Chapter 4: The Phoenix Feather

Mum was biting her lip at the kitchen table, his school list spread out before her in treacherous rows of black ink and a measly 10 quid stacked up beside it.

“We’ll make do.”

Severus knew it’d take more than a couple of fivers to cover all that but kept quiet. He was waiting for Mum to tell him he couldn’t go. She promised he’d be off to Hogwarts the September after he turned eleven, but her promises had always been cheap and it wouldn’t be the first time they tallied up the numbers and couldn’t afford something.

“I still have a set of scales,” she muttered, running her finger down the list. “Got rid of the telescope ages ago…We can trade in the brass cauldron—”

“Mum, no!” Severus interrupted. 

He regretted it instantly because Mum looked cross. He slowly sat back down in the seat across from her and slumped in his chair.

“Brass for pewter…it’s a bad deal and you’ll never get your money’s worth,” he said quietly, gripping the edge of the table.

“You could probably get a brand new pewter cauldron for the old one we have and still have sickles to spare,” she said testily. Severus couldn’t contain himself any longer. 

“But anybody’d take a brass cauldron over pewter. The decrease in brew time alone—”

“Your school list says pewter, so you’ll have pewter,” Mum declared in a tone of voice that took to the conversation like a meat cleaver.

“Yes, Mum.” Severus looked down. He didn’t want to upset her lest she decide to leave him behind in Cokeworth while she shopped for his supplies in Diagon Alley alone. He’d look like a gormless oik in front of Lily, who wasn’t going to Diagon til next week and wanted him to tell her what to expect from his own trip. He’d told her everything he knew a long time ago, but most of it was stuff he pestered Mum into telling him. He’d only gone once himself and been too small to remember any of it besides seeing a goblin with ears so long he wanted to reach out and pet them. The goblin had been nice and given him a flavor-changing lolly. Lily had these wild ideas from Muggle books that Goblins were savage, sorta stupid miners. She was glad he’d told her they run the banks before she met any and embarrassed herself—her words, not his. She would’ve been alright without him. He didn’t think Lily could embarrass herself if she tried. 

The only other memory he had from that day was Mum in her dress robes. She had looked beautiful in her witches’ robes, but she had worn a frown that day too. 

He risked glancing at her through the tangled curtain of his dark hair and saw she was back to poring over the list.

“The uniform will be the most expensive.” Her voice sounded annoyed now, strained like after a long morning at the end of a sleepless night or an evening of yelling over the blaring horns of passing river boats. Going over his school list was supposed to be exciting. Severus didn’t know how he had managed to ruin it.

“I can get secondhand robes,” he said obligingly, running his hand over the scorch mark on the edge of the table where Toby left a fag burning too long.

“The shoes will be full price.” 

“Sorry.” 

She looked up at him and then quickly away. “Let me bring down the supplies you already have,” she offered, leaving the kitchen. It was a short trip upstairs. The second he heard her reach the steps, he propped his feet up on the chair left of his and stared at the ceiling. 

Severus could imagine her stooping over the old trunk of hers they kept fashioned as a lamp stand in his bedroom so Toby wouldn’t get to it. Mum’s trunk held the entire contents of the Snapes’ magical world—except for the cauldron they disguised as a flowerpot and kept in the kitchen—Mum’s old books and robes, and sometimes her wand if she didn’t have it hidden in her apron pocket. There had once been wizarding money too, but it disappeared years ago.

He turned his gaze towards the brass cauldron, which was on its way to disappearing, and he tried not to think about how bitterly unfair life was. He had so many good memories with that cauldron, and there were so many things they’d never get the chance to brew together. It was like saying goodbye to a friend.

