A/N: sorry for anyone who’s been waiting for this chapter… I’ve had a hard time finding inspiration, plus there was school and camp before that and Minnesota before that. And I’m having a hard time keeping this interesting. I promise it’ll get a lot better later… I have some slightly gruesome things planned. So if you don’t like that, I suggest you stop reading now. I’ll try to get the next chapter up ASAP!!
“Bye, see you later!” Scarlett called. Her long, pale blonde hair whipped as she turned around.
“Bye,” we all yelled after her.
“Robyn, I really like your hair cut that way. Hazel did a really good job,” Cassara said.
“Thanks, I do too,” Robyn replied. About ten minutes before we got off the bus Robyn declared that she was bored with her look and wanted Hazel to cut her hair shorter. “Cut it as short as you can get it so I can still get it in a ponytail,” Robyn had said. Hazel had obliged. I had to admit, she did look really good with it, even though it probably did mean she’d be grounded for the rest of her life by her domineering mother.
“I can’t wait until next year!” Cassara squealed, her dark brown eyes sparkling. As usual, she was so full of energy she couldn’t focus on one topic for more than a minute or two. “It’ll be so much fun!”
“We have NEWTs,” I reminded her.
Robyn raised her eyebrow. “Are you really that nervous, Lil? You did so well on the OWLs. And you’re the top of our class.”
“Of course I’m nervous!” I exclaimed. “Aren’t you guys?”
“No,” Cassara said.
“We’ll do fine,” Robyn said. “All of us will do perfectly fine.” I could tell she was nervous though, because she was fingering her nose. When she was a third year, she had gotten hit in the face with a Bludger as the Keeper. It had broken her nose, and ever since then she had had slight a bump on the bridge of her nose. Whenever she was nervous or self-conscious, she would rub the bump.
“You’re lying, Robyn,” I said. “You’re nervous. You’re doing that thing with your nose again.”
She immediately dropped her hand. “Well, maybe I’m a little nervous.”
“You’re lying!” Cassara exclaimed. Her pale face lit up with a grin. “You’re really nervous. And you know it!”
All of a sudden I heard footsteps coming toward us. We turned around to see who it was, and saw that it was Gregg.
“Hey Gregg,” I greeted him.
“Hi,” said Gregg. “Cassara, we have to go this way.” He pointed toward the right
Cassara gave me a big hug. “See you later, Lils.” She hugged Robyn, too, then walked away after Gregg.
Looking over at Robyn’s short black ponytail, I asked, “What do you think your mum will think of your new haircut?”
“She’ll hate it,” she replied with a touch of defiance and certainty in her voice.
“Oh.” There was nothing I could say to that, was there? I was sure I would never be brave enough to do that. If I knew my parents wouldn’t like something, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t face them when they got angry at me.
“I’m a coward, Robyn,” I said sadly.
“What are you talking about?” asked Robyn. She rubbed at her arm where she had gotten the latest cut, a scar from tripping over the pile of clothes on her side of the room and scraping her arm against her bed. She had a little bit of a reputation of being a klutz off the field, but she dominated in any sport she tried. She was the Seeker on the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
“I always do exactly as everyone tells me without even thinking about it. I can’t make decisions for myself,” I replied.
“That’s not true, Lily, and you know it,” Robyn told me firmly. “You can make plenty of decisions for yourself. You just don’t like angering people. Normally the only person I’m angering is my mother, and it’s not like I’ll ever make her happy.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t hate you,” I said to her. She just shrugged and said nothing. I spotted my mum talking to her mum a little ways ahead of us and said, “Well, there are our parents.”
“Bye, Lily,” said Robyn. “I hope I’ll see you later this summer.”
“I hope so too,” I said. “I don’t want to spend any more time with my sister than I have to.”
We approached our parents, and they said goodbye to each other. I could tell from Mum’s clipped tone that she didn’t like Robyn’s mum very much. To be honest, I don’t think anyone did. She terrified me and all of my friends, even Robyn.
As soon as we got there, her mum turned to her. “Come, Robyn,” she ordered.
Robyn waved and walked off, sighing.
“We need to hurry. We have to make sure your bridesmaid dress fits you so we can get a new one if it doesn’t fit,” Mum said, kissing me quickly on the cheek.
I gaped at her. “Bridesmaid?”
“Of course. Petunia’s getting married. Didn’t I tell you?” Mum asked.
“No.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Well, you’re one of her bridesmaids.”
“Did she agree to this?” I asked skeptically. Mum couldn’t accept that we didn’t like each other, so she tried everything to force us to be together. This included setting us up on things like this.
“It doesn’t matter what Petunia thinks. You’re her sister; you have to be in her wedding.”
It was hard to believe that Petunia and I were related. We didn’t look at all alike”she had stick-straight bleached-blond hair (which would’ve been dark brown if she didn’t waste all her money bleaching it) and was quite tall (but her long neck probably made up half that height). I was short, just reaching five feet four inches, and I had wavy red hair that I normally kept back in a ponytail. It was just lower-maintenance that way. She had huge, bug-like blue eyes whereas I had green eyes. Petunia was very skinny, not that I wasn’t, but she looked unhealthy. One time she ate only carrot sticks for lunch for a whole year. I had a huge sweet tooth. Petunia wouldn’t eat chocolate if you gave her money.
