A/N: Just to clarify one thing, in case some were worried (it was mentioned in the previous chapter's reviews): there will be NO Severus/Lily/Remus OT3. Snily is basically my only ship for HP fandom (I suppose that would make it my OTP, except I honestly don't think they would ever have worked in canon) and while I have general opinions on all kinds of other HP pairings, on the spectrum from 'really like it' (e.g. Sirius/Remus) to 'detest it from the bottom of my heart' (absolutely Ron/Hermione), Severus/Lily is the one that I truly love. Ergo, this story is going to be Snily eventually (when the characters are ready for the relationship; we're getting closer!). There might be some degree of romance with other characters for either of them in the meantime, but a) it'll be only temporary, have faith in me, I would not be selling this story with a falsehood, and b) at no point will there be a three-way relationship between them and anyone else.
But that said, Remus as Lily's friend is here to stay, and not only is this necessary for the overarching plot (Remus is now the link that'll be bringing the change started by Lily and Severus in Part I to the Marauders in Part III), it's also very important for Severus' character evolution and thus his and Lily's relationship.
Chapter 22: To Escape the Inevitable
Lily startled awake into pitch darkness, feeling hot and achy, with her face crusty from tears and her immediate surroundings cramped. Swallowing, she held herself perfectly still as she got her bearings, realising with a sluggish numbness to her thoughts that something sharp was moving through her hair. Wincing a little, she extended her hand up, up over the ground, until her fingers touched softness, and her ears filled with a strange little trilling sound.
Oh, she thought to herself dumbly, right, Archimedes.
The little owl she'd purchased that morning – and was it really less than a day that she'd been laughing with Remus and telling him about her favourite childhood film? – was grooming her hair, apparently. When he realised she was awake, he released a quiet but more familiar hoot, that reminded her of nothing so much as a horse's whinny, and walked gangly over into her field of vision, where she could run her fingers gently through his fluffy feathers.
She wiggled the fingers of her other hand and found that they were locked tightly with someone else's. She had to blink past stinging, swollen eyelids a few times, but she finally caught sight of the lanky black hair half-covering a familiar, lovely face of her best friend, relaxed in sleep in a way that made her breath catch in her throat. She'd not seen Severus asleep in years; she'd forgotten how often he scowled or grimaced at every moment of his life, how rigidly he held himself normally. Like this, relaxed in sleep, there was an innocent handsomeness to his features that made her want to run her hands over his cheekbones and eyebrows and the ridge of his nose (his eyes and lips, too, but that really was far too intimate, and Lily didn't think it).
Shifting in her spot, she leaned back, pressing firmly into something very warm and slightly knobby, and in response, that something shuffled a bit too, followed by a loud exhalation. Remus. They were back to back, and he too was asleep.
Pulling her hand away from Severus', Lily shifted to her back, and Archimedes, his sharp talons making her wince for a moment as he hopped up onto her chest, apparently quite happy to momentarily roost between her breasts, big yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness as he observed her.
"Bet this wasn't what you thought it would be when you met me this morning," Lily whispered to her new pet, wiping away the crusty residue of her tears off her face with one hand. She felt hollow, wrung out. The first blast wave had passed, and in her sleep, she'd managed to distance herself enough that she no longer felt the urge to cry and cry and cry. It didn't change much else, though; her family had fallen apart, and nothing was ever going to be okay again. She didn't know what to do, where to turn. Whatever holding pattern things had been in until now, tense and unsaid as they'd been in the last weeks, that was broken now, and she knew it wouldn't be put back together the same way. Whatever her father had done, whatever her mother had known, it didn't matter anymore, because now it was all of them, Lily and Petunia in it too, and there was no going back.
Severus shifted to her right, shuffling a bit closer.
"Lily? Go back to sleep," he murmured, sounding still mostly asleep. His fingers trailed up her arm and tangled in the hem of her sleeve. She didn't think it had even registered with him.
"What time is it?"
"Late."
She snorted quietly and felt Remus turn over on her other side.
"You awake?" he asked, sighing softly.
"Can't sleep anymore."
There was something ethereal, something that felt almost sacred, about the place she was in right now, under the stars, with two sleeping boys protecting her from either side, and the warm little weight of a bird on her chest. She didn't want to fall back asleep and miss it, though her eyes stung and her body and soul demanded rest.
"Do Mum and Dad know we're here?"
"Mhm," Remus voiced, his eyes still closed. "Went to tell them. Snape watched over you."
"You didn't burn everything down," she muttered, mind sluggish.
"We have an understanding," Severus replied, rubbing his nose lightly into her shoulder, as if he had an itch. "Are you okay?"
"Better. Sorry for crying all over you."
"You can always cry all over me," he replied. Sighing, Lily leaned her head to the side until their foreheads were touching and breaths mingling, and closed her eyes. She reached out with her opposite hand until Remus tangled his fingers with hers, and she finally felt safe enough to try and forget until morning.
Lily found her mother in the kitchen, standing over the sink filled with what looked like clean dishes. The cupboard doors were open and gaping empty, and the kitchenware was spread out all over the room in various neat piles.
Archimedes trilled softly in her hold, his whole tiny body shaking against her chest, and it was his sounding that brought Monica out of her trance. Lily placed her owl on the closest chair back, and then crossed over the room to hug her mother tightly. She returned the embrace with desperation that Lily had never seen from her, and it made Lily's chest ache.
"I'm so sorry, Mum."
"It's all right, Lily. It'll be all right."
Pulling away, Lily shook her head. "Don't pretend, please. It won't."
"We'll sort it all out, your father and I."
"Mum..." Licking her lips, Lily took both of her water-pruned hands in her own. "Mum, have you been happy, before this?"
"Happy enough."
"That's not the same thing as just happy," Lily countered quietly. "Did you know?"
Monica turned away from her and back to the sink, grabbing hold of the sponge to start vigorously scrubbing a pan that by all accounts had been clean from the start.
