A/N: For those interested, I've added the one-shot depicting the reaction of the Marauders to Severus' makeover to the one-shot collection Naught Gold May Remain (Chapter 3: To Boggle the Mind). Feel free to check it out or not as you see fit.

Chapter 50: Affirmed in Doubt

By the end of February, Lily's mood once again took an already tread path. As one week turned into two without being able to meet with Severus in person, and then began stretching into the third, all her light-heartedness of Valentine's Day gave way to the drudgery of sharp retorts, public scorn and too-short conversations in written form. On top of that, this second time around, there was Severus' sudden popularity to contend with, too, and their one somewhat more bombastically staged argument during Potions class blew up in their face when Willa Hoyden spread the word around. Her gossip mongering resulted in hawk-eyed, sharply hostile Slytherin gazes being directed at Lily's back, gazes that Lily had to pretend not to notice, all the while wanting to scream at those presumptuous tarts who'd not given him a second look for years and yet were now acting as if they were entitled to possessiveness over him, scream at them that Severus was her best friend, that he was her boyfriend, and how dare they think she'd hurt him like that for real, on purpose.

Most of all, what it boiled down to was this – she missed him.

Late at night, cocooned by the curtains of her four-poster bed, curled on her side with her knees tightly tucked against her stomach, Lily missed Severus. She missed his sometimes stoic, sometimes volcanic presence beside her, she missed his acerbic sense of humour, she missed his awkward, sincere care, she missed witnessing his brilliant mind run a thousand miles an hour. She missed her best friend, in ways that she'd been missing him for the whole last school year and this one too, in ways whose shadows promised the pain of watching him pull away from her, of letting him slip through her fingers, of driving him away.

And the worst part of it all was that she couldn't miss the feel of his long, dexterous fingers tracing the bare skin of her back, she couldn't miss his hot breath on her skin, she couldn't miss his embrace and his kisses. She couldn't, because they had until now only ever been her fantasy, and no matter that it was coming up on six weeks since they'd spoken of it, since they'd agreed to get involved, no matter that it was coming up on three weeks since she'd called him her boyfriend and he'd blushed that splotchy, unflattering blush of his and she'd wanted to kiss him so much she'd almost cried when bloody Albus Dumbledore had interrupted them, the thing was that they hadn't, in fact, done a single proper romantic thing in person, and this romantic relationship that they were supposedly in was more a figment of her imagination than something real and concrete.

When she felt like this, she clung as much as she could to their secret banter, to being allowed to flirt outrageously with him in their journals, to sending him innuendo and feeling a wicked, pleasurable spark lick up her spine at the thought of him in his own bed, reading it and blushing and maybe thinking about her, about her words and reaching for himself beneath the covers. Some nights, though, even that wasn't enough, because while Severus never once complained, never once rebuffed, he also didn't really reciprocate in kind.

Lily couldn't tell if it was because she was moving too fast for him on that front, if he was feeling vulnerable and insecure, or if it was because he just didn't know how to reciprocate, at least not as simple flirty banter. In the light of the late winter sun, Lily was content with getting one truly emotionally meaningful sentence for each ten or twenty of hers, because when that one sentence came, it always knocked her breath out of her chest, wrapped her heart in tight warmth and brought tears to her eyes. When he expressed himself, it was always so much more than she'd ever hoped to get. But in the dead of night, when insecurity fuelled by all her past mistakes and daily hardships ate away at her, his words weren't enough to silence those damned kernels of doubt, that she wasn't enough, that she was too late to discovering her feelings, that she'd hurt him too much until now and he'd realise it one of these days, tell her: "I wish I could say it was fun, but it wasn't even that because in six weeks we'd never even kissed once; I'd rather be with someone who has never taken me for granted and used me for her own self-validation." Worse, with the recent events, Lily now had people to put in place of this nameless girl who was better for him, people like Willa bloody Hoyden and Valeria bloody Anderson and others fawning over him.

And once again, as her mood plummeted from hopeful and ecstatic to despondent and pessimistic, she found herself trying to cling to this idea of their relationship, to him, struggling all the way with her own need for assurance, trying to tamp down as much as she could the desperation for that reciprocal validation of their relationship that Severus so rarely provided. It was the last thing he needed from her, she knew that; she'd promised to be his support, his sanctuary, and instead, she was turning into yet another burden on top of dozens he already had on his back. But she couldn't help herself.

Sometime around the middle of that third week, something changed. There was nothing she could pinpoint that led to this change, nothing concrete that would be the equivalent of a slap to the face. It felt more like a wave, a slow building of moment upon moment, culminating at some time in the middle of the night while she was lying in her bed under the covers, letting her tears soak her pillow and trying to will herself to sleep, in a swelling of clarity inside her, this sense that she'd been here before, two months ago, torn into pieces and not knowing how to put herself back together again.

She was wallowing in her own difficulties. Again.

She was damn well not going to be doing that anymore.

Sniffing in self-disgust, on the night when that realisation washed over her, Lily sat up, conjured a handkerchief, wiped her wet face, blew her nose, and then took a few deep breaths until the urge to cry receded. Lily was a doer, and all this crying and angsting that she was doing was not bloody helpful in the least. So she was going to think things through and figure out what was helpful.

And oh, there was one bloody obvious thing, all right, and one that she'd so idiotically denied herself three weeks ago.

For all that she and Severus had begun acting on paper as if they were in an actual relationship, the truth was, they weren't, not really, because a romantic relationship was more than just words, even heartfelt, emotional, loving ones. A romantic relationship – for Lily at least, and she hoped for Severus as well – was also physical intimacy, was not just speaking but also acting differently to a close friendship. And theirs, for all that it had been frayed for so long, had nonetheless been a close one already: they'd slept next to each other, almost breathing in the same air; they'd hugged and held each other through difficult times; they'd kissed on the cheek; played with each other's hair as kids.

What Lily needed – what they both needed – was to turn the romantic part of their connection tangible, something that she could use as incontrovertible proof that the thing between them was more. Ironic, then, that it had been Lily who'd passed on the imperfect but very real chance to actually accomplish this, for the absolutely moronic idea of having their first kiss be some perfect fairy-tale event.

And for crying out loud, of the two of them, Lily should've absolutely been the one to know that there was no such thing as a perfect first kiss. She'd had three first kisses in her life, and all three had been a rather silly, awkward bump of noses and lips and teeth, until she and her partner had caught their stride and managed to slot themselves properly together.

