A/N: So I'm back and delivering with the Drama. Get ready for it.
You all owe a major thank you to Corina for beta'ing this chapter. She kind of went above and beyond her duties here, helping me to solve some sticky structural issues that had plagued me for months.
Can't wait to hear what you all think!
In the week plus since losing sight of her targets at the boathouse, Lily had dedicated every spare minute of her time to searching the place for clues. On the night she'd followed the mystery voices, she'd nearly frozen to death. She'd touched every boat that hung in the rafters above to assure herself they were solid, not illusions, and that none were missing; she'd commandeered a telescope from the Astronomy Tower, so that she could better peer out over the lake; and, she'd tapped every plank of flooring to search for hidden passages. No dice.
It was now a Sunday, a balmy weekend afternoon. Lily had convinced Mei-Lin and Will to join her in searching the boathouse. Until now, she'd selfishly coveted her one, solid lead, hesitant to bring in a second or third pair of eyes. Nine days since she'd first connected the boathouse to the Grindylows, and she was finally ready to admit defeat.
Predictably, Will wasn't much help. Propped on a stool in the corner, he grandstanded unabashedly. Mei-Lin wasn't afraid of dirty work, fortunately, and she'd dropped to her knees to scour the floor for footprints. Afterwards, she dipped her hands into the water, running her fingertips along the wall algae-coated wall. The floor was slick with grime, and Lily didn't envy Mei-Lin the task.
"You're 110 percent sure that Potter wasn't just telling the truth? That he didn't come in here to shag Shafiq?" Will said.
Lily, who was fingering everything on the shelves by the northside of the dock, tugged on a coil of rope and frowned. "Well, no. It could have been a…date, but that doesn't explain why he disappeared. Also, it was bloody freezing. Who would take their pants off in that? It's just too suspicious."
None of Will's naysaying was original to Lily. She'd ruminated on all of the possibilities obsessively for nine days. It could have been a date with Danyal. James could have brought the Slytherin prefect down to the boathouse to show off his knowledge of hidden passages and then secreted her away before Lily burst in to find them. This theory failed to account for Sirius wandering the grounds or the fact that Lily hadn't found a passageway out of the boathouse.
From her spot on the floor, Mei-Lin said, "Speaking of suspicious, do you know who's not? Marlene."
"She still doesn't do anything?" Lily asked.
"Oh, she does things. Constantly. Never takes a break! Just none that are related to the Grindylows," Marlene said sourly. "She makes rounds, Lily!"
Since she'd begun spying on Marlene, Mei-Lin had kept Lily grumpily abreast of their dormmate's movements. The rounds Mei-Lin referred to consisted of Marlene's compulsive habit of speaking to every sixth-year once a day. She'd circle the Great Hall, passing out hellos like candy. Mei-Lin swore that Marlene was such a butterfly, she might fly away at any moment.
"Meaning she's popular. Meaning the Grindylows," Lily said.
"Do you actually think Marlene McKinnon is smart enough to be a member of the Grindylows, or is this just an inventive form of torture you've created for Mei-Lin?" Will asked. "Please know that you have my wholehearted support either way."
"Well…she's not on my top list of guesses," Lily admitted, sidling toward another shelf of boating supplies.
One of Mei-Lin's many observations about Marlene had included some horrifying insight into Marlene's limited understanding of geography, revealed during their dormmate's conversation with Napoleon Shacklebolt. Namely, Marlene believed Hispanic people were from the Middle East. Lily had said it simply showed Marlene wasn't well-versed in the facts of the world, blamed Hogwarts' dismal educational standards; Mei-Lin said it showed Marlene was "an idiot."
"Are you kidding me?" Mei-Lin demanded.
"Sorry. I've been working on my list of suspects, and she's a definite possibility, but I think I have nine stronger candidates," Lily said apologetically. Will looked eager to hear more, so Lily continued, "These are only my guesses for the sixth-years, and keep in mind that there needs to be at least one from each house. I think the members are: James, Sirius, Remus, Tristan Codrington, Danyal Shafiq, Rita Slughorn, Sev, Tamyra Booth, and Momoko Suzuki."
"Lily, that's not half bad," Mei-Lin said admiringly.
"That's atrocious," Will said, equally stunned.
Lily decided to ignore the criticism in favor of beaming at Mei-Lin. She'd gone through several drafts of top picks before landing on her current list. She was the most confident about James, Sirius, Remus, Danyal, and Sev, which left her with four open slots.
Tristan Codrington was popular, and how could he be otherwise with cheekbones like that? The Ravenclaw was decidedly fit, and he was dating one of the most popular girls in school, Nadia Kovalenko. On top of that, he played for the Ravenclaw house team, was a member of the Potions Society, and an invitee to the Slug Club. Accomplished? Check. Popular? Double check.
Rita Slughorn (niece of Horace Slughorn) had received a perfect score from Lily in terms of accomplishments, the only sixth-year to do so as Lily hadn't rated herself, an exercise that would have broken the curve. Rita had more than earned her score as a prefect, member of the Potions and Charms Clubs, and frequent attendee of her uncle's gatherings. Yes, she'd lost a few, well, several points on the popularity score as Lily couldn't recall the last time she'd seen Rita with anyone other than her housemate, Marion French, but the sheer scale of her activities more than made up for it in Lily's opinion.
Tamyra Booth, a Ravenclaw, was another case of involvement trumping popularity, though Tamyra did share a higher cache than Rita. If Lily was forced to make a comparison, she would say that Rita was about as popular as Mei-Lin, while Tamyra sat on the same level of the social hierarchy as Lily herself. Tamyra was also utterly brilliant with seven OWLs and high marks, all managed while serving as three-term President of the Gobstones Club and as a prefect.
In Momoko Suzuki, Lily thought she'd found a balance. Momo was equally popular and accomplished, though not the standard for either. She was a tutor, member of the Astrological Society, and frequent sight at meetings of the Dueling Society. Better, she hung out with all the most popular girls in Hufflepuff. She may not have been the social force that was her close friend, Nadia Kovalenko, but Momoko was a member of the popular crowd and had attended the last Grindylows party.
"How'd you come up with this shite?" Will huffed.
"I assessed everyone on popularity and their involvement in school activities. If you think you can do better, I have the rankings in my bag," Lily said archly, nodding toward her satchel by the door.
"Gladly," Will said, marching to her bag. A second later, Lily heard the tell-tale zip and the sound of papers rustling. Lily didn't so much as cringe when her tampons went flying and Will scrambled to pick them up. It served him right.
Compared to the castle proper, the underground harbor was less ostentatious. It had been designed for practicality, not presentation, so beyond the shelving, there wasn't much to explore. Night or day, the single room was lit by lanterns along the wall, but the sun also peeked through; the boathouse was constructed of three walls, opening up to a caved inlet, which led to the lake.
There was one decoration: an empty frame hung opposite the door. It had been empty of its contents every time Lily had visited. Lily approached the portrait now. It depicted a starry night, lit by a full moon. Something about the breadth of the brushstrokes struck her as familiar, but Lily couldn't put her finger on it. The portrait was oddly large, 1.5 meters by 1.5 meters, and when Lily ran her fingers along the gilded frame, dust coated the digit.
It was entirely out of place.
From behind her, Mei-Lin approached and said, "You know, this would make an excellent entrance to a secret passageway."
Lily agreed. She dug her fingernails into the edge of the frame and pulled. The thing didn't budget. Mei-Lin proceeded to tickle, pet, scratch and poke every nanometer of the painting in the hopes of provoking a response. Nothing worked.
