DISCLAIMER: The ideas are mine, the characters belong to JK

A spring afternoon I discovered a bowl on my desk, Just a few inches of clear water in it. Floating on the surface was a flower petal… as I watched, it sank… Just before it reached the bottom, it was transformed into a fish. It was beautiful magic, wondrous to behold. " Professor Slughorn, The Half-Blood Prince Film

The morning was beautiful. The kind of beauty no one had seen in a very long time.

It was breakfast time at Hogwarts and the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall seemed to open to a bright blue sky. It matched whatever could be seen of the real sky though the windows, a velvety blue expanse, dotted, every here and there, with clouds as white as candy floss. This was highly unusual, so much so indeed that one might suspect something was wrong. That is, if the absence of the unseasonal everlasting mist they had learnt to associate with dementors could ever be considered wrong.

Breakfast was usually a silent meal. The only constant sound – other than the cacophony made by silverware carelessly hitting dishes, and occasionally falling to the floor – was the noise of pointy feathers furiously scratching parchment; for of course, there never failed to be at least one or two students who had forgotten to write an essay or paper due the first morning class. They would be too busy for conversation, of course, trying to swallow some food whilst writing about the twelve uses of dragon blood, or some complicated transfiguration spells. As for the rest of the students, most of them were still sleepy, absorbed in their own thoughts, silently striving to cross the imaginary bridge linking the real world to the world of dreams- Or nightmares, which lately, seemed far more likely. The war had taken its toll on everyone, and it was difficult to find peace, even in sleep.

It wasn't as if they had a lot to talk about, anyway. Whatever news came from the outside world were generally bad, and silence was preferable to more bad news. In the past, the arrival of the owl post had always been a joyous occasion, but it hardly ever happened anymore. Several days went by without a single owl flying through the windows to deliver a letter. Sure, the students made frequent trips to the owlery to write home assuring their parents that all was well, but away from the protected walls of the castle no one had the time to do the same. In the past, parents and grandparents often sent boxes of sweets to their kids in school, but that habit was discontinued when it became too dangerous to go outside. The war had brought scarcity – as it often does – and it was time to say goodbye to such frivolities and concentrate on basic needs. Especially when places like the Diagon Alley became full of ghost shops, and broken parlours whose owners had been dragged away by force. Even the Daily Prophet had been taken – and nearly shut down-and now, there were gaps of several days in between issues, which were irregularly mailed to the very few who insisted in not cancelling their subscriptions.

Whenever a student did get a letter, though, it usually meant that something really bad had happened, something considered worth writing about. More often than not, it meant that someone had died. And the arrival of the post was followed by that same student standing up and rushing outside. The steps hitting the stones of the floor and echoing in the walls remained in the ears of the people in Great Hall for several moments until there was silence again. No one had the heart and energy to comment on what just happened, or to do anything more than exchange looks for that matter. The owls – whom, in the past, flew over their masters' shoulders hoping to have some bits of toast or a sip of tea-were gone almost as quickly as they'd arrived.

The unchanging grim weather outside contributed to the general mood. Spring or summer, the sky was always dark, the air was always too cold, and the flickering candlelights invited silent contemplation. It was difficult to believe that there were no dementors hovering even within those very walls. The air was sullen, and never more heavily felt than in early mornings.

But today, everything was different. It was very early still, but the four long tables were quickly getting crowded with students, most of whom were too young to even remember the sight of such a beautiful sky. The bright blue colour felt like a puff of fresh wind, and for the first time in years, it fostered conversation. Some were even smiling, and the Great Hall felt very much like it did in the past; during breakfast or before a Quidditch match.

And then it happened. Even earlier than usual, hundreds of owls came into the Great Hall through the highest window sashes, and flew over the tables, dropping packages and letters in the laps of their owners. One particularly large bird brought so many packages tied to its legs that its flight slightly lost course. Several students got letters from three or four different owls, some of whom carried packages so large it made the birds wobble in the air. Those packages were dropped unceremoniously over the table, knocking down jars of pumpkin juice and catapulting spoons loaded with jelly, but nobody seemed to mind. Even after they had carried on with their deliveries, the owls flew over their masters, hanging around to nibble their ears and have a quick bite as the students opened the envelopes with a mix of fear, anticipation and hope. Whatever the news they received, it must have been good, for instead of feeling the urge to leave the hall, students who had already opened their letters rushed up and down the Hall to share the news with their friends, a smile in their faces. Voices were louder now, and somewhere at the Hufflepuff table, a particularly large package opened itself as it touched the ground, and colourful fireworks exploded towards the sky.

