Hey guys!
So I'm guessing you all fairly hate me now, which I not only understand but agree with. I kind of hate myself for not having ANY free time EVER. Ahem. But in other news, new chapter is up! Yaaay! I realize it was probably a pretty crappy place to leave off last time, what with the 5th year event and all.
Basically all you need to know is: it's over. Snape called Lily a you-know-what, and she flipped a biscuit. Not for no reason, of course.
So here is the aftermath, and as always I try to connect more of the pieces of the puzzle that is the Lily Evans story together. SO hopefully my story gives you more insight to their thoughts/reason for actions than the original JKR tales. In any event, the italicized lines are always her work, and everything else is straight up mine, or merely drawn from her framework. Enjoy!
All belongs to the all-Great and Powerful Rowling.
Lily spent the remainder of the day locked up in her dorm. Mary, Alice, and Raven slunk into the room soon after she collapsed onto her bed. They exchanged awed glances, until Alice stepped forward and sat on the edge of her bed.
She didn't say anything, just sat. The other two girls tentatively moved forward, Mary sitting on a stool and Raven taking the floor.
"He-he did it." Lily's rib caged surged from the weight of her sobs. "He . . . he called me a-a . . ."
Alice's entire figure clouded over. Her brows drew together dangerously as her eyes lit with a fire of darkness.
"A . . . a Mudblood." Lily drew her pillow into her face as her body wretched. She felt like her heart was splitting. Half of hatred, half of heartbreak.
Her ribs ached – no, her chest. Her heart was squeezing, turning inside of itself. Her best friend, her best friend, her best friend. He did it. It was . . it was over. Betrayal. From both sides.
Alice laid a hand on Lily's back, and then slowly rose. Raven looked up to her from the floor. "Where are you going?"
Alice walked to the door. Still facing it, she turned her head to the side and said, "To kill him."
Raven gave an innocent gasp and Mary choked as Alice reached for the door handle and pried it open.
"No. Don't." Lily's voice was thick. Her throat felt padded and her tongue felt enlarged, filling the whole of her mouth with saliva. With a great deal of physical effort, she drew her weight out of the pillow. Her eyes were swollen, and red. She swallowed, and everything felt a little better. Her tongue size reduced, and her vision came a little more into focus than the previous moment.
Alice looked back, her mouth set in a firm, thin line. "He's given me all the reason I need for an expulsion. I'll send him to St. Mungo's for this."
"Alice, he's not worth it." Lily tore her eyes away from her friend and hid it in the pillow she cuddled. "He wasn't worth any of it," she whispered to herself. But as her friends exchanged glances once more, she knew the words were a lie.
"You swore! You swore to me you'd never use that spell on anyone except for defensive purposes!"
It was night time, and Lily stood facing Severus clad in a nightgown with the Fat Lady looming behind her, arms crossed. When she had entered he had hastily scrambled up from his sitting position. Now he stood opposite of her, lanky hair shining with grease in the torchlight.
"That was a defense!"
"He was letting you go." Lily's green eyes narrowed into slits. They were still slightly puffed, and she resisted the need to rub the sticky feeling out of them. "Those spells are too dangerous Severus. If you hadn't missed . . ."
"Why should you care about him! I'm the one he attacked-"
"I don't!" Lily snarled. "But that doesn't mean I want you to kill him! I don't care if you get expelled anymore, with the amount of things you do with your friends," she spat. "But I don't want Potter dead either."
This is stupid, Lily thought. This isn't even the real reason we're meant to be fighting. They knew why they were both there.
Lily quieted and drew her brows together. A distant memory echoed through her mind.
"Does it make a difference, being Muggle-born?" her innocent voice rang out. They were nine years old again, sitting crossed-legged and facing each other as Lily picked at twigs from the tree they sat under. The sunlight was streaming golden threads across the gentle waves in front of them and through the branches from above. She had felt . . . happy. Curious. These were the days Severus had answered every question Lily produced about the wondrous world of Hogwarts. The times of purity and friendship.
