Warning: Some depictions of blood. Gross.

Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns Harry Potter. Art work by the super talented blvnk-art (tumblr) aka potterbyblvnk (insta)

Song: Worship by Amber Run

The Mending

"Wow, well this is most certainly a step in the right direction."

"I don't know. It seems a little regressive if you ask me."

"Well, that's why you're failing History of Magic, isn't it? Because you can't see that this is what needs to be done in order to stop the next generation of Grindelwald supporters from taking hold in Wizarding society. 76 percent of Wizards agree with the new laws."

"Okay, Joseph, an A is hardly what I call failing History of Magic—"

Lily had barely been sitting with the Ravenclaws for more than five minutes, but she was already kind of over the way they spoke to one another and how high-and-mightily they seemed to regard themselves. She and Remus had some of the best grades in school, yet they would never pretend to be some highbrow, smarter-than-thou teens who were generally just better than everyone else because they knew how to use big words and had memorized statistical information. And the girls thought that I had a stick up my arse… There was nothing wrong with being smart, Lily thought, but there was definitely something wrong with intentionally trying to make other people feel dumb.

"What are they talking about?" Lily asked Benjy softly, at breakfast Sunday morning. He had invited her to eat with them, and had only done a slight double-take when she'd brought Remus along with her. We're a package deal, Lily had sang in her head as they'd sat down next to him.

"What?" the boy apparently called Joseph asked, unnecessarily loud, drawing the attention of everyone in the vicinity to their conversation. "Don't you read?" He slid over today's copy of The Prophet on the table between them.

Lily grimaced. That was quite the weird way to ask, 'Didn't you read this one specific article that was printed only a few hours ago?' Benjy helpfully passed it along to her. Lily's eyes flew, skimming over how the Minister of Magic had just granted Aurors the authority to use Unforgivable Curses against Death Eaters, and how they'd deemed trials unnecessary in their swift quest to bring them to justice for their crimes. Lily couldn't help but feel slightly queasy with this turn of events: no judge, no jury, just executioners. They could kill them on sight, no questions asked. It felt sort of wrong.

"I think it's a good thing," Benjy told her merrily, munching on his toast. "Saves Aurors from having to deal with a bunch of red tape, don't you think?"

"I don't know…" Lily answered honestly, rereading the article again more slowly.

"What?" Benjy asked nonplussed. "I mean, the Death Eaters are getting out of control. I would have thought that you'd be happy with this."

Lily raised her eyebrows looking at him. "Me?"

Benjy fidgeted awkwardly. "Well, yeah. I mean. This affects you, doesn't it?"

It did. But Lily thought proper trials and adequate justice affected everyone, really. "Sure. But I don't know if getting rid of giving people their day in court is the correct way to fight bigots." She looked at Remus who was still staring at the article, highly interested. "There's still a small chance that someone could get framed, or falsely accused of being a Death Eater, and then what? We just lock them in Azkaban and throw away the key?" She poured herself a glass of water. "We have Wizengamot for a reason. Why doubt them now?"

Joseph scoffed, clearly eavesdropping. "Wizengamot is wrong all the time."

"Yeah, for sure," Lily agreed. "But that doesn't mean that we should just scrap them without first putting something better in place—"

"You're Muggle-born, you don't understand how we've been—"

"Joseph." Benjy cut him off angrily with a menacing glare. Even his other friends were looking at him like they thought he'd crossed an invisible line.

"I'm just saying, the whole Death Eater problem is getting out of hand, and if some heads have to roll to get rid of them, so be it. They knew what they were getting themselves into when they pledged their loyalty to a megalomaniac. They should suffer the consequences."

Lily couldn't help but think of Potter, having gotten branded at age 13 as part of this cult. Had he known what he was doing? Had his Merlin-awful mother steered him towards it? Should he spend the rest of his life getting his soul sucked out of him because of his misinformed actions as a prepubescent child? Probably, she reasoned. It's not like he's shown any growth since. The complicated nature of the whole conundrum made her head spin.

"Are you okay?" Benjy whispered to her a few minutes later when she still hadn't eaten any more of her food.

"Yeah. Fine," Lily answered with a forced smile.

Lily and Remus' next Order meeting felt awkward. Well, perhaps it was only awkward for Lily, but she felt like Moody kept looking at her with his magical eye, as if wondering what the hell she was still doing there if she was no longer agreeing to spy for them. She tried to tell herself that her paranoia was all in her head, especially since Dumbledore had been nothing but courteous and welcoming when she'd arrive, but it was a hard feeling to shake. Lily sunk into her chair in the back with Remus, wholly ready for the hour to pass by as quickly as possible.