The was so much happening at the same time that it was impossible for Horace Slughorn to be more than marginally aware of it all from his spot at the staff table. The scene was overwhelming, but in a good way, and the decibel level constantly increased. A first year Ravenclaw boy, wanting to get to the other side of the table but blocked by several groups of older students much taller than himself, decided to crawl under the table to meet his mates and show them what was written on his letter. A group of girls next to them could barely restrain their excitement and took turns between hugging each other and jumping in the same place. Away, a Slytherin boy crossed the whole extent of the great Hall to kiss his girlfriend, a girl in blue robes. Closer to the staff table, a Gryffindor fifth year climbed on a chair to be able to see his friend from another house in a distant table, now that almost anyone was standing up, and a third year boy from Hufflepuff almost choke, trying to swallow his sausages and eggs and tell his friends the big news at the same time. Friends held each other in tight embraces that wouldn't let go, talking about their plans for the future and speculating about life on the outskirts of the castle again. Couples engaged in kissing as flagrantly and indiscreetly as it would never have been allowed normally, and whispered in each other ears, no doubt promises of youthful love. Youngsters ran outside and came back, holding other friends by the hand, inviting them to join the party. A seventeen year old girl picked up her tiny first year brother, and the little boy wrapped his arms around her neck, in spite of what any of his little friends might say. But they didn't say a thing; they were too busy, re-reading the letters they'd gotten from home. Everywhere, groups of students toasted with goblets full of pumpkin juice. Away from the door, a group of tall Slytherin sixth years joined their wands, pointing to the sky and launched green sparks up above. Others did the same and soon the ceiling was crawling with colourful sparks.

As if it wasn't enough, while professor Slughorn watched the students and smiled surrendering to the feast, a group of ten to twelve owls including a particularly large hawk-like animal had made their way to the main table and dropped several letters and envelopes on his lap. He caught the ones that had fallen a bit farther on the table and piled them over what seemed to be a box of his favourite crystallized pineapple. Those letters and packages seemed to have made their way to the professor from several of his former pupils, a pleasure he hadn't had in a while now.

Horace heard the loud sound of a bunch of thick envelopes missing his head for a millimeter and hit the floor heavily. He touched his ear, a reflex, seeing as the letters had come so close and lowered himself to pick them up. Malcolm, it read in one of them, in purple ink. Those were not intended for him, but for his colleague, Minerva McGonagall. She sat by his side at the beginning of the meal, but Horace realized with shock that she wasn't there anymore. He'd been so absorbed by the fuss among the students that he didn't realize that some of his colleagues had stood up to try and keep the mess under some control, or at least, keep anybody from being hurt. The Potions master left the letters addressed to Minerva next to her cup – in a much shorter pile than his own – and lifted his eyes to look for his colleagues in the Great Hall.

The young and tiny professor Flitwick had disappeared amongst a particularly large group of Ravenclaw students-half maintaining discipline, half joining the celebration. Rubeus Hagrid, on the other hand, stood tall near the farthest end of the Slytherin table, trying to stop the students from doing anything more dangerous than launching sparks to the ceiling. A few metres away, Minerva McGonagall talked to some of the students on the table of her own house. The witch had a stern and cautious look in her eyes. She had always had that cautious tone, even when she was a young girl at Slughorn's class. She grabbed a piece of parchment that looked a lot like a newspaper page from the hands of a student and read it carefully, seemly unaware of the fuss all around her. She turned it over and read it again. Whatever was written there, she was not convinced. Then, as the students continued to talk loudly and excitedly, the Transfiguration professor turned her eyes to the staff table. She looked straight to professor Dumbledore's chair, but the Headmaster was nowhere to be seen. Minerva bit her lip, and without a second thought, the witch turned her back and walked away. She must have had her mind set in getting to wherever it was that she was going, because she walked straight to the door, ignoring a bunch of Gryffindor girls who were behaving quite silly: dancing and climbing over their chairs. The girls went on without as much as a reprehension. Now that was something that Horace had never seen before.

