Chapter 1: At Platform 9 ¾

AN: This story is planned to go pretty far, at least to graduation. This is my first fanfic on this website. Please review and let me know what you think! I'm going to try to make this as canon as possible, but feel free to let me know if I mess up somewhere. Ok, here we go!

Disclaimer: JK Rowling invented and owns Harry Potter and his universe. I am merely mixing up the same 26 letters that she used to create something new.

Lily Marie Evans sat in the back of her father's beat up car. She looked out the window nervously, watching the other cars on the road bypass hers. Lily's father was in the front seat, talking to the other drivers. She could tell that he was nervous about dropping Lily off at platform 9 and ¾, because he didn't entirely support her magical abilities. He would never say it though.

Lily's father wasn't the only one who was unsure of sending Lily to Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Lily was thinking about Petunia, her beloved sister, and how she had sneered at her so unapprovingly when she had left their small, boxy house on the hill. She was thinking about how Petunia might feel about her when she came back home for Christmas. Lily was lost in thought and didn't notice when the car stopped at King's Cross Station. The only thing that jolted Lily Evans from her thoughts was when her father opened the car door, which she was leaning against and Lily tumbled out of the car and onto the pavement.

"Oh!" Her father exclaimed as he held out a hand to help his eleven year old daughter up off the ground. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright." Lily replied taking his hand.

She stood up, embarrassed, and brushed off her school robes, which she was already wearing. Lily's father placed her school trunk onto a trolley. He helped her push it to the wall between platforms 9 and 10. The ministry representative who had visited her house the past January had told her about this barrier which separated the muggle world from the wizarding one. Her mother, father, and sister a stood behind Lily as she walked through the barrier for the first time.

She opened her eyes on the other side, without realizing she had closed them. Lily's family appeared, as if out of thin air right behind her as Lily gazed, awestruck, at what was in front of her.

Steam billowed from the shiny, red Hogwarts Express like it was rising off of a hot tea. Lily saw hundreds of people. Parents, siblings, students, and friends all running and rushing around the platform. She walked forward slowly, taking in the experience.

Petunia grunted next to her, with her nose turned pointedly in the air and her thin, bony arms crossed over her chest.

"Some magic school, still using our inventions."

I rolled my eyes, ever since I'd found out that I was a witch, Petunia had been terribly irritated about the whole thing.

"Don't you roll your eyes at me!" Tuney exclaimed, sounding offended. "You have no right to be up on your high horse. And just because you're going to magic school! Because you're a witch!" She continued putting an emphasis on 'witch' that made it sound like something you wouldn't want to be.

"I'm sorry, Tuney, I'm sorry! Listen-" She caught her sister's hand and held tight to it, even though Petunia tried to pull it away.

"Maybe once I'm there- No, listen, Tuney! Maybe once I'm there, I'll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!"

"I don't- want- to- go!" said Petunia as she dragged her hand back out of her sister's grasp. "You think I want to go to some stupid castle and learn to be a- a-"

Petunia's pale eyes roved over the platform, over the cats mewling in their owners' arms, over owls fluttering and hooting to each other in their cages, over students, some already in their long black robes, loading trunks onto the scarlet steam engine or else greeting one another with glad cries after a summer apart.

"-you think I want to be a- a freak?"

Lily's eyes filled with tears as Petunia succeeded in tugging her hand away.

"I am not a freak," said Lily. "That's a horrible thing to say."

"That's where you're going," said Petunia with relish. "A special school for freaks. You and that Snape boy…"

Lily's eyes momentarily flitted to Severus'. He looked slightly hunched and was standing next to a thin sallow-faced woman who greatly resembled him. He was looking back at her and her family, where she was being berated by her sister.

"…weirdos, that's what you are. It's good you're being separated from normal people. It's for our safety."

Lily glanced at her parents, who were looking around the platform with an air of wholehearted enjoyment, drinking in the scene. Then she looked back at her sister, and her voice was low and fierce.

"You didn't think it was such a freak's school when you wrote to the headmaster and begged him to take you."

Petunia turned scarlet.

"Beg? I didn't beg!"

"I saw his reply. It was very kind."

"You shouldn't have read-" whispered Petunia "that was my private- how could you-?"

Lily gave herself away by half-glancing towards where Snape stood nearby. Petunia gasped.

"That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking around my room!"

"No- not sneaking-" Now Lily was being the defensive one. "Severus saw the envelope, and he couldn't believe a Muggle could have contacted Hogwarts is all! He says there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of-"

"Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!" said Petunia, now as pale as she had been flushed before. "Freak!" she spat at her sister and she flounced off to where her parents stood.

Lily stood where she was for a while, watching as life happened around her. She only was pulled from her thoughts when her father put his hand on her arm and asked her if she needed help with her trunk and trolley. She declined his help and said goodbyes to her family. She would see them again that Christmas, but she felt funny, like she was leaving them behind for good.

Lily found her way into the corner of a compartment of rowdy first year boys. Her face was pressed against the cool glass of the window and she was crying.

Snape saw her out of the corner of his eye as he was running down the corridor of the Hogwarts express looking for her. He slid open the compartment door and sat across from her.

"I don't want to talk to you," Lily said in a constricted voice.

"Why not?"

"Tuney h-hates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumbledore."

"So what?"

She threw him a look of deep dislike.

"So, she's my sister!"

"She's only a-" He caught himself quickly; Lily, too busy trying to wipe her eyes without being noticed to hear him.