Prologue/Early Years
“Lily! It’s time to go home!”
Lily can hear her sister’s voice calling her as if it’s an echo in a cave. Soon, she’ll have to acknowledge it, but for now, her entire world is made up of the swooping weightlessness in her stomach as she swings back and forth on the swing set.
This is her favourite spot in the world.
It’s the end of August, which means that school is starting soon. She’s already been going to school for two years, and she can’t figure out if she’s excited about starting again or not. She always seems to be stuck in this funny spot where she’s friends with most of the people in the class, but not the same way they were friends, somehow. They’re close, but there always seems to be something that she’s missing. Something that she can’t see, but they can. But she’s learning. And she has something that they don’t. She has her tricks.
She’d figured out she could do the tricks the day after her eighth birthday.There had been frost on the windows, and she had been running her finger in rhythmic lines over the glass, imagining the ice moving in crystalline patterns - and then it had. The ice flowed like water, swirling and twisting; she startled slightly, pulling back from the ice, and it had stopped. She’d looked around for Petunia, but she wasn’t there. Lily had fluttered her hand nervously, then reached out to touch the glass again. The ice moved.
She’d stayed there, at the window, for three hours. Instead of watching the people pass by in the street like usual, she created art on the window that looked like the houses outside. Their roofs were on fire, and their walls were the sky, with swallows swooping across them.
…
“Mary, can you go and get your brother up please?”
“Yeah mum!”
Mary goes leaping across the hall from the bathroom, back into her and her brother’s room. “Oi!” She jumps on the bed, squishing him.
“Bloody hell Mary, what is it?”
“We’ve got to leave for school soon!”
He shoves her off and rubs his eyes. “Fine, fine. Bugger off, then.”
She hops up from the floor and dashes back out, clumping down the stairs to the kitchen where her mum is doing the breakfast dishes. “He’s up, mum!”
“Thanks, Mary.” Her mum smiles at her. “You excited for your first day of school?”
“Yeah!” She leaps round the kitchen in a frenzy. “Can’t wait to see Georgie and Emma and Jessica and-” her mum laughs. “Calm down!”
“What about you?” Mary asks. “Are you excited?”
“Excited that you’re going to school?”
“Noooo,” Mary says, laughing. “Excited to see Georgie and Emma’s mums?”
Her mum smiles. “Oh. Yes, I suppose I am.”
Mary loves school. She loves it, because she loves seeing her friends. She loves playing games at lunch, and whispering in class, and hugging them at the end of the day.
…
Lily swings higher and higher, feeling gravity begin to lose its hold on her.
“Lily, don’t do it!” Petunia shrieks next to her - but Lily barely hears her.
She can feel the power shift and move in the air around her, and with a deep breath, she lets go. The weightless feeling soars in the pit of her stomach, and she opens her eyes again to see the world twirling around her, before coming to rest on her tiptoes as she lands. She laughs and spins on the spot, watching her feet on the asphalt.
Lily hears Petunia scuff her feet on the ground to stop the swing, and looks over to see Petunia with her hands on her hips. “Mummy said you weren’t allowed, Lily!”
“But I’m fine,” Lily laughs. She can’t stop smiling, and bounces slightly on her toes. She catches sight of the purple flowers scattered around the bushes, and runs over, picking one up. “Tuney, look at this. Watch what I can do.”
Petunia looks around, and then reluctantly comes over, looking nervously at the flower Lily holds out to her. Lily is hopeful. She wants Petunia to be able to feel the power the same way she does - she wants Petunia to feel the wonder like she does. Her palm warms, and the petals of the flower begin to move, fluttering, opening, and closing. Lily smiles.
“Stop it!” Petunia shrieks - Lily looks back at her face, confused, and sees an expression that she doesn’t like. Something like fear, maybe. Or disgust.
“It’s not hurting you,” Lily says, feeling something sad growing in her chest. She closes her hand and drops the flower. Petunia watches it fall.
“How do you do it?” There’s something that Lily can’t quite place in her sister’s voice. She wrinkles her nose, trying to make the words to explain.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
Lily startles at the unfamiliar voice; Petunia yells out and dashes for the swings. Lily turns to see a short boy with black hair standing beside the bushes. He looks uncomfortable.
“What’s obvious?” She asks.
His voice is just above a whisper as he replies, “You’re… you’re a witch.”
