A/n: This is a story about love. Of all kinds. It follows Lily, James and Snape through first year, to graduation and beyond, through heartache, laughter, adventure and war. From troublesome puberty to career decisions. Through their first kisses to their last. From the first defiance of Voldemort to the third.

I hope you enjoy it.

The Hogwarts Express
First Year

X

There is no one left in the entire world that knows the whole story of Lily and James Potter. Sirius fell through the Veil, Remus died beside his wife and Peter is better left unmentioned. And no one ever really knew the end. How James was immediately disarmed, but that didn't stop him from trying to punch Lord Voldemort right in the face. Or that Lily knew what she was doing and invoked the old magiks that kept her son safe.

No one tells Harry Potter how much his parents loved each other. No one thought to reassure him of that. He never got the chance to be grossed out by their kisses at the dinner table the way the Weasley children were, or found out if they held hands under the table when they thought no one could see, like Lupin and Tonks.

After viewing Snape's memories Harry begins to wonder how his mother ever could have loved the man he saw in his memories.

X

'But she hated him!'

'Nah, she didn't.'

X

James fell in love with Lily Evans on September 1st, his first year at Hogwarts. But he was 11, so he didn't quite know that yet.

The train tooted and students around him chattered. James was attempting to find a compartment that wasn't full when the train had suddenly lurched into motion and he- who hadn't yet grown into his tall, gangly body and developed hand-eye coordination- went flying forwards, taking who he would learn were Lily Evans and Severus Snape down with him.

He collided with an unknown entity and found himself face down on something firm but soft. For a moment he forgot himself and simply remained there, frozen in place.

"Ahem," someone coughed, sounding like they were trying very hard not to laugh.

He scrambled up, and found himself looking through cracked lenses at a cherry red, very horrified looking black haired boy and a sniggering red headed girl.

He spluttered unintelligible excuses and tried to turn on his heel and leave with something resembling a sense of dignity. Unfortunately the cracked lenses of his spectacles left him almost blind and off-kilter. He tripped once again on his robes and fell sideways through an open door and into an empty compartment.

Worst. Day. Ever. He thought to himself and wished wholeheartedly that the floor would swallow him whole and he could escape the boy's embarrassed glares and the girl's stifled giggles.

"Here," she said kindly, smothering any residual laughter. She came closer and pulled out her wand. "I'm Lily. Let me help you with those." Lily kneeled beside him, muttered 'Reparo' and smiled. "All better now?"

James stared at her in awestruck amazement. He felt his palms burning red-hot and his mouth go dry. He swallowed. "Thanks."

"You're very welcome. Come on, would you like to sit with us? I think everywhere else was full."

James spent the rest of the trip having heart palpitations and alternating back and forth between gazing adoringly at Lily and having a staring match with Snape. The latter kept turning red in embarrassment and folding in on himself until James looked away again.

Soon the topic of Sorting came up, "You want to be in Gryffindor," he claimed, "Best house, my mum and dad were both in it. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw are ok too I guess," Although he ceded this reluctantly.

"Mum says there's four," interrupted Severus.

"Ya," James conceded again, "but no one decent wants to be in Slytherin, every dark wizard that's ever lived was one of their lot."

"But-!" But Snape was then interrupted by Lily, who launched into an interrogation unlike anything James had ever experienced before at the hands of anyone other than an adult who knew he'd done something wrong.

The moment soon came when the Hogwarts Express pulled into the station at Hogsmeade and Lily stopped her unrelenting barrage of questions about Sorting and Magic and Quidditch. Especially Quidditch. She loved asking him about it and he loved talking about it.

It annoyed him a little that she always tried to include the introverted Severus in the conversation, but it didn't matter much. The other boy didn't volunteer a lot of information.

"We're really here," she said wonderingly. He tried to look at it from her perspective; being a muggle-born, this must seem so- for lack of a better adjective –magical.

Severus smiled for the first time the whole trip. "Look out the window Lily."

They all did.

From their vantage point, the spires in the distance towered upupup and the majestic beauty of its sheer largeness filled something inside them that only destiny can touch. The effervescent golden lights twinkled like stars gathered from the sky and tossed onto the canvas of a medieval painting. Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry was the most breathtaking thing they'd ever seen.

It would be the home they'd always think of when the word comes to mind.

"Come on!" she exclaimed excitedly, grabbing each of the boys by the hand and dashing for the steps off the train.

"Firs' years!" A booming voice called above the crowd of students milling about. "Firs' years over here!" An enormous man in a thick moleskin coat beckoned to the smallest of the children, offering the most welcoming of smiles through his wiry black beard.

"A'right you lot, follow me now! Wer takin' a diff'ren' way."

The trio, led by Lily, who still had her hands –which were damp from sweat –clutching theirs, followed the giant through the crowd and down a long, winding road.

Eventually they arrived at a lake. There, moored to a rickety dock, were a dozen or so boats.

This time it was James who excitedly pulled the others along with him. They were the first to claim a boat.

