Talk about the worst birthday you've had. {Not that Fen wants to know, but Nat is curious}
āThe worst birthday Iāve ever had,ā Lily repeated, as though hoping the soft spoken words could prompt some eloquent response from the recesses of her mind, before the thought weighted the edges of her mouth downward. Slender digits ran through her hair as an exhale pushed past partially parted lips, sinking further into the couch she sat on while the memory assaulted her senses as clear as though she were viewing it through a pensive.
As the chilling, near suffocating, embrace of January loosened into the soft grasp of Spring, it brought with it promises of new beginnings, of brighter days and better things. It was a time when students and teachers alike were forced to pull back the safety curtain that theyād put up in September and were forced to face the inevitable of exams and, for fifth and seventh years, the fact that these exams could potentially decide which path they paved for themselves in terms of their career. Among those things, the end of Winter - this year - brought with it Lily Evans seventeenth birthday which was marked by the sounds of the girl in question emptying the contents of her stomach in a bathroom on the seventh floor. Lily having woken not an hour before to a small pile of presents at the foot of her bed, the familiar slanted hand-writing on a card from her ex-best friend causing her already queasy stomach to lurch, getting up and finding the girls bathroom in the dormitory occupied left the future head girl running down the seventh floor corridor before she could blow chunks all across the hall.Ā
⦠at least her future was brighter than the toilet bowl she found herself hunched over.
The second hand of her watched ticked in the ear that was rested against it before the copper haired woman noticed that the headache thrumming against her temples pounded in the same rhythm. A groan clawed itās way from her throat once sheād realised the beat had been interrupted by hesitant digits rapping against the wood of the stall door. āLily?ā Brows drew together as she tried to cut through the din inside her head and place the voice that had called out to her. āYour friends are worried about you,ā her lack of foresight in locking the door was cursed when it was pushed open tentatively, the startling blue eyes of Alyssa McKinnon peered around at her once the gap had been made big enough, Lily noting the concern that filled the sapphire orbs and realised she must have looked pretty pathetic sitting on the floor in her fluffy bathrobe and quidditch pyjamas (she didnāt even like quidditch that much). A moment of hesitance was given between the fifth year prefect offering her hand and Lily clutching it in her own, shameslessly relying on the other woman to help her up and found herself being guided to the hospital wing, managing a weak thank you before Madam Pompfey took it upon herself to fuss over the muggleborn witch.Ā
Severe food poisoning. If food would betray her, what else did she have left?Ā
Long after the sun had settled over the horizon, Lily still sat upright in her bed, the letter that a persistent owl had just brought to her illuminated only by the dim off-yellow lamp light of the hospital wing. Each movement the copper haired female made was laced with an underlying hesitance: the slip of her figure under the seal, the grip two fingers had on the thin slip of paper while pulling it from the envelope and the flick of Ā a digit that revealed the familiar slanted writing of her sister to apprehensive green eyes. Lily, I am only writing to you because mum and dad say that I am under some sort of obligation considering itās your birthday. I hope you are well. You should probably know that Vernon and I are getting married, it will be in Summer of next year though we have collectively decided that we donāt want someone like you there. - Petunia.ā Blinking rapidly as she read over the deliberately short, impersonal, letter, she ran her tongue across her teeth, willing herself not to shed tears as memories surfaced - as they always did - about every time Petunia had called her a freak. A hand swiped under her nose, mumbling aboutĀ āstupid potionsā (knowing they werenāt really to blame), reaching over to take a sheaf of parchment from between the pages of her potions book and writingĀ āPetunia, I wouldnāt miss it for the world - Lā but abandoning the pursuit of pondering the appropriate levels of sarcasm for a letter as she leaned over, emptying the contents of her stomach, though it was mainly bile, into the bucket beside her bed.
ā⦠I was ill on my 17th birthday, which isnāt my favourite way to celebrate anything if Iām honest.āĀ Lily shrugged, the rise and fall of her shoulders, too quick to be casual, connoting that there was something that she was omitting but not seeming like she would elaborate further.











