chapter four.

Lily took a meandering route home after dealing with Helena Hodge, foregoing the Tube to wander along Thames Path for a few miles. The sun had come out for a spectacular spring day, she had no modeling business and minimal revising to do, and she'd bested a villain—all in all, an afternoon worth savoring.

It would have been nicer if Chat Noir had made an appearance, of course. He'd only missed two villains before: once when his family had gone on a last-minute trip to visit relatives out of town, and once when he'd shown up so ill that he'd sicked up after landing at her side. It took some debate, but Lily had succeeded in sending him home.

After all, he had that option. Ladybug didn't. There would be no end to the akuma without her, which meant no sick days for her. Fortunately Petunia and Vernon almost never traveled, and when they had gone to the Canary Islands for a week in January, they'd been more than willing to leave Lily behind.

She walked into the house humming, idly wondering if she should take the time to make homemade biscuits for Mary.

Her peace lasted all of two seconds.

Petunia strode into the foyer. "Lily Catherine Evans!"

"Petunia Francine Dursley. There, now we've been introduced to one another."

"Don't take that tone with me. Where have you been?"

"Mars. It's lovely, actually. I spent some time with Matt Damon, he was wonderful—"

"You should have been home an hour ago."

Lily went to set her bag down on the steps. "I walked a bit. Oh, don't tell me, the Conservatives made walking illegal now because that's how immigrants get around."

"I needed your help with supper—"

"You don't need my bloody help—I can barely peel a potato. You always say that, and I always end up sitting about after you tell me I'm doing a crap job—"

"I need to know where you're going to be."

"Not all the time! I'm not a toddler."

"There was an attack at your school earlier!"

"Yeah, and Ladybug sorted everything out. A logical person might conclude that I had to be getting home safe because there's never been two attacks in one day—"

"And there were never any villains before last fall!" Petunia's arms wrapped around her chest. "There's something freakishly wrong with London—and especially at that school of yours. No other place in London has had so many attacks—"

Guilt crept into Lily's stomach. "Only because there's one bloke at school that makes people really vulnerable to akumas. I can't help that."

"We're moving out of London."

"Resorting to threats, now, are we?"

"It's not a threat."

"Vernon would never leave that ruddy company of his—he's too weirdly attached—"

"Vernon has already requested his transfer. We're moving to Sussex at the end of term."

They were moving out of London. Lily was moving out of London. Ladybug was moving out of London.

The air vanished from her lungs.

"What?" she forced out. "What are you—we can't—my school—"

"It's not safe. We're going to be murdered one of these days, or worse, permanently turned into one of those weirdo villains with their unbearable outfits—"

"Yes, that's the real worry here, what we might look like—"

"I've found us a house, and a school for you."

Lily lifted her chin. "I'm not going."

"Mum and Dad put you in my legal care—"

"Legal only," Lily muttered.

"—and I won't leave you behind to get killed by some lunatic freak."

"This isn't fair."

"Do you think all this stress is helping my situation, Lily? Do you?"

"Your situation. You mean your shit uterus?"

Petunia flushed. "There's no need to be crass. Female bodies don't care for this sort of stressful environment. I read about it online."

If Lily had had her yo-yo, she would have hurled it right at Petunia's face. Like Voldemort was keeping Petunia barren, instead of Vernon's thankfully inferior sperm. Voldemort had a lot of blood on his hands—blood Lily had cleaned away with magic—but the empty second bedroom was not his doing.

That stubborn jut of Petunia's chin was all too familiar to Lily. She could make arguments about how she'd become a bloody model to get into Hogwarts, how she'd worked her arse off all year to come in top of her class, and how she wasn't about to leave that position to start over at some new, inferior school…

But it didn't matter what Lily wanted. It didn't matter what her parents wanted. Lily was legally Petunia's to boss around for another year and a half, and unless Lily wanted to become a bloody runaway—a tempting thought—she had no recourse, no appeal, no judge to confront.

A frustrated noise slipped out between her clenched teeth, and she stormed upstairs.

Once in the attic, she let Mary fly out of her bag, and then flung it across the room. It collided loudly with the opposite wall, just below the lone window, and plummeted to the floor.

Lily would have loved to pace, but she couldn't even stand upright except in the center of the attic, so she was forced to stand still and tear at her hair.

