Chapter 10
Not one of them spoke for at least thirty seconds.
Andi and Marlene were exchanging a wide-eyed look of surprise, whereas Remus was giving Sirius a look of utter disgust. The latter, who had been staring after Lily with a slightly slack-jawed expression, noticed and was immediately on the defensive.
“How the fuck was I supposed to know that?” He asked the group, angrily. “Did you lot know that?”
The girls shook their heads, expressions grave, but an acute sense of betrayal began to form as he saw the telltale signs of guilt in Remus’s expression.
“You knew?!” He asked, trying–and failing–to not sound accusatory. Remus just frowned and looked away.
Everything began to fall into place. How tired she’d been. How… Complacent she’d been. The Lily of years past would have never let so many things slide. She was the only person he knew who was as stubborn as he was. She could argue for hours.
He’d been stupid enough to think she was starting to like him. That her new amiability was because of him. His height or his wits or his stupid hair. The whole time she’d been drowning, and he hadn’t known. No one had known. Her friends, now gathering her things quietly to bring back to the dorms, they hadn’t known. She hadn’t told any of them. And a tiny, unfair seed of resentment settled in his gut when he realized just how much distance she had created between them and how much work she’d put in to make sure none of them could try to bridge it.
Feeling unmoored, he got up as the group dismally disbanded and settled in formation with the rest of the Marauders, listening to the whispered explanation Remus was giving Sirius.
“I kind of just figured it out, she didn’t tell me. I didn’t think it was my place to share.”
“Who the fuck cares whose place it is?” Sirius snapped, not even looking at Remus. James knew him well enough to know it was a combination of guilt and embarrassment that made him lash out, but it didn’t make it any more pleasant to deal with. “That whole fucking situation could have been avoided.”
“There may have been other ways that situation could have been avoided,” Peter muttered.
“Really, Pete? You want to chime in?” Sirius turned on him, his voice almost a snarl. “Please, tell me more.”
James wedged himself between them and clapped a hand on Sirius’s shoulders.
“Come on, Sirius. You couldn’t have known. Let’s get pissed.” He gestured to the table of drinks on the other side of the Common Room. Remus gave him a silent look of reproach, but James didn’t much care anymore. He wasn’t going to feel guilty because he hadn’t been able to read Lily Evans’s mind.
He saw Andi leaving out the portrait hole. Good. One of her friends could follow her and deal with whatever the fuck her problem was.
“Can’t believe Moony didn’t tell us,” Sirius sulked, after taking a shot of straight firewhiskey. “What sort of friend is he?”
“I bet Snivellus knew,” James said, following suit when Sirius handed him a cup.
“Course he did,” Sirius said, “they’re practically joined at the hip. I don’t know what you see in her, honestly.”
At this moment, James didn’t either. “Doesn’t matter. Not our problem.”
***
She always rather liked crying in the Astronomy Tower.
Something about looking over the endless blackness of the night, the glittering constellations visible in the Scottish sky–it could comfort her. But today, she didn’t come here to be comforted. She came here because she no longer knew where to go.
In a few years, she might look back on this and think that it had only been a matter of time before she had exploded. Of course, she would lash out and of course, she would feel sick and terrible afterward. But a part of her had believed she could handle this by herself. And the knowledge that she’d failed, yet again, was lead in her gut.
Footsteps made her wipe her nose hastily, looking up at the intruder. Andi had found her.
“I’m fine,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat and looking away.
“Glad to hear it,” Andi said, not quite closing the distance between them. There was something in her tone that made Lily look up.
“What?” She asked.
“I’m glad you’re fine,” Andi said, with the same barely concealed emotion. “You haven’t seemed fine for months, but I’m glad you’re, yet again, pretending.”
She was wrong. Lily was done pretending. “What the fuck is your problem?” She asked, pushing herself off the ground and standing opposite her.
“Haven’t got a problem,” Andi said. “Just came to make sure you hadn’t gotten yourself killed by Death Eaters while you were off sulking.”
“Sulking?! I tell you my dad is dead and you tell me I’m sulking?” Lily was as angry as she’d been with Sirius. Andi Shacklebolt, who constantly competed with her, who openly insulted her, who had lost her own parents when she’d been barely six. Andi Shacklebolt was not going to tell her she was sulking. “What did I ever do to you, Shack?”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it, Lily?” Andi retorted, her arms crossed.
“What’s the thing?!” Lily snapped, trying to blink back the pinpricks of tears in her eyes.
“You’re supposed to be my best friend!” Andi shouted, and both girls fell silent.
It took a few moments for Lily to respond. “What?”
Andi looked away, and when she spoke her voice was unsteady. “I mean… aren’t you?” She sniffed, loudly. “We partner in every class, we study together, we live together, i… I mean, Marlene’s got Mary and Robin’s got Fiona, I thought… you’re supposed to be my friend and you don’t even tell me about this? Friends know when their friend’s dads die, Lily. This is just… I know how bad this must have been for you. I do. You know I’ve lost my parents, too. But it was shitty of you not to tell us, and then explode when it comes up as if we should have known.”
Lily was glad she no longer lost herself to accidental magic or she might have thrown Andi from the tower.
“You know what? Fuck you, Shacklebolt.” Andi flinched. “You think we’re best friends? You’ve never once even said you enjoy my company. You’ve never sought me out if it didn’t actively help you. If I have the gall to sing in the shower, you spend the rest of the day complaining about it. And you’re going to guilt me about friendship?”
