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            Mr and Mrs Potter, of Potter’s Cottage, Godric’s Hollow, were rather unusual, even by wizarding standards.  They were exactly the sort of people one would expect to be involved in something strange and mysterious, mostly because they had never shied away from anything of the sort – more often than not, they would be the ones behind it.

            Mr Potter was a wizard of no small talent, with a particular interest in transfiguration.  He was a man who had yet to grow out of his boyish charm, with untidy black hair and a crooked smile that evoked an air of mischief.  Mrs Potter was a brilliant young witch, with fierce red hair and vibrant green eyes, possessing an undeniable inclination towards charms.  They were young and happily in love, even when the shadow of war hanging over their heads forced them to go into hiding.

            The Potters were undeniably a strange family, but by far the strangest thing about them was their young daughter, Lily, as so named in honor of her mother.  Lily, unknown to everyone except herself, was not supposed to exist.  Indeed, in another world, there would exist a young boy named Harry Potter, son of Lily and James Potter, born on July 31, 1980, in Godric’s Hollow.  His parents would be tragically murdered by Voldemort on Halloween, leaving poor Harry an orphan, and he would go on to be known as the Boy Who Lived.  His story would last seven books, eight movies, multiple videogames and other spin-offs, gathering a ridiculously large and devoted fanbase, and ultimately culminate in his victory against Lord Voldemort in the Battle of Hogwarts, followed by a short epilogue.

            This was not that story, largely due to the fact that Harry Potter did not exist.  This surprising fact was actually quite easily explained through the conventions of modern science and analytical statistics: the odds of any specific individual coming into existence is one in four – four quadrillion, that is.  For Harry Potter – the one we know, at least – to be born, one very specific egg would have to come into contact with one very specific sperm.  Keeping that in mind, it is actually far more believable for any other individual except Harry to have been born – like our titular protagonist, for instance.

            It is unknown what, exactly, kept Harry Potter from being conceived in place of Lily Potter, but with odds of 1 in 4,000,000,000,000,000, one must keep in mind the true scope of the Butterfly Effect.  Perhaps, in one world, Harry’s parents went on a very romantic date at a newly opened restaurant and came home in the mood to do the horizontal tango, thus giving our dear Harry the chance to be born.  In this world, perhaps a stray hair fell from a chef’s hairnet, causing him to sneeze; the sneeze causes the chef’s hand to slip while chopping vegetables and he cuts his finger open; the chef has to go to the hospital to get stitches, leaving a new, inexperienced chef in charge of preparing the food; the new chef is frazzled by the dinner rush-hour, and ends up undercooking the chicken; the undercooked chicken gives poor Mr Potter, who was treating his wife to dinner for their anniversary, food poisoning; Mr and Mrs Potter are forced to go home early to fetch some potions for nausea, ruining the romantic mood and dousing the chance for any funny business beneath the sheets until some days later.

            But that is merely a whimsical hypothesis, the truth of which is unprovable by mortal means.

            Truthfully, with the added requirement of one’s parents to meet and be attracted to one another, and their parents before them, back and back through the ages, it is quite a miracle for anyone to exist exactly as they are now.  But Lily is not so strange merely for the state of her existence, but for the manner of it.  As mentioned above, everyone was quite overjoyed at the birth of a lovely baby girl, except for Lily herself, who was quite put out by it.

            Lily was not always Lily, you see.  Before she was Lily, she was a young woman who quite enjoyed reading the Harry Potter book series, among other things.  It was a tragic event that led Not-Yet-Lily to becoming Lily-the-Younger on that fateful day of July 31, 1980.  Now, that all would have been quite fine, if only she didn’t remember any of it.  Unfortunately, that was not the case for our dear Lily, and she was burdened with the knowledge of her glorious purpose.

            So, all in all, the Potters were quite a strange family, with an even stranger daughter, but they were quite happy despite that.  The Potters, as first-time parents, did not think overmuch of their daughter’s strange behavior; as far as Mr and Mrs Potter were concerned, they had a darling little girl who was a bit above average, but otherwise perfectly normal.  If she seemed unusually terrified of a full bathtub, well, there were plenty of young children who hated bath-time, and it was easy enough to work around.  The Potters cooed when she fawned over Sirius and Remus, and laughed when she hit Peter while screaming “Bad rat!  Bad rat!” – although, due to her age, it came out more like “Baa raah!  Baa raah!” and only caused more hilarity.

