Lily felt sorry for him. He was always the odd one out. The kid who everyone else giggled about behind his back. The one whose homework would suddenly go missing, the one whose potions never turned out quite right. Just because he had been driven to tears once in class, everyone called him Snivellus.

They were no better than Muggle children! Lily remembered all too well what it was like to be different. Once, she suffered with thick glasses and frizzy hair bound in braids - that is, until she discovered magic. She used to be the one that all the Muggle children teased, until her vision mysteriously improved and her hair became sleeker. Of course, this was before she learned that she wasn't supposed to be practicing magic yet.

"New school, new start," she told herself, and became one of the popular Gryffindors at Hogwarts. But just because she was popular didn't mean that she lost touch with that other side of herself, or that her heart had hardened because of it. It was quite the opposite. She helped her classmates when they were stuck on their homework. She smiled at the silly Potter boy and his friends when they would crawl through the portrait late at night, never admitting that she had been waiting up to make sure that they were alright. And of course, she kept "accidentally" finding Severus in deserted corridors, where he would be hiding with red eyes.

No matter how often he pushed her away, no matter how often he answered her kindness with biting remarks, she kept reaching out to him. Even in their last year, when she and James were dating, Lily would always stand up for Severus, even against her love. She never received a word of gratitude; when she found out later that he had joined the Death Eaters, she wasn't surprised. She sent the occasional owl anyway, without James ever knowing. Of course, there would be no reply, but she was certain that her notes had found him anyway. One day, she was sure, Severus would have a change of heart.