"Where did you spend the night? Your friend came to tell us, and he insisted that we leave you in peace. I've thought him a nice young man, but now I'm–"
"Mum, don't change the subject," Lily cut her off. "Did you know?"
Monica smacked her hands down into the sudsy water.
"What do you want me to say, Lily? Did I know about her? Did I know that he's wanted to leave me for months, maybe years? Did I know my whole life was a sham?"
"Any of it. All of it," Lily countered. "What did you know? Dad said you've been having problems for a very long time. What problems, Mum?"
"I don't know, Lily. Your father... things changed for him, apparently. What we had was no longer enough. Men go through that, the mid-life crisis. Rejecting good positions at prestigious universities and insisting on marital counselling, never being happy and wanting a new life."
Lily opened her mouth, but hesitated, remembering the boys' suggestion to speak with her father about the whole situation properly too. Her mother was obviously not willing to speak about this now, and Lily didn't feel confident enough prodding her, because she didn't know what had even happened between her parents in the last year or two. Her mother had mentioned counselling, and that by itself was news to Lily. Petunia had written in that letter a few months back that their father had passed up a position at University of Bristol, but he was obviously more interested in the position at Victoria University of Manchester, so it wasn't simply about moving away from Cokeworth.
"Who wrote to you?" her mother asked, switching the subject while Lily was pondering over what to do.
"Huh?"
"The owl, dear. Is it one of the girls?"
"What? Oh, no, Archimedes is mine, I bought him yesterday in Manchester."
"You didn't tell me you were looking for a new pet."
"I wasn't; we just stopped by the store to see what they had. I saw him, and decided that I really wanted him. Severus will bring his stuff over later, the cage and all that; it was shrunk so he has to enlarge it at his place first."
"Lily, about your friends – perhaps it would be better if Remus were to go home early."
"Oh! I..." Startled, Lily's heart picked up its rhythm at the thought of losing one of her biggest supports so far. On the one hand, she knew that it was the right decision, because this was a family matter and having an outsider witness it was inappropriate on so many levels; on the other, though, she didn't want Remus to go. Severus wouldn't be welcome in the house either, no doubt, and she couldn't even imagine being alone in here with her parents warring over this and with Petunia's hostilities going back to their initial levels, which they no doubt would, since this was their main cause in the first place. "I'll talk with him about it," she promised vaguely, trying to buy time to think this through a bit more.
She left her mother to her obsessive cleaning and found her father in his study, looking wan and sad, though his eyes lit up with muted hope when he saw it was Lily who'd knocked. She deposited Archimedes on the little bird perch that usually hosted her Daily Prophet delivery owls each morning, and her little bird settled back into sleep with hardly a trill.
"A new pet?" her father asked.
"Archimedes. I got him yesterday in Boggart Hole."
"He's lovely."
"Mhm. You and Mum let me stay out all night."
Stephen shrugged.
"Monica wasn't for it, of course; in this case, I chose to put my foot down. Remus was right, you needed time and rest, and you wouldn't have gotten it in the house last night. I trust both him and Severus to look out for you, and unlike your mother, I am not hung up on you all being teenagers. You're mature enough that if there is something going on with you and one of them, I trust you to be smart about it. Besides, you'll be an adult in less than six months, by your society's standards, and I won't have much of a say then, anyway. Did it help?"
"Yes, it did," Lily answered truthfully. "Thank you. I'm ready to talk now."
Her father immediately turned away from his desk and invited her to sit on the armchair, which she did, curling up with her feet beneath herself and her knees close to her chest. That revulsion she'd felt yesterday when she'd looked at him was gone; in its place was hurt and disappointment that she had never thought she'd feel towards him, and her insides ached with the need of relieving those feelings, of soothing them away.
She didn't know if it was possible after yesterday and his broader actions, but Lily found herself wanting desperately to try, and feeling young and stupid and little about it, too.
But that was all right; if her turbulent friendship with Severus and the last three months had taught her anything, it was that the relationships with the people who mattered the most were worth all the sense of foolishness and discomfort they caused her.
"You said you and Mum have had problems. When did that start?"
"She and I would not agree on this, but for me, the issues started around the time we learned that you are a witch. So, about six years now."
"That long?" Lily breathed out.
"Not in the way you're thinking," her father cut her off. "We had one of our bigger arguments about you going to Hogwarts. You'd been saying that you're a witch for a couple of years by that point, ever since you and Severus became friends, but to be honest, I didn't truly believe it until Professor McGonagall demonstrated. I didn't want you going to that school; Monica insisted it would be better for you."
"But why? I mean, I wanted to go, and I would have needed to learn to control my magic either way."
"After all this time, it's really not very important. I felt that you would be too isolated from us, that you'd not be able to go to university. You know I'd always wanted you to push your education as far as you could."
"There are masteries in magic, too, Dad," Lily pointed out.
"As I said, it's really unimportant now. You went to Hogwarts, that's that. But that's when it started for me, when I realised that I was not satisfied with my life anymore. It's not something that bothered me much for a long while. You'll understand once you start working; the daily grind is a very powerful force. You get lulled into your routine, get comfortable in it, don't consider it too much. For a while, I thought it would pass, that it's just what happens with middle age."
"Mum said you're having a mid-life crisis."
"Perhaps she's right," Stephen answered with a small shrug. "I certainly don't believe so, but then I would hardly be capable of being objective about such an assessment."
"So why have you been dissatisfied?"
"Because after you'd left for Hogwarts, I realised that I have no one to truly speak with in the house. Not the little everyday things, of course, the weather and our obligations and the news. Intellectual conversation, about politics, about the society, about history and books and all those other things. I realised at one point that I preferred to stay on campus and debate the curriculum I taught with my students, or in outings with other professors. I missed you constantly asking me about things, missed listening to your fervour over everything and anything that crossed your mind. Monica and I had had such conversations in the beginning of our relationship, but they'd tapered off some time around when Petunia and you were born, and I'm afraid Monica's interests shifted until they became misaligned with mine."
