A/N: Throughout the course of the month, I think of all sorts of things I want to say about the next chapter, and then forget them all by the time posting comes around. Thank you to anyone who had kind words for the last chapter! Thank you to Corina for beta'ing as always. For the past year, I've felt very disconnected from this story, afraid that I won't be able to connect all the dots or finish it as I take on more real life responsibilities and pursue other goals. That said, I remember enjoying this chapter when I wrote it last December, and I enjoyed editing it this time around. It needed less work than most. I hope some of you can forgive (or even enjoy!) the melodrama as this chapter delivers another big moment toward the end. Maybe it's just my style.

Happy August!


James Potter served two detentions for instigating the dungbomb incident that sent Lily Evans to the Hospital Wing with a concussion. The typical response to the detonation of a dungbomb was to run in the other direction, so it wasn't common knowledge that exposure to the gas for more than a few moments could have unwanted side effects. Side effects such as: dizziness, nausea, blurred vision, and oh yeah, fainting. The warning labels on those packages were criminally tiny.

Add in the physical toll of exhaustion, and it was no wonder that Lily had lost consciousness. The heavy collision of head with stone caused the concussion and ensured what might have been a brief fainting spell stretched on longer. By the time she came to in the Hospital Wing, Madame Pomfrey had already cleared the concussion right up, so all Lily lost was a few hours of time. No pain. No stress.

Well, plenty of stress.

She had been told that James carried her to the Hospital Wing, but that had been their last contact since his…well…Almost a full week had passed, and James had deftly managed to avoid being within shouting distance of Lily, skiving off classes and mealtimes as needed to maintain his distance. Lily was starting to wonder whether he'd installed one of those new-fangled satellite trackers, the kind that the astronauts used to navigate space travel, on her person because his ability to predict where she'd be and vacate the premises was uncanny.

And Lily knew he was avoiding her because she was looking for him. Every time she entered a room, her eyes were drawn to compulsively sweep for that familiar messy hair. She'd swallow the thick disappointment each time when her search came up empty.

James loved her.

Lily had refused to think on this revelation, hadn't dissected the scene for clues or considered the repercussions. She'd pushed the confession to the side in favor of her goals. Still, his words would surface in her mind whenever she lost focus for so much as a second, always looking for an opening.

James loved her.

Lily almost wrote Petunia for advice. No one had ever been in love with Lily before; but Petunia, she had experience. There'd been a local boy that fancied Petunia when they were young. Petunia had been ten to his – Bobby Richmond's – nine, so Petunia hadn't given the bloke the time of day. Bobby was a boy, and Petunia was a woman now, or so she told Lily. Every time they'd pass by his house, Petunia's back would go ramrod straight – a feat considering her already formidable posture – and she wouldn't spare a glance toward his house. If Bobby called out a hello, Petunia only haughtily raised her chin.

Petunia hadn't cared for her admirer, and yet she'd been laser-focused on him all the same. It was clear in the way she carried herself that she was desperate to know whether Bobby watched her pale, knobby knees brush against her skirts. When she and Lily were both in bed, Petunia would talk endlessly about Bobby's "obsession" with her, concocting scenarios as to how she'd snub him if he dared to catch her eye at the market – the audacity! For a time, Petunia was convinced Bobby was stalking her, peeping out the curtains to spot him out in the act. Lily thought Petunia was too hopeful at the prospect. Because regardless of whether the feelings were returned, there was just something extraordinary about the possibility that someone might love you.

Lily woke that morning, nearly a week after the dungbomb incident, with the same sense of confusion and longing that had plagued her since James' confession. Her roommates were still asleep, which was rare. Emmeline was the early riser. It must have been only a few hours – three at most – since Lily had fallen asleep around two, well before the sun would even consider rising.

Hyper-aware of the silence, Lily crept on sock-padded feet to the loo. There, she took longer than usual to stare at herself in the mirror. The face she saw there confused her. It was the face of a girl who was loved. Lily didn't suffer from low self-esteem and had a strong sense of her value, yet she didn't understand how someone might love her. Fancy her? Yes. Love was a different universe.

Emmeline knew what it was to be loved. Before James had decided he loved Lily, he must have loved her first.

It would be another hour before Emmeline rose from bed. Unlike the other girls, Emmeline wouldn't head straight to the loo to relieve herself. Instead, she'd dress in her loose clothes, spread out in the apex of the circle the girls' five beds created, and stretch. There wasn't a direction Emmeline's well-trained body wouldn't bend. Mary would refuse to watch because she said it hurt too much just imagining her legs in the splits. After she finished, Emmeline would spend the following half hour meditating, oozing a serenity that Lily could never achieve.

Morning stretches were a ritual Lily and Emmeline shared, though both girls went about it differently. Lily always retreated to the bathroom, settling for a few hasty minutes of stretching upon the cold, unforgiving floor, just enough to wake herself up. It was soothing, the chance to numb her ever active brain. She liked the tangibility of the results. So often, her goals were indistinct and long-in-coming, so that she could work for ninety hours and see no difference from where she'd first started. Flexibility was something else entirely. She could feel the sear of her cavles as she touched nose to knee or fingers to toes, could track the increase in her flexibility by the pain she felt when she flattened her palms to the ground. Faced with the satisfying ache, she couldn't think about much else – not the Grindylows, not James Potter, not Lily Evans.

Lily didn't want to be herself that morning. She didn't want to be a girl who was loved and utterly confused about her life in the wake of it. She wanted to be Emmeline, a girl who had been loved and had the surety to move through life in spite of it.