"You okay?" Remus asked her concerned as Matthew Hunt got into an argument with Emmeline Vance about the best course of action for uncovering more Death Eaters.

"Yeah, yeah, just ready for bed," Lily answered, not completely untruthfully.

She thanked her lucky stars when the meeting was adjured early because of pressing matters that a more intimate core group of members of the Order had to discuss. It looked as though only the Aurors and Dumbledore were staying back in the office as the rest of them filed out via the fireplace while Remus and Lily exited through the door. Lily happily returned Alice's enthusiastic wave goodbye.

"Still up for Gobstones?" Remus asked her in the hall.

"Sure." Lily answered. "After I put on my jammies."

"Of course. Can't play Gobstones until comfortable."

Several hours later, Lily had crushed Remus for their fourth game straight when a timid 5th year approached them by the fireplace. "Um, Lily?" she asked. Lily looked up at her expectantly. "Uh, Olivia's at the Fat Lady? She said she needs to speak to you?"

Lily gave Remus a 'what the hell is that about?' look as she got to her feet, thanking the shy Gryffindor and stepping outside. She had a sneaking suspicion that whatever the prefect had to say, it was probably Potter related. She tried suppressing all thoughts of Potter's dick in Olivia's mouth before she opened the portrait to her. "Hi," Lily said with absolutely nothing else to go off of.

"I don't know where he is," Olivia said frustratedly, obviously cutting right to the chase.

"Who?" Lily asked, crossing her arms over her camisole. Her PJ trousers might have been fuzzy and warm, but her top offered little protection against the draft of the hallway.

"Potter," Olivia said dryly. Lily guessed that however they'd left things last had not been pleasant. "He was supposed to do patrols with me tonight, but he never showed. I don't wanna go outside alone, it gives me the creeps."

It was a valid concern. Lily had noticed that her prefects had been stretched quite thin since McGonagall's new requirements had been set into place. She wondered if there was a way to tell the professor they were no longer required without revealing what she knew — and admitting she was taking a Death Eater at his word. What if he didn't show because he's torturing some kids right now?

"I'll take care of it. Just," Lily sighed, "start inside, at the Astronomy Tower, and work your way down. You don't have to patrol outside tonight."

"Thanks." Olivia turned on her heel and disappeared around a corner.

Fucking Potter. He had told her he'd stop. Fuming, Lily marched back inside the common room and walked to her dorm, grabbing his Invisibility Cloak. She had to gather proof that he'd broken his promise to her so that she could break hers and turn him in. Maybe with the changing laws, his invincibility wasn't as secure as he'd previously believed it to be. If she told a whole room full of people — perhaps the entire Order — who the Death Eaters in school really were, and what they did to other students, they'd all be thrown in Azkaban before their parents could put a stop to it — before they could hurt me.

Why did Lily feel queasy as she stormed past Remus (telling him not to wait up) and ran down the castle? A few less students in her classes didn't affect her in the slightest.

Lily nearly slipped and ate it as her feet landed in the Entrance Hall, ready to stomp outside. There, on the stone floor, was a heavy trail of blood that she'd walked right into. The interval between the crimson droplets got gradually closer the farther from the front door the path got, making Lily think that whoever was dragged along through this hall was definitely bleeding out somewhere. Barely thinking, she held her wand close and ran after the wake of red, following it all the way to the dungeons, and to the entrance of the Slytherin dormitory.

James wasn't on his rounds. Lily felt like heaving. No. She engulfed herself in Potter's Cloak and used her master password to enter the Slytherin common room, bolting for where she knew the 7th year boys' room was. She nearly slipped again on the puddle of blood outside the door.

When she pushed the door open, she was greeted with crazed shouts and the tortured cries of a man she knew all too well.

"We need to bring you to the hospital wing!" Sirius yelled, obviously not for to the first time.

"No, they'll know, Pads, they'll—" he had to stop talking, wailing instead as he clutched at what looked to be a hole in his side. No, it's not a hole, Lily realized. The entire left side of his abdomen is just missing.

"Fuck, Prongs, it doesn't matter if you're dead!"

"He said no, Merlin-damnit. Listen to him!" Avery shouted, getting in Sirius' face as the boy tried grabbing for Potter's arm, looking like he was going to drag him there himself.

"I'll heal it," Potter declared foolishly, weakly, trying to point his wand at himself, only to wince as it slipped through his slippery fingers, coated in his own blood.

