First Year: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

In the heart of London lay the King's Cross Station where it was filled with all sorts of muggles—there were the working kind, the ones visiting a relative and those with weird accents. Or so, young Lily had thought. It was September the first and just like the man dressed in blue robes had told her to, she stood patiently at King's Cross Station with all her luggage packed and piled neatly on her trolley, awaiting his arrival. Feeling slightly nervous about her first day, she looked down at her ticket that read 'Platform 9 ¾' again to make sure her eyes were not playing tricks on her the last 43 times she's looked at the thing.

As she stood in between platforms 9 and 10, the 11-year-old continued to question the reality in her being here with her trunk stuff full of odd magical equipment and strange books that promised you knowledge on a thousand kinds of herbs and fungi. A magical place such as Hogwarts existed, right? A place where people would accept her.

Right?

Her elder sister's words resurfaced from her memories and suddenly, she was in the field back at Spinner's End, looking down at Petunia from the top of the hill as her sister stomped furiously towards her. "You're a freak, Lily! I'm telling mummy! Come here, freak!" she yelled and yelled until everything in Lily's world seemed to come crashing down on her little shoulders. Lily's eyes stung at the memory of her hideous words. She wasn't a freak. She wasn't!

Someone touched her shoulder and she jumped, startled. She turned quickly to see thick longish black hair and a very familiar grin. Oh, that's right. Severus was going to be there too. He would help her, they were friends, afterall. "Severus!" she said in surprise before returning his grin with a shy smile.

"I just got here. Have you got everything from the list?" he asked her, glancing at her luggage pile. Her main trunk sat on the bottom of her trolley with her suitcases stacked and tucked in every possible way, but what caught young Severus' attention was the cage housing a cat with fur as dark as coal and eyes so green they seemed to glow. "I don't know why you bothered with a cat as your familiar, but I guess that's just so like you" he remarked with good nature, knowing how Lily had always fancied cats. "I, personally, went for the owl" he gestured proudly at his own cart with a frizzy feathered grey owl propped on top of his suitcase.

Lily's cheeks went slightly red at the comment. "I didn't think it mattered. Should I have asked for an owl instead?" she asked, suddenly feeling panicked.

Severus shrugged dismissively. "Don't matter, owls are just more convenient, is all" he put his hands on his trolley and wheeled it away from the pillar wall between platforms 9 and 10. "C'mon, the entrance is this way"

Lily fumbled with the ticket in her hand, "O-Oh but I was told to-to wait here, a man was supposed t-"

"I'll show you how to get to platform 9 ¾" Severus told her over his shoulder. Not wanting to be left behind, Lily shoved her ticket into her pocket and hurried after her dark-haired friend.

"Wait for me, Sev!"

…

When Severus told her to run into a wall, she thought he was trying to be funny. But when he denied it, Lily refused to budge an inch until he told her the real entrance to platform 9 ¾, and so Severus decided to demonstrate. Lily had smugly pushed her trolley aside to give him the room to line his trolley up with the wall, and then he was off, running at full speed towards the wall. She'd expected him to call his bluff at any moment, but her dark haired friend simply sped on with a determined look on his face. She opened her mouth to try and stop him but winced when she saw that he was going to collide with the wall; however, the crash did not come. Instead, he fazed through the bricks as if they did not exist, and he did not come crashing out from the other side.

Now, she stood where Severus had once been, peering around her belongings to see the wall looking more and more solid by the minute. Mustering as much courage as her little body possessed, Lily heaved in a breath and pushed off.

As soon as she stepped out from the wall and straight into platform 9 ¾, she felt like the whole world had shifted. It was just like when she had gone shopping in Diagon Alley, the exhilaration, the strangeness of the air—it was as if all the world's limits had been lifted away.

"I told you I wasn't bluffing." Severus's voice cut into her thoughts.

"I'm sorry for calling you a liar," she smiled, knowing that he wouldn't take it to heart.

"Let's board the train. You have your ticket, don't you?" he was about to push his cart away when Lily cried out.

"It's not in my pocket." Her face had gone slightly pale from panic. "I must've dropped it somewhere," the young redhead looked around on the ground.

Immediately abandoning his trolley and hurrying over to Lily's side, "I'll help you look for it," Severus told her. Suspecting that she might have dropped it on her way to the platform, Severus headed back through the magical barrier only to see a boy with unruly black hair bend down to pick a gleaming ticket from the floor.

"Give that here," he found himself saying as he approached the boy.

The boy looked up from the ticket to stare at him with arrogant hazel eyes and Severus immediately felt a sense of dislike towards the stranger. "That belongs to my friend, give it back," he told him firmly.

The boy raised an eyebrow before smirking "How do I know you're not lying?"

Peeved at the boy's audacity, he snapped back without thinking "I'm not!"