"Maybe you have to say the password," Mei-Lin suggested.
Groaning, Lily prayed that wasn't the case. The password to Gryffindor Tower was unguessable, exhausting all of the Latin and English languages as it changed every week. Lily's memory was formidable, so it was rare that she forgot the password into Gryffindor Tower altogether, but she'd been so bursting with energy and excitement during her first year at Hogwarts, that she wouldn't bother to memorize the password at all. Twice, she'd been left, trapped, outside after curfew. The first night, she'd banged on the portrait of the Fat Lady with heavy fists, ignoring her screams for help, and intent on summoning someone from inside. The ruckus had caught the attention of Filch, not her housemates, and Lily had earned her first Hogwarts detention, even as she begged for mercy, citing her helplessness. The second time, she had given up all hope immediately, slumping to the floor and snuggling into her robes like a blanket. She'd slept for nearly an hour when a shoe nudged her side a few times. It was James and Sirius, password in hand, and they'd let her into the castle amidst much ribbing about her forgetfulness. Since, Lily had never once failed to commit a password to mind.
Knowing that their efforts in the boathouse would be pure conjecture, Lily grimly said, "Open Sesame."
"I'm afraid of water. I love water. Get your sea-legs. Hard to starboard," Mei-Lin tried without success. Lily looked at her askance, so Mei-Lin added for her benefit. "I don't know. I feel like it'll be nautical themed. The password is…"
Jabbing a quill angrily into Lily's rankings, Will hissed to himself, "Absurd!"
The portrait creaked open once the final syllable left his mouth. Unprepared, Lily didn't leap out of the way as the portrait swung back on its hinges and collided directly with her face. Stumbling back, Lily rubbed her nose. It was reddened from impact, but there was no blood. There was no time for pouting, so Lily walked around the portrait, so that she could peer inside. Within the black, yawning space revealed, Lily could faintly make out a flight of steps.
"Well, well, well. What have we here, my pretties?" Lily intoned gleefully.
The reference was entirely lost on Mei-Lin, but her answering grin was still resplendent. They could both scent adventure on the air, spicy and hot. Oftentimes, people questioned their sorting: Lily had the inquisitiveness of a Ravenclaw, and the uninitiated wrongly pegged Mei-Lin as a Hufflepuff. The way their blood quickened now at the prospect of adventure would have put to bed any doubts.
"Um, I'm doing some lifesaving work on this list, so why don't you two check it out without me?" Will said.
"Coward," Mei-Lin said.
"I've never claimed otherwise," Will said, shrugging his shoulders.
"So what if it's dark?" Lily asked. "I highly doubt we're going to run into anything too dangerous in the middle of the school."
"Do you attend the same school as me? This is Hogwarts. You'll be lucky if you don't get burnt to death by a dragon. Count me out," Will said.
Mei-Lin might have teased him mercilessly, but forcing Will to do anything was a worthless enterprise. He'd ultimately go, but he would whinge the entire journey, distracting their focus from clue-gathering.
"Fine. We'll see you later. If we're not at breakfast tomorrow, report to Dumbledore. Tell him the dragon ate us alive," Lily instructed.
"I have a great pair of black dress robes that'd be perfect for the occasion," Will called morbidly as the girls climbed over the low threshold of the frame and into the secret passage.
The staircase spiraled clockwise, like the many barrel staircases that wound through Hogwarts' towers. Unlike the staircases they climbed every day, this one was unfinished: no railing. In the dark, it would be a simple matter to lose her footing and topple, a graceless return to the boathouse with a few broken bones to mark the journey. Complicating matters, medieval castles were built with uneven staircases, designed to confuse enemy invaders in the dark. Keeping one hand on the wall at all times, Lily made her ascent. The walls were damp, perspiring. Behind her, Mei-Lin shadowed her footsteps.
They arrived at the top and repeated the magical words, "the password is absurd" to emerge in the middle of the Bustling Grand Staircase. A group of fourth-year Slytherins squawked in put-upon outrage at the sudden interruption, moving resentfully to the side.
The staircase must have been magical because a straight shot up stairs should have launched them into the sky not to the opposite side of the grounds and into the castle proper. Something crackled beneath Lily's skin, a remnant of magic, not quite as disorienting as an apparition.
"My, my! It's been some time since anyone's come through here!"
The portrait from which they'd emerged smiled jovially. Lily realized the empty scene downstairs had looked familiar because it was a perfect match for the portrait of Percival Pratt, the noted poet that shouted rhymes and riddles at her every day as she walked to class.
"Hello, Percival. I didn't realize you double-functioned as a door, and here I thought you were such a bore," Mei-Lin said.
Simple or not, a rhyme was always enough to summon a smile to Percival's face, and it lifted and curled his momentous moustache. Lily wasted no time with pleasantries, jumping straight into her line of questioning.
"Percival, were you here last Friday night? The sixteenth? Here and awake I mean?" Lily asked. He nodded. "Are you sure? Sorry to press, but it's important."
"I'm certain. I had Sir Cadogan and dear Glanmore over for a game of cards. I won handily. See the trick is to choose opponents who bring out the worst in the other. Glanmore's a true hero. Killing the Serpent of Cromer was no easy task, you know. So, Cadogan is driven to distraction trying to prove he's a hero as well, and it's a simple matter to get a peek at their cards as they bicker," Percival said in a whispered aside.
"Did you notice anyone come through the passage that night?" Lily asked.
"No, like I said. It's been many years since I swung forward without warning like that. You gave me such a shock."
"Maybe you didn't see anyone, but you opened just a little," Mei-Lin bargained.
Percival stayed firm. No matter how they phrased the question, he insisted that no one had used the secret passage from the boathouse in years.
As they walked away in disappointment, Percival chimed in with his parting words, "Just remember, take time every day to rhyme what they say!"
As far as workable guidance went, Lily had hoped for better. There was no time to waste in lamenting the dead end because Lily was slated to meet with James in the common room to work on their Transfiguration project. She may have been perpetually late to everything, but James – James! with his wonderful hair and keen interest in whatever she was researching – was always the exception, no matter how cross she was with him. Or rather, pretending to be as their last few chats had seen her anger ebb away until all that was left was the soft putty of her feelings, crushed but still throbbing with want for him.
Buoyed by her teenage fantasies, Lily beat James to the common room, though he joined her shortly thereafter. A punctual bloke that one. Yes, fit , punctual, and ace at Transfiguration, and she could never sort how such a thing was possible. That said, fifteen minutes into their work session, Lily was prepared to admit that despite his many glowing attributes, James Potter was not a perfect person.
Had someone asked Lily in their fourth-year for a comprehensive list of his shortcomings, she would have been eager to provide it, and the parchment would have stretched to the floor in tightly-cramped lettering. Today, in their cozy corner of the common room, Lily would have answered with only one fault: he was utterly tone deaf.
James hummed absentmindedly as he worked, nose pressed to his notes, so the ugly music lilted across the table. He was humming something moody, classical, which started in minor and then, burst brilliantly up an octave, and then another. With the musical range of a crisp, James thoughtlessly strained up to follow the music, voice cracking and whistling like a kettle.
From the moment the noise had started, Lily had debated reaching across the little square table that separated them to give him a thwack across the head. He'd probably look at her with those big, offended eyes, but at least he'd stop with the screeching. What stayed Lily's hand was his contributions to their project, relative to her own. Namely, while he poured through notes and outlined their project, Lily was reading a magazine article on Helen Bamber, the head of Amnesty International's British Group and the founder of their Medical Group. Lily might have tried to help, but every time she read the start of her Transfiguration textbook, her eyes glossed over and the crushing reality of the imminence of death made her feel seasick, so she'd retreat back to something that didn't make her miserable. James had been a wonderful sport about it all.
