A/N: Written for HP Trans Fest 2022. Dark-please be careful! A character is outed, there's transphobic bullying, and there's a transphobic slur in the last chapter.

Prompt: T4T, trans man James, trans woman Lily. He had been socially transitioned since very young age, she was a late bloomer. Hogwarts sixth or seventh year, and they were roommates, friends to lovers

Further Comments: I would love to see the changes in Lily's and Severus's relationship dynamic explored.

I had intended to cover the roommates to friends to lovers across fifth through seventh years when I started writing, but the story grew massively beyond the scope of what I had intended to write, and I ended up not having time to write past the end of fifth year-so you won't see James and Lily start dating here. But there's T4T, trans Lily and James, roommates to something, and Lily & Severus dynamics all here!

Several scenes in this work paraphrase scenes from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I've changed them around enough to hopefully fall within the realm of fair use.

Thanks to adastraarts for the beta and sensitivity read!

xx

Severus takes the news quietly. His eyes are small and squinty and aimed anywhere but at Lily as he fists his fingers in the grass. It's windy, so much so that the air almost drowns out Lily's words, but she's positive he can hear her—that he's hanging onto every word like each one is a lifeline or maybe a death sentence. (She doesn't know, however, whether it's a death sentence for her or for him or for their relationship. Maybe it's all three.)

When she's finally gotten all of the confession out, he closes his eyes and says, "So—you want me to start calling you Lily?"

"Yes," she says helplessly.

"And—you're a girl?"

"Sev—"

"Then you're a girl," Severus says firmly, "no question."

She thinks back to something terribly similar he told her once when they were sitting in this same grass so many years ago—finds herself wondering whether he means this now when she doesn't even know whether he meant that then. She's heard him call Mary Macdonald a Mudblood before, even if he wouldn't admit it to Lily when she confronted him. If she can't even trust him to be on her side as a Muggle-born, how's she supposed to trust that he'll accept—?

"Why Lily? I mean, what made you choose that name?"

Lily shrugs. "I was always jealous of Petunia's name when we were kids—her having a flower name was feminine in a way that I wanted for myself. The name 'Lily' has been in my head since—I was five or six, maybe?"

"So before we even met," mumbles Severus, "and—and you never told me?"

"Come on, it's not like that. You have to know how scary it is to… to…" She takes a deep breath. "Anyway, you're the first person I've told. If I was ever going to tell anybody, I wanted it to be you."

"Are you going to tell more people? Your parents, your sister?"

"I don't want to, but I think I might have to. I can't live in this body any longer, Sev. I just…"

He grips her hands tight. "I'll help you. If anybody at Hogwarts gives you shit about it—if bloody James Potter has a single thing to say to you—they'll have to come through me."

Hesitantly, Lily gives him a smile and hopes to god Severus means it.

xx

Just like Severus is, she's fully expecting Potter to act like a piece of shit about her gender identity. What Lily isn't expecting is for him to become her biggest supporter in all of Gryffindor House.

She knows her roommates are going to be the hardest people to tell, so she just—doesn't. Instead, she passes word along to Mary Macdonald when they bump into each other on the Hogwarts Express and lets the boys find out by osmosis. She manages to avoid Potter and company all through the train ride, across the grounds, and through dinner, but she can't put it off any longer when she and Severus finally part ways at the end of the night and she makes her way back to Gryffindor Tower.

She ducks quickly across the common room—she tries to avoid spending time in there whenever she can help it—but she only gets a few minutes of privacy in the dormitory before Potter, Pettigrew, Lupin, and Black barge in after her. They're chattering loudly but fall pretty much silent the second they lay eyes on her. There's only a brief pause before the joke comes out of Black's mouth—but Potter immediately rounds on him with the tip of his wand raised to Black's throat.

"You shut the fuck up about her."

"What, man? What's the big deal?"

Potter releases him. "Not another bloody word, Sirius, or so help me, god…"

Baffled, Lily tries to make herself as small as possible. She's never gotten on with any of her roommates, not with the way they've always treated Severus. Even if they weren't outright enemies, it's still awkward as hell living with them, what with the way they're all best friends with each other but so obviously not with her. They keep their secrets, and she's constantly hearing them fall silent and uncomfortably change the subject every time she can't avoid coming up to the dormitory any longer.

So why is Potter defending her now, let alone standing up to Black in order to do it?

He does nearly the same thing the following morning at breakfast, pulling out his wand and casually threatening to hex the fourth years who get in her face about being trans. By the time he tells off a couple of Hufflepuffs for using her deadname while they're waiting for Professor Sprout to start Herbology, Lily can't take it anymore. "Potter, can I have a word?" she says. She tries to sound sharp, but she's pretty sure her voice is just—tired.

Pettigrew whispers something to him, but he brushes off whatever it is and crosses over to her. "Over here," Potter mutters, grabbing her lightly by the elbow and pulling her into a corner of the greenhouse. Black and Pettigrew are staring, but they quickly turn away when Potter flashes them a look.

