June 22nd, 1976

"I still don't understand how I never knew you have a sister," Mary's saying.

They're out to coffee with Marlene at a café just outside Mary's neighborhood. Ordinarily, Mary would have preferred Madame Puddifoot's in Hogsmeade, but she's been delving more into the Muggle side of life to avoid the negative atmosphere of the magical world that's been sparked by the threat of Voldemort. This Mary tells Lily, all very fast and with the expectation of an equally chatty reply; Lily may have known her for five years, but not well enough to realize her tendency to over-share with friends. Since Marlene is Mary's best friend, Lily wonders, does this make Mary her friend by extension, or is she just trying to accept Lily now that Severus is out of the picture?

Lily explains, sighing, "I don't talk about Tuney that often. We're not exactly, er, on the best of terms…"

"By which she means Petunia hates her for being a witch," interjects Marlene loudly, eager to shoot down a girl she didn't know existed until Lily started staying with her. Lily rolls her eyes, as she's also beginning to catch on about Marlene; she's both impassioned and impulsive.

A few people sitting nearby turn their heads at mentions of witchcraft. Mary blushes and looks around at the Muggles, her face bright red, and she hisses out the corner of her mouth, "Not so loud! Jeez, Mauve, haven't you heard of the International Statute of Secrecy before?"

Marlene mumbles an apology, then adds, blinking, "Since when is Mauve one of my nicknames? I mean, Lena or Leigh you've used…"

"Oh, I just think it goes, now that Lily's Red and all," Mary prattles, her voice back to normal. Lily rolls her eyes again and takes a long swig of her cappuccino. "James was calling her that at Peter's house the other day."

Marlene glances, startled, at Lily, then back to Mary. "Pete invited you to his place?" she asks quickly. Mary nods and opens her mouth, about to spit out a litany of details, but Marlene quickly cuts her off: "I just mean, you know, since I hang around with all the Marauders in the summer… plus Black was probably there…"

"Does she know about you and Sirius?" Mary mutters, glancing conspiratorially at Lily.

"Well, now she will," snaps Marlene, put-out in response to Mary's bluntness.

Lily smiles faintly and traces the rim of her coffee mug. "It's all right; I—erm—caught on a couple months back," she fudges, not wanting to give away Potter's admission.

Marlene raises her eyebrows; the left one arches past her carefully side-swept bangs. "Did you? I thought we weren't being obvious…?"

Lily bites her lip. "No, no, you're not," she improvises clumsily, "you just, er, notice things like that when you live in the dorms. Someone might have said something once or twice, I don't know, and I just—pieced it together…"

"Probably Mary here," bites Marlene, sipping her latte. Mary starts indignantly, but Marlene cuts her off before she can defend herself. "Doesn't matter, I guess, you know anyway. He was there, wasn't he? Black?" she directs back to Mary, who nods. "He say anything about me?"

"Well, he asked Pete once or twice why you weren't there—it wasn't suspicious or anything, he was more, like, casual."

Marlene raises her coffee to her lips. "Huh," she says quietly, taking a sip. They sit in silence for a minute, until she continues, "Who else was there, Mare?"

"Oh, um… James and Lupin, of course. And Em," she lists.

"Em was there?" Marlene seems about as incredulous as Lily is at the news; while she likes Emmeline Vance (another of their roommates) well enough, her borderline-antisocial tendencies don't make her the most likely person to spend any time with the Gryffindor boys, of all people. "Isn't she a bit too…"

"No, I know what you mean," Mary says, swallowing a mouthful of coffee. "She didn't say, like, anything the entire time…just read some Muggle fantasy novel—I always find those hysterical, don't you? How far off they are." At this point, she's particularly careful to lower her voice, despite her tendency to seem dumb at times. "Anyway, it wasn't really awkward or anything, she just sat with Lupe the entire time. He kept her company, I guess. Unlike poor Red here, who's hardly said more today than Em did yesterday," she finishes, looking expectantly to Lily. Lily hides behind the mug again, draining the cappuccino all too fast.

