Her name was Lilith.

She was more commonly called Lily. She was popular, in a way- had many friends, and almost everyone knew her name. She was a Gryffindor, outspoken and stubborn, as they all are. She was also the closest thing I had to a friend. I hated her.

I suppose that doesn’t equate- ‘friend’ and ‘hate’. But that was what happened.

I didn’t personally know her, actually. She didn’t know me either. She saw me one day and decided that I was in trouble, and that she could oh-so-benevolently step in and “help”. I’ll admit (grudgingly) that I was indeed in a bad situation, but I could handle it. Her yelling at damned Potter and his friends only made it worse, as if I couldn’t handle myself.

…

Who the hell am I trying to fool? All of them were there- all of them… nearly everyone who took the OWLs that day were there, crowded around. All of them saw how they taunted me, humiliated me. Only Lily, the damned golden girl mudblood, sainted Gryffindor, stepped in to stop them… and I didn’t accept it. Not only that, I scarred her, verbally threw her to the mud, down where I actually was.

For some reason, I wish that I hadn’t. She was… beautiful. She had a violent beauty, she had the courage I never possessed, courage to throw something in a persons’ face and say “Deal with it.” She lacked regard for what people thought, and how people might react. But I didn’t feel that way then- no, I blinded myself by petty things such as House loyalty and ancestry.

Really, no matter how many bad things I said about her, I think I loved her. A distant love. Not a crush, as many pitiful hormone-driven teenagers were influenced by, but more of a respect/love. She was not only courageous, in that annoyingly Gryffindor manner, but also intelligent. I didn’t think the two traits could co-exist. She was strikingly intelligent, though. I believe she even once offered to help me with Charms- not that I took it, or ever would. Again, restrictions of House and such.

Even after the “Post-OWL incident”, she never mentioned it. She was angry for quite some time, and wouldn’t look at me when paired with me during classes (not that I can blame her). Eventually, she approached me again when our current Potions professor assigned us to do a “group essay”. This is when I discovered her brilliance. We then began something of a truce, not becoming friends, and we never discussed personal issues. She could have been great.

But she married Potter. And that’s about where my respect ended. What a fool she was- wasting her talents, her connections, to become a housewife to that miserable…

That’s off-topic. The point is, she wasted her life. And now she is dead because of it. Because she became involved with Potter, she died. That beautiful flower was destroyed.

I last saw her two days before she died. She was holding her child, the child she gave up a free life for, and she told me that she couldn’t be happier. I didn’t understand. I still do not. But that was the last time I saw such grace in the world, such innocence. And now it’s gone.

I know that it was Voldemorts’ wand that fired the curse, but I blame Potter and his friends for putting her in that position. They were responsible. They took her from me, and from the world.

That was the real reason I left Voldemort, once and for all.