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Liam Evans always knew there was something wrong with him. No, not wrong, really. Just… out of place. Like a puzzle piece that didn't quite sit right in its allotted space. A chip in the onion rings. A spoon in the fork slot. He watched the other kids playing and laughing, and none of them seemed to feel like they were the only crayon turned upside down in the box. Or maybe they just hid it better.
Liam told his mother once that he felt like his skin was itchy, like it didn't fit or like he picked up someone else's skin instead of his own, only he didn't know how to take it back off now. She told him this was normal; everyone felt that way growing up. So he believed her. She was his mother, so she would know, right?
On his eleventh birthday, in January 1971, Liam received a unique present: a letter, brought to him by an old lady in a tall pointy hat. She told Liam, his parents, and his sister Petunia, that Liam was a very special boy. Liam was a wizard.
It made sense, though. Liam considered it as his parents and the witch—Professor McGonagall—discussed wands and robes and magic books. Liam never felt like he fit, and this must be why. Liam didn’t fit. He wasn’t a—what did she call it?—a muggle, so he didn’t belong in this life with his parents and his sister. There was a whole new world out there for him to explore, and that must be the place where Liam would truly belong.
One gloomy Tuesday afternoon, approximately six months later, Liam and his parents met Professor McGonagall outside of an old shop, and she led them through a door to a pub his parents couldn’t see, through a wall that moved with the tap of her wand on a particular brick, and suddenly the wixen world was there—really, truly there—in front of him. Liam drank in every wonder that he had not even dared to believe existed.
They exchanged money for weird gold, silver, and bronze coins at a bank run by goblins—which were apparently real. He bought a wand that chose him, out of all the wizards and witches that had ever come through. Made of willow wood and a unicorn—a bloody unicorn —hair at the core, it went swish-swish when he waved it and sparks the color of the evening sun shot out of the end. Good for charms, he was told, but Liam didn’t really know what that meant.
They bought spell books and potion supplies, robes and cloaks, and at the very end of the trip, Professor McGonagall led Liam into Eelop’s Owl Emporium. She told him that not every child who goes to Hogwarts gets an owl, but it would allow him to communicate with his family when he missed them very much. Then, to Liam’s utter surprise, she purchased a beautiful black Northern masked owl. Liam named him Emeric, which was a name he found in a book called History of Magic.
When they returned home that evening, Liam sat with all of his books and robes around him, hoping to memorize every moment of the day so that he could live in it forever.
1 September 1971, found Liam walking nervously toward a great brick wall in the middle of King’s Cross Station, hoping desperately that everything he had learned in the last year about who he was and where he belonged wasn’t a lie or a trick or some mean prank. But the wall let him through, and a moment later he was faced with a great red engine called the Hogwarts Express.
It was real. He was really a wizard, and he was finally going home .
Liam spent the day roaming the train, meeting his classmates and students who were years ahead of him. He saw his first bit of magic when a third year boy summoned a candy shaped like a frog back when it tried to hop away from him. He couldn’t find it in him to sit in any cabin for long, so he ended up wandering and meeting as many people as he could. Most were friendly, though some of them sneered at him when they found out he was a mudblood . (It was a word Liam hadn’t heard before, but he had the distinct impression that he should be insulted by it.)
When the train stopped, a giant man loaded all of the first years into boats, and Liam got his first look at the castle from the middle of the lake. It stood tall and proud and seemed to sparkle in the night sky. If Liam didn’t already know the castle was magic, he would have known simply by looking at it. The magic seemed to ooze out of the bricks. Liam’s heart sped up at the sight, the staccato beat seeming to call out the word home .
Liam now stood in front of the old hat that had just sung a song about working together and building a better world and—honestly, Liam hadn’t paid much attention because a hat should not sing. Soon, everyone was being called up one at a time to try on the hat.
“Evans, William”
Liam cringed at the use of his full name as he walked up the dias and took a seat on the stool. The hat was slowly lowered onto his head.
Well, this is very interesting.
Uh, what is?
The inside of your head, child. I can see everything.
Oh, um. Okay.
Lots of ambition here, yes. Plenty of intelligence. Off the charts empathy. But I think… Yes, you’re going to need all the bravery you can muster and more to face what is to come. Perhaps surrounding yourself with Gryffindor will help you.
What do you mean? What is coming?
If I could tell you, I would, but this is something you need to discover on your own. Just know there is nothing wrong with you. I’ve seen inside the heads of generations of wixen students, and you are not alone. Hopefully, you can see that in…
“GRYFFINDOR!”
The table on the far side of the room draped in red and gold burst into applause, and Liam walked toward the table with pink cheeks. He spent the rest of the feast wondering just what the hat could have been referring to.