When Marlene doesn't say anything convenient to draw attention away from her, Lily sighs and shrugs her shoulders. "Just thinking," she offers by way of explanation.

"About?" Mary demands, for once keeping brief and to the point. Lily mumbles indistinctly and tips the nearly-empty mug back to catch the foamy dregs on her tongue. "What was that? Potter, did you say?"

Marlene latches tight onto the opportunity to grill Lily on the subject. "What's been going on with you and him lately, anyway?" she demands.

"Nothing!" Lily insists. She figures her pretending-to-drink-coffee jig is up, so she unnecessarily wipes her mouth on a napkin instead.

"I don't call it nothing, your relationship with the bloke. You've been up and down with him since day one—you row with him whenever Snape's around or comes into the conversation, but the second it's just Gryffindors, you're practically flirting with the guy," accuses Marlene.

At the other end of the table, Mary is grinning coyly. Lily works to keep her temper under control.

"I do not flirt with him, Marlene! He flirts with me, I just don't bother telling him off for it when Severus isn't there—oh, don't look at me like that, you know I don't hate him as much as you want to think I do. I don't like him, necessarily, but mostly I just don't know him, and we're too different for him to rub me right until I do—"

"So you want to get to know him, then," suggests Mary, beaming, and continues before Lily can interrupt, "Don't deny it, Red, Sirius told me yesterday you and James have been attached at the hip at every social event this summer. Everyone knows about, like, how you lashed out at him during O.W.L.s, and it's never been as bad as that before—and now you're hanging around him?"

"Just the other day he was at home with you, with nobody else there… you don't have any weird relationship with Jay we don't know about, do you?" presses Marlene, watching Lily intently. Mary looks positively delighted by the idea.

"No," Lily asserts, "I just—oh, come on, you all know ruddy well how stressed I get during exams, especially for a subject like Defense. And he'd just asked me out—asked me out, out of the blue, like nothing was wrong—and then Severus called me a Mudblood, for god's sake! My best friend! I had a right to snap!"

Marlene sighs. "Oh, come off it—Snape isn't even your friend anymore."

"Exactly," Lily emphasizes, "so that takes away my only reason to hate Potter, now, doesn't it?"

"So you were just exaggerating when you went off on him like that and told him he makes you sick, were you?" says Mary skeptically.

Lily retorts, "I didn't say I like him, Mary, just that he's more tolerable now than he used to be. Let it go, yeah?"

They let the subject drop, but Lily can tell from the looks on their faces that they aren't going to forget it anytime soon. Hastily, she thinks of something to divert their attention. "What did you want to know about Tuney earlier, Mary?" she asks.

"Oh—I just, like, thought it was odd, you know? I know you for five years, and then the first I hear about you even having a sister is that you're not invited to her wedding."

"Well, technically, I'm invited—though only because my parents want me there," Lily says, understating how badly Mum wants her to attend. "But I'm not going to be in it—not as maid of honor, not as a bridesmaid, nothing. I didn't even get a formal invitation."

"I told her to go, and to bring Black to get back at her, but she's not having it," Marlene tells Mary in an aside.

Lily exhales slowly. "I don't know… I'll probably just go. I think Mum might take offense if I don't, particularly after not telling her in advance that I didn't intend to come home for the summer," she decides reluctantly. "But I'm still not bringing Black as my date; he'll just make it worse for me. Lupin, maybe—he seems all right."

"Huh," says Marlene slowly, losing interest in Lily and instead dabbing at her mouth. "You know, we should probably get going—I'm done here. Either of you bring any lipstick that'll work for me? I forgot mine at home," she adds, frowning at the red stains on her napkin.

"I don't wear makeup," Lily reminds her patiently as Mary rummages through her bag.

Marlene grins. "Right. You really should; some mascara would really make those eyes pop…"

"I think I have one or two that could work here, Mauve," interjects Mary, holding out a selection as Lily shakes her head and smiles, "but don't count on it; the pinks I like are far too light for your skin tone." (Lily stifle a laugh at the irony: Marlene's complexion may be dark, but after a week of exposure to Muggle tanning beds, Mary's, though tinted orange from her cosmetics, is almost as much so.)