The air was chilly when Lily returned to her room, and she tightened her robe protectively. She didn't allow herself a moment to think as she crawled beneath Emmeline's bed. From there, she unearthed the yoga mat and set up just as Emmeline did every day. The girls' dormitory was circular, the five beds settled around the walls and creating an arc with only one pathway to the door. It was in the direct center of the beds that Emmeline always unrolled her mat. Breathing as deeply as her need for silence allowed, Lily sat on the mat and touched her toes. Immediately, she was bombarded with the noise – all the nighttime shufflings that she tuned out so easily in sleep were magnified as she sat there, feeling undignified, an imposter. To her left were Mei-Lin's gasps for air, short and uneven, like she almost forgot to breath in her sleep; Marlene muttered to herself in a language that her heart had written and no one else would ever speak; Mary emitted those oddly pained whines that had startled Lily when they first roomed together. Even Emmeline's gentle breathing reverberated in Lily's ears like an indictment.

She was sweating, having barely finished on stretch. Guilty for no discernable reason. She wasn't Emmeline and never could be.

A sense of unease clung to her, and, later that morning, Lily went to a meeting of the newspaper group agitated. Since Lily had passed out before her typical session of tutoring with Quincy the week before, she'd been forced to double up on the two activities now. Seated in the library on Lily's left were the members of the Hogwarts Monthly Letter, and to her right was Quincy Terlep, only half-pretending to work on his assignment.

"Can't you ditch him?" Will stage-whispered, gesturing to Quincy Terlep.

"Honestly, he can't afford it," Lily said in a more genuine whisper. They both smiled unconvincingly when Quincy turned to see what they were whispering about.

The library table had never been more crammed. Quincy had a habit of scribbling bits of his assignment on different pieces of parchment throughout the day, so that he had nearly thirty pages, chewed and tea-stained, spread out around him, his current assignment to map them together like a puzzle. Lily had picked out seven reference books to assists in his translation, none of which he'd yet to open; the tomes were forbidding stuff, stacked high enough that Quincy couldn't see the crown of Mei-Lin's head from across the table. Dorcas had decorated her side of the table with precisely laid quills and ink in various colors – red for corrections to the copy, black for additions, blue for notes.

Dorcas had donned her reading glasses – an affect as Lily was almost certain that Dorcas wasn't near-sighted and the copy hovered right before her nose – and was reviewing Mei-Lin's article on the last Quidditch match. Trying to act as if she didn't care her work was being harshly assessed, Mei-Lin stared at the ceiling. Will was eating pretzels.

"It's not very exciting," Dorcas commented.

"It was an eight-minute match," Mei-Lin protested. "It wasn't very exciting."

Dorcas adopted a McGonagallish expression, peering over her specs, "Your job is to make it exciting. Maybe start the article with some statistics on the average length of games, how rare an eight-minute match is, that kind of thing. Put in the worldwide record for the shortest match and maybe the Hogwarts record as well. Make people feel as if it's historic."

"Research," Mei-Lin said glumly.

"You do this every time," Dorcas huffed. "If you didn't bin your notes after every article, you wouldn't have to go back and redo the research. I know you've covered this subject before."

Lily frowned over Quincy's work rather than listen to the bickering. He was trying to translate the XXX spells, found carved into cave walls in modern-day Iraq and essential for dating wizardry back more than six thousand years, into Latin. He'd sketched one rune out to form Mingō Navisum,' which if it held with its Latin roots would be a spell that induced pissing on a boat. Or perhaps in a boat. Or by the boat itself? There was really no way to tell until it was cast as Quincy had stumbled upon an entirely new invention with that one.

Preferring not to just give Quincy the answers – because how would he ever learn? – Lily struggled to find a way to correct him. The laugh caught in her throat wasn't helping.

"Um…you definitely want to reconsider the first part, alright?" Lily said.

To Mei-Lin, Will said, "I think I found a mistake – you called Nott a 'Slytherin chaser.' You'd better change it to a 'Slytherin wanker.'"

Immediately, Dorcas wrestled the article out of Will's hands before he could sketch in his edits. She took her proofing duties very seriously.

"That's the kind of joke James would make," Lily said to Will.

"Coming from you, a Potter comparison's a compliment," Will said.

Lily scowled and opened her mouth to protest, but Quincy tapped at her shoulder, so she spun around to address his question. For twenty minutes they continued on in this haphazard manner, Lily trying to juggle two very different responsibilities. When Dorcas finished lambasting Will and Mei-Lin for their respective failures, it was finally time to turn to Lily, so she tried to concentrate as much of her attention on their editor as possible – a 70-30 split.

"Lily, I'm going to want you to take the first pass on all of the proofing for the June issue," Dorcas said.

"But you're so much better at it," Lily wheedled.

"I have nine articles to research and write this month. Since you haven't submitted a single article to me in months, you can help by taking the editing off my plate. Thank you," Dorcas said.

There wasn't much room to argue after Dorcas Meadows thanked you preemptively.

"And we have the OWL and NEWT exams coming up next month. You can cover those. I'd like an article this month chronicling how students are revising for their exams and some tips on destressing. Then, in June, an article on the exams themselves," Dorcas ordered Lily.

Lily nearly gasped. "Dorcas, I can't! I have to work on the –" Lily cast a less than unobtrusive glance at Quincy – "article on killer whales. I don't have time to research anything else."

"You promised you'd let me assign you to anything if you didn't turn up anything useful by the end of the year. Now, I've been reading your progress reports each week, and you don't even have the beginnings of an article," Dorcas said.

"I made plenty of progress! I have a number of leads, and I think I can name at least two…killer whales," Lily protested.

Nearby, Lily heard students laughing, and she glanced around to make sure it wasn't directed at them. A few tables away, Emmeline was sitting with a mixed group of students, from every house and year. They didn't appear to be studying but were rather having a brilliant time, giggling over something Emmeline had said. Lily noticed that everyone at the table was unconsciously angling towards Emmeline, like she was the sun and they were sucked into her orbit. They were too far away to overhear Lily's conversation, so she returned her attention to Dorcas.