            It is quite unfortunate that she was unable to clearly convey her warning to her parents, because it perhaps could have prevented the tragedy of Halloween night, one year later.  Poor James and Lily were busy trying to sooth their one-year-old’s terror, who was particularly inconsolable, when the wards announced an intruder.

            You know how the rest goes, don’t you?

            Voldemort stepped over the still warm corpse of little Lily’s mother and father, and pointed his wand at the helpless infant.  Little Lily had stopped crying, even as her mother and father were murdered in front of her, and stared at the Dark Lord with uncomfortably clear eyes.

            Only two individuals would know for sure what happened that night, and no one left to wonder would ever guess that Lily smiled at the man who was once Tom Riddle as he cast the killing curse at her, sealing his own fate.

            Lily waited for the arrival of Hagrid, who came amid the bustle of the crowd below, wondering at the sudden explosion.  She received him lukewarmly as she was taken from the crib and cradled gently in his massive arms.  If he wondered at her inability to cry, he did not voice it in-between his own racking sobs.

            Sirius arrived, cursing, as Hagrid wiped the blood from her brow with a handkerchief twice the size of her face.  She reached out to him babbling “Siwius,” and making grasping hands, but Hagrid refused to hand her over, citing Dumbledore’s orders.  All complaints went unacknowledged beyond Sirius apologizing and lending Hagrid his flying motorbike.  “Pafoo,” she tried, scrunching up her face like she was crying, but it was useless.

            There are not many things a one-year-old can do to control their own narrative, and even if she had managed to get her point across, there are few adults who would take her seriously.  And so, despite all her futile efforts, Lily was left to the whims of fate and Dumbledore’s machinations.

            The twenty-four-hour journey from Godric’s Hollow to Little Whinging sapped her of her energy and – much like Harry – she fell asleep over Bristol, not destined to wake until Petunia’s shrill scream the next morning, when she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles and instead found a near-frozen bundled babe on her doorstep.  You’d think someone would have been smart enough to cast a warming spell on her blanket before leaving her outside all night, but apparently not.  What if she froze to death, or got kidnapped?

            These thoughts and more ran through young Lily’s mind as she miserably pondered what the next years of her life would hold for her, while being pinched and prodded by her new cousin, Dudley.  The original Harry may have been blissfully unaware of his fame and fortune, but Lily was not, and she was decidedly most unpleased with being saddled with the story of the Girl Who Lived in place of the Boy Who Never Was.

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            Ten years would pass before Lily could be free of the Dursleys, and they would pass slowly and excruciatingly.  Ten long, long years of suffering under the Dursleys that would go little remarked upon in all seven books of Harry Potter, which began a year after his birth and picked up again a few months before his eleventh birthday.  Lily – and the real Harry – did not have the luxury of a convenient time-skip in place of those ten years, and instead were forced to live through them, day by day, week by week, year by year, until their Hogwarts letter came.

            Because of the limited information about Harry’s life with the Dursley’s prior to his eleventh birthday, Lily could not say for certain how closely her life resembled that of the original Boy Who Lived, but there were some easily identifiable differences.  Petunia Dursley, as a white suburban housewife whose main aspiration in life seemed to be existing as a living homage to her counterparts in the 50’s, did not allow Lily to go around in Dudley’s far too large hand-me-downs because it would have been horribly improper for a young lady like her to look so tomboyish and unkempt.  Instead, she was almost exclusively clothed in horribly bland, floral patterned dresses bought from the bargain-bin in second-hand stores.

            Due to memories from her previous life, Lily did much better in school than Harry had – though he was no slouch himself when it mattered – in spite of the Dursleys’ disapproval.  The first time she came back from primary with higher grades than Dudley, the Dursleys practically had a conniption fit over how it was possible that a freak like her managed to surpass ickle Diddykins at anything.  They moved through the stages of accusing her of cheating, denouncing the teachers as incompetent, and finally to locking her in the cupboard and near starving her in an attempt to break her will and force her to stop putting forth the effort required to excel at school.  But her intelligence was something Lily refused to compromise on.  When they finally realized that there was nothing they could do to change the situation, the Dursleys resigned themselves to the truth and simply hired a private tutor to get Dudley up to speed.