They pay—Mary and Lily split the bill, after Marlene realizes she's forgotten to bring any Muggle bills—and take off to walk back to Mary's house. Marlene, Lily notices, checks her reflection constantly in shop windows, critically playing with the hem of her skirt as she goes—not in vanity, Lily surmises, but because she's uncomfortable without her robes. Growing up in a family of brazen wizards, she figures, can make you doubt your ability to not look out of place in the Muggle world.

It's a nice area, not upscale but cozy, the close buildings no higher than two stories. The cold spell from earlier in the week is beginning to thaw, but a slight breeze remains to tease the leaves of the densely packed trees. It's cloudy but not entirely overcast out, and shy sunlight warms their arms, which are bashful and exposed without robe sleeves to hide them.

Lily watches her roommates silently (especially in Mary's case, she can't quite call them friends yet) as they walk. They pay no mind, carrying between them light conversation about a "scandalous" breakup in their year: apparently, the reasonably sensible Pol Patil had left fellow Ravenclaw Carol Davies for Greta Catchlove, a domestically inclined Hufflepuff. "He's an idiot for leaving Davies, since honestly, he was better off with her; at least she was an intellectual match for him. Catchlove doesn't stand a chance," Mary's saying when Lily tunes in briefly. "I give it, like, two months at best—he's going to want to debate politics or something, and she's going to want his opinion on his favorite flavor of cheese. Mark my words, it's not going to last long."

She's better than she looks, Mary. On her surface behavior alone, mostly negative words come to mind: superficial, materialistic, dumb. And it doesn't help her case that she certainly looks the part: half-Irish and half-Scottish, her skin would be ghostly and her hair jet-black if not for the tanning and the beach-blonde dye, her Muggle tee and jean skirt reveal far more than is necessary, and she throws a fit whenever she breaks a manicured nail. In particular, no one at Hogwarts knows quite what to make of her speech habits: her "likes" aren't fitting of her personality. (Not yet, at least: Marlene has always joked that Mary's the predecessor of a new stereotype.) Time, though, lures one into a sort of fondness for Mary, or at least an understanding. She gossips but never backstabs, can't keep a secret but doesn't pretend to, flirts around but never crosses lines, and they've all seen her fierce loyalty to her housemates in between the shallow smiles. She isn't Lily's first choice for a companion, certainly, and nothing like her former best friend, but she's not one to underestimate, either.

By the time they reach Mary's house, the subject has shifted again, this time back to the other Gryffindors. "Have you been in touch with the other girls?" Marlene asks Mary, swiping dark brown hair out of her face. "Alice and Em?"

"I told you already, I just saw Em yesterday at Pete's," Mary answers, "though not other than that—you know how she is. I wrote Alice a couple days ago, just about, like, how her summer's going and things like that, but she hasn't gotten back to me yet. And I asked whether she wants to hang out sometime this week—I thought we could get the girls together, catch up on what we've been doing."

"We've only been out of school for a week. We've hardly been up to much, and I doubt they have, either," Marlene points out, smirking. "Especially Alice."

Mary tilts her head. "As far as vacations go, maybe not—but there've been developments, we all know that." They both look pointedly to Lily, who sighs. Apparently, there's no escaping the gossip.

"Just because Potter and I aren't at each other's throats every second of every day—"

"Does not mean there haven't been developments between you two," finishes Mary smugly (though Lily hadn't intended to end the sentence quite like that).

"All right, fine," she gives in for now, recognizing defeat. "How would you describe these—developments?"

Marlene launches immediately into a litany. "Well, to start, there's the fact that you've gone from hot-and-cold—well, lukewarm-and-cold, anyway—to just lukewarm, not even the occasional insult. He hangs around and you don't even mind, you're initiating conversations with him, and he's calling you Red."

Lily blinks. "What does him calling me Red have to do with anything?"

"It has everything to do with everything," Marlene continues. "It's practically a term of endearment, and you hardly even mind."

