Chapter Text
Its a warm, hot summer day, when Lily meets Severus Snape.
He gives her a flower, and tells her she's a witch. He tells her she'll receive her Hogwarts letter when she turns eleven.
She's nine, but her sister Petunia is eleven, and she received no such letter.
Lily doesn't tell Petunia at first, scared of another difference between her and her sister.
Where Lily's chubby, Petunia is skinny. Where she's got green eyes, and red hair, with freckles, Petunia's got blue eyes, and blonde hair, with no freckles.
Where Petunia is older, and talks about boys, Lily's younger, and doesn't talk about boys.
But, being a witch, does explain things, like the time the flowers had almost wilted, and she reversed the process, or the time her had been cut short, due to a piece of gum being stuck in it, and she grew it back out, or perhaps, the most important thing, her well kept secret her ability to see ghosts, and talk to them, much like the snakes she talks too.
So Lily waits to tell her sister, in hopes of not damaging the relationship between them perhaps, although, she already knows it gone, has been for years.
She goes to the tree, and continues to bring the boy food, and plays with him.
Lily can see the almost dead relationship between them, how Petunia has distanced herself from her, how her parents always, without a doubt, compare the two.
She's ten now. Nothing changes, not really, Petunia turned twelve a few days before she turned ten. Although her parents still compare the two of them, and the glint in Petunia's eye is changing from love to hate. She tells her sister, hoping it will bring them closer together.
It doesn't.
Lily's eleven now, Petunia's fourteen.
She gets her Hogwarts letter, and so does Severus Snape.
A professor brings it to her, Professor McGonagall, in fact. She says she's the transfiguration professor, and head of Gryffindor.
Lily goes with her to get her school supplies. Lily loses what little relationship she has left with Petunia