1

Lily did not know quite know she had ended up smoking cigarettes with Regulus Black on top of the Astronomy Tower, but she wasn't about to complain about it. It felt comfortable, and the coat he had lent her refrained her from getting too cold. After all, it wasn't like she could cast a charm right now to protect herself against getting cold. She didn't exactly have the right mindset to grab her wand when she sleep-walked through the castle to the Astronomy Tower and almost fell down to her death. So, she felt very grateful indeed that he had the sense to lend her his coat before she froze to death.

Lily would worry that he would get cold if he didn't look as if he was in his natural habitat. With the way she imagined his own home back in London and the dungeons to be, he probably was. "Where did you find those anyway?" She asked, taking a short puff from the cigarette, turning over to look at him from where she sat with her legs hugged tightly against her chest, her sleeping gown feeling very much thin indeed despite the coat wrapped around her shoulders (it was the first time they'd properly talked in a very long time, and Lily had appeared in her sleeping gown in front of him; her mother would faint from the shock if she knew).

She hardly imagined he would willingly go to the muggle stores to buy anything, much less a cigarette. It wasn't exactly something that any self-respecting wizard was willing to do. They had other shopping methods out here in the wizarding world, after all.

Lily remembered one instance when she went shopping with Molly and Arthur Weasley and thought that maybe it was for the better that it wasn't a usual occurrence if their reaction was anything to go by. She didn't exactly fancy a shopping trip with somebody who would gape and gasp at every small thing in the store for like every five seconds or so. Lily was merely a few steps away from dragging the two of them out of the store when they were finally finished with the shopping.

He shrugged, but there was a tiny, almost playful grin playing on his lips when he finally turned to look at her, biting down on his lips. It was proving to be a bit hard to not stare at his lips, but she really did need to focus on anything else than his lips. Lily wondered if he would think her weird if she stared at his hands. Oh, of course, he just had to have pianist's fingers on top of perfectly good looks. Life was never fair to her. Why couldn't he have had god ugly fingers? It would have been way easier if he had ugly fingers.

"Alright, I may or may not have," He began, like a child that he'd always appeared to be simply incapable of being even when they'd been a lot younger than they were now.

He'd always been a little too mature for his own good, Lily had always thought, even at the age eleven (at that age, Lily had been hexing Potter and his friends, giggling about stupid boys and new spells she had learned about with Alice and Dorcas, not looking like a living a statue like he did, only bothering to talk when he was approached by somebody else, and they did, like every five minutes).

Lily remembered the day that she had seen him across the Great Hall that day when he was sorted into the Slytherin, remembered the completely and utterly expressionless face that shouldn't belong on the face of any child, let alone one so young. The way he walked so very carefully with a certain grace that Lily knew she would never be capable of acquiring even if she tried as if he actually thought that the smallest mishap would end up in punishment for him (knowing his family, it probably would have).

"May have borrowed it from my brother the night before went away," He continued, and Lily stared at him blinking her green eyes at him in complete surprise, gaping her mouth open.

Lily did not ask him how he felt about any of it, if he awoke feeling empty and hollow, and maybe like crying because he missed his brother so bloody much, but knew there was nothing else he could really do to change his mind, not really. Lily did not ask him if when he looked at him, he felt like that he was seeing a stranger rather than the brother that he knew and loved once, a long time ago. Lily didn't ask him any of those things, but instead, she threw his way a teasing grin, the way she imagined she might have done if they were the sort of people who hang out with each other very often, if he was the sort of a wizard people like her were allowed to befriend. "You stole it from him," Lily said, half-teasing and half-accusing, wondering and wondering when the spell they were on would break, and the reality the two of them lived in would crash onto their fantasy.

She thought it would be very easy, to love him. The only thing that wouldn't be easy was what came after that, the consequence of such love.

"I did no such thing." His eyebrows furrowed at her like he was actually genuinely offended that she would ever assume such a thing. "A Black does not steal. It's above us."

"A Black may not steal, but clearly you did, Mr. Black," Lily chuckled, wiping the tears away from her eyes. "What are you going to do, return it to him?"

"No, I would get him a new one — a better one even, and he would thank me."

Lily stared, all laughter dying. "Would he?"

He shrugged, looking down, playing with his ridiculously long fingers. Honestly, why were they so bloody long? "I don't know." He looked the other way, whatever spell they were on having ended, "Let me walk you to the Gryffindor Tower. It's getting late. They may not have noticed you were gone, but you do need your sleep. Almost ending up dead while sleepwalking does not count for a sleep, I rather think."

