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April the First


Lily awoke with a start, her covers wrapped about her oddly and tight. She’d been thrashing during the night. Funny sorts of dreams had plagued her - dreams that felt like nightmares, though not much had truly happened in them. She tried to drive some of the lingering images from her mind as she extricated herself from the duvet, kicking it off the bed in frustration.

There was just no driving out the sound of Petunia’s voice from her dream… They’d been having a tea for their dolls, complete with biscuits with sprinkled sugar baked on their tops. Their mum had given them real tea, too, and let them use the real china. Petunia had looked so pretty in her pink party dress, and Lily in her blue, serving them and their dolls second rounds. They had had that same tea party a million times over, at least once a week since they were children. The dream wasn’t the nightmare, not even the words Petunia had been saying had been the nightmare… The nightmare had come with the bitter realization - mid dream - that there was no way that she wasn’t dreaming, however real it might have felt, for Petunia Evans so hated her sister that the scene she had dreamed would never, ever take place again.

She dressed quickly, leaving her Gryffindor tie loose around her neck. She couldn’t handle even just one more tiny thing such as that pressing into her - physically or mentally. She stared at herself in the little mirror by her door and frowned, turning away, unpleased with the messy look of herself. She quickly braided her hair and removed the tie altogether, tossing it over her desk chair, and sighed, deciding it was probably better not to look at the mirror again before going downstairs.

It was Sunday so the common room was pretty full of students sitting about rushing to do essays they’d been assigned to have done first thing in the morning. She shouldered her bookbag, planning on going by the library after breakfast, and set off out of the portrait hole and down the hallway, still thinking on the nightmare.

“Lily, wait up.”

She paused when she heard her name and turned ‘round to see Remus trotting on after her. She bit her lower lip and waited for him. They hadn’t spent as much time together as they had been doing after the disastrous kissing session in the common room, he had sort of been avoiding her a bit, it had seemed. Granted, there had been a lot going on - and most of the time he’d been “avoiding her” had been during the full moon, so of course that was why, and LIly knew that, but she couldn’t help but have her feelings a little bit hurt…

“You look very pretty today,” Remus complimented her as he caught up. He smiled as he looked her over.

Lily put her hand on her braid, “You don’t need to say that, Rey. I’m a mess, really.”

“Mess?” Remus shook his head, “You’re not a mess. I’m a mess --” he said, waving a palm at his haphazardly hanging robes, “But not you.” He smiled, “I got dressed rather quickly when Peter said he saw you leaving. I wanted to catch you up , I haven’t gotten to see you in a little while. Do you fancy breakfast together?”

Lily nodded and the two of them started walking on down to the Great Hall. together. “Are you as nervous as James is this morning?” Remus asked as they walked, looking over at her.

“Nervous as James?” Lily echoed with confusion. “Nervous about what?”

“About the Ilvermorny team coming today?” Remus chuckled, “I’ll take it as a no, then?”

She stopped dead in her tracks, “That’s today? Today’s the first already?”

Remus had a feeling he’d just awoken the same nervousness in her.

“And I look like this?” Lily flipped her braid, “Oh this is not good… not good at all…”

“You look lovely, I already told you,” Remus said, “Besides, there’s really nothing to be nervous about. I wasn’t trying to panic you, only just was going to say that James is nervous about meeting the Ilvermorny team and --”

“Meet them?”

“For dinner?” Remus supplied.

“For dinner?!” Lily’s eyes were wide.

“Didn’t you read the notice board? Derek put up this morning that he’s set up with McGonagall for the Ilvermorny team to have a very special late dinner with the Quidditch players - James asked if it was just the All Stars that were invited and Derek said that it was anyone who plays for the school. All four captains are welcome to bring their full teams.”

Lily cupped her hands ‘round her eyes and a dragon of panic seemed to rise up inside her. Why today, of all days, when she was feeling so awful, missing Petunia, and looked so horribly a mess? Why did today need to be the first? She felt rather ill as a wave of missing Alice Bell wove through her gut as she thought how well Alice would’ve done at fixing Lily’s hair and making her rather more presentable than she was now… Alice had known so many wonderful hair spells…

Remus touched her shoulder, “Lil? Are you alright?”