Really, between this fantasy perfect kiss on the one hand, and the clumsy but real deal on the other, it was no contest which one would've been the comfort she'd needed over the last weeks, and it was on her that she'd gotten the two confused.

Huffing in annoyance at herself, frustrated still with her swollen eyes and her stuffed-up nose, Lily beat her pillow into submission, pulled the journal and the pen from their hiding spot between the mattress and the bedframe, and took the first step towards rectifying her latest blunder.

Severus, it's been two and a half weeks. I miss you. I really, really miss you. Is there any way we can see each other this weekend?

While there was a part of Severus that had initially revelled in the sudden popularity and interest that putting effort into his appearance had afforded him, it became a rapidly shrinking one as one week of him being the talk of the hour turned into two. This annoyance was quite aside from potential issues of Lily's emerging jealousy (which she was certainly valiantly trying to pretend wasn't there, but Severus could still read between the lines of her messages, because he was a Slytherin and Snakes were conditioned to look for things that Lions weren't). No, the base annoyance had to do with something much simpler – the people approaching him had no interest in actually getting to know him, they were simply curious about something unusual happening in their midst, and he didn't have the time to indulge their vapid, obnoxious curiosity.

Granted, this was enough of a boon to his business – said business being the easiest guise people were finding to interact with him – that he and Thistletwaithe had to sit down and work out a more structured labour division and even discuss recruiting someone else to help. It even turned out to be the in he'd needed with the Gryffindor crowd, which had been the one House not interested in buying his products and services over the last semester. So it was certainly doing wonders for his reputation as a teenage procurer, which could only help to pad out his résumé and was thus something he'd begun desperately requiring since his birthday and the botched initiation mission.

With the easy avenue into the Death Eater organisation closed to him, Dumbledore's suggestion for moving forward was for Severus to prove himself invaluable to the Dark Lord on his own merits within the next two to three years. That meant, on the one hand, that Severus needed jaw-dropping references, and references as a businessman were just as valuable as mind-blowing N.E.W.T. scores or a brilliant Potioneering Mastery – thus the benefit of his momentary popularity. On the other hand, though, he also needed something truly unique he'd invented personally to gift to the Dark Lord if he was to get past whatever Lucius Malfoy's opposition to him joining was going to be, and all these people suddenly vying for his attention with no interest in becoming actual customers was eating away at what little time he had to devote to his own independent research and experimentation – thus the annoyance, which was by the second week starting to outweigh the benefit.

It took him losing his temper once to learn of a very effective deterrent – being verbally cutting and unpleasant. His sudden change in appearance may have brought him to the attention of a lot of the student body, but that was all it boiled down to, in the end; the moment all these people learned that his personality was on the unpleasant side and his tongue was razor-sharp, they lost their interest just as quickly as they got it. So, by the time the second week turned into the third, things started for the most part returning to normal, and he could let out a secretive sigh of relief.

There was one person this didn't seem to work on, though – Willa Hoyden. Within a few days of his transformation, she began actively seeking him out in their shared classes and in the Great Hall during meals, constantly making references to his appearance and her interest in him. Severus, who'd never before been targetedly pursued in a romantic sense by anyone but had seen plenty of it in a boarding school housing some five hundred and more teenagers, was finding that he wasn't enjoying it even a tenth of how much he thought he might. Part of it, of course, was that he wanted Lily, not any other girl; another part, thought, was Willa herself. She was far too loud for Severus' taste, in her strange boyish style, in her blatant declaration of interest, in her unflappability and her speech patterns. As one of the group he belonged to, he didn't mind her, and her sense of humour was dark and morbid enough to suit him most of the time in limited amounts, but now that she wouldn't leave him alone and all of his increasingly nasty rebuffs slid off her like fire off a phoenix, she was quickly starting to drive him up the wall.

The worst part is that the more I try to get her to stop, the more everyone else in the group gets suspicious, he wrote to Lily, unsure how upset she might be getting over Willa's behaviour. Her hyper-flirty full-throttle-romantic Lily persona was once again beginning to give way to the needy-and-clingy Lily, if in rather more muted manner than the last time, and though she was clearly trying to conceal it, her jealousy was coming through.

What is it with people not understanding the word 'not interested', she groused back. If this is what you had to deal with for years with James' interest in me, I'm truly sorry for all the hard times I gave you over it.

So there were perhaps a few benefits to that, too.

I should hope he at least never tried to force himself on you.

She tried to force herself on you?!

Not as such. It is simply that her concept of personal space doesn't quite align with accepted standards. For her, sniffing others is a perfectly normal thing to do, for instance.

But that's just crazy! Who goes around sniffing people and thinks that's fine?! And in any case, 'no' should mean 'no', regardless of what the other person 'thinks' it means.

I can handle her brand of craziness, don't worry. Only... I don't want you to think I'm trying to encourage her in any way.

I know you're not. I trust you. Just be careful, please; I don't want anyone getting suspicious of you.

He certainly didn't want that either. Unfortunately, it was becoming rapidly apparent to him that something more drastic would need to be done to finally resolve this situation. The issue was, he wasn't quite sure what could be the best move to make.

Over the last semester, the sixth-year Slytherin boy dormitory had gone from the main hangout spot to an uneasy no-man's land. With the breakup of the fivesome after Mulciber's arrest into two pairs relatively hostile to each other, the tension that existed when there was no other buffer between Avery and Philes on the one hand and Severus and Thistletwaite on the other (such as existed in the Slytherin library; Mickey and Jones had very intelligently run for the hills the moment they recognised the new lay of the land back in September) meant that most of the time these days, the room was empty.

They all knew they had to sleep in the same room with each other; they bloody well didn't have to do anything else there.

Not too surprising, then, that Stacie managed to corner Severus there without anyone being the wiser.

Sometimes, when the sheer amount of duties and obligations became almost unmanageable, Severus had found that skipping lunch for a power nap was the best way to stay afloat. Stacie had been right in pushing him to sleep more four weeks ago, and it was easy enough to sneak a sandwich into some of his classes (courtesy of Mickey) when it came right down to it. The additional bonus was that he slept better in those thirty minutes than he did throughout the night – having to sleep in a room where half of the occupants would like to do some rather nasty things to him tended to be rather deleterious to turning off cognitive processes.

