Buddies

For the next few days, Sev didn't look at her once, or at least Lily didn't see him, but now her confidence was so strong that on Wednesday, in Potions class, she stuck to her guns, preparing the ingredients even more meticulously and slowly than ever to the edge of the table, slightly sideways, so that he wouldn't miss a thing. Cecile didn't seem to notice her new attitude, as Lily expected.

She took longer than usual to start brewing the potion to give Sev time to work on his, and before long she saw him go to the cupboard and back slowly as he looked around the room. When he reached her level, without looking at her, he slid a piece of parchment on the table, next to her hand, which she already had ready to receive, and her fingers brushed for a split second.

She crumpled it up, hiding it, took it under the bench and unfolded it there to read it. Sev's neat, tight handwriting read:

Add only 3 juniper berries and not 4.

After stirring clockwise, do wait for the potion to settle before stirring counterclockwise.

He made one more trip to the cupboard, but this time he passed nothing to her on the table, from which she deduced that he had dropped the note in the backpack by the hallway. She waited a minute and took it out. Unfolding the parchment ball, she could see that it was written on both sides. In one he detailed the following instruction and in the other he said:

It is better to give you the note in your hand, it is less visible than the table or the backpack. So get ready for the next class, there will be no more today. Thanks for your help.

Lily hadn't expected, seeing Sev's attitude the past few days, that he would already make an appointment for her DADA class, but realizing that they wouldn't have any more contact until a week later, she was sad.

And even more so when she realized that he was risking much more than she was in the plot, and he was still thanking her, while she couldn't tell him anything. Once again Sev was doing a lot more of his side and he was in complete control, and that wasn't Lily's plan.

He finished the potion before she did because obviously she must have been working late to wait for his instructions, but she still finished it on time. In the past they had always been the first to complete the brewing of the potions.

That day Slughorn congratulated them both for their results after a month without doing it, visibly satisfied that his two best students had recovered the excellence they achieved working together also separately.

'What will he know? He doesn't know anything.' The bad thing was that he proclaimed it out loud in front of the whole class, pronouncing their surnames together in the same sentence, drawing attention to them that wasn't convenient to them at all.

Three weeks passed like this. The contrast between the complicity between the two on Wednesday mornings - now they brushed hands every time Sev handed her a note - and his indifference - despite never seeing her with Remus anymore, he only gave her fleeting glances and terse greetings the rest of the time, to which she always responded with her best smile - was disconcerting.

But Lily was not daunted, she had decided to respect his pace, although she was impatient that he still hadn't appointed her for DADA classes. Perhaps he had backed down on that.

But in the fourth Potions class since the ruse began, in which Sev had been making two or three trips to the ingredient cupboard to pass messages back to her without anyone apparently noticing, Slughorn scolded him in one of his wanderings.

"Mr. Snape! Can't you gather all the ingredients at the beginning of the class, like the rest of the students? I don't see the need for you to wander around the room distracting those who are working."

Lily felt her face redden to the roots of her hair, and Sev's cheeks took on some color as well. They must have expected it, they were doing it so surreptitiously that Slughorn hadn't noticed anything. Had he figured out the ruse, he most certainly would have covered for them as Sev predicted, but by not doing so, he was exposing him.

Sev responded quickly and surely with a not very good excuse that he must have prepared for such an eventuality. "I do it because that way I organize myself better. I take them as I use them and I have more space to work, sir."

The whole class was already attentive to the controversy, in fact Lily could hear muffled laughter coming from the bench behind her, where the quartet was sitting, although of course not Remus's, and the teacher's response didn't help dissipate it.

"That doesn't seem like a good reason to me, Mr. Snape. The benches are wide enough."

He no longer had an answer to that, and without answering and with his eyes on the ground he quickly went to his place, obviously without leaving the note he was carrying for Lily, since all the students were following him with their eyes.

'By Merlin! How were we so naive to think that it could turn out well?' And on top of that, once again, it was he who had taken all the risk. Lily felt horrible, because the whole plan had sprung from her whim, and also because now they were also going to be deprived of that little trick that brought them together.

She had gotten into the habit of glancing at him shortly after he left the instructions as Remus had recommended, despite the risk of being seen by the snakes, because it seemed like the only way she could thank him for his help, although almost always she found him focused on his work.

This time she waited a reasonable time before doing so, so that the class would forget the incident and no one would notice. She just wanted to check how he was doing. When she turned she saw him write quickly on a piece of parchment. He always took his notes in his book, never took notes in parchment, so he must be writing to her. Was he crazy? How did he intend to pass it to her? She had to warn him not to do it.

She continued to cast quick glances at him and the Slytherins, who were concentrating on trying to rectify their usual goops. She finally caught him, and while she shook her head slightly, trying to transmit a gesture of alarm, he, serious and confident, pointed to the backpack with his finger and lowered his eyes again to continue writing.

Well, the note didn't look like an instruction, it was much longer. He surely wanted to tell her something else, clarify what had happened. She would leave her backpack open and wait for him to leave before her at the end of class so he could threw it.

She took time to clean up, as Sev seemed to be waiting for the snakes to come out before he did. They left at last, and so did the quartet, and he brushed past her, dropping the ball of parchment into her backpack. Knowing that there was no one behind to see them, Lily lightly stroked his arm through his robe.

He turned to look at her and whispered, "See you." And he left.

She still waited another minute to get out so they wouldn't associate her lateness with him, because she knew that Cecile and Mary would be waiting for her at the door of the classroom to go to the Ancient Runes class, which they had next.

"How much you took Li! We're going to be late for the next one," Mary reproached her.

"I'm so sorry, go ahead, I have to go to the bathroom." She wanted to read his message as soon as possible, she expected that Sev would give up helping her in Potions but she didn't care. She didn't want him to take any risks again.

"Well, we'll wait for you, but don't be late," Cecile told her.

"No, seriously, go without me, I think I'm going to be late and they'll deduct points from all of us."

"Okay, see you in class," Cecile said, looking at her understandingly and taking the other's arm to leave.

She slipped into the dungeon bathrooms and locked herself in a toilet to read the note. It said:

You see what happened today. We need to talk and come up with another plan. Can you meet Friday after school?

If you can, give me a signal today at lunch and meet me in the entrance hall on Friday. When you see me, follow me at a certain distance, I will show you the way.

Make sure no one follows you. Carry your wand.

If you can't come, don't worry, I'll find you.

She sighed in relief. Not because she thought they could fix the Potions mess, but because they were finally going to be able to talk. Of course she would go, and even if she had any other commitment, she would have called it off immediately.

She ran up the stairs to the Runes classroom and on the way she was thinking that she didn't care about all the silly excuses she had made for being with him. She only wanted that, to be with him, she would let him know without further delay.

Delay. Gryffindor was deducted five points for her being late to class.