"But it's just conversation, Dad. How can that replace love?"
"You've not been in a serious relationship yet, Lily; it'll be more understandable to you when you are. Emotions are largely easy; you feel or you don't, and there isn't much you can do to force yourself either way. Relationships are a constant forging and reforging of connections between yourself and the other person. A lot of people don't realise it – I certainly didn't when Monica and I married – but the work never stops. Marriage isn't some sort of magical stasis charm that will preserve your feelings and your connection. Romantic relationships are just like any other kind of relationship, they require work. And people change. You've changed a lot between last year and this, and it took me a little while to catch on. And for every change that happens to you, that will be reflected on all your relationships to one extent or another."
Yes, Lily was finding this to be far truer than she could ever have thought before. "So how did you change?"
"I became lonely, in this house, with Monica. I craved a connection that went beyond basic emotion, beyond just love that we share, and when I tried to let her know, she didn't seem to understand. For her, what we had was more than enough, and every time I tried to seek more from her and didn't get it, it felt more and more like a pointless endeavour. So I found myself connecting to people at work instead, going out to university functions, organising more seminars, taking over a bigger share of the research, while at home, I became content to just share space and... not engage. And in doing this, I was messing up more than just my marriage with Monica, I was also messing up my relationship with you girls."
"What do you mean?" Lily asked with a frown, head swirling from what her father had told her so far, and instinctively shying away from the suggestion that she was somehow involved with her parents' relationship failing.
"I'd barely manage to wait for you to come home for the holidays, because of our time together. I missed that as much as I missed you, always, and of course, you always came back with new ideas and new tales about this world that you were a part of and that was a part of you, and I always wanted to hear more, not only because I wanted to know what sort of life we'd allowed you to work towards, but also simply because it was interesting and new, and it called on the academic in me. Petunia picked up on it, though I'd not realised this for a very long time. She is so perceptive, it's a shame she doesn't seem to have an interest in challenging herself."
"She takes after Mum," Lily murmured, remembering her grandmother saying that more than once. "I take after you, and she takes after Mum."
"I suppose that's truer than simply in looks. She caught on to it, and she felt that it was further proof we were favouring you over her, and she took it out on you. I should have seen her insecurities years ago, though; I should have seen how my actions were impacting her, and by extension your relationship with her. And it wasn't fair to you either, Lily, to expect you to somehow take Monica's place in a role that was so very important to me, or to encourage your belief that it wasn't damaging us all to collectively focus so much on your schooling and magic in general."
"So, where does that woman come in? When did that start?"
Stephen sighed. "You have to understand, Lily – Jocasta is my close friend first, before anything else. What romantic connection we had was very brief, a product of circumstance that led me to seek comfort and solace in a very difficult time in my marriage. We both regret it; she detests that her actions hurt my family, Monica first and then you two girls by proxy, and I hurt for having caused pain with it, for breaking your mother's trust and faith in me. I am ashamed for how it came about, and what kind of person it makes me, in your eyes and my own."
"But you said you love her."
"I do," he confirmed, with deep regret on his face. "As I said, you cannot influence how you feel, you can only influence what you do. I know you want me to regret my feelings for her, and I am sorry that I cannot, for our sake. I would sacrifice almost anything so that you and Petunia would not hate me, that your love for me and your relationship with me would not be in danger. I suggested visiting a family therapist to Monica when I first realised that I could no longer connect to her at the level I needed to, and she felt hurt by the suggestion that I was unhappy with her, so we left it at that initially. Jocasta was the one who insisted that I had to push the issue if I wanted to save the marriage. She was the first to point out to me – and she was right – that I gave into your mother too much, on all levels. I found it too... tiring, too much effort, to fight for the things I wanted when I so rarely got any of them anyway, and the more our relationship became on her terms, the more reluctant I was to contradict her. So after Jocasta and I agreed that we could not carry on our relationship as we had for those couple of weeks – and it really was only a little bit more than two weeks, two years ago, I swear this is the truth, Lily," he stated fervently, as if wishing to press the truth of his words into Lily's very heart, "– I finally admitted to myself that things weren't working as they should, and I tried to fix it."
"Did you try counselling in the end?"
"For a couple of months about a year ago. It didn't take; Monica didn't feel that our relationship was anyone else's business, and she didn't think that an outsider such as a licenced therapist could give any real suggestion or advice on how we are with each other. That trip we took, for Easter last year, that was my attempt to help us reconnect away from our everyday routine. I really did try, for almost a year after my... dalliance... with Jocasta, but ever since we stopped counselling... I don't think that there is anything left on which to work in our marriage, Lily, and to start over... even if I were up to it, which I don't think I am anymore, I don't believe Monica understands the need for it, or perhaps she refuses to see it. I don't think I understand what's going on in her mind anymore, and that's what hurts me the most, to be honest. I feel like we've grown into strangers, and I don't know how to overcome that."
"So, you're giving up?" Lily asked sadly, biting her lip. "That's it?"
Exhaling, Stephen leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his face.
"I will be honest with you, love; the relationship your mother and I had in your youth, that's gone, and I don't see it coming back. But this isn't just about our marriage, this is also about our family, and that includes you and Petunia. I know what sort of stigma goes with the concept of divorce for children in the non-magical world; I don't know how this might impact you in the wizarding world. But, I want to take that into account, maybe primarily that."
"What are you saying, Dad?"
"I'm saying... well, I'm saying that if you and Petunia cannot handle an outright divorce, then your mother and I will find some other arrangement that will suit us all."
