In the summer of 1974, Petunia Evans drove her younger sister to her annual checkup.

With Lily away at boarding school for the better part of the year, it was essential that she see the family doctor at least once a summer. As these things always went in the Evans family, Petunia took the time to schedule the appointment, to mark the date on the calendar, and, when the time came, to shepherd Lily into their father's aging Ford Corsair and drive her the nine minutes – six without red lights along the way – to the pediatrician, empowered by her newly earned license and the 44 hours of unsupervised driving Petunia had achieved since.

The family doctor, a dry-mouthed septuagenarian named Doctor Plower, performed the usual tests. He prodded Lily's tongue and looked into her eyes and listened to the stethoscope. At the end of the appointment, Dr. Plower recited the same words of wisdom he provided to every young woman of Lily's age who entered his office: "Make sure you're eating your vegetables. Remember, gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, and what they don't tell you is it can clog your arteries. And, a growing girl needs plenty of sleep."

It was the last axiom that caught Lily's interest.

"What exactly would you define as enough sleep?" Lily asked curiously.

When Lily heard Dr. Plower's response – that an adult required seven to eight hours a night but a girl her age would do better with nine – she'd laughed so hard, she'd nearly fallen off her plastic-lined patient's bed.

As Lily then informed her alarmed doctor, she hadn't slept more than six hours a night since she was eleven years old and went off to school. In fact, whenever she managed six hours, she counted herself lucky.

Nothing much had changed since then as Hogwarts celebrated its first day of spring weather in the March of 1976. In fact, if asked, Lily Evans would have only amended her initial statement to declare that she was lucky to manage a full five hours of sleep. There was simply too much to be accomplished for Lily to waste her life away with her eyes shut and mind floating along a stream of pleasant but ultimately meaningless dreams. No one had ever affected change by resting their head on a pillow.

As it was, Lily had managed only four hours the night before, and while it had taken nearly drinking her weight in tea to make it to class, she was holding up admirably. She hadn't so much as closed her eyes all through her morning classes, and Professor Flitwick had awarded her efforts with a nod of approval. Not that Lily could boast about her accomplishment to her friends. They'd only roll their eyes, unable to comprehend the impossibility of staying awake through class, the privilege of people who regularly surrendered to their biological need for sleep.

One such friend, Will Myers, laid his head wearily upon a desk, letting out a long groan. "Explain to me again why we're meeting during lunch instead of after class, like a normal club. I like to use this time to, you know, relax?"

"It's called a lunch meeting," Dorcas Meadowes responded sternly.

"And because the news doesn't rest," Lily added. "It doesn't recognize things like lunches."

"Name two things that don't rest: the news and Lily Evans," Will muttered, his words not remotely muffled by the arms on which his head was currently buried.

Mei-Lin came to the rescue. "I actually like when we meet over lunch. It helps the day end that much sooner."

Miserable and entirely out-voted, Will raised his head to glower at his friends. Lily could sympathize; it must have been impossible being friends with such a group of over-achievers.

The Hogwarts Monthly Letter had been Lily and Will's brainchild in second-year, though they hadn't succeeded in convincing anyone but their close friends to read it until their fourth, when their social cache at Hogwarts was skyrocketing. It was a monthly newsletter, lovingly written and curated by the group of four, currently meeting in one of the empty Ancient Runes classrooms on the western side of the castle.

First, there was Dorcas Meadowes. Current editor – a position they traded amongst themselves each year after a nearly friendship ruining feud over who would take the top position – and sixth-year Ravenclaw, Dorcas was tasked with calling the meetings and aiming her journalists' varied attentions and interests in the necessary directions to create an actual, readable paper at the end of each month.

Considering Lily's hopelessly overbooked schedule, it wasn't a job anyone would envy, and Dorcas had accepted her turn as editor with extreme hesitation. Seven-months into the job, she had admitted that her fears were mostly baseless. Yes, Will had a tendency to argue against anything that resembled real work, and yes, Mei-Lin hadn't met a deadline since her date of birth, and yes, Lily couldn't be contained when she had a new idea, but it was better to lead the pack of maniacs than to be dragged along in the wake of their madness. Under her tenure, the Letter had gained an intellectualism that had been sorely missing from the endless feature pieces that had defined Will's time as editor the previous year.

Mei-Lin Lai had never cared much for journalism or writing – her imagination was a broad and sweeping thing, powerful enough to stimulate her in the dull hours of the night and never requiring she put pen to page to realize her dizzying daydreams – but where Lily went, she all too often followed. The sixth-year Gryffindor had taken one look around the dormitory with Lily absent and realized that she could either join or be left behind. Ever since, she'd covered sports for the paper. While this mostly consisted of interviewing the house Quidditch team and paraphrasing the news from The Daily Prophet, she'd also tried her hand at introducing muggle athletics to the paper, a decision that often resulted in hilarious errors as Mei-Lin, a pureblood, had never seen so much as a football in person.

The third member of the group was another sixth-year, Will Myers. While Will was loud enough in his frivolity that many wrote him off as containing more air than a bag of crisps, he was by far the best journalist on the team. He was largely motivated by a great-uncle, whose expose on the politicking of goblins had nearly shut down Gringotts in 1878, and a mother who sat as the editor of Witch's Weekly and was an over-enthusiastic supporter of her son's budding talents. A Hufflepuff, Will valued people and their contributions to things, resulting in insightful feature pieces that delved into the motivations of his peers and contained angles that could pull at the sympathies of the coldest member of Slytherin House.

Rounding out the four-member team was Lily. There had been a fifth member, once upon a time, a time when all four houses were represented, but in a stunning display of loyalty, Severus had found his membership revoked the very afternoon of the lake incident of fifth year. Things weren't the same without him, but, as Mei-Lin would argue, their work hadn't suffered from his absence, and teamwork was at an all-time high.

Which, considering their tendency toward infighting, would probably fail to impress any outsider looking in on their disorganized gatherings.

