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It was seventh year that I decided Severus Snape had to die, and that I was going to be the bloke who killed him. My fascination with Lily Evans aside, he really was just a wanker. The disgusting enthrallment with all things dark arts did not help, and it only made my decision easier. It didn't scare me; how comfortable I was with the idea, which said something because even Sirius raised an eyebrow when I declared it.
She was walking back toward the tower from the library, far away from the entrance to the dungeons, so what he was doing there besides planning an ambush I couldn't fathom. It was pure bloody luck that I happened to be coming back from the kitchens the long way.
"For the last bleeding time, it is not happening!"
"Lily, please. You need to see sense! I know what I said was…well,"
"Was what? Mean? Awful? Racist? What Severus? And after what happened in Herbology? And to Marlene? Will you stand there and tell me you didn't know?
"You did know didn't you? And believe it, don't you deep down you believe it even though you said it was all for show?"
"That isn't what I was going to say Lil—"
"I don't care what you were going to say! It's how you feel, and what makes this rich, what makes this ironic Severus, is that your father is bleeding muggle as mine!"
She was shrieking, and though they weren't in plain view, it was loud enough that anyone who passed by could have caught onto that piece of information that Snape undoubtedly didn't want anyone knowing. Which was why he raised a wand to the girl he claimed to love.
Her arm was bleeding, but her face showed no signs of pain until he spoke again.
"You repeat that again, and I'll make damn sure Avery finds you wand-less and alone where no one will hear your scream." He was pale and sweating, and looking like he was already filled with a cold regret. But none of that mattered.
That was the first time I saw Lily Evans lose it.
As I was about to intervene, she reached up and slapped him, raking her nails along his face and leaving four perfect bloody lines. He put a hand to his face and felt the blood. Her eyes were wild, her shoulders shaking, and by now my worry shifted slightly toward Snape.
Snape looked down at his blood on his hands and turned and ran like the slimy wanker he was. When my vision cleared, Lily Evans was sitting on the cold ground staring up at me.
"You can come out now Potter, he's gone." When I sat down next to her, she wouldn't look at me. She had shrugged out of her robe and was attempting to heal the gashes down her arm.
I took my wand and did it myself, running it along slowly. Thankfully it was shallow and so a visit to the hospital was not necessary. She looked up at me through her long black lashes and I gave the first shite answer I could come up with, "when you're mates with Sirius Black—"
"Those must come in handy." She chuckled and winced with the movement. There was silence while she looked at me, tears dry on her face, and I swallowed back my impulses. I'd like to think we'd made some progress in the area of her not hating me. When I saw her sitting with her chin on her knees on the petrol sign, I knew I had to keep trying.
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth and looked away again. Before I could stop myself, I pushed her back behind her ear, making her turn. Her cheek pressed into my palm, and my breath hitched in my throat. She noticed.
"We should clean up and get to defense." Without another word, she shrugged back into her robe and I followed her down the hall.
"Are you going to tell me what happened?" I asked.
"Do I really need to?" she answered while staring straight ahead.
I swallowed. No, she didn't.
It was in defense, that very same day that she figured it out and honestly, I should have known. I'd never produced a corporal patronus before, never had to try. So when the Lynx flowed out of her wand like it was effortless, my competitive prat came shinning through. I'd been suppressing the urge to behave like an arrogant git ever since Lily called me out on it fifth year. In retrospect, I cannot believe I didn't see what could have (and did) come prancing out of my wand.
I pictured her smiling at me that night before disaparating from the petrol sign. The first time she laughed at one of my jokes second year without trying to hold it back. I pictured her wonder when I ran my wand up her arm to her shoulder, the wound closing, and how she shivered despite herself when my hand touched her bare skin.
The stag burst out of my wand before I had even finished the incantation and when those wide green eyes of hers looked up at me, I knew I was truly and royally fucked.
Her jaw hit the ground as she looked to me and to the cloud of silver that was the stag. I could see her connecting the dots and remembering that night last year. I flicked my wand down and the stag evaporated.
