A/N: So for those of you who don't know, it's Jily Week over on Tumblr! This basically means that loads of incredibly talented people are posting art, fics, edits etc based around daily prompts from now until Sunday, so you should check it out if you can.
I'm posting daily drabbles for it, and I thought I'd post them here as well, just to keep all my writing together. This will be a series of not-really-connected drabbles, and so the styles may vary a lot and the chapters will probably not form a consistent timeline.
Prompt for day one: Childhood
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Lily Evans took her first steps aged 13 months, in the living room of a modest, semi-detached house in Cokeworth. She crossed the room to reach the biscuit in her mother's outstretched hand, and was cheered on by both her mother and older sister, and later hugged proudly by her father when he returned home from work. She still didn't walk routinely until she was closer to eighteen months; her mother often said that Lily could never be rushed into accepting things, even when they were inevitable.
James Potter had taken his first steps by the time he was nine months old, and they had been witnessed only by the house elf who had watched, horrified, as he crossed the room on shaky legs before swinging on the door handle in an attempt to escape from his playroom. After that date, nothing was safe from James Potter's little hands, and the house elves spent many an hour chasing after him to retrieve precious Potter artefacts. James' mother often said that James always went directly for what he wanted.
Lily's first day at primary school was one of excitement more than worry; her big sister held her hand all the way on the walk, her mother following along behind, admiring her girls in their matching uniforms and neat plaits. She made an instant friend in Angela, a fellow redhead who lived in the next street over from her, and spent lunchtime skipping with the other girls in her class. She loved school from that very first day.
James never even had to leave Potter Manor for school; his parents' hired a governess, a lady even older than they were called Harriet, who simply moved in with them to take care of him. She adored him, and happily played with him between lessons, but it simply wasn't the same as having a friend of his own age to match him in hyperactivity. He loved Potter Manor, but as he grew it began to feel confining.
Lily discovered magic, although she did not know that was what it was exactly, when she was six years old and desperate for just one last bedtime story. Not one member of her family believed her when she claimed that the story books lying on her bed had just floated down from the shelf when she thought about it, despite the fact that she quite clearly could not have reached the high shelf herself. No-one wants to believe in unexplainable things, so they simply didn't think about it, and they continued this attempt at ignorance for a further five years until an extraordinary letter arrived, accompanied by an even more extraordinary person. They had always considered their daughter to be special, and couldn't honestly say they were that surprised at finding out she was more special still, though that did not tone down the jolt at finding out that magic was real.
James had heard stories of magic, and seen it used, from the very earliest days of his life, and he was desperate to be able to perform it himself. While Lily's parents tried not to see any results of their daughter's abilities, James' parents watched him carefully, wondering every day when he would show signs of magic. There was never any doubt in their mind that James would be a wonderful wizard, and James himself was confident that he could do magic, if only he could force it to come out of him. Some days he would simply stare at objects, willing them to move, to change, to respond to his wishes. It shouldn't have come as any surprise to any of them that one day, when James was five years old and sulking after a row with his mother about whether shoes were necessary for going outdoors, every pair of shoes in the house miraculously disappeared. When his letter arrived the summer after his eleventh birthday, it was a surprise to no-one and merely resulted in a celebratory trip to Diagon Alley to pick out an owl.
Lily - who had grown up with a sister who was also a best friend, who had become close friends with a boy who lived just round the corner, who had neighbours very close by and a plethora of acquaintances from primary school - couldn't wait to go to Hogwarts to learn, to explore her magic, to discover a new world. She wanted to meet people and make friends of course, but she already knew what it was like to have friends, to be surrounded by people who liked her and played games with her; she wanted to find out more about magic, about magical creatures, and charms, and the history of the school and all the hundred million things that were new and exciting.
Lily's strange new world was James Potter's very familiar one; he had no interest in learning about Goblin Rebellions or how healing potions were made. To him those things simply existed, they were everyday and mundane, and they held none of the awe for him that they did for Lily. No, what James Potter wanted out of Hogwarts was something he didn't have at home; friends, pranks, games, Quidditch matches. He did want to learn - especially things like transfiguration, and apparition, and any number of other spells he'd seen his parents use and desperately wanted to be able to use himself - but for someone who'd grown up on an isolated estate, who'd been educated at home, who had no siblings and had only ever really interacted with children of a similar age when he'd spent time with his cousins, a castle full of people was the draw for him.
James had been lonely; Lily, uninformed. Both went to Hogwarts with the intention of remedying what they saw as the defects of their childhood, each of them already strong-willed and stubborn by the tender age of eleven. James, goal-orientated and focused, and Lily, thoughtful and introspective, were both sorted into Gryffindor, and one could say that was where their story began.
But in truth their story started so much earlier, their characters and habits and desires formed by their very different upbringings; if there had been an outside observer to the events of their childhood, their interactions at Hogwarts would have made perfect sense; it was always inevitable.
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A/N: I just have this headcanon that James was a lonely child, and so he completely over-compensated when he got to Hogwarts, whereas - going by JK's comments that Lily was a lot like Ginny - I think that Lily would have been pretty popular pre-Hogwarts as well.
As always, thanks for reading.
