Chapter 2
“So, you’re a muggle-born?” I asked.
“Yep. Born and raised in southeast London,” said Mary, who seemed quite proud of that fact.
“So you and mum met in Hogwarts?”
“Met in Diagon Alley, the three of us” she declared, “Marlene, Lily, and I were unstoppable. Even James Potter feared us, and he wasn’t afraid of anything.”
“You knew my dad too?” I said,
astonished. I had a feeling that the whole, tragic truth of every single thing about my parents lied in the mind of this woman. I still wondered, of course, what the hell she meant about being the love of my mother’s life.
“Of course I did. There wasn’t a person
at Hogwarts in the seventies who hadn’t at least heard of your dad and his friends. Mind you, he wouldn't have let them forget. He really was quite the show.”
“Right well, I’m starving. Want to grab lunch and talk there?” I asked.
“Sure thing.”
14th of August, 1971
I had just turned eleven only three weeks before, and now here I was, with a group of around six other muggle-born kids, trying to figure out how the hell we were meant to buy a magic wand. Each of us had been instructed to meet outside an abandoned pub at eleven o’clock sharp.
The woman in green, who’d instructed us to call her Professor McGonagall, had lead in inside the pub. It was quite dingy, and although it was supposedly abandoned, this pub seemed as full of drunk people as any other. Professor McGonagall sat us at a table and asked us to introduce ourselves by name, say our age, one fact about ourselves, and where we were from.
The circle started with a short, brown haired girl. “Um, hi, my name is Hestia Jones, I'm eleven years old, I own two dogs, and I'm from Edinburgh . Next, a taller girl with dark skin and cornrows. Oh great, I thought to myself, the circle is going counter-clockwise, which means i’m next.
“Hello, my name is Aurora, Aurora Sinistra. I’m eleven years old, I know sign language, and I was born in Egypt.”
Me next, now is better than later. “My name is Mary Macdonald, I’m eleven years old, I have four siblings, and I’m from London.” OK. Good. Not half as bad as it could’ve been.
Person four was a brown boy with brown hair, who had a huge smile on his face. “I’m Benjy Fenwick, I’m eleven I can speak Spanish, and I grew up in Dublin.
“Hi, I’m Charity Burbage. I’m eleven years old, I love crocheting, and I’m from Leeds.”
Although Charity was speaking, I looked around to see a pretty red-haired girl with bright green eyes, pink, full lips and freckles splashed across her face staring at me quite intensely. That was the first time I ever saw Lily Evans.
When the girl broke her gaze, she turned to speak, “My name is Lily Evans, I’m eleven years old, my mum and dad are from Poland, and I was born in Cardiff.”
She spoke in a bold way, the same way my aunties did, like a fire that could never burn out. Although I wouldn't realize it until years afterwards, I fell in love the moment that girl opened her mouth.