So, I'm doing Nanowrimo this year (if you don't know what it is, it's basically where you have to write 50,000 words in a month. Google it, okay.) and I decided to do mine as a Harry Potter fanfiction thing... It's not really a story. Am I aware this might not count? Yes. Do I care? No. For me, I feel like if I write 50, 000 words on Lily Evans and about her life I deserve a freaking certificate! If you have a Nanowrimo account please add me as a friend! Nanowrimo's gone a bit weird on me, it just won't load, anyone else?

Every day I'll be uploading more on Lily! In chronological order, hopefully, although this does kind of wander... So there'll be thirty of these! Also, and this is exciting, I wrote EXACTLY 1,667 words which is what you have to do in order to hit your 50, 000. I didn't mean to, it just happened COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT. Also, there's a bit in here about a Hogwarts prospectus... well, I actually wrote one for my English GCSE as coursework... and I got full marks. Enjoy, and please stop by every day! Also, please review as reviews will motivate me to do this! 50, 000 words, 30 days, the challenge is on!

I was eleven when I found out I was a witch.

I had already taken and passed my eleven plus with flying colours, and gotten into the nearest grammar (unlike Petunia, my older sister). I had made my Mum go out with me and buy a new pencil case, a new coat, and a new bag in addition to my brand new uniform, things we couldn't really afford but which my Mum happily bought anyway. I danced down the streets that night, imagining my future. My parents were so proud of me. "You can go to university and have the life we never could!" they said, and I was excited at the prospect of being the first in my family to go to university. I was so taken up in what I'd done, I didn't think about how Tuney would be feeling. I saw shutters in my sisters eyes. She was only going into Year 8, but she was already mixed up with the wrong crowd, drinking and smoking and terrorising younger kids – but not me, she made sure of that.

I thought it was a joke. When Sev told me I was a witch, I didn't believe him. Me and Tuney flounced off and I persuaded her not to tell our parents (I was never sure why) and that was the end of it, I thought. Except he came again, and again, and told me so many times that I was a witch I started to believe it. Sev could always do that: make it so you believed in him and eventually yourself. I bet he was a good recruiter for Voldemort.

I didn't tell my parents, then. Sev said not to, he said they wouldn't believe me, that it was better to wait for a teacher to tell them. He didn't know who would come tell them, he thought it might be a man called Professor Dumbledore who was the Headmaster or maybe a woman called Professor McGonagall.

I tried to tell Petunia. She thought I was joking, like I did at first, except she never really came round. Even after Professor McGonagall came and told my parents, she thought we were all crazy for even considering it. She really fractured our family then, with her snide comments. Most of the time, she wasn't there though: she spent a lot of time with her friends that summer. When she was at home, she'd sneer at me and say "What about being the first female Prime Minister then, freak?"

I get that Tuney was mad. Really, I do. It must have been awful and hard to deal with, especially when my parents were even more excited at the prospect of me going to this amazing boarding school than they were at me going to the grammar. I know she was jealous and mad at me, because I chose to leave her.

But it still hurt. She was my best friend, pretty much. The other teased me about how hard I worked (like Tuney now did) but I always had Petunia to talk to. But after I accepted my place at Hogwarts, she didn't really talk to me and when she did it was to insult me and call me freak.

For my parents, everything about the magical world was spectacular. They were in love with the grand atmosphere of Hogwarts (it always amused non-muggleborn friends that Hogwarts had a prospectus similar to Muggle schools), with the goblins at Gringotts, with the idea that one day I would be able to fly on broomsticks and conjure potions and use a wand to do spells that would actually work (my Dad told stories again and again of how when I was seven I pretended a stick was a wand and went around cursing people and how when I was ten I dressed up as a witch for Halloween and how we never knew in all that time…)

My parents made me sit at the kitchen table looking at pictures of me dressed up as a witch, the warmth of the fire and brightness of the lights sending me half to sleep. Through the door, in the living room the television screen flickered on Petunia's face as she sat there in darkness and in silence.