Professor Slughorn slid his chair backwards and stood up, placing his pile of mail under his left arm. He wanted to open his correspondence in private, and he chose to take the fact that the deputy Headmistress had left as a non verbal permission for the heads of houses to excuse themselves from the Great Hall. With a gesture of his wand, the Slytherin Professor sent Minerva's letters to her office, and they simply vanished from the staff table to reappear there. Then, he cordially excused himself from Professor Burbage, still on the table, and started to walk the long way to the door, grasping fragments of all kinds of conversation on his way.

"It's finally over, finally..."

"... and they've already come back from the country, and we will..."

"... big explosion, and wreckage, and dark spells, and that sort of..."

"I don't think anybody knows that!"

"They say it's gonna air on muggle television!"

"What's a tevelision?"

Horace laughed. Although some of that was nothing more than rumours, all around him, the same words were repeated over and over again: End. Peace. Destroyed. Dead. Over. Nobody seemed to have the doubts Horace read on Minerva's face. The old professor knew it was wise to have doubts, but he understood his students. They did not wish to be wise, they were too young for that. They wanted it all to be over. They wanted to believe.

"Professor, have you heard?" Miss Jones asked loudly, over several heads. "Isn't it great?"

"Great, Gwenog, great!" Slughorn smiled at the girl, and messed up the hair of a tiny first-year Slytherin kid who ran by him, trying to reach some friends at the other end of the table. "Just great!" he repeated it, but deep down his mind, Horace wondered. Could it be true? Was it all truly over?

As he made his way to his office, Horace realized that the euphoria was not restricted to the Great hall. Instead it seemed to overtake the whole castle. Walking by the library's doors he glanced at books flying aimlessly over the tables, according to a happy melody, and several metres ahead, Peeves performed loops in the air, singing a victory song of his own making. Across the corridors and moving staircases – they were moving more than ever this morning - many students made their way to and from the Great Hall, still chatting about the big news. A large group of ghosts floated by him with cheerful voices, and the Gryffindor tower ghost didn't seem able to keep his nearly decapitated head over his shoulders as he talked. Even the portraits seemed to gather in each other's frames, chatting excitedly and cheering with the other inhabitants of Hogwarts. It was as if the castle itself had come alive to celebrate the end of a very long night. In spite of whatever doubts might be on his head at that moment, a big smile appeared on Horace's face.

As he entered his office he didn't even bother to close the door. With the letters now suspended by a Wingardium leviosa, the old professor's eyes did a quick scan of the place. It was so small! He'd been trying to get professor Merrythought's old office for years now. Maybe now he would get it! He dropped the letters on a shelf and started looking for his letter opener… But something made him stop. There was something odd, Something missing.

Horace looked back at his desk, slowly. There was a big bowl right where it should be, just a few inches of clear water in it. But that was it. There was no fish inside.

His faced taken by fear and concern, Professor Slughorn closed his door, with a flick of his wand. Slowly, he walked the few steps separating him from the desk, hoping, more than believing, that if he was close enough to it he would see his fish again. But of course, that was nothing more than wishful thinking. Francis was gone.

Horace sat on the comfortable chair by his desk and summoned his letters from the shelf. He desperately went over them one by one and then again and again, until he was convinced of what he had only suspected earlier. What he had known as soon as the dreadful realization that Francis was gone hit him. There was no letter from her...

There was no letter from Lily...

Horace felt the water filling up in his eyes as he was overpowered by memories.

Horace Slughorn believed that there was more to being a teacher than being skilled in one's field. He believed that to be a professor, it was not enough to be a wizard of great knowledge and power. One also must be somewhat seasoned. Marked by time. When he started teaching, Horace was a very young man, and as such, he committed the mistakes of a young man. So many errors in judgment... A lot would have been different if he hadn't, but of course, it took him a long time to understand this. In fact, he didn't fully understand it until Lily.

