The first Lily hears of it is just before breakfast when she's on her way to the Great Hall and bumps into Avery. "Looks like you're not the only freak in this school," he sneers at her. "Hey, maybe someday Potter can carry your babies."
For a second, Lily's mind goes blank, and she's got no idea what Avery's going on about besides that it's meant to be some kind of insult. Then it clicks. She wants to ask him, "You know about Potter?" but she holds her tongue and raises her chin and just keeps on walking, knowing Avery isn't worth it, knowing she's probably going to hear plenty more of these comments over the next few weeks if Potter's secret is out.
And boy, is Potter's secret out. The Gryffindors who gave her a hard time when she first came out have nothing to say this time around—probably because the ones who don't hero-worship him are terrified of how he'll react if he hears word that they said a word against him—but if Lily is taking this much shit from Slytherins, Ravenclaws, and Hufflepuffs, she can only imagine how much worse it is for Potter, who's not already used to taking any transphobic abuse. It's almost enough to make her want to reach out to him and ask how he's holding up, offer a listening ear—but then she remembers everything he is and everything he's done, and she can't bring herself to do it.
She feels like a hypocrite: after all, he defended her when she came out, and now she won't do the same for him? But then she reminds herself—Black tried to kill Severus, and it only took Potter how many weeks to forgive him? The two of them have clearly made up now that Black is defending Potter's honor all over the school, and the idea that Potter could forget, just like that, exactly what he saved Severus from—
But Severus calls people Mudbloods, even if he won't admit it to Lily's face. Christ, is her head swimming. Sometimes, she doesn't think she'll ever be able to keep straight just who the real antagonist is in her world.
It's easier than she would have expected to avoid him, given the way Black, Pettigrew, and Lupin keep acting like a bloody force field around him at all times. They don't share a dormitory anymore, so she hasn't had to dodge him late at night, either. Of course, living with the girls has come with its own weirdness: they've been perfectly polite to her face, but she doesn't know them, and they've all made it perfectly clear over the years exactly where Lily stands with them if she's going to insist on remaining friends with Severus.
She doesn't—Lily wouldn't say she misses living with the boys. She never felt like she fit in there—not with her gender, not with the secrets they so obviously kept from her, and definitely not with the way she can't stand Potter's and Black's fat heads and Pettigrew's willingness to fall right in line with any and all of the cruelty the two of them initiate. Besides, even if she doesn't really click with the girls she's living with now, there's something incredibly affirming about living a lifestyle that fits her that's almost as heady as having the body she longed for for so many years.
Still, she feels a weird sense of loss, like the part of her that lived up there for four and a half years is just—gone. Lupin politely asks her how it's going in the girls' dormitory a couple of times, but otherwise, it's like nothing has changed for her old roommates—like she never existed in the first place.
Frankly, she doesn't know why Potter hasn't made a bigger effort to talk to her since he got outed. She gets the impression that he would like to, from the way he keeps looking at her, but he doesn't try, and neither does she—at least, she doesn't until about two weeks after he's outed, when she's just walked into the Great Hall to find McLaggen running his mouth at Potter, and something in Lily just snaps.
"Do you ever get tired of listening to yourself talk, McLaggen? Or are you just trying to convince yourself that you're as secure in your masculinity as Potter obviously is? Because from where I stand, he's a hell of a lot more sure of who he is than you ever will be."
Potter looks stunned, and so does McLaggen, though he covers it quickly with a smirk. "But he hasn't got a real—"
Lily rolls her eyes. "You really think that's what it's about? It's got nothing to do with the body you're born into and everything to do with the way you carry yourself. He may be the most bigheaded person this castle has ever seen, but he's carried himself with nothing but grace these last few weeks."
"If he knew himself, he'd know well enough that he's a girl underneath everything he keeps telling everybody, and you'd know—"
"It's okay, Evans," Potter interrupts now that he seems to have gotten his voice back. "You don't have to—"
"But I do," she says, turning to him and completely ignoring whatever the hell McLaggen is going on about now. "I do have to, Potter, just like you had to…"
Save Severus, she's thinking, but even though she doesn't say it, she thinks Potter knows what she means. He colors. It's a good look on him—Lily likes it much better than the brash, cocky front he usually puts on.
