Her name was Lily Evans.

She was named for her grandmother that left her family the house that they lived in. It was a big white Victorian on the middle of a street on top of a hill, in a small English town, north of London. These were the first things Lily remembered ever learning.

Lily grew up rather alone, but never lonely. Her sister, Petunia, had been close to her when they were very young, but when she started showing signs of magic, shunned her, out of fear( though no one knew then that what she was doing was caused by magic) and a little jealousy too, because when strange things happened around Lily, it got Lily a lot of attention. At school, it wasn't much better, though it was no fault of Lily's.

When she was in kindergarten, her teacher told the class that they needed to find something to recite in front of the everyone. As they were 5-year-olds, nothing much was expected. Something from Dr. Seuss, maybe, or a nursery rhyme. That's pretty much what the kids in the class did wind up doing. All except for Lily. She had found a poem in a book of popular children's poems that belonged to her sister. When her name was called to get up at the front of the room, she went up and started her recitation. It was " Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein.

"There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends"

Lily had no idea just how impressive it was for a five year old girl to be able to remember and recite such a lengthy poem ( lengthy for a five year old that is) .If Lily had known what doing that poem would start, she may not have done it at all. But, the fact remain that she did, and the second she finished her teacher started clapping from her desk.

" Wonderful, Lily, that was wonderful! Did your mommy or daddy pick that out for you."

"No, I did. It was in my big sister's book. My Daddy helped me learn it though , he made flash cards and everything. The poem sounded so cool. Like there was a place you could go far away from the rest of the whole wide world, where everything was magical, like a fairy tale."

Lily's teacher smiled to herself over Lily's obviously big imagination. She turned to the class.

" See, children, this is the sort of thing you can learn in school if you try and put in effort. Lily here should be congratulated for her hard work."

A few kids grumbled good job to her, and that was it. They were all obscenely jealous of her, because she was the only one the teacher had said good job to. They were to jealous and really, to young, to make the connection between the teacher's liking her recitation the best and all the hard work Lily put into doing it. From that moment on , all the kids in her class branded her a teacher's pet, and avoided her during lunch and at every recess.

Lily was a small, understanding, patient little child. The kids in her class weren't acting very differently than her sister did, and her sister ignored her out of jealousy for the attention she often got for being so pretty, smart and sweet. It never occurred to Petunia that she might have gotten some attention to if she were nicer to her sister, and didn't spend so much time sulking over her. So Lily decided to deal with them the same way she dealt with Petunia; by ignoring their rudeness and not forcing herself on their company.

She spent her recesses reading books, and practicing math problems in her smiley face notebook. She figured if they were going to call her a teacher's pet, she may as well live up to the name. She assumed that the other kids would eventually get over ther anger about the poem, and be nice to her again. But she kept doing well in school, and the teacher kept calling her out for it, and her classmates stayed jealous. When it didn't look like it was ever going to change, Lily became very sad. But that all changed on day when she was in the first grade. She was reading a book, and the main character was lamenting to another person about how different he was from everyone around him.

" Why do I have to be different? Why me?"

" It, means my friend, that you were just born for a special fate. Different than the masses of people living hum-drum, typical lives."

" Oh, really, well then, what am I supposed to do in the mean time until this special fate?"

" Accept who you are, and accept who they are. You may never be able to change their minds about you. You cannot control the will of others , my friend. But they can never change your mind about you, unless you let them. Meanwhile, learn all you can, about as much as you can, because that will take you everywhere. You also never know when you will need to use that knowledge. Remember , the truly malicious are blamable, most of the others are just ignorant. Remember all this, and you may not always be popular, but you will be happy."

That one paragraph spoke volumes to Lily. She immediately forgot about her classmates treatment of her. They weren't malicious , just ignorant, and she couldn't control them anyways. But she could control her, and so she stopped being sad about it. Then she decided to take the other advice of the paragraph , and learn all she could about different things. She already did very well in school, so she decided to learn about things less academic, and more fun.

She walked up to her mother and said" I want to learn something new."

Her mother looked at her in surprise, but then directed her youngest daughter to the basement, to her grandmother's studio.

