Lily took a deep breath of the fresh fall air as she made her way towards the castle. It was good to be home. She didn’t know when their little house in Cokeworth had stopped feeling so much like home exactly, but the difference had definitely been noticeable this summer, holed up in her room avoiding Petunia’s hostility and even the sight of Severus. She’d relied on letters from her friends to keep her company, comforting herself with the words of those who actually cared about her.
She knew avoiding her former best friend was going to be a lot more difficult in the castle, which was so much smaller and where they had so many classes together that she couldn’t skip out on, but the thought didn’t feel nearly as daunting with the support from her friends to fall back on.
Though, of course, there would be plenty of people who would be the opposite of welcoming. She wasn’t naïve enough to not realize that Professor Ambarella’s disappearance was far from innocent, and some of the more vocal blood purists had been already proclaiming what they hoped had happened to the muggleborn. Lily had handed out a whole host of detentions before term even started, but she wasn’t sure that would make much of a difference.
Shaking herself out of her depressing thoughts, she quickly picked up the pace, eager to get to the Great Hall to watch the Sorting Ceremony and catch up with her mates that she hadn’t seen in the prefects compartment. Unfortunately, she must not have been paying enough attention, because she almost immediately crashed into someone and only barely stopped herself from tumbling to the ground. “Are you alright?” she asked franticly as soon as she had regained her balance. “I’m so sorry about that, I suppose I was just overeager to get to the Great Hall.”
it was not exaggeration to say that rita THRIVED at hogwarts. for lack of a better term, it was where she had the most control. back at home, it was maribelle this, and maribelle that, and did you hear what maribelle accomplished last month? when are you going to show us the same, margarita. home was exhausting and soul-sucking. hogwarts was where rita sat on top, drowning in the attention she received as ‘ head of the gossip committee ’, as many had taken to calling her.
at a time like this, you could usually find rita wherever the crowd was, surrounded by people and therefore stories. but at a time like this, there were many crowds around, and it was as rita was on her way from the grounds-crowd to the hall-crowd that she found herself colliding with an airy redhead. brushing herself off and regaining her balance, rita scowled at the person who had nearly caused her to fall head first into the stone floor — lily evans. “ i’m fine, no thanks to you. ” rita rolled her eyes at the ridiculous sentiment that evans tried to pass off as an excuse. “ it doesn’t hurt to watch while you’re going while you’re at it. off with the fairies this evening, are we? come back down to earth for a second and you might realise there’s other people in this hall too, evans. ”