"The only article you'd be ready to write is on that party you went to, a wrap-up for the students who weren't invited. Are you willing to do that?" Dorcas challenged.

Lily refused to see her name in the byline of a Grindylows article until she was finished with the real thing. To submit some pithy article on parties now would be to alert the Grindylows that she was onto them.

"No, I don't want to write about the killer whales yet. I'll take the OWLs stories," Lily capitulated.

She looked over at Quincy, who was frowning dumbly at his assignment. If he were anyone else, their poorly veiled deception would have fallen flat. As Quincy was still translating the rune out to mean urination, however, Lily thought their secrets were safe.

Lily didn't pay her pupil the attention he was due, so she didn't catch when he decided to brandish his wand and cast his disgustingly mistranslated spell. She heard him cast 'Mingō Crus,' – to urinate on a leg – and shrieked. His dangerous wand was pointed straight at her.

Instead of disaster, the beam of soft blue light merely lifted the hair on her head for a few seconds and then released it to cascade down her back. Lily almost cried with relief. She hadn't wanted to know how the spell, properly cast, would have manifested.

Quincy gave a little cheer, "See, I'm improving, Lily."

Lily couldn't tell that beautiful, proud boy his error, so she simply translated the rune herself. She was not risking any more mixups.

Unbothered, Quincy continued, "I swear, this new wand is the best thing that's ever happened to me. It's like it can read my mind. My last one was powerful, like the magic would just shoot out of it, but the spell would always go wonky."

Lily hummed, uninterested. It seemed to her that it wasn't the wand that caused his grades to suffer. Then, her head shot up.

"Did you say you have a new wand?"

"Yeah, isn't she beautiful?" Quincy said, proudly showing her his wand.

"When did you get it?" Lily demanded.

"Not quite two months ago, I think."

Urgently, Lily said, "Here's a Latin dictionary. Look up Mingō. I have to find a book, and I need Mei-Lin, Will, and Dorcas to help me. It's a very…uh, it's a big book. Very heavy."

Stomping on toes and ignoring her friends' whines, Lily pushed and prodded her mates into the stacks, giving no explanation beyond her manic eyes. Once they were clear across the library, Lily scanned their surroundings for eavesdroppers. She dropped to her knees to peer between the gap in an encyclopedia set. There was no one crouching on the other side. Above her, the other members of the newspaper exchanged worried glances.

"Quincy has a new wand. Sirius has a new wand. And remember, XXX got a new wand last year," Lily said. "Wizards almost never get new wands! What are the odds that all three of them needed theirs replaced over the course of a about a year?"

"You think –" Mei-Lin began.

"It's too big a coincidence not to mean something. I think it's part of their induction into the society. They receive new wands, almost like a new identity or maybe like a membership card. I'm not sure," Lily said.

"Sacrificing your own wand for something," Will murmured, toying intently with his own hawthorn wand, "You'd have to wand the thing bad. I mean, it would be like giving up a part of yourself. A perfect way to weed out anyone who wasn't completely committed."

"But Terlep's so thick," Mei-Lin said.

"The more I learn about the Grindylows, the more I'm convinced they're just a bunch of shallow, spoilt children. They'd enlist Quincy," Lily said.

She only felt marginally guilty for lumping James and Sirius amongst the number of shallow, spoilt children.

One of whom was in love with her. In case she could ever forget.

"Wand oaths!" Mei-Lin exploded unexpectedly. "It's more than just a sacrifice. I bet they all take an oath on their new wands! You speculated before about an Unbreakable Vow, but that's serious business. Too serious. Every Unbreakable Vow has to be registered with the Ministry. But a wand oath's different."

Wand oaths were a matter of the wand's honor. If a wand's wizard or witch broke this most solemn of vows, the wand would be honor-bound to reject the wizard forever, becoming naught but a length of timber in the unworthy's hand. The years of connection forged between wand and wizard were too intense for someone to just throw away on a whim, and wand oaths were upheld almost religiously by the wizarding community. Yet, as Mei-Lin said, the consequences were not fatal, so there was still room to reneg if conscience dictated. Wand oaths were also more flexible because the wand would sometimes interpret events and determine the agreement was no longer viable, forgiving their wizard for recanting – for example, if a wizard swore to always protect their friend, but said friend then tried to murder them, the wand would recognize the betrayal as terminating the oath and allow its wizard the right of self-defense.

Bound up by honor and magic, no Grindylow would betray their secrets for trifles like money or celebrity. It would explain their loyal silence over the centuries.

"Well, it's all something, I suppose, but what can you do with this information beyond putting it in the final article?" Will asked. "It's not like we can start surveying everyone at school about their wands. That would be like taking an ad out in The Daily Prophet, saying 'we're investigating the Grindylows.'"

Dorcas ruminated quietly on the issue, and when she landed upon the solution, her voice came out in a whisper, like Lily's enthusiasm and paranoia had infected her. "The Ministry! All abandoned wands are supposed to be submitted and registered with the Ministry. They don't want something that powerful just laying around or for people to cast dark magic with another wizard's wand and cause all sorts of problems. That should be public information, too."

"That's genius! So, we'll just write the Ministry, soliciting information on wands discarded in the last month and cross-reference from there," Lily said, beaming.

"This is good reporting, Lily. A good lead," Dorcas complimented.

Hopeful, Lily tried, "Does that mean I don't have to write the OWLs article anymore?"

"Not on your life."

Well, she'd tried.


