AN: And another chapter, another month. I hope you're as safe as you can be. Take care and have fun reading!
oooOOooo
Fired
The shop looked great. Lily turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. The shelves were still empty, but they were arranged in a way that would make it easy to access them, and for a large group of people to flow easily around them towards the counter at the side where the people would pay. There were shelves for potion phials, small railings with nice carvings lining them, shelves that were partitioned in a way that would allow tins and storage glasses to be placed, shelves with pegs that could display dried plants in bundles. Everything was done in a wood that was neither too dark nor too light. Paired with the magelights under the ceiling – decorated with stucco elements imitating different plants – and the big windows, it made for a very nice lighting situation.
"What do you think?" Severus had followed her from the backrooms, which encompassed storage and a potions laboratory, as well as an office and a breakroom for the staff, into the front of the shop, answering questions.
"It's wonderful." Lily said from the bottom of her heart. "When will you get the first stock? And have you already decided on an opening day?"
"The first stock of ingredients and some prepared wares – like candles, chalk for drawing which I plan to soak in different potions, and some of the more well-known beauty products –- will be arriving over the next week. I can't open before I have some staff." Severus looked equal parts nervous and excited.
"As you plan to brew all of the potions to be sold, and expect a lot of people you will need to cater to if you want to leave a good impression right off the start, you can't be in the front selling and talking to customers." Lily nodded, walking over to the window where someone had painstakingly painted the name of the shop in an elaborate fond:
Prince's Potions
For your everyday needs
The edges were decorated in several colours, depicting some stylized vines as well as small symbols Lily had learned to associate with traditional protective rituals. She had seen those edged into some old objects Tom had displayed in his showcases before.
"Will you be conducting the interviews?" Lily turned back to her friend, very happy for him. Getting this chance was a big opportunity for him. She was sure that, as long as he didn't have to deal directly with his customers too much, this was bound to be a success.
"Parts of them. I'll be assessing their competence in potions. If they don't know enough about potions, they can hardly recommend something appropriate to the customers." He shrugged, one of his hands sliding along the nearest shelf. "Lord Malfoy has hired someone who knows a lot about bookkeeping, and will also screen the applicants in a first step. He said something about an appearance that people associate with seriousness, general friendliness, and a certain resistance to stress. I guess they need to be able to stay polite in the face of dunderheads."
Lily snorted. "And Tom did set the wards around here?" She was pretty sure he had said something about the fact that he had already done so. He had worked on the warding scheme for several evenings and had asked her for her opinion once he was pretty sure he was finished.
"Yes, he has." Severus had finally managed to adapt to her calling Tom by his name, no longer flinching every time they talked about him. "The only spellwork that still needs to be done is enchantments on the shelves here out front and in the storage room."
"Do you have an enchanter in mind for that?" She frowned. "Couldn't you have bought some shelves that were already enchanted?"
He nodded and walked up to her, looking out of the window watching the people in the Alley walking by. "I could have, yes. They would have been pretty standard, not geared towards the needs of this shop at all. Some of the enchantments used on those shelves tend not to react well to some of the most common ritual potions. Beside that, all options I inspected were of poor quality. Either in the woodworking, or in the enchantments." He hummed, and then threw a cheeky grin in her direction. "I had rather hoped to give the contract to a young upcoming enchantress. Her work is exemplary and I know she has excellent resources to cater to the unique needs I have for the range of products to be sold here."
Lily gave him an answering grin. "Those are a lot of shelves, which probably all need different enchantments. Something to keep things from spoiling in the storeroom, some anti-theft measures out here? Something to keep dust and pests away? Some small wards to keep things from falling down? What else?"
"That's already a pretty extensive list. I'm not sure I can pay for that many complicated enchantments on all of the shelves." Severus grinned all-out now, turning back to survey the shop as if he were a king assessing his kingdom. Or maybe a Prince.
Which left the question of what had been necessary to secure the rights to use that old family's name for the shop.
