Author's Note: Thank you to my beta, aberrantstrain, for reminding me to describe the Muggle Studies classroom. Thanks also to Guest for reviewing the last chapter.

Chapter 9: A True Friend

"He's not my boyfriend!"

She might as well have kneed him directly in the bollocks; it would have hurt a damn sight less than the ache in his gut brought on by her words in class earlier today. The incident had left Severus reeling, confused over the status of their relationship and insecure about Lily's feelings for him. Worse, he had been absolutely mortified, sitting as he was next to Evan, who must now think that he had made up the whole story about kissing Lily.

Severus had hurried from the room as soon as class was over, skipped lunch, and sulked his way all through his afternoon classes (none of which he shared with Lily, thankfully). By the time supper rolled around, he was famished, so he had reluctantly made his way over to the Great Hall, where he was still sitting over an hour later, dragging out his meal, because he knew that the minute that he got up, Lily would follow him out. They were still supposed to meet for his birthday, after all. It seemed that everything had changed in the blink of an eye with those four bloody words, but their plans had not.

For the first time that he could remember, Severus was actually dreading to spend time with Lily. He was so sick with dread, in fact, that he had lost his appetite, and had spent the past fifteen minutes pushing his beans and mash around his plate. His friends had all left, variously off to the library and the common room to get started on homework. He could see Lily darting impatient glances at him from across the Great Hall. Her plate was sitting empty in front of her, and he knew that she was waiting for him to finish, clearly anxious to leave. He sipped his pumpkin juice, stalling for time. Eventually, she huffed and got up, and he breathed a sigh of relief. But he tensed as he realized that instead of leaving the Hall, she was headed straight for him.

She came to a stop on the opposite side of the table in front of him. "Come on Sev, what's taking you so long?" she said with a petulant pout that he was glad his friends weren't here to see.

He sighed internally and resolved himself to the uncomfortable evening ahead.

He followed her out of the Great Hall and to the empty Muggles Studies classroom, where they routinely met after supper. It was a small room, and filled to the brim with all sorts of obsolete Muggle knick-knacks (most of them out of working order), everything from a gramophone to a telegraph machine. Severus would never understand the point of hiring a Muggle Studies teacher who clearly hadn't lived among actual Muggles since the turn of the century.

Lily locked the door behind them and threw up a Muffliato before they settled on the flagstone floor, backs against the far wall.

She smiled softly at him. "Happy birthday, Sev. How does it feel to be fifteen?" she asked, rooting around in her satchel. She fished out a small-ish box and handed it to him. "Don't shake it," she warned.

"Feels like fourteen, but with more homework," he replied. He took the gift from her carefully, resisting the urge to shake it. He flipped the lid of the plain cardboard box to reveal a set of two identical square silver compact cases. He picked one up and opened it, revealing that it was, in fact, a folding pocket mirror. He stared at it, bemused and a little hurt. "Is this some sort of hint that I need to take better care of my appearance?" he asked tonelessly.

Lily's jaw dropped. "What? Don't be daft!" She reached over and fetched the second mirror from the box on his lap, opening it and holding it in front of her own face. "They're two-way mirrors," she explained. "I charmed them myself! It only two me the entire month of December and a whole shelf of books on protean charms." He could hear her voice emanating both from her mouth and from the mirror at the exact same time. It was disorienting.

He peered curiously into his own mirror and saw Lily scowling indignantly back at him. "Oh. Clever," he told her, and watched as a smile broke out on her reflected face.

"I know," she said in a self-satisfied tone of voice. She snapped her mirror shut, and both her reflection and the echo of her voice disappeared from his own, which now appeared like any regular mirror, reflecting his own spotty face back at him. He grimaced as his eyes settled on a particularly juicy spot on his forehead, and snapped his own mirror shut as well. Fifteen was going to be hell. "I got them so that we could communicate and —" she faltered, suddenly falling silent.

"And?" he prompted.

She flushed, looking down, where she was picking at her cuticles in her lap. "Don't laugh — but I was thinking…well, I miss sleeping next to you, and I thought — I thought if we used the mirrors at night while we're sleeping it would be almost as if — as if we were lying next to each other." When he didn't respond, she looked up uncertainly at him, and rushed to explain: "If I woke up, I'd see you right there, and even when I'm asleep, subconsciously I'd feel like you're there by the sound of your snores…"

"Hey! I do not snore," he interjected.

But Lily ignored his outburst, burying her face in her hands. "Oh god, you think it's a rubbish idea. It even sounds like a rubbish idea when I say it out loud now…You must think me so needy…" she moaned.