The Astrological Society was one of Lily's least reputable activities. She'd joined in third-year, drawn by the promise of interweaving Astronomy and Divination, two subjects that fascinated her endlessly. For the first two years of her membership, the society had delivered on its promise. The small group would examine charts, plot out the stars in the sky, and examine historical events to determine how the heavens had influenced history unfolded. The less scientific-minded members had pressed Lily into the most poignant philosophical conversations of her life, as they debated whether the stars influenced events or merely reflected them: had a different planet been in power on Guy Fawkes day, would things have transpired differently, or were they always destined to occur as they had? Pre-determination versus free will. Lily always argued that the movement of the stars and planets was predictable, meaning actors throughout history could have changed their lot had they only chosen a different moment to act. Listening to the others' arguments, however, Lily would experience doubt, wondering if whether her role in the world was less fixed and tossing about in bed at night as she struggled to come to terms with this existential threat to her existence. The club had challenged her to be more than simply a machine that regurgitated facts. It had made her think.

Then, the president of the club had finished her seventh-year, and a new president was named: Marlene McKinnon.

The Society had changed in predictable ways.

Typically, they met in the Astronomy Tower, but Marlene had moved the meeting to the Divination classroom, through the trap door in the North Tower, because it was raining outside. Marlene insisted that seeing the rain pelt the magically enforced lancet windows, just wide enough to push through a telescope, made her feel cold.

Entirely made up of girls, the eight members of the Astrological Society sat on bean bags and stools, sunk low to the ground. Gina Parrish had brewed tea for the meeting in identical tea cups made of fine-bone china, each decorated with petal pink flowers, too symmetrical to occur in nature. They were short one cup, so Lily had agreed to sip her tea from a brown coffee mug. It had a wide brim, and she accidentally tipped it too far, burning her upper lip.

They were short a cup because, inexplicably, Mary had decided to attend the meeting. Lily had never seen Mary at a single school even – outside the occasional Quidditch match. Marlene was positively glowing with pride that the club she organized had caught Mary's notoriously limited attention. Absently, Mary twirled her already drained tea cup around by the handle, daring it to fall and shatter.

Lily had run into Mary briefly earlier that morning. The other girl had been deep in a conversation with Lily's very own boyfriend. Falling short, Lily had stared at them, the way they blended together, all dark hair and poise. When Sirius spoke, Mary actively listened, made eye contact, everything. And in return, Sirius seemed relaxed, like he needn't keep up his hundred conflicting personas and could just be himself in Mary's presence.

Spotting her, Sirius had broken away from Mary to greet her. Most days, Sirius greeted her with a kiss – to the hair, the temple, the lips – but with Mary watching, he didn't so much as touch her. Plans for a date the next day had been made, though Lily was baffled by Sirius's instructions to pace seventh-floor corridor across from the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy. And all under the apathetic stare of Mary MacDonald.

Lily didn't blame Mary for seeming bored at the Astrological Society meeting. Instead of focusing on the stars or examining current events, Marlene started the meeting as she always did: sign compatibility discussions. The shift under Marlene's reign had been towards gossip, and all the members, excepting Lily, were thrilled to spend an hour a week, predicting who would make a charming couple or who was going to bomb their finals because their sun sign would be in Mars on test day.

The girls debated the compatibility of an Aries with a Leo, perking Lily's interest for perhaps the first time in the history of these discussions. James was an Aries.

When there was an opening the conversation, Lily hesitantly interjected, "Which signs would be most compatible with an Aries? They seem a bit difficult."

"Hmm, a Gemini, a Sagittarius," Marlene answered thoughtfully.

It was a mistake. Lily knew better than to broach this topic while James was dutifully ignoring her. Better for her sanity would be to return the favor by dismissing all thoughts of him from her mind. Learning the stars also supported them as a couple, the introduction of fate and magic to the occasion, would only set her up for misery. But James was in love with her, so she had to know.

"What about an Aquarius?" Lily asked.

"Oh sure! They're highly compatible," Marlene said.

"Are you sure?" Gina Parrish questioned. "Both those signs like to be in control. I think that would be a pretty tense, back-and-forth relationship."

"True, but that's not insurmountable," Marlene said dismissively. "Think about it. An Aquarius is this zany, out-of-the-box person, always coming up with adventures and ideas. That's highly attractive to an Aries. Then, the Aries is an executor. They've got the passion and creativity to follow through with those ideas. They're both energetic, lively. They'd have so much fun together."

"What about sex?" Mary asked, a hint of deviance powering her smirk.

"Oh! Phenomenal sexual chemistry," Marlene said.

"Agreed. The need for control might be an issue out of the bedroom, but I think it'd prove pretty explosive during sex," Gina Parrish said, giggling through the word sex, like she couldn't believe her own audacity.

There had to be a spell to suppress a blush, to revert the flow of blood to somewhere less noticeable, like the phalanges. No one would notice if her fingers turned mottled red. Lily needed to learn it immediately, mind racing with the implications of her compatibility with James. Every descriptor was spot on. She'd always adored James' passion, whether to a prank or his studies. She might not always agree with his decisions, but the dedication he showed to all of them had always attracted her. Their every conversation was a thinly veiled battle for control, just like Gina said, but Lily had never considered how that might play out in sex, and her libido charged ahead with the idea. She wanted to find a private place and consider the implications of this information thoroughly…and luxuriously. Wow.

James was so handsome when he was smiling and at ease, but the way his jaw would clench when she challenged him, the onset of stubbornness was sinful. Would it be too obvious if she fanned herself? Everyone else was bundled up in their robes to wade off the cold.

"You're an Aquarius, right, Lily?" Marlene said.

"Um, yes, on the cusp between Aquarius and Pisces."

"I'd think you'd ask about Scorpios then," Mary said blandly. "Since that's Sirius's sign."