“That’s not fair,” Andi began, but Lily raised her hand.
“No. I’m talking now. And I’ve listened to everybody for fucking years, it’s time for you to listen to me. How dare you tell me how I’m supposed to deal with my dad dying. I’m sorry I didn’t live up to whatever ideal of Lily Evans you had in your head. But get used to it. I’m done.”
Andi’s eyes were dark and she looked, for once, like her age. Like a fifteen-year-old girl who didn’t know what to do next.
But Lily wasn’t looking at her. Instead, she stormed past the other girl and back into the castle, her cheeks shining with tears.
***
The mood in the Gryffindor Tower the next morning was decidedly somber. Sirius wasn’t speaking to Remus, Andi wasn’t speaking to Lily, and Lily wasn’t speaking to Sirius, Andi, or James.
The rest of the Gryffindors were mostly trying to stay out of the quagmire of drama, which involved giving all affected sympathetic looks whenever things became awkward.
Lily, foreseeing this, left the dorms at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning on a Sunday, in the hopes of avoiding any further interaction for as long as she could. If she had stayed, she might have noticed that not all the beds in her dorm had been slept in the previous night. She might have wondered, despite herself, where Andi Shacklebolt had spent the night.
It was October 1st. She wondered if this would be the worst year of her life, or if this was simply a precursor to all the other bad years to come. She wanted to talk to Sev, but she could hardly walk into the Slytherin boys' dormitory and wake him up. He’d always been a late riser.
She wanted to write a letter home. More than that, wished she could just call her mum or Tuney. Even her sister’s acid voice would be comforting at this point. She wanted to remember there was a reason to get through all this–all the rage and the confusion and the exhaustion.
She was so caught up in her own thoughts that she almost didn’t notice the strange scene in front of her until she was a part of it.
A younger student, one whose name she didn’t know, was cowering in the hallway in front of her. He was hunched over, wearing ragged-looking pajamas, trembling against the hard, stone wall of the corridor. Instinct told Lily to hold her wand as she approached, reaching one arm out.
“Hello?” She called, gently. “Are you alright?”
The boy kept shaking, his face turned away from her. She braced herself, then shook him on the shoulder. He spun to face her and she stumbled back, shouting in alarm.
He was holding a knife. A small, rusted-looking thing that looked like it could be a hundred years old. His eyes were open but glazed, looking at her without registering anything. She gripped her wand so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
“Can you hear me?” she asked, gently. “I think you might be under some kind of spell.”
The boy murmured something in response, but she couldn’t understand it. She prayed a Professor would find them soon.
“What’s your name?” She asked.
After a few moments, he spoke, clearer this time. “Eric Turner.”
“Hello, Eric,” she said. “I’m Lily. Are you feeling okay?”
Eric shook his head vigorously. “Something’s wrong. Something’s in me.”
Lily swallowed back her fear and took a step closer. “We can go to Madam Pomfrey, alright? She will be able to help. We don’t need a knife.”
Eric looked at the knife like he’d forgotten he’d been holding it. “No. That’s not it. It’s me. I can fix it.”
“Of course you can,” Lily said, encouragingly, close enough that she might be able to make a grab at the knife. “Can I help?”
Eric looked at her, his eyes clearer than ever. Then he blinked, a small smile stretching across his face. Before he drove the knife into his own shoulder.
***
Lily’s scream had gone unanswered as she lunged forward, grabbing the younger boy and holding him up. His eyes had closed, and he’d become unresponsive, the knife sticking out of his chest like a rusted thorn. Blood poured from the wound, and everything she’d ever known about injuries had flown from her head like bats in the wind.
She should take it out. No, she mustn’t take it out. She should wait for a Professor. He might bleed out. She needed to act now.
Somehow in all this, she’d forgotten she was a witch, and, instead, half carried, half dragged Eric to the Hospital Wing, yelling for Madame Pomfrey before she’d even entered the room. Madame Pomfrey appeared in an instant, not looking even slightly ruffled from sleep as she tied her thick dressing gown closed and flicked her wand, levitating Eric onto a bed.
“Get Professor McGonagall,” she instructed, not even looking at Lily. “I will get your full account after. Run.”
And Lily ran.
***
By the afternoon, the story had circulated throughout the school. And she had realized, too late, that the visceral nightmares that had been plaguing Gryffindor Tower had not been as isolated as they’d thought. The whole school had been suffering, with increasingly active outbursts.
Because, according to Madame Pomfrey, Eric had been asleep the whole time they’d been talking. He’d been asleep when he had left the Hufflepuff dorm and he’d been asleep when he grabbed the knife from an old suit of armour. He’d been asleep when he’d stabbed himself in the shoulder.
He would be fine. The wound had been easy for magic to heal, and Lily had gotten him to the Hospital Wing before too much blood loss could occur. But it would be a long time before anyone forgot he was the boy who stabbed himself in his sleep. Or, at least until the next tragedy happened.
The faculty didn’t know what was happening. They didn’t say that, exactly, but Lily imagined if they had a plan of action, it wouldn’t have gotten this far in the first place. More than a dozen students had ended up in the Hospital Wing after sleeping-related injuries, Alex McKinnon among them. All of them had tried to harm themselves in some way, then awoken in confusion to find themselves bleeding.
Alex hardly remembered anything from his dream. Eric remembered almost all of it. For the first time, Lily was grateful for her insomnia. But she would have to sleep eventually.
And she wasn’t sure what would happen if her nightmares came to life.