Lily frowns. There’s a pang of anxiety in her stomach. “That’s not a very nice thing to say to somebody.”
She turns, trying to hold herself in the way Petunia does when she’s angry, and marches back to the swings.
“No!” The boy cries out, and Lily turns as she grabs the pole of the swing set, watching him run towards her and her sister, the overlarge coat he’s wearing flapping like wings. “You are,” he says, “You are a witch. I’ve been watching you for a while. But there’s nothing wrong with that. My mum’s one, and I’m a wizard.”
Tuney laughs next to Lily, her voice harsh, making the bad feelings in Lily's chest build up again.
“Wizard!” Petunia cries out. “I know who you are. You’re that Snape boy! They live down Spinner’s end by the river,” she says to Lily. Lily’s confused as to why she puts so much emphasis on the location. “Why have you been spying on us?”
“Haven’t been spying,” the Snape boy grumbles. He must be overheating in his heavy coat, Lily thinks. “Wouldn’t spy on you, anyway, you’re a Muggle.”
Petunia humphs. Lily doesn’t know what Snape said, exactly, or why Petunia is upset now, but she glares at the boy as she follows her sister out of the park.
The feeling in her chest writhes. Frustration, confusion, anger, sadness, fear - and just a hint of curiosity.
…
Mary is frightened. She is sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest in the corner of the schoolyard, a little section that dips behind the main building. She tries to breathe deeply, getting her heart rate under control. It’s only the third week back at school, fresh off the start of her fifth year in primary school. It all happened so fast - Mary had been whispering to Georgie, and then the teacher, Miss Reed, had startled her, grabbing her shoulder from behind, and given her a detention. Mary tried to explain that she’d just been asking for a spare pencil, and the teacher had shouted. She’d been right up close to Mary’s face, and shouting, and then – and then –
She shudders, burying her face in her knees. The lights had flickered, and the door had slammed open, and suddenly, Miss Reed was opening and closing her mouth, but no sound was coming out.
She doesn’t know what happened. She doesn’t know what she did, but she doesn’t want it to happen again. She’d run out of the classroom when it happened, and gone outside, and now she sits here in her little safe spot, wishing she could just forget that it ever happened. Wishing and hoping that she’ll wake up soon, and it was just a dream.
…
She’s not normally allowed out alone. Petunia is usually with her. But tonight, her parents had guests over from church, and the house was crowded, and she could hear her own heartbeat in her head. It was easy to slip out into the quiet evening, where she felt like she could breathe again.
She goes to the playground, thinking maybe she could go on the swings again. When she gets there, there’s a figure sitting on the roundabout. Lily thinks about turning around - the late summer light is beginning to fade - but then she sees the large coat, and recognises the boy from the previous week.
“Hello,” she calls out. He looks up as she walks over, looking nervous.
“Hello,” he replies.
“What are you doing here?”
He frowns slightly. “It doesn’t matter.”
She wants to know, but decides to let it go, and sticks out her hand. “I’m Lily.”
He looks at her oddly, but shakes her hand. “I’m Severus.”
Lily kicks at the roundabout slightly. She wants to spin on it, but thinks she’d better not ask Severus to move. It might be rude.
She’d thought a lot about the things he had said to her and Tuney. About her being a witch. Lily had tried to bring it up to Petunia, but she hadn’t wanted to talk about it. She’d said that it was stupid.
Lily doesn’t think it’s stupid.
“Are you really a wizard?”
Severus looks up at her as she rocks back and forth, one foot propped against the roundabout.
“Yes.”
“And do you really think–” she cuts herself off before she can finish. She wants to know. She wants to know if she’s really magic.
“What?”
“I can do things,” she says instead. “I can make pictures, and make things move if I want them to.”
“Magic.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “Is it really real?”
He just nods.
Lily sits down next to him, pulling her knees into her chest.
“So I’m a witch, then.” It’s not a question. She’s just saying out loud what she’s been thinking out since their first interaction. He seems to know it.
“What are you doing here without your sister?” Severus asks.
She’s not sure how to explain. “It’s just crowded at home right now. I wanted to go outside where it was quieter.”
“Right.”
“What are you doing here?”
He stares at his shoes, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his coat.
“My parents are loud, too.”
“Are they having a party?”