"Here's an idea," James said, stopping his infernal humming only to force her to think about Transfiguration instead, which wasn't exactly an improvement. "We could make the theme of our project miracles and magic in muggle mysticism. You like to research, so you can do the reading up on different transfigurations famous in muggle theology, and I can handle the practical side. We recreate the transfigurations, photograph and contextualize it all within the mythology, and we earn ourselves an O, while learning something new about muggle culture."
"What do you mean by miracles in muggle mysticism?" Lily asked. It was pathetic, but she felt positively tingly at hearing James talk in academic terms with her. His intellect and love of learning was the most embarrassing turn-on in history.
"Like, this Jesus bloke. He transforms clay into birds, for example. There's a lot of food transfigurations, too, which are tricky because, you know, Gamp's Laws, but we could do at least a physical transfiguration."
Lily exhaled slowly. "James, Jesus was not a wizard. What he did was not transfiguration."
"Oh, come on! Look at everything he did. You want to tell me that's not magic?"
"Yes, actually. They're miracles. Last time I checked, a wizard couldn't raise the dead. And, like you already pointed out, Gamp's Laws. He could also turn water into wine. They were miracles. Not magic."
Hands raised in front of him, James said, "I take it back. Bad idea, sorry."
Only at his conciliatory stance did Lily realize that she was gnashing her teeth together and poised as if to lunge across the table. Lily folded her hands together and leaned back, forcing calm into existence. James hadn't meant anything by his bumbling about because wizards lacked the background to understand muggle religions. And, frankly, Lily couldn't blame James for not believing, because she wasn't certain of her own stance; at times the gentle cadence of prayer and generous words of the New Testament rang hollow to her too. Despite her own vacillating, Lily would never mock believers because that was Petunia, her mum, a litany of good-natured people who complimented her Sunday dress and shared fresh-baked cookies after the service.
She'd been raised up in the C of E by a mother who was devout and unbending when it came to her daughters' religious education. Until her mother grew sick, Lily had never missed a Sunday service, even when she was a walking contagion with chicken pox or the flu. It had been a shock when her father didn't take them. They'd dress and leave the house as if they were heading to church, but it was a ruse to fool their bedridden mother, instead visiting an ice cream parlor, the sweet vanilla overcoming any of Lily's nerves about their waning attendance. Her father had said a loving god would never make their family suffer so deeply and that he wouldn't worship a cruel god. A year and a half later, Lily had made a go of attending church again alongside Petunia, but by then everything was different. She had met Severus, and she knew she was a witch, and the command 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' struck her, deep and discordant, their humble chapel heating up like a pyre as Lily sweat in her pew, realizing that maybe the Bible wasn't written for her after all.
Apologetic, Lily decided to backtrack from her ferocity if not the content of what she'd argued, "It's not an awful idea, James. I just think a lot of wizards view muggles as silly and superstitious, but they're not dumb. They're thoughtful and smart and willing to learn, and we shouldn't do anything in this project that's going to contribute to the idea that they're less than they are."
"You know I think the world of muggles. I just wasn't thinking. Let's circle back to one of our other ideas," James offered. To emphasize his point, James drew a quick triangle around another idea he'd been considering, pertaining to size experimentation. It wasn't more than a minute before James looked at her again and voiced a new question, "Does that mean you're a Christian? You believe in that stuff…I mean, err, religion?"
Somewhat bashfully, Lily admitted that she didn't. "I believe there is a god, whether that's a source of energy or something so immense I can't begin to fathom it. I think God is the source of benevolence, that all love emanates from Him. I believe that every human being has a soul, which is something separate from our brains and consciousness, something stronger than the brain, which will outlive the body. I'm maybe a bit binary in how I think about good and evil, and I believe that good people are rewarded while bad people suffer in the afterlife. It's, well, it's important to me that there's a Heaven. I need to believe my mum is somewhere beautiful. And, I believe in Hell. I need to believe that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and the others like him are going to suffer for what they've done."
James whistled, and the note was ten times prettier than his previous humming. "Beautiful. Honestly."
"Yeah?" Lily asked sheepishly, warring with the wave of terror that clutched her whenever she admitted out loud that she wasn't certain Jesus had died for her sins and all the rest.
"Absolutely. You make me wish I believed, too. I've just never taken the time to think about it all: death and the universe and purpose. Like I said though, the way you talk about it is beautiful," James said.
"Are you an objectivist? Like, you don't believe in anything unless there's concrete evidence?" Lily questioned.
Earlier, she'd snagged a crocheted blanket from the couch, burgundy with the Gryffindor lion in yellow thread, and she played with the fraying tassels rather than look at James. She was half afraid he would say yes because she'd never been able to reconcile the evidence-hungry rational side of herself with the need for something soft and mystical in the universe. There were plenty of scientists and thinkers that accepted the existence of God, but there were others that were leading a vocal movement in favor of atheism. Lily felt caught in the middle between two warring movements and facets of self.
"Not at all! Have you never noticed my hundred and one superstitions? Some things are just true, and I don't need to know why."
"Err, no?"
"Oh blimey, ask Remus. I drive him mad with them, but I don't believe in taking chances," James said with an astonishing amount of heat in his voice.
"You don't believe in taking chances?"
"Not with the forces of the universe. I'll take a chance with the forces of gravity, manners, and McGonagall, but I'm not risking anything else. I figured out pretty young that I have the best luck in the universe, and you don't get something for nothing. If I'm not careful, I could lose it all, wake up and Sleekeazy's gone under, my parents have divorced, and I've body-swapped with Filch. Not risking it!" James said.
At Lily's pressing, James shared a few of his superstitions, and Lily was left to marvel at how she'd never noticed what a freak he was, darting about the castle in accordance with imaginary laws that no one else adhered to. If he woke up in the morning and it was raining, he wouldn't shower for the entire day – a rule that had destroyed the peace of the boys' dormitory in the spring of 1974, when it rained for two weeks straight – and if the rain started up after dinner, James would take another, regardless of whether he'd already showered that morning. He ate his food in alphabetical order like an absolute monster, dessert and drinks being the only permissible exceptions. Tuesdays were rife with bad luck, so he tried to avoid anything important, saving it ideally for Thursday's wondrous luck. If he cast a spell and it backfired or the results were less than desired, he would tap the wand four times on the nearest wooden surface and murmur an incantation that sounded like a nursery rhyme to "erase my wand's memory of failure." And, he believed that if someone bumped into you on the left-side on your birthday, that person wished you harm.
Evidently, Lily had done just that when they were in second-year, which led to an intense debate.
"I did not wish you harm!" Lily insisted.
"You hated me! You hated me, and you collided with my left-side as we left Charms. I'll never forget it. You waltzed off, and I just stood there, shocked! Because, there I thought you were ace at those bubbling charms, and you were plotting my murder. It scarred me!"
"You're making this up," Lily said.
"No! Ask Sirius! I stayed away from you for weeks after because I was convinced you were just looking for an opening."
"What are you supposed to be asking me?" Sirius drew close by their table. He'd spent the last hour asleep in the corner, a motorcycle racing magazine splayed open across his knees. Now, he and James did some elaborate boy-mate greeting with their hands before Sirius threw himself into the chair by James' side.
"Was I not terrified of her in second-year? After the shite she pulled on my birthday!" James said to Sirius.
