When she enters the library, her eyes seek out the familiar head of blonde locs buried in a book of magical creatures. Mismatched eyes scanned the written text with a pretty pout on her lips. She feels a smile tugging her lips at the sight as she walks to their shared table.
They had started meeting at that same table in their 3rd-year when Pandora had been eyed with caution by the students around her. Whether it be because of her late enrollment, her watchful eyes that reflected an air of eerie curiosity, or her strange codependency with her twin brother, no one seemed to want to be five feet near her. And while Lily had to admit, Pandora was a bit unsettling, there had been a seed of pity that led her to offer the other a seat at her studying table. Which has been where they build their friendship into something more.
When she sets her books and bag down, it takes Lily a moment to realize that Pandora hasn’t been reading the book. She had been writing on it. Her green eyes widen.
“Dora!” She hisses, “What are you doing?”
“Correcting it.” Her brown and blue eyes look up at Lily. A smile stretches across her face as she sets the book down, “The misinformation is horribly biased and very poorly written, I ought to correct it. No one will notice for I doubt many people even read this book. The cover is terribly plain anyway.”
Lily tries to scold her, she really does, but she can’t help but giggle. Like most purebloods, there has always been this air of poshness in her voice. Sirius had it for a while, she heard most of the Slytherins in shared classes having it, and the Rosier twins had it. But to Lily, it was harder to take the twins’ speech seriously with their lisps, which made them sound much like children trying to do business.
“Whatever you say,” is what she lands on.
The other girl visibility lights up at the sentence and she opens her book again to doodle and correct with a pink feather. Probably taken from one of her family’s menagerie animals.
For some unknown reason, Lily doesn’t open her books. One of her hands remains on her bag and the other on the table near Pandora’s wide scatter of colorful quills, sheets of parchment, and camera. It’s a mess of things Lily has gotten used to seeing. To the point where she expects it when they meet in the library, even looks forward to seeing the familiar mess of things scattered about on the table that they marked theirs.
She wants to see it every day. Be surrounded by it, because it’s so Pandora. A thought that makes her dig her thumbnail into her fingertip. They are friends. Good friends. And yes, sometimes they kiss and sometimes they are touchier than your average platonic duo. But they are friends and she doesn’t want to wake up in a world without Pandora Rosier.
“Knut for your thoughts?” Pandora had set down her book and now looked at Lily with a tilt of her head, some of her locs falling on her face, striking Lily with the urge to reach over and brush them away to reveal all of Pandora’s face. The face she shared with Evan Rosier but to Lily, was beautiful in her own way. Not that she’ll mention it to Pandora of course. The twins take a weird pride in being a reflection of each other.
She doesn’t answer her immediately, just picks up a red quill and examines it, not willing to look at Pandora as she answers, “I like this.”
“You can have it,” the other girl replies with a mere shrug.
Lily didn’t have the heart to say that she didn’t mean the quill, “You don’t like it?”
Pandora leans her face against her hand, elbow propped on the table, “I do,” she replies, “but it doesn’t fit me.”
The feather was red like her hair, a vibrant red.
“That doesn’t mean you should just give it away,” Lily hums.
Pandora shrugs, “Sometimes you have to.” And Lily feels as if the conversation isn’t about quills anymore. She feels Pandora’s eyes on her, and yet, she still doesn’t look up at her mismatched eyes.
How long will they walk across this tightrope? A stupid question, really, since Lily knows she’s the only one balancing, refusing to fall while Pandora gracefully lets herself go. She can watch Pandora fall and fall and still maintain her air of whimsical beauty. All the while Lily balances and stubbornly refuses to let go. Despite the fact she oh so wants to. Someone will catch Pandora, but who will catch Lily?
Green eyes move from the quill to the untouched book of magical creatures.
“You could be a teacher,” she says carefully. It’s an iffy topic for her: what they will do with the war over their heads.
Pandora laughs a beautiful sound that makes her heart flutter, “I could never.”
She finally looks at her. The light in her brown and blue eyes, her long blond locs, her glossy lips, and her rounded face. It takes her breath away with a mere glance.
“Why not?”
“Not my thing.”
They fall into a comforting silence. So comforting that it makes Lily feel fake. Like they are hiding from something big. In a way, they sort of are. But Lily doesn't like hiding.
