September 1st 1971 Dear Diary,
I am sorry I have not written in you for so long. I just have not had any time. First things first, last time I wrote in you we were going to our new house. Since then I have met Ashley Rosewood and her parents. I was also unfortunate enough to meet James Potter and his friends, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew. I hate James Potter. I was invited to his birthday party and then during the party I got so mad at him; I threw cake in his face with magic.
Oh yes, I forgot to tell you, I am a witch and now, I am on a train to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I am so happy. I found out that Ashley is also a witch. Of course, the only thing that could ruin this happy time happened, James Potter, and his awful friends are all wizards. Uck! Maybe I will get lucky, and he will be jinxed.
I will write in you later. Its time to put on our robes! I am so excited. We are almost there!
Love,
Lily Evans
With that, I snapped my diary shut and stood up. As I looked around the compartment, the only person in it besides me was Ashley. Just then, I realized beside, Ashley, I had no friends unless you count the boys, and I most certainty will not. With that thought in my head, I turned to Ashley and asked, “Do you actually know anyone else besides the boys and me who will be at school?”
She looked at me a second as if I were crazy. Then slowly, she said, “Um… actually, no, I don’t, or at least no one in our year. I have met a few people who are 6th or 7th years, though.”
“That settles it then. Let’s go explore the train and see if we can meet any new people.” I got up and started to reach out to open the door when the person I was really starting to hate, James Potter, suddenly opened it.
When he saw me, he seemed surprised but he got over it quickly, and said “Oh, hello Lily. We were just looking for a compartment to sit in.”
I quickly recovered from the surprise of his, or should I say their, because he never goes anywhere without his motley crew and Sirius was standing behind him, fast appearance. “You can have this one. Ashley and I were going to go explore the rest of the train to see if we could meet anyone else new to the school,” I said slowly, inching around the group and towards the door, but it was too late.
Sirius shut the door, and they all sat down around us, while James said, “Why don’t you stay here and talk to us? Anyways, anybody you meet now might not get put in to the same house as you when your sorted, so you might as well wait to be put in to your house before you go and make friends.”
When he said this, I started to get mad. I wanted to get away from the boys as fast as I possibly could. James Potter was driving me batty with his superior, know-it-all attitude. I quickly glanced at Ashley. She kept discreetly looking over at Sirius. I realized that she probably would want to stay here, now that he was here, so I quickly said, “Will you guys leave for a few minutes? We need to change into our robes.”
This was true. I had written in my journal, and then completely forgot. I gave the boys a significant look and they left.
“You know I didn’t really want to go explore the train anyways,” Ashley grinned at me, but I knew she just wanted to be around Sirius. She had that glazed look in her eye that I often saw with Petunia.
After we finished changing, I reluctantly let the boys back in and we started talking about school.
“You know how we get sorted?” James asked. “My parents said they put an old hat on your head and it tells you where you belong.”
I was confused, so I asked, “How would some hat know where to put you? Moreover, how does it even tell you? Hats aren’t alive.”
James looked at me funny and spoke in a tone that said I should have known better. “It’s magic of course! That is why we’re going to Hogwarts.”
“Oh well, what is the school like?” Ashley asked, bored of the talk about sorting.
This time, Sirius spoke up, “I’ve heard that it’s huge. It has got like seven floors, and the staircases move! Then there are the classes: Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Astronomy, not to mention the elective classes we get to take in 3rd -5th year before O.W.L.s.” With that, he fell silent like the rest. All of us were lost in our thoughts of the immediate future, but a moment later, surprisingly Peter spoke up.
“I heard when you get into the third year you can go into Hogsmead, the only non-muggle community in Great Britain. It has a whole bunch of stores, like Honeyduke’s and the pub, The Three Broomsticks.” Peter fell silent, looking as if he wished he had not said anything at all.
“That sounds cool and all, but what about this year? Do you know who any of the teachers are? What are the rules? How long are classes?” I asked not really expecting much of a reply. We are talking about boys here.
