Lily woke up the next morning and automatically reached for the skirt, but the moment her fingers wrapped around the gray cloth she suddenly felt very tired. Dragging it over legs, clasping it closed, making sure her white slip was hidden away, keeping her ankles primly crossed and her knees together– it was too much effort. After a long night like the one before, she was exhausted. So, she dropped the skirt and picked up James's trousers instead.
Mary and Marlene gave her twin looks. "What?" Lily groused, as she fixed her red-and-gold tie.
"You're wearing the boy's uniform."
"So?"
"You'll get in trouble."
"There's no rule against it."
She went down to the common room and immediately all eyes turned to her. Lily swallowed and felt the blood rise to her cheeks (she always hated it when she blushed; red on red on red), but she tilted her nose up as she took those final steps. James was looking at her like a Cheshire Cat, all wide grins and sly eyes. "You look good wearing my clothes," he commented as she passed.
"I look good in anything," she replied and ducked through the portrait.
She hurried to the Great Hall and slid into a seat at the Gryffindor table. Sev was already there across the room. He ate quickly, without looking up ("No one's going to take it from you," she told him once). Sirius's little brother was next to him and glaring daggers at her. Had he been there the night of the duel? Was he angry that a Mudblood like her had won against a Pureblood? Lily flashed him a cheeky grin and waved cheerfully, which made his fierce scowl even fiercer.
Satisfied that he wouldn't dare try anything here, with the teachers overseeing from the high table, she brushed back her long hair and reached for a plate of eggs and toast. Most days she loved her hair; she loved the color and the length and the slight curl. She liked how pretty it made her feel. But on days like this when she was tired, and her skin was itchy, and the hair felt thick and heavy lying against her back, like at any moment it would become too much and snap her neck in half, she wished she could take a pair of scissors and cut it all off. Her mother would fall in a dead faint if Lily came home with short hair, and the thought was almost enough to make her do it, but then she'd probably be locked in the house for the entire summer until it grew back.
It was Double Potions this morning, then Double Herbology after lunch. She made plans to go back to the Dueling Ground before dinner and make a tracing of those glyphs. There had to be a meaning behind them; they might hold the key to breaking the binding.
She felt more than saw James slide into the seat next to her. "Remus told me you came into our room and took a pair of trousers and my Snitch," he whispered into her ear. "Wanted something to remember me by?"
"The uniform skirts don't have pockets," Lily mumbled into her pumpkin juice, feeling her face heat up again.
"But you look so cute in them–"
Cute. Any other day, Lily might have been flattered at being called cute. She might have giggled and playfully scolded him, but today it only made that itchy feeling worse. It made her want to tear off her own skin. She wanted to tell him that sweet, cute Lily Evans had gone up against the likes of Adam Mulciber and won. She hadn't needed James to swoop in and rescue her.
She watched Sev duck out of the hall as it started to fill up with more students. With a mumbled, "see you in class," to James, she hurried after him. She watched as his shoulders visibly tensed when the sound of her footsteps echoed behind him, and he didn't relax, not even when she fell into step beside him, knowing it wasn't James or Mulciber or any of those other boys stalking him. "What do you want?" He asked, sounding tired.
She hated that he was so guarded around her – her – when it should have been the other way around, her a Muggleborn and him constantly hanging around a bunch of blood purists. "Can't a girl walk her fiancé to class?" She quipped.
"You think you're so funny."
"I do, in fact. I'm hilarious. You're just a sourpuss."
He huffed – in scorn or amusement, Lily wasn't sure – and hurried down into the dungeons for Potions, Lily following every step of the way. He took his usual seat up front, frowning when Lily slipped into the spot next to him (her old seat, before the fight, and it felt like coming home). "What are you doing?" He demanded.
"Pulling out my notes," she answered.
"Your seat is back there. Next to Potter."
"Oh? Is this spot occupied?"
It wasn't. It never was, not since Lily had vacated it last year. No one dared sit next to Severus Snape, no matter how good he was at Potions.
"I was talking to James about the Dueling Ground–"
"Did you tell him?" He hissed, his pale, sallow face losing what little color he possessed.
"No, I didn't. I just asked him what he knew about the place. He said the wards down there were made with dark magic that required a human sacrifice. And look, I found this old medieval ballad about Godric Gryffindor burying a woman alive during the building of the school." She pulled out her notes from last night and pushed it toward Sev.
He picked it up with a frown. "An old folk song is hardly proof of anything," he pointed out.
