Chapter Four
Later, she corners Sirius while he's tinkering with his motorcycle. It's a monstrous and beautiful thing, and she's nervous of it, but also a little fascinated.
"You know the potion Albus and Grindelwald have been working on," Lily begins. "The dragon's blood elixir."
"Yeah?" Sirius grins at her sideways, as if he already knows what she's going to say.
"I need a bottle's worth of it."
He sleeks his fingers through his shaggy hair and straddles the leather seat, looking rakish and mutt-like. "Well, why don't you ask them, then? Seems little enough."
"Albus mustn't – I want to keep Albus from knowing for as long as possible."
Sirius grunts. "Good luck with that." Lily wonders if he's being deliberately obtuse. "You want me to do the stealing, I take it. Why?"
"Because it's for Harry. It could help, but Albus is concerned about the possible side effects."
"And you're not?"
"I'm more concerned that Harry might – " At the last second, she switches from, "die" to "lose. That Voldemort might torture or overpower him, despite Albus's best-laid plans."
"The old man's not infallible, I'll give you that." Sirius rubs his nose and glances at her. "I'll do it." His eyes make a casual tour of their surroundings; his brother Reg has a disturbing tendency to loiter in the bushes nearby. Albus attributes it to years of ducking his parents and waiting for someone his age to show up, but Lily suspects he just likes to spy. He's a Slytherin, after all. "In exchange, though, you'll tell James about the baby?"
Lily, realizing her mouth is hanging open, shuts it. Then she says, "What's to tell? If you know, then obviously James knows, too."
"Yes, but not from you." Sirius studies her from under shaggy brows. "You haven't said a word. He's a bit bummed about that."
She sighs and scrubs her face. "Have I mentioned lately that Albus Dumbledore is a royal purple pain in the arse? Yes, of course I'll tell him. Not that there's much to tell, really. It's just a baby."
"Right, and I'm Helga Hufflepuff," says Sirius, and guns the engine.
~~#~~
She finds their first kiss. It takes place – where else? – in Azkaban.
Fate, it seems to Lily, has a nasty sense of humour.
It's odd, that the prison at first reminds her of Hogwarts. Just because it's an old stone castle, with stairways and alcoves and overhead galleries, doesn't mean she should feel as though she knows it. Mostly it's lit like the dungeons; the window embrasures are small and squinty, narrowing the amount of daylight that gets in. Torches are few and far between, stuck at drafty turnings, the loud flames sucked and extinguished and relit in a repetitive fire-breathing pantomime. The whoosh of combustion casts long, jumpy shadows down the corridors, which narrow rather quickly into great slots of darkness. On the walls, moisture stains glisten, and there's moss or possibly rot. It's not merely Hogwarts in ruins, not merely a castle in full-blown dribbling senility. It's Hogwarts after a psychotic break.
Snape's sitting in his shirtsleeves in his small, damp cell when the iron door creaks open to admit Harry. While he confers with the guard on watch, Snape hunches further into himself, chafing his arms for warmth and holding his Mark against his chest. If appearances are anything to go by, he hasn't slept in a week, and it's been at least that long since his hair was last washed.
"That was a pretty filthy trick you pulled," Harry says once they're alone, "you fucking arsehole."
The visit degenerates from there into a shouting match, and Lily skims. Snape's right, Harry does wave his wand around in a reckless manner. Well, he's upset about Snape's incarceration and pending trial. Good boy, Lily thinks; but Snape refuses to leap on 'the Potter bandwagon.' The next thing Lily knows, Snape's got Harry backed up against a cold, smelly wall and is leaning so close you could stun them both with a single spell. Hm, Harry was dead on about where Snape shoves his leg. And Snape was telling the truth about who kissed whom first, although to be fair that leg is rather provoking.
But Harry's the instigator, and Lily has to hand it to him, it works brilliantly at getting Snape to shut up. Also, Snape seems to appreciate Harry's tongue far more when it's in his mouth than when it's left to wag unsupervised. However he justifies it, he doesn't object to Harry kissing him nearly as much as he objects to – vilifies – pretty much everything else Harry does.
