Blossoming Beginnings
As a child, Lily Evans had never really fit in. She had always been the “weird one” according to some people. She had a peculiar childhood, with some unexplainable things always happening around her. She grew up in a very small village in the UK, and by the end of her first year in school she was known as the town outcast. All the children were told by their parents to not talk to her, and they gladly listened. Even Lily’s own sister, Petunia, pretended to not be related to her. But she always had her parents on her side, along with her lovely cat Lemon who Lily had named when she was a very small child.
Lemon had always been there for her, through the good and the bad times. She was a small, skinny cat with a beautiful orange coat that was so light that it looked yellow. That’s where Lily got the name lemon. Lily brought Lemon almost everywhere, including her favorite tree. It was a giant, beautiful weeping willow, and it was next to a beautiful pond that always had small ducks swimming in it. Whenever she approached the tree, it started swaying, almost like it was waving to her, even when there was no wind. She always found this fascinating.
One cold day in January of 1970, was Lily’s tenth birthday. She approached her tree, excited to tell it everything that had happened on her special day. Of course, she sugar-coated it, but she never really realized what was truly going on, because her heart was full of love and nothing else. She told the tree an epic tale of the wonderful morning and breakfast that she had, and then around lunch time she was allowed to have her cake early in the day. She had thought that this was because she was such a good kid that year, but it was truly because she didn’t have any friends to invite over, and her parents took pity on her. Lily then told the tree of all the treasures and gifts she had received for her birthday, sharing the same amount of love through the explanation of every sock to the Barbie clothes she had gotten, all the way through the fancy telescope that her parents had gotten her as a surprise.
The truth to what had happened, though, was that her parents woke up and started making Lily’s favorite breakfast food, which was honey waffles, until Petunia had woken up and convinced them to make her favorite breakfast food, which was the family’s secret recipe from their French grandmother. Then, even though Lily’s parents had invited Lily’s school class to come for her birthday party, nobody showed up. They let her open her gifts early because they had been hoping that there would be more to her birthday. She got socks from most of her family (aunts and uncles,) because even they think that Lily is the odd one out. From her “sister” she got Barbie clothes, even though it was actually her parents that got her them in Petunia’s place. From her parents she got a telescope, because they realized that Lily was always staring up into the beautiful sky. To her parents, her birthday was a failure, but to Lily, it was one of her best birthdays to date.
But then, appearing from the other side was a boy. His appearance wasn’t very good, greasy, knotted hair, dark circles under his eyes (which made him look like he hadn’t slept in weeks), and bruises covering his legs, which were not covered even considering the freezing cold. Before she could even process what she saw, the boy was talking.
“Hi, I’m Snape,” he said.