Still Dye-Urn, Just After
But they had to go back out eventually or let Potter nose through all their belongings. Which was tempting, but just because he was probably stupid enough to set off Spike’s privacy wards didn’t mean they had to be stupid enough to let him do it while Spike’s friend was watching.
Besides, he might just do something more cleverly malicious instead, like letting the baby leak something noxious onto the sofa. There weren’t any specific wards against that, and since the baby wouldn’t have done it on purpose it might not set off the malice-focused ones. Ev had charmed the couch to be quite easy to clean, since Spike couldn’t stand to let Linkin do more than a deep cleaning once a season at most and was more or less hopeless at cleaning things in ways that weren’t strictly synonymous with either ‘tidying up’ or ‘sanitizing.’
He could and would provide dye after he’d bleached something horribly pale and streaky, but it was never really the same, and his coloring charms were, well. It was possible that Evan’s standards were unusually high in that area, and that Narcissa was an equally unreasonable second opinion. Even allowing for that, though, they really weren’t Spike’s forte.
When they did join the detestable duo (tiresome triad? Linkin had puffed off, anyway, so definitely no more than a triad) again, Lily huffed, “Oh, really.”
“It would serve you right if I let you think so,” Severus said, unperturbed. Evan, still feeling a little heavy and warmly clouded in the head, didn’t understand this until he caught sight of them in the reflection from the mirror, with his hair down and mussed and the top button of Spike’s shirt still open, though he’d taken care of the marks Ev had left on his skin (alas) and the wrinkles in his waistcoat and closed three other buttons before leading them out of the bedroom.
“What?” Potter asked, confused. Then he blinked, and stared, catching on, and demanded, “Wait, what?!”
Spike stared back at him, pulling a mountain of Withering over himself that very nearly covered his massive squirm, and scorned, “Good morning, Potter.”
“Now, that’s not fair, Spike,” Evan said, happily taking the opportunity to latch on again as if it were only Reg visiting. “You can’t complain, when you’ve worked your heart out to pull the wool over someone’s eyes, about how perceptive they aren’t.”
Spike tilted a haughty look and a haughtier eyebrow up at him, and sniffed, “I don’t see why not.”
“So unreasonable,” Evan mourned, side-snugging him tighter.
“You all insist I’m the worst liar Slytherin’s ever let graduate alive,” Severus argued, folding his arms and raising his chin even higher. “Ergo, anyone who allows me to fool them either is irredeemably dim or wants to believe what’s being hinted at them.”
Evan tilted his head, let a beat pass, and suggested, “We could be lying.”
Spike stared for a bare second before head-butting him into the sofa with what could, really, only be described as a shriek of fury (but also, unless Ev was imagining it, just a glimmer of calculation?). He grabbed one of the pillows Slughorn had visibly found so inadequate and started whaling on Evan with it, snarling, “You say that you are lying— but— if— everything you say is a lie— then you are telling the truth— but you cannot tell the truth— because everything you say is a lie— but you lie— you tell the truth but you cannot for you lie—!”
Evan, through his answering shrieks of laughter and the arms he’d put up to protect his face (or at least his hair, which was inclined to tangle when left free) from the cushiony buffeting, managed to notice that Evans was not only giggling helplessly from the armchair but saying the words along with Spike, in perfect unison and nearly the same mechanical tone, though not so ferociously.
“What in Merlin’s name,” Potter said helplessly, clutching his baby protectively.
Spike stopped whamming Ev with the pillow, and he and Evans turned to Potter with blank faces and chorused, “I am not programmed to respond in that area.” Then Evans collapsed into more giggles while Spike smirked and himself collapsed down into Ev’s inviting arm.
Ev hadn’t expected him to do that. As far as he was concerned, it proved he hadn’t been imagining that calculating glint, because Spike didn’t even act like this in front of Reg, and certainly not in front of Narcissa. And, okay, maybe he had some long-lost habits of having no dignity at all in front of Evans to revert to. Not even ‘maybe;’ this was in fact very likely.