But Severus didn't think it was a rubbish idea, or needy. Okay, maybe a little bit needy. But he liked that. He liked that Lily missed sharing a bed with him so much that she had gone to all the trouble of enchanting a set of two way mirrors so that they could pretend that they were together in the same bed at night. His earlier anger and insecurity over Lily quickly dissipated, and he laid a hand on her back, trying not to grin like a loon.

"I think you're sweet. I like it," he murmured, pulling her into a hug.

She pulled back after a long moment, resting her forehead against his. "You do? Really?" she asked, eyes shining with unshed tears.

"Yeah. It is a clever way to communicate, and…and I miss sleeping next to you, too," he admitted shyly.

Lily beamed a smile so wide that it sucked the breath right out of his chest, and closed the distance between them, meeting his lips in a tender kiss.

She pulled back slowly, still smiling, then turned to grab a second wrapped package out of her satchel, holding it out to him. It was large, flat, and soft.

"This one's just for fun," she said brightly.

Severus took the gift from her and turned it over, wedging his finger under the spellotape. "This better not be polyester," he warned in a mock serious tone of voice.

Lily punched him on the arm. "Who do you think I am, Petunia? I would never inflict polyester on you!"

The wrapping fell open to reveal a black tee shirt with the words "F—ck censorship!" emblazoned in white across the front.

He felt his face split into a wide grin. "I love it. Can't wait to wear it in front of your sister over Easter break."

"Good, because it took me all night and three ruined tee shirts before I got the screen printing charm to work properly." Now that he looked carefully at her, she did indeed have bags under eyes.

"I think it's sexy that you're a feminist, and I don't care if it's objectifying you to say that," he told her, casting his mind back a week to the conversation that spawned the tee shirt.

"You're allowed to objectify me sometimes; I'm your girlfriend," she said with a wink and a flirty smile that normally would have caused his chest to flutter. But today, he felt his body grow rigid and cold at her words. He stared resolutely ahead, his field of vision narrowing down to the poster of the London Underground affixed to the classroom wall in front of them.

"Are you sure?" he asked, voice cold and devoid of any inflection.

Lily's answer sounded to him as if it came from very far away. "What?"

Severus knew that she was playing dumb, and it incensed him. He knew it, because he could the feel the anxiety and the guilt radiating off of her in uneven waves, which was a sure sign that she was incompletely occluding him. Lily really was a crap occlumens when her emotions were heightened. Then again, she hadn't had much cause in the past to practise deceiving him.

Well, if she was going to play dumb, it meant he had no option left but to bring the issue up himself, and he resented her for making him be the one to do it. Especially on his birthday.

"Are you sure you're my girlfriend?" he repeated, louder this time. "Because that's not the impression that you gave Potter today," he finished bitterly.

"Oh Sev…is that what this is about?" she asked, feigning surprise and concern.

When had she become such a good actress? If he hadn't been a Legilimens, able to pick up the real emotions that conflicted with her feigned ones, he would have bought it.

Still staring ahead, he saw her arm reach out in the periphery of his vision, and felt it come to rest on the back of his neck. She tried to turn his head to face her, but he resisted. "Sev, look at me," she said urgently. "I didn't mean anything by it, I swear. It just slipped out…They were teasing us like they have a hundred times before, and I just said what I always say without even thinking about it. I didn't even realize what I'd said until after I'd said it."

He turned to her slowly, scrutinizing her carefully. "So, now that you realize what you said, you'll have no problem correcting him, right?"

Lily stilled like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," he elaborated, forcibly keeping his voice calm. "That you'll go up to Black and Potter and tell them that you misspoke? That I am, in fact, your boyfriend? You know, just to clear up any lingering confusion."

She remained silent for a long moment, and when she next spoke, in a placating tone, she wouldn't quite meet his eyes. "Listen Sev, I was thinking, maybe it's not such a bad idea to keep it quiet for now. You — you saw how they teased us, and they don't even know we're together. Think how much worse the rumours would be if they knew the truth about us. We'd never be left alone."

She had a point, yes, but he couldn't help but suspect that there was more to her desire for discretion than what she said. From the very moment he had heard her holler those words — he's not my boyfriend — he hadn't been able to escape the notion that she was….ashamed. Ashamed for people to think that they were dating. Ashamed of him.