"A lot of folk songs are based on real events, and even if the details are wrong, there's still a good chance a woman had been sacrificed and immured during the school's construction. I found references to the practice, like in The Building of Skadar. They did it to ensure the building would never fall, that it would go on surviving for millennia." She leaned forward, making sure Sev was looking at her. "If we got more information, we could break the binding. Let's meet at the Dueling Ground this afternoon. I want to get a tracing of the glyphs; we might be able to find out what they mean."
Sev looked at her with dead, empty eyes. "And then what?" He asked.
Lily blinked. "What do you mean?"
"Let's say you do find a way to break the binding and you 'rescue' me. What then? We go back to being strangers? What else would you want?"
"God, Sev, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, we need to worry about your safety!" She hissed. Lily didn't understand him at times, couldn't understand what squirmed in his brain. She was trying to look at the big picture, to focus first on the basics – keep Sev away from Mulciber, free him, protect him – and he was worried about the state of their relationship?
Sev shook his head, eyes shifting away from her. "It was different before Hogwarts, I felt more like your equal then. But since then– my debts keep mounting. Do you know what the teachers used to say, before we stopped being friends? They said I was lucky to have you as a friend. It was never the other way around. Nobody ever said you were lucky to have me. You always used to look so pleased and proud whenever you bought me the supplies I needed, or told off Potter, or when there'd be a group assignment and no one would volunteer to pair with me– no one but you. I'd wait and then, at what felt like the last second, you'd come to my rescue, and you smiled. People would say, 'Lily is so kind and good to be nice to Snivellus.' I don't want–" he took a deep breath. "I don't want this to be something else I can't repay."
"Sev–"
The classroom door opened again and Slughorn shuffled inside, followed by their classmates. Only James – with his dreams of being an auror – had opted to take Advanced Potions. Poor Sirius didn't get a high enough score on his O.W.L.s and now was left floundering. What was he going to do if he couldn't become an auror with James? But without Sirius, and her friendship with Sev in tatters, it had been natural for she and James to team up. James stopped in the middle of the doorway, forcing the other students to squeeze past him, as he stared in shocked disbelief of seeing Lily sitting next to Snape once more.
Someone knocked into his shoulder and Lily watched as he slowly came back to himself, his expression darkening as he took one step in front of the other, towards the back, to where they had sat together all term. Sev didn't look up, didn't acknowledge either James or Lily, but kept his gaze on the notes he was taking.
Herbology went more or less the same as Potions had, with Sev doing his damned best to pretend she didn't exist, but with the added benefit that James wasn't there to glare holes into the back of his skull. Remus and Peter did share their class and from the furtive glances they kept shooting her, she knew they would report to James everything that went on between her and Sev. That itchy feeling grew and grew as the class droned on.
"Miss Evans," Professor Sprout called out. "Could you please demonstrate the proper spell required for harvesting a Bouncing Bulb?"
Lily nodded and lifted her wand, pointing it at the large potted plant. In a pot that big, the bulb was probably the size of a dog, and it would need to be restrained, lest it aggressively start attacking. She had intended to use a simple levitation charm to lift it free from its confines. But the moment she uttered the phrase, "wingardium leviosa," a surge of raw power rushed through her, lighting up through her chest and arm and to the tips of her fingers until she thought pure fire was erupting from her hands. The bulb was ripped free with such force that it shot straight through the ceiling, shattering the roof of the greenhouse and sending a rain of broken glass on top of them.
"Yes, well, a bit more gently next time, Miss Evans," Professor Sprout wheezed, looking very bewildered as she shook out the glass from her hair. "That was an extraordinary amount of power you just used. Sit down, you must be feeling dizzy after a display like that."
Lily didn't feel dizzy. She felt like she could do it again and again and again if she wanted to, but she sat down anyway.
"That's a good girl, I– oh! Mr. Snape! Are you hurt? Did the glass cut you?"
Lily looked at Sev and saw blood running between his white fingers where they were cupped against his nose. "No, I'm fine. Just a nosebleed," he said, his voice muffled.
"You two better head on to the infirmary, just to be on the safe side."
They both nodded and left the greenhouse. "Are you sure you're okay?" Lily asked, looking over Sev critically as he hurried along. He looked peaked.
"Fine," he said, wiping at his nose. At least the bleeding had stopped.
They crossed the threshold into the school and Lily gave him a grin. "So… glyphs?" She wasn't tired, Sev was looking better, why waste a visit to the infirmary when they could get started researching?
