Chapter Text
Severus Snape, age 9, was watching them. He'd been watching them for a while. He'd seen two of the girls before, but the third one was new, he'd never seen her before.
The little red-headed and green-eyed girl was a witch: he'd seen her perform magic before. The older blonde girl, sister to the red-head, was not. Severus had kept an eye on them for a long time, afraid to approach them, yet longing to belong.
The third girl had brown curly hair, so wild it formed a halo around her head. She had freckles, large front teeth and brown eyes that seemed to sparkle with delight as she laughed. The girl picked up a lone flower, a dandelion, and raised it into the air: it floated, multiplied, and soon a whole flotilla of flowers coursed through the air. They plaited themselves into the girl's hair, and the two of them laughed in delight, while the third girl grimaced. It was beautiful magic, wild and innocent, and Severus could not resist.
The girls were dressed in summer dresses, and he felt miserably shabby in his second-hand clothes and in his father's old coat, but he had nothing better to wear.
The girl with the fluffy and wild brown hair was the first to see him. Her brown eyes were kind and sparkled with delight as she greeted him, approaching Severus with her hand extended. “Hello! I'm Hermione Granger, nice to meet you! Who are you?” The two others stood a little further back.
“I'm Severus. Severus Snape.”
“I know you. You live at Spinner's End, by the riverside,” said the blonde girl in a snide, sneering tone, but Hermione Granger seemed to pay her no mind.
“These are Lily and Petunia Evans”, Hermione introduced the girls.
“You're... you're witches,” Severus muttered, slightly frightened by her bossy tone. Lily and Petunia Evans looked affronted.
“That's not a very nice thing to say to somebody,” Lily Evans said.
“What do you mean, witches?” Hermione asked curiously.
“Witches. You can do magic. There's nothing wrong with that, my mom's a one, and I'm a wizard,” Severus explained.
“Oh,” Hermione said, smiling. “but I thought witches are evil. We're not evil.”
“Nothing evil in being a witch or a wizard,” Severus said.
“How do you know that?” Hermione asked, sitting down. Lily and Petunia sat in the swings and began swinging, and when Lily was swinging high, she let go and floated lightly to the ground, though her sister protested. Hermione clapped her hands at her, and Lily blushed and curtseyed, very pleased.
“I've been watching them for a while,”Severus confessed, “though you're new. I haven't seen you before,” he told Hermione.
“You've been spying on us!” Petunia Evans chimed loudly.
“Haven't been spying. Wouldn't spy on you, anyway. You're a Muggle.”
“Come on, Lily, we're leaving,” Petunia said, insulted by his tone, and Lily followed her sister, glancing back at Hermione, who remained. Hermione waved at her friends as they went down the hill.
“I don't know what a Muggle is, but that didn't sound nice,” she chided.
“It's a non-magical person. If your parents aren't witches or wizards, then you must be Muggle-Born.”
Hermione nodded. “My parents don't do magic. At least I don't think so. They're dentists. Anyway, we just moved in. I live close to Lily and Petunia. Tell me more about magic? What's your mother like? Do you know any neat tricks? Are there any books about magic?”
Severus blinked at the barrage of questions, but he felt happy. She wasn't as pretty as Lily Evans, but she listened to him as he spoke for hours about magic. She always had more questions, but it didn't matter. He'd just found his first friend.
And she had very kind eyes.