The atmosphere in the Muggle Studies classroom was oppressive.
Awful. Frozen. Heavy. It was not quite unfamiliar to the students who bore it—something they'd felt all year, ebbing and flowing in a poisonous wave over their heads—but this day, this moment, was somehow worse than anything they'd found before.
It was familiar, but unbearable all the same.
Class had technically started minutes ago, but nobody spoke. Professor Cuffe was sat at her desk, everything typically witty and bright drained from her eyes, and though her skin was ruddy with emotion she looked disconcertingly lifeless.
Lily thought it was odd that the Prophet covered the story.
When she considered it, of course it made sense—Magic-on-Muggle crime certainly warranted front page coverage—but a smaller, simpler part of her mind couldn't make sense of it. If her mother was killed, if her sister was killed, would they be plastered on the front page just the same?
Would she look the same as Cuffe did now? Halfway between wrecked and empty and too far down both roads to care either way?
Maybe Adam understood. Maybe Lily could try to. All the Mudbloods, the Half-Bloods, maybe they could try their hardest to understand, take the feeling that'd rooted itself in their chests and imagine it magnified, imagine it pushing and stretching until their ribs cracked, until they couldn't breathe. Somehow, though, Lily knew none of the seventh-years understood.
They were all far too young to be married, to be in love, she thought.
To be in love and then to lose it.
"Professor…?" Kerry asked at the five-minute mark.
Pureblood.
Lily didn't mean to think it, but she could hardly force the word from her head.
Matilda Cuffe looked up absently. After a moment the words seemed to register, some light reading in her eyes. "Oh, Merlin, have I…how…sorry."
She rubbed a hand over her face, succeeding in making it redder but no livelier, making no move to stand. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay, Professor," Remus said softly.
Why had she come to class? Surely nobody expected her to teach given the circumstances.
"No, it's…" She gave a heavy sigh. "I'm alright."
"You don't have to—" Mary tried to say, her voice breaking off too easily.
"No, no, I…today is the last day for Romeo and Juliet. It's about time we moved on."
Lily expected to hear something dark in her tone, but it couldn't be found; it was purely hollow.
"I don't know if you lot noticed, but I've kept my views to myself during our discussion. It was difficult, at times. Your opinions…hearing what you've had to say, hearing what children in these days think of children in those…it's been very educational for me, honestly. Sort of heartbreaking, too, I suppose.
"I'm sure it's not necessary for me to inform you of this, but we are living in terrible times—depraved, horrible, devastating, senseless…" she took a breath as if to collect herself, but her voice still wavered. "Terrible times. This is not a place where children should be growing up, I think. It's certainly not a place for love."
Her voice caught on the word in a way that made Lily's eyes water without her permission. She hated it, hated this, hated the weight of tragedy that'd forced its way into the classroom. She had to fight herself to stay in her seat, to keep from fleeing. Again.
"The comparison hadn't really occurred to me when I assigned the reading. When you lot came in, though, flooding the room with more opinions and energy and passion than this classroom has probably ever seen, I realised. I don't know if you did, but I realised that we're in the same place they were. That this story hits perhaps too close to home."
Lily shifted in her seat. She didn't want to listen; didn't want to hear; didn't want to look any deeper than an old Muggle playwright and names on paper, in storybooks, in the Prophet; didn't want any of it to be real.
Her crimson nails aged poorly, chipped so severely that only spots of colour remained, but the colour still haunted her. Violent ends.
"Romeo and Juliet were victims," Cuffe said forcefully. "Not of their own folly, or rashness. They were given a death sentence for falling in love at just the wrong moment."
The witch was crying now, and she made no effort to conceal it. Lily's fingers blurred in her vision.
"They had their entire lives ahead of them, and they fell in love at just the wrong moment. He…they didn't deserve…it's not…" She let out a sob like her voice giving out. "I'm sorry."
Not here, Lily thought, and the last of her restraint abandoned her. She left abruptly, left thoughtlessly, left her bag, her friends, and a destroyed professor behind.
.
She wanted to let loose the second she choked out the password and entered the common room, but there was a cluster of fourth year boys right by the door, clearly skiving off class. They jumped to attention when they saw the Head Girl enter, but right then they were nothing more than blurry obstacles.
Rushing past them and to the back wall, Lily tried to blink the tears out of her eyes, hardly able to find the small golden mark with her vision so impaired. No matter how many she tried to banish, though, it seemed that more followed. She resorted to feeling out for the raised, cold metal blindly, feeling a wash of relief as it passed underneath her fingertips.
"Amabo te," she whispered desperately, and disappeared behind the door as quickly as she could.
The fourth years stood dumbfounded. The petty joy of their bad behavior vanished, leaving them with confusion and whispers of concern. There was no laughter among them as the portrait-hole door swung open once again, several minutes later.
"Did you see a girl run through here?" James Potter asked, an uncomfortable intensity in his eyes. "Red hair, upset looking? Head Girl?"
