I'll Take it Shaken, Not Stirred

Chapter 1: Somewhere Between Fairytales (a.k.a. The Boy in the Fire)

" ...Life is much more successfully looked at through a single-window..." 

-The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Once upon a time, in a land not far away, in a time not long ago, there was a perfectly normal house, on a perfectly normal street, in a perfectly normal town, in a perfectly normal country. Or so it would seem.

In said house, lived a family. It was not a large family, and it was not a large house, but it wasn't a small house either. There were four bedrooms, two baths, a smallish kitchen, a small basement, and a smaller attic. It was a tidy house, with nothing about it or its inhabitants that would imply to the naked eye that anything extraordinary (by the standards of the neighbors) would ever happen there. It wasn't the type of house to be involved in a fairytale at all, or so it would seem.

In this house, lived the Evans family.

Mr. Benedict Evans was a writer for the newspaper, and he did most of his work in the spare bedroom, which doubled as his office. He was a tall, handsome man in his early forties, and had (for what very little it may be worth) played a mean football game when he was younger. But that was long past.

Mrs. Anna Evans was a kindergarten teacher, and she also worked at home in what she described as a job ten times more difficult than her husband's. She took care of her youngest daughter. Mrs. Evans was tall and slim, and moved with an enviable grace and refinement. Mrs. Evans was, for lack of a better description, beautiful.

Petunia Evans was the oldest girl, but she no longer lived in the un-extraordinary Evans house. When she turned twenty-one, she moved away to a flat in Surrey. Petunia had the build of her mother, but not the grace. Her hair was short and ash-blonde, and her eyes were steely grayish blue.

And that left Lily.

Lily Evans still lived at the Evans house, but only for the portion of the year when she was not away at boarding school. Lily too had the build of her mother without the perfect posture and movement (though hers were hardly lackluster). Her hair was a bright ginger color, but she didn't know whose "fault" that was. Her mother's strawberry blonde (more blonde than strawberry) hair was the closest thing to it that she knew of. Lily's eyes were the features she liked best about herself, however. They were large, almond shaped, and a bright jade green, similar to Mrs. Evans's. Of all the Evanses, Lily was the oddest.

In addition to being the sole real redhead in her immediate family, Lily was a witch. Nine months out of the year Lily spent at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Lily did not think of her life as a fairytale, nor her house as a palace, nor her boyfriend as a knight in shining armor, not herself as a damsel in distress. And perhaps, on some accounts, she was right. But that depended on one's definition of the "fairy" in the fairytale.

On the particular morning where this story begins, seventeen-year-old Lily was preparing to return to Hogwarts. It was September the first at last.

True to man's fallen nature, Lily had waited till the morning of departure to pack. It was seven o'clock, with three hours until she had to leave for Kings Cross. She was in her bedroom, bending over the large black trunk that lay on her bed, as she folding clothes neatly inside.

Lily's bedroom was very "eleven-year-old girl," but it was a very good "eleven-year-old girl." The walls were a reddish sunset color, and there were at least four lava lamps in various spots around the room. The doors to the outer hallway and to the closet were beaded, as well as the window "curtains." The last time Lily had had this room redecorated had been, of course, when she was eleven, just before she got her letter of acceptance to Hogwarts. Her first ever Hogwarts letter.