Jily | I Can't Love Him

Prologue

Severus Snape was a skinny boy. His black hair was overlong, and his clothes—though they were his best—were so mismatched that it looked deliberate: too-short jeans, a shabby, overlarge coat that might've belonged to a grown man, an odd smock-like shirt. He looked no more than nine or ten years old, sallow, small, stringy.

He was slightly hunched, standing next to a thin, sallow-faced, sour-looking woman who greatly resembled him. He stared at a family of four a short distance away. The two daughters stood a little apart from their parents. The younger of the two girls pleaded with her sister.

"...I'm sorry, Tuney, I'm sorry! Listen—" She caught her sister's hand and held tight to it, even though Petunia tried to pull it away. "Maybe once I'm there—no, listen, Tuney! Maybe once I'm there, I'll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!"

"Lily, I don't—want—to—go!" said Petunia, and she dragged her hand back out of her sister's grasp. "You think I want to go to some stupid castle and learn to be a-a—"

Her pale eyes roved over the platform, over the cats meowling in their owner's arms, over the owls fluttering and hooting at each other in cages, over the students, some already in their long, black robes, loading trunks on to the scarlet steam engine or else greeting one another with glad cries after a summer apart.

"—you think I want to be a-a freak?"

Lily's bright green eyes filled with tears.

"I'm not a freak," said Lily. "That's a horrible thing to say."

"That's where you're going," said Petunia with relish. "A special school for freaks. You and that Snape boy...weirdos, that's what you two are. It's good you're being separated from normal people. It's for our safety."

Lily glanced towards her parents, who were looking around the platform with an air of wholehearted enjoyment, drinking in the scene. Then she looked back at her sister, and her voice was low and fierce.

"You didn't think it was such a freak's school when you wrote to the Headmaster and begged him to take you."

Petunia turned scarlet.

"Beg? I didn't beg!"

"I saw his reply. It was very kind."

"You shouldn't have read—" whispered Petunia. "That was my private...how could you?"

Lily gave herself away by half glancing towards where Severus stood, nearby. Petunia gasped.

"That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking into my room!"

"No, not sneaking..." Now Lily was on the defensive. "We were playing hide and seek. Severus saw the envelope, and he couldn't believe a Muggle could have contacted Hogwarts, that's all! He said there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of—"

"Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!" said Petunia, now as pale as much as flushed. "Freak!" she spat at her sister, and she flounced off to where her parents stood.

After quickly exchanging goodbye's with her parents, and a final glance at her sister, Lily took to boarding the train alone, leaving Severus on the platform. The first few carriages were already packed with students; some were hanging out the window to talk to their families, others fighting over seats. Lily kept on going down the platform and found an empty compartment near the end of the train. She started to shove and heave her trunk towards the train door. She tried to lift it up the steps but could barely raise one end, once she almost dropped it on her foot.

"Need a hand?"

Lily looked up to see a boy no older than herself, with faint scars that ran across his pale face.