Autumn 2019

Lily aggressively screwed up her half-finished letter. It seemed that there was no straightforward way to tell her parents that she'd brought shame on the family. That she'd been put in Slytherin.

The Hat told her that she had great capabilities and a thirst to prove herself. "Just like your father." She'd grinned then, sure that she'd achieved what Al hadn't and made it into Gryffindor, wasn't being shoved in Hufflepuff with the likes of him. But she had the shock of her life when it roared, "SLYTHERIN!"

"Trying to find a way to tell your parents?"

The voice made Lily jump violently; she'd thought that there was nobody watching her in this secluded corner of the common room. She turned around to see a boy leaning against the wall behind her and smirking, in that signature Slytherin way. While there wasn't necessarily anything unfriendly about it, it made Lily feel uneasy. He looked far too confident to be a first year.

"I... I might be," she said eventually. This boy was the first person who had bothered to speak to her properly all day, other than her family - but even they had completely blanked her after the Sorting. James looked at her like she'd killed someone when she went over to join her new housemates. And until now, the Slytherins had all been hostile towards her, like she didn't belong in their house.

"Your parents don't have anything to be ashamed of, you know. It's not as if you're suddenly a different person."

Lily surveyed the boy suspiciously. "What would you know?"

He held out his hand. "Connor Finnigan. Second year." Still confused, Lily shook it. She wasn't sure where she knew the name from. "Both of my parents were Gryffindors, too."

"Oh." A beacon of hope lit up inside Lily. "And... they didn't, like, disown you or anything?"

"Of course not," Connor said, smirking again, but it wasn't in a nasty way. "Being put in Slytherin was the best thing that ever happened to me. Meant that I didn't have to keep trying to live up to my precious brothers. I'm different; I can be my own person."

That sounded awfully familiar to Lily. It was exactly how she felt about her family. All her life, she'd had this desperate desire to shine; maybe being in Slytherin was her big chance. She could be successful in her own right, without competing against her brothers and cousins. It was like a huge weight off her shoulders.

She smiled at Connor, and as he smiled back, she knew that she'd made her first friend.