"Oh, yeah, you were ridiculous," Sirius seconded immediately. "We took some weird shortcuts through the castle to make sure we were never alone in a corridor with you. Not sure how you were going to overpower the four of us, but James took no chances."
"Ridiculous," Lily said. "What finally convinced you that I didn't want you dead?"
"Easy. You were the first person to say hello to me on the first day of Spring," James said.
"What?"
"Whoever first says hello to you at the start of Spring is secretly in love with you. Figured that your animosity had morphed into love because naturally. Who wouldn't love me?"
No matter how vehemently she denied it, Lily could not convince James that she hadn't harbored a secret crush on him in their second-year. As they bickered, Sirius relaxed entirely into his seat and closed his eyes, a smile on his face. They folded into something that felt perfectly natural, a rhythm of James working on their project, Lily protesting something she found absurd, and Sirius butting in with a pithy aside that set James reeling with laughter. The only moments that jolted Lily out of her own contentment were when Sirius would touch her unexpectedly, a brush against her wrist or their knees knocking beneath the coffee table. It, unlike everything else, wasn't natural, and she couldn't hide the jolt that rocked her each time.
Because everything felt so comfortable, Lily allowed nearly a half hour to pass before she realized she was letting a perfect opportunity drip like water through her fingers. She has two all-but-confirmed members of the Grindylows at her disposal and she was basking in their company without so much as a probing question. Dating Sirius Black wasn't meant to be a pleasure cruise. It was meant to be a deep, personally draining investigation into the underbelly of the school.
Lily grew quiet as she raced through her mental catalogue of mysteries that needed solving and the various angles she might take to introduce her chosen line of questioning. When she settled upon one, she looked up from her book with what she imagined was her most innocent smile in place.
"I think it's impossible to keep a secret nowadays," Lily said, aiming for contemplative.
James's attention was torn between the work he was doing on their project and a game of tic-tac-toe that Sirius had started on the margins of his notes, so he only grunted in response to her opening line. Lily was not deterred.
"Think about it," Lily rallied. "The world's smaller than ever. Pick a country and you can travel to it, muggle or witch! So, we know more about our neighbors than ever before, and news from around the world affects us more today than ever before. The secrets are disappearing. Soon, we're going to know everything. There will be no place to hide."
Sirius shook his head. "I could not disagree more. We have too many secrets still. Look at my family. We have all sorts of secret practices, crimes, traditions, and more that haven't spread outside the House of Black, and I promise you all the old families are alike. Then, there's the Ministry. Sure, they're leaking information left and right, but the state of the Prophet is abysmal, and you never know what information is true or false. Too many double agents."
"We have our fair share of secrets, too," James said chummily.
"Some of us have too many," Sirius returned.
Neither of them said a word after that, turning away to stare in opposite directions. Lily disliked having her clumsy opening dissected so thoroughly, and she worried that changing tactics now would be too obvious, so she tried again.
"Alright, maybe not in your world…but in the muggle world! Look at Richard Nixon!"
"Who?"
"Richard Nixon! He was a leader of the muggle United States. He tried to tamper with the elections by spying on the opposition, only his spies were caught out. And, they didn't keep their orders or who ordered it a secret. They tried for a bit, but the whole case cracked right open because it's impossible to keep a secret. Maybe you can hide things for a few months or hell, even a few years, but you can't shield the truth for longer than that. Give it half a century and the truth will win out.," Lily said.
"Or maybe people just won't care about what happened half a century in the past," James pointed out.
Pretending as if he hadn't spoken, Lily said, "Which is why I think the Grindylows are so incredible, if you think about it. Because that's a secret that's been maintained for a long time. A few centuries at least, right? And no one's ever broken and spilled the truth. I can hardly make sense of how they've managed to get that many people to keep a secret for that long."
"Maybe they only pick the best secret keepers," Sirius offered, and Lily frowned at his insincerity.
"I've thought about it, and I think you'd need to have a pretty strong system in place to demand compliance. These are the options: One, you threaten them. The Grindylows are a secretly violent organization and betrayal equals death or maiming or, I suppose some kind of career-jettisoning. Or, you know, there are these muggle secret societies, and some of them have a practice, where the members expose their gravest secrets and worst acts, so that they're afraid to ever betray the society lest their secrets be exposed," Lily said.
James gaped at her. "I don't think the Grindylows are out there massacring past members. It's a school club."
"I'm just brainstorming," Lily said primly. "Two, they could bribe them. Maybe they're paid to keep silent, and they receive more of their payoff each year."
"Nah, that wouldn't work with half the old families," Sirius said immediately.
"Three, they use magic. An Unbreakable Vow would do the trick nicely," Lily said.
"Again, I don't think they're operating on pain of death," James protested.
Lily wouldn't lie, she was relieved to hear it. Still, she doubted hundreds of people could keep a lifetime of silence unless there was some element of fear keeping that quiet. The more she talked through the options, the more convinced she became that the Grindylows used some combination of all three options. There was some degree of threat to keep people in line, a degree of reward to act as a balm against the leash – maybe as simple as social and political advantages amongst the members? – and there was something magical to seal it all together. Maybe an Unbreakable Vow was too extreme, but Lily knew there were other spells that could bind a promise, if less strictly, and she'd have to do some research to explore her options.
Lily feigned a sigh. "You're probably right. I bet you that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named uses these methods, though."
That set James and Sirius both off into a rant about the current political situation, and Lily let the subject of the Grindylows drop entirely. Hearing James and Sirius both protest against the madness of Lord Voldemort was comforting, a reminder that not every pureblood was pure-evil, and she surprised by the time when their scheduled hour was up and James had to leave for Quidditch practice. The final match of the season against Hufflepuff, to determine the champion, was right around the corner, and James wouldn't be kept from practice for anything.
Left alone, neither Lily nor Sirius said anything for a minute. He didn't need to. From the way he kept glancing at the portrait hole, Lily knew he wanted to get away from the amassing crowd of Gryffindors that had filled up the common room. In need of some fresh air herself, Lily proposed they take a walk if he wasn't busy. She always felt the need to add on the caveat, to remind him that it was all at his pleasure. Their relationship was too insubstantial in her hands to make assumptions.
They walked amiably, hand in hand. Sirius didn't say much of anything, but Lily didn't think he was unhappy. His mood was silent but pleasant, and she was happy to provide the conversation. By the time they made it outside to the grounds, she'd told him all about her classes, a funny joke Will had nearly murdered her with, and the uneventful story of her last trip to the cinema.
When their faces met sun and air as they exited the castle, both Lily and Sirius expelled synchronized sighs of relief. Lily rolled her neck, luxuriating in the way the sun beat down on her bare skin, threatening freckles with every second. Beside her, Sirius shucked off his robes and with it the cast of his silence, growing more outspoken and alive. He was left in some band t-shirt and trousers, rolled at the cuff.
"I love when the weather warms," Lily said, leading the way to nowhere in particular. Sirius following dutifully along. "I hate being cooped up in the castle during the winter. I spent my whole childhood outside."
Suffering had defined Mrs. Evans' existence, but the one thing she would not suffer was the sight of one of her girls indoors on a "perfectly good day." She was always chasing Petunia out of the house with strict orders not to return until dinner. Preferring the mindless lull of the telly to frolicking outside, Petunia would try to sneak back in, timing her attempts to when their mum was hanging up the washing and sprinting to the sanctity of her bedroom. The time her mum had caught Petunia crawling across the kitchen floor would always stay tattooed to Lily's brain. Rather than order her out with words, Adelaide Evans had continued the task at hand: sweeping the kitchen clean of dirt. If she happened to swipe up Petunia in the process and give her a few brisk whacks with the bristles, well that was just a happy bonus.