"The meeting will be over once you've all reassured me that you understand your assignments for next week," Dorcas consoled Will.

She dangled the hope that lunch might still be waiting for him when the meeting ended, like a fisherman with plastic bait on the end of his lure. And, like the foolish fish, Will was drawn in by the promise, doomed to be unrealized.

Lily, who didn't doubt they would be there for another half hour at least, took a nibble out of one of the finger sandwiches that Dorcas had generously supplied. Beside her, and in an equal display of disbelief, Mei-Lin took a noisy bite from her apple.

"I'm all clear, Chief," Will said. "Interview a few shopkeepers down in Hogsmeade. Talk to a few of the students from different years. Nothing much to it."

"But what's your angle?" Dorcas pressed

Will drummed his fingers across his desk, like the very question persecuted him. "I won't know that until I hear their answers, now will I?"

It was an argument the two had fought nearly a hundred times, and Lily could have quoted Dorcas's responses, no particular talent for Divination required: "But how will you know what questions to ask if you don't know the story you're trying to write?"

Lily sat on one of the desks in the room, feet swinging in long arcs and just scraping the floor each time they swung back toward her. Idly, she noticed the mire that was collecting on the soles of her moccasins and brought one of her feet up for further inspection. The sole was worn through, plastic peeling around the edges, and there was a pinprick of a hole that was sure to expand until her beloved shoes better resembled a plastic bag. The question would be whether she wore her trainers for the next four months or abandoned her pride and wrote Petunia for a new pair. Both options horrendous.

Never one to keep her mouth shut, Lily interrupted Dorcas and Will's bickering to suggest, "Oh! Write about how we should have more Hogsmeade weekends! You can interview the shopkeepers for quotes about how students help drive the local economy, and the students could talk about how Hogsmeade weekends help alleviate some of the pressures of a hectic finals schedule. It'll be brill!"

"Funny how you're bursting with ideas for someone else's story, when I've yet to hear a single concept for yours," Dorcas said.

Lily didn't shrink, but if there was one circumstance under which she might, it would be when Dorcas cast that painfully flat glare in her direction. Chilly didn't begin to describe the look in Dorcas's dark and unyielding eyes. It was true that Lily had yet to stumble across the breath of inspiration that would fill her time for the rest of the year, but these things couldn't be hurried.

Unlike her friends, Lily fancied herself an investigative journalist. She had neither the interest nor the tolerance necessary for interviews or bland articles on changes to the school curriculum. Her interest in the newspaper was entirely singular: pursuit of the Truth, with a capital 'T.'

When she'd first entered Hogwarts, it had driven her mad how even simple matters – like what was in the eerie and forbidden forest on the edge of the grounds? Or how exactly had a ghost come to be haunt the girl's toilet and why had no one thought to exorcise the wailing nuisance? Or how did the loo always looked fresh and friendly when none of the girls had ever lifted a finger to clean? – were shrouded in mystery. Did no one know? Was there a vast conspiracy to keep the student body ignorant? Worst of all, no one ever appeared to care! Just thinking of people's complacency was enough to make her itch.

In her quest for the Truth, Lily was an unstoppable and, oftentimes, destructive force. She would pick a single topic each term and pursue it with dogged determination. In second-year, she'd exposed just how the meals were prepared by a labor force of house elves – not much of a secret, she'd learned later, but for a twelve-year-old, a significant revelation. Third-year had focused on the spreading practice of using ghosts for labor, eliminating the need to pay the wages of a living, breathing employee and the subsequent impact on the workforce. Fourth-year, she'd tackled nepotism on the house Quidditch teams and fifth-year the rates of detentions controlling for blood status.

Not exactly friend-winning material, but speaking truth to power was rarely met with smiles and offers to come by for tea.

Unfortunately, she'd yet to land upon a winning story for her sixth-year. The better part of term had been spent chasing down leads surrounding the DADA professorship and Dumbledore's unerring inability to permanently fill the spot. After months of research, however, she'd been forced to, and oh it pained her to think it, quit. There was just no story to be found, and all she had to show for her efforts was a notebook of ideas, which, when read in retrospect, made her look like a conspiracy-obsessed loon.

"Inspiration will come to me," Lily insisted, swallowing down the note of worry that threatened to creep through. "It always does."

Dorcas looked skeptical, and with good reason as Lily had been repeating the same refrain for nearly two months, but didn't press. There was never any call to motivate Lily. She was a whirling dervish of energy when all everyone else wanted was some peace and quiet. She'd sort things eventually.

"And Mei-Lin-" Dorcas began.

"I know. I know. Get started on the Hufflepuff interviews. I'll have predictions by the end of next week," Mei-Lin said.

"I was going to remind you that you're three weeks overdue on the perils of muggle sky-diving."

"Oh…that."

"Yes. That."

Will snickered.

Not much else was decided upon during their meeting. Like Lily had predicted, they finished with only three minutes left to the lunch hour, which Will bemoaned loudly as he swanned off to class. It was back to the humdrum of schoolwork and learning, the very reasons they attended Hogwarts and an utter waste of brain cells if you asked Lily.

One of the advantages of not eating in the Great Hall was avoiding the body-crushing exodus of students racing off to class. Hooked arm-in-arm, Lily and Mei-Lin were able to make their leisurely way to Transfiguration – a joint Gryffindor-Slytherin affair – without knocking into so much as a single shoulder, two minnows swimming with the current.

"Are you going to have time to meet and work on our DADA essay tonight? If you do, I can help you with the tougher bits," Mei-Lin offered.

"I don't know. Maybe." The way Lily stressed the word and sighed left little doubt that she intended to be far too busy to worry about trivialities like homework.

"Lily, it's due Wednesday morning. If you don't make time, you're going to have to tackle it all yourself," Mei-Lin warned.