“No,” Lily said, jumping back from his touch. It still felt awkward after what had happened with the kiss and now she was caught up in the worry about the dinner. “I’ve got to go back to the common room, I need to fix my hair and --” she turned back quickly.

Remus hurried to keep up, “Lily, it’s alright, calm down, you’ve got hours --”

“It’ll take hours.”

“But we were going to have breakfast,” Remus complained, “I miss you.”

Lily sped up and called over her shoulder, “I’m sorry, Rey, I just can’t be meeting Ilvermorny looking like this! You go! I’m sure the other boys will be along soon!”




Remus was sitting at the Gryffindor house table in the Great Hall when Sirius, Peter, and James came down. He’d finished eating already and was just sitting and talking with Frank Longbottom about the strange mooncalves that Frank’s Care of Magical Creatures class had studied during the full moon the week before. “They only come out in the full moon, you see,” Frank was saying, “Similar to werewolves, you know, except they aren’t as horrible, of course --”

“Werewolves aren’t so horrible,” Sirius said, butting in as he sat down on the bench. He nudged Remus, who he had sat next to, grinning.

“They dance,” Frank continued without reacting to Sirius at all. “On their hind legs and all. They leave these very intricate patterns in the fields - drives muggles mad, they do. You’ve heard of crop circles, yeah? Those funny things Muggles insist are alien lifeforms communicating with mankind?” Frank guffawed, “If only they knew it was great big magical cows that were making them!”

Remus laughed, too, “Wow,” he said, “They sound brilliant. You got to see one?”

“Oh yes, Professor Kettleburn said they’re rather common. He brought us out on a field trip this week to the other side of Hogsmeade, the whole class. We got to have dinner at the Three Broomsticks and hear the Shrieking Shack.” He shivered, “It was making a real racket that night! And then he brought us out to the fields and we saw the mooncalves. It was smashing!”

Sirius and Peter exchanged glances at the mention of the Shrieking Shack and the racket it had made. “It sounds brilliant,” Sirius said, smirking, “Kettleburn’s class sounds like a right adventure.”

“Oh yes, he’s fearless when it comes to magical creatures,” Frank said. “I s’pose that’s why he’s missing so many of his fingers, though.”

James was busy staring down at the plate of food that had appeared in front of him upon sitting, his stomach in absolute knots. He didn’t even seem to be hearing the conversation as Frank went on excitedly, telling them about the other fantastic creatures that Professor Kettleburn had been teaching them. James picked at his sausages half heartedly.

If James was nervous, then Derek Bell was a real wreck. Frank was just telling them about the clabbert that Kettleburn had shown them earlier in the year when Bilius and Alex came in, dragging Derek along as Derek muttered frantically, staring down at a checklist in his palm, his hair tufting out in several directions.

“Here, mate, sit here and eat something,” Bilius said, shoving Derek down into his place at the table, “You’ve been harried all morning, take a break of it.”

“Yeah, put down the checklist,” said Alex, reading over and snatching the parchment from Derek’s hand, “You’ll be just fine, you’ve done everything.”

“Not everything,” Derek argued.

“You’ve got half the afternoon --” Alex started.

“And besides, it’s April first,” Bilius said, “And we haven’t even done a single prank yet! What a waste of a perfectly good holiday!”

Derek’s eyes looked up sharply. “Absolutely no pranks.” He looked down the table, “You lot hear me? No pranks. The Ilvermorny team’s going to be here soon and the last thing we need is them thinking we’re a bunch of lunatics for setting off Filibuster Fireworks and that sort of hooliganism.”

Bilius mimed having been shot with an arrow. “You wound me.”

“E tu, Bili,” said Alex, grinning.

Derek’s voice was solemn, “I’m serious.”

“No you aren’t; I am,” said Sirius.

Bilius leaped from his seat to give Sirius a high-five as the others all laughed uproariously at the joke - except Derek and James, who were both equally nervous looking. “This is a very important happening!” Derek was saying, “This tourney is the first time that Ilvermorny and Hogwarts have worked together and it’s absolutely imperative that everything go well!”

“Yes, we know, mate,” Bilius said as he returned to his seat, “Political hand shaking and all that lot. But blimey, Bell, it’s April Fools!”