The rest of the day passed much too quickly. I was dreading seeing Lily again, so much so that I even took dinner alone in the kitchens. I was dreading explaining this secret that had been so well guarded to someone who might not understand. Not only were we unregistered; we were underage and technically breaking the ban on underage magic outside the confines of Hogwarts. A formal ministry sanction would most likely hinder any of us from working at the ministry (and primary place of wizarding employment) and that was the best-case scenario. On top of it all, it was the first night of the full moon.
"She figured it out, didn't she? She's bloody unbelievably clever, how could she not after your little display today?" Sirius ran a hand through his shoulder length hair and let out a sigh.
"Oh well," he continued, "guess you'll have some explaining to do when we make it back tonight."
"You're being much too cavalier about this Padfoot. You understand what will happen if the ministry had the slightest suspicion? What they would do to us? To Remus?"
His scoff was muffled by his shirt as it went over his head. "You honestly think the bird will talk? Because, I must say Prongsie, I don't think she will."
"Well, you can't know that," I half muttered when we had reached the shack.
"Before you start looking for ministry lackeys behind us at every corner, let us just get through tonight, yeah?" He grinned at me and ran off, jumping and transforming in mid air. Attempting to think of Moony and the task at hand, I put aside what I couldn't control and prayed to whatever deities might or might not be listening that Lily Evans was capable of mercy.
She was waiting in the common room when I got back, though it was gone two a.m. Her green eyes looked me over as I made my way to the fire, clutching my midsection and my three or four broken ribs. She was standing, her robes off and her tie askew; shirt un-tucked and her curls running wild down her back. I tried not to focus on her rolled down stockings and exactly how much of her legs I'd not seen before. The fire danced in her eyes, where I expected to find anger and righteous indignation but was greeted instead with wonder and excitement. She seemed fit to burst with it.
"Lily, you have to understand—"
"You're the stag."
I blinked. "Well yes, but—"
"And Sirius is the dog, isn't he? He must be, I can't picture Peter as a dog, in fact I can't picture Peter there at all to be honest, but I suppose he must be, you lot are always together." She was pacing back and forth in front of the fire, waving her hands animatedly, and I couldn't understand her reaction at all.
"Of course, you must be unregistered, not to mention underage, but that would mean that you were able to—"
At this I stood fast, ignoring the pain from my ribs and gently took hold of her arms to make her stand still.
"It means that you can't tell anyone, at all, not ever. Not Marlene, not Alice, not Dorcas, no one. And not just for our sake, but for Moony as well. We did this for him you see, it makes it easier not being alone. And as animals, even if he were to bite us, it wouldn't be con—"
"It wouldn't be contagious and you can't be infected. Yes, I know all about it." She looked at me just then, in way that told me she'd barely been listening, as if she'd been lost and was only now coming back to herself.
"Show me how to do it."
"Pardon?"
"Tell me how you did it!" She half begged, half ordered. I shook my head as if to clear it from this strange, strange nightmare.
She gripped my arms hard, digging into where Remus' claws had gouged at my skin.
"I want to know how you do it. I want to learn how." She gripped harder and I could feel the blood welling up under my shirt.
She looked down for the first time as I winced and frowned. She led me back to the sofa, and began to unbutton my shirt without a word, the unanswered question of her transformation still thick in the air.
Lily whistled as she saw the purple and black staining my skin.
"You weren't honestly thinking of healing this on your own were you?"
She pushed my shirt off my shoulders and I could not say or think a word. I could barely swallow. Her fingers trailed fire across my skin and I took myself back to a time when this would have meant everything to me.
"Can't exactly go to Pomfrey, and Sirius is crap at it," I said.
"Hmm, I suppose he must be." She ran her wand across the bleeding wounds on my arm much like I had done for her that morning, closing them with minimal pain. Her brow was furrowed as she worked. Lily conjured a bowl and a towel, summoning a vial from the washroom simultaneously.
"This is murtlap. It is going to sting like all hell, but it won't let you scar." She took a second look at my arms while cleaning the blood off and added, "much."
She moved on to my ribs next, setting the bones and mending them, the whispered incantations made her breath ghost across my skin and I let out a shudder I couldn't suppress. I thought of McGonagall in a play wizard spread, which worked to calm me down until she began rubbing the ointment on the bruises.
Noticing how I tensed, she smirked. "I'll try to be gentle."
I laughed, despite it all.