Lily's mouth dropped open, and she leaned back in her chair in shock. Her first thought was that all her anguish, from the moment she'd seen her father holding hands with that woman, to right now, was all unnecessary, because they'd not even divorce if only Petunia and Lily asked them not to. And the urge to ask him to give up this idea was so strong Lily could taste the words on her tongue, her heart beating wildly at the thought that she could save their family, she could just say the word and all this would be behind them, just a nightmare from which they'd woken up, just–
But then she met her father's eyes, and the words tasted suddenly of ashes in her mouth, because she could see that he was expecting her to do it, he was already trying to prepare himself for failure and disappointment, trying to come to terms with an existence he must have thought unbearable, if he was willing to divorce. And she remembered, too, her resolution that she would not claim and dictate the acts of others, that she would not use them to her own benefit – and who would truly be the one getting something out of them staying together? Their mother, maybe, if she was truly so desperate to keep to how things had been going; but Lily and Petunia would be moving out sooner rather than later, Petunia was already eighteen and Lily would be seventeen in six months, both adults and both looking to find their own place in the world, and when they left, it'd just be Stephen and Monica, alone, and Lily's father already looked like he could barely stand it.
And what about her mother, in the first place? Monica's feelings were far more important to Lily right now than Stephen's, because he was the one who'd cheated, and he was the one who'd started this all, and just as importantly, he was the one who was the breadwinner, the one who brought money into the home. Lily's mother was the one who'd be left on her own, a homemaker for twenty plus years and with her belief that her job was that of the wife and the mother and the woman of the household.
"What about Mum?" she asked her father, licking her lips. "If you divorce, what happens to her?"
"We've not spoken about that, but as far as I'm concerned, she can have the house, and of course she'd get alimony."
"And you?"
"The job in Manchester is better paid, and I'd only require a small flat with an extra room for you and Petunia."
"And what about her? If you divorce Mum, would you get back together with her?"
Her father closed his eyes and sighed wearily. "I honestly haven't considered that, Lily. I have not even made peace with coming to this decision yet, and my marriage is such an enormous part of my life, my existence... I cannot think any further than this." He rubbed his upper lip over the bristles of his beard right under his lower lip, then looked up, and Lily was struck for the first time by the fact that her father was heartbroken, was genuinely, truly heartbroken about everything. "I have loved your mother since I was twenty-six years old, and I will love her until I die. The way I love her may have changed, but the emotion itself is there and will be forever. This is... tearing me up inside. I am destroying our family with this, everything you girls have known, everything Monica and I have struggled to build for the past two and a half decades. But I truly believe that it is the best decision, for everyone. Please, try to understand, love."
Lily swallowed past the lump in her throat and nodded. She could try, though she couldn't promise anything more than that, because she didn't know how she felt, now that she'd heard the whole story. Was her mother so hard to reach, so set in her own views, that her father was willing to give up after more than twenty-five years of effort? Lily's stomach turned, because she knew how that must have felt – she'd gone through something similar in the last half-year, hadn't she, though in her case it was her best friend, and not her spouse, and it was seven years and not twenty plus. But the sense of failure, the sense of hopelessness and exhaustion, those all she knew very well.
And how was she to reconcile that with the fact her father had been unfaithful? Her daddy, her hero, who'd won her a stuffed toy panther bigger than herself at the fair when she was three, who'd helped her rescue her kitten from the deluge when she was five, who'd taught her to read and who'd witnessed her first deliberate spell, who'd held her when she'd cried and who'd supported her when she was desperate, who'd always made time for her and had always been infinitely interested in everything she had to say. He had cheated, was still cheating emotionally if not physically, and it horrified her every time it intruded into her thoughts.
"Have you talked with Petunia about all this?"
"Some of it," Stephen answered. "She was there for some of the bigger events in the past few years, so I think she was half-way expecting it. But she's currently not willing to listen to me, not after I told her about Jocasta. I am hoping that she'll calm down in a few days, and I'll try to explain it to her, too."
"And if I asked you not to do it, if I... if I asked you to stay, you would?"
Sliding out of his chair, her father knelt by her side and took her hands in both of his.
"Lilyflower, I love you. I love you more than I've ever loved anything in my life. You are my baby girl, my child, a part of me in ways that no one but you and Petunia can be. I am not leaving you. Come September, Petunia will move down to London for her courses, and in another year, you too will start finding your own way in life. But you're not leaving me and your mother, neither one of you, just like I won't be leaving you. Your mother and I won't live in the same place anymore, and you'll have to split your time to visit us instead of seeing us together, but you will always have a place in my heart and in my home and in my life, always. The relationship we share as a family is not the same thing as the relationship you and I share; we won't be a family in that way anymore, but we will always be father and daughter. I am not leaving you, I promise."
"But you're leaving Mum," Lily whispered, finding her lips trembling and tears spilling over her still tender eyelids. Her father swallowed, blinking his own tears out of his eyes, and pulled her into a tight, warm hug, and this time, Lily couldn't find it in herself to pull away, as she let her tears silently fall to wet his shirt.
"I wish I could say that I wasn't," he whispered into her hair, "I wish that I could stand before you with her and say that it was a joint decision, that we are leaving each other. I truly do. But someone has to make the first move, and she never will, so I must be the one." He rocked her slightly, like he'd done when she was very little, and Lily pretended that none of this was real, that she'd woken up from a nightmare and he was telling her that it was all right.
But she couldn't do it for more than a moment or two, because it was never going to be all right again.
"Yes," her father said. "If you ask it of me, then I'll drop the whole thing, try again. For you."
A choked sob ripped from Lily's chest, and it almost came out as a hiccough, muffled into his shoulder. It hurt, but she shook her head.
"I don't know, Dad. I don't know what to do."
"Think," he advised her. "Let yourself process it. I'll give you all the time you need, love, and you need to do the same. Talk to your mum, to Petunia. Nothing has to be decided this instant."