“No.” He looks up at her sideways, looking very small somehow, like he’s sunk inward. “They argue a lot.”
“Oh. That’s not very nice.”
“No, it’s not.”
...
“I’m strange.”
Severus looks at her with an odd expression on his face, one she can’t quite place. “Strange?”
“Yeah. That’s what everyone at school thinks, I know. But I guess it was just the magic.”
He fiddles with the laces on his shoes. “I guess so.”
She falls back onto the grass, twisting her fingers around themselves. “I’m happy I know now.”
Severus is silent.
Lily twists herself upright again, crossing her legs and tapping her knee. “Can you tell me more about the Ministry of Magic? Is it like Parliament?”
He smiles a bit. “Kind of. They make the wizard laws, and make sure that Muggles don’t know about us. And the Ministry can punish you if you do magic outside of school, you get letters.”
“But I have done magic outside of school,” Lily says, worried.
“We’re all right,” he says hurriedly, “We haven’t got wands yet. They let you off when you’re a kid and you can’t help it. But once you’re eleven and they start training you, then you’ve got to be careful.”
Lily’s fingers have found a twig in the grass and she twirls it in between her fingers. A wand. She would have a real wand, one day.
She drops the twig, twists her fingers around themselves, and leans towards Severus. “It is real, isn’t it? It’s not a joke? Petunia says there isn’t a Hogwarts. It is real, isn’t it?” She’s still scared of the answer, somehow. She can’t quite make herself believe it.
“It’s real for us,” he says. “Not for her. But we’ll get the letter, you and me.”
“Really?” she whispers, looking at her hands, feeling the warmth curl around them.
“Definitely.” He sits back, relaxed.
“And will it really come by owl?”
“Normally. But you’re Muggle-born, so someone from the school will have to come and explain it to your parents.”
“Does it make a difference, being Muggle-born?”
He’s quiet for a moment, and she looks up from her hands.
“No,” he says, as he sees her eyes. “It doesn’t make any difference.”
“Good,” she says. She’s relieved about that. She’s already tired of being the strange one.
…
“Get the door, please, Mary!”
“Ethan, get the door!” Mary yells across the hall.
“Mum told you to get it!”
“I’m busy!”
Ethan humphs and stomps down the stairs.
Mary is focused on the purple thread she’s adding around the hem of her skirt. Her forehead wrinkles as she presses the needle into the thick fabric. She wants to wear this skirt when she goes over to Georgie’s flat the next day.
“Mary!” Her mother calls up the stairs again.
“What, mum?”
“I need you to come down, please.”
Mary sighs, and tucks her needle into the fabric. She gallops down the stairs, expecting her mum to be ready with mail, or a shopping list. Instead, she finds a tall woman standing in the hall with her mother. Ethan hovers in the door to the kitchen, looking nervous.
“Mary,” her mother says carefully, “this is – this is Professor Mcgonagall…” she hesitated at the title.
“Hello,” Mary says, confused. She looks to her mother.
“Shall we go into the sitting room?” Professor Mcgonagall suggests. She has a very crisp, clear accent.
“Yes, yes,” Mary’s mum says hurriedly, moving quickly through the doorway into the sitting room. “Please, have a seat.”
Professor McGonagall sits down carefully on the sofa. Mary’s mum sits at the other end, and Mary settles herself in the armchair, pulling her legs up under her.
“I’m here,” Professor McGonagall begins, “because Mary has been invited to attend the school I am employed at.”
“A public school?” Mary’s mum asks.
Mary sits up a little straighter, and drops her legs to the floor. She’d sat her entrance exam for grammar school at the end of the year, and had gotten a score high enough to go to one - they’d had a party and everything. But a public school?
“Not quite,” Professor McGonagall says. “It’s a special school, for people who have skills that most people don’t. It’s a school of magic.”
Mary feels as if ice water has flooded the room. Magic?
“Excuse me?” Her mum says. Mary looks at her, and she gives Mary a look that says, very clearly: don’t say a word.
“I understand that this may sound fantastical -” McGonagall starts, but Mary’s mum cuts her off.
“Are you joking?” Her voice is layered, still polite on top, but Mary can hear the anger beginning to boil under the surface.
Inside Mary’s head, it’s as if the last two years are flicking past her eyes in a photo album. Every moment that wasn’t quite right, every time something didn’t make sense, every time she had been worried, or frightened, or angry.