There had been a reason that Lily cast her judgmental, investigative eye toward the DADA professorship. She and Defense had never acclimated to each other. Lily had hoped that in discovering some secret conspiracy about the never-ending revolving door of professors, she would be able to neatly place the blame for her Defense struggles at her professors' feet. Maybe she would be more accomplished if her education wasn't interrupted every year by a new professor's approach to the material. Unfortunately, there was no conspiracy, and all it took to prove the fault rested squarely on her shoulders was a glance at Mei-Lin, who had never failed to scrape an 'E' on her DADA assignments.

"I'm going to be busy until late tonight," Lily said, knowing that Mei-Lin liked to be left alone after nine, drifting away on a sea of dreams that were every bit as real and satisfying whether she was awake or asleep. "But don't worry. I'll figure something out."

"Busy with what?"

Lily didn't miss the note of suspicion that had crept into Mei-Lin's voice, and it set her teeth on edge.

"The same thing as always. It's officially spring, so we're starting up tennis again. I'm not trying to ditch you or anything," Lily said.

Years ago, Lily had petitioned the professors for permission to erect a tennis net on the grounds, a request that was met with incredulity. Wizards were absolutely barmy over Quidditch, to the point that all other sport was met with disdain. Lily could still recall her frustration while explaining the principles of the game to a young Sirius Black, the prat meeting each of her answers with an unfavorable Quidditch comparison until she was grinding her teeth in the way her dentist had explicitly warned her against.

The professors had ultimately acquiesced to Lily's request, though they'd recognized that tennis was never going to capture the imagination of the student body. There was always the real threat that a denied Lily would forge ahead on her own regardless.

She'd purchased the net herself in the winter of her third year, walking out with a trowel, a net three-times her size, and the intention of erecting the thing herself. The ground still hard with the winter cold, she'd spent a good hour banging futilely at the posts before dissolving into a fit of overwhelmed tears. The gamekeeper had come across her then, a massive man named Rubeus Hagrid, and he'd helped her set the net outside his hut, the ground cracking and parting under his meaty fists. On particularly warm days, Hagrid would come out to watch Lily as she played, bringing his boar hound, Fang, who would break from his master and try to weave between their legs as she served.

Of her many activities, Lily was particularly fond of the days when the sun would beat down bright and searing on the back of her neck, and she could escape outside for a few matches. It didn't bother her that the court was a patch of dirt with no lines to delineate the boundaries. Growing up, she'd almost never had access to a real court, except for those days when her father made the time to drive her down to the sports center two towns over. She'd spent her early years playing tennis in the street, batting the ball with all her might so it sailed far beyond the traditional boundaries, bouncing it aggressively off car windshields and scraping her knees as she dove to the sidewalk.

"I never said you were avoiding me," Mei-Lin said sulkily, but Lily was having none of it.

"For the last time, I didn't ditch you that weekend. I was in the library, just like I said I would be," Lily snapped.

"Where? Lily, I looked all over the place," Mei-Lin replied in kind.

Most people would reel back in surprise if they heard Mei-Lin speak in such a harsh tone. It just didn't fit with the popular perception of Mei-Lin as quiet and unfailingly polite. Lily was her closest friend, however, and given unfettered access to the nastier sides of Mei-Lin's personality, including her true opinions about the student body. In a word, Mei-Lin thought everybody around her was a wanker. Whether Lily qualified as one of the ranks of 'everybody' depended on Mei-Lin's mood.

"Clearly, you didn't look closely enough," Lily said.

The newest source of tension in their friendship was the Saturday before last when Mei-Lin and Lily were supposed to meet in the library to study. While Lily remembered arriving on time and diligently reviewing her notes until well after the half-moon had risen over the castle, Mei-Lin insisted that Lily had been nowhere to be found. Shortly afterward, accusations that she'd been oddly absent for the rest of the weekend followed.

It was, in short, the most ridiculous argument they'd ever had, and that included the time they'd rowed about the true origins of Swiss cheese. Mei-Lin's bitterness over Lily's busy schedule was hardly new, a constant buzz of scalding remarks peppered throughout the week as Mei-Lin bemoaned how often she was left to her own devices as Lily flitted around the school. The addition of false accusations on top of Mei-Lin's typical complaints was almost too much to bear. The accusations may have been false, but Lily's innocence was impossible to prove as there were no witnesses ready to testify that she had spent her Saturday in the library. They were at an impasse.

"Look, can we just forget about it already? We can study tonight. I'll make the time," Lily said as they rounded the corner of the Transfiguration corridor.

"You're going to need it," Mei-Lin said, voice a hint kinder. "McGonagall's probably going to layer on the homework, too."

"Ugh, do you think?" Lily moaned.

"Don't worry. I've got your back," Mei-Lin said, squeezing Lily's arm, a gesture that Lily didn't hesitate to return.

With only a minute before the start of class, Lily and Mei-Lin entered the doomed class. Lily's footsteps slowed to a shuffle as she prolonged the minute before class began. The sandwich she'd eaten for lunch felt heavy in her stomach.

Transfiguration didn't like Lily any more than DADA did. When she was feeling charitable toward herself, she would claim that Transfiguration just hated creative spirits. When she was in a more self-critical mood, she'd admit that it had more to do with the fact that she was an idiot than anything else.

Everyone was already there, the assortment of Slytherins that had claimed the back-left of the room and the entirety of the Gryffindor sixth-year class. All of her dormmates were huddled around a single copy of Witch Weekly, looking sleek and as imposing as a gang of Teddy Girls. In the far back, the boys who had fashioned themselves the Marauders sat, talking animatedly. Today they'd included their roommates – Duane Hinkley and Khalid Niazi – and the overwhelming maleness of the six boys struck Lily on an almost visceral level.

Looking around the room, Lily recognized how comparatively isolated she was from the rest of her classmates; she was seated in the very first row. For Mei-Lin, it was a dream, a chance to spend an hour with Lily without interference. Lily would have liked to be closer to some of her housemates, like she had been when they were all younger. Certain fit housemates in particular were especially welcome to talk to her. There were, however, benefits to her isolation. Severus was one of the Slytherins in the corner, and the barriers she erected between herself and the rest of the class worked just as efficiently at keeping him out as anyone else.

