It never starts somewhere spectacular. No, life changing, world altering events always seem to begin somewhere small, perhaps somewhere unassuming, somewhere no one would ever think to look or examine or peruse, because why would they?
The Evans' household is quaint; it is quiet; it is nothing spectacular or even as much as astounding. It is in the most whole sense of the word, normal, and so it only makes sense for her origins to begin somewhere as mundane as Cokeworth.
Mrs. Evans works as a nurse at the local hospital, Mr. Evans in the factory only three miles down the road. Petunia doesn't work, despite her protests that she's working quite hard on finding some secretarial job in the city. She has a habit of never specifying which city. As far as Lily is concerned, Tuney's only plans involved finding a wealthy, boring, stick in the mud to settle down with, and as she has already attached herself to Vernon Dursley, she clearly has nothing left to accomplish.
At fifteen, Lily has no plans. At fifteen, she has no inkling as to what her future holds or what she even wants. At fifteen, the only thing she knows of the future is that when she wakes up each morning, some way, somehow, she and Petunia will get in a fight.
That is the primary constant in her life, the fighting. Sisters bickered of course, if Lily were to ever meet a set of perfect siblings she wouldn't even know what to do with herself. It hadn't always been that way, of course. In fact, in most of her earliest memories, the pair had been inseparable, their names a single syllable uttered in one breath. She can't ever place her finger on the exact moment they started to drift apart and some nights it keeps her awake.
But things change, whether she knows the moment or not. She's learned to accept the fact that is she says the sky is blue, Petunia will go blue in the face while saying it's green.
The singular thing the Evans' sisters manage to agree upon is their wanderlust, or at the very least, their need to escape. While Lily wishes to see the world and all it had to offer, Petunia seems only to wish to see the sign proclaiming "You Are Now Leaving Cokeworth."
It's a factory town. Every surface seems covered in a fine layer of grease, a thin dusting of pollution. Lily grew up without seeing the stars in the sky, and it isn't until years later she finally understands what she missed.
If prompted, Lily can prattle off all of the establishments in the little town. There is a gas station, a post office, a small cafe just down the street, a secondhand shop where she found her favorite sunflower printed dress, go a bit further from home and there is a grocery with a pharmacy attached, a pub her dad likes to frequent on his weekends off, the local school, a rickety old church, the hospital just outside the village, and a shop for auto repair. It's strange, Lily had always thought, that a few measly shops, a couple of rundown buildings, and of course, the three factories that drew in all the work, could make up the sphere of her world. By all extents and purposes, she never has to leave.
She desperately wants to leave Cokeworth. The locals are of the friendly sort, they have to be, living in such close confines, working in such close confines, shopping in such close confines, existing in such close confines.(Once, in the midst of one of her fits, one of those door-slammed-shut-screaming-at-the-wall-just-to-scream type of fits teenagers are often plagued by, she yelled that the only thing worse than the smog were the constant smiles.) The only other person she knows in the village (other than Pet, of course) who hates the town as much as she does is Severus Snape.
Sev has always been a little different, as far as Lily can tell. He was always alone, always torn off from the group. But, she won him over, years ago, and so they were quite near inseparable.
They spend their days sitting on the hilltop, back behind his home- she had, oddly enough as she came to realize after enough time had passed, never stepped foot inside- looking down at the river that winds its way through Cokeworth, watching the smoke billow from the chimney of one of the factories. In her memories, Sev was a quiet boy, his sleeves pulled down over his knuckles even in the rare flashes of heat that reared their heads in the summer months, his hair limp and always hanging just in front of his face. He always tells her she's special. And to a teenage girl, even a teenage girl as spectacular as Lily Evans (though even she didn't know just how spectacular she was), that means something.
According to Pet, he's a freak, creepy, and undeniably off. So of course, Lily disagreed. But then it happens and everything changes and everything is undeniably different.
She should have brought the umbrella, Lily thinks a bit darkly, her eyes flicking up to rolling clouds, streaks of gray and angry shades of blue stretching across the sky. Petunia had insisted that she needed the umbrella, what if Vernon came over and wanted to go on a walk? Like Vernon Dursley ever went on a voluntary walk in his life. The thought was almost laughable. No, it is actually very laughable, and when Lily laughed, Petunia had turned an awful shade of pink. She had tried to begun to argue that it would make much more sense for Petunia to go get the damn milk, but, after a look from her mum, she had conceded without further argument and let Pet keep the damn umbrella and her spot on the sofa. A bit of rain wouldn't hurt.