Any other time, they would have grown giggly and excited that the James Potter—Quidditch Captain, Head Boy, Man of Every Hour James Potter—was talking to them; they would have adopted that strange, over-masculine that only highlighted how boyish they still were.
Today, they only pointed. "There was—she made a door appear—"
"Thanks," the older boy said distractedly, setting off in the same direction, whispering the same words the children couldn't make out.
They watched the door disappear again and began to wonder why they'd ditched Herbology in the first place.
.
James probably shouldn't have run after her like that.
They hadn't spoken for days after their argument in the hallway, and they had barely managed cool politeness this past week. Her words still stung every time he remembered them—which was often. Every time he saw Snape and his bloody nose he wished he could do more.
None of it mattered when he saw her so upset in Muggle Studies. He'd seen her tense up, how she couldn't bear to look at Cuffe, and as the entire class sat stunned both by the professor's words and Lily's retreat, James was already jumping to his feet.
He would've gotten there faster, probably, but she was already out of sight when he'd left the classroom; he tried the Astronomy Tower first. With his knowledge of Hogwart's secret passageways, he'd assumed he'd beat her there; instead, he'd waited in the bitter wind for about five freezing minutes before he guessed he'd been wrong.
Maybe she hasn't been to the Tower at all since Halloween, James wondered.
He'd been all momentum making his way across the castle for the second time, but he hadn't noticed his own intensity until the door slammed shut behind him.
Right at his feet, barely a metre into the hidden hallway, Lily sat crumpled on the stone floor, her sobs echoing softly.
James stopped cold.
She looked up at him, and his heart squeezed horribly at the sight of devastation in her face.
"…hi, James," Lily said in a strained voice. Hearing his name like that hurt in a confusing sort of way.
"Lily," he said, his voice catching slightly. "I looked for you at the Astronomy Tower first. Sorry."
It wasn't until after he said it that James thought it might be odd to apologize, as if she'd been expecting him to follow her—as if she'd been waiting for him. But she didn't seem to notice, or else she didn't acknowledge it, giving something that was almost a smile. "Too cold."
"Figured that out, yeah," he said awkwardly.
"And I…" her voice dripped away weakly. She looked so small, so ashen in her stone surroundings, that she could've fit in with any of Hogwarts's other ghosts. The hallway encasing them could've been a mausoleum. "I don't feel safe enough there, right now."
"Oh."
James sat down on the floor beside her. His legs were too long to sprawl out in the tight space between Lily and the dead end where the door used to be, so he bent them to fit as best he could.
"I don't feel very safe anywhere right now," she breathed in a way that raised the hairs on the back of James's neck.
"Hogwarts is the safest place on earth, Lily." Coming out of his mouth, it felt condescending.
She locked eyes with him, and though he felt that typical jolt, they gave James no advantage in understanding the way she felt. Lily just looked lost.
"This world doesn't want me, James."
His heart broke, quick and sharp and painful, and James blinked at the feeling. Frankly, he was surprised it'd lasted this long.
"That's not true." The words stumbled out. I want you. I'm a part of this world, and I can't think of a version of it that doesn't have you. I can't love a version of it that doesn't have you.
But those kinds of sentiments—those grand-gesture, romantic ideas—never seemed to settle well with Lily, so James bit down on his tongue and ignored the taste of blood.
"This world wants me dead." Lily's voice was certain, and though her resolve on the matter seemed unshakeable it did not ease the tears racing down her cheeks.
James could think of nothing else to say. Cautiously, like he was sneaking around a sleeping dragon, trying his hardest not to wake her, he slid his arm around her shaking shoulders.
The dragon pressed her face against his chest; he wondered if she had fire left to breathe.
James leaned against the wall behind him, and managed to get rather comfortable despite the rigid surface—probably in part due to the brilliantly new experience of holding Lily against him. So comfortable, in fact, that the sound of her voice again made him start:
"James?"
He looked down at her, but the sight of Lily nestled against him—so neutrally, with no awkward stiffness but no true warmth either—threw him for a loop. Seeing her made the situation too intimate, too real, too much. James swallowed hard as he averted his eyes to the ceiling. "Yeah?"
"Why do you fancy me?"
It may have been the last question he anticipated—not that he was very capable of anticipating anything between them at the moment. James frowned, becoming aware of the way his arm had fallen asleep against her. Class was certainly over by now; people were probably wondering where they were.
"I…I'm not sure I know what you mean," he muttered.
She shifted. "Not really a difficult question, is it?"
How could a girl look so exhausted and still carry such a challenge in her voice?
"Okay," he relented, shaking his head. "I guess I just mean…why are you asking?"
Maybe he could've tried to deny his own affection, but that seemed idiotic, even for him. It wasn't as if he ever tried to hide it; it wasn't as if she ever pretended not to know.
"Humour me?" Lily wasn't answering his question. They both knew that.
"I don't know if—" he started, but trailed off, unsure what he meant to say.
"I'm scared, okay?" She interrupted. James was sort of glad. "There's too much happening, and none of it's new but lately it feels like just too much, and I want something familiar right now."
His throat tightened automatically. "Okay," he said with a little strain in his voice, trying to collect his thoughts.
