Her Father's Hair | By : ladyemmelinethethird Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > General Views: 13536 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter fandom and make no money off this work. |
By the time she was eating her first breakfast at Hogwarts, Lily Dorea Potter had heard everything about how much she resembled her dead parents. “She looks just like her mother… but with her father’s hair.”
At eleven years old, scrawny but with a face that everyone agreed would grow up to make her beautiful, Lily was already expected to be many things. She did not think she would ever be a great witch, or as beautiful as everyone said her mother had been. She figured the “great witch” title would go to her first friend at Hogwarts, a Muggle-born girl named Hermione Granger, and privately thought Hermione was already beautiful, not despite her scraggly hair and crooked teeth but because of them.
She actually tried to be a good student, shaking off her Potions teachers’ comment of “Lily Potter. The Girl Who Lived. How wonderful for you to grace us with your presence,” and taking notes anyway. She didn’t know what Snape’s problem was with her — she had done nothing to make him think she would be entitled or rude.
When he noticed her writing notes instead of watching him attentively (apparently that was enough he needed to decide she was a brat) he started firing questions at her that she couldn’t possibly know the answer to. At the final one, she finally got her confidence up.
“Sir, I was taking notes,” she muttered, blushing and pushing up her notebook so he could see she was writing.
“Oh.” At that, Snape was appropriately embarrassed. “Well then, Potter, I assume you will look up the answers tonight — as will all of you. Let’s see if you first years have the basic skills necessary to find answers in a textbook,” Professor Snape said, returning to the board and flicking the answers up that the students would find.
Lily saw the boy from Slytherin who had commented that she shouldn’t consort with Muggleborns unless she wanted people thinking she loved Muggles herself glaring at her. Well, it wasn’t her fault Snape had assigned homework to the class, and it was a perfectly reasonable first assignment for that matter.
“What’s with the Potions teacher just assuming I’m going to be a brat?” Lily asked Hermione as they filed out of the classroom in the dungeons.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hermione sighed. “I think some people just think you’re going to act all rude because you’re pretty much the most famous witch in Great Britain at this point.”
“Yeah, well if I ever had any of that attitude, Dumbledore made sure the Dursleys beat it out of me,” Lily muttered under her breath, causing Hermione to turn to her and ask “what?”
“Nothing…” She sighed. She didn’t want to talk about something extreme to Hermione so soon, and besides, it was a little embarrassing the sheer amount of abuse she’d experienced at the hands of the Dursleys.
The other teachers were definitely nicer than the Potions Master, even if one of them was a ghost who practically made Lily fall asleep within the first ten minutes of his class by droning on and on about the syllabus.
It became clear how exceptional Lily’s experience at Hogwarts would be, for better or for worse, when at dinnertime an owl came swooping down to the Gryffindor table and perched itself briefly on Lily’s shoulder before dropping a letter into her hands.
“Blimey, mail at dinner time? Don’t get that often, ‘specially not first years,” Ron Weasley observed in between bites of his drumstick.
Lily turned the letter over in her hands. Miss Lily Dorea Potter, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She took a moment to admire the fact that she was a witch now before tearing into the letter, hoping it wasn’t too private.
She unfurled the letter, which was written in neat penmanship and signed at the bottom by Remus J. Lupin — someone Lily didn’t know.
Dear Miss Potter,
Allow myself to introduce myself. My name is Remus Lupin, and I was one of your father’s best friends while attending Hogwarts, and afterward. I am also related to you by marriage, being the husband of one of your distant cousins from the Black family — Nymphadora Tonks.
The reason for my letter is that I believed certain circumstances were in play, and now they have changed. This morning, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore informed me he would not be taking personal control over your education, as he had initially planned, and you would be studying with the other children your age. I personally think this is a reasonable choice — you should have been showed your world before age 11 — although I do have some reservations about one of your teachers, hence my owl.
His name is Severus Snape, and he is the Potions Master. To most students, he is an obnoxious, slimy git — although if you say that, he’ll be sure to give you a week of detentions. To you, however, and to me as a friend of your late mother and father, he is something different. He was friends with your mother when she was young, and when she got older he joined a gang of students who would eventually follow Voldemort, and began to hold prejudiced ideals about Muggle-born witches and wizards. Despite this, he was still possessive of Lily, and obsessed with her surviving the war and ending up with him. I’m sure you have already been told by many people that you are like your mother with your father’s hair, and I would encourage you to be wary of him. Many people, including Dumbledore, believe he has changed since his Hogwarts days, but I do not.
If you have any questions about anything in this letter, or really anything about the wizarding world, feel free to Owl me or my wife. We would be more than happy to help you out, as it seems you have been placed into this world with barely any information and abandoned by the person who claimed he would help you.
~ Remus J. Lupin
Lily put the letter down and stared at it. Well, that wasn’t odd at all. “I guess I know why Snape acted all weirdly towards me this morning, now,” she told Hermione, pointing to the section about the Potion Master’s obsession with her mother.
“Well, that is certainly… a letter full of information,” Hermione answered, trying not to reveal her confusion at everything in the letter.
“Well, I think I need to talk to Dumbledore,” Lily said, sitting up and stuffing the letter in her robes.
“I don’t think you should tell him about everything in the letter!” Hermione protested.
“I’m not an idiot, Hermione,” Lily said with a roll of her eyes. “I’m just confused… seems like he wants to keep me as isolated from knowledge of the Wizarding World as possible. And if I have distant cousins, why didn’t he place me with them?”
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