Lily took a hearty gulp of her tea. It was tepid now and washed weakly down her throat. No one else had made the connection that Sirius was a Scorpio, just Mary. Worse, Lily suspected Mary knew James was an Aries as well. Sometimes, Lily thought nothing could escape Mary MacDonald's dark, impassive eyes.

"That's right. Scorpio's not an easy sign to deal with," Marlene said, fidgeting in her seat. "I can, um, give you the breakdown if you like, Lily, but well, it's not – uh – it's not a great match on paper. I'd understand if you prefer not to know."

Lily shrugged. "I never prefer ignorance to knowledge."

"Well, the good news is that both are pretty loyal signs, and they have a pretty similar view when it comes to the importance of love," Gina said optimistically.

"But it's also like…doomed," Marlene said, not hedging a bit. She leaned forward, closer to Lily, like she was scanning for signs that Lily might sob at this ominous declaration.

"Huh…" Lily couldn't summon the proper response. She could barely force herself to ask, "Why?"

"Scorpios tend to stick to the places, emotionally and physically, where they feel safest. They, uh, brood. Meanwhile, an Aquarius likes to explore the world, discover new things and really goes out of their comfort zones. The two signs just never align in what they want to do," Gina explained.

"That doesn't sound much like Sirius," Lily said, thinking about Sirius's penchant for idiotic pranks and adventures with his mates. She said as much.

"Sure, it does," Mary interjected. "Sirius's comfort zone is with his dormmates. So as long as he's with his boys, he can go anywhere. Try separating him from them and introducing an adventure. He'll never go for it."

The group tittered, mouths hidden behind raised teacups. Lily had the impression she'd just inadvertently waded into a battle with Mary MacDonald. Everyone was speculating as to which girl understood Sirius better and thought Mary had thrown down the gauntlet.

"Is that it?" Lily asked Gina.

Gina gave a sympathetic frown, "Honestly, no. Scorpios brood, and Aquariuses tend to think they're just being overdramatic, which causes problems all around. Also, both can be majorly jealous. Scorpios especially."

"Oh, well that sounds accurate. I'm wildly possessive of him," Lily said.

No one laughed, and Lily realized they didn't recognize the joke.

Marlene busied herself with the pot of tea, filling Lily's once more to the brim and combing out a doily so she wouldn't stain the table. "Don't worry too much, Lily. These things are generalities, guidelines. There's always exceptions."

Nodding, Lily plastered on the sincerest smile she could manage, hoping people wouldn't realize how disinterested she was in her compatibility with her own boyfriend. Other girls in the circle had crushes, so the conversation drifted to their potential matches. Covertly, Lily made a grab for the chart on Scorpios. She scanned the list, alighting on Scorpio's compatibility with a Taurus; Mary was born in early May.

The chart said the two would make an excellent, balanced match, both fiercely loyal to the other. When Lily looked, Mary was examining her nails with no more interest than she ever showed. But somehow, Lily was certain she had Mary MacDonald's undivided attention.


It was possible that Sirius Black had finally cracked.

At least, that's what Lily ranted to herself as she paced the seventh-floor corridor as instructed the night of their date. Sirius had given further instructions that she was to imagine her perfect date location as she marched up and down the drafty hall. Lily had told Sirius in no uncertain terms, that he would never take her on the perfect date (read: the library of Alexandria pre-unfortunate-combustion), but he had stuck to his orders, leaving Lily to waste away in the corridor. The bald head of Barnabus the Barmy was shiny, winking at her mockingly.

Running late, Lily had fully expected Sirius to be waiting for her. When he wasn't, she assumed he'd ditched for the night. Lily checked her wristwatch, an air-light bronze piece with a black face and gold numbering.

Giving a wristwatch on a witch's seventeenth birthday was tradition. For years, she'd watched as the older students returned from their holidays sporting ornate pieces. The wealthier students' watches were always custom-designed to reflect some part of their personality: Lila Selwyn's watch would give real-time updates on local weather conditions, so she could best decide when the schedule the Ravenclaw house team practices. Emmeline's reminded her when to eat, to stretch, to walk, to sleep for maximum health. As a girl, Lily longed for one of her own, a desire born half out of practicality – it would be useful to have a watch that alerted her to upcoming solar activity – and half out of a shameful wish to assimilate. She, at twelve-years old, wanted to be just like the other students for once.

By seventeen, Lily had largely rejected pureblood traditions, but the pockets of childhood remaining still wanted a watch for her birthday. That year, her father had sent her back from Christmas hols' with her birthday present, a small box that she promised not to open until her birthday, and Lily had thought her father had remembered the thousands of hints she'd dropped about the custom.

It turned out to be ribboned stationary.

Generously, Will and Mei-Lin saved up to give her a wristwatch. It was leagues away from the complex watches most purebloods sported, but it had the nifty habit of warning Lily when she was running late. It would vibrate against her wrist, reminding her that she had to run, a warning that she nearly always ignored because she was usually hopelessly behind schedule by lunch.

Looking at her watch was bittersweet. It was a reminder that she was loved by her friends, that she'd far prefer to be chatting with them than waiting around for Sirius, who was probably never coming. Irritated, Lily paced up and down the corridor, per Sirius's instructions, but rather than think of the perfect date spot, she imagined a place where she and her friends could meet without the difficulties of Will's house status getting in the way. Sneaking him on a weekend when half the house was outside was one thing, but he rarely got both feet through the portrait hole on a weekday without one student or another throwing a hissy fit and kicking him out.

A minute into her pacing, Lily stumbled back, hand splayed against her chest because a door had sprung into existence, where before had been unobtrusive stone. Quickly, she cycled through the possible explanations – she was still faint from the dungbomb incident, lack of sleep was making her hallucinate, the door had always been there and she was merely unobservant and ought to give up investigative journalism then and there – before deciding to do the obvious: open it.

