In which Lily is subtle like a subtle thing that subtly subtles.

Notes: Posting this was an impetuous decision while brushing my teeth this morning of November 9, 2016, which also would have been my mother's birthday. I don't like posting anything before its follow-up chapter is written (and I'll have to make sure this is the edited version tonight; I need to go to work now), and I've been stuck on chapter three of this for a very long time.

But we all need something today. Keep calm and stir your brew—and watch Stephen Tries To Make Sense of It All.

The Pricking of the Needler

"Well, you can't have her," James said bemusedly, ambling in from the sitting room with his hair its usual delusionally-stylish disaster. He looked as if he'd dropped in more or less because he felt like it, although the bag on his shoulder said he'd brought some things to work on enchanting if they got around to it. Probably for the Aurors; Sirius thought he saw the shape of a shoe in there. "I saw her first. Anyway, I know you can do a reparo yourself. What happened?"

Sirius hesitated. What had happened? He felt as though he'd fucked up monumentally and a small child was now helplessly lost in Knockturn or something, but that was bollocks. Snape had full control of his wand and brain and was therefore not in the least helpless: was completely his arse-noseish self and, hysterical dramatics aside, in less need of protection than just about anybody else in the universe. And, furthermore, he'd left on his own, without so much as a word. Why the hell should Sirius feel guilty about it?

Reluctantly, he closed his eyes and breathed out, let the annoyance fall away and the small, still, cool voice in him that understood these silent, slippery people speak. It and he said, "Evan—my cousin, the other one who's not a complete arse?"

"The one who slept through every single Prefect meeting?"

What Moony had said was that Evan had stared out the window and doodled and played notebook games with Ben Goldstein, but that was probably the same thing as far as Lily was concerned. "Yeah, him. He was giving me a chance to apologize for, er, that thing with Sniv and Moony in fifth year. It went west when you came in. I've got to track Sniv down without giving him a heart attack. He's, uh…" He trailed off, and lowered his hand to around his hip.

James's mouth quivered. "Do we have to?" he asked plaintively.

"Come on, Jamie," Sirius whined, knowing that would be enough. James might think a mini-Snape was funny (because it was), but James had not been amused back in fifth year. Well, no one had, although Sirius had made the colossally stupid, nearly fatal mistake of trying to persuade everyone that, hey, since no one had actually gotten hurt…

But as long as Sirius didn't tell James Snape's mind was unaffected, he'd get over himself and take it seriously in a hurry. Maybe even if Sirius did, what with having a baby on the way. Sirius had been given to understand that Impending Fatherhood could muck about with a bloke's brain.

"All right, all right," James groused, but he was good-natured about it, and already with a little edge of anxiety curling in under. He got Sirius to fill him in more clearly on the way back to the fireplace, and then explained to Lily through the flames.

You couldn't really see a person's expression properly through Floo, but Sirius got the impression (as he often did, with Lily) that she thought they were the dumbest creatures on the face of the planet and being boys only excused them a little bit. "Well, he's not going to want to talk to me," she said, in a voice that added, you morons.

"He likes you," James said, his own voice trying to be just-making-a-point-ma'am but actually hoping she'd take the problem off their hands and also deeply resentful.

"That was years ago, Jamie," she said patiently. "He can't afford soft spots for people who are hard with him, and I couldn't afford to be anything else. I'm just another mudblood to him now, and a traitor for marrying you. Really, I'm the last person you should ask."

"Wouldn't be so sure, Hydrangea," Sirius said over James's cross, kneejerk scold over what she'd called herself, or said Sniv would call her. "I think that potion he slopped over his face did something to his emotions. I mean, he wasn't even insulting me hardly at all, he just wanted to make biscuits."

"He was at your mercy, Sirius," Lily sighed at him.

"Yeah, except he wasn't," Sirius told her. "He was totally playing along with Evan. I think for fun."

"And why did you say he was making biscuits again?"

"Well, he said it was to bribe Moony, but that was an excuse. I mean, I told him Moony prefers milk chocolate up front and he forgot to ask if we had milk right up till the end. I expect he was just passing the time, Queen Anne's Lace."

"Making biscuits is a harmless thing you can do without magic, that occupies your hands if you do it without magic. They take time to make and have harmless kiddy-fun-fun-puppy-splashing-in-rainpuddle associations, Siri," Lily said. "He wanted you and your wand-hand to be busy for as long as possible, and feel like he was little and harmless."

Immediately, immediately Sirius knew she was right, and was furious with himself for letting himself be snaked about. Not to mention annoyed with her: if she knew Sniv that well, why didn't she know Prongs well enough to know that waving it about how well she knew Sniv would hack her husband off and make him antsy and difficult until the next time she pulled him? She did, that was why not, she just wasn't thinking, because she was like that, and because she just had to get one over on Sirius. "He could have talked like he was little and harmless, then."