When Lily Evans became his student, Horace Slughorn was a much older man than when he started teaching. Perhaps if that had not been the case, they would never have met. She would have attended his class anonymously, as countless other did, before and after, and he would have gone by with his existence undisturbed. Perhaps, if he was a younger man when they met, he would never have become aware of her talents. Perhaps he would have overlooked her skills and ability on account of her questionable background. They never would have become acquainted with one another. Once she was done with school, they would have gone their separate ways.

Francis would never have existed.

But he's getting ahead of himself.

The first time Lily Evans was brought to his attention was in a morning very much like this one. The Professor had been sitting by this very desk, eating some crystallized pineapple and reading the latest articles on wizarding economics. It would have been a perfectly lovely and ordinary morning if Argus Filch had not knocked on his door. Apparently, according to the caretaker's alarms, a student had broken into the potions classroom, certainly to steal forbidden ingredients, and Filch wanted the professor to accompany him to the dungeons to make an inventory of whatever was missing, so he could add it in detail to the charges against the "criminal".

"Mrs. Norrris says they are still down there" he said, in a hoarse voice, rubbing his hands against one another.

Horace believed Filch to be a dreadful man: Always dressed in rags, with a much overgrown beard and a bad breath, followed by that ghostly cat, wherever he went. Horace had not seen the men pick up a wand once his entire time in the castle. The Potions Master remembered celebrating when the previous caretaker, Apollyon Pringle, left the castle a few years earlier. Little did Horace know, the man's successor would be just as bad.

Even as they walked side by side, Horace could hear the sound of the freshly polished chains banging against each other inside the caretaker's pocket. He seemed to delight in that noise.

"Surely you're not planning to use those chains you keep in your office against the students?" Horace asked, raising an elbow.

Filch mumbled something back, grinding between his teeth. Horace didn't fully trust that the man would refrain himself from hanging whoever the student was from the ceiling by the ankles and wrists, and he was certainly going to report the case to Dumbledore. Albus was a sensible man; surely he would not want to hear of such practices in the castle while he was headmaster. In fact, Horace believed that Apollyon's fondness of corporeal punishment had something to do with the reason he left the school. Albus simply would not agree with such a dangerous method of punishing misbehaviors.

Genuinely bothered by the sound of the chains, Slughorn gave some large steps and walked ahead of the other one. It was displeasing enough to be taken off his office by his dreadful man on what was probably a false alarm—

Except that it wasn't a false alarm at all. As Horace got closer and closer to the allegedly invaded dungeon, he realized that there was someone still in there. They were brewing a potion.

The professor was thunderstruck a few metres away from the door. He signaled Filch to stop and stay silent and concentrated on the fragrance coming through the crevice of the slightly opened door.

It was a delicate fragrance, almost heavenly in its essence, and it meant that that student, that young girl had successfully prepared the Angel's Trumpet Draught. That was a N.E.W.T level potion, sometimes not even taught at school, and yet a 5th year Gryffidor had successfully prepared it. That was uncanny.

Looking again, Slughorn realized he recognized her from his class. She was the redhead that always sat by the Prince boy, Severus. Though he did not carry his mother's last name, Severus was, just like Eileen had been on her time, a brilliant potioneer. His friend – what was her name again? – she never did make gross mistakes in class, but Slughorn just assumed she was being helped by the Prince boy. He definitely seemed to have a liking for her. But he was not there in that dungeon, it was just her, and that was definitely the smell of the Angel's Trumpet Draught...

Evans, her name was Lily Evans, he remembered. Slughorn had some work to do.

He turned to Filch angrily:

"Lily Evans happens to be one of my best students, Filch, and she happens to have my permission to use the class room after hours!"

Filch seemed both disappointed and confused.

"But why didn't you say-"

"Didn't you recognize the Angel's Draught? Don't you know that it had to be boiled in a size 8 lead cauldron and this is the only one available in the castle? Do you even know anything about potions at all?"

Filch's protests were reduced to incomprehensible mumbles through gritted teeth.