Inside, the room was everything she'd just imagined. By the fire, there were four seats, intimately pressed together and each with their own side-table to house drinks. Far opposite the fire, was an icebox to keep the pumpkin juice closed, stacked with magazines like a makeshift table. Away from the seating area was a stretch of empty, carpeted space, perfect for if Lily and her friends decided they wanted to dance around like lunatics for half an hour. Behind that was an actual, God's honest, indoor tennis court, complete with balls and rackets.

The space was so impressive that Lily momentarily forgot all else. As thought returned and the possibilities of such a room occurred to her, Lily gave into giddiness and cackled.

The return of rational thought allowed for additional observations. Namely, Lily realized she wasn't alone in the room. In the corner, shrouded in shadow, a figure sat hunched over, arms wrapped tightly around his knees. It – he – was shaking.

Lily searched behind her for an explanation. There was none. The figure gave a whimper, and it was enough to push Lily past shock and into urgent action.

It was Sirius, and he was crying.

"What happened?" she said, racing to his side.

Lily dropped to her knees, crawling the remaining distance until she could clutch at the fabric atop his shoulders. Rather than acknowledge her, Sirius turned his face away, resting his forehead against the wall. He'd quieted when Lily approached but that didn't fool her. Through his tightly compressed lips, Lily could still hear the whimpers.

"Sirius, please talk to me. Tell me what happened to you," Lily pleaded.

When he still didn't answer, Lily set to work, rubbing her hands up and down his chest, checking him all over for injuries. Other than a fasciculation in his left wrist, the muscle jumpy and twitching, she couldn't find any physical ailments. Lily didn't know whether she was more relieved to find him clean of blood or horrified because it opened a door to a less solvable dilemma.

Sirius was murmuring something, lips barely parted and moving. The words lost to the wall. Lily laid her hands over his ears. His hair was wet from sweat, and she could see droplets clinging to his pale forehead. Desperate, Lily jerked his head toward her. Immediately, she wished she hadn't. Concentrated pain was writ large on his face. It levelled her.

"I don't know…I just want to help you. If you won't tell me what happened, at least tell me how to help," Lily croaked through a dry throat.

Her plea worked some kind of magic because a park of recognition flashed across Sirius's face, quivering his lips. He knew her. Sirius pitched forward into her arms, burying his wet face in her chest. The collision knocked her back down a few degrees before she regained her balance.

He was shaking, and Lily felt the room go cold. It was impossible to remember the warmth and wonder she'd felt when entering the room only minutes before. This odd room, with its fire and its bright lights, was too hot, and Lily felt smothered by Sirius clinging to her.

Muffled to the point that Lily questioned whether she understood the words at all, Sirius muttered, "Dead…fault…shouldn't have…blood and…too much."

"Did you have a nightmare?" Lily asked hopefully.

It was the wrong question to ask because Sirius started to cry in earnest. This was anguish in its purest form. Whenever he could suck in enough air to push out a coherent word, he would wail "dead" and then proceed to hyperventilate into her neck, reverting to the helplessness of a child.

His father.

Sirius's relationship with his father was doubtlessly negative, though she didn't know any details. After over a month together, she and Sirius had barely scratched the surface of getting to know one another, and she couldn't offer him the support he needed. Years of letter writing had made Lily an expert at comforting the bereaved in all but one circumstance. She'd never known how to react to the letters where her penpals spilled over with their resentment towards the dead, the ones where they confessed to always hating their deceased parent. For Lily, death had transformed her mother into something shinier than ever, an angel within the confines of memory.

Lily was at a loss as to what to say, afraid to insensitively blunder into one of his vulnerabilities, like a drunk driver with the keys to a lorry. What she needed was an expert on Sirius Black.

"I'm going to find James," Lily said.

Like a toddler who'd been lost in a mall for an hour and was just now reunited with his mummy, Sirius clutched her tighter, shaking his head and continuing to murmur nonsense words into her chest.

"Sirius, I have to get James. He'll know what to do," Lily said.

"No, don't! You, you're all I have. Not James," Sirius moaned.

Her stomach flipped and something wet and hot tore its way up her throat into her mouth, mingling with her saliva and turning it bitter. It was fast becoming necessary that she leave not only for Sirius's sake but her own. She was suffocating under his neediness and her subsequent failures to help him. Only with great effort was she able to untangle herself from Sirius's clinging arms, promising all the while that she would race back as quickly as she could. Misery had sapped him of strength, so his arms hung limp after she escaped them, head bobbing like bait in the water.

True to her promise, Lily ran from the mysterious room at full tilt. Gryffindor Tower was less than a three-minute walk from the seventh-floor corridor, and at a full run, it too Lily two. Several meters from the Portrait of the Fat Lady, Lily shouted the password, earning a screech of surprise from the portrait, which hurriedly swung aside to compensate for Lily's dramatic dive.

Everything was too bright. Inside the bustling common room, people went about their lives with no idea of the crisis taking place just minutes away. She didn't see James anywhere, but it was difficult to sort through all the familiar faces. Out of the corner of her eye, Lily saw Mei-Lin approaching, probably to ask why she was back so soon, but Lily didn't want to field her questions. She tore up the boys' staircase, ignoring the shouts of confusion from a few second-year boys, who had to flatten against the wall to avoid being knocked down.

She didn't waste time knocking at the dormitory, flinging open the door with no regard for what may be on the other side. Duane Hinkley was in the process of pulling off his socks – fully dressed otherwise – and, seeing her, his hands shot up to cover his chest as if he were thoroughly exposed. He and Khaled, busy at push ups in the corner, were the only boys in the dormitory.