Animatedly, James lectured the two of them on the history of the first year traditions and how the older students were getting to the castle. Severus pretended he wasn't listening, but James knew that he was.

x-x-x

James held his breath as Deputy-Headmaster Worcester placed the Sorting Hat upon his head. He had always been told that the hat thinks out loud, that he'd deliberate, that he could discuss it with the animate object. It was silent for 20 seconds and then—

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Loud applause from the crimson draped table at the far end. Excitedly, he dashed towards the cheers and took a seat right across from Lily, who grinned at him hugely.

Two other Gryffindors were sorted. A few Hufflepuffs, some Ravenclaws, and four Slytherins.

Finally, Severus' name was called. He walked up to the stool with hesitant steps, as if to the beat of a death march. The hat decided quicker for him than anyone else. It has barely touched one greasy lock of hair when it shouted what sounded like a death knell to James. "SLYTHERIN!"

x-x-x

After the feast James let Lily talk his ear off as they followed the prefects and made their way up winding staircases to Gryffindor tower.

"Pollywaddle." The ginger-haired girl leading them said as they stopped at a large portrait.

Lily jumped and grabbed his sleeve when suddenly the pink swathed lady in the picture moved. She gestured theatrically with her right arm and the frame swung outward, revealing a wide arch. The redhead and the boy prefect led them through it.

"This is the common room. Upstairs to the right is the girls' dormitories, to the left is the boys'. Weasley will take the girls up to their room; I'll take the boys. C'mon."

Lily and James glanced at each other then went their separate ways.

James smiled at Peter Pettigrew, who he knew vaguely and ever the friendly one, introduced himself loudly and jubilantly to his other dorm mates.

Remus Lupin, Sirius Black and Harley Gibbon.

And so, it began.

x-x-x

It had been an awful morning.

She had tried to sit next to Sev at breakfast, much to the consternation and apparent disgust of the other Slytherins. He hadn't been able to meet her eyes. He just slumped down in his seat and stared at his plate. Her heart-struck disappointment was put to the soundtrack of Avery and Malfoy's sniggers.

"Fine," she'd said, as if she cared more for the essence of toad on the bottom of her shoe and stomped away.

She cornered and confronted him on the staircase later. The confrontation was their first fight since the time when he'd hurt Petunia and Lily had attempted to turn on her heel and stomp off with all the pompous, self-righteous nerve she could muster. Instead she'd managed to get stuck in the sinking step and fall over, fracturing her tibia.

Sev didn't even turn around.

Alice, a second year, and her boyfriend, a third year named Frank helped the sobbing 11-year-old to the hospital wing.

She smiled sheepishly through her tears at the middle-aged doctor who greeted the group with a stern look. Explaining her clumsiness was mortifying, especially in front of the two older students, but Monsieur Pomfrey didn't scold her or roll his eyes or anything. He just rolled up his sleeves and withdrew his wand.

In order to understand the magnitude of what happened next, one must first understand Lily Evans.

She had known she was different since before she discovered her magic.

She had never been particularly unpopular. She had her friends. But she'd always felt apart from them. She always felt like she was staring at them from afar, through the lens of a fogged up telescope.

The moment Severus told her what she was, every day little pieces of her began to accumulate in wounds she'd never known were there, wounds that had been there so long that she felt their absence more than their existence. Her abrasions slowly scabbed over with the bits she found.

On her second day of Hogwarts, that final lesion was sealed shut.

When Monsieur Pomfrey had mended her broken leg with a flick of his wand and alleviated the pain with a drought he'd brewed right in front of her, something suddenly clicked. Something magical had fallen into place inside her and she'd just known.

Of course, like so many others in the years to follow, James had ruined that moment of utter clarity for her.

The tingling feeling of the drought working had just reached the very tips of her toes when the doors to the hospital wing had opened with a bang and in sauntered James with a bloody lip and a grin. As well as Severus, bloody-nosed and inversely angry. Both were on the arm of a bright purple-faced Professor McGonagall, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

"What in Merlin's name did you boys do?" Monsieur Pomfrey demanded with the longsuffering air of a man used to dealing with ruffians and the proud countenance of an authority figure.

"Merely defended a lovely lady's honor," James with no remorse even as Snape gawped at him in abject disbelief. Potter winked at her and grinned wider than before.

"Well if it's to defend a lady's honor…" the healer trailed off. "I suppose exceptions can be made then."

"Really?" James asked in surprise.

"No. Ten points from Gryffindor."

Lily would remember the expression of utter horror that smacked across his face until the day she died.

All this was beside the point; Lily, who had never quite been a part of her parents' and sister's world had found her place somewhere. She'd just witnessed the mending of bones in a snap. It was the first bit of true fantasy she had experienced. Magic was a world of possibility and knowledge yet to find scope in her mind. Lily had found Hogwarts. Lily found a place where she belonged long before she ever knew that that was what she was looking for.

Lily decided, right then and there, that she would become a healer.

That was the point.

x-x-x

"Oh bugger," groaned James as he tripped over the doorjamb and was sent careening into the middle aisle of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. He tensed for impact but his fall was never broken. Instead he glanced up to find Minerva McGonagall's face creased in bemusement, wand drawn, levitating him.