It’s Mary’s turn to cut into the conversation. “It’s real?”
Her mother stares.
“Yes,” McGonagall says, “It’s real. I expect you have some experience?”
Mary nods. “Things… happen.”
“Mary, what are you talking about?” her mum asks.
“Perhaps I should simply demonstrate,” McGonagall says delicately. She draws a long, thin wand from inside her coat pocket, glances around the room, and points it at the vase of flowers on the coffee table. Smoothly, each one changes and grows, transforming from a mix of fuchsias and marigolds into a neat bunch of yellow roses.
Mary’s mum stares, her mouth open slightly, and blinks rapidly. Mary gets up, not sure where she’s going, exactly, just needing to move. She walks over to the roses, and reaches out with a finger to touch one.
She turns to make eye contact with Professor McGonagall. “Can you tell me about it?”
…
Lily’s parents took the news quite well when a stubby witch called Professor Sprout showed up at their house to tell them that Lily was magic. Lily supposed that the reason they weren’t more surprised is because, to some extent, they already knew. After all, she hasn’t exactly been keeping it a secret, that she can do magic. If anything, she thinks her mum is probably relieved that Lily truly wasn’t at much risk when she flew off of the swings.
She practically runs to the park, hoping to find Sev there. He got his letter two days ago - he told her that the reason she hadn’t got hers yet was because they had to do it in person. He’s not at the park when she arrives, but she decides to wait. She can’t sit still; she spins on the roundabout, goes for a swing, and dances about behind the bushes.
Eventually, he shows up at the normal time - early enough into the evening to hopefully avoid his parent’s fighting. She leaps over to him, squealing.
“I got it! I got my letter! Letter letter letter letter letter!”
He laughs as she dances around him, arms outstretched. “I told you it’d come soon.”
“I still can’t quite believe it,” she says, beginning to settle down a bit. “It feels like someone’s going to come tomorrow and tell me it was all a joke.”
“Nope,” he says, grinning, “It’s real. We’re going to Hogwarts.”
She jumps in place again, shaking her fists back and forth. “We’re going to Hogwarts!”
“Are you going to Diagon Alley to buy your stuff?” He asks, walking over to sit down on one of the swings.
“We’re not,” she says sadly. “I wanted to, my parents say that we’ve got enough to do with me going to boarding school and Tuney transferring to a public school. The professor who came to see us is going to bring the things on the list for me.”
“That’s too bad,” he says, “We could have met up in Diagon Alley.”
“Yeah,” she sighs. “But we’ll still be on the train together!” She doesn’t think they would have met up in Diagon Alley - after all, her parent’s don’t know that they’re friends. It’s nice to imagine all the same.
They stay there for another two hours or so, swinging back and forth and listing all the things they’ll do when they get to Hogwarts.
…
Mary’s not sure how she feels about Hogwarts. Her mum and dad are also conflicted; Mary heard them arguing about it one night, in their room. Her mum was saying that it might be good for her, if she was really magic - what would happen to her otherwise? Her dad, on the other hand, didn’t want her so far away, learning strange things, without her family there.
The reason that Mary’s not sure if she wants to go was because, really, she doesn’t want to leave the corner of the world she already has. She has her friends. She has her family. She has the charity shop that she buys clothes at whenever she saves up enough pocket money, and the market that she and her friends go to and buy giant pretzels. And there’s also her plan - going to grammar school with Emma, and graduating like her uncle.
She doesn’t really want to leave all that behind.
McGonagall returns to their house a week before Mary is supposed to leave for school, bringing with her the things that were on the list in Mary’s Hogwarts letter. McGonagall had offered to take Mary and her parents to buy them in person, but Mary had refused. It’s probably because the more things she learns about this school, and this world, the more she feels it’s real - and she doesn’t want it to be real, just yet.
It’s the same reason that Mary puts everything McGonagall brought straight into the trunk, and shoves the trunk into her wardrobe. It doesn’t fit at first, and she works herself up quite a bit, feeling the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, but then she feels something in the air around her give, and falls forward into her wardrobe, which has apparently grown an awful lot on the inside. Ethan finds her crying on the floor in front of the now-extended wardrobe, and sits down next to her.
“Hey, pretzel. What’s up?” He’s called her pretzel since she was five, and she first discovered them at the market.
