Killer, thriller
Lily sees Sirius coming yards away.
She was shunned the entire morning by the ‘Marauders’ (Or so they called themselves, which Lily privately thought was a bit ridiculous). It didn’t matter to her much, Marlene and Mary still spoke to her, despite the odd tension at the table.
Now, one thing about Sirius is that he can hold a grudge. It’s a habit all the boys share. Guilty until proven innocent, and all that. Despite this, if it’s someone he cares about, he can’t stay mad for long.
So, Lily isn’t surprised when she spots him walking towards her in the courtyard, with all the faux confidence of a movie star. She flips through her book, not really reading but feeling the need to pretend she’s busy.
“Evans.” Sirius says, plopping down on the bench next to her, arm draped over the back of her seat. She privately rolls her eyes.
“Are you done throwing a fit?”
He sputters, laughing a bit. “I was not throwing a fit. Prongs, however…”
Lily resists the urge to roll her eyes again. She was aware of the reason for their nicknames, having been let in on the secret when she befriended Sirius, but she thought they could’ve at least picked better ones. Prongs? Really?
“Yes, well. James is being dramatic.”
Sirius looks at her, suddenly very serious. “Is he?”
This is the hard part. The pity, like she’d been slipped a love potion in her sleep. As if she wasn’t of age and fully capable of making her own romantic decisions. She loathed the way they acted like she needed supervision, especially where Severus was concerned.
She flips her book closed, crossing her legs and gesturing towards him. “Well? Get on with it.”
“Well there’s been a rumor…”
“Which are notoriously true.”
He ignores her jab. “That you were seen talking to Sniv— Snape again.” Sirius puts his hands up in defense. “Now I just wanted to look after you and make sure—“
Lily remembers the last night she spent out with Sirius, it was somewhere in Muggle London that he’d been hellbent on visiting. They were the only two still out, everybody else having surrendered to the night and went home. He got drunk and leaned his head on her shoulder, proclaiming that she was in fact, his best friend.
It felt nice at the time.
“Make sure ?” Lily repeats, making sure the anger lingers in her voice.
Weirdly, she wishes Severus were here. She shakes the feeling.
“Well, I’m all for a laugh of course– but–”
Sirius is smart. That’s the thing. Underneath all of the bravado and arrogance, he’s really quite brilliant. She knows what he’s trying to do. It’s just that the next thing is that Lily is smarter.
Lily fumes. “We were just talking, how dare you assume– after everything– ” She points an accusatory finger at him, standing up and whipping around to face him.
“Were you just talking in potions class too?”
She gapes, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “That’s nothing– It was–”
“Look,” Sirius motions for her to sit down, and she does. He squeezes the bridge of his nose as if she is being incredibly frustrating. “I don’t personally care who you date or whatever, but I also don’t fancy seeing you hurt again.”
Lily falters, just for a second.
Nobody saw her cry before that day, ever, and her father died in second year. Sirius was the one who found her, actually, as an accident. It was what sparked their friendship. She hated him at first, of course, but he was there for her in his own way. He was fun, and she really needed that at the time.
“I won’t tell James.” Her eyebrows furrow at the use of his first name. Sirius is almost never– well– serious. She knows that he’s not really offering to keep her ‘secret’ for her, and more to protect James. “But I think– I think we all sort of expected it. You and him.” He pauses, and then says, more to himself like an esoteric joke: “Magnets.”
“I– Thank you…” Lily moves to stand up, unsure of what to say, “I know what I’m doing Sirius.”
He gives her a very serious look, a meaningful twitch of his eyebrow. “I sure hope so.”
Yeah, She thinks, I do too.
Lily looks out onto the water, it wrinkles like messy fabric in the gentle wind. They’re far enough away from everybody that the sounds of laughter are distant as a memory. She leans forward, running her hand over the surface of the lake, letting the water cool her hand.
“I trust Black ‘knows’ now?” He says, the air quotes implied, as he sits down next to her.
She smiles a bit. “I let him believe he got it out of me.”
When she looks over his gaze is already fixed on her, wide black eyes pouring into her soul. She almost looks away from the intensity of it, but she decides to meet it head on.
“What about Burbage?” Lily asks, lifting her hand from the water and drying it on her patterned tights.
“She knows.”
Lily nods. She finds that it’s easier than she thought it’d be, spending so much time with him. In a way, it’s a lot like it was before.
When she met him, at nine years old, her entire life changed. It shaped her, in a way, being friends with him. It was as if there was a distinct line drawn through the fabric of her life. A ‘before’ Severus, and an ‘after’ Severus. She’s only eighteen, but she knows that she’ll remember all of it for the rest of her life. Before, there may have been other stories she could tell, but in the after there’s only him. He’s her great mystery, the big, otherworldly connection she felt once and never again.