"Cool," a boy in the back row with shoulder length black hair exclaimed.

"Indeed Mr. Black, very cool," the professor quirked an eyebrow and set James on his feet. "You're late Mr. Potter. Stay after class."

"But Au-!"

"I think you've caused enough trouble for one morning, don't you think?"

They didn't learn much in the hour-long class; it was more like a summary of what would be to come during the following year.

After class he approached McGonagall's desk hesitantly.

"What the hell Aunt Minnie?" he whined.

She cleared her throat and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Don't swear, Jamie"

Minerva was his godmother and had gone to school with his parents and had been a constant fixture in his life since birth. He didn't like her calling him 'Jamie' since he'd received his acceptance letter but he liked 'Mr. Potter' even less.

"I can't favor you here. We talked about this. Inside of Hogwarts I am your teacher," she smiled, "Not the loving aunt who got to spoil you from the get-go."

"Fine." He grumbled.

"Detention tonight sounds fair."

"No it doesn't!"

x-x-x

Detention wasn't so bad.

The boy named Black from the back of the class helped him climb out the fourth story window and onto a broom.

McGonagall caught them, obviously, and made them do lines.

x-x-x

It took Severus a week to muster up the courage to apologize to Lily.

This was mostly because during that time she was always with other Gryffindors. The only solace he found was in her distinct avoidance of Potter.

He wasn't entirely sure what it was about James Potter that bothered him so, but he was ever so sure that it was his fault.

He did deserve the beating the other boy had given him though.

Severus said none of this to Lily of course, but he groveled and wheedled with fervency the likes of which he hadn't done since he lost control of his magic on Petunia.

Of course she forgave him quickly, she always did.

"I'll never act that way again," he promised.

"Why did you in the first place?"

Because he just wanted to fit in; he wanted to belong, he wanted friends, he wanted for Hogwarts to mean finally being a part of something.

Because Slytherins weren't supposed to be friends with Gryffindors, let alone mudbloods. (Which he'd never say to her face of course).

Because he couldn't bear the thought of proving his father right about him.

Because he wanted to succeed, and to do that you need contacts. The only contacts he could ever make wouldn't even breathe in his direction as long as Lily was between them.

"Because I was being stupid."

His decision was made.

x-x-x

"A perfect brew as always, Ms. Evans!" Professor Slughorn clapped his hands giddily as he praised his favorite student. She smiled shyly and cast a sideways glance at Severus, who was sitting one desk over and whose potion's qualities were just as specific as her own.

"Thank you professor," she replied so as not to be rude. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her friend's head whip back around and his nose bury itself into the textbook once again.

"I hope you are planning on going into a profession involving potions, my dear!"

I wish you would stop singling me out and embarrassing me in front of everyone.

"You have quite the talent for it!"

Please shut up.

From across the room James and Sirius, whose potion was a bubbling, goopy mess gave her enthusiastic thumbs up and stuck their tongues out at Sev. She sighed, rolled her eyes and buried her face into her folded arms to hide her burning cheeks.

x-x-x

On the morning of the first Quidditch match of the year, the Gryffindor common room was alight with chatter and excitement. Frank regaled Alice and Lily with tales of his first game. He was the Gryffindor Keeper. Being a third year, this was only his first year on the team, but his enthusiasm and careful boasts were neither obnoxious nor annoying. She loved the fervor with which the usually soft-spoken Frank spoke about his favorite sport.

Frank went down to the pitch early and she and Alice went down together a little later. She spotted Sev on the way down and gestured wildly for him to come over. He hesitated a moment before approaching the two girls. He didn't miss Alice straining on her smile, but Lily did. He sighed and pretended he hadn't seen. "Come sit with us," her invitation was kind, she had no way of knowing that everyone sat with his or her house. That a Slytherin would be unwelcome did not occur to her.

Severus sat through the entire game with dozens of eyes searing him with their stares and Lily apologizing and promising that next time they could sit with the Slytherins. "They would be even worse." He told her and turned his attention back to the flying boys and girls gilded in red and blue uniforms. He suffered through the gawkers and didn't complain.

x-x-x

Christmas came and went. Lily had gone home. Severus had not. James dragged Sirius home with him.

On Christmas morning James woke up to a pile of presents, some from friends, some from his parents. Sirius received just as much, including an adorable drawing made by his baby cousin Dori.

At the very bottom of his pile James found a red box, in it were a pair of socks and gloves, as well as a scarf and a hat. The note read: 'They're charmed to heat up your fingers but not melt snowballs. And the hat won't mess up your hair. Happy Christmas! Best, Lily.'

"I was supposed to get her a present?!"

X

It was April and the snow has already begun to melt when he handed her a scarf. It was messy, and warped, bright green and one side had fringes while the other didn't.

"Thank you?" she said uncertainly.

"I asked my neighbor to teach me," he explained, "She's a squib."

She smiled brightly and effused more genuinely this time: "Thank you."