Lily

Chapter Twenty:

Lily was following the Weasley family, Hermione, and Harry up to their seats. They had been climbing the stairs for a while when Ron questioned his dad about how high up they were.

"Not much further-" Arthur began to reply before a cold voice cut him off.

"Let's put it this way." The man said, "If it rains, you'll be the first to know."

Lily grabbed Harry's hand, a bit scared of the man, before noticing Draco standing next to him. It slowly clicked in her mind that the man was Lucius Malfoy- Draco's father.

Draco was looking at the ground, refusing to make eye contact with Lily. He did spare a quick glare at Harry, but besides that, kept his gaze on the floor.

"Malfoy." Arthur said with a slight ice in his voice.

"I do hope you enjoy the show." Lucius said as if speaking of an inside joke, his gaze sweeping over the family and stopping for a moment on Harry before moving onto Lily.

Although still feeling scared, she didn't look away and gave him a cold look. He seemed slightly surprised by that, but quickly turned away and ushered Draco to their seats with the Minister of Magic.

"Come on, Lil." Harry grumbled, continuing the climb up the stadium steps.

Lily followed him and they found their seats. In the seats next to them was a small house elf, looking scared out of her mind as she closed her eyes and tried not to look down.

"Are you okay?" Lily asked her kindly.

The house elf jumped and looked at her.

"Y-yes, Miss." She said, "Winky is just a-scared of heights."

"Well, why don't you go down?" Hermione asked curiously.

"N-no!" Winky prostested, shaking her head vigorously, "Master Crouch told Winky to s-save the seats."

"We can save them, Winky." Hermione told her, seeing how the house elf was shaking in her seat.

"N-no, thank you, Miss." Winky declined, before closing her eyes.

Hermione frowned and looked like she wanted to say something else, but Ron nudged her.

"She won't go against her orders." He informed her, "Best to just let her be."

"But that's awful!" Hermione protested, "Sending her up here when she is clearly afraid!"

"Yeah, but we can't do anything about it." Ron reminded her.

"House elves are practically enslaved!" Hermione continued, "That's so wrong!"

Lily nodded her head in agreement.

"They like it." Ron said, "Look at the house elves at Hogwarts, they-"

"There are house elves at Hogwarts?!" Hermione gasped.

"How'd you think everything gets cleaned?" Ron asked.

"Magic!" Hermione said.

"Well, yeah, I reckon they use magic, but-"

"This is awful! Why hasn't Dumbledore done anything about this?!" Hermione demanded.

"I dunno, but look, the game's about to start!" Ron said, pointing at the field.

Hermione shook her head in disapproval. Lily watched the game with the others, not rooting for one team over the other seeing how she wasn't too interested in Quidditch, and didn't know much about the teams. She was just happy to be invited and to spend time away from the Dursley's house.