AN: This entire chapter consists of flashbacks. Some poor planning of the chapter outlines is to blame I'm afraid, since some things must be revealed before other things happen… if that makes sense.

Anyways, I hope you'll be patient with me and I swear I'll get back to the present in the next chapter.

Bayswater, March 1990

Lily's hand was warmly enveloped in Mark's as they leisurely strolled down the road in Bayswater to his flat. It felt like such a wonderfully normal thing to do – walking home from the tube station to your boyfriend's flat on a Friday evening after a few drinks at the pub. Normal things were a rare luxury in Lily's life, and even if her relationship with Mark initially had been a way to gain useful information for the Order, it had taken very little time before gathering information had dropped to the bottom of the priority list whenever she saw him. Lily was surprised by how much she liked him, and how quickly they had established a relationship. It was not entirely unlike how she had once fallen for James Potter, although that felt like a lifetime ago.

Mark was busy telling her about how he had seen her several times at the pub before approaching her that fateful Friday nearly nine months ago.

"…and Charlie walked up to me and called me a coward for not having the guts to ask you out," he said animatedly.

"No, he didn't," Lily protested playfully.

"He did! I made a bet with him that the next time you showed up I'd talk to you, or I'd clean dishes for free every Friday night for a month."

Lily rolled her eyes. "I'm going to ask him about that," she vowed.

"Oh no, Charlie's much too proud to admit to losing a bet," Mark said with a glint in his eye.

Lily just shook her head with an amused smile on her face.

They had settled into a nice routine over the last couple of months. They'd always spend Friday evenings as well as most of Saturday together and made a point of meeting up at least once more every week for lunch, dinner or just a cup of tea at some overpriced place in the city. Mark had an irregular work schedule, and for Lily one week was never the same as another, although he thought that was due to her made-up employees the Prestons in Westminster and their rambunctious children. In reality, it was thanks to Death Eaters who were getting increasingly brazen with their attacks on muggles.

Suddenly a loud banging noise erupted from somewhere much too close for comfort, followed by a number of panicked screams.

"What was that?" Lily asked and looked at Mark who had twisted around towards the source of the noise.

A dark-clad figure in a mask appeared suddenly on the street before them and Lily did not have time to consider the consequences. She let go of Mark's hand, whipped out her wand and sent a stunner straight in the Death Eater's chest before he had the chance to fire one at them. It must have been a very green Death Eater, Lily would later realise, because he didn't even attempt to deflect the spell.

Lily didn't give Mark time to process what he had just witnessed, instead she took his right hand in her left and started hurrying down the street with her wand still tightly clutched.

"Oh my God," Mark said, and his breathing grew quicker. He was certainly in much better shape than Lily, so it was definitely not from the brisk walk – he must be in shock, she realised.

"Calm down, we're not out of the woods yet," Lily urged and turned her hand back and forth to look for possible threats.

"You're a terrorist," he said accusingly as she pulled him along down the street.

"We can speak later, now we have to get away," she snapped and kept pushing forward.

They didn't speak again until they reached the front door to the building where Mark lived. With shaky hands he fished out his keys from his coat pocket and unlocked the door.

As soon as they were inside Mark's flat and the door was shut he turned to Lily with a serious expression on his face.

"Explain," he said shortly, and Lily sighed.

"What do you want to know?" She asked.

"We know that the attacks on the tube network are most likely carried out by groups of people like you-"

"You haven't told me that," she said.

"It's classified."

"Tell me, then, what do you know about us?"

Mark clearly hesitated before he answered. "We know that you have very powerful weapons that can cause extreme damage. Weapons that we've never seen before. There are theories on them being developed in the Middle East, the Balkan, Central America… Freaking everywhere. Gillespie at work had a theory last week that they're made in Antarctica, but the truth is that for all we know, they just as well could be. We only know that the weapons you people carry are highly lethal, and that they eject different kinds of dangerous blasts."

Lily showed him her wand.

"Weapons like this?" she asked.

Mark instinctively took a step back and almost

"Yes."

Lily held out her wand to him. "Take it," she told him.

He hesitated.

"Go on, take it," she repeated.

Slowly, he took two steps forward and took the wand from her hand.

"Now use it. Point it at something. Anything," she instructed, and Mark looked around the room before pointing it at a vase on the mantelpiece. Nothing happened. He tried the lamp hanging over the dining room table. Nothing. The cushions on the sofa. The fruit bowl. The TV. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

With a frustrated growl Mark gave up and brought the wand up to eye-level to inspect it closer. His fingers ran over the smooth wood and he squeezed it between his thumb and index finger.

