She likes the way the cigarette smoke moves. She watches the unusually bitter September air carry it away from the tower and into the clear night sky. She imagines it to look a little bit magical, and then laughs softly at her own foolishness.
The tower, which is one of the castle's smallest and therefore perfect for Lily's purposes, is scarcely larger than her dormitory, and she leaned comfortably against the weather-beaten stone wall. She could see silvers of the grounds between the jagged stone teeth that ran along the edge of the tower. She tilts her chin to stare up into the sky. The stars sparkle above her and she tries half-heartedly to sort them into their constellations. But the footsteps on the stone stairs distract her.
The cigarette falls to her side at once, half-hidden in the folds of her robes, and she touches the badge on her robes. A lie twists itself into shape almost without thought. Patrols, she thought she heard something.
But the interloper isn't a teacher. Rather, it's Sirius Black, looking slightly disheveled in an Arrows t-shirt and school trousers.
"James sent me to find you," he says, as though anything else could have compelled Sirius Black to follow Lily Evans to a far-flung corner of Hogwarts in the middle of the night.
"I guessed as much," she said. He stares archly down at her, and she waits with a tinge of defiance for an obnoxious remark.
He looks as though he wishes he hadn't found her at all. James must have sent out a search party after she'd made a scene like that. And in the middle of the common room, no less. It's after hours, but that's never mattered to James and his friends.
Technically, James doesn't have a claim over her, but she knows he will soon. It's been different lately, and people are already smirking and saying they knew it all along. It's as if they're sitting in a creaking car at the top of a thrill park ride, waiting to lurch into downward motion. Any moment now…any moment now.
She imagines herself walking down the corridors with James, their hands swinging back and forth, back and forth. A couple. JamesandLily. Tangled and twisted together by friends and futures and flats.
She refuses to make eye contact, but she can feel Sirius settle into place beside her as she stares determinedly at the wall straight ahead. She doesn't know what to say to him, so she raises the cigarette to her lips and takes another drag.
"My sister's getting married," she tells Sirius.
He's heard of Petunia. "Congratulations, I suppose." It's unconvincing.
"When we were kids, Petty used to cheat at board games so that I won," she says, without turning to look at Sirius. The words have the weightiness of a long-buried secret. "She would shove play money into my pile when I wasn't looking or stack the deck so I got the good cards."
Sirius doesn't say anything.
"And when our- When we moved, I slept in her room for months."
Lily remembers the feeling of her cotton pyjama-clad body folded under her older sister's arm, Petunia's heavy blue duvet with the scratchy embroidery draped over the pair of them.
Petunia's room had a window that looked over the front garden, and Petunia let Lily sellotape the lace curtains away from the window, just in case they happened to see a tall and wiry man bobbing back up the front path.
Sirius holds out his hand for the cigarette. She considers him and then hands it over. He holds it carefully between his fingers, tilting his head back slightly as he savors the taste.
"Thirteen months."
"What?"
"Me and Regulus. We're thirteen months apart."
"Do you think you can ever stop loving someone like that?" she asks.
"I hate Regulus," says Sirius at once. "He's fucking insane, and fuck if I know why." Almost as an afterthought, he spits, "Stupid prick," with a little less venom than he should.
Sirius seems to have a particular relish for crafting highly vulgar and entirely original names for the various members of his family—his mother, his eldest cousin, his uncle, and his grandfather seemed to bare the brunt of it. The most she's ever heard him say of Regulus was to call him a little idiot after an altercation in the corridor.
"We were close too," Sirius says, as if confessing to a horrible sin. "Before."
"Before?"
"Before Hogwarts."
"We're all different than we were when we were kids," says Lily, thinking of dragon-hide Herbology gloves, tartan uniform skirts, frog spawn-splattered trainers, and Petunia's housewife haircut. Her mind cuts to Regulus, who had lost the anxious crease between his eyes that Lily had counted as a permentant feature.
"Reg was afraid of everything when we were kids," Sirius says. "He didn't even like being downstairs by himself after dark. Used to make me come with him. That's why he's bought into all of this stuff. He's not after the power and he doesn't give a shit about muggles. He's just afraid of what will happen if he does anything that he's not supposed to."
"I'm sorry, Sirius," she says.
"I always knew that Regulus was a bit spineless," Sirius says, apparently trying to say as much as he could before he lost his nerve, "but I didn't think he would really buy into the whole Death Eater thing. And—" Sirius hesitates, "I've tried to convince him that he should stay away from them, but he doesn't care what I have to say."