Lily nodded, rubbing her cheek against the cotton of his shirt in a soothing, repetitive motion. Then, after a bit, when she was feeling slightly calmer, she pulled back and accepted her father's handkerchief to wipe her cheeks and nose with.
"Mum wants me to send Remus away."
"And what do you want?"
"I want him to stay. He and Sev, they... they took care of me yesterday. I don't want to be alone with this. I don't... I don't want to be here." She startled herself with how much all the negativity and vileness that she was feeling came out with that word, that had ripped out of her chest unbidden.
Propping his arms against the handrests of her sofa chair, apparently content to continue kneeling on the floor, her father observed her quietly for a little while. Then he nodded.
"Do you think, if you asked her, that your friend would let you go to her cottage a bit earlier?"
"Clotilde? I don't know; I don't think she can do it before."
"What if you went there with Remus or Petunia? Would she mind letting you two stay there without her?"
Feeling a bit discombobulated, Lily frowned. "What? I don't... You know Petunia wouldn't want to go, Dad."
"The boys, they'd look out for you?"
Bewildered, Lily nodded. "I don't understand, though. What are you suggesting?"
"I'm suggesting that you see with your friend Clotilde if she'd let you have the cottage for the next week if someone else – say, a friend or your sister – came with you, and if she would, then we'll tell your mother that you've moved up your vacation with your girlfriends, and then you, Remus and Severus could go and stay there for the next week."
Lily found herself shaking her head to make sure her hearing was working right.
"You... are you suggesting we lie to everyone so that I could spend a week on the beach with two boys my age and no supervision?"
"Would you need supervision?"
"I'm sixteen. Aren't parents supposed to give curfew and fret over hormones when you're a sixteen-year old girl? Or, or, being taken advantage of by horny boys?"
Her father offered her a wry smile. "Lilyflower, if anyone will be taking advantage, it'll be you taking advantage of those two boys, not the other way around. The way you've got them twisted around, I'm more worried for them coming to blows over you than you ending up pregnant by them."
"Dad, that's not funny. I've not twisted them ar–"
"Oh, love, you really have. Granted, Remus is far less obvious about it than Severus, but those two boys are stupid about you."
"No, Dad, you're completely wrong," she said hurriedly with a shake of her head. "Severus is... well, that's one thing, but Remus lost all his friends last month when he stood up to them for the first time, and he's always been lonely and shy, that's why he's so protective – he doesn't have any other friends except for me."
"Perhaps that's it, then," her father acquiesced, though Lily couldn't quite tell if he'd meant it sincerely or as a platitude. "Either way, even if I don't trust them with you individually, they don't seem to like each other very much, do they."
"More like hate each other," she muttered in agreement.
"Well, then, I can trust them to keep each other in line, if there's a need. And I know how smart you are, Lilyflower; there is no reason you'd do anything stupid at all."
"Lying, though?" she asked, grimacing as two warring feelings rose up at the same time – the powerful yearning for exactly that which her father had suggested, and the disgust at the suggestion of lying coming from someone who had been doing just that for years now, to all of them. "Hasn't there been enough of that in this family?" It was why her question came out less recriminatory than it might have otherwise.
"Yes, there has," Stephen agreed, not even trying to pretend he didn't know what she'd meant. "But the truth is that Monica will not agree to this otherwise; she did not feel very positive about Remus coming for the two weeks in the first place, and she... perhaps shares more of Petunia's opinion of Severus than mine. And sometimes, the lies we tell to protect, either ourselves or others, are important. They aren't right, and they can cost a lot, but so long as you keep that in mind... the world isn't black and white, love. Nothing is good or bad only. You need to remember that when you go into the big wide world."
She really didn't like the lying to her mother, after everything that had happened (she was pretty certain that Clotilde wouldn't mind her bringing Remus with, so she'd immediately decided to tell her the truth – or most of it, anyway). But, the more she thought of it, the more she loved the idea, the escape her father had thought up for her. It was downright seductive, the idea of three weeks away from home instead of two, going swimming with all of her closest friends instead of just the girls, escaping the pain that the word 'home' now brought, at least for a little while.
And getting some distance, too, so that she didn't say something stupid and come to regret it later in life. What her father had offered her, it was... it was huge, it was his life and happiness, and she knew what that meant, knew it because she'd already been offered almost the same thing by Severus, and she'd not been able to handle that either, terrified of messing things up. But at least it meant she knew how important it was to do the right thing.
"Ok. I need to speak with Mum about everything, I want to know her side. And Petunia, too." Actually, she wanted to talk to her sister first. Uncurling from her spot, she stood up and stretched, feeling finally somewhat settled into this new, ugly reality of home. "Sev's going to bring Archimedes' stuff; let him sleep there in the meantime, yeah?" He father nodded, following her lead and standing up, and Lily laid her hand on his forearm gently. "I don't know how to be ok with what you did with that woman, Dad, but I don't want... I don't want us to never be ok again, either, so I'll... I'll try to figure it out. And, thank you, for letting me run away for a bit."
Stephen ran his hand softly over her hair, down to the nape of her neck, and guided her gently closer so that he could place a tender kiss on her forehead.
"Thank you, love, for not thinking me a monster."
"You could never be a monster to me. You're my dad."
She gave him one last sad smile, before walking out in search of her sister, feeling at the same time numb and utterly terrified for what was to come.
"You stayed out with Snape and Lupin," were Petunia's first words when Lily entered her room and closed the door behind herself.
"Yeah. Did you stay here?"
"Of course. This is my house, and my room, and I'm not getting chased out by anything else happening here," her sister confirmed brusquely.
"So, what do you think? About the divorce?"
"I think that Dad is completely out of his mind," Petunia said bluntly. "I knew they were going in this direction – I knew something like this would happen sooner or later – but the affair..." She sniffed, and Lily took a moment to scrutinise her sister's appearance. Though she had as heavy a makeup as was possible to have in these temperatures, Petunia hadn't managed to conceal how swollen her eyelids were, or get rid of all the redness from her eyes.