Lily, on the other hand, hadn't needed to be told twice. Their house didn't have an AC, so it was too hot to stay inside on a summer's day, and the cramped walls of her home simply didn't hold enough adventure to keep her entertained. Nothing much happened in Cokeworth, but a natural-born conspiracy theorist, Lily could concoct a dastardly plot from a few grains of sand, and she'd spend hours combing the neighborhood for clues that the cotton mill was brainwashing the town by dropping chemicals in the river or that the school was actually run by witches (the irony was not lost on her). And when she tired of that, there was always the park, where she would swing until the ground no longer felt like home, until she belonged to the air.
As Lily explained her childhood proclivities to Sirius, he hung on her every word, like her stories of a typical childhood were as intoxicating as the firewhiskey hidden in his pockets. It was when he questioned how a slide worked that Lily couldn't help but ask how he'd spent his own childhood.
Sirius didn't answer for a long time, like he was debating how to frame his childhood. "I was...under-stimulated as a boy. Most children get their attention from their parents, but mine were never around. Sometimes I'd see my mum when she was keeping the house, but that was usually a sign to run the other direction because she was bellowing about phantom dust and out for blood. My father...Orion, well, if he wasn't at his club, he was locked away in his study and going anywhere near it was...unpleasant."
"It sounds so lonely."
"It was."
"I'm sorry," Lily said honestly.
"Don't be. It taught me an important lesson. I spent my childhood hiding and shrinking away from the things I wanted because I was afraid of the consequences. That's over now. I'm not scared of anything or anyone, and if I want something, I'll go for it."
Unbidden, tears rose up in Lily's eyes, and she blinked them away frantically. That line of thinking was just too familiar. From the time she was diagnosed through the chemo and to the end, Adelaide Evans had spent less than two weeks combined in the hospital. Instead, the family had transformed the master bedroom into a sickroom. Retreating to the hospital felt like a capitulation to the cancer. And in that final, long-enduring week - so long that Lily sometimes wondered whether this wasn't just a dream, and she wasn't still trapped in those six lingering days - they finally caved, and Adelaide was admitted to the hospital.
There was a conspiracy, woven by the doctors, the nurses, her mother, father, and the janitorial staff to ensure that Petunia and Lily were never left alone with their mother during those final days. Weak and often confused, their mother would hallucinate, talk about things that didn't make sense and scare the lights out of the girls, so an adult was always present to run interference, to explain.
In a comedy of errors, however, Lily was left alone with her mother for several precious minutes. Her father and Petunia were in the cafeteria for lunch, and the nurse that had agreed to supervise had raced off to help a patient coding in the next room.
Nervously, Lily had crept close to the bed. Her mother was sweating and had balled all of the sheets up at the edge of the bed. Lily hadn't wanted to touch her and make it worse. Everyone had told her that mummy wasn't contagious, but she wasn't sure whether she ought to believe them. Petunia had given her the chicken pox only the year before.
Lucid, her mum had looked straight at her, more present than Lily could ever remember in her life, like her mum was seeing her for the first and last time. Lily had frozen under that stare. She knew that what came next would change the course of her short, uneventful life.
And it had.
Adelaide could barely get the words out, speaking in the pained whisper of the dying, but Lily had heard every word. Adelaide talked about her dreams. It had never occurred to Lily that her mum could desire anything outside of taking care of her and Petunia, but she recounted a full childhood of her own, her desires of becoming a licensed veterinarian and living out in the country, nursing horses and cattle back to health. A whole host of unfulfilled dreams.
And all she kept saying, on repeat, was, "I didn't think it would be this short. I didn't think it would be this short."
Lily had internalized her mother's words, and it seemed Sirius had learned much the same lesson from life.
"But what about your brother?" Lily said, after she'd collected herself. "He must have spent time with you."
They were coming up on the Quidditch Pitch. Her feet, unbidden, had guided her to James. It was impossible to pick out the individual players as they zoomed above the crisp green field, but Lily thought she could identify him anyway. There was one player, drifting higher than the others, and she liked to think it was James. Who else would always take it to the extreme? A fleck of red in the sky, from a distance the players could be mistaken for birds, until they moved, brooms twisting them in directions and angles that birds could never replicate.
Sirius watched the players too, though with less interest as he answered her question, "Rex wasn't much of a playmate because he was too terrified of making a lick of noise and bringing mum down upon us both. We had tutors during the week, and Friday nights the whole Black clan gathered, which was something unpleasant but never boring."
"What about friends?" Lily tried again.
Sirius laughed, "Lily, stop looking for a last-minute savior. This story doesn't have one. Not until I met James and Peter and Remus, at least. We weren't permitted to wander around and didn't have much of a yard, so no friends. It was just me in that empty house. I completed a lot of puzzles because toys were infra dig for the Black family...also so much shopping. Anything related to taste was an acceptable pastime, so I'd pour through catalogues, circling the items I'd purchase. I'd sketch out entire rooms and how I'd fill them. For a few years, I wrote my own magazine - just sheets of parchment held together with a bent corner. I'd write reviews of every piece in the catalogues, scathing pieces like I'd been mortally wounded by the ostentatiousness of a paisley sofa."
"That explains a lot," Lily muttered. Just yesterday he'd made a comment about her matching a yellow scarf with her red trainers.
"Old habits," Sirius laughed. "But now I'm a disinherited ligger, so I'm sure I'll grow out of it."
Lily shook her head in disbelief. "How can one person say 'infra dig' and 'ligger' over the course of a minute?"
"Perhaps that person is ashamed of being the sort to say 'infra dig' and curses to cover their posh habits," Sirius said.
"So you swear to make people forget you say things like that," Lily teased.
"That and my parents despise it."
"But they don't know you're doing it!"
"I have a robust imagination," Sirius said. He was smirking. "Do you feel sorry for me, Lily?"
Talk about a trick question. Lily averted her eyes. They'd come upon the broom shed, a squat brick structure that Lily had never been inside before as she never had cause to fetch a broomstick.
One moment, Lily was idly observing the broom shed. The very next, her back was pressed up against the uneven cut brick walls with Sirius looming over her.
"What are you - oh!" Lily squealed.
He was kissing her before she could finish the thought.
Oh, that.
Obviously, Lily had known going into this relationship that Sirius was going to have expectations. No teenage boy wanted to be in a relationship restricted to platonic hand-holding. Finding a balance had proven difficult. On the one hand, drunk Lily clearly hadn't minded the prospect of snogging Sirius, and it wasn't as if she didn't find him attractive. On the other, her motives were a twisted mess, and she could never relax. Fortunately, Sirius wasn't going to push her beyond the inevitable hemming and hawing of every teenage boy, and there was an expectation that girls her age might want to prolong intimacy, so Sirius didn't find it too suspicious. Unfortunately, since he assumed she just a nervous virgin, he also thought she could be slowly seduced, led to the water like a fidgety horse.
The kiss was teasing. Sirius kept both of his hands on the trunk for purchase and would lean forward to deepen the kiss only to slip out of reach when he felt Lily begin to return it. All the lies in the world weren't enough to tamp down her hormones, so Lily found herself chasing his lips each time. After the fifth time he evaded her, she pouted.
"Aww," Sirius cooed. He tapped her bottom lip with his forefinger.
"Move the finger, or I'll bite it," Lily warned.
"I don't know why you're whining. I'm just respecting your boundaries, taking things slow," Sirius said, laughing at her.