There's a gracefulness to Sirius Black that she's never noticed before. When he's not laughing too loudly or grinning too broadly, Sirius looks every bit the pureblood prince. Even in profile, his features are the kind immortalized in ceremonial paintings. Square jaw, straight nose, and clear grey eyes. She forgets sometimes, the kind of people that Sirius Black comes from. Death Eaters perhaps, but the kind of Death Eaters who serve eight course meals and attend private dinners with the Minister.
But Sirius isn't interested in that rot. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and he took the road less traveled. So did she, come to that.
"Maybe I should be thankful that Petunia's marrying Vernon Dursley instead of taking the Dark Mark," said Lily. "But I wouldn't be surprised at this point."
Sirius chucked softly. "What's funny is that they probably say the same sort of thing about us. I know my brother does."
"Strange isn't it?" says Lily, feeling oddly detached from the stabbing pain of having one's sister deny the legitimacy of one's livelihood. I think my sister is still hoping that one day I realise how ridiculous magic really is and follow her into secretarial school."
Sirius snorted.
The silence between them was comfortable now.
"Can I ask you a question, Sirius?"
"Hmm?" Sirius shifted so that their shoulders were touching. It wasn't the least bit romantic, but there was an unmistakable intimacy to the gesture.
"Do you love Regulus?"
"Yeah, I do," said Sirius in a gravely voice. "He's my baby brother. I think he's an evil git, but, I dunno, even if he tried to kill me or something, I think I would still love him. I mean, I don't trust or like him, but I can't just stopping loving him. Because somewhere he's still the kid brother who played Exploding Snap with me in a closet at family parties. It's stupid, isn't it?"
"It's not. I think it's just what siblings are sometimes. You still love them, even if you hate them."
"But—" Sirius's voice turns bracing. "I have James."
"It's not the same though, is it?" says Lily, almost conversationally. She passes the cigarette back to Sirius and he takes it gratefully. "I've got Marlie and the others, but it's not the same as having Petty like I did when I was little. James can't really understand that."
"I know," says Sirius. He sounds oddly guilty, as if Lily has caught him in a lie.
The cigarette singes his fingers slightly, and he stubs it out.
"But—" he struggled for the words. "But James flew halfway across the country on a broomstick just to break me out, and I know Marlie would take an Unforgivable for you. And Remus and Peter and Fiona. They love us too."
Lily nodded without removing her head from Sirius's shoulder. Her vision began to blur, and she blinked rapidly. Not in front of Sirius Black, shouted the girl she had been in fourth year. But the dam had broken, and she felt fat tears on her cheeks.
Sirius straightened, and she thought for a moment that he was pushing her away in childish male disgust. Instead, she felt the comfortable weight of an arm draped around her shoulder. She settled in the crook of his arm, burying her face in his cotton Appleby Arrows t-shirt. Sirius stroked her hair without saying anything. His head was resting against the stone wall, and his jaw was clenched.
When she had sobbed herself into silence, she shifted back into a sitting position. "Oh, shit, Sirius, your shirt—" Sirius' shirt was stained with salt water and mascara, and Lily tried to rub one of the black smudges.
"It's fine," said Sirius. And, in an unexpected gesture, he reached up and ran his thumb under Lily's eye. He smiled at her.
"Still, your shirt though—"
"I've got more."
Lily gave him a watery smile. "Thanks."
There's another thumping of feet on the staircase. It's James this time, and his halfhazard manner of dress looks less calculated than usual. He's missing a sock and his thick scarf is draped over one shoulders.
"Lily!" he cries. He's halfway to her before he processes Sirius sprawled against the wall beside his not-quite girlfriend. "Are—Padfoot?"
Sirius's hand is suddenly holding hers and he's pulling her into a standing position. "Found the missing Evans," he tells James. "And I'm fucking freezing, so for my finder's fee-" he pulls on the end of James' untied scarf and it slides from its owner's neck and is instantly wrapped around Sirius's. James makes a noise of mild protest, but Sirius grins immodestly.
The thick scarf obscures the splotches of water on Sirius's shirt, and Lily knows that it's meant as a gesture to her.
James looks at her. "You alright?" He knows she isn't, but they can talk about it later. For now, all he needs is confirmation that she's not going to be throw herself off the tower anytime soon.
"I'm all right."
A/N: Sorry about the smoking, but roughly 40% of British teenagers smoked in the 1970s. So out of James, Remus, Peter, Sirius, and Lily…