Daydream Believer

1 September, 1976

“Alright. Listen.”

Mary and I exchange a worried glance. When Marlene gets in a mood like this, there’s no stopping her.

“We’re listening,” Mary says cautiously.

Marlene kicks up her legs and rests her heels on the bench between Mary and I. Frilly white socks wrap up her ankles before disappearing into cherry red loafers, which perfectly match with her cherry red lips. If I tried to wear lipstick like Marlene does, I think the combination of that and my bright orange hair would permanently blind someone.

“Lil, you’re a prefect this year,” Marlene starts.

“Uh-huh,” I say.

“Which means you can sneak out basically whenever you want.”

“Well, that’s not exactly—”

“And get us out of detention,” Mary adds. 

“Mmm, not really.”

Marlene goes on like she hasn’t heard me. “Mary, you’re dating the Hufflepuff quidditch captain.”

Mary beams. “I am, aren’t I?”

“And,” Marlene pauses for dramatic effect, “this is the year that I kiss Dorcas Meadowes.”

“Ha!” I let out a laugh. “In your wildest dreams.”

Marlene makes a face at me. “I’ve already kissed her in my dreams, now I need to do it in real life.”

“Well best of luck to you then,” I say. “You’ll need it.”

“Thank you.” She folds her arms proudly. “This is our year, ladies.”

Mary seems completely sold on the idea, so I’m the only one left to object.

“Sixth year,” I clarify. “Not the one where we finally got to be upperclassmen, and not the one where we’ll graduate at the end.”

“Oh, Lily dear,” Marlene says, clicking her tongue in disapproval. “Don’t be such a pessimist! Sixth year is the most fun, everyone says so.”

“They do,” Mary says.

I shoot her a glance. “Don’t encourage her.”

Mary shrugs. “This is the last year we don’t have to worry about what happens after school. Not to mention the war.”

“I suppose,” I say.

“Aha,” Marlene says, grinning with satisfaction. “I’ll put you down as a yes, then.”

I slump down in my seat. “Should I be offended that you have absolutely no hope for my love life?”

“Aw, she didn’t say no hope,” Mary comforts me. “Just very, very little.”

“Shut up.” I hit her on the arm. “Well, with any luck, the other Gryffindor prefect will be smart, handsome, and nice.”

“Who do you have in mind?” Marlene asks.

I sigh. “A transfer student.”

The train rumbles along, the lush green Scottish countryside flying by the windows. Once we’ve finished gorging ourselves on sweets from the trolley, we trek down the narrow hallway to the toilets and change into our robes, gossiping about everyone we pass. Mary ditches us for her Hufflepuff quidditch captain boyfriend Patrick, so Marlene and I return to our compartment and lie down on opposite benches.

“They don’t tell you who your partner is in the letter?” Marlene asks. We’re still on the question of the hour—who’s the other Gryffindor prefect. 

“Nope.” I shake my head. “Keeping the mystery alive.”

“Damn.”

At last, the train stops, and my prefect duties begin. I’m about to say goodbye to Marlene and head over to where the first years await when I see something that makes me stop dead in my tracks.

Marlene bumps into from behind. “What—oh.” 

The sympathy in her voice confirms that I’m not seeing things—that really is James Potter with a prefect’s badge on his tie, directing first years to the docks with a huge smile on his face. My stomach contorts itself into a knot.

Here’s the thing: Potter is, on paper, a fine prefect partner. He’s clever, well-liked, and generally pretty responsible. What that description doesn’t account for, though, is that he’s an utter and complete arse. No exaggeration. He’s cocky and arrogant for all the aforementioned reasons, and worst of all, he’s smart. I might be able to put up with it if he was an idiot—accept that he has to fluff up his own ego a bit to make up for the fact that his brain is missing a few crucial lobes—but he’s not. He’s always been by my side at the top of the class, and that’s really just the icing on the cake, isn’t it?

He waves at me over the heads of a few short first years, though he has the decency to dim his smile a bit. I glare back.