"So shall I create some preliminary options with costs to be expected?" Lily hadn't had any job this big before. She had started researching more complex, combined enchantments, even practised on some trunks. The biggest, most complex items she had tried so far had been a pair of vanishing cabinets. And those had only been big enough to send small objects like letters back and forth. Doing the same for a set that humans would use felt too dangerous.
"That would be appreciated. If possible, see if you can combine a minimum setup, anti-theft, deterrents for pests and dust, and possible upgrades, per shelf. There is a budget I need to stay within. Depending on the price of the products on a specific shelf I might want more protective measures…" He shock his head, chuckling. "There is a lot to do and plan when opening a shop. I never would have thought this would lie in my future."
Lily knew what he wanted to say. "Back in fifth year, if someone had told me that I would create my own small business of enchanting I wouldn't have believed it. I was very focused on getting into charms development."
"There are many paths to walk, and we don't know where Magic will take us." Severus sounded reverent in a way she wasn't used to, but remembering his scolding over her not respecting the religious beliefs of others kept her from commenting. She had been working on it, but while she had managed not to comment on the small ritual of worshipping Magic at a small altar that Tom was doing every day that she had walked in on a few times, Severus had always hidden this side of himself from her. Accepting that Severus was different than she had believed was harder than learning about Tom and what he believed in.
She understood the sentiment behind that sentence, regardless of the religious phrasing. "I don't think it would be healthy for us to know where we will be, and how we will end up there, in a few years. Being able to make choices of our own is important."
Severus nodded. "There are a lot of stories all around that tell us how people relying on foretold futures suffer. Better to be surprised than to try to avoid something and causing it in the first place."
They were about to return to the back rooms to take another look at the storeroom and the laboratory so Lily could create a better proposal for useful enchantments and better judge how much work it would be, when they noticed a commotion in the Alley right in front of the door of the shop. So they turned around and walked back to see what was happening. Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. She had lived by that credo for a long time, if there was something to investigate and no obvious risk, she would investigate.
Severus probably was concerned that the altercation could possibly negatively impact the opening of his shop.
The first thing they noticed were several individuals in the colourful robes of the Auror corps. Was someone being arrested? Were they searching for someone?
After a moment Lily realized that the Aurors were not in a shouting match with a civilian, but with each other.
"Is that Black?" Severus asked, squinting at the figures.
Lily took a closer look at the one Severus had pointed out. The silhouette would match a wizard, and would also match Sirius. The hair was certainly dark and unruly enough. But the figure's back was turned towards the shop, so she couldn't really be sure. "It could be."
"The other one is certainly Senior Auror Proudfoot," Severus said, probably knowing him from Death Eater meetings. And Lily agreed. She was actually sure about that too. He had a rather distinct jaw, and the insignia on his robes indicated that he was a Senior Auror. There were not many of those. On top of that, she had met the man during the attack on the Bakery just a few houses over.
"That's very curious," Severus mused, and Lily nodded in agreement. Aurors weren't known for shouting at each other where others could see.
Voices got louder and louder, and finally, just as Lily had contemplated leaving the shop to get a better view of the whole thing, the wizard who had stood with his back to the shop window, turned throwing his hands up in the air, as if exasperated.
"That is Black." Severus stated drily. "He would get in a shouting match with a superior."
There was nothing to argue with that. "True. It's very like him. But what are they shouting about?"
"How should I know?"
Before Lily could ask Severus to make a guess, spellfire lit the room in colours.
"Shit!" That was a lot more serious than Lily would have guessed. Severus jumped into action, not running towards the front door and therefore the action, but in the opposite direction. Deciding that caution was the better part of valour, Lily followed him, walking mostly backwards. Sirius had taken cover behind a stall that just stood there in the street – one of the smaller sellers who couldn't or wouldn't spend the money to rent or buy a shop – and was shooting stunners towards his colleagues, who had taken cover on the other side of the street. When she almost fell to the floor because her foot had caught on the edge of a shelf, she stopped looking back. The action that she would have been able to see wasn't all that interesting. Certainly not interesting enough to risk falling and breaking something.
