Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs and everything else belongs to our Queen, JK Rowling!

Chapter 1: Beechwood

This is a story about Harry Potter's Daughter, Lily Luna Potter. She is eleven years old and coming to Hogwarts for the first time. I decided to have made her mature from the perky, bubbly little nine year old we all saw and fell in love with on Platform 9 and 3/4 in the epilogue of Harry Potter 7, to a more quiet, thoughtful, solemn, shy eleven year old. But don't think her shyness means she's a pushover. She makes a perfectly good job of making it clear that she has a mind of her own, if I do say so myself. I have scoured Harry Potter wikia to make sure my post-Harry Potter novel is as accurate as possible. I have done my best to make sure that I have gotten my facts straight. If not, please tell me which character's fate I muddled in the comments/reviews and I will set about to correcting it.

I gazed out the window of my compartment. So here it was. Finally. After waiting for eleven long years that seemed like forever, after eleven yeas of hearing my family members telling me incredible stories that made my bones ache with a longing to go, after four years of hearing my older brother's confirmations about it being as wonderful as everybody said it was, I was going to Hogwarts.

I looked down at my wand in my lap and realized that my finger had been absentmindedly stroking it back and forth. Every time I saw it my heart seemed to turn a back somersault. Whether this was because I was so excited to have a wand of my own after jealously coveting my brothers for so long, or perhaps it was simply the childish, petty joy that I am sure many young witches and wizards before and after my time have felt gazing at their wand, and being faced with the realization, no matter how many times they have found before, (I confess without the slightest bit of shame that I had become rather addicted to the rush of energy my heart gained every time it found it) that they are on their journey to becoming a mature witch or wizard.

I was incredibly proud of my wand's appearance. Although I confess that this was a rather petty act of conceit, I can't help but console (and at the same time feel a bit foolish) of the fact that every other eleven year old witch and wizard on the train, with a smidgit of self-esteem's feelings for their own wand had little difference from mine.

My instrument was beechwood, unicorn tail hair, fifteen and a half inches, unyielding. I couldn't wait to use it and perhaps this was just my tendency to believe in things that didn't necessarily happen (a fault of my overactive imagination,a trait to this day I must lament I don't know who I got from, my parents being the solid, practical people that they were) but I would have sworn on my Uncle Fred's grave that I could feel it pulsating, sensing the raw, unprocessed magical ability in myself and desperately desiring to channel it.

I wondered why I was sitting all alone in a compartment. Cousin Hugo had invited me to join his friends but for a reason unknown to myself at the time, I wanted to sit alone. Of course, this was not at all how one had imagined my journey to Hogwarts. Harry Potter's daughter. I should have been sitting in a crowded compartment, filled to the brim with new friends, laughing and joking. Yet... I wanted to be alone. It would be a very long time before I thoroughly realized the reason why.

Part of me already knew why I had wanted to be alone. I didn't want to make any new friends until after the sorting. In my mind, there really was no point in talking to people and getting all chummy, and then watching them get sorted into a different house and rarely speak to them again. Although Aunt Hermione was always telling everybody that students should try for inter-house unity, I was yet to realize the significance of her words. My brother James had confessed to me that the students had a tendency to hang out within their own houses. He was the one who advised me not to make friends until after the sorting. Me being an eleven years old with no idea of the world of Hogwarts except for the stories I had heard, and who believed that since my brother was four years my senior, he must be older and wiser, I believed him. I love my brother very much but I must admit that I feel some foolishness whenever I remember believing his words now.

"If you hang out with kids in your other house too much, people might start to think that you don't want to be in Gryffindor. You don't want 'em thinkin that now, do you?"

"NO" I replied fiercely. There's nowhere else I'd rather be in Gryffindor! I want to be in Gryffindor just like Mummy and Daddy, and everybody else in the family" (I was nine at the time)

However, my certainty that I was going to be a Gryffindor had lasted throughout the years. Everybody in my family had been one. If there was somebody who wasn't, then to this day I am still unaware of it. Despite the fact that my father was constantly telling me about the unpredictability of which house to which I'd be chosen, I was convinced that I was going to be a Gryffindor. I have discovered ever since then, that some things you have to discover for yourself, despite the number of times it has been told you you. My father seemed to believe so himself because he flatly refused to tell me the exact procedure by which I'd have been chosen. When James and Albus came home from school, he had forbidden them to tell me and he was vigilant about not revealing them to me by accident, as were the rest of the family.

"There's something exciting about realizing just how you are going to be sorted when your in the Great Hall" said Uncle Ron.