It's hardly like she will melt in the rain.
Under the heels of her worn out trainers, the bits of gravel kicked up onto the sidewalk crunch into the darkened pavement. Her arms swing a bit carelessly as she walks without thinking towards the shop just a few streets over. If her mum wasn't planning on using that milk to finish her cake, Lily knows that she would have been less than enthused about trekking out in the gloom.
It's the type of day she loathes, when the air feels fat and overstuffed and clings to her like a second skin, settling heavily onto her shoulders, thick with the rain that hadn't yet come, and no sun to detract from some of the misery. She hates not seeing the sun, despite burning whenever the forecast was anything less than overcast. ("Honestly Lily, you're too pale, you look ill, it's unattractive.," Petunia is sure to mention whenever an opportunity arose.)
But the prospect of one of her mum's birthday cakes had been alluring enough to draw her from the cool tiled floor of the kitchen. A part of her wishes Sev was there, after all, company keeps her mind from the weather. Lily rather wishes that part of her would shut up.
He was one of them. She'd heard about them on the news at night, a few bits of whispering and gossip around the village. A mutant, that was the proper term, but the word freak was used a bit more liberally. And she doesn't care about that, no, Lily knows she doesn't care about his genetics of all things; she cares that he'd changed.
A funhouse mirror of who he once was, he was bent and distorted out of shape. Or maybe she'd just been blind to see him any differently. The look in his eye as he spread his palm over a patch of grass, overgrown, the sort of grass that scratched along her bare legs, it wasn't the Severus she knew. When she looked down, the grass under his palm was dead, brown, rotted. She wishes she hadn't recoiled on instinct. But she had.
("You're toxic," she says quietly, the words tacking up in the air between them, her eyes still aimed downwards.
Severus shakes his head and exhales a long breath, pulling his sleeve back down over his hand. "I'm poisonous, there's a difference.)
Lily tries to shake the thoughts from her mind, but they cling, hooks dug in. He looked at her differently after that day. Curious, almost confused, expectant of something that didn't come, a confession she didn't have to offer. Then the distance started to grow. She felt it ballooning between them, pregnant and swollen with silence. She exhales a heavy sigh as she pushed into Miller's, the doorbell jangling. She can dwell later. She needs to find milk.
By the time she exits the shop, the rain has begun pelting the street with a vengeance. And so she runs.
When Lily finally stomps through the backdoor, her chest is heaving and she is soaked thoroughly to the bone. Petunia wrinkles her nose in her direction, hands stilling from loading the washing machine. "You look horrid."
She grits her teeth, trying, trying, trying to be the bigger person. Lily is not the bigger person. "Well maybe if someone had let me take the umbrella," she begins, voice taut as she hefts the milk into the crook of her arm, pushing past her sister. "Maybe if someone hadn't have thrown a hissy fit and gone and gotten the milk when mum asked!"
Petunia opens and closes her mouth, brows furrowing as her lips twist into an unhappy line as she turns to follow Lily into the kitchen."I was waiting on Vernon! Unlike you, I actually have someone normal who wants to be around me." A cruel edge creeps into her voice and Lily's then empty hands ball into white knuckled fists.
"Don't talk about Sev like that," she spits the words back, voice beginning to rise. A hurricane is rocking her chest and she feels her bones rattling inside her. But Petunia isn't done yet.
"I guess it makes sense he's your only friend. You're probably a freak too," she continues, sneering in her direction, 'you're probably one of them. Might explain what's wrong with you."
It starts growing harder and harder to breathe steadily with the pain swelling behind her eyelids, white hot needle pricks into her brain. Somewhere, buried in the back of her mind, Lily knows something is wrong. But how is she to know what power is coiling underneath her skin?
"Shut up, shut up," her hands are curled into her hair, pulling hard at the roots, "just shut up you, you bitch!" She's yelling, eyes clamped shut. Petunia takes a step back, about to offer a retaliation of her own when Mrs. Evans stumble into the doorway.
"Girls! Both of you, what on earth is going on! Lily, apologize to your sister!" Mr. Evans exclaims loudly, his face drawn in tight concern as he looks at his daughters. Next to him Mrs. Evans stands in silence, holding a birthday cake with a softly flickering candle.
