Chapter 2:
Kingsnake Venom and Bezoar
Lily walked as quickly as she dared with a large glass flask of orange, lumpy liquid through the crowded halls of St. Mungos. She ignored the usual unnecessary comments of all the portraits she passed, letting the constant thud of her steps on the wooden floor drown them out.
"Mix essence of squid with a cup of seawater and a teaspoon of calming draught, dear, that will surely fix the dark circles under your eyes."
"You really mustn't walk so fast Miss, that could create quite the mess."
"What put her in such a mood?"
She finally made it back to the ward she was over and saw her trainee for the day, Edith Thompson, holding a bucket under a little boy's head, catching the multicolored lizards the poor kid burped out, vanishing them occasionally. The unfortunate child was pale, shaky, and tears dripped off his cheeks, following the lizards into the bucket. The mother of the boy rubbed his back and as she saw Lily, smiled in relief. The redhead conjured a goblet, uncorked the flask, and poured the potion, being careful of the amount.
"Will that stop the lizards?" The mother asked as the child emitted a particularly large maroon one with a pitiful groan. It fell into the bucket with a loud thump. Lily, the mother, and Edith stared at it for a second.
"It should," Lily averted her gaze from the lizards and met the boy's eyes, "Davy, this potion is going to be unpleasant. I need you to try and get down as much as you can." Lily handed the cup to him, and he grimaced as the chunky liquid slid down his throat. She nodded and turned toward the mother who was wringing her hands.
"Davy's throat is going to be very sore for a while. I'd recommend not feeding him any acidic, salty, or particularly rough foods for at least a week. Soft foods, like ice cream and pudding would be best. Give him a spoon of this," She pulled out a small bottle from her healer's ropes, "every morning for three days and that should heal any cuts or scrapes in his mouth. Other than that, he should be fine. Just remember to be extra careful next time with where you put your wand from now on." Lily watched him for a moment, making sure he really was done burping up reptiles. "I think he can go home." Edith put the bucket on the floor.
"Thank you so much!" The woman said as she took her son by the hand and led him out of the room. Lily let out a weary sigh.
"Did you make this just now?" Edith asked, sniffing the flask. Lily replied in the affirmative and began checking on the rest of her charge. Edith followed. Out of all the trainees she's had to work with, Edith was by far her favorite. Being the youngest in the family of all boys, she was eager to learn and eager to prove herself. While her competitiveness with the other trainees sometimes caused her to be less professional, she was willing to do whatever was asked of her. Even if it was just to hold a bucket under a vomiting child.
"What's in it?" She asked.
"You tell me." Lily said, as they were heading to the next room of patients, a challenging tone to her voice. Edith sniffed it again, and poured out a little of it into her palm. She examined it with her finger.
"Chopped up bezoar?"
"And?" Lily paused at the door to the room. Edith tasted a little of the potion, and made a face.
"Dandelion juice?"
"Kingsnake venom. But it does have a similar tang as Dandelion juice. I wouldn't taste any more of that since you don't have any lizards that you need to dissolve." Lily said with a laugh. She started opening the door.
"And...a soothing solution?"
"Very good Miss Thompson. 10 points to Ravenclaw!" Lily said, faking Professor McGonagall's voice. She held the door open for Edith, and saw that the girl had started to blush.
And so went her shift: Edith asking Lily questions about each treatment she prescribed, Lily finding ways to quiz Edith about her own studies and knowledge. Finally, during her lunch break, Lily excused herself from Edith's eager inquiries and offer of lunch in the cafeteria, and made her escape.
Today had almost been a boring shift, fortunately. The lizard problem was an interesting challenge—Lily had to make up a potion to treat it—but everything else was fairly standard. Which was a good thing because Lily was exhausted (and a bit hung over) after Sirius came over last night, but was also a bad thing because Lily hadn't been too distracted from his news.
So it was with little grace she apologized to her fellow healers as she accidentally bumped into them in her hurry to get to the fifth floor. She found herself stomping up the stairs to the tea room, and due to the many complaints of the portraits hanging on the walls, she tried to step more softly. Foolishly, she had ended up shoving the newspaper article in the pockets of her robes this morning, and throughout the day, whenever she went to grab her wand, she had felt the crumbled paper lurking in her pocket.
She couldn't really look at the picture or read the article last night, but now that the shock was over, her curiosity was killing her. She couldn't seem to stop looking at the blasted thing, studying the future Mrs. James Potter and of course James himself. How many times had she pulled the scrap of paper out and crumpled it into a ball to be done with it, only to flatten it back out again today? It was pathetic. She stopped and let a couple pass by her on the stairs, frowning at their intertwined hands. Cursing herself under her breath, she reached deep into her robes, and brought it out once more. Lily sat down on the stairs.