James wondered if she could feel his heartbeat—if she knew what her words did to him, what they always did to him—but she didn't seem all that present. Despite how drained she seemed, the idea of it—of James as something comforting, something good, something familiar—was enough to make his cheeks flush.
In all the time he'd been in love with her—love is too strong, don't say love when you tell her—James never actually imagined this conversation happening.
"When I saw you on the train for the first time," he started, and apparently he hadn't given it enough thought, because this was clearly a bad place to begin. I wondered what a girl like you was doing with a boy like Snape.
"When I saw you," James tried again, "I was amazed by your hair. I'd never seen hair as bright as yours before. And up close, when we were in the same compartment, your freckles were so cool. All of the girls I grew up around basically hid from the sun, and there you were absolutely covered in them."
He risked a glance down at her. What was he risking? Over the years they'd mostly faded, but the ghosts of them lingered on her nose, forehead, and cheeks. They matched her eyelashes, he noticed—the same pale reddish-gold.
Noticing his silence, Lily looked up to meet his eyes, prompting James to turn away skittishly instinctively.
"And then when I actually spoke to you?" He cleared his throat, attempting to refocus. "Merlin, I was done for. All fire and excitement, always so lively, always so passionate…it was like nobody could hold you back. Even seeing you angry was exciting," he admitted. "Which probably did more to hurt my years of courtship than anything."
James felt Lily bounce with a bit of laughter, and it lifted his spirits.
"You just…you feel like life. You feel like air. Not like a gentle breeze, though, not like that. It's like…you know that feeling when you've just been running, or you're swimming and you come up for air, when you can breathe again and you really understand why you need to? Like, you feel out of control, because obviously you need air to survive, but it also feels like a gift, like you're finally breathing properly, and it makes you whole? You feel like that."
He was rambling now—he could tell. "Am I making any sense?"
Lily was quiet for a long moment. James wasn't used to anxiety, but in that moment it seized him eagerly; he was certain she could feel his heart racing then.
"It…" she said quietly. "The comparison makes sense. I know the feeling you're talking about. It's just that…" Her voice had a certain stunned, distant quality to it. She felt a bit stiff against him, but James had no idea if he was imagining it or not.. "It's difficult to imagine somebody feeling that strongly about me."
"It's a lot to feel," James agreed, "but you're the only person it makes sense to feel this much about."
Again, Lily fell silent. James felt unbelievably exposed.
"I'm not ready for something like that," she confessed. "I don't…Sirius is right. You're right. Everybody's right. I'm closed off from everything, but that's all I can think to do, and I don't think I'm…solid enough to reciprocate something like that right now."
Disappointment filled his chest; at least that feeling was familiar. "That's alright."
"But for the record," she whispered, "you're like fire."
"Fire?"
"Mm," she hummed.
"Not bad," he smiled. James didn't dare look at her again, but if he had, he would've seen that Lily was smiling, too.
.
"I think I'm in love with Adam," Marlene said lightly, breaking the long silence of the dormitory.
Lily and Mary looked up in surprise from the latter's bed. "Seriously?" Mary asked.
"Is that insane?" She asked, her face flushed, her dark eyes glittering with uncertain hope.
"It's entirely mad, Marlene," Lily started with a weak smile, "that it's taken you so bloody long to realise."
The girlish gossip helped to lift her spirits, but the distress from Cuffe's lecture and the everything from being in the hall with James still lingered in her mind. When everybody asked her where she'd been, Lily couldn't bring herself to tell them; it felt more intensely private than anything she'd ever experienced.
Was that fair? Did it even make sense?
Why was it her instinct to keep every moment she had with him a secret?
Marlene frowned. "What, have you all been talking about us behind our backs or something?"
"Since fifth year, I reckon," Mary confirmed.
"Oh, well, that's reassuring," she groaned.
"Cheer up," Mary said, keeping her voice impressively perky, "it's not your fault."
"It's just that so much has happened," Marlene confessed earnestly. "First with his mum, and now with Cuffe's husband, and all of this talk about the play in the first place…"
She shook her head. "Life's too short, yeah? I get that now. There's no time to waste."
Lily felt her face heat up, and though she gave herself strict orders not to think about why, her mind travelled all too easily—too quickly—to James's hazel eyes, his arm around her. She felt a hundred violent ways when she thought of him, and none of them were simple enough to figure out. "I s'pose."
"I think it's great, however you've gotten to it," Mary smiled softly. A month ago, the news of Raymond Cuffe's death would've sent her into a panic attack for the ages, Lily thought, but now she was wonderfully calm; it was confusing, but she decided to be glad instead. With so few things going well she couldn't bring herself to examine the things that did.
You feel like life. You feel like air.
"I'll tell him at dinner," Marlene said. "Or no…that'll be too gross. And loud. And public—Merlin, what if I got food in my teeth?"
Lily could see her talking herself out of it, but stayed silent.
"Just tell him after dinner, then, love," Mary said gently. "It's not as if any of us will be going to bed early tonight."
