Chapter Eleven

August the Thirtieth, Nineteen-Seventy-Seven

"Oy!" James yelled, pounding on the locked door to the washroom occupied by his best friend - his best friend who turned out to spend more time in the shower and on his hair than anyone else James knew. "Are you even listening?"

"Yeah, Hogsmeade. Tomorrow," Sirius said is a muffled voice that made it evident that he was brushing his teeth. "Supplies, letters arrive by owl post an hour ago. Anything else you'd like to add for me to recite, Prongs?"

"An hour! Good on you for remembering - you've been in there since then, I was beginning to think you'd drowned," he said, slapping his palm onto the door one more time to go back to his room, pulling out the letter he had just received from Lily. He flopped onto his stomach on his bed, glancing at the door before unfolding the letter.

James,

I've been well, thank you. Just waiting on my Hogwarts letter - still hoping on Head Girl, you know. You can let Sirius know that Davie's alright as well. I'm sure he's not asking but you know how they are, he's probably thinking about it nonetheless.

I hope we're still on for Diagon Alley, it would do Davie a whole lot of good to see everyone again, she's been acting a bit strange. I'll let Davie know as soon as I can, she's been a bit preoccupied this summer. Take care of yourselves, I don't want any of you not showing up because you've gotten into trouble, Potter.

Always,

Lily

James beamed as he reread the letter. His letter. Lily Evans had been writing him letters. This had certainly been, in his mind, a very good summer.

"You look nice today," Lily said as Davie was brushing her hair in front of the mirror - she had only just gotten used to doing her hair the 'Muggle way' which entailed brushing it by hand, and ever since, she had acquired a certain vanity about it. "I did tell you we were leaving for Diagon Alley tomorrow, didn't I? To get our things?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Davie said in a pleasantly dismissive voice, putting in a pair of earrings from her mother, then adjusting the cowl neck of her sleeveless purple sweater that had been given to her my Mrs. Evans. "That's why I'm going to go see -"

"Severus," Lily said with an exasperated sigh. "You've been spending an awful lot of time with him this summer -"

"You used to spend a lot of time with him and I didn't say anything -"

"That was before," Lily said sourly. "Davie, I can't see why you're so friendly with him now that you know what he's like."

"He's been helping me read up on Charms - you know it's my worst mark, and he's really intelligent," she said, smoothing out the fronts of her black pants and avoiding her friend's gaze. The fact that she had in truth been spending an unusual amount of time with Severus Snape, with whom Lily had already had a terrible falling out, the same Severus Snape who himself had told Davie that he had no high opinion of her at all, was a slightly awkward point between the two friends. Lily, especially, tended to bring up the strangeness of the unlikely friendship, while Davie made particular moves to avoid such conversations.

"He's just - well. I don't know, it's not awkward. I don't have to try to impress him -"

"No one impresses him -"

"Exactly," she said, giving her hair another smoothing out. Lily sighed resignedly, shaking her head.

"Well, be home for dinner, at least?" Lily asked kindly, giving her friend's arm a gentle tug. "You're the only one in this entire house who will eat my mum's banana pudding desserts, even Dad won't even take more than two bites. I'm not sure she's ever going to let you leave us now."

"I'll be here," Davie laughed in relief that her friend was at least being accepting of the fact that she had come to be friends of some sort with Severus Snape over the summer. She had even inexplicably come to the point where she considered him a separate being entirely from the Severus Snape she hated and held responsible for the fact that she was an orphan and had no parents - she had come to believe that in all likelihood, her parents would have forgiven him by then.

Contentedly, she slipped on a pair of purple slippers and walked briskly down the stairs, and down the nearby cobblestone path. She continued walking until she reached a small, slightly muddy dammed creek at the emptier edge of town, which had in the past month or so become hers and Severus' chosen meeting-place.

"You've done yourself up a bit," Severus said coolly, having arrived a few minutes earlier. "Is there an occasion?""