There she was. Danielle Levesque. Even her name made Lily feel inferior. Her light blonde hair was cut fashionably at her chin, her posture impeccable, and had an air about her of class and elegance. She wore a sleek black dress robes with very high heels with ease. Lily's bright green eyes drifted over to the man the woman was clutching so tightly. James Potter had changed. He seemed older, more mature, more of a man than the brilliant, pert boy she once knew. Gone was the familiar crooked grin, replaced with a mouth drawn in a firm line. Though, she noticed once again with a twinge of bittersweet pain, that his unruly, always ruffled hair remained the same. Every now and then, the blonde would lean over and whisper in his ear and the flash of the cameras glinted off her ring and the rims of his glasses. Then the traces of a smile would touch his face for the briefest of seconds. The boy she knew and loved grew up, a feat she never believed possible.
The redhead suddenly laughed at the picture of herself, pitifully draped on the stairs, clinging to a scrap of wrinkled paper. Shaking her head at her own melodramatics, she walked up the remaining steps to the tea room, pushing the paper back into her robes.
She went up to the counter, grabbed a cup of tea and then sat down at the nearest empty table. With her elbows propped on the sticky table, she couldn't help but think that Miss Levesque wouldn't even consider committing such an act of bad manners.
Sipping her hot tea, slurping a little just to spite these thoughts, she observed the rest of the people in the tea room. Next to her, sat a family of three talking animatedly and gesturing to each other with their cups, tea splashing out on the table. She smiled and her gaze went to the bald man on her left. He gripped his ceramic cup tightly with one hand, while the other was otherwise employed in keeping his head upright. Her eyes flicked over to the table next to his, and she froze mid slurp. There sat the couple she let pass her earlier.
The girl had fallen asleep on his shoulder. He had his hand tangled in her long hair, looking at the patterns etched in the table with a gentle smile. They couldn't have been more than seventeen. Her breath caught in her throat. She continued to watch the pair, unable to peel her eyes away as images of another seventeen year old boy and girl flitted through her mind. She was so stupid then. All proud and stubborn. Always pushing James away, never letting him see how much she cared for him.
The girl woke up, ducking her head, blushing. The boy withdrew his hand from her hair, and bent down to whisper something in her ear. She threw her head back and laughed in response.
Lily closed her eyes, memories replaying in her head. Memories she hadn't let herself dwell on in years. When was the last time she felt as safe and happy as the girl two tables away from her? Weeks, months, maybe years ago? Was it all the way before she and James ended it, almost three years ago? She squeezed her eyes tighter.
Even now, she can't remember what or who even started that fight. It was after Edmund Bones's funeral. James was walking her back to her flat. They both were exhausted. It started off harmless, a little jab here and there, but it quickly escalated. Soon their teasing, light insults became painful and unpleasant. It was one of their worst fights. They went too far and pulled out their wands. When Lily finally saw it, James had taken a step back, face white with anger and his hazel eyes shining with more than fury.
"I'm done." He said, levelly, clearly and then he disapparated, leaving her crying in the street. She stumbled home, and for the next week she waited for him, for his half mumbled apology, his hesitant hug. It didn't come. Two weeks after, she now expected him to show up at her door with some bouquet of flowers charmed to dance the macarena, but instead, Sirius came. Trying to convince her to go and speak to him.
"Why haven't you done anything? Do you really want to make things right? Because if you do, you need to get off your bloody arse and go beg for his forgiveness. Because I don't think he's coming back this time, Lil. He's been mad as hell for the last week. Every time I mention your name he'd throw whatever he could as hard as he could, but lately, he's numb to the whole thing." Lily laughed at Sirius then. Said that it was a stupid fight, that James would come back when he had cooled off. So for the next two months, she waited, acting like she wasn't scared. That she didn't consider Sirius's advice every other minute.
Three months after the breakup, James received an offer to go and finish Auror training in France. He left. Without even saying goodbye. Without telling her he was leaving. Four months after the breakup, she was in denial, pretending not to get nervous as more days passed without a letter from him. It wasn't until one year passed that she started to accept the fact that he wasn't going to write. Thank goodness for Dorcas back then. She found Lily mindlessly making enough pastry dough to feed Hogwarts, after she had found one of James's old quidditch t-shirts at the bottom of her laundry bin. Dorcas immediately owled for a week of sick leave, and joined Lily in viciously beating frozen butter into sheets, folding it in dough, beating it out again. Then, together they made croissants and meat pies and watched reruns of Coronation Street, and Dorcas pretended not to notice when Lily started blubbering through Jack Walker's death and continued till Valerie Barlowe electrocuted herself with a broken hair dryer.
Lily Evans opened her eyes and took a deep breath, steeling herself. Pushing her half empty tea away, she checked her watch. Now she had to get back to her ward. Edith would've finished lunch, and would soon hunt her down, ready with 100 new questions. She dug around in her bag, pulled out a small bottle of pepper up potion, and downed it in one gulp. Then, she stood up quickly, making the chair scrape the tile floor. As she walked out of the tea room, she dropped a scrunched up bit of paper in the rubbish bin, leaving with it all the regret, the pain, and the fragile hopes concerning a forever messy haired boy.