Their late-night meetings in the common room hadn't diminished; with the intensity of the war ramping up every day, it was only getting harder for the seventh-years to find rest. Even Lily stayed until the wee hours of the morning, unwilling to spend the nights alone. It made everybody else a bit uncomfortable, how she hardly looked James's way, how she fixed him with an icy glare if they happened to catch each other's eye, but it was easy enough for her to focus on the fire and tune out nicely to the restless chatter of her friends.
Tonight, she was unsure of her plan. After he'd come after her, and the words they'd traded—she'd curled up against his side like a bloody cat, for God's sake—was it even possible for Lily to ignore him?
He called me air, she thought. Was it even possible for her to be around him?
If Lily remembered properly from her science classes in primary school, fire ate up oxygen to keep burning. When you trapped a flame and it ran out of air, it died out almost instantly.
Where do we go from this?
"I might, actually," Lily said before she could think it through. Mary and Marlene turned to look at her with both surprise and concern in their eyes, and she tried not to blanch under their gaze. "After everything that's happened today—"
Everything that'd happened that day.
"—I think some time alone would do me well."
"That makes sense," Marlene said, uncharacteristically sensitive. Maybe it's all the love, she thought drily. "I'll let you know how the McKinnon affair goes."
"You make it sound so dramatic," Mary teased.
"It is dramatic!"
"It's nothing we haven't known about—"
"It was certainly news to me when I realised, and frankly it's none of your business—"
"If Adam's surprised, he's much slower than I thought he was—"
"So you can all just bugger off and leave us alone, yeah?"
A beat of silence fell after Marlene had gotten out her final snark. It was the kind of lapse in conversation that always filled itself with laughter, and the three girls were glad to replenish it.
"Good luck, Marlene," said Lily through her giggle. There didn't seem much to go around at Hogwarts lately; she figured they'd use her luck better than she could.
.
"So. Price and McKinnon."
Remus Lupin was something of an insomniac; Sirius had known this since they were eleven.
When they were first years, he would tease him about it—not cruelly, but of course not free of that casual malice children always have—but Sirius felt rather guilty about that once he learned of his "furry little secret".
Now, though the dark circles permanently under his eyes were worrisome, he appreciated Remus's tendency towards sleeplessness. Most nights he stayed awake with him. They'd sit in the common room after everybody else had retired, pushing into the hours that were neither morning nor night, watching for the sun to just barely started bleeding into the deep blue of the sky. He would lament his loss of beauty sleep, but it was the only time the couple really got to be alone.
"Took them long enough," Remus said, stretching a bit before resting his head on the other boy's lap, staring up at the ceiling. This was one of such nights, and though the day had been eventful—with Muggle Studies and later Marlene's confession, too—they were staying up even later than usual.
"Price was so stubborn I thought it'd never happen," he smirked. "Hell, McKinnon's such a pushover I thought it'd never happen. It was a perfect storm of 'not-happening' but they somehow managed not to bugger it."
"Adam's not a pushover," Remus sighed. "He's just not as pushy as you are."
He shrugged. "Pushy works."
"It pisses a lot of people off, if that's what works for you," the other boy laughed.
Sirius began to wind his fingers through Remus's fair hair. "It's efficient, Moony."
He didn't respond, instead focusing on his boyfriend's ministrations, relaxing but trying not to nod off. "I'm just glad they figured it out in time."
"In time?" he asked. "What, do you know something I don't? Is Hogwarts going under siege at dawn?"
"If it's at dawn," Remus yawned, "maybe we should go to bed."
Sirius didn't laugh. "In time?"
Remus locked eyes with the grey ones above him; his expression was sleepy and grim simultaneously. "Things aren't getting any better, Padfoot."
Sirius didn't care for the chill that passed through him at his words.
"Cuffe's getting to you."
"Cuffe has a point. Just not the one any of us want to hear."
They were silent for a while, but not uncomfortably so, the crack of the fire and the rustle of fingers in hair keeping them from isolation.
"Are you going to fight, Moony?"
"'Course I am."
He felt he had known the answer before asking, but the certainty of Remus's words was unsettling. The popping of the fire, the crumbling logs and embers, sounded harsher for a moment. "We keep calling it a war, but I haven't really thought about fighting in it. Against my family."
They weren't really his family anymore, he knew that; it didn't change how wrong it felt. Remus grabbed Sirius's hand, still fussing with his hair, and wrapped his own around it. Sirius moved their locked hands to sit over the other boy's heart.
"I can't kill him," His left the name unspoken, but of course they both knew. "He's—he's a right arse, but he's my brother. I can't do that."
Remus squeezed his hand. "Don't be dramatic, Padfoot. It won't come to that."
"You don't know that."
He sighed. "Sirius."
Sirius didn't respond, but he knew he was listening.
"I can't really tell you what's going to happen; I don't think anybody can," he admitted. "I'll be with you, though. We'll be with each other. I can tell you that."
"You really sound like a member of the True Love Brigade now," Sirius said, his tone deliberately level.
"I did say Cuffe had a point."
"Doesn't Mercutio die, too?"
