Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Lily Evans always wore green.
It wasn't noticeable or blatant; just a green hair-tie here and a pair of green mittens there. Nobody really noticed it, but to those who did, she justified it with the color of her eyes and hair. It brought out the green and went well with the red, she said.
She wasn't sure exactly when it had started. She had never worn green when she was younger; and she hadn't noticed the exact beginning. However, she knew the general time frame.
Sometime after the shouted word. Sometime after Mudblood.
After she had broken her ties with the house of Slytherin, and with those ties, the heart of her oldest friend. Who could have guessed that the dirty, misunderstood, terrified little boy who had called her a witch one day on the playground would be her best friend? She didn't understand it, but it had happened.
Their parting had been inevitable, from the moment that the Sorting Hat had placed Lily in Gryffindor. She had held out some hope that he would not, even though it was what he wanted, be placed in Slytherin. Even in the course of one short train ride, she had already picked up on the animosity between Slytherins and Gryffindors.
They had tried to avoid the unavoidable, and, in spite of all the odds, the Slytherin and the Gryffindor persisted in their friendship for years. Five years, to be exact. Five years of evading questions from more appropriate friends, of shunning the more popular spots to study, and talk, and be friends.
But then, one warm spring day, James Potter and Sirius Black taunted and tortured Sev past the normal pranks, and she had stood up for him.
And now she always wore green.
It was a type of mourning, she supposed. Mourning for the loss of the friendship, the loss of what could have been.
After that incident, James Potter slowed down on the pranks. Sometimes she caught him looking at her, puzzled, and she knew he was wondering why she had stood up for a Slytherin. Even though he claimed to be in love with her, she knew he wasn't. She knew that, had he truly loved her, he would have noticed that she was friends with Severus Snape.
When she thought about her childhood friend, she always called him Sev. After that fateful day when they were fifteen, he was Severus.
In seventh year, James started actually talking to her, and he stopped cursing people for the fun of it. She started to fall in love with him, and he with her.
When her child was born, she was glad that he had inherited her green eyes. She felt that his eyes, and hers, would, in some way, always be her small tie to Slytherin and Severus.
Most people wore black to mourn. Lily Potter wore green.
She was wearing green the night she died.
A/N: This story has been buzzing around in my brain for quite a while. I'm pretty happy with it, too. It is 487 words long, and took me about 45 minutes to write. If you enjoyed it, please review!