Meeting Snape

A sudden rustling came from the bushes, and a small, skinny boy emerged.

It was Severus Snape. He wore a baggy old coat that did not fit him at all, its fabric covered in gray-black coal stains. His greasy black hair lay flat against his forehead, and his cuffs were worn pale and frayed. He clutched a crumpled piece of hard licorice candy tightly in his palm and looked up at Lily, awkward yet stubborn.

Lily stared as he walked straight up to her, inwardly surprised. She had not expected to meet a key figure from the original story on her very first visit to the park.

"Hi, I'm Lily."

"You're a witch," Snape said first.

Lily was taken aback. She thought a little helplessly that he really did not know how to talk to people. If he had said that out of the blue to someone else, they might well have mistaken it for a malicious curse.

Snape seemed to realize that his tone had been too abrupt, and hurriedly tried again. "You made those butterflies stop in midair just now. That was magic. You're different from ordinary people."

With that, he picked up a length of thin, withered grass root that had just been pulled from the soil, its outer skin speckled with black ash. He lowered his eyes, his Adam's apple bobbing slightly, and murmured an obscure, unintelligible incantation.

The dry, hard, rough root instantly became soft and pliable. Its tendrils bent and twined of their own accord along an invisible current of magic, overlapping layer upon layer. In an instant, they became a paper crane with delicate wings, the grain of the brown grass root clearly visible on its paper body, lifelike.

He raised his wrist slightly and gave it a gentle push.

The magical paper crane flapped its thin wings and rose slowly into the air. Riding the warm evening breeze, it circled Lily's fluffy red hair once before landing steadily in her outstretched palm.

Lily froze, then instinctively curled her fingers gently around the crane made from the grass root. Her eyes shone as brightly as the setting sun. "That's amazing."

Snape let his black, greasy fringe fall over the tips of his ears, which had quietly turned red. His voice was muffled. "It's for you."

Lily gently traced the overlapping creases of the paper crane with her fingertips, then looked up at him with a smile. A warm breeze stirred her brilliant red hair, and her smile was clear and bright. "It's beautiful. I'll put it away safely and treasure it in my little wooden jewelry box."

She carefully touched the crane's delicate wing with a fingertip and turned to Snape beside her. "What did you say just now? Can you turn any old grass root into something else? And how did you find out you could do these amazing things? Before, all I could do was make butterflies follow me and make swings move on their own. I never knew there was a special way to do it." Snape edged back toward the bushes, rubbed his coal-dusted fingers against the hem of his coat, and explained softly with his eyes lowered:

"That was a simple Transfiguration Spell I learned by secretly reading old magic books at home. As long as you know clearly what you want something to become and say the spell correctly, you can reshape most small, ordinary things. I've known I was different from other people since I was little. My mother is a witch, and she left quite a few magic books, so I learned that people like us who have magic are called wizards and witches. When we turn eleven, a letter from Hogwarts will arrive, and we'll be able to leave town and go learn magic. Unlike the Muggles in town, who never come into contact with any of it their whole lives."

Lily listened with her eyes fixed on him. Remembering that her canvas lunch bag was still sitting on a tree root nearby, she immediately pulled it between them and lifted the metal clasp. Inside were neatly arranged ham and cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off, two rosy apples in a small enamel box, and a small piece of milk candy Mrs. Evans had prepared.

She handed Snape half a sandwich and pressed an apple into his hand. "These are for you. My mum made them especially this morning. They're really good."

Snape hesitated for a moment, then slowly accepted them, his fingers tightening slightly.

The evening breeze carried the scent of grass from the riverbank. The two sat side by side, sharing the food, and Lily took a small bite of her apple before speaking up. "My name's Lily Evans. Can I just call you Severus from now on? It's a lovely name."

Snape looked up into her emerald-green eyes. The setting sun cast a warm glow over the girl's red hair, and much of the long-standing isolation and loneliness in his heart softened. He nodded gently, his voice much softer than before. "Yes, you can call me whatever you like, Lily."

For several days afterward, Lily deliberately went to the river in the park, always using a walk or a detour after school as an excuse. Every time, she "happened" to run into Snape hiding alone by the bushes. Before long, the distance between them faded away completely, and they grew much closer.

Before going out each day, Lily quietly dug out the family's tin lunchbox and, while her mother was not looking, filled it with all sorts of food. One day it was tuna mayonnaise sandwiches, the next corned beef and pickles. Sometimes she brought soft, fluffy butter scones, along with a box of fresh seasonal fruit—crisp, sweet apples and juicy pears. When there was a market, she could even sneak two candied cherries. As soon as she saw Severus, she generously pushed the lunchbox between them and, without taking no for an answer, gave him more than half.

Every time Snape accepted the food, he was ill at ease, his fingers repeatedly rubbing the clean, soft edges of the bread. In all his life, no one had ever thought of him like this and shared such delicate, sweet-smelling food with him.

In the afternoon shade, the two sat side by side on the roots of an old tree by the river. Most of the time, Snape did the talking. Everything he knew about magic had been pieced together from the battered old magic books at home and fragments of his mother's casual talk. He spoke haltingly, often stumbling, and would lower his head halfway through a story to think for a long while, his words coming out in a muddle.

But Lily never interrupted. She watched him with bright emerald-green eyes and listened intently. Whenever he finished a halting account, she immediately showed her amazement at just the right moment and murmured appreciative exclamations.

"So there are flying broomsticks too? That's incredible!"

"Magic potions can actually change how people look? I never imagined anything like that existed."

Even when Snape's stories were disjointed and full of trifles, she never brushed him off. Every now and then, she asked a question or two about the details, encouraging him to go on.

When Snape saw the sincere curiosity in her eyes, his formerly gloomy, tense expression would slowly soften. He was willing to tell Lily alone all the things he had learned about magic that he had kept in his heart, with no one to listen.

One afternoon, the kitchen still smelled sweetly of baking butter and sugar. Lily and Petunia had just finished cooling a tray of golden, crisp homemade cookies together. Flour still clung to both girls' fingertips. Petunia rubbed her aching temples, too sleepy to keep her eyes open, and told Lily she was going back to her room for a short nap and would finish her school arithmetic homework when she woke up. Then she went upstairs to her bedroom.

Once the bedroom door upstairs had closed softly, Lily immediately took a clean sheet of greaseproof paper and quietly wrapped up more than half the freshly baked cookies. She tucked them into her tin lunchbox, then slipped out of the house on tiptoe while her mother was tending the flowers in the garden and headed straight for the town park.

Sure enough, she found Snape beside the familiar bushes and the roots of the old tree. The boy sat curled up alone on the tree trunk in an old coat washed pale and covered in coal dust, his head bent over a worn magic book with curled pages. Hearing footsteps, he looked up sharply. When he saw it was Lily, his tense shoulders relaxed a little.