Chapter 5: Castles in The Sky

Severus dressed himself with more care than usual. He figured he wouldn’t be seen by anyone, but on the chance he were, he didn’t want Lily’s folks to react the same way her sister had. Her entire street was housed with notorious busybodies and curtain-twitchers. This year he had a semi-decent outfit set aside for the Hogwarts Express ride. It might have been up to scratch for its original owner, who was longer and broader than him in all directions, but it had been mended so many times that Severus planned to swap it for robes the second he stepped on the train. The trouble was Mum would notice what he was wearing the minute she saw him. He hadn’t yet told her Lily invited him over. She’d been furious the first time she found out about Lily—that Severus had met a Muggle-born and broke the Statute of Secrecy to explain magic to her. He hung around Toby voluntarily for a week just to avoid the brunt of her. Mum had gotten over it, but this morning he’d woken up to the sound of Toby slagging off at her over the damn radio. He’d gone back to sleep after Toby left for work, but if Mum hadn’t, she be in a right state.

Severus figured he’d get it over with. He crept down the stairs as quietly as he could, but each step was like a snapping twig in the forest. He might as well have announced himself with trumpets. It wasn’t too late to make a break for the door, but Mum would have heard him, so he figured he should check on her. 

She was sitting at the kitchen table with the radio, fiddling with the dials and tweaking the antenna. She didn’t look up at his approach.

“Muggles make all of these complicated gadgets,” she muttered spitefully under her breath. “All of these parts and none of them work.” Her voice hitched as she shoved the antenna down and gave the device a violent whack. 

So Mum was in a mood. Severus could see the dark bags under her eyes from the doorway.

“Don’t just stand there,” she snapped at him. As reluctant as he was to step any closer to her, he peeked at the radio’s exposed back panel. The problem looked easy to fix. Their radio was always breaking down to the point he’d picked up repair tips from taking it to the shop so many times. This repair wouldn’t even require extra tools.

Wizards had radio, but from what Mum had once told him, they were basic models with an on/off button and a volume knob. They didn’t come with capacitors, resistors, coils—none of that.   They came pre-charmed to tap into the Wizarding Wireless Network, and you couldn’t use one to listen to Muggle stations since they worked on magic, not airwaves. Supposedly, it was possible to access the WWN on a Muggle radio, but Severus had dedicated an entire month to such a mission when he was 8 and never managed it. 

“The speaker wires were loose,” Severus explained as he slipped them into place on the amp board and screwed the panel back on. He spun the dial and Toby’s favorite station fizzled to life. His dark eyes met his mother’s.

“Of course you’d know how to fix it,” she sneered. Mum paced around the tiny kitchen like a caged animal.

Severus knew what she’d meant—her half-Muggle son could work a Muggle contraption that made no sense to the likes of her. She didn’t belong in the Muggle world, neither of them did. It wasn’t their place. It wasn’t their home. He’d go off to Hogwarts in two days. His trunk was packed, but poor Mum would be staying here in Cokeworth, in Spinner’s End, alone with Toby.

Mum was pulling out pots and kitchenware, turning every which way in agitation. The news that Lily had invited him over was frozen on the tip of his tongue, but Mum spared him the worry of having to break it to her, slamming a drawer shut and rounding on him.

“I can hardly get anything done with you underfoot and getting in my way. Why don’t you go outside?”

Severus didn’t need to be told twice. 

He had time to kill til noon, so he meandered along the river, where Prilov’s kept watches in their display window. Most of them placed their hands around a quarter after 10; the one outlier ran fast at 12:05. Even though the shop owners were still on the wrong side of the waterway, they considered themselves part of the better end of Cokeworth. The man behind the counter shot Severus dark looks through the dirty glass, as if Severus wanted to steal his junk. Some place on the street had gotten burglarized—probably the pub, they were the only ones with money in the till—and now everyone was on high alert. He circled the streets again until the clock chorus claimed a couple minutes after 11, and it seemed reasonable to head towards Highcourt Street.

He still couldn’t believe he was in Lily’s house. Sometimes he would walk with her in the direction of her street to lengthen their time together, but he usually stopped on the corner of Bush Gardens and turned back. Today he crept through the gardens of Highcourt until he reached one with a gaudy stone birdbath in its center. When he neared it, Lily flung open her backdoor and waved him inside. Severus admired the kitchen he stepped into; everything was so shiny and new, like the Evanses lived inside a catalogue ad. His eyes fell on the fruit bowl, loaded with apples so red they looked made of plastic. There wasn’t a fly in sight.

“Let’s go upstairs!” Lily said, dragging him to the front of the house before he could fully get his shoes off. He dropped his loafers by the door as he followed her up the staircase. She was waiting in front of a white door on the left. He figured they would do what they usually did at the park and pore over their school textbooks. He tried to remember where they had left off, but he had spent hours reading A Primer to Defense Against Dark Forces by wandlight long after he and Lily had parted ways.

“This is Petunia’s bedroom,” she announced in a low, dramatic voice. 

“What d’ya wanna go in there for?” Sev asked sourly. Tuney was the only dark creature on the planet he didn’t care about.

“Because Tuney never lets me,” Lily replied, as if it were obvious. “C’mon, that’s where the good stuff is.” She turned the door handle and disappeared into the room. 

Severus had no choice but to follow her. He gave the pastel and white bedroom a critical once over. “It’s all regular Muggle stuff.” His eyes landed on a teddy bear a foot away from him, sitting atop the night-table with crocheted shoes, a headband, and a little bracelet made of ribbon. It was wearing a dress that, save for the flowers embroidered on it, greatly resembled the smock he had worn the day he met Tuney in Mum’s old blouse. He glared daggers at its stupid smile. 

“Good find!” Lily had noticed him looking and quickly felt under the bear’s dress, to Sev’s confusion. She put the bear down disappointed. “Could’ve been something. It’s so obvious, it’s not obvious.” He had no words. It was so mental, it was still mental. With a devious wink, she pulled the headband over the bear’s plastic eyes as a miniature blindfold, then flew across the room. Lily was opening drawers at breakneck speed.

