Previously in the Darklyverse: Alice and Frank started dating. Peter's ex, Siobhan Flynn, got back in contact with him. In order to better heal Order members after raids, Lily began training to be a Healer at St. Mungo's. Remus struggled to find a job. Mary and Lily began planning their weddings.

xx

October 9th, 1978: Lily Evans

The news that Alice is dating Frank Longbottom spreads so fast that Lily can hardly believe they're not all still at Hogwarts, where one rumor can permeate the entire castle in a matter of days. They got together on Sunday morning, and by the time Lily hears about it from Sirius on Monday night, half their graduating class knows, and so does most of the Order and, apparently, Mary. "But I don't think she's responsible for word getting out, for once," says Sirius when he and Lily are in the bedroom, sitting on their beds facing each other from opposite ends of the room. "I mean, Remus told me. James told Peter, who told Emmeline and Siobhan Flynn—"

"Wait a minute, Peter and Flynn are back together?" Lily says skeptically. "I thought that was over in sixth year after Em kissed him in front of half of Gryffindor."

"They're 'just friends,'" says Sirius, making quotation marks in the air with his hands, "but I don't think it's going to last. He and Em are too weird for Flynn not to get jealous. Anyway, James said Flynn told Amos Diggory, and it was all over after that; you know Diggory can't keep his mouth shut to save his life."

"I'm glad she and Frank found each other, though," says Lily, smiling. "She deserves something nice after what happened with Dirk Cresswell, and Alice always liked Frank."

"I always thought it was odd that she got with Cresswell instead of him. Looks like she finally figured that out for herself, though. Maybe she'll relax a little now that she's got somebody to blow off steam with."

"Don't be an arse, Sirius," says Lily, rolling her eyes.

He holds up two hands in front of him in mock surrender. "I don't mean it in a mean way! But you know Alice can be—well, uptight."

"Dating Dirk didn't help any," Lily points out.

"That's true," muses Sirius. "Still, maybe Longbottom will be a better fit for her. She deserves to be happy."

"Yeah, she does. I'm happy for her," says Lily. "Listen, I should get to bed—I have to get up early for work again in the morning—but are we still on for tomorrow evening?"

Sirius gives her a thumbs up. "Shopping for Mary's shower? Definitely. Remind me again what we're getting for her?"

"Stationery," says Lily, "and a couple of nice quills. Alice says she's still writing stories a little bit."

"If we pop into some Muggle bookshops, we could probably find some guidebooks on how to write fiction well. Think she'd appreciate that?"

"That's brilliant. She'll love it."

"I don't have any Muggle money at the moment, but I'll pay you back in gold for my share," says Sirius.

Lily grins at him. "Perks of living with a Muggle-born, am I right?"

"Oh, honey, you know I only keep you around because it bolsters my blood traitor status."

"Night, Sirius."

"Good night, Lily."

She's still laughing when she closes the door to the bedroom and starts rustling through her dresser for clean underwear. Sometimes, it's hard for Lily to believe there was a time that she actively disliked Sirius and James and the other Gryffindors, but every time she almost forgets about their history, something reminds her of the constant feelings of isolation and claustrophobia that used to follow her and Severus everywhere they went.

Those moments, though, are getting rarer. Lily wonders what it says about her that she's managed to almost completely immerse herself in the world that she and Severus so resented when they were together.

The other Gryffindors aren't her entire world, at least: they may make up a lot of the Order and most of her social circle, but she has Healer training to focus on now, and as much as she wishes she were in International Magical Cooperation instead, St. Mungo's is becoming the place where Lily can reinvent herself into whoever she wants to be. No one in her training and none of her superiors know her from Hogwarts, and her anxiety is starting to settle now that it's been a few weeks and no Death Eaters have come to attack her in the middle of a shift. And the training is interesting: she's learned some new spells and discovered a lot of potions that she'll have to brew up and keep at home in case of various emergencies.

She wishes she could get Remus a job the same way Emmeline got Sirius one, but even if Remus were employable as a werewolf, she doesn't know whether he likes Potions enough to stand that part of the curriculum, or whether he does okay not only seeing but directly working on injured, bloody, or disfigured bodies. Still, Remus has been coming with James to Lily and Sirius's flat a lot in the evenings when everyone else gets back from work, and while it's a pleasure to spend more time with Remus, it always makes Lily feel a little guilty to answer in full when Remus asks her how her day at work was.

And spending time with James… she looks at him and sees the boy who so badly tormented Lily's best friend for so many years, and she wonders whether James is the one who's changed, or whether she is.

Healer training the next day goes well, of course. She's been doing it long enough that they're starting to let her shadow Healers who are treating real patients, and it feels good not just to get the experience but also to see how the magic of a wand and a potion can completely transform some of their conditions. Healing wasn't her first choice of career, but she thinks she could maybe make it work, if the Department of International Magical Cooperation won't take her back someday when the war is over and Lily has options again.

