The first time Lily Evans remembers being told that she was beautiful, she was four, and it was her mum. She was getting ready for church, wearing a brand new blue dress, and her big sister was braiding her hair. Her mum leaned down to straighten her dress and whispered in her ear that she was so, so beautiful. Her mum said she was beautiful, and she believed everything her mum told her, so she believed it.
The second time Lily Evans remembers being told she was beautiful, she was seven, and it was a boy with blue eyes and brown hair that her sister had a crush on. She was sitting on one of the swings on the playground at recess when he came up to her and handed her a bouquet of tiny flowers that he picked himself from the patch of grass beside the sandbox, and he told her she was beautiful and asked if she would be his Valentine, and she could see Petunia glaring at her from the swing right next to hers, and suddenly she wasn't sure if it was really such a good thing, being beautiful.
The third time Lily Evans remembers being told she was beautiful, she was nine, and it was a girl in her class with brown hair and brown eyes that she was friends with enough to invite to her birthday party but not enough to share secrets with. The girl's name was Emily or Evelyn or Elissa, she doesn't remember now, and she was the first to arrive at her house on the day of her ninth birthday, and Lily had been trying to think of something to say when the girl had said, mournfully, that Lily was beautiful and nice, and why couldn't she have pretty hair and pretty eyes and be pretty like Lily instead of plain and boring like herself. Lily spent the next five minutes trying to convince Erica (or Emma, or maybe Elle) that she did have pretty hair, and pretty eyes, and she was very pretty, and everyone knew that Trent Davis in the grade above them had a crush on her, and that had to count for something- but Elizabeth (Esther? Erin?) remained unconvinced and then the doorbell rang announcing the arrival of more girls and the conversation was forgotten.
Lily didn't invite that particular girl to her tenth birthday party.
After that, Lily Evans stopped keeping track of the times people told her she was beautiful.
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After a while, Lily Evans didn't need people to tell her she was beautiful for her to know that they thought so.
Her sister thought she was beautiful, and she hated her for it.
It had started when the blue-eyed boy had asked her to be his Valentine. Lily had said no, because she knew that 'Tuney liked him, but all that had done was make people think she had high standards and make her sister resent her all the more.
It wasn't just the boy. All of Lily's mother's friends would come 'round for tea and rave and gush about how absolutely lovely Lily was, but they hardly spared the slightest second to say the same about Petunia. Lily didn't understand it; she thought that Petunia was very pretty. She had long, straight blonde hair that was much neater than Lily's was, and her eyes were the most pleasant shade of pale blue. Surely she must be more beautiful than Lily, with her frizzy, messy hair that looked like fire and her eyes that were an unnatural shade of mossy green. The one time she had thought to ask her mother why everyone seemed to think she was so beautiful, her mother had laughed and said that she was beautiful because she was unique.
She never asked again.
Her very first best friend thought she was beautiful, and she thought that he was beautiful, too.
He had long, ragged hair and pitch black eyes and wore mismatched, second-hand clothes, and Petunia said that he was horrid and foul and the exact definition of ugly, but Lily didn't listen and didn't care because Lily thought that he was wonderful.
He was smart and kind and he told her wonderful things about a school called Hogwarts where they taught Charms and Potions instead of Maths and Science and he told her that they would both go there and learn to cast Summoning Charms and brew Pepperup Potions and be best friends forever and ever.
He was right about most things, at least. They did go to Hogwarts, and there were classes like Potions and Charms, and she did learn how to cast a Summoning Charm and brew a Pepperup Potion, but they weren't best friends forever, so in her mind, really, he was all wrong.
Because they went to Hogwarts and everybody thought he was awful, except for Lily. And everyone made fun of the way his nose was too big and his hair was too greasy and all he cared about was Potions, except for Lily. Because he was her first ever best friend and he thought that she was beautiful, and she thought that he was, too - except she would never admit it but she didn't really think so anymore, because his nose was too big and his hair was too greasy and all he cared about were Potions and Dark Arts and her, but it wasn't enough and she could feel him slipping away from her and she thought that maybe, if she had just kept thinking that he was beautiful the way he thought that she was, maybe it would have been different but she couldn't and she didn't and it wasn't.