“A-ha!” She said triumphantly, pulling out a magazine from between a folded stack of blouses. There were a group of older boys on the cover. “Tuney does like them!” 

Looked to be some music group Sev had never heard of. He was bored already, but Lily had replaced the magazine with great care to copy its original position and resumed rummaging through the room with gusto. She was flipping through the individual pages of books and inspecting the undersides of drawers; it all seemed a bit mad. He doubted that Lily’s sister would use half the hiding spots Lily was checking or had anything worth hiding, but there was no use in sharing that with Lily. She had already found a tube of lipstick inside of a sock and now she was extracting a cassette Petunia had hidden in between the folds of her window dressings. Lily considered it an astonishing discovery, so he figured they would be here for awhile. He moved to sit on the bed when Lily stopped him. 

“Not on the bed,” she said so sharply he jumped up before he could sit down. “We have to sit on the floor. We can’t give Tuney any clue we were in here.” 

Severus rolled his eyes and sat on the shag rug, wondering if Lily would usher him onto the bare floor so he wouldn’t leave an imprint behind in the rug fibers. He had not imagined spending his day so dully. It still beat being at home. He was still with Lily, who appeared to be having fun, and maybe she’d decide they could rifle through her kitchen next. In the meantime, this wasn’t a bad place to fall asleep. 

Sev lay back on the floor and that’s when he saw it. His eye level with the hem of the bedskirt, Severus spotted a single envelope under the bed. From what he could make out, it bore neither stamp nor postal code. His curiosity piqued, he pulled it free from its hiding place.

“Did you find something?” Lily asked eagerly. 

“This is the Hogwarts insignia,” Severus said in surprise as he lifted the envelope so Lily could see. It was addressed to Miss Petunia Evans of the Southeastern bedroom of Number 22 Highcourt Street, Cokeworth. “Why would Petunia have a letter from Hogwarts?” 

Lily snatched the letter out of his hands. “Maybe they sent her a letter too,” she theorized excitedly. She had already pulled out the letter from its envelope and unfolded it, stepping closer so Severus could read over her shoulder. Unlike his and Lily’s letters, Petunia’s letter wasn’t written in green ink or signed by the Deputy Headmistress. Her letter bore the signature of none other than Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. 

“Tuney must’ve asked if she could attend Hogwarts,” Lily gasped with a sense of disbelief. 

“That’s dumb,” he muttered, but Lily glared at him so fiercely he was forced to backtrack. “All I meant was she would’ve gotten a letter at 11 if she had magic.” Lily was still looking at him with slits for eyes. He cleared his throat. “How do you think she got a letter to Hogwarts,” he asked nervously.

The distraction worked. Lily was too curious to ignore the bait, though she didn’t sound pleased. “I don’t know. I can’t see her using an owl.”

That much was true. “She couldn’t have used the post either. Unless—they must have wizards undercover at the post office!”  

The day improved from there. He and Lily made their way downstairs to her kitchen to get snacks, Lily listening intently to his undercover mail room theory.

“Seems like a boring job, magic or not,” Lily grimaced. “I’d hate to sit at the post office all day checking if any letters to witches or wizards came in. Why would the Ministry care?”

“The Ministry always cares about protecting the Statute of Secrecy. But you wouldn’t have to worry about working a job like that. Mum said that anyone working close with Muggles didn’t do well on their exams.”

Lily gave him a keen look and stuck out her jaw mulishly. “Tuney says you don’t like Muggles,” she pressed with a tight voice and accusing eyes.

Severus opened his mouth to respond. There were so many things he wanted to say, like if all the wizards and witches in the world collectively decided to hide themselves from Muggles, that meant something. And that his Mum married a Muggle and that didn’t work out too well for her. Or him. And that Tuney herself was hardly likable. Neither she nor Francis Sowell nor the kids he’d encountered at primary, nor the workers at the mill—all Muggles. But Severus didn’t have a chance to say any of it because as soon as he made to speak, they heard the the sound of tires pulling up to the house-front. 

Lily gasped and looked at the clock. “My dad’s home early,” she said in dismay. “Quick! Go round the back!” 

She grabbed his hand to pull him to the back door before Mr. Evans reached the house, but Severus yanked her back before she ran outside. “Your neighbors are in their yard,” he panicked.

Lily looked out the window with him. Her neighbors were having a garden party and were currently staring into the Evanses’ garden to admire their birdbath. There was no way to sneak out the back without them seeing. They were surrounded and could hear Mr. Evans’ footsteps nearing the front entrance. 

“Oh no,” Lily groaned. So much for being allowed over. Severus felt just as despairing.

It wouldn’t make a lick of difference that Lily had been the one who invited him. Toby would blow a gasket if neighbors started talking about him again. There were still two days to weather at home before leaving for Hogwarts. The worst part was that Lily might get into trouble too. A set of keys jingled from the doorway. He would do anything to avoid that.

“Sev?” he heard.

But when he opened his eyes, Lily was no longer standing next to him in her kitchen. He wasn’t in a kitchen at all. Instead, a chimney stood to his left. He blinked to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. There was nothing but smoke and sky overhead. He was on the roof of the Evanses’ house. Voices drifted up from the neighbors’ garden party and Severus jerked forward on reflex. It might not have been the smartest idea. His socks slid on the roof tile and he grasped for the chimney to steady himself. He could see half of Cokeworth from up here. Everything was still shrouded in a hazy smog, yellow from the bright sun, but the city skyline didn’t seem as bleak with his back to the giant, towering smokestack.

He stood for a moment, breathless in the breeze, as a pair of birds whizzed over his head. 

The smoke swirling through the sky gave the illusion he could walk through puffy clouds. He stuck his arms out to the side like the wind would lift him above the rooftops. Then Severus came crashing back to earth. 

As far as he could tell, this didn’t solve his problem; it merely delayed it. How was he going to get down from the bloody roof? How was he going to explain getting cocked up here in the first place when somebody spotted him? The only good he saw from this scenario was that he could take responsibility for whatever happened on himself and keep Lily out of it.