The cauldron was as out of place in Spinner’s End as the witch and wizard it belonged to. Mum was using it to prop the backdoor open because it was hot and opening the windows would let the flies in. They couldn’t come through the backdoor because the dirt in the brass cauldron was mixed with a compound that would kill any fly trying to cross its faint green vapors—a potion of cow tail, lavender petals, crushed garlic, oil from pressed basil leaves, and scales from a pinecone. Severus had perfected the brew after some experimentation—now he’d have to adapt it for pewter temperatures. He scowled. Cow tail was out. He’d never heat it hot enough, fast enough, and that ingredient was what gave the potion vapors their movement. It was useless now.

This late in August the weather was mild through the Midlands, but mill housing trapped heat in the summer, even close to the river. Every window of the factory buildings would be open because temperatures ran so hot the rooms with machines felt like the tropics. Toby hadn’t owned a winter coat in years, and that was before they moved him to the boiler house during the big downsize. Their home wasn’t particularly close to the work buildings, but somehow the heat spread its way down all the narrow streets in the district, the terraced houses fencing it in. Mill housing was hell.

Severus heard the telltale creaking of Mum coming back down the stairs and moved his feet off the chair in time for her to walk into the kitchen. She wasn’t carrying anything. She cleared her throat.

“I thought you might want to test your wand.” It was her own wand she held out to him.

Severus, who had always been keen to borrow his mother’s wand, was suddenly loathe to take it. He looked up at her with eyes full of concern.

“But…what about you, Mum?” 

“Take it,” his mother repeated, more pressingly. “Go on. We both know I haven’t been doing much magic with it anyway.”

Severus’ expression grew more troubled than before. He couldn’t bring himself to refuse her wand outright, but he’d sit on his own hands to stop them from grabbing it. There had to be another solution, but Mum wouldn’t let him think of one before resorting to threats.

“Take it or you won’t have a wand for Hogwarts.”

Her warning spurred Severus into snatching the outstretched wand from her hand. He gave her a shaky smile. “Thank you.”

“How about a spell?” Eileen offered. “Let’s start with a simple one. Lumos.”

His mother plucked the wand from his fingertips, demonstrating a simple movement like a lowercase, cursive letter ‘e,’ and slipped it back into Severus’ grip. He bit back a comment about having done that one a million times before and simply performed the spell.

“Lumos.” The wand tip lit.

He and Mum smiled at one another, bittersweet, the best they could get, and Severus refrained from mentioning that his mother’s incantation hadn’t lit her wand tip moments before. It hung over them too fragile, a nox on their small spark of happiness.

“I’ll miss you,” Severus whispered. The words tumbled out of him, caught somewhere between truth and falsehood. Yesterday, they would have been a lie. He had never been more excited to see the back of Tobias and Cokeworth and even his mum, but now that he held her wand, he couldn’t ignore how empty-handed he was leaving her.

“I’ll be fine,” Eileen shrugged. “It’s time for you to get out of Cokeworth.”

It was as close to I love you as either had managed in a long time. 

❀

“Morning!” 

“My, my! You’re looking smart, Pet,” Mum said, turning from the kitchen cupboard where she was taking out jams and sugar to set on the dining room table. Petunia was dressed to join Lily on her shopping trip. No letter had arrived confirming or denying her admission to Hogwarts School, but there was still an hour left until Lily had to be in front of the fireplace per her instructions. Suppose a last minute letter did come within that time? She didn’t want to be unprepared for it and miss her only chance to buy books and materials. What kind of student would she be? They could rescind her transfer request for something like that. 

The chance of a letter arriving on Saturday morning was slim, but she had to make sure. She ran to put her shoes on.

“I’ll check the post!” 

Empty. Her stomach dropped. Petunia tried not to let her disappointment show. She’d been preparing herself to be rejected the whole week as every passing day lessened her chances of receiving a letter, but that did little to console her now. She really believed there would be a letter by the 28th, even if it carried a rejection.   

She tried to keep herself optimistic. The postman hadn’t come yet, so she could still get news before Lily’s departure. She took a seat at the dining table and tried to ignore the massive pit in her stomach.