"Well, I think so, anyway," Davie said brightly, clambering up the side of the short wall and having a seat, dangling her feet off of the edge towards the water. "We've gotten along for an entire summer."

"To what end?" Severus asked bluntly; he, too, had grown slightly comfortable around the girl though he only grudgingly admitted it. If it could be avoided, he didn't even mention it at all, really. It was clearly not the sort of friendship he had once had with Lily Evans in this very place, in Spinner's End as a child, but is was a friendship nonetheless. "We're not going to be friends after this summer, once we go back to school - we both know that. And it's our last year. Once we're out…"

"Hm." Davie nodded quietly. It was testament to the fact that they were nowhere near being best friends, as there were many points of conversation that were taboo throughout the entire summer, which included life after school, Sirius Black, and James Potter. "It's a pity, though, isn't it? I do sort of enjoy spending time with you."

"To think if we had all been - been Muggles," he said distastefully; it almost physically tasted terrible in his mouth to suggest. "We might not have all become enemies to begin with."

"And to think," Davie mused, her gaze shifty, as though she were testing the waters, "you and Lily may never have fought and never have fallen out, and she'd never be on speaking terms with James Potter. They've been writing."

Now, Severus was silent. Davie sighed, bracing herself on her hands at the edge of the wall and leaning her weight on her arms. Severus glanced at her; she was, in his mind, nowhere near as beautiful as Lily Evans, but Davie was certainly not unattractive. She was amusing to be around, even if a bit excessively silly and whimsical for his taste. Compared to Lily Evans, Severus mused, Davina Maddux was a plethora of shortcomings: she was nowhere near as graceful, as poised, as naturally gifted -

"I was right, you know," Davie mused, kicking her feet over the edge and letting the heels of her shoe skim the top of the water. "You still are one of the most interesting people I've ever met."

"More interesting than Black?" Severus scoffed incredulously at even the thought of being considered anything except slimy, anything except Snivelly. Even Lily thought of him as nothing more than just another heartless, incorrigible, bigoted Slytherin. Because he was. "I highly doubt that."

Davie went quiet at the mention of Sirius' name. She had made careful effort to avoid speaking about him, to even avoid contacting him, the entire summer - granted, it had not been hard, considering he'd never tried contacting her either. Severus was just so much easier to be around, because there was nothing to worry about - as fatalistic as it seemed, they both knew their friendship was going to be short-lived, and so, they acted and spoke frankly with one another. At the age of seventeen, Davie didn't think much more about the reasoning. It would have been quite simpler to believe that perhaps she fancied Severus instead, but at the cusp of adulthood, Davie couldn't really bring herself to think that it was anything so simplistic.

"Sirius - well, he isn't very interesting, I don't think. Not in the same way," Davie said. "He's actually rather simple to understand." She wasn't sure whether she considered this simplicity a good or bad thing; the way he acted was something that Davie still did not feel compelled to try and understand.

"So he's a simpleton -"

"That's not what I said," Davie said sharply.

"You might as well ha- Merlin be damned!" Severus cursed suddenly when the sound of loud smacks on the concrete wall signaled a flurry of falling raindrops. Grabbing Davie by the wrist, he pulled her off of the wall and brought her to a cluster of trees, the same where they had first seen one another at the beginning of the summer. "I suppose I forgot to warn you that we get summer rains -"

He was cut short by Davie standing onto the toes of her sopping wet shoes and brushing her lips chastely against his.

It was only then that Severus Snape really considered that Davie actually was a bit pretty, in a funny, child-like, wide-eyed sort of way, especially when she was sopping wet and terribly disheveled. He had no idea why she was kissing him, or why she even thought to do so - but the fact that she already had and could not undo it… it would all be forgotten by the next day when they left Spinner's End. What was there to lose?

