She could see him from across the table. It was strange, what she felt for the boy at the Slytherin table. He was three years older than her, a seventh year, and again, a Slytherin. Gwillan Tippetarius. The object of her desire.
Perhaps it started when she was a first-year, scrambling around for a compartment, when she approached this quiet, solitary Slytherin, and he was kind to her, the opposite of how she was always told that Slytherins were prone to act.
Funny, wasn't it, what impressions she held? She had grown up in the center of Gryffindors, with the only ones in her family not going to the house of red and gold, the House of Heroes as she knew it, were Molly, who did go to Slytherin, Louis, who was a Ravenclaw, and Hugo, who was a Hufflepuff, much to Uncle Ron's initial disappointment.
Slytherins were bad, were evil, right? As much as her father insisted upon this, her mother would snort and say, "Yeah, right." So who was right then?
Lily's childlike, naive mind still wondered then and now if Slytherins were really as bad as her family said. She knew about the Second Wizarding War, and she knew that You-Know-Who was a Slytherin, but did that make them all bad?
Gwillan was sweet to her then, telling her that she would be just fine at Hogwarts, and he actually wanted to get to know her, not the Potter side of her. Just the Lily side. The redheaded Gryffindor girl that was much like her namesake, her grandmother.
She knew it was rare then, and it was increasingly rare in school. Most people just wanted to get close to their hero, her father, rather than her. It was frustrating to always love in your parents' shadow, and to know that you might for your whole lifetime, no matter how hard you try.
"That's deep," he'd once said to her approvingly, those sad green eyes brightly fixed upon her every word. Those sad eyes. . .
"Why do you look sad all the time?" She had once asked, about her second year, when he'd just announced that he'd been made a prefect.
He just stared at her, thinking up a response suitable for a twelve year old child.
"It's a Slytherin thing," he said, looking away to his hands folded in his lap over his emerald and black Slytherin robes.
Seeing that she was not satisfied with this answer, and was frustrated (because she could understand, really) he sighed.
"Good people can be Slytherins at heart," he said. "Slytherins that are good at heart, though, don't want to be in Slytherin, the house where you get called racist, evil, and told that you don't have a heart every single day just because of the war twenty-two years ago."
"And you're a good person, right?" She'd asked eagerly, her naive young mind unable to fathom her friend being bad.
He managed a smile. "I'd like to think so, Lily."
That was probably when she first started to fall for him, she realized. Something about his solitary, mysterious personality drew her to him, something about the aura of darkness that radiated off of him, despite his kind words and actions he had always had towards her.
She wanted to find good in people, a trait that her more cynical cousin, Rose, told her would get her into dangerous places one day. She wanted to find the good in Slytherins, especially from a young age, and he was her starting point.
She never laughed anymore at the jokes where Slytherin was the punchline, because of him. She would start telling off anyone who decided that the Slytherins needed just a little more bashing. Her view was opening up because of him.
Probably didn't hurt that he was attractive, to her at least, either. He had paler features, which Lily was rather fond of, maybe because of her own pale, freckled skin that accompanied her fiery red hair. He had green eyes with flecks of brown and amber that captivated her every time he looked at her, every damn time. His hair was dark and was in wavy curls on his head that she had the urge to run her fingers through.
Maybe this was a crush that she'd get over one day. She, however, was going to take advantage of this while it lasted. She looked down from the table, and applied some lip gloss, and looked back up, to see Gwillan smirking in her direction, as if he'd caught her staring. She blushed and grabbed her bark too embarrassed to remain in the Great Hall, even to wait for the owl post to come in like a feathery hurricane.
She passed quickly by the other Gryffindors, and nearly tripped over her own robes in her hurry. She just wanted to get out, get out before she did anything more embarrassing. She tripped again over the hem of her robes, and she let out an unintelligible string of curse terms as a hand gently gripped her arm and brought her back up to her feet.
"Hey, Lily," Gwillan said, turning her around so she was facing her. "I just thought you ought to know-" he hesitated. "You don't need the makeup." He then patted her shoulder and turned around.
Lily stared after him incredulously as the owl storm came in. He would be hers.