It was a game we played – a weird, twisted, completely random game – but a game, nonetheless.

It wasn't, "Evans, will you go out with me?" it was, "My dearest and most wonderful Lily Ann, will you do me the honor of accompanying me to Hogsmeade this weekend?" or something of the sort, and nothing any less fancy. It wasn't, "Evans, watch out – Snivelly tends to hang out around the wrong people," it was, "Listen – I don't trust Snape. You do, but I don't. Just… be careful, Lily, okay?"

I always loved it when he called me Flower – anybody else would call me Lily-Flower, or Tiger Lily, but he just made it Flower, and it was beautiful… like his eyes.

His eyes always made it so hard for me to stay mad at him. I would scream, "POTTER!" at the top of my lungs – and it would always be "Potter" because it's a lot easier to enunciate inject frustration into every syllable than "James" – whenever he dyed my hair purple, but on the inside, I was laughing so hard I could hardly breathe. He told me about times when he could've sworn he saw me smiling while I was yelling at him, and I would laugh for real, and his eyes would sparkle as though all of his dreams had come true.

Those eyes held so much emotion, all the time – mischief, happiness, love, and sometimes – times I feel guilty and sympathetic about – disappointment, regret, anger. They were such a unique color, too. He always said they were hazel, but I don't think so. They were this sort of really light brown, with the kind of brown that hazel eyes have. They were completely hazel around the edges, and really dark brown just around his pupil.

He always said how amazing my eyes were. I never believed him, though, no matter how many times he or anybody else would tell me. Even Sirius and Remus and Peter and Frank would say that, when they pretended to flirt with me, and I know Alice and Mary and Marlene all thought so, too. They were jealous – not that I'm being arrogant, like he used to be. They told me so.

They told me a lot of things – "James isn't that bad! You should give him a chance!"; "He really cares about you, you know."; "He loves you. You love him. You know it, Lily, don't deny it." – but I never really minded when they told me how stupid they thought our game was. I knew it was stupid, and I loved every minute of it.

The rules to our game were made up as we went along. We never told each other when we made a new rule, either, but we always knew. It was some sort of connection that we shared, and once we created it, when we started playing the game at the very end of first year, it strengthened more and more and more, and it never broke.

Usually, we would call each other Lily or James, and then eventually Flower or Prongs, although the latter was more in mocking than anything else. Then there were the times when one of us would absentmindedly say Evans or Potter – "Hey, Evans" – and then it would have to be, "Hi, Potter," for the rest of the day, or even the week. Whoever reverted back to first names first lost, and the winner would say, "You owe me one." We never did set a price – until the beginning of seventh year.

We paid for every time we lost in kisses – on the head, on the nose, on the cheek, on the lips – until we started to lose on purpose. Our game was altered when our Hogwarts days ended, and on our last day at the castle, before we headed down to Hogsmeade station, he knelt down on one knee and told me how he knew we hadn't even been dating for a year, but he wanted to be with me the rest of his life, even if it ended the next day. It went on in that fashion, stuttering and blushing, and I shrieked and tackled him while Remus, the sneak, snapped a picture of us ("For future blackmail," he said, but I knew he just wanted to capture the moment).

It was amazing that we were both suddenly Potter. Lily Potter… it sounded so right, it felt so right. I loved him so much for gifting me that rightness, and I showed him that love.

Harry was an accident, but he was the best accident that ever happened to us. We both knew we were too young, and never in my life had I been so glad to have met Hestia Jones. She was like the older sister that Petunia never was. She had to take care of two younger brothers and a sister without her dad, and was more than used to her mum being pregnant. She helped me learn what to expect. I owed her my sanity.

We were no longer Lily and James Potter. We were the Potters. We were a real family.

Our game changed and grew and reformed, and it gave us each other, and it gave us Harry. It gave us our family.