Sev sighed but followed her back down to the Dueling Ground. The entrance looked a lot less menacing in the light of day, but still eerily tragic and somber. Stepping into the vast cistern, the torches lining the walls immediately lit up with enchanted fire. She circled the edge of the glyphs, taking her time to look over the intricately carved columns and the vaulted ceiling. She gasped as she stepped inside the glyph she had been instructed to remain in when she dueled Mulciber. The ceiling… she hadn't noticed it that night, but the ceiling was enchanted just like the one in the Great Hall. Except it didn't show the sky, but a distorted, Wonderland version of Hogwarts. The castle was upside down, like she was soaring above it from a great height, and it laid in ruins. Gryffindor Tower had collapsed, old, mossy stones were spread across the windswept grasses, the courtyard was a tangle of English ivy.
Sev came to stand next to her. "Max claims it's the glamour Muggles see if they ever happened to stumble on Hogwarts, but Max flunked both Charms and History, so what does he know?"
Lily tore her gaze away from the sight. Glamour or not, it sent a chill down her spine. "Okay, let's start making our tracings. I can recognize a few runes in them, I'm sure we'll be able to figure out what they mean with a bit of research."
"That one is a protection glyph against enemies," Sev said, pointing to one in a dusty corner. He pointed to another. "That one is for a strong foundation– used either metaphorically, the foundation of a marriage, or literally, as in Hogwarts's foundation, could be both. That is one for growing, that one is for enchantment, one for loyalty, one for entrapment."
Lily stared at him. Sev let out a snort. "You think I didn't do my own research the moment Mulciber won me?"
Lily threw up her hands. "You could have told me from the start! Is there a way to break them?"
"I couldn't even fully decipher them. Like that one, the entrapment glyph." He walked over to a glyph that just barely intersected the glyph Lily was standing in. "Some of the runes are also seen in old marriage contracts, but these right here? Those are used when binding ghosts." Severus scowled. "They're very old, probably carved when the castle was built. A lot of the magic used in their making has been lost."
Lily chewed on her lip as she stared at him. The candlelight made his hair shine. "You said you only started researching after Mulciber won you, did… did you like the person you were engaged to before?"
Sev looked down, his black hair falling forward so that it curtained his face. "Well enough… it was Reg."
"Reg," Lily said flatly. "Regulus Black was engaged to a half-blood? Were you planning to elope?"
"No, his parents agreed to it."
Lily heard the words, but they didn't make sense. She heard enough about Sirius's parents from James to know they considered a half-blood only slightly better than a Muggleborn, fit enough to scrape and bow as servants instead of outright exterminating them.
"There were extenuating circumstances."
"Which were?"
"Nothing I'll tell you."
Lily folded her arms and said, her voice harsh, "Do you want to be engaged to him again?"
"What?"
"You suggested a mock duel to transfer the engagement. Do you want it to be Black?" The words tasted bitter in her mouth, both at the thought of giving Sev away like he was an object, and at giving him to Regulus Black.
Sev thought on it for a moment before shaking his head. "He's a mediocre duelist. Mulciber would just win again."
A soft sigh escaped her lips. "Then for now, we'll stick together." She tried not to sound too pleased about it. "We're a team, okay? That means we work together."
Sev sighed, jerked his head in a way that Lily decided to interpret as a nod, and watched him leave.
Severus's legs felt like lead as he dragged himself down to the dungeons. He was exhausted, and all because of a simple levitating charm. Lily Evans was going to be the death of him.
He reached his room and pushed it open to find it empty, except for Reg sitting on the edge of his bed. "Hello, I didn't see Mulciber for lunch today," Severus commented as he stepped inside.
Reg smirked. "Rosier had a long talk with him. He's still in the infirmary, I hear."
"Ha, good. How have you been? The Dark Lord wasn't upset when you lost to Mulciber, was he?"
Reg scowled. "No, he seemed to think it funny. I don't think he cares much about who gets you, so long it's one of us." He shot Severus a significant look. "He won't be pleased when he hears a Mudblood's won you."
Severus swallowed thickly. "I can get her to agree to a mock duel."
"It's too late for that. I don't like Mulciber; honestly, I don't think anyone likes him. But he's ours and she's humiliated him. She's got to pay for that."
Severus felt frozen as Reg stood up and cupped the back of his neck. "I'll go as easy as I can on her, for you. But the other Slytherins won't let her get away with a mock duel. And, honestly, it's best to just rip the bandage off now. I know you care about her, but what do you think is going to happen to her when the Dark Lord wins the war?"