On the last day that they were friends, she stormed up to the owlery in a fit of hurt and rage and wrote to her sister and told her that she was right about one thing, at least. Her best friend was horrid and foul and the exact definition of ugly, but he was still the best best friend she ever had.
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Around the time Lily started at Hogwarts, she learned that boys can't be beautiful.
The concept had confused her when she had first heard it from one of the girls in her dorm who had curly blonde hair and a wicked smile and was very pretty - just not as pretty as Lily - but all the other girls agreed and they explained that boys could be cute or handsome or even hot, they just couldn't be beautiful. Lily supposed that made sense, so after that she had stopped referring to her best friend as beautiful and decided on handsome instead, though it didn't have the same ring.
Throughout the rest of her time at Hogwarts there was only one boy that she ever thought to describe as beautiful, but she decided that she couldn't be blamed for it, objectively, because he was beautiful, objectively. He had porcelain skin and long ebony hair and plump red lips and he reminded her of the fairy tale princess Snow White. His eyes were narrow and sterling silver in color and they were framed by long black eyelashes that most girls she knew would kill for, and he was tall and charming and graceful and it seemed like every girl but her was mad for him.
She hated him for a long time, because he was beautiful, sure, but he was also loud and rude and obnoxious and he used girls like napkins - dating them for a day or two and then throwing them away without a care as if it didn't even matter - and yet everyone was so charmed and dazed by him and girls sent him fancy Valentines and chocolates laced with love potion and they sighed and swooned over him and she knew that it was because he was beautiful, even though most of those girls thought that boys couldn't be beautiful, and mostly she agreed but if anyone was going to be the exception to that rule then it was him, certainly.
He was the only person that she ever considered to be as beautiful as she was, and she often wondered, despite herself, if he hated it as much as she did, but she never got the chance to ask.
Once when Lily Evans was in her fourth year at Hogwarts, a boy had thought that she was beautiful so much that he had asked her on a date. She had been surprised, because she hadn't been asked out properly since the swing-set when she was seven, and she was always told it was because she was so beautiful that it was intimidating, which made her angry, but that didn't help because her anger only made her more intimidating, so she had given up and resigned herself to being seen as unapproachable by most.
This boy seemed nervous, so he must have been a little bit intimidated, but he did ask her, and he may not have been the best looking bloke at Hogwarts but he was handsome enough with sandy blonde hair and chocolate brown eyes and a small, sweet smile, so she agreed. They went on two dates and had scheduled a third but it never happened because Lily was beautiful, too beautiful, beautiful enough to make another boy so jealous of this one that she had agreed to go out with that he became the target for a series of terrible pranks that eventually landed him in the hospital wing, and even though Lily whined and complained for days to her friends about the unfairness of it all, she owled the poor boy and canceled their date and never rescheduled because it would be cruel and pointless to let him get hurt over her when she knew that he would, because she was beautiful.
She then became more unapproachable than ever, but it was better that way, so she really didn't mind.
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When Lily Evans was eleven she met a boy who claimed to be in love with her before she ever spoke to him.
He was arrogant and insufferable and in the first conversation that they ever had he told her she was beautiful, but he said it differently than anyone else ever had; he said it as if he expected her to fall down at his feet in gratefulness and adoration, but she didn't and it made her angry that he thought she would because she already knew that, thank-you-very-much.
This boy was also the only person ever to not be hurt or even fazed by her rejection, and he just continued on talking at her, cocky smile and ego still in place.
Oh, how she hated that boy. She had never hated anyone before, and she had liked to believe she never would, but he just made it so easy she couldn't help it. It seemed that every time she turned around, there he was, ready and waiting with yet a new way to "declare his love," each more flamboyant and infuriating than the last. He seemed absolutely convinced that she was secretly desperately in love with him, and that eventually she would just give in and fall into his arms like a helpless maiden and beg for his endless care and devotion, which he would gladly grant and they would "live happily ever after, the end" like they were characters in some sort of twisted fairy tale. In fact, she knew that's what he thought would happen, because he told her so himself one Valentine's Day when he was 12 and she was 13, and he had barely finished speaking when she punched him in the face and broke his nose, right there in the center of the Great Hall. That event became one of her fondest memories.
