometime this holiday please invite him over please? On the tenth of August, four weeks after her seventeenth birthday, and four weeks before I was due to leave for secretarial college, we sat in the living room with Lily, who couldn't stay still for more than two seconds, waiting. I was dying to ask why they were all concentrating on the fire rather than the front door when it swirled green and a tallish boy with untidy black hair and glasses stepped out, grinning. His hair was a mess. His glasses were crooked. He was gangly. Nevertheless, he was the most handsome boy in the world.

I was eighteen. He was seventeen and my beautiful sister's boyfriend. I was a Muggle. He was a pure blood wizard and he did not look at me once.

In that instant, I hated her.

Ten years before, Lily and I had been on equal footing. We were both girls and destined for not much more than secretaries. Then it became clearer and clearer that Lily was both prettier and cleverer than me. She got the letter for Hogwarts, which I never did. Looks appeared on my parents' faces that had never been there because of my actions. She was different, special. She came home top of the year and I came home close to the bottom. In the back garden, Lily showed me she could ride a broomstick. She discussed it airily, as a matter of no great importance. I thought it was the best thing in the world. One day when they were out, I sneaked it from Lily's bedroom, where, luckily for her later, it was always kept. I stood in the back garden, and said "Up!" loudly. Three hours later they came back from Diagon Alley to find me, shivering and sobbing in the rain, mumbling 'up' over a motionless broomstick.

She kept coming back, top in her year. She told me, in her world, men and women were no different. It was only my world, the world of Muggles and shortsighted rationalising fools, which such silly differences were made. Mother and Father were proud-darling Lily could be whatever she wanted (an Auror, as it turned out). I was still going to be a secretary.

And now Potter. He bowed to me, still grinning, when Lily introduced us. I did not make a sound, just smiled weakly. The year before that, The Equal Opportunities Act had been passed. Now I too could be whatever I wanted to be. Only, I had just one A Level, a D in English, and was still going to be a secretary. Lily had thirteen OWLs (I think they are like O Levels, or as Dudley's taking, GCSEs) and nothing less than and E, her equivalent of a B (in the days when there were no starred As, and such a high grade meant something).

Everything I wanted, Lily had. James Potter. Intelligence. Beauty. Magic. A flying broomstick. My parent's attention. I kept up the pretence of liking her until one day at breakfast. I was helping make it; James and Father were discussing radios, already sitting at the table. It was a glorious day, and the kitchen window was open.

An owl soared in. I blinked-weren't owls nocturnal? -until I saw it carried two letters, addressed in emerald green ink. I was used to Lily getting an owl for her school this time every year, so I thought nothing of it, until she screamed. I dropped the plate I was holding.

"I'M HEAD GIRL!" Lily screamed, jumping up and down like a maniac. Something was clasped in her hand. James was grinning stupidly at his own letter with, with a red and gold shield shaped badge resting on the table in front of him. "I'm Head Boy," said James quietly. "Beats me why they didn't give it to Moony, he was the prefect, but I suppose I'll have to live with what I've got."

I left the room quietly.

That was the straw that broke the blindfold I had been wearing. They should not be allowed, them and their kind. This magic thing, it was unnatural. They were freaks and that's all. All this silly pointing sticks at each other and saying pig Latin. Plain wrong. That Voldemort, he's the truth of it. He's what their magic can do. That's what their world can make. It shows what they're capable of. After a while of lying in on my bed, sniffing, I left to wash my face. As I passed Lily's room on the way to the bathroom, there was a loud crack from it.

"Oh, I wish you wouldn't do that, James. You know it scares me sometimes, and these aren't times to scare people."

"Not even he could scare me now. Not even a Dementor could stop me feeling so happy."

"Dementor?"

"Sorry. They are horrible. Guard Azkaban, you know, our prison. Suck all the happiness out of you."

How did he get in there? He's not allowed to be in Lily's room. I'd have heard him creep across the landing. I went to his room-no one there. I went back.

"...Just hope Petunia's alright. She clams her feelings up, and I have not seen her since breakfast. This might have been the last straw-she's not a witch, she's not exactly clever, and I think she might be a bit jealous of me."

Understatement of the century, Lily, I thought grimly.

"She's fine, I'll bet. She seems a nice girl, a bit quiet, but all right really."

Why did I think they were freaks? I asked myself. James wasn't a freak. He was being nice. "But she does have one failing-she looks remarkably like a horse." Instead of sticking up for me, her flesh and blood, Lily laughed. Laughed.

Two days later I left for college, claiming I wanted to be settled in by the time term began.

I cannot be held responsible for what happened next. In fact, it was good that I was not there. In being at college, I have inadvertently saved the world from Voldemort, by being alive to look after Harry for the past fifteen years, who is the two worlds' only hope against him. In a way though, Lily is responsible, but only through existing.

Lily was not back at school yet. She was up late doing some forgotten homework, at nighttime. James had gone home, and I was at college. Mother and Father were asleep. Lily heard the front door open and instantly knew she was in trouble. She hadn't heard any fumbling around with lock picks-it wasn't a Muggle burglar. None of her school friends had any reason to be here or to sneak up on her. Whoever it was, and she had a pretty shrewd idea who wished her ill. She quietly turned off her lamp and hid behind her bed, wand in one hand and her broom in the other. The window was already open-she did not need to make any noise doing that. Lily needed to be sure she wouldn't be seen or followed, so she would have to cut it fine-she would have to stun them or suchlike.

Footsteps climbed the stairs. They entered our parents' room. Tears dripped from Lily's eyes as the whispered words of a dreadful curse reached her, words she hoped she would never hear. There was a rushing sound and green light brightened up her room shortly, and then a second time. The footsteps moved across the landing to my room, where they moved around as Lily prepared to jump.

Finally the footsteps and a figure in a mask, all in black entered her room.

"Impedimenta!" she screamed, then leapt onto her broomstick and sailed out of her room.

An hour later she arrived at James' house, drenched, shivering and sobbing. She told me this in a letter. A letter told me of our parents' deaths and that now she was living with James for the remainder of the holidays, frightened for her life. She didn't come to me. I saw her once in the intervening years before her death. She hadn't wanted anything to do with me when our parents were killed by one of her lot. She ran instead to her precious wizard boyfriend, instead of her blood relative, who was closer. She didn't come and tell me the news in person, but sent a letter. She didn't come and live with me in college, but with her wizard boyfriend and his wizard parents. She didn't want anything to do with me, so I would not have anything to do with her.

I have a constant reminder now of both James and Lily, just when I thought I had cut them out of my life completely. Harry is the worst thing that could have happened to me. He looks increasingly like the handsome, brilliant boy I could never have with each passing day, but as soon as I think that Lily's eyes peer out at me from behind glasses. He has Lily's joy of living combined with James' seriousness. Sitting in the kitchen, telling me that their murderer had returned with a voice like James' and Lily's eyes telling me it was true, last summer, struck a chord in my mind, woke me up. They were not evil, not all of them. Hearing him call out to his parents in his dreams-nightmares-reminded me that he was my flesh and blood. He was the only living remainder of James and Lily, my only relative but my own son, and I had done the worst by him I could but for kicking him out into an orphanage age one.

I resolved to myself that, this summer, I would do what was right by him. I would pay back my debt to Lily from all the letters I never replied to, all the lost years between our parents' deaths and her death, through him. I would not blame him for his father's single thoughtless comment all those years ago. I would make up those years of hate. I would not let this relative go without a fight.