A/N: To be quite frank, I had no intention of getting back into multi-chaptered fics (they are bloody tiresome and I usually lose interest in them pretty quickly) but I was reading Bridget Jones's Diary recently and I couldn't help it: I had to write a fic in that quirky diary style.
I've tried writing diaries before – and it totally didn't work because I was thirteen and very stupid – but now I'm almost sixteen and I think I can actually handle it.
Enjoy, and please do review! I'm a tad inexperienced with this style…
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This is the personal journal of Lily Evans, Gryffindor, Year 7
Please return to her if found. Thank you!
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September 1
9:00 AM
Status: Harangued
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Argh, bollocks. I can't find my lucky socks anywhere.
I could've sworn I put them in the laundry basket when Mum came around and hollered at me to wash my clothes (again) but she insisted they weren't in the wash and now they're nowhere to be found.
Fuck.
I cannot leave home without these socks. That much is for certain – I will not leave home without these socks. Alice finds me bloody ridiculous, because she maintains you don't need superstition in a world where you can do real magic, but I am a Muggleborn and want to cling to my childhood notions, thank you very much.
Those socks truly are my lucky socks – I have had them since I was twelve and they have yet to fail me – and I can't go to Hogwarts for my seventh year without them.
This isn't good.
I hear Mum yelling at me to finish the bloody packing so we can leave. Her yelling makes George, my owl, flap his wings noisily. He and I are similar that way – neither of us enjoy the attractive sounds of Mum getting annoyed early in the morning. But she's right – we have to go to the station now. Mum won't let me Floo over to Alice and go with her because she insists on taking me herself (i.e. driving) as some sort of unstated mother-and-daughter bonding law. And we have a really long commute time I can't figure out how to reduce.
Sometimes, I really wonder how we ever got on without magic…
TO-DO LIST:
Find toothbrush.
Remember my Charms book this time.
Check laundry again for socks.
Leave Petunia a note to remind her about the casserole I made for Mum, not her glutton boyfriend Vernon.
Remember to feed George before we leave.
Get out of here before Mum murders me.
10:30 AM
Status: Idle
We are in the car frantically going to the last highway that separates me from King's Cross Station. George keeps hooting from the back-seat, annoyed that the journey is so bumpy and full of jerky stops (Mum isn't known for her driving skills). It is a miracle I haven't missed my train yet.
Found my lucky socks, by the way – they were on my feet. I had forgotten that, in a fit of responsibility and pride-inspiring self-awareness, I had worn them so I wouldn't waste twenty minutes looking for them in the morning.
Wow. I surprise myself sometimes.
11:05 AM
Status: Stabilizing
I'm on the train now, thank Merlin. Found Head's compartment with ease, mostly – although I almost hit a couple of first-years trying to haul my trunk up the train steps. I didn't see Alice yet, but I'll join her a bit later. McGonagall says once I'm done meeting the Head Boy and talking with him, I can go back to the regular compartment.
I'm nervous, to be honest. I've wanted to be Head Girl forever, because Mum was a Head Girl at her school and naturally expected me to follow in her footsteps; but at the same time, I'm so bloody forgetful sometimes.
Normally, I'm a good girl. Truly, I am. I'm a notorious procrastinator, but the work is always done when it's needed, neat and clean and mostly correct. All the bitching and whining I do is kept safely behind the scenes, to Alice late at night. That's why everyone thinks I'm responsible and that's probably why I got this job.
But they don't know my ways and the Head Boy certainly won't. I hope he's a good sort of bloke that can forgive a few missteps. Or a million.
I hear someone coming. The Head Boy maybe? I'm hoping it's Remus Lupin. He's exactly the good sort of bloke that can forgive my missteps. And he's way more responsible than I am. Please let it be Lupin…please let it be Lupin…
11:07 AM
Status: Horrified out of my mind
HOLY MERLIN'S FAVORITE SALAMI SANDWICH! JAMES BLOODY POTTER IS THE HEAD BOY!!!
Buggerbuggerbuggerbuggerbuggerbuggerbugger.
I'm sorry, that simply had to come out of my system right about now or we would have had globs of Lily-Evans's-insides all over the train. But honestly! Bugger!
I am in the bathroom right now. The moment he stepped into the compartment, taller and a little tanner than last year, my jaw just about fell to the floor.
"Evans, are you all right?" he had asked me with this look of concern all over his bloody face.
Didn't he have the brain capacity to realize I was not bloody all right?!
I cannot believe this. I truly can't. How can James Potter be the Head Boy over Lupin? Lupin is…Lupin! He's bloody perfect! And he has manners! And he doesn't challenge Black to burping competitions over breakfast! This can't be happening. This really can't be happening. I must be in some kind of alternate dimension.
Pinched myself three times.
