"Are you sure?" Mary kept asking.

"Yes," was Lily's answer, every time. Mary frowned, but trimmed Lily's butchered hair into something resembling a proper haircut. For a boy, at least.

"Because I know a spell that can make it long again, or there's potions," Mary continued on. "Or if you want it short, we can do something stylish. Maybe chin length."

"No, thank you," Lily said as she watched the hair fall to her feet. She kept stealing glances at her face (his face) in the mirror. She looked like a boy… like a really young boy, some snot-nosed firstie instead of a proper teenager. Her face was too round, her jaw too soft. She wanted the reflection staring back at her to be tall and masculine and maybe a little rugged. She wanted him to be as handsome as Lily Evans was pretty. The reflection threw her a wink and Lily smiled back at him. She'll have to give him a proper name. They couldn't both be Lily Evans. She felt that Lily wasn't a proper name for him, and besides, Lily was starting to feel too small for her too. Lily was that little girl who wore dresses and make-up, who was the apple of her mother's eye, who wasn't allowed to have dreams beyond marriage and children because Mum thought feminism was the worst thing to happen to women and motherhood was the greatest joy a woman could ever hope to achieve. Lily was the girl who had let James Potter place her on a pedestal, because at least then she was somebody. She… he… didn't really know who he was anymore.

"All done," Mary said and brushed the hair from Lily's shoulders. "What do you think?"

"It's perfect," he said and gave a sudden jolt because the voice – the high-pitched, girlish voice that she had always had – sounded so incongruous coming out of his mouth.

Mary smiled. "I'm glad to help. Going to the library?"

Lily shook his head. "The infirmary. I've got to drop something off for Sev."

"You know, James is pretty broken-hearted. He's been moping around the castle all day…"

"He'll get over it. We all have to learn to accept disappointment sooner or later," Lily said. If he could accept Sev's rejection, then James will just have to learn to accept Lily's. Lily hefted his bag onto his shoulder and left Gryffindor Tower, keeping his head up high as he ignored the whispers around him, the fingers pointing at the uniform he wore, his short hair. Let them talk. Who were they to judge? Idiots, with their too small minds clinging to old ideas. They lived in a world where it was possible to transfigure a needle into a mouse, and suddenly a girl turning into a boy was somehow beyond the scope of their imagination? Sev was right. They were dunderheads.

Lily entered the infirmary and spotted Sev leaning back against a pillow, a book in his lap. He looked up and his eyes met hers, and suddenly, without knowing how, she was a girl again, the illusion ripped away as she nervously tugged on the sleeve of her robe. What would he think? What would he say? Would he laugh? A myriad of emotions flashed across Sev's face at the sight of her, first confusion followed by something close to glee as he cracked a grin. "Has Potter seen your new look?" He asked. "I bet he's devastated. I still remember the words to that poem he wrote you in third year. Your hair is like a sunset–"

"Stop talking before I obliviate you," she growled and dropped into the chair beside his bed. She glared at him, to which he only stared blandly back. "Well?" She huffed out.

"Well what?"

"Is Potter the only thing you care about? Don't you have an opinion about… about all this?" She gestured to herself, to her short hair to the boy's uniform. "Everybody seems to have something to say about it."

"Lily, you know my family was poor enough that I had to wear my mother's hand-me-downs. I'm the last person in the world to criticize you for dressing like a boy."

Lily huffed out something like a laugh, and something like a sigh. He'd forgotten that this was Sev, the weirdest boy in school. If anyone would be able to understand, it would be him. "Well, what if it's not just the hair and clothes?" Lily asked, his voice challenging. "What if it's… more?"

"More how?" He looked puzzled, as if he genuinely didn't understand what she meant and Lily shifted awkwardly in her seat, feeling suddenly like a fraud, like a kid playing dress-up.

"Like… What if I want all of it? Adam's apple, beard... cock? What if I don't want to be Lily Evans anymore?" Lily lifted his chin defiantly, pushing past his fears and anxiety to lay the truth at Sev's feet.

Sev wrinkled his nose in a mixture of disgust and confusion, and Lily felt his heart sink to his knees at the sight. "You really want to be a man? Why? Being a girl is so much better. If I had a choice, I think I would choose to be a girl."

Lily sat there, unsure if she had heard him correctly - he seemed utterly oblivious to what he had just said, and was she just being sensitive, was she reading too much into it – before blurting out, "Wait… what? Do… do you want to be a girl?"

Sev snapped his mouth shut, his lips pressing into a thin, hard line. "No, no," he said, but his shoulders were shrugging in a maybe. "I just… I want to be me and I can't be that without everybody criticizing me for it. Because I'm too emotional, because I have long hair, because I like potions and I'm not athletic and I'm hysterical and a crybaby and a bitch. I have never measured up enough to qualify as a 'man,' so maybe I was never supposed to be one in the first place." He turned away from Lily. "But I think I could be happy with being me if everybody else would just leave me alone."

Lily leaned forward and snagged his hand. "That is exactly how I feel."

"But you seemed to fit your role so perfectly," Sev protested, finally turning to look back up at him.