Until the kiss winds down. Then Snape turns a special shade of pale and tells Harry, in a frayed-thin but reasonable voice, to go now, for fuck's sake, and Harry looks at him with a kind of sick hope. Lily curses the sexual alchemy that's sprung up between them. Snape has every reason to look dismayed, considering he's mostly composed of impurities, and that's exactly what the alchemical process is intended to transmute. He could very well plunge his soul into the fire and end up reduced to ash. Harry, by any reckoning, is already pure gold. Well, golden enough. Lily sees no reason for him to endure another crucible of pain to prove his worth, certainly not just because he fancies a fling.
After Harry leaves and the booming door locks Snape in, he paces the room the way predators do, desperate, his eyes flickering back and forth, always returning to the door. Finally he stalks to the mildewed corner most secure from prying eyes, wedges his narrow back against the stone, and slides to the ground, knees up. Eyes closed, as if he's too humiliated to watch what he's doing, he gropes inside his trousers and starts tossing himself off.
Trembling, Lily changes the station. She seeks out Harry's wife. She avoids Harry in this timeline and concentrates on his children. They're the future: amusing, high-spirited, the continuation of the Potter line. But in the end it doesn't matter, she tells herself. Snape's going to die. Harry won't have a choice.
She turns off the set and goes to find James. She needs to touch someone. Someone real. She banishes the house. She banishes the past. She needs to be touched in a way that will assuage the strange trembling that this scene, this sordid act, has awakened inside her.
~~#~~
She's been pulling James into the bushes a lot lately. He doesn't seem to mind. Sirius has taken to giving her sour, amused looks, but he'll have to make do on his own.
She feels briefly guilty for having lured James away by dropping sexual hints. She wants to be outside Sirius's sphere of influence and to avoid, if possible, Albus eavesdropping. James is already untucking his shirt when she says, "Not so hasty, love, this is – James, I'm sorry, I've meant to do this before now. But I'd like you to meet Tom."
He tucks himself in again, fast. He almost knocks his glasses off, ruffling his hair in agitation. "Merlin's tits, Lily!" He leans forward, nose wrinkling, then says, low and hard, "That's the most revolting excuse for humanity I've ever seen." She flares up, feeling personally insulted, but he gets to the point: "That's a piece of Voldemort's soul. You know that, right?"
She steps back a pace, alarmed. So they've figured it out. Or maybe Albus let it slip. "Don't speak to me as if I'm an idiot. I know what he is. I also know," slow down, Evans, she tells herself, and takes a deep breath, "that he's part of Harry."
James nearly pops a vein. "He's a sodding Dark wizard!"
She looks over her shoulder, then shoves her way through the foliage, knowing he'll follow. She doesn't want that black dog Sirius to overhear and come lolloping out of the bushes to add his bullying approbation to everything James says.
They rustle into a coppice that's been one of their favourite love nests, quiet and pretty and quilted with sunbeams. They proceed to desecrate it by turning and squaring off. "Listen carefully, Jamie. I'll say it again." Tom's asleep. She touches his cheek too gently to wake him. "He's part of Harry."
James glares at Tom as if he's turned her against him. "He's a remnant of a murderous, diseased psychopath, and he doesn't deserve to be coddled like that." Restless, he props his shoulders against a tree and stubs one heel on the roots. "Bloody hell, Lil, how can you let yourself be taken in like this? Just because he looks harmless. He's like this magical cockroach that won't die!"
A few leaves drift down; one lands on Tom, a five-pointed green leaf like a papery hand. He whimpers, and Lily brushes it away. Nearby, there's a crackling, skittery sound, like lizards scarpering off. James straightens up, then, and draws his wand, as if he intends to use it.
Lily's temper almost gets the better of her. "He's a baby."
The wand is pointed at them – no, at Tom. "What would happen, do you suppose," James says, all the strength and courage in his body knotted into a need for revenge, "if I killed him here, where he might actually die and leave Harry alone?"
Lily remembers having those same thoughts, the first time Albus put Tom in her arms. She could Disapparate now, but Merlin, she refuses to run from her husband.
"I don't know," she retorts, and turns her back. "But if you want to find out, you'll have to curse me first."