Lily and Mei-Lin chatted lightly for the few remaining minutes before McGonagall began to lecture, and then it was back to the mechanics of partial Transfigurations. It was exceptionally difficult, as Lily knew from experience, to only partially transfigure an object. By accident? Simplest thing in the world. She'd mastered that as a first-year when all her feathers to teacups would remain soft and speckled as the owl from which they came. Achieving the same thing on purpose, however, was a different matter since stopping the magic at the right point and shaping it to only affect the desired bits was a labor in patience.

Given the difficulty of the subject matter, Lily really ought to have paid attention.

Unfortunately, four hours of sleep wasn't enough. There was something about McGonagall's voice, too, so even and strong, like crashing waves. Add in that the topic was boring as a flobberworm, and Lily couldn't hope to keep her eyes open. Chin propped on her hand, her eyes fluttered shut and that was that. Her heart rate dipped and steadied as she slipped into a doze. Lily didn't sleep deeply enough to dream, but she still felt a stirring once or twice, like a knock against her side.

Only after she'd opened her eyes once more to find the entire class focused on her did Lily realize that Mei-Lin had been poking her between the ribs. The stares of her classmates were like a dozen mosquito bites to her skin, covering her all over with the sting of their inspection. Lily didn't much care about the judgmental faces of her peers, but she was absolutely horrified by the look McGongagall was directing at her. It was an expression she'd seen one hundred times before, but it never lost an ounce of its effect.

"Miss Evans, am I hallucinating last month when you reassured me I had caught you sleeping in class for the last time?" McGonagall demanded, voice a whip in Lily's groggy mind.

"No, Professor," Lily said, "Only, I wasn't sleeping just now. I was listening with my eyes closed."

Snickers rose throughout the class and McGonagall's slit eyes impossibly narrowed. Lily felt guilty for the lie – she was committed to the truth after all – but she couldn't afford a detention with her packed scheduled and felt it was justified. A victimless crime.

"Well, if you've been paying such close attention, perhaps you'd like to show off your partial transfiguration," McGonagall bluffed.

Lily wanted to laugh, biting her cheek to tamp down the inappropriate urge. If she'd obediently taken notes and internalized McGonagall's every word, she still wouldn't be able to pull off a partial, and McGonagall knew it. McGonagall could attempt to humiliate as punishment all she liked, but Lily was virtually immune.

"We only began to cover the topic today, Professor," Lily said brightly. "No one could successfully complete the spell yet."

McGonagall raised an eyebrow in victory. "Mr. Potter successfully completed his just a minute ago. Perhaps you missed it while you were 'listening with your eyes closed.'"

There was full-blown laughter from the class now. Nothing mean-spirited, or at least Lily didn't think so. Perhaps the Slytherins were having a bit too much fun at her public rebuke, but the scene was too common for Lily to think anything of their mirth. She could be annoying at times, a fact of which she was perfectly aware, but she thought her classmates still liked her well enough.

Lily turned to James Potter at the back of the class. Sure enough, he'd succeeded in partially transfiguring his rat. Where its coarse-haired hind should have grown, there were now a pair of crooked frog legs, slick with a sheen of slime that she didn't want to contemplate, the residue dripping thick on his desk; it looked like something that could have been cast in stone and set alongside the many grotesqueries that decorated Hogwarts. Seeing her looking, James gave her an arrogant smile and gestured toward his creation. Under normal circumstances, Lily would have liked to stare at that smile – it was one of her favorites, where the corners dipped up enough to showcase the dimple on the left-side of his mouth – but his natural talent for well, everything was likely to score her a detention, so she could only summon up a scowl for him in return.

Turning back to McGonagall, Lily settled for the truth, "Professor, you and I both know I'm rubbish at this, so it's hardly fair to compare me to your best student. I'll practice really hard, truly, and next class I'll show you my partial first thing. How about that?"

Lily could sense the tide turning within the class as people chuckled at her gall. Oftentimes, being unapologetic worked well in her favor. Had she blushed and stammered, the laughter of her classmates would have transformed into jeers, like sharks scenting out chum in the water.

Sighing like Lily was insufferable (as if McGonagall didn't secretly adore her), McGonagall said, "Let's aim to listen with our eyes open from now on, Miss Evans. Otherwise, you'll have the opportunity to show me your partial repeatedly in detention on Friday."

"Sounds fair," Lily said, trying not to smile.

Despite her cheeky answers, Lily truly valued her relationship with the Transfiguration professor, so she did her best to remain bright-eyed for the rest of class. It was a struggle, but one she managed to overcome thanks to the helpful pinches Mei-Lin delivered every five minutes from underneath the table. If someone were to look at Lily's thighs, purpling with bruises, they would conclude she was being abused. Not that the chances of someone seeing her naked thighs were particularly high.

All the same, Lily did enjoy the occasional daydream about just who might discover what she looked like beneath her skirt. She bit her lip to suppress a dreamy smile as her mind wandered. The thoughts that filled her head did wonders for keeping her awake. It didn't hurt that the main object of her fantasies sat only three rows behind her. There were several boys that Lily fancied in the hazy, undefined way of a girl with no intention of dating – Quincy Terlep, Tristain Codrington, hell, even Sirius Black on occasion – but Potter had a decided lead over the other boys in her year.

The chain of events that transformed James from the bane of her existence to her primary focus every dreary class time was untraceable. Change had snuck up on her as stealthily as the effects of puberty, gradual changes that she took for granted, culminating in one shocking discovery when she was fourteen and could no longer squeeze her torso into the faded, turquoise blouse she'd favored for years. James could still be a berk, to her and others when the inclination struck him, but he also charmed Lily with his devil-may-care attitude and undeniable fitness. Lily didn't have any particular desire to turn her fantasies about Potter into realities, but she certainly enjoyed the products of her imagination.