"There has to be a trigger, or a switch... Something! Does it only respond to your fingerprints?" He asked and Lily raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not James Bond," she replied.

Mark stared at her with a shocked, almost worried expression on his face for a long moment.

"How does it work then?" He eventually asked.

Wandlessly, Lily summoned the wand which flew out of Mark's hand and into her own in an instant.

His eyes grew to the size of saucers.

"Y-you. It's... it's not just a weapon?" He asked dumbfoundedly.

"You hadn't figured that out?"

"N-no… we thought… we assumed that the sticks… that the weapons were what set you apart, but… oh, Jesus, it definitely isn't, is it? It's you that's different."

Lily could tell that Mark was growing increasingly more shocked. He had sunk down on one of the uncomfortable dining chairs that looked very stylish but was awful to sit on, and stared into space.

"I'm a witch," she said simply.

Mark looked up at her. "This must be some sick joke. What do you mean by that?"

She wordlessly turned one of the dining chairs into a goose and then back again, had two of the tiny espresso cups on the kitchen counter do a happy little dance, and finished off with levitating the couch several feet into the air and spinning it around.

"I know it's a lot to take in," Lily said as she carefully put the couch back in its place in front of the TV.

Mark just nodded.

"It certainly is," he said blankly.

Lily took a seat across from him at the table.

"You can't tell anyone about this," she said sternly and looked him deeply in the eyes. "We have something called the Statue of Secrecy in the Wizarding World-"

"The Wizarding World?" Mark said incredulously.

Lily paused.

"Yes, we have our own government, hospital, school… There's an all-wizard village in Scotland, and a shopping street in London," she explained and briefly wondered if it really was wise to reveal that much at this stage.

"How is that possible?"

"Lots and lots of concealment and muggle-repellent charms."

Mark stared at her with a confused look on his face.

"Muggle?" he asked.

"Non-magical people," Lily clarified.

He gave her a long look.

"Huh, there's a word for that?"

"Witches and wizards have managed to live next to the muggle world for generations. This isn't something new. The Ministry of Magic-"

Mark snorted and shook his head in disbelief.

"- was founded in 1707, replacing the previous Wizard's Council which had been around since the 13th century," Lily explained, recalling the facts from her History of Magic O.W.L exams.

"So, does that mean that your lot is responsible for every inexplicable incident in history? Are the UFOs yours too?"

"Of course not," Lily huffed. "Throughout history it's been very rare with wizards killing muggles, even more so in the last centuries. Well, up until two decades ago."

"What changed?"

Lily carefully weighed her words before she answered.

"A couple of years ago, or decades I guess, a very powerful wizard started to gain power. There has always been a minority of wizards who consider muggles inferior, and even those who have advocated for some sort of oppression of them, but before this recent wizard there wasn't much of a movement. However, he has managed to mobilise a number of followers, and has gained more support amongst more mainstream wizards as well. There's a lot of prejudice against anything muggle in the wizarding world, and he has exploited that."

"Are you telling me that we have some sort of magical Hitler to thank for this mess?" Mark exclaimed.

"Well, you're not entirely wrong there," she admitted. "Mark, if this is too much to take in, I need you to tell me," Lily said seriously.

Mark frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"I need you to understand that you cannot tell anyone about this. No one at work, none of your friends. No one. If you feel that it's too much to handle you must tell me right now."

So that I can remove all your memories of me, she thought, and felt a knot in her stomach at the prospect of removing herself from his life and his memories.

Mark shook his head.

"No, no, I'll be fine, I just need a minute, that's all," he hurriedly said, and Lily offered him a weak smile.

"You're certain?" She asked.

Mark took both her hands in his and squeezed them tightly.

"Of course."

There was an Order meeting the next evening, and afterwards Lily stayed behind and managed to get a one-on-one conversation with Dumbledore. She briefly explained what had happened the previous day and how she had been forced to reveal that she was a witch.

"What do you think I should do? Should I obliviate him?" She asked. They were alone in the dining room after the others had left, and Lily paced back and forth whilst Dumbledore remained in his seat at the end of the long table.

"You don't want to obliviate him, do you?" Dumbledore guessed.

Lily wondered how he did that; how he so often managed to pinpoint exactly what someone was thinking or feeling. She had always assumed that it was simply a matter of Dumbledore being an excellent judge of character, but Lily's more cynical side had sometimes entertained the idea that it might be some extremely light and discreet version of legilimency.

"That is hardly relevant. If it needs to be done, then I'll do it," she said determinedly even if just thinking about it felt awful. What she had found with Mark felt more precious than anything she'd had in years, and the idea of losing it was enough to make her feel slightly panicked.

