A/N: This chapter deals with one part of the aftermath of the big bullying scene in Chapter 19 of The Lion, The Snake and The Stone, so chronologically it falls right after Albus and Minerva's conversation in that chapter. This is the first completely Snily chapter in the one-shots, also, so hopefully satisfying for those who keep wishing I'd get a move on with that part of The Path Not Tread.

Background reminders - Harry and his friends attacked Evan as retaliation for Evan putting Seamus Finnigan in the hospital wing for three days, and are caught by McGonagall, who proceeds to inform both Dumbledore and all the parents of the children, in an effort to put a stop to such behavior. Additionally, there was an incident previously where Draco Malfoy called Lily 'Mudblood' and Evan performed Accidental magic in his anger, lashing out with a botched Dark spell, though Draco was not seriously injured. Aside from that, Lily had a stillbirth in 1984 that raised a whole host of issues in her marriage with Severus and eventually led to her completely abandoning any and all involvement with politics and the Coalition for Muggle-Borns political party (CMB) that she had in the period from the end of the war to the stillbirth so that she would save her marriage. She is also Neville's godmother, and both Alice and Mary (Harry's mother) were her best friends, incidentally also pregnant at the exact same time as her.

May 1992
Escaping History

Severus was in the middle of copying out his hastily scribbled notes on a new potion into his laboratory notebook as Lily cooked dinner for them when the knocking on the door interrupted their until then rather uneventful evening. Exchanging mildly puzzled looks – their address was not public knowledge, and their friends and colleagues normally sent an owl ahead of themselves, so usually they didn't really get unexpected visitors – Severus rose from his chair and went to open the door.

He found himself blinking once or twice in surprise when it turned out to be Albus of all people.

"Not taking your leisure with the Floo?" he asked, smirking slightly at his mentor and surrogate father. Albus liked popping by unannounced, though he always firecalled to check that he was not interrupting anything before coming through. To see him at the door was a bit amusing, actually.

"Ah, not this time, I'm afraid, my boy," Albus answered, sounding rather grave. With a frown, Severus let him through and closed the door after he'd entered.

"What's this about, then?"

"I think it'd be best if I spoke with both you and Lily at the same time. I'm afraid I've got some news neither of you will much like."

Worry mounting, Severus led him into the kitchen, where Lily greeted him with a quick hug. Seating himself back in his usual spot at the kitchen table, Severus offered one of the other chairs to the old wizard.

"A letter should arrive for you a bit later in the evening," Albus began, "but we both agreed that perhaps this news is better delivered in person."

"Has something happened at the school?" Lily asked, turning off the stove to join them at the table. "Is it Evan?"

"I'm afraid so. He is fine, it is nothing exceedingly grave," he hurried to assure them, which paradoxically only made Severus that much more worried, "but apparently, he has been in several altercations over the school year, and Minerva has only today managed to discover the perpetrators."

"Altercations? You mean, fighting?" Lily asked with honest confusion in her voice.

"Whom with, Albus?" Severus demanded, able to read the situation much better than his wife.

"I'm afraid it was with Harry Potter and his friends. Today hasn't been the first such attack, on either side from what Minerva's informed me."

There was rushing in his ears, and from one blink of an eye to the next, Severus was no longer in his kitchen, working away on a task he enjoyed, living the life he'd built with the love of his life; he was instead back at Hogwarts, the skinny, impoverished, disliked boy tormented by the popular Quidditch player and his posse, always on guard, always fearful of running afoul of them.

The sound of a mighty clatter snapped him back to the present, and he found himself standing with his hands planted firmly on the table, his chair upturned behind him, and the fury boiling his blood in ways he'd almost forgotten it could.

"Severus!" Lily exclaimed, jumping to her feet as well. Severus ignored her, meeting Albus' eyes, which were shaded and stoic.

"My son is being bullied by James Potter's spawn, and you only now saw fit to inform me?!"

"I did not know before today," was Albus' infuriating answer. Severus slammed his hands against the table, making everything rattle and a couple of his books slip to the floor with a bang.