“Exciting day, isn’t it, poppet?” Daddy said to Lily, who was also fully dressed and looking at the clock with such misery you’d think it had been frozen at ten minutes after nine for ages. The sisters picked at their toast reluctantly while their parents discussed the new birdbath Mum had purchased for their garden. It was an extravagant thing, something Professor Frothmore could afford, carved out of marble with two angels holding its basin. Dad thought it was as lovely as it was expensive, while Mum informed him being non-refundable was among its many-advertised features. 

“Would you like to go check if there are any birds yet, sweetheart?”

“Maybe after I get back,” Lily answered distractedly. She only had eyes for the clock.

Mummy and Daddy didn’t know about Petunia’s letter. They hadn’t looked at it when she handed Dad the envelope or asked her any questions afterwards. They had no idea that Petunia was awaiting return mail this very minute. She had decided not to tell them she tried to apply to Hogwarts in case she didn’t make the cut for Lily’s school. Then it’d be like she never asked to go. It’d be her secret. But as the hour was drawing nearer, Petunia’s imagination was growing more fantastic. Suppose she was accepted—what then? She could handle the shopping trip, she had planned for that. She was fully dressed. She had money ready for supplies too, stockpiled from Christmases and birthdays. If a letter did arrive for her, she felt her parents would be happy to send her off even though they hadn’t budgeted to send two children for brand new supplies. She winced thinking about the newly purchased birdbath. How much did magic equipment cost anyway? She’d need robes and books and a magic wand…

Petunia had spent the past three weeks being very quiet whenever Lily spoke about magic. Now that Professor Frothmore had confirmed it was real, there was no reason to argue it didn’t exist. She had learned a few things about what real magic could do. Wizards and witches could teleport, like the professor had, and fly, though they needed broomsticks. They could heal broken bones and even make themselves lucky. It was no surprise Professor Frothmore could be so rich. Magic sounded too good to be true.

In another 20 minutes, Petunia heard the sound of Mrs. Pullman greeting the postman from next door. 

“That’s the post,” she announced, taking off. 

“No need to rush!” Daddy called.

She greeted the postman at the door and he handed her three letters with a smile. She shuffled through them. All addressed to Ned Evans. She told herself it was possible Dumbledore was sending a reply with Professor Frothmore, but that only doubled her nerves.

She handed the stack to Daddy. 

“I think they’re all bills.”

“Yes,” he laughed uneasily, slipping the stack under his breakfast plate. “Never pays to race to a mailbox.”

It was a quarter to 10. Lily had been waiting in front of the fireplace for the past 10 minutes. She had taken to pacing the open space in front of the coffee table, which left Petunia crammed into the corner of the settee, nervously tapping her fingers. 

10:02 AM. 

Lily was counting down the seconds now. Professor Frothmore had promised her sister a three minute window for transport starting at exactly 10:04. Petunia got the spur of the moment idea to check if an owl might have delivered her letter. Lily was a witch now and they used owls to deliver the post. Maybe—unlikely, but maybe—Headmaster Dumbledore had sent her reply with an owl. Petunia ran up to her bedroom on the chance she’d spot an approaching bird in the sky from her window. They’d never received an owl and she didn’t know how it worked. Did you have to stand outside to get a letter?

She turned open her door handle and the instant she stepped her foot in the doorway, a bird appeared over her bed in a ball of fire, rendering her speechless. 

It was the most magnificent creature she had ever seen. Right there in front of her eyes, fluttering in red and gold, was a bird as large as a swan. Its beak was golden and its eyes were a blazing black and its long tail billowed like a golden kite. 

In its talons it held a letter.

She and the beautiful bird locked eyes and the bird burst into flames again. The fire swallowed itself, flame and bird gone, the surrounding area mysteriously unaffected. 

For a moment Petunia forgot what she was doing. Then, promptly remembering why she was here, she raced to tear open the envelope on her bed. 

“Pet! Pet, come quick!” 