That was why, when Stacie walked in and shut the door behind her, the sound of it had him almost jumping off the bed in fright.

"Would it kill you to knock, Stacie?" he snapped testily as he fought to regulate his breathing and heart-rate past his foggy, sleep-addled brain. "Bloody hell."

Stacie answered by giving him a wry smirk and lifting her eyebrow. Grumbling under his breath, Severus sat up on the edge of the bed and rubbed his eyes to wake himself up.

"Could you stand up for a second?"

Blinking bemusedly at the brunette, Severus indulged her; it was clear that she had something in mind, so he thought it best to get it over with. Stacie wasn't the type for idle chatter anyway.

The girl walked across the room, stopping right in front of him; she was shorter than Lily by a few centimetres, putting her eyes directly in front of his nose, which was about where she was staring at, as well, with an almost comically studious expression on her face. She gave him a critical once-over, met his eyes with her own dark ones, then took his head firmly in both hands to hold him still and kissed him.

Frozen in shock, half-muggy with sleep, Severus' mind began emitting a weird screeching noise between his ears; Stacie's lips were soft and slippery with something, and the pressure of them against his mouth was firm, constant as they shaped around his upper one for a long, long moment, her nose brushing against his and her eyes utterly blurred in his field of vision. A shiver crawled up his spine when she pulled away and her mouth slid with the softest of friction against his, the sensation new and intriguing and haunting in equal measure.

Stacie gave him a weird look that Severus' malfunctioning brain was refusing to process properly.

"I do hope you're not quite this statuesque when you're kissing your girlfriend," she told him critically. "Because no offence, Severus, but that really was quite terrible as far as kissing technique goes."

"You kissed me," he said blankly, trying to find sense in something that held absolutely none in that moment.

"Well, I can hardly judge how good you are at it otherwise, don't you think?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

Severus' mind finally rebooted properly, so much intertwined emotion he couldn't parse it out bleeding through that terrifying blankness – anger and outrage and offence and curiosity and guilt and disappointment and probably a few more things, too – and his mouth spat out words like hot potatoes on his tongue before he even knew what they were.

"How do you bloody think I'd have gotten any sodding experience at it, Stacie, when that was my first fucking kiss?!"

Suddenly, the blankness was almost preferable.

Stacie's mouth fell open.

"You've never kissed anyone before?"

Groaning, Severus buried his hands in his hair and tugged in frustration.

"No, I bloody well hadn't, because I–"

"You what?"

"I wanted it to be with Lily, that's what," he spat out wrathfully. "Which you now utterly ruined!"

And oh Merlin, Lily! How was he going to explain this to Lily?

"Ah," Stacie breathed out, voice pitched low in regret. "That wasn't my intent."

"Well, then what the bloody fuck was your intent, Stacie?!" Severus rounded back on her. "Why the hell would you do that?! You want to ruin the best thing in my life, is that it?"

"Of course not."

"I knew I had to watch my back with sodding Hoyden; I didn't think I'd have to watch my back with you!"

Stacie sighed and rubbed her forehead. "I am not interested in you, Severus."

"Jolly good, except you just. kissed. me!"

"And how does this affect anything for you?"

"How–" he choked on his outrage. "Fucking hell, Stacie, how do you imagine Lily will react?! If I lose her because of your stunt–"

"Do you intend on telling her?"

Severus opened his mouth to answer and his voice wouldn't come out, because even though he knew what the right thing to do was, the temptation not to was strong enough to close up his throat. It took him a good five seconds before he managed to choke out: "Yes."

"I suppose that is your decision," she answered with a shrug, "though if you ask me, I don't really see that she needs to know about it if it'll cause strife between the two of you. It didn't mean anything to you, and it certainly wasn't intended to mean anything in the first place."

"Then what was it meant to achieve?"

"I wanted to see if you were any good at it, and if not, I thought I could give you some advice, that's all."

That somehow made everything even worse.

"So you did this as part of your little project," he hissed. "That's what it all is to you, isn't it, my hair and my clothes and my teeth and my sodding nose? It's about having a living doll you can shape and mould however you choose to come out with some imagined version of a high-society arse-licker that you can use when it suits your purposes for the gratitude of fixing him up."

Stacie's expression twisted in outrage for the first time since they'd become friends. "No!" she exclaimed back. "No, absolutely not! It's about looking out for a friend who is foolishly putting his head on the line for a girl that was until six weeks ago merrily yanking his chain and leaving him miserable with everything in his life. And if Lily Evans cannot deal with something as innocuous as a closed-mouthed kiss, then I don't know how you imagine she'd be able to deal with all the things you will have to do once we're out in the real world, Severus!"

Severus pulled back with a sharp inhale. If Stacie was telling the truth, if she wasn't trying to manipulate him... no other friend except Lily had ever looked out for him just because he was who he was, and to hear Stacie voice it like that, with insulted conviction, shook him to his core.

"I–"

The silence that followed was suffocating. Stacie was the one who broke it in the end.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ruin the moment you had planned with her; I assumed you'd be beyond that by this point, to be honest, it's been more than a month."

"We got interrupted again, and we both wanted it to be perfect, so we left it for next time, which hasn't happened yet," Severus admitted, dropping down onto his bed, feeling utterly drained by the last ten minutes. Shaking her head, Stacie sat down next to him and put a hand on his arm.

"Look, for what it's worth, the one time I spoke with Lily, she seemed rather intent on this thing between you two, and you're welcome to blame it on me."

"It is absolutely your fault."

"Of course. In the meantime, would you like some advice about kissing technique? I can guarantee you that it'll be worth it."

"What advice?"

"Well, for one thing, the point isn't to just stand there like a pole, you're meant to participate."

"Somehow, I managed to become aware of that even without your particular brand of help, ta ever so."

Stacie gave him a dry look.

What followed was a progressively more uncomfortable ten minutes that left Severus with splotchy cheeks and a rather better understanding of Stacie's experience in the romance department than he'd ever had before. And while all the advice she listed seemed to be useful, not only did the level of detail that Stacie went into make him wish he was anywhere but here, it was also so utterly outside of his usual experience that he could already tell the whole thing would be completely useless to him in the end.

