A/N: I'm madly in love with this pairing.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not making any money off this.
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Oh, not your everyday circumstance
The elephant
Sharing peanuts with the rats
The Minnow and the Trout, A Fine Frenzy
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A late summer breeze makes falling leaves of her sunset hair as she tumbles through the sky on that creaky swing—the middle swing, always the swing in the very center, because she is the core of his world.
"Will they really send it by owl?" she wonders, gliding by him with a swish of patterned skirts and summer days. Her legs pump out a rhythm, taking her up and down in a grandfather-clock arc that tick-tocks the evening away.
"Yup," he confirms. He slumps in his own swing, both feet firmly on the ground.
"And it'll come right away?"
"Yup," he promises, though he's only speculating.
"And if we run?" She lets her legs drag in the humid air, braking her mad flight, and comes to a gentle landing at his side.
He frowns and glances over into her face. Her eyes shine like splints of emerald, mischievous in the last light of day. "It'll catch us," he's sure. "You can't run from a delivery owl."
"Have you ever tried?" Suddenly she is holding her wand, and he realizes she has had it tucked into her sock all this time. He has barely a moment to ponder the incongruity
—this is their Muggle world, these swings with the rusting chains, the line of trees fencing in the setting sun, and memories of magic don't belong—
before he knows what she's going to do.
"Don't, Lily," he pleads. "What if you get expelled?"
She hops from the swing and tilts her head at the sky, watching the first few stars come out. "They won't expel me, not for a little bit of magic."
"But they might." His throat closes and his mouth dries out like mud in August. Without her, Hogwarts is just Potter and Black and whispers between his shoulder blades because no one cares to look him in the eyes.
The trees are charcoal cut-outs as the sun peers over the topmost branches. She turns to face him and the light makes a halo of her hair. "Don't you ever want to have an adventure?" she asks.
He doesn't; evenings on a swing set in the park are magical enough, provided she is on the swing beside him.
"You," she proclaims, placing small hands on slim hips, "need to lighten up."
His coal eyes find an interesting pattern in the dust and he traces over it with the toe of his battered shoe. He hears her sigh—her bemusement just almost makes him smile—and then a few little sounds tumble breathlessly from her mouth.
He recognizes the words as that bloody charm Potter and his mates were so fond of last term, the tickling spell that turned its victims into giggling fools. As soon as the thought crosses his mind, pins and needles dance across the bottoms of his feet and the back of his neck; his thin lips twitch in a reluctant smile.
"This …" He can't finish the sentence, because for the first time in his life, he's laughing too hard to rebuke her. "… isn't," he tries anyway, "… funny …"
"I think it is," she says, and that makes it final: the spell was amusing, he's having a fine time, and she's laughing with him, not at him because he's made a git of himself in front of the whole school again.
The charm fades in a moment; his smile lasts a moment longer before reality sinks his stomach down into his shoes.
"You—you used magic," he says through the remnants of laughter. He thinks he's going to be sick, because there it is: the white dot of an owl in the lengthening twilight, still so far away that if he squints he can pretend it's just another star.
"I used magic," she confirms impishly.
"They're going to expel you!" he shouts. It's clear from the way her mouth tilts at the corners that she doesn't see the long September days hiding alone down by that great crooked tree, fighting back unwelcome tears and the knowledge that his best mate's gone and not coming back.
Or maybe she does see, because suddenly her eyes soften. She reaches out to grasp his long, awkward fingers in the warm pink cocoon of her hand. "They can't expel me," she says, "if they can't catch me."
Before he knows what's happening, his feet are pounding the packed dirt in time with hers, kicking small muffled thumps into the humid air as they sprint away from the playground. She is still in oblivious possession of his hand, but he curls his fingers ever more tightly around hers and doesn't bother to catch his breath.
When he glances back over his shoulder, the owl is much closer, and the knot in his stomach is a millstone tied to a drowning man's feet.
What if, what if, what if, his heart pumps through his veins.
What if, what if, what if, his feet pound into the sidewalk.
This is as close as he has come to panic in a long while; he feels claustrophobic in these open spaces between a summer twilight and an endless night.
"It's still coming!" she shrieks happily, when his feet have drummed out several more stanzas of blind fear. "I wonder—" She gasps a little, hard pressed to breathe and speak while running. "—what the … envelope … will—say!"
He doesn't care where the envelope says (Running Down the Sidewalk; Trampling Mrs. Lee's Rosebushes; Trespassing on Mr. Smithson's Fresh-Cut Grass) so much as what the letter says, but he knows he is alone in his concern.
She doesn't stop running until they reach the park and the tree-lined bicycle path paved with cracked concrete. She pulls him behind a tree and they crouch in the shadows, alone with the musty scent of bark and a handful of fireflies.
He tries to catch his breath, but it hurts to pull in air; there's a great stinging pain in his side and his heart won't stop racing. She stays right beside him, her breath hitching, as though she's trying to fight back a laugh.
"It's—it's still," she gasps, "coming!" She sinks to the ground and rests her head back on the trunk of the tree, a broad grin lighting her eyes.
All he can do is wait for the end. He wants to squeeze his eyes shut so he doesn't have to watch the owl swoop gracefully through the park and drop a thick envelope at Lily's feet. But he can't, and before he can flinch the letter is lying in the grass in front of them and the owl is fluttering off into the sky.
"Now, let's see," she says, almost introspective as she reaches for the envelope. She giggles as she reads the back aloud: "Lily Evans, Behind the Fourth Tree …" Her nimble fingers work the envelope open and she winks at him. "Awfully specific of them, don't you think, Sev?"
"Read it," he croaks.
Her eyes scan the page, line by line, and he watches her face, wondering why her smile hasn't faded. Any second now she'll get to the part that says she can't come back, the section detailing her expulsion and informing her that Hogwarts is only for good little witches who don't run from Ministry owls.
"Well?" His voice trembles from expectant to hopeful when her grin never deserts the gentle lines of her face.
"Well," she says, folding the letter up and placing it back in the envelope, "you're a big worrywart, Severus, that's what. They've sent me a warning is all—'Underage magic is prohibited and further violations will be dealt with' as per our boring codes and rules that no one really bothers to memorize"
He takes a shuddering breath as his mind tries to fold itself around her words. "You mean you haven't been expelled?" he wonders.
"I haven't been expelled," she repeats. She hands him the letter and he reads it for himself, drinking the unexpected reprieve like it's water.
They sit in silence for a moment; night falls around them, heavy and still with heat.
"I really scared you, didn't I." She doesn't have to ask, because somehow she always knows. He shrugs in response, because he doesn't need to answer.
"I wouldn't really get myself expelled, Sev," she assures him. "I'm not that stupid—this was just a bit of fun, see?"
"I still don't see what was so fun about it," he mumbles, pulling his knees up to his chest and hiding his face behind curtains of unkempt hair.
"I won't leave you," she tries again. "Never—remember, I promised, back before we started our first year."
He does remember
—the swings creak, and
"Always," she whispers over the singing of the chains, "we'll be best friends always, Sev."
"Promise?" he demands, fierce and frightened as he watches her float up and down and up again—
"Well, I meant it," she insists. "Always, Sev, that means forever."
Forever seems a long time here at the end of another summer, so he smiles his small smile and she beams back at him. It's quite obvious she counts herself forgiven, and she is, because he can't bring himself to begrudge her an evening of laughter.
"Always?" he asks again, just to hear her say it, just to feel the way his heart beats the rhythm of the creaking swing set against his ribcage.
She wears certainty well. "Always."