Accio Evans

Chapter 1: Head Girl

An immense feeling of relief left Lily as she crossed the barrier to Platform 9 ¾; she felt better than she had all summer. The summer had been relatively monotonous, the days seemed to stretch out hours longer than normal and she spent virtually the entire holiday in relative isolation. Then there was The News, her older sister Petunia had announced her engagement to the Rhinoceros himself, Vernon Dursley. Lily had only met Vernon on two occasions and within five minutes on their first meeting she had made her judgement about him; her mother had always warned her not to judge a book by its cover, however with Vernon, what you saw was what you got, his depth of character was as shallow as the shallow end of the swimming pool. He was a gruff man with a thick neck and a rather large portly belly, accompanied by a bushy moustache. Lily honestly could not see what Petunia saw him; apart from the fact he seemed to have a reasonably large wallet, and he seemed to have no qualms of lavishing the contents of her sister. In addition to her already rising anxiety levels, her mother had announced that Lily would be a bridesmaid, Petunia hadn't seemed best pleased, Lily wasn't too joyful herself although at least she managed to hide it.

Pushing the thought of her sister to the back of her mind was easy as soon as the scarlet train and the smell of burning coal filled her nostrils. She was finally going home, back to Hogwarts.

Lily looked around for her friends and for a few seconds she felt dejected that she'd arrived before them and would have to wait alone for them to arrive, that was until she saw three pairs of hands waving manically and scurried over to where she spotted that her friends were stood near the back of the train by the entry doors.

"Lily I missed you!" Hestia Jones exclaimed, throwing her arms round her best friend's neck. Hestia Jones and Lily Evans had been best friends since they set eyes on each other on their very first train ride back in first year. The half-blood witch had eyes the colour of the sky on a clear day released her from her vice like grip as her eyes trailed from Lily's face to the shiny badge which hung on her pristine Hogwarts robes. "You got Head Girl! You never told me! How could you?!" Hestia dramatized throwing her arms out wildly.

"I wanted to keep it a surprise!" Lily explained, a huge grin breaking out onto her face; the badge had been her only saving grace this summer, it had arrived ten long days ago, along with her Hogwarts letter and a handwritten note from Dumbledore explaining that she need not visit the Prefect compartment on the train this year, as the Head Girl usually would, with no other explanation. The only rational thought that entered Lily's head on reading this was that Dumbledore had wanted to keep the identity of the Head Boy a secret, although Lily had no idea why anyone would want to do that...

"I still can't believe you didn't tell us!" Jessica Silvers mused. Jessica was easily the tallest of the group of four, standing at least half of head above Hestia who was the next tallest. Slim and lean, she was the perfect build for a Quidditch seeker, the position she held on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Her brown eyes seemed to sparkle at the sight of the badge; it was common knowledge that Jessica had wanted the Head Girl position; however she didn't seem too disappointed that Lily held the position instead of herself.

"I brought tissues and everything thinking we were going to have to console you at not getting the Head Girl badge!" Alice Prewitt added. "We knew it wasn't Jess, we thought it would be you, then when you didn't say you had it, we assumed it wasn't you either! We thought it would be that awful Samia Rain, you know the Ravenclaw prefect? The one with the really bad hair extensions and that false smile? Look how many I brought!" Alice added, pulling tissue after tissue from her pockets, soon the other three witches were holding handfuls of tissues as Alice, the only pureblood witch, stood grinning; she always did love muggle things, tissues included it seemed. Lily dropped her pile of tissues, as did Jessica and Hestia, who looked frankly disgusted at the pile that now filled the platform. Alice removed them with a flick of her wand and grabbed Lily's hand.