There were days when Lily remembered that she was only eighteen. Not many, but they did happen.
She stared at her left hand, pale and slender; scrutinized the map of veins, studied the canyons between tendons, the sloping hills of knuckles, peninsular fingers. She had never been unduly vain, she knew her own shortcomings and had what she though was a fair picture of herself in her head. Average height, a slim body—except her hips, which were slightly wide—long red hair that she often thought of cutting, if only for convenience. A pretty face, not uncommonly so but pretty nevertheless. She was fond of her nose, and her sparkling green eyes. Lips too thin, she often thought, but with the right kinds of kisses they bloomed a little. On the whole, not an unfortunate portrait.
On the days she remembered she was only eighteen it shifted a little. She saw the parts of her that were no longer coltish; she noticed her increasingly graceful movement. The only time she was secretly proud of her body was on these days. She only remembered she was eighteen when she remembered herself twelve, thirteen, fourteen, awkward and blushing.
Awkward and blushing, stumbling and stammering, eyes too big since they seemed to notice all the wrong things, and disproportionately so. At twelve she had noticed James for the first time, his arrogant swagger through the corridors, his dissolute good looks even at his age, his contemptuous bravado. Thirteen, her eyes like cameras then, taking picture after picture of him as he roamed the grounds with his pack of friends. She had had only the barest idea of attraction, only a lightly sketched notion of lust and of sex drawn in rapid strokes by older girls and snide lectures from Petunia. "You do know what it is, don't you?"
Petunia. Lily was secretly proud of her body when she thought of Petunia's, long and geometric with a face like a donkey and a voice always braying. Lily was secretly proud of everything about herself when she thought of Petunia, especially now, married to that horrible egg of a man and with a fat squalling baby.
Lily stared at her hand again. Agile, tapered fingers, intelligent, she had said. Oh, it had been like the best sex when she had said that. To hear intelligent said about any part of her, said in those low tones, pushed from that mouth with that perfect tongue, oh, it made everything else worthwhile. All the mockery, the insults, the occasional curses; she had called Lily's fingers intelligent and Lily loved her forever.
She looked hard at the gold line that severed one of those brilliant digits from the plateau of her hand. James hadn't known why she had wept when he slipped it on; he thought she was overwrought from the joy and honor of it. He had used that word, honor, and Lily had sneered at him in her thoughts. As though he knew what it meant.
She was only eighteen, and she knew. She had learned about honor from the best, the most knowledgeable and experienced teacher on the subject. One who carried it in her veins carefully, as though it would spill if she moved too suddenly. It wasn't just pureblood, she had said. Oh, it matters, it does, and it's unfortunate that yours isn't, but pureblood was simply a matter of birth and could happen to almost anyone. The thing to remember, darling—
Darling, she had said, and Lily had felt faint.
The thing to remember, the thing her darling had so carefully taught, was honor.
Lily remembered. She felt the weight of the ring pulling down her hand and in a moment of horror snatched it from her finger and set it on the table. Thank God James hadn't enchanted it. Alice had told her that Frank had enchanted hers and it wouldn't come off. How hateful, Lily thought. How insecure. At least James trusted her enough to wear the ring of her own volition. There were just times she didn't feel like it. Especially not when she thought about Bella.
When she thought about Bella she didn't want anything touching her skin.
She had been fourteen when her focus had turned, without any input from her brain, to Bella's elegant form. Even as a teenager she had been elegant, not like her sister, not posh, but with a dismissive kind of cruel grace that Lily found intoxicating. She was almost luridly beautiful, jet-black hair that shone purple in the light, enormous lustrous eyes, eternally parted lips. Bella's sculptural face and preternaturally ripe body filled in the rough diagram of sex Lily had pieced together like an ink bottle turned over a piece of parchment.
The lens of her eyes snapped shut to James.
Lily hadn't worried about the intensity of her attraction to Bella. She hadn't tried to rationalize, in her fumbling adolescent way, the nature of it. She had assumed it was something that happened in this world. Something natural to magic. Everything had felt absolutely right to Lily from the moment she had smashed through the platform barrier for the first time. Nothing had felt wrong since, none of her sudden flashes of knowledge, none of the previously inexplicable things that had happened to her, around her, from her. It made perfect sense, her life now. Her nascent quivering passion for an older girl must just be part of it.
Lily could feel Bella in her blood.
It was not long before she began wishing in earnest that Bella could be hers alone, could touch her the way she had learned to touch herself. She followed her everywhere that she could get to without being noticed or stopped.
James was following Lily then, and she had hoped feverishly that Bella hadn't noticed. She hoped feverishly that Bella had noticed her, but that she didn't feel the way Lily felt about James; didn't look at Lily and see only the hope of sweaty pawing and slack-jawed gaping. Lily wanted James to leave her alone, wanted his friends to leave her alone, wanted there to be nobody in the world but her and Bella. That way her imagined lover would have to see her.
Oh, that day, that day it happened, Lily still bit her lip in anticipation when she thought of it now, years later.
Lover, lover, come back.
On the table the ring began to hum. So James had done something to it. She watched it carefully as the sound grew louder and the gold began to glow, getting brighter and brighter until Lily had to cover her eyes and grope blindly for it. With muted rage she forced it back on her finger. The humming stopped; the light faded. James. What a bloody bastard. Bella knew about you. No, Bella knows about you. Somewhere.
Somewhere. Bella had vanished only weeks before but it had been a long time in coming; Lily had watched those lovely eyes grow more and more wild, watched her mouth curl into a feral smile, felt her hands growing colder and her lips growing hotter until the pain was so that she could no longer stand them on her skin. But she tried. Bella was still somewhere, still alive and calling to Lily through her blood. Sometimes it would rush achingly through her body and Lily knew Bella was near. James never suspected anything, thought Lily's sudden faintness was an effect of the efforts they were all putting into the Order, the bloody Order, James and his crusade to destroy people like her Bella.
Lily knew she was on the good side, the right side; she knew that if James, if anyone, even Alice, found out about Bella there would be punishment. It would be excruciating, it would be worse because she would be thinking of how insufficient her cold lover would judge whatever halfhearted damage the Order would do to her. Lily knew they would have to take action because of the nature of it, but that they wouldn't want to. James hated even raising his voice at her, afraid of hurting her, and the rest of them followed his lead. Lily thought of Bella's ruthless, elegant methods, how Bella knew instinctively that Lily would not cry, that she would writhe and scream and die for her over and over.
Bella knew about Lily. Had known all along. Lily saw in her dark eyes the glint of malevolent knowledge about Lily's desire that would forever after only inflame that desire more. Lily still could not explain the intensity of Bella's cold allure, certainly could not have explained it at fourteen when she still knew so little of the world. It was that cruelty, that subtle malice, which had not yet chiseled her so sharply, it was the hint of hereditary madness that pulled at Lily's comfortable, stable, well-adjusted heart. It was the blackness of Bella that reflected the secret black passages in her own mind, her own soul.
It was her eyes, her skin, oh God, her poisonous, her mesmerically beautiful mouth.
Lily trembled. Lily ached. Lily remembered the heat of that mouth on her throat, the hollow of her throat, the place that made her weakest. She remembered Bella's tongue tracing her collarbones, her teeth biting down hard on the taut flesh of her neck, Bella's clever fingers between her legs, Bella's cool and pitiless hand, somehow cool even against the liquid heat of Lily's sex, Bella licking her flesh, Bella pushing her down, Bella fucking her, Bella fucking her, Bella—
Lily wrenched the ring off before she came. Let it hum. Let it burn.
She was only eighteen. She had a right to need more time.