"Pfff," Lily snorgled. Even when they'd hated each other the most, Sirius had had to admit that she only giggled when other girls were doing it, which was just good policy. "Sev? He couldn't pull that off when he was eight and his idea of mischief was getting a birthday card to my mum inside her morning egg."

"You're making that up," James said suspiciously.

"Ask her. I promise she remembers; it didn't work out as well as he hoped, poor kid—ugh, poor Tuney. And he'd read up for weeks... Anyway, if he'd tried to act twee you'd have been sure he was Planning Something, Siri, wouldn't you. Look, I'm toasting my face off, here."

"That's right!" James jumped like something had stung him. "Lily, you shouldn't be kneeling! Come through at once."

"Oh, Christ," she sighed. "Jamie, I'm fine, but I need to either put more floo powder in or get up, and—'"

"No, you've got to find him," Sirius absolutely didn't beg. "Evvie'll set Narcissa on me. And he probably wouldn't bring in Bellatrix right away, but Cissy? You never know."

"I told you, I'm the last person he'd talk to," Lily said patiently. The fire flared greener again as she added more powder, but only a bit. The I am prolonging this conversation only slightly message was a quite pointed one.

James sighed enough aggravation to blow down at least a house of sticks and straw, if not a brick one. "OK, tell us where he'd go," he groused.

"…The second-last person he'd talk to," Lily amended dryly, and looked at Sirius, insofar as anyone could tell where eyes of fire with undifferentiated pupils were looking. "This is your quest, Sir Galavaunt."

"You mean Galahad," Sirius preened.

"I meant Gadabout, but then I thought I'd try to be polite," Lily said sweetly, "even though any person with a brain cell and a half to rub together would, in this situation, have told his mates this was not a good time to drop by, since none of you have the least notion of calling ahead or knocking. Honestly, it's as if the only one of you who wasn't raised by wolves is Remus."

"That's 'cause he did raise us," Sirius said, just to get Moony in trouble, too.

"Now you're just trying to get poor Remus in trouble," Lily scowled at him, amused. "We do not blame little Dutch boys with frostbitten fingers when tsunamis knock down the dykes."

"…What?"

"Never mind. I'll tell you where to look if Jamie leaves the room and you give me a wand-oath not to tell him or let him follow you."

Prongs's jaw dropped. "What?"

"Dearheart," Lily said—patiently, but the veil the patience drew over her mix of sad and leftover annoyance wasn't quite heavy enough to be opaque. "Sev didn't even pitch a fit about being left with Sirius, at least where Sirius could see, and he ran screaming when he heard your voice."

Sirius thought about pointing out that there'd been no actual screaming, but since this fact was marginally more to Sniv's credit than what Lily had said he decided not to. It'd just get Prongs's back up and make Sirius look bad. And also make Prongs look bad to Lily, which wasn't on.

"It doesn't matter how I feel about you, or that I know you've changed, or how I feel about him. I can't let you know where he goes when he's upset. I know you've stopped bothering him, but knowing you know where to look for him would just scare him to death. It'd just be wrong, Jamie; I can't do it."

James glared at her, working up an argument, and she looked back levelly out of the fire while Sirius fervently wished to be elsewhere. Finally James grumbled, "It's very annoying that this is sort of what I love you for, and I intensely dislike it."

"And just think, you could have avoided the whole business by developing the habit of knocking." Prongs stuck out his tongue at her. "Well, come back home and we can argue about it," she suggested, smirking. He brightened.

"Bleargh," Sirius announced. "Fine, sod off, Mushpot. Let's get this over with, Lils."

"Ooh, he's barked," James commented. "I mean narked."

"There's a quite dark wizard out there somewhere with a hair-trigger temper who looks about six," Sirius told him. He was a bit narked off, now someone mentioned it. "He's going to go somewhere dreadful and someone's going to try to take him apart for potions ingredients, seeing as he's not half pretty enough to get kidnapped for anything really foul, and then he's going to kill them. And we won't even be able to get him for it properly because he'll be a juvenile claiming self-defense and panic."

"So what you're saying," James said slowly, "is that a dark wizard we don't care about's gone off to be dark wizard bait, and the nastier bits of Knockturn Alley aren't going to be anyone's problem anymore by tomorrow, and the only downside is we may have to get Snape sentenced to the Thickey ward instead of Azkaban?"

"…You may have a point," Sirius said, but he was counting on Lily. There was another downside, and it involved his former family sending its shapelier members to eat his eyeballs. Or, worse, reproach him politely at length over tea. Also, Remus would Look Disappointed At Him.