            Going through school again wasn’t fun by any means, but it was made worse due to the fact that she had to experience it as Lily Potter alongside her cousin Dudley, who hated her even more now that she had proved that she was smarter than him.  So began his long campaign to make her life hell.  He started by isolating her from her classmates through physical intimidation, and then began harassing her through various means, such as spit balling the back of her head, sticking gum in her hair, kicking the back of her seat, and ruining her homework and textbooks.  Lily was thankfully spared the more physical side of the bullying due to Petunia’s insistence that hitting a lady was ‘uncouth,’ but it didn’t stop Dudley and his gang from taunting her, pushing her around, and pulling her hair.

            If Lily was actually a young girl, she might have been more upset about being childishly tormented and ostracized by her peers, but as it was, she had the mental fortitude of a grown woman who already had antisocial tendencies and an introverted nature.  Even without Dudley and his gang, she never would have bothered approaching and making friends with other ‘children her age’ because she found their immaturity equal parts boredom inducing and irritating.  Lily did exert the bare minimum of effort by notifying the teachers of her bullying, but was unsurprised when they proved to be useless.  She was nonetheless irritated by the incompetence.

            Life outside of school wasn’t much better – worse, actually, given that school at least allowed her to hide out in the library and escape her dreary life through books.  Lily only read in the school library, not just because she wasn’t very fond of spending recess outside and Dudley never came to the library, but because even if she managed to smuggle some of the Dursley’s books into her cupboard, they were all boring old non-fiction.  The Dursleys did not approve of fantasy and imagination, two of Lily’s favourite things.

            At the Dursleys’, Lily spent every minute she wasn’t in the cupboard – about the size of a small bathroom and horribly spider infested – working through her chores, mainly cooking and cleaning.  Lily hated cleaning due to her irrational fear of dust, but had more mixed feelings on cooking, which reminded her of her first mother.  Lily used to be in charge of gardening too, until it was proven that any plant she looked after would inevitably wither and die, much to Petunia’s chagrin.  Lily’s first mother had loved cooking and gardening, but Lily only inherited her talent for the former.

            Lily truly came alive at night, when all the Dursleys had headed to bed and she had the house all to herself.  She had long learned the trick to unlocking the cupboard with a series of precise applications of telekinesis and a whispered ‘Alohomora,’ frequently using it to steal into the kitchen and pad out her diet with some actual food.  It took a few years before she managed to perfect the skill required to not have her bi-weekly burglaries noticed by Petunia, but the threat of being locked in the cupboard and starved no longer hung over her head like Damocles’ sword.  It was her late-night snacking that led to her not looking so much like skin and bones, but she was still much smaller and skinnier than all of her classmates due to malnutrition.

            There was also her time spent with Mrs Figg, but it was barely worth mentioning for its mind-numbing boredom.  She had tried to persuade Mrs Figg into letting her do something more interesting, but it was a losing battle.  Truthfully, Lily had begun to hate Mrs Figg for her inaction on Lily’s behalf; she knew Mrs Figg was supposed to look after her on Dumbledore’s orders, meaning that both of them knew the extent of what she suffered under the Dursleys and chose to do nothing for the sake of a stupid blood protection charm.  She would have called her out on it if that didn’t mean explaining where she got all her strangely in-depth knowledge, and that would throw off all her carefully considered plans.

            Lily had started to hate all of the adults in her life at Little Whinging.  She hated the Dursleys, Mrs Figg, and Dumbledore for obvious reasons, but she also hated her neighbors and teachers, who ignored the signs of abuse and neglect in order to maintain their own convenient ignorance.  More than anything, Lily hated stupidity and incompetence – all of which surrounded her in spades.