Remus answered, “The Transfiguration teacher is Professor McGonagall, Charms is Flitwick, and Potions is Slughorn. That is all the teachers I know of. Oh yes, and Professor Dumbledore is headmaster. There are too many rules to list, and classes are an hour each. Double classes are two.”
Everyone stared at Remus a little taken aback that he knew so much of all the facts of Hogwarts. After that, Remus, Ashley, and I got into a conversation of everything we hoped to be able to learn in our first year. I have so much I need to learn. Everyone seems to know everything there is about magic already, how am I ever going to catch up?
Sirius interrupted our discussion. “Anyone want to play a game of exploding snap?”
I looked up at him confused and asked, “What is exploding snap?”
Now, it was everyone else’s turn to stare at me for a second before they remembered I was from a muggle family. Ashley spoke up and explained, saving me from further embarrassment, “Exploding snap is a wizarding card game. You try and build a card house before the cards blow up, that’s where the exploding part comes in.”
“Is it dangerous?” I really did not want to get hurt before I even got to school.
“No, the worst thing that could happen is if you’re too close when it blows, it might scorch your eye brows,” James assured me, with a lopsided grin.
“Ok I’ll play, I guess.”
Sirius dealt out the cards evenly and we all got to work on our towers. As we continued to place one card delicately after another, Ashley cards suddenly exploded as if it was a firecracker. After the main explosion was over the rest of our towers came exploding down in a chain reaction. As if they had, all been waiting for the rest to explode.
Mine was the third to explode; I had leaned closer to my tower than was safe to see what was left of Ashley and Peter’s towers when mine went off. At first, I did not realize mine had exploded, then I smelled burnt hair and I looked over at my smoldering tower remains then at my hair. The bottom inch was fried. I could not believe it. “Oh well it’ll grow back,” I grinned sheepishly because they were all looking at my hair. Half of them whether or not to be horrified (with the possibility I had gone batty) or laugh. “Does anyone have a pair of scissors?”
Remus dug into his trunk above his head and pulled a pair out, handing them to me. I had Ashley cut my hair evenly and to right above where it had been burnt.
As Ashley was cutting Sirius remarked, “At least your eye brows weren’t singed off. That is a lot worse than your hair.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked wanting to know why he said that. “How do you know?”
“I was playing Exploding Snap when I was seven, and it exploded right in my face. My eyebrows and lashes were completely burned off. Unfortunately, my eyebrows were never the same again.”
Even though he said this in a sad and somber tone, when I looked at Ashley we could not help but laugh aloud. Sirius sat down on one of the seats with humph and had his lip stuck out in a fake pout. With that, we laughed even harder, and were joined by the boys.
Before we knew it, we were puling in to the Hogsmead station. The prefects (which I learned were the fifth years and above that were in charge) were at all the doors, opening them, and we could hear a loud voice echoing through our ears. “Firs’ years! Firs’ years over here! Mind yer step now! C’mon, follow me! Firs’ years come with me!”
As I climbed out of the train, I saw what had to be the largest man in the world. I had seen a man claiming to be the largest at the circus when I was little, but the man with the messy mass of black frizz and the giant hands swinging a lantern, by far surpassed the circus man’s claims. Two of me wouldn’t even equal him in height. His face was covered in a beard that looked made of black wires. Once all the first years had come over to this gigantic man, he said, “My name is Rubeus Hagrid, but I would like yeh all to call me Hagrid. Now follow me ter the boats!”
“What boats?” a boy in the back of the group asked.
“The boats that’ll take yeh across the lake, and to Hogwarts, o’ course. Yer just lucky it not rainin’. Only four to a boat.”
As we climbed in to the boats, I started to get worried. What would happen if the hat that was supposed to sort us decided that I was not good enough for Hogwarts and refused to sort me? Could that even happen? I kept thinking up crazy ideas as to what would happen to me, until I was brought out of my stupor by some one in my boat shouting, “Look at the castle.”
Lily and James, A Love Unfolding by lupinslover
Chapter Notes: In this chapter Lily goes to Hogwarts by traveling there on the Hogwarts Exspress. Most of the chapter takes place on the Hogwarts Exspress. Also Lily and her friends get sorted by the famous sorting hat.