The Muggle World
So far, I have received three letters from James (one for each day I’ve been here) explaining everything he and Peter were doing over holiday. It seemed to be a lot of quidditch and then more quidditch. I missed my brother, but I definitely did not miss the constant quidditch. The Evans’s certainly weren’t used to all of the owls, but they had a good spirit about it. At least, Mrs. and Mr. we’re fine with it, petunia not so much. When the owl arrived this morning she seemed well… disgusted would be a nice way of putting it.
“Ugh, you stupid wizards with your stupid pets are ruining my breakfast!” She practically spit her toast at Lily while I grabbed my letter.
“Petunia.. just because wizards don’t use telephones, does not mean we should be rude to their methods.” Mrs. Evans chastised her daughter.
“I for one find it fascinating how they find the rightful owner of the letter.” Mr. Evans joined us at the table. Petunia rolled her eyes.
“Well I find it absolutely sickening that the freak is turning our home into a zoo!” Petunia directed her anger towards Lily even though she hadn’t done anything wrong. Petunia then lowered her voice so only Lily and I could hear her. “If I see so much as a feather or god help me, droppings in my room… I will not only disown you, but I’ll make sure that you’ll never fit into this world again, you abomination of humanity. At least then I’ll never have to see your nauseating friend ever again.” Before we could retaliate, she took the rest of her meal and left the kitchen. Surprisingly, Petunia's words didn’t bother me. She was a muggle who didn’t understand the wizarding world, I was a wizard who knew nothing about the muggle world. The only difference is that I didn’t care about the differences, but Petunia did. Peter had a lot of squib relatives and while they say they’re all fine with being in the muggle world, it was obvious that they resented being the only ones that couldn’t do magic. I think Petunia just resented the fact that Lily had ‘freak-like’ magic.
“I don’t get it?” Lily scanned my letter from James, I didn’t mind that she read it. I probably would’ve told her word for word anyways.
“Why your sister hates magic? I don’t get it either.” I shook my head and stuffed my face with toast. Muggles used this toast-er, which basically burns bread. I think my mum uses a spell for that. Either way it tastes the same.
“No, your brother!” she lifted the letter as if to show me it was there, “he’s so nice and caring to you and the marauders, but he’s a total prat to everyone else!”
“Lily!” Mrs. Evans scolded, “I am so sorry Hazel, I’m not sure what’s going on with my daughters.” she smiled politely at me.
“It’s alright Mrs. Evans, James definitely has qualities that people find annoying. He loves pranks and he’s very competitive. However, he is a great friend and probably the most loyal Gryffindor I know.” I turned to look at Lily, “you just have to get to know him more.” Lily rolled her eyes and smiled.
“What do you girls have planned for today?” Mr. Evans changed the topic. I had no idea what we were doing today, I was just along for the ride.
“We’re going shopping.”
*****
Muggle shopping is absolutely, 100 percent, nothing like diagon alley! There were entire stores with about twenty different themes. There were radios, tellies, clothes, cabinets, books and more all in one store! Not only that, but there were smaller stores next to each other inside one huge building. It was genius of the muggles. Everything was bright and music was playing in every store. It was like christmas! I tried on dresses and blouses and something called jeans! I had no muggle money, so I told Lily I’d pay her back in galleons. Lily bought me a pink dress, a shirt with butterflies, and jeans! Real jeans that flare out at the bottom and the buttons were all the way at my belly button. Lily poofed and fluffed my hair so much, It was twice as big. Which is very impressive. I felt like a real muggle! It was so cool! The only thing i wore that was actually mine was the butterfly necklace my mum gave me for my eleventh birthday, and my matching bracelet with James.
“We should go ice skating!” Lily announced after we got something called soft pretzels.
“What’s that?”
“Wizards don’t have that?”
“Is it like ice fairies? Or frozen water goblins?” I asked and LIly just laughed.
“Come on.”
Lily took me to an ‘ice rink’ and we put these incredibly weird shoes on. I fell almost immediately after I stood up, luckily Lily caught me. A three muggle girls on the opposite side of the rink started laughing at us.
“Interesting outfit! The patterns are so… chaotic and loud.” One of the muggles smiled at me like I was a pixie in a cage.
“Thank you!” I said sincerely, “look! I made a muggle friend!” I looked at Lily and smiled. Now, I’m not an idiot, I know when people are making fun of me. But I was having so much fun with Lily, that I didn’t care. Besides, I was pretty much never going to see these girls again. Lily looked at me concerned, but I just shrugged. “Come on, let’s go fall on ice!” I started walking to the ice, but Lily didn’t follow.
“How do you do that?” Lily asked, her feet stuck to the ground.
“Do what?”
“Petunia, these girls, hell even Snape gives you crap all the time and yet you’re cool with it, how?” She looked at me in actual wonder. I started to wonder if both Snape and Petunia were getting to her. I sat down on the bench before I fell over from the skates. Lily sat next to me.
“Well.. all those people who say those stupid things about me, don’t know me. I’ve never met those girls before and they know less about me than the fact that magic exists. I think I’ve spent maybe thirty seconds alone with Snape and the only things he knows about me revolve around my last name being Potter. And your sister isn’t mad at me, she’s mad at what we can do. If I was a squib, I would definitely resent James.Anyways, they all have their reasons not to like us, but those reasons actually have nothing to do with our personalities.” Lily seemed to listen to every word I said. I think she will tell me more details later.
“That’s really wise.” She said, It was my parents' wisdom. Well, my whole family’s actually. My parents were always so caring and warm that it really taught James and I to love ourselves and not care about the bullies.
“I’m very wise, call me rowena because I pretty much invented wisdom.” I smiled and Lily and I laughed.
“Ready to fall onto ice?” she asked.
“Oh definitely.” We walked to the rink and in an hour, I fell at least 37 times.