"You want to deserve it?" she says quietly. Pettigrew, Lupin, Black, and McLaggen and his friends can all hear her, but she suddenly doesn't care. "Do better. Be the man I know is in there. Quit with the bullying, and earn it."
Potter opens his mouth—closes it. "Okay," he mutters. "I—yeah. Yeah, okay. That's fair."
And—this is the part Lily can't believe—he actually does. He stops. Days turn into weeks that become months, and she doesn't see him go after Severus once—doesn't even so much as hear about it from anybody after the fact. Once, when Black starts laying into Severus, Potter even puts a hand on his wrist and stops him.
They don't talk again, but Potter keeps giving her that wounded-dog look whenever he thinks she's not looking. She doesn't know what to make of it. She could just—scream.
And the thing is, you'd think Severus would be happy about this, but he's not. He gets edgy and sullen, which is especially frustrating given that he's pretty much Lily's only source of companionship—has been for the last eight years. They're studying in the library one evening in May when she finally slams her Arithmancy textbook shut and says, "Okay, I can't do this anymore. Out with it, Sev. What did I do to make you hate me so much?"
He stares at her, his mouth a thin line. "I don't hate you," he tells her flatly.
"Don't you? Because you've been acting weird all year. Ever since I told Potter to back off—"
"Because I don't need you fighting my battles for me. It's insulting." Severus has clenched his fists on top of the table; the skin on the back of his hands is going white.
"It never bothered you before when I would defend you. It's like just because you know now that Potter is trans—"
"I don't care if he's trans. I don't have a problem with trans people."
"Don't you? You let Mulciber and Avery run their mouths at me every time they bring it up—"
"I told you: that's just how it is in Slytherin," he snaps. "If you were in there with me, you'd know what it's like, but you're not, Lily. You're just… you don't know."
There are about a dozen things wrong with this statement, but she latches onto just one for now, just to keep her head clear. "You say that like I haven't thrown every person in my own house under the bus for you for the last five years. I stand up for you constantly, and I'm a pariah in there for it, but you don't see me shrinking from the responsibility to be a decent best mate to you. What, are you scared of the way they'll treat you if you try to stand up to them for me?"
"I'm not scared," Severus hisses. "And that isn't fair. I never asked you to defend me, you know. If you had gone on letting them treat me the way they did—"
"If I'd let them go on treating you that way, I would have been a shite friend to you."
"Like I'm a 'shite friend' to you. Right? That's where you're going with that, isn't it?"
"Yeah," she says without thinking, "maybe you have been."
"And I suppose Potter's the one you're going to allow to make it all okay again? It doesn't matter how badly you sabotage your relationship with me as long as he's there to tuck you in at night, does it?"
Lily scowls. "Why are you so obsessed with him? What does any of this have to do with—?"
"It has everything to do with Potter!" Severus snarls. "He fancies you! James Potter fancies you!"
It's not like Lily hasn't suspected this, but—well—she doesn't know how she feels about Potter's own feelings for her, and anyway, it's not Severus's place to throw them in her face like this as some kind of ammunition. "And that affects my friendship with you how, exactly? Potter and I aren't even friends. It's not like he's—he's—keeping me from seeing you or anything."
"He's only leaving me alone because he wants you to go out with him. You've turned me into your latest project just so that James Potter can use the way he treats me as a means of getting you to—"
"That's ridiculous," says Lily coldly. Her face is probably bright red by now; she can feel her skin heating up. "Potter would never leave you alone just to get in my good graces. He's too full of himself to change for other people."
"Yeah, well, he changed for you, and if you're too enamored with him to see that—"
"I'm not enamored with anybody," she spits. "What do you want me to do, anyway? Go up to him and tell him to start needling you again?"
"Maybe you should. At least that way—"
"Unbelievable. You are unbelievable."
She stomps off with her face in flames and her heart thumping. As pissed as she is at Severus right now, however, Lily knows she's not going to do what she threatened—what he practically encouraged her to do—and tell Potter that Severus is fair game again. It would be hypocritical of her to offer Severus up to his bullies after everything she's said about his obligation to defend her better than that, even if you ignore all the years she spent protecting him—the way she can't save face if she stops now, even if she wants to.
It's not like she thinks he can't handle himself, but—well—friends are supposed to take care of each other. Just because Severus is too proud not to criticize Lily for her help doesn't mean she's supposed to stop.
Is she?