“I’d like to be a potioneer.” She says in a quiet voice as she leans back in her seat, almost like she is afraid of Pandora’s reply.
“Well, you could be.” She replies with a warm smile.
Lily shakes her head and grifts her gaze elsewhere on the table, they are tipping into very dangerous territory, “Not with the world at hand.”
She tries to make it sound lighthearted. Like it didn’t affect her that much. She laughs to brush it off and would think it worked had it not been for Pandora’s smile suddenly disappearing. Replaced with the blank look of indifference that her brother often wore. Fucking twins.
“Dumbledore extended an invite,” Lily says as she gathers the courage to look at Pandora again, she doesn’t know why she’s telling Pandora this, it was meant to be a secret, “to join an army.”
“How Gryffindor of you,” Pandora hums. Lily winces slightly at the indifferent tone.
“You could-”
“No.”
Pandora’s voice was final, the tone of an heir gone long ago. A tone that sends a rare spark of anger through Lily’s heart.
“So what are you going to do then?” She grits her teeth. Trying to hide her frustration but how could she? Pandora, a privileged pureblood could easily step in and be tremendously helpful to the Order. She could help the muggles and muggle-borns. Bloody hell, even half-bloods, and other purebloods.
But the girl was just not going to?
“Go anywhere but here,” Pandora replies simply, “I don’t want to be involved.”
She can feel her heart breaking, or was it the image of Pandora she was so used to breaking?
“So you’re just running away?” She can’t help the question slipping from her lips. But despite it, it felt less like a question and more like a realization. A realization that is crushing her.
“I am,” Pandora says, her voice so devoid of sympathy that Lily wants to shake her, pry her open to see if the girl has any feelings of guilt for being a-
“Coward.”
The statement feels foreign on Lily’s tongue, like someone or something invaded her mind because she would never, ever, call Pandora that. No. It just wasn’t true. She’s seen the Ravenclaw cause chaos in the halls, brandish her wand for duels, and be reckless with her potions. Pandora Rosier wasn’t a coward and yet, that is exactly what Lily Evans thought of her at that moment in the library.
Pandora was a coward. Running away with her privilege while people were being tortured and killed. People just like Lily. Pandora was turning her back on them, on Lily. She didn’t care. Running away to save herself as if her status as a pureblood didn’t already protect her. And judging by the girl’s expression, Lily had a feeling Pandora knew that. She’d have to. How can someone turn their backs on innocents being murdered and think themselves not a coward? How could Pandora live with herself knowing she doomed millions?
“I don’t want to be involved in bloodshed, I don’t want to be in a war right out of school,” Pandora sighs, “...and I don’t want you to be as well. We are too young, don’t you think?”
She inhales a breath sharply, “I must not be too young if I am being given a chance to fight now,” her green eyes narrow at Pandora’s still form, and she chews the inside of her cheek. A small part of her knows that Pandora is right. Lily would be fighting right out of school. She diverts her eyes for a moment because if she keeps looking she might go back on her word to Dumbledore. And she refuses to. People need her.
The slight furrow of her brow cracks Pandora’s expression of indifference and Lily wants, oh so badly, to reach over the table and press her thumb to the crease, to ease Pandora’s worry. Because it doesn’t look right on her. But she bites the inside of her cheek and forces herself to stay seated.
“You are gambling with your life,” Pandora says. Her voice is surprisingly filled with concern and Lily wants to block out the sound of her voice. She wants Pandora to sound indifferent again, apathetic, anything except concern and worry. Anything to make being mad at her easier, “Lils, there isn’t any guarantee that you will survive. You’d die so young.”
But as always, nothing is ever easy for a girl like Lily Evans, who wants desperately to touch Pandora, to hug her, kiss her, whatever she allows her to do because the way “Lils” falls from her lips makes her feel as if Pandora has dissected her open to pry Lily’s heart from her body carefully and possess it most lovingly.
The taste of blood starts to touch her tongue.
“For a good reason,” she forces out, because annoyingly so, Pandora is right.
“You are being reckless,” Pandora scolds, urgency is present, laced within her words. But to an outsider, they wouldn’t know. Only Lily does.
It’s a regular thought that she finds herself clinging to. The idea that only she knew the deepest parts of Pandora. Evan would never count because he is Pandora’s twin, but Lily. Lily is different from the rest of Hogwarts who would whisper behind Pandora’s back. They would never know Pandora like she does. It’s a thought she is fine with. Why would Pandora need another when she had Lily? It would be a waste really.