Without releasing his hold on the chimney, Severus tried to size up what it would take to climb from the roof to one of the second floor window ledges using the houses across the street for reference. He swallowed the lump in his throat. It was a big gap. While he was wondering whether he could make himself Disapparate a second time, Lily and Mr. Evans came outside, walking to Mr. Evans’ car. They spoke for a minute as Mr. Evans handed Lily something from the trunk, and Severus realized this was his chance. He waved maniacally to get Lily’s attention without attracting her neighbors, willing her to look at him. She didn’t turn her head, but by sheer coincidence, Mr. Evans looked up, locking eyes with his. The man’s jaw dropped and he gave a panicked, convulsive shake, like someone who’d seen a Thestral for the first time. Lily ran to his side and followed his petrified gaze upwards. She seemed so shocked to see Severus on the roof, no one would believe she’d seen him at all that day. Not that Mr. Evans noticed her reaction; he was busy scanning both ends of the road and the windows of the opposite houses. There were a surplus of cars parked on the street, but no people. 

Mr. Evans squinted back at him and exchanged whispers with Lily. He told Severus to “wait there and don’t move”—at least that’s what Severus thought he said. He couldn’t read lips well, and Mr. Evans didn’t actually say anything out loud before sprinting into his home. Lily also didn’t shout anything to him, giving the impression the whole street was enveloped in a powerful Silencing Charm. She mimed jumping. Did she want him to break his neck? She’d have to be spare to think he’d jump two stories. It wasn’t the same as jumping off a swing. When he didn’t move, Lily looked up at him with concern. 

Severus heard Mr. Evans from the garden and crouched low. A chorus of voices greeted him, and he responded in a loud, chipper tone.

“Hullo! Just changing a lightbulb! A regular, one-man job!” A ladder. He must be getting a ladder.

There was a slam from the backdoor and Mr. Evans reappeared in the front of the house so quickly Severus would’ve thought he disapparated. He was whipping his head to check the coast was clear and then began leaning the ladder against the roof. 

When the top of the ladder made contact, Severus inched his way towards it, keeping low and trying to prevent himself from sliding down the shingles. He glanced over the roof edge. Lily was small and still from her spot on the road. He wasn’t afraid of heights—Mum told him a story about a Squib once…wizards didn’t go splat—but it was a huge relief Mr. Evans was half-way up to meet him. Normally Severus was quick on a ladder, but today his slippery socks slowed him down. He moved one foot and one hand at a time at crawl speed. As he stuck out his right foot, he felt himself drop several rungs. His heart leapt into his throat. He grabbed at anything he could get ahold of, bracing himself on the ladder sides and falling so fast, the metal edges scraped the skin of his hands. Then he felt pressure let up from where Mr. Evans had pulled his ankle. 

Lily’s dad reached the ground and started carrying the ladder off in such haste, he didn’t notice Severus hadn’t climbed off yet. Sev jumped the last couple of rungs. Lily took one of his stinging palms into her hand and pulled him inside, Mr. Evans racing after them with the huge ladder slung over his shoulder.

Severus stumbled through the Evanses’ front door, fidgeting so much he’d have no trouble convincing anyone it was his first time in the house. He couldn’t imagine making a worse first impression. There was no way appearing on the roof hadn’t landed him in trouble. Then again, Lily’s dad knew about magic…

Mr. Evans rushed past him to set the ladder down in the corridor. Then he raced to the closed door, locked it, bolted it, and set a chain across it for good measure. Severus flinched when he spun round, but the man sped past him again, flying to the sitting room window, where he peered out onto the street from behind a curtain. Severus used the time to cram his feet into his shoes. He didn’t think Mr. Evans noticed he had been outside in his socks.

The house had gone so still, he nearly jumped out of his skin whenMr. Evans whirled on him unexpectedly. Severus got his first good look of the man. He was tall, towering over Severus’ 11 year-old frame, but Toby was broader and had two stone of muscle on him. Out of the corner of his eye, Severus glanced at Lily and noticed she didn’t seem afraid of her dad—a good sign. His eyes flickered back to Mr. Evans. The most distinctive feature about him was he had remarkably narrow shoulders. Beyond that, there wasn’t much to pick him out of a crowd. Lily’s dad didn’t really look like either of his daughters. He had plain brown hair with a hint of red in his mustache when it caught the light. That mustache was all Severus could focus on. It was thin, set in two separate pieces over his lips, and twitched like the curtains Mr. Evans had hidden behind. 

Before his eyes, the mustache was pulled back.

“What the devil were you doing on our roof?” Mr. Evans asked with a whisper fit for the stage. Severus’ eyes darted to Lily for a clue of what to say. 

“I—“ Lily shook her head. “I don’t know,” Severus lied. 

“Severus got there with magic,” Lily explained. Severus couldn’t tell if her comment was helpful or not. Mr. Evans didn’t look too pleased.

“But why?” he asked, directing his question towards Lily, who turned her head to Severus expectantly. Severus fumbled for an answer. 

“Er. I didn’t mean to. I was—in the park. And I thought about seeing Lily. When I opened my eyes…I was on your roof.” He ran a hand through his hair. If his lie had been any more transparent, Mr. Evans would be able to see through it clearer than his windows.

“Just like that?” Mr. Evans’ mustache quivered suspiciously, but the rest of him was so bent out of shape, he was ready to wrap himself round any explanation he was given.

“Yes, sir.” Severus straightened up, searching for something more to add. “Thank you for getting me down.”

Mr. Evans nodded to himself so many times he began to resemble a bobblehead. 

“Well, you really ought to get a handle on things to not repeat these sorts of accidents in the future.” He fixed his hands on his hips. “Best you run along? And be quick about it.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.” Severus didn’t mention he’d be quicker about it if the man hadn’t manhandled his ankle. He toed towards the door, casting a nervous look back to Mr. Evans, who had returned to staring out the window. He gave Lily a small wave and she shot him two thumbs up with a giant grin that made the whole day worth it.