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she yelled, frantically scanning the paragraphs for her answer. 

No.

There it was, spelled with different letters. “I regret to inform you…” 

She sat on her bed and furiously wiped at the tears in her eyes.

In a different set of words, more polite, more professional, Albus Dumbledore had told Petunia that her grades were commendable, but not one of the subjects she studied mattered in the magical world. Hard work was an admirable quality, he believed her promise to work very hard, but magic wasn’t something you achieved through perseverance. Her letter had proven her very courageous, cunning, creative, and willing to toil—all qualities Hogwarts values—but magic comes down to fate: you are simply born with it or you are not. Petunia was not. He had finished by complimenting her on her excellent penmanship and signing the letter, “Warmest regards.” Somehow that made her feel worse.

“Petunia, you missed it,” Dad called from downstairs. If his tone of voice was anything to go by, it was worse than falling asleep before midnight on January 1st, or blinking when a camera snapped its shutter, or leaving the room right before they told the funniest joke on the telly. It was worse than missing a million special moments combined.

Her eyes misted as she read the letter over more slowly. She might have missed whatever magic occurred in front of the fireplace, but the rest of them had missed the magic she saw in her bedroom. The beautiful bird had left a feather behind. She picked it up and twirled it, causing the red plume to shimmer with an iridescent gold gleam. That was hers alone. 

Who was she kidding? The bird was Lily’s, like everything beautiful and wonderful and magic. Lily had a whole world of magic to herself. She gave her feather an involuntary squeeze and to her surprise, it was very warm, making her hand feel as though she were holding it over a fire. She let go of it. It was worse to have seen that bird and go back to being satisfied with regular life in Cokeworth than to have no clue such a creature exists. She wished she could forget everything about magic, everything about witches and wizards, everything unnatural that unfolded before her eyes but not the eyes of other people. She felt incredibly alone. Lily would join hundreds of students all like her, but Petunia didn’t have a single soul to confide in. The Statute of Secrecy prevented her from telling her friends the truth about her family—about her magic sister. She’d sound like a raving loon if she even tried.

Petunia was busy feeling sorry for herself when she heard footsteps on the stairs. With sudden panic, she looked at her glowing feather and the letter from Dumbledore. She couldn’t be caught with these. She scrambled for a hiding spot. How could she ensure these would never be found? Dresser? Desk? Too obvious. Maybe she could tape the feather to the underside of a drawer? No, that was the first place to check for secrets. The feather was so warm she feared someone would feel its heat through the wood like a miniature furnace. The footsteps were getting closer. She hurriedly climbed on her bed, unscrewed the lampshade over her ceiling light and hid the feather in the glass basin. No one would turn on the light until dark. When her parents were busy and she could sneak a screwdriver from the toolbox downstairs, she’d move the feather behind the ceiling’s air vent. She shoved the letter under her bed as an afterthought. Mummy wouldn’t look there again until the week was up because Petunia liked to do her own dusting. 

There was a rap on her door.

“What on Earth were you doing, Pet? It was 3 minutes,” Mum huffed, opening the bedroom door just after Petunia flattened her bedspread.

“I—” She hadn’t thought of a good excuse of why she went missing, and Mummy was frowning at her. “I—thought I could lend Lily my birthday money,” she lied, turning out her pockets with the savings she had prepared to fund her own shopping trip in Diagon Alley.  

Mum’s expression softened. “That was sweet of you to try,” she said evenly. “Well, you can use your money on yourself tomorrow. Come downstairs.”

Petunia and Mum joined Dad in the sitting room where he tormented Petunia with his retellings of the green fire FLOO for Petunia’s own benefit. She heard all about the magic teleportation powder and how Professor Frothmore despises Muggle fireplaces because they're so small, it’s hard to travel in them, something Dad found uproariously funny. 

