Lily Evans was not used to being the first one noticed. She had always been observant (which Remus Lupin called "nosy" and James Potter called "brilliant", and privately she agreed with them both). But the first time she took notice of the girl was in Care of Magical Creatures class. Lily didn't think she would've looked at the girl at all if she hadn't followed the girl's stare back to her dark eyes. Once she saw her, however, she didn't really know how she'd missed her before. The girl was every inch of six feet, somehow managing to straddle the line between looking like a piece of taffy stretched too far and a mountain placed in the middle of class. Her black hair fell in a single, utilitarian braid over the deep green hood of her school robes, and she'd shunned the thick-heeled boots that were popular with the fifth-years this term for ones with sturdier, simpler tread. One of the enchanted fireproof blankets Professor Kettleburn had attempted to helpfully hand out was draped over her arm.
The girl noticed Lily noticing. She suddenly seemed intensely interested in Professor Kettleburn's excited explanation on the difference in temperament between the diamond-crusted fire crab that she held and the caged ruby-studded one that several of the Slytherin boys were eyeing nervously. Lily, not one to give up her noticing just because she'd been caught, could see the edges of the girl's ears turning bright red.
"Evans!"
Lily closed her eyes and set her teeth. "What, Potter?" She rolled her eyes away from the girl and found Potter thrusting an emerald-covered fire crab towards her.
"I bring you this thoroughly tamed fire crab, which shines with the same, er-"
"Green-ness," Sirius Black offered from where he was experimentally prodding a stick into a cage of juvenile fire crabs.
"Green-ness!" Potter repeated. "Yes, which shines with the same green-ness of your eyes!"
Lily looked at the crab. It glowered out at her from under the hood of its shell, looking maybe less tame than James claimed. "Well, I've already managed to get this one quiet all on my own, thanks," she said. She pointed to the cage she'd been cleaning and the sleeping sapphire fire crab inside.
"Right, but this one is green!" Potter insisted.
"We've established that you're not color-blind, Potter." Lily eyed the fire crab again. Six legs bristled from under its shell. "Would you put that down? I don't think it's-"
Before she could finish her warning, several explosions occurred all at once:
The end of the fire crab exploded in a spectacular display of sparks and flame.
James Potter's eyebrows exploded with the stink of burned hair.
The girl who'd been noticing Lily exploded into motion and flung her fireproof blanket onto the fire crab.
Sirius Black exploded into laughter.
"Christ, Prongs! Your face!" he cackled.
James reached one soot-blackened hand up to touch where his eyebrows used to be, then sighed mournfully. "Where's Remus?" he asked Sirius, finally accepting Lily's rejection and turning to look for the much calmer boy of their quartet.
"He won't help you this time, he said he's done with it," Sirius reminded him.
"Yeah, well, bet you five Galleons I can convince him if I can manage to get up a good sniffle by the time we find him."
Lily looked up at the girl, who now stood a few feet away looking equally uncomfortable and satisfied. Professor Kettleburn hurried over to pat the girl's shoulder approvingly. "Well done, Sera! That's excellent reflexes, my girl!" He laughed heartily, but the girl didn't smile.
"Thanks," Lily managed to cut in over Kettleburn's new wave of instructions to James and Sirius on how to carefully bundle the crab back into its cage.
The girl - Sera, Lily assumed - shoved her bangs out of her eyes and shrugged. "That Potter kid's an idiot," she said, by way of acceptance.
Lily snorted. "I thought that was a well-known fact."
"I'd never had the opportunity to see it in action, though," Sera said, finally cracking a slight smile.
"If you wait around long enough, he gives free demonstrations five or six times a day." Lily extended her hand. "I'm Lily Evans."
"Sera Vilhjalmsson." The girl shook it and tossed her braid back over her shoulder. "Does he bother you a lot?"
Lily rolled her eyes. "Every blasted day since I set foot on the train in our first year," she said. "He's not quite as bad as he seems, though that really isn't saying much."
"I'm surprised he's still got all his limbs." Sera squinted over at where James and Sirius were attempting to herd the remaining fire crabs into cages using sticks. Peter Pettigrew, the round, rat-faced final piece of the foursome, hovered nearby, helpfully dousing the small fires from the fire crabs' rear ends with streams of water from his wand.
"Remus Lupin is rather talented with healing spells. I think he and Sirius usually bully him into fixing them so they don't have to get an earful from Madam Pomfrey," Lily said.
"Which one is that? The one with all the hair?" Sera asked.
"No, that's Sirius," Lily laughed. Slowly, the class broke up and began trickling back up the hill toward the castle. "Remus is ill, I think." Not that Lily didn't have her own personal opinions on the exact nature of his illness, but she kept those to herself.
"Lily!" Halfway up the hill, a few of her friends were waiting. Adara Steinberg waved at her.
"I should go, we're supposed to get a headstart on that Potions essay. Did Slughorn set you the same one? Three feet of parchment on the effects of chamomile on Sleeping Draughts?"
Sera nodded. "Due Tuesday."
"That sneak! Ours is due on Monday." Lily lifted her hand at her friends. "I'll probably see you in the library this weekend, then?"
"Maybe. Try not to let Potter kill you between now and then." Sera grinned at her, then headed toward the lake where a short, plump girl in a Hufflepuff jumper waited next to a tall, honey-blond Gryffindor.