            At some point, around halfway to her eighth birthday, she’d had enough.  She was done playing along with the script and she wanted out now.  Dudley had pushed her into a lake, causing her to panic and blast him back so hard that he hit a tree and was knocked out cold.  Vernon and Petunia were furious; Vernon nearly knocked the sense out of her and locked her in the cupboard with the bare minimum provisions for a month – the longest punishment yet.  If she hadn’t known how to break out and steal food, she might have actually passed out from hunger.

            Lily decided to become more proactive about getting away from the Dursleys instead of waiting to be whisked away to Hogwarts and having to come back every summer.  She hadn’t necessarily been just waiting around beforehand, but it hadn’t amounted to much.  She had told the teachers about Dudley’s bullying; nothing happened.  She had hinted about the abuse she experienced; nothing happened.  This time, she would ensure that she was heard and that something would be done about it.  She went to the student counsellor and started sobbing about how she hated it at the Dursleys, and they were horrible, and she wanted to live somewhere else.

              Lily’s word alone wasn’t worth much, but she’d made too much of a fuss to be ignored.  Lily had tried to combat the smear campaign the Dursleys had been running against her for years by putting on a show of being extra polite and helpful to the neighbors and never making trouble in school, but she’d only had moderate success.  The Dursleys fought back against the slander, of course, but they couldn’t afford to take it out on her because of the ensuing investigation.  Then one night she woke up the next morning to find that it had all been forgotten about.  Her inquiries to the Dursleys were met with boxed ears and a harsh scolding, but no spark of recognition.  She received much the same response at school, like it had never happened to begin with.  Only the counselor she'd brought it up with seemed to remember anything, telling Lily that the results of the investigation had been inconclusive and scolding her to stop lying for attention when it could very well mean legal-trouble for her loving relatives.

            It was terrifying.  If Lily didn’t know that magic was real and what the memory charm was capable of then she might have thought she was going crazy.  She didn’t mention it again and stopped trying afterwards.  The incident had successfully broken her spirit and shown her that there was no way to get away from the Dursleys until her eleventh birthday.  Unless she wanted to run away, but that wouldn’t be a long-term solution.  There was nowhere to run to; she’d still have to go to school and find food, and she’d eventually get picked up by some Good Samaritan and dropped back at the Dursleys anyway – or abducted and sold into human trafficking.  Lily Potter had gone through the motions of rebellion and landed on reluctantly resigned acceptance.

            Instead of fighting against it, Lily moved her focus to attempting to draw as little attention to herself as possible.  A few years down the line, it was clear she’d succeeded: the Dursleys would simply brush over her as though she wasn’t there, no lingering thoughts or glances in her direction.  Petunia didn’t nag her about her chores, Dudley didn’t seek her out for torment, and Vernon didn’t ridicule her whenever he caught her outside of the cupboard.  It was as if they’d completely forget her existence until she made herself known first, like a ghost haunting her own house.  With so little evidence, no one would ever think a girl named Lily Potter lived there, even more than before – not even the Dursleys themselves.

            She preferred it, honestly, to the way it was before, where the slightest misconduct would result in an earful and a night in the cupboard with no supper.  She made sure to keep up the illusion whenever possible, outside of a few disruptions, until her Hogwarts letter arrived and she could exorcise her presence entirely.

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            The years before Dudley’s eleventh birthday came and went – for the most part – unremarkably.  On the day-of, Lily faded out of her relatives’ thoughts with ease and was forgotten in the house instead of being taken along or passed onto someone else to watch over.

            The Dursleys returned in a short fashion, and Lily continued to wait patiently for the day her Hogwarts letter would arrive and she could begin to put her plans in motion.  She had spent years going over every minute detail, making plans, counter-plans, and backup plans from A to Z.  There was nary a situation she did not have at least a dozen plans for, all with room for improvisation where necessary.