"Stop! Stop, stop," he ordered. "All this you're telling me, it's – I'm grateful, I suppose, but – what does that even – firstly, I'm hardly going to remember all of – and anyway, it's about as clear as Gobbledygook."

Stacie grimaced. "I am aware. Kissing is a skill. I can explain it to you until the sky turns green, but if you haven't actually tried to perform it, your body will hardly know how to translate it from instruction into action. Which brings me back around to my original intention."

It took Severus only a couple of seconds to connect the dots.

"You want to teach me how to kiss?"

"If you're interested," she answered with a slight nod.

"I – no. I cannot."

"You said you two wanted it to be perfect; that's hardly likely to happen if you don't know what you're doing. However you decide, though, it was an offer with no strings whatsoever attached, Severus."

Severus clenched his hands in his robes on his knees and ground his teeth together, feeling torn. On the one hand, he knew he couldn't acquiesce to this rather mad scheme, because he was already dreading Lily's reaction and he couldn't just not tell her. On the other, however... well, on the other, he was already feeling like a failure in this department whenever he had no idea how to answer Lily's flirtatious messages, whenever his inexperience and awkwardness with expressing emotions left him floundering. But this, showing her how he felt with actions, rather than words...

Oh, boy, did he want to make sure their first kiss was perfect, and not just because of his own wish to express himself in no uncertain terms. It was also because he knew how much it meant to her, that behind Lily's decision was all the weight of their Patronus-related conflict, the hurt he'd caused her by refusing to show her his, to help her and teach her how to cast it. He wanted – needed – to help heal that wound he'd inflicted on her, and with what the Patronus had come to represent between them even beyond this – the way that he'd given her his heart on a platter by showing her his Patronus, the way that she'd let him know she understood it by showing him her own, that incredible moment of the two silvery does touching while Lily's fingers entwined with his – creating one perfect memory of them for her to use felt absolutely right.

And perhaps, in one very tiny corner of his mind burned also an indelible curiosity about the whole process, a curiosity which had only ever been abstract until twenty minutes ago, and was now a fully corporeal one.

Apparently getting tired of watching his struggle, Stacie bumped his shoulder with her own. "Actually, I've a compromise to your dilemma. Since that, earlier, was absolutely not a kiss by any decent standard, how about I show you how it's truly done and you use that to put everything I said into context. You won't be lying to her if you were to say that I kissed you properly once, and you'll at least know what you're doing when you do get your blushing, virginal selves around to it." She gentled the implied insult with an open little smile.

Severus licked his lips, turning her suggestion over in his head for a moment. What she'd suggested was rather slytherin, in a way, and he tried to figure out if he'd feel guilty for spinning it to Lily in this way. But the potential benefit of it outweighed his hesitancy in the end.

It'd be just one kiss, after all, and he was already thinking of it analytically enough that it didn't seem like a big deal. As Stacie had said, it wouldn't mean anything at all, it was just learning a new skill for when it would mean something, with the girl Severus had been dying to kiss for years.

"All right," he agreed finally, his heart picking up a somewhat nervous rhythm. "How do we do this?"

"Turn towards me," Stacie instructed, resettling on the bed so that they were facing each other. "Now, pay attention to what I'm doing, and follow my lead."

Stacie placed one hand on his bent knee and the other on his cheek, then leaned forward and, for the second time in his life, Severus had someone's mouth on his own. This time, he closed his eyes and focused on what Stacie was doing. It was surprisingly instructive, too – she started the same way as last time, with firm pressure of lips against lips; when he relaxed into it as much as he could, she rubbed her lips against his and opened her mouth enough to graze his lower lip with her teeth. She followed it up by sucking on it slightly, and oh, that felt rather interesting, he had to remember that. All the while, her thumb was running lightly against his jaw, a strange sort of counterpoint to her mouth. Severus tried to at least not sit there like a slab of meat, though he wasn't quite sure what more he could do beyond shift with Stacie's movements; he was far too focused on what she was doing in any case, putting her words together with her actions and trying to figure out how he might implement it.

When the Slytherin girl pulled back, Severus opened his eyes and blinked a couple of times; his mind buzzing with the new information, he took in her quirked mouth and lifted eyebrows.

"Much better," she declared. "What did you think?"

Severus licked his lips, tasting the lip balm that had rubbed off on them. They were still tingling, but though Severus' body was thrumming with the experience, it felt only skin-deep, nothing truly special beyond the newness of it all.

"It was... instructive. I think I will manage to get a hang of it quickly enough."

"Excellent. Just keep in mind what I told you – take things slow, use your hands, don't slobber – and you'll be fine."

Without any further fuss, Stacie got to her feet, gave Severus a pleased, mischievous grin, and wiggled her fingers in farewell as she walked out of the room, cancelling the privacy spell she must've cast before she'd woken Severus up.

It was only when she'd shut the door that the other side of the last half hour came back to him, the one that settled in the pit of his stomach, whispering at him that Lily won't be happy about any of this, and you might've screwed it up before it'd even properly started, and if you did, you'd deserve it, too.

Swallowing at the nausea the thought caused, Severus rubbed his mouth with his fingers in an unconscious attempt to rub away the lip balm and put it out of his mind with practiced ease – what was done was done, and really, unlike Lily's infatuation with James Potter, Severus had absolutely no interest in Stacie whatsoever; she was simply a very good friend who'd spent the last month expanding the tools in his arsenal for the mission that would be his life until who knew when. This was nothing more and nothing less than that. Lily would have to understand.

Yawning widely, James hopped off his broom a couple of feet before it'd come to the ground, thumping down on the snow-dusted grass of the Quidditch pitch.

"Get to your showers, you stinky lot!" he yelled back at his team, shielding his eyes from the glare of the mid-morning sun. "No dawdling, or there's no breakfast for you!"

Around him, his team members landed onto the snow-dusted grass one after the other, laughing and shouting and jostling one another. Proud as he was of his team, James' flier's high was starting to run out, and he wished they'd hurry to the changing rooms so that he could get through his own shower and then collapse into bed for a few hours.

Winter full moons, especially those that came the night before early morning Quidditch practice, were the worst.

A flash of red pulled his attention to the stands, where he saw Athenora leaning against the railing. She offered him a smile in greeting as soon as he flew up to join her.

"That is some excellent flying, Jimmy," she complimented him. "Some party it was last night, though?"

