Unexpected

It’s New Year’s Eve of Lily’s sixth year at Hogwarts, 1977 just on the horizon, and she is starving.

She’s spent all day cooped up in the Potions lab, working on her extra credit project for Slughorn. She’s brewing a modified version of Amortentia, one without the frankly concerning abilities of the original potion. No, her version of Amortentia simply allows one to smell the scents that they associate with what they love the most. She’s calling it Odores Amoris—Latin for “scents of love.”

When she enters the Great Hall she spots Sirius Black, the only other sixth year Gryffindor who stayed behind for the holidays—although she doubts his reasons are the same as hers. Black hardly puts any effort into his schoolwork, he wouldn’t be caught dead doing extra credit.

Sitting next to him is Nigel Hawthorne, a particularly shy second year Hufflepuff who was unable to go home for the holidays because his parents are looking after an ill relative. Lily checks in with him every morning to make sure he is doing alright, but the boy is incredibly introverted, and offers nothing more than the barest of responses whenever they speak. And yet, right now he looks positively joyful, his eyes full of awe and delight as he stares at the older boy beside him. They’re both wearing colorful little paper crowns and blowing on noisemakers, laughing uproariously at the racket they’re making.

The sight makes Lily smile, and she shakes her head in fond exasperation. She may not be the biggest fan of Black’s, but she knows that deep down, he and his friends are good people. He wouldn’t bother trying to cheer up a lonely little boy, one not even in his own house, if he wasn’t secretly a soft-hearted fool.

“Evans!” Black bellows when he finally catches sight of her. “Finally come to join us?”

Lily rolls her eyes, plopping down across from the two boys at the table.

“Against my better judgment,” she concedes, trying and failing to hide her smile. Black just grins right back at her.

“Happy New Year’s Eve, Lily,” Nigel offers quietly. Lily turns to the boy, a soft look on her face. She is so very relieved to see that he has finally come out of his shell—and it’s all thanks to Sirius Black.

“Happy New Year’s Eve, Nigel,” she returns. “Now, where can I get one of those fantastic crowns?”

“You can have mine,” Sirius offers, plucking his purple-and-green paper crown from his hair and leaning over the table to place it gently on Lily’s head. “It goes with your hair.”

“It absolutely does not,” Lily protests, but she laughs and doesn’t once take it off all throughout dinner.

When the meal is over and all the food has finally disappeared, Lily, Sirius, and Nigel head out of the Great Hall and pause at the stairs.

“Would you like to join us in Gryffindor tower for the night, Nigel?” Lily asks, hesitant to leave the little boy alone once again. Nigel opens his mouth to answer, but a yawn cuts him off. He blushes, looking embarrassed.

“I think I’ll probably just go to bed,” he admits.

“I think that’s a good idea,” she answers, and then leans in to give him a quick, sisterly hug. “Goodnight, Nigel. Sleep well.”

Nigel’s face is even redder than before when she pulls away, and he stammers out a good night back.

“I’ll walk you down to your common room,” Black offers, and Nigel looks at him gratefully for the excuse to escape. Lily giggles as the little boy practically drags him away, but not before Black manages to wink at her conspiratorially. She winks back, and the bright, genuine smile he gives her is worth it. As his grinning face disappears around the corner, Lily realizes that she has just made friends with Sirius Black. The holidays truly are a time of miracles.

“I can’t believe you’ll talk to him, but not me,” a familiar voice sneers.

Turning around, Lily finds Severus Snape standing less than two feet from her, a hateful expression on his face. In his right hand, he’s clutching his wand, but in his left is a half-empty bottle of firewhiskey. The smell of the wizarding alcohol clings to his hair and robes, and he is totally and utterly smashed.

“Well, he’s never called me a Mudblood, for starters,” Lily answers with a roll of her eyes. She turns to leave, but Snape grabs her arm.

“Lils, please,” he slurs. The use of her nickname grates on her nerves. How dare he call her that? “How many times do I have to say it? I’m sorry.”