However, with the events unfolding before her eyes. The idea is slipping. Flowing through her fingers like water. Sooner or later, she won’t have Pandora at all. An occurrence that she has never even acknowledged because why should she?
Lily has never known a good life with Pandora. And she doesn’t how to start.
“Please,” Lily says, so softly it feels like a whisper, but she needs the girl to understand with the little words she can scrap up within her panicked mind, “I’ll wait for you-I can-”
“Lily,” Pandora’s voice cuts through and she winces at the use of her name, “I won’t fight in a war. Nor do I wish for you to as well.”
Scraped painted nails dig into her skin so deeply she feels as if it will draw blood, “You-you can’t just-run away.”
Pandora tilts her head, “Said who?”
With her eyes starting to wet, she scrambles for anything, “People need you,” she pleads, “I need you, Pans.”
She looks at Lily with pity.
“Please…” she tries again.
It doesn’t do anything, instead, Pandora gets up from her seat across from her and walks to stand right beside Lily. A careful hand decorated in black ink touches her lower jaw to lock their eyes together. It’s a soft and gentle touch, everything that Lily craves from her. She wants it to last forever.
“To die is to be remembered, to live is to be forgotten,” Pandora whispers, “I would’ve been fine being forgotten if only you remembered me.”
No words escape her lips before Pandora kisses her.
For a split second, Lily wants to push her away, to scream that it isn’t what they should be doing. But she doesn’t. She allows Pandora to remember the taste of her lips in the corner of the library. Her freckled hands reach up to grasp at the other’s buttoned shirt around her waist to keep Pandora closer. To never let go because Lily needs this in more ways than one. It’s not just for the sake of the people who need help that Pandora could potentially give, but for Lily, and in honesty, it’s more for Lily than it will be for anyone else. Because no one else could have this.
The grip she had on Pandora’s shirt tightens.
“Please don’t let go,” she mumbles against lips that taste of pomegranates shipped directly from Thebes that Pandora loves so dearly. She wants to remember the taste without ever touching the fruit. She wants to savor the taste but when she feels hands faintly creeping up her waist, her mind is made blank.
Liking someone is one thing and loving is another. And Lily loves Pandora. If her mind was any clearer, she would’ve pushed Pandora away. But the taste of pomegranates and the tickling feeling of fingers against her body create a fog of love that clouds her brain.
A fog that quickly clears when she feels lips that pull away. She chases Pandora, desperate to get a taste again, but is pushed back into her seat.
“Dora-”
“I love you,” she says and Lily feels warm until she doesn’t, “but I won’t fight.”
She searches for words to say but nothing comes out, again. Years of reading failing her at this moment. Words she consumed over and over that now hold no meaning in this situation.
“I love you,” Pandora says again, firm and more sure than Lily had ever heard her speak, “and I want you to come with me and survive. To be remembered by only ourselves when the books do not. That is all I am asking of you, Lils.”
If Pandora had asked her this exact question a few years ago, she would have agreed. When more than half of Hogwarts had shunned her for being a muggle-born. But things have changed since then. She’s made friends like her, friends who accept her. She doesn’t want to cower and let their generosity go to waste. The Wizarding world gave her something more than she could ever wish for: a family. And the debt is now due.
She loves Pandora. More than she loves her admittedly. But unpaid debts will come crawling back to her. Biting at her heels.
“I love you,” she whispers, almost fearful, “but I can’t stay with you.”
Pandora shakes her head, “You won’t.”
“I ca-”
She begins to cry when Pandora moves her touch away from her lower jaw. Her hand reaches out but the other only takes a step away. Tears blur her vision but she swears, swears that Pandora is also starting to cry. But she can’t tell if it’s her being hopeful or if it’s true. With the faint sound of whoosh, Lily can tell that Pandora has packed her things the way she always does when they are done.
“Good luck, my flower,” is the last thing Pandora ever says to her.
“Good luck, my flower,” is the single sentence that rings in her mind when she kisses James at the makeshift altar.
“Good luck, my flower,” is the last thing Lily thinks of, the words slipping from Pandora’s lips, the taste that haunts her every waking moment since that day in the library.