His Greatest Wish, by AndromedaMarine
Departure into Summer
Exams and June had come with surprising swiftness, news of the war coming with it on a daily basis. Voldemort himself had shown up in battle against ten Aurors in late May, killed three and injured the rest, including Mad-Eye Moody. Death Eaters were appearing in the Ministry every couple weeks, wreaking havoc in Voldemort's name, and Disapparating before Aurors could close in. The Wizarding world had been thrown into a state of panic that even Dumbledore couldn't control at Hogwarts: thirteen students were pulled out by the end of May.
At the beginning of June, Lily suggested to their friends that they have a name for themselves. Sev had thought this would happen eventually, since three of the Marauders were now Potter-less. "How about the Circle of Seven?" Lily had asked, going on to cite the magical properties of the number seven, and how cool was that. Sev laughed at her momentarily but they ended up agreeing enthusiastically, becoming the Circle of Seven on June first.
At breakfast on the morning of June thirtieth, 1972, the day they would head back to their families for the two months of summer, Severus felt a prickle go down his spine. He looked up at the High Table, immediately meeting Albus Dumbledore's eyes, and instantly Severus's mind was as guarded as it had been in Voldemort's presence; it was almost without thinking that he forced all the old memories behind his shield. The sparkling blue gaze held power and strength even in the immense distance of across the Great Hall...but the moment he threw up his walls he knew that Dumbledore suspected...
A twelve year old could not know Occlumency.
A twelve year old could not have memories of dying.
A twelve year old could not have killed a very alive Albus Dumbledore.
But this twelve year old did and had. And as those three thoughts shot in rapid succession across the front of Sev's mind, he realized how careless he had been by meeting the Headmaster's gaze. How careless, to have, however inadvertently, let Dumbledore in on his secrets.
His heart hammered wildly against his chest, trying to break free and flee the Hogwarts grounds—as long as he remained here he was in danger of being cornered by Dumbledore, in danger of losing the one thing that protected him from the war: the secret of his past life. He did not look up to the High Table again, even when they exited the Great Hall to make for Hogsmeade. Sev kept his face down and his eyes guarded, barely acknowledging it when the Head Boy and Girl wished him good luck (as if he needed it) in the rest of his years at the school.
The Hogwarts Express pulled away from Hogsmeade Station and Sev let out a long-held sigh of relief. After that morning's slipup with Dumbledore he could breathe easy, knowing he had the summer before he must face the wizened Headmaster. The Circle of Seven had a compartment entirely to itself; Frank, Sirius, Peter, and Remus sat on one bench and Lily, Alice and Sev sat on the other. After a while Frank pulled a pack of Exploding Snap from his pocket and set it up, and for several hours the compartment smelled of lingering sulfur from the smoke.
Sev still wore his cloak when the Express chugged into King's Cross, covering the only mismatched Muggle clothes he owned. Before the train rolled to a complete stop he pulled out the last letter he'd received from Eileen, halfway through May, and read it for the thousandth time.
Dear Severus,
I have no objections to you spending the summer with the Evans family. It is probably for the best, as I do not want you to be hurt by Tobias anymore. For prudence I have told him you are rooming with this Remus Lupin for the holidays and won't be back perhaps until summer after your second year.
Tell me when you plan to go to Diagon Alley for next year's supplies, and I will meet you inside the Leaky Cauldron on that day.
I am proud of you, my courageous Gryffindor son.
Love Mum
Nothing about Quidditch, nothing about avoiding Tobias to send him the letter, and nothing about fighting back against an abusive husband. Sev sighed, re-folded the letter, and slipped it inside his cloak. The train rolled to a stop and the student movement started—the Seven heaved their trunks down and dragged them out onto the platform, queuing into the line waiting to be let through the barrier into the Muggle world.
They said their goodbyes after emerging from the brick wall, and after promising to write to them all summer, Lily pulled Sev towards her smiling and waving parents. Mark scooped Lily into a tight hug and quite to Sev's surprise, Rose did the same to Sev.
"Lily was excited beyond words when she told us you accepted our offer!" Rose said to him happily. She kissed the top of his head and released him before embracing her daughter. Sev staggered backwards, still stunned by Mrs. Evans's forwardness. Mark stuck out his hand and vigorously shook Sev's.
"We look forward to getting to know you, Severus!"
"You can call me Sev," he stammered to Lily's parents. "Everyone else does."
He had never paid much attention to Mark and Rose during his previous lifetime, and although he knew that both died before Lily married James, he couldn't remember if they suffered magical or Muggle deaths. Already he was certain that they would be a fixture during these years, perhaps playing the part of parents when Eileen couldn't.