❀

“And he was on the roof!” Ned Evans repeated for the fourth time that day. Lily had restarted her count at supper after she lost track and Dad was already up to four.

“What were you doing home so early?” Rosie asked suspiciously, nosing her wineglass.

“It’s a lucky thing I came with him stuck on the roof like that. Imagine if he had to get help from the neighbors,” Ned blustered. “How was your shopping, Pet?”

“Fine,” Tuney answered, jabbing her fork at the slab of beef on her plate.

“Everything is so expensive these days,” Mum interjected. 

Ned looked unsettled. He mentioned the price of the birdbath, which peeved Mum until he repeated the neighbors’ compliments before loudly bringing up Sev on the roof again.

Lily reminded herself she only had to pretend she knew nothing about how Sev appeared on the roof for two more days, one of which was almost over. She reached for another bun from the towering pile in front of her sister. Tuney gave her a dark look and rolled her eyes.

“What,” Lily pantomimed. Both sisters simultaneously glanced to where their parents were talking. The pair were too absorbed in their conversation to notice the girls.

“Imagine if he slipped and fell and died on our property.”

“Like I said, it was a great stroke of luck I happened to get home when I did. Else it’d have been the police and the papers.”

They locked eyes again and Lily read the words spelled out on Tuney’s lips. 

“He did it on purpose,” she declared soundlessly. 

“No,” Lily lied, stuffing the bread in her mouth when her parents looked over. No one would find out the truth that she had invited Sev to their house. But that said, Tuney was right. Sev must have gotten himself on the roof on purpose. He told Lily about accidental magic, but it couldn’t have been accidental he disappeared at the perfect time so her dad wouldn’t catch them inside together.   

Sev had said she had loads of magic and he knew so much, he must have loads too, enough to make him choose to make magic happen like she does: if he wants it to.

Lily couldn’t remember ever doing magic by accident. As far as she could recall, before getting her wand, she could make unexplainable things happen exactly as she willed them to. It didn’t manifest like an unstoppable superpower—her magic was more subtle than that—but there were countless moments she made something impossible happen by thinking about it intentionally. When the wind-up ballerina on Tuney’s music box stopped working, Lily could make her spin. She raised flying bubbles out of dish soap. She soared off swings. After Professor Frothmore arrived to deliver her Hogwarts letter, Mum and Dad suddenly came up with multiple memories of Lily performing what they now believed was unconscious magic, but none of it sounded right to her. Her parents’ examples were them attributing every good stroke of luck that happened to the family to Lily unconsciously making it happen, which wasn’t remotely how accidental magic worked, which was—well, Lily didn’t quite know. It was one of the many things about the magical world she didn’t know. Sev had reassured her being Muggle-born made no difference, but sometimes it felt like a crusty arse-lick, to borrow one of his expressions.

She thought back to the times she had seen Sev do magic, a grand total of two times, once today in her house and once two years ago at the park. If Severus appeared on the roof on purpose, did that mean he also dropped that tree branch on Petunia on purpose?

Lily had forgotten all about that incident and the resurfaced memory soured her to her wizard friend. She felt rather cross towards him now as Mum asked her yet another question about the fake version of the roof story. She knew she had invited him over, so it was both their faults she had to deal with their lie, but it irked her that he could be lying to her about what trouble he caused by choice. 

When Tuney asked if she could be excused, Lily remembered she had a second lie to hide thanks to her day with Severus. They had been in Tuney’s room and read her letter! How was she going to hide that? 

Lily desperately wanted to ask her sister about the letter she had written to Albus Dumbledore. She had spent close to two years believing that Tuney hated everything about the magical world. Sev said it’s the case for most Muggles and had been shocked when Lily smugly announced her parents were thrilled she was a witch following Professor Frothmore’s visit—especially Mum, who had once been obsessed with policing Lily’s use of her special powers. Despite his well-wishes, Sev had looked doubtful that their attitudes could remain so different from her sister's. But here was proof that Tuney liked magic enough to wish she could have magic too! Hogwarts would be so much fun if Tuney were going with her. She’d know all the names of the Professors and what to expect from all of the classes and the other kids. 

It had been a trade. Lily hadn’t realized it at the time, but her friendship with Severus had come at the price of her relationship with Tuney. It was easy to forget about her sister when she and Sev were wading through shallow areas of riverbank to collect hornwort and curled pondweed for future potions ingredients. It was not easy to forget Tuney when Severus could give Latin names to all the bursts of magic she could do, and her eagerness to learn something new was mixed with the ghost feeling of showing Tuney something truly astonishing. Or when Tuney wasn’t home for supper because she was at Poppy Dudley’s house and Mum would complain because Poppy’s mother was a nurse and that meant she didn’t care to be home for suppertime and raise her children. Lily wished her friendship with Sev hadn’t meant losing her sister. If Tuney had magic too, maybe they all could have been friends. Sev wouldn’t have turned down a chance to browse through someone’s Hogwarts textbooks for two years and Tuney liked to be prepared for everything.

But her sister wasn’t going to Hogwarts, she wasn’t befriending Severus anytime soon, and there was no way for Lily to bring up the letter without admitting she’d been sneaking through Petunia’s belongings. There might be less than two days before she left for Hogwarts, but Lily didn’t know if she could keep quiet about that letter for so long. Worse, she didn’t know if she’d have the opportunity to keep quiet or if Tuney would somehow suss it out.

Luckily for Lily, Mum asked Tuney if she could help with the washing up, so her sister wouldn’t be going straight to her bedroom. She just had to hope she put everything back exactly where it belonged. 

❀ ❀

Severus was scouring the park. Lily wasn’t there, but it wasn’t necessarily a sign she had gotten into trouble yesterday. She told him last week she’d stay home the day before leaving to Hogwarts because her parents wanted to spend the whole day together. That left Severus searching for bush cricket eggs alone. 