"Not good enough!" he bellowed. "He was under your care, Albus! My son! My only child, having to deal with the same blasted thing that I was forced to during my time?!"

"I run a school, Severus, not a prison ward," Albus answered, an undercurrent of magic in his voice that made it almost echo in the kitchen. "I can act only when I become aware of the problem, and your son has inherited a rather impractical tendency of keeping things to himself and trying to solve his own problems, no matter their size."

"What are you saying, Albus?" Lily butted in.

"On a previous incident, he refused to name his attackers; not too long after that, Seamus Finnigan came under Madam Pomfrey's care for three days. While nothing could be proven, Misters Finnigan, Potter, Thomas and Weasley are adamant that Evan was responsible, and Minerva is inclined to believe them."

"How dare you blame the victim in this, Albus!" Severus growled, spittle flying from his mouth. "How dare you?!"

"And who was it that taught those boys to hate each other in the first place?" the Hogwarts Headmaster challenged. "Perhaps I should blame you and Sirius?" Severus felt a surge of white-hot rage spread through him, and he slammed his hands against the table again. Albus didn't even blink. "Or would you like me to apologise to you again for mishandling his and his friends' attacks on you? Is there anything that I can say to you that would make you calm down and listen, Severus?"

"Go to hell, Albus!"

It was either walking away or upturning the table, and Lily was on the other side of it – Severus chose to walk away, the anger stronger than he'd felt in more than a decade scorching in his very blood.

The silence in the kitchen rang in Lily's ears – or maybe that was simply the echo of Severus' shouts in her mind that screamed.

She wanted to scream herself. She wanted to go after him. She wanted to put Harry over her knee and give him a good spanking. She wanted to Apparate to Hogwarts this instant and get her son out of there and never let him out of her sight.

She did none of those things, and instead clenched the edge of the table until it bit into the skin of her palms, and breathed heavily, waiting herself out.

Lily had learned long ago that she was incapable of thinking clearly during the first blast of strong emotion, and that any decisions she made in that state always ended up being wrong ones. Over the years, she'd managed to develop ways of containing them speedily, the war stealing time out from under her at every turn, but right now, she had neither the strength nor the inclination to do any such thing. Dumbledore could bloody wait her out, when he'd seen fit to take almost a whole year before noticing what was happening to her child.

A muffled slam of a door from somewhere in the house made her flinch, and after a few moments she registered a rather insistent pecking on the window.

"Would you like me to..."

"Please," she answered, keeping her eyes tightly shut for a little while longer. Only when Albus had dismissed the owl and returned to the table did she drop herself back into her chair and take the letter from his outstretched hand. She read through it almost mechanically, noting Minerva's more detailed description of both the incident that had brought everything to light and also Seamus Finnigan's injury, which Lily had no difficulty believing her son to be at fault for – she was not blind about her child's personality, and while Evan was nice enough to people when they didn't provoke him, he was as prickly as Severus at his worst when things didn't suit him. There had already been instances of his magic scaring away children in his primary when he'd felt harassed by them, and given Severus' insistence on teaching him to never let anyone cow or intimidate him, this sort of response was exactly what she might have expected.

But it hurt, to know that her child was only eleven years old and already capable of this sort of viciousness – vanishing teeth and breaking legs. It hurt even more that he felt it was a necessary measure to protect himself. It hurt the most that she'd not seen it for a possibility, that she'd not considered it in all this time, how the history was liable to repeat itself when old grudges were not properly resolved, how the next generation absorbed from the previous one.

She should have; by God and Merlin both, she should have paid more attention, should have been a better mother, should have insisted Severus be a better father, should have–

"Remus and Sirius have been informed," Albus intruded into her thoughts, and she blinked and looked up from the letter she was clutching in her hands. "As have the parents of the other boys. If you wish, I can speak with them directly as well, and I will of course provide you with the contact information for all of the parents and abide by your and Severus' wishes on how to handle the situation going forward."