Liam fell into a fast friendship with the boys in his dorm. The funny, sweet one who always had a joke to share and seemed eager for approval–Peter. The loud, obnoxious one who didn’t always know when repeating something his parents said was a bit offensive–Sirius. The quiet, sweet one who always had a book and was so incredibly quick witted–Remus. Then there was James, who was as loud as Sirius, and as quiet as Remus, and as funny as Peter, and always so unfailingly loyal, almost to a fault. Liam didn’t quite know what to make of him, or what to do with the twisting in his stomach when he looked at James.
It was an easy friendship, full of laughter and pranks and wild stories that Liam didn’t believe half of. Liam, however, still never really felt like he fit in. He wasn’t just one of the boys the way the others were. He was still stuck feeling like the only skittle in a bowl of m&ms. Or perhaps he had been the subject of human transfiguration and had been put back together in the wrong order . Perhaps his custom tailored robes were actually meant for someone else. Sometimes he checked to see if his shoes were on the wrong feet, as though that could explain the way he felt like he was missing every other step. No one else looked like they wanted to dive head first into a cauldron of polyjuice potion and step out the other side as someone else.
If Liam had hoped that magic would make this feeling go away, he was quick to discover that he had been very, very wrong.
He made it nearly a full year at Hogwarts before he found himself in tears in Professor McGonagall’s office after his final exam closed. He had only meant to ask her if it was possible to go home a few days early, thinking that perhaps he was homesick and missing his mom, but somehow she managed to break through and extract the whole story from him.
“Have a biscuit, Evans.” Liam grabbed one out of the tin, wiping his face as he took a bite of the ginger and cinnamon biscuit she offered. “I think I may know what you are going through.”
Professor McGonagall told a story about how she was born with a different name that never felt like her name, and everyone called her boy when she never felt like one. She spoke about how she chose the name Minerva because she was the Roman goddess of Wisdom, and how she asked her family and friends to call her girl, and how she never felt out of place again.
Liam let his eyes fall closed, feeling as though waves were crashing heavily against the beach in their mind. A whole world of possibilities seemed to be crashing in around xem, and suddenly it seemed like maybe ve wasn’t alone in this, or perhaps zie wasn’t broken but just misplaced. Miscategorized. Could this really be the answer to their questions? Could it really be as simple as choosing she?
“I get to choose?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“You can, if you want to. If you feel like it’s something you need to do for you.” McGonagall smiled kindly at her. “You don’t have to, though, if you don’t want.”
“What will my parents think?” The crashing waves around her brought doubt with the possibilities, and she couldn’t stop the worry that built inside of her. What if… what if Liam could be loved, but she could not? What if they just thought she was broken?
“We’ll tell them together. I promise, I will make sure it is okay.”
McGonagall took her home that day, fetching her belongings from her dorm while the boys were occupied elsewhere. She was excused from the last week of school, and though she regretted missing the train ride home, this was more important.
McGonagall sat with her as she told her parents about how she felt like a girl and how for the first time in her life, she thought she finally fit the way everyone else did. McGonagall helped explain and answered all of their questions–no, the wixen world is largely accepting of persons like her (trans, she learned. She was trans); no, it is not a phase; no, it is not a choice; no, it will not harm her to be a girl; and yes, magic can help.
It turns out that magic did help her find a home.
She chose the name Lily. She liked to think it’s what she would have been given if she was born in the body she was meant to have. Her mother (Rose), her aunt (Violet), and her sister (Petunia), all had flower names like her grandmother (Iris). Lily seemed to be who she had always wanted to be.
It was a summer of discovery for Lily in many ways. She learned that nail polish was incredibly difficult to put on cleanly without help and a steady hand. Lily wondered how people could stand the thick texture of make-up until the moment she looked in the mirror and realized that it wasn't so bad after all.
She inherited a trunk of Petunia's old clothes, much to the disdain of her sister who wasn't used to having to share. Lily found that women's trousers were terribly designed (where was she supposed to keep her wand if there were no pockets?). A long dress with a belt that cinched the waist made Lily feel like spinning to watch the material swirl around her.
However, nothing made her feel as perfectly in place in her body as the long pleated skirts that danced around her thighs with each step she took. That was how she ended up with a trunk full of skirts, tights, and spell books as she boarded the Hogwarts Express on 1 September 1972.
She arrived early and sat down in the last compartment of the last carriage. She pulled out a book to nervously flip through as she waited for people to show up. She knew that the boys had picked this carriage to sit in on the ride. They had mentioned it in the numerous (unanswered) letters they sent that summer. She had never responded because she wasn’t sure how to tell them they weren’t addressed properly. She hoped they wouldn’t hate her–for disappearing, for not answering, for… for not being the person they thought she was.
Lily turned another page, though she couldn’t tell you a single thing that happened in the previous handful of pages. She stared at the black words on the page, not even pretending that they’re making it into her head.
The compartment door slid open, and Lily held her breath.
“Hey, sorry to bother you,” Remus began, but he stopped suddenly. “Evans?”
