honey & wildfire

the evans family, circa 1960 — practically perfect in every way. xavier evans was rising in the ranks of his job as a bank teller; petunia evans had recently learned how to walk and spent most of her time prancing around the small cokeworth estate; and annabelle evans had just given birth to the most beautiful baby girl, lily. nothing here could possibly go wrong.

and for the longest time, nothing did. little lily grew up in a household full of smiles, forming a particularly strong bond with her older sister and learning to love only in the largest of doses. for five years, the evans family were so picture perfect you might have even thought it fake, but no amount of love could ever be pretend with this small bunch - they simply knew that happiness was around every corner and chased it with all the childlike optimism the world had to offer.

it was once lily turned five that things took a turn for the worse. the little toddlers happiness and excitement could no longer be contained in such a small body and so instead decided to lash out on the house. beds floating, cats hurtling across the room, the bushes out the front blooming with red in the middle of winter. the simple and mundane had suddenly become anything but - lily jane evans was a witch.

but of course, that wouldn’t be explained for at least another three years. from the ages of five to eight, xavier and annabelle liked to believe that it was miracles that followed their beautiful baby girl. petunia, however, was not so forgiving. she feared for what her freak of a sister was capable of, but for the most part, she kept her fears to herself. her sister was still her sister, after all, and she would still try her best to love her as before.

it was in the summer of 1968 that lily first met severus snape - an odd little boy from the bad side of town, as petunia liked to call him. lily simply preferred to call him her best friend. lily and severus got on like a house on fire for the simple fact that severus seemed to be the only one who truly understood her. it was severus that first explained to lily what she truly was, and lily wholeheartedly believed him. petunia, of course, was furious for how the greasy little boy drove a wedge between her and her sister and was even more horrified to learn of what he was telling her - no one could do magic. not really. lily and severus were simple freaks.

the first time petunia called lily a freak, lily cried herself to sleep. what could possibly drive her sister, one of her closest friends, to say such a thing? she wasn’t lying. she really could do magic, and it was beautiful. and yet petunia refused to believe it, and for that, lily was devastated. all she wanted was to share her gifts with her sister and instead her gifts were exactly what drove them apart.

lily always lived to regret how she handled this gradual separation. her fervent heart turned quickly from love to anger, furious that petunia refused to share this gift with her, but of course she should’ve realised that it was still enough to love without magic getting in the way. she feels as though she shoved her magic in her sisters face and that is why petunia hates her, and if she could go back in time and pretend magic was nothing all for the sake of the sister, perhaps she would.

when a strange owl dropped a letter on the evans’ front door step explaining that magic really was real, lily couldn’t really say she was surprised. after all, sev had told her this day would come. she was over and done with the surprise and confusion and was now able to be wholly and completely ecstatic for her start at school.

what she didn’t expect, however, was to be torn away from her best friend on the first day. severus had explained the house system to her before, and she’d always wished to be in the house of the ferocious lions, she just hadn’t realised how polarising it would be to be a lion and to love a snake. for a while, she was seen once again as a freak, this time by her peers, and this time for many reasons: one, for fraternizing with the enemy, and two, for being a muggleborn.

just as when she had been called a freak the first time, lily cried when she was first called a mudblood. where had she gone wrong? severus had described hogwarts as somewhere magical, somewhere inviting, a home away from home, and yet here she was just as equally criticized, ostracized, and bullied as back at cokeworth. severus ended up being her only friend for months as she tried to find a way to fit in, and a part of her almost resented him for that.

but of course, lily jane evans is not just going to sit back and accept a terrible fate. lily jane evans is a fighter, first and foremost. lily jane evans fought tooth and nail to be accepted within hogwarts, to be loved and, most of all, to be respected. and it didn’t take long for this to come true. lily was bright and cheery and had all the boisterous enthusiasm of her housemates, and for that reason she finally found friends outside of severus.

slowly, these friends became her best. they surpassed that of her sister, that of severus, and became her main priority. severus was not forgotten, of course, though perhaps he liked to act like he was. lily tried to keep their friendship alight for the first few years, but it was far too clear in this context that lily evans and severus snape were from two different worlds - they didn’t fit. they drifted and drifted until fifth year came - and everything came crashing down.

hearing severus call her a mudblood was not just heartbreaking, it was blood boiling. lily thought that she could trust this boy, this friend who had been there for her since she was eight, but that clearly wasn’t the case. he was done with her, and she was more than done with him.

after this incident, lily became a lot less trusting of people’s intentions. there was a tension bubbling in this exciting and mystical world she was now a part of and some people were always going to be on the wrong side - and she might not even know it. and so she was cautious, she chose her friends carefully, she learned how to let go. things were only going to get tougher.

proving herself tough and intelligent and a true leader at hogwarts, lily has been awarded the title of head girl in her last year, a role she takes very seriously despite some of her misdemeanours in previous years (punching someone for calling you a mudblood shouldn’t give you detention, anyway). she pushes herself hard in her final year, some would say to the brink, but she has a purpose now - the tensions are boiling over and she is about to be thrust into the real world, where life is no longer so protected...

MISCELLANEOUS

lily has a very black and white way of looking at the world. to her, there is good and there is bad, and you choose which one you are. a good example of this is what happened with severus - for the whole time she’d known him, lily had thought severus to be a good person, no matter his house or his limited supply of friends. he might’ve been odd but he was good, but the moment he called her a mudblood, something in her switched, and severus was bad. she went from trying to talk to him every day to never talking to him again, from viewing him as her best friend even in the toughest of situations to her worst enemy. lily feels everything very strongly (love, hate, anger etc.) and this only feeds this somewhat toxic way of thinking. basically - don’t cross lily. she will write you off in a second.

the only exception to this rule is petunia dursley - push and push and push enough and lily understands that petunia is not wholly good, but she cannot bring herself to say her sister is wholly bad either. lily wasn’t invited to her sisters wedding, she hasn’t even so much as met vernon yet because petunia refuses to see her, and yet still lily would drop everything if it meant she could spend the day with her sister. it’s very complicated. yikes!

another note: lily starts to move away from this type of thinking when she gets closer to james and realises that maybe her impressions of people are wrong but... we have to wait and see that one out, don’t we!

lily loves baking. no, she is not good at it.