Sacrifices of Childhood
Edited Version
Author: Formerly known as EbonyQuill
Summary: Lily Evans had been trained to be an Auror since she was the tender age of eleven. She has had to make some sacrifices throughout her life to be the strong person she is today. That includes pretending to be some snooty brat in order to expose Death Eaters. Now, that she's done the job will people be able to forget the past and accept the original, true Lily?
Disclaimer: I do not own Lily Evans, James Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, and anything and everything else you recognize from the Harry Potter books. All of the characters or anything else mentioned belongs to the J.K. Rowling.
Author's Note: This was my first fanfiction. Ever. I have decided to edit it because I loved the idea so much when I thought about it. I understand that some of these original readers will never see this story's "facelift" and that I regret. I will try my best to update this (harharhar) and actually add a chapter. (I vaguely remember writing the beginning of one two/three years ago and never finishing it.) Now that it is summer I feel that I'll have a lot more time to give to this piece. This is way too long. Enjoy!
I
Lily remembered her first four years at Hogwarts, school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, vaguely. She had been friends with some of the snobbiest girls ever to exist. This was for one and only one reason: it was suspected that these girls' parents were Death Eaters.
Lily Angelica Amethyst Evans was no ordinary witch - she was the most valuable, treasured, and secretive of Aurors. At the tender age of eleven she learned of her father's great abilities for espionage. She was not legally an Auror - yet she worked special assignments that had to be conducted within Hogwarts that none of the regular aged Aurors could execute. It would have been very suspicious if a Professor was researching his young students. Lily's father, who trained her to be cunning, fake, and lethal, was Apollo Evans.
Apollo Evans was one of the greatest Aurors of his time. He was often synonymous with grand names and regal honors. The summer before Lily began her first year at Hogwarts a stitch in their plan was obvious to the Aurors. Death Eaters wouldn't want the daughter of the very man who was hunting them down to have relations with their children. This was solved easily - Lily would be disguised as a muggleborn since her father was not stated on her birth certificate (another story for another time.) No one drew connections between Apollo Evans and this simple fifth year Muggleborn. Lily loved it this way.
Lily had started her training after rummaging through her father's files looking for the private notes of her mother. Vinifera Lorraine Amethyst was the daughter of a wealthy muggle father and desperately poor witch mother. She was killed the April before Lily was to start her studies. Vinifera's estranged husband, due to their constant traveling because of their work, sought revenge for his beloved deceased wife. During a battle she was shot with a poison arrow, but being the woman of strength she was, she pulled the arrow out of the side of her stomach with a pained look and said, 'What a stupid medieval contraption. Apollo.. I think we have finally worn them down to the point that they may fight us off with sticks and stones next.' In his wife's vengeance, Apollo captured, interrogated, then imprisoned to Azkaban, numerous infamous Death Eaters. He has been a high target on Voldermort's enemies list since then.
Apollo decided to train his daughter after many thoughts and arguments with himself. He finally decided that if Lily had the knowledge of hand-to-hand combat, a number of spells, and some wits if he should ever pass on, Lily could take care of herself. Lily had trained from sunrise to sunset every day for every summer after this. She had learned to push the limit - to be triumphant. She hadn't been able to overcome her father yet, but it was a goal.
Lily reminisced to her ditzy ways that she had to accustom in order to be friends with those girls. She also remembered how crude and mean she had to pretend to act. And how sick she used to get when she pretended to be interested in the mind-playing games her friends would play on poor, innocent boys. She clenched her hands at the thought of her third-year self acting oblivious to the horrible ways they all used to treat her. Oh - how she hated herself.
The summer before fifth year something strange, miraculous, and inevitable happened. Phillipa Nord's father, Elena Kinnian's uncle, as well as Moira Devin's and Louisa Keyes' parents were caught at a meeting where they were supposedly attempting to make ties with Romanian vampires to help Voldermort's war effort. All six of them were tried and found guilty.
Now Lily was allowed to act like her true self. She could act-slash-be intelligent, articulate, funny, sarcastic, and the person she was all along. Lily was always a pretty girl, though she was underestimated because of her friendship with the biggest attention whores in the school therefore automatically classifying her as an attention whore as well or worse - a vulgar 'wannabe.'
She had straight, shiny auburn hair that ran to the small of her back. She had become accustomed to flipping her head of hair behind her shoulder in a rude gesture. She wanted to shoot herself every time she attempted to do 'flip'. Her bright green eyes were usually glazed over with thoughts of backstabbing her "friends." Now they were slightly blank and filled with happier daydreams. Her nose was petite and described by her father's colleagues as "cute." Lily despised compliments.
