Chapter Ten
June the Twenty-Fourth, Nineteen-Seventy-Seven
"You know what I think?" Lily said as she helped Davie put pillowcases on the pillows of the cot they had set up in Lily's room so the girls could share the way they did. The Evans family - save for Lily's sister, Petunia - was quickly charmed by her, and the way she was so impressed with every little thing in their home, despite their humble means. For one thing, Davie had certainly never seen a Muggle refrigerator, and always accepted a proffered snack that came from the refrigerator, even if only to verify for herself that it was in fact cold.
"I don't think Sirius fancies you -"
"That's relieving," Davie said stiffly, "because I don't -"
"I think he loves you," Lily continued, and Davie's eyes went wider, if that were even possible. "Just think about it," Lily said when she noticed the stupefied expression on her best friend's face. "Would he have taken the trouble of -"
"No, thank you," Davie said, plopping down on her bed and beginning to rifle through her belongings in order to get settled. She wanted to simply enjoy and appreciate the fact that she was here with her best friend instead of with her batty great-uncle with several hundred fish living in his house. The Evans' home was warm and welcoming, save for Lily's sister, Petunia, who judging by her expression always was subjected to a terrible stench that no one else appeared able to smell. "I don't want to think about it."
She sighed, looking up and out the bedroom window - the little town called Spinner's End wasn't at all luxurious, and there was certainly nothing magical about it, but it was pleasantly homely, and Davie liked it just fine.
"Do you think I could go for a walk? Have a look around?" Davie asked curiously - Lily looked confused, considering there was really very little to do in the neighborhood, but she nodded. After some help from Lily picking out a set of Muggle clothes (which, Davie noticed, were a bit long for her, considering Lily was slightly taller) Davie stepped out the door and shuffled down the cobblestone streets until she found herself strolling by a park - a quaint sort of place with old swings and teeter-totters and clusters of branchy, rather unkempt trees. The familiar face she found n that park, however, would turn out to be an even more unwelcome sight than Sirius Black.
"Severus?" she snapped incredulously when she noticed the boy standing under a tree, looking rather sour, but not expecting to be interrupted. "What are you - ah, right," she said, remembering when Lily had long ago mentioned that they had lived together ever since they were children. This was probably why Lily had been so happy to have Davie over for the summer, so she would have someone to keep her company and keep her away from Severus Snape.
"What are you waiting for out here? For Lily?" she asked in a knowing tone. "Because you love-"
"You can't say a word," Severus said, overcoming the surprise of seeing Davina Maddux in Spinner's End. "I don't need pity now that she's become a member of the James Potter fan club -"
"Pity! Why would I pity you? Why would I help you?" Davie asked, crossing her arms and taking only a few steps closer., her eyes narrowed hostilely into slits. "You're in love with Lily and by Merlin, I could tell her -"
"Fine!" he seethed. "Go on then, so I can be as miserable as I've made you -"
"You're so full of yourself!" Davie said shrilly; it felt so unnatural for Severus Snape to be eliciting such an emotional reaction from her, and even more unnatural to be unable to draw her wand at a time like this, considering no one was allowed to see them use magic. "You think that outing your stupid little crush is nearly as bad as killing my mum and dad -"
"You were full of yourself to even think I'd fancy you," he said flatly, but the words themselves hit Davie hard; the expression on her face was somewhere between being heartbroken and enraged because he had just confirmed what Davie had believed for a long time: she was certainly not much of a catch compared to Lily Evans.
"You know, I always tried to be decent to you," Davie said, tears slowly gathering behind her eyes as the confrontation intensified. "Because I really did think you were interesting. I thought you and I might be friends - I always got so angry with Sirius for being so hard on you, always said you didn't deserve it," she rambled. "But you still managed to hurt me, just as much as you hurt Lily. Is this the way you treat all your friends? Call them names and - and kill their parents?'
"Now you're talking nonsense -"
"No," Davie persisted. "Lily and I always stood up for you, even before got in with you little batch of - of mini Death Eaters. But I suppose you've picked whose respect matters, haven't you?"
"What's supposed to matter?" Snape retorted angrily, looking away, anywhere except towards Davie and pressing the heel of his hand into his forehead as though he were trying to justify his treatment of Lily even to himself. "The opinion of two little girls I met in school or the rest of the world that'll respect me once they've seen what I'm capable of -"
"Listen, you -" Davie hissed vehemently; Snape had been so distracted that he hadn't seen Davie striding up to him until she had interrupted him, shoving him hard by the shoulders so he stumbled backwards. "You think everyone else in the world is so ignorant, everyone hates you, everyone's so hard on you, and so selfish - look at you!" she gave him another hard shove so that he stumbled backwards into the trunk of a nearby tree, not so much because Davie was strong, but because he was so dumbfounded at her outburst. However, as he hit the hard surface of the tree, he winced, clutching at the back of his shoulder. When he moved his hand, he tried unsuccessfully to conceal the fact that his fingers were smudged in -
"Blood?" Davie asked in a hushed voice, her expression changing immediately as she reached out, yanking his hand towards her to confirm the sight for herself. "I didn't push you that hard -"
"They're not from you," he said flatly, pulling his hand away from Davie's grasp. He managed a brief glance at her eyes to find them full of emotion - not quite pity or mocking, but genuine sadness. Compassion, even. "Can you now get it through your thick skull why I'm desperate to remedy my - my lack of dignity?"