"Potter, what are you doing? If anyone were going to bully me about… about being a girl…"

He casts a shifty look around and then lowers his voice. "I just… I can relate, okay? I'm, uh… I'm trans, too. I transitioned to male before I started at Hogwarts."

She tries very hard not to allow her jaw to drop, but she fails. "You're telling me…? I thought I was the only one here."

"Yeah, I thought I was the only one, too. Remus is the only other person who knows."

"Not—not anyone else?"

"Well," says Potter, fidgeting, "there are a few kids of my parents' friends who met me when I was really little and still going by my deadname, but it was years ago. My parents dropped out of the pureblood scene and declared themselves blood traitors a long time ago. If any purebloods at Hogwarts still remember me, they haven't called me on it—they might just be assuming I had a sister who turned out to be a Squib or something. But besides them—nope."

"You didn't even tell Black? I would have thought you'd at least tell Black."

Potter shrugs. "It's not like I don't think he would accept me. I guess I just… I didn't want to find out how differently he'd look at me if he knew. At least with Remus, I knew he wasn't going to judge because he… uh…"

"Because he what?"

"I shouldn't say. It's not my secret to tell." Potter casts another look around the room. "Don't tell anyone what I told you, okay? You're braver than I am, coming out publicly like this. I don't know if I'm ready to…"

"Yeah," Lily breathes. "Yeah, of course I won't tell."

Potter is a trans man, and Lily can hardly believe her life right now. She'd thought she was going to have to go through this transition entirely alone, but now—

And yet it's not like she can confide in Potter about anything, not really: they can't be friends, not when he still treats Severus like shit. If anything, he should know better than to be such a godawful bully if he knows what it's like to fear being on the receiving end of that kind of attention, were his secret ever to get out.

xx

"How'd it go with Dumbledore and McGonagall?"

Severus asks this in the weirdly timid voice he's been adopting every time the subject of Lily's gender identity comes up. It's not like he's not trying to be okay with it—Lily can tell that he's trying—but she really wishes he could act just as normal at moments like these as he is when they're experimenting with the textbook recipes in Potions or making fun of their professors or speculating about what terrible lives Severus's bullies are going to have someday. (Ever since Potter told her what he told her, though, she gets a sickly sort of feeling in the pit of her stomach every time Potter's name comes up when they're doing the latter. Sure, him being trans doesn't change who he is or what he does, but Lily feels sort of like they've been forced onto the same side now whether they like it or not—like poking fun at Potter means she's poking fun at herself, now, too.)

Still, she's got to give Severus credit for asking, even if she knows this conversation is going to be uncomfortable. "Oh, it went fine, if you can count Dumbledore misgendering me no fewer than six times as 'fine.' He kept correcting himself midway through—calling me 'Mister, uh, Miss Evans.'"

"Could make a good drinking game," says Severus too quietly to pull off the snicker that Lily thinks he's attempting. "Stick it in a Pensieve, hop in, and take a shot of Firewhiskey every time somebody gets it wrong."

"Yeah."

There's a long, awkward pause. "But they said yes? You can move out of the boys' dormitory?"

Lily bites her lip. "They said they would let me, but… there might be a problem. The founders designed the girls' dormitories so that boys can't get in, and this was a thousand years ago—they didn't exactly have progressive views on gender identity. So until Madam Pomfrey finishes brewing the potions I'll need…"

"You're kidding. You're stuck with Potter's gang? The one good thing that could have come out of this, and you can't even have that?"

Her stomach twists. She feels sort of badly about putting down Potter after what he told her, but how's she supposed to explain that to Severus without utterly betraying his trust? It doesn't matter how much she can't stand Potter: outing him is utterly out of the question. After all, if the roles were reversed, and somebody told her worst enemy that she was trans before she was ready…

So instead, she dodges the question. "What do you mean, 'the one good thing?' It's not bad that I'm a girl, Sev. I just… am."

"I'm not saying it's bad," he hastens to say, even though his voice still sounds weird. "I just mean—well, your life is harder because of it, isn't it? You said yourself you hate living in your body—"

"That's temporary," says Lily, frowning. "Madam Pomfrey says she can make me… feel like me, for the most part."

"Okay, but then there's all the social stigma that goes with it. People aren't just going to—accept it. You know that, right?"

"The people who matter accept it. You accept it." Severus doesn't say anything. "Don't you?"

"Of course I do. It's just—the Slytherins talk, that's all. I hate hearing the things they say and knowing that you—have to face that every day."

Lily can't say this is entirely surprising: honestly, she's surprised more people haven't been outright intolerant to her face. Still—"And you didn't say anything to defend me?"

Severus flushes scarlet. "You know what it's like for me in there, Lily. Slytherin's just… cutthroat."

"Yeah, and you're at the heart of it," she mutters. "You've got people like Mulciber and Avery fawning over you. If you spoke up, they'd listen."

"You don't understand. There's a big difference between Slytherins listening to me teach them new curses and Slytherins… listening to me."

She sighs. "I wish you wouldn't do that so much."

"Do… what?"

"Practice curses. Seriously, Sev, the Dark Arts? You're better than that."

Severus stiffens.