"What d'you mean?"

"I mean your sleepless night; it's rather obvious on your face," she clarified when he stared at her in surprise.

"Yeah, couldn't sleep."

"Would you rather that we dance around the topic, or should I just tell you my best guess?"

"About what?" he asked, almost wincing at how oddly pitched his voice suddenly was.

"All right. You invited me to Hogwarts to help with the warding, but now that I've actually met Remus, I can tell that he would never have agreed if he wasn't confident someone would supervise. If that were a faculty member, you wouldn't need me for warding. So, my assumption would be that you guys learned some advanced magic to keep him company during the full moon, hence the sleepless night. Am I close?"

James leaned against the railing, his legs suddenly quite weak.

"You can't tell anyone, Athens. Promise me. And I mean, not even Sophia and Christopher. We'd go to Azkaban for it."

"My lips are sealed," she promised easily.

"We're Animagi," he whispered, looking around to make sure no one else could hear. "Sirius, Peter and I. Unregistered."

"That is impressive, Jimmy. And rather ingenious; I couldn't think of which magic would protect you against werewolf-inflicted injuries, but Animagic makes sense. You are your animal, but you still keep your higher mental processes, unlike if you were to be transfigured into an animal by someone else."

"Sirius' idea originally."

"You should've told me before, though," Athenora admonished him. "I need to account for that in the wards, and now this means I'll have to go through everything I've worked out so far and rework it."

"I'm sorry. No one except the four of us knows. And now you, I suppose."

"I can keep a secret," she assured him with ease, as if he didn't already know.

"So, how do you like my friends so far?" James asked her, eager to change the subject.

"Remus impressed me, but I get a sense he's found his moral direction since last summer."

"It took us a while to work out our differences, but it was worth it," James admitted, turning over to stare at the footprints and the sweeps in the snow his team had made this morning. "Thank you for giving me the push on that front. Though... he and Sirius aren't as close as they used to be."

"I am surprised you would expect them to be, especially given Sirius' deterioration since last summer."

"Deterioration?" He'd noticed Sirius going off on his own a bit more than usual, granted, but James couldn't quite figure out what she meant by it. If anything, notwithstanding that period around the hols that Sirius had struggled with (which James now thought had most likely been caused by this being the first Christmas after his disowning), it seemed to James that his best friend had really found his equilibrium since August – as much with Remus and their group, as with the gradual merger of their group with the girls' contingent, and James' friendship with Lily too.

"Perhaps it is simply towards me, then," Athenora allowed, which was fair enough – Sirius was still royally pissed over what'd passed between her and James last summer, even if James himself had mostly managed to put it behind himself. "In any case, you will most likely have to let Remus and Sirius settle their differences in their own time; pushing rarely results in a favorable outcome."

"I know." After a bit of a pause, he dared ask the question that'd been plaguing him for the past couple of weeks. "And, what about... Lily?"

Athenora turned her head towards him, so that her blonde locks fell against her red lips.

"She doesn't seem to like me very much, does she," the older girl mused thoughtfully, reaching with a gloved finger to tug her hair out of the way.

"I, ah... might have mentioned that you and I had a thing last summer."

"Hm."

"Athens, what?" he nudged her with his shoulder, feeling slightly nostalgic at the contact; the odd pang of yearning for what he'd thought they had last summer still hit him occasionally, though he tried his best to ignore it. What he'd thought they'd had had all been in his head, not real, and dwelling never did him much good at all. "What's on your mind?"

"I don't imagine you'd like to hear my answer very much, that's all."

"Come on; I asked, didn't I?"

Athenora sighed slightly and nodded. "If you want me to be frank, Jimmy, then I don't think she's very interested in you romantically."

James swayed on the spot, his legs suddenly going weak beneath him. "What? Why would you think that?"

"You said in one of your letters that you thought she might return your feelings, and I think it likely that this was the case at the time, but not anymore. She tends to keep a distance between the two of you during meals and group gatherings even when you aren't speaking with me, so it's likely not due to my presence. And Jimmy, she doesn't really look very comfortable near you in general, as well."

James exhaled heavily, his heart dropping into his shoes.

"A few weeks ago, she mentioned a bloke she met during winter hols. An admirer who's clearly interested in her if those flowers he got her for Valentine's Day are anything to go by. But she said they aren't anything. I didn't think she was that into him, but..."

"That might be it, and I think it'd fit with the timeline as well. You have an advantage over him, though. You're here, and he is not."

"So, you think I should... woo her?"

Athenora shrugged lightly. "That's your decision, Jim. I'm simply stating a fact you've got on your side."

James took a few shaky breaths, his chest feeling tight at the thought of Lily with someone else. He'd thought that going slow was the right move, that being friends first was necessary, and they were friends, they were almost more, he'd been so sure of that until the last few weeks, but now...

Getting validation of his fears from someone unbiased was a blow, so much so that panic was almost catching up with him. That was the lack of sleep, though, he knew himself well enough to recognise that. He couldn't make any proper decisions until he'd slept some, but it was clear to him now that he had to make those decisions soon, or else risk losing her entirely.

"I... I need to think about this," he said weakly.

"Are you certain you want to pursue her, though? I don't know how good your chances are."

"I'm certain there was more between us around the hols, Athens. I can't just let her slip through my fingers simply because I was too cautious. I..." he swallowed, thought about Lily's kind smile and understanding eyes whenever he asked her for advice, her beautiful laugh and giggling snorts whenever he told her a particularly funny Marauder adventure, the way she'd lean towards him or touch his arm every so often (though that had gone missing somewhere on the way, and why hadn't he noticed it until now, why?). "I think I'm in love with her," he voiced shakily to the first girl who'd truly captured his heart, even for just a few weeks one summer.

"Then I wish you all the luck in the world, Jimmy, because I fear you'll need it."

Sunday at seven in the morning was extremely early, but Lily was so excited to have an hour and a half of uninterrupted time with Severus that sleep had been burned out of her system long before she offered Dumbledore a polite greeting as she stepped into his office. Everyone (except Quidditch players, that is) seemed to enjoy sleeping in on weekends, so usually breakfast was a leisurely enough affair that Lily didn't expect her girlfriends to be up before eight-thirty. And this time, Severus had exacted a promise from Dumbledore not to disturb them, too, which Lily could see had induced some amusement in the old wizard, if the twinkle in his eyes was anything to go by.

