A Muggle politician named Henry Clay once said, "We watch a great nation stirred up from within and without, like the sea surging before a storm."
Britain in the seventies had more than just The Beatles, disco, and bell-bottoms. Teenagers of that era already had a different concept of "adulthood" from those of the past.
According to old traditions, marriage and motherhood were the only paths to adulthood for women. If a girl was unwilling to enter marriage, she would be defined as an irresponsible adolescent. Yet some teenagers in the seventies considered how to become dignified "young women."
Boys and girls no longer drove their parents mad with noise-like music, the latest dances, and questions of friendship. Instead, they considered work and social status, displaying their maturity by possessing value of their own.
The disagreement between Pomona and Lily was not merely because Pomona was an "old fossil" while Lily belonged to the "breakthrough generation" influenced by new ideas. Once wizards had isolated the Wizarding World from Muggles because of the International Statute of Secrecy, their time seemed to have stopped in the seventeenth century, when wizards had been forced into hiding. Their clothing, customs, principles of life, and more had all diverged from those of Muggles.
Compared with the noise outside school, things within Hogwarts were relatively peaceful. Even though they were no longer friends, Pomona could still hear news about Lily. For instance, they had arranged to meet in the music classroom on the fifth floor today, but only Sirius and Peter Pettigrew had come. James had once again tried to ask Lily out, hoping to attend Slughorn's Slug Club with her.
It was not that James particularly wanted to join the Slug Club. He simply wanted to be seen as a couple with her. But James