"She can't, Mary, she can't—"

Mary flitted about Lily's head. "Oh, Lily, I'm so sorry—"

"I can't leave London! The akumas will get out of control—everything will be ruined—"

"We'll find a way to change her mind."

"No," Lily said, a hole opening in the ground beneath her. "We won't, I know we won't, she's stubborn and—and selfish, she never cares about what I want—"

"It sounds like she was worried about you."

"Worried, yes, but about herself and her stupid uterus. She's just pretending like it's partially about me—it's never about me—"

The walls of her cupboard of a room had never pressed in on her like this before, never threatened to smother her. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't stand to be in this bloody house with her bloody cow of a sister another moment—

And she didn't have to be.

"Mary," she said, "spots on!"

Mary looked like she was hesitating, but Lily sent her a wild, desperate look, and Mary disappeared into one of her earrings.

With her trusty yo-yo in hand, Lily escaped through her window and zipped around London, flying from one edifice to the next. There was nothing like this, nothing, and Lily was damned if she was going to give up that moment of weightlessness when she hit the peak of an arc, or the exhilarating fall back toward the earth, or the satisfying yank as her yo-yo pulled her from certain death.

London was hers, in a way it belonged to no one else.

No one, that was, except Chat Noir.

The news might've been a smidge less devastating if she'd had someone to talk to, but he was the only one who'd be able to grasp exactly what this meant to her. Unless they were both transformed, though, she had no way to contact him.

There was Mary, of course, but Mary was unfailingly, sometimes annoyingly optimistic.

And Mary hadn't said what Lily secretly knew to be true, which was that Lily did not have to keep wielding the Ladybug Miraculous. Lily would have to give it up if she didn't want London to fall to Voldemort.

She was alone in dealing with her fate, in facing the very serious possibility of having to give up her superpowers and her friends and her school. There was no one else to talk to. Dorcas might have been some comfort, if she were more empathetic and if she hadn't been home with a fever. Besides her, though, there was only Severus—and that was no option at all, not anymore.

She needed comfort. She needed someone to tell her things were going to be all right, but in a less positive way than Mary—

What she really needed was exactly what Potter had given Bonnie Grogan: genuine support and compassion, but not so much as to be cloying. Words she'd never expected to associate with Potter, but she'd heard him do it with her own two ears.

The problem was that Potter wasn't her confidant, much less her friend—

But he did know Ladybug.

Lily gave the plan a full three moments of consideration before changing direction, heading straight for Belgravia.

It was impossible not to know about the Potter bakery. Even if his dad hadn't come to Career Day, everyone at school raved about their treats. Plenty of students had moaned about how jealous they were that Potter got to live above such a famous, delicious bakery.

Severus, of course, had liked to make snide remarks about Potter's parents. They'd made millions inventing hair care products, and now, in his opinion, were demeaning themselves by opening up a quotidian business simply to amuse themselves.

Lily had never given the bakery much thought, but had passed it many times. It was hard not to when it was so close to school.

Figuring out how to talk to Potter didn't occur to her as a problem until she was on his block. But as luck had it, the Potters had a lovely rooftop patio, one covered in black wicker furniture, verdant potted plants, and strings of twinkling fairy lights.

Potter himself sat sideways on the wicker couch, thumbs tapping furiously at his phone, brow furrowed in concentration. A sweating glass of iced tea sat on the table next to a plate piled with biscuits.

She landed deftly on the patio behind the sofa, one arm splayed to the side for balance.

He jumped to his feet with his fists raised in front of him, his phone abandoned to fall onto the sofa cushion. "I warn you—Ladybug?"

Lily found herself horrifyingly speechless.

What had she been thinking, coming to Potter's, this was insane—

"Oh, god." He looked down at the ground, one hand tangling in his hair, the other dropping to his side. "Oh. Shit. Shit."

"What?" she said. "What, no, I—I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come, I wasn't—only earlier, you—"

He brought his head up. "Earlier I what?"

"You helped me. And I wanted to, er. Say…thanks?"

"Oh." His hand came out of his hair. "Oh, thank god, that's—right. Er. Sure, yeah, no problem. Happy to, ah, do my part. And all that." He cleared his throat.

"You don't have to get all weird about it."

