Lily's nails were bitten short and sore. There was a ridge of skin visible at the end of each finger where the nail had given protection before, but which now were exposed and some even bleeding. The worst were her left thumb and ring fingers, of which she had chewed the skin at the sides of the nail until just buttoning her robes smarted. Lily knew her hands looked horrible. She ran her little finger over the blue veins that stood out on her left hand, the tiny red spot that had been there on her ring finger as long as she could remember, the scars from various potion scalds and the long, deep creases on her palm. Earth hands, square. Hardworking hands, her pa had always said. She hated them.
James Potter had caught her chewing her nails in transfiguration that morning. 'Stop it, you look disgusting', he had said. Lily had blushed. But what did she care what a prick like him thought? She wasn't taken in by his muscles, his looks or his swagger. That wasn't her type. She was interested in character, in someone who she could talk to all night, who could make her laugh, who knew her inside out and who loved her all the same…
Loved her. Shit, did she really think that? Would someone who loved her call her that foul name? Criticise her for who her parents were? Fucking hell. Would someone who loved her stand her up all the time to mess about with his slimy little immature, blood-obsessed, dark-artsy rich-kid friends? Ignore her when he was with them? Embarrass her like he did so much, leaving her to make excuses to her very justifiably concerned friends? Would someone who loved her, Lily Evans, refuse her help when it was offered, preferring to suffer at the hands a group of stuck-up wasters than take the hand reached out by his oldest friend? His only real friend.
Lily loved Sev. But the Sev she loved didn't come out to play anymore.
Looking down the hill at the lake where a doe lapped at the clear blue water, foal at her side, Lily wished she had never come to Hogwarts. She would still have been on speaking terms with Tuney, would have been able to visit her parents' friends' houses without all those awkward questions, would never have seen this bad bad side of her weird but friendly neighbour. Lily picked at the nail of her big toe. She managed to pull it off halfway, more than she'd planned, and she winced at the sharp pain, trying to push it back in to its place. She didn't know what to say to her friends. They had been right all along and it hurt Lily oddly, right in the guts, to admit that. Sev had changed, for all she'd thought she knew him. At age ten he'd been greasy and he'd been cruel – but then, so are all kids at that age. Slytherin had pulled that side of him further out as he got older. He had never wanted to be in any other house and that was fine with Lily, but his whole demeanour had altered as their first year went on: he had stooped more, laughed less, and even their private night-time chats had filled with a strange new intensity that made Lily uneasy.
Lily lay back on the wet grass. It had rained that afternoon. She held her hands up to the white sky and pressed them together, slowly and tightly interlacing the fingers. She remembered Sev years before, on an out-of-bounds turret of the castle, teasing and pushing her as if to make her fall, grabbing her upper arm roughly when she nearly did go, and then their simultaneous intake of breath as their hands found each other and snugged together effortlessly. "Mudblood" – how dare he! A massive black dog startled her by bounding in to her vision, followed by a huge and beautiful stag with smooth antlers. Lily had never seen a stag that close before, despite the many deer there were in the school grounds. She felt calm and self-assured as she rose to face it, marvelling at the beauty of nature. She could have sworn there was a moment of almost-human eye contact as she extended her right hand to touch it (it was that close!) but then it turned and cantered off into the trees.
Lily Evans stood up and brushed the grass blades from her robes. The time it took to walk back to the castle would be enough to dry the dampness of the cloth. Her insides physically ached and she yearned to sob some more, but she relaxed her shoulders and looked straight ahead as she walked, imagining the moment she next saw Sev. Would she break down? No, she would not. In the hours she had spent on her own on that hill, she had prepared herself for every eventuality, every excuse he might plea, every memory he might evoke. She knew there was no room for weakness. Her Sev was too far down his road to come back, and she wasn't interested in following him there. It pained her to say so, but it was over.