Short Trip
The boys, the girls
They all like Carmen
She gives them butterflies, bats her cartoon eyes
She laughs like God
Her mind's like a diamond
Audiotune lies
She's still shining
"Ready?" Lily’s mother asked.
They were at King’s Cross station, right in front of the barrier that separated platforms nine and ten. His father had Lily’s suitcases, and her mother was resting a hand on her daughter’s shoulder.
"Ready," answered Lily, and the three of them started running through the solid wall. In seconds, they were on platform nine and three-quarters.
There were a lot of young witches and wizards; the youngest ones—first years, were hugging their parents while they cried. The other ones were saying goodbye.
They walked towards the Hogwarts Express, and Lily didn’t see Severus on the platform; she thought he was already on the train. She did see Remus, but he was with Sirius, Peter, James, and James’ parents, so she didn’t want to talk to him with his friends there, so when he saw her, Lily smiled and said hello with her hand, and Remus did the same thing. Lily noticed Sirius was weird; his skin was paler, and he had dark eyebags and a tired face, but she let it be and turned to her parents, Sirius' problems weren’t hers.
"Your friends just arrived," said his father, pointing with his head at two girls, Mary Macdonald and Marlene McKinnon.
She had met them on her first day at Hogwarts. They were roommates, and they easily became friends. Hestia Jones was her roommate too, they were friends; they saw each other and talked almost every day, but her best friends were Amelia Bones, a Hufflepuff.
Lily approached her friends. Marlene was already wearing her Hogwarts robes and was saying goodbye to her family. She had four older brothers, and just one of them was still studying at Hogwarts, Ashton.
"Lily!" Mary exclaimed when she saw her. The three of them smiled and hugged. Lily has seen Marlene during the Christmas break; she came to Lily’s house for lunch on Christmas day, but Mary spent her holidays in Jamaica with her family.
They separated from the hug and looked at each other. "How was your Christmas break?" Lily asked.
The girls started talking about what they did on their holidays, and eventually, the driver warned all of the people at the station that the train was going to leave soon, so they said goodbye to their parents and walked through the train.
"Hey, I’m going to search for Severus to say hello; I haven’t seen him since Saturday," said Lily. They were in the Gryffindor hallway of the train, and the Slytherin one was at the other extreme.
"Uh… Ok. Be careful with the Slytherins, Lily. You know how they are with people like us," warned Mary, and Lily nodded.
Mary and Lily were muggle-borns, and Marlene was half-blood, so they had to be careful when they were with the Slytherin kids, they always had to harass them by just existing.
Lily separated from her friends and went to the Slytherin hallway. When she arrived, she started looking for Severus through the windows. Suddenly, she bumped into someone for not looking straight.
"Watch your step, redhead," said the boy with a cold tone. When Lily looked at him, she noticed it was Regulus Black, Sirius’ younger brother.
For a moment, she thought it was Sirius, they looked so alike, but Regulus' gaze was so much colder, with that penetrant emerald green, there was no sign of Sirius' funny and cheerful look. His hair was more elegant than his brother’s, shorter and curlier, but it had the same dark black colour. He didn’t look good, though, and she was sure something happened to the Black brothers during this break. He looked a bit anxious, something that she never saw in him. Regulus raced a brow on his angular face.
"Oh, yes. Sorry," answered Lily, and she moved to let Regulus pass. Behind him was Bartemious Crouch Jr, he was Ravenclaw, but he was always with Regulus and Evan, two Slytherins. Barty looked at Lily like he was so much better than her, but he didn’t say anything and followed the youngest Black.
When Evan and Barty were younger, they were like the other pure-blood supremacists, mean and bullies, but since they became friends with Pandora Ollivander, they didn’t say anything about muggle-borns and half-bloods because she was a half-blood. Lily was glad of that, but that didn’t mean that they were nice; they still thought they were better than everyone and kept bullying people for other things. Regulus didn't have to say anything, his looks were judgemental enough to make you feel inferior to him.
Lily began walking again and saw an open compartment. Severus was in one seat. In the seats in front of him were Mulciber and Avery, but she ignored them.
"Hi, Severus," she said, and her friend looked at her and smiled.
"Hey, Lily"
"What do you think you’re doing here, mud-blood?" Mulciber said, and Lily tensed.
"Don’t call her that!" cried Severus, and he moved to be in front of Lily, facing the two other Slyitherins.
"Shut up, Snape, why are you her friend? She’s not like us!" Avery got up and crossed his hands.
Like us, Lily thought. She knew that Severus was a half-blood; his father was a muggle, but in Hogwarts, they all thought that he was a pure-blood. Only Lily knew the truth, and she promised him that she would never tell anyone about it.
"Lily," Severus, with an apologize look said, "you should go."
"Yes, get out of here, mud-blood."
"You should stop judging people and focus more on your classes, Mulciber. The other day you exploded the easiest potion ever in your face, I’m sorry to say that, but being a pureblood doesn’t save your brainless head," said Lily, looking at him with fake pity. "I prefer being punched by the whomping willow rather than talking to you, so I’m going anyway. Bye Snape"
While she said that, Mulciber and Avery gasped, and Severus held back a laugh. Mulciber was going to say something, but Lily didn’t let him and closed the compartment door in his face. She walked to the Gryffindor hallway, holding her breath.