"Severus, what are you doing?" He was kneeling behind the counter, at a hatch in the floor she hadn't noticed before.
"Activating the stronger wards," he answered, waving his wand over the small cut in his left hand, healing it. "I don't want to risk them getting in here or some stray spell doing damage to the shop. Lord Malfoy is a generous man, but I don't want to have to ask for a budget expansion because Black has managed to get into a violent altercation in front of my shop." Severus stood and huffed. "Why does he always manage to get me into trouble?"
Lily chuckled. "I fear that might be a natural talent. It's unlikely that he already knows that this will be your shop once it opens, so he hardly could have planned any of this."
"He might have planned to escape down Knockturn," Severus pointed out as Black darted out of his hiding spot and ran for it in direction of the disreputable street.
"Or he's winging it." It was strange how they were standing here watching a fight, almost like an action movie, but real. Being behind strong wards certainly helped to detached her from the situation.
"Possible." And there they stood until the Aurors had followed the fleeing Sirius and left their field of view.
"Do you have tea, Severus?" She was curious, there was no doubt about that, but following them on a wild goose chase would be very stupid.
Her friend turned to her, blinking slowly. "You want to drink tea?"
"Yes." She gave him a look for sounding surprised. "You do have some, don't you?"
"I do have tea, in the break room. Don't you want to see what this was all about?" Severus asked, waving his hand vaguely in direction of the street.
"Oh, I do very much want to know what that was about. And I fully intent to ask Tom about what he knows when I get home. No reason to risk injury when I can simply ask."
"As baffled as I am, I guess being a parent does change priorities. Please follow me, and I'll make us some tea. And now that you brought him up, how is your relationship developing?"
"Why do you sound as if we are an interesting potions experiment?" She followed him back into the break room, and settled in a chair at the table, while Severus walked over to the stove and placed a tea kettle over a flame.
"If I let myself think about who you are in a relationship with, I feel my ability to formulate sentences leaving me." He took down a container from a shelf, opening it, to spoon some of the dry tea leaves into the robust but nice teapot. "As a good friend, I want to be able to talk with you about relationships, so I do need to put his identity to the side as much as I can."
That was so very much the Severus she knew that Lily smiled, folding her hands on top of the table. "I'll try to be aware that you're ignoring a big part of what makes the whole thing so much more complicated when asking for advice then."
"I do want to know, so stop avoiding the question."
With a laugh, Lily complied with his request and started to tell him how her relationship with Tom was developing. From the casual touches when they moved close to each other in passing, shoulders, hands, arms, over the long talks they had almost every evening while sitting in front of the fire, to the small short kisses they had shared each evening.
"We didn't have enough time to snog, like we did after our date, and I fear it will be a while until we both have time to go on a date again, but I think it's going nicely."
"It sounds like it." By the time they had gotten that far, the teapot was empty.
"How is your relationship with Regulus?" As far as Lily knew, her friend was still hiding his budding relationship with the younger Black brother, especially from the Black family.
"If you want to know if we have come to a decision, the answer is no."
A chiming sound rang through the whole shop, interrupting Severus in his explanation, causing him to frown.
"Someone is at the wards?" It was a reasonable assumption, but it could be an alarm that a potion had reached a state that needed intervention of some kind. There were a lot of potions that needed to rest a specific amount of time, or steep, or cool down to a specific temperature. This was a potions shop.
"Yes, the wards were tripped." With an impressive billowing of his robes, Severus stormed out of the room, towards the front door. The place where the wards were calling him to. Lily had enough experience with the wards around Potter Manor that she knew how much information someone tied into the wards would get from them.
She was a few steps behind Severus and got a good look at a slender young wizard, with carefully styled, shoulderlong hair who was standing right at the door, looking frantic. His features were very familiar and there was no doubt that this man was the brother of Sirius Black, the one that had been here only a few hours before.