She finally made her escape at a quarter to one to watch the birds testing their new birdbath. Mummy would be so disappointed! They were all wrens, which meant they had the misfortune of being plain as well as common. As she watched them splash brown feathers in the water, she thought again of the majestic bird with feathers of scarlet and gold. She didn’t get to hear it sing. Lily would. The thought plucked a dirge within her heartstrings. A secondhand experience of magic was like someone rapturously telling you how they heard the most beautiful music they had no way to reproduce for you or how they tasted the most delicious cake you would never get to eat. She turned away from the wrens’ chirping with the taste of ashes on her tongue. 

Lily knew a small taste of what it was like. She could hardly stand waiting a week to go on her trip to the magical shopping center because Snape’s stories about it couldn’t compete with a true in-person experience, yet she didn’t seem to care that her stories sentenced other people to an endless wait. There was no special world preparing to open its doors to Petunia.

She sank down to the level of the stone angel facing the house. For the first time, Petunia thought maybe she didn’t want to be like Mum, sitting in their dull house and waiting on the chance a beautiful bird could fly into their garden and dazzle them with its feathers. She touched the tip of a stone wing and stood up. The little brown birds finished drying themselves on the edge of the bath and flew away. 

Even the wrens could leave Cokeworth.

After enduring several more of Dad’s jokes about fireplace travel while she and Mum made cheese and pickle sandwiches, Petunia went to her room to mope. Lily would be arriving in 20 minutes with a magic wand and the rest of her supplies. It made her sick. Petunia hoped Lily would follow her instinct as usual and beg to see Snape first thing after coming home. Petunia didn’t want to see her. From her spot lying corpselike across her bed, she swore she could make out the vague outline of the castoff feather glowing through the opaque glass of her ceiling light. When she closed her eyes, the glow remained beneath her eyelids, burned into her retinas. Could anyone see it if they went into her room and stared at the light long enough? She needed to get that screwdriver.

Predictably, Lily’s return was met with the same fanfare as the Queen’s Birthday Parade. Mum and Dad’s zeal matched a crowd of thousands. They had flowers and a secret welcome home banner waiting—all for Lily missing from home a few hours. She didn’t want to know what her parents would do when Lily actually left for boarding school and didn't come back for months at a time. Fireworks? A marching band?

Petunia planned to hide in the loo during Lily’s three minute return window, but her parents forced her to watch the fireplace with them, each with a hand clamped on her shoulder. At exactly 1:13, the Evanses’ fireplace roared green, and Lily tumbled out of it with two massive shopping bags, coughing and trailing soot everywhere. She looked like a chimney sweep out of a Dickens novel, but she stood and raised her arms like she had gotten home from a fight against a dragon. Mum and Dad applauded accordingly. 

The three of them began rummaging through Lily’s shopping bags from the sofa, where Lily was sandwiched between their parents. Petunia hadn’t caught whether Lily or Mum suggested it first, but for once they were equally enthusiastic. Lily wanted to show them something in particular, but Mum or Dad would examine some item near the top of the pile and Lily would launch into an enthusiastic explanation of her school uniform or her winter cloak or her telescope. At Mum and Dad’s encouragement, she was modeling her ridiculous pointed hat.

“—and the sweets shop! They had cakes with iced flowers that bloomed before your eyes; and a box of chocolates that would play a tune when you opened them, but each chocolate made its own bell sound! And a pudding that vanished if you tried to take too much of it!”

“That’s handy. It’d be the biggest hit at the Ladies’ Luncheon,” Mum said wryly, holding Lily’s set of scales on her lap. 

“I wanted to bring some magical sweets back with me to show you, but Frothmore wouldn’t let us buy anything that broke the Statute of Secrecy.”

“She has the kindest heart," Mum cooed over Lily's head as Dad nodded affirmatively. Petunia was left feeling like the spare tire to a tricycle. 

“I have to go back,” Lily said with bitter determination, brandishing her telescope like a club though she didn’t realize it. “He kept rushing us along, and there was so much to see.”