It was too early in the day for the crickets to be out, but their eggs would be nestled in tree bark if he was lucky enough to find any among the trees bordering the footpath. Severus wanted to test substituting crickets for grasshoppers in Hogwarts, and they didn’t live as far north as Scotland. He read about it in a footnote in Mum’s ingredient encyclopedia, which noted that ‘potioneers should exercise caution substituting grasshoppers and crickets interchangeably, but the general substitution ratio is 2:1. Vester Zwitschern, Grillen oder Heuschrecken.’ In 9 out of 10 potions, crickets were the superior choice by far. You’d get a stronger, longer lasting product. Every tenth potion, you really needed a grasshopper and a cricket would explode your brew or worse, depending on how the cricket parts interacted with the other ingredients. Pewter’s cooler brewing point was begging for cricket swaps. The apothecary who traded in his brass cauldron really sold him on pewter’s overlooked qualities. There was a whole field of wicked cold brew potions, but the really advanced stuff was beyond NEWT level. You needed special freezing spells to get your potions into the negative temperatures or really rare ingredients like yeti blood. 

To his luck, he came across an oak crevice full of bush cricket eggs. He filled a jar and mixed it with some dirt to keep the eggs moist. As an afterthought, he peeled back some of the rough oak bark too. He should’ve brought his potions knife. He couldn’t get much with his bare hands and it always came in handy. While struggling, he spotted a pair of milkcaps hidden at the base of the tree. Bostin' find! He’d share one with Lily. They had an oily smell to them, kind of like wet laundry, but their spores could be used for all kinds of healing potions. They were super versatile. He had so much stuff to carry, he had no reason to delay going home any longer. If he beat Toby back, he might even be able to test out a spell while Mum was cooking supper. She tried to put him off of spell practice by slyly asking if he wanted to spend September in St. Mungo’s instead of Hogwarts, but when he asked her if other first years would know spells before classes started, she went silent and he doubled his secret practice sessions. 

Severus had only slammed his front door closed when there was a knock behind him. He nudged his foraging finds against the wall. Someone was always knocking to ask, “Where’s Toby?” So long as it wasn’t the creditor this time. If it was, it’d still be better for Severus to open the door over Mum.   

“Ay, lad. Toby round?” The bloke at the door looked too pissed to remember his own name. He probably wanted to score a pint off the old man. Those were the only sorts Toby could feel sorry for, the knobs thrown out of the pub.

“Nope, hasn’t been home for days. Check the river,” Severus grinned, slamming the door in the man’s face. He brought his milkcaps into the kitchen to start getting them dried out and wrapped them in a rag from one of the drawers. Mum stopped peeling potatoes at his entrance. She was giving him her signature look of judgment. Severus folded his hands. “I was helping.” 

“Help set the table.”

Severus grabbed plates, glasses, and cutlery. When Mum glared at him, he pulled out a third set of everything for Tobias, who Severus wished hadn’t been home for days. He eyed the table for how best to arrange this. It was so small you couldn’t keep from knocking knees together once you sat down. He’d put Mum across from Toby. That meant she’d have to look his way, but they’d have a table between them. That left himself in the middle. He’d have the misfortune of being within Toby’s arm reach, but at least he wouldn’t have to look at his mug. He switched around the wobbly chair to the empty place. They hardly needed to sit in it unless they had someone over.

“Toby’s skipping the pub then?”

Mum’s dark flashed in warning. “Don’t call him that. Have some respect for your father.”

He spun indifferently. Her words were so ingrained they lacked any bite. It was almost like a joke between them.

“It’s ‘cause Toby and I are such good mates.”

Mum’s lip curled. He knew that look of amused meanness from better days when Mum, gobstone champion, would invite him to play a match to watch gobstone liquid squirt in his face after she flattened him. 

“Alright. Go shine his shoes then, since you’re such good mates.” 

Severus huffed inaudibly and went to grab polish and a couple of rags before kneeling by Tobias’ ratty, mud-slung work boots by the backdoor. He could not be out of this house fast enough. 

By the time he’d gotten the mud scraped away, there was a second round of banging on the front door. Severus rose to check who it could be now. They needed a Muggle-confunding charm on this place. Mum claimed they couldn’t for obvious reasons, but that made Severus think it twice as useful.

Toby was waiting on the other side, looking like he’d been standing there a good hour for all the patience he had. 

“The hell you got on your hands?”

“Shoe polish,” Severus answered, walking back into the kitchen. Toby followed after him and spotted the discarded rags and jar by his old pair of shoes. He hummed approvingly.

“Some manual labor’ll do you good ‘fore you’re off to posh school.” He scraped back the chair at the table and sank into it, kicking out his legs. Severus and Eileen kept their heads down.

“No supper?” Tobias drummed his fingers against his empty plate. Most millworkers turned deaf, but Toby’d be the only one to turn partially blind.

“Chicken is in the oven,” Mum said, tension coiling her shoulders. She sped up the pace of her chopping, and for a minute the only sound in the room was the slicing of her knife and potatoes falling into the pot. 

Mum set the potatoes to boil, and Toby started fishing for cigarettes in his pocket. 

“Left my smokes…” He didn’t say where, so it was either the pub or he was off to buy a pack from the corner store. 

“Maybe he won’t come back,” Severus said optimistically. Mum gave him another sour look. Knowing their luck, Toby would come back when supper ran cold, and he’d blame it on Eileen for not having it ready when he first walked through the door. But tonight, Toby returned just in time and in surprisingly good spirits. He polished half his plate before Severus cut into his own chicken. Mum eyed Severus pointedly over the bowl of potatoes she held out to him. He turned to Toby to pass it. 

“Mr. Snape.”

He could feel Mum burning a hole through his head with her eyeballs, but Toby was amused. “You’ll be Mr. Snape at that school of yours. Hear that, Eileen? Your boy’s a blueblood.”

“Tobias—”

“No son o’ mine is gonna stand for that ‘yes, sir,’ ‘no, sir,’ ‘can I lick your arse, sir,’ bullocks.” Toby said, jabbing his fork at Eileen and then taking a bite of the chicken stuck to the end of it. He addressed Severus while he chewed. “Mark my words, lad. You’ll hate it.”