"That is not funny, you two," Lily scolded them, right on schedule. "Just because he had his mind and his memories doesn't mean the potion and the body weren't affecting his emotions. There's a reason being a juvenile would be a defense for him, Sirius. De-Aging potions are supposed to make you be young and feel young again. Imagine if you were just little and someone had left you with a babysitter that scared you so much you had to bluff about how calm and mature you were, and then you got so much more scared you had to run away and you knew no one would come find you—"

"Which is why you should come," Sirius explained at her.

"No," she said flatly. "I'm not explaining why again." She looked as if she were struggling with herself, then said reluctantly, "If you find him and he won't go with you, you can ask him if he wants to talk to me and send a Patronus. But I'll only come if it's somewhere it's safe to bring a baby. I'm not risking him over you lot being boys."

"You could drop him off with someone," Sirius pointed out, despite a voice at the back of his head telling him not to argue with mama-witches. "What about your mum?"

"She told me not to come by today if I didn't want to fight with Tuney."

"Urgh," Sirius conceded. "Strong constitution, your mum."

"Oh, Sirius, just because Tuney doesn't get along with me doesn't mean she's completely worthless. It's not her fault she used to love fairy tales and then found out she wasn't the one who'd get to go live in one. And she's brilliant at organizing things; I expect Mum wants her help for Dad's surprise retirement party."

"Okay, okay," Sirius tried to appease her.

"Well, she probably does! It's not terribly easy to really surprise Dad, and he said he didn't want a big fuss made so all Mum's ideas were going to be too much—"

"Tiny, violent, greasy dark wizard on the rampage," James reminded her, grinning.

"On the toddle," Sirius corrected.

"—Right. I don't know why you don't think he hasn't just gone home, Sirius. Or to see Narcissa Bl—Malfoy or someone."

"No, I thought of that," Sirius said. "But if he has, then there's not much we can do about it and he's perfectly safe, if not secure, and Evan can find him in two shakes when he gets back."

"…Which brings up the point of shouldn't you be bothering Rosier with all this, not me?"

"I don't know where he is," Sirius said. Which was true, but felt like a dodge, but there was no reason to dodge. He'd agreed to watch the prat; he should want to do what he'd said he would. "He left Snape with a way to contact him, not me. He just said he was doing a wedding portrait."

"Wouldn't he be at his studio, then?" James asked.

"Could be," Sirius allowed. Evvie preferred to work on location, he knew, where the older Rosiers couldn't collar him when he looked not-busy and make him do more work and no one who wasn't paying him would wander by and make suggestions at him. But this might be their best chance at actually keeping Prongs from finding out where Sniv's hidey-holes were. Sirius didn't like finding out about them himself, not this way. If he'd trailed Sniv to them, or forced the locations out of him, that would have been different. This was like getting a bloke's mum to rat him out; it just wasn't the thing. "Why don't you go see? It's, uh, I think it's between Gringotts and the robe shop. Near there, anyway."

"I don't mind," James said, heading for the door since the Floo was busy. "Worst Rosier's likely to do is yawn in my face or drip paint on me. Paddy, shall I leave this here?" He hefted the bag he'd come in with. "I wanted you to take a look at the sneaky trainers for Dumbledore. Lily made some progress on them last night."

"Bring 'em by tomorrow," Sirius shook his head. "If I end up bringing Sniv back here I'd rather he not wonder what they are."

"Good point. Right, Cherubim of Fire, home shortly."

"That's not clever when she's actually in the floo, Prongs."

"She knows what I meant!"

"It's my eyes. Fetch milk, will you?" she asked. "And if you happen to pass wherever you found that fantastic redcurrent wensleydale…"

"A quest!" James yelped happily, and bounded out the door.

"Exit one pint whipped cream," Sirius commented after him, amused.

"If there's one nice thing about Gryffindor boys," Lily said complaisantly, "it's that you're all marvelously cheap dates. A six-pack, a mountain to climb, and thou beside me in the wilderness. Hufflepuffs always want to take a girl to the opera or something to prove they're not plodding, unsophisticated duffers. One doesn't always want the dead mouse you lot come trotting back with, but at least one can bring a book or one's work."

"And we take suggestions."

"Though you sometimes take them off the Quidditch pitch, through the Forbidden Forest, and into realms unrecognizable," she smiled, a little headachy with recollection but not terribly reproachful, for her.

"Lends an element of surprise. Mountains are actually quite expensive," he noted.

"Only if you're fixed on actually buying them," retorted Lily. "A nice hike thereon in the fresh air's enough for most people. Or, better yet, a nice flight there-around. And you and Jamie would rather sneak in than own one, don't pretend you wouldn't."