"No. It doesn't make any difference," his youthful, eager voice answered.
Quietly, Lily said, "I once asked you if being Muggle-born made a difference.
"You lied."
Snape remembered the memory; she could tell. His chest rose up and torturous sorrow overtook his face.
"I'm sorry."
Lily looked coolly into his eyes. Those black, liquid eyes which she no longer trusted. "I'm not interested."
Snape's shoulders slouched. "I'm sorry!" he begged.
"Save your breath." She shook her head. It was a good thing Lily had gotten all of the crying out of her system in the previous hours. Now she could be firm and resolved. She folded her arms again.
"I only came out because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here."
"I was," Snape said eagerly. "I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just- "
"Slipped out? There was no pity in Lily's voice. "It's too late. I've made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends –"
Severus glanced down.
"- you see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?"
Sev opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking.
Lily looked down at him in disgust. "I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."
"No – listen, I didn't mean –"
" – to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood Severus," she said in a mock playful voice. Her tone changed.
"Why should I be any different?" Lily green eyes blazed with intensity as she stared at his crumpled state.
He struggled on the verge of speech, looking as if to tell her something important, but she was done listening to his sodden excuses. With a contemptuous look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole.
The next day Lily went into the Hall for breakfast and found Potter sitting with Sirius and the other Marauders, crowded by students – many of them girls – as he recounted the story. A stark brown scar lined his cheek where Snape's curse had hit him. Lily blinked as she looked at his chest, knowing what would have happened if Severus had aimed successfully. For now, at least, Potter's body was whole, of which he was ignorantly blessed.
Lily guessed Potter had asked Madame Pomphrey to leave the mark on his face instead of healing it completely. It would be just the kind of stunt he would pull in order to showcase his injury and get the attention he vied for. Well, his crave certainly seemed to be tended to, as the students clung to his every word.
He sat on the table above the onlookers and motioned with his arms, saying, " – and then old Snivellus went for his wand, but I was too fast for him! Boom! Just like that he sprawls on the ground again."
"Yeah and if he was too fast for him, then how'd Potter get that cut?" Derik's low head muttered to Longbottom some ways down the table. The two were buried in their porridge and Frank chuckled into his bowl, shoveling another bite into his mouth.
Potter sat up a little straighter and turned his head toward the two, his hair sticking up in the back with a cowlick so sharp it could prove dangerous. "Well if you must know Welmount, Snivellus managed to crawl his crooked nose over to his wand while I was busy chatting up a certain redhead." He shot Derik a self-content smirk. Derik turned pink and grumbled something incoherent into his breakfast bowl.
"AHEM," Lily cleared her throat from behind. Potter whipped around as his wand hand flew to his hair. He successfully managed to hook the wood underneath his glasses and dismount them off his face. The surrounding students laughed as he floundered about, searching the table like a gapping fish.
Remus raised a lazy hand from behind his newspaper and handed Potter his rectangle spectacles. Potter hastily replaced them and grinned down at Lily. "Ah, right – ahem. Morning, Evans."
Lily glared at him.
"Stop spreading rubbish and get out of the way Potter, you're clogging the walkway with your fantasy stories." Her hair was a mess and her pale, translucent skin highlighted the veins running under her face. She had a headache from lack of sleep and her sour mood started the day with a frown.
"Can I help it if people are naturally drawn to me? You're here, aren't you?" he puffed out his chest and looked down to her with a crooked smile.
Lily had hardly gotten any sleep as she recalled the events in her mind a hundred times, going over every aspect of the situation. Every miniscule detail and transaction which had occurred leading up to the event. Starting from their youthful meeting – now a mixture of treacherous bittersweet feelings – to the dangling of his feet under the birch tree.
Her head swam, her tongue tasted sour, and her body was stiff and drained, every movement had to be made gingerly and with careful concentration.
In other words, this was not the moment for him to be making jokes.
"You can help that fat mouth of yours stay shut. Put some food in there like the rest of us are trying to do. I'm a prefect and I'll get Dumbledore if I must. Now move."
