The Prince and His Flower
Chapter One
"Tell me a story, Lily."
These were the words that came from a delicate little girl in a big white bed. Lily Evans looked around the hospital room, small and white and sterile. She wondered if the hospital rooms of St. Mungo look like this, or if this was some Muggle invention. A way to mock the patients, to make them gaze upon the perfect white walls from their imperfect, sickly bodies.
Warm green eyes looked upon a small girl no more than eleven years of age. Had she been so small back then? Merlin, that was only six years ago, and yet it seemed like a lifetime ago that she had played the roll of a Muggle.
"What kind of a story, cousin?"
"One with a happy ending."
Happy ending, did she know anything about those? With You-Know-Who gaining power with every blink of the eye, with people disappearing every time you turned around? Did Lily Evans remember what it was like to believe in happy endings?
"Sorry, don't know anything like that."
Look at her, thinking like some pessimistic old woman. She was seventeen and a half, bound to start her seventh year of Hogwarts in September. And if she had had her way, she wouldn't be here now, in the hospital room of a dying cousin she barely knew. She would be out there, standing side by side with her friends, fighting. She wouldn't be stuck here with the family that was always trying to hide her anyway, pretending as if the war and her friends and her school, and everything that mattered didn't exist.
"Don't you want to talk to Petunia?" Lily asked almost hopefully. Perhaps she could go home, read the Prophet and owl her friends, make sure they were still alright.
"No," the girl said in her pitiable little voice, faded green eyes looking up at her older cousin, "I wanted to see you. I see Petunia all the time, but I hardly ever get to see you Lily."
So that was what this visit was about. Why her little cousin had begged for Lily to come, though they had rarely interacted prior to this meeting. She just wanted to see the family enigma before she died. For ever since strange things had occurred around Lily Evans (and that had been for all of her life), her parents had found it most prudent to keep her hidden from the prying eyes of the family. For her own good, they said. So that no one could think poorly of their sweet little ginger-haired angel. It wasn't her fault, her parents would remind her, but other people wouldn't understand her peculiarities.
Her own parents didn't understand themselves.
And after Lily had received her letter to Hogwarts, things had gotten worse. Petunia had practically disowned her. Lily tried her best to explain the wizarding world to her parents, and she knew they tried their best to understand, but Lily knew she might as well have been speaking a different language when she spoke of transfiguring or Death Eaters. Their conversations had grown increasingly like the generic ones on those Muggle television shows, until suddenly Lily felt most at home in the magical world in Hogwarts.
The silence in the room continued, and so Lily's mind was free to blast her thoughts. This was her last summer before graduation, before she got a job and could live in the magical world full-time. So she could empathize when her parents had asked her to spend the majority of the summer at home – it was their last chance to be a family again. Or to pretend to be a family, at least.
"Tell me a fairytale," said the girl, sitting up in her bed, golden curls bouncing as she did so. She looked like an angel.
"Like the kind with Princes?" Lily asked satirically, smiling at her own private joke. The girl nodded.
Her cousin wanted Lily to tell her a fairytale. Lily didn't know any of those. So she decided that her own life was the next best thing.
Lily sat back in her chair with a smile. It felt good to remember her self, to recount the story, even if her one-girl audience would think it little more than a myth. If she was going to be here, she might as well make the best of it, "Well, if there is one story I do know, it's this one – The Prince and His Flower."
The younger cousin smiled, a trace of life coming to her green eyes as she gazed into Lily's vivacious orbs.
"What's it about?" she asked eagerly.
"About a girl named Lily – yes like me," she said before the younger cousin could even open her mouth, "And a boy named Severus."
The little girl giggled, "That's a funny name."
Lily smiled, but her eyes were distant, "Yes, I thought so too. So we'll just call him Sev."
Not the sort of thing I usually do, but it came to my head and had to get it out. Hope you enjoyed.