Lily had seen enough. The situation was dire, and she could fix it. She whipped off Potter's Cloak, not giving the boys any time to react and hex her, because she was already crouching at the side of Potter's bed, wand out and muttering all the healing spells she knew.

"Lily—" Potter said breathlessly, somehow smiling at her through all his pain. It was a short-lived flicker unfortunately, as he convulsed a second later, his body unable to cope with the extreme loss of blood and flesh, shrieking out haunting screams.

Fuck, this is bad. Lily turned to Sirius. "You. Use his Cloak to go to the hospital wing and steal me Blood Replenisher, Muscle-Gro, and Bertie Bott's Brain-Numbing Potion." Sirius just looked at her blankly, as though still trying to figure out when she'd shown up. Lily had no time for shock. "Now, Black, now!"

He sprang into action, transforming into a shaggy black dog who grabbed Potter's Cloak in his mouth and sprinted out of the dorm. She'd unpack his Animagus form later, right now, she had a boy to save. She turned to Mulciber, dick that he was, and commanded him, "Hold his hand."

"What?" Mulciber asked, somehow still grossly even though it was single word.

"Hold it."

Mulciber did as he was told as Lily conjured a stick to jam into Potter's mouth so he wouldn't bite off his own tongue. "Sorry, James," she whispered as she began cauterizing all of his open wounds, making Mulciber scream when Potter broke his hand in his own, thrashing on the bed. Lily knew it was barbaric, but without the right potions, he would bleed out and die. At least this way he would live until Lily could regrow the entire chunk of him that was missing.

"Shit! He's—"

"Almost done," Lily replied, brow scrunched in concentration as she sealed the last of Potter's open skin. "There."

She looked up to find tears streaming out of Potter's eyes, but his face started relaxing, realizing the worst was finally over. She probably should have preformed the very same calming spell on him that he'd hexed her with before she started literally setting his skin on fire— but she hadn't.

Sirius burst back in through the door, balancing what looked like ten different bottles in his arms. "There were choices, so I just grabbed them all," he said panicked, dumping them on the edge of Potter's bed. "Do these work?"

"Yes," Lily said curtly, grabbing the familiar purple bottle, popping open the cork top, and bringing it up to James' lips, where she had to remove the stick.

Sirius sucked in a deep breath as he realized his best friend was no longer on the verge of death. "What, I'm gone five seconds and you already gagged him?"

"Shut up," Lily said distractedly, eyes glued to Potter's mouth as he swallowed the potion. "That's it, drink up," she soothed, absentmindedly pushing his hair back off of his sweaty forehead, letting it run through her fingers. "You lost a lot of blood."

Potter's hazel eyes were unfocused, hazy with all the pain, but they seemed to be trying to hone in on the sound of her voice.

She cut him off and grabbed the next bottle, recognizing that Sirius had brought her both Skele-Gro and Muscle-Gro. She was fairly certain that whatever curse he'd encountered had gutted him under his rib cage, so no bones were missing at least. "I'll have to conjure him back some of his stomach, and possibly the bottom of his left kidney," she said aloud, mostly for herself, but also in case it helped tranquillize her audience's alarm. Walking them through her steps never hurt. "This will taste like shit, Potter, but I know how much you like your abs, so drink up," she instructed him, bringing the bright blue potion to his lips. His eyes drank her as he drank it.

Potter grimaced and sputtered. "Uh uh, take it all." She could have sworn a muscle in his temple twitched from her command. She sorted through her leftover bottles, pulling out the last one she needed. The boys around the bed were now watching enraptured, clearly thinking of her as some sort of genius goddess who had just saved their king. "Now don't let the name fool you, this one is super strong." The bottle was shaped like a jellybean, but Lily knew that was just an homage to how the wizard who had invented it had made his original fortune. In his later years, after having come up with the snack to feed generations upon generations of daring children, Bertie Bott had gone back to his true passion in life: drugs. He had invented the most mind-altering, nerve-defying potion known to Wizarding kind — that just so happened to be perfect for patients dealing with inconceivable amounts of pain. It was highly addictive, and rarely ever prescribed, but Lily knew that if Potter had to regrow half his abdomen and deal with her attempting (it wasn't like it was common practice or anything) to repair some of his vital organs, he'd need it. She unscrewed the lid. She gave Potter a very stern finger to the face. "Now, don't you go becoming an addict on me." She tipped his head back, and poured a hefty dose onto his tongue.

He swallowed and looked at her dreamily. (It worked fast.) "Too late."

