the_debt_of_time

crumpling on the playground asphalt, Lily soared like a trapeze artist through the air, staying up far too
long, landing far too lightly.
They continued watching the memory play out, Sirius forcing himself not to look
at Snape interacting with the young Lily. Despite the pity he felt for the boy, Sirius still
remembered the man who did not deserve to know Lily. Not after what he had called her.
Not after joining Voldemort. Sirius could not force himself to acknowledge that this small
child was the cause of so much hurt to a girl he had thought of as family.
"Does it make a difference, being Muggle-born?" Lily asked.
Snape visibly hesitated. "No. It doesn't make any difference."
"Good," Lily said, relaxing.
"Fucking hypocrite," Sirius snapped, turning away from the scene.
"Sirius, stop," Harry scolded him.
For once, Sirius listened.
As the scene re-formed, Sirius looked around. They were on platform nine and
three-quarters.
Snape stood, slightly hunched, next to a thin, sallow-faced, sour-looking woman who greatly
resembled him. Snape was staring at a family of four a short distance away; the two girls slightly apart
from their parents. Lily appeared to be pleading with her sister.
"I'm not a freak," Lily said. "That's a horrible thing to say."
"That's where you're going," Petunia said with relish. "A special school for freaks. You and that
Snape boy... weirdos, that's what you two are. It's good you're being separated from normal people. It's
for our safety."
Before Sirius could look around the platform in search of other faces from the past,
the scene changed again.
"This is it! We're off to Hogwarts!" Snape said brightly, trying to cheer Lily up as they took their
seats in an empty compartment.
Sirius grinned at the sight of himself and a young James Potter entering the same
compartment. "Ah, now look at these handsome faces."
"You'd better be in Slytherin," Snape said.
"Slytherin?" James said. "Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"
"My whole family have been in Slytherin," the younger Sirius said.
"Blimey," James said, "and I thought you seemed all right!"