"As you see fit," Lily answered. "But if I were you, I'd not speak with Sirius about this without Remus, or else he might be liable to brush it off. Remus couldn't have encouraged anything of this sort, this is Sirius' doing, if it is anyone's. And my bloody husband's. Remus and I only turned a blind eye to it," she concluded bitterly. Lily and Remus were no doubt more passively at fault, but she blamed both her best friend and herself just as much as those two overgrown children who could not put their issues properly to the side, at least in front of their kids.

"If you will permit me to share some experience with you, my dear," Albus said, placing his hand on Lily's forearm and waiting until she nodded to continue. "This could have as easily happened if they had not had Sirius and Severus' interactions as instructions on it; children at that age find it necessary to establish their position in a wholly different hierarchy to the one of a family unit, yet they are still too young to be capable of instinctively and easily empathising with their peers. So long as we act promptly when such a situation arises, I believe it is mended easily enough."

"And if not, then it stays for the rest of one's life," Lily noted pointedly. Albus inclined his head.

"Yes, to my great regret. I cannot change the past, much as I wish I could. I can only attempt to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. We will all be more vigilant from now on."

"Thank you, Albus."

Nodding once, the old wizard stood up and, with one last squeeze to Lily's forearm, he said his good-bye and Disapparated out, leaving Lily to sit for a moment longer in the chair, Minerva's letter now a crumpled mess in her hand.

She took a moment to pick through her emotions, to identify and classify them. Guilt and anger were a toxic mixture, and now that she was alone and free to experience them without an audience, she wasn't certain which one would overshadow the other.

She was angry at Harry and his friends, of course she was. She could only imagine how disappointed Mary would have been to get a visit such as this from Dumbledore, how quietly wrathful she would have been over the whole affair. But more than at Harry, she was angry at his guardian, because Lily didn't believe that children were born vicious, didn't believe that this was something inherently in them from the start, this vileness of thought and feeling needed to enjoy tormenting others. She couldn't, not when she remembered how gentle her own son had always been with their pets, how attentive and exuberant Harry had been with Neville when they'd been little, how forgiving and loving Ron was with his mischievous, teasing brothers whose target he often was.

They all held in themselves the capacity to do harm, to one extent or another. Lily had truly learned that only during the war, when she'd had to question how far she herself could go and when she'd had to reconcile the capabilities of those around her, her lover and her friends, and her enemies too. But she'd watched the way her sister had spoiled her son, the way she'd allowed her brutish husband to influence him. She'd watched, too, how seven children wore on Molly and Arthur's attention and patience, how torn and overworked they were, how easily individual children slipped past their focus at any given moment. So why hadn't she paid more attention to the way that schoolboy grudges between Severus and Sirius had been influencing Harry and Evan? Why, when she'd had so much more opportunity for it?

It was because their interactions had become such a status quo over the years that none of them even truly thought about it. It was simply everyday life that Sirius and Severus barked and growled at each other, called each other hurtful, idiotic names and constantly brought up ancient history to make each other uncomfortable. She and Remus had more or less washed their hands of it, because the stress of it hadn't seemed worth it when those two seemed perfectly capable of behaving like reasonable adults when it was truly necessary.

Lily was someone who was quick to anger, yes, but unlike Severus, she didn't have the temperament to nurse that anger. In worst cases in her life, she'd managed to maintain it for a few days, but sooner rather than later, she always succumbed to exhaustion and unhappiness that came with it. Her husband was the other sort, the type who'd always sustained himself on anger, who'd spent his entire childhood angry at anything and everything in his life, himself included. For him, anger burned strong until he saw fit to quench it, his natural ability to compartmentalise and push away those emotions which didn't suit him at any given moment serving and damaging him in equal measure.

So by the time Lily finally rose from the chair and walked hazily up to the attic of their home, into the slant-roofed bedroom of her only child, guilt had won over the anger. She curled up on Evan's bed and hugged his pillow to her face with one arm, enveloping herself in the clean, soft scent that she'd preserved there with a stasis charm for these moments when she missed him with desperation. Her other arm snaked itself around her belly, trying to contain the gaping, yawning emptiness inside that she'd felt in waves since she'd gone to darkness one night with her child protected inside her and woken up from it with her baby gone, torn away from her by nature's cruelty and healers' desperation, dead and buried before Lily had even had a chance to hold or even see her tiny, underdeveloped body, her little girl stolen from her by her own inability to keep her alive.