"You're a git."
With what she would have described as a giggle from anyone else, Sirius took her by the wrist and dragged her inside the broom shed. It was neat, scrubbed clean of spiderwebs and organized by broom size thanks to a few overenthusiastic third-years eager to make their respective house teams. A stack of boxes, housing broomstick polish, made a perfect perch for a girl her height, and Sirius wasted no time dropping her onto the makeshift ledge.
Sirius kissed her again, but this time he wasn't teasing. His left hand ran gently up and down, petting and prodding her side, and lingering along the bra strap, and his other hand tangled in her hair. With it, he pulled so that her neck arched, and he could plunder her mouth; she was swooning.
After ten minutes of this, Lily pulled away gasping. Sirius removed his hand from her hair to grip her by the waist, but Lily batted his hands away. She needed space to get her head on straight because her pulse indicated she was seconds away from a heart attack.
"Okay. Okay," Lily said, practically hyperventilating. "Time to reintroduce those boundaries and concerns about taking things slow."
Sirius drew away, putting some much-needed distance between them. He was nearly as shaken as she was, though he concealed it better. Breathing appeared to be an effort, and his chest fell and rose heavily with each intake of air. Regaining himself, Sirius said something about it being nearly time to head to the Great Hall for dinner.
Lily was hungry, but her mind was far from thoughts of dinner. It had suddenly occurred to her that Sirius's interest in her didn't add up. There were plenty of girls in the castle, beautiful or smart or funny in their own right, who would do more than over-the-shirt snogging in a broom cupboard. Plenty who had done more with him. That he was panting and unsatisfied with her made no sense.
"Why are you with me?" Lily asked. "I mean, I won't even let you take my shirt off."
"What kind of boys have you been dating that would make you say something like that?" Sirius demanded.
"The teenage kind."
That earned a laugh. "Fair enough. We get on well, don't we, Lily? That's why I'm with you. You're a riot. I can never predict what waste of time, craziness you're about to embark on. And you're never needy, never nag me for something I'm not going to give. I like that about you."
"Okay, you like me because I'm low-maintenance and weird? But that still doesn't...why'd you agree to go out with me in the first place?" Lily pressed.
"I don't like to tell pretty girls no," Sirius said. When Lily raised an eyebrow, he sighed and continued, "And well, I suppose I liked the reactions it got out of people, too."
"Mary?"
"No, I told you that I'm not worried about Mary."
Lily had managed to hunt down Sirius to talk about Mary after he ignored her on the grounds the week before. She'd told him all of her concerns about Mary in detail, including Mary's newfound interest in her, and given him a one-time chance to back out of their relationship with no drama. Rather than rush off to Mary, Sirius had reassured Lily that she was misunderstanding the situation, that Mary MacDonald didn't feel jealousy. (Actually, he said something along the lines of Mary not being able to feel anything at all, but it had been very rude, and Lily had pinched him for it.)
"Then, who? Severus?" Lily tried again.
"Spoiling his year is a bonus. I can't lie," Sirius said through the widest grin she'd ever seen on him.
"If not Sev, then who?" Lily asked.
A possibility occurred to her, and it competed to be her worst nightmare and greatest dream in one. He'd been rowing with James for a month now, the length of her relationship with Sirius, and it was obvious, in retrospect, that they'd already had their falling out at the Grindylows party where she first hooked up with Sirius. Whether James had genuine feelings for her or not (he didn't), that wouldn't prevent him from feelings of possessiveness. Boys could be like that, or so Lily had read. James didn't want her, but he considered her his all the same, and Sirius ignoring James' "claim" would be an insult.
"James?" Lily asked, dreading the answer.
Sirius's response was explosive.
"No!" He practically shouted the word. "No, I would never-I can't believe you even think...No!"
"Well, you've been at each other's throats," Lily said defensively. How could she think that, indeed!
"Yes, we've been rowing, and yes, I never would have gone out with you if we weren't, but that's just because I knew it would piss him off to all end. With us fighting, I wasn't worried about his feelings one way or another, but I didn't - wouldn't - go out of my way to hurt him. Merlin! I'm-"
"Relax, relax. I was just asking," Lily said hurriedly.
The veins in Sirius's neck were all straining under the stress of his reaction. He was angry with her, but Lily wondered whether the strength of his response wasn't born of disgust at himself.
"I'm right pissed at James, but that has nothing to do with you," Sirius said.
It was the same assurance that James had already offered her, but only now could Lily relax completely. She'd needed to hear it from the both of them.
"Course, James doesn't see it the same way."
And just when she thought things were getting easy.
There was nothing like exercise to work up an appetite, and by the time dinner rolled around, Lily's stomach had expanded, swallowing up her kidneys, liver, and intestines, transforming into a monstrous thing. It bellowed for food, urging her to inhale a dinner roll and dive face first into the Yorkshire pudding.
The ravenous beast that had once been called Lily Evans didn't spare a glance for her classmates at the Gryffindor table. If she or rather, it had, it would have seen that she was sitting in foreign territory – to call it behind enemy lines would have been needlessly dramatic, but she was certainly outside her comfort zone.
Without Lily noticing, the table around her had filled with the most popular students in Gryffindor house –Michaela Curtis, Cheryl O'Hannigan, Ken Price, Annie Powell. Just about the only people she was remotely comfortable with were Sirius to her left and Marlene opposite her at a diagonal.
After plowing through a plate of green beans, two servings of pudding, and chugging her pumpkin juice, Lily finally returned to her body. A thumb jutted into Lily's line of vision. The dark thumb, white around the knuckle wiggled like a challenge. If any thumb could be described as arrogant, it would be this thumb. Astonished, Lily glanced to her right to see Michaela Curtis watching her expectantly. Lily wasn't sure what she was supposed to do with a thumb jutting into her personal space, so she just tapped it awkwardly with her own, like a stubby high-five.
"Evans, it's a thumb war," Michaela said. When Lily continued to stare at her without recognition, Michaela moved onto Sirius. She leaned right over Lily, blocking off the dinner table and the food in the process, to engage Sirius in a heated thumb war. A few minutes earlier, Lily might have murdered Michaela for coming between her and the food.
"Can you believe we're less than two months out from NEWTs?" Ken Price asked.
Cheryl O'Hannigan, who was squinting over a Transfiguration tome, spared a second to glare. "No, I had no idea. I'm just reading at the dinner table because I can't stomach your company."
"You know, I think the sorting hat only got the half of it," Sirius said, eyes trained on Michaela Curtis's darting thumb, "They should add sarcastic to daring and bold. You lot can't say a word with sincerity."
"How's this? You're sincerely shite at thumb wrestling," Michaela said, capturing both Sirius's thumb and the victory.
With their match over, Lily was able to once more reach her plate and settled in at a more sedate, human pace on the stewed carrots. Mei-Lin was nowhere in sight, which meant Lily would have to beg for mercy once she was back in the dormitory. A good friend would have saved her a seat. Figuring a gift of food might smooth the way to forgiveness, Lily slathered a roll in butter so that it was sticky to the touch and positively dripping – just the way Mei-Lin liked it – and tucked it safely in a napkin. As she worked with her right hand, Lily's left hand was busy spearing carrots. She was still hungry.