I think that part of the reason she hated me so much was because I had stolen my parents’ attention when the letter to Hogwarts came. She had always been the favorite” after all, she was the oldest. And she always had friends surrounding her. They used to be nice to me, but I think that was only because Petunia made them. That was back when we were still friends. Now one of their favorite pastimes was Lily-bashing, which consisted of going up to me and flinging as many insults at me as they possibly could. After a particularly long and annoying session I couldn’t take it anymore I punched Yvonne, her best friend, and almost broke her nose. I got grounded for a month and had all my books taken away from me. This resulted in me not getting any of my homework done until the night before classes started. It all would’ve been fine, if it had actually stopped the insults. On the contrary, it made Petunia and her friends more inclined to tease me. It was kind of surprising that my parents never realized anything”they still thought Petunia was a good daughter.
But as flawless as she seemed to my parents, she loved to insult people who weren’t normal. But what was “normal” anyway? She certainly wasn’t it”regular people ate food. And normal people weren’t nosy. And in a witch or wizard’s mind, muggles weren’t normal. So normal didn’t exist. I would never tell Petunia that, though. She would probably rip my eyes out.
“I don’t want to be Petunia’s bridesmaid,” I told Mum blatantly. “She doesn’t like me.”
Mum gave me an exasperated look. “What makes you think that? You two are best friends.”
“She hates me Mum, can’t you see?” I yelled. I looked around; there were people staring at us. But who wouldn’t stare? A teenage girl was arguing with her mother in the middle of King’s Cross Station. And the girl was dragging a trunk and carrying an owl in a cage. “We should get out of here,” I said. We made the way to the car in silence.
Once in the car I continued, “Mum, Petunia hates me. She thinks I’m a freak.”
“Nonsense. She’s just not used to having you around,” argued Mum. “It’s going to take a while for her to get used to her sister being a witch.”
“It’s been six years, Mum. If she was going to get used to it she already would have!” I replied. “How can you not see that?” A tear trickled down my face; I hated Petunia. Well, I don’t think it was necessarily that; I hated what she had done to me, how she had treated me after she found out I was a witch. As much as it hurt, I knew she wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
“Lily, if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all,” ordered Mum. “I’m sick of hearing all of these lies.”
“Fine,” I replied dully.
The car ride home was silent from then on. Although it was slightly awkward, it was better than arguing about how my sister and I got along.
As soon as the car stopped at my house I jumped out and shut the door. “Your dress in on the bed. I’d like you to try it on to make sure it fits,” Mum told me.
I simply sighed and nodded dully. Mum narrowed her green eyes at me and flipped her hair over her shoulder.
I had inherited many of my physical characteristics from my mother”my green eyes, red hair, basically my overall appearance was exactly like hers. I wasn’t sure how much our personalities were alike, though; we often argued, although mostly about pointless things, but soon forgot about what we were arguing about and made up.
I stared down at my feet, surveying the peeling red paint on the stairs. Our big, shingled house used to bring me comfort as a child; when people would tease me I would run home crying and, strange as it sounds, I would instantly feel better. But I didn’t get any comfort now; it felt like I was walking into a torture chamber.
Mum got to the door before me and rammed her key into the lock much more aggressively than normal and glared at me, obviously still annoyed. She swung it open and I heard Dad greet her. Then she muttered, “Lily’s being impossible.”
“How so?” Dad said, his voice fading away as they moved away from the door.
I sighed as I made my way through the door and thought, How am I going to survive like this until after the wedding?
I was making my way up to my room when I ran into something. Something very bony. “Watch where you’re going, freak,” Petunia said disgustedly. I said nothing and just stood still for a moment, watching Petunia and waiting for her to continue on. She gave me a funny look, then sauntered past scowling. Once she made her way by, I trudged up the steps to my room.
“Lily, try on your dress,” prompted Mum, shouting from the kitchen.
“I’m going,” I yelled back irritably. My room was just at the top of the stairs, so once I was at the top I crossed the hallway and opened the door hesitantly. Every time I left for school, I always expected to come back and find it completely different. That never happened, though; my parents went into my room to clean it (they were huge neat-freaks and couldn’t handle dust anywhere in their house, even in a room they seldom entered), but they left it alone otherwise. The walls were the same light lavender and dark purple sheets still covered my huge canopy bed. The bedside table with my phone on it was still next to it, and it even had the scrap of paper with Robyn’s phone number on it. She had given it to me before last summer and told me to call if I ever had a problem. We did spend a good deal of time on the phone that summer even though there wasn’t a problem, though, which, of course, infuriated Petunia. But whenever she went on one of her rants my parents and I tuned her out, so nothing ever came of it and she eventually stopped.
I looked at my bed and, sure enough, laying on it was the ugliest dress I had ever seen. It was bright pink and covered in lace and ruffles. I snorted in disgust, but shut my door and pulled off my clothes. I was not looking forward to wearing it. Maybe if it doesn’t fit I’ll be able to get out of the wedding, I thought as I pulled it over my head. As soon as it was on, I turned to the mirror on the back of my door and surveyed myself. Huh, just my luck. Perfect fit.
I could tell this was going to be a long summer.
A/N: Well, there it is… I hope you like it! Please review!!!!!!!!! I didn’t get many on the last chapter and it was slightly disheartening. It wasn’t the most interesting chapter I’ve ever written, but as I said, it’ll get more interesting soon. I would really, really appreciate some, and it doesn’t take all that long, people!!