Marlene gives me a shove, and I look back at her pleadingly.

“Go on, babes,” she says. “Your duties await.”

“Remind me to kill myself later,” I say. 

With a final huff, I make my way through the crowd of kids retrieving their bags to where James Potter is standing.

“Potter,” I say, avoiding looking at him.

“First years this way!” He calls over the noise. He’s got one arm up and is beckoning like a crossing guard. “Evans.”

I cross my arms and watch the little faces scurry past. A blonde girl with pigtails trudges past us lugging a trunk twice her size.

Potter crouches down. “Alright there? Here, I’ll take this for you.”

She smiles at him gratefully. “Thank you.”

“I’m James,” I hear him say kindly as they walk off.

He carries her trunk like it weighs nothing and I resist the childish urge to stomp my foot. Not even ten minutes in and he’s already making me feel useless. He is so, so good at that.

He appears back at my side, presumably having seen the little blonde girl off safely in her boat.

“They get smaller every year, I swear,” he says, looking out proudly as if we’re two parents at the playground.

“No, Potter,” I say. “You just, unfortunately for the rest of us, keep getting older.”

It’s dark by the time all the first years are on the boats, being rowed to the castle for their special entrance. Potter and I walk up the hill with the other houses’ prefects in silence, thank god, though I am forced to greet one of the Ravenclaw prefects who I sat with in Transfiguration last year. The feast has already started when we arrive at the Great Hall, the four long tables all filled with students in black robes. Above their heads, the high vaulted ceiling twinkles with stars, a perfect replication of the night sky outside. I tiptoe down the bench until I find where Marlene and Mary are sitting and shove myself in between them. Dumbledore is just beginning to introduce the sorting hat.

“What have I missed?” I whisper.

“All the usuals,” Mary says.

The first years burst through the doors then, in a nervous, fidgety horde. Every year when this happens I remember my own sorting ceremony and marvel at how I made it out alive. I showed up to this school with no knowledge of the Wizarding World besides a tall stack of books and a brand new wand. Severus had explained some things before we came, but I felt immensely behind.

I find him in the crowd now, hunched between his buddies at the Slytherin table, his face obscured by that mop of dark hair. It’s so silly to be sentimental, given the way things have been between us lately, but I am anyway.

The loud, gravelly voice of the sorting hat filters through my thoughts as the ceremony begins. A scrawny boy with glasses runs off to the Ravenclaw table before being replaced on the stool by a girl with curly brown hair.

“Gryffindor!” The hat declares, and our table erupts in applause. She disappears somewhere down the other end of the bench as someone else steps up to the hat.

The cycle is repeated long enough that my stomach begins to grumble.

“Oh thank goodness,” Marlene says when no more first years hover anxiously in the aisle. “I’m going to eat a horse.”

I laugh. “That is definitely not how that saying goes.”

Suddenly, McGonagall’s voice rings out again over the noise. “Thomas Riley.”

Marlene groans. “Another one? I could’ve sworn—oh my god.”

“What?” I turn around to see what elicited her reaction.

Making his way up the aisle is another new student to be sorted, but he is definitely not a first year. In fact, he looks about our age.

“Is he in our year?” Mary asks.

“God I hope so,” I mutter.

Marlene laughs. “Hot damn.”

Thomas Riley sits down on the stool with the sorting hat on his head and gives us all a lucky minute to stare at him. He’s tan with long, shaggy brown hair like some kind of American heartthrob. Tall and lanky, he crosses his legs at the ankles when he sits down, as if he’s relaxing on the beach, not receiving a judgement that is going to determine the fate of his year, if not longer. He smiles out at us before the hat yells “Gryffindor!”

The table cheers again, but the excitement is punctuated by whispers of confusion. Who is Thomas Riley, and why is he being sorted as a clearly-not-11 year old? Maybe my prophecy of a transfer student came true.

Predictably, it’s all anyone talks about for the rest of the meal.

“Finally some excitement at this school,” Marlene says, her eyes glittering.