Lily had a sprinkle of freckles over the bridge of her nose giving her a childish and innocent look. Her lips weren't as full as her mother's but they resembled Vinifera's fine features. She was slightly petite standing at 5'4. Her complexion was always slightly pale and sick-looking, but today it looked more lively. In the long run of it, she could have passed as a younger version of her mother. The only feature that she shared with her father was her jade eyes.
The fifteen-year-old rested her head on her elbow which was fixed atop the windowsill. Her facial expression violently changed to the saddening thought of her mother when she saw her reflection in the window. Vinifera was more rosy-cheeked and she smiled a lot more. Vinifera was vulgarly sarcastic and her father had loved her for it. Lily blinked repeatedly to prevent any tears that dared to fall on her cheek. Outside she could see two boys with black hair motioning some other people to come along.
She raised her eyebrows at the sign of intelligent life outside her compartment door. Almost simultaneously with the student's first step into her compartment that she rested her head on the window and pretended to be asleep. If she could pretend to be stupid and attention-craved for four years, she could certainly pretend to have no conscious of what was going on just a few feet away from her.
The first to step in was James Potter with hazel eyes, unruly black hair, Hogwarts quidditch glory, and an ego.. he was quite the catch. Following James was Sirius Black. If there was any difference in appearance between James and Sirius, it was that Sirius had longer, neater hair, gray eyes, and he was more well-built. Personality wise, Sirius Black was even worse than James. Remus came in with a pleasant look on his haggard face. He was blessed with hair that bordered sandy blonde and light brown with clear blue eyes. He was the most sensible one of their little circle. Last, but not least was Peter Pettigrew. He had dark blue eyes and dark-brown hair that fell in front of his eyes. He was the most quiet of the group.
Lily had once, or twice, or a million times heard people refer to them as the Marauders. She knew they were infamous for all their pranks, ability to make girls swoon, and effortlessly get perfect marks in their studies. They were the golden group. And for the first four years of Hogwarts, she pretended to adore them.
"Hey - isn't that one of Phillipa or Elena's cronies? Lana? Laura? Lisa? Someone, help me out," James said with a groan. He always considered Lily as another follower that verged on the line of not-so-secret admirer and stalker.
Remus took one look at Lily's unmatchable hair, "Her name's Lily. She's in our house. She does considerably well in her studies. Very well actually. I think she's the one that beat you out of the top of our Charms class, James. Pity she picked such poor company."
Lily clenched her teeth through her facade and then relaxed her mouth. She thanked Merlin she had her back to them.
"Isn't this the one that offered five galleons for your undergarments Sirius?" Peter asked, being the first one to sit down, a very considerable distance away from Lily.
Sirius looked at her, tipping his head to his left. "No that was Louisa or Elena. Er bloody hell, there's no difference between any of them at this point. You know - this one's never shown an interest in any one of us. Maybe she's immuned," Sirius grinned," well we can fix that with my charms, Remus' intelligence, Prongs' wit and Peter's innocence."
Remus rose an eyebrow and an amused look played on his face as James looked quite pleased with his compliments. Peter smiled and replied, "You'll have to work on your charm then, won't you?"
Sirius looked less than smug, "Shuddup Peter."
James hit Sirius on the back of his head, "You're theone that practically named yourself Prince Charming. What are we - big oafs who have to rely on personality like Severus? 'Oh - I have no good looks at all. I can read though.'"
"It wouldn't hurt if you could read James," Remus joined in the common Marauders banter.
Sirius crossed his arms over his chest. "I was just saying - we together," he twirled his finger at each of them in a circling motion, "would make the perfect man."
Peter snorted and Remus coughed. James started in a bout of laughter and held onto his sides. Sirius mock-glared at them all, then looked at Lily. "What are we going to do about her?"
"She'll die of pure shock and excitement when she finds out that she's sharing a compartment with us," James scoffed. Remus shushed them,
"Let her sleep." This was ironic because Lily had actually fallen asleep three minutes after their arrival. She was awoken by some wispy tapping on her shoulder.
"Lily Evans? The trolley is here. I didn't want you to miss - yeah," Remus stated awkwardly, but politely. James, Sirius, and Peter had voted not to wake her up since her circle of friends rarely ate.
She looked at him bewildered then replied, "Oh - erm thanks."
Going up to the trolley lady she made all costs not to make eye contact with any of them. "Er - five of those and seven of those. Ah I'll take six of these. Nine of those, wait, thirteen of those."
Lily went on to buy numerous snacks, candies, and drinks. James stared at her whilst raising his left eyebrow. Remus and Sirius cocked their heads slightly to the right and barely opened their mouths. Peter raised both eyebrows and scratched his head slowly. To put it more politely; the Marauders gaped at her.