"Perhaps you should come and check the situation for yourself instead of trusting the words or rather, whatever it is that you trust in this cat! Leave this place immediately! And I don't want to hear of you bothering Miss. Evans during her study time, you hear me? Quite frankly, if students cannot study in the castle anymore I don't know what business we have calling this a school..." Filch started to drag his feet away from the dungeon slowly and disappointedly, the chains still tinkling in his pockets. "And be aware that I'll talk to the headmaster about this chains you've been carrying around."

After that, Filch dragged himself a little faster.

Once the caretaker was finally gone, Horace remained where he was, watching his young pupil a while longer. He went back to that same dungeon on that same time the next week, and the week after that, and every time he'd been amazed by the difficulty of the potions Miss. Evans was attempting to prepare. The Befuddlement Draught, an Invisibility Concoction, the Invigoration Draught. Each of them perfectly executed. All of them years ahead of her presumed level of expertise. Apparently she was equally as brilliant as her young Slytherin friend. In fact, from what Slughorn had seen, she might as well be in Slytherin herself! He wished she was! It wouldn't have taken him so long to find out about the girl.

But there was more to watching Miss Evans than marveling at her ability with a cauldron. As Horace found out, she was a brilliant charm-maker. Whatever tasks required millimetric precision, such as cutting daisy roots, she did by hand with a beautiful silver knife. Everything else, she did with charms, so at some point there were three cellars pouring previously mashed grains in her cauldron, each floating by itself, at a particular height, dropping its contents at a unique and precisely calculated rhythm. At the same time, a wooden spoon moved the concoction, 7 times to the left, 7 and a half times to right then left again, all of it without the girl so much as touching the spoon. It almost seemed as if the tools obeyed her thoughts instead of a wand. It was beautiful to watch. She was just as brilliant with her charms as she was with her potions, if that was indeed possible. Whatever ingredients Lily needed she summoned with her wand and as they landed beautifully in front of her, she never restricted herself to what was written in the literature. Instead she explored each ingredient and discovered the best way to do it. Crushing instead of cutting. Squares instead of circles... And because her charms freed her hands from manning spoons and mashers, she could write all the data she gathered, plus all of her thoughts and observations down in a little notebook with flowers in the cover.

Horace went back to watch her several times for weeks until the day he realized she was brewing Amortentia. The steam rose in characteristic spirals, it had the distinctive mother-of-pearl sheen... And the smells, the smells were all there. It was uncanny. But that was a particularly dangerous potion, especially in the hands of a young which, and that's why that day, Slughorn finally did what he'd been meaning to do for weeks. He stepped into the dungeon.

"Evanesco" – Lily said quickly, as soon as she realized there was someone walking in, and the cauldron was emptied. Not just that. The ingredients and tools were no longer there; even the smell that filled the room was gone. Horace had never seen such a perfect vanishing charm before. It did not leave a trace.

"You have a great talent for charms, Miss Evans. But I know you were brewing Amortentia. It had all the right smells..."

For a while it seemed like Lily was about to deny the whole thing, but when the professor said that, she spoke before she thought.

"Really? I did it then! You see, I smelled it too, grass wet with rain, oliebollen with hot chocolate and—Well, but it changes for everyone, and I couldn't be sure, until..."

"It was perfect, Miss Evans, truly perfect! Evans, Evans—I don't seem to recognize your family name. Where are you from? Are you from Britain?"

"Yes, sir, but—"

"Are you related to the Prince, as well, by any means?"

"No sir." She said firmly. "My parents are muggles."

Slughorn blinked a couple of times.

"Muggles? Indeed?"

That was surprising information, and perhaps if he was younger he would advise her not to prepare such dangerous potions again and leave... His father would certainly not care for that bit of information- he was very much proud of being part of the Sacred 28- but he was long dead, and Horace was now a seasoned man, who had had countless students from muggle families before. And here was a particularly talented one. Talented and bold, for when she told him about her lineage – or rather lack of one – she looked him in the eye, challenging the professor.

"Incredible, Incredible—" He continued. "Tell me, Miss Evans, I will host a small gathering in the third floor for some selected students tomorrow night. Your friend Mister Snape will attend, I believe. Would it be possible for you to join us?"