Everything is too loud. Something is crawling it's way through Lily's throat, clawing into her mouth. Her limbs are shaking, everything is shaking. She feels fire inside of her and it's eating away at her organs and her bones and her heart won't stop pounding against her ribs and they are going to break from the strain and her ears are ringing and her head is being split by an icepick or a jackhammer or a saw and her own skin feels hot to the touch and- she opens her eyes.
Her parents, wide eyed terror, Petunia with her hands curling over her ears, the carton of milk spit and torn apart, the glass from the overhead lights confettied around her own feet. Her birthday cake smashed onto the ground. Mr, Evans clutching at his chest, stumbling against the doorframe with a hand outstretched.
"You're one of them," Petunia whispers, voice shaking, thin finger outstretched and pointing, accusing.
"Henry," Mrs. Evans gasps as the shock slipped from her system and a whole new type of fear floods through her,
The Evans' household has always quaint, quiet, not spectacular or astounding in the least, but that changes in a shower of glass and a scream.
At fifteen, Lily Evans had no plans and only a wish to leave.
At sixteen, Lily Evans has no plans and she runs.
"Petunia call 999, go, hurry."
The EMTs wheeling her father out on a stretcher.
The living room decorated for a party she didn't have.
In the midst of the chaos, Lily went to her room, threw the few things she needed into her backpack, and slipped out the back door. That had been two months ago. had gone to her room, thrown what she needed into a backpack, and then she'd run.
The bus ride from Cokeworth to London had been the longest few hours of her life, her head swimming. She was different. She was like Sev. She was a mutant.
For the first time in her life, that little nagging in the back of her mind was silent. Unanswered questions had their answer. She wasn't like everyone else. Lily had never been like anyone else. For the first time in her life, she was afraid of what was nestled inside her chest, what slid through her veins.
Two months had passed in a haze of sleepless nights and hungry days, in back alleys and ragged trainers slamming against the sidewalk with pilfered food shoved deep into her pockets, in unwashed hair and side-eyed stares. Two months and she still isn't used to being alone.
Lily pushes her hands into her pockets, the material of her jean jacket wearing and worn thin, fraying at the edges. The weight of her entire world presses against her back with each step, shoved haphazardly into the backpack she and her mum had bought on a rare trip outside of Cokeworth. She'd never gotten to take it to school. The thought makes her ache for a home she has fled and so she tries to swallow the memories, but they slide down her throat like glass.
The gnawing in her gut grows harder and harder to ignore, incessant and ever-present; she knows she was withering away. It's funny, in a sad sort of way, how the absence of something could be just as potent as its presence. Her life seems to be full of all sorts of bittersweet revelations, she thinks a bit sourly. Her stomach lets out another growl; she gave up counting the number per hour after her first week.
She'd stopped trying to catch strangers' eyes after the first week, stopped trying to beg for handouts, loose change. No one ever wants to linger on the desolate, and if they did, it was from a distance. A walking cautionary tale to tell their children. No one wants to be caught staring at the clearly homeless girl on the street, because if they are, they might feel inclined to do something. No one ever wants to do something.
Lily shoulders through the after-work crowd, wave after wave of nine-to-fivers in their pressed shirts, silk ties, polished heels and prim blouses. Men with cigarettes dangling from the corners of their mouths, walking in impenetrable ranks down the crowded sidewalk toward the tube. When she turns into one of the cleaner alleys, such an oxymoron, she bites back a mirthless laugh, a scowl, a grimace. Home sweet fucking home. With a sigh, she sinks down against the wall, knees bent, feet turned inward, head pressing against the grimy stone.
She slings her bag from her shoulder and settles it between her legs, her thin hand fumbling for the zipper. A half crushed bag of chips, a bruised apple, and a melted bar of chocolate. Maybe she should feel bad for stealing, let the guilt worm through her and eat at her conscience. But she doesn't. A girl has to eat, and so she eats, wolfing down the bag of chips as if she hasn't eaten in days. Maybe she hasn't. The days blur together in endless, mindless streams while still seeming to last for weeks at a time.
Lily is about to tear open the crinkled wrapper around the melted chocolate when she hears the first groan. At first, she makes no move to investigate. She's seen quite a few horror movies, enough to know that following a strange sound through a dark alley was a sure fire way to get stabbed. Or shot. Or strangled. Or really, any other ominous word beginning with the letter "s." But when the groans of...pain? continue on for a few more minutes, her curiosity wins out over reason and rationalization.
