"Ready to brave the gossip train, Lily?" James asked with his signature lopsided grin, placing special emphasis on her first name.
She rolled her eyes but didn't bother trying to hide the smile that graced her lips. "What's the use in waiting, James?"
"M' lady," he said with a flourish and a bow, bending at the waist and placing one hand behind his back. She scoffed but strode forward through the open portrait hole, glancing behind her as James ducked under it a moment later.
James reached out and took Lily's hand in his, intertwining their fingers as tingles rushed up his arm. A strange warmth inhabited his body that he was sure wasn't just from their body heat and his heart fluttered when he felt her fingers settle against his, their arms occasionally bumping together.
Lily looked around self-consciously, noticing every knowing glance, every whispered comment shot their way from passing students as they wound their way down the castle to the Great Hall. Once they had made it down a few floors, the crowds of students grew thicker as students began their Sunday mornings, letting the rush of their latest Hogsmeade visit dull out as slowly as possible.
James nodded to a group of passing students who were staring unabashedly and not even bothering to whisper as they talked about them. "You know Lils, everyone already knows that we're dating by now. I don't think us holding hands is what's going to give it away."
She shook her head to clear her thoughts and smiled. "I know, I know. You're right."
He felt her relax against him and he smiled as they walked into the Great Hall, hand in hand and even though Lily was blushing a deep red that rivaled her hair, she was beaming. They marched to their usual spots at the Gryffindor table, impervious to the gossip thickening into a cloud around them. A few of their friends filed into the Hall as they were eating, but still, James and Lily left alone before the rest had finished, drawing stares from all along the room.
"We did it! We made it through our first public appearance as the 'it' couple of Hogwarts," James smirked.
"Let's hope Hogwarts finds something more interesting to gossip about than us by tomorrow," Lily replied.
"By tomorrow? No way! We're the Head Boy and Girl! Dating hasn't been this cliche since rival seekers were seen kissing in the locker rooms!"
Lily laughed and nudged his shoulder, making them stumble together down the hall like two love-drunk idiots. Without ever talking about where they were headed, they both turned towards the Entrance Hall whose towering doors were thrown wide open, letting in the crisp autumn air with a gentle fog rolling out from behind the lights of the castle.
Someone cleared their throat to their left and both halted in their steps, looking in the direction of the noise. Head bent slightly, Snape stepped out of the shadows of the corridor that led to the Slytherin dungeons and gazed up at Lily from between strands of dark hair.
"Lily?" he asked in a soft voice, ignoring the dark expression that instantly passed over James' mien.
She sent a reassuring glance to James before responding. "What do you want, Snape?" she said in a voice full of exhausted annoyance.
"I just want to talk. Please," he said, taking another step towards them with a furtive glance over his shoulder down the Slytherin corridor. Apparently begging a mudblood for a moment of her time was frowned upon among his crowd.
"Not interested," she replied shortly, tugging at James' hand.
"Please, Lily. Come on," he begged, hurrying into their path.
Lily shot a dangerous glare at him and moved forward to shove past him, but Severus moved to block them once more.
"Lily, we're friends! Can't you just hear me out?"
She rounded on him violently, hair flying as she turned. "No, we are not friends. And no, I already heard you out more times than I can count so I don't see what use will come out of listening to your same spiel again other than it ruining my day."
Severus tucked his lips together and sucked in a deep breath before meeting Lily's dagger-like gaze. "I promise not to bore you with another spiel again if you just hear me out now. Just one more time."
Lily's eyebrow raised and her eyes bore into Snape's, searching for any signs of duplicity.
"I promise," he assured her in a quieter voice.
She let out an exasperated sigh and flicked her hair behind one shoulder, finally letting go of James' hand so that she could cross her arms. "Fine. Let's get this over with."
Severus sent a pointed glance at James and said nothing.
"Go on," Lily urged.
"Not with him here. In private," he spat, disgust lining his face.
Lily scoffed, shaking her head. "Never mind, then. Let's go James."
"No!" Snape shouted. "I… I won't bother you again if you would just… listen to me."
Lily worked something around in her mouth as she came to a decision. She squinted at Severus. "Fine."
James bent over and whispered, "Are you sure?"
Lily nodded. "Yeah, I'll be fine. I'll just… meet you at our corner of the courtyard. Okay?"