            When the fateful day in July came, she calmly went to the letterbox, sorted through all the letters, stuck the one with her name on it in her waistband and casually pulled her horribly pink and floral shirt overtop to keep it hidden.  Looking out the window, she checked for owls, but couldn’t see any.  She stopped by the kitchen table, deposited the letters, and then retreated back to her cupboard to stare at it as she contemplated which plan to go with.  She looked it over, breath catching in her throat as she read:

                                    Miss L. Potter

                                    The Cupboard under the Stairs

                                    4 Privet Drive

                                    Little Whinging

                                    Surrey

            There were many things that this letter represented, not least of which that this was really happening.  Lily Potter was a witch, and she was going to go to Hogwarts to learn magic.  It was unbelievable; a dream come true for Potterheads everywhere, and she was living it.  Of course, it’s not all sunshine and roses, as her many years living under the Dursleys’ thumb could attest.  She rubbed the thick, yellowed parchment beneath her own thumb, feeling the solid weight of it and letting it ground her in reality.

            It had been eleven long, long years since she’d last read the books or watched the movies, but she’d always had a particularly good memory and could just about remember most of the letter’s layout – everything except the shopping list, which she’d have to open the letter for.  Still, she hesitated over the purple wax seal.  She’d read it, and then what?  Despite practicing how to address letters at school in preparation, she had no way to reply back.  Without replying back, how would she be able to get to Diagon Alley in order to make the necessary purchases?  She doubted she could convince the Dursleys.  If she waited and didn’t open it, more would arrive, until it would be impossible for the Dursleys to ignore.  Lily did not want to move around from hotel to hotel until Hagrid came for her in the miserable house on the rock in the middle of the sea.

            Lily restrained herself and tucked the letter gently under her mattress.  This would have to be done delicately, she decided, as she might not be getting her hands on another one anytime soon.  It was the discovery of the letter that led to Harry being given Dudley’s old toy-room, and Lily wasn’t about to cheat herself out of that chance.  She’d keep the letter hidden, wait for another to arrive, give that one to the Dursleys so that she could get the upgraded bedroom, then wait to find an owl and send back her letter.

            The next day, another letter addressed to Miss L. Potter arrived and she deposited it on the table along with the rest of the morning mail.  Lily heard Petunia shriek when she found it, and stayed waiting in her cupboard for their decision to move her to the toy room.  That evening, when Vernon returned from work, he stopped by her cupboard and ordered her to move into her new bedroom despite Dudley’s wailing.  She carefully tucked the pilfered letter away in her things and made the move in one trip.

            Dudley was always getting new toys, which became old toys, which became broken toys and were either stuffed in this room to rot away and be forgotten or given to Lily.  Most of the toys got shoved in there rather than make their way into her hands due to Petunia’s insistence that it was unsuitable for Lily to play with boys’ toys when she should be playing with dolls instead, and Dudley’s sniveling appeals that he didn’t want her touching any of his things.  It disgusted Lily that they were always bemoaning the drain she was on their funds when they spent the bare minimum on her, meanwhile, Dudley had a whole room devoted to his old, broken toys when he was constantly getting expensive new ones and a guestroom that was empty for most of the year.

            If it wouldn’t have caused more trouble than it was worth, she would have built them into a pyre and burned all of them.  The morning after her move, Dudley was more subdued, seemingly in shock at being denied something for the first time in his life.  That day there were three letters among the mail, all of which she’d snuck down and grabbed before the sun came up.  The day after that, there were twelve, all piled just inside the door.  She’d waited in front of the door for their arrival, and then immediately crept her way outside to look for an owl so she could deliver her response to the Deputy Headmistress; she had waited until more letters showed up on the assumption that the more owls there were, the easier it’d be to find at least one of them.  If she couldn’t find any today, she’d just wait until tomorrow.  Worst case scenario, Hagrid found her in the horrible shack and took her to Diagon Alley himself.

            Luckily, she managed to find one with minimal effort, waving around a stolen piece of bacon and making clicking noises to draw it closer.  She attached the letter to its leg and spoke to it calmly, like one would a person: “Please deliver this to Professor Minerva McGonagall at Hogwarts.  Thank you.”  It took off and she retreated back inside before someone could notice her absence, as unlikely as it was that they would even spare her a thought.  Sometimes, it was like they weren’t even aware she was in the same room.  Her letter had been short, sweet, and to the point, merely asking McGonagall to send someone to take her to Diagon Alley on behalf of her magic-hating relatives, and for them to please not mention the letter she sent while doing so.

