The Story Of Lily and James Potter
Written By: Sarah Mandahl
Across the world, the day started out like any other day. When James Potter woke up
that morning he remembered that today was no ordinary day. Today James was to be turning eleven. Now, I should probably tell you about James and his family before I go on with the story, otherwise if I don't you will probably be confused. Growing up, James was always playing sports such as Quidditch with the other children and he loved reading the different books that he got for his birthday. Physically, James was fairly weak for his age and he wore glasses to be able to see better. In his opinion the worst physical feature he had was that he had the most unmanageable hair possible. Besides all that James was said to be a very normal eleven year old boy. What is Quidditch you may be asking yourself? Well, I'll tell you. Quidditch is a sport young wizards and witchs play on broomsticks and if you have ever been able to see a game than you are very lucky indeed. James also had to worry about buying his school books.
You see, James had received a letter that morning that his parents and he had been waiting for, for a very long time. He received a wax sealed envelope that enclosed a letter from one of the most famous wizarding schools known around the world. That school was called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The letter James got invited him to spend his education there for the next seven years. A few moments after receiving the note his parents took him off to a place he had only seen once before. This place was known as Diagon Alley.
Diagon Alley was a street for witches and wizards to go and buy all of their magical supplies. James got all of his school books and supplies there and then read that he had to be on Platform 9 3/4 on September 1st to catch the Hogwarts Express from Kings Cross Station. When James asked his parents where Platform 9 3/4 would be, his parents just took him home and said "We'll show you tomorrow son." With that James went to bed just as confused as he was earlier that day.
On the morning of September 1st, James and his parents set off for Kings Cross Station. When they arrived at the station, James got on the train for a few moments, found an empty compartment to put his stuff down, and went back to wave goodbye to his parents as the train pulled away. When James got back to his compartment he found that three other boys had occupied it as well as him. "I hope you don't mind sharing your space" said one boy with reddish brown hair. "I'm Sirius Black" said another boy with black hair reaching his hand out to shake James's.
"My name is James Potter" he replied. "Who are the other guys? If I may ask." Sirius replied by introducing James to Remus Lupin who apparently was the kind who had reddish brown hair and who was the first to speak. Than James was introduced to a small fat "mousy" grey haired boy named Peter Pettigrew.
As James sat down, the compartment door swung open and a girl who by the looks of it was the age of eleven stood in the doorway. She had green eyes and dark brown hair. Her name was Lily Evans. As Lily stood in the doorway, Sirius asked "What are you doing here Lily?", Lily retorted by saying "the conductor and Professor Dippet, the school's headmaster by the way, wanted me to tell everyone we will be arriving soon so you should probably begin to get your robes on." As Lily left James asked Sirius who she was. "Oh her? She's Lily Evans, she's a first year just like us." "Oh, ok" said James.
As the Hogwarts Express pulled up in front of a large castle, all the first years including James,Peter,Sirius,Remus,Lily and a few others were escorted into the front of the Great Hall by their soon to be Mythology teacher, Professor Minerva McGonagall. She brought them in front of the whole school, placed a stool on the floor in front of them and laid an old wizard's hat on top of the stool.
Then Professor McGonagall took a piece of parchment out of her pocket and read from it. "Sirius Black she read aloud as Sirius walked up and sat on the stool. Professor McGonagall then placed the hat on Sirius's head and waited a few moments. The hat on top of his head came alive and a few seconds later it yelled out in a low voice " Gryffindor! "
At that very moment Sirius went towards a long table where other Gryffindors were sitting and let out a very relieved sigh. He then looked up to see his mortal enemy Lily Evans be put in Gryffindor as well. Sirius groaned when hearing the news but became ecstatic when his new friends Remus, Peter and James entered Gryffindor too.
Finally, after one hundred other students were sorted into the four houses of Gryffindor , Hufflepuff , Ravenclaw and Slytherin , the final student, Severus Snape, a student with greasy black hair and crooked type nose was sorted into Slytherin House. When that happened Sirius leaned over to James and whispered "there was never a witch or wizard alive that turned bad who was not in Slytherin." As he heard this James became very shocked.