Visions of James in mind, Lily survived the rest of class without incident.

Toward the end of class, McGonagall announced, "You'll all be happy to hear that I won't be assigning any homework for next class." She paused to wait out the sighs of relief and exclamations of celebration, much like a comedian riding out the height of the laugh. Lily performed a quick sign of the cross in thanks. "But that is only because you'll be completing a practical assignment this term. You'll have the rest of the year to work on it, and you'll present in place of a final. I'm available for help, but this is a project in which you'll receive little guidance."

Lily only half-listened as McGonagall explained how they were to choose one of the principles of magic and create a project surrounding it. There had to be a practical and written element, but McGonagall would leave the majority to their discretion. Basically, it was a pleasant replacement for the final.

Cheerfully, Lily bumped Mei-Lin in the shoulder, a gesture that Mei-Lin returned. They made great partners at project-work. Mei-Lin wasn't in the running for any awards, but she was a decent student, and better yet, she didn't mind when Lily became so busy she couldn't complete her portion of the assignment.

All of Lily's jubilation fizzled out of her like a balloon with a tear, however, as McGonagall continued, "And for this project, I'll be assigning partners."

Beside her, Mei-Lin slumped in defeat. While Lily would have preferred to work with Mei-Lin, she wasn't too worried about the assignments. McGonagall wasn't going to condemn her to working with a bigot from Slytherin, too aware of the political climate, and Lily could pull something shabby together if necessary. In contrast, Mei-Lin despised just about everyone outside the staff of the Hogwarts Monthly Letter. Mei-Lin's marks would turn out fine regardless, but her knuckles were turning white where they gripped the desk, agonizing over fantasies of listening to her classmates jabber on about the pointless for hours on end. Lily pat her arm consolingly.

No amount of comfort could help when McGonagall announced that Mei-Lin would be paired with Marlene McKinnon, one of their dormmates and the one Mei-Lin could stomach the least. When Marlene smiled at them, Mei-Lin's answering quirk of her lips could only be described as a grimace.

Then, McGonagall said Lily's assignment, and it was like angels parted the skies to allow a beam of light to flow down and illuminate McGonagall's kind face. James. Lily would be partnering with James.

There was no fighting off the goofy grin that threatened to consume her face. Not only was she paired with a boy she found endlessly fit, she was paired with the best student in the class! Given her recent behavior, Lily didn't know why McGonagall had chosen to be so generous towards her, but Lily swore to do something particularly kind in return. She'd work extra hard for the rest of term, just to show McGonagall she was trying.

Once class officially ended, Lily looked over to James. He was already staring at her.

That was the other thing Lily adored about James Potter: he seemed to fancy the hell out of her right back.

"I'm going to talk to my new partner. See about setting up a time to meet and get to work," Lily told Mei-Lin, not taking her eyes off James for a second.

"I guess I should do the same," Mei-Lin said morosely.

In that time, James made for the door, so Lily had to hurry after him. She really did want to have a word about the assignment. That and a chance to flirt so blatantly that her father would have a breakdown were he present. To her endless delight, James was waiting for her out in the hall, leaning against the wall of the corridor with his dimple-inducing smirk on display.

"Now then, partner," she greeted him, and if her voice became embarrassingly low as she addressed him, well, it was no worse than the way his own tone dipped in return.

"Alright? I have to say that was some scene in there. I'm a little disappointed you didn't see my brilliant transfiguration, what with you listening with your eyes closed. It was pretty impressive," James said.

"Potter, I've seen you dazzle the class with your spellwork for six years straight. I've imagined what your partial must have looked like and am suitably impressed."

"Well aren't you lucky? Partnered with someone whose spellwork dazzles? Sounds like a guaranteed 'O.'"

Lily's brain shorted for a second as she tried to piece together whether James' words were intended as innuendo. She didn't think so, but then again it was Potter. Her toes curled a little in her shoes before she remembered to reply.

"You're definitely the brains of the operation," Lily conceded.

"Does that make you the eye candy?" James asked. He was grinning, and now Lily was certain he knew exactly what he'd said before and was basking in the way it had ruffled her. It made Lily want to tease him right back.

"No," she smiled. "I'm afraid that would be you again. Clever and pretty."

"Then, what does that make you?" he asked.

He took a step forward so that he was no longer leaning against the wall, a crucial step that put him just inside the limits of her personal space. She took the moment to drink in the color of his eyes, usually concealed by distance and his glasses. It was a brown that doubled for amber in some lights, like the briolette pendant that her mum had left for Petunia in her will, rough with varying shades of amber melting into each other and yet beautiful all the same.

Swallowing so that her voice didn't come out as husky as a serial smoker, Lily answered, "You tell me."

Instead of giving a real answer, James chucked her under the chin. Lily debated whether it was utterly pathetic to linger over the feeling of his knuckles on her bare skin.

"I can already tell this project is going to be legendary," James said, the kind of thing he probably told to loads of girls but still managed to imbue with enough charm that Lily felt special at the recognition.

"Do legendary partners get invitations to your birthday party? It's coming up soon, and I still haven't heard anything about it," Lily said.

James had built a reputation from the scope of his birthday parties. There was the great-walk out of fifth year, when he managed to convince all his friends, a.k.a. half the school, to walk out of their Tuesday classes and head down to the Three Broomsticks, a ploy that earned him a month of detentions and the eternal goodwill of the pub's proprietors. There was the twenty-four-hour birthday party of third-year – the last time his birthday had fallen on a weekend – where he'd convinced all the participants to spend an entire day in revelry. Fourth year, he paid the Seranading Ladies to play his party. Second year, his father invited the national Quidditch team – half of whom showed up in exchange for free Sleakeazy for life – and first year, he'd convinced Hooch to let him commander the pitch, putting a fleet of wobbly eleven-year-olds on brooms for an afternoon of flying. James encapsulated a living legend.