She looked up at him with a small smile. “Yeah, it’s uh. It’s Lily now.”
“We weren’t sure if you were coming. You just disappeared last year, and you never answered our letters.”
Lily shrugged. “Sort of went through a lot of changes this summer. Wasn’t really sure, um, what to say, but I am back.”
Remus smiled at her, brightly, like this was the best news he’s ever heard. “Cool. What are you reading?”
And just like that, it was fine. Everything was fine. Every time that one of the boys came in, Remus handled the transition with ease.
“Sirius, check out the book that Lily brought with–” he glanced back at her for a moment, a question in his eyes.
“Her.” She said, calmly.
“--that Lily brought back with her.”
“Peter, can you grab the magazine in the top of my trunk before you sit down? I want to show Lily the article I think she’ll like.”
“James, can you believe that Lily has never tried Fortescue’s ice cream? We have to take her next summer.”
James looked down at her for a moment, a shadow passing over his face briefly before he smiled. “Alright, Evans. We’ll have to make a whole trip of it.”
Lily breathed a sigh of relief. It went… better than expected.
Lily sat on the common room couch, watching all of the other Gryffindors filing past her up to their dorms. She had waited, purposefully, so that she could try this the first time without an audience.
McGonagall had told her that the magic of the castle would recognize her right to use the girl’s stairs. It wouldn’t spit her out merely because of the history of her body. McGonagall hadn’t steered her wrong yet, but….
Lily took a deep breath, then let out a slow exhale as she stepped onto the first step. She planted her foot firmly and stepped up.
She waited.
Nothing happened.
The siren didn’t go off. The stairs didn’t become a smooth slide. She was standing on the first step of the girl’s staircase, and it wasn’t throwing her off. It accepted her. The magic recognized her. She was… home.
She ascended the stairs slowly, one foot at a time, and with each step up, she felt elation build in her chest. She had found it, the place where she belonged and it felt…
It felt so right that she didn’t know how to put it into words.
Years rolled by, and Lily grew into her place in the magical world. It wasn’t always easy, but it was always worth it to finally be who she was.
She had worried that she would lose her friends, but nothing really changed. Plus, the girls in her new dorm adopted her into their circle immediately. It was perfect.
She would exchange books with Remus and study with Marlene. She danced to the muggle record player with Sirius and sang karaoke with Mary. She played chess with Peter and read the latest Witch Weekly with Emmaline. Everything was normal.
Except for James.
At the start of fifth year, there was a noticeable shift in the way James treated her. He was never mean, and never misnamed or misgendered her. Yet, he seemed distinctly uncomfortable being around her.
He would ruffle his hair nearly constantly when she was around. He would laugh a little too loud, a little too forced, at her jokes. He called her Evans when everyone else called her Lily, which rubbed her the wrong way. She briefly dated Eddie Bones in sixth year, and she could always feel when James was glaring at them. For two years, Lily ignored it. If James had a problem with her, then that was his problem, and not hers.
It was the start of seventh year when she decided that she couldn’t ignore it any longer. They had just finished clearing the Great Hall after the welcome feast, as they were required to do as Head Boy and Head Girl. They had walked back to Gryffindor tower in near silence, but at the base of the dormitory stairs, James turned to her with a smile.
“Night, Evans.”
“Good night, Pot–wait, Potter.”
He turned back to her, having already stepped up onto the first stair. She took a deep breath.
“DoyousayEvanssoyoudon’thavetocallmeLily?”
His brow furrowed. “Come at me again?”
She bit her lip. “You’re the only one who calls me Evans.”
“Right.”
“Everyone else calls me Lily.”
“Right, again.” She could tell that he was still confused.
“Do–do you call me Evans so you don’t have to call me Lily?”
It was quiet for a beat, and she watched the realization come over his face. “You mean… are you asking if I don’t see you as Lily?”
She nodded, worry pooling in her stomach.
“No. No, Lily, not at all.” He walked forward and took her hand. “It’s not like that at all.”
“Then, why?”
His face softened as he looked at her, still holding her hand, which for some reason felt like it was burning. “Because you call me Potter. Because it’s always been our thing. I call you Evans, and you call me Potter. I liked–having a thing with you. Something that was just ours.”
“But why? Why would you like having a thing with me?”
“Lily.” He was smiling now, and rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb. “Surely you know the answer to that.”
Lily shook her head, not because she didn’t know, but because… No, she couldn’t be right.
“I like you. I have for a very long time.”
She felt all the breath leave her body. She couldn’t find anything inside of her to answer him. He didn’t seem to expect a response, though, and he bent down to kiss her cheek.
“Good night, Lily.”
He walked up the stairs behind him without a backwards glance.
Her fingers found the spot on her cheek where he had kissed her, which seemed to be burning in the exact shape of his lips. James…liked her? James liked her. James liked her.
Oh.
She whispered good night into the empty common room, before heading up the opposite stairs.