Lily lifted herself to her feet and glanced at him with the corner of her eye, wondering casually if he'd always been taller than her. It felt like he wasn't, felt like there was a time in their lives when he'd been shorter than her, shorter than everybody. Lily wondered what he'd been like, during that time period. She wondered if he'd been lonely. He struck her as somebody who was always lonely despite all the company he kept with him.

"Do you want your coat back?" Lily asked, inching the clothing closer to herself.

She didn't want to give the coat back.

It was a very lovely coat.

He shook his head, a tiny smile playing on his lips when he looked at her. "Keep it." He pulled a loose strand of hair behind her ears, just like he had that last time she had seen him at the back of that shop, so many years ago — or was it into the future? Lily didn't know. Time travel was weird and confusing. "It suits you better than it does me."

That was obviously a lie. Black would always suit him way better than it would suit her. However, she let him get away with the lie.

If only just because she really wanted to keep the coat.

"Very well then, it's your loss," Lily shrugged, smiling up maybe a little too excitingly at him, "Walk me to the Gryffindor Tower then, and then you can tell me about whatever you can tell me all about what Severus had been doing those days. I want — no, need to know."

Lily would be a fool if she were to miss such a good chance at acquiring information about her childhood best friend.

He offered her the crook of his arm, which she happily took. "Snape?" He arched his eyebrows, obviously feeling very confused. Lily didn't blame him. Everybody and their mother knew that they were currently at odds right now. However, with much more tact than Lily would have been capable of in his place, he asked her nothing at all about why she wanted to know about it. "Well, he'd been hanging out with Avery those days lately, as well as with my cousin."

Now, it was Lily's turn to be confused. "Cousin?"

"Rosier," He explained, "Well, biologically he isn't exactly my cousin, but his aunt is married to my uncle, which makes us cousins, however faraway the actual relation between us truly is."

Lily made a noise in the acknowledgment. "Funny, I thought all purebloods were related." Lily tried not to judge, like really hard, but in the end, she did judge them.

It was just so weird.

"We are." He agreed. "For example, Potter's granduncle is married to my grandaunt, Dorea Black. So, yeah, we are all related in one way or another, however, the relation to Rosiers aren't exactly that close. Aunt Druella is actually the first Rosier to marry a Black in whole centuries."

Lily simply nodded her head. She felt like that family tree was going to give her a horrible headache if she actually tried to take a good look at it. "So, Severus?" She asked him to continue while they walked down the staircase, her arm resting around the crook of his arm. "Is he doing anything involving — you know?"

He shrugged. "I do not know, not really. I don't exactly make the point to hang out with them. It wouldn't really bode well for my future to be seen associating with Avery. It's bad enough for our reputation that my cousin is —" He stopped himself mid-sentence, shooting her an apologetic look. "I am sorry I can't be much of a help."

Lily shook her head. "It's alright." She said. "Your family doesn't approve?"

Huh.

She would have thought it was right up in their alley.

He shook his head. "Don't get me wrong, my family is very much involved in the dark arts, but what they are doing, all that blood and murders, it's way too public for our taste. Bellatrix had always been a bit of an anomaly among us, always trying to cause chaos and mayhem, always so unpredictable. It doesn't look well to have a known murderer in our midst. We do have a reputation to maintain, after all."

When she really thought about it that did make an odd sort of sense.

Though there was the question about why Walburga Black would want her darling son to join them, though. "But why not do anything to stop it?" She asked. "I can't imagine it would be too hard if they've tried."

"Because she isn't our problem anymore." He said. "She's a Lestrange now. When people look at her now, they don't see a Black. They see a Lestrange, and Lestranges, they adore every bit of chaos and mayhem they can get. As a matter of fact, they marvel at it. I suppose one could even say that she married into a fitting family."

Lily remembered Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange during the war and shuddered at the image. It wasn't exactly a sight that she wanted to remember. "That would be an understatement." She stopped before the portrait of the Fat Lady, then turned to look at him gratefully. "Thank you, for everything."

Fat Lady was looking at her accusingly. "Now, where have you been, young lady?"

Lily waved a hand away.

She wasn't in any particular mood to quarrel with her anyway. "I'll see you at the Great Hall in a few hours." He replied, turning on his heel to walk away.

Lily waved at him in goodbye and watched him disappear into the darkness.

"You should know, young lady, those Slytherins, they aren't worth the pain. You should date a charming Gryffindor boy. Why don't you try that Potter boy that's always chasing you around? He would make a very good boyfriend, I rather think."

Lily rolled her eyes. "Maahes."

However, Fat Lady stared back at her stubbornly, "It changed." She said. "I suppose you would have to sleep here tonight."

"Maahes." Lily insisted. "I know it didn't. Now stop playing around, and let me in."

