Lily sighed contently as she watched the quidditch players outside her window in her dorm. She was bundled up in her oversized green sweater she had borrowed from her late father, wearing only a pair of lavender knickers under it and a huge mug of hot chocolate in her cold hands. Moments like this she cherished greatly when no one was there to blatantly stare at the weird wallflower who kept to herself except when she was talking to Alice Longbottom, which was rare as she was an upperclassmen while Lily was a sixth year.
In all of her six years here at Hogwarts, Lily spent most of her time in the library or avoiding her peers as much as possible by staying in her dorm or the Room of Requirement which she found in her third year. It wasn't that Lily hated her classmates or anything. It was more like that she didn't know how to interact with them without stuttering and acting like a complete fool. It also didn't help that her green eyes tended to slightly freak out people to. In the muggle world, she was often treated like an outcast by her peers due to the strange things that happened around her, causing her to often be bullied by said peers. Her accidental cases of magic combined with the loss of her parents when she was five further alienated her sister from her. After the death of her parents Petunia refused to associate with her, despite living in the same orphanage.
These experiences forced Lily into the small shell she was in. After discovering she was a witch Lily hoped she could finally find a place where she could belong, but her naïve mind was soon disappointed when she learned that just like in the muggle world, prejudice strongly existed within the magical world, and with the way things were going, was only going to get worse. Nevertheless this did not deter Lily from achieving top marks in all her classes and even rivalled the famous Marauders, a famous group of seventh year boys, who despite constantly playing pranks on nearly the entire population of Hogwarts, were also incredibly bright, well excluding Peter Pettigrew. Professor McGonagall had even previously remarked that she could break the top spot the famous James Potter held in Transfiguration, but Lily really didn't want to get ahead of herself.
Speaking of the Marauders, Lily thanked the high heavens for putting her a year below the group of hooligans. This put her further out of sight from the devious pranksters, and for Lily, that particularly meant away from the attention of James Potter. Growing up in an orphanage, Lily had seen many brawls and fights from the bigger boys. James Potter strongly reminded her of those boys. While being annoyingly charming, he was also extremely hot-headed, and was known to engage in physical fights with Slytherins who pissed him off. Of his victims, his most favourite was Severus Snape, who never failed to piss off the messy haired boy. A cocky James Potter leaving a fight with a smirk and bloody fists, leaving his unconscious victims behind him was a typical sight in the school hallways and playgrounds. Raised up thinking he was practically royalty, James Potter strutted around Hogwarts like he owned it along with its inhabitants. It didn't help the fact that the rest of the marauders answered only to him, even the temperamental Sirius Black, and girls flocked to get at least one snog from him. He was conceited, arrogant, and the typical example of an Alpha man with his strong broad shoulders and impressive height. Now Lily knew James would never hurt her physically, but she couldn't help but be slightly scared from the cocky pureblood. Not even the children of Death Eaters unnerved her so. He was powerful and If he wanted he could easily crush her mentally and physically like those muggle bullies, except with even more force. Unlike the other Marauders, there was something dark about James Potter that she couldn't explain. So Lily tried her best to stay out of his way.
Unfortunately, Lily was not her usual alert self the day before. Thinking about the incident caused Lily to further sink herself onto the cushion and her cheeks warmed when thinking of it. It was a typical day and Lily was coming back from the library. In her hands was a old worn out copy of Pride and Prejudice, and as she squealed internally about the cuteness of Mr. Darcy, she did not realise the four muscular men who were also coming her way but not paying attention to what was in front of them either. James was walking backwards while demonstrating a spell he learned from his father. The hallways were crowded and Lily was trying her best to move her petite figure through it while attentively reading a book she had read a dozen times before. Suddenly she bumped into what she thought was a random brick wall and in an extremely ungraceful manner tumbled onto the ground with a loud squeak. The crowd of people suddenly stopped and laughed at the blushing red head who could only stare back at the wide amused hazel eyes of James Potter.
"Looks like you pushed a little mouse there Prongs", a handsome dark haired boy next to James spoke with a wide grin. The other two looked apologetically at Lily and offered her a kind smile. James merely smirked and held out his strong calloused hand out to Lily. With wide doe-like eyes Lily stared at his hand for a second before coming to her senses and quickly grasping it. He easily pulled her up and even while standing Lily realised how easily he towered over her at 6'2 over her petite height of 5'4. This alone made Lily want to run like a startled deer. However, she quickly realised that her escape mission was impossible as her hand was still tightly held in his own tanned one. Meekly looking up to wonder why he wasn't letting go, she was surprised to find the once amused eyes suddenly turn dark as he appraised her. Weirdly too, he also begin to sniff the air around him, and his jaw clenched as he took in her petite form. The emotion in his eyes changed from confusion to shock to realisation and he suddenly let go of her hand. Sirius sensing something was wrong took a step forward and froze as well, staring at Lily with an unreadable emotion in his eyes. James let out a growl, which she blushingly remembered caused her knickers to go slightly wet, when he sensed how close Sirius was, and abruptly pushed him back. The two shared an silent conversation before Sirius nodded his head in a strangely grave manner and stepped back like an obedient dog.
James turned back to her and Lily nearly took a step back from the pitch black colours of his eyes. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bent down to whisper in her ear.
"Till we see each other again my little rose", With that he turned and left with the rest of his pack following him. Sirius turned to give her another dark unreadable look before turning back again.
Since then Lily tried her best to only avoid any public spaces, which caused her to confine herself to her room or attending her classes. It would have been fine if they had just merely laughed and moved on, but the dark almost possessive look on Potter's face caused her to hug her knees and pray he and his minions had already forgot about her. They were eventually going to leave anyway since this was this last year. Besides, she laughed to herself, what would they want with a little mouse anyway?