God, but she wanted her son there with her in that moment, wanted to hold him and hug him, wanted to feel him warm and safe in her arms, to see and touch his aquiline nose, his greasy head of hair, his lashes hiding her green eyes, his long fingers and narrow shoulders, bony elbows and knobby knees. She wanted to be able to hear him breathe next to her and feel the warmth of his small body, holding his indelible curiosity and his prickly, vulnerable emotional core, wanted to keep him close and never let him go into the big, bad world, a world she'd fought so hard to make better for him, and in the process had overlooked the dangers in their close circle she'd thought utterly safe.

Severus found his wife in their son's room, curled up on his bed with her back to the door, in the protective pose that made a part of him break into tiny pieces all over again every time he saw it, because he knew what it meant, he knew what she was struggling with whenever he saw her that way, and he was utterly helpless to make it stop for her.

He'd spent an hour or so in his laboratory, scrubbing cauldrons and flasks, sorting ingredients and wiping surfaces, because he'd been far too angry for anything else and he'd known that Lily didn't deserve to deal with his anger. When he'd finally managed to wrestle it under control, he'd been left with a spotless workspace and the prickling feeling of muted fury in his veins, which was manageable enough to direct into finding a solution to the issue.

It was that prickliness that made him ask, perhaps a bit too sharply: "Are you not angry in the least?"

"At whom?" Lily responded, not moving a millimetre.

"At Potter's blasted spawn and his hooligan friends? At Sirius bloody Black and your precious wolf? At Albus and Minerva for needing a whole school year to see it? At me? Take your pick."

She stirred, sitting up to face him, her arms wrapping protectively around her lower midriff.

"I am," she answered, meeting his eyes with her shadowed, exhausted ones. "I'm angry at all of the above. But you know whom I'm most angry with? Myself."

"Yourself?" Severus asked, incredulous. "What have you to be angry with yourself for, Lily? This is the least your fault of everyone involved."

"How is it not?" she snapped back, the fire leaving her as quickly as it had come. "If I'd paid more attention, if I'd kept my promise to my friends..."

"What are you talking about?"

"My promise," she reiterated, arms tightening around her. "My promise to Mary and Alice that I'll watch over their boys, my promise to Remus and Sirius that I'd help them, my promise, Severus, that I'd not vanish out of those children's lives like their parents had, that I'd not be just another adult who is so involved with her own life and goals and family that she'd only care about those boys when it's convenient for her."

"Harry Potter was not yours to raise. And the cur made himself perfectly clear on how he saw your attempts at providing him with assistance."

"And when had that ever stopped me before? Do you remember, right after they died, how it was? How Harry stayed with us at least once a week, while we all juggled the clean-up? He used to call me 'Miss Lily', and now I'm 'Mrs Snape'. And Neville, too; I'm his godmother, for the sake of all that's holy, and when he needed me most, I couldn't handle him, so I pawned him off to Sirius of all people. If I'd only stayed involved, if I'd... maybe I would have prevented all of this, maybe I could have made it so that my child would not have to deal with harassment and persecution by his peers."

Severus knew better than to tell her to stop feeling guilty; he himself had never learned to let go of guilt, not in this life and he doubted in any other either. But her distress served better at cooling his anger than an hour of Occlumency had, and he crossed his arms over his chest, keeping his distance and their eye contact, giving her the space she needed to voice what troubled her so much.

"You were right, back then. You were so right, about the CMB and the politics and my insane need to make everything perfect, and how much I was throwing away for it. And I haven't stopped since, I haven't learned anything from almost destroying our marriage, I've only changed my focus and even that I've messed up. My son, whom I was so proud of, always, capable of doing something like this," she said, pointing to the letter left forgotten on Evan's night table.