A tawny owl soared through the open windows into the Great Hall. Lily didn't think much of it as owls often interrupted the dinner hour if their recipient hadn't been available during breakfast. When it redirected and made straight for Lily, she paused her eating. In six years, she'd never received so much mail in one month. Petunia must not know how to live without her for a week at a time. That or she'd found Lily a summer job and wanted to tell her...or, something terrible had happened to their father. A tray of eggs sat in front of her, and Lily focused on the cheery yolks, which jiggled and then settled whenever someone knocked into the table. The eggs were too normal and domestic. Nothing awful could happen to her while she was intent upon them. The owl landed in front of her. The taste of acid, a classic precursor to a panic attack leaked beneath her tongue, and Lily acknowledged that trauma beat eggs every time.
No one else at the table noticed Lily's nerves as she removed the letter with shaking hands, continuing with their blather, like nothing awful had ever touched a single one of their lives. One look at the letter alleviated her fears. The handwriting didn't match Petunia's at all, and now that she could think more clearly, Lily realized the owl was regal and well-groomed, a far cry from the public-service owls that Petunia rented. Lily still couldn't relax, a spike of adrenaline still coursed through her system, but she wouldn't burst into tears at the table, which was a godsend.
Curiously, Lily fingered the red envelope, flipping it over a few times in her hands, but there was no return address. Only her name in precise lettering. She opened the letter.
Lily then dropped it with a scream. Her scream did nothing to drown out the terrible, booming voice that emanated from the letter, loud enough to make her clap hands to her ears and moan. Overwhelmed by the volume, it took Lily a moment to pay any mind to what the voice was saying. The first word Lily heard distinctly was "mudblood." The second was "whore." From there, the shrieking letter continued in the same vein, insulting Lily in every way imaginable, though it always defaulted back to its favorite "mudblood whore" insult.
Looking about, Lily saw the rest of the Great Hall was quiet. Conversation couldn't have survived in the wake of the earsplitting shouts, but the attention of her classmates went beyond that. Some students were sympathetic, while others were shocked or gleeful, but all attention was equally unwelcome to Lily. She shrank in her seat, cupping a hand to the side of her face to hide her expression and tried to outwait the onslaught.
It lasted seven minutes.
Whoever had sent the howler must have sported iron lungs because they managed to barrage Lily with insults without pausing for breath, easily competing with the lung capacity of an Olympic swimmer. There was something truly deranged about the voice, too, and goosebumps crept up Lily's legs with the realization that the sender intended her real harm.
Finally, the howler burst into orange flame, disintegrating. The pile of ash landed directly on the plate of eggs. The perfect quiet in the wake of the storm was unnatural. No one dared so much as whisper, like the awful voice might return and attack them. What finally broke the hush was laughter, pure and unadulterated, and it was coming from the Gryffindor table.
Unable to believe a member of her own house could find her predicament so funny – perhaps her hearing had been impaired by the shocking volume of her assailant –, Lily turned to the voice, only to find it ringing directly in her ear. It was Sirius, doubled over and tears falling from his eyes. It was worse than the silence. To break the spell of Sirius's manic laughter, students began to eat again, filling the room with the sound of forks clattering off glass china and the drip of pumpkin juice from the jug.
Lily didn't wait for Sirius to recover from his laughing fit before turning the full force of her glare upon him. She half-expected to hear that the awful howler had been a prank. If it was, Grindylows or not, she was going to dump him. Her heart was racing double-time at having that horrible slur flung at her repeatedly. She couldn't afford to show her weakness, lest every bigot in the castle learn she could be rattled, but internally, she wanted to collapse into bed and not move for an hour. A century.
No one had ever spoken to her like that. Not to her face.
"What are you laughing at?" Lily demanded, cheeks brilliantly pink.
"I'm afraid you've just been introduced to dear old mum," Sirius said, choking on his own cackles.
"Excuse me?"
"That was my mother. The estimable Walburga Black. Aren't you happy to have made her acquaintance?" Sirius said.
No one else at the table could see the humor in it. They all avoided Lily's eyes, engrossed by their books, their plates, their fingernails. The only person who appeared to understand her predicament was Marlene, who winced visibly through the scene. Now, she gave Lily a sad little shrug.
"Why did your mother send me a howler?" Lily asked.
"I imagine Regulus reported us, the little brat. Surprised it took him this long, actually," Sirius said. "You know how my family holds with that blood purity bilk. She doesn't approve."
"I thought she'd disowned you. What does she care?" Lily said, which was perhaps insensitive to his familial woes, but she was rattled.
"True. Hypocrisy at its finest, isn't it?" Sirius said. "I knew she'd be livid, but I wasn't sure how she'd react. I half expected her to try to hush it up, play it off as a rumor. Guess not."
He didn't move to say anything else. No words of comfort. Nothing. Worse, Sirius's laughter wasn't derisive. It didn't taste like blood in his mouth. He was truly delighted by the howler scene.
Lily didn't lecture Sirius. She just wanted to put the event out of memory. Hogwarts was meant to be the last safe space in wizarding Britain, and she didn't want to see it tainted.
With a concerted effort, their table returned to business as usual. Minutes later, they were all back to laughing, no one louder than Sirius, and talking about the upcoming Quidditch match. Lily remained silent, back a rod of steel to belie the way her neck prickled with anxiety.
A few minutes later, Annie Powell said, "There's a sight I never thought I'd see."
Everyone followed Annie's less-than-subtle pointing to the end of the table. James and Emmeline had just sat down together. One of James' arms slung loosely around Emmeline's shoulders. Depending on how Lily squinted, the arm looked either friendly or romantic. She looked long and hard, relieved to have a new subject for her thoughts.
"Any second now she's going to bite his hand. She has to," Michaela Curtis said, confidently.
The gossip was enough to draw Cheryl out of her book, and she chimed in, "I don't know, Michaela. She looks pretty comfortable from where I'm sitting."
"I can't believe they're getting back together," Michaela said.
Lily didn't so much as twitch, every muscle locked and steady. This news didn't upset her at all.
Michaela's declaration proved too much for Marlene, though, who dropped her silverware to the table with a discordant clang. "They are not getting back together!"
"You sure?" Cheryl said.
"After what he pulled? I'm positive. Emmeline's not a slag like you and me. She has standards," Marlene said. (Cheryl reacted to being called a slag with far more grace than Lily imagined she could have summoned in the same situation, and just returned to her book.)
With the conversation moving along, Lily gave herself permission to look, to see the way Emmeline curled slightly into James' strong, tan arm, the way James' lips hadn't stopped moving for a second. He felt like he could talk to her, was eager to share his thoughts, and Emmeline was happy to listen. They were both windswept and ruffled – him from Quidditch practice and she from a run around the grounds – and there was something bright, unbearable to look at, about their combined athleticism. Together, they were like the sun.
Still bickering about James and Emeline's dating prospects, Sirius said, "I wouldn't be so sure, Marlene. Things are different this time."
"I wouldn't be so sure, Sirius. From where I'm sitting, things look exactly the same," Marlene rebutted.
Sirius's reaction was immediate, body going stiff. Everybody glanced away hurriedly except for Marlene and Sirius who glared one another down. Sirius looked like he could cast a perfect Avada Kedavra, powered solely by his anger, and Marlene returned his stare with the confidence of a girl who could deflect a killing curse. By the way everyone busied themselves with their food, it was obvious everyone understood the subtext of the exchange.
Everyone but Lily.
She was perfectly confused, not the least because she'd always thought warm, bubbly Marlene adored Sirius, and the cold woman shooting daggers with her eyes clearly despised him. What had James done to Emmeline? What did Sirius believe was different? Why was he so outraged that Marlene disagreed? It was like she'd fallen asleep and woken up on a soapy episode of Coronation Street.
It didn't escape her attention that when Sirius wrapped an arm around her waist, he gripped a little tighter than usual.