"How rude!" Fat Lady cried out scandalously. "Exactly what I would expect from —,"

Lily sighed. "Never mind." Lily pretended to leave, only for Fat Lady to yell out, "Alright, alright." And all while she entered the Tower, she could feel the Fat Lady glaring at her.

It was a good thing that she didn't care about what Fat Lady thought about her.

2

It was only after their classes were over and finished for the day that Lily finally got the chance to talk to her best friend, seeing as the other witch hadn't shown up in any of the classes they've shared or to eat breakfast at the Great Hall when Lily walked into the room in the morning. Instead, her absence had been hanging over her for the rest of the day, making her feel like such a lousy friend for not going out to check on her instead of attending those classes that Lily had already learned and known about from page to page the last time around that she had been here (unfortunately, she needed to have her attendance record perfectly clean if she had any hope of getting a nice job in the future, much to her frustration), though she did head over to find her as soon as the classes were over and finished. Probably would have to explain to Professor Goldstein why she rushed out of the classroom as quickly as she could the next time she met her though, Lily made a mental note to herself, as it was a very rude thing to do, though it wasn't like she had much of a choice, considering the fact that her mind was running quickly through all the possibilities, and they weren't exactly what you would call pretty.

Lily checked every corner and room of the castle, every abandoned classroom. She only came to regret the choice thoroughly when the only thing that she had come across when she opened the classrooms were the students hooking up in the various corners of the rooms, something which she would never be able to make herself forget regardless of how much she wanted to do just that. She felt thoroughly traumatized, nobody wanted to see Emmeline Vance going at it with Stanley, though thankfully neither of them had seen her, or else her life would have been made a living hell once again, like that time during their first year when Vance would make her shoes magically vanish just because she was offended that James liked her, as if she even asked for that sort of attention.

Lily rolled her eyes, Vance, and her obsession with James had always been vastly annoying. She could keep him if she wanted him that much, though Lily supposed there was a matter of if he was willing to put up with somebody who was that obsessed with being with him that much.

Very unlikely, Lily thought with a slight smugness, even he wouldn't stop that low. At the very least, she didn't think he would. They may have been married for over three years, but that didn't particularly mean they knew each other all that well. They had spent most of that time trying to avoid each other, after all.

Lily sighed, and opened the door to the abandoned bathroom with a wave of her wand — there was no way she was touching that with her own fingers, they looked like they hadn't been washed in a decade — when she finally caught the sight of Dorcas crying by the sink, her head pulled down. She made slight, choking noises while her one hand covered her mouth, as if she was desperately trying to stop crying, but found herself unable despite all the effort that she put into it.

Lily knew that feeling all too well. Though she wasn't in a particular mood to remember exactly why she had been crying in the first place.

Lily entered the bathroom slowly, careful not to startle her into having a heart attack or something, when Dorcas suddenly lifted her head to look at her across the bathroom, her dark eyes snapping onto her own in obvious look of a surprise.

"Lily, hey," Dorcas greeted her, forcing on an awfully pained looking smile on her way, making her wish she didn't act like this every time she was upset by something. Lily wished to tell her that it was alright to feel upset or even sad, nobody who respected and loved her even a little expected her to act like a perfect human being all the bloody time. And well, if they did, fuck them. "I didn't see you there. What are you doing here? Did you come here to —,"

Lily cut her off before she could proceed with the heartbreaking act of pretending like everything was completely fine when it was very clear that it was not. "Dorcas, you don't need to pretend. You never need to, not when you are with me." She said, stepping a few steps even closer. "Can you please tell me what happened?"

Dorcas gulped, staring at her stubbornly, "Nothing happened." She snapped. "I am fine."

Lily resisted an urge to groan in frustration.

It was just like Dorcas to deny anything was wrong, despite the hard evidence to suggest the contrary.

"Really?" Lily arched her eyebrows with arms crossed across her chest, then inched closer to where she stood across the bathroom sink, "Because I wake up to find my best friend missing and skipping classes even though she had never done such a thing before, and then I find her crying in the bathroom, her eyes all red? If that's your definition of a fine, then I suppose I am blooming with happiness and joy."