A part of her always knew they weren’t over, there was always a small part of her waiting for him to show up at her door again. They’ll never be the same, she doesn’t want them to, but Severus will never be entirely out of her life, no matter how much she tells herself she wants him gone.
Lily changes the subject. “Sirius said he won’t tell James.” She looks down at her hands, and then ahead at the water. The sun is setting, casting an orange glow across the surface.
A nervous sort of smile ghosts his face, quirking up at the side of his mouth. “Not ideal.” He remarks.
“No,” But she’s smiling too. “Not ideal.”
“We’ll have to be more… obvious.”
She exhales shakily, looking over. “Oh, hold on, you have something in your hair.”
It’s a leaf, right on top of his head. Lily reaches out, and almost pulls her hand back before shaking her head and thinking better of it.
Severus’s face turns red as she plucks the leaf out, her knuckles grazing his head. She swears she heard his breath hitch.
She almost pulls back, but a thought pops up in her head. Without thinking, she speaks. “Can I kiss you?”
His head moves so fast it’s almost comical, searching her face as if she was slipped a love potion. Severus’s face turns a shade darker. “What.” Again: like a statement.
“We’ll have to do it eventually. And it’ll be obvious if we’ve only kissed once. You remember, surely?” Lily is toying with him a bit, but she can’t really help it. It’s too easy.
“I remember.” He breathes.
“Sooooo…. can I?” Her heart races in her chest, for… some reason. She is in control. She is.
Severus nods his head, “Yes.”
She leans forward, careful to give him enough time to pull back. He inches forward, ever so slightly, his eyes fluttering shut.
Before everything happened, they were never really dating. But they weren’t exactly friends either, especially during fifth year. There was always something different about them, a bond that went past whatever people thought they had.
The word ‘romance’ feels inadequate, and not exactly true. It’s too small of a word, too simple of a feeling. It was a glow, like being lit on fire from the inside out. She tried to find it with James, but it never worked out that way.
None of the times that he kissed her felt like it did with Severus, just that one time.
Afterwards she saw him everywhere, everything he did. He was haunting her. He chose the dark arts over her, he chose his beliefs over her. Severus called her a mudblood, something she’s not sure she’ll ever un-absorb.
She hated him, of course she did, a lot of her will probably always hate him.
But she loved him first.
Before she hated him, before and during all the nights they spent screaming at one another until the sun went down. She loved him. It was mindless, careless, and as easy as breathing. Lily doesn’t think she ever told him that.
She’s never loved like that since.
As she feels his lips on hers, she wonders, distantly, if it ever left.
When Lily thinks of her kissing Severus the previous day, she thinks of it as a momentary lapse of insanity that she should probably get help for. She should go to therapy. Or get a lobotomy.
She’s in ruins the entire day, kicking herself for creating the plan in the first place, and oh, would you look at that, Severus is supposed to come over in three hours.
Lily spends the entire time pacing around her dorm and contemplating jumping out the window.
It takes her two of those hours to calm herself down. The kitchenette has muggle appliances, some sort of tribute to muggle students to make the school seem better. So she makes herself soup the muggle way. She puts on a record, writes to the Gryffindor dorms to check on Marlene.
She knows he won’t be late, it’s like an instinct. Lily knows it without thinking. It’s like he has a space in her mind, taking up an entire corner and holding residence. Because she can’t get him out. The more she thinks, the more she thinks about him. Would he like coffee? No, it doesn’t matter. But, really, if she’s making coffee for herself she should really just make some for him.
Lily groans in frustration, throwing open her window and leaning out of it.
The night air is cool, despite the summer coming up sooner than later. Below her, two students laugh as they walk side-by-side, hands tucked in their pockets. They’re together, she thinks. They must’ve found a way to sneak out, the way the boys do, maybe. It hurts her heart a bit, the sound of distant laughter. In some dramatic, melancholic way it feels like a bad sign.
She crosses the room, taking her jacket off it’s hook (which she stuck there herself, because the psychopaths at Hogwarts don’t use coat racks ). Inside the pocket, she finds her last pack of cigarettes and takes it out. She’ll have to have Remus get her more, if he’ll even do it.
It’s strange, she never even considered that she could be putting her friendships in jeopardy by going through with the plan. She chose her way, but she didn’t think of it as picking a side in their petty rivalry.
It was reckless of her, but she’s starting to think that’s just the way she is with Severus.
Lily shakes her head and walks back over to the window, lighting the cigarette with a simple charm. She takes a long drag, letting it burn her lungs until she’s sure that he’s far out of her mind.
Like he heard her peace of mind, she hears the door swing open. Lily doesn’t look back, she doesn’t need to. She’d feel him coming without any senses at all.
Severus shuts the door behind him carefully, as if she were asleep and he didn’t want to wake her up. She casts a silent Incendio on a candle in the corner. Though, she’s sure he already feels her presence.