Lily's first invitation had come in fourth-year. Se'd attended despite her hesitations, all of which stemmed from the fact that James was an enormous prat. When Severus pressed her on the issue, she'd been forced to shrug in shame and admit that she really liked the new song by the Seranading Ladies. Fifth-year, she'd soundly rejected her invitation. Not only was she uninterested in antagonizing the professors, but she was also thoroughly sick of James' flirtations by that point.

Since then, James had learned his lessons about propriety and boundaries. Lily thought he may still fancy her, but he showed it in a more subdued way, which was bearable; preferable. Of course, now that she'd started to notice the way he filled out his robes, she wouldn't have minded if he made his feelings a little clearer. Sometimes he was so subtle that she started to wonder.

"See, you have me in a tough spot," James said, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "On the one hand, legendary partners absolutely warrant invitations, but people who blew off last year's event? Excluded on principle."

Lily rolled her eyes. It was so like James to demand that she make amends for something done a year ago. His memory was sharp as the bristles on his custom-made broomstick. A short list of times James had remembered something completely obscure and long-forgotten just that year included: the maiden name of their first-year Defense professor's wife; the exact order of how Hooch had ranked the first-year class in terms of flying (all 45 of them); an itemized list of every time Khalid Niazi had ever stumbled into his person with details on the time and place dating back to second-year; and why Lily had been late for their Transfiguration final in 1974. James took that formidable memory and he applied it for evil, namely, holding grudges against anyone who had ever wronged him.

"You're forgetting that I'm a redhead, and redheads warrant automatic invites," Lily said.

"You're confused. I have a strict no ginger policy."

"Is this a new policy? Because it didn't exist last year," Lily said.

"Nope. I just happen to offer exemptions for particularly beautiful witches," James replied.

Ah, James, and Mei-Lin wondered what Lily found so attractive about him. Not that Lily spent a lot of time mooning over boys with Mei-Lin. No, she saved that particularly activity for her hours with Will, who found the topic every bit as stimulating as Lily and was far less likely to throw a book at her if she started to sigh a bit too fondly as she reminisced about James' hair.

Lily wandered idly, glancing behind her coquettishly as she did, toward the camber window overlooking the Quidditch pitch. Tiny blurs whipped around the goal posts, a shock of unexpected color flying faster than any bird. Joining her, James propped one of his feet up on the stone bench, the kind designed and installed in old castles for a lady in full skirts busy at her embroidery. The sun beat down warm, yet not suffocating, and made James' wide grin that much more brilliant.

"Makes perfect sense that I'm not invited then," Lily nodded. "Will's mentioned that I've been looking a bit haggish since Christmas 'hols. I reckon my haggishness is only compounding the ginger problem."

Lily then gave her hair an artfully casual flip. She'd teased him, agreed with him, and now played with her hair. All she had to do was find an excuse to pet his arm, and she'd have ticked off every box from Witch Weekly's guide to flirting with wizards.

The grin that James aimed at her slowly faded with a beleaguered sigh. He began to play with his own hair in a way that had less to do with flirtation and more to do with habit.

"I would absolutely invite you to my party if I could. In fact, you have a standing invitation to every party I throw for the rest of your life," James said, and Lily smiled as her mind raced with the possibilities of crashing boys-only events, imagined the thrill would be the same as those heady moments when she'd used her father's razor, something so foreign and inherently male, "but I'm not having a party this year."

Lily took this news in stride. "Alright, I get it. It'll be a secret, last-minute event. I'll be on the lookout this weekend."

"No, Lily, really. I'm not having a party this year."

"Whatever you say, James."

"I'm serious," James bit out frustrated.

"You are serious," Lily breathed out, tone disbelieving. "But why?"

"No reason," James said with a shrug that urged her to drop the subject immediately.

In all her life, Lily had never written a piece on student drama. The ever-changing allegiances and blossoms of love were empty fodder that any hack journalist could uncover. When Lily put her pen to paper, she wanted to expose something meaningful – injustice, discrimination, nepotism and the like. James Potter choosing not to host a birthday party should not have qualified, and yet, every one of Lily's journalistic instincts screamed in unison. There was a story here. James' cagy refusals to explain only confirmed it.

"If I'm not pretty enough, you can just tell me, James," Lily tried.

"Don't hunt for compliments."

Lily let the rebuke slide off her as she was hunting, certainly, but not for compliments. No, she wanted to know why he hadn't stopped fidgeting from foot to foot since they fell upon the topic of his birthday.

"Shite, I need to get to class," James said, glancing around the corridor and realizing that all their classmates had already sidled away. She had to shade her eyes against the sun to look at him.

"Or you could stay here and tell me more about the party," Lily suggested.

James chuckled, returning to himself, "Unlike you, some of us care about our marks."

"Please, you're clever enough that you could skive off three days out of four and still pass with flying colors."

James stared at her with an expression that she couldn't begin to decipher and then, just as inexplicably, said, "I'm never going to get used to that."

A smile curved his lips, and then he saluted her and walked away, disappearing behind a corner of bossed stone. Lily stood still, watched him go and tried to process what had to be the most bizarre interaction she'd ever had with the boy.

Get used to what?

Wasting time on deciphering the many moods of James Potter was bound to end in disappointment. As far as Lily could tell, no one had ever succeeded. Lily lost another moment to her thoughts before she remembered with a jolt that she had class starting as well and broke into a sprint to make it to History of Magic.

While Lily had every intention of forgetting all about James' suspicious behavior, especially as History was one of her favorite classes, she couldn't stop her mind from drifting throughout the rest of the day. To an unhelpful Dorcas, she speculated as to whether James might plan to quietly celebrate his entry into adulthood with his family. All through dinner, she chanced glances at him from down the rows. After dinner, she'd trekked down to the empty stretch of lawn near the gamekeeper's hut for tennis and taken a ball straight to the eye as punishment for her distraction.