She waits. James whispers her name, betrayed, and she faces him with Tom pressed to her breast. "He's part of Harry," she says again. "I'm sorry, love, I can't let you do it. I can't jeopardize Harry's chances, certainly not in a spasm of hatred. And," she swallows, because of course this is part of it, "it won't change what's already happened. Or what has yet to happen. He'll still have to defeat – " she folds the blanket over the baby's ears and whispers " – You-Know-Who."
James takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes. He says quietly, "So it's Harry who'll have to kill him, then."
It hurts to hear that. It hurts not to know whether it's true. "Maybe," she whispers, and then walks up to James. "Here. Just for a minute. Hold him, James, please."
He dons his glasses, scowls at the diseased child, sulks at her, then stabs his wand into his pocket. "It won't harm Harry," Lily promises, placing the wool-wrapped bundle in his arms. Tom is shaking. Or it could be Jamie. "Who knows, it might even help. Perhaps Harry can feel us touching him somehow."
The sibilant tongue of the wind talks its way through the trees. Tom flaps his pink hands and lets out a mighty burp, and James, her bold Jamie, grimaces but doesn't drop him. Today's a bit cooler than usual, and though the sunlight throws intricate chain mail patterns, it's not warm enough. Lily circles behind her husband and hugs him, her chin on his shoulder. This way, she can make silly faces at the baby. Someday, she's sure of it, Tom will smile back.
It's almost like having a family again.
~~#~~
A few days later, there's a knock at the door. Lily's been watching bits of Snape's life on his personal station, but she switches the dial at once to Harry's future and spins the rings back and forth until she locates him. He's brought the kids to Ottery St. Catchpole, and there are redheads everywhere, more than Lily can possibly keep track of. She smokes nervously and only half-watches, alert for possible invasion. This is her hiding place. She can do what she likes here.
The knocking stops. She's still tense, so when the window suddenly crashes upward she's on her feet at once, ready for battle.
Sirius leans in, festooned with curtains and grinning like a sex-crazed fiend. "It's no use pretending you're not at home," he tells her, arms crossed on the sill. "The house only shows up when you're in it, you know."
"There's such a thing as wanting to be left alone," she says tartly.
"Just trying to be neighbourly," he smirks. "Here, catch." A flash of red glass hurtles through the air, flung with alarming accuracy at Tom's bassinet. Lily Accios it, and a small bottle slaps into her palm.
"This is the elixir, eh?" She shakes it; the contents are the colour of fresh blood. "So how'd you sneak it past Albus?"
Sirius gives her a mock-pitying look. "My dear Lily, you really must get used to being dead. We're no longer bound by mortal restrictions, remember? If something already exists, you need merely conjure it yourself. Think it into being and give it the necessary properties. I didn't go anywhere near the dragon's lair to acquire this. I created it myself."
She huffs in exasperation. "So how do I know it's the real thing?"
His devilish eyebrows lift. "At this point, it's up to you. If you believe it's the elixir of life, then it is. It'll work within whatever limits are set by its theoretical counterpart in Albus's mind."
"You're saying I could have done this myself." Lily frowns at the bottle.
Sirius grins and shrugs, almost banging his head on the sash. "Really, love, how long have you been dead? You need to figure these things out."
After Sirius finally leaves her alone, Lily squirrels the bottle away in the lefthand compartment of the console where, to her astonishment, she finds a stash of soft-core porn mags.
~~#~~
So, that abbreviated dinner in the restaurant was Harry's way of celebrating Snape's acquittal. No wonder the git was so prickly. Intent on following the convoluted beginnings of their affair, Lily picks up where she left off the day Albus so rudely interrupted.
She watches the wait staff vanish the food from their table, Snape drape himself in his robes while the entire clientele of the restaurant stops talking, mouths full, to stare. Ignoring the collective weight of disapproval, Harry wraps a hand around Snape's arm, says, "Ready?" and then Sidealong-Apparates them into the night. The area of London looks familiar, with the starless sky capping the low, dense halo of city lights. Sirius's old neighbourhood, isn't it? For a moment, Lily's nearly bent double with nostalgia. Then her son, towing a reluctant Snape behind him, steps from a dark alleyway, and the two of them navigate the bustling streets together, flaring into odd visibility beneath the electric lamps, almost lost amid the hurly-burly of Muggle crowds. A passing lorry or an impatient line of cross-traffic occasionally blocks Lily's view. The steady rumbling is as noisy as Sirius's motorbike, which she half-expects to come crashing through the window, drawn as if by a mating call.
