Harriet L. Stevens has a big personality.
You don't like her at first, because she's stubborn and outspoken and rude to the bold, rebellious boy you call your best friend, but when she sticks up for Lovely Lily Evans you decide she's ok, maybe.
Harriet L. Stevens always looks pale and thin, and her wheat-coloured hair is always tangled, her large eyes always sad, and yet you can see her underlying beauty.
Not that you look at her like that, because Lovely Lily will always be your one and only.
You're thirteen and are paired up to work together in class. Harriet. L. Stevens tells you to call her Harry and she makes jokes and laughs a lot, and you pretend that she doesn't look like Death warmed up, and you wonder if maybe she's got a furry little problem because the only other person you know who looks that sick is Remus.
You're fourteen and she's one of your closest friends.
You don't quite know how it happened, but suddenly she's one of your best mates and you still know she's hiding something and she's getting sicker and sicker and -
"I've got leukaemia, James."
She beats it, of course.
She's Harry bloody Stevens, how could she not?
When you are fifteen you all get plastered and she's your first kiss, but her lips, while they are soft and sweet, they aren't Lily's lips and she ends up sleeping in Sirius' arms, a happy smile on her face. You can't tell her the biggest secrets of course, and she knows you lot are hiding something but she shrugs and says it doesn't matter.
When you're sixteen she learns what heartbreak is because there's a war brewing and her family have been killed, for fun, for sport, because they are what ignorant wizards call 'muggles' and you hold her while she cries.
When you are seventeen she finally gets Lovely Lily to say yes to one date, just one date, and one turns into two and three and four, and soon Lily is standing next to you under the moonlight sating softly, "I love you, James," and you owe it all to her.
When you are eighteen you go off to fight a war, with Lovely Lily and Sirius and Remus and Peter and Harry Bloody Stevens by your side, and in between battles she is maid of honour when you marry Lovely Lily Evans.
When you are nineteen you are tortured, and when you are nineteen and a little bit she is tortured too.
When you are twenty you turn to her with a shit-eating grin and say, "Lily's pregnant."
And she hugs you and whispers, "Oh, James, I'm so happy for you," in your ear.
Two weeks later a Death Eater casts a curse at you, a fatal one, and she shoves you aside and takes it herself.
You cradle her in your arms as she dies and you cry, and ask her why. She replies softly that every kid needs a father and you remember bitterly that her own walked out on her when she was a just a little girl.
And you watch as the light fades from her eyes.
When you are nearly twenty one your Lovely Lily holds a tiny, black-haired baby in her arms and says casually, "Let's call him Harry.".
And so you do.
When Harry (Potter) is fifteen, Sirius tells him with a sad expression, "You remind me of Harry the Original so much sometimes, you know."
And Harry frowns and asks, "Who?"
So Sirius tells him.