Lily's grandma had been a singer and dancer on the London stage in her younger days, and one of the rooms in the basement she had made into a dance practice studio.

Lily opened the door and flicked on the light. One wall was completely covered in mirrors, and the other three were covered in pretty pink wall paper, with a few framed pictures of ballerinas on them. Against one wall was a piano, and next to that, a book shelf with what looked like a bunch of dancing how-to books. Eagerly, Lily went over and checked out the books. There were ones on ballet, ballroom dancing, tap, jazz dancing, swing, and old popular dances, like the jitterbug and the twist, and a few on choreography. There was even one on gymnastics, even though that wasn't strictly dancing.

Over the next few weeks , Lily spent every day after school down in the basement learning out of the dance books. She became rather good at it. As she was only about six or seven, and still young and flexible, she tried some basic gymnastics, like cartwheels, tripods, and head and handstands. This was so successful, that eventually she was going to her dad and saying

" I want to learn something new ."

So he taught her how to draw and paint pictures. When her mom saw this, she decided to teach Lily how to sew on the family sewing machine. One day her aunt came over for a visit, and when she heard that Lily was on a quest to learn as many different skills as she could, she took Lily down to the dance studio and taught her how to play the old piano there. They had such a good time, that soon her aunt was coming over once every two weeks to teach Lily how to play, and the two became very close.

At a family gathering when Lily was nine years old, all her aunts and uncles, as well as her parents , sat around for an Evans family tradition; bragging about their children. When Lily's mom told everyone how Lily was always eager to learn different and new things, her male cousins decided to teach her how to play soccer ,so they would have an even number to play with. (A/N: The Brits call soccer football, but I'm no Brit. Sorry, folks!) She loved the game, and spent the whole rest of the day playing it with her cousins.

Her parents were very proud of Lily, and all of her accomplishments and talents. One person who wasn't proud of her, though, was Petunia. Extremely jealous of how 'perfect' she was, and all the attention it afforded her, she was cruel and mean to Lily every chance she got. Lily ignored hjr though, remembering that, as the book she had read so long ago said, you can't control the will of others, accept them for what they are. She did, and as the book predicted, she was a very happy girl, if not very popular among her peers.

And so Lily drew, danced, sewed, played, and painted through the next few years. She was now on the eve of puberty, and approaching eleven. Her room was filled with pictures she had drawn and her closet filled with clothes she had sewn herself. On a shelf above her bed were trophies she had won doing dance numbers in local talent shows. Lily thought life would just go on like this forever. She had already begun to fill out forms for the local secondary school.

It was a bright sunny day in July when everything really started. Lily was headed out the door, to get to her summer soccer league for girls. She was thinking about

the day before at practice. She had kicked the ball toward the net, and another girl on the other team stepped out to block it with her body, but the ball sailed around the girl, and into the net. Everyone accounted it to the wind, but Lily knew better.

It was starting again. The weird things that just happened around Lily sometimes. There had been no wind even blowing yesterday. This was a pretty tame incident compared to other stuff. Once , she fell from a tree and broke her arm, and the next morning she woke up and it was fine. Once she got really mad at some kids at school for making fun of her, and a whole row of bookshelves came down from the wall. No one was hurt, but from then on she had a feeling she wasn't quite like the other kids, and in more ways than just being the teacher's pet.

She headed for the door calling to her mom saying " Mom, I'm going to ride my bike to practice at the park." She opened the door and stopped. Standing in the doorway was a man. But he didn't look like any man Lily had ever scene before. H was rather short, but had a kind smile on his face. He was wearing pinstriped pants, a white button -up shirt, but with a loud lime-green tie tied haphazardly around his neck, as if he just wasn't quite sure how to tie it. Over this was a floor length trench coat. Well, floor length for a normal sized man. On this man, it gathered at his feet.

" Hello," The strange man said in a rather high ,airy voice. " Are you miss Lily Evans?"

" Yes, I am." Lily replied warily.

" I am Professor Flitwick. May I come in? I'd like to speak with you and your parents, please."

Lily nodded timidly, and let him in.

As he walked through the door, she noticed he was holding what looked like an envelope in his hand. On the cover was a coat of arms, with a badger, an eagle, a snake, and a lion...

To be continued...