"Me?" Lily was surprised. She was expecting a detention, perhaps several points taken from Gryffindor, certainly not an invitation to a party. "I suppose so."

"Brilliant! We shall see each other tomorrow night, then! I have some special food, some special guests, I think you will enjoy it!"

"Ah—Thanks professor!" She said, still astonished with her good luck, pushing the flower notebook into her backpack and hanging it on one shoulder.

When she was about to leave the dungeon, Slughorn called her again.

"Miss Evans—?"

"Yes, professor?"

"In the future, talk to me before you use the room, okay? And try to stay clear of these particularly dangerous potions."

"Certainly, sir" She said, a strange sheen on her green eyes.

That was the day when it all started. Lily attended his function the next day, and many more after that, along with her friend, Severus Snape. She continued to use the dungeon out of hours, but this time, Slughorn dropped by to assist her. He read some of her notes and added points out of his own experience as a potionist. He lent the girl books on the latest advances in potion brewing and called her afterwards to discuss what she had read. He also paid more attention to her in class, which had the unfortunate side effect of rendering Gryffindor several extra house points in the house championship. When Horace first realized that during class, he said Lily should have been in Slytherin for the first time. He would repeat that many times, and the girl would always give back some cheeky answers. It made him laugh.

Lily's brilliancy caused Slughorn to pay attention to many different things. He realized, for instance, that Dirk Cresswell, another muggle born student, a year older than Lily was actually truly talented with languages, and at the age of sixteen had mastered several goblin dialects. Later he would become Head of the Goblin Liaison Office. He belonged in Slughorn's club of gifted youngsters, and the professor wouldn't realize that if it weren't for that one red haired girl. Neither would he have realized the same thing about several students that came to Hogwarts years later...

But that was not all he got from his young pupil.

By the end of that year, Lily had become the best among the best of his selected group of favourites. That was why he stopped by that door that day. If he had heard any other girl in the castle crying and sobbing in an empty classroom he would simply have walked away, shrugged and made some comment to himself about girls, or about the troubles of being young and in love. But the student he heard crying was not just any young girl. It was Lily.

She had her back turned to the door, but he recognized her instantly. It was not her white backpack lying in the ground, it wasn't even her long red hair cascading down her back. It was the birds.

There were about eight to ten twittering birds above the girls head. Their feathers had several colours, ranging from sky blue to orange and yellow, and they flew over Lily's head in all sorts of circling and figure-eight patters. They flew over each other quickly enough that it was difficult to count them, but not so fast as to make it difficult to appreciate their beauty. Horace could not help but admire Lily's ability to produce such beautiful charms even when she was in such distress.

The birds were singing a pretty song, and Lily watched them, almost as if she was trying to learn from them the secret of singing such beautiful song in the cramped space of the classroom, when they clearly belonged outside in the open sky... Her eyes were full of tears, and she was so distracted in her own thoughts the she failed to notice when the Potions Master walked inside.

"Lily?" he called gently.

She rubbed her eyes, trying to hide her tears.

"Professor! I didn't know you were going to use this classroom. I'm sorry, I'm already leaving."

"Shh, calm down, Lily." He said before she could stand up. " I'm not going to use this room, I just came in to see if you were okay."

The girl dropped her back on the floor once more and looked away from the professor, back at the birds.

"I'm fine, sir—"she said simply.

She was trying to be brave. There was something to be admired there. Horace stepped forward and sat by her side, in front of a big closed window, depicting a greyish rainy sky. He glanced at the twittering birds as well, as one of them, a green one, lowered his flight to the level of Lily's ears and stay there for a couple of seconds.

"This is beautiful charm work Lily. I am always astounded at the beauty of your magic, you know?"

The shadow of a smile appeared in the corner of Lily's mouth. She picked up her wand and spinned it between her fingers.

"Mr. Ollivander told me when I bought the wand... Willow... Swishy... Good for charm work..."

Horace smiled at the little girl. Talent for such beauty could not possibly be blamed on a wand. No matter how good a wand.

"Lily, dear, you know you can talk to me, right? I know I'm not the head of your house, but you're one of my own, and if I can do anything to help, if there is a problem..."

