4th December 1971 - cont.

Lily's fury dissipated in her footfalls and by the time she'd made it to the portrait of the Fat Lady, she became aware of her own angry tears drying on her cheeks.

"What a lot of drama for a little first-year" the portrait commented dryly. Lily glowered at her and scrubbed her face with the back of her hand in an attempt to make it less obvious that she'd been upset.

"Perrywinkle," she muttered, and climbed wordlessly through the open portrait hole.

The common room was quite full, thanks to the grim weather. She couldn't see the other Gryffendor girls and supposed they must still be at breakfast. She did spot James Potter, along with Sirius and Peter in a far corner doing what she supposed must be homework - books were open in front of them. A few older students were dotted here and there, two brothers she thought were in the Gryffendor quidditch team were carefully repairing a deep scratch to a broom with a maintenance kit.

She had thought she would find Remus here, but it seemed she was mistaken. Lily knew it was probably fruitless, as he was friends with James Potter, but she didn't want that.. Meeting… to colour his opinion of Severus. But she supposed if he wasn't with Potter and his friends, she was out of luck.

Her stomach was turned with the fallout and she couldn't bear to try and join her dorm-mates for breakfast. She wished she hadn't lost track of time. Lily wasn't foolish enough to think that Severus' response was warranted, but in the aftermath, she did feel guilty that it was her absentmindedness that had put him in that mind-set in the first place.

Petunia had said she was careless and scatterbrained plenty over the years.

It was when the Gryffendor head boy came out of the door tucked in the right hand of the common room that it occurred to her.

She waited for him to leave the portrait hole, and scanned the room to check that the others were engrossed in their own pastimes and paying her no mind. Luckily she was inconspicuous as a small and relatively unknown first year. It seemed no one spotted her slip into the door leading to the boys dormitory staircase.

She climbed the stone steps to the first sub-landing and pushed it open.

As she'd guessed, there was Remus. His head snapped up from the book he was sitting reading on his bed. His eyebrows raised at the unexpected company, but he dog-eared his page, closed the book and smiled politely at her.

"Lily? Are you alright?"

She closed the door behind her and stepped into the room proper. It was an almost exact replica of her own dorm, bar the knick-knacks on the bedside tables.

"Yeah," she said, quietly. "I'm sorry about that."

Remus shuffled to the edge of his bed and faced her properly. "You don't have to say sorry."

But I do. If she let it happen, Severus would make no effort to be friendly with anyone, besides herself. And it wasn't fair to him. She couldn't be the only person in the world who saw the good in him.

She accepted the unspoken invitation and went to sit beside him.

"He's just… I don't know… he's just-"

"Scared?" Remus finished for her. "Sorry for interrupting."

"No, you're right, I think." Lily looked at Remus' perfectly neutral face carefully. "Scared… Sometimes I feel like he forgets that…" Lily bit her lip. It's maybe a bit unfair to be talking behind his back like this. Though Remus seemed… safe enough.

"He has something good, and doesn't want to lose it," Remus mused.

But the only thing stopping him from having it is holding it too tightly, she realised.

They sat in silence for a little while, Lily stared at her feet, then noticed Remus'. Or rather the bloody gauze peeking out from underneath his faded blue socks.

"What happened to your ankle?" she asked. Lily remembered back to early that term and the way Remus had limped into class, late. She felt him twitch next to her, then he reached down and self-consciously pulled his socks up.

"I just hurt it," he whispered stiffly. Lily raised an eyebrow at him, more interested than ever.

"You hurt it back in October, too, didn't you?" It wasn't really a question. He chewed his thumb nervously instead of answering.

"Remus."

Lily had only been vaguely interested, but the way he seemed to be looking for a way out of the conversation without creating more intrigue had convinced her to pursue it.

He seemed to wilt in front of her. The calm politeness had vanished from his face and behind it was something frightened and raw. She looked at the hand he was chewing. For the first time she noticed that he was missing a fingernail. His hands resembled her fathers more than her own. As a welder, he sported many small marks from burns and careless handling of sharp metal.

He couldn't meet her eyes.

"Remus, what's going on?" Her voice was careful and even. The same voice she saved for frightened animals and lost younger children.

The silence grew between them like a deep, dark trench. Lily's mind inexplicably thought of mineshafts.

After a long while, something small and brave reached out.

"I can't tell you." His voice was barely more than a whisper. Lily thought his eyes looked wet.

"You can."

It was that simple.

He wiped his eyes, a little roughly and met her gaze. His eyes are green, too, she noticed.

"I'm a… I…" He struggled for a moment. "I bit it." Lily said nothing and Remus heaved a wobbly breath before continuing. "Sorry, no, it's not that. Well, it is that, I didn't lie. It's that… I'm a werewolf."

Lily's expression didn't change. A vague memory presented itself to her.

"So, wizards and witches, what about warlocks?"

"Just another word for wizard," Severus answered.

"Okay, what about vampires and banshees and werewolves?"

Severus laughed. "I mean, kind of. But they're not just, like, normal. You wouldn't see one in school or something."

Well, he was wrong about one thing, Lily thought, mildly.

"Please… Lily…" Remus' hands were shaking. She reached out and took them, thoughtlessly.

"I… I don't really know what that means, Remus." Her voice was little more than a whisper. He had the air of someone confessing a great sin, but it had little significance to her, other than guilt at making him so upset. "Well, I do, but… I don't know how I'm supposed to feel."

Apparently unable to hold himself together any longer, he sobbed. Once. Then groaned in frustration, unable to stop the second, then the third. She was swimming out of her depth, out at sea, flailing desperately for the right thing to do as she watched her classmate sit in front of her and sob, head down, tears dropping into his lap, his hands shaking in hers.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to him. He glanced up. His face was wet with tears and snot, mouth quivering, eyes puffy.

So this was the small, brave thing that reached out, she realised.

All she could do was pull him in for a hug. With his hot face hidden safely in her shoulder, he could do nothing to gather himself together. The light was on, he'd been exposed, and worst of all, he'd been seen. It was all he could do not to wail.

Lily got her shining moment.

My resolute headcanon is that Remus told Lily he was a werewolf long before James and Sirius worked it out behind his back.

The chapter is a little short, but hopefully it's solid enough to make up for the brevity.