"Well, if you want it then tell your friend to come get it herself" he waved the ticket in Severus' face before pulling it out of the boy's reach when he made a lunge for it. Annoyed but not given up, Severus tried again for the ticket but could not best the other boy's reflexes as he ended up tripping on something and then came crashing down on the concrete with a thud.

"Severus!"

Two heads snap in the direction of the voice. Lily stood staring in disbelief as the scene unfolded before her eyes. That boy had deliberately tripped Severus to the ground, holding a ticket out of his reach as bait. What a bully! Huffing, she hurried over to her best friend's side to help him to his feet. "Are you alright, Severus?" she asked, her brows furrowed in concern.

"Fine" Severus sniped, looking up to glare at the smug-looking boy with a renewed hatred.

Turning her attention towards the unidentified boy, she reached out a hand and stared at crossly at him. "I would like my ticket back, please," she said.

The boy blinked twice, at a loss for words, before ultimately lowering the ticket onto her outstretched hand. "Thank you," she told him, her voice softer now before she tugged Severus along with her towards the magical barrier. But Severus was not happy about how things ended between him and the arrogant brat.

…

While his parents had loaded his stuff onto the train, James wandered off to find something worth his while. After peeking over shoulders for the past 15 minutes, the only interesting thing he's seen was some boy's Nimbus 1700. So, he made the very adult decision to wander into the muggle world by himself, even though his parents had specifically told him not to. He couldn't wait to start his flying classes. Since his dad already taught him the basics, he was going to make the rest of the class look like fools. Whilst he was in the midst of thinking of all the right things to say when the other kids asked him for advice, he saw her.

A girl.

She was just a girl but she was terribly pretty, with long wavy red hair and pale skin. She stood in between Platform 9 and 10, looking down at a familiar-looking ticket. Was she a witch? Of course she was, she had a cat sitting on top of her luggage. She seemed perplexed. She must be trying to get to platform 9 ¾. Does she not know how to get past the magical barrier? Should he go and see if she needed help? But what would he say?

Without knowing, the boy was running his hands through his hair, ruffling it about and making it unrulier than it already was. He should just go up to her and tell her how to get to Platform 9 ¾, then she'll think he's awful clever and thank him. Yes, that's just what he'll do.

But things didn't quite work out for little James when the girl's dark haired companion decided to show up. He watched as she blushed and smiled shyly whilst the boy talked. Now he was bored and annoyed. He'd been hoping to make a new friend but no one wanted to be friends with someone who considered that greasy haired loser as a friend anyway. He'd just go back to the platform and find his parents.

Just as he had walked around the pillar, so did they. And he ended up watching them chat animatedly for the next few minutes. At that point, he was blatantly staring at the red-haired girl, noticing how her expressions changed throughout the conversation. He was intrigued by her but he didn't understand why. Maybe it was because she was so pretty. She could very well be the prettiest girl he's ever seen. Not that he would to admit that. Girls were disgusting.

He noticed something black in his peripheral vision and realized that the boy was still with her. A sudden pang of jealousy stabbed at his heart but he brushed it off. What's he got to be jealous of, he didn't even know her. For all he knew, she could be sorted into Hufflepuff and he would be in Gryffindor and they would never even think of speaking to one another. He was much too brilliant to be speaking to a Hufflepuff.

So, when he saw her ticket drop out of her pocket as she disappeared through the magical barrier, James wasn't quite sure of what to do with it. Should he return it? Perhaps he should, it was only the right thing to do. He'd just picked it up when he heard a voice gruffly say, "Give that here."

It took a second for him to recognize the greasy haired boy. The girl's friend, apparently. If he gave it back now then it would save him the trouble of having to find her "That ticket belongs to my friend, give it back" James bristled at the mention of his friend. Instead of handing the ticket over, he decided to provoke the other boy.

He wanted to meet her, he wanted her to come and confront him and he thought the ticket to that was quite literally in his hands. That is, until the boy had tried to snatch it off him. Without thinking, he was evading his attempts and mocking him. He was no good for her. Someone as plain as him should never be friends with her. Out of malevolence, he had stuck out his foot to trip the unsuspecting boy to the ground. But as soon as he did it, he felt guilty. He was just about to offer a hand to the boy along with an apology when a melodic voice stole away his attention.

It was her. She sounded even better than he thought she would. And she was looking at him! It must be his lucky day because she was making her way towards him. He stood a little straighter as she approached. He panicked momentarily when he realized he had no words to greet her with, but soon realized that he didn't need them, for she strode past him completely to pull the greasy haired git off the floor.

Oh, right. Him.

He watched as her mouth moved and listened to her voice but not what she said. He was completely entranced by her presence. She turned and regarded him crossly, with eyes so green, everything around them seemed to look dull. "I would like my ticket back, please" she said, shortly and James forced his hands to comply, not caring how dumb he must look then.