“Did he see you?”
He smirks, a little cruelly. “Potter was opening his door as I opened yours.”
Lily can tell he’s enjoying it at least a little bit, hurting James’s feelings. It occurs to her, for the first time, that the only reason Severus agreed to her plan was because he wanted to get back at James for that day. An eye for an eye, and all that.
She’s surprised at how hard the thought hit her, how much it hurt.
Pressing the cigarette to her lips once more, she takes a long drag before looking back. He’s wandering around her dorm, looking at everything for the first time.
Having her own space is nice, it reminds her of home, a distant place before Hogwarts. She’s done a lot to decorate it, much to the dismay of the elves, but she wanted to take advantage of it. The dorm itself is relatively large, especially for just one person, but they spared no luxury for the Head Girl position. It has a small kitchenette, of course, with a connected living room and a separate bedroom with a bathroom next to it. It’s nice, and it makes her feel less homesick.
It’s an odd feeling, knowing that she’s lived here for half a year and Severus has never seen it. He used to be the first person she showed things to.
The cigarette burns down to the filter, and she stubs it out on the wall outside the window, tossing it down below. She grabs another one, biting it between her lips as she hops up on the windowsill. “Coffee’s on, grab me a cup too.”
He nods, padding over to the kitchenette, accioing two mugs from her cupboard. It takes him only a second to pour it for the both of them. Severus doesn’t say anything about the muggle appliances, surely having learned his lesson about snide comments, but she’s grateful for it anyways. She can’t afford another headache.
She holds out a cigarette for him as he hands her the cup, like a trade. Cigarettes are one of the muggle inventions he actually does fancy, never quite able to kick the habit.
They’re so, so similar sometimes.
He takes it, and almost like a habit, leans forward and presses his to hers, lighting them at the same time. Severus pulls back quickly, his cheeks red in the flickering candlelight. He leans against the wall, and it’s almost endearing. Almost.
They’re silent for a while, in a way that should be awkward but really isn’t. It’s such a normal thing, like summer back home, chain smoking in her bedroom while their parents thought they were far away.
Lily breaks the silence first. “I went to Petunia’s wedding.”
She did, a couple months ago. It felt weird not telling Severus, she didn’t have anybody to tell, not really. None of her friends knew Petunia, or what her home life was in general. A lot of the time she wasn’t sure they knew her at all.
Severus’s lips quirk up, like he can’t help himself. “Dursley?”
Lily laughs. “Yeah, God, it was awful.”
Her sister had dragged her around the entire day beforehand, ordering her around like some kind of dog.
“Well, the question that looms over us all: what colour was your dress?”
‘
She shakes her head at the memory, laughing as her shoulders shake. “She picked yellow for all the bridesmaids.” Lily giggles. “And Vernon’s tie.”
He mirrors her almost exactly, shaking his head as he laughs. “And why did she think that would be a good idea?”
“Oh!” She exclaims, suddenly excited. “Yellow is understated, didn’t you know?”
“Oh obviously,” He remarks dryly.
“You know she actually yelled at James, like properly blew up on him.”
“And the crime was…?”
“He ate some of her strictly decorative table fruits. You should’ve seen it, she was so upset. I mean she was upset that he was my date in general–”
Severus’s expression falls a bit, but it’s enough that she notices.
“What?”
“I don’t want to talk about Potter, Lily.” His eyes are pleading, wide as ever.
She frowns. “The entire reason you're here is so that he stops bothering me. He kinda has to come up in conversation. I dated him.”
“Merlin knows why.” He responds, under his breath.
Lily scoffs, snapping. “I don’t think you have the right to judge who I spend my time with. After everything do we really need to have the same argument? You were the one who fucked everything up. Not me. Whatever I’ve done, you betrayed me first.”
It’s something she’s been holding back for a while, every time Severus glared at her and James in the hallways she wanted to scream at him. He had no right.
“I know that!” He stubs out his cigarette on her windowsill, standing tall and throwing it outside. “I’ve apologized, I’ve pleaded, I’ve said I’ll do anything . I stood by while you– with him– I’m here.”
It’s his tone of voice that hurts her, like she’s done something so wrong. And it hits her: they’ll never work. They’ll never be like they used to. She can kiss him, and she can try to pretend that whatever she still feels for him is enough, but they’ll always fight. It will always come crashing down on the two of them, and she isn’t sure she has enough strength to pull herself from the wreckage another time.
The anger flares up again, like an old friend. It’s a familiar feeling, comforting, almost. Lily shuts down. “You can go now.”
He blinks.
She levels him with a glare. “Go.”
Severus leaves, silently, and quickly like the floor had been set on fire. Lily ignores the pang in her chest, the tears welling up in her eyes.
She spends the rest of the night wondering if she can get away with murder.