Another Chance

Liliana Evans sits at her vanity, staring out the window at the drumming rain. Tomorrow she is to be married off to Severus Snape, the perfect pureblood, rich, Slytherin husband. She has known it since she first left for Hogwarts. Her place, she was told, was to become a beautiful Slytherin, do well in school but not exceed, for to bybass her betrothed would be rude and unwomanly, then be married off and create heirs for her husband's empire.

At first she had fought it, refused to marry him, tried to be her own person. But soon she had learned that resistance is futile. This is her place, and there is no use trying to fight it. No use trying to fight her parents' medieval traditions of arranged marriages, no use trying to fight Voldemort. Always in the world there will be a balance of dark and light, and for her to resist would be to throw off that very balance. So she gives up. Her mind becomes robotic, no longer thinking for its own. She cries out at the sheer misery. She can do nothing. To run away would be self-torture, for the Dark Lord can always find her. To marry would be an equal torture, killing her soul. There is only one thing she can do. Unlatching the narrow fifth story window, the night wind blows the warm summer rain onto her face and the sheer curtains billow around her. Ripping the tiny ballet shoes, her only sense of self left, off her charm bracelet, she jumps.

On the sidewalk below, James Potter is out for a midnight stroll, to clear his mind. He has just graduated from Hogwarts, and he is frustrated. His father pushes him more and more every day to join him at Gringrotts, saying it is a proper career and that his dreams of quidditch are silly and unsubstantial. His mother urges him to marry, and invites silly, fake, surface-deep women to dinner hoping that he will like one of them. Of course they must be a pureblood Gryffindor, to carry on the proud Potter tradition. He needs to escape. Suddenly, he hears a stifled scream from his left. With eyes like a cat, he spots something falling from a high window through the dark. Without thinking, he runs towards it and whips out his wand, slowing its fall until it lands softly in the grass before him.

Still running, he sees that the lump is a person, wrapped in a silken nightgown, thin frame wracked with sobs. He recognises her immediately, She is Lily Evans, the Slytherin Head girl in the same year as he. Altough they aren't best of friends, he has spent enough time with her and heard enough of her sarcastic comments to guess what she is upset about, and he knows he needs to find her a way out of her situation before she tries to kill herself agian. He knows that a pureblood Slytherin woman from a family such as hers hasn't much of a reason to live, and somehow he needs to convince her that that can change. She tilts her wide green eyes up to his, and in that moment they see something new in each other. A new life, and a reason to live. It won't be easy, but together they can forge the way into uncharted territory, the Lion and the Serpent.