"Do you –" Lily had to stop to wheeze "–know where James Potter is?"

"Pretty sure he's at practice, isn't he?" Duane said, looking to Khaled for confirmation.

Ah yes, Lily would have known if she'd stopped to think. The Quidditch Cup Final was only a week out, and James had declared the Pitch his new bedroom until Hufflepuff was defeated. It was also on the opposite bloody end of the grounds. Frustrated, Lily pulled at her own hair.

"Why do you ask, Eva–?"

Khaled didn't get to finish his sentence because Lily was off again. She pushed her body to its ultimate limit as she ran, gulping in breaths that burnt, her throat adust from exertion. The whimsy of the castle's design – moving staircases, trick steps, and winding passages – was now nefarious. The castle was a labyrinth keeping her from her destination, and when the Great Staircase moved out from under her, necessitating that she find another route, she nearly screamed.

When Lily finally arrived on the Pitch, the team was thankfully grounded, running laps. Lily doubted they could have been any more exhausted than she, though James' militant barking for them to run faster seemed almost as intense. Unable to slow down with momentum and desperation pushing her footsteps, Lily barreled straight into James, knocking them both to the ground in a pile of bruises and aches.

"Bloody fucking–! Lily, why the hell?" James groaned from beneath her.

Still lying on top of him – she'd really earned a breather – Lily gasped out, "Sirius is in trouble. I don't know what's wrong, but he's just crying and shaking, and I don't know what to do. Please tell me you know how to help."

James rolled to the side, toppling Lily into the grass. He sprang to his feet with more energy than Lily could bear to look at in her exhausted state, let alone summon for herself.

"Aren't you coming?" James demanded, already half jogging away.

"I think I just need to lie here for a second. You go ahead. I'll catch up," Lily panted, staring up at the dark sky with unseeing eyes.

A hand interrupted her vision. "Buck up, Evans. You're coming with me."

James bounced on the balls of his feet, and this urgency rejuvenated Lily. She took his hand and let him whisk her off the Pitch. As they ran, James drowned her in question after question about what she'd seen, what Sirius had said, and what she suspected caused his behavior. It was hard to focus on anything but keeping pace with James' unforgiving sprint, but Lily noticed that James wasn't overly surprised that Sirius had suffered a breakdown. Only concerned.

The door to the mysterious room had disappeared, but James didn't slow. He knew all about the disappearing room and paced up and down the corridor manically until it reappeared, as if on a timer. Unlike the door, Sirius was still in the corner where Lily had left him. James crouched by Sirius's side. Their heads close, black hair blending together; they looked like brothers.

Her eyes stung, and Lily realized she hadn't blinked once, afraid to miss a moment.

"Lily, wait outside," James ordered.

"I want to help," Lily argued, taking a bold step toward the two boys.

James took a deep breath. "You did good, Lily. You've already helped. Now, you can continue to help by letting us talk alone. Sirius and I need you to wait outside."

Somehow, James had summoned the exact balance of manipulation and kindness to send her out into the corridor. Now it was time for the long, interminable wait.

She couldn't bear to sit and do nothing, but no useful activity suggested itself. Settling reluctantly on the floor, Lily decided to write everything she knew about Sirius Black and his family down on paper. The list was far from comprehensive.

Lily knew the Blacks were purebloods, proud and rich to complete the stereotype. She also knew that Sirius had never had a kind word to say about his family, and he would loudly criticize Regulus for his failings as they passed in the halls, gone the stilted civility of that night at the Astronomy Tower. Lily knew that his mother possessed the lungs of an Olympic swimmer, the hysteria of a mass-murderer, and the bigotry of a Death Eater. Over the summer, Sirius had been disowned by his family. And, only six months later, Sirius's father had died unexpectedly.

Maybe Sirius blamed himself for his father's death. The shock of losing his oldest son might have killed him. Or maybe he died of other causes, but Sirius believed he could have prevented it by staying.

The very possibility crushed her. Lily had never once held herself responsible for her mum's death, but she imagined the weight would be soul-shattering. Everything she'd witnessed over the past month – Sirius's mood swings, the way he was quick to anger, and how he experimented with personalities like he hated his true self – darkened.

Since Lily knew little about the Blacks, writing a list only kept her busy for a quarter of an hour. To pass the time afterwards, Lily did the unthinkable: she practiced her Transfiguration. In her pockets, Lily always carried her wand, a tub of mints, dental floss, her notebook, and a spare quill and ink. Today, she also had a few crumpled toffee wrappers, one with an amateur doodle of a pygmy puff, drawn by Mei-Lin during Potions. Lily cast on one of the wrappers, trying to partially transform it into a pumpkin.

No matter how she struggled, she couldn't quite manage it. After each attempt, Lily was left with either an entire pumpkin or a candy wrapper. Her mind rejected the partial transfiguration, rejected the idea that something could be two things at once. Her brain wanted to classify everything into neat categories, never acknowledging the duality that laid at the center of the universe.

Take her boyfriend, crying helplessly on the other side of the door. The unabashed vulnerability wasn't the sign of a man, yet Sirius couldn't be comfortably called a boy either. He was neither saint nor sinner. Sirius was capable of probing insight and blatant insensitivity within the span of five minutes.

Lily wondered if she was too quick to define people by how they were deficient or by the qualities she perceived, never affording them the same rich interior life that she herself possessed. Sirius was capable of cruelty, so therefore he could not be categorized as kind-hearted, but he was capable of charity and therefore could not be categorized as heartless. Perhaps it was more accurate to say, "Sirius is capable of cruelty, so therefore he is capable of cruelty. Sirius is capable of charity, so therefore he is capable of charity."

Without thinking and eyes closed, Lily cast again. She opened her eyes to a perfect transfiguration.

