Chapter Text
Lily had heard the fifth years in years past complain about the amount of work and time they had to put into their schoolwork, and she’d always shoved it aside– she was naturally good at schoolwork, and she enjoyed it, for the most part.
But she truly hadn’t expected the shift in workload. It was intense, the OWL season. Every speech made by every professor made her realize that she was going to have to get her act in shape if she wanted to advance in the wizarding world. She knew that, as a muggle-born witch, if she wasn’t top of her class or at least near the top, she wouldn’t go very far. Even if she was perfect, she wouldn’t get as far as the lowest performing pureblood. It was depressing when she thought about it that way, so she didn’t and she simply put in as much time as she could.
Mary didn’t plan on going into the wizarding world as much as Lily and Marls planned, so although she studied just as much as Lily and Marls, she wasn’t as driven. Even Marlene didn’t have as much drive as Lily did, because Marlene knew she would be able to have a place in the wizarding world, because she was born into it. Lily wasn’t even sure if Marls was conscious of this, but she couldn’t tell.
So Lily’s September was filled with schoolwork and constant studying. Every waking second was spent in the library, and Lily’s study group with Remus, Mary and Marlene had reformed.
“What are you going to do after school?” Lily asked Mary, who was filing her nails. They’d been talking about the future (An iffy subject to begin with), and Lily was curious.
“Not sure,” Mary replied, nonchalant. “Not like I’m gonna have a place here afterwards, right?”
“You could be a teacher,” Marlene suggested.
“Right,” Mary laughed, “And teach more of those little sh*ts?” She pointed to a few kids who were dumping some poor Ravenclaw’s books out.
“Guess you’re right,” Marlene relented. “What about you, Lils?”
“Mmm,” Lily murmured, thinking. “I’ll probably do something in potions. Apothecary work sounds fun.”
Remus raised an eyebrow. “Potions sounds fun?”
“Shut up,” Lily shoved his arm. “You like History of Magic, so you can’t talk.”
“Yeah, I saw you actually awake in the class the other day,” Mary grinned. “Tell me, how do you accomplish such a feat?”
Remus blushed slightly. “I just think about other things. You know. Diversion tactics.”
“Right…” Mary said, narrowing her eyes. “I’ll figure it out on my own, then.”
“That’s a losing battle,” Marlene muttered. “Binns is so boring…”
“Wish McGonagall taught History of Magic,” Lily commented.
“I think it’s the subject that’s boring,” Mary mused. “Not the teacher.”
“Well, no,” Remus argued, “If Professor Binns taught… say… Care of Magical Creatures, he’d make it awful.”
“Oh, that’s true.”
“Maybe it’s the ultimate combination,” Lily suggested. “The subject and the teacher.”
“See, this is why I don’t want to be a teacher,” Mary said, grinning. “People would talk bad about me all the time.” She blew on one of her nails. “Can’t have that happening. Marls, do you want me to quiz you on Transfiguration again?”
***
Aside from the astronomical workload, the classes themselves began to tilt more towards defense and war. It was clear to any student now that the teachers were attempting to prepare them for war. McGonagall taught them more on concealment, Slughorn focused on poisons and antidotes, and Defense Against the Dark Arts had become a ray of sunshine in Lily’s day– all the professor would talk about was how they would “need this outside the classroom…”
It wasn’t cheerful, Lily thought, all in all.
Lily was focused on schoolwork, Mary was focused on trying to get closer to Sirius Black, and Marls was intensely focused on quidditch, for some reason. She’d begun to avoid Mary and Lily more– in fact, it was more Mary that Marls was avoiding.
And although Mary didn’t notice it, Lily wasn’t an idiot and saw what Marls was doing. But she figured it was just because Marlene was focusing more on quidditch, and because Mary tended to start asking Marlene questions about Sirius every time she came back from a run with the two boys, Marlene had started avoiding the questions in earnest.
Lily had tried to patch things up with Sev, since everyone seemed to be distant. Even the boys were more distant than usual– and she wouldn’t think about hanging out with them, but desperate times called for desperate measures. But Peter Pettigrew was obsessed with his girlfriend, Remus Lupin was avoiding Sirius for some reason, Sirius didn’t take notice of that and seemed to disappear every other day, and James Potter was an enigma.
“Sev?” Lily asked into the corridor he’d told her to meet her in. “Hey, Sev?”
Mulciber and Sev stepped out, Sev sighing disappointedly. “Hey Lily,” Sev said, smiling at her. “How’re you doing?”
“Not too awful,” Lily said, and glanced at Mulciber. “Is he ok?” His neck was swelling up like a life ring.
“Eh, he’ll be fine.” Sev shooed him off, presumably to the nurse’s office. “He just got hit by an engorgement charm.”
“Mm,” Lily hummed. “Have you started thinking about what you’re going to talk to Slughorn about for careers?”
“Well,” Sev said, “I think I want to go into something with Potions. Or maybe something in a teaching position.”
“Teaching?” Lily raised an eyebrow. Sev wasn’t someone she could see as a teacher. “Really?”
“Well, it’s more of a backup option,” Sev continued. “I don’t really like teaching all that much. I just think it would pay well.”
“Right,” Lily said. “Pay is always good. But Sev, what about something you really want to do?”
“Mm.” Sev sighed. “That wouldn’t make money, believe me.”
“You could publish a book on Potions,” Lily suggested. “You’ve got a lot of good notes in your textbook. You could edit it, make it better. It’d be really helpful, I think.”
“Maybe I will,” Sev said, and he smiled at her. “You’re smart, you know that?”
“Duh,” Lily said, crossing her arms and smirking. “Damn straight.”
Sev burst out laughing. “Lily, that was so out of character–”
“Oh, don’t you dare laugh at me!” Lily berated him with mock enragement. “You just said you wanted to be a teacher–”
Sev laughed even harder, clutching his stomach in pain.
***
Lily spent every waking moment in the library once they were in the thick of OWLs season, so it was no surprise that, soon enough, she got intensely bored with the subject matter.
So it was only through the natural course of events that she discovered wordless magic. It was interesting– for once, she had difficulties with a subject. It challenged her, challenged the way she thought about magic.
She had originally thought that magic was words and a wand and intent– a mixture of those three made magic. But that couldn’t be right. Magic was in the air around her, it swirled into her life and embedded itself into everything, like water vapor in the piece of wood underneath a door. It soaked into everything it touched and expanded the reality of that thing it touched, and the magic user was no different.
Lily’s entire view of magic changed. Wands weren’t even needed for magic– she thought back to when she was a child, doing magic with the flowers and jumping off of swingsets. That was magic without words, without wands, only with intent.
So although she could probably, with enough practice, do magic without a wand, she could definitely do magic without words. Eliminating one of the unnecessary(although helpful) tools would let her do wordless magic.
That was sixth and seventh year stuff. Lily was impressed with herself– she’d definitely worked ahead in her class, looked ahead into higher levels of magic and magic theory. But she’d never really worked on something that was so distant from what she’d done in class.
Lily could do wordless magic. It happened on its own, the first time she did it. She’d wanted her book, a specific book that had been on the other side of her library table, and suddenly it had dashed forward when she’d made the gesture of her wand to it– and boom. She’d done wordless magic. No words uttered– only intent and wandwork.