Actually, it was definite. Spike never had any dignity in front of Evans. But maybe sometimes as a kid he also hadn’t tried particularly to have any, rather than simply had consistently failed.
Either way, though, Evan had never seen Severus affected by drink, fatigue, potions, or anything else in any way that would cause him to be this playful and carefree in front of James Bloody Potter if he wasn’t doing it on purpose. Even hemp leaves, which mostly made wizards giggly and sloppy and dreamy (including Narcissa, which had been hilarious) had just propelled him into a panic attack over… well, Ev suspected that it had really been over feeling sloppy and dreamy and starting to feel giggly, but what Spike had actually started hyperventilating over was that he couldn’t ‘want to move his hands.’ It had looked to everyone as though he’d then started shouting at Mulciber, who was well into the giggling phase, that it wasn’t funny, but in retrospect Ev thought he might have been shouting at his own smoke-sodden brain.
Either way, after that he’d put on a bubble-head charm whenever the rest of them decided to relax with suffumitory potions, and declined to eat or drink anything really fun. And as far as alcohol went, while he had joined them, and would join a dinner party now, for a glass or two of anything but beer, Ev had never seen him anywhere near drunk.
Which was a pity, in Ev’s opinion. While one didn’t want to get impaired at dinners, because anything might be going on under the surface, a glass or two more than he’d drink at his own kitchen table could make them less tedious and his table companions more interesting, which in turn made him more charming to them. And then he got to come home to Spike a bit sloshed, which Spike had always thus far responded quite well to. He was a lot less likely to let Evan hang all over him while he was working if Ev was sober, for one thing, and feeling Spike’s back work against his chest while a potion got orchestrated was of Evan’s favorite things.
Severus kept insisting that he didn’t get drunk because he wouldn’t be a pleasant one, but Ev suspected he would only be unpleasant under, er, ninety-eight percent of all circumstances, and would be a lovely, cozy, sleepy drunk at home with Evan. Probably a very demanding one, Ev expected, making heart-meltingly petulant demands along the lines of sit here and no, on MY lap and stop being tall and fine, then, I’m sitting on you and right, now, read to me. No, not that book, the other one, and move your arm, I’m going to sleep. No, move it THERE. …Why did you stop reading?!
Even then, though, Ev wouldn’t expect him to go over all lighthearted and rambunctious and silly. And, all right, it was visibly confusing Potter and that could have been predicted. Evans had been swept up in it and was enjoying herself to the point where she seemed to have forgotten she’d just been mad enough to slap Evan, although it was possible that Spike had gotten that sorted with her by goose-hiss while Ev hadn’t been paying attention. And Spike knew Evans; now that he wasn’t too close to the myriad problems she’d represented at school, now that he wasn’t drowning in misery and trying to cling to entirely the wrong person’s shadow for a lifeline, it was to be expected that he’d know how to pull her strings, when he was willing to try.
But if he’d just wanted to confuse Potter, even while entertaining Evans—even to do both those things while startling Ev back firmly and delightfully into his own skin—there must have been a thousand ways Spike could have done that with more dignity. And Spike did care about his dignity, although he always said indignantly that only pompous old toffs even thought like that and what was wrong, anyway, with not being innately a frivolous, airheaded jackanapes?
Ev therefore looked at Potter more closely, covering his scrutiny with a complex series of little shifts and playful complaints about Severus’s bony elbows that would be so much more comfortable over here—no, here, no, Spiiiiiiiiike….