“You say that, and yet you still spend all your time with the other Death-Eaters-in-training,” Lily repeats for what feels like the thousandth time. She’s starting to get angry, and she thinks she might hex him if he says another word. “Your friends want people like me dead, Sev. Forgive me if I don’t believe you’re really all that remorseful.”

Snape scowls darkly, and in a flash, he pushes her up against the ornate stone banister of the stairs.

“You think you’re so much better than me,” he hisses. His cloudy eyes drop to her chest and he licks his thin lips, before pressing himself against her lewdly. Then he looks back up, straight into Lily’s shocked face. She can’t believe he would manhandle her like this, even after everything. “You’re nothing but a frigid bitch.”

Lily’s shock turns to hurt, and then that hurt gives way to rage.

“Flipendo!” Lily yells through gritted teeth, and Snape goes flying back, landing on the floor with a dull thud. Lily strides over to his prone form, wand held threateningly, green eyes like wildfire glaring down at him. “If you ever touch me again, Severus Snape, I'll show you exactly how much of a bitch I can be.”

With that, she grabs the firewhiskey from his slackened grip and runs up the stairs toward Gryffindor tower, furiously dashing away the angry tears she can’t quite seem to stifle.

By the time she stumbles into the common room, she’s already a bit tipsy. Sitting in front of the blazing hearth is Sirius, and he looks just about as miserable as she feels. She plops down next to him and silently offers him the bottle. He raises a tired brow at her in question, but she just shakes the bottle insistently in response. Sirius shrugs and takes it from her, downing a large swig in one go. She claps when he lets out a billow of smoke, and he gives her a weak smile.

“Where did you even find this?” Sirius asks, examining the way the glow of the fire catches on the amber liquid. Lily mumbles something and reaches for the bottle again, but Sirius quickly downs the rest. He needs it more than she does.

The redhead glares at him for a moment, but then she sighs and lays back on the floor, too tipsy to hold onto her anger.

“Stole it from Snivellus,” she answers, and Sirius barks out a laugh. But it’s wrong, bitter-sounding, and Lily sits back up, looking at him with concern. “What happened?”

“My little brother’s officially a Death Eater, and it’s my damn fault,” Sirius growls. He makes an aborted motion, as if he’s about to throw the empty bottle of alcohol at the wall but loses steam halfway through. His whole body sags, a devastated look on his face. “You-Know-Who marked him after I ran away — my parents didn’t want their last heir escaping.”

Lily’s heart breaks for Sirius, and even for Regulus. He may be a bigoted toe rag, but he’s still just a kid. Maybe he would’ve grown out of it, if he’d had the chance. But now he never will. That brand on his arm will haunt him for the rest of his life — if he ever does change, no one will believe him.

“I’m sorry,” Lily whispers, unsure what else to say. Then, more firmly: “But it’s not your fault. It’s Voldemort’s, and your parents’. They would have marked you if you'd stayed. Or more likely, they would have killed you when you refused. Regulus would have ended up marked either way.”

“I should’ve convinced him to leave with me,” Sirius whispers back brokenly.

“We both know that nothing you could have done would have changed his mind,” Lily answers. Though he doesn’t admit it, she’s sure he knows it’s the truth.

“I was supposed to protect him,” he says instead.

The firelight flickers across Sirius’s face, and not for the first time, Lily thinks that he really is handsome. Even now, slumped over with his stubbled chin resting on his knees, she can clearly see the strong line of his jaw, his furrowed brow and his straight, aristocratic nose. Sirius is always rough, always loud, dismissing any notion of attractiveness almost before it can form in her mind. But right now, in the still quiet of the Gryffindor common room, with an empty bottle of Ogden’s Finest held loosely in his grip, Sirius looks so tragically handsome, and Lily wants. She wants to forget the feeling of Snape’s body pressed against hers, she wants Sirius to forget his pain, she wants them both to feel less damn awful.

But mostly, she wants him so much it aches. So with firewhiskey burning in her veins, she leans in and presses her lips to his.