"Weird? Me? Never. I'm cool as a cucumber, although those grow on the ground, don't they, so they're not really cold until we make them that way…" Potter narrowed his eyes. "Wait a minute. You don't do thank-you house calls."

Lily fiddled with the end of her ponytail. Oh, she really shouldn't have come.

"Well," she said. "No, I haven't, but that doesn't mean I couldn't start. It seemed…nice?"

His eyes lit up. "Couldn't get enough of me earlier, could you?"

"Oh, that's not—I'm…" The reason for her visit came crashing back down on her. "It's nothing. I shouldn't—this was a bad idea. I'm sorry."

She reached for her yo-yo at her hip, but he said, "Wait. No, I'm sorry, don't—why did you really come?"

"I…heard the biscuits were really good here."

He stayed silent for a moment, and then said, "Oh, well, in that case. Take a seat."

"I don't want to interrupt—"

"What, my phone? Nah, I was just playing a game."

"Don't students spend most of their time revising?"

"Maybe other students. Not this one, though. No need." He tapped his brain. "Like a steel trap."

"You did just ramble on about cucumbers."

"Evidence of my superior analytical skills, stored in my steel trap."

She snorted.

"Take a seat, my—honored guest." He gestured at the patio furniture. "Have all the biscuits you want. I've already ruined my dinner."

She walked over to a chair. "Your parents let you do that?"

He dropped back onto the sofa. "I may have caused a diversion to swipe these."

"Causing diversions is a regular thing for you, then? Bit of a peculiar hobby. Up there with collecting lint and following ants."

"Hobbies are important. They really bring a fullness to your life."

"Was that a pun about being full?"

"Me? Never." He shoved the biscuit plate closer to her. "You going to have one, or what? Lavender shortbread—my mum's favorite."

Lily picked one off the plate and held it beneath her nose. "It smells amazing."

"We don't put the Potter name on anything less than excellent."

"Let me guess: yourself included?"

Potter tucked his hands behind his head. "I'm glad you're catching on."

She fought a good fight against a grin, but ultimately lost. "And where does modesty fall on the Potter family value scale?"

"Modesty? Never heard of it. But I'm intrigued, tell me more."

She initially nibbled at her biscuit, but quickly found herself devouring it, and then several more, while they went back and forth about nothing in particular. She started out perched on the edge of the chair, but in no time scooted all the way back, rested one arm on the arm rest, and kicked her feet up onto the sofa cushion near Potter's.

"Did you apologize to the akumatized girl today?" she asked. "And I mean really apologize."

"'Course I did. I'm amazing, remember?"

"Well, I'm miraculous."

He raised his glass of iced tea at her. "Didn't know you were a fan of the pun."

"Oh, I'm not. Trust me. That's really Chat Noir's thing."

"I didn't know he had a monopoly on them. Shame. I thought he'd be too busy saving London to constantly defend his title."

"Not today. Today he lazed about."

"Well, let's not make assumptions—"

"I know, I know. He was probably sick or stuck on a broken Tube car or something. I'm honestly not worried about him."

Potter sipped his drink. "Why didn't you go see him? About whatever made you want to come find biscuits. Not that I'm upset at having company, mind—normally my best mate keeps me entertained, but he got dragged to some awful family thing."

"I can't contact him if we're not both transformed. Protecting our identities, and everything…"

She'd almost suggested exchanging phone numbers countless times, but that was too personal—too tied to their real identities. Email was out, too, because anyone could glance over their shoulder, or hack into their accounts.

The only truly safe communication method came with their suits.

"Ladybug—are you…why are you really here?"

Lily focused on very thoroughly brushing the crumbs off her lap. "I…I needed to get out of my house. My family…"

She'd worked up the nerve to come here, he'd been more than pleasant as a host, and now she couldn't even tell him—although she really shouldn't have tried to tell him in the first place. He'd just met Ladybug today, for Christ's sake. He didn't exist for her to dump everything on.

"Say no more." Potter tapped a finger on his glass. "My best mate spends more time here than at his house, you know. And with good reason."

"And I didn't—there's nowhere… They…" She looked away, out onto the neighboring rooftop where a pigeon hungrily eyed their biscuits. "They want to move out of London."

Potter choked on his iced tea. "I'm sorry, what?"

She smiled bitterly. "It's too dangerous here. There's a supervillain about, hadn't you heard?"