Lily shrugged. "I didn't think there was any choice in the matter, and… I liked the praise. All that positive attention. It made me feel like I was doing something right even if… it didn't quite fit on the inside." He scrubbed his face with his other hand. "That sounded really shallow, didn't it? God, I wish I was more like you. You don't care what anyone thinks. No matter what James or Sirius or anyone else said or did, you didn't let them stop you."

Sev barked out a laugh. "Trust me, I've been plenty swayed by praise and a pat on the head. That's how I ended up in this mess in the first place, because I wanted the Dark Lord's praise." The smile on his face turned bitter. "You were right. I should have listened to you."

"I should have done more to help you, I should have–"

"I shouldn't have agreed to that contract in the first place, I shouldn't have said what I said, let's just…" He took a deep breath. "I just want to be friends again, like we used to be before Hogwarts and… and everything, and I know you're only helping me because you feel morally obligated, but after–"

"I want to be friends again too," Lily said and Sev squeezed his hand.

"Do you… still want to be called Lily?" He asked.

Lily shrugged. "I don't know. It doesn't fit, but I don't have any other name to replace it. I don't know, it's too confusing, let's focus on the bond." He started pulling out his notes because an unbreakable marriage bond seemed easier to tackle than something as nebulous as gender.

"Were you able to find anything?"

"There's not much. The first wizard to bear the surname Prince was a French battlemage named Louis le Prince, sometimes called Louis the Bastard because he was an illegitimate son of the French King Henry I and an unnamed witch. He sailed to Britain with William the Conqueror and took part in the Battle of Hastings. Funnily enough, Godric Gryffindor also fought in the battle on the side of Harold Godwinson, and was captured and imprisoned, though he must have been pushing one hundred at the time, not that age seems to matter much to wizards. Just look at Dumbledore. Anyway, you know how the battle goes, William wins, becomes king, and gives land to Louis le Prince as a reward for his service. Louis marries a local Anglo-Saxon witch from a family of 'traitors' that supported William the Conqueror's claim to the English throne. Her name was Mildthryth or Mildred. Her family must have had a blood feud with the Gryffindors, because she demanded the head of Godric Gryffindor in exchange for her hand in marriage, but by then Gryffindor had already escaped prison and disappeared. She ended up marrying Louis le Prince anyway, even without Gryffindor's head." Lily shrugged. "After that, it gets pretty boring. The standard ups and downs of a noble Wizarding family. Winning land, losing land, plotting murders, marrying cousins. Same old, same old. There was nothing that stood out." Lily frowned. "The only difference between the Princes and, say, the Malfoys or the Selwyns, was that I couldn't find any record of a Prince attending Hogwarts until after the reign of Queen Elizabeth and the Statute of Secrecy was enacted. But, even then, it's not that uncommon. A lot of old Pureblood families chose to privately tutor their children at home. It was a sign of wealth and status, whereas Hogwarts was a place for Muggleborns and Half-Bloods and poor Pureblood relations."

"Maybe they were banned," Sev mused as he leaned back against his pillows and closed his eyes. He was already growing sluggish with exhaustion. "They did demand the head of one of the founders. Looks like that's another dead end." He swallowed, and Lily watched his throat bob with the motion. His neck was long and pale, and stretched out on the pillow like he was Lily could see every curve and dip. "I'm sorry," Sev said without opening his eyes.

"It's not your fault."

Sev cracked one eye open to glare at him and Lily huffed. "Yes, alright, you shouldn't have agreed to the contract. You shouldn't have gotten involved with Death Eaters. But this is still something that was done to you. You don't deserve this."

"Neither do you," Sev said. "Especially not you."

Lily looked defiantly down at him. "I'm not sorry I got involved. I'll never be sorry. I want to help you. Please let me help. I don't want your gratitude, I don't want you to owe me a debt if that's what you're scared of, I just want to be with you."

Sev bit his lip. "Would you abandon me completely if I said I knew a Dark spell that might tell us more about my family?"

"No," Lily insisted, but then he frowned. "How Dark?"

"Very Dark."


James sat by himself while Slughorn droned on about the potion they would be making next week, the chair beside him – Lily's chair – was conspicuously empty. James tugged the Marauder's Map out from underneath his notes. His eyes immediately fell on the dot that was labeled Lily Evans, still in the infirmary, hovering right beside the one named Severus Snape. They hadn't spoken to each other in over a year. How had Snivellus wormed his way back into Lily's good graces? This was all his fault. He was always telling Lily not to bother with James, trying to come between them, whispering poison into Lily's ear so that he could have her all to himself. Snivellus had done something to her. Lily – the Lily James knew – would never act like this.

It was the only thing that made sense to him. Snivellus was trying to isolate her, trying to get her to push away all of her friends so that he could trap her in his web. Maybe he was dosing her with a potion. Maybe it was Dark magic. The slimy bat was obsessed with the Dark Arts.

James jerked in place and shoved the map back under his notes as Adam Mulciber slid into Lily's seat. "You have a death wish?" James hissed at him, but instead of running back to the rest of those Death Eater wannabes, Mulciber just grinned and held up his hands in supplication.

"I'm not here to cause trouble, well, I am, but not for you. Snape's been begging for a beating, and I know how much you and your friends enjoy doing that." He leaned forward and whispered, "You want to know why Evans has started hanging around him again? It's because they're engaged."