Severus stared down at his plate, eyes burning. He was no son of Toby’s and wouldn’t hate Hogwarts no matter how posh the kids were. He couldn’t stand the sight of Tobias’ smug face a second longer. A heavy hand fell on his shoulder. Of all the things Severus imagined the old man could say to him on his last day at home, he would never have dreamed Toby would try for advice. 

“If you run into any trouble at school, you remember those places only look at money. It’s all about knowing the right people and being the right people, the kid of the right people—”

“Tobias—“

Toby raised his hands up. “I’m giving the lad some advice. Don’t know what crap you told him.” He looked past Mum’s glum face towards the backdoor. “You finally got rid of that ugly flowerpot,” he said approvingly. “That thing was cursed. Anything you’d plant in it died.” When Eileen and Severus didn’t respond, Toby took a long swig of his pint.

❀ ❀ ❀

This was the big day. September 1st. Today marked Lily’s departure for Hogwarts, and even Petunia couldn’t help be excited. With Lily off to boarding school, life could finally return to a semblance of how things used to be, at least until Christmas holiday. Life might never go back to how it was before Frothmore’s visit announcing Lily was a witch, but this month could fade into a distant bad memory. She could pretend her sister wasn’t off to a magical school and fool herself with the same lie they planned on telling the neighbors.

Unlike Mum and Dad, Petunia felt as though Lily had been gone a long time. For the past two years, it had been like her sister had been replaced with a different person. It brought to mind the stories Nan used to tell them about changeling children, fairies who had been swapped with human babies in the cradle. Petunia never liked those stories back when she believed they could only be pretend, but Lily used to grin and say, “I’m a changeling. I’m going to go back to the fairies some day.” Now those memories gave her the creeps. If witches and goblins were real, why not changelings too? She thought of Professor Frothmore not explaining how Lily was the sole magical member of their family or Dumbledore’s letter skirting over the issue of why some people were fated to be magic and others were not. Did she have a lost sister out there, kidnapped and replaced, that no one had thought of searching for? Someone should really look into that. There was a bona fide witch living in their neighborhood, who might also be a convicted criminal, and her parents had been acting like they were under a spell for weeks.

She looked around the table at her family digging into their breakfasts like nothing was wrong, especially Lily, who ate her food like it was a speeding competition. Petunia bit into the scone on her plate, covering her mouth so no one would see her gag. All she could taste was char. She peeked underneath it. The whole underside was burnt. No one else at the table gave a sign that anything was out of place, so Petunia had no idea if she had been the only one to get a burnt scone or everyone else just did a better job eating around the burnt bits. She cut the top off and ate it with extra jam and clotted cream to mask its dry taste. 

Last night, Mum had set out a flurry of photographs of Lily around the house, so she could always have Lily’s face in a room after she was gone. All of them were photos where Lily was by herself, so it hardly brought Petunia back to the good times, but she recognized a photo she had taken of Lily a couple of years ago at Nan and Grandad’s of Lily in front of the setting sun. You could barely tell it was her with her face obscured in shadows against the strong light. It felt wrong to be happy somehow; this sendoff had all the burnt bits of a funeral. Lily wasn’t coming back, not the way Petunia remembered her sister. 

Lily wanted to leave earlier than planned, so the Evanses piled their dishes in the sink and filed into the car. Once Lily and her trunk were settled in the Vauxhall, Petunia brightened with the realization that there would be nothing magic left in the house when she and her parents returned home. They could finally rest easy. Petunia had destroyed her letter from Dumbledore the other day, after her shopping trip with Mum. Under the pretext of cleaning the fireplace, she had taken a match to the envelope and watched as the wax Hogwarts seal dripped off and flames swallowed the letter whole. It burned like regular ink on regular paper, joining the mass of cinders from the FLOO, which were swept together into the rubbish. It was like she never applied. And between now and Christmas, it would be like Hogwarts never existed. 

The thought kept her spirits high during the car ride. Mum and Dad had bandied about sightseeing in the city after seeing Lily off since it would be Petunia’s first time in London, but Mum was tired from waking up early to bake. Dad said they would save the sightseeing for Christmastime, and it would be even nicer because the decorations would still be up in January. 

As tired as Mum was, she spent the entire trip twisted in the front seat to face Lily and talking animatedly. 

“When you get on the train, love, make sure you pick a compartment that already has kids your age and not an empty one. That’s how you can make some friends right away.” For once Lily seemed to be listening. “Who you sit next to can define your whole life.”

Dad adjusted the rearview mirror to reflect Lily’s eyes. “And remember you’re going to be sleeping in a girls dorm, so it’s important to be friends with girls since you’ll spend the most time with them. Having other friends is nice, but it can’t make up for not getting along with the girls you share a room with for seven years.” Petunia thought Daddy sounded like the repetitive voice on one of his persuasive hypnosis cassettes.

Mum nodded. “Try to get to know a few older students too. It’s so much easier for the kids who have an older sibling.” She frowned, then self-corrected. “You know what I mean.” 

Petunia stared out her own window at oncoming traffic. 

They arrived to King’s Cross with less time to spare than they thought. Ned had gotten lost, which spent all of the time they saved from leaving early. It was the most exciting part of the trip because they saw the outside of London Zoo and the British Museum. This was the London of Petunia's dreams. Even the ordinary streets seemed to come to life with buildings taller and older than those in Cokeworth. She wished Dad had circled Buckingham Palace too, but they hadn’t veered that far off course. Lily didn’t see any of it. She spent the time holding Mum’s wrist and staring at the face of her watch as Mum reassured her they wouldn't be late. They still had enough time before her train departed that they didn’t need to worry, but when they parked and entered King’s Cross Station, Petunia saw why it would have been beneficial to arrive early. The station was busy. Large crowds were speed walking to their destinations with briefcases and luggage trolleys as a loudspeaker juggled the arrival and departure times of various trains. From the concourse, London seemed to be the center of the universe. 

A station worker noticed them and walked up to dad with a smile on his face. 