Potter sighed. He turned back to the group saying, "Sorry mates, show's over. Evans here is feeling a little cranky."
Lily shot him a fiery glare, her crusty eyes tight with swelling. As students began to disperse and broke into groups of twos and threes as they sat at their appropriate House tables, Potter sobered up and looked over Lily's figure with genuine concern.
"And the next time you mess up your hair I suggest you try sticking to the old fashioned way and get on a broom. You'll save some spectacles that way." Lily walked over to the end of the table, joining her three friends as they ate. She missed Potter satisfied smile as he turned as well.
"Would you just talk to me?" Severus pleaded. It was after their Potions class - a rather easy lesson due to the finishing of O. - and Lily had stayed behind to finish cleaning her spilled marlin fish bones. Snape had seen the opportunity and lingered. Slughorn had the decency to make himself scarce when he saw the two and had disappeared into his room. Every staff member and student knew what had occurred between the former friends.
"That would be a no." Lily kept herself bent over the desk, wiping the shard bits of bone into their container.
"Tell me how I can make it up to you!"
"We've been through this Snape. You can't." She pricked herself with a sharp bone and gave a cry of surprise and pain. Lily grunted as her annoyance built and her tolerance with Snape lessened.
"Look, I'll never say it again – I'll even spend more time with you and less with my friends! That's what you've always wanted, right?"
Lily's eyes flitted to him.
"I'll do anything, Lily."
The offer was tempting. So tempting, it almost hurt to think about.
But as Lily closed the lid and walked slowly to the ingredients cabinet, her back to him, she remembered why the offer hurt so much. They'd already been down that road, and Lily had come to accept that Severus would never truly change. There was no chance of it, not in her lifetime.
Her skirt twirled out as she spun around to face him, arms folded and eyebrow raised. "What about the note for Racole?"
Severus stumbled and screwed up his face, apparently not expecting the question. "What about it? Look, I'm sorry for that too."
"And yet you claim you'll never call me that again when it's been done twice. Once on paper, the other to my face. How am I supposed to trust you the next time your friends pressure you into hurting my feelings? I can't. I don't anymore, I-"
"What are you talking about? I never called you a-a that with Racole!"
Lily glared dangerously as a warning for his lies. "Are you telling me, that you didn't write the note for Racole to 'gain pity from the Mudblood'? It was your handwriting Severus, I'd recognize it anywhere. Having it slip out is bad enough, but deliberately writing it down is comp-"
"That wasn't for you," Snape sneered. He reverted back to the person who spent his time impressing Death Eaters. "How was I supposed to know you'd be there? I only found out after, when that failure Racole turned up with antlers on his head. It was for that stupid moon-loving prefect of yours, who you obviously don't mind spending hours upon hours talking with."
Lily paused. "Remus?" How much did Snape know? Had Melvin overheard their conversation? Had he been following them the whole time without their knowledge? "What's he got to do with it?" There was no way he had heard them talk about Remus's condition, was there?
She had to keep Snape talking long enough to find out and protect Lupin's secret.
"He's a prefect. He's supposed to protect innocent bystanders," Snape said bitterly. "Fat lot of good that did Racole, or me for that matter. The bloke just stood there the whole time and let boy-wonder Potter get away with everything in his whole stinking life! How'd he even get that title?" he muttered to himself.
Lily cleared her head with a little shake.
"But, Remus isn't a muggleborn. So why write the note?"
Severus looked up. "He's not? But all that rubbish about his mum being sick, and never a mention of St. Mungos-"
"He's half," Lily interrupted. "Remus's dad was a wizard, same as us. He upset Grey- the wrong people. And now he's dead. So you can shut up about him being a Mudblood too."
"Look. I didn't know, alright? Lily-" She turned her head away from him. "I'm just sorry, okay?"
Lily ran her teeth together in thought. Still not facing him, she whispered, "Why should I believe you?"
"Because we're friends."
Lily gave a quiet shake of her head. "You're wrong Sev," she whispered. "We were friends.
Ta-da! What'd you think? Feedback, please!