The asphalt of the playground seemed so far below me as I swung back and forth on the rickety old swing set. My fingers gripped the metal links and strands of my fiery hair flew in my face.

"I'm going to do it now! I'm going to jump!" I announced.

"Lily, don't do it!" cried my sister, Petunia, whom I called Tuney. Ignoring her shouts of protest, I released the swing's chain and leapt. I let the wind catch me and soared.

My feet hit the ground, as daintily as a feather would land when dropped.

Tuney stopped her swing and ran to my side. "Mummy told you not to!" she scolded. "Mummy said you weren't allowed!"

"But I'm fine," I argued. Then I remembered the skill I had discovered the previous day. Tuney simply had to watch. I knew she would be impressed, so I strode to the edge of the playground, picking up a flower from beneath a bush. "Tuney, look at this. Watch what I can do."

I placed the flower on my palm and held it out towards my sister. The petals opened and closed repeatedly in perfect synchronization.

"Stop it!" she shrieked, as if it was painful to behold.

"It's not hurting you," I told her, but I dropped the flower anyways. I didn't like to see her upset.

"It's not right. How do you do it?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?" came a voice from behind the bush. A thin black-haired boy stepped out. He was pale and oddly dressed. Tuney screamed and retreated to the other end of the playground, causing him to blush. But I, ever the curious one, stayed put.

"What's obvious?"

"I know what you are," he said. To me, this sounded like the sort of thing one would say to someone whose deepest, darkest secrets they had discovered, but I didn't have any secrets, except that my neighbor and I had spent our allowances to buy pet mice together and were were keeping them in her basement. But he couldn't possibly have been talking about that.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"You're... you're a witch," he said cautiously.

I was offended. I knew a "witch" was someone who was evil and people often used it as an insult. A girl called Tuney a witch at school once. She came home crying.

"That's not a very nice thing to say to somebody!" I told him. I ran back to Tuney. But the strange boy persisted.

"No!" he yelled, rushing after me. "You are. You are a witch. I've been watching you for a while. But there's nothing wrong with that. My mum's one, and I'm a wizard."

He had been watching me?

Tuney snickered. "Wizard! I know who you are. You're that Snape boy! They live down on Spinner's End by the river," she told me, disgust dripping from every word. She turned back to him. "Why have you been spying on us?"

The Snape boy had found a sudden fascination with his shoes. "Haven't been spying," he mumbled. "Wouldn't spy on you, anyway. You're a muggle." He said it with the contempt that most people might say witch.

"Lily, come on, we're leaving!" She declared. We marched away, beginning the long walk home from the park.

The Evans house, a two-story brick building with a white porch and a flower garden, was located on Springcrest Lane in Little Whinging. My sister and I stepped through the front door and promptly removed our muddy shoes. Our mother was in the kitchen, a flowered apron over her plaid dress.

"Hi, girls. Do you want a snack?"

We informed her that we did indeed want a snack, so she toasted some slices of bread and spread her homemade raspberry preserves on them. As we sat down to eat, she asked us why we were home so early.

Tuney had obviously been dying to tell her of our run-in with the Snape boy. She told the story, speaking at so fast a pace that Mother had to request multiple times that she slow down.

"That is quite odd," she remarked.

The next day, a letter arrived in the mail addressed to me. I tore open the envelope with excitement. I almost never got mail. The letter read:

Dear Miss Evans,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress

Witchcraft? This couldn't be a coincidence. I had to speak to the Snape boy.