Dad gently removed the telescope from Lily’s fist. “Don’t feel disappointed, Poppet. He was just trying to keep everyone on schedule. Punctuality is the cornerstone of civilization, you know? Every virtue springs from its font.”

Petunia had wandered away from the conversation and was bending over the fireplace. Per Professor Frothmore’s instructions, its screen had been removed for the occasion and its interior cleaned. There were piles of ash sitting there now, but it didn’t appear to be evidence of anything particularly magical. Petunia dipped her finger into the edge of a cinder mound and examined the residue. Just dirt, she scowled, brushing it off.

“Pet, what are you doing?” Dad asked.

“There’s dirt,” she pointed conspicuously to the person-sized, gray smear across the rug, which dissolved into dark footsteps pattering across the room. Dad waved his hand flippantly.

“You can clean it later. Come look.” Lily had taken out her coveted magic wand, the crown jewel of all her sister’s magical items.

Even Petunia couldn’t resist a glance. It didn’t look that special. It was a polished stick in a box at the end of the day. The special one was Lily herself, who had been born with magic powers for some mysterious reason. Headmaster Dumbledore's reply never answered why that was, why Lily had been born a witch but Petunia hadn't. Whatever hopeful feelings Petunia harbored about a magic wand being her own ticket to doing magic had been smothered by Dumbledore’s letter. She was just a Muggle. Lily was…something else. Her parents oohed and aahed at Lily’s stick, and, as if to prove her point, took turns waving it around. Nothing happened. She could only be thankful that Lily didn’t take it upon herself to perform her own magic demonstration. Professor Frothmore had been abundantly clear Lily performing magic at home was against wizarding law. 

While everyone was distracted, Petunia finally had her chance to retrieve the screwdriver from the toolbox.She made a beeline to her room and caught the last bits of conversation coming from the sitting room on the staircase.

“It was too bad Professor Frothmore didn’t step in with you,” Mum sighed. “I meant to tell you to ask him if students need helmets for broom flying or if the school provides those. Your list didn’t say.”

“No one wears a helmet to ride a bike,” Lily scoffed. The preteen never sounded so unimpressed. She hadn’t listened to their mother in her most impressionable years, she wasn’t going to start now.

“Maybe people should,” Rosie countered. She and Dad made some muffled comments about the chances of broom collisions in the same tone of voice they spoke about anything dangerous or worrisome. 

“Can I go see Sev?” Lily interrupted. “I promise I’ll ask him about flying helmets.”

“All right,” Mum sighed, “but don’t be surprised if he doesn’t know.” 

By the time Lily jiggled the front door open and slammed it closed, Petunia had popped the grate off the air vent over her bed.

❀❀

There was no reason to bring her wand with her to the park, but Lily did it anyway. It wasn’t just to stick it to stuffy Professor Frothmore either, who said temptation would be less if a new wand remained untouched in its trunk until the start of term. She genuinely couldn’t stand to be apart from it. Whenever she held her wand, even inside its box, she felt like a real witch. Magic had been at her fingertips before Severus explained the reason for her supernatural gifts, but her new wand opened up so many possibilities. Without the wand, she was Lily Evans, an 11 year old girl living in Cokeworth with her family whose life had been charted out across safe harbors. With her wand, she was a witch and anything was possible. She didn’t know how to perform any spells yet, but she and Sev had read about them, and she couldn’t wait to make things float, unlock doors, conjure animals—there was an endless list of impossible things she had the power to do! Or, she would have the power to do, once lessons started.  

As she waited on the pavement for cars to pass, her hands reflexively wandered to the box in the backpack she kept slung over her right shoulder. Her wand was still there, in its wooden case. None of the Muggles near her had any idea there was a witch at the zebra crossing; she looked like any ordinary girl, but in a few days, she would be living in a magic castle, learning spells, and brewing potions. 