"Yes, but you're—"

"I know."

"Well, shite. Can't you just—I dunno, tell them? About why you can't leave?"

"Absolutely not. I'd be banned from being Ladybug in a heartbeat. They'd take away my Miraculous." Her lips twisted. "And sell it to the highest bidder, no doubt."

Potter's drink clinked against the glass tabletop as he set it down. "Fuck. Fuck."

And that was what Lily needed to hear. She needed someone to freak out over this. To curse and be angry and outraged on her behalf.

"They can't do that," he said. "They can't take you out of London. Fuck."

"Exactly," she said. "So, yes. Biscuits sounded really nice. Thanks for them."

"You can take all these home and more, if you like. You need them."

"Going to go cause another diversion? On my behalf, no less? How chivalrous."

"Chivalry is second to excellence on the Potter family value scale."

"I've learned so much tonight. I won't even have to go revise at this rate."

He laughed, a little wildly, pressing a palm against his forehead. "Oh, Ladybug. I hope you've got a plan."

"A plan for helping you steal biscuits? Not exactly the intended use of my Miraculous."

"Yes. That's exactly the plan I meant. You're so astute, Ladybug. Steel trap in your mind, too. I can tell."

"I know what you meant. And I—I just found out. So no, I haven't got any brilliant ideas yet." She gave him a once-over. And this wasn't fair to add on, but there was such a perfect opening… "If you're so excellent, you figure it out."

"Hey, my family's excellence is firmly in the realm of chemicals and, by association, baked goods."

"Don't let modesty stand in your way now, not in my hour of need."

"I'll think about it, all right? But this is a little outside my area of expertise, so, you know…"

"No, I—I know. This isn't your problem."

It was her problem, and hers alone. But it would have been so, so nice to have anyone help out with it. If she didn't have to handle this, like so much else in her life, completely on her own.

"It kind of is my problem," he said. "I do live in this city, you know."

"You don't say."

"So I care. I do."

"Good to know you've got some eye toward self-interest. I did worry about that earlier today."

"You'll figure it out—you're Ladybug. And you can get Chat Noir to help you, too, I bet. There's no way you'll actually move out of London."

"I wish I had the same confidence."

"Stop by anytime—as we discussed, I'm overflowing with it, and I'm happy to give some away."

"Just like someone else I know," she muttered. Then she sucked in a breath. "Shit, what time is it?"

"Oh, uh—" James checked his phone. "Quarter past."

Lily jumped to her feet. "I've got to get home, she's going to kill me—"

He stood up, waving at the rooftop next door. "Shite, yeah, get out of here! Angry mums are a more terrifying force than Voldemort."

Lily's throat tightened. "Yeah," she said roughly. "They are." She took a few steps toward the edge of the patio, her hand poised on her yo-yo, and then remembered the manners her parents had worked so hard to instill in her. "Oh, um, thanks, by the way."

"You really can have more biscuits if you like."

"Thanks, but I meant…"

"Oh, hey, no worries. Someone's gotta save the superheroes, right?"

She gave a small smile. He hadn't come up with a plan, but he'd…he'd fixed her. As much as anyone could have, right then. He'd said what she needed to hear.

"Have a good night," she said. "And don't break any more hearts."

"I can't help it," he said. "My hair is a veritable magnet."

Lily couldn't fight back the laugh at that, either. Which was just fine by her.

"Bye, Potter," she said, and flew off across town.

Lily hadn't always been so isolated.

In primary school, she and two girls named Joann and Selim spent countless nights at each other's homes. They went to the pool and to the park and did all the normal childhood activities together.

Then one summer she caught a few neighbor kids circling in on a pale, dark-haired boy with hunched shoulders. She ran them off with her loud voice and her stubborn look, and from then on it had been her and Severus against the world. All her other friends faded away. It hadn't seemed like anything odd at the time—friend circles shifted quickly at that age—but now, looking back, things were rather obvious.

But it was fine, really, relying so much on Sev. She had her parents, and her sister, and a best friend that wanted to spend all his time with her, and that was enough.

It would have been better, of course, if Severus hadn't shown up to school every now and then with a black eye or a bruised wrist, but even that resolved itself in the form of Mayor Tom Riddle.