Even aside from his constant obnoxious declarations and extravagant ploys to get her attention, there were other reasons that she would never, ever fall for him. The main reason being that he was, as she liked to put it, a bullying toerag, and his main target happened to be her best friend.
It had begun on the train ride to Hogwarts at the start of their first year with an argument that got out of hand. She wasn't even sure what exactly it had been about in the first place, but it started small and quickly evolved and became bigger and more hateful until it seemed to all parties involved as if it had not started during that train ride; as if it had never started at all but had simply always been, just as sure as the grass was green and the sky was blue, they all hated each other, and that was that.
Lily would like to be able to say that it was simple, clear cut - that the arrogant toerag boy was the "bad guy," the bully, and he was always wrong, and that she was the heroine, standing up for her friend and for what was right, and walking the straight and narrow like all the Greatest People do, but she couldn't say that because if she did she would be lying, and though she may not be the spokesperson for The Light that she wished she could say she was, she really did always dislike liars, and she disliked hypocrites even more.
Because, in the end, there was no "bad guy," no villain, in the long-lasting altercation between the arrogant toerag and his band of misfits and her best friend and her - they were all childish and stupid and hateful and wrong, wrong, wrong, about themselves and their intentions and most of all about each other - and maybe it was all of their faults or no one's fault but when Lily thought of who to blame she would always like to blame herself, because she was beautiful and she knew that a good portion of their fights were fights over her, and everyone said that that wasn't really her fault but nevertheless she couldn't help wishing, not for the first time, that she had just been born plain and boring like her sister Petunia or the brown-eyed girl from her ninth birthday party, because maybe then this whole situation could have been avoided.
By her sixth year at Hogwarts, her best friend wasn't her best friend anymore, but she still didn't like it when the arrogant boy was mean to him, and that was something that neither he nor his friends nor her friends nor anyone else would ever understand. They asked her, aren't you angry at him? Aren't you upset? Don't you realize he's a bad guy now? Don't you see who he hangs around with, and the kinds of things they talk about? Don't you know that he's planning to join them? Can't you see what he's become?
Yes. Yes, I'm angry. Yes, I'm upset. Yes, he is a bad guy. Yes, I see who he walks with, talks to, and the kinds of things he says. Yes, I know what side he's on - he's made it very clear - and I know he knows all about the Dark Arts and that he'll be one of them by this time next year.
Lily said, again and again and they still didn't understand.
He was her best friend for longer than he was a bad guy. They had never known him; to them, this was no surprise. They'd always thought this of him. Their position had not shifted, had not changed.
They had never seen him smile or laugh, had never seen the look on his face when he found a new way to improve a potion, had never seen anything other than the two-dimensional villain that they painted him to be. They didn't, they couldn't understand that even if she never forgave him, it would not change the fact that he was her very first best friend, and he was the best best friend she would ever have.
Not least because he was the only best friend she would ever have, but she didn't know that yet.
By seventh year they still didn't understand, but maybe they didn't need to because maybe the arrogant toerag wasn't really much of a toerag anymore (though he wasn't any less arrogant), and maybe the Band of Misfits realized they no longer much liked being bullies. Or maybe they didn’t decide - maybe life made that decision for them. Because by seventh year there was a real war happening, and when you are dealing with pureblood extremists and dead parents and prejudice and fear, the real, genuine kind of fear that children with spiders and circus clowns as boggarts could never understand, then maybe there’s just no time for petty, school-yard bullying. Maybe, once you learn to truly hate someone, you realize that anyone you disliked before doesn’t really matter at all.
And maybe that’s why, when the arrogant boy confessed to her for the first time that year, she said yes.