Remus let out something too silent and heavy to be a sigh. "You really did do the reading."
"Just this once." Sirius tried for a smile. "He dies, right? Fighting a battle that doesn't really have anything to do with him? With a family that's not really his?"
The sound of the fire seemed to fill the room too much then. For no apparent reason, Remus felt like he couldn't breathe; in a small attempt to lift the weight on his chest, he moved Sirius's hand from his heart and pressed it to his lips.
"We'll survive where they didn't," he whispered.
And they both wanted it, so desperately, to be true.
.
The Astronomy Tower wasn't the same for Lily anymore.
James mentioned that he'd looked for her there, and Lily never escaped with the intent of being found; he'd interrupted her enough for a lifetime.
So, the Tower was out.
The Great Lake was finally frozen, and would likely remain frozen until spring. Lily preferred it in warmer months, of course, but then it was always crawling with people. She'd stopped coming out there to think about halfway through fifth year, when it'd become clear that it was Sirius and Marlene's new smoking spot.
They didn't come out this far when it was raining; nobody did. To Lily, the faint drizzle over the grounds—just frozen enough to bite at skin—was a sign that she was meant to return to the Lake today. Her mother's insistent nagging played in the back of her mind as she cast another warming charm over herself, her last one having worn off during the walk out. The warmth enveloped her, like a scarf tucking itself around her neck, and it was sufficient, Lily thought, but not satisfactory.
She was used to a new kind of warmth now, despite how quickly she'd lost it. Scared it away.
No matter, she thought, shaking her head to herself. At least I'm not freezing to death.
Her footsteps were tentative as she approached the edge of the lake, wary of the slick grass and the dark ice over the water. She sat once she arrived, not cold enough or warm enough to feel any more than numb.
Lily preferred running water, unfrozen water, but the Lake was enough. She put her hand against the ice; it took a moment before she felt a chill against her skin.
"Lily?"'
She stiffened at the voice. The chill ran its way down her spine.
"It's freezing out. You shouldn't be—"
"How dare you?" Lily asked fiercely, whipping around to face him.
Severus froze in front of her. The rain must've covered the sound of his approach.
"What the hell are you doing here? Following me?"
"I—"
"Or did you come out here to bloody poison me again?" It was unclear if Lily heard James own words in her accusation, but she didn't seem to; she was too mad and too numb to notice.
"I can explain!" Severus said hastily.
Lily scowled. "No you cannot, Sev!" The nickname came from her instinctively, but it didn't feel right like it used to. It felt like a betrayal. "Why even bother trying?"
Perhaps Snape had come out here with a plan, a script prepared in his head, but now he looked like little more than a deer in headlights. Say something, Lily thought furiously. If you can explain, we can go back to the way things used to be.
Please say something.
Severus stepped closer, and Lily searched for a mark on his crooked nose that he knew she would not find. He wouldn't meet her eyes.
"I'm…" he mumbled, barely audible over the hiss of the rain. "I am sorry, Lily."
Lily looked away from the boy before her. Snape looked pathetic, she realised. More than he had as a scrawny little boy in oversized clothes; more than he had being dragged around by his horrible, increasingly Dark group of friends; more than he had suspended by his ankles, his face red from embarrassment and exertion. Lily saw him, for the first time, the way everybody else told her she should.
It made her feel no better. "Stay away from me, Severus."
"Lily, I—"
"Could you please just sod off?" She yelled, pushing her hair out of her face too aggressively. His mouth snapped shut in surprise as her voice rang through the grounds. Hers did, too. "I don't want you in my life anymore! And pardon my assumption, but I thought you were fairly clear about not wanting any Mudbloods like me in your life, either."
"It's not—"
"Why are you still trying to fix this?" Lily asked desperately. "Is that what you're trying to do? Do you just want me to make you feel better? Do you—do you want a back-up if your Death Eater friends fall through? Because I'm not going to give it to you, Severus."
If not for the way he flinched, Lily wouldn't have been sure he was hearing her at all. His face was pale, but it always was. His eyes were dark and unreadable and fixed stubbornly on the slick grass at his feet. Her face stung with the rain; her warming charm was beginning to wear off.
"You are getting nothing from me anymore."
To an outside observer, it would have sounded odd. After all, the two hadn't been friends for a year and a half, and hadn't spoken in the time between then in now but once, in the Hospital Wing. It wouldn't have been surprising if her words didn't make sense to Severus himself.
But he understood perfectly.
Lily began to storm away, heeding no caution for the slippery grass beneath her feet, not bothering to renew the charm protecting her from the elements. At that moment it only felt right to be frozen.
"I'm sorry."
She might've heard it behind her, hidden among her angry breathing and her affected footsteps and the strengthening rain, but she let it hit her back and kept walking.
Lily couldn't afford to forgive him anymore.
.
The stormy walk through the castle didn't warm Lily at all. She rushed into the girl's dormitory without knocking, shivering and incensed, and Mary jerked upright on her bed in surprise.
"Lily?" Her baby-blue eyes were wide with concern. "What's happened?"
