Lily (Evans) Potter

[Chaser74]

I've always thought of Lily as like the perfect mixture of all the Houses; I'd expect that she was a hard one for the Hat to place!

I picture her like a Hufflepuff because of the caring quaities she displayed by sticking up for Snape whilst he was being taunted. That can't have been the first/only time she's done something like that, so that leads me to believe that she had a bit of a 'Puff in her.

I see her as a Ravenclaw because of her apt for Potions, and probably Charms. I have pictured her as a good student, willing to stick up for what she knows. A passionate learner.

A Slytherin because of her ambition to do well. I doubt that she was lazy, and can see her wanting to be the best.

And last, and formost, a Gryffindor. She was brave enough to die for her son, and fiery enough to stand up for and against her peers.

The hardest thing I find is giving Lily her fair share of flaws. Perhaps she was too headstrong, cocky even. She was probably grudging, and maybe stuck in her ways.

[emrii]

I think Lily had very little patience for James and the Marauders. Maybe another flaw could be that she had very little patience all round? This runs in to the temper we saw in Snape's Worst Memory. And I like the idea about her being friends with Snape. I can sort of see it working but I've never read any fics that venture into this and I'm fairly well-read Marauder-wise.

[nenya]

in my fic, I have come to the decision that she was friendly with Snape, but after he called her a 'Mudblood' she started to go off him. Then over the Sixth Year she starts to see the softer side of James.

However, by the beginning of the seventh year I was going to have her feeling like she was too good for James, thus making her a little arrogant (because I feel that everyone is a little arrogant) and perhaps she is a little impatient with those around her. But she is also very friendly and social, and is always willing to help someone out.

[MorganRay]

In my fic, I have come to the decision that she was friendly with Snape, but after he called her a 'Mudblood' she started to go off him. Then over the Sixth Year she starts to see the softer side of James.

This is a good idea. I think what can be derived from the books about a turning point is when James saves Snape. I think this would be the *revelation* point that Lily needed to really see that James wasn't just arrogant. This event, when mentioned, ticked off in my mind that this is when Lily possibly found out about Remus's secret, too. There's not definate canon support for this, but so far, she was never mentioned as an animangi, too. She could have discovered the Marauder secret on her own, but this spot in the Marauder history we know about seems to be a convinient spot for Lily to learn about the illegal activites. Also, maybe when Lily learns about what James did to help Remus, she'll come around to him a little more.

However, by the beginning of the seventh year I was going to have her feeling like she was too good for James, thus making her a little arrogant (because I feel that everyone is a little arrogant) and perhaps she is a little impatient with those around her. But she is also very friendly and social, and is always willing to help someone out.

I don't think by seventh year she would feel arrogant to James. I think she would feel too good for him during sixth year, but if you buy them getting married almost directly out of Hogwarts, she'll need to be really starting to get to known him and forgive him for his slights in the seventh year. I've always pictured seventh year Lily/James as trying to understand each other, maybe fighting like Ginny did with Harry. I think, by this point, they've both matured, and she can also realize that she's been too hard on James.

5 points to Hufflepuff

[midnight_me]

But at the moment, she's a little 2-D and I want to flesh her out a bit, I was wondering what opinions you guy's could give me.

She's definitely a bold person that's not afraid to talk to or stand up to anyone. I imagine her having lots of "okay" friends, and maybe a few close friends. Have her hang out with different people in your fic, not just one or two friends.

I also think she might have been a bit stuck up at times. Like she thought she was too good for James. Others may not agree with this.

And I think she would be able to take a joke. In lots of fics I see her freak out at the Marauders when they pull some harmless prank on her. She usually never forgets about it through the whole fic. Don't do this! It's cliché. I'd have her be sort of amused by the Marauder's jokes as long as they didn't hurt anyone.

She did care about her schoolwork. Have her study when she needs to, but don't make her really swotty. She probably didn't read her schoolbooks over and over like Hermione does.

Make sure they get together pretty quickly (not in the first week, but in the first few months of school). They got married straight out of Hogwarts, so they must have gotten together fairly quickly in the year.

Slughorn described her as cheeky. Take this into consideration when writing!

I hope this helped. Good luck!

