Plenty of people don't believe in bad luck, or luck of any sort, for that matter. Those people go about their day, thinking things happen when they happen and that is that. Then, there are the people who are so superstitous, they go into hiding whenever they see a black cat.

Lily Hoffman fell into neither of these categories; however, luck did take a large part in her life. In fact, Lily believed very strongly in luck and fortune, but her belief stemmed from the fact that Lily herself had some of the worst luck ever. She attributes this lack of fortune to cosmic retribution--she's convinced that, in a past life, she must have been someone or done something horrible. Or perhaps she had been a particularly selfish and cruel dancer, and so her grace had been taken away [another favorite]. Whatever the reason, it cannot be denied that Lily luck would never cease finding new ways to deplete itself.

Getting to the astronomy tower was taxing for anyone; it required far too many stairs and far too much effort. However, getting to the astronomy tower was much worse for Lily, who could not climb stairs without acquiring some sort of injury. It also took her a great deal more time than normal people, since she had to concentrate every second of the way on minimalizing her chance of injury. In fact, where it took most people in the Hufflepuff dorms about ten to fifteen minutes to reach the tower itself, she had already been traveling for a good half hour and was not yet halfway up.

"Come on, Lily!" she cheered under her breath, staring intently down at the floor as she clutched the railing hard enough that her knuckles were white. "You can do it!" She inched upward, taking great care to step warily and not hit any cracks/indentations/malformations of any sort. She had, at this point, already scraped both her elbow and her knee and a pretty nice bruise was blooming on her exposed left shoulder.

After another fifteen minutes of painstakingly slow climbing and the door was in reach. Beaming, she accidentally dropped her guard and sped up a bit.

Bad idea.

Not only did Lily trip on the unfortunate ant that was crawling across the stair, but she tumbled and rolled up the stairs, landing in a heap [with her head at the bottom and her feet in the air] at the entrance to the tower. Lovely. She sincerely hoped that there was no one there to see the underwear she'd just flashed to the world when her skirt had gone flying up. Sighing, she attempted to right herself, smoothing her uniform out and shaking her hair to get it out of her face. She, of course, wasn't surprised. This was just her luck.