"Do I look like something's wrong?" She asked sarcastically, giving a turn. Drops of water flung from her hair with the spin, making Mary flinch instinctively, though they were nowhere near hitting her.
"You look like hell," she answered honestly.
Lily gave a thin smile. "Ace. Just double-checking."
This was Marauders-speak, obvious and strange in her voice, but Mary thought better of commenting on it. "Lily, what happened?"
Lily huffed, sitting at the foot of the bed; Mary, willing to lend an ear but unwilling to have her bedcovers soaked, leaned over to grab her wand and cast a quick drying charm. Her Charms work was never the best, but at least her friend was no longer dripping.
"Severus."
The acid in her tone was unprecedented—at least for matters of Snape. Mary was positive she'd never heard Lily say his name with so much animosity.
Of course, Mary heard the speculation of her fellow classmates and Gryffindors. Everybody knew Snape was the one who sabotaged their potion. There were no concrete facts—the Slytherin was too clever for that, too evasive—but they'd all seen the way he lingered too close by, and it couldn't have been a coincidence that two Muggleborns were the victims.
James told Mary that he'd broken Snape's nose as retribution. Serves him right.
Lily told Mary that James shouldn't have broken Snape's nose as retribution. Seriously?
"You're giving me that look," Lily said, rolling her eyes.
Mary blinked. Her train of thought wandered off more and more lately. Probably just the exhaustion, making her brain behave stupidly. "What look?"
"The look, Mary," she sighed. "The 'why-the-hell-is-Lily-still-so-pathetically-caught-up-on-her-old-childhood-friend-who-has-Death-Eater-friends-and-is-awful-to-her' look."
It was a very complex, specific look, apparently, but Mary couldn't be sure the expression had never crossed her face. The thought definitely had. "I'm not giving the 'why-the-hell-is-Lily'-whatever look. And I don't think you're pathetic." That much was true. Nobody was more pathetic to Mary than Mary. "But you haven't even told me what's happened, love."
Finally, the brittle light in Lily's eyes began to thaw. She fell back onto the bed, rubbing her hands over her face, either trying to warm up or to hide. "I talked to Severus."
Mary pursed her lips slightly but tried not to give any looks. "And?"
"I called him a right bastard and told him to get out of my life. I mean, not in so many words, but…that was the idea."
"You did?" She was here to play therapist, Mary knew, so she kept her voice neutral. Internally, though, she was thrilled, however childishly, that Lily was finally cutting ties with her dangerous dead-weight friend. They hadn't been on friendly terms for ages, but she'd never drawn the line in the sand. Instead, Lily had simply…drifted away. She'd never done anything to let Snape know that there would be no more redemption.
Until now, Mary thought with pride.
"He bloody poisoned us," Lily said with a short, bitter laugh. "I guess he figured I didn't get the point with the whole Mudblood thing—"
Mary flinched at the word.
"—and had to resort to physical harm to finally get rid of me."
That was the simplest way to sum it up, she supposed. If it was easier for Lily to act as if Severus wanted to destroy their relationship, Mary had no real problem with the logic—even if it was clearly faulty. Snape was obviously in love with her. The repeated injury he continued to bring was unintentional; he was just that terrible a person.
"Slimy git," Mary said. In her opinion, good therapists shouldn't say much at all.
"Right!" Lily nearly shouted. "I can't believe it!"
"Right!"
"After everything we've been through!"
Mary let the comment sit. It was impossible for Lily to think of the Slytherins the way she did, and she knew that. No amount of slurs, unsubtle comments about her blood, or ultimately harmless "poisoning" would ever equal one swift, well-aimed Crucio alone in dark corridors.
She was less than human to them. They were nothing more than demons to her.
Lily didn't notice her friend shiver. "After everything terrible he's done…everything terrible his friends have done…I can't give him my sympathy anymore. I can't worry about him. Not in Hogwarts, or my head, or anywhere else here may bloody well pop up."
Mary bit her lip. "He's not a good person," she said, her voice barely audible.
Lily stiffened, but it seemed to be reflexive, because she relaxed a moment after. "I know that."
Now.
.
The Marauders were oddly lethargic that afternoon. Pranks had died down considerably—gone down nearly to none, in fact—since their last catastrophic one. None of the boys wanted to do homework, or wander the halls, or sneak down to Hogsmeade.
The only thing any of them seemed to be up to at the moment was listen to James wallow.
"She said she wasn't ready?" Sirius asked.
James nodded solemnly. "Since you're the sodding expert, apparently, d'you think you could explain that?"
"It's absolutely nothing new, Prongs," Remus answered instead. He tended to be an expert on most things, though, so James let it happen. "Lily just needs space, for God's sake."
His cheeks flamed. "It's not as if I'm the one pushing things."
"You're always chasing after her, though," Peter added.
Apparently, it was now time to criticise James's approach to his relationship with Lily—his confusing, perhaps nonexistent relationship with Lily—for the past three years. "Not anymore—"
"Not like asking her out, or anything, anymore," Peter corrected himself hastily, his cheeks turning as red as James's own. "Just…y'know…the night you snogged, you followed her up to the Astronomy Tower. Then yesterday, when she left class all upset, Sirius said you were out of your seat after her straight away."