"Can there be yetis?" he asked hopefully.

She laughed, but then gave him a look that was halfway between uneasy and stern. "Now, look, Siri, if I tell you where to look you're not going to be a pest about it later, are you?"

Sirius squirmed. He scratched his ear—with his hand, although part of him wanted to be doing it with his foot. Slowly, he asked, "If I say how about you just give me a one-off portkey, will you tell James it was your idea and I was a pain about it?"

She just looked at him, slow and considering and crackling in flame.

Having a feeling she would reach right out of the fire and smack him if he implied she was old enough to be Snivvy's mum (though everyone knew she'd spent her first four years at Hogwarts nagging him like she was; it was amazing his roommates hadn't just poisoned his sheets for putting up with it, when you thought about it, or maybe they had and he'd been too toxic himself to be affected), Sirius squirmed again. He decided on, "…There wasn't anywhere you could go to get away from people, at Grimmauld, except the library, and most of those books would eat you soon as be looked at. Dad had his study, but he was always in it."

Her face softened. Sirius felt a bit dirty, not in a good way, and wished he'd thought of a lie that would work instead.

"Sev's mum encouraged him to play outside," Lily said carefully. Sirius, with a small, wary, parrotty face fresh in his memory, instantly imagined about twelve nightmare houses. He wondered whether Lily meant Snape had been running away from his mum or she'd been sending him away from something worse. Then he yelled THIS IS SNIVELLUS at himself, because he shouldn't be wasting a lip-biting on someone like that. You had a choice about growing up nasty; look at him and Reg. Anyway, Snivvy would have flown at him to take his face off at the first suggestion of pity or even understanding. Probably would even have flown at a girl he'd unaccountably had a chance with. Sniv was mental.

"So he could be anywhere."

"There are a few places. I won't send you right to them; he'd be really upset. Close enough to do a point-me. You'll show him the portkeys when you find him, and give them back to me, used or not, and I'll owl Rosier and tell him how many I got back," she added sternly. She didn't bother to explain why she wouldn't owl Snape directly; even people who didn't have jealous husbands or other sorts of difficult histories with him preferred to deal with his more polite flatmate when humanly possible, Sirius expected.

"Right." He didn't want at all to examine why he felt relieved.

"Back in a tick, then."

The fire died as she backed away to do her spellowork. Sirius went back into the kitchen to presumably-finish Sniv's… thing. Porcelain and excessive puddles of milk out of the chocolate, give it a quick re-warming and mix-up, pour it over that second layer of sticky oats, apply another cooler and an impervius.

Not alchemical technomancy, or, if it was, it was Sniv's own fault for doing a bunk and leaving him to ruin it and he should get points for effort. Shrinking the pan, he slipped it into his pocket. He'd decided at the last minute not to wrap it in a napkin, because Snape would be snide at him if he didn't but suspicious if he was in any way mannerly.

Lily was a quick worker with charms, but it still took her a few minutes longer to prepare her portkeys. The fire flared again, and bloomed her hand, holding a drawstring bag, instead of any face. "Here you are," she said. "Got them?"

He took the bag. "Got it. Skin-for-time trigger?"

"No." She put her face in, evidently for the express purpose of looking sardonic at him. "The trigger word is pax."

"You are a right pain, milady," he sighed. "Right, I'm off to track down your straying ass."

"Mule," she corrected severely, or maybe she was calling him one, and the fire died again.

Apparently Lily didn't hold with the standard practice of making portkeys look like rubbish, at least when she was going to get their bases back. He considered the little charm-bracelet looking things, tipped into his palm. A spinning wheel, a fish, a children's slide (unless it was a malformed elephant), six kinds of leaves, a bluebell, a book.

Not exactly promising clues for hunting down even a teeny dark wizard, but you had to make allowances for Lily. For Lily Being Pointed, probably. He'd see where they actually took him, and he wouldn't let his guard down. Especially for the bluebell.

Since the other things could be explained, if taken literally, due to Sniv being a potioneer who'd once been a child, Sirius used the spinning wheel portkey first. Despite all his resolve to make Moody proud of him, the first breath nearly killed him.

To give Sirius and his perfectly respectable DADA marks their due, nothing had actually attacked him. And to give Lily the credit she deserved (which, in Sirius's hacking, gasping opinion was minimal), she hadn't portkeyed him into a wall or one of the looming mechanical monsters with which he was surrounded.

No, the difficulty was just that it turned out to be a bad idea to portkey into a room full of large, complex objects that (Sirius inferred) hadn't been used in about ten years by anything but dust mites. Or a room full of teenagers, even muggle ones, who thought they were right bad lads.

Next (at some point, hopefully): The Hounding of the Basket-Case