Sniffing herself, Lily crawled onto Petunia's bed and hugged her. They'd not hugged in years, and it felt awkward, the older girl narrow and bony where Lily last remembered a child's softness, and it took her a moment too long to respond, but she did in the end, wrapping her arms around Lily's waist and squeezing tightly.
All their arguments, all their intolerance, none of it mattered suddenly. All that mattered was that they were there for each other, together in the same circumstances.
"Dad told me about their issues," Lily informed Petunia once they'd finally pulled away from each other. "He said you saw a lot of it?"
"There was a huge row at Christmastime the year you stayed at your school. They'd been out with friends and started fighting when they came back, both half-drunk. I had to scream at them both to get them to stop."
"Oh, T– Petunia, I'm so sorry."
"I bet that's when he did it," Petunia said, viciously tearing a paper tissue to shreds in her lap. "He stayed gone for whole days after that."
Lily's stomach flipped uncomfortably. She didn't want to think about it, didn't want to know the specifics.
"What did you see?" Petunia asked, blue eyes narrowing as they flew up to meet Lily's green. "Yesterday."
"I saw..." Lily licked her lips, bit the lower one lightly. "I saw them walk out together. He... he took her hands and kissed them, and then she... she kissed his cheek, but it was – it was right at the corner of his mouth, where his beard starts. Then she got in a taxi, and he saw me."
"I knew it. I knew they weren't over."
"I don't... I don't know. I don't think he'd need to lie to us about that. I mean, it'd be different if I'd not seen them, but–"
"Of course it makes sense, Lily, don't be stupid. He wants sympathy. He wants to win us to his side."
"But Mum doesn't seem to think their troubles were anything but him having some sort of mid-life crisis," Lily objected. "That's ridiculous, it doesn't fit at all with how serious he says it was."
"And you'd trust him over Mum?"
"I don't know what Mum thinks," Lily repeated, "because she won't say anything but that it's a mid-life crisis. I'll try to talk to her again later, now I can ask her specifics, but I can't trust her about something she's given me absolutely nothing at all about!"
"What would she need to give you?! He had an affair!"
"Two years ago, for two weeks! But they're talking about divorcing now, not two years ago."
"That's if he's telling the truth. Meanwhile you saw him kissing that woman."
"He said it was a, a by-product, a symptom of their problems, that she isn't why he's doing this. He said he and Mum are like strangers living together."
"He's never content with anything," Petunia muttered, shaking her head. "That's his problem, you know. He's never content with what he's got."
Lily shook her head, but didn't say anything to that. She herself didn't think that was it at all, and even if it was, what was wrong with wanting more out of your life with another person, if it was forever? She'd wanted more out of her relationship with Severus, and with Petunia, too, enough to do something about that. If she hadn't, where would she have been now? Forever finished with her best friend, and probably still fighting with her sister without even knowing why.
"T– Petunia, would you be ok here if I left for my seaside holiday a week sooner? Mum suggested that Remus should probably go home, and Sev is going for some special training anyway, and I'd... rather not be here just now."
"Why wouldn't I be all right with that? It's your own life, Lily."
"Yes, but with everything that's happened, and if they decide to really go ahead with it... Dad will have to move out, and there will be talk of splitting stuff and solicitors and all of that ugliness... I can stay, if you want me to."
Petunia studied her for a moment, before apparently coming to a conclusion and decisively shaking her head.
"No, you go if– you go. I'm fine."
"What will you do?" Lily asked guiltily.
"What I've been doing all along – supervise."
Archimedes proved his worth that very evening, when he enthusiastically accepted the letter and flew assuredly westwards, returning mid-day even though he looked about ready to drop into a deep sleep. Clotilde's response to Lily's plea was a key and a hand-drawn map of how to reach the cottage from the main road, along with instructions about opening the wards. Lily had kept the letter bare, mostly, saying only that her parents were talking of separation and that she wanted to escape the house for a little while and whether Clo would mind her inviting Remus for the week, so that she'd not be alone. Of all her friends, Lily felt the least worry about telling Clotilde; the older girl's parents had never even married, which was why she had her mother's French last name though her father was British, so if anyone would understand what it was like to not live with both parents together, it was her. Lily's limited knowledge on the topic suggested that the wizarding world looked extremely unfavourably on divorce, and she wasn't looking forward to sharing the news with her Pure-blood friends. Even in the Muggle world, divorce was not seen as a positive thing in the least – Lily remembered one girl in her primary whose parents had divorced, and she'd been almost a circus attraction because of it. At least Severus and Remus both had acted as normally as Lily could have ever hoped for, and it made all the difference in the world; she didn't think she could have stood it if they'd pitied her for possibly becoming a child of divorcees.
Getting Remus on board was easy enough; he'd already planned to stay another week, and he didn't much care where he'd spend that week. Severus agreed immediately, but needed a day or two to get his mother to sign off on it, since he was already going to be gone from home for three weeks in August. Convincing Lily's mum was the hardest part of it, and Lily wasn't looking forward to the lying, so much as she knew it was necessary, because even if her dad hadn't pointed out that Monica didn't appear to have too many positive feelings about Lily's male friends, she would have known herself that there was no way her mother would be all right with Lily staying anywhere for a whole week alone with two teenaged boys.
She made sure to repeat the sentences a few times in her head first, just because she knew that she was not very good at outright lying. "Clotilde is already there, and she says that she doesn't mind if I come early," she elaborated on the falsehood to her mother after she'd explained what her intentions were. "Mary and Bettina would then come as scheduled in a week's time."
Monica pinched her lips for a moment. "Oh, dear, must you really?"
"I'm sorry, Mum, but I just... I don't know what to do with myself here."
"I don't, either. I never thought I'd be in this situation."
Lily pulled her gently by the hand to the sofa in the sitting room, where they could talk more comfortably.