"Sev it is, then," Mark said, and hoisted Sev's and Lily's trunks onto a trolley to be pushed out to the car.
Lily hooked her arm through Sev's and they trailed her parents to the parking lot, slid into the backseat, and began the drive to Nurren.
"Petunia has been gone for a week already," Rose told them when they neared the outskirts of the industrial town where Sev had lived all his life. "She will only be gone until half August, though, so she'll be here for two weeks before you return to Hogwarts on September first."
Lily groaned. "She's going to be awful to us, isn't she?"
Mark answered his daughter. "Petunia is just jealous, sweetie. She'll get over it."
"No, she won't," Sev replied, causing Rose and Lily to stare at him, and Mark's eyes flickered to the rear-view mirror. "Really. If Muggles don't like the idea of magic right off, they never will." Petunia Evans is certainly no exception.
Rose's features melted into sympathy. "Your father?"
A vein in Sev's neck jumped when Tobias was mentioned. Lily saw and intervened. "That's not something he wants to talk about, Mum," she said, staring at her mother. "What are you making for dinner? Hogwarts food is good, but not as good as home cooking."
Rose understood and smoothly went along with the subject change. "I was going to ask you kids what you wanted, it being your first day back home."
"Dumplings," Lily answered immediately.
Ten minutes passed before Mark turned the car into the Evans driveway. Spinner's End lay essentially four blocks over, but Sev felt extreme relief that he didn't have to go there. This is it, he thought to himself. The start of summer with Lily. The whole time one room away from her. Can you do this without screwing up?
"Lily, why don't you show Sev to the guest room? It's all ready for him. We'll get the trunks," Mark stated as Rose unlocked the front door.
Sev had been inside Lily's house only twice before, the time they snooped in Petunia's room and once during the summer before fifth year for a reason Sev couldn't remember. What he did remember was an exchange of angry words pertaining to Sev's loyalty, and he hadn't spoken to her for the rest of the holidays. When they resumed their friendship, it lay on rocky ground, and suffered its fatal blow during the O.W.L.s.
Lily walked up the stairs and opened the second door on the left. "Here's you," she said with a small smile. "I'm the first door, and the bathroom is one down. Tuney's room—well, you remember." The room was bigger than the one at Spinner's End, nicely furnished, and had a window facing east.
Mark appeared in the door with Sev's trunk in tow; he rushed forward and took it from the older man to set at the foot of the bed. "Thank you, sir," he said automatically.
"How about this? I call you Sev, and you call me Mark." Mr. Evans wore a smile to Lily's red cheeks. "You're living with us for the summer, Sev, formality gets very old very fast."
"You're just telling him that because you get tired of your students calling you sir or professor all the time."
Mark's eyes smiled at his daughter. "Wouldn't you?"
Sev looked from Lily to Mark. "You're a teacher?" Another thing I didn't know about the Evans family.
"Of English literature at the little college just inside Nurren. Now, why don't you get settled in? Dinner's at six, according to Rose." Mark winked at the two twelve year olds and departed to deposit Lily's trunk in her room and go help Rose in the kitchen.
Lily sat on the edge of Sev's bed and stared at the doorway. "It's kind of strange, being back after a year of magic."
Sev flicked his wand into his hand from the holster and studied it. "Yeah. It's too bad we're not allowed to do magic outside of school."
Lily regarded the wand and tipped her head in reluctant agreement. "But if anything bad happens, we won't get into trouble if we do use magic in self defense, right?"
"Right." Good thing Fudge isn't minister and Umbridge isn't in the Wizengamot yet. Sev slipped the wand back into the holster secured to his forearm. "Let's just hope nothing bad happens. Oh—I changed my subscription to the Daily Prophet that it'll come here instead of Hogwarts. That way we can stay current on what's happening in the Wizarding world. We'll just have to keep it from your parents if we want to keep them in the dark about the war."
Lily shifted uncomfortably. "I don't want them to keep me away from Hogwarts, but I hate lying to them," she confided. "You know they're going to ask how the year was and we can't tell them it was all wonderful, because not all of it was."
Sev sat down next to her, his weight sinking the mattress slightly so she softly bumped into him. "But a lot of it was wonderful, Lil. We made a bunch of friends, we're top in the year, and Hogwarts is probably the safest place in Britain, except for Gringotts. I know a lot can happen in two months but just wait and see—we'll be back at Hogwarts before you know it." He gently bumped her shoulder with his. "And here I thought you had all these plans for what we're gonna do with our freedom."