"Believe me, it's not a term of endearment," Lily scoffs, all too uncomfortable with the girls' presumptions.

Mary adds, "Maybe not to you, but he's probably using it like one. You can't not realize how long he's been carrying around a torch for you."

There's a pause as the full statement sinks in—it's common knowledge around the school, but people rarely talk about it so bluntly. Finally, she again diverts their attention: "As if the two of you had nothing to share. Black, Marlene? Cattermole, Mary?"

They flush; she smirks. For the next few hours, at least, she suspects that she'll be free.

xx

"Coming out of the woodwork, I see, Lily," says Emmeline when Lily stumbles out of the fire. As it turned out, Alice got back to Mary fairly quickly after all, inviting all of the girls to her house for Friday afternoon brunch. Though her extended family is famously large—half the Abbotts that Alice meets are so distantly related that she doesn't recognize them—Alice herself is an only child, and her rather nice house, which is at least double the size of Marlene's, seems frigid and empty, having only three inhabitants. It's like none of them ever figured out what to do with the place once they'd bought it.

Bashfully, Lily clambers to her feet and shakes soot out of her hair. "Hello to you, too, Emmeline," she mutters. Though she likes Emmeline perhaps the best out of the Gryffindor girls—she and Alice are the more authentic of the four, so she's the default preference given Lily's academic differences with Alice—Emmeline carries the fewest airs, which can be as unnerving as it is refreshing, and can be cryptic at times.

Not ten seconds later, Alice rushes forward from the kitchen, where Lily's sure she's been fixing lunch. "Marlene! And hello to you too, Lily," she greets, with a touch of strained enthusiasm when she says Lily's name. Though she's clearly struggling to welcome Lily, the former outsider, she's quick to engulf the both of them in hasty hugs. Lily catches a mild whiff of something earthy from her straggly blonde hair before Alice lets go and beckons them out of the living room. "Come, come, in the kitchen—Mare and Em were just helping me with some sandwiches and tea—oh, how have you been? I haven't heard from either of you all summer…"

It occurs to Lily that she's never before seen Alice outside of school—but then, she realizes a split second later, neither has she seen any of the Gryffindors outside of school before this summer. Her holidays have always been spent with Severus, all other communication usually limited to Alice's occasional polite letter and, this past Easter, Potter's Howlers professing his love (Howlers because he knew Lily wouldn't read an ordinary letter).

She shakes off the memories and follows Alice into the kitchen, which is just as sterile silver as her living room is blank white. Mary grins at them from her stool, where she's finishing up a fruit platter at a narrow island. "Could one of you prepare tea?" asks Alice, addressing Lily and Marlene—Emmeline situates herself a suitable distance from Mary at the island and flips open a novel, pointedly exempt from responsibility.

"I can do it," says Marlene, taking fast initiative. "Lily's still learning how Wizarding kitchens work."

"Lucky," Mary mumbles, accidentally knocking over the top of her arrangement.

Lily chuckles and eases herself onto a stool next to Emmeline, peering over her shoulder. "Good book?" she asks mildly, careful not to get too close—Emmeline can be a bit touchy about personal space. She merely nods and flips the page, not delving into any details as usual. If she's expecting Lily to ask further questions, she doesn't comment when Lily doesn't.

"So, Alice," says Marlene, putting on a kettle, "what's this I hear about you and Dirk Cresswell?"

Alice turns bright red and stammers something about "mutual friends" and "a very nice bloke." Apparently, the nagging Lily's endured about Potter is not an exclusive treatment. All Alice substantially provides, though, is that "I quite like him, really, and I don't want to ruin the possibility of a date because my mates have me thinking about him constantly, so I'd appreciate it if you'd all let it alone!"

Mary tuts; Marlene rolls her eyes. "Hope you get the date," Lily says encouragingly, and Alice shoots her a grateful look.

"Thanks, Lily—sandwiches, anyone?"