When she uttered a "Thank you," he snapped out of it and could only watch as she disappeared through the barrier. That was not how she was supposed to thank him. That was not how it was supposed to go at all.

…

The next time he saw her was when he was looking through the compartments for vacancy with his new friend, a rather loud and bold boy with wavy black hair and a charismatic smile. They'd met on the platform when they interjected at some kid boasting about how he was going to be sorted into the Slytherin House because of his father had been in Slytherin, as well as the father before him.

"Nothing good comes from Slytherin anyway!"

"Oh shut up, Malfoy!"

They'd shouted out at the same time whilst standing next to the other. And so, their friendship bloomed in the midst of ignoring the cries of a red-faced pureblood and debating over whether the Appleby Arrows or the Wimbourne Wasps were the better quidditch team before eventually agreeing that Hamish McFarlan of the Montrose Magpies was the best chaser the world has ever known.

James later learned that the boy he was idly chatting with, was in fact, the heir of the prestigious House of Black—Sirius Black. His parents didn't tell him much about the house of Black but he would often hear his father and mother speak of them in hushed tones when they believed him to be asleep in his room. Something to do about them rejecting the idea of allowing Muggleborns equal rights as Pure-bloods. He vaguely wondered if that was how his new friend felt about Muggleborns.

"Look, they're barely occupied. Let's ask if we can sit with them," Sirius's voice had snapped James' head back to the present but, before he could tell him it was a bad idea, the boy had already stuck his head through the doors and asked. He effectively shut his mouth when he heard a muffled, "D'you mind?"

He watched as she smiled at his new friend and shook her head, he couldn't hear what she said but didn't need to when his friend pushed the door open and crashed inelegantly onto the empty seat across them. "Well get in here, James" he waved his hand inwards to exclaim himself.

Like an awkward toddler, James shuffled into the carriage with dread settling in the pits of his stomach as he tried not to think about her in his presence. However, before he could see it, he forced himself to turn around and busied himself with shutting the compartment door then sat down with a little too much force, still refusing to meet her eyes.

"Hi, I'm Sirius" he hears his friend say. Then a giggle. Her giggle. When he looked up, he noticed that everyone in the compartment was looking at her and apparently, she did too. With rosy cheeks and pressed lips, she sank in her seat and found sudden interest in her fingernails.

"I-I didn't mean any offense by it. You have a very interesting name." she explained. "I'm Lily by the way" she added quietly. Sirius merely shrugged it off dismissively. When she noticed that her friend had yet to say anything she gave him a little nudge with her arm "And this is Severus."

Oh, he'd forgotten they were in the company of the slimy git. "James Potter," he purposefully boasted his last name, knowing that any magical folk would have heard of the name Potter no matter how young they were. Severus threw him a dirty look, knowing what he was playing at. However, before an argument stemmed, Sirius jumped into a conversation with him and Lily with Severus.

The two parties had spoken separately, intent on minding their own business for the most part of their trip— until James heard Severus mention the sorting hat.

"I hope we get sorted in Slytherin," he had told a very bright eyed Lily, who obviously had no idea what she would be getting into.

James snorted loudly and rudely, snatching the attention of everyone in the carriage. Severus shot him a heated glare, as if daring him to speak. So, he did.

"The house of Slytherin is filled with nothing but the sly and cold-hearted," he snooted in his high and mighty voice. He waited for Severus to snap back but instead, Sirius voiced out.

"Where are you heading, if you've got the choice?" Sirius seemed genuinely curious.

James didn't even give his answer a second thought before answering "'Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!' Like my dad." He proclaimed, looking up as if posing nobly would prove his point. This time, it was Severus' turn to snort. "Got a problem with that?" he challenged, leaning forward on his seat and on the verge of standing up.

Severus rolled his eyes. "No, if you'd rather be brawny than brain."

But as soon as James had opened his mouth to snap back, the train slowed to a stop and the sharp hissing sound of released steam reach his ears. "We're here!" Lily exclaimed, her excitement was contagious and no longer were they concerned with petty debates over which house was superior, only eagerness to get started in Hogwarts as soon as possible.

…

When the sorting hat had been placed on his head, it'd been barely a second before a loud and firm "GRYFFINDOR!" resonated throughout the hall, evoking cheers and claps from the left table in the middle. Obviously proud that they had a Potter on their side. With a proud smile, he caught Lily's eyes glimmering with… admiration? Absentmindedly, he hopped off the chair when her name had been called.

"Lily Evans"

Evans, huh?

As he settled in his seat next to Sirius, he heard another Gryffindor being announced and his head snapped up to see an excited Lily bounding down the steps and towards their table. The Gryffindor table. He then proceeded to try and convince himself that the squeezing of his heart was for gaining a potentially useful member to earn points for their new house. Not because he now had her as a classmate.