Nope, I'm still here. And now I'm in pain.
Buggerbuggerbugger.
What am I supposed to do now?!
11:25 AM
Status: Worried
I have hidden in here for almost twenty minutes now. I think I have to go back or I'll have to invent some kind of rare, unheard-of bladder disorder to explain why I had to be in the bathroom for twenty bloody minutes.
Bugger. My life is officially over.
12:13 AM
Status: Confused
I went back to Potter in the Head's compartment after I last wrote. As expected, he asked if I'd fallen ill because I'd been gone so long. I told him I had eaten bad shrimp last night at a farewell-to-Hogwarts dinner, so I'd been springing up to go to the bathroom every seventeen minutes for long periods of time.
It wasn't a complete lie. Only the last part was. In reality, I actually had eaten some bad shrimp at a farewell-to-Hogwarts party Mum had thrown in the backyard last night. I had been quite sick for a couple of hours afterward, but now I was all right. But he didn't have to know that.
He kind of nodded at me, as though he knew I was lying but had no choice but to believe me. Eh, well. Close enough.
"So…you're the Head Boy?" I eventually had to ask him in order to break the awkward silence.
"Yeah," said Potter. "Sirius was over when I got my letter and neither of us could believe it. My Mum thought Dumbledore was off his rocker."
"Really? How interesting," I said in a falsely cheery voice.
Potter chuckled, more to himself than to me. "Yeah…interesting is a good word for the reaction of everyone I knew afterwards," he said. "Everyone's been on my case about it ever since. Sirius laughs every time he sees my face."
"Do you…want to be Head Boy?" I asked him.
"It's not my first choice of duty, since I'm also incidentally Quidditch captain, but I figured I'd have a responsible Head Girl to help me through it," he said. "And luckily for me, I do."
Oh hell. Here we go again with the whole responsibility thing. At least he'd fix his facts in the next few weeks when he discovered reality…
"Wow," I said. "So…we have to talk about stuff, don't we?"
"Yeah, we do," said Potter. "Let's talk about it."
And so we started talking about stuff – how we're going to handle this Head thing, a rough idea of what's going to be going on this year. Very formal, very important conversations. I felt like a bloody business executive or something. Potter was light, but clearly, he knew this was a serious matter and he treated it as such.
We didn't ask about each other's summers or anything. We just talked about stuff. He has a lot of opinions about stuff, that James Potter. The only way I got him to stop talking was to tell him the lunch cart would be coming soon and I wanted to find Alice. This reminded him to find his own friends and we set off out of the Head's compartment to the main compartment.
Socialization over. Done. Completed. Terminated. I am safe to flee the scene.
New mission: I need to find Alice and tell her everything.
12:56 PM
Status: Annoyed
Never mind. Scratch that last. I regret finding Alice at all.
The moment I arrived into her compartment with Olivia Harris, I captured their attention and informed them of my plight – James Potter as my fellow Head.
And what did they do?
They started bloody laughing at me.
"Oh, Lils, you poor, poor thing," said Alice, her coffee-brown eyes weeping with laughter as she pulled me towards her into a hug. "Only you, darling. You have the most rotten luck of anyone I've ever known."
"Merlin, Lily, I'm sorry," said Olivia, making her sympathy-croon-that-sounds-like-George-when-he's-doing-his-business. "Oh dear…what are we going to do about this?"
My friends are two polar opposites sometimes, I swear it.
Alice: Loud, blunt, wise, and sometimes insane.
Olivia: Mild, eloquent, sympathetic, and always the good girl.
Sometimes, it's tough for me to figure out who I want to listen to; so today, I chose Olivia, because she is, after all, sympathetic.
"Thank you, Livvy," I said, wrapping my arms around her and resting my cheek on her shoulder. "You're such a doll. See, Alice, this is the kind of friend I need you to be for me."
Alice rolled her eyes, but immediately demanded more details on my conversation with Potter. However, when a person like Alice demands details, she has very specific requirements – she wants to know how our "romance" is coming along. And on that front, I had absolutely nothing to tell her. This frustrated her – a lot.
"Merlin, Lily Evans, what am I supposed to do with you?" she asked me, thumping me on the side of my head.
"How about not hitting me?" I suggested. "I kind of need the big pink thing protected by the bone you just tried to smash, thanks."
Alice ignored that. "No, honestly, you are the most hopeless individual I've had the displeasure of being stuck with," she complained. "You are the Head Girl and he is the Head Boy. This is the perfect time for you to make a move on him!"
I groaned.
See, in second year, I was a bit of an idiot. All girls at the age of twelve are – they have no idea what they want in life. But in second year, I made the mistake of confiding to Alice that had a little crush on James Potter, that nerdy-but-cool kid who seemed to do everything wrong but still do it right.
