Chapter 12: A Night With Friends
Harry sat uncomfortably on his chair, trying with all his might to Apparate back to Gryffindor tower, though he had no idea how to do it. He had once managed to magic himself to the roof of his school when Dudley and his gang were chasing him, so why couldn't he muster the power necessary to escape now? Never mind that Apparition was impossible inside school grounds; surely if one was desperate enough, the barrier preventing it would come down.
It wasn't that the chair was uncomfortable, far from it; it was well-padded and the back seemed to mould itself to Harry's as if it knew the precise curvature of his spine. As chairs went, it was far comfier than the hard, worn wooden benches of the Great Hall.
The chair was not the issue. It was the room in which the chair was placed and the company sitting on the surrounding chairs.
The chair and Harry were in Professor Horace Slughorn's private quarters among witches and wizards from almost every house and year. They were names and faces that he knew well from reading his schoolbooks or the Daily Prophet. Nearly every one of them would grow up to be a person of some note in the wizarding world, though not all for good reasons. Ron would have died to be in the same room as Dougherty Hornbuckle, currently a seventh year Hufflepuff, and later Seeker for the Chudley Cannons from 1980 to 1987. Next to Dougherty was a Ravenclaw Harry remembered seeing in the paper over the summer, she had been arrested for killing a Muggle and announcing her support of Voldemort; a later article claimed she had been under the influence of the Imperius Curse, but it still chilled Harry to be sitting across a table from her.
And then there was the particularly handsome Ravenclaw sitting at Slughorn's right hand. The boy was smiling widely at his placement, offering a hearty and false chuckle every time Slughorn boomed out a belly-shaking laugh.
"Gilderoy, my boy," Slughorn said and turned his attention to the boy beside him, "do tell us what you've been up to all summer."
Gilderoy Lockhart smiled, his teeth as impressive and white as Harry remembered them. "Well, professor," Gilderoy began, "I've been reading up on my Charms."
"Your best subject," Slughorn commented fondly.
"I do try at Potions, sir," the boy insisted, "but I've just a knack for Charms. And it's a good thing I was studying my advanced Charms, too..."
As the boy began a long-winded story in which he, naturally, featured as the hero, Harry wondered if any part of the tale was true or if his tendency toward theft and deceit was already a part of his character. Young Gilderoy looked to be in his fourth year, hardly old enough to be playing around with advanced charms during the holidays. He was still bound by the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underaged Sorcery, too, and would have been in serious trouble if he had managed a charm as impressive as he was currently describing.
"—and then I raised my wand and uttered the counter-charm," Gilderoy paused dramatically and looked around the table to make sure everyone was as impressed by his story as he thought they should be, "and my friends all applauded as I gently lowered the girl back to the Earth."
"Quite astounding," Slughorn agreed and patted him on the back. "Lucky you were there."
"Yes," Gilderoy said as he ran a hand through his thick hair. "That's what they told me."
Harry covered his mouth with his hand so no one would hear the snort escaping. He had somehow maintained a straight face as Lockhart spoke, but the pompous declaration at the end was too much. His ribs ached from trying to hold the laughter in; they ached even more when his neighbour elbowed him sharply.
"Behave, Harry," the girl chided.
He looked over and saw Lily Evans glaring at him. It was strange looking into eyes identical to his own. Sure, he saw the green, almond-shaped eyes often, but that was in a mirror, looking out from his own face. Those eyes should be surrounded by thin metal frames and topped with black eyebrows. They were not meant to be unprotected beneath a dark red fringe.
It took a monumental effort, but he managed to look away from Lily's eyes long enough to notice that she was fighting a disbelieving smile, too. She was having far more success than Harry was.
"How can you keep a straight face?" he asked her quietly, pretending to lean over to look for a dropped napkin.
"Two years of practice," she muttered. "You'll get better at it."
"Let's hope I don't have to," he replied and sat up straight. Gilderoy was still talking, which didn't surprise Harry in the slightest; he always was a glory-hound. Lockhart as a grown man would fight perfect tooth and manicured nail to get his face on the front page of the Daily Prophet. Harry really didn't care except that Lockhart had been fond of trying to drag him along, too.