"Professor—" She interrupted, lifting her chin to look him in the eyes. "Do you think it matters? That I am muggleborn? Does it make a difference?"

Horace looked long and hard into the girl's deep green eyes. It couldn't have lasted longer than a second, but many things came to his mind. A few months earlier, his answer would be different. Surely he would not have said it to just anyone, or in just anyplace, he wouldn't want to be considered prejudiced, but he did—he did believe that blood status made a difference. He had been taught that from an early age, and it seemed right for as long as he could remember. Now, however, his convictions had changed. As he looked Lily in the eye, he could only give her one possible answer. But before he could say a word, the girl turned away, a single tear falling from her eye.

The twitting birds were no longer singing.

He wanted to say "no," but he didn't. Understanding finally came to him as he realized that his words made no difference. That he was not the one she wanted to hear those words from. That she had probably heard those same words before, but now she'd find out that it wasn't quite true. And it hurt.

Seeing the girl crying like that broke Horace's heart. He couldn't bring himself to say anything at all.

He realized that she was alone. She was not an orphan, but her family, whoever they were, was far away, forever separated from her in many fundamental ways. They did not belong in her world, and she no longer belonged in theirs. And that's why she was crying alone in an abandoned classroom; because there was no one else she could go to when things went wrong.

That was the first time Horace realized that teaching, mentoring his pupils, might mean a great deal more than teaching theory in classes and making a few introductions. Sometimes it meant being exactly where he was now. Not always, not even often, and certainly not with every student. But right now, with Lily.

She needed him.

Because of that, and because seeing her in that state broke his heart, the old professor reached out to Lily and used his finger to dry the tears from her face. He did not make her tell him what had happened, he didn't even ask. He was just there for her, untill she picked up her backpack and walked away, cleaning her face with the back of her hand.

The next afternoon, when Horace stepped into his office, he discovered the bowl over his desk, just a few inches of clear water in it. Floating on the surface was a flower petal. And when he realized that it was a Lily petal, he knew where the bowl had come from... As he watched, it sank. Just before it reached the bottom, it was transformed into a fish. It was beautiful magic. Wondrous to behold...

Horace walked to the window of his office and looked down at Hogwarts grounds. It was a lovely spring day, and there were flowers blossoming in the vicinity of the lake. There, sitting by an old oak tree near that same lake was his little flower, Lily.

He decided to call the fish Francis, and never removed it from his desk. It became his companion. And for the longest time it was always there for him-Until it wasn't. Until that October in which Hogwarts woke up to a perfectly blue sky for the first time in many years. That day when everybody was happy, and even Horace had been happy for a short while. A short while. Because now, a lonely tear fell down his face as he realized that Francis was no longer there, and that it could only mean one thing...

It was his fault, at least in part. If he had been stronger in his youth, if he had been a better judge of character, perhaps they would have been spared of all the evil that had been inflicted upon them all these past many years. Year after year he watched the death counts increasing. He watched people standing against evil and failing, and he knew, he suspected he knew why, and he probably would have been able to help but he was so ashamed of that—He supposed he could have fought, but he was not a soldier! So he watched. He watched his students and colleagues having people, dear people, taken away from them, until now, at the very end, when someone had been taken away from him.

Lily.

Until that moment, as other tears rolled down his face to join that first one, Horace had no idea of just how deeply he was affected by her loss. He could not have known that in a few months he would resign his post and retire because he simply did not feel fit to be a teacher any longer. He could not have known that it was not quite the end, that he would have another chance to do right. He was too confused. All he knew was that he missed her dearly. With all his heart.

The old wizard stood up, went to the window. He looked down at Hogwarts grounds. The students were outside now, celebrating. The grounds looked very much like they did that day, when he first got Francis.

Except that it was no longer spring, and the lilies were nowhere to be seen.

Author's Note: This has been in my computer for several months, and I decided to finish and publish it now. That part of the movie is so... It is inspiring. It's rare that something in the films is better than in the books, but this little bit of Slughorn's dialogue is.

I am submitting it to the (Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge: Athena)

Please Review...