“What about your undying love for Dorcas?” Mary asks, shovelling peas into her mouth.

“Alive and well, but there’s room for two in here.” She taps her chest. “I’ve got a big heart.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Big eyes too.”

“Okay, Little Red Riding Hood,” she says. “Off your high horse. I know you’re ogling as well.”

She leans forward and peers down the table to where the new student sits. I follow her eyeline and take in his movie star look again.

“You’re right,” I say. “Well, I think you all owe this to me.”

“And why’s that?” Mary asks.

“Remember what I said about the transfer student? On the train?”

Marlene gasps. “Lily’s clairvoyant, everyone. Get your tickets here.”

Mary grins. “For the low, low price of delusion.”

“You also predicted that the other Gryffindor prefect would be smart, nice, and handsome, and you got Potter instead,” Marlene points out.

Always attuned to his own name being mentioned, Potter perks up from a few metres down the table. “Talking about me, McKinnon?” He calls.

“Only terrible things, Potter,” she calls back, then turns to me. “It is going to be a fun, fun year for you, Lil.”

I groan. “Don’t remind me.”

After the feast, Potter and I lead the new first years up to Gryffindor Tower. Despite having to deal with the arsehole walking beside me, there’s a certain sense of pride that comes with the prefect duties. I remember nervously following Alice Fortescue and Frank Longbottom up to the tower for the first time. I was amazed at everything they knew about Hogwarts and, it seemed, about life. I don’t know anything about life, and Alice and Frank probably didn’t either, but I do enjoy pointing things out and answering questions as we corral the crowd through the corridors. Like I’m becoming the people I looked up to. Like somebody’s looking up to me.

Of course, Potter ruins everything he steps foot in, and this is no exception. We reach the portrait, and I’m about to tell the first years the password to make it swing open, when Potter leans over to me and says, “I changed it.”

I look at him in disbelief. “Where did you even find the time?”

“Here and there,” he says mischievously.

“Don’t tell me you made it something obnoxious,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “Or gross.”

He grins and doesn’t answer, but instead faces the small crowd of first years huddled on the stairs. “The password, at least until Evans chops off my head and changes it, is ‘seekers rule.’”

A few first years cheer, and Potter looks pleased with himself. 

I roll my eyes exaggeratedly. “Very clever.”

“Thanks,” he says sweetly, ignoring my sarcasm.

The first years are watching us attentively, like we’re putting on some sort of show. I suddenly feel self-conscious. 

I sigh. “Alright, let’s just go in.”

When I turn around, the portrait is empty. I lean closer. “Um, excuse me?”

“Oh dear!” comes the Fat Lady’s shrill cry. She bustles back into the frame and sits down on the column in a coquettish pose. “Almost missed my introduction, did I?” She leans over as if to see the first years better and gives them a wave, then looks at me. “Password, dear?”

I glance at Potter in annoyance before saying, “Seekers rule.”

“Very well,” she says, and the portrait swings open.

Potter grins at me. “Do you really think so? How kind, Evans.”

I huff. “Shut up.”

I can’t sleep that night, as usually happens when I first get back to school. The anticipation and excitement combined with the unsettledness of the first night in a new place mean I lie awake, staring at the canopy above my bed for what feels like hours. I think through the year ahead of me—N.E.W.T. classes, learning to apparate, turning 17, being a prefect for the first time. My excitement for the latter has been significantly dampened upon learning that Potter is my colleague, but honestly, I don’t know how I expected any less. He’s always been the bane of my existence. Since as far back as first year, we’ve been vying for the top spot in the class, neither one of us ever gaining sufficient footing over the other. If I get lucky enough to be Head Girl next year, the universe will cancel it out by making Potter Head Boy. Then we’ll really be working in proximity. I shudder at the thought. 

But it’s not enough to turn me off the prospect of being Head Girl. The title shines like a golden beacon of daydream fuel, just out of reach, but closer than before. I fall asleep dreaming of polishing my badge.