His ribs got another sharp jab. Blinking, he realised that nearly the entire table was looking his way.
"Wouldn't you agree, Harry?" Gilderoy said with a winning smile.
'Just can't leave me alone, can you?' Harry snarled internally. He managed a noncommittal smile and nodded. "Yeah," he said. It was all Gilderoy needed to keep going.
"Just as I was telling you," the boy proclaimed. The other diners clapped their hands politely or nodded approvingly.
"Do you even know what you just agreed to?" Lily asked, a smile pulling at her mouth.
"No… what did he say?"
The girl shook her head at Harry's foolishness, her face set with seriousness. "He said that pansies are the greatest flowers and that a real man would happily wear them in his hair. He's planning on making this Monday official pansy-lovers day," she informed him. "You agreed to champion the day for Gryffindor."
Harry felt his stomach turn and the blood leave his face. Had he really agreed to something so stupid? "You're joking. Please tell me you're joking."
Lily just shook her head again and turned her attention back to the table and the conversation, which had somehow managed to escape Gilderoy's grip. Slughorn was talking to a Gryffindor who looked rather like a third year Slytherin from Harry's proper time; he couldn't remember the boy's name, but he had the same long nose and deep-set eyes. He found it hard to believe that any Gryffindor family could create a Slytherin child, but Sirius was a lone Lion in a long line of Snakes. So clearly it was possible.
For the first time, Harry wondered if there had ever been a Slytherin in his family. He had only really thought about his immediate family, his mum and dad, both of whom were in Gryffindor. Lily was Muggle-born, the first Gryffindor the Evans family had ever created, so her lineage was not up for much debate. James, however, was from a pureblood line of witches and wizards going back to the founding of Hogwarts or even earlier. Was there ever a time when they were Slytherins?
Consumed as he was by these new thoughts, he didn't need Lily to further bruise his ribs to see that Slughorn was standing and beginning to wish them a good night. Harry rose with the others, taking the professor's hand when it was offered and shaking it as the man spoke pleasantries Harry was not particularly interested in hearing.
He escaped into the hall outside Slughorn's private quarters in the dungeons of the castle, carefully avoiding Gilderoy Lockhart. The Slytherins moved off to their dungeon-level common room, and the pleasant chatter continued among the remaining students as they walked up the stairs. Harry stuck close to Lily, not wanting to get pulled into a conversation with Gilderoy Lockhart about Pansy Day or whatever nonsense he might be on about.
"I don't know what you're so worried about," Lily commented. "You'll look great with flowers in your hair. Especially purple ones; they'll contrast nicely with your eyes."
"Stop talking," Harry grumbled, not daring to look at her. He knew she would be fighting laughter and couldn't bear to think of his mother making fun of him.
"You can't take a joke," she muttered as she shook her head.
His head snapped up and he was staring in open-mouthed confusion at her. "Joke?"
Lily could only laugh at the look on his face.
"That is not funny."
"Yeah, it is," she disagreed and laughed up three flights of stairs, Harry glowering along behind her, red-faced and thoroughly annoyed.
His indignation grew with each step but he managed to push out a sentence to end her laughter, "And you yell at James for playing tricks on people."
The girl's smile dropped off her face. "That is totally different," replied the girl stonily.
Harry just pushed past her and marched himself down the vacant hallway. As he neared the stairs that would take him up to the Gryffindor tower, he stumbled. His feet refused to move off the stone floor. "Peeves!" the boy shouted. This was so not the time for that irritating poltergeist to be playing tricks on him.
"I think you mean 'Evans'," Lily said as she walked up behind him and shoved him rudely. Harry had to flail his arms to keep from falling. The girl, for all the damage she was causing to his ego, simply sat herself down on the stairs and waited for him to right himself.
"What the hell?" Harry demanded as soon as he was certain he wouldn't fall forward onto the stairs and break his face.
"You need to listen, and if sticking your feet to the floor is the only way to make that happen…" she sighed and twirled her wand in her slender fingers.
