Lily Potter And The Hidden Room

Part Nine - Spring Break

"Happy Easter everyone!" Ginny cheers, crushing her family into a hug.

"Mu- I can't breathe!" James rasps, his cheek pressed into Lily's shoulder. Ginny gasps and releases her children from their death grip.

"I'm just so happy to see you all again!" Ginny squeals, despite having seen them less than a month ago.

The Potter family hop into a black taxi cab to take them home.

***

Lily breathes in the familiar scent of 12 Grimmauld Place. She recalls moving here in the summer last year, and the intense ordeal of redocorating. All of the rooms were dark and gloomy in the typical fashion of the Black family.

Harry had been reluctant to remove the family tree on the wall in one of the rooms, as it made him feel closer to Sirius. However, Ginny took a paintbrush to it while he was at work and painted the Potter-Weasely family tree over the top of it. Harry had no choice but to love it, and gradually came to accept that it was wrong to still linger over Sirius' death the way he had been doing.

Lily's bedroom is on the top floor, away from all the hubub and noise of her extraordinary family. With a sigh of relief to be somewhere safe again, Lily releases Muffet out of her cage and gives her a saucer of milk from the fridge. The ginger cat rubs against her leg in approval and tucks into her treat.

A large cardboard box has been abandonded on the floor of Lily's bedroom with all sorts poking out from the top. Intrigued by its appearance, Lily digs through it and discovers the stuff from her parents days at Hogwarts. Several quidditch trophies, multiple "yearbooks" made by Fred and George Weasely [AN: RIP], a Potions textbook and an old cloak are inside. Removing the precious memories, Lily sits down to look through them all.

Muffet - having finished her treat - flops lazily on her owners lap and purrs cheerfully. Lily picks up the textbook. The pages are torn and mouldy, with large ink splodges on the front cover. She opens it cautiously. The paper feels so fragile the book could fall apart any second. On the first page, it is written: Property of the Half-Blood Prince.

I wonder who that is? Lily thinks to herself. Continuing to skim through its contents, she discovers that almost every potion has some form of annotation on it; there are even alterations to the reciepe.

Unhappy with how it has been mistreated, Lily places the textbook away in the box and moves onto the next item. The moth eaten cloak smells like dust, and as she wraps it around herself Lily holds her breath.

She releases it when she discovers the secret behind the old cloth, that her whole torso is now invisible.

So this is the invisibility cloak her godparents always muse about! Lily tucks it away underneath her bed, after all it isn't stealing if she gives it back. She will merely borrow it and return it before it's missed, which, given the state of it, won't be any time soon.

Finally, Lily scoops Muffet off her lap and tickles the munchkin cat fondly behind her ears before heaving the collosal yearbook into her place.

Engraved into the leather cover reads: Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Gryffindor House. 1995.

The atmosphere in Lily's room has changed, taken on something much greater than before. She turns the pages, absorbing every enchanted photo and feasting on each hope and dream. Lily Potter recognises a few names from stories, Parvati Patil, Lavender Brown, Colin Creevey, and none other than her father. A smile breaks out on Lily's face as she reads his dream: To become a top Auror. And look at him now, in line for the place of Minister of Magic.

The mood is shattered as Lily turns the final page. A face - barely recogniseable, might I add - sends her heart into palpitations.

"Izabella Rodriguez, dreams to be remembered as a hero."

The picture shows a girl with a bright, smiling face and lush black hair. She is laughing. She is living.

What happened to turn you so evil?