Severus opened the door holding his hand out, probably breaking the ward line and pulled Regulus into the shop, giving the other a shy smile.
"My brother was fired! He's no longer an Auror. He's a wanted man!" That did explain what had happened in the Alley. Lily cast a summoning charm for her bag – it was too warm for a cape or cloak – and put the strap over her shoulder.
She cleared her throat, startling the two wizards who clearly were enamoured with each other, holding hands, so they turned to her. "I'll write up a proposal for enchanting your shelving and send it to you by the weekend, Severus. I'm expected at home, and I'm very interested in asking my own sources a few questions about that baffling display in front of the shop. Have fun, you two!" And before Severus could voice any complains or make any demands that she keep this quiet, or for Regulus to get his wits back to let go of Severus' hands, she was out of the shop and walking down the Alley towards the Leaky Cauldron with a spring in her step.
oooOOooo
It was easy to be at the Ministry almost every day, now that Lucius was the Minister. Barty – junior, not senior – was the Minister's assistant, and Abraxas was there almost every day as well. Tom would meet up with Abraxas, or would arrive with him, going down to the Office of Inheritance to ask about the verification process of his claim, or simply being around to talk to different people working there.
With Lily over at Severus' shop, and Harry with the Malfoys in a kind of improvised daycare centre, Tom had the whole morning to network and gather intelligence. It was funny how many people inside the Ministry any day were only there to network. Maybe a third of the people he could see were neither working in the building, nor there for some errand or other. He was outside the DMLE offices when he heard people shouting. Or rather one person shouting. "How can you do that?! Everyone does something like that from time to time! It's basically expected! But you want to put me on probation for that?"
Tom stopped, just as many others around, and carefully walked closer. He noted with some amusement that the group of people who had heard the start of this was quickly broken into two: those that wanted to avoid any problems and retreated, walking as fast as possible without looking like they were running, and those curious enough to drift carefully closer, pretending to be going about their business.
Tom used his guise as the wizard learning the ways of the Ministry to walk closer without pretence.
"What if I let a drunk wizard who didn't pay his tab completely, go? What's the matter with that? I know for a fact Dawlish has done the same?" That clearly was a wizard, and someone was trying to calm him down, judging by the much quieter murmur Tom couldn't really hear.
"I have always known that there are double standards at work here! I want to talk with Bartemius Crouch! I'm being targeted." He sounded like an entitled pureblood who never would have thought to be the target of the rampant favouritism and had learned that he had been wrong. Funny how people reacted when they suddenly lost their position of privilege.
Tom rounded the pillar at one edge of the big entryway into the open-floor-plan office and immediately spotted the source of the commotion. There in the middle of the little cubicles stood Sirius Black, dishevelled, robes open, showing his leather trousers and muggle t-shirt, shouting at Senior Auror Proudfoot, who tried to stay calm.
All around, the Aurors currently not on active duty were watching. Some had stood up in their cubicles, others where standing in a loose circle around Black and Thomas, son of Pericles Proudfoot. Scattered among the Aurors in their distinctive robes were civilians of different ages. Probably people wanting to make complaints about something, or some petty thieves.
"Silence!" It seemed as if Thomas had had enough. "Black! You have done more than is reasonable to bend and break the guidelines you have sworn to uphold. You are on probation. If you don't change your conduct, I'll bring all allegations to the attention of the head of our department." The man had an impressive glower. Somehow Tom felt he should have placed a bet that Sirius Black would be the first Auror loyal to the Order who would manage to make enough legitimate errors to be written up and put on probation.
The way this was developing, he might even get himself fired here and now.
"No! I will not accept this!" Well, and wasn't that the epitome of Gryffindor foolishness? Tom felt reluctantly amused and kept watching. For one he wanted to know how this would develop, and for another, he was very sure that Lily would want to know all the details once she even got a hint of this happening.