Taking three steps, Severus picked up the letter and read perfunctorily through it, ignoring the spike of anger he felt at Minerva's description of Potter's attack on his son, and instead focusing on her explanation regarding Seamus Finnigan's injuries. Vanished teeth. The fall. The broken leg. Three days in the hospital wing.

"I shouldn't have let you convince me to dismiss the incident with Draco Malfoy so easily. We should have done something jointly about it back then, I knew I should have insisted."

Severus shook his head and peered at his wife down his hooked nose.

"You know he did not intend that magic against Draco; it was Accidental magic, and Albus was more than clear on how upset he'd been over the thought of being seen as 'Dark'. As for this – the vanished teeth were intentional, no doubt, but the fall was likely accidental. He did not intend all of this, either."

"Oh, didn't he, Severus? The same way you never intend to put James and the others in the hospital wing every time you went after them as retaliation?" she asked sharply.

"Of course I intended it every time," Severus admitted without guilt over the satisfaction he'd always gotten out of it. "But there is a big difference between me and Evan."

"Which is?"

"I didn't have you for a mother."

She exhaled in a dismissive huff, and Severus crouched down at her feet and placed his hand on her knee, as much for balance as for comfort.

"Lily, you will listen to me now. I have taught Evan to stand up for himself and never let others terrorise him, yes. My mother taught me nothing else but perseverance and survival by any means necessary, as you very well know. You are the one who has taught him empathy and kindness, who has taught him not to strike pre-emptively and to always fall back on moderation first when he feels it to be the only recourse left to him. You have not failed him, do you understand me? If you need blame anyone, then blame me, for not having anything more to offer him as a father but what lessons my blasted childhood had left me with, that the Dark Lord and the War had honed in me until it is all that I had."

"Don't be absurd," Lily replied with force, the fire returning to her eyes and banishing her depression and despondency. "If that was all that you were, I would not be here right now, Severus, and having a rotten childhood is what made you be a good father to him, not the other way around. I have no intention of blaming you in order to relieve my own sense of guilt."

Severus sighed, knowing that Lily's stubbornness rivalled his own and that pushing further on the topic would be completely fruitless. Instead, he cupped her cheek gently with his free hand and guided her softly to rest her forehead against his. Lily's hands came up to wrap around his neck, fingers burrowing into the hair at the nape of his neck. Closing his eyes, Severus took a deep breath and let the remainder of his fury settle into familiar background anger that he'd long since learned not to let interfere with his thinking and life.

Neither of them said that it would be all right, because they'd both gone through too much for such empty platitudes to serve any purpose, but there was understanding between them nonetheless, built out of guilt and anger and sadness and determination.

Lily was the one who angled Severus' head up and brought their lips together in a bruising, desperate kiss of affirmation which Severus instantly deepened, wishing badly that he could simply take all of her devastation and turmoil into himself through it, that he could just suck all of that burdening emotions out of her heart until she was light and pure as the first day he'd seen her, hovering in the air after throwing herself off the swing, flying as if she was made only of air and nothing could hold her down.

It was foolish thinking, of course. The carefree, naïve girl of yesteryear was not someone that could ever have fallen in love with, let alone built a life with him, him who was tarred in darkness and weighed down by bad childhood and even worse first years of adulthood. And Severus knew Lily would only shake her head if he ever told her all this, would object most strenuously, because she'd been demanding to shoulder his burdens since they were sixteen years old, and would not stand for anything else after fifteen years. It was in the way she was kissing him even now, like what she needed was to know that they were in this together and not to relieve her own heavy heart.

But Severus had had a very long time to understand that this overwhelming need to make things better for her, to always do whatever it took to see her safe and happy, that this was a part of bone-deep, soul-permeating, unquenchable love he held in his heart for her. Sometimes it was hard to even remember back to his miserable teenhood, when he'd feared that love of any kind was beyond his grasp – that was how powerful his feelings for Lily were today, how crystal-clear and prominent in his very being. And even though this need was a constant backseat driver to all his actions, a much larger part of him rejoiced in gaining constant proof through Lily's actions that she felt exactly the same, that her love for him was just as strong, because she kept them on equal footing, kept them grounded and their marriage one of fair partnership, even through the worst of its times.