His stomach glowed as his burnt skin seemed to bubble and shift, moving to make room for the muscles that were trying to form there. It was a ghastly sight that Lily was so grateful he could no longer feel.

"Prongs, mate," Sirius clapped him on the shoulder, Lily thought a little too heavily given his current condition, "don't scare me like that again, all right?"

He merely shrugged in response.

"Yeah, he'll be out of it for at least ten hours." Lily stood up, using her wand to sanitize her hands, before siphoning the blood off of his sheets. There was no way it hadn't soaked into his mattress, there was just so much. "I'll work on the skin and organs once the muscles have stitched themselves where they should be." Lily pulled her hair up into a messy bun with the scrunchie on her wrist, knowing this was about to be a long night.

"Can you heal my hand?" Mulciber asked meekly.

Lily didn't look up from Potter. "No."

"Shit," he muttered dejectedly, walking over to his bed.

Lily felt Sirius' gaze hot on her cheek. "Where'd you learn all this?"

"I have a lot of free time over the summers," Lily answered vaguely, not wanting to get into her family — or rather lack there of — history with an unfriendly stranger. The good thing about her orphanage being in a city as busy as London was that she'd never had to worry about getting busted for studying, and practicing, underage magic.

"Well, that was brilliant." She turned to him surprised, not expecting any sort of praise. "You saved his life."

It was the most sincere thing she'd ever heard from the Death Eater. "Course. I'm a healer, it's what I do," she brushed off.

Sirius scoffed, but didn't fight her on it, crouching down to be at Potter's eye level. "How you doing, bud?"

Potter smiled lazily, head lolling on his pillow. "Great." Lily couldn't help her lips from twitching into a smirk. It was fun seeing him like this.

"Merlin," Sirius chuckled, shaking his head.

Wanting to give the best mates a bit of privacy, Lily excused herself to their bathroom to clean up, magicking away the blood that had somehow spattered its way onto her camisole. She was deep in thought exiting the toilet, wondering if what she'd read in her healing books would translate into her being skilled enough to perform organ repair, when she was greeted by the sight of Sirius showering, scrubbing his best friend's blood off his body. "What the—" she yelped, shielding her eyes from the unwanted view.

"What did you expect, princess?" He grinned, not moving to cover himself up in the slightest. In fact, he seemed more than comfortable enough to turn around even further, washing his backside. "This is the guys' lavatory."

Lily huffed, walking swiftly to the sink to wash her hands. If she could refrain from looking at Potter's naked body when he had paraded it before her in this very same bathroom, she could most certainly keep from looking at his best friend's too. Her vision was only picking him up in her peripheral, and yet his parts hardly seemed as — How should I put this? — eye-catching as Potter's. "Could you put on a towel or something? No one wants to see that." It wasn't true, and Lily knew it. He was shorter than Potter, but no bloke could make Lily feel less pretty than Sirius Black. His features were pristine in a very feminine way that he totally rocked.

"Your best friend wants to see this." He wasn't wrong. He smirked, and the look wasn't nearly as alluring as when Potter did it. "It's just a dick, Evans. You can look if you want. I know you've seen them before." His amusement grew. "I've heard you see them before."

Lily rolled her eyes. "Wow. I've had sex in my life. So naughty." She flicked the water off her hands. "Maybe I just don't want to see your dick, ever thought about that?"

"Mm, yes," Sirius said knowingly as he finally grabbed for a towel and wrapped it around his waist. "Prongs mentioned you weren't comfortable with bodies yet—"

"What?" Lily yelped, falling for his bait. "I'm plenty comfortable. Just because I don't flaunt mine at every chance I get like you two—"

Sirius held his hands out, palms up. "How am I flaunting?"

"—doesn't mean that I don't love my own body—"

"I'm literally just standing here in my own shower, after showering—"

"Why do you call him 'Prongs' anyway?"

Oh, he loved that she'd asked him this, she could tell. "You of all people should have figured that out already." Off of her confused look, he continued, walking up next to the sink and leaning against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. "Because you've felt it? Gotten skewered by it?"

Wow. He really wasn't going to let this whole, 'you shagged my best mate' thing go, was he? "Original. So it's because he has a nice cock?" she scoffed.

"So, you think he has a nice, big cock, eh?"

"I didn't say big."

"It was implied."

"Fuck, you might be worse than him."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Sirius said with a huge smile. "Just don't go falling for me, too, all right? Don't want to anger my boy."

"What?" Lily looked at him confused. Sparring with Potter had always felt like a seduction, but with Sirius, it just felt like a trap.

Sirius got solemn as he tilted his head to lean against the mirror, studying her. "You care for him."