Suddenly Black, the older, had his wand in his hand and was shooting stunners and what looked like prank spells randomly into the people standing between himself and his two routes to escape. One would lead past Tom and a few other onlookers and the other towards the room where the secured floo was located. Not waiting to see which way Black would decide to run, Tom erected a quick shield over the entrance, or exit, that would block anyone from crossing the threshold. By attacking people in the Ministry, Black basically had dug himself a hole too deep to get out of without serious help. No pun intended.
And so Tom watched Black first running towards the exit he had blocked, before he turned in a sharp curve and took a roundabout way towards the floo. At least that was a trackable way to travel. If someone knew what they were doing, vanishing in the corridors, rooms, and stairwells of the Ministry was possible.
A few of the Aurors, Proudfoot among them, followed Black and once they were most certainly gone, Tom dropped his shield and got up from his crouch. That had certainly been more interesting than he had anticipated the day to be while the three of them had had breakfast that morning. "Is anyone hurt?" Tom asked, letting his gaze wander over the few others who hadn't made a run for it once spells had started to fly.
"No." "I don't think so." "I'm fine." Several people answered, carefully checking themselves and their neighbours over, and slowly leaving the scene, going back to whatever they had been doing before they all had been drawn here.
The human instinct to watch when something bad happened to someone else was interesting and kind of morbid.
"Mr. Riddle." Auror Dawlish stepped up to where Tom was still standing in the entrance, contemplating what to do next. "Can I help you with anything?"
There was caution in his eyes, but his voice and demeanour didn't show any of the deference the young man – only a little older than Lily, or Black – usually displayed when in Tom's presence.
"No, I didn't intend to visit the Auror office today. I was on my way up to the Minister's office, to greet my friend Abraxas, when I heard shouting and came over to see if I could help." And he had.
"Thanks for blocking this exit then, Mr. Riddle." It was strange to be called Riddle again, just like in school, and not exactly the same at once.
"It was my pleasure." He made brief eye contact with his follower, quickly concentrating to enter the man's mind, conveying the hint that he wished to be kept up to date on the developments. "I'll be on my way then."
Doing exactly as he had said he would, Tom continued on his way towards the Minister's office, entering the outer office, bypassing the waiting area, which was mostly empty anyway, where Barty was sorting through some paperwork.
"Is the Minister in? And Lord Malfoy? I wanted to speak with the latter." And there again was the respect and deference in the eyes of his followers, not visible in the way he held himself or spoke. Being a powerful player in the shadows had unexpected perks to it.
"They are both in the office, Mr. Riddle. I'll let them know that you're here."
Where in a muggle office might be an intercom for a secretary to inform the important person in the other room of visitors, the magical world had a less obtrusive object that looked similar to a small slate, just like the one Tom used to learn his letters.
Barty spoke to a small piece of chalk, "Mr. Riddle is here to see Lord Malfoy," which then wrote down what had been said, transferring the message to a speaking device in the other room.
Tom waited patiently, looking around the room with a large number of paintings lining the walls – all of past Ministers, and landscapes from all around the isles – as well as a few shelves and cabinets displaying presents that had been given to the Minister of Magic by foreign dignities. He wished he could study them more closely, or those that he knew were stored away in some storage room, but they were layered in wards for preservation and protection, and, while interesting, not worth the risk.
The door to the Minister's office opened, and Tom got a glimpse of a tired-looking Lucius behind that large and imposing desk as Abraxas stepped out. The door was closed again, and Tom felt glad that he had chosen not to be the Minister after all. It was too much paper shuffling for his taste. Too many administrative tasks, even though the Minister could delegate a lot, he couldn't delegate everything, foremost being the delegating itself.
"Tom! There you are!" The blond wizard opened his arms in a gesture of familiarity. "I thought you wanted to be here earlier."
Tom nodded and took the last step to greet his friend with a confident handshake, that consisted of them both grasping their forearms and not their hands. Another gesture that implied a close relationship of allies, almost like family. "I got distracted by a shouting match down by the Aurors." He shook his head in incredulity. "Black, Sirius Orion, seems to have earned a scolding and didn't take it well. Spells were exchanged and Black ran off in a huff. I expect that he'll either be in a cell this evening, or on the run."