To her relief, the camera's focus tightens and she hears Harry's voice over the din. He keeps glancing up to gauge Snape's reaction, which predictably results in him stumbling over the pavement as often as he stumbles over his words. Snape strides along in silence and lets Harry cope as best he can. "I keep waiting," Harry pants, hurrying not to fall behind, "for the day I stop thinking about other blokes. I'd like to believe that Ginny and I can make a go of it, but – "
"But it's never a good idea to marry one's mother," Snape snatches the sentence away from him.
Lily sits upright, startled, and she and Harry both yelp at once, "You arsehole!"
Lily blushes at the coincidence, thinking, Well, the arsehole's got a point. Harry stops in his tracks, much to the annoyance of various Londoners with things to do and places to be. He looks as if for a sickle he'd Disapparate and leave Snape alone to face the irate hordes.
"I suspect, however," Snape hauls Harry to the pavement's verge and presses the issue only after they're no longer a pedestrian hazard, "that in Miss Weasley's case, it would be more an instance of marrying her mother."
"You enjoy being a dick, don't you?" Harry's standing practically atop the toes of Snape's boots, and he juts his chin upward as if spoiling for a fight. Or provoking a kiss.
With a flick of robes and a twitch of kneecaps that nearly topples Harry in front of a roving band of stockbrokers, Snape re-establishes an argumentative distance. "Whether I enjoy it or not, there it is: the thing that sets me apart from the Miss Weasleys of the world. They may be better looking and more socially acceptable, but," he waves a hand dismissively, "I have something they don't. Therein lies my primary appeal."
Harry sighs and rumples his hair, gazing vaguely up the street toward Grimmauld Place. "Yeah, I feel bad for Gin. But I 'spect she'd prefer to be spared finding out years down the line that her famous husband's a homo. Not a very happy ending, that."
Snape turns as though to lay a hand on Harry's arm, but changes his mind and walks on. As if it's a partner-dance, Harry steps forward into the vacuum left by that incomplete touch.
"If you were to marry Miss Weasley," Snape informs him the moment he jogs alongside, "I assure you, she would never find out." He's so quiet and serious that Lily briefly imagines the kind of man he might be if he didn't feel the need to scrawl I am hateful and I hope you all burn in hell across the world's face with every word and gesture.
They cross at the light, Snape ruminating as he stalks to the opposite pavement. Oncoming pedestrians veer around them, casting annoyed looks at Snape's robes, as if his eccentricity of dress inconveniences them. Harry starts to ask a question, but Snape's not done. "You'd stay married," and he imparts each word as if pronouncing a spell vital to Harry's existence, "spawn a celebrated host of red-headed Potters, behave like a model husband, dazzle your legions of fans, and devote the rest of your life to making your family happy. Even if that happiness depended upon everyone collaborating in a fiction of blissful ignorance." He shakes his head, clearly tired of thinking about it. "Who's to say that wouldn't be the better course?"
Harry rubs his hands on his robes and scratches behind his ear before blurting, "I wasn't lying when I said I've always wanted more than anything to be normal."
They're passing under a street lamp. Oh, Merlin, the way Sev rolls his eyes. Lily has to agree with him in this case. "Too late for that," he sneers, which is going a bit far. "And if I may point out, forcing your presence on me doesn't qualify as normal. If you're in search of happily-ever-afters, then my only contribution to your little self-delusionary quest is as an example of what not to do."
Impulsively Harry takes Snape's arm and performs a little scuffling jump to match his stride. Lily almost bursts into a million pieces at the look on Snape's face, and her sudden lunge to hug her knees jars Tom awake. "I'm not ever going to be normal, though, am I?" Harry gets out, sounding as though a bone's caught in his throat. He shoots Snape a sideways glance. "So I'll settle for being fucked-up and happy in the moment, if it's all the same to you."