She was a girl on a mission, though, as she descended through the hidden passageway to Severus' laboratory, where she found him sitting at the bench, fully absorbed in a book of some sort, a couple of cauldrons simmering on the other side of the room. By the time she'd pushed the trick shelf out of the way, he was already getting to his feet, and they collided in a clumsy tangle of limbs.

It didn't matter; all that mattered was that he was in her arms, a solid, wiry line against her body, his robes against her fingers softer than any he'd ever worn before, his smell familiar and yet new, mixed as it was with his new shampoo, where her nose got buried in his hair behind his ear. The three weeks of distance melted off her shoulders as if they'd never been when his arms tightened like vices around her midriff.

"Lily," he breathed out.

She had no idea how long they stood like that, simply holding each other, but it felt good, it felt almost overwhelming in the relief and joy that flowed through her, head to toe, renewing and reinvigorating. When at last they separated, Lily finally got her first proper look at him, at his serious dark eyes and his clearly freshly washed hair and shaven face, and when she felt his arms fall to his sides, her heart picked up its rhythm again, because thoughts of her mission came back to her, of her plan not to waste the opportunity–

"Lily, I need to te–"

She interrupted him with a finger on his lips, loving how he froze in surprise at her touch, his eyes widening. Once she was certain he'd not continue his sentence – whatever it was, she didn't care – she let her hand fall to his chest, leaned in, closed her eyes and kissed him.

A moment suspended in time, where they simply stood against each other, with their lips pressed together, and it was exactly what she'd expected, really, until it wasn't, until she tilted her head a bit this way, and he tilted his that way, and they were kissing, properly kissing, with none of that silliness of whose nose poked whose cheek and teeth clinking together, just closed-mouthed brushes of lips against lips, soft and gentle until Lily fisted her fingers into his robes and snaked her other hand to the nape of his neck, and then Severus' hand came up to cradle her cheek, the other to tug her closer by her hip, and oh, then it turned intentful somehow, better, as he licked at her upper lip, just a tiny bit, a swift there-and-gone sensation on whose tail followed a gentle suck and, oh God, it'd never been like this before, like she was burning from the inside out, and she drew him closer still with her fingers tangled in his hair and robes, returned the favour, opening her mouth to nip gently on his lower lip and soothe it with her tongue, and the broken little moan that Severus released at that sent chills of pleasure down her spine.

They broke apart, breathing heavily and clutching to each other. Lily felt dizzy, her legs nearly shaking in the effort of holding her upright as she rested her forehead against his brow and memorised as best she could every single millisecond of that kiss. When she felt capable again, she pulled back and looked at him, at the way his lips were a bit red and his cheeks splotched and his eyes couldn't focus, and it was an incredible rush to know that he was just as affected, that it was as good for him as it had been for her.

"Was it good?" he asked in a hoarse whisper as his gaze focused on her in degrees.

"Perfect," she breathed out, kissing him again, unable to help herself, quick and hard, the sort of kiss she'd expected that first one to be, a sloppy peck that rang out in the space between them. "It was perfect." He kissed her this time, another quick one, but soft and reverent somehow, making her toes curl. "I'm so sorry for making us wait," she said once he pulled back. "I was a complete idiot. We should've done that weeks ago, Dumbledore be damned."

The hand on her cheek moved to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, and she shivered in pleasure.

"No," he said softly, eyes roaming over her face. "I wanted it to be perfect."

"It was. What did you want to tell me?"

If she'd known the question would result in his shutting down in an instant, expression closing off as he released her, Lily would've paid more attention when he'd initially spoken; at the very least, she'd have waited to bring it up until they'd kissed some more. As it was, though, she'd asked now, and the way Severus pulled away from her sent a stab of fear through her.

"Severus?"

He clenched his jaw tightly, stared at the ground, then very deliberately looked up at her, in a way that had her flashing to that day of first torrential rain in months last summer, when he'd done almost the same thing and told her something she'd not known how to process, how to accept, when he'd shown her his cruel side in a way that had hurt for weeks afterwards.

"Three days ago, Stacie kissed me."

Lily's throat closed up, and she stumbled back until she was against the workbench. Her stomach turned and turned again, so that for a moment she thought she'd throw up, and tears sprang up in her eyes unbidden.

"What?" she whispered, all her insecurities of the past three weeks rising back to the surface as her mind conjured up what that had looked like, reminding her how attractive Stacie was, how she was a Slytherin like him, how they'd been almost inseparable for weeks now.

And beneath that, the memory of standing on a busy street with the sun beating down on her, a strange woman kissing her father in front of a hotel, her mother knowing or unknowing at home.

Severus took a step forward, hands outstretched as if to touch her, and she flinched away.

"It was just the one time, Lily, and it–"

"Is she– do you– do you have f-feelings for her?"

"Lily, no," he said forcefully. "How can you – after everything –"

"How can I?!" she croaked, meeting his eyes finally.

He let out a hollow laugh that cut almost as badly as his words. "Yes, Lily, because I gave up all my future ambitions and the people I considered my friends for her, did I? I pledged my service to a cause that isn't my own, promised to risk my life for who knows how long, for her, did I? Did my Patronus – is my Patronus not enough to – to –"

Her heart restarted its manic rhythm, only for a different reason entirely.

"Then why? Why would you kiss her, Severus? I thought... I thought..."

"She kissed me, Lily," he repeated. "It meant absolutely nothing, and it was nothing like our kiss, do you understand? Nothing. It was just more of her idiotic makeover plan, nothing more, she said she just wanted to see if I needed pointers on it, it–"

Lily sprang up, shock giving way to outrage. "Pointers. Is that why our kiss was so much better than I'd expected, why–"

This time, it was Severus who flinched at her words, the fire of determination in his eyes morphing into fire of another kind, one that she usually knew to beware, just not in that moment. "What, you expected it to be bad, is that it?"

"I thought you'd never done it before. I thought–"

"Wait, is that why you're upset?" he demanded, bulldozing over her words. "Because you're not the only girl I've ever kissed in my life?"

"I didn't say that–"

"But you thought it, didn't you? That I couldn't be upset that you've had boyfriends before, that you almost fell for James buggering Potter of all people, but you claimed the right to be my first kiss and if someone got there before you, you can't stomach that?"