The question then becomes—when will the war be over? Will it happen in Lily's lifetime? Will it outlast generations to come? She hopes it won't, but people are saying that Voldemort is immortal, and it's not like the Light side is winning.

The Order has done a remarkable job keeping all of its fighters alive, at least, but Lily definitely wouldn't say that they have any kind of advantage against the Death Eaters. Yes, they've managed to capture and turn in a number of them, but that number is dwindling exponentially the more time passes, and the Death Eaters are getting away with more and more torture and murder no matter how hard the Order tries to stop them. Lily's hopes for the future aren't high. It's like there are always more of the Death Eaters, like they keep oozing out new soldiers for the same old Order to take on, and Lily doesn't know how much longer they can keep apace with them.

It doesn't make good sense to her, either, that the Death Eaters haven't started attacking on their own terms the people they know or suspect to be Order members. How is Lily not dead by now? How are they all still here and alive and, for the most part, well?

She's worked herself up into a right state about it by the time she gets home from St. Mungo's, and Sirius recognizes it immediately, before the word "hello" has even made it all the way out of his mouth. "You okay, Lily? Did something bad happen at work?"

"No, no, nothing like that," she sighs. "I'm just worried. It's the same old stuff, you know, the war and everything—no need to get concerned."

"Your well-being is always my concern," says Sirius, and he gets up and walks over to hug her. "Let's go spend a couple hours picking out wedding gifts and pretending like the world we live in is safe, huh? There's no point dwelling on things we can't change, and we're already doing everything we can to help by fighting with the Order."

It does cheer her up at least a little bit to choose gifts for Mary. They settle on some nice stationery, two peacock quills, and a how-to book about writing your first novel. Lily has always thought of wedding showers as being more of an American custom than a British one, but apparently they're popular in Wizarding Britain, and shopping for Mary's is a nice way to take Lily's mind off of everything that's going wrong in the world and her life.

She and James still need to send out the invitations to their shower in December, so Lily picks out some stationery for herself, too, to use to write the invites. She wasn't necessarily planning on getting them done today, but when she and Sirius get home, she still could use another distraction, and she doesn't necessarily want to interrupt boys' night. James and Remus had invited Sirius and Peter over to their flat for a hang, and Lily knows the four of them haven't really had much of a chance to connect lately.

She really ought to invite Peter to her and Sirius's flat more often. Lily, James, Sirius, and Remus end up doing a lot as a foursome these days, and she doesn't want to get in the way of their friendships with Peter, who has been sitting back and taking it entirely too patiently, in Lily's opinion.

She's made it about halfway through her stack before she hears a crack from outside followed by a knock on the door. Lily finishes her sentence, sets down her quill, and dashes over to get the door. It's Alice, who's carrying two bottles of butterbeer and looking sheepish. "I wanted to get out of the way of boys' night," she says by way of explanation. "Sirius said you could probably use the company."

"Sirius would be right," says Lily, smiling. "Come on in—I'll take your cloak—"

She tucks Alice's cloak in the front closet, then joins her on the couch, where Alice is stretching out her legs (though not propping them up on the coffee table the way Sirius often does). "I heard about you and Frank," she says. "Congratulations! I'm so excited for you."

"Thanks," says Alice. She looks maybe a little more tense about this than Lily would have expected, but she doesn't want to say anything that might make Alice uncomfortable, so she doesn't press it.

"Marlene should be coming by any minute now," Lily says. "I invited her over since, you know, Sirius won't be home until late."

"Do you think she'll be angry with me? Marlene?"

"Why would Marlene be mad at you?"

"I just mean—for talking to Mary first about me and Frank getting together. I don't really know where Mary and Marlene stand at the moment, and I don't want to—I don't know—encroach on Marlene's…"

"Territory?" Alice doesn't answer, but smiles sort of nervously. "You're totally within your rights to talk to whomever you like about the things that happen to you. If we all were only allowed to get close with one person at a time, the world would be a very lonely place."

"I don't know. Sometimes, when I was with Dirk, I didn't know… I mean, nobody else was…"

Lily waits, but Alice doesn't finish her thought. When it becomes clear to Lily that Alice isn't going to speak again, Lily says, "When you and Frank start getting serious, you're not going to ditch all the rest of us for him, are you? Because we just got you back from Dirk, and it's been really nice to see you without him there as a buffer."

Alice smiles a little. "Who's saying Frank and I are going to get serious? We've been dating for all of three days. Besides, I haven't really seen much of anyone since we left Hogwarts, and…"

Lily reaches over and puts an arm around her. "Then we'll just have to change that, won't we?"

xx

A/N: The prequel fic, Legacy, is complete! And there's a sneak peek in the epilogue of what's to come when Darkly goes canon-divergent. Scope it out if you'd like!