"If I don't have something on my face, don't stare. It's rude," Lily stated, while walking back to her seat looking annoyed and taking a bite out of one of her many Pumpkin Pastries.
James, who lowered his eyebrow, was the first one to string a sentence together that masked their apparent shock. Maybe it was the shock that Lily was planning to eat all that food or the shock that Lily had a serious tone and didn't sound ditzy - to put it more delicately. Maybe it was both that had caused the rarity of all four of the Marauders becoming baffled.
"We just haven't witnessed a girl eat so much before, sorry," James candidly apologized, rubbing the back of his neck as a bad habit.
Lily looked at him that made him feel inferior and made a point to exaggerate her, "Sure."
"Isn't it some sort of rule to, well, not eat?" Sirius asked trying to hide his dumbfounded expression.
"According to who?" Lily accused, angrily chewing on a piece of her chocolate frog.
Sirius said quietly, "Erm - the student body?"
Lily rolled her eyes, "Wrong answer."
"Well I meant Phillipa, Elena, you know," Sirius tried to meet her halfway. Lily crossed her hands over her chest.
"I don't converse with them any more so I wouldn't know, nor do I care."
"That's news to us," Remus said.
"Why aren't you friends with her?" Peter simply interrogated.
Lily sarcastically replied, "Why aren't your shoelaces tied?"
Peter blushed a light pink at his own mistake, especially since it was pointed out by someone who used to worship the most unintelligent girls in the school.
"Give him a break Lils," James commanded.
"Lils? Gross. I won't give Peter a break because you're obviously not going to give me one," Lily replied almost angrily.
James was very surprised at this comment, he had always assumed that this girl was easy to order around. He had never met a girl with such demanding and threatening spunk as Lily Amethyst. Lily had started reading a book so they ignored each other and the boys went back to their previous activities which included a Championship game of Wizard's Chess. Lily had gotten to the last chapter of her book when the ten minute warning sounded.
"I'll go to the bathroom and you can use the compartment since there's more of you," Lily said, her temper calmed. She made her way to the closest toilet with her uniform in her hands. The Marauders immediately started gossiping about Lily.
"Can you believe that was Lily Amethyst!" James exclaimed, ruffling his hair.
"I didn't hear a single 'like,' 'whatever,' or 'omigod,' I am dumbfounded. I always did find it quite annoying that these birds are using American slang," Sirius replied, showing the same kind of disbelief as James.
Peter feigned a high-pitched feminine voice, "Don't you know it's, like,all the rage in Europe?"
The other three Marauders laughed and James commented jubilantly, "Peter.. Never do that again or I'll have to turn your skin pink. You can choose the color of polka dots. May I suggest purple?"
"I fancy green," Peter replied jokingly. Remus chuckled and went back to their first subject,
"Lily has matured. Maybe something happened over the summer."
"Do you think her parents died or something?" Sirius wondered.
James shook his head. "I don't think so. Wait - who are her parents?"
No one could answer. "Maybe it's because of the whole Death Eater thing," Peter pointed out.
"Oh - the Romanian vampire thing?" Remus asked.
"Yeah. I mean, most of the girls' parents were exposed. Maybe Lily's parents were avid anti-supporters of You-Know-Who," Sirius added.
"No - her parents are Muggleborn," Remus stated.
James sat there pondering for a moment. "I don't know what happened, but I like this Lily a lot more."
"I second that."
"I third that," Peter added after Remus.
Sirius tapped his fingers on his thigh, "She wasn't that nice, but she's bloody gorgeous. So I guess it's okay."
Lily returned with only two minutes before they arrived. Everyone was too preoccupied with gathering their things that no more words were said. Lily was the first to leave the compartment, just a minute number of seconds before the train landed at the platform. After being pushed, barely tackled, rudely shoved, and called a very bad name Lily made it to the carriages. She sat in the first empty one she could find.
Lily felt like overdosing on some chocolate frogs when she saw some familiar, but unwanted faces.
"Oh. My. God. Lily! I haven't talked to you, like, all summer! It has been so horrible! We can catch up on the carriage ride, 'kay?"
"Uh - sure Phillippa," Lily felt hot all of a sudden.
Author's Note: Well - that's the edited version. I hope it's somewhat better than the one I wrote two years ago when I first started. Haha. I'm in need of a beta because I'm grammar-challenged and WordPerfect can only do so much. Ergh. I won't beg you to review - but I would appreciate some feedback. Constructive flames are accepted. If you have even the tiniest spark of interest in being my beta for this story feel free to email me at . If you have AIM, you can easily reach me at the screenname a hugx.
Alison. (Way too long Author's Note. Sorry.)