Lily wasn't prepared for the shift in conversation. She jolted and reached for a toothbrush for something to do with her hands, hoping that Sirius wouldn't notice that she knew just which one was Potter's. (He did.) "What makes you say that?"

His grin morphed into something that even Cheshire Cats would kill to achieve. He knew he had her. "You came and found him, Evans. You practically broke into our place to save him."

"There was blood in the halls," Lily defended herself ardently. "What else was I supposed to do?" She loaded Potter's brush with paste and jammed it into her mouth. "You should probably send a house-elf to clean up the mess by the way, before everyone starts asking questions," she blurted out chunkily, trying to deflect.

It didn't work. "Would you have come running if you thought it was Avery who was hurt? Or Mulciber?" No. She wouldn't have. She would have felt bad if they'd died, but she wouldn't have gone out of her way to save them… Would I even have felt bad? They were bad people. Bad things were allowed to happen to bad people… Aren't they? Sirius pressed on as Lily brushed harder. "You like him. It's about time too, because he's been obsessed with you for waaay too long now."

Lily spat out the frothy paste, feeling like this was something he shouldn't be telling her. "What?"

Sirius ignored her obvious denial. "All I know is if a bloke fucked my brains out like he did yours, I'd already be down on one knee, sweetie," Lily licked the toothpaste off of her lips, unfortunately being forced to relive the memory of said fucking. "Don't break his heart," he said.

Well, now Lily wasn't sure if he was joking or not. All her experiences with Potter had made her come to the sad but inescapable conclusion that Potter didn't have a heart to break. Against her own will, Lily felt as though she had started to gain a real understanding of her fellow Head, but his best mate remained an utter mystery. He has to be pulling your leg.

Sirius watched her every move calculatedly. "He's a good guy." Oh, thank god. He's kidding. Lily rinsed off Potter's brush and put it back in his spot. "He saved my life tonight. That curse he took? It was meant for me. He never lets anything bad happen to the people that he loves. Remember that, Evans."

Lily finally returned his gaze. Was he using her surname instead of one of those ridiculous pet names because he wanted her to take him seriously? She had no idea Potter had taken a spell for his best friend, but honestly, she wasn't that surprised. If he wasn't raised evil, he would have had a lot of traits that would have made Godric Gryffindor proud. Lily tried to repress the memory of the Sorting Hat trying to tell her that she would do great in Slytherin and that it wanted to place her there. It had been something that she had never told a single soul and she had been fighting against her entire tenure at Hogwarts. She'd wanted to be like McGonagall — the formidable witch that had shown her the way and opened up her world to magic. Lily had obviously since seen the kind of people that resided in this dungeon and she'd wanted no part in it. She forced a swallow, trying to wet her vocal cords. "I'm a little more concerned about how he treats the people he hates."

Sirius held her look unblinkingly for a good chunk of time. Finally he seemed to cave. "Anyway, what's Lupin up to these days? He does nothing but give me the cold shoulder in Potions, but I would really love to take him home to my parents. You know, piss them off a little bit." Lily knew enough about Sirius' parents to know that while they shared his backwards beliefs on Muggles, they differed greatly in views on who one could love. It was a wonder that their homophobic tendencies hadn't driven Sirius to move out now that he was nearly a whole year past being of age.

"Don't you dare use him like that—"

Sirius snorted. "You're one to talk. When's the last time you used my best mate as your fuck-toy, or Fenwick to make yourself feel better about using Prongs as your fuck-toy?"

He was way more on the nose than Lily felt comfortable with. "You don't know what you're talking about." His little huff pushed Lily from being slightly indignant to self-righteously affronted. "If anything, Potter uses me to get off."

"Are you—?" Sirius pushed himself off the wall, looking like he wanted to strangle her for being so daft. "Get your head out of you arse, Evans!"

"I was the one to ask him out!" Lily claimed stubbornly, turning to face him fully. She knew it was a silly thing to cling to, but she felt like it was all she had. There wasn't enough time in the day to explain to him all the psychological ways she felt like Potter was messing up her very brain chemistry.

Sirius gaped at her, looking as if he had about a million things to yell at her, but somehow finding the strength to pull it all back. "You are so lucky I owe you." He held his hands out and clenched them into fists in front of her face, clearly demonstrating how he wished he was squeezing her head to death instead. "You're so—" he struggled, "—full of shit!" He turned and walked out of the bathroom.

Lily watched as the door swung closed behind him. "So I've been told," she muttered to no one in particular.

Next Chapter: The Gratitude