Chapter Text
On the first of September, Hugo and Lily sat side by side on Lily's bed as they watched the clock. The second hand ticked up from the six to the twelve and past it, not pausing at the top like Lily felt it should do.
"Train's gone," Hugo said. "Rose said the train always leaves at eleven on the dot." That was why Hugo had made sure to set the clock to the right time. The second hand was fast approaching six and then heading back up to twelve again as if nothing important had happened.
"It's official now," Lily said and then sighed. She let herself fall back on the bed and stared up at the stars which her father had helped pin to her ceiling in the exact shape of the constellations. They twinkled even now in the daytime.
"We're not going to Hogwarts." Through the last few months, as both their birthdays passed them by and their parents had had meetings with Headmistress McGonagall, it hadn't felt real. Even going to St. Mungos and getting confirmation hadn't felt like it was happening to them. It was only now when they were eleven years old and the Hogwarts Express was heading off to Scotland without them that it felt like it was really happening to them.
"Yeah." Hugo lay down next to her. "Lils."
"Yeah, Hugo?" Lily turned her head to look at her cousin. He stared at the ceiling, his brown eyes blinking behind his glasses.
"We've never been to Hogwarts and we've never been on the Hogwarts Express. Is it weird that I miss it all the same?" Hugo turned to look at her. His brow was wrinkled and his lips were pulled down into a frown. Lily smiled but she had a feeling it came out a lot sadder than she planned.
"No, I don't think so. It's not really that we're missing it, but we expected today and this year to go a certain way. We expected to be able to join James, Al, and Rosie on the train to Hogwarts; we thought we were going to be just like everyone else. It's not weird to miss that." Hugo turned on his side on the bed and curled into Lily.
"We're the only kids in our family who are squibs," Hugo whispered. "I overheard Aunt Audrey wanted to get Lucy tested to make sure she had magic." Everyone else in their family was older than Lily and Hugo, so they had received their Hogwarts letter and headed off on the train this morning like they wanted to.
"Does it matter whether she does or not?" Lily asked, even though she knew full well that it did matter. The fact that they were hiding up in her room watching the clock said it did matter. The fact that they weren't on the train with the rest of their family said it mattered. "They can't do anything about it if she is like us." It was weird talking about their family like there was now an 'us' and 'them'.
"Dad snapped at her," Hugo said, "then Uncle Percy said they wanted to know so they could be prepared if not. He talked about Muggle schooling and us being behind." Lily knew Hugo well enough to hear the fear behind his words. Hugo had read all of Rose's first year textbooks after she had started her second year, out of fear of being behind in his year when his mother was famous for setting school records. It was okay for Rose, who was fast shaping up to be just as good at Quidditch as Lily’s mum, but Hugo was far more like his mother than anything.
"We've done Muggle schooling," Lily pointed out. It was true. They were the only two families in their extended family who had gone to Muggle primary school. They had only gone for the last three years, only being trusted to keep their mouths shut about magic when they were old enough to understand why, but it was enough for them to be vaguely familiar with the Muggle world. Sure, they had gotten a lot of strange looks when they said they didn't own a television but otherwise they had all found enough in common to get along with the other children.
"Not seriously though," Hugo said and bit his lip. It was true, none of them had taken their marks too seriously since they hadn't thought they would be needed. "Lily, what do we even do now? Not only are we Squibs in one of the most well-known families in the magical world, but we also have no clue how to act in the Muggle world! Are we ever going to fit in anywhere? I mean, Mum can't look at me without tears, Dad is acting all jolly and Rose keeps talking about Quidditch and then trailing off as if she had forgotten that I'm not magical anymore."
"Shut up, Hugo," Lily said, her voice loud in her bedroom. Her cousin fell silent, his chest rising and falling as he breathed too fast. Lily grabbed his hand and put it to her heart and breathed as slowly and deeply as she could. Hugo slowed his breath down and they stared at each other as Lily took his hand away. "We'll deal with this, okay?" Lily said. "We're not the only squibs that have ever happened and we won't be the last. But whatever happens, we stick together. Okay?"