He'd been invited to help judge the school's year-nine science competition, and with Lily home sick, Severus presented their work on robotic aircraft alone.

Riddle was impressed. A connection was forged. And a rescue was completed.

The legal details were vague to Lily, but somehow Riddle was allowed to take Sev out of his home. He put Sev up at his hotel, and gifted him a coveted space at the finest school in London.

At the time, this all seemed perfect. Fairy godfather like, really.

But then that drink driver murdered Lily's parents, and Severus was living across town, and Lily had no choice but to move in with Petunia and Vernon and start at the local school.

She wasn't exactly in a mental place to make friends that year. She was too busy focusing on not crying all the time, and on becoming a successful model. Who needed friends there anyway, she told herself, when she would be at Hogwarts soon?

And then her work paid off, and she broke the news to Sev, and she strolled into Hogwarts proudly at his side.

But things weren't the same. It was no longer Lily and Severus against the world.

In their year at different schools, he had made...not "friends," really, so much as mutual acquaintances, ones whose families threw scads of money at the mayor's campaigns. Sev had barely told her anything about them except that they were clever and wealthy and exactly the sort of people the world needed more of.

The first day at lunch, he brought her to their table in the courtyard. Lucius Malfoy took one slow, appraising look from Lily's head to her toes, and then turned back to the person next to him, continuing their conversation as if Lily didn't exist.

"Excuse me—" she began, but Sev's hand landed on her wrist.

He subtly shook his head.

Because right, right, of course she couldn't go off the rails, not after she'd already lost it once that morning—

But also…there was that faint flush to Sev's cheeks. She'd seen plenty of his expressions over the years, enough to know that this particular flush was…embarrassment.

And this time, embarrassment over her.

She took a step back, out of his reach. "I prefer to eat alone," she said coldly.

He ate with her out of loyalty. At first, anyway. But then after a few weeks they bothered him about it, and said they had important business to discuss at lunch—like they had important business, they were bloody teenagers—and Lily increasingly ate by herself.

There were other decent people at the school, of course, but Lily had associated herself quite strongly with Severus on that first morning.

Under other circumstances, she liked to think standing up for her friend would've served as an excellent mark of her character to the other students. The circumstances that were, though, involved almost no one liking Severus. Potter and Black subjected him to the worst, but everyone else looked at him with, at best, mild disdain. Walking down the corridor at school with Sev was like walking with Moses in the Red Sea: everyone parted around his stalking form.

Some of it, she figured, was the hygiene. He did have a bit of an odor, and there was that awful sheen to his skin and hair. And he was not…particularly kind. Those who didn't make way for him in the corridors were liable to get bruised by his book-laden bag.

And on top of that, he ran that bloody blog.

As soon as Ladybug and Chat Noir debuted, he made it his mission to "unmask those two blithering idiots. How do we know they're not the ones causing the akumas? It's probably all some asinine publicity stunt to make themselves feel important."

Riddle only encouraged him, buying him a professional website and fancy video editing software. "He," Severus said, sticking his nose up in the air, "supports my interests."

Even if Lily hadn't had a vested interest in keeping Sev ignorant of Ladybug's identity, she still wouldn't have supported his interest. Superheroes needed help, not stupid accusations. Lily couldn't protest Sev's blog too much, though, not without possibly revealing herself, and anyway, it was good to keep your enemies close.

Not that Severus was her enemy. Only on that particular thing, of course.

It was all he talked about for weeks. How old they looked. How their accents sounded. Where they had to live based on how long it took them to show up to villains.

This rambling did benefit Lily—she learned that the Miraculouses magically disguised her. Severus would have known Lily's voice and accent in an instant otherwise. But all the other students, save Sev's mates, stayed far clear of that blog, and of him. They'd been saved too many times by Ladybug and Chat Noir to think anything awful of them.

If it had just been Severus with a bone to pick about the superheroes, things might have gone differently in his friendship with Lily. But it hadn't been.

There was Riddle.

Before she became Ladybug, Lily had never had much time for following politics. She was young, and then grieving, and then furiously busy. But then small comments began slipping into Mayor Riddle's interviews about the city's plague of villains.

The first reporter to notice that Hogwarts was an akuma hotspot triggered it.