"I'm upset because it feels like cheating, Severus, and cheating destroyed my family!"

The way all colour drained from his face would've been satisfying, if the scream hadn't cost her, too. She slumped down on the bench, wrapping her arms around herself as she stared somewhere towards her own shoes and wished, wished that things could go smoothly between them, easily between them, just once. She'd so hoped today would be that day, and now she didn't know what to think anymore.

It hurt, and she was absolutely upset because the thought of being cheated on, like her mother, or maybe also like her father, like the girlfriend of James' ex, it choked the breath out of her. She wouldn't be that sort of person, couldn't. And the thought of Severus doing that to her, Severus, who she'd thought would be her own and no one else's, ever, it was nauseating.

But wasn't there also truth, too, in what Severus had so callously thrown in her face? She'd thought that he'd be hers, and hadn't she also thought, in a part of her mind, that she was now entitled to everything of him, without regard for reciprocity? Because she was fully aware of the disparity in their romantic experience, she'd been so very steeped in thoughts of it over the first few weeks of their relationship that she'd thought she'd have to teach him everything, had perhaps even looked forward to it. So was it that he'd gotten advice from a girl who wasn't her that was also bothering her, separately from all the rest? And he was right, that wasn't fair of her, was it, when there was simply no way for her to give him that back, there was no way for her to turn back time and not have the three previous relationships she'd had, the experience she'd gained through them, or to take back the bucketfuls of hurt and anguish she'd dumped on him last semester, with her silly infatuation with James.

She felt more than saw him sit down next to her on the bench.

"I am sorry," he said very quietly, reaching hesitantly for her hand; exhausted, Lily let him lace their fingers together on her knee, the hurt throbbing somewhere beneath her breastbone, but the yearning for him that'd plagued her over the last weeks coursing in tandem through her veins, too. "I didn't even consider that, and I bloody well should've. I swear to you, Lily; I will never cheat on you. Never. And I – I apologise for what I said just now, I – I didn't – I hate that I hurt you, Lily. I seem to always be doing that, and I try not to and somehow I still do."

"It's what we're best at, isn't it?" she huffed cynically, shaking her head. "All we ever do to each other is inflict pain."

"All?" he asked, with such raw anguish in his voice as Lily had only ever heard once before, that it tore her insides to shreds in a far more visceral way than his admission of the kiss had.

She'd promised herself that she'd fight tooth and nail, she'd promised herself she'd not let hardship stand between them. If she was a woman of her word, then it had to apply here, too. And God, losing Severus just when she'd gotten her first glimpse of what it'd feel like to be truly together with him, it'd be an earthquake that tore mountains apart to the little seismic activity that this kiss was, in comparison.

"No. No, it's not." She covered his hand with her other one and squeezed. "You make me happy, Severus. You do. And I hope that I make you happy too, in spite of the pain."

"I've never been happier in my life," he answered reverently, and for a moment, Lily could barely breathe for the staggering weight of that admission.

"Thank you for not hiding it from me," she said instead, wanting suddenly to lay this hurt to rest, needing to get back to that mindset of twenty minutes ago, before it had come into being. "I'd... I'd rather know the bad, however much it hurts, than be caught unawares. If I know, we can work through it, we can figure it out, know better for next time."

"I've learned my lesson there already," he admitted heavily. "But Lily, as for this, I–" She turned her head towards him, witnessed the struggle written over his face, in his eyes and downturned mouth. "I don't know what I'll have to do for the mission. If I'll have to pretend to be in a relationship with someone, if I'll have to – to participate in some sort of bacchanalia or – or seduce someone, as if I'd bloody ever manage something like that –"

And that was yet another hit in a line tonight, the realisation all over again, on yet another level, that what they were doing, what Severus was doing for Dumbledore and her and their future, that it was so much more than just play-pretend, that it was dangerous and deadly serious and real.

"And I don't have much choice but to accept that, I suppose," she finished his thought, resentment thick on her tongue. Somehow, it was so very easy to forget that until this war was won, Severus would never belong only to her, that there'd always be someone and something else claiming a piece of him, stealing it away from her, and that she didn't even have the right to be indignant about it, not when it was for the cause she so deeply believed in.

"I cannot abandon what I've agreed to," he answered. "I told you that, Lily. I cannot. And if it's too much for you–"

"No, don't you dare say it," she cut him off, clenching his hand with hers, his palm sweaty against hers. She couldn't hear that word, couldn't even think it; she'd come nearly close enough to actually voicing it earlier, asking him if that was what he wanted, and she felt it was all far too fragile to withstand it being given voice, given power, just now, this place they were in and her heart with it. "I chose you, Severus, and if I didn't quite realise the extent of this mess we're in, that's on me, and I can't promise not to resent it, but don't you dare even mention that."

"Then you don't get to ask me that, either," he volleyed back, "because being with you is what I've wanted for years, Lily. There's never been anyone else, do you understand? No one but you."

And Merlin, it was hard to say, but the words were choking her and she couldn't swallow them, couldn't hide her insecurities and fears from him so much as she wished, when she said: "But now you've got people who get you, who– people like you, girls, and they're– and they haven't hurt you like I have, haven't– and we can't see each other except once every three weeks, and it's all just so bloody hard even without everything else you have on your plate, the, the business and the spying and your grades and–"

"You're..." he stopped, looking stunned for some reason, and Lily's heart contracted in fear. "You're afraid that they'd – that I'd somehow – that you'd lose me to someone else? Someone... Slytherin?"

"Don't– don't make light of it, Severus, please. It's–"

"No! No, Lily, that's not what I – you don't – I meant that if anyone might lose anyone here, it's really the other way around."

He feared the same thing, it came to her, and it was she who stared at him, stunned, this time. He shook his head, cupped her cheek, and she let him, melting into him, craving his nearness even though she still hurt for what he'd admitted to her.

"Lily, did you want easy, when you were deciding?" he asked her. He had the answer already, of course, but Lily still shook her head, swallowing past her dry throat. "Then why do you imagine I would?" Why are you so uncertain of me all of a sudden? was what he was asking, she knew.

She couldn't tell him the truth, couldn't tell him that he'd turned the tables on her with his metamorphosis and that she didn't know how to handle it, like this time last year, she never knew how to handle it when he did that to her, when he took the upper hand away from her, that perhaps he wasn't the only one with trust issues in their relationship.