Dorcas sighed, looking down at her hands in defeat, shaking her head with a heartbroken expression on her face that almost broke her heart, "Yesterday, I went to surprise Logan in his dorm room — I thought it was a good time, you know, to do it, seeing as we had won the Quidditch Match against the Ravenclaws that evening. I knew how much effort he'd been putting into it lately, so I thought maybe I should reward him for his effort, even if I wasn't exactly sure I wanted to —," Dorcas lifted her head to look at her, and Lily felt her heart sinking in her chest when she caught the expression on her face, and immediately went to hold her hand in her own, grasping it in the assurance. "But, he wasn't alone when I went there. He was with — you know those dumb girls who follow Vance around everywhere she goes, like they depend on her to live? One of them, I think Annabelle was her name? Anyway, I've found him in a bed with her, and — he tried to explain, make excuses, you know the usual thing a man does when they're caught cheating —," Dorcas broke off, crying once again. Lily went in to hug her, holding her tightly around her arms, patting her reassuringly on the back. "I just can't believe that he would do this to me."

Lily nodded her head, trying to understand, though she really did not regardless of how much she wanted to share her pain along with her, take some of it from her shoulders. It was just the sort of a pain one simply did not understand unless you went through it personally, and Lily did not. That was just plain fact. She may have had issues with James for a very long time, but neither of them had cheated on one another. At the very least, she could take some assurance in that.

"It's going to be alright, honey," She patted her on her head, while she cried against her shoulder, shaking horribly. "We are going to go through this."

The only thing she could do for her best friend was to be here for her right now, and curse his name along with her if needed to, and she hoped for the meantime, that would be enough.

It had to be enough. Otherwise, Lily did not know what she would do.

3

"It had always been about him, you know," Dorcas informed Lily later, sitting across from her at the Hog's Head Inn, holding a butterbeer-filled mug in her hands, "Now that I really think about it, it had always been about what Logan wanted and needed, never about me. Logan needs to be comforted because Potter is biting his head off for not seeing the snitch before Black could, and he needs me to comfort him for it, throwing away all of my duties and responsibilities aside for him. His mother is holding a charity ball that he doesn't want to go to, and he needs me to distract him from his duties and responsibilities. He has to sacrifice his summer vacation because his dad wants him to do summer job because he feels that his son needs some real-life experience before he sets out into the world after graduation, and apparently, that's the worst thing in the world. It had always been about Logan and Logan, never about what I wanted or needed. He never asked about me, you know. I'd bet you that he doesn't even remember my Papa's name."

Dorcas violently drowned the rest of her drink, "You know what? You are so right. I do not need — or even want him. If he wants to shag Annabelle or whatever her name really is, it's his business. I do not fucking care."

Lily nodded her head and listened, not really knowing what to say to her right now. "As a matter of fact, I am going to show him how much I don't care by sleeping with —," She looked around the room, scanning the crowd for a familiar face. "Yes, Peter. I'll sleep with him."

When she rose to do exactly that, Lily put her hand on hers to stop her from making a giant mistake that she would probably come to regret very much in the morning. "Dorcas," She began in a warning tone, stopping her. "No." The last thing Dorcas needed was to sleep with somebody Lily suspected was partly responsible for how the Lord Voldemort found them, and even if he wasn't (which Lily seriously doubted), rushing into a bed with somebody just because she was angry and bitter about her boyfriend cheating on her wasn't exactly the way Lily wanted their evening to go.

"Dorcas, yes." The other witch argued in Spanish, looking down at her stubbornly, "I am sleeping with him, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

"Of course I can stop you if I want to," Lily argued, "But I wouldn't need to if you sit down here right now, and accept that it's a very bad idea to sleep with Peter Pettigrew of all the people. You would be proving him nothing at all, Dorcas, and instead, you would lose something very precious to somebody who doesn't deserve it in the first place. And even if all that is not true, do you really want to give James Potter the satisfaction that you gave your virginity to his childhood best friend?"

Dorcas immediately sat down, pressing her lips together in consideration, "No." She finally said, sighing. "You are right. I do not. It's just — Lily, I wish I could do something — anything to make this feeling go away. I hate feeling like this, like I wasn't enough for him like I wouldn't be enough for —," She cut herself off, but Lily knew what she was going to say anyway.

Dorcas' father had always been a subject the other witch avoided to talk about, but from what Dorcas had told her in the future, she knew that ever since her mother had died when she was very young and they both had to move to London, away from the remainder of what they both had lost, her father had been subjectively absent from her life. Dorcas would ask him to spend time with her again and again, and he would agree that he would, but every time, something would always come up that wouldn't make it possible for him to spend any time with her.

Dorcas Meadowes, a lonely girl in a big house with only house-elves to keep her company.

Lily smiled, grasping her hand tight. "We would find another way to have revenge, I promise. One that doesn't involve you sleeping with anybody." She told her, "But for today, let's just forget about him altogether. We do not need the reminder, not tonight." Lily lifted her own mug to her lips, sipping from it. "We just need to have some fun. So, what do you say, one more drink?"

Dorcas grinned. "I rather think that it's going to be more than just one."