They were both breathing heavily once they finally pulled away, and for her part, Lily felt more grounded than she had fifteen minutes ago, which was a relief, because there was still a lot to consider and discuss, for which she now felt emotionally prepared.

"Why aren't you still angry?" she asked her husband, running her thumb over his upper lip to wipe away the moisture and her own lip balm she'd transferred onto him. The drag of his afternoon stubble was pleasantly scratchy against the sensitive pad of her finger.

"Do you truly imagine I am not?" he asked her in response, lifting his eyebrow.

"I expected that you'd still be applauding Evan fighting back, not agreeing with me that what he had done to Seamus Finnigan was worrisome."

Severus exhaled gustily and shifted to sit down on the carpet, and Lily followed suit, until they'd shuffled each other so that he was leaning against the bed and she was settled in his lap, her arm around his neck, his encircling her waist.

"You cannot comprehend the level of rage I feel over this," Severus told her in the end. He rested his head against the bed mattress and stared into the distance a while, and Lily gave him the time he needed to put thoughts into words. "For a moment when Albus first told us, I was back then and the last fifteen years didn't exist. That Evan has to relive my torment at the hands of another Potter..."

"But?"

He redirected his gaze to her, the intensity in it scorching enough to make Lily's heartbeat speed up. Merlin, she loved his eyes, loved how much she could read of his inner self through them.

"You come first, Lily. Always."

She never could stop her breath catching in her throat when he said it, that one word which held the absolute power over her, that encompassed all that she was to him and all that he had to give her.

Leaning forward, Lily rested her temple against his, holding him close with a hand on his cheek, feeling his steady breath on her neck.

"I love you. Forever."

His next breath shook, just slightly, and she smiled and kissed him where his jaw met his ear, before pulling away so that she could see his face properly.

"If it was up to me, I would applaud him, yes," Severus admitted heavily. "But I do not want his next six years to be like mine, if this first one had to be, and I... admit... that I do not want him to grow comfortable with the level of viciousness anywhere near what I am capable of."

"You like his gentleness."

"Yes," he confirmed. "It means that he's had a better childhood than I had. And it means that there is more of you in him than of me."

Lily knew what he'd left unsaid – that while he knew she could be as vicious as necessary, in her case, it was something learned out of painful necessity on the cusp of adulthood and something she'd never let find its way substantially into her relationships with those close to her, neither of which was the case for him. She couldn't fault him in the least for wanting their son to be more like her, though for her own part, it tugged her heartstrings every time she saw a new glimmer of Severus in Evan.

"We'll need to discuss it with everyone," she decided, licking her lips. "I will speak with Remus – and you will stay away from Sirius; Severus, I mean it," Lily ordered the moment he opened his mouth, clearly spoiling for an argument. "I am certain that a big part of what's led to this problem is the boys seeing how you and Sirius interact and thinking it all right to emulate you without understanding anything about what's behind it."

"If he had kept that child in check–"

"Stop," she said sharply. "Stop throwing blame around, that doesn't help us and I've no energy for it just now, either. I've kept out of how you and Sirius interact because, frankly, I was just glad that you could interact at all when you needed to with all the bad blood between you. But we need to deal with this constructively, and that's not going to happen if you're spitting mad when we sit down to discuss it. Please."

"All right, but you make sure that cur understands exactly where we stand on this."

"I will," Lily promised him. "And we also need to sit Evan down and talk to him about this. I can't accept that violence is his answer before speaking to an adult about it, Severus. I simply can't. He hadn't mentioned a single thing about it to us! If he can't trust us with his difficulties..."

Severus shook his head and squeezed Lily's waist in comfort. "I am more likely to believe that he does not wish to be seen as an incompetent baby, than that he does not trust us. You remember how embarrassed he was over his homesickness last winter."

That was true, but it also pointed out to a rather worrying personality trait in their child – Evan was clearly desperate enough to be taken as more mature now that he'd left home, that he was constantly overestimating his own abilities to handle his issues and letting them balloon beyond control. It was definitely something that they needed to address properly.