At that moment Headmaster Dippet rose up from the staff table and told the first years along with everyone else that the Forbidden Forest was off limits to all students and staff. After that he finally said "tuck in" which for him and the rest of the school meant "let's eat"
After dinner James, Lily, Peter, Remus and Sirius followed the other Gryffindors all the way up to Gryffindor Tower. Before they could enter though, they had to tell the portrait of Morgan Le Fey the password, which for them was "frog grof." As they stepped in they found themselves face to face with an eight foot three inch tall boy with black hair and brown eyes. This boy held out his hand for a handshake and said "'ullo, my name is Rubeus 'agrid, but you can call me 'agrid if you'd like ter." After Remus, James, Peter and Sirius introduced themselves they all left the common room to explore the castle a bit.
While they were exploring, they bumped into what seemed physically like a very weak second year boy with brown hair and deep brown eyes, "'ullo Tom" said Hagrid,"it's Mr. Riddle to you, you big oaf" said the boy by the name of Tom Riddle. Tom kept on walking until he reached the Slytherin corridor. James thought "apparently he isn't that weak mentally" as Tom walked away.
"I'm very sorry about him you guys, Tom isn't really the nicest fella in the world" said Hagrid. "It's ok Hagrid, don't worry about it" said James. "Thank ya kindly, James is it? But there is a problem ya see, I'm in my second year here just like him and well that means I have classes with him everyday." After all that Hagrid, Sirius, James, Remus and Peter all went back to Gryffindor Tower and went up to the Boys Dormitory and finally went to sleep.
The next morning James awoke in his new four poster bed. He looked around, at first wondering where his parents were and then after seeing Sirius in the bed next to him, he remembered he was at Hogwarts and not at home anymore. After he thought of that a while, he got up out of bed and went down to breakfast.
While James was eating breakfast with Remus, Sirius, Peter and Hagrid,Professor McGonagall walked up with each of their individual schedules for the term. All the schedules looked a little like this:
James Potter Term:1 Year:1
· Professor McGonagall/Mythology
· Professor Sprout/Herbology
· Professor Binns/History of Magic
· Professor Dumbledore/Transfiguration
· Professor Plank/Potions
· Professor Tonks/Defense Against The Dark Arts
· Professor Sinistra/Astronomy
· Professor Flitwick/Charms
· Professor Crouch/Care of Magical Creatures
James, Remus,Sirius, Peter and Hagrid all had the same schedule but the only downside to the schedules were that they were to have double Potions and double Defense Against the Dark Arts with Slytherin which meant that they were forced to deal with Slytherin all throughout fifth and sixth period.
After they finished their breakfast and finished looking over their schedules they began walking towards Professor McGonagall's Mythology classroom. That morning the class was learning about Morgan Le Fey. Professor McGonagall told the class that Morgan Le Fey was thought of to be a witch or sorceress as they called them back then. She was also said to be the sister of the famous and legendary King Arthur. After Mythology, the group of boys went to Herbology with Professor Sprout, History of Magic with the only known ghost professor named Mr. Binns,then they had Transfiguration with Professor Albus Dumbledore.
When they left Professor Dumbledore's classroom, they entered one of the dungeons and sat down. This was Professor Plank's room. Professor Plank was the Potions professor. He had very sharp facial features and when he looked at you he had the greatest look of disgust on his face everyone ever saw. Being in the dungeon for Potions wasn't the most pleasant experience in the world. The dungeon was damp and dark and had a great stench that could only be described as "the stench of decay." There was no mistake when someone whispered in your ear about Plank's favoritism towards the Slytherins because he of course was their Head of House.
After being tortured for what felt like a day or so in Potions, James, Sirius, Remus, Peter and Hagrid joined Lily out on the Quidditch Pitch to take a break before their Defense Against the Dark Arts class. James, Lily, Sirius, Remus and Peter borrowed the school's Cleansweep brooms while Hagrid used his own Nimbus Two Thousand and Two broom. The group had just enough people to make their own Quidditch team. James was going to be their Seeker, Hagrid offered to be one of the Beaters while Peter was going to be the other. Finally, Sirius was the team's Keeper which left Lily and Remus to be the Chasers. In the end they needed one more Chaser and a whole other team in order to actually play.