Derek went to answer when a barrage of owls came hooting through the high windows of the Great Hall, delivering letters and newspapers and packages to the students at their tables and Derek pushed away the plate Bilius had set before him in all of the hub-bub that was going on. Bubo landed before James with a little note tied to his ankle in his mother’s handwriting. He detached it quickly and opened up the letter to find that his mum was writing to let him know his dad’s charges had been dropped by the ministry, of course. At least that was one worry off his chest, James thought.

After breakfast, they all went back to Gryffindor Tower to prepare - except for Derek, who had said he had things to do elsewhere. The Ilvermorny team was due to arrive a bit after lunch and the entire school was to go out onto the grounds to welcome them. James nervously tugged his Quidditch robes out of his trunk in the dormitory.

“What’re you getting those out for?” Peter asked.

“I’m going to wear them to greet Ilvermorny,” James said.

“Your quidditch robes?” Remus asked, “Why?”

“So they see I’m a player, too,” James said.

The afternoon seemed to disappear instantly and soon enough there was a knock at the boys’ dorm room door and Alex Tinnamin was shouting through that it was time to head out to the grounds. The whole of Gryffindor was nervous now, and Remus spotted Lily, her hair braided and wrapped about her head so that it framed her face nicely. The girls were all a twitter about her, talking about the Ilvermorny boys and whether they would look nicer than the boys at Hogwarts. Remus couldn’t get near to her to talk again so he stayed with James, Sirius and Peter as they took up the rear of the mass of Gryffindors that flooded out of the portrait hole. Bilius Weasley was in the lead, directing them all down the stairs. They merged with a body of Ravenclaws part way down and the two groups continued on through the castle.

“Do you think they took the train?” Sirius asked, intending for James or Remus to answer.

“A train? From the States? A train wouldn’t be able to get across the water! They had to have flown, of course,” said a Ravenclaw boy named Ji Chang.

“On brooms?” Peter squeaked, “All the way from America? Do you reckon they could’ve fallen off? Or seen a shark?”

“Of course not all the way on brooms,” Ji said.

“On an aeroplane?” suggested Remus. “Well that doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t the muggles question what the quidditch equipment was?” Ji didn’t seem to have an answer, so he melted into the crowd of Ravenclaws without replying. Remus shrugged.

They all poured out on to the grounds of Hogwarts, joining an excited throng of Slytherins and Hufflepuffs that were already outside. Dumbledore and several other faculty members were lined up at the foot of the stairs leading up to the entrance and Filch ran about between the students separating them so that Ravenclaw and Gryffindor stood to one side of the stairs and Slytherin and Hufflepuff stood opposite them, leaving a narrow space up into the castle for the visitors to walk through. Anticipation and excitement buzzed through the four groups of students, a cacophony of voices echoing off the castle.

Sirius elbowed James and pointed.

The Hogwarts team that Derek had assembled were standing down below with the faculty and Derek was behind them a few yards away, talking to Professor Blythe, who had one hand on his shoulder as she spoke. “Nice of her to calm him down,” Sirius said, “Merlin knows Derek’s about to go mental over all of this.”

“Yeah it is,” agreed James.

Once Filch had managed to separate out the houses, he ran down the stairs rolling out a long black carpet that had the Hogwarts crest in the very center and went all the way from the door to the foot of the stairs, where Dumbledore stood. When Filch reached the bottom, Dumbledore said something to him and then turned and looked to the sky.

All of the students followed suit with a great sound of shuffling feet. Sirius cupped a hand over his brow. The clouds moved silently over the castle, the blue sky bright and lovely, sunlight pouring down over the grounds, warm and pale yellow. A bird flew by.

“I can’t see,” complained Peter, whose short stature made it so he couldn’t really see over the person in front of him at the part of the sky they were all looking at.

“Nothing’s happening,” whispered Remus.

“I want to see,” Peter said.

“There’s still nothing happening,” James replied.

“This is bloody boring,” said Sirius, “Why’d they bring us out here so early if the ruddy Americans aren’t even here on time?”

Suddenly James’s hand flew forward, so eager to point that he managed to hit Remus right in the back of the head. “There!” he shouted, “There!”

Sirius looked where James was pointing and sure enough there was a black dot in the sky growing steadily larger…