"What an unexpected development." Abraxas answered, his eyes burning with curiosity. "Do we want to go out then to get a coffee and some cake or pastries?"
"I would very much like that."
They turned and walked out of the Minister's offices, smiling, talking easily and animatedly, clearly conveying to everyone who they passed that Tom Riddle was close with the Malfoys and therefore not someone that could be just passed over. Talking about Harry also was adding fuel to the stories about his being the father, the actual biological father, to the Potter heir. The acceptance of the convenient potion in the wider population really was working in their favour.
It was a time-intensive way to gain a name for himself, but laying a solid foundation like this, one interaction at a time, would last much longer than any of his terror acts as Lord Voldemort could ever have hoped for. He certainly would remain a boogeyman under that name, but without a steady stream of similar acts, the stories would grow and leave his control, ending with their being nothing but a mere fairytale told to children to make them behave.
Eating some place public with Abraxas wasn't exactly a hardship.
It was late afternoon, or early evening, when Tom returned home to find Lily being pinned between a sleeping Harry and the loveseat, reading a book on enchantments to repel pests. The book was charmed to glow slightly, which kept the room dark enough that Harry wouldn't wake.
"Hello," Tom greeted just loud enough to catch her attention. "Severus asked you to enchant the shelves in his shop then?"
Her green eyes narrowed. "Did you order him to do that?"
He chuckled at her suspicious-sounding voice and held up his hands, palms facing her. "No, it was his idea. He brought it up and had a lot of arguments prepared to convince Abraxas and me to hire you. It seems he thought that we would insist on an older enchanter, someone with a Mastery."
Lily rolled her eyes, huffed, and returned to her book. "It certainly is an interesting task. Especially to select the right and most effective combination of enchantments. He has a fixed budget and I don't want to set my price too low. Did you ever realise how hard it is to calculate a reasonable price for a service?"
Tom settled down on the floor right next to the loveseat, placing one hand right next to Lily's, feeling contentment filling him. "Borgin didn't have any complicated process. He simply multiplied the amount he had paid for an object by five, and then added fixed amounts for each attribute. Made from gold, has gems, is a dark object, is illegal… you get the idea. Only for truly exceptional items did he use something more elaborate."
Lily closed the book and handed it to Tom, who placed it on the table. "That sounds like he had a lot of experience with the prices he could set and still sell. I'm not doubting your intelligence, but it looks as if this might have been a hidden effort that a much younger you simply couldn't spot."
Tom blinked slowly. He had never even considered that. It had always seemed very random. "I think you are correct. He does know his artefacts, illegal objects, and jewellery. I guess it's likely that there was a lot more thought in those prices than I realised back then. He even might have included a margin to allow for haggling. He never seemed dissatisfied, even when a customer managed to get a substantial discount." Lily made him think about a lot of things from his past. How odd that he still had so much to learn. He had always assumed that he knew pretty much all there was to know about reading people, to identify their motives.
"Well, I don't have that kind of experience yet. I'm between a rock and a hard place, or at least I feel as if I am. Can't really get too low in my price, because Severus would feel insulted. At the same time I don't want to go too high, because I would feel like I was taking advantage of a friend." She huffed.
Tom interlinked their fingers again. "How about this: You set a price, a reasonable one, for your time. Add onto that the price for all the material you will need. Metals, a fraction of what you paid for the tools you will need, cleaning agents… you get the idea. You certainly know better than me exactly what you will need once you have decided on a combination. Then add something for taxes. Then see how you feel." He shrugged.
"Thanks, that sounds like a plan." She hummed and turned her head on the armrest so she could lock her eyes with Tom's. "We got to test the wards today."
"How?" Why would Severus have to test the wards? Then he had an idea. "Black was in Diagon?"