However, I thought it was incredibly unfair of my father to do this to me, particularly as he had revealed the information to Albus before he joined. (don't ask me how I knew. I Just did) Dad allways did seem to favor Albus over me and James. To this very day, I still feel a pang of jealousy and resentment deep within my chest, although the agony isn't quite as strong and fierce as it once was. It has dulled over the years from a strong, stinging, raw pain, to a slow, steady,ache)
Perhaps, the reason why me father favored Albus was because he was the only one of us who had inherited his eyes. To me, this seemed like an act of incredible vanity and conceit. Favoring a child because he had inherited your most desirable characteristic. I hadn't yet realized whose eyes they really were. But even as I think about it, I cannot help but bring myself to wonder: is it still alright for my father to show favoritism?

My brother may have inherited my gran's eyes, but I inherited her name. I do not think that I would have found myself objecting to the inheritance of her eyes, but genetics is the one thing that wizards cannot control. That's muggle stuff. I believe that James was learning about that kind of stuff in Muggle studies. I would have to ask him about it sometimes. Instead I had my mother's bright brown eyes, which helped me see in front of my nose just as fine as green ones would and her bright red hair, which at the moment was tied into what Mum called, two slim, rat-tails.

I was rather nervous about entering Hogwarts. This was nothing to be ashamed of, as evey other first year on the Hogwarts Express felt the same, but I found myself with an extra pound placed on my back. You see, I had many expectations to live up to: Lily Luna Potter, daughter of Harry Potter, the only survivor of the Avada Kedavra curse, defeater of the Dark Wizard VOldemort, and head of the Auror office as well as Ginny Weasley, former Captain of the Holyhead Harpies and Senior Quidditch Correspondent, Neice of Ron Weasley, who helped Harry Potter on his quest to destroy Horcruxes, Hermione Granger who (in addition to the latter's brains whose reputation as the brightest witch her age while she was in Hogwarts was stuff of legend as much as my father's conquest), sister of James Potter (best chaser on the Gryffindor team) and Albus Potter. Yes, I certainly had a lot to prove.

Everybody was expecting so much of me and part of me wanted to please them. My father had said that I was named after my late Grandmother, an incredible witch, and not to let her down. My Gran was apparently very popular during her days at Hogwarts. I am quite proud to say that I was quite proud to have her name. I wanted to carve a name for myself, to carve a great path worthy of the Weasley and Potter name, and to add to the legacy of the Potter family. In addition to everything that I have said before, I was the first female Potter born in seven generations, (and seven was the most powerful number in all of wizardry so everybody was expecting something something of me and watching my every move with somewhat baited breath) I was bred from two incredible families, a fine example of selective breeding in the wizarding world.

And yet...a part of me didn't want to be Lily Luna Potter. I didn't want t greatness or recognition. I didn't want to come to Hogwarts, bathed in glory, and leave behind a blaze of it when I graduated. I just wanted to be-well-myself. Everything about me, from my family, to my appearancscreamed "This witch is headed for greatness!" But I didn't want to be set up for greatness. I wanted to find my way like everybody else. I wanted to be well liked for who I was, not my family.

My own name didn't make anything easier. My grandmother was something of a legend back at Hogwarts judging by what Albus and James told me. My dad had yet to disclose to me how she died. It was clear that my father had picked out the names for me and my brothers. Often, I felt bad for Mum, for not lettig me have a say in my name, but considering that this was the woman who named Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione's owl "Pigwidgeon", I felt somewhat relieved afterward. But my Mum confided in me that she always wanted to name me Louella. I allways wondered why she had let my Dad name my siblings and I. My Mum was the most stubborn person in the world. If she wanted to have her way, she would be prepared to argue with my Dad for hours on end about it. So why was she sch a pushover for something so important as her children's name? It was a very long time before I realized the reason. Very very long. I was young and impulsive then and I was still a bit alien to the concept of empathy as many children my age, wizard or muggle, are. But I digress,. Somehow, a bizarre and odd name would certainly have sounded better to me then. For then, at least, I would be able to make an identity for myself out of it. It is veryhard to create an identity for yourself whenyou have a name that once belonged to someone else's. Everywhere I went, people kept on thinking "There goes Lily Potter, named after her mother. How could I make a name for myself, when my name already was giving it all to somebody else. I highly doubt that thoses of you who were born with your own name will understand what I mean. Perhaps those who were named after somebody won't either. I wasn't completely clear of what I was feeling myself.

I had decided that once I reached school, I would ask my peers and teachers to call me Lily Luna, my first name and my middle name. That too, was a hand me down from a great witch. My Auntie Luna; a very close friend of my Mum and Dad's and a very famous naturalist. She had discovered a vast amount of species that everybody thought were imaginary, and had even written a book of her travels which was on the first year's book list. Yet another name for myself to live up to. But in a similar manner of two negatives making a positive, the combination of the two names gave me an identity of my own. But was this going to be possible. Could I go to school as Lily Luna? Or would I be spending my school days, as "Lily Potter, daughter of Harry Potter?"