Summary: Lily reflects back on her memories of her life, attempting to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, I'm just borrowing them to use for a while. All credit goes to the extraordinarily talented J.K. Rowling.

CHAPTER ONE - the first memory

September, 1971

Through the thick, billowing clouds of smoke, a trolley appeared, followed shortly by a slim redheaded girl, with pale skin and emerald-green eyes. Tucking her hair behind one ear, she looked around rather nervously, eyes wide with both excitement and apprehension. Her parents stood behind her, gazing animatedly at their newfound surroundings. Drawing in a deep breath, she took a step forward -

Only to careen into a lanky body with a dangerously messy mop of hair.

"Hey! Watch it!" the girl said crossly. Barely even looking up to acknowledge her, the boy - for that was what he was - flashed a wide grin, exposing a set of pearly-white teeth, before racing off in the other direction. Her parents moved towards her with concerned expressions plastered all over both their faces.

"Are you alright, Lily dear?" her mother asked, her parental instincts kicking in.

"I'm fine, I just wasn't looking where I was going," the girl - Lily - muttered. She was still in shock from the sudden collision with one of her future classmates so soon. And from the boy's lack of manners. And his eerily good looks - not that she had been noticing that, anyway.

Turning away from her still anxious-looking parents, she focused on the task at hand - finding Severus. He did not take long to spot - a pale, pallid boy with dark, straggly hair, Severus Snape was the only other person Lily knew who was, like her, attending Hogwarts this year - in fact, he was the only other member of the wizarding community that she had ever spoken to. That is, if you excluded the visit from the sinister witch who had first come to speak with Lily and her parents, informing them that Lily in fact possessed magical powers, and had an invitation to a magical school of magic where magic was taught in magical classrooms by magical teachers who would also train them to control their magical abilities.

Though she did not normally consider people who she had only met two weeks ago as friends, seeing as her lack of magical education was so extreme, she supposed that he was the closest thing to one that she had right now.

As Lily began to push her trolley over to the spot where the sallow-skinned boy was waiting, she heard the train's whistle, and quickly turned around again to say goodbye to her parents - and, she supposed, her sister Petunia as well. Tuney had been ignoring Lily ever since they had first found out she was a witch, and the redhead realised now that the fact that she was leaving for boarding school would not change her sister's attitude. Indeed, as her mother and father both gave her hugs and whispered tearful farewells into her ear, she looked up, only to see Tuney impatiently tapping her foot, with a barely-concealed bored expression on her face. Not once did Petunia even send so much as a glance in Lily's direction. Sighing to herself, she gently wriggled out of her father's embrace, before boarding the train and giving her family one last wave before the train doors slammed and the wheels began spinning.

After successfully locating the luggage compartment, and stashing her trunk inside of it, Lily walked down the rickety corridor, lost in thought - until she, once again, collided with something extremely warm and solid. And breathing. Grinning at her was the same boy, with the same messy hair and the same mischievous demeanour.

"You again," he said, his eyes twinkling. "Seem to have a habit of crashing into people, don't you?"

"Excuse me?" Lily asked incredulously. "As I recall, you were the one who bumped into me the first time, not the other way round!"

"Huh," he said with an exaggerated frown. "Funny, I remembered something completely different. If you had actually been watching where you were going -"

"Excuse me?" she repeated. "If you hadn't been running around the platform like a complete lunatic, I wouldn't have -"

"Lily?" A new voice entered the conversation. Whipping around, Lily heaved a great sigh of relief as she greeted the newcomer - who was none other than the very person she had been looking for, Severus Snape.

"Severus!" Lily cried in delight. "Thank goodness you found me, I -"

Once again, she was cut off from finishing her sentence.

"Severus?" the boy said with a snort. Lily shot him her best dirty look, while the boy in question stared daggers at the other.

"James!" came another boy's voice, followed by its owner. "There you are, we've been looking all over for you, I was beginning to -" he stopped short at the sight of the other two students. "Who are you?" he asks, smirking in the same irritating way as his friend - James, she supposed - did. "I'm Lily Evans, and this is Seve…"

And just like that, the memory fades away, into a deep expanse of grey nothingness.