Hesitantly, Lily pushes herself to her feet and takes a few wary steps out of her nook in the alleyway, brows furrowing and knitting together. "Hello? Anyone there?" She asks, her voice a bit hoarse. Oh way to go, Lily, say the most stereotypical thing the girl who's about to get murdered says, she thinks darkly, cringing to herself . She doesn't have long to dwell on her own stupidity, because in only a moment, a soft reply echoes from further down the alley.
"Here," is the only word uttered by whoever it was that was making those awful sounds. Frowning, she takes a few more cautious steps in the direction of the voice. Whoever it is, they certainly don't sound well. Then she sees a pair of ragged trainers sticking out from behind the dumpster. After a moment of internal debate, Lily pokes her head around the corner of the metal bin.
Lying on the ground, nursing a black eye with a dented can of soda, is a rumpled teenage boy. He gives her a weak two fingered salute before groaning loudly once more. His shirt hangs, too big, off his frame, his jeans torn at the knees and frayed at the hems, his arms raked with what looked like angry scratch marks, his nails red at the beds. She frowns. Or rather, her frown grows deeper. That is certainly not what she'd expected to see.
"You alright?" She finally asks after a long stretch of silence. It hadn't necessarily been uncomfortable silence. No, she conceded, that's a lie. It had been the uncomfortable silence of two people, one of whom was lying injured behind a dumpster, who didn't know one another. Slowly, the boy pushes himself up into an almost seated position.
He didn't have a bad face, Lily notes, despite the scar, white and twisted, jutting down his cheek and just under his eye. And the black eye. And the split lip. He gives a grimace before letting his head fall back against the brick wall, eyes squinting and squeezing shut. "Peachy," he mumbles as he lowers the can from his eye. The skin surrounding it is a storm, blues and purples and tinges of black. He opens his good eye and shoots a look in her direction, studying her.
She knows he notices the dirty clothes, the hideous way her hair is matting, the dark circles stamped under her eyes. She knows because she sees the same things when she looks at him. His lips quirk slightly, a small smile barely nestling into the corner of his mouth, when he pops the tab on his soda. He takes a small drink, barely pressing the metal to his tender looking lip before he thrusts the can in her direction. "Want a drink?"
She learns his name is Remus Lupin ("and please don't laugh, I know, yes, Wolfy McWolf- I said not to laugh!") and that for the past year and a half, he's been living on the streets. He doesn't tell her why; she knows better than to ask. He got his scar in a car accident when he was seven years old, his mum hadn't survived. When he says this, he goes quiet, long fingers tapping against the tattered denim of his jeans. He likes to read and has on occasion caught a fairly decent nap in the seldom visited periodical section of the library. He reminded her that everyone one the street had once had a dream. She told him to fuck off with that philosophical shit and he laughed.
She tells him her name is Lily Evans and that she ran away from home two months ago. She doesn't tell him why; he seems to know not to ask. She shares her apple with him, the juice dripping down their fingers and their chins. She talks about how she thought she was going to be a chemist or a doctor or something substantial. He tells her that everyone on the street had a dream once. She tells him to fuck off with that philosophical shit and he laughs.
It takes them a week to get the hang of it. Lily goes in the shop first, as clean as she can manage to look. Then Remus walks in to distract the owner by looking suspicious and like, well, like a hungry, homeless kid. After he's tossed out, Lily makes her way up to the counter to pay for something, something small, a candy bar, a soda. And then she leaves, having bought one thing, with twelve others shoved deep into her backpack. They meet up afterwards in the alley to split the spoils of war. They only ever take what they need.
("We're homeless, not heathens," Remus announced after their first successful mission.
Lily snorted, a Benson and Hedges primed between her lips as she struck a pilfered match. "That's cute. You should cross-stitch that onto a pillow for me, yeah?" )
They aren't thriving, but they are surviving and for the first time in a long time, Lily isn't alone.
It happens on the way back from the library, both their heads foggy and heavy from a nap. The librarian, the one with the glasses like ovals, has known for some time about how they would sleep, curled in a heap together, by the atlases and thick, dust coated dictionaries. She insists they take a few old books with them and a few cookies. The books are shoved into Lily's backpack and a few cookies, wrapped carefully in a napkin, are snug in Remus's pocket.