They stared into each other's eyes, having a silent conversation within a second before James gave a reassuring smile and kissed her briefly before marching out the doors, head held high and fists deep within his pockets.
Lily looked back at Severus with nothing but suspicion. "After you," she said with a cold nod.
Severus swallowed and walked briskly down the hall towards an unused classroom. He opened the door and let Lily pass through before he paced the length of the class, between the columns of desks while Lily waited impatiently near the door. Eventually, she couldn't take it anymore-the silence, the pacing, the tension.
"Look, if you want to talk then-"
Severus turned on his heel and interrupted her with a glare as dark as a storm. "Why are you going out with him?"
She laughed. She actually laughed, the laughter rising up within her and cutting through the tension like butter. "Oh, Snape. You can't be serious right now," she said after calming down slightly.
He glared at her. "Why? Why? You've always said how much you've hated him, but now… now it's like you actually like him? Why are you pretending to like him?"
"Wow. Wooow," she said, a hint of a laugh still hiding just behind her words. She placed her hands on the desk behind her and raised herself up, perching on the edge of the desk and letting her legs dangle. "I hate to break this to you, but I'm not pretending. I genuinely like James Potter, as hard as that may be for you to hear."
Severus refused to look away, trying to ignore his heartbeat that was buzzing loudly in his ears, the blood roaring in protest. "All I'm saying is if you're doing this to get back at me in some sick way for what I said to you in fifth year, then"-he spread out his arms- "point taken."
Lily restrained another bout of laughter but a smile still slipped out while she tried to decide if this was funny or just pathetic. "Are… are you kidding me? Please tell me you're joking."
Somehow, Severus's look darkened. "No. I am not kidding, Lily."
Her smile slid into an open-mouth gape and she studied Severus's face, still attempting to determine what reaction to go with. Eventually, her body settled on flat-out anger. "God! Not everything is about you!" she shouted, jumping down from her seat on the desk.
"I'm not saying th-"
"Move on, Severus!" she screamed, stalking forward. "As shocking as this may seem, I have not based the entirety of my life choices, including my boyfriend, on you and our broken friendship."
"Boyfriend?" he scoffed. "Boyfriend? You've gone on one date."
"And we're going on another," Lily retorted.
Severus looked at her, incredulous. "What do you see in him? I thought you hated him! We used to always complain about him together."
"What do I see in him? What do I-" Lily scoffed. "No. I don't need to explain myself to you."
"You promised to talk! To hear me out," Severus said.
"Hearing you out is different than you harping on about who I am."
"This isn't who you are."
"How would you know who I am?"
"Just tell me! Why? Why him?" Severus demanded, his voice bordering on the hysterical.
"Fine! Fine, I'll humor you. Why James Potter? Because he is kind and funny and smart and charming. He is fun and makes me laugh and stands up for his beliefs, beliefs which I agree with. Basically, he is a good person," she finished, crossing her arms, letting the unspoken ending hang between them.
Severus stood there, stunned like a deer in headlights. "And I'm not," he finished quietly for her.
Lily shrugged. Her heart ached for the obliquely delivered insult at her once-considered best friend, but the truth was the truth, no matter how you hide it. "We both chose our paths a long time ago, Snape."
Her lips stretched into a sad smile and she turned towards the door, but when she reached out for the handle, she found it locked, unwilling to budge beneath her grip. She instantly pieced together what happened and sighed, turning slowly back.
"Really, Snape? You're going to lock me in here until what, you change my mind? I agree to stop dating James or something?" she said, her voice thick was sarcasm, her head motioning to the wand in his hand.
"You keep calling him James," he pointed out, ignoring her question completely. "He used to be Potter at best. And now I'm Snape. Not Sev, not even Severus. Just Snape."
"Yes. I call James by his first name because, as aforementioned, he is my boyfriend. I call you Snape because we are merely classmates. Now unlock the door or I will myself."
"Don't do this. Please, don't do this," he begged, shaking his head sadly.
"Now really. This is getting quite sad and honestly, it's creepy how controlling you are, even when we aren't friends." Lily turned back around and slipped her wand out of her pocket.
"It's dangerous!" he shouted. "To be with him. He's a pureblood who flaunts his beliefs that go against all sense of tradition. You have to know that being with anyone like that is dangerous."
Lily scowled and whirled around, her anger reigniting within her. "And why is that, hmm? Because you and your little friends make it so? Because you hate muggle-borns like me. Because you are so insecure that you have to take out the competition, berating us for being inferior when really, anyone who believes that absolute rubbish is clearly inferior, shallow, and flat-out cruel."
