things i'll never say ~ l.l.p.

two - growing

The summer after we met, Mason spent a lot of time with me and my siblings. His mum had to work a lot, so she would drop him off at our place, and we would spend hours in the treehouse, watching movies and playing games and doing all sorts of other ridiculous things.

Albus would play with us sometimes, but James rarely would - the thought of going to Hogwarts in September gave him a big head, and he felt he had better things to do than hang around with 'little kids' like us. We didn't mind much, since we all thought him rather a prat. Besides, the only movies he liked to watch were the silly ones like Mission: Impossible and that sort of thing. The rest of us much preferred old Disney films like Robin Hood or The Great Mouse Detective.

Anyways, it was a pretty great summer, but much like all good things it came to an end. Although Mum had offered to homeschool Mason along with Al and I, his mum wanted him in a real school, so we wouldn't see much of him for a long while - until the next summer, in fact. But when we did see him again, it was heavenly.

It was that second summer, when I was seven-and-a-half, that I first fancied Mason Bones. I hardly realized at first that I blushed an awful lot around him and cared a little more than I had what he thought of me, but one day my brother pointed it out to me.

It was late one evening in July, when Dad had an overnight shift at the Ministry and Mum was playing quiddich-in-the-dark with James out in the yard. It was Mason's mum's day off, so he hadn't come over, and I made an offhand comment to Albus as we sat around in the treehouse that it wasn't nearly as fun when Mason wasn't there to play with us.

He shrugged. "Doesn't matter much to me," he said, "but I s'pose it's worse for you, not seeing your boyfriend."

I looked at him, thrown off guard by the word. "Mason's not my boyfriend."

My brother laughed. "No, I guess he's not. But you'd like him to be, all the same."

I crossed my arms. "I'd like no such thing."

"Sure, Lily, whatever you say."

I stuck out my tongue at him, but inwardly was alarmed, because I realized the idea of having Mason as a boyfriend was not an unappealing one.

But that was silly, wasn't it? Of course it was. I quickly put the idea out of my head. Unfortunately, keeping the idea out of my head was no easy task. I spent the rest of that summer doing my best not to be a blushing, giggling mess, and wishing that Mason would go back to school already.

Luckily for me and for my friendship, by the time the next summer rolled around I had entirely grown out of my feelings. I blocked the embarrassment of the previous year from my memory and Mason and I were once again the best of friends.

The summer before we went to Hogwarts - I call it the Last of the Great Summers. Mason was seven months older than me, so he'd already gotten his wand before that summer. He wasn't really supposed to use it, of course, but the Trace didn't matter as long as my mum was around. We secluded ourselves in the treehouse with an old copy of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade One and had a great deal of fun with it.

Mason was, from the first, a very talented wizard. He quickly got the hang of the simple charms and was soon using them as casually as if it were an old habit. For the most part, mishaps were avoided, although there was one unfortunate incident where we accidentally set a tree on fire. Luckily for us (and for the tree), it was an easily remedied mistake.

I didn't get my wand until a week or so before school started. Because my birthday was 1st September, I was rather a special case on the matter of my Hogwarts acceptance letter. Since the letter system was magically automated and wasn't interfered with, I couldn't really get a letter early, but we knew my name was in the Book of Admittance, so we confiscated the supply list of my cousin Hugo, who was some months older than me and had had his things ready to go since practically the previous Christmas - or rather, his mum had.