Lily Potter

Lily Potter (née Evans) is the mother of Harry Potter. She is described as being very pretty, with startlingly green almond-shaped eyes and thick, long, dark red hair. In addition, Lily is one of the brightest students of her year, with a natural and intuitive ability at Potions. She is one of the "all-time favourite students" of Horace Slughorn, who describes her as "vivacious", "charming", "very brave", and "very funny". Rowling describes Lily as being "a bit of a catch"; she was a popular girl for whom many boys had romantic feelings. Lily is Muggle-born, and her sister Petunia Dursley despised her for being a witch and viewed her as a "freak" but is later revealed to have been jealous of her abilities. Rowling stated on her site that Lily did receive warning letters for testing the limits of the statute of secrecy.[27] Lily's Patronus is a doe, presumably to pair with James's Animagus shape of a stag (also the form of Harry's patronus).

After witnessing a memory from Snape about Lily's and James's time as Hogwarts students, Harry gathers the impression that Lily hated James, but Sirius and Lupin assure him that she did not; they "simply got off on the wrong foot". Rowling confirmed this view when asked how Lily and James had gotten together if Lily hated him. Lupin tells Harry that after James matured and changed his attitude, Lily started dating him in their seventh year. Rowling later echoed Lupin's words, describing it as James having to "[tone] down some of his more 'bombastic' behaviour". They married soon after leaving Hogwarts with Sirius as best man at their wedding.

The old, pre-Hogwarts friendship between Lily and Snape is fully revealed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, along with the fact that Snape harboured unrequited romantic feelings for Lily from childhood. Rowling states that Lily might even have returned those feelings if Snape had not become so seriously involved in the Dark Arts. Their relationship ends in their fifth year at Hogwarts, when Snape, angry and humiliated, unthinkingly calls Lily a "Mudblood" after she defended him against James and Sirius. After leaving Hogwarts, Snape became a Death Eater and informed Voldemort of half of an overheard prophecy, which Voldemort takes to refer to Lily and her son, Harry. Fearing for Lily's life, Snape joins the Order as a spy for Dumbledore, in exchange for what he hopes will be Dumbledore's protection of Lily. Voldemort offered Lily the chance to step aside before he killed Harry because of Snape's request to spare Lily's life, but Lily refused and Voldemort killed her. The result of her selfless act of love manifested itself two ways: when Voldemort attempted to kill Harry with the Killing Curse the spell backfired, rendering Voldemort non-corporeal. The lingering protection afforded to Harry by Lily's sacrifice rendered Voldemort unable to touch him physically. The second way in which Harry is protected by Lily's sacrifice occurs when Petunia takes Harry in. Dumbledore told Harry that he had extended Lily's protection to Privet Drive, because Lily and Petunia are related by blood. This protection ends when Harry comes of age at 17.

Though Harry bears a great resemblance to his father, it is often noted that he has Lily's eyes. In a 1999 interview, Rowling stated, "Harry has his father's and mother's good looks. But he has his mother's eyes and that's very important in a future book". That "future book" was Deathly Hallows. In Snape's death scene in that novel, after having passed his memories to Harry, he whispers to Harry: "Look... at... me..." In one of Snape's memories, it is revealed that Dumbledore convinces Snape to protect Harry after Lily's death by mentioning the fact that he has "precisely" the same eyes as his mother.