She nodded, a small smirk playing along her lips. "He was having a shouting match, and then ran down Knockturn."
They exchanged their parts of the story until the two of them had a complete picture of what had happened until Black had run off into the warren of streets and alleyways that was called Knockturn Alley.
"Where do you think he is now?" Lily asked, a hint of melancholy in her voice.
Tom hummed. "Either still running, hiding with an Order member, or trying to leave Britain." He didn't need to explain to her that he would have been informed if the man had been caught. "How familiar is he with muggle ways of travel?"
He placed his head on her thigh and heard her sigh before she answered. "He knows how to get around. Because of his animosity with his family, he was really eager to learn whatever he could. At times it's been rather strange, between how he was bothering me for answers, and how delighted he was when he had managed to take the bus somewhere. If he tries to travel to the continent by muggle means, he can manage that."
"And because he has magic he wouldn't even need money, or much finesse to cover his tracks." As an Auror he should be able to cast a passable confundus which usually was enough to convince a muggle that they had already been paid, or were seeing something or someone else.
"Can you help me take Harry to bed?" It seemed as if they were finished with this topic.
Tom got up from the floor, getting out his wand and cast a healer's charm intended to levitate a body. He had learned that it was one of the best ways to move a sleeping Harry without waking him. "How do you want to end the day?" Tom just had to ask. They had shared casual touches, kisses even, but the pace wasn't fast enough for his libido. But he stood by his plan to let Lily set the pace. She was a Gryffindor, she wouldn't wait to be conquered, or appreciate being pressured until she caved in. The last was what James Potter had done, and the first wasn't in her nature. While she seemed cautious where they were concerned, she was bold enough that he could rely on her making the first move. Which wouldn't be compromised by him giving her openings as well as opportunities. So he continued to do so.
"Something calm. Reading maybe? I still have to do research into why Severus was so explicit about normal enchanters not being able to provide what he needed and me having excellent resources. I guess some standard enchantments compromise the special ritual potions and ingredients somehow?"
They walked down the hallway towards Lily's and Harry's rooms, the small boy floating before them, Tom checking on his altar when they walked past it.
"There certainly are enchantments that can be a problem that are standard in almost all shop applications. There are alternatives, but they do require more work, which is why they fell out of favour once the traditions requiring them fell out of favour as well."
"I guess you do have books on those alternatives?" Lily wanted to know, opening the door into her rooms, so that Tom could float Harry through it.
"I do. They even include an explanation of why the others are bad, and how exactly the interference works, how the enchantments described are different. And it is in modern enough English." He smirked, fondly remembering some temper tandrums Lily had had over a few especially complicated translations in his old manuscripts, letters, and documents.
She send him a glare, but its effectiveness was severely diminished by her smile. "Will you let me borrow it?"
"Certainly." There was no reason for him not to. Giving her information had worked rather well for him. She tended to ask questions and not take things said by authority figures as gospel.
In fact, her adherence to the scientific method, while it had confused him at times, had led her to cross-reference and investigate, helping him to find even better arguments for his cause.
They tucked Harry into bed, spelling a night light into being, and left the room again. Tom spotted the snake they had changed a while ago, and hissed a greeting to her, which she answered. Harry had been much happier now that she didn't ignore him any longer. On top of that, the task in and of itself had been rather fun, if complicated.
"Will you fetch those books and one for you to read? I would love to spend the rest of the evening with you, reading, snuggled together."
He would never admit that snuggling was something he liked to do, a lot, but he did and eagerly went to gather the books and return to Lily's side, to read an interesting book – fiction for a change – and snuggled together on a love seat spelled to be just big enough so that it was a lot less likely that he would fall off the side.
This certainly was a big step in the right direction in his eyes.
oooOOooo
AN: Writing conversations between Severus and Lily is fun. A lot of fun. And now I'm off to write more chapters!
First published 14th of May 2021
next chapter scheduled for the 11thof June 2021
Thanks to Jordre and Jake for helping to improve my spelling!