Alice, being Alice-like even then, encouraged me to make a move on him, tell him how I felt…
…until third year, when he began to flirt like an outrageous git and my infinitesimal feelings for him withered down to nothing.
But here's the kicker – Alice still convinces me to go for him because now I have "secret feelings" for him.
All I have to say to that is, if they're being kept a secret, the vault is pretty damn good, because I don't know I have them either.
Ah, well. I settle down in my seat next to Livvy, braiding her straight mahogany hair (that I so wish I had instead of my unruly carrot-mop) as Alice goes off into another you-love-James-Potter-and-need-to-get-over-your-stubborn-and-irrational-nature rant.
This isn't anything new anymore. I happily tune her out until the lunch cart arrives.
1:27 PM
Status: Bloated
I have eaten so much, I don't know why I have exploded yet. Alice and Olivia weren't stupid enough to stuff their faces like me because they weren't stupid enough to skip breakfast and give their body something to complain loudly about, like mine.
Note to self: Stop eating so much. You will be rolling around the corridors of Hogwarts if you are not careful.
8:16 PM
Status: Irked
I am going to bloody murder Alice and Olivia.
We got off the train – as we were supposed to – and approached the carriages – also as we were supposed to.
However, due to a twist of bad luck that can only come to me, James Potter somehow found me and began walking in my direction. And I couldn't pretend I hadn't seen him because I had and he managed to catch my eye. Oh Merlin.
The moment he came over, Alice got on that big grin of hers that means trouble and said in an overly-bright-and-cheery voice, "Why, hello, Potter! How nice to see you! How was your summer?"
"Fine, thank you," Potter said politely to Alice. "And how was yours?"
"Brilliant," said Alice.
"Hi, James." Olivia smiled politely and shook his hand.
Olivia is compulsively polite and does things like that – plus, she dated Potter for a while in fourth year (shudder) and is therefore on first-name basis with him. For some reason, they are still casual friends, despite the rather nasty break-up that ensued in fifth year.
"Hi, Olivia," said Potter just as politely to Olivia. "Had a good summer?"
"Yes, fine, thanks," said Livvy.
"Great – it's good to see you both," said Potter. "Evans and I already said hello on the train."
"That we did," I confirmed, mostly because I was nervous as hell and still jittery from the Liquorish wands I'd had on the train.
Damn those Liquorish wands. They always made me so hyper.
"Right…" Thankfully, Potter had picked up the vital skill of recognizing awkward silences and leaving them with a smoothly-laid excuse. He did that then. "So…I'm going to go find a carriage, all right? I'll see you lot at the feast."
"Hey, hey, we're coming too," said Alice. "I don't intend to walk up to the castle, for Merlin's sake."
Oh, Alice. She makes me scared sometimes. She has no idea when to quit – and obviously, she's trying to make an opening for me to get into a carriage with Potter and ride off into the sunset with him or something.
Well, she's an idiot. I remember thinking, I won't get into a carriage with him. I won't I won't I won't –
"Oh, hey, there's a carriage there!" exclaimed Alice, pointing at a carriage nearby. "And it's only got room for two people! Lils, why don't you go with Potter in that one and Olivia and I will come up in another one?"
"Erm…all right," said Potter. "C'mon then, Evans."
I shot Alice the Look of Death, but she cheerfully waved good-bye at me, enjoying the sight of me having to go with Potter to the carriage, which already contained a couple of fourth years. We sat up in the carriage and we were silent as the girls jabbered on about their holidays. What a fun ride that was.
I'm in the Great Hall now, waiting for Alice and Livvy to turn up. I now have one of those gold steak-knives in my hand and I am not afraid to use it. There are so many people here, no one will suspect a thing.
9:14 PM
Status: Bored
Oh, first years…hurry up and be sorted please. You are such nuisances sometimes. Despite my gluttony on the train, I am hungry once again. I will never be able to wear a bikini ever again.
Hey. Samantha Ackerman is now a Gryffindor. The first kid has been sorted.
One down, three hundred million to go.
I swear, we get more and more first years every time I sit through this ceremony. Our group of them couldn't have been this big. Could it?
10:30 PM
Status: Exhausted
Have eaten until bursting point. Skirt feeling tight. Hair is oily. Body is sluggish, weak, like a four-hundred-year-old woman. Need lucky socks to will my intestines to digest this and keep me from retaining this monstrous weight.
Found Head dorm fairly easily. Potter's room just down the hall connecting them. Didn't see him come in. Thank Merlin for small miracles…
Will write again tomorrow when in a more coherent state.
'Night.
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A/N: So…thoughts? Reactions? Likes? Dislikes? Warnings? Whatever it is that's floating through your mind right this second, put it in that review box and let me know if this is a project worth pursuing.
Thanks, guys!