"My mum wasn't enough for my dad, in the end," she told him instead, that other truth that was rearing its ugly head all over again. She wondered if it would ever stop.

"You will always be enough for me, Lily. No matter what happens, no matter whatever hurt was before all this. Always."

A dry sob fought past her throat, without any real tears to it, one, then another, then another, making her shoulders shake as she fought for breath, the release of three weeks of tension behind her as much as the culmination of the emotional rollercoaster of the morning. Severus pulled her into his arms until she could get control of her diaphragm, held her just as he'd done all those months ago when everything had changed between them, though this took only a couple of minutes and wasn't nearly so earth-shaking as that.

When she'd managed to catch her breath, Lily resettled herself more comfortably against Severus' lanky frame and asked: "Why would she do it? Stacie. Why would she think to kiss you? She knows we're together. I thought... I thought she was on our side, at least."

"It's a tool for her, how she looks and acts. Seduction," Severus clarified, running his fingers through her hair in a soothing downward sweep. "I suspect there is something between her and Mickey, but she is otherwise quite utilitarian about it. She is a Slytherin, however, so I would not be surprised if she had some additional agenda to 'helping' me, as she said."

"Why? Severus, what is behind all the rumours about the three of them?" Lily sat up, dislodging his arm from around herself, but she wanted to be able to look him in the eyes. "I know they're your friends, and I like that you have them, but what she did, it– I don't feel comfortable with her anymore."

"You mustn't tell anyone if I share it with you."

"Of course." Perhaps in the past, Lily hadn't understood the value of hidden information; those days were long gone now, though.

"They are grifters, long-con artists. Self-taught for the most part, just starting out, but their intention is to make careers out of it in the Muggle world after we're done here."

"So, criminals then?"

Severus shrugged. "They have their own rules about whom to target. You can't cheat an honest man is one of their mantras."

"That's... is there anyone in your House who doesn't intend to be on the dark side?" Lily asked, incredulous and stumped as to what she was supposed to do with the information that Severus was friends with yet another group of wannabe-criminals.

"That depends on whether you consider politics 'the dark side', too," Severus replied with a scoff. "It's life paths that Slytherins are good at, Lily. And at least they don't want to hurt anyone the way Avery and his lot revel in."

"So is that what Stacie claimed she could teach you? How to be like them?"

"Among other things," he admitted. "Are you... is this a problem for you?"

"If it keeps you safe, then no," Lily told him determinedly. "Whatever it takes, Severus, I don't care. But I... promise me that there's nothing between you two."

She knew she sounded irrational, clingy and whiny, she could see in his eyes that her fear and doubt hurt him, but he simply said: "I promise," and hugged her again.

For a while they simply sat like that in silence, clinging to each other, and it was exactly what they both needed after the emotional upheaval, to just coexist together, with no expectations or pressure to fill the silence. They'd been good at that before too, back in Cokeworth when nothing existed outside of their mundane little town, their spot in the park by the river, and long, hot days stretching before them.

"I'd like to go away somewhere for Easter," she said eventually. "I... do you want to?"

"Where?"

"Anywhere. Just, away. Where we don't have to worry about who's watching and how long we've got to wait until it's safe to see each other again in private."

"Yes. Yes, I would like that very much." His voice was a touch shaky, and under Lily's hand, she felt his heart pick up its speed. It came to her, when she thought about what she'd said, why this was so – because it'd be a week where they'd be completely alone, where they'd have the freedom to explore the physical side of this new aspect of their relationship, and suddenly, her heart was beating just as fast.

She pulled back and stared at him, at his lips, their kiss replaying in her mind in fantastic detail.

"May I kiss you? Lily, please," he breathed out into the air between them, his hand shaking as it moved up to hover next to her ear, Severus giving her the space to refuse if she wasn't ready yet. She nodded her assent, reaching for him as he cupped her head in his hand, suddenly hungry for him in a visceral, possessive way that was new and terrifying, something she'd not experienced before.

She wanted to mark him somehow, make sure he knew that he was hers, not Stacie's, not any other girl's, hers, and he didn't get to kiss anyone else without her consent, didn't get to practice with them or whatever else Stacie had tried to get him to do with her.

Their second proper kiss was about as different from the first one as it could be – Lily, unable to help herself, went on the offensive, taking control of the kiss the way Travis, her second boyfriend, had liked to do to her, and here was finally Severus' inexperience coming to the fore the way she'd expected it to earlier, so that he ended up clutching to her shoulders, giving into her onslaught and trying to follow her lead while she kissed him forcefully, running her tongue over his lips in teasing swipes and biting them, gently enough not to hurt him but with just enough spice to it that he'd remember it for days when he licked them.

Severus was a quick study, though, he'd always been. It took him only a bit of time before he started reciprocating in kind, started pushing back, and Lily let fully go, half intentionally and half driven by pure base need, daring to push past his lips with her tongue and touch his, to pull back and give him the moment he needed to mirror her action, and then to answer his hesitant caress by moaning softly into his mouth.

Severus' breathing was like bellows when they broke apart, and Lily's wasn't much better either. His lips were swollen and red, glistening, and the sight was so shockingly appealing that she swiped her thumb against them to feel their heat, only pulling her hand back when Severus groaned.

"What the bloody hell was that?" he panted, looking at her with eyes that were liquid pools of darkness, his pupils blown wide open.

"That's what I've been telling you I wanted to do with you for weeks," Lily replied smugly, basking in his appreciation and ignoring the way her cheeks felt on fire. "Bet she didn't mention anything about proper snogging, did she?"

Severus licked his lips distractedly, his eyes trying to stay locked with hers but constantly straying down to her mouth. "No," he rasped. "No, she bloody well didn't."

"Good. Because you're right, I didn't like that she got to kiss you first, but I'll forgive you both so long as you remember that I am the only one who gets to do this with you."

"Oh, thank Merlin," he blurted out, cheeks turning even redder than they were a moment before. "I meant – I didn't mean that to sound as if – I mean –"

Lily couldn't help herself; she fell into helpless giggling at his clumsiness to express himself, and after an insulted moment, Severus joined her.

It felt good to laugh, after everything that had come before; it felt even better, a little bit later, to kiss him again and feel like they were finally, irrevocably a true couple.