He managed to get her to smile. That was good. He'd noticed on the train ride back that she would stare off into space and forget the people around her for a few moments. She wasn't just worried about lying to her parents, no...there was something else weighing on her mind, and it bothered him that she said nothing. Maybe I shouldn't resent it. I am keeping a bigger secret from her...nothing can be a bigger secret than jumping backwards in time to correct the past.
Lily began to say something when a tapping came from the window. The two children glanced up and saw an owl flapping its wings to remain steady in the air, knocking against the window as best it could with an envelope clamped in its beak. Sev and Lily rushed to the window and the owl tumbled in, dropped the letter on Sev's head, and flew back out possibly faster than it had flown in. Whoever had written did not want a reply.
"Who's it from?" she asked as Sev picked up the letter.
"My mum, it looks like." He ripped it open and tugged out the parchment, unfolding it. Lily stood at his arm to read over his shoulder.
Dear Severus,
I was wrong. Tobias is livid that you have not come home for the summer. When I told him in April that you would be at Remus Lupin's he did not believe me. I have tried to stand up to him but you know better than anyone what he is capable of. I will try to continue the lie that you are south of London.
Whatever you do, don't come home. Whatever you do, don't let him see you or Lily in Nurren.
Stay safe, Severus. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is gathering strength.
Love Mum
Lily's wide green eyes rose slowly to meet the darkness of Sev's. His face was stony in anger, but simultaneously filled with regret and sadness. Lily touched his left forearm, feeling him recoil a tiny bit. "Sev?"
He squirmed out of her touch and unconsciously rubbed the skin where the Dark Mark used to be...even at ten months into this second life, he could still occasionally feel the twinge of the Mark, or the strange sensation of painless fangs sinking into his neck. He shook his head, trying to convince himself it wouldn't always be like this. Ten months was nothing compared to the years he planned on spending in Lily's company. "I'm fine."
"No, you're not. Come on, we can't keep doing this. It's obvious you're not fine, and lying to me about it is just as bad as whatever else you've been keeping from me and the Circle."
The letter crumpled in Sev's hand. "He's been worse in beating her, that's what's not fine, Lily!"
Tears formed unwillingly in her eyes. Before he had a chance to know what had happened Lily had her arms around his waist, her head against his chest, hugging the breath out of him. He weakly returned it and sighed dejectedly when they separated. "I'm sorry for being all emotional all the time, but sometimes—ooh, it just makes me mad what you went through. At least you're not there," she ended quietly. "At least you're safe."
He hated being the pessimist—he hated being the one who always saw the negative. But with Lily's help and constant presence he had managed to rein it in a little. "That doesn't keep me from wishing I could do something to make him stop," he muttered.
"I do too." Silence filled the room for a few minutes until Lily said, "Why are you still wearing your Hogwarts cloak?"
The completely unrelated question threw Sev for a loop. "Oh, er, you've seen my Muggle clothes, Lily, they're hideous."
Without a word, Lily stared at him for a beat, stood, and disappeared out the door, turning the direction of the staircase. Tentatively he followed her, rounding the corridor to the kitchen just as Lily started talking to her mother. "Mum, Sev doesn't have any proper Muggle clothing. All he's got is awful leftovers from before Hogwarts, and you've seen he's grown since then."
Sev's cheeks burned as Rose Evans looked at him. Her face softened with Lily's words. "Well, then, it looks like we'll be going on a shopping trip tomorrow. Lily, you need some new clothes too—you're growing up fast!"
"No, Mrs. Evans—"
"Rose," she interrupted him.
"—Rose, you don't have to buy me anything at all, really, I'm fine—"
"So you'd rather sulk through summer in that heavy thing? Sev, it is not any trouble to get you proper clothing." He knew she wanted to say the rest: From what I've heard from Lily about your father, I'm happy to buy you clothes. The expression on her face said not to argue.
"It's settled then. We're going into town tomorrow."
Mark looked up from the paper at the table and surveyed his wife, daughter, and Sev. "Wonderful. That means I get the telly to myself." He wore a triumphant smile.
"Now, wash up, dinner will be ready in a few minutes. Lily, please set the table."
"Yes, Mum," Lily answered, heading to the cupboard.
For a long moment Sev stood there and watched the two women move around the kitchen, marveling at how normal it all seemed, even with a Wizarding war raging on the outside, even with drunken husbands beating their wives, and even with the nagging knowledge that Albus Dumbledore was on to him.
Summer had come.
A/N: Anonymous reviews are now enabled. I'm sorry I haven't been replying to reviews; I always intend to and then forget :/ I'll try to be better about that. R&R!