A short time ago, she had been cross she had to wait so long to shop in Diagon Alley after her letter arrived, but now she realized the practicality of it. Lily didn’t know how she would have gone weeks without testing a spell if she had a wand at her disposal since the beginning of August. She had been desperate to try some magic ever since Sev showed her his Mum’s old schoolbooks full of wand movements and Latin incantations. She had wanted to try a spell today in Diagon Alley, where she could have gotten away with it, but shopping with Frothmore hadn’t gone as planned. Lily's scheme to skive off the trip for a couple of minutes crashed before it got off the ground. It turned out Frothmore had the eyes of a hawk, the premonition of a prophet, and the luck of a leprechaun. They could never get out of his sight. He controlled exactly what they did and for how long they did it. Every purchase they made went through his eyes, every person they spoke to had to meet his approval. If Mum had a twin and the two of them were a single person, he was worse!

He was so stringent, he vetoed anything he deemed a transgression against Secrecy, no matter how innocuous. Nothing met his standards, not books that could be hidden on a shelf or sweets that could be eaten immediately. He wouldn’t let them go inside the broom store or the joke shop, citing it a superfluous digression from the itinerary, and at every stop he timed them with his pocket-watch. It spoke to the magic of Diagon Alley that they were able to have so much fun despite him. Frothmore saved their wand purchases towards the end, right before they were scheduled to stop for ice cream and go home. Lily was so desperate to try a spell, she planned to sneak her wand into the loo and try a harmless windmill charm in one of the stalls, one she practiced with a twig a couple of weeks ago. Frothmore insisted she leave all her bags behind, checked that her wand was in its box, and then asked a witch he knew to follow her into the loo to keep an eye on her. In the loo. Mad! She was glad she wouldn’t be taking his class and felt sorry for anyone who did. 

Lily knew no one was stopping her from trying a spell now, but as tempted as she found herself, she wouldn’t do it. Professor Frothmore spent their time in Madam Malkins warning the three first years about the Trace as they were poked and prodded with charmed needles. Frothmore could be pedantic and overcautious, but the Ministry wasn’t joking about their punishments. Severus said his mum went to school with someone who had their wand snapped. To Lily, that sounded like the worst thing imaginable: being permanently banned from using magic and left stranded in ordinary life.

Lily crossed into the park and followed the footpath towards the tree border, confident she would find Sev by the river. They hadn’t set a meeting time, but no matter when she arrived to their meeting place, Severus always beat her there.   

Today Lily could finally tell him about her magical adventure. Even if Sev had gone to Diagon Alley last week, there were so many sights she was sure to have seen a new kneazle at Magical Menagerie or a new title at Flourish and Blotts. From the time they met, she had spent half their friendship wondering whether Sev got tired of answering her questions about magic and the Wizarding World. He never gave her that impression. She knew he’d happily repeat a story five times if she asked him to, but after two years, the truth hit her. It was the other way around. She was tired of asking him questions. Lily wished she could know the same answers Sev did and didn’t have question basic things like Are there girl goblins? Do dwarves exist? Sev taught her loads—even Frothmore had been impressed by how much she knew…for a Muggle-born— but she still felt as though she were entering Hogwarts at a disadvantage. 

As she reached the grove of trees that signaled the end of park property, she took the box that held her wand out of her backpack. She didn’t open it: here in the woods, out of sight from any onlookers, she was sorely tempted to test one of the spells she knew by name. But holding the box made her feel closer to her wand already. On whim, she flipped open the lid. Just to look. 

Surely there couldn’t be any harm in holding it?

Lily was twirling her wand between her fingers, a real wand now, not a stick to play pretend with. 

“Mr. Ollivander said it’s good for charms—”

“Put that away,” Sev hissed, whipping his head in both directions to make sure they were alone. He eyed a boat sailing along the river with reservation. The effect was very Petunia-ish, a comparison Lily knew he wouldn’t appreciate.