Severus wrapped his arms around Davie's waist slightly awkwardly, pulling her close and kissing her soundly - he'd never done anything of the sort, but the fact that she didn't immediately pull away meant that he probably wasn't doing anything wrong. This was really nothing to do with him fancying Davie, but everything to do with Severus Snape still being a seventeen-year-old boy - he channeled years of being laughed at and rejected and humiliated into the act of kissing Davie. He felt vindicated, like he was spitting back in Sirius Black's face. He could almost see Black's angry face, imagine the sort of humiliation he would feel at the idea of Snivellus getting to Davie first. And…

Slowly and quietly, Davie laughed as she pulled away, looking down at her shoes. "So who were you pretending that I was?" she asked good-naturedly. Severus didn't look at all surprised that she had caught onto the fact that a part of his mind had enjoyed imagining he had been kissing Lily. A part of imagined the look on James Potter's face instead Sirius Black. He wanted to get back at them both. Davie, of course, could not be angry either, as the action on her part had been more of a test than anything - not so much the kiss, but the way she felt afterwards.

There had been no culminating 'wow' after the initial thrill of the action on either end. Davie walked a few steps away, turning her back to Severus. "It's good that term's about to begin or I might have forgotten that we're going to be enemies in about a year or so."

She turned back to Severus, smiling sadly and shaking her head. "It's just a pity I couldn't have changed your mind. I know Lily would have been glad to hear it too," she pointed out before taking off back down the cobblestone path under the rain.

All the way down the street back to the Evans' home, Davie realized that even as she'd kissed Severus Snape, it had never solely been about Severus at all. It had been a sort of experiment, a test of whether or not she had been able to forget about…

Davie panted slightly as she got back inside the house, kicking off her wet shoes at the door so they wouldn't track mud all over the Evans' floor. Immediately, Lily hurried downstairs at the sound of the door; from the kitchen, Lily's older sister, Petunia, glance with a glare before going back to helping Mrs. Evans cut vegetables for dinner.

"'Tuney looks like she's about ready to chuck the cleaver at me," Davie pointed out with a snicker. "I suppose I shouldn't expect a goodbye present from her -"

"I've got it!" Lily said brightly, brandishing a letter towards her best friend. "Look - here, have a look!"

"Head Girl!" Davie said excitedly, glancing at the paper, then looking up to confirm - Lily had already pinned the gleaming badge onto her blouse. "Oh, think of it - my best friend, Head Girl! D'you think Remus is Head Boy?"

"No, it's James," Lily said quickly, before even really thinking the statement through. Davie, who had placed the letter down and was pulling her wet hair out of her face, looked up questioningly. "Oh, well," Lily began hesitantly, realizing what she had just blurted out. "We've been writing over the summer, you remember, and he got his letter yesterday -"

"I see," Davie said with an impish smirk. She briefly looked as though she were going to ask something else - Lily knew without even being told that she had considered asking how Sirius had been over the summer, but quickly thought better of it. "Well - shall I go get changed for dinner?"

A/N's

I'm hoping not to have too many tomatoes thrown at me for including a Davie/Severus kiss in there - and poor Davie, being thought of as a 'plethora of shortcomings'. I had a couple messages saying that they thought Davie's self-confidence issues about being in Lily's shadow were unrealistic, but honestly - I was a teenager not too long ago. Teenagers are pressure-cookers full of insecurities, and dealing with them is one of the most beautiful parts of growing up, don't you think?

In any case, next chapter, we'll no longer be in Spinner's End, and we'll get into the nitty-gritty of seventh year, which will have more chapters dedicated to it than the other years spent at Hogwarts. More action, more drama, more - well, more of everything.

To Jokegirl, yup! The story finishes up all the way in Deathly Hallows, but it won't be that epic - there's going to be a fairly hefty time-jump sometime soon. The story is still going to be pretty long, granted, but it won't be a 100-chapter epic or anything.

To myinnervoice, I'm glad you're enjoying so far! I'm trying really hard to make all of the characters seem like real teenagers coming into themselves, because I think it's really interesting reading characters who develop over the course of a story, so I thought try my hand and writing something like that myself. Thank you for your support and feedback.

Thank you to happybrokensmile as well for favoriting!

Also, to any readers I have that haven't made their presence know, thank you for reading! Until next time, cheers!