            The next day, Professor McGonagall herself came to the door of Number 4, Privet Drive, dressed in an eye-catchingly green, if otherwise remarkably Muggle, dress.  There had been several possibilities that resulted in her arriving for Lily instead of Hagrid, and she was pleased with the outcome.  It was certainly better than if Snape had shown up, however small a chance there might have been.

            Petunia answered the door and politely asked for her name and the reason for her visit.

            “Professor McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts.  I have come to collect Miss Potter,” she announced, staring at Petunia coolly.

            “Oh, Vernon!” Petunia wailed, face white like old porridge, and collapsed against the wall as McGonagall let herself in and strode past her.  “It’s one of them, they’re here!  They’ve come for the girl!”

            Vernon rumbled down the hall, face growing purple like a particularly ripe grape.  He looked ready to explode as he bellowed, mustache twitching, “Now listen here, we’ll not have any of – of your sort in this house, hear me?  She won’t be going to your crackpot school; we’ve stamped all that nonsense out of her.”  He pointed his fat, ruddy finger right in front of her face.

            McGonagall lifted a solitary eyebrow.  She was not so uncouth as to point her wand at a Muggle, but she did use it to push his finger away from her face.  Vernon recoiled as if he was shot.

            “I believe the matter of her attendance falls upon Miss Potter, not you, Mr Dursley.”

            “What’s going on?  Why’s someone here for Lily?” Dudley asked from the entrance of the kitchen.

            “Dudders, go to your room, okay sweetie?” Petunia’s voice was quiet but urgent, like it had been wrestled out of her throat.

            “I don’t want to; I want to know what’s going on!  A letter, a houseguest, why’s that freak getting so much attention?” he whined.

            “Dudley!” Petunia raised her voice at him – an occurrence so rare that his mouth snapped shut audibly, “Go – wait in your room, and don’t come out.  Mummy and Daddy will handle this.”

            Unable to get his way for the second time in nearly as many days, Dudley slinked up the stairs in a stunned manner, completely bypassing Lily’s position at the top of the steps.  The slam of his door confirmed his reluctant compliance.  Lily expected a lot more broken toys to migrate their way into her room after he was done throwing his tantrum.

            “And where is Miss Potter, might I ask?  I have much to discuss with her in regards to her trip to Diagon Alley,” McGonagall’s eyes scanned the hall in search of her.

            Petunia nervously wrung her hands in her apron as Vernon fumed.  Lily almost imagined she could hear the whistle of a tea kettle and see steam coming out of his ears.  All this excitement couldn’t be good for his blood pressure.  Lily certainly wouldn’t be terribly sad if he dropped dead of a heart attack.

            “Haven’t I told you she’s not going?  We won’t have any of that lunacy in this house!  She’s going to Stonewall High and she’ll be grateful for it.  I’ve read that letter, and she needs all sorts of rubbish – books and sticks and great, bloody birds!  I’m not paying for any of it!” Vernon declared scornfully.

            Petunia glanced anxiously towards the door, which she’d finally remembered to shut at some point, “Vernon, please, the neighbors might hear – oh, what would they think!”

            “You will not have to pay for any of it; Miss Potter can cover her own expenses.  You will not be deciding whether or not she shall attend Hogwarts,” she responded, maintaining her poise.  Her eyes caught on Lily’s small figure as she crept down the stairs, eyes softening imperceptibly.  “Now, I will be taking Miss Potter to Diagon Alley to purchase her wand and books.  I trust this will not be a problem?”

            “No, Professor McGonagall,” Lily answered for the Dursleys.  They startled upon noticing her presence.

            “You – you knew?” Petunia croaked, doing a wonderful impression of a toad.

            Lily looked her straight in the eye and calmly told her, “Yes, Aunt Petunia,” showing a particular and uncharacteristic adherence to manners that often preceded an act of calamity and betrayed a truly immense amount of condensed rage.

            Petunia flinched as if the words struck her, aware of how out-of-place they were, though not of their true significance.

            Lily Potter walked out of Number 4, Private Drive, alongside her new Transfiguration teacher and amidst the white noise of Vernon’s affronted sputtering.