"It's nothing to me, Potter." They come to a halt, heads tilted up to confront the massive, decrepit façade of Grimmauld Place. "I hope you're not expecting me to hold forth on what future is best for you. I'm no more familiar with immediate gratification than I am with reaping rewards in the long run. Look to someone else for advice."
Still clasping Snape's arm, Harry gestures lamely. "Home, sweet home."
The door at the top of the stairs swings open, and Snape twists free as Ginger Chappie pokes his head out. Lily catches a flash of something furtive and conflicted as Snape, shifting slightly, creates the sense that an icy chasm has sprung up between himself and Harry. He glares as Ronald Weasley sings out, "Oi, Harry, great timing! A whole tableful of fantastic grub just appeared out of nowhere! Not enough to go around, but we've saved you a plate, so you'd better – oh." It's taken him that long to acknowledge the cold burn of Snape's baleful smile. He nods warily. "Professor."
Harry pounds up the weathered stairs, but Snape doesn't follow. Clearly upset that his plans for the evening are slipping away, Harry retraces his steps, argument evident in every line of his body. Snape's frosty demeanor defeats him before he even musters a word. "Save your breath, Potter. I've no desire to be present at a Gryffindor slumber party."
"Look, I'm sorry. I didn't know they'd be here." Above, the doorway's jammed with a solid wall of interfering and inquisitive friends. Lily hears Hermione's exasperated voice, "You've no idea where that food came from! For all we know, it could be poisoned!" before her face rises into view, peering curiously over Ron's shoulder. Ginny Weasley crowds to the fore, and Lily's amused to see that she's already drawn her wand. At a guess, the girl's nursing some serious revenge fantasies.
"I'm perfectly capable of finding my own way back," Snape announces. "Bear in mind what I said, and don't throw your choices away. There's no shame, Mr. Potter, in being faithful."
He's standing on a lower step, which puts them nose to nose, and suddenly Harry leans forward as if afraid he'll never get another chance, never mind that they're in full view of a shockable audience. Snape deflects the kiss, raising his ravaged face to indicate the spectrum of gobsmacked expressions caught in the light from the open doorway. "Many thanks for an enlightening and ultimately pointless conversation," he grumbles with enough snap to bring Harry to his senses - although his lips brush Harry's ear when he turns. "I hope your friend Weasley enjoys my portion of the dinner."
"You can't go." Harry almost reaches out to restrain him but realizes in time the enormity of his mistake.
"Can't I?" Snape says in an ominous drawl. "Whyever not?"
It's a struggle, but Harry finally gets out in a whisper, "You owe me a snog."
Snape's glance flickers to the doorway and its occupants, to Harry's face, then up and down the street. It's the look he wore in prison, which ended with him crouching in a corner, one hand down his pants. He feels trapped, Lily realizes. Unclean. "So it's payment you're looking for, is it?" he says under his breath. "I should have known."
"No! That's a load of bollocks. I'm not – "
"Go inside," Snape commands. "And don't even think of following me."
He stares straight into Harry's scowling face until the boy turns and marches up the steps. Ron attempts to shove a glass of wine into his hand. "Mate, you should try this. The food's fantastic!"
"Have mine," Harry snarls, "I'm not hungry," and shoulders past them. Ginny squints a mean, triumphant smile at Snape's inscrutable figure as everyone mills about on the threshold and then stampedes inside. The door slams.
Snape stands for a moment without moving. The camera pans down his body; his hands are wound in the material of his robes, clearly anchored there to keep them from touching what they shouldn't. "A load of bollocks, indeed, Mr. Potter. You're bloody starving," Lily hears him say, but the focus remains on his hands. They twist, press their knuckles together, and slowly unclench. "As am I." His voice is a whisper, and Lily swallows. A swirling, shadowy confusion blurs the screen, and when it clears she's staring at the bottom steps, the angle of lamplight illuminating one corner like a wedge of white cheese. By the time the camera rises, giving Lily a long shot of mansions towering in the gloom, Severus is already far down the street, dwindling between pools of lamplight, an extra layer of black vanishing into the darkness.