Lily's First Day
All characters (c) J.K.Rowling and not me.
Everyone around her was fidgeting nervously, even Severus had his bottom lip clenched between his teeth. Not Lily though; she was practically shaking with anticipation, she could barely prevent herself from shouting out in excitement. She was finally here! After all those years of wondering and imagining, after all of Severus' stories of the hideous giant squid that lurked in the murkiest depths of a great lake that sat in the voluminous grounds, overlooked by a towering castle, of the Great Hall, enchanted to echo the sky that it stood beneath, and of the moving staircases and bewitched corridors, she had finally arrived! For years everything that Severus had said had just been stories to her, never more than an image in her mind's eye, but now they were real.
"What if I'm not in Slytherine?" came a whisper in her ear. She turned around to see Severus, paler than ever, now chewing his lip so hard that Lily thought it might detach itself from his jaw at any moment. "So what if you're not in Slytherine?" replied Lily, "what difference would it make?" "My mother would kick me out of the house for a start," he muttered quietly, so as to allow no one but Lily to hear. "Then you can come and live at my house," she said firmly. Severus did not reply, but he smiled broadly, and Lily could tell that he was reassured.
Moments later, they were greeted by an elderly, ye wise looking man, who introduced himself as Professor Dumbledore, and explained about the different houses, and how they would be sorted. Of course, Lily already knew this, thanks to Severus, but she still listened intently. This man seemed almost to radiate magic, and hearing it all from him, standing in the halls of Hogwarts, it all seemed so much more real.
They followed Professor Dumbledore into the Great Hall. It was almost exactly as Lily had always imagined it; everything from the vast expanse of starry sky where the ceiling should be, to the cold stone floor beneath their feet, to the battered old Sorting Hat that stood on a stool at the front of the hall, waiting to decide the fate of each student, was precisely the way she had seen it so many times in her mind's eye, yet it was somehow more grand and beautiful.
One by one, they were all called forward and sorted. Within seconds of the Sorting Hat touching Lily's head, it called out, "Gryffindor!" and she heard Severus groan loudly in disappointment. She too was disappointed that she would most likely not be in the same house as her best friend, but to her mind, it would have little effect on their friendship.
As the sorting continued, she found the two empty seats on her left filled by two boys. The one furthest away from her she recognised as a boy she had met on the train, and whose name she now found out was James Potter. The other boy, however, she did not know.
Partway the feast, he turned to her and introduced himself; "I'm Remus," he said. She wanted to be hostile to him, as a few minutes ago, he had been chatting avidly with the Black and Potter boys who had been so inexcusably nasty to Severus on the train, but she decided that she could not isolate herself from the entire Gryffindor house, and after all, he hadn't even been with the other two on the train. "I'm Lily," she said, smiling at him. "Listen," he said, "I saw you talking to that Snape boy earlier." "So?" she asked, indignantly, "I can talk to whoever I like." "Not to the Slytherines you can't" he replied gravely, "not if you want to keep all your body parts intact, anyway." "I don't see why," said Lily, her voice betraying her annoyance, "what makes them any different from us?" "They all hate people who are different from them. They'd hate me because..." he tailed off, and bit his lip as if to prevent himself from letting slip some great secret. "Go on," said Lily, still annoyed, but wanting to hear more. "Well, they'd hate me because I'm different, but we don't need to go into that, it's not important. Anyway, they hate people who have muggle parents too, and pretty much anyone who even talks to muggles." "But Sev said that it wouldn't matter that my parents were muggles," she said, now tearful. "I bet he didn't," said Remus. "He did!" she insisted, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. She then gulped, held her head up, and said obstinately, "No. I don't care what you say. Me and Sev are going to be friends forever"