Lily promptly digs in, mostly for an excuse to keep a full mouth and a low profile, even though she's not known for her appetite. Conversation bursts the room's seams, which is surprising for its size but explicable by the occasion: it's the first time this summer that they've all been together under one roof. Mary is quick to ask Alice's opinion on the Davies-Patil split ("Not that it's any of my business, but personally, I think it's a shame it didn't work out… I've always rather liked Pol, actually, and I don't think he'll ever be as happy with Greta as he was with Carol, or as he looked to have been, anyway"), and in turn dishes on her budding friendship with Reginald Cattermole ("He's a change from the sort of bloke I usually date, but you can only put up with the likes of—Gilderoy Lockhart, or—or Davy Gudgeon—for so long before you want something more, and Reg is sweet and, and, honest… and, like, it's only one date, it's not the end of the world if we don't hit it off"). Emmeline, of course, is as complacent with her novel as always, and Marlene remains noticeably quiet, probably to divert attention from her own semi-secretive love life.

Only once is the Potter issue raised. Oddly enough, Alice is the one to address it—"So Mary was telling me earlier that you and Potter are starting to hit it off, Lily?"—but Lily's determination to not discuss him increases when Emmeline sneaks a sideways glance at her from behind her book.

"Consequence of seeing him daily since we got out of school," Lily explains away. "He's probably lamenting my absence right now—told me yesterday he'd write me tonight so as not to break the habit of knowing how my day is going. Once school starts back up, it'll probably blow over."

"Last time you talked to him at school, he asked you out," Alice reminds her unnecessarily.

Lily retorts, "Last time I talked to you at school, Dirk Cresswell interrupted before I could say anything significant."

Alice quickly drains her tea and drops the matter without another word.

"I'm thinking of buying a Kneazle," announces Emmeline without lifting her eyes from the page. Mary raises her eyebrows, but the rest of them take the comment in stride—Emmeline is prone to abrupt comments.

"Well, you'll need a license for that." Alice is the first to respond, ever the realist.

Lily sets down her sandwich (or what little remains of it). "On that note, I'm thinking of buying a cat—could be a good idea to get them at the same time, Em; they'll be able to keep each other company while we're in class. Do any of you have cat allergies?" A flurry of negations and shaken heads ensues. "All right, then—we can do our school shopping together, head down to the Menagerie."

"We should all do our shopping together," suggests Marlene. "Lily's staying with me anyway, and we barely ever get together like this often…"

Alice nods her approval. "Should we go right after O.W.L. results come out? Since I don't know how long Lily will be staying with you…?" The subtle implication is that Lily wouldn't be invited otherwise—that she's the pesky tagalong to a tradition—but at least no one objects outright to her presence, though that may be mostly due to politeness.

"When do results come out—anyone know?" Mary asks.

"Er… sometime in July; the exact week varies from year to year," figures Marlene. "I'll owl you all about it when we get them, yeah? How d'you reckon you lot did?"

Alice moans and slouches in her stool, resting her head in her hands. "They were awful. Positively awful," she bemoans. "Oh, I'm sure I failed Arithmancy, and don't even get me started on Defense Against the Dark Arts…"

"Please. I failed Arithmancy; you aced them all," accuses Marlene. "You're going to be an Auror, too, right? So we'll need Potions, Transfiguration, Herbology, Charms, and Defense Against the Dark Arts, at least…"

"I hope I got through Care of Magical Creatures all right. I'm sure I passed, but I want at least an E in it," Mary worries. "I mean, since I'm going into wizarding naturalism… Herbology was a piece of cake, though."

Marlene moans, "Oh, god, Herbology," and emulates Alice, burying her face in her arms.

Mary looks curiously to Emmeline and Lily, but neither of them bothers to voice their woes; Emmeline is again engrossed in the book, and Lily would rather not discuss her academics in front of Alice.

A resulting beat ensues, then Alice muses, "It's strange, going to Diagon Alley, isn't it? The place is practically empty nowadays… it used to be so crowded back in our first year."

Emmeline says quietly, "The Dark Lord takes his toll."