“Where are you heading, sir? If you’d like to show me your ticket—” The station worker sized up the single trunk on the trolley and the family of four with a new wrinkle in his brow. 

Dad fumbled. “Well, you see. We’re, uhm—“

“Honestly!” Mum cut in, loud enough for nearby passengers to swivel their heads. “Some people won’t mind their own business.” 

The station worker was so flustered, he gave the family a wide berth after that. The rest of the travelers in their midst darted away like minnows in the presence of a big fish. Mum took charge, directing them to the signs for Platforms 9 and 10.For her part, Lily hardly looked like a changeling heading to her true home. She was scanning for directions as she trailed Mum. It set her apart from the everyday commuters, who wore tired, unfazed expressions. She had the same aura as the nearby pair of Italian Uni students, excited and maybe a touch apprehensive. They passed Platform 9 and began counting their steps, stopping parallel to the brick pillar before Platform 10. It was to the left of them, several yards away. They turned to face it as a single unit. Although it didn’t look any different from the other brick pillars they had passed along the other platforms, Petunia didn't want to look at it. It felt like a place that should remain unseen, like the sewer pipes or the ceiling vents. Dad checked Lily’s Hogwarts letter.

“This is it,” he announced cheerily. Mum looked delighted. The pair of them headed straight towards the pillar like they were going down an airstrip, each bracing a hand on Lily’s trolley.

All of a sudden Lily stopped walking. Mum and Dad staggered as the trolley stopped mere feet away from the magic entrance to the Hogwarts Express.

“What’s the matter, love? That’s the pillar,” Mum whispered excitedly, but Lily didn’t budge. She stood frozen, her hands gripping her trolley and her feet rooted to the tile floor.

“It’s not too late to turn back and go to Tuft Grammar,” Dad teased.

“No!” Lily cried, now looking ready to leap headfirst into a brick wall even if it wasn’t a magical doorway. “I’m not going to a dumb, boring grammar school when I can learn magic!”

Petunia seethed, and whatever expression of fury and betrayal and resentment her face had contorted into, Lily saw, because her green eyes widened guiltily. She opened her mouth, but Petunia stalked off before her sister could say anything more, away from her family and towards the unobtrusive brick pillar. She was ready to leap headfirst into a brick wall even if it wasn’t a magical doorway.

She did stick her arm out in case, so she wouldn’t just crash into a pillar, and it was a good thing she did. Instead of slamming into brick, she walked through the wall as though it were air and knocked straight into someone else’s back with her outstretched hand.

“Hey! Watch it!”

“Sorry,” she said meekly, losing her momentum as the angry teen she bumped into stormed off. She didn’t blame him for standing in front of the entrance because the sight awaiting her was overwhelming. 

It was like she was transported to an entirely separate train station. There was no hint of the rest of King’s Cross from here. You couldn’t hear the whistles of other trains or glimpse other sets of tracks. The gleaming red body of the Hogwarts Express stood to her left. They had already started burning coal in the engine room; steam was pouring onto the platform, where bursts of color flashed through the air. Someone had set off blue and bronze sparks at the other end of the station and a middle-aged woman nearby was manipulating the steam into the shape of an eager puppy to amuse a gaggle of small children. 

Up ahead, one girl around Petunia’s age was braiding another girl’s hair with magic. The dark-haired witch waved her stick and the blonde’s long hair arranged itself into two perfect plaits. Petunia looked at the pair with envy. 

Lily was right. Who would want to go to a dumb, boring grammar school?

She was lucky the next people behind her were her own family, otherwise she might have been plowed over by an incoming trolley. But the three other Evanses came to a standstill, as starstruck as Petunia. They might have stayed there until it was time for Lily to board the train if Petunia hadn’t told Dad they shouldn’t block the entrance.

“Quite right, Pet. We should get Lily’s things onboard.” He lifted Lily’s trunk by the handle and looked at the steam engine caboose, where a line of people had formed. All of them, adults and older teenagers alike, were magically floating trunks up to the open doors of the train. For a moment, he seemed confused whether to ask someone for assistance or whether to break the flow of the line by hoisting the trunk up himself, but an onlooker had come to his rescue. 

“I could take that,” said an older girl with a badge on her black school robes. She pointed to the trunk in Dad’s hand, and he was in the middle of declining when she drew out a stick. With a wave of her magic wand, the trunk floated onto the train. Mum and Dad looked relieved and Lily’s whole face lit up. There was a hunger there and Petunia knew exactly what her sister was thinking: soon that would be her waving a wand and performing wonders with her magic. 

Bitterly, Petunia wondered whether Lily would feel the same way she did if the sisters’ circumstances were switched and it was Lily’s lot to know all these marvels were possible, but forever out of her reach. It was a question they would never have the answer to. In this world, Lily could fill all her longings. Only one sister was made aware of limitless possibilities she was shut out of. Only one sister had to turn back and go to Tuft Grammar. It wasn’t Lily. 

Petunia left her family and walked further up the platform alone, her heart racing but her steps cautious. She wanted to get as far away from her sister as possible, but she didn’t feel comfortable wandering into the crowd. She felt like they all saw through her as dumb and boring, and some of the magic she was seeing frightened her. A group of teenagers in multicolored robes were standing around a feather. With a flick of a wand, the feather had transformed into a pigeon, which flew up to the rafters. The group jeered at it to come down and she scuttled away from them. Had the feather always been a bird? Would the bird change back into a feather—and if yes, in how long? Could a feather lay an egg? 

Her feet stopped working. She was soon overtaken by her own parents, who pushed past her as though in a hypnotic trance. She considered rushing back to the normal side of King’s Cross and waiting by the car until the was all over, but there was a tap on her arm. Lily was standing at her side looking apologetic. 

“I didn’t mean what I said earlier about grammar schools being dumb.”

Petunia’s large eyes flashed with anger. “Of course you did. You only didn’t mean to say it out loud! Saying sorry is a waste of air if you don’t mean it.” 