"You're not inferior!"
"But everyone else with non-magical parents are?"
"That's not-"
Lily scoffed. "And you wonder why I'm not going out with you, of all people. Since you apparently seem too thick to understand, it's because you're not a good person, Snape. You're just not, as painful as that is for me to admit after all these years."
Severus gawked at her, his eyes filled with pain and his body slouched in defeat. An odd sense of vindictive pleasure erupted in Lily's chest, quickly replaced by guilt, then relief at getting that weight off of her shoulders.
With a sigh, Lily turned and unlocked the door, intent on hying onto the castle grounds to find James and salvage some of their relaxing morning. But before she left the classroom, she turned over her shoulder and in a much gentler voice, said, "See you around, Snape."
Turns out that 'around' was much sooner than Lily had anticipated or hoped for. 'Around' ended up being that very afternoon when she and James were walking back towards the Common Room after a few hours of 'studying'-studying being the blanket term to cover studying, talking, general goofing-off, and of course, the occasional kissing.
"Well would you look at what we have here?" Avery drawled, strolling leisurely around a corner, toying with his wand and glaring malevolently at James and Lily. Though it was hard to determine who he reserved more contempt for.
"A mudblood and a traitor," Mulciber answered, scowling. Behind them, the rest of their retinue chuckled and fanned out in a rough line, blocking the hallway.
James smiled pleasantly and let go of Lily's hand. "Good afternoon," he said. Then he nodded to a boy in the back who couldn't seem to decide on if he'd rather hide or put on the prideful pretense like the rest of them. "Hello, Regulus. I'm sure Sirius sends you his regards."
Regulus ducked his head, but some of the others scowled and made low noises of disgust as a response for him.
Lily nervously glanced at each of the students standing before them, taking note. There was Avery and Mulciber at the lead, Dolohov and Rosier and Snyde behind them, and at the very back, stood Regulus and Snape. Her blood boiled at the sight of him, her nerves becoming a composed anger.
"Hello, Snape. It seems you don't live long on your promises, do you?" Lily said, her voice like acid. Snape looked up slightly, his expression wrought in confused regret, his loyalties laying in the no-man's land in the middle of the corridor, somewhere between Lily and his beliefs.
Avery scoffed and grabbed onto Snape's arm, dragging him to the forefront.
"We heard you two had started dating, but I'll admit, I hoped it wasn't so," Avery taunted with a smug gleam.
Lily and James stood silently for a moment, unimpressed, until James rolled his eyes dramatically. "All right. I'll humor you. And why is that?"
"There's always time for a pureblood to come to their inherent good senses," Mulciber explained. "But it seems that you have officially stooped to the level of a mudblood."
"Don't call her that," James hissed back angrily, taking a step forward as his wand jumped into his hand.
"Why shouldn't he?" Lily said loudly, pressing a hand against James' chest to restrain him from leaping on the group as a one-man army. "I am muggle-born and I'm proud of it."
"Yes, well that's where we run into a little bit of a problem," Avery said with a malicious smile. "We don't approve of mudbloods, no matter how proud, and we certainly don't approve of pureblood traitors fraternizing with such filth, let alone dating one, do we Severus?"
Severus shook his head dutifully.
"I said: do we, Severus?" Avery repeated more firmly and elbowed him.
Snape looked up and met Lily's gaze. "No. No we don't," he confirmed evenly.
"Next time I'm looking for approval from a bunch of creepy, self-absorbed, gits, I'll be sure to find your sorry lot," Lily replied, her eyes dangerous slits and her wand clutched tightly in one hand, hidden beneath her crossed arms and jacket. "Let's go, James," she muttered, turning on her heel and letting her wand arm swing free of her clothes.
Predictably, the moment she turned her back was the moment that Avery lashed out, flinging a hex in her direction.
Knowing exactly what was going to happen miles before it did, Lily leaned out of the way, but the movement was unnecessary as James casted a powerful shield charm in front of them, sending the hex rebounding back. The Slytherins all ducked under the flashing light, letting it soar harmlessly down the empty corridor behind them.
Lily turned again to face them, wand in hand, with a tight-lipped smile. James was bouncing on his toes, eager for a fight, but not so eager that he couldn't count. The facts were the facts, and they were greatly outnumbered.