[Vindictus Viridian]

We know Harry doesn't seem to have come across his mother's name on any of the detention cards he copies -- but that doesn't mean Lily was a perfect angel. One possibility is that Slughorn said she would have made a good Slytherin because she was subtle and not easily caught. The other possibility is that Harry didn't see her name for the same reason he never came across "Severus Snape" under perpetrator or victim; there are some names on which the ink never fades and the mice never chew. Perfection does not seem to have been a prerequisite for Head Boy; why assume it was for Head Girl? Certainly it wasn't for prefect, or there simply wouldn't have been one for the Gryffindor boys of that year.

In other words, Lily can cross the line, as long as she doesn't get caught crossing it too often. She tends to run off with my pen when I write her -- a bit hyperkinetic, perhaps, and good-natured up to a point (but don't go past that point.) Something of a tendency toward runon sentences seemed to suit her. Friends in other Houses seemed to suit her. Routine skirmishes with Rosier and Wilkes, followed by a few bland lies to the investigating professor ("They appear to have stuffed each other headfirst down the girls' toilets. How strange,") also seemed to suit her. I was inclined to take "Everyone loved Lily" with a few grains of salt and a few nasty Slytherins. If she and James defied the Dark Lord three times, odds are good both of them did well in DADA.

[Accio_Brain]

The hardest thing I find is giving Lily her fair share of flaws. Perhaps she was too headstrong, cocky even. She was probably grudging, and maybe stuck in her ways.

I agree. We've seen the dark side of James in Snape's Worst Memory, but we've yet to see what Lily's flaws are. She was apparently a great person, but she was certainly not perfect. I think she would be very hard to write because we know very little about her. I guess I would take all these suggestions to heart and just make sure that she isn't perfect because no one is.

[princesskate]

I always imagined Lily knowing that she was smart, pretty, fun to be around ect... and that gave her confidence and allowed her to be cheeky. Unlike James, the confidence didn't go to her head and allow her to be arrogant. But I do think there are a lot of similarities between James and Lily, which may be why they sometimes butted heads.

[Lily_greeneyes]

This thread has been dormant for over two months...I'll post in this anyway.

I've got one more thing to add to Lily's character.

I believe she was dead stubborn. An example that demostrates this, was how she resisted James until seventh-year. Because of this stubborness, I believe at first, she didn't realise she liked him. She was probably in a state of denial. Think about it; going from seeing James as an arrogant, bullying toe-rag, to falling love? It just wasn't going to happen in the space of a few months (obviously they must have dated before the end of seventh-year...).

It makes sense that she would have begun to like him at a somewhat earlier stage, maybe in the middle of sixth-year. Most probably, she wouldn't have known how she felt, or what that emotion was. Then in seventh-year, bam! She realises.

We know that Lily isn't a shallow person. Sticking up for Snape, who showed his thanks with an insult, demostrated this. She didn't judge him on his appearance or the fact that he was a Slytherin. She judged him as a human with equality.
I think the only part of her that wasn't great was her self-realisation/discovery. She needed to trust herself more, realise her own emotions. Everything else about her was just right; looks, intelligence, morals, beliefs.

But of course, this is just my belief of her. That's the portrayal of her that I'm using in my Lily/James fic...It's not canon, but more like deduced from canon.

[Werewolf_sympathiser]

For Lily, I've always seen her with a kind of dry humour maybe even sarcastic, but not in the same way that, say, Malfoy is. I do think she was pretty and perhaps popular but she probably only had a few really close friends. To others she could've come across as a swot, perhaps a house traitor in the case of helping Snape and maybe not particularly friendly. However, as POA film Lupin said "She helped me at a time no one else would" or could or...well, it was soemthing along those lines, perhaps she was in fact sympathetic towards people who have come from unfortunate circumstances: Lupin, Snape, maybe even herself. As someone mentioned before, she probably got a lot of stick for being Muggle born, especially from those in Slytherin (think Hermione and Malfoy's relationship). Perhaps the way your characterisation of Lily sees James and Sirius is as spoilt little rich kids who pick on those who haven't had the upbringing they have (although it can be argued that Sirius came from unfortunate circumstances due to his family).

I do think Lily was pretty and smart. I have trouble making her appear popular to other guys when I write her but Jo says that she was. In a sense she is a bit like Ginny and Hermione but qualities such as her open mindedness and perhaps distance from her peers make her different too. I do think she had a fiery temper, as shown in 'Snape's Worst Memory' and that perhaps once you were in her bad books it would be hard to get back out again (like in the case of James). I hope that wasn't too confusing