Hugo nodded, looking a lot calmer now, and pushed his glasses up his nose. "What do we do first?"
"We go and eat lunch," Lily said as she sat up. "It might be early but I bet Gran has made something now. Our parents will come and pick us up soon and I don't want to be here when they come back." Lily knew her parents loved her but it was obvious that they didn't know how to act around her. If she and Hugo were in the kitchen, she just knew the conversation would fall awkwardly as both sets of parents tried to avoid talking about where they had been at all, like Lily and Hugo were just babies who could be misled like that.
"Good idea." Hugo scooted off the bed and almost fell off. Lily ruffled his hair and then headed out of the room, trying to bounce like she normally did but finding her cheerful attitude harder than normal. Hugo had only been voicing fears she had too and they both knew it. But Lily's job was to keep pushing them forward, not to dwell in the worry and anxiety that plagued Hugo a lot of the time. Now with their future so uncertain, Lily understood that they would need that more than ever. "Lily." Hugo grabbed her arm at the top of the stairs and then leaned in.
"It may be wrong but I'm glad you're with me in this," Hugo whispered in her ear and then rocked back on his heels, watching her nervously for a reaction. Lily wanted to snap at Hugo that it would be better if neither of them were in this situation in the first place and what kind of best friend he was to wish that kind of thing on her? But she knew what he meant. As awful as this whole thing was with not having magic and not being able to go to Hogwarts, it would have been so, so much worse if Hugo had gone off on the Hogwarts Express this morning and Lily had been left staring up at the ceiling of stars alone.
"Ah, there you two are." Their grandmother's smile was warm and welcoming, though she had been a little awkward around them since the big news. Unlike their parents, their gran had just focused on making sure they were well-fed and cared for and hadn't bothered with asking them questions about their future and what they wanted to do. It was nice to just have someone who didn't ask questions and expect decisions, or at least opinions, even if Lily could see the worry behind the kind smile.
"Gran, we're hungry. Can we have lunch now?" Lily asked as sweetly as possible. Gran nodded, and she hurried over to bring the food to the table. Normally she would just wave her wand and it would all be on the table already but Lily had definitely noticed a lot of the adults had stopped using magic around them so much. The only people who hadn't bothered was Aunt Fleur and, when they saw her, Victoire. It hadn't been so noticeable with some of the adults in their family, like Lily's dad and Hugo's mum, who were used to doing things the Muggle way, but it had been really obvious with Uncle George, who usually had his wand out nearly all the time they saw him.
Lily and Hugo glanced at each other but chose not to say anything. Lily had been grateful at the time for Fleur and Victoire's stance on magic, which Lily had overheard Victoire explaining to Dominique (“they're not stupid or suffering memory loss, they know we have magic, and they're not going to forget just because we aren't using it”), but now it felt like a raw nerve that was being jumped on. Instead, they helped their grandmother move things to the table and, when they sat down to eat, they gladly let her lead the conversation. Mostly their grandmother talked about the garden and knitting the Christmas jumpers; easy, domestic talk which didn't require much input from either of them. Hugo, who had always been more polite than Lily, spoke more while she kept glancing at the clock.
"Thanks for the lunch, Gran," Lily said. "Can we help you clear up?" she asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.
"Oh no, don't you worry, dearie." Their grandmother smiled, and Lily wondered if she could see the faint hint of alarm at the suggestion of washing up without magic. "You go off and play." Lily nodded and then dragged Hugo out of the kitchen before he could say anything else. He called out a thank you for the lunch before willingly following Lily down the garden path. Lily's parents had bought this house when Lily was six years old, after her mother had retired from Quidditch for good and the two of them realised they were happy with only three children. It was a house which looked like a small cottage on the outside but was much larger on the inside. There was a long, narrow garden, which led down to a pond and a large field which could be used as a Quidditch pitch, especially after Lily's father had put a variety of Anti-Muggle charms around the place and their grandmother had planted several trees to screen the pitch from watchful eyes.
"Why don't these Anti-Muggle charms work on us?" Lily wondered out loud as they walked through the pitch and towards the pond lying just in a hollow next to it.