Lily was late for her scheduled Tuesday tutoring session with Quincy. Of course, late was relative, when she considered that Quincy typically rolled up fifteen minutes after the scheduled start time. If she hurried, she could still beat him to their seats in the library. Assuming she had the energy in her sluggish body to move faster than an ailing flobberworm.
She wouldn't have been running late, except she'd stopped in the dormitory after classes, thinking she'd just drop off her bags, and had instead passed out on Marlene's bed. The wave of exhaustion had hit her with such force that she half believed she'd been drugged. There was no foul play about it, though. She'd been sleeping even less than normal. On top of her normal activities, she was now juggling hours a day with Sirius, dropping meals left and right to milk every second dry. She'd skipped dinner for two days straight and breakfast that morning as well. On top of everything else, the mess of hints that everyone had dropped about James – about his row with Sirius or his relationship with Emmeline – were keeping her up those few precious hours she was fortunate enough to spend in bed.
There was a limit to how long she could keep up this kind of pace. Already, she was noticing that when Will and Mei-Lin looked at her, their eyes lingered a beat too long. They were searching her for signs that she needed an intervention.
The specter of fourth-year hung over them like a dark cloud. Buried beneath the weight of all her commitments, her friendships, and school, Lily had suffered what some might call a breakdown. She'd attended classes with something wild lurking behind her eyes, earning the concern of every professor. She'd also started sleepwalking. It was terrible, a blight upon Gryffindor house, as she'd wander the common room and stairwells, babbling frantically, just a string of sounds that rarely formed a coherent word. She'd leave the Tower, too, sometimes waking up a on the sixth-floor or outside the Portrait of the Fat Lady, who was deeply disapproving of her escapades. It was too dangerous for her to be wandering the halls, defenseless. As James had so aptly put it, she had enemies. Plus, the physical toll had left her haggard and weak. Lily had only started to regain her bearings when she lessened her load, dropping assignments and revision, especially for the classes she disliked. Quickly, her mental state had improved, the sleepwalking had stopped, and she'd never since committed fully to her classes, calling them dangerous for her health.
She knew the prospect of a return to her fourth-year antics frightened her friends. Unlike them, Lily wasn't afraid that her body might turn on her. She was properly furious. It felt like the truest adversary to achieving her goals was her own damned needy body. It went on strike against her whole sleep-is-for-the-weak philosophy.
Rather than take the Grand Staircase, Lily bypassed the busiest routes; there was a shortcut to the library if she cut across the third-floor. Rounding the corner, she saw three things: a row of Robot Lilliputs toys, all shiny and new, recently removed from their packaging; a pile of dungbombs, not yet activated; and James Potter, kneeling in the middle of it all, holding a fistful of string.
Lily acted on instinct. "You!"
"Me!" James cried back.
She'd managed to genuinely startle him, and his hands flew to his hair before he thought to try to conceal his suspicious activity. He rose to his feet, trying to block the pile of dungbombs with his shadow, as if she were that stupid. Lily didn't much care about whatever infantile prank he was about to inflict upon the school. (And, it didn't take a genius to figure that he was going to string the dungbombs to the toy robots, wind them up, and let them trail the dungbombs through the halls for maximum havoc.) Her thoughts were otherwise directed.
"I need to know something, and I need a clear answer from you," Lily said.
"You alright? You look…tired," James said. His eyes trailed her figure without a hint of lechery. Just pure concern.
"You told me that your row with Sirius has nothing to do with me," Lily said, "But Sirius told me differently."
James drew himself up to his full height. "What's he been saying?"
The downside of not sleeping was that her body was functioning on pure adrenaline, and it didn't engender the best choices. Lily hadn't planned to confront James about Sirius's cryptic comments. Her well-rested, rational brain had, in fact, determined that doing so would be a terrible idea, an idea which would lose her Sirius's trust and cause a needless fight with James.
Her whole body was wired, the kind of buzz that usually came after drowning six cups of coffee in an hour, and her fingers tingled. Caution wasn't an option.
"He told me," Lily began hotly, "that he wasn't angry with you about anything concerning me, but that you didn't feel the same, which is not what you told me in the prefects' bath!"
"I told you that our fight wasn't about you, which is true," James said.
"But Sirius said –"
"I understand what he said," James said shortly. "We're not fighting about you."
"So, he was lying? You're not upset about us dating?" Lily pressed.
Lily had asked the question a dozen different ways in a dozen different combinations, and she'd finally landed upon the right ones, like a password to unlock James' truth, his feelings. And when he released them, it was one of those definitive moments that bisected her life. There was living before and there was living after, and Lily couldn't ever return to the former.
"Not upset –" James barked, "Not upset – I could bloody murder him!"
As if for emphasis, James kicked the pile of dungbombs, setting them off with a cloud of noxious gas that soured the air. James didn't even react because he was too busy staring at her, so intensely that she half-expected she might detonate in an explosion of her own.
Everything about the scene rubbed Lily the wrong way, not the least of which was the jealous demon in the back of her head that was hellbent on bringing the image of Emmeline and James to the forefront of her mind whenever she lost focus for so much as a second. Angry at him, angry at herself for feelings she had no right to in the first place, Lily said, "Murder him? Why? How do you get to be upset? You didn't want me!"
"Don't act stupid," James said harshly.
Something strange and terrible was growing inside her. Her feet felt heavy, not swollen like with a pregnancy, but somehow separate from her body. He'd called her stupid, a word that had never been lobbed at her before, certainly not as a weapon. Certainly not by James. She ought to have screamed at him. All she managed was a half-gasped, "What?"
"Don't play that with me," James warned. "Don't start with that 'you didn't want me' nonsense. It's shite."
"Maybe I am stupid. Spell it out for me," Lily demanded because she didn't understand him, and she was sick of it. Too many secrets. Too many lies.
"What? What do you want me to say? You want me to say that I've been in love with you since we were twelve years old!"
His words rang in her ears and, after they faded, a nonexistent bell kept right on clanging, clogging up her senses. She chose that inopportune moment to start coughing, hacking really. What started as wheezes transformed into full-throated coughs that bent her body in two and brought tears streaming down her cheeks. She couldn't control her coughing at all, couldn't grasp a full breath that didn't worsen the agitation of her lungs.
Through it all, James was forced to wait impatiently. He was probably panicking. He was probably wondering whether she hadn't faked this perfectly timed coughing fit to evade him. By holding her breath entirely, Lily was able to quell the worst of the coughing and think about the bombshell James had just dropped on her life. Lily kept her silence far too long; she knew it as a full minute lapsed. The only sound was the occasional wheezing breath. Warring inside her were a million different impulses and explanations, each more implausible than the last. The entire conversation was wrought from the kind of fantasies she would entertain about James in class, and she ought to have had something clever to say, just like in her daydreams. She didn't.
The only thing Lily knew was that the corridor wasn't large enough to contain her and the immensity of her feelings. They were suffocating her sure as the noxious dungbomb fumes she was sucking through her mouth in deep, gasping breaths. Like a TV that couldn't pick up a station, her vision grew staticky.
"You rejected me," Lily croaked finally.
"Biggest fucking mistake of my life."
Lily took one long look at him through her narrowed vision – the chin tilted with wounded pride, the plaintive lines of his mouth, and those eyes dripping with sincerity – and for once, she thought she understood every nuance of someone's expression as if he were feeding her the crumbs of his heart. He'd said he loved her, and he wasn't lying.
She coughed again. Again. There was no air in the corridor. Her knees bruised as they hit the floor. The blurry TV station drew even more out of focus.
She fainted.