"Severus," she said quietly, glancing between his face and the slight smudge of blood on her hand she'd acquired from touching his. Just glancing at her, there was more genuine, focused concern in her eyes than he'd received from anyone, from Lily even.
"Lemme see," she said; Severus was lost for words. Davie sighed, sitting down in the grass next to the tree and giving his arm a tug, signaling her to sit next to him. "Take your shirt off -"
"You're mad," he replied flatly. "I'm not going to - you're still angry at me, what's the matter with you?"
"I am angry," she conceded, her expression sour. "But you're bleeding and it makes the odds a bit uneven. It's distracting and not very honorable. Now, let me see."
Effectively dumbstruck, Severus unbuttoned his dingy collared shirt halfway, lowering it down past his shoulder blades. He grimaced when he heard her gasp - apart from one or two fresh, barely-healed cuts, still sticky with blood, the skin on his back was a latticework of scars of varying depth and darkness.
"Look at you, these aren't even cleaned up," Davie said stiffly, trying to maintain some semblance of harshness and disdain in her voice, though it was admittedly difficult to do. "Just - wait here. Don't do anything." Davie stood up, pulling a handkerchief out of her pocket and strolling over to the nearby drinking fountain to dampen the piece of cloth.
"Alright," she said, poising the wet kerchief over one of the cuts; her calm approach to the situation was surprising, so much so that Severus Snape was not sure that it wasn't simply deception. "This might hurt -"
"Worse than getting them to begin with, you think?" he retorted sarcastically.
"I was just warning you," Davie snapped irately. "Now this is going to sting."
Severus let out a muffled noise when, as promised, the feeling of a wet cloth touching the wound gave a telltale twinge of pain, but surprisingly, Davie had no snide comment in return. She would never go so far as to say she understood him - in fact, she felt more puzzled by him than before now that she came to consider the fact that perhaps he had his reasons.
"You'd make a good Healer," he commented.
"You told me that. Years back," she said with a grudging laugh. "But, well - you know I'm not going to be a Healer."
"Once we're out of school we're going to be enemies. Worse enemies than we are now," Severus said flatly. "Don't get used to being kind to me. Down the road, I wouldn't allot you the same courtesy."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Davie said calmly, finishing up cleaning his wounds and tugging his shirt back up over his shoulders. "It's a pity we were never properly friends to begin with. I've never really been friends with someone like you."
"So Padfoot," James said, juggling a balled up pair of socks as he got to unpacking his things; he and Sirius had been able to make up shortly before the school year ended, and so things had regained some sort of normalcy when they were living in the Potters' house over the summer. "You going to write her?"
"Nope."
"Visit?"
"Nope?"
"Ignore her for the entire summer and sit around brooding like a pathetic git because she won't apologize to you?"
"Now you're onto it," Sirius said roughly, lounging back onto the daybed in James' room, lacing his fingers behind his head.
"So you're not planning on writing her?" James asked. "So those pieces of parchment in your trunk that have 'To Davie' written on the top, you were just practicing your penmanship?"
"She'd sooner feed it to her owl than read it, I'd rather not waste the parchment," Sirius said, twirling his wand between his fingers. There were times when he certainly didn't do a bad job of pretending not to care that Davie was not speaking to him.
"You're filthy, rich, mate, you could write her a novel a day and the price of parchment wouldn't make a nick on the balance of your vault in Gringotts," James pointed out, before his face curled into a smirk. "You think Romnic Digby is going to be writing her this summer?"
"He can go ahead!" Sirius said, chucking his wand at James' head; he simply laughed, shaking his head and catching it in one hand - his reflexes from playing Quidditch were, Sirius had to grudgingly admit, impeccable.
"You missed." he laughed, chucking the wand back at Sirius. "You know, I could write Lily. We've been alright lately," he said with a broad grin. "You know, maybe see if she'd give us a hand with her." James grinned when Sirius looked away, trying to hide a hopeful expression on his face.
"If that's what you get off on," he said noncommittally. "I know you'll write her anyway."
"Too right," James grinned, kicking off his shoes and leaning back on his own bed. "In fact- I think I'll do just that."
A/N's
Another chapter! Very tiny this time around, and the next couple will be a bit short. The summer of seventy-seven will have one more chapter dedicated to it, and while it's nothing that's going to send the plot spinning, it will still hopefully be worth reading. Mostly just teeangers being teenagers for the next couple of chapters - but please do pay attention to the sort of things that go on in their seventh year, as there will be scattered mentions of things that will go on in the future. The happenings at school in their final year will be a bit hefty, to say the least.
Thank you to Padfoot'sPixie and cherryblossom2revenger for your reviews! Until next time, cheers!