“I’m sorry!” Lily blurted out, trying an apology even though Petunia told her it wouldn’t work. She was used to her magic words doing something. “I wish you could go to Hogwarts with me.”

Petunia turned away from her sister without a word. She meant to rejoin her parents, who were standing several feet ahead, but Lily clamped onto her hand so tightly Petunia thought she’d sprain her fingers.

“…I’m sorry, Tuney, I'm sorry! Listen—”

Petunia was struggling to pull her hand out of Lily’s viselike grip.

“Maybe once I’m there, I’ll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!”

Lily’s words echoed through her head. Lily, who was used to hearing a “yes” where Petunia had received a “no,” who thought she was so great and so special that the Headmaster of her lousy school would change his mind once Petunia’s words came out of Lily’s mouth, who knew she simply had to show up and bat her eyelashes and she’d get anything she wants, Lily was magic. She made things happen. Lily made the flowers bow their petals. Lily made the air twirl her in circles through the sky. Lily made Mum and Dad so proud for some unbelievable gift she had done nothing to earn. 

If Petunia had any say, there was one thing her sister wouldn’t make happen. Lily couldn’t make Petunia fawn over her like everyone else did. 

“I don’t—want—to—go!” said Petunia through gritted teeth. How could she spell it out to Lily, as they were playing tug of war over her own hand! With a final jerk she pried her hand free. “You think I want to go to some stupid castle and learn to be a—a…”

Her pale eyes roved over the platform, over the dozens of mewling cats eyeing the dozens of large-taloned owls hooting shrilly in their canary cages, over the students dressed in long robes—black and all kinds of patterns and colors—waving sticks and lugging trunks, over the objects floating into the train and the people disappearing out of the air. She hated all of it.

“—you think I want to be a—a freak?”

Lily’s eyes had filled with tears.

“I’m not a freak,” she said. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

“That's where you're going,” said Petunia, taking great enjoyment in spreading her own misery. She was a many-lipped monster Lily was powerless to stop. “A special school for freaks. You and that Snape boy...weirdos, that's what you two are. It's good you're being separated from normal people. It's for our safety.”

Lily glanced toward their parents, who were looking around the platform with an air of wholehearted enjoyment, drinking in the scene, yet wholly oblivious to their two daughters. Then she looked back at her sister, and her voice was low and fierce.

“You didn't think it was such a freak's school when you wrote to the headmaster and begged him to take you.”

Petunia turned scarlet.

“Beg? I didn't beg!”

“I saw his reply. It was very kind.” Lily had given herself away.

“You shouldn't have read—” whispered Petunia, incoherent with rage, “that was my private—how could you—?”

Lily gave an incriminating half-glance toward where Snape stood nearby, struggling to haul his trunk off a trolley. Petunia gasped, putting two and two together. She knew Barbara-Bear’s Alice band hadn’t fallen over her eyes by itself. That day Snape had appeared on the roof! Petunia had hid her envelope from Dumbledore under her bed for one day. There was only a small window of time she had been absent from the house while Lily was home, free to roam her bedroom. Snape hadn’t mysteriously shown up on the roof out of nowhere after all. Lily had invited him over. Apparently it’s good fun to spy on a Muggle. 

“That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in my room!” she accused.

“No—not sneaking—” Now Lily was on the defensive. “Severus saw the envelope, and he couldn't believe a Muggle could have contacted Hogwarts, that's all!”

Couldn’t believe a Muggle had contacted Hogwarts! That’s all Petunia was now, a Muggle. Lily had chosen Snape over her from the moment he had set the two sisters apart as a special witch and a plain, old Muggle. Those two deserved each other! Lily had chosen her way and good riddance!

Lily was rambling still.

“He says there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of—”

“Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!” interrupted Petunia, now as pale as she had been flushed, like the alleged wizards in the post office were spying on them right now. Her eyes drifted to the feather-pigeon in the rafters. All those special powers and yet wizards couldn’t seem to leave regular, normal folks alone, could they? "Freak!" she spat at her sister, and she flounced off to where her parents stood. They took no notice of her anger. They didn’t register her at all. They didn’t even seem aware of Lily’s absence, and she was the whole reason the Evanses were here.

Petunia cleared her throat. 

“I said goodbye already,” she announced pointedly, her arms crossed. Ned and Rosie blinked blearily like she had woken them from a dream.

“Oh—OH! Lily!” 

Mum and Dad turned around and shuffled past Petunia towards their younger daughter as a final whistle sounded to board the train. They had accepted Petunia’s goodbye without question. She didn’t watch them say their own, her back turned to the three like she belonged to another family. She didn’t watch Lily board the train or the red steam engine pull away from the platform. 

She stood waiting for her parents to decide it was time to begin their long drive back to the Midlands. The platform had become far less crowded between the missing students and the relatives who had already made their departures. Only a handful of stragglers were left now, including the Evanses. When Mum and Dad turned back to Petunia, they soon realized their mistake. Not a stone’s throw away from the three of them stood the solitary, sour-faced figure of Eileen Snape. 

The four Cokeworth residents were alone at this end of the station. Not a single person stood as a buffer between them; no pooling steam shielded them from the other’s view. There was only one exit outside of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, and it was past their distant neighbor. 

“W-what do we d-do?” Ned stammered so quietly he didn’t move his lips. He looked terrified at the prospect he may be liable to say hello and was trying everything in his power to avoid doing so. He surreptitiously glanced towards the few strangers loitering down the way, as though hoping the group would walk in their direction to save them from their current predicament.

Rosie didn’t share her husband’s fear. She haughtily lifted her nose to the sky and walked past Mrs. Snape like she was one of the station’s support columns. Following his wife’s lead, Ned brushed past the witch quickly, looking somewhat ashamed of himself—more so for any association that may be misconstrued between them than for any perceived rudeness in his actions. The pair had left Petunia behind. She gave Mrs. Snape a quick glance before looking down and scampering after her father. Of all expressions to catch on Mrs. Snape’s face, Petunia would have never expected the one she found and she would never tell her mother what she saw. Mrs. Snape had been looking at the Evans family with pity.