There's a brief pause as they chew on her words, followed by an immediate bout of nervous laughter and forced conversation to shake them off. There's a small scuffle between Alice and Marlene when the latter insists that everyone help her clean up, but for the remainder of the day, the mood only somewhat lightens.

As expected, when Lily and Marlene Floo back to the McKinnons', waiting for them is a haughty-looking long-eared owl that Lily instantly recognizes. "Potter," Lily says under her breath, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she accepts the letter in its outstretched talons.

Red—

Hope you've enjoyed your day. Sirius bought a motorbike and is trying to charm it to fly, so you can imagine how that's going. Peter says he'll do my eulogy if I have to test-drive the thing.

I long for you desperately and think you're divine. Sirius says hullo.

—James

Lily scribbles her reply and sends it on its way: Potter—my day was fine; Mary Macdonald probably wants to know what you think of Patil and Catchlove, and Emmeline Vance is apparently getting a Kneazle. Thanks for not sending a Howler. Don't off yourself on the bike, not that I'd care if you did, and don't hold your breath, I'll see you tomorrow at Lupin's—Evans.

She meets Marlene in her room, where she's reading again; she looks to be close to the end of the romance from earlier. "Interesting ending?" Lily asks, plopping down next to her, cross-legged.

Marlene sticks in a bookmark and pulls off her reading glasses. "I guess. How's Jay?"

"He and Black are trying to make a motorcycle fly," Lily says darkly (Marlene shakes her head and sighs). Lily conveniently neglects to mention Potter's parting words. "Anything interesting planned in the next week or so?"

"My birthday's on the 29th," says Marlene casually.

Lily's taken aback. "Why didn't you tell me? Now I haven't gotten you anything…"

She smiles, but it's halfhearted. "It's all right; just get a card or something next time I'm not looking. Anyway, we're spending the day at my dad's, if that's all right."

Once again, Lily is floored. "But—your parents aren't divorced."

"It's kind of a long story…" Lily maintains her gaze, and Marlene slouches in defeat. "Fine. Well—obviously, Neil's not my father. He and Mum were together at Hogwarts and got engaged right out of school—but Mum thought they were rushing it and got cold feet, and the engagement fell apart for a few months. They got back together, of course—Neil made some corny gesture that Mum completely fell for—and they got married soon after when they found out Mum was pregnant. Neil figured they just hadn't been careful enough before they broke up… he didn't realize Mum had had a fling during the separation until I was born two months later than would have been possible, were he the father."

Lily doesn't answer, at first. Marlene's no longer looking at her, eyes trained fixedly a spot a few centimeters to Lily's left, but otherwise doesn't look affected by the confession. "I—er—I mean, I'm not sorry, but—"

"It's awkward, I know." She laughs, but it comes off as more of a bark than anything. "It's not very classy, being the illegitimate child—and it's a huge disgrace in wizarding culture. Mum hasn't told anyone but Neil and my siblings, and they're all sworn to secrecy on it—the only others who know are you and Mare. And Doc, of course."

"Doc?"

"My dad. Caradoc Dearborn—Doc for short." Marlene looks at Lily, finally, but it feels more like she's looking through her. "Muggle-born. Auror. Nobody knows I'm a half-blood, either, since I was raised pureblood."

Lily's starting to realize what Marlene meant when she said the other Gryffindors have secrets. "What's he like?"

"Oh, he's all right," admits Marlene, laughing again (but this time, it sounds authentic). "My problem is with Mum, not with Doc. Doc's a good guy. Mum didn't want him to be able to see me, but Neil convinced her that I deserve to know my father, so I always spend my birthday with him and stay at his flat for Christmas. Sometimes I don't see him much, if there's an emergency, but he's great when he's around. He'll like you, I'm sure."

A rapping on the window interrupts her. "Potter's owl again," Lily mutters, crossing the room and letting it in. His letter is simple: Red—Sirius says that Catchlove's a brilliant kisser, so I reckon Patil's got the right idea about her. See you tomorrow—James. "This'll just take a minute," she promises Marlene, and she flips his parchment over and scrambles for a quill.

Potter—can I ask a favor of you?