Introduction
One might think that on a cold night in September, most students would be inside enjoying their feast, chatting up on the latest gossip of who was going with who or their summer adventures, filling themselves with the satisfaction of being with friends again, whispering the news of the wizarding worlds darkest enemy, and keeping warm around their common room fires. One might think that was the case, but apparently a few six year Gryffindors had forgotten all about poor Lily Evans and hadn't noticed the flash of red hair disappearing around the Great Hall's door in an attempt to get away from the hushed whispers, the pitiful looks and the affectionate pats on her small shoulders when one passed by. Perhaps it was a relief to her friends to not have to watch her sink back and fade into nothingness, for they were enjoying their happy friends company and making one after another after another bottle of butterbeer disappear.
Possibly everybody in the entire school knew that the arrogant chaser for the Gryffindor Quidditch team was absolutely, hopelessly in love with the muggleborn, and had been since that one winter day in their forth year when the snow came down very delicately and stuck to Lily's red hair and dark eyelashes, making the tip of her nose and cheeks flustered when the wind came down and left biting kisses on the fourteen year old. That was the day realized that for a skinny, strong willed, fourteen year old muggleborn witch, Lily Evans was exceptionally beautiful, and would become even more so with age.
Lily definitely begged to differ at this point.
Her soft curls were falling out of it's knot on the back of her head, her skin was pale from hardly any sunshine, and red rings had formed around the used-to-be-emerald eyes that now lacked their normal fire, and had turned almost gray over time. Even as a complete mess, Lily Evans was still, and always would be, an exceptionally beautiful witch.
Later that evening in the common room, the walls would illuminate and die down with the flickering flames, and the Gryffindors joined in another drunken ballad of folk songs written by (what Sirius called) "incredibly firewhiskey intoxicated wizards" lead by the Marauders themselves (Remus wouldn't have it, he rarely had half a bottle of firewhiskey while most others had splurged on two or three, and plopped down in the chair in the corner of the room, nibbling on his chocolate and reviewing his oh-so-fascinating charms text book.)
Mary McDonald had found Lily on the way back to the common room, to which Lily was grateful, because she really did not want to walk in a complete bloody disaster and have more pitiful looks from students that she knew really didn't care all that much. So, her friend graciously sat out of the celebratory passing of the bottles with Lily, and went to bed early with her. A few more choruses from a song about Odo, ("And Odo the hero, they bore him back home, to the place that he'd known as a lad, they laid him to rest with his hat inside out, and his wand snapped in two, which was sad,") the party eventually died out, and the students made their way quietly up to their dorms, and collapsed into bed.
But what does any of this have to do with Lily, the problems the wizarding world was facing at the time, or what kind of student would want to spend their first day of term with a hangover? This is where most of their troubles begin, Lily had already had a terrible summer, with her father dead, her best friend gone, and the dangers she and her family faced, and she would have a rather strange year. James Potter would lose something important to him momentarily, Remus Lupin would be betrayed, Severus Snape would face troubles and pressure, and the rest the school and wizarding world would become shocked by the seriousness of the war, and the lives endangered at the hand of Voldemort.