He didn't have the courage to confront her about it directly — saying the words out loud would hurt more than he could bear. But he had to know. So he did something he rarely did anymore, even around her. He lowered his shields, completely. His mind, laid bare and unprotected, was immediately assaulted by a jumbled cacophony of her partially occluded thoughts and feelings. She was attracted to him, yes, but she wished that others were attracted to him as well. She craved the external validation that came with dating a conventionally handsome, popular bloke. A bloke like —

He abruptly threw his shields back up in a sudden instinct of emotional self-preservation. That was the trouble with reading people — the reason that nearly every Legilimens went round the twist eventually, even if they learnt occlumency — brutal honesty was a double edged sword. It was tempting to know what others really thought of you, but once you did know, you almost always wished you hadn't looked.

The conversation had not progressed the way that he had hoped it would. But what could he do? Lily obviously wanted to keep the romantic aspect of their relationship under wraps for now. He could put his foot down and refuse to play the cloak and dagger game. But what if she felt so uncomfortable with the whole school knowing that they were going out that she ended it? The very possibility made his stomach twist into knots. No, he couldn't risk that. He would just have to follow her lead. He had no other choice.

He nodded. "Okay," he choked out, ignoring the pain in his chest.

Lily smiled hesitantly, and he could see her shoulders droop in relief. "Well, I'm glad we talked about it...cleared things up instead of letting them fester into resentment," she said softly. Her hand was still resting on the back of his neck, and she rubbed her thumb in circles soothingly. He relaxed into her touch despite himself. It felt good — reassuring — even if he wished in that moment that it didn't. It made him realize how much he depended on her touch, and the thought terrified him.

"Yeah, me too," he echoed.

But he couldn't help feeling that things were far from cleared up.

"That's fucking creepy, mate," said Evan cheerfully, as he lounged against his bedpost. Severus had just finished telling him about Lily's gift.

"It's not," Severus insisted.

Evan regarded Severus as if he were a particularly dim first year. "No really, it is." At Severus's blank look, he ran an exasperated hand through his short ginger locks, making them stand on end. "Your girlfriend enchanted a set of two way mirrors so that she could watch you while you sleep. If that's not creepy bordering on stalker, then it's at the very least exceedingly clingy."

"But I can watch her sleep too," he pointed out.

Evan shook his head wearily. "That doesn't make it better."

Severus frowned. Didn't it?

"By the way, guess who I'm taking to Hogsmeade with me on Saturday?" asked Evan with a self-satisfied grin.

"Mercedes Shacklebolt?" he volunteered immediately.

Evan's face fell. "How'd you guess?"

Severus snorted. "I'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumber than a concussed troll not to notice the way you fawned all over her in class today." He twisted his face into a grimace. "I can't believe I'm stuck the rest of term working on a project with the two of you lovebirds."

"I was not fawning over her," enunciated Evan indignantly. "She was fawning over me."

It was moments like these when the familial relation between Rosier and Black showed itself so glaringly as to be unmissable.

"Keep telling yourself that, mate," he responded with a smirk.

Evan grumbled good-naturedly.

"Speaking of fawning all over girls, I suppose you're taking Evans to Hogsmeade?"

"I reckon so," said Severus slowly. "She hasn't said otherwise. Why?"

"Well, now that she's your girlfriend, you know she's going to expect you to take her to Madam Puddifoot's, right?" Evan threw his head back and laughed. "Oh, I can't wait to see you in there. You're going to love the decor," he crowed gleefully.

Severus motioned for Evan to quiet down. He darted his eyes about the empty room, before shutting the door with a wave of his wand.

"Yeah…about that…listen, could you keep it quiet, you know, about me and Lily?" he said in a hushed tone. At Evan's wrinkled brow, he fidgeted with the cuff of his sleeve, and sighed."Only, we've decided to keep it a secret for now. We get teased enough as it is, no sense adding fuel to the fire, yeah?"

He didn't know what reaction he had been expecting, but the expression on Evan's face caused Severus to lighten his shields. What he sensed from Evan surprised him: genuine sympathy laced with a slight bit of righteous indignation on behalf of his friend.

He didn't always act it, but Evan was a perceptive bloke, and he was right on the mark as usual. Severus studied the tapestry of Merlin and Nimue embracing on the far wall while Evan scrutinized him; he was embarrassed and dreading what his friend would say next.

But he needn't have been worried. "Yeah, sure thing mate. My lips are sealed; permanent sticking charm," he assured, and pressed his lips together, making a zipping motion across them with his right hand.

In that moment, Severus was forcibly reminded why he liked Evan so much. True, he could be self-absorbed, and shallow, and he had a certain roguish charm that at times reminded him of Sirius Black. But he had just allowed Severus to save face on the matter of his girlfriend, and that was, in his estimation, the mark of a true friend.

Author's Note 2: No footnotes this time! But hop on over to AO3 for pictures of Sev's gifts!

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