She stopped in the Marauder’s compartment. The last time they went to Hogwarts, Remus forgot that he had to come to the prefect’s compartment, so this time she was going to tell him they had to go again, so she took a deep breath and opened the door, waiting for the worst.
"Evans!" James smiled, looking at her with his chocolate and shiny eyes. But Lily barely looked at him. "You missed me, beautiful flower? How nice, I missed you too."
Lily blushed at the nickname. Potter always calls her different names, but this was one of the worst. She focused on Remus; he was reading a book while sitting with Peter and Sirius was in front of him.
"Remus, we have to go," she said, ignoring James.
Remus looked up from the book and looked at Lily with a dull gaze.
"Really? Again?"
"Yes, Remus, again."
"Yeah, you have to do your responsibilities, sir. Prefect," joked Sirius, and Remus rolled his eyes.
He closed his book and stood up. Sirius was smiling, but he looked bad, like he hadn’t gotten any sleep in weeks.
"I know you came to see me," whispered James, and when Lily looked at him, he winked. "I thought of you every day, it was a nightmare not seeing you."
"For me, it was more like a dream." She said, "We going?" Remus nodded, and she went to the Hallway, and the tall boy followed her.
"He’s never going to stop, is he?" said Remus.
"I don’t think so. Why can’t he stop with this joke? It's annoying, and it’s not funny."
"Well, he’s showing his feelings, it doesn’t have to be funny. The funny thing is that you regret him every single time." He let out a small laugh.
When a student passed by their side, they had to move to the wall, and she felt Remus’ chest in her head. Remus was the tallest in his friend group. He was pretty and had nice golden hair too, so when he became a lot taller than Sirius and James, a lot of girls started to like him.
Even Lily once had a small crush on him. But it was just platonic now.
"Showing his feelings?" she said "He’s just doing it because of the laughs."
"No, he’s not. He likes you, Lily," Remus said, looking at her profile.
"Sure…"
Remus was going to say something more, but they arrived at the prefect's compartment, and she opened the door.
The meeting was boring as always, it felt like it took a whole eternity, but suddenly they were at their school. When the meeting ended, Lily looked for her friends and went to Hogwarts together, and now they were in the Great Hall. Dumbledore just ended his speech, and the dinner showed up.
She was sitting in front of Mary and Marlene, and Remus was by her side. Usually, she sat as far as she could from James, but this time she had to sit beside the Marauders. James and Sirius were talking about Quidditch with Marlene, she became their keeper this year. Peter was eating in silence, and Remus was reading his book. Mary was talking to Hestia, normally, she sat at the Hufflepuff table to be with her inseparable friend, Amelia, but today was the first day of classes since December, so everyone had to sit at their house table.
Lily was drinking pumpkin juice when she noticed that James had put something in her other hand that was laying on the table. She stopped drinking and looked at it. It was a chicken nugget with a heart shape.
"I was going to eat it," he said looking at her with a grin "but I thought that my heart is yours, so here you have." He messed up his dark hair, he always did that when he was around Lily.
She rolled her eyes and threw the chicken nugget at his chest, and James caught it like it was something valuable and precious. "You may keep it unless you want to die by sudden death," she said.
"Oh, you care about my health. I always knew that I was important to you, my sweet pumpkin pie."
"I care about your health as much as I care about a fly."
Everyone laughed, even James, and he ate the heart-shaped chicken nugget without stopping to look at her and smiling. But Lily broke eye contact and looked at Marlene instead.
"Did you know that Dorcas Meadowes is now the Slytherin’s captain?" At their meeting, Emma Vanity talked about how she renounced her role as captain to focus more on her studies, she had the N.E.W.T.s this year.
"Really?" Sirius asked, and Lily nodded.
"Ugh, Meadowes, seriously?" Marlene said, "She’s so weird, it’s like she never talks, she's always studying and observing everybody in silence and I think she doesn’t have friends."
"She’s good, though," James said. "She’s the best keeper." Marlene raised her brows, and James added quickly, "In Slytherin, obviously, you are a better keeper than her, no doubts."
Marlene hummed and gave James a suspicious look, but he smiled innocently. When he noticed that Lily was looking at him, he winked at her. And Lily blushed and blinked, she didn't notice she was looking at him.
They began to talk about Quidditch again, and Marlene brought back the theme that James almost said that Dorcas was a better keeper than her. Lily didn’t like Quidditch, but she had to learn the rules to watch Marlene play and enjoy every time Gryffindor marked, so she knew how it worked.
Dorcas Meadowes was their age, and she was very good at Quidditch, but Marlene was very good too. Honestly, she never looked at the keepers unless someone marked, she focused more on how ridiculous James was on the broom.
When he flew, it was like the world stopped and it was just him and his broom. He danced in the air and made moves and pirouettes like it was nothing, and the people loved it. But he didn’t do it because of the claps; for once, he didn’t care about anything else than flying, and you could tell that because when the crowd clapped or the commentator said anything, he didn’t notice, he was fully concentrated on just him, his broom, and the air. But obviously, as a chaser, he had to mark points, too. He was the best chaser Gryffindor had had in years.
But being athletic, handsome, funny, tan and hot didn't make him good. Lily found him really annoying, everyone loved him, except her, and James knew that, James knew that a boy like him would never be with a girl like her, Lily was sure that he knew that and that was why he always made jokes about them dating.