PROLOGUE: A Bad Start to an Impossible Day

7:15 am. Day One Hundred and Twenty-Six of official unemployment. Current mood: sleepy.

Lily needed coffee. In the Muggle world, finding a double-strength skim mocha cappuccino at this hour would be as easy as walking to the coffee shop around the corner. She would have been able to pick up some nice pastry breakfast, perhaps a croissant, before heading off to whatever Muggle job she would do. This would take much longer to do because she wouldn't be able to apparate. Then, arriving at her workplace, she would survive the day, before coming home exhausted, sit down in front of the television and watch a soap opera. But this was the magical world; so the same bizarre reasoning that explained why her apartment - a spacious two-storey complex that should be, by all the Muggle laws of physics, the size of a broom closet – was so big, finding a shop that sold Muggle foods such as a double-strength skim mocha cappuccino was impossible.

In this magical world, or more appropriately, this magical part of the world, she had neither a job nor a double-strength skim mocha cappuccino to look forward to. No, in the magical world, it didn't matter that she was top of her year at Hogwarts. It didn't matter that she got all "Outstanding" in her N.E.W.T.s, or that she was Head Girl with consistently brilliant recommendations from her professors. No, in the magical world's public relations sector, she was the last person that would be hired. No contacts, no connections, no experience, no double-strength skim mocha cappuccino. She was going nowhere.

Lily buried her face underneath her bedclothes. It was the end of blazing August, the summer after her graduation; a voice inside her was scolding her for not partying the nights away and enjoying the three-month-long excuse not to work, as the majority of her peers certainly were. She'd wasted it complaining about how no PR agency would hire her. Soon, fifteen minutes turned into an hour, one hour into two. Her enchanted alarm clock promptly told her off for sleeping in when she asked for the time a few hours later. What did it matter? She had nowhere she had to be. Finally succumbing to that inner voice yelling at her to do something productive, Lily rolled out of bed, rubbing her eyes and muttering obscenities about the public relations sector's bosses while she stumbled to the kitchen.

The kitchen was small compared to the rest of the apartment, very different to what Lily expected hers to look like when she was younger. Instead of Muggle 'life-made-easier' appliances lining the benches, there was a large sink with a dirty cauldron inside it and several bottles of peculiar-looking ingredients scattered across them. The curtains covering the window above the sink were a strange shape with large portions clipped upwards rather than down, so as to not catch fire from potion experiments again. A fire-engine red fridge stood next to the bench – the only remnant from Lily's pre-magical childhood daydreams that made it to reality – and it was empty, as she suspected. She had procrastinated going shopping for quite a few days already. Perhaps it would be worth it to trek into Muggleland and buy a double-strength skim mocha cappuccino.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter.

Criticism is accepted and appreciated. Please, please review.

I do promise that chapters will be much longer than this, it really does pain me to write something so short, but it had to be done.

See you next time,

-xSymnia