"I think it is notable," Riddle answered. "It's certainly notable. I think it's worth asking why this particular school is being targeted. I don't need to tell anyone the reputation of Hogwarts, or the type of student that it tends to attract. I think it's worth asking why several other akuma victims have been very successful individuals. In the last month alone, a hedge fund manager, a member of the House of Lords, and the director of the royal opera have all fallen prey to Voldemort. So yes, I think it's worth asking what sort of person has it in for successful people."

"Successful," Lily said, muting the television in Severus's room. She dropped the remote onto the bed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He'd curled up in the armchair next to her, and looked up from his textbook. "You know what it means. That they're doing well for themselves."

"Rich, you mean. Loaded. Like that's the only metric for bleeding success—"

"Lily, you have to admit that most of the victims have had a certain amount of wealth—"

"Silvia Dodgson is loaded, is she? Funny, I was pretty sure her family lived on a council estate, but maybe they own the building, my mistake."

"I didn't say all of them, I said most—"

"But what would Voldemort care if someone has money or not? He just wants the Miraculouses from Ladybug and Chat Noir. That's why he sends out villains, to draw them out where he can try to get at them."

"He's perfectly capable of having multiple agendas, isn't he? And how do you know his stated motivation is his true one? It could be a ruse."

Lily clenched her teeth and forced herself to drop the argument. She had plenty of counter-evidence to present—two months' worth of villains, to be precise—but there was that damned line to walk between defending Ladybug and revealing herself.

Her ire didn't wane. It stayed with her, simmering beneath the surface, flashing at odd moments. At her photo shoot that weekend, the photographer kept scolding her for slipping into a scowl. And on Monday, when Avery sneered at her as he came to drag Severus away to their other friends, and Severus said nothing, Lily's irritation boiled over.

"What makes you so much better than me, hm?" she said to Avery, hands on her hips.

"Lily," Sev pleaded, but she didn't so much as spare a glance at him.

"You'd be better off leaving Snape alone," Avery said. "He's got better caliber friends now. Ones who are more like the people he'll be dealing with from now on."

"And what caliber is that? I pay my own way here—I earned my spot more than you ever did, you spoiled, snotty, sorry excuse for a—"

"Lily," Severus hissed, tugging on her sleeve. "McGonagall."

Lily's blood ran cold, and her tongue died down as McGonagall strode down the corridor toward them. She was too far away to have heard Lily, but their combative poses hardly looked innocent.

Lily plastered on one of her charming model smiles, the one that said she was living a magnificent life now that this particular brand of foundation had hidden her very minor acne.

McGonagall didn't have anything to go on, not with all three of them suddenly playing nice, but she sent Lily a warning look before walking away.

The moment she was out of sight, Lily stormed off.

"Wait," Severus said, chasing after her. "Wait, Lily, it's not—"

She spun around. "It's not what, Severus? Please, finish that sentence."

"It's—it's complicated, all right? They're used to a certain lifestyle—"

"Lifestyle? You mean only interacting with other wealthy, ignorant pricks?"

"They're trying to set high standards for society—not let people think it's good to be at the bottom—"

"I'm a bloody model, Sev—is that not good enough? Not at the top enough? I'm not even on scholarship—which ignores the whole problem of them assuming lower income people aren't worthy of their bleeding time—" She forced out a breath. "You know what? Forget it. If you want to be friends with them, go ahead. But don't expect me to sit back and let them insult me to my face."

She turned around to head to class, accidentally running her shoulder directly into Dorcas Meadowes.

"Sorry." Lily stepped to the side. "Didn't see you there—"

"Lily, wait—"

"It sounded like she was done to me," Dorcas said, sliding between Severus and Lily. "She didn't tell you to fuck off, but it was close."

"Remove your interfering, obnoxious self from my presence—"

"That bit doesn't work on me. Here, I'll do it for her: fuck off. Come on, Evans."

Lily blinked, took in Sev's seething expression, and said, "All right."

Dorcas marched off down the corridor with Lily at her side.

"Thanks," Lily said.

Dorcas made a noncommittal noise. "No means no. Boys are idiots."

"You don't have to escort me to class."

"No one's escorting anyone. Walk with me or don't. Sit with me in class or don't. It's your life."

"Perfect," Lily said. "I can definitely work with that attitude."

Dorcas shot her a thin smile. "Then we'll get along just fine."