"Mum, do you want to stay married to Dad?"
"How can you even ask me that?" Monica asked, voice wavering.
"Dad said you've had problems since before I went to Hogwarts."
"That's absolutely not true, Lily. We had a, a rough patch, two years ago, but things got better after that. Everything was fine until this year, things were completely fine. I don't even know where this came from."
"Dad said you tried family therapy."
"That nonsense. Yes, I tried it, because he wouldn't let it go, but it didn't do anything for us. The therapist kept insisting we needed to work on our communication. There is nothing wrong with our communication, Lily, or there wasn't until this."
"But this isn't sudden, Mum, not the way Petunia says it. It's not... I've known something was wrong since the evening I came home."
"When you've been married for twenty-two years, child, even half a year is sudden enough."
Swallowing, Lily tried to imagine what that could feel like, and failed. She could barely imagine herself at twenty-two, let alone spending that much time with another person.
"Dad said, he said you've not talked things through yet."
"No, not yet, though I expect we will in a few more days." Monica huffed, her face showing all of her hurt for a split second. "He said his hand was forced rather more quickly than he'd wanted it to. Apparently, he hadn't meant to involve you and your sister before he'd spoken with me. But he was planning it, oh, he was."
"What will you do? If... if you do decide to split up?" Lily asked her tentatively. "Will you fight it?"
Her mother sniffed, blinking vigorously a few times. "I don't imagine I will. I'd rather it be quick and quiet than drag it out and... it would be quite undignified, wouldn't it. But I am not leaving our home, and you are not, either, until you find your own places. He'll be the one to leave."
"We wouldn't, Mum," Lily promised, taking her hand in both of hers. "Whatever you and Dad decide in the end, Petunia and I will always be here for you, you know that."
"I know, darling. Oh, I do so love you," her mother said, pulling her gently into a hug, which Lily returned gladly.
"I love you too, Mum."
And she wondered, too, at the way her parents seemed to see this mess differently. It made her anxious, unsettled inside, confused about what was true and what wasn't, and that irritated her because she was feeling torn between loyalties to both of them. It felt like she was expected to choose, and Petunia certainly didn't seem to have a problem with that, but it felt like choosing one side would be betraying the other, and Lily didn't want to be betraying anyone. She didn't want to have to choose a side in this, that wasn't fair.
The house was a suffocating place for that weekend. Monica and Stephen barely spoke, and when they did, it was behind closed doors, where Lily, Petunia or Remus couldn't easily overhear them. Petunia shunned their father wholly, choosing either to hover around their mother, stay shut in her own room, or vanish out of the house with her friend Martine Dalloway. Lily shied away from Stephen as well, though she found that she couldn't stomach being around Monica, either, feeling upset every time she saw that façade of forced indifference on her face. All her further attempts at probing her mother for her feelings on the topic of her marriage ended up the same as the first couple, with Monica seemingly shutting her out and trying to change the subject. It was a coping mechanism, no doubt, but for Lily, who had always been a fiery person with emotions so on the surface that she wasn't even sure how to begin trying to hide or dampen them, it felt alienating in the same way that Petunia's anger had always felt alienating, and as a result created a widening distance between mother and daughter that Lily didn't know what to do with. The clarity that her father had offered in regard to his own views on the failing marriage pulled at Lily, though she recoiled from him again when, in the early hours of Sunday, she wandered down to the living room to try and get some sleep with the assistance of the telly sounds droning in the background, and realised that her father was curled up on the recliner in his study where he'd taken to sleeping for the last couple of days, the guest bedroom being already occupied by Remus, speaking softly on the phone to only one possible person, and speaking in tones that left Lily feeling tied into knots.
She doubted him, doubted him on everything every time she spoke with Petunia, who seemed convinced that he was lying to them. She struggled to find ways of comprehending her mother in this whole mess, to connect to her. She analysed each and every moment of the summer hols for more and more clues about how things had fallen apart, clues that had slipped her by because she'd had no frame of reference in which to notice them. She thought of the last few holiday seasons, when she'd come home, when they'd gone on holiday together, trying to see what it was that had pushed her father so far away from them, from her mother into the arms of another woman, even as she herself felt the same thing with her mother's stubborn resistance to sharing her internal life with Lily. She exhausted herself with thoughts that went on and on in endless loops she couldn't stop, until Remus joined her and distracted her until she dozed off on the couch next to him.
She cried, because there was a rock on her chest and it made breathing hard, because there was a knot in her throat that made swallowing difficult, because there were cramps in her stomach that wouldn't let her sleep. She cried, because that was the only relief she found – if she cried herself into exhaustion, at least she could sleep, even if it was only to doze on and off for the whole day.
She remembered those first couple of days after Severus hard hurt her, and how utterly destroyed she'd felt. This was worse, somehow; she'd had a target for all her pain and frustration and despondency then, anger that had pushed her through. It had been easy to lay the blame at Severus' feet, at Potter's and his group's, for what had happened. She'd had the security that even though this one part of her life had broken into pieces, all the rest of them were secure. She had none of those things now. She was angry with the situation in an abstract way, but she couldn't seem to grasp the anger at her father that Petunia had, her sadness pure and all-encompassing enough that it muffled all the rest, helped along by her father's utter openness about the whole thing and her mother's contrasting wall of silence. By Sunday evening, she was choking on it, fleeing to her room when Petunia began pressing the topic of solicitors on their mother, where Remus helped her lose herself in magical theory of charms used on flying brooms, and she could block out the voices discussing the dissolution of her family and home life in clinical, legal terms.
On Monday morning at the crack of dawn, Petunia gave Lily and Remus a lift to the Stoke-on-Trent bus station, from which they were supposedly going to take two different buses in two different directions. The horse-faced girl didn't say much, but she did surprise Lily by initiating a fierce, almost desperate hug that Lily returned in equal measure, and that lasted longer than any hug Lily had shared with anyone in recent years.