The shock of pain was a blessing in disguise because, after that, Lily found it comparatively easy to focus on the match at hand, all thoughts of James banished. There weren't enough members of the Hogwarts Tennis Club for any one participant to be distracted. In fact, there were two: Lily and Evangeline Presley.

"Are you alright, Lily?" Evangeline gasped. Her urgent concern was unfeigned, but there was an element of glee there, too. It wasn't often that Eva scored a point on Lily. Fourteen and gangly with the onset of puberty, Eva was far from a challenging opponent.

Crouched low, Lily nursed her eye. The sting was persistent, like there was a nettle clamped beneath her eyelid. The left eye remained stubbornly closed, eyelashes sticky against her cheek from the tears that leaked out. All the same, she waved her hand to ward off Evangeline's attempts to help.

"I'm fine!" Lily called bracingly. "Your serve. Fifteen love."

Eva raised her racket hesitantly. Paused. "Are you sure? If we wait, maybe Emmeline will come, and I can play her instead. Just until your eye feels better."

"No," Lily said and with a burst of determination managed to wrench her eye – red and puffy – open into the barest slit. "Emmeline's not coming, so let's play."

When Eva sent the ball hurtling over the net, Lily tracked it with her right eye. Evangeline liked to send it deep, straight for the baseline. Muscle memory took over, and Lily raced backward, arm already arching for a backhanded groundstroke. The ball connected, impact rattling her arm, and the ball sailed past Eva for an easily won point.

Once upon a time, Lily's dormmate, Emmeline Vance, played alongside them, giving Lily some active competition. Since the start of the year, however, she'd turned cold on the sport, leaving Lily to Eva.

The lack of challenge didn't much bother Lily. She just loved the sport. It reminded her of the rare days of family bonding. She and Petunia would break out their tennis whites, kept pristine for just such occasions, even though they knew the terrain around the court was soft dirt and would whip around in the wind, staining their skirts long before the match was finished. They'd play for hours, muscles tightening up in agony from overuse, and take turns imitating each other's grunts until Lily was rolling on the court with laughter and Petunia was purple in the face with rage.

Lily's muscles snapped into place, and her mind quieted from the soothing repetition of the volley. She forgot to care about anything. These two-hour sessions were the only time in the week where she truly relaxed.

The sky turned progressively pinker, smears of startling color replacing clear blue as the sun receded behind the castle in the distance. In those minutes, before the sun set entirely, Hogwarts stood at its most magical, a landscape of vivid, ephemeral colors overwhelming the unforgiving gray of stone walls. The sight of it left Lily gaping and breathless no matter how many evenings she spent in quiet study of it. Knowing how much she enjoyed photography, Will had once asked why she never brought her camera to take a shot of the castle blooming with color, and Lily had only shaken her head in mute refusal. She didn't know how to explain that the transient was never meant to be captured on film; it was meant to be experienced.

After tennis, Lily raced to the Charms corridor for a meeting of the Charms Club, presided over by Professor Flitwick and dedicated to the discussion of Charms theory. It wasn't the most rewarding activity in the world, but as Charms was the one practical subject of spellwork that didn't torture Lily on a daily basis, she felt compelled to attend. It was also a club she shared with Dorcas, so the two girls passed notes in the back and traded stories about their days with relish while Flitwick stabbed his wand repeatedly to demonstrate the vehemence of the Austrian Charms style.

Loquacious and energetic about charms, Flitwick often lost track of time, and today's meeting was no exception. It was nearly ten o'clock by the time Flitwick remembered and sent them off to bed with cheerful calls for them to dream well. Past curfew, Lily had no choice but to return to her house.

The Common Room was abandoned, all the lights extinguished except for the glow of embers from the fireplace. Lily heaved a sigh and dropped her satchel beside one of the armchairs. Mei-Lin would be long asleep, a new resentment against Lily burning in her breast.

By the light of a Lumos, Lily began to tackle the mountains of homework her professors so callously assigned her. It was her least favorite part of the day, when her energy began to wane and there was no promise of pleasures to come with her friends tucked away in bed and the sun set on any opportunities to explore. Yet still, she couldn't afford to rest. Worst of all, the ever-encroaching guarantee of sleep haunted her. She despised it, the act of lying still in her bed and waiting for her mind to shut down. Sometimes, she wondered whether it was any different than dying, her sense of self so wrapped up in her thoughts that she couldn't conceive of existing outside of them. Lily knew from experience how short a life could be, and she mourned for the passing of each day, having to say goodbye to herself and her friends on a perpetual loop until one day her mind shut off forever and these miniature deaths yielded to a permanent one.

Around midnight, Lily felt her discipline waning. It was the hour she normally tried to close her books for the night, but her Defense homework was still woefully incomplete, and her Runes translation better befit a third-year. Still, she argued with herself that she could always complete her work the next day. Tuesdays were a blessing as she only had two classes, so she would have rare pockets of spare time to focus on her assignments. Of course, she possessed the self-awareness to recognize that she'd likely make excuses come morning as well, but the lure of relaxation was too strong.

She tossed her unfinished assignments into her satchel and reclined more fully into the sticky leather of the armchair.

If pressed to name her biggest complaint against the Hogwarts lifestyle, it would be the limitations set on how students could spend their free time. Without electricity, there was no telly, no film, no radio. The students were restricted to the grounds, limiting her ability to hike and explore. Excepting Hogsmeade weekends, there was no shopping or restaurants. She was trapped in a castle with next to nothing to do after the day waned and her friends retreated to their beds.

To fill the hours of darkness, Lily had purchased a boxset of biographies on prominent women of British history. In those pages, Lily found herself time and time again. Those minutes spent reading brought an unsettling clarity, a time where her purpose shone with a brilliant lucidity that the mundanity of the school day usually obscured.