"I agree that he should be able to come to us at least about issues with his classmates," Severus continued, "but I refuse to put a moratorium on violence. He needs to be able and free to defend himself if he is attacked."

"I agree, but what he'd done to Seamus Finnigan was not self-defence, Severus, that was retaliation, pure and simple. That was proactive, and all it did was make things worse. Besides, there are safer ways of self-defence than using offensive magic. And this may have been an intentional action on his part, but the incident with Draco Malfoy was not, and he fell automatically back onto Dark Magic. I don't like how cavalier he is about Dark Magic."

Lily didn't truly blame Severus for this – after all, she herself was quite comfortable with at least the theoretical side of the Dark Arts, having worked during the height of the War at redesigning Dark spells to be less damaging, and one of the things they'd agreed on practically from the start of her first pregnancy was to keep the Dark Arts as much away from their child or children as possible. But the fact still was that Severus had a well-deserved reputation and that kids were inquisitive little sponges who picked up on all manner of things, including those you did not wish them to, such as magic you wanted them to learn only when they were mature enough to not let it influence them.

"Very well," her husband agreed after some quiet thought. "I will start teaching him defensive magic – no doubt that incompetent that Albus took on as this year's DADA professor hasn't even touched on one useful thing all year – but I will not tell him to limit himself to defence if he feels that this is not enough to protect himself. His safety comes first, no matter the cost."

"Yes," Lily agreed firmly. "Of course, his safety comes first, and you know that I am not naïve enough to think that offence is not sometimes the best defence. I just don't want him retaliating purposely and lashing out with something that could kill the target of his aggression. I don't want his instincts to be violence before all."

Like they were for Severus. Nodding, Severus indicated he'd understood the unsaid part of that sentence and that they were in agreement.

The weight of the whole situation more bearable now that they'd made concrete, unanimous plans, Lily kissed Severus, short and firm, before pulling away and clambering to her feet, her husband following suit.

"And as for me, I am going to start being more involved with Neville's life at least," she told him. "He's my godson, and he deserves more from me than I've given him."

"And Potter?"

She shrugged. "Depends on how this whole thing shakes out with Remus and Sirius. And at least he has those two; Neville's all alone with Augusta and that nasty brother of hers. And Neville also still has to deal with Alice and Frank. He needs my support more of the two."

"You should accept Meadowes' offer, as well," Severus said, taking her hand firmly in his as they descended towards the middle floor and making Lily's stomach flip. Startled, she looked at him – the current Minister for Magic, their old Order friend Dorcas Meadowes, had asked her to be on a new advisory body to the Ministerial position that she wished to form, and Lily had been more than a little reluctant to accept given how much her prior involvement with the political arena had damaged her marriage and family around the time of the stillbirth. Severus hadn't said anything much about this in the months since they'd discussed it first, but she'd not expected this.

"I thought you were against it."

"I am not thrilled about it, but you gave up more than simply your responsibility for your friends' children seven years ago," he pointed out. "In spite of everything that happened, Lily, I know what being part of that movement meant for you."

Her heart skipping a beat or two before it began hammering in her chest, Lily wrapped her arms around Severus' neck as soon as they'd reached the landing and kissed him passionately. She was apprehensive about the whole thing – more than – but the fact that he understood and forgave her to the point of being accepting of her resuming at least a part of those activities, that meant everything to her.

Of course, it wasn't just that feeding into the frenzy that suddenly sparked into life between them in that moment, until they were stumbling towards their bedroom shedding extraneous layers of clothing with no care about where those fell, too driven by the urge to feel and taste and devour one another. It was also the final release from an emotionally difficult afternoon and the need to properly reaffirm their own convictions, the various roles they'd accepted throughout their thirty-one years of life, and their connection and devotion to each other. And when they finally finished in a sweaty, overheated tangle of limbs, Lily couldn't help the dangerous surety that everything was going to eventually turn out all right from taking root and filling her with warmth, because she felt that as long as she had Severus by her side, she could do and face almost anything – even her own and his mistakes as parents.

Even the history they'd tried to escape, in one way or another.