A moment later they noticed a boy by the name of Arthur Weasley walk by and asked him if he would like to play and be their final Chaser and he happily agreed to do it. An hour later Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy and Tom Riddle came walking up with a few other Slytherin students and challenged the Gryffindors to a game of Quidditch. Before the game began Hagrid and Arthur told James, Remus, Sirius, Peter and Lily the rules of Quidditch. Hagrid said "Quidditch is played by using four balls. There is the Quaffle, the keeper which is Sirius for our team, blocks the Quaffle from getting into the three goal posts at our end of the field. There are also these balls called Bludgers which the beaters, for our team those are me and Peter, hit out of our team's way and try to hit the other team and keep them from scoring. Also, the chasers, Lily, Remus and Arthur being ours, score points by throwing the Quaffle into the other team's goal posts. Finally, there is the Golden Snitch. James, this is the ball you'll need to worry about." He pulled the small golden ball from the box. Hagrid spoke again saying "this little ball is very hard to see when it gets going, but it is very important to the game of Quidditch, James you catch this, you will win our team one hundred and fifty points." James looked at the Golden Snitch as it sprouted little silver wings. Just before it flew away, James cupped it in his hands, put it back in the box and Hagrid,James and the rest of the team mounted their broomsticks as Tom Riddle and Severus Snape walked up.
As the game started, James flew up in the air and began looking for the snitch. While he was searching, Remus had made two goals scoring twenty points for Gryffindor and Riddle made three goals in result scoring thirty for Slytherin. A moment later James followed Snape's gaze and found that he was looking right at the snitch. Before another second passed by, James bolted for the snitch before Snape even knew what happened. A few moments later everyone on the Gryffindor team was trying to figure out why the Slytherins were groaning so loudly, they looked around and saw what was going on. James had changed the score from 30 Slytherin-20 Gryffindor to 30 Slytherin-170 Gryffindor. James had won the game for Gryffindor.
After the game the team went to their Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson where they learned about the different Unforgiveable Curses, which are the Imperius Curse, which makes it so whomever puts the curse on you has total control over your thoughts and feelings and actions, the Crutacius Curse which makes it so you go through the worst kind of torture in your life and finally they learned about the worst of all the three curses, the Avada Kedarva or the "killing curse" which kills the victim instantly.
When Professor Tonks introduced Avada Kedarva to the class, it seemed to James as if Tom was a little too anxious to be able to learn it and in result be able to perform it on other people. Professor Tonks told the class that throughout history the Avada Kedarva spell was used by some wizards and witchs to torture and finally kill others, no matter if they were either "muggle" or if they were of the wizardring world. After Defense against the Dark Arts, the Gryffindors had to deal with Astronomy with Professor Sinistra, Charms with a young and fairly small goblin called Professor Flitwick and finally Care of Magical Creatures with Professor Crouch. After classes, the Gryffindors went back to the common room before dinner.
As James, Remus, Sirius and Peter sat in front of the fireplace, Lily burst in the room screaming and sobbing. She was about to run up to the Girl's Dormitory when James stopped her. "Whoa, Lily what's wrong? What happened?" said James. It took a few moments for Lily to catch her breath but when she did she told James, Sirius, Remus and Peter about how she had witnessed Tom and Severus "practicing" the Unforgiveable Curses on an unsuspecting fellow student that she didn't recognize, then she said, that when they found out she was watching they threatened to try the Avada Kedarva curse on her which was the reason why she was crying so much.
After Lily calmed down, James, Sirius and the rest of the guys sat around the fireplace again, this time trying to figure out how to alert Headmaster Dippet about what Snape and Riddle were doing without getting into trouble themselves. After thinking about it for a while they finally went up to bed. Once James had his head hit the pillow, he was asleep immediately.
The next morning James woke up with what he thought was a fairly good idea in his head. He waited in the common room for Sirius, Lily and the others in their group to wake up. As the others began to join James in the common room, James began to tell them his idea. He told them about how his friends back home and he would send messages back and forth to each other using different forms of coded messages that "muggle" children used alot.