"He told you that the authorities think that the Death Eaters are part of a terrorist group with a

special kind of weapons, and the wands being those weapons?" Dumbledore asked.

"Not only the Death Eaters, but all witches and wizards. He thought it was the wands that set us apart, he was quite shocked when I showed him some wandless magic," Lily clarified.

Dumbledore leaned back in his seat and thoughtfully stroked his beard.

"Hm, interesting. Well, he's proven to be a quite useful source of information then, hasn't he?" Dumbledore said and Lily nodded.

"Yes," she.

"Do you trust him?"

Lily paused for a few moments. Did she trust him? He had given no indication that he would talk to anyone about what Lily had revealed to him.

"I do. I do trust him," she decided.

"Very well, then," Dumbledore said and rose from his chair.

"What if I'm wrong?" she asked abruptly. "What if I'm wrong and he tells his friends or his colleagues or his boss?"

Dumbledore smiled reassuringly.

"Then I suppose we'll have some obliviating to do," he said calmly, and when he noticed that she still did not look entirely convinced he looked deep into her eyes.

"Lily, one muggle is not going to overthrow the entire Statue of Secrecy."

Bayswater, June 1990

Her relationship with Mark slowly returned to some level of normalcy. As time went on, she felt increasingly assured that he understood the importance of the Statue of Secrecy, and that everything she told him stayed between them. She talked about the Order in very broad terms and mostly to present a contrast to the Death Eaters, since they were the only wizards apart from Lily Mark had any experience with. She explained her own origins and her blood as well as the stigma that came with it in the magical world.

"So, it's some sort of blood-based racism?" He summarised with a frown.

They were spending a rainy Sunday inside, lazing about on the sofa and drinking tea as the rain rolled down the large windows in Mark's flat. It was indeed a very nice place – much nicer than a police officer would ever have been able to afford without generous grandparents – and compared to Lily's cramped flat in Clapton where the kitchen had been converted into a makeshift potions lab, it felt like a palace.

"Yes, I guess that's pretty accurate," Lily replied and took a sip from her tea mug.

"Seems stupid," Mark commented.

"More stupid than regular racism?"

Mark smiled.

"I guess not. So, when did you find out you were a witch?"

"I think I was seven or eight. As a child I became friends with a boy who lived nearby who was a wizard. His mother was a witch and he told me that I was one as well,"

"And you believed him?"

"I knew I was different," said Lily simply. "I could do things other children couldn't, and when he told me about magic it made a lot of sense. When I turned eleven one of the teachers from Hogwarts came to tell my parents,

"And then you went to a wizarding school? Did you and your friend go to the same one?"

"There is only one in Britain, so yes. We were in different houses in school; he was a Slytherin and I was a Gryffindor. Blood prejudice was much more common and socially accepted in Slytherin, and he fell in with a bad crowd. We drifted apart during our time in school, and in fifth year he called me by a very derogatory word, and I refused to speak to him again," she said and felt a wave of sadness roll over her at the memory.

"You never spoke to him again? Not ever?" Mark asked curiously.

Lily nodded. "I never forgave him, which in hindsight feels a bit harsh considering the fact that he tried to apologise for ages. On the other hand, he did become a Death Eater after we graduated so maybe it was for the best after all," she explained.

"He's one of the bastards blowing things up?" Mark asked angrily and Lily shook her head.

"No. He died many years ago, around the same time as James and Harry," she replied.

She knew very little about the circumstances around Severus' death, and when she had asked Dumbledore about it a few years into the war, she had not received much of an answer. In fact, that conversation was one of few instances when Lily could recall the headmaster clearly avoiding a subject, and even if she had been somewhat intrigued because of that she had never managed to find anything more out on the subject. Moody had known nothing. Remus had known nothing. Sirius, who had still been angry and alive at the time, had said something scathing about wanting to shake hands with whoever was responsible and then suggested that she was betraying James' and Harry's memory by sympathising with a Death Eater.

Lily had slapped him across the face, putting all her anger and grief into it, and Sirius had sported a bruise for weeks. They had never made up either, because less than a month later Bellatrix Lestrange hit him with an Avada in the back during an attack in the Underground.

AN: Turns out I needed way more flashbacks than I thought I would, but hopefully you're finding it interesting to see how both Lily and the U.K ended up where they are now.

When I decided to write this story I knew I didn't want to start out with a canon, 21-year-old Lily because let's be honest, is there a less developed character in this series? (I could see an argument for Ginny, but IMO Ginny is pretty much a copy + paste of Lily with some quidditch skills added on.)

I knew where I wanted 'my' Lily to be when the story started, but obviously I have to show you guys how she got there.

As we progress there will be less flashbacks and more plot.