“I’m not doing magic,” she protested. Sev scoffed. “No one’s here, and if someone were,” she cut Sev off before he could admonish her further, “they would see a girl holding a stick. Hardly news to make The Cokeworth Mail.” Severus grumbled indistinctly but didn’t comment further.Lily took that for a win. She grinned and held up her wand in victory.

“Ten-and-a-quarter inch,” she said proudly, unable to draw her eyes away from it. “It’s willow and unicorn hair. What’s yours?”

“Cedar and unicorn,” Sev replied flatly.

“Brilliant!” she gushed. “Maybe our cores came from the same unicorn!”

Severus made a noncommittal noise, turning his head to watch the retreating boat make its way downstream. Lily was surprised at his lack of enthusiasm. She would’ve expected him to be over the moon with excitement. 

There was a time when getting wands was all they could talk about. Only a week ago, they had planned to double check their wands against an old book of Sev’s, which had a wand wood glossary in the back, as soon as they had their wands in hand. She really wished she could see it. Something Mr. Ollivander said about willow wands nagged at her. He said that they choose owners with hidden insecurities. He had directed those words to another child at the shop, not to her, but Lily couldn’t get the thought out of her mind. She hadn’t remembered reading anything about hidden insecurities in the glossary, but there were so many entries that she hadn’t paid special attention to willow wood. 

Before stepping into Ollivander’s, she truly believed her perfect match would be phoenix feather and elder wood—the rarest kind in the world. Sev had laughed at her, saying if she beat the odds against having a wand like that, she should play the lotto next. It was a little silly looking back; she was perfectly pleased with the willow and unicorn hair wand she purchased now that she had it. She felt it was special the moment golden sparks flew out of its tip. If she could only read what the glossary said about willow wood, she might be able to put the hidden insecurity fear to rest, but Sev hadn’t brought the book with him or mentioned it at all today. She could ask him if he knew anything about willow wands choosing insecure owners, but she didn’t want him to think she had some hidden insecurity. Besides, he seemed distracted with his own issues. Usually if he got taciturn and quiet, talking about magic could bring him out of it, but today that wasn’t working, though he had politely listened to her stories from Diagon Alley. She couldn't imagine what could be troubling him with their departure from Cokeworth a mere three days away. They were closer to Hogwarts than ever before.

“Another girl had a unicorn core too—Mary,” she said conversationally. “Luke’s wand core was dragon heartstring, but the wood was willow, same as mine.”

Sev’s eyebrows knitted together. “There were other first years at the shop?”

“Professor Frothmore took all three of us to Diagon Alley, so we got to know each other a bit. Mary’s all the way from Glasgow, can you believe it?” Lily might’ve noticed a nervous look come over Severus’ face if she had been paying attention, but she was counting on her own fingers. 

“Now I’ll know three people at Hogwarts—four if you count the Muggle Studies teacher.” A curious thought came over Lily, a question she never considered asking before. “Do you know anybody else who’ll be at school?”

Severus shook his head. “Just you,” he said very quietly. Lily thought his expression suddenly looked deeply uncomfortable, like she had put him in an itchy wool sweater.

“You know no matter how many people we meet, you’ll still be my best friend.” 

Those must have been the magic words. Severus tried to bottle up his smile, but couldn’t. The corners of his mouth were splitting open so wide they threatened to push his cheeks off his face.

“I should get going,” he said, but Severus didn’t budge an inch from his spot on the grass. “Same time tomorrow?”

“You should come over,” she blurted out. It was a sudden idea, but one that sounded even better to Lily voiced out loud than it seemed when it popped into her head. Sev, meanwhile, looked bewildered. He had never gone inside Lily’s house before, though he walked with her to the corner of Bush and Highcourt Street more times than Lily could count. “At a quarter to noon, but don’t come a minute earlier and come round the back.” 

Sev’s expression changed from shocked to shrewd and he eyed her with the tired, wary look of someone seasoned to her flights. 

“I am allowed over, right?” 

“Course,” she answered easily. “I’m not allowed out tomorrow is all.”