James and Lily Potter did everything young.
Lily, clever as she was, spoke her first words at just seven months, and James, a very different sort of clever, had learnt to talk back as early as one. Lily was riding a bike – without training wheels, mind you – before her fourth birthday, and James was on a broom almost as soon as he could walk. When she was five, Lily Evans received her first award; the very same year that James Potter broke his first bone. She had mastered the entire fourth year Charms catalogue (and some of the fifth) before the age of thirteen, and he had scored more goals on the Quidditch pitch than any second year in recorded history. In their fifth year, Lily made Prefect, and James Captain. In their seventh, Head Boy and Girl. He fell in love at fifteen, she at seventeen, and the two were married – quickly for her, finally for him – at just nineteen.
Not even two decades old, James and Lily Potter had fought dozens of battles, saved countless lives, and risked their own over and again. Her first scrape with death occurred in 1979; he, on the other hand, had had approximately thirty-five close encounters – whether in the skies or the Shrieking Shack – since the age of seven. Thus, while she had always had a certain awareness of mortality, it was not until his nineteenth year, when Lily's life was the one at risk, that James first came to fear death. And, of course, at only twenty years of age, Lily gave birth to their first child; a beautiful baby boy with his hair and her eyes.
James and Lily Potter did everything young.
And so it was that, in spite of everything they had done, and everything they could have been, death should come for them young, as well.