"Aren't you a prefect?" he questioned. The majority of prefects Harry had known would never have done something like this – Ron and Malfoy excluded. He had never thought his mum would be the sort to use her magic and position against someone. Since he knew so little about her, he had filled in her personality with the only other person he knew that was anything like her, imagining her as something of a Hermione. They were both Muggle-borns, Gryffindors, prefects. Surely, the love of rules and setting of a good example came as standard with all that. How wrong he had been.
"Deal with it, Granger," she spat, glaring at him. She stood abruptly, and poked at his chest. "I am nothing like Potter. He hurts people for a laugh."
"And what did you just do to me?"
"Taught you a lesson about keeping your ears open," she insisted.
"Bollocks! You were loving seeing me squirm," Harry matched her glare.
The girl clenched her fists at her sides, clearly fighting with herself to keep from slapping him. "It would have served you right to agree to something as stupid as that. You've no idea what idiot plans Gilderoy comes up with!"
"Believe me, I do," he replied in a dark mutter.
"You don't! He landed three girls in hospital last term because they agreed to some stupid scheme of his," she informed him. "They were out of school for a month while he came out of it smelling like—"
"A pansy?" Harry interjected.
The snort came out of her before she could stop it. "That is not funny. I am trying to help you."
"This," he pointed to his feet, "is not the sort of help I need."
"Well apparently it is," she poked him again. "You're the git stupid enough to agree whatever Gilderoy said. Where was your brain, Harry?"
So that's what his mum thought of him.
Ever since learning that his parents were not useless, unemployed drunks as his uncle had always claimed, Harry had lived with the hope that they would be proud of him, impressed by his accomplishments and skill as a wizard. He had been as wrong about that as he had been about Lily being like Hermione.
Not caring that his feet were stuck to the stones, he let his knees buckle and crumpled into a heap on the floor. "Just leave me alone," he told her in a hollow voice.
"Harry," the girl said cautiously and put a hand on his shoulder. He didn't bother slapping it away, just shrugged half-heartedly to get her to remove it. She sat down beside him. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
"Clearly that isn't true," she insisted. "I'm not sorry for playing a trick on you, Harry. You need to pay attention to that idiot."
"I don't care about him. I know he's a dangerous moron," Harry replied in a dull tone. He wished she would just go away, but, for all her dissimilarities to Hermione, Lily was equally as persistent.
"Then what is it?" she demanded, her voice somehow both soft and hard at the same time. He knew he would have heard that tone often as a child, whenever he had accidentally broken something or turned her favourite jumper blue. Even though he didn't want to, he found himself responding honestly.
"You think I'm stupid."
"What?"
"You heard me," he said, burying his head in his hands.
Her arm was around him, but he felt no comfort from it. "Harry, believe me, you wouldn't be the first person to be duped by Gilderoy. I don't think you're stupid," she said softly. "You're just new and uninformed."
"That wasn't what you said a minute ago."
"Again, you're new and uninformed," she said with a slight laugh. It forced Harry to look up at her; surely she didn't think laughing at him was a good course of action at that precise moment.
The boy watched in confusion as Lily stood, muttered a spell and waved her wand at his feet before offering her hand to him. Tentatively, he shifted his feet and found them free from her sticking charm. He ignored her hand, standing on his own. The girl refused to be deterred; her hand remained out to him as he tried to walk past her.
"What is this? An apology?" he asked.
"An introduction," she corrected and held her hand out more insistently. He had no choice but to take it. "Pleased to meet you, Harry. My name is Lily Evans. I have a bad temper and it sometimes gets away from both me and my mouth. Anything said while I'm angry or annoyed should be ignored entirely."
"Nice to meet you…" he replied cautiously.
"You are no longer uninformed," she said. "Now, do tell me the worst thing about yourself so that I won't be caught unaware in the future."
He laughed. He couldn't help it. The worst thing about her was also the worst thing about himself. "The same, I guess," he said quietly.
"It must come with the green eyes," she commented.
"Yeah," Harry agreed. "It must have." He had, after all, gotten his eyes from his mum. Apparently, he had also inherited her temper and her tendency to shout things that he later regretted.