With extreme care, she'd take notes on the women she discovered, detailing their accomplishments and states of mind in a green-leather notebook, brimming with similar notes from years of research. The notebook's purpose shifted with time as Lily's focus was ever-changing. The early pages were filled with sloppy attempts at poetry, all rhyming without any attempt at meter; there were her observations from when she'd toyed with botany and notes on the stages of the moon. It was a lovingly maintained collection of a young and vibrant mind.

It had been a birthday gift from her mother – the final gift – and Lily gave it the attention such as a treasure deserved. Every night, she set it carefully inside a hat box from Debenhams, cushioned amongst a bed of pink, papery tissue. The box would then be placed beneath her bed where it was out of danger from misplaced feet or curious eyes. It had not so much as a single dog-ear or ripped page, and, for consistency, she'd written every entry to date in the same black ink. She dreaded the day she'd run out of pages; the current standing was 461 filled out of 500.

Tonight, she was reading the biography of Florence Nightingale. For about three years as a child, Lily had thought Florence Nightingale was a storybook character, what with a name so quintessentially Victorian it sounded like an invention from one of Dickens' less masterful works. Lily had reflected that her own given name was a step in the right direction, but Evans was horribly pedestrian. Her mother's maiden name had been Forrester, which at least evoked a sense of a heavy wood to fit with the nature theme, but her mum was long gone and her name along with her, so Lily was stuck with boring, old Evans.

Not that a name was all that important. A mind like Florence Nightingale's would have thrived even if her name was something dull like Anne Smith. The chapter on Nightingale's contributions in the Crimean War briefly touched on modern contention as to whether Nightingale's achievements weren't exaggerated, to which Lily could only cluck her tongue in disapproval. It was so very like muggle men to call into question a dead woman's legacy. Fortunately, it was only a brief mention in the fourth chapter. After that, the book settled into a rhythm, highlighting Nightingale's accomplishments across fields.

It was the scope of what Nightingale had achieved that left Lily breathless. Here was a woman who had not limited herself to one field of proficiency. Mastery of one area of study was admirable of course, but Lily fancied herself a renaissance woman at heart, and Florence Nightingale encapsulated what she wanted to achieve. The icon had revolutionized the role of nursing, helped make strides for social reforms, contributed to the field of graphical representations, improved sanitation standards, and written on a broad variety of topics. Over the course of a long but unhealthy life, Florence Nightingale had never wavered, had never succumbed to the limitations other tried to place on her gender.

The next day, when Lily's eyes fluttered shut in class and weariness settled into her bones, she would remember Florence Nightingale. Dedication, discipline, and effort were the three keys to success, and Lily thought that if she could only achieve a third of what Florence Nightingale had, she could die a happy woman. The scent of the room sweetened and grew heady as Lily lost herself to indulgent imaginings of a world in which she had left a definitive mark. She would not care if one hundred years later people had forgotten her name and her personality, so long as something she'd contributed to the world – a new spell, a discovery in the field of biology, an award-winning expose, a political career (the possibilities were truly endless) – was remembered and felt for centuries to come.

The stirring motivation of Nightingale sat heavy with Lily as she went about her nighttime routine, removing her makeup and preparing for bed. So many hours wasted each day on frivolities, on sleep. The very fact that she had makeup to remove was a testament to her vanity. No one would remember her for being pretty in a century, or even thirty years, when her beauty would be long past its expiration date. Despite all the work she put into focusing on what truly mattered, she was still a slave to the expectations of her age.

All four of her room mates were fast asleep when she crept into her dormitory. She had the room's contours perfectly memorized from many such late-night entrances and didn't require the guide of candlelight to find her way to bed. She took four steps forward, a half step to the left to glide around the trunk at the foot of Mary's mattress, ducked beneath the fairy-lights Marlene had strung between the bannisters of hers and Emmeline's beds, and then she parted the gauzy folds of her own coverings and collapsed into her old adversary.

Tonight, something was different. Rather than the soft rustle of sheets, Lily heard the unmistakable crinkle of paper as she settled beneath the bedsheets.

The mystery paper was a note, or rather, an invitation. The message was inscribed in impersonal, newspaper print on standard parchment:

To: The Esteemed Lily Evans

Date: Saturday, March 27, 1976

Where: The Southside of the Forbidden Forest

Attire: Formal

Guests: Not permitted sans their own invitation

See you soon…

G

The signature would several times, disappearing beneath an illustration of seaweed. While the note offered no more information, Lily knew exactly what much sought-after treasure she held in her hands. Before her eyes, the invitation began to disintegrate, so she hastily scanned the contents, memorizing the time and location of the party. When the note had dissolved entirely, she was left with a starfish in her hands, bleached orange-pink from the sun. She studied the souvenir for a long time, the only evidence of what had just occurred.

The Grindylows. She'd been invited to a Grindylows party.


A/N: There aren't really words for how excited (read: nervous) I am to be starting up another story. I've been working on this for nearly 10 months and have been eager to share it with the world. I've been hesitant to post because I keep editing and moving the pieces around to make it more tightly plotted, but I think it's time to release it like a baby bird. (Note: the story's not finished, but I have a good chunk done.)

A few warnings: I chose mature for the story because of later events, but it'll read as teen for the overwhelming majority of the story unless I'm feeling smutty in later chapters (and who knows really?).

The greatest warning, though, is that these are complicated, messy characters, and you're going to want to strangle pretty much all of them at one point or another (hopefully, you'll love them the rest of the time). Crit is more than welcome (though I may disagree), and I have no problem with reviews where you mention you're frustrated with a character, BUT please, please, please double-check when you do if your review comes off like you're trying to inform me that "X" action is immoral. When my characters do something wrong, I'm well aware of it, and reviews that try to inform me of it, make me bonkers. It's just personal preference, please & thank you.

That said, I live for reviews, and I'm going to be super greedy because I've been sitting on this chapter since March, just waiting to see what everyone thinks, so I look forward to hearing from you! Hope everyone enjoys!