Research is Complicated

     Lily spent the next five months of her life with her young mind haunted by the water woman's words.

     The Gift. The Gift. Severus says you have the gift.

     What was the gift?

     That January, she would find out. And find out she did.

     She wasn't actually certain that anything was going to happen. Up until that summer, she had always figured herself a regular girl who sometimes did odd things. Eventually, she would find that she was regular, for someone in her community, but she wouldn't meet that community until the afternoon of her 11th birthday.

     It was around 4pm, and Lily was discussing with her mother what she wanted for her special birthday dinner. They were just getting ready to head out food shopping, but just as they pulled on their coats there was a knock on the door. Her mother answered to reveal a woman wearing several layers of strange clothes, with a blanket-like outer covering. At her side, wearing similar clothes, stood-

     "Severus!"

     Lily ran for her friend, nearly toppling him in a hug before thinking better of it; he did seem to have a thing about physical contact. But, to her surprise, he came to her first, not hugging her, but grabbing her face between his hands and nuzzling their foreheads together. It reminded Lily of a cat.

     "Good afternoon," the strange woman spoke pleasantly to her mother. "My name is Minerva McGonagall, I'm a professor of... higher education, for exceptionally unique children. I do hope you're not in a hurry."

     Lily watched her parents eye the scene with confusion, looking between their daughter and her strange friend, and the woman still politely waiting on the other side of the doorway.

     "I'm sorry," her mother addressed the woman, then turned to her daughter, "Do you know these people, Lily?"

     "I do!" she said, then paused and clarified, gesturing to her friend from the summer, "Well, I know this one at least. He's my friend! We met this summer."

     "I see," she turned back to the stranger, Minerva, "Would you be his mother?"

     "I would be a close friend of his mother's. A neighbor, of sorts."

     "All right... please, come inside, it must be freezing!" poor Mrs. Evans was still horribly confused, but retreated back behind a polite mask until she could learn more about the situation.

     While Lily's mother made tea in the kitchen, her father and sister showed the guests further into the living room, where Severus immediately began to braid her hair with focus. Petunia eyed them warily, possibly remembering Severus from finding him under the bridge. She hadn't known that Lily continued seeing him, even spoken to his mother.

     "So, did you say you teach, Miss?" Lily perked up to listen to her father speak with the stranger, Miss McGonagall.

     "I did," she said, and pulled out an envelope from her large cloak. "This is for you, Lily. We can discuss it once your mother joins us."

     And she did, shortly. Once everyone was settled in, the teacher began to speak. Severus stopped braiding Lily's hair.

     "As I mentioned, I am Professor Minerva McGonagall. I am an educator at a school in Scotland, known as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I've been doing this for some time now, and I understand how difficult it is to understand. So, allow me to demonstrate."

     She picked up the saucer from beneath her cup and removed what appeared to be an ornate stick from her cloak. She tapped it against the dish, and the shape morphed quickly. When its transformation was complete, it was no longer a tea saucer, but a stuffed bear! She used the stick, a magic wand of some sort, to levitate the bear towards the family sitting across the room. There were exclamations of surprise as her father grabbed the bear to examine it, both astounded and confused.

     Lily looked to her friend, who seemed neither astounded, nor confused, and shoved the bear in his face.

     "Did you see that? That was amazing!" her excitement gave her friend a smile, but her simply nodded at her words.

     Professor McGonagall took a few steps across the room to retrieve the bear, and with another tap of her wand, it was returned to its original state.

     "I am here today because according to our registry, your Lily can do that and much more," she continued her explanation to the now mystified family.

     "Hogwarts is a boarding school - a 7 year program for young witches and wizards beginning at age eleven that has been tradition among our community for centuries, at which I am the transfiguration professor and Head of Gryffindor House. Most witches and wizards are born to families with one or both parents being magical themselves, but there is the occasional exception. Your Lily is what we would know as a 'muggle-born witch', a witch with two muggle, meaning non-magic, parents. Under these circumstances, we send one of our own staff to speak with families. Every magical child within our jurisdiction is granted automatic acceptance upon their eleventh birthday, which would be today, if we are not mistaken."

     The professor handed Lily her letter with an air of pride. She opened it immediately and showed it to her family. Her parents read over the letter, and looked at one another, each trying to gauge the other's response.

     "I'm... not sure what to say," her father spoke for everyone in the room.

     "I am!," everyone except for Lily, that is. "Mum I have to go. I have a magical destiny! And Sev will go too, right?"

     The professor, initially smiling at her future student's enthusiasm, frowned sympathetically.