“I just –” her throat is clogged, and she gives a big sniff before speaking again. “I just don’t want to leave.”
He sighs. “Well, I don’t think anyone really wants you to leave. But it’s for the best, innit? You’ll get to learn all kinds of mad stuff.”
“I don’t think I want it,” she whispers. “The magic.”
“How come?”
“I had everything worked out,” she says. “I was going to go to grammar school. Like you.”
He suddenly slings his arm around her shoulder, pulling her closer. “Yeah,” he says, his voice rather soft. “But now you get to go to magic school, you idiot. That’s even better than grammar school.”
She looks up at him, feeling quite small, and sees him smiling at her. “D’you really think so?”
“‘Course I do. You get to do something none of us can do. That’s special. Now, c’mon. Let’s get that trunk back out and pack the rest of the things you’re gonna need.”
…
Lily stands on the platform, staring at the great steam train huffing in front of her. Her parents had hesitated when they reached the barrier, but Lily had simply tugged Petunia with her and gone through, and they’d followed quickly behind, not wanting to lose them. She’s said goodbye to her parents already, and now she knows she needs to talk to Petunia. Lily’s worried. She’s worried, because she knows what Tuney did at the end of the summer, and she doesn’t want her to be upset.
“Tuney,” she starts. “I wish you were coming.”
“Oh please,” Petunia says, growling slightly, and Lily looks over at her, startled. She looks angry.
“What?”
“Don’t act like you aren’t so happy to be leaving me here,” Petunia says, not looking at her.
“I’m not!” Lily says, surprised. “I’m really not, I–”
“Yes, you are!” Petunia says, louder. “I’ve seen you, all summer, planning everything you’re going to do while you’re gone!”
Lily reaches out, trying to catch her sister’s hand. “I’m sorry, Tuney, I’m sorry! Listen, listen – maybe once I’m there, I’ll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!”
Petunia tugs hard on her hand, yanking it out of Lily’s grasp. “I don’t want to go! You think I want to go to some stupid castle and learn to be a– a– you think I want to be a freak?”
Lily stills suddenly. She can feel the bad feeling coiling in the pit of her stomach. She can feel the pressure in the back of her throat. The platform is too busy, all of a sudden. Too loud.
“I’m not a freak,” she says, quietly. “That’s a horrible thing to say.” She hopes Petunia will stop.
She doesn’t.
…
Mary had almost cried leaving the house. She’d almost cried getting on the tube. She’d almost cried as they arrived at King’s Cross. She’s almost crying now, standing on Platform 9 ¾. Ethan looks thoroughly uncomfortable as he watches people with owls and broomsticks moving around the platform, chattering happily. Mary’s mum hugs her, and hugs her again. Mary keeps her eyes down.
“Mary, can I talk to you for a second?” Her dad says.
She looks up at him. He’s looking at her with that mind-reading gaze that he has sometimes. “Okay.”
He steps to the side, and she follows.
“I know something’s the matter,” he says. “Do you want to tell me what it is?”
She thinks for a minute. She’s not quite as worried anymore about losing her friends. She’s talked to them. They’ll write letters. Something else is on her mind now.
“I’m worried,” she says slowly. “I’m worried, ’cos I wasn’t born into it. I know you don’t like it, but – “ she struggles to form the right words. “If I’m going to be a witch, I don’t want other magic people to think I don’t belong ’cos I wasn’t born into it like they were.”
“Mary, I need you to listen to me.” Her dad looks very determined. She studies his face. “No matter how I feel about all this, you’ll have just as much right to be there as anyone else. Just like you have just as much right to walk around London as anyone else. Do you understand?”
She drops her gaze. “But I wasn’t born a witch.”
“Look at me.” She doesn’t look up, and he ducks down to try to catch her eyes again. Reluctantly, she lifts her gaze. “If you’ve magic, that’s something you were born with, innit? Don’t let anyone take that away from you.”
She can feel a lump in her throat, and reaches out. Her dad envelops her in a strong hug. She feels his breathing stutter along with her own.
After a long moment, they move back over to her mum and Ethan. She doesn’t want to let go, but she does. She looks up at the train for another moment, then turns to her family.
“’Bye.”
Her dad smiles. “Goodbye.”
“’Bye, pretzel,” Ethan says.
Her mum just waves.
She turns, and steps up onto the train.