Rosier was apparently just as truculent as James and whipped his own wand in their direction, sending a poorly-aimed spell careening past them. Like a rubberband pulled taut, the Slytherins' control snapped in unison and hexes were suddenly flying from every wand. Though Snape was only aiming for James and Regulus was only aiming to miss while giving the appearance of ready participation.
James ducked and danced away from each spell, sending back his own when he could, and he tried not to worry about Lily. She could handle herself in a fight, he knew, and they both had plenty to worry about on their own. More so than usual for James, since Snape had taken on an entirely new persona: his fury was clear as he shot curse after violent curse at James' chest. One scraped his shoulder and James felt his skin tear beneath his shirt, but he didn't dare look down. It seemed that Snape had come to injure at best.
Lily fought alongside him, watching with some satisfaction as one of their spells froze Snyde in place, a look of mingled shock and anger stuck to his face. But even with Snyde out of play, there were still too many for them to take on alone.
She glanced sideways. "James?" she asked as quietly as she could manage with the adrenaline pumping through her veins. "Where's the nearest passage?"
A light of understanding flicked on and James smiled. "Cover me," he said back, flinging another countercurse to block Mulciber's.
Lily did as he asked and sent nonstop countercurses and blocking spells in every direction, her arm flailing wildly, as James ducked behind her and ran to a large portrait at the opposite end of the corridor. James leaned in close and whispered to the old man who was painted in it and the man nodded once before reaching behind him and pulling a book from the bookcase. The portrait swung open and James ducked behind it so that only his head was showing.
"Lils!" he shouted. "Run, I'll cover you!"
Lily didn't wait another second since the Slytherins had been closing in and she could feel the spots where some of their curses had scraped her when she'd failed to deflect them quick enough. She sent one final hex randomly in their direction and sprinted down the hallway, hearing the Slytherins pursue her with gleeful shouts. One shout turned into a scream as James sent him sprawling, but Lily didn't pause to look.
She barrelled towards James and reached for the edge of the portrait, using it to spin wildly around the corner and duck into the dark hole in the wall, hoping that James knew where it would lead, but not really caring. James stepped in behind her and quickly slammed the portrait shut so that they were smothered in darkness. Above the sound of their heavy breathing, they heard the Slytherins outside shouting, trying to pry the portrait open, banging on the canvas and even the wall itself.
James flicked his wand and a ball of light appeared at its tip, illuminating his confident smirk.
"Well that was fun," he commented conversationally.
Lily blew on a piece of hair that fell into her face and tightened her ponytail. "I did warn you. I told you there was no way they were going to leave us alone once word got out."
James shrugged. "We can take them anytime. I'm not worried."
"You can't hide in there forever!" came Avery's angry shout through the canvas. "You'll have to come out eventually and we'll be waiting here when you do!"
James chuckled. "That's where they're wrong. Come on," he said, sliding past Lily and walking further into the darkness, disappearing a few steps later.
"James?" she whispered, her voice caught in surprise.
"Still here! Careful, the passage turns a meter or so in," his voice floated back.
Lily lit her own wand and followed carefully, one hand trailing the wall as she did to feel for the abrupt turn in the passage. A few brief moments and two more turns later, Lily stumbled upon James holding open another portrait with a grin. He bowed and muttered, "M' lady," as she stepped out with an eye roll.
"Where are we?" she whispered, looking around.
"Take a look around that corner," he whispered back with his lopsided smirk.
Lily complied with one suspicious glance before peeking around the gargoyle placed at the corner. She sucked in a breath and retreated back towards James. She had barely caught a glimpse, but it was enough to recognize the corridor that they had just sprinted down; though now the Slytherins were at the opposite end where James and Lily had entered the first secret portrait, all arranged in a frustration-filled semi-circle, demanding the elderly wizard let them in.
Lily chuckled and shook her head in amazement as they strolled casually down the hallway in the opposite direction.
"I'll admit I'm surprised," James said.
Lily started in surprise herself. "Did you not know where that led?"
"No, I knew. But when we found it, we were disappointed at such a useless passage. I mean, it actually takes longer to get to the end point than it would to just take the regular hallway, but who knew? I guess it has its uses after all."
As always, I hope you all liked this little short story! Just an fyi, I'm going off to college this week so I'm not sure when I'll be able to post anything new so I hope to see you all later!