     "I'm afraid not, dear. Our law prohibits the use of wands by magical creatures; we aren't able to teach most of our curriculum without one."

     "Oh..." Lily sighed at the same time as she heard her sister yell, "Creatures?!"

     Her parents reacted similarly, though in a more subdued manner. They both turned to the child next to their daughter, and eyed him with suspicion. Severus, feeling the tension directed towards him, leapt from the couch and ran to the Professor, who put a protective arm around him.She soothed him, gently, then turned back to the family.

     "He hasn't had a good history with humans," she explained, "but he is no danger to you. Severus is a siren with a human father, and I brought him along to see his friend. We've been trying to acclimate him, to see if we can get him talking in front of humans.

     "You see, in our world, the magical creatures and the humans are heavily divided. There's a great amount of stigma against these creatures, despite their sentience and intelligence. I hope to change this one day, but that will be a topic for another time."

---

     That time came quite soon for young Lily Evans.

     Ultimately, her parents could hardly refuse their daughter the chance to be part of her own culture, and she was permitted to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In doing so, however, a flame alighted within her as she heard whispers of injustices throughout the halls.

     Lily had been welcomed by Professor McGonagall, now her head of house, to continue her friendship with her siren friend throughout the school year. As it turned out, Severus and his mother lived relatively solitary lives off the shore of Scotland, quite close to the teacher's personal home. Lily was permitted to visit, with her parents' permission, two weekends out of the month to help ease Severus's tension around humans. The idea was that, in time, humans would have a better understanding of their creature counterparts, and the cultures could begin to merge like they apparently had generations ago. Lily was not let in on all of the details, but it seemed that modern humans were quite intent on keeping their lives separate, so she was asked to keep their visits quiet from others.

     As she grew older, more educated, Lily was let into some of the other research being done by Minerva and some of the other professors, and by the end of her fifth year, she had met a young werewolf and seen a nearby veela colony! She had also begun independent research, primarily centered around Severus, with one solo attempt at visiting the veelas leading to a close call with some talons.

     So, she focused closer on her friend, and was fascinated by what she saw. When taking on a human form, his body remained thin and lanky, with few signs of a human-esque puberty taking place. His natural body, however, had begun to change. The small split in his tail that she had noticed years ago had gotten deeper, dividing almost entirely into two separate tails, like his mother's. He also developed what might be something akin to breast tissue, and his hair - which was not really hair, but more akin to a sensory aid, such as whiskers - became thicker, but seemed to carry less weight.

     Severus was very comfortable in her presence, but still didn't do much talking. For this reason, she opted to ask his mother about these changes. Eileen took significantly longer to warm up to Lily, but the more interested she became in their culture, the more she opened up to the young woman.

     "Years ago, I told you that we can't determine the sex of a child until they are further developed," she recalled. Lily nodded her acknowledgement. "This is what you're seeing here.

     "Our bodies aren't like yours; our reproductive organs are primarily internal, and they show no signs until we approach reproductive age. They also aren't binary - it isn't uncommon for our bodies to have two complete sets of functional reproductive organs, or a complete set and a partial set, or any combination. I have only a receptive womb, but it seems my child is developing with a form of combined system. Does your language have words for this?"

     The words "intersex" and "hermaphrodite" both came to mind. She wasn't sure which was more appropriate, as she didn't want to refer to them as animals, but they weren't quite humans either. She settled on nodding the affirmative, and Eileen did not ask her to specify.

     Lily also grew more curious about Severus's human father, and the circumstances that came with that, but that was one topic that Eileen still would not give her any ground on. It reminded her of her progress with the Veelas.

     There werewolf boy was nice enough. His name was Remus, and he had a precarious legal status that allowed him use of a wand, but did not allow him enrollment in school. Werewolves seemed to be a tricky subject, as they were technically classified as creatures, but were most often born to two human parents. Such was the case for Remus, who had been a werewolf for most of his memorable life. Luckily, once he got to know Lily better, he was much more open about his condition, and also offered some insight on the veela colony.

     "They're very anti-human over there," he told her. Lily was surprised - she had figured that the animosity only went one way. "It might be cultural, like a sort of 'traditionalist' perspective. They do well for themselves, and life has been like this for a long time. They're not quite like the rest of us."

     That much was certainly true; in the closest range she had ever gotten to them, she noticed that the veela tended to build and furnish homes that cater to their various elemental abilities.

     Her curiosity had long since been caught by this mysterious world of magical creatures, and by her seventh year, Lily made the decision to dedicate her life's work to them.