PART I: LILY
The friendship of Lily Evans and Mary Macdonald began under a bed. Lily's bed, to be exact. See, she'd been having a bad day. It was first year and everything was just...a little...much. She missed her mum and dad, back then she even missed Petunia, and Severus was there but he wasn't there-there. He was in Slytherin. After the sorting Lily had briefly considered begging the hat to put her in Slytherin too. Especially after being placed in the same house as Black and Potter. There hadn't been any posh kids at her old school but they were about as obnoxious and self-obsessed as she had expected. And Potter was so gaga for Gryffindor that she was certain it would be filled with people just like him.
In the end, however, Lily had not had the guts to ask anything of the sorting hat, so she had remained in Gryffindor. And mostly that had been okay—posh bespectacled prats aside. Her roommates were nice, her classes were fun, and she did rather like not living in a dungeon. But she was also...lonely. And out of place. And uncomfortable. There were so many things that the kids around her—even if they weren't Purebloods—seemed to know, and it felt impossible trying to keep up with it all. Severus did his best to help her along but she could tell that he was sometimes a little bit embarrassed by her. That was the worst feeling honestly.
One afternoon, at the end of September, for no reason in particular, it had all just felt too much. So she'd crawled under her bed, trying to make the world smaller. Easier to manage. About fifteen minutes into her pity party Mary had walked in. Lily watched her feet, listened to the David Bowie song she hummed under her breath. Her and Mary had barely exchanged more than a few sentences but she was secretly Lily's favourite roommate, if only because she was the one who reminded Lily the most of home. The posters she hung on the walls were all of people Lily recognized and they didn't move or talk, plus, sometimes she would complain about things that Lily could relate to—like missing ballpoint pens and three-ringed binders.
She's not sure, to this day, what compelled her to speak then. Surely the smart thing to do would have been to remain silent and hope that her new roommate wouldn't notice her having a complete and utter mental breakdown. But being quiet had never been Lily's strong suit.
"Do you have records?" she wondered out loud.
"Ah!" Mary shouted, her feet stumbling back into her bed. "Jesus Christ, Lily? Is that you?"
"It's just that I've never seen you play any but you hum them all the time," she said in lieu of an answer.
"Where the hell are you?" Mary demanded.
"At home I have a bunch of records but my mum wouldn't let me bring them, she didn't know how safe it would be here and she was worried they'd get stolen, not that Wizards are dying for Muggle music but, of course, she didn't know that. Still doesn't know, I suppose—"
"Lily," Mary said harshly. "Did you get turned invisible or something?"
"What? Oh," Lily blinked. "No, I'm not invisible."
"Then why the hell can I hear you prattling on but there's not a single freckle in my line of vision?"
Lily scowled up at the bottom of her bed. "I don't have that many freckles."
"Uh-huh and the Giant Squid doesn't have that many legs."
"Did you just—"
"Where are you?" she was beginning to sound genuinely exasperated, but to be honest, Lily quite liked being a disembodied voice. It was freeing
"I'm under here," she said eventually, and with great reluctance.
"Under—oh honestly," some shuffling later Mary was kneeling on the floor and peering at Lily under the bed.
