Greeting one another with glad cries after a summer apart.

“ – you think I want to be a – a freak?”

Lily’s eyes filled with tears as Petunia succeeded in tugging her hand away.

“I’m not a freak,” said Lily. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

“That’s where you’re going,” said Petunia with relish. “A special school for

freaks. You and that Snape boy…weirdos, that’s what you two are. It’s good you’re

being separated from normal people. It’s for our safety.”

Lily glanced toward her parents, who were looking around the platform with an

Air of wholehearted enjoyment, drinking in the scene. Then she looked back at her sister,

And her voice was low and fierce.

“You didn’t think it was such a freak’s school when you wrote to the headmaster

and begged him to take you.”

Petunia turned scarlet.

“Beg? I didn’t beg!”

“I saw his reply. It was very kind.”

“You shouldn’t have read – ” whispered Petunia, “that was my private – how

could you – ?”

Lily gave herself away by half-glancing toward where Snape stood nearby.

Petunia gasped.

“That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in my room!”

“No – not sneaking – ” Now Lily was on the defensive. “Severus saw the

envelope, and he couldn’t believe a Muggle could have contacted Hogwarts, that’s all!

He says there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of

– ”

“Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!” said Petunia, now as pale

as she had been flushed. “Freak!” she spat at her sister, and she flounced off to where her

parents stood…

The scene dissolved again. Snape was hurrying along the corridor of the

Hogwarts Express as it clattered through the countryside. He had already changed into his

School robes, had perhaps taken the first opportunity to take off his dreadful Muggle

Clothes. At last he stopped, outside a compartment in which a group of rowdy boys were

Talking. Hunched in a corner seat beside the window was Lily, her face pressed against

The windowpane.

Snape slid open the compartment door and sat down opposite Lily. She glanced at

Him and then looked back out of the window. She had been crying.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said in a constricted voice.

“Why not?”

“Tuney h-hates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumbledore.”

“So what?”

She threw him a look of deep dislike.

“So she’s my sister!”

“She’s only a – ” He caught himself quickly; Lily, too busy trying to wipe her

Eyes without being noticed, did not hear him.

“But we’re going!” he said, unable to suppress the exhilaration in his voice. “This

is it! We’re off to Hogwarts!”

She nodded, mopping her eyes, but in spite of herself, she half smiled.

“You’d better be in Slytherin,” said Snape, encouraged that she had brightened a

Little.

“Slytherin?”

One of the boys sharing the compartment, who had shown no interest at all in Lily

Or Snape until that point, looked around at the word, and Harry, whose attention had been

focused entirely on the two beside the window, saw his father: slight, black-haired like

Snape, but with that indefinable air of having been well-cared-for, even adored, that

Snape so conspicuously lacked.

“Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?” James asked the

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 573