"We're not Muggles, Lily," Hugo said, sounding more like his mother than she had heard during the whole summer. "We're squibs. We have enough magic to see through anti-Muggle charms and not be affected by any of those spells, as well as see Dementors and thestrals, but not enough to actually use it." Lily made a face.
"I think that's the first time I heard you say that," Lily said.
"Said what?" Hugo asked as they arrived at the pond. It was a medium sized pond, big enough and clear enough to swim in but not too big that they couldn't reach the other side fairly easily. Lily and Hugo headed to a small dock Hugo's father and Lily's mother had built when the Potters had first moved in.
"That we're squibs." Lily sat down on the edge of the deck and took her shoes off, dangling her feet in the water. Hugo, after a moment's hesitation, did the same. The water was cold but Lily kept her feet in, swirling the water around.
"That's what we are, isn't it?" Hugo said quietly. "Trying to deny it or cry about it isn't going to do much." He sighed. "Doesn't mean I didn't wish it wasn't happening." He kicked his foot, a splash of water flying across the pond and making the water ripple. "It's not fair. I prepared so much for my first year. I read all the textbooks, I made Rose tell me about Gryffindor dormitories and when I thought I might be somewhere else, I talked to Aunt Luna and Aunt Hannah. I even talked to Al and Scorpius, even though Al thought I definitely wouldn't be in Slytherin."
"Oh." Lily's heart sank as she realised that they would never be Sorted. Throughout their life, the Hogwarts houses had been a source of discussion. It wasn't just the Sorting Hat that told you where to go; the House you were in determined the path of your life. Not only what traits of yours would be encouraged but what friends you would make and even how you would be viewed outside of school. Not only were Lily and Hugo now squibs, regarded as something shameful by a lot of people, they also would never have that bonding moment that a lot of people in Britain had when they met someone who went to the same house. They would never be able to talk about sinking down into one of Gryffindor's squishy armchairs or figuring out the riddle to get into Ravenclaw's common room or watching the giant squid go by in the window like in Slytherin. She would never be able to hear Dad's stories about Cedric Diggory and think she was in the same House as him.
"It's just... why did this happen to us? Why are we squibs? What did we do wrong to get this? There was a theory about whether it was inbreeding that caused loss of magic, but my mum's Muggle-born so it wasn't even like Dad was marrying his second cousin or something. And yeah, the Potters and Weasleys are distantly related but your grandmother was Muggle-born too. And none of our parents or aunts or uncles ever had to worry about their magic being weak or anything. Even Uncle Percy never thinks about that." Hugo was kicking his feet in the water and scowling down at the little waves flowing outwards. "It's just not fair."
"No, it's not." Lily tilted her head back to stare at the sky and shivered a little in the autumn breeze. Somewhere back at the house, her parents and Hugo's parents were returning. They would probably question Gran about how Lily and Hugo were and did they seem upset? What could they even do if they were? They couldn't give Lily and Hugo magic and they couldn't change the culture that would give Lily and Hugo the chance to continue living in the magical world as before. Lily couldn't imagine living in the Muggle world all the time. They had visited before when they went to the cinema with Dad or when they saw Cousin Dudley and his family but Lily had always enjoyed it as a visit.
Their whole lives were going to change, and they didn't have any say in it. They would have to go to a whole new school and get used to whole new subjects and a whole new way of life, and it all just sucked. If it had been their parents forcing them to do this, they could at least shout and storm and make a fuss about it. But Lily and Hugo didn't have enough magic to go and attend Hogwarts, and that was just a fact of life. How could you argue against facts? It was like trying to complain about the sky being blue or water being wet.
Normally this would be the time where Lily would say what they were going to do and have a plan for something at least. But Lily was feeling disheartened as she remembered all the little things that she wouldn't get to have, the things she had expected to have.
"Want to stay here a bit longer?" Lily asked. Hugo turned to look at her, his glasses glinting in the sun. He nodded slowly and then copied Lily's posture, leaning back on his hands and staring up at the sky.