"You'll call me back if you need me, won't you, Pet?" she asked her big sister with insistence. "And ring me up even if you just want to talk; you have the number."
"Will you do the same, then, Lilian?"
Smiling at the nickname, one that had died with their childhood closeness, Lily pulled away to meet her sister's eyes and nodded.
"I'm not abandoning you, I promise. I'll phone so often you'll get sick of me."
Petunia raised an eyebrow and shook her head.
"It'd be a change from the usual."
"Think you can handle it?"
"I can handle anything, Lily."
It was a sad sort of truth, too – Petunia had complexes that Lily didn't even know how to begin to unpack and she was so rigid that trying to change her was like trying to bring down the Tower of Babylon with one's fists, but she was tough at her core, a survivor; there was probably nothing that would ever break her, not the way that Lily was learning she herself could be broken. And so much as Lily admired her for it, she didn't feel the envy that she'd once felt over it, not anymore, not since that Saturday when she'd broken over how she'd treated her oldest, closest friend, because now she understood that sometimes, only by breaking the existing could something better be put together afterwards, and Petunia's resilience prevented her from experiencing such a thing.
But it still meant that she was more fragile, and where she'd needed to break if she'd wanted to preserve her connection to Severus, she knew that in this instance, she couldn't let herself fold under pressure, even if it meant running away for a little while. Still, knowing that Petunia wasn't angry with her, it helped get her on her way; it helped her feel less guilty for it.
Petunia left them at the station not long after, and Severus arrived on the bus from Cokeworth less than ten minutes later. They'd figured out the best timing to minimise any chance of someone catching on to their little scheme, and it felt good to see those plans unfolding without any stressful hitches.
"You look..."
"Like crap?" Lily finished for her best friend when he stalled.
"I was going to say exhausted," Severus answered with a frown. "How much sleep have you had?"
"I napped through most of yesterday," she said with a shrug, handing him her wide brimmed hat to reset her ponytail, and turning her thoughts as best she could to the promise of the sea. "Your mum didn't make a fuss?"
"No more than expected; is your owl still at my disposal?" He was being circumspect because of Remus being a passive participant in the conversation; all that he'd been willing to tell in the presence of the other boy was that he had other obligations after this week, and that he needed to organise transportation. Lily agreed that it was the smartest option; she trusted Remus, and there was a case to be made about how confusing he was going to find Severus' behaviour during their seaside holiday once they all got back to Hogwarts and Severus resumed his association with the Junior Death Eaters, but she was not willing to risk Severus' safety on that conviction. Remus could speculate, but without any concrete hints as to the Slytherin's true role in the coming months and years, he would only be able to speculate in generalities.
"Of course; what did you think of the name?" she asked him with the smile she reserved for their inside jokes. Severus' response was to snort and wryly shake his head as he handed her the hat back.
"Figured you'd go for that one. Didn't doubt for a second you might."
"What's with the name?" Remus asked with genuine curiosity.
"If you were to believe Walt Disney, the greatest wizard of all time, Merlin himself, apparently had a comedic, grumpy sidekick pet owl whose name happened to be Archimedes, incidentally one of the greatest scientists of antiquity."
"Ah; The Sword in the Stone."
"So Lily's told you about that vicious monster she used to call a pet?" Severus asked flatly.
"Madam Mim was not a monster. She just had a unique personality."
"Yes, she ate your woollen sweaters and liked Tuney of all people. I'd call that very unique."
"You're just bitter cause she didn't like you as much as she liked me," Lily said airily, and Severus spluttered, while Remus laughed.
"I'm not bitter! Why in seven hells would I be bitter? She scratched me up so badly your dad almost took me to have a tetanus shot. No, our hatred was fully mutual."
"I remember; it was a source of endless amusement for Petunia." Lily sighed. "I did love that crazy cat. And hey, at least Archimedes doesn't seem to hate you."
"The heights he's reached, now that your owl has proclaimed him acceptable company," Remus joined in.
"Of course; anyone smart enough to run away from you is someone whose approval I'll gladly deem worthy," Severus lobbed back.
"Oh, for Merlin's sake, you two," Lily said with a sudden spike of exasperation, rolling her eyes, though there was a strange sense of comfort in the fact that not everything had been changed by the last three days. "You should have told me you wanted to share custody of my pet; I'm sure there's got to be some little toad who'd like both of you. Maybe we should call it Wart; that'd fit just right on all accounts, wouldn't it?"
Chastised (and tripping over each other's words in their haste to reassure her neither saw her as a 'little toad' so much that Lily actually cracked a genuine smile), both Remus and Severus let the little spat go, finally shutting up and following her when she tugged on her suitcase, having spotted the bus they were waiting for.
Lily did her best to leave everything that had happened this summer holiday at the bus door as she climbed in and wound her way onto the bench at the very back. After all, she was going on a seaside holiday, and the best part? The same damn weather that had made the summer insufferable so far was going to ensure that she was going to have three full weeks of sunshine on the beach, with no worry over being cooped up in a house, and with the promise of getting to tease two very self-conscious boys about their pale, skinny chests until they forgot all about obsessing over their feud, followed by some lovely girl time with her closest female friends.
If only she managed to actually not think about her home situation, it was going to be a glorious three weeks.
A/N: 'Wart' is another Sword in the Stone reference - it's the nickname given to Arthur by his adoptive family, and basically the name he's called by throughout the film. The toad is, of course, a reference to the three allowed pet species at Hogwarts, since we already had Madam Mim the Cat, and Archimedes the Owl.
I am curious about everyone's opinions on Lily's home situation - which parent would you support in her current position, what do you think she should do, how do you see Petunia's reaction, can you imagine how this might have gone down in canon!Lily's life, etc? And, as I promised, I'll expound myself a bit more on this whole storyline in the interlude.