Title: Lily's Allergies
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Lily Moon, Poppy Pomfry
Rating: G
Word count: 600
A/N: Written for the prompt 'allergies' for
The Golden Snitch's Prompt of the Day. Also on
AO3.
Summary: Lily is allergic to cats. At Hogwarts, that's bad news.
Lily sneezed violently, causing all of her History of Magic class to turn and stare at her. Well, all except for Professor Binns. The ghost continued droning on about the Soap Blizzard of 1378 as if nothing had happened.
Lily felt terrible. She’d been looking forward to attending Hogwarts ever since she was very young. And when she finally got to the magic school, it was even more incredible than she had dreamed.
Except for one thing: Lily was allergic to cats. And naturally, Hogwarts allowed students to keep cats as pets.
Granted, most students who could afford a pet chose to keep an owl. They were more practical, since they could be used for sending and receiving post. Lily herself owned a tawny owl named Apollo.
But of course one of the girls in the same year and the same house as Lily owned a cat. And that cat got its fur everywhere, all over the common room and the first year girls’ dorm.
As a result, Lily had spent every day of the past week with her eyes watering, her nose running, and her skin covered in hives. She knew she couldn’t handle seven whole years of this. She was afraid that she was going to have to drop out of school. But fortunately for Lily, it didn’t come to that.
That evening, as Lily sat in the common room trying to work on her Charms homework, she had another sneezing fit. It caught the attention of everyone else in the room, including one of the prefects.
“Are you sick, Lily?” the prefect asked with a look of concern on her face. “You’ve been looking unwell ever since you got here.”
Lily shook her head and forced herself to smile, grateful that someone was showing concern for her. “No, it’s just my allergies” she said.
“Allergies?” asked the prefect, a puzzled look on her face. “What do you mean?”
“I’m allergic to cats” said Lily. “And one of the girls I share a dorm with has a cat.”
The prefect’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. Then she said “You should have said something sooner, Lily. I’m sure Madam Pomfrey has something that will take care of that right away.”
“Really?” said Lily. This was wonderful news!
“Really” assured the prefect. “Let me take you to the hospital wing right now.”
Lily pushed her Charms homework aside and followed the prefect out of the common room. They made their way to the hospital wing, where the prefect explained what was going on.
Madam Pomfrey shook her head. “I don’t know why they don’t put this information in the acceptance letter” she said. “Every year some poor first year student with allergies suffers needlessly because they don’t realize there’s a simple solution for it.”
Lily was relieved to hear she wasn’t the only one who had ever been in this situation.
“Let me just get you the allergy potion” said Madam Pomfrey, disappearing into her office. She reappeared a moment later with a very purple liquid in a small cup for measuring medicine. Handing it to Lily, she said “Drink it all up and the effect should be instantaneous.”
Lily did as she was told. Within seconds of swallowing the potion, she felt back to her old self.
“Now, I’m afraid the effect of the potion only lasts for about a week, so when you start to feel another reaction coming on you come and see me again” said Madam Pomfrey.
Lily smiled and nodded. “I will. Thank you.” Turning, she followed her prefect back to her common room.