She is surprised to realize that somehow, when she wasn’t paying attention, the arrogant boy had grown into a man - still arrogant, but also intelligent and hard-working and brave. Now, when he calls her beautiful, he doesn’t say it with expectations. He doesn’t smirk and wink at her as if she will suddenly swoon into his arms. He simply tells her, with an expression bordering on awe, that she is beautiful, as if she may have somehow forgotten. As if it’s important to him that she doesn’t forget.
For the first time in a very long time, she responds to the words “you’re beautiful” with a genuine thank you.
She marries him, because of course she does. Maybe she always knew that she would, someday - or maybe it just seems that way, now, just another in a long list of great ironies in her life.
She doesn’t marry him because she loves him, not really. She marries him because there is a war going on, and they all might die tomorrow, and he is real and he is there and he thinks that she is beautiful - a bright light amid the darkness of their current lives. She marries him because she is pregnant and she is terrified, but he is happy and excited and she thinks that she needs that - that without his happiness she would crack and crumble into dust.
She thinks that maybe she does love him, or at least she could, someday, but she isn’t quite sure, and it doesn’t matter, anyway, she decides. There will be plenty of time to figure that out when the threat of death isn’t hanging over their door.
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She never does get to figure out whether she loves him. She almost regrets not thinking about it before, because it seems terribly unfair to him now.
He loves her, she knows. He has told her, many times, with that same awe-stricken expression he wears to remind her that she is beautiful. She wishes, pointlessly, at that moment, that she had not said yes to him that day; that she had never let him remind her of her curse, this terrible curse that has followed her since birth.
He is dead now, she knows. She heard his body hit the floor, his head landing with a sickening clunk against the bottom stair - she spares a second to be thankful that at least he had not felt it, had been dead before he fell - and she knows that soon, she will join him.
She is not afraid. She feels many things, as she stands to face the man that will end her life - sorrow, for her husband, who died trying to protect her and their son; regret, for putting her faith in the wrong person, in Peter, who she knows must have betrayed them; disappointment, that she never got to make things right with Severus, that she has not seen him since they graduated and now she never will again, that she never got to ask him all the things she wanted to, to try to understand the events that led up to that terrible, terrible day, to that awful word that she could never bring herself to forgive; and resignation, that she will never grow old, will never see her son grow up, will never find out if she could ever really fall in love with her husband, will not live to see herself grow withered and ugly; that she will die as she is, young and bright and beautiful - she feels these things and many more, but fear is not among them. She has felt so much fear these last few years, perhaps she simply has none left.
Mostly, though, above everything else, she feels anger, and bitterness. For herself, and for the world that cursed her to be beautiful. More than anything, more than even the man who stands before her now, with his beautiful face and hideous soul, more than anything, she hates her own beauty.
If she was not beautiful, her sister would not have grown to resent her. If she was not beautiful, her peers would not have envied her. If she was not beautiful, her best friend would not have been made to feel as if he was unworthy to stand at her side, he would not have earned the hatred of a cruel, arrogant boy at such a young age. If she was not beautiful, her husband would not have loved her so much, he would not have chased her until she finally agreed to marry him, he would not be lying dead at the bottom of the stairs.
But none of that matters, because Lily is beautiful, and James is dead, and Severus is lost - to her and to himself, and Marlene, with her curly hair and wicked smile, is nothing more than a statistic - a number in the count of those lost in this war, and Petunia is insecure and vicious, and it seems to her like her entire existence has been a curse, has always brought pain and suffering to everyone she ever touched, eventually. But if she has hurt so many people, made so many mistakes, then she wants to do at least one good thing before she leaves this world behind. If she can’t give her son a family, then at least she can give him a chance - a life. So when the man - Voldemort, because if she’s going to die anyway she might as well use his name - tells her to step aside, she refuses, because if she couldn’t protect anyone else from the effects of her terrible curse, she is determined to protect the one person she has left. If she can’t ever be happy, then maybe her son can.
As the beam of green light (almost the same color as her beautiful eyes) shoots towards her, she uses her last moment to wish - to any power that might be listening - that her curse is not passed on to her son. She hopes that, whatever he is, however long he may live, whoever he may become, she hopes that the one thing he will never be, is beautiful.