"Okay, yes, so maybe I chase," James admitted, though somehow he made his concession sound impenetrably stubborn. "A bit. Occasionally. But I didn't kiss first. And I wasn't the one curled up against her like a ruddy cat." He heard his own frustration and, disliking the way it made him sound very much, he tried to moderate his tone. "I understand, if she needs time. I've talked to her enough to know that she probably isn't ready for a relationship, or anything like that, with everything going on. And it's not like I've had any problem with waiting before.
"It's just all of these ruddy mixed signals that're going to do me in." James ran a hand through his hair frustratedly. Every time he'd done it since Halloween, he worked very hard not to think of Lily—Lily weaving her fingers through the mess of it, Lily gripping it tightly when he bit her lip—but he was very rarely successful in that endeavor.
He ran his hands through his hair a lot.
"Wormtail's on to something, I think," Sirius mused. "If you didn't chase, you wouldn't be giving her the opportunity to do things she regrets."
"'Things' is a terrible nickname for James, Padfoot." Peter chuckled at his own joke. His friends were pricks sometimes.
James clenched his jaw and wished this conversation weren't quite as upsetting.
He wanted to be a lot of things to Lily, but never a regret.
"So…I just leave her alone," he said. "Really, genuinely, absolutely leave her alone."
His three friends looked back at him with varying levels of sympathy in their eyes; even Sirius's, whose were tinged with a joking gleam, were difficult for James to face.
"I mean, she didn't say she didn't fancyyou, Prongs," Remus shrugged, adopting a feeble smile. "Just that she's not ready for somebody to fancy her as much as you do."
"Blimey, I don't think I'm ready for somebody to fancy me like Prongs fancies Evans," Peter giggled again.
That was about James's limit, and he shot Wormtail a glare. "Play your cards right, and you'll never have to worry about that, mate."
Sirius laughed loudly, and Remus held in his as best he could, but Peter just rolled his eyes. It didn't look like he was affected much by the comment. "Bugger off, Prongs."
"Sorry, Wormy, but I love you too dearly to stay away."
"Suddenly," he said, "I feel a lot worse for Evans."
James winked, ignoring the ugly feeling squeezing his chest. "You're just jealous."
.
Everything stopped all at once; Lily was starting to understand that.
When the sun sets the day ends all at once; when somebody says goodbye they're gone all at once; when a person dies they're dead all at once.
Lily tended to cling, she realised. Not that anybody would term her as clingy. It was just difficult for her to let go of things, and it seemed that she was losing more every day. There was nothing she could hold onto that would never end.
The fire mused on her thoughts, and a glowing log fell in agreement. She tried to remember a time where the fire of the Gryffindor common room was not lit. None came to mind. Fire was in a permanent state of entropy, of self-destruction; it always ended up putting itself out. It didn't make sense that one could go on forever.
Magic kept it burning, obviously. It wasn't difficult to figure out. Probably not even a difficult spell to cast. Tucking her feet under herself on the couch, Lily recalled a curse they'd learnt in sixth year—one that would suck the air from a room, suffocating everyone in it. Surely it would suffocate the fire, too.
She used to think magic could keep everything alive and lovely forever.
Maybe it could, if that was the way everybody decided to use it.
Another log crumbled, and Lily tried to remember how she'd landed on this train of thought.
It was lunchtime, but she wasn't hungry, and the common room was blissfully empty. If it hadn't been, if some first-years were busy playing tiddlywinks or some fifth-years having their first kiss, Lily would've had to shut herself up in her Head's dorm, alone.
With a private room, it may have been a good idea to make that her main haunt for isolation, but Lily would never be able to stomach it. She needed something moving—alive—to keep her mind busy, to keep her sane; the rustling trees she can see from the Astronomy Tower, the wind in her hair; the rain and the ice of the Great Lake; the bright fire, now, of the common room.
Surely somebody would come along soon and take this from her, too. Why could Lily never be alone these days?
The fire snapped at her. She lifted a fingernail to her mouth and bit it, grimacing at the taste of varnish in her mouth. She glared at the offending pigment, cornflower blue and patchy, suddenly very angry with it.
"What's the point of having you if you don't stop me from biting?"
Lily frowned. "Oh, bullocks. I'm talking to myself now."
This fire wasn't doing enough to keep her sane.
The portrait-hole swung open, and Lily turned too quickly to the sound, unsure if she was glad or irritated by the interruption. Her cheeks flushed when she met eyes with James; she dropped her hand from her mouth.
He simply waved at her on his way to the golden mark at the back of the room. Lily turned back to the fire but listened to his footsteps, the barely audible amabo te he whispered, the sound of the gently closing door.
She frowned; the fire scolded her for it.
"Bugger," she sighed, grabbing a throw pillow and pressing it against her face.
.
"Let's take a walk, Potter," Marlene said with a quirked brow, putting a forceful hand on the boy's back.
