Harry’s mother
Lily Potter
Harry’s mother. A Muggle-born witch whose choice, in the opening tragedy, is the protection the series keeps trying to understand.
Lily is dead before the first chapter’s present tense. What the early books give you is a sacrifice, red hair, and a sister who wants nothing to do with the magical world. Green eyes get mentioned because Harry is how the living remember her.
She was skilled, and she was friends with people who later chose ugly politics, including Severus Snape as a child. That friendship is a fact the novels reveal in pieces. The love that saves her son is the part the first book is willing to say plainly.
Later in the story
The shape of her Patronus, and the full story of the friendship, are late pages. They change Snape more than they change the fact of her courage.
Family sketch
The Potters
A three-person sketch. The novels mention a wider family, including Harry’s aunt on his mother’s side, and this drawing leaves that street for the book.