The man juts out from the alleyway, a switchblade glinting maliciously under the orange glow of the streetlamp. Inhale. He's three feet away. Exhales. Lily feels the cold edge pressing into the curve of her throat, a too big hand curled around her thin arm. He reeks of booze, of stale cigarettes, of too much aftershave and sick, his eyes blown too wide for anyone sober.
He keeps the blade, dull, but not dull enough, firm against the stretch of her throat while he yanks her backpack from her shoulder. Hard. "Don't take that, let me go," Lily protests, an elbow flying back towards the man's gut, her heel to his toes, only he doesn't. Instead he presses the knife harder and she pretends not to feel the drop of blood slipping down toward her collarbones.
"Give me all the shit you have in your pockets," he hisses to Remus, his breath too close to her skin, his hand holding her arm too tightly.
Remus's hands ball to white knuckles fists and his jaw clenches. In the five months they've been together, she's never seen him look so un-Remus. Before she can say anything else, she's being shoved to the sidewalk, her elbow crashing against the pavement. The knife skitters out of the man's hand, but not for long enough. Before they can run, Remus is pressed to the lamppost, the knife under his jaw. The man, he's screaming something, saying something, but she can't hear him, it's just noise. It's all just noise.
Again, it's happening again.
This time, Lily doesn't fight it.
The man's on the ground, gripping his head with cupped hands. She doesn't see the knife. He's screaming; he won't stop screaming, the light on the post has shattered above them, a shower of glass raining down. They don't pause or hesitate or marvel because their feet are hitting the pavement, muscles screaming as they run and they run and they run.
Chest heaving as she slumps against the wall in the nearest safe alley, Lily tries to catch her breath, her hands gripping her knees. Beside her, Remus mirrors her position, their recovered bag at their feet.
"So, you're a mutant." He doesn't ask. After the show she just put on, he'd have to be stupid to think she was anything else. But he doesn't seem afraid either, not as he looks at her from the corner of his eye, mop of hair falling just slightly in his face.
It takes her a while to speak. She'd grown used to having someone again. The streets were never easy, but they were easier with Remus. "That a problem?" She finally replies, meeting his side-eyed gaze with one of her own. She remembers the way she felt when Sev had shown her his power, the way something inside of her shook and rattled, the way she leaned away. Remus wasn't leaning away.
After an eternity, he shakes his head. And then he's laughing. Why the bloody fuck is he laughing? Lily looks at him head on, slowly straightening up as her brow furrows in confusion, perfectly justified confusion, she thinks. He extends a hand to her, moving to press his back to the wall as well. "Remus Lupin, fellow mutant, nice to meet you."
Later that night, they sit on the cold concrete, passing the last cigarette of the pack back and forth, back and forth, the burning cluster of embers the only light. "The car wreck, 's what did it. One minute my mum is driving me home from piano lessons, the next some ass in a truck's t-boned us, sent us flipping off the road. I crawled out but my mum seemed stuck. Something just snapped, I think. I couldn't even see out of one eye," he reaches up and taps his scar, a wry, sad grin twisting itself on his face. "But I felt different, I felt like someone else. When the ambulances and police arrived, I had flipped the car right side up and dragged her out." He presses the cigarette to his lips and looks too far away. Lily sets her hand on his knee and leaves it.
"I was fighting with my sister. We fight- we fought all the time, about everything. She was calling my friend a freak, calling me a freak, and I just couldn't take it, you know?" Remus holds the cigarette to her and she gladly plucks it from between his fingers. "I called her a bitch and I just lost control. I screamed and glass shattered and my mum dropped my birthday cake and my dad," Lily falters, stumbling over the words as they glued themselves inside her mouth, "I think he started having a heart attack. When the ambulances came, I ran away." There wasn't a way to sugarcoat it, pretty up the truth. She'd lost control and her family suffered and she ran.
They let the silence sit, quietly passing their cigarette until it dwindles to nothing more than ash, smoke coiling around them, hiding and masking and obscuring and doing everything Lily wishes she could.
And then it's just darkness. Lily lets her head fall against Remus's shoulder, a thin jacket spread over their legs. Neither notice the rat alongside the opposite wall, watching them with almost human inquisitiveness.