Then he told everyone that his idea was to use a type of coded message to send to Headmaster Dippet explaining what Snape and Riddle had done, so they went to work on the message. When they finished it looked something a little bit like this:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
4 5 1 18/16 18 15 6 5 19 19 15 18/4 9 16 16 5 20,
,
19 5 22 5 18 21 19/19 14 1 16 5/1 14 4/20 15 13/18 9 4 4 12 5
20 8 18 5 1 20 5 14 4/1/19 20 21 4 5 14 20/12 1 19 20/14 9 7 8 20.
.
25 15 21 18/5 22 9 4 5 14 3 5/9 19/16 15 19 20 5 4/15 14/20 8 5/4 15 15 18/15 6/20 8 5/19 12 25 20 8 5 18 9 14
4 15 18 13 9 20 15 18 25.
.
19 9 7 14 5 4: 1/3 15 14 3 5 18 14 4/19 20 21 4 5 14 20
: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
At the end of the letter there was a P.S. that said "you can read the letter by using the decoder at the top." After Professor Dippet decoded the note and read it, he went to the door of the Slytherin Dormitory and as was stated the "evidence" he was looking for consisted of moving pictures of Snape and Riddle using all three Unforgiveable Curses on the poor unsuspecting student but, what Lily and the others didn't know was that Snape was also under the Imperius Curse which meant that Riddle had full control over his thoughts and actions which was the main reason why he was involved but luckily Dippet was able to see it and the next day he did something about it.
In the morning, Professor Dippet brought down the punishments on Severus and Tom. Severus, since he was under the influence of the Imperius Curse the whole time, only got detention each weekend for the next month while Tom on the other hand was expelled from Hogwarts and sent back to live in the "muggle" orphanage he had once grown up in.
That night, Remus, Sirius, James and Peter were walking outside on the grounds when all of a sudden Remus thought he saw something in the bushes. When he went to investigate he heard a strange noise go deeper into the bushes which made him walk farther. A few moments later, James, Sirius and Peter heard someone yell from where Remus just was and when they ran to check it out they found Remus lying on the ground with a large bite mark on his arm. At that moment, they picked Remus up and ran to see Madam Pomphrey the school nurse.
When they reached her office, they laid Remus down on a bed and told Madam Pomphrey everything that they could remember. Madam Pomphrey then began to fix Remus's wound but told the group that there would be some dangerous consequences since the bite Remus had gotten was from a werewolf. Everyone looked scared when she said that, everyone especially Remus.
James asked "how long will it be before we actually see the degree of the side effects?", "the next full moon, which is this time next month Madam Pomphrey replied. As she was leaving, Remus sarcastically whispered under his breath "great, we only have a month before I possibly hurt one of you." With that, James, Sirius and Peter went back to the Gryffindor common room. Later that night, as Sirius was reading a book about Anamagi or people who willingly turn themselves into animals, he had an idea.
He got James and Peter together and told them about his idea which was, that if in a month Remus turns into a werewolf than Peter,James and himself will begin the transformation into different types of animals so Remus wouldn't have to be alone. "It will be the kind of animals that we will decide on when the time comes though" Sirius said.
A month later, as Remus, Sirius, James and Peter were walking out on school grounds again, the full moon rose high above the clouds. A moment later Sirius, James and Peter watched in agony as their friend painfully changed into a werewolf before their very eyes. When the transformation was complete, James, Sirius and Peter ran for the safety of Hogwarts Castle, since everyone knows that werewolves can never tell the difference between friend and foe. They reached the doors of the Great Hall just in time. Remus had almost bitten James in the leg when they shut the door on his snout. Remus then whimpered in pain and ran towards the Forbidden Forest while James, Sirius and Peter made it safely back to the common room and waited till morning to begin planning their own transformations.
After a fairly good night sleep, the three friends woke up to find Remus asleep in his bed. Not knowing when or even how he came in last night they all shrugged it off and began deciding which kind of animal they were each going to transform into for the rest of their lives to help out their friend. Peter decided to change into a rat since he was the smallest of the group, had buck teeth and had grayish "mousy" hair. Sirius planned on becoming a dog since out of the three he was the most loyal to people he cared about and having black hair like he did only helped him out even more. James on the other hand chose to transform himself into a stag since he was the smartest and the strongest of the group of friends.