I started spending more time with Sev. My parents encouraged me once they knew he was a wizard and more than once they talked to him themselves about what it was like living in the wizarding world.

It was then I saw how he could so easily change into someone he wasn't. When my parents were around, he pasted a cold smile on his face, his words running clear into another, not the easygoing, friendly Sev I knew. It was to become what I called his evil face. To think, I first called it that as a joke.

In the later years of our friendship, he changed back and forth so often from the Sev I knew to the one he presented to the world that I didn't know who he was anymore. Hell, I bet he didn't either.

When I occasionally saw kids who went to my primary school, they'd ask if I was looking forwards to the grammar. I'd say actually, I had gotten into a boarding school on an academic scholarship and the kids would look at me, some of the awe I felt mirrored in their eyes and say how lucky I was. Yes, I would say, I know.

They never knew how sorry I felt for them. Most of them would stay where they were, not going to sixth form and university, going into low paid jobs whereas I would have so much more, I'd be part of a whole other world, where I could travel the world on my broomstick (how sad I was to find out this wasn't possible- unless you were very foolhardy or plain crazy), and where I could go to a boarding school that was a castle.

The first time my parents didn't look happy was when I said, disdainfully about a classmate of mine, "He'll never succeed in life, he'll be in prison by the time he's eighteen." They were appalled and sat me down and taught me a valuable lesson that I remembered for the rest of my admittedly short life. They said that just because I was a witch, just because I was going to a magical school, and just because I scored better on my eleven plus and got into the grammar doesn't mean I'm better than anyone else. It's how hard you try, my parents said. It's how good you are, how nice you are. Lily, they told me, it is much better in life to be good than to be rich or clever or upper class.

I have tried to remember that when dealing with people, particularly annoying, persistent boys. I'm not better than anyone, not even James Potter. There, I said it.

And years later, when I was back home briefly in between Order missions, I came across a few of my old classmates and we got talking and you know what? The boy I had declared would be in prison at eighteen was, at nineteen at Southampton university studying for a degree in architecture.

That summer, the summer before Hogwarts was one of the best I ever had. I tried to ignore Tuney, and during the day me and Sev went to the park and went on the swings or, when they were busy, sat on the grass talking, me weaving daisy chains as I said how nervous I was. "What if no one likes me?" I asked, and Sev looked at me, the intensity in his gaze frightening. "How could they not?" he said simply, and I had to look away, pretending the sun was blinding me when really it was his love. James had the same look on his face when he asked me to marry him.

Sometimes we went to Sev's house. I never really felt comfortable there, and I don't think Sev wanted me there, but his Dad had funny moods and would sometimes, in the morning bellow "I want you home by one o'clock!" when I knocked on his door, so at one we'd go to his house and sit in his bedroom talking. It was better than my house, at any rate, where you never knew if Tuney and her cruel friends were around. We never seemed to run out of things to talk about in those days. We could sit for hours and not get sick of each other's company. I have no idea what we talked about, now.

Sometimes, if his mother hadn't drunk too much Butterbeer, she'd let us use her special Gobstones set, the gold one that she'd won in some tournament. Sev always beat me, but I didn't mind.

The summer went by too fast and too slowly at the same time. I didn't want to start Hogwarts and I couldn't wait for it. I was alternatively worrying about having no friends, worrying about the work, worrying about getting lost, and feeling increasingly excited.

I was so innocent then. I wasn't thinking about the boys at Hogwarts, or anything bigger than making sure I did my all my homework.

I truly believed that if I did all my work well and smiled and was polite to teachers then the world would be fine.

I wish that was what it took to save the world. Smiles and kind deeds. Instead, we're fighting and spilling our blood for peace and I just don't know if it'll enough.

When I was eleven and just about to start Hogwarts I had parents who supported me, a best friend who was there for me no matter what, a sister who came into my room in the middle of the night the night before I was going to Hogwarts and whispered in my ear "I'll miss you".

I had it all.