It was a while before she spoke again. "I won't, I would never turn you in, even if it weren't for Remus. The fact that it is about him just makes this all the more amazing. How long has it been?"
I knew these questions were coming, but her hands had distracted me from planning out a plausible half-truth. I stared into the fire and quickly edited out the uglier parts of the story, hoping she wouldn't read it all in my eyes.
"We started looking into it at the end of third year when we found out about Remus. Took us until the middle of fourth to actually do it."
"You've been doing this since fourth year? The three of you?"
"I'm not sure if I should be taking offence to your tone of surprise there, Ms. Evans, but yes. It keeps him away from the village and from the school and it helps to clear his conscious, knowing that we're there to keep an eye on him. He never remembers the next morning."
"Show me how to do it James." Her voice was soft, and earnest, and when I heard her call me James I knew that it was my undoing.
"Why?"
"Because to me it makes magic real. To change form like that? It connects you to a kind of magic I can only dream about. It's why I wanted to come here so badly, why I couldn't leave even after my sister begged me. To have the kind of power you can push out without needing a wand, something so deep, so personal that only you can manifest it, not a magical core belonging to something else? It's the reason I can't go back to living like a muggle even though, bloody hell, we both know how much easier, how much safer things would be if I could. Why wouldn't I want to learn?"
"It isn't that glorious or simple Lily. Things can go wrong, you can die."
"I'm aware of what can happen," she said, her voice hardening at once. "And I don't appreciate being spoken to as if I were a child. If you don't want to help me, fine just bloody say so. But don't you dare sit there and speak to me like that."
I exhaled in frustration, as if I really were talking to a child and this only fueled her further. "I'm not trying to be didactic, I'm being honest. Peter almost died the first time. We were very young and very reckless and all right yes, we had a good reason, but if I could go back I-"
"Don't tell me you wouldn't have done it, we both know that isn't true," she cut me off, desperate to keep her point.
I let out another frustrated sigh and winced from the pain of it. Lily deflated almost instantly.
"Look, you're in pain, and tired. I'm sorry to be so pushy, yeah? It's just that when the stag came out of your wand, and I knew it was you I'd seen that night, it all clicked and I wanted to ask you then but you disappeared. When you weren't at dinner I thought I have to find him because he can help me. I've wanted this for so long James, I can't describe it, I—"
"If I say no, you'll do it anyway, won't you?" I interrupted.
"Yes. Now that I've seen first hand it's possible to accomplish, yes," she answered.
"And I take it you won't wait until you're of age to get a ministry liscence and registration?"
"You know how long that'll take. They'll probably deny me considering the times and circumstances." Yes, I knew.
"I'll do it."
"I understand why you'd be hesitant-wait what?" When he mind caught up with her mouth her jaw dropped to the ground.
"I said I'll do it. I'll help you."
"Why?" she blurted out.
"Because I can't deny you anything, Lily Evans. Even when I bloody well should."
She sat and stared at me for a long while, the information settling in. I was completely unprepared for when she leapt across the small sofa and threw herself across my injured middle, holding onto my neck for dear life. I was covered in dirt and blood and dried sweat, sporting three newly healed ribs and Merlin only knew how many other cuts and bruises and Merlin's bread and butter but I didn't care. She smelled like almond blossoms and smoke from the fire and this was Lily-sodding-Evans draped across my sodding lap; that moment stopped my world, everything tilted on it's axis as I held her close to me, knowing that in a few seconds she would collect herself and that it would all be over. That I was a man, and I was supposed to be stronger than this, I was supposed to be over her. The only thing I was was full of shit.
I inhaled one last time as I heard her breath catch, her heart begin to race and the heat rise on her cheeks. She gracefully disentangled her limbs from mine, scourgified my shirt and patted down her skirt.
"I'm going to bed, and you should too. Lessons start this weekend, and as you are absolute pants at transfiguration, please be sure to do your reading Miss. Evans."
She snored and knocked me lightly on my good arm.
"Have a sodding shower Potter. You need it." She got up quickly and made short work of reaching the girl's staircase. Just before I made to get up, she turned back around and looked at me.
"James?" she called.
"Yes?" I answered back.
"Thank you."
She flushed once again and raced up the stairs before I could answer. She had gotten the last word. Again.