So that was it, they had chosen their animals, made the potion that they had to drink and waited for the next full moon. When a month passed, the full moon had arrived and Remus began to transform for the second time, James, Sirius and Peter wished each other luck and took a large drink of the animagus potion they had made. As Remus transformed, so did James, Sirius and Peter. Finally, when the transformations were complete and James, Sirius and Peter were in their animal form, "werewolf" Remus seemed to act nicer to them since werewolves only attack humans and not other animals. For the rest of the night James, Remus, Sirius and Peter hung out under the stars, and then in the morning when they woke up the potion wore off. The would only have to drink the potion one more time on the next full moon to make it permanent to where they could transform at will whenever they wanted. Although it was only during the full moon that they actually did.
Seven years or so later, Lily and James were married and had a little boy named Harry who would later be known as "The Boy Who Lived" since he survived the Avada Kedarva curse used by Lord Voldemort, which unfortunately killed his parents in the same night. Professor Dippet would later die of old age and Professor Dumbledore would take over the Headmaster of Hogwarts position after Dippet's death. Professor McGonagall would become the Transfiguration professor and also Head of Gryffindor House. Defense Against The Dark Arts would later become a cursed subject when no teacher would last more than a year on that position. Professor Sprout stayed on as the Herbology professor, Professor Flitwick stayed with Charms, Sinistra with Astronomy and Binns being the only ghost capable of knowing anything about the History of Magic stayed with that subject. Professor Dumbledore would later give the Potions teaching position to none other than Mr. Severus Snape.
Sirius would later become the Potter's "secret keeper" and Harry's god father when Mr. and Mrs. Potter would have to hide from Voldemort, but because Sirius thought Voldemort would figure it out to easily he made Peter their "secret keeper" at the last moment not knowing that Peter would later tell Voldemort all about James and Lily's secret hiding place and in result betray his supposed friends to their deaths. Remus soon became a teacher of Defense Against The Dark Arts at Hogwarts but because of the curse he only lasted a year but still remained very close with Harry and Sirius after Sirius broke out of Azkaban prison because he was framed by Peter for betraying Lily and James.
Hagrid later became "Keeper of Keys and Grounds" at Hogwarts and in Harry's fourth year he became teacher of Care of Magical Creatures which he held the position until he was forced a temporary leave of absence in Harry's fifth year for reasons unknown and this was all WAY after he was expelled from Hogwarts in his third year, also for unknown reasons. Finally, the future of Tom Riddle is both famous and unknown all at the same time. What I mean by that is as Tom Riddle grew older, the hatred in his heart grew greater and greater. He hated his "muggle" father and his witch mother for abandoning him; he hated Dumbledore for not giving him the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, which some say is the reason for the curse.
He had so much hatred within him and was already such a powerful wizard at the time that he stopped using his "muggle" father and grandfather's names, "Tom Marvolo Riddle" and began using a name that he hoped would later be feared by not only wizards and witches but "muggles" as well. He began using the name of Lord Voldemort or "The Dark Lord" to his followers who would later include Lucius Malfoy, his wife Narcissa Malfoy, their son Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape as well as Peter Pettigrew. Voldemort's powers would grow larger and larger over ten years until one night, after hearing about this prophecy from a teacher by the name of Professor Trelawny and from Peter and Severus that stated how one day a boy whom is born at the end of July will be his undoing, he came to the home of Lily and James Potter after being tipped off by Peter and killed Lily and James, he also attempted to kill their one year old son Harry which then led to his downfall until he would be able to come back in full force in Harry's fourth year, with Harry and Peter's help no less.
He would later need skin from Pettigrew and blood from Harry to get his full strength back so that he and Harry could fight one final time. What Voldemort didn't know was there was a possibility that he gave the future to the wrong child. There was another boy born at the end of July, this boy was called Neville Longbottom...is there a possibility that Neville's life was saved just because of a minor change of mind on Voldemort's behalf? That question may never be answered unfortunately.
I'd love to say that it was a happy ending for all that was involved but there were some deaths and some sadness along the way but most of the time they had happiness as well so I guess that is the best I can offer you. So now I will say that this is the end of my story about James and Lily Potter and their life at, as well as after Hogwarts
The End