James looked up from the table with surprise. "Going to ask me to Hogsmeade?" He asked around a mouthful of mashed potatoes.
She rolled her eyes. "Actually, I was planning on taking you to some empty classroom for a quickie, if that's alright."
"Are you cheating on me, Price?" Sirius piped up, sounding predictably offended.
"I am also here," Adam smiled. Marlene looked at him and smiled back, her stony expression gone, and didn't even notice the sauce on the side of his mouth.
"Hey, if we're going off to shag, Price, I'd appreciate you not making love-eyes at your boyfriend right before." James took one last gulp of pumpkin juice before he stood.
Marlene smiled harder at Adam, and Adam smiled harder back.
"Merlin! You're making me jealous here," he tried again.
She turned to fix him with a glare. "Somebody's eager. I'll bring him back in one piece," she told the table as they walked away.
"We wouldn't mind if you didn't!" Sirius called after them.
"Yes, we would!" Adam disagreed. Marlene smiled again at his voice, and James shook his head with a massive grin.
"You two are bloody adorable, you know that?"
The smile left her face easily; it was apparently only charmed out by McKinnon, like a shy, finnicky cat. "I'm here to yell at you."
They exited the Great Hall, and the sounds of chatter and clinking spoons traded itself for the scattered conversation of the corridor. Students of all years flitted about, joking or laughing or simply sitting together, not talking at all. The many halls of Hogwarts were always full after meals; tonight, James and Marlene were nothing but another post-dinner stroll.
"Oh?" James asked, trying to think of anything he'd done in the past few days to piss her off.
"You and Lily are being weird."
"I've hardly been around her this week," he frowned.
She stopped to face him, lips pursed, eyebrows raised like he was an idiot. How was he the idiot this time?
"What's wrong with that?" He asked. "Has she told you she's upset by it?"
Marlene rolled her eyes again, crossing her arms. "Obviously not, James, because we all know she doesn't bloody talk about her feelings. I just think it might."
James tried not to get his hopes up with the idea. "I dunno. Just haven't been around her lately. I'm not—not avoiding her, if that's what—"
"You're avoiding Lily?" She accused sharply. A pair of second-years ran past, shrieking something about baby toads and cauldrons, and James was quite suddenly reminded of a stern mother.
"I just said that I'm not, Marlene, if you'd listen—"
"There's no reason you'd say you aren't avoiding her unless you are, I'm not thick—"
"Do you know how a conversation works?" He asked frustratedly, running a hand through his hair. "Y'know, asking questions, getting answers, waiting a minute so the other person can get a ruddy word out? Is that a familiar concept to you?"
Marlene looked unaffected by his distress; she stood, statuesque, arms still crossed solidly across her chest. "Why are you avoiding Lily?"
"I…" he tried to think of a decent way to explain, and came up empty. "Because she asked me to."
"She asked you," she repeated, sounding doubtful.
"I mean, not literally, but she…we've had a few conversations that made us think it would be best if I did."
"Us?"
James blushed. Before he could answer, a Ravenclaw girl—about fourteen, from the looks of it—walked up to him and grinned. "Do you need something?" He asked, trying to be a good, polite Head Boy.
"My friend said she thinks you're fit," she said blithely, pointing to a girl across the hallway who was blushing furiously.
Marlene made no attempt to cover up her laughter. James felt he had to try, at least. "Oh, well, that's very…nice of her."
"She wants to ask you to Hogsmeade."
"That's, uh, very—"
"This is very charming, really, but Potter isn't interested in twelve-year-olds," she was nonplussed by the clear look of offence on the younger girl's face, "and we were in the middle of having a conversation, so it'd be best for all of us if you bugger off, I think."
The Ravenclaw didn't move, her eyes as wide as saucers, and James had to work hard to keep from laughing.
"No?" Marlene asked the glaring girl. "Right, then."
She began walking down the corridor; James knew he was meant to follow, and so he did, casting an apologetic glance at the girl as he went.
"Well, that was—"
"Who is us and how thick are they to tell you to avoid Lily?"
"Blimey, you're a girl on a mission."
"You're damn right, Potter." Marlene allowed herself a little smile.
"It was Remus and Peter and Sirius."
She was dead silent in response, and James got the sense she was thinking about what an idiot he was again.
"And me," he added. "I mean, it was my choice. They just led me to it."
Marlene stopped, and had to hold James back before he could climb onto the moving staircase in front of them without thinking. It was more thinly populated in this area, and the halls were oddly quiet; even the paintings were subdued, chatting mildly amongst themselves.
"I can't figure out what's going on with you two," she said, shaking her head.
James fiddled with his glasses. "Me either, if it's any consolation."
"That makes it worse, I think."
"Me too," he sighed after a beat. "Are…are you worried about her? Is that why you're asking?"
Marlene nodded, her eyes fixed on the staircase as it fit itself to a new landing. "Aren't you?"
He started up the staircase. After seven years, they both knew where it would lead; the movements weren't mysterious or intimidating like they used to be. "I was trying not to be."
"Me, too."