#marp:open

[eveninglily]

Confusion, Chaos, and a Lack of Commitments

"So, neither of us did the assignment."

[eveninglily]

Of Modifiers and Mortification

Tuesday September 7th, 1976

Lily neatly penned “I must not be atrociously late because I got into a verbal brawl with a pureblooded bigot” at the top of her parchment, pausing to dip her quill in her brand new ink pot.

Well. There’s one. Only one hundred and ninety nine more to go.

She sat, bored, in a classroom, penning useless lines from unimportant reasons. Nope, it wasn't History of Magic.

She sucked the end of her quill into her mouth, her red hair shading her face and green eyes nearly glazed. 

Wasn’t detention about scrubbing bedpans or something useful like that? Potter had never talked about something as horribly boring as lines. Then again, you couldn’t trust half the stuff that came out of that boy’s mouth. But still. Lines? Because she was late to Defense?

And she had been so proud that she had had five years of schooling and zero detentions. All ruined in the course of one month.

It was for a good cause, she told herself grimly. You can wash away your perfect, pristine, immaculate, spotless, flawless record for a good cause. Troll defense. The protection of muggle born sleeping rights. Good causes.

So she was all alone in the empty classroom, staring at her ink pot as Argus Filch leered at her. Ah, the joys of detention. She could absolutely, positively, definitely, certainly understand why Potter and Black spent half their lives in here.

“I must not be horrendously late because I defended my sleeping rights from a vicious Slytherin with a Jekyll-Hyde personality.”

Two.

Besides, detention was for people who deserved it. People who broke important rules regularly. People who disrupted class and other people’s private thinking time. Like Potter. Or Black. Or pretty much the whole Slytherin house. She was innocent. Well, at she should be excused. She was defending her rights! Preventing herself from becoming a doormat! Fighting back against muggle-born injustice and anti-sleep policies! Fighting a seventh year witch with a reputation for using horribly nasty curses! Surely that could sort of count as defense?

Lily sighed and rubbed at her writer’s bump.

“I must not protect muggle-born sleeping rights from people afflicted with multiple personality disorder during my Defense Against the Dark Arts period. Of course, I may do so at any other time.”

Three.

197 more to go and her quill tip already broke. At least she still had a well full of adjectives. There was some ink left, too.

Oh, and there wasn't anyone else here to witness her humiliation. That, at least, she was spared. Maybe no one would ever know about her detention and her reputation would remain clean, her prefect status untarnished. Maybe the only people who would ever have to know would be her and Filch. Oh, and the defense professor and class room full of students. But still. Better than nothing.

It would only take one second for her whole year to hate her. One misstep, one false word, one sign that she didn't fit in and Lily Evans would be despised. 

Lily knew. It had happened before.

So she was glad that she would have to suffer through the next hour alone, in silence. If there was no one there there would be no one to tell.

The door slipped open and someone stepped through.

Great, now she had company.

[bloodthirstybella]

Bloody Awful

The only thing worse than having double Transfiguration is having it first thing in the morning. 

And on a Monday, too.

[aratamongmen-blog-blog]

Nostalgia and Dust-mites (Open)

It had begun as a recovery effort for a shirt he swore he packed, and ultimately ended with him surrounded by a worthless bounty purged from his trunk, all of which he swears to have no memory of packing. 

Having peeled back the sedimentary layer of books, thrown in at the last minute, clothing, and anything else he'd packed on an afterthought, Peter was excavating in his baggage's uncharted territory. The core stratum of his transferrable belongings. The very matrix by which all of his other belongings mold themselves around. In layman's terms, the rubbish that had collected at the very bottom of his trunk. 

There was the usual bric-a-brac that escaped the annual rotisserie of school supplies: bits of broken quills, empty ink vats, tear-away pages of notes he could have really used during final exams week. Among the expected clutter, however, lay hidden objects of sentiment that had been buffeted to the back of his mind, as well as their carrying quarters. 

Peter surveyed a half-finished packet of caramelized flies; the only piece of evidence that remained of him ever owning a toad. (Phineas had resolved that the domestic life wasn't for him and legged it towards the end of Peter's first year. The bastard.)

But the proverbial clang! of striking gold truly resounded when he uncovered an old book under a tangle of faded jeans. 

Practical Magic For the Practical Practitioner by Joanne Knightly 

Other than apparently being a die-hard fan of alliteration, Ms. Knightly was, of all things, a muggle. A Pagan, if you wanted the full glory of it. From a wizard's perspective, pawing through the compendium was like staring at a generic, copyright evasive version of a well-known trademark. Funny, in a pathetic sort of way. Of course, a few laughs at Joanne Knightly's expense wasn't enough to prompt Peter into actually purchasing the book. 

No, it had been a gift. 

A gift he now perused fondly, distantly, and shamelessly in Hogwarts's courtyard, the last vestiges of summer's warmth lingering vigilantly in the air. 

[remusloonylupin]

Days go by

So … we’re still not talking …

[dancingwitharaven]

"Well, how long was I gone? Long story; nothing to share."

[eveninglily]

She Changes From Day to Day

"Right, polite."

"Okay, what exactly are you doing?"

[eveninglily]

In the Pit of Snakes (and Acting Like Slugs)

Friday, September 10th 1976

Lily shifted in her seat.  It was the second Friday of the year, meaning that Slughorn had another one of his dinners. Lily liked Professor Slughorn, with his round belly and wide smile, but his gatherings were incredibly boring and often annoying. It didn’t help that there were very few Gryffindors and very many Slytherins, making the awkward meetings even tenser.

To make things even worse, Slughorn had decided to seat her between Regulus Black, who admittedly Lily had never talked to but had always heard Sirius say was a cowardly anti-muggleborn purist, and his cousin Bellatrix, who had threatened to kill Lily during their last encounter.

Also invited were Bellatrix’s sisters, haughty Narcissa and quiet Andromeda, Lucius Malfoy, a seventh year named Rita Skeeter who had a large amount of passion for writing and very little scruples when she did so, and a sixth year Ravenclaw muggleborn named Wendy Slinkhard with whom Lily had always gotten along with well enough. Unfortunately, Wendy was at the other end of the table. 

In the midst of it all, Slughorn was chatting gaily with Malfoy and Skeeter over what seemed to be “how moral dilemmas are necessary to get far in life”.

Lily’s feet hurt in her pointed heels and she had to stifle a yawn with her hand, covering it up as a long cough that made Narcissa Black raise her eyebrows and Lucius Malfoy wrinkle his nose. 

Yeah, this was going to be a great dinner.