The door creaked open while Lily was distracted, turning the pumpkin-cum-wrapper about to study it. James plucked the half-pumpkin from her hands. He looked exhausted.

Lily scrambled to her feet. It felt stupid to voice the words, unnecessary, but James didn't leap to assuage her curiosity, so Lily said, "How's Sirius?"

"I put him to bed. He'll sleep here tonight," James said.

"I don't think he should be left alone," Lily said.

"I'll stay with him," James assured her.

James' eyes were hollowed out, shadows of his usual vigor. Like Sirius, James needed the chance to sleep and put this awful evening and the nightmares to rest, if only for a few hours. The armchairs inside looked comfortable enough, but Lily doubted they'd afford a sufficient night's rest. She could never sleep well away from her own bed; the few sleepovers she'd ever attended had been bittersweet affairs, where Lily stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, long after her friends had drifted into sleep, hoping for a miracle, that Petunia might rescue her in a stolen car, or that her father would telephone for her to return home immediately.

"I can run back to the Tower and get you some blankets, a few pillows. I want you to be comfortable," Lily said.

"No need. That's the beauty of the Room of Requirement," James said.

"The what?"

Against the odds, James smiled. Maybe it wasn't his normal dazzling grin, the one that could add an extra year of life to a dying woman, instead a bit dulled around the edges, but it was a smile all the same.

"The Room of Requirement. You walk past this stretch of wall three times, picture clearly what you want the room to look like, and voila! A door appears, leading exactly to where you pictured. Right useful. I'll just imagine up some beds, and we'll be fine for the night."

"That's incredible," Lily breathed.

"Isn't it? I'd still be a virgin if it weren't for this room. Remus and Peter found it our second year. They were going through this Rogers and Hammerstein phase, a real nightmare. I'd told them they needed to find a private place to screech, where innocents' ears wouldn't be harmed. That or I'd hex their vocal chords to tie together. Looking for a place to sing, they found this," James said.

God, she loved this bloody miraculous school. One moment, she'd feel like fate was maliciously draining the blood from her heart with a bendy straw, and the next, she'd be fully recovered. Hogwarts never let her mope for long.

"Thank you for coming with me," Lily told James, trying to convey the full force of her sincerity through her eyes. "I've never seen…actually, I haven't seen someone that rent apart in a long time. I don't know how I would have helped him if you hadn't come with me. I was in so far over my head."

"I should thank you for fetching me," James corrected. "He'll be alright. I'll set him to sorts if it kills me, but I hat to imagine what would have happened if he'd been left alone."

"What triggered it?" Lily asked. Instantly, James became more guarded, so Lily hazarded, "I know he's upset about his family. I'm just asking what brought this on specifically."

James' measured his answer precisely. "It was one of those conflations of little things. His brother was being a prat today, and it's the four-month anniversary of his dad's death. And, he saw Franklin Berry today. He cut his hand at dinner, lots of blood. All of it just brought back bad memories."

"Bad memories of what?"

Lily hadn't meant to ask the question aloud. She knew that James would shut down and refuse to respond rather than reveal Sirius's secrets. He did just that, wary of her and her motives.

"Come on, James," Lily tried. "He wants me to know. You saw him in there, how vulnerable he was. He wouldn't show me that if he didn't want me to dig deeper. If you'd heard the things he said to me! I'm not trying to be nosy or pry into your business…James, I'm scared. I'm scared for him, and I'm scared for me."

James put his hands on her shoulders, angling her body to face him directly. His face, his hands, everything about him was gentle but deathly serious. Like her, he must have been terrified for his friend – only a stone could feel otherwise – but none of that fear was present now as he confronted her. All she saw was purpose. Purpose and kindness.

"Promise me, Lily. Promise me that you're not going to dig into this. He doesn't want you to know. He and I may be rowing, but I still know him better than anyone, and this is a certainty. Be there for him as much as you like, as much as he'll let you, but don't pressure him for answers," James said.

"The things he said to me–" Lily protested

James cut her off, "Sirius expects people to be able to read his mind and know what he wants. And it's very rarely what comes out of his mouth. Don't read into what he told you in there. He was overwhelmed. Just trust me on this. If you don't want to hurt Sirius…if you don't want to hurt me, just leave it alone."

She nodded.

The idea of hurting James was untenable. The fact that he was already hurting was nearly too much to bear.

His hands were red, particularly around the knuckles. They'd been scraped raw with the cold, or perhaps from slamming his fist into the wall. Neither would surprise her, considering how helpless she'd felt when she first saw the devastation in Sriius's empty eyes.

Tenderly, Lily leaned down to place a kiss against his knuckles.

Inside, Lily felt cold and dead, but James' body burst with heat, so Lily hovered over his hand for a long moment, cheek brushing against skin and soaking in the scent of him. Her eyes drifted closed as contentment replaced all the anxiety of the past hour.

With aching softness, James brushed a tendril of hair behind her hair. Hours of conversation were communicated in those two simple gestures. Nothing had ever felt as right as James' fingers scraping along the shell of her ear. No one had comforted her like this since she was a small girl, and she wanted to return the care a hundred-fold.

"I need to get back to Sirius," James whispered drowsily.

"Of course," Lily agreed.

It was only later that night, when she collapsed into her bed in Gryffindor Tower, that Lily realized James was a true magician, able to make the impossible real. It was impossible, but Lily laid in bed knowing that everything was going to be alright.

The red-eyed cuckoo clock started up with its cheeping chime of the hour, and Emmeline threw her pillow at it in a futile effort to silence its ringing. Lily, however, smiled dreamily to herself, entirely unaware of the call of the cuckoo next to her bed. The world and all its sights and sounds faded and faded to nothing, until all that was left was peace.