Bewildered, he concluded. Potter wasn’t confused, he was bewildered. It might have been something like the expression on his own face back in second year, when he hadn’t been anywhere near awake enough to make sense of the way a grubby scarecrow whose sole purpose in life seemed to be getting into trouble without even getting any fun or advantage out of it had suddenly dropped out of either his nice probably-ordinary dream or the ceiling. And then proceeded to emotionally blackmail him with all the precision of a fish knife—he was rather certain, in retrospect, that at the time he’d had no emotions worth mentioning, but Snape had found a way to hook him anyway—and even more suddenly flashed a sunny, evil, dangerous grin that Ev’s hormones had not yet been up to making sense of. It had somehow made the horrible, nasty, unkind early-morning before-tea sunlight nearly-bearable anyway. Even though Ev had not in the least wanted to be blackmailed into acting like a responsible Slytherin prefect at the age of twelve. Especially given how much trouble it had seemed likely to be, considering that it was Trouble In Second-hand Robes prodding him into it.
Not the same expression, almost certainly. Potter didn’t look hypnotized, like Evan had been (Ev hadn’t even begun to get entranced for months if not years, but if there was one snake-thing their cobra had never needed to be taught, it was catching people up in his eyes and freezing them like baby birds). He did, though, have that look of something just went wrong with my whole world, I think it might be upside down, or possibly I have accidentally apparated to the wrong planet, because things do not seem to be as I have always known they are, and I would badly like to think that this is a con or a prank but everything’s all wrong for that, too.
Well, as long as Spike knew what he was doing—and this was the best reaction any Slytherin had gotten out of Potter to date, depending on what you were going for—then it prrrooobbbably wouldn’t matter too much that Ev hadn’t caught up yet.
“Oh,” Spike said when Ev had finally got him comfortably settled, giving Potter and his looming-squall in a blanket a disinterested look. “Are you still here?”
“Yes, Sev,” Lily said patiently, “because no one’s actually explained why Rosier’s nice elf was throwing plates at you yet.”
“Yes we did.”
“Not really,” she scolded, crossing her arms at him with a you needn’t think you’re getting away with that, young man look that was going to serve her well with her sprog right up until he got old enough to dare to, as Spike was doing now, cross his eyes at her irreverently.
“No one’s also explained why we particularly care,” Potter told the baby, but it was quiet enough that everyone just looked at him and then pretended not to have heard.
—Well, the baby did make a Gah! sort of noise, but if you asked Evan, it was probably coincidence.
“Should I mention at this point,” Evan asked Spike in the same sort of not-really-sotto-voice as Potter, “that in addition no one’s really explained why Eva—er, Lily slapped me and called me names?”
“You realize that if you do, you might get answers?” Spike replied, a little drawly.
“Shutting up!” Ev returned promptly, and got one of Spike’s eye-corner-crinkly who-me-grinning-I’m-not-grinning-I-don’t-even-smile grins back. It was immensely warm-making, all bubbly, considering where he was doing it from and in front of whom, all whip-wiry-solid and radiant heat and smelling all Spikely the way he did with his core muscles very nearly relaxed under the casual drape of Evan’s hand. Evan couldn’t quite stop himself from snuggling him. Just a little.
“So, er,” Potter asked awkwardly, “how long has this been going on?”
“Fifth year,” Evan said pityingly, at the same time as Spike and Lily chorused, “Fourth year,” in identical matter-of-facts tone. And then turned with very nearly the same sigh to give him, Evan, exactly the same I would ask where you were at the time except I don’t have to because this is not news why-are-people-stupid look.
“There’s no need to look at me like a stunned sheep,” Lily added reproachfully. “I was hearing about it all year.”
“You were not!” Spike was all indignation. Evan thought he should probably be a bit ashamed of himself for finding this quite so adorable, since he knew it was mostly delightful because he was just pleased to see their creepy twin act broken up.
But only mostly. The thing with the eyebrows drawn down in the middle and winging up at the edges, and the bright-eyed look that hovered between hurt and scandalized, and the way his chin jerked up and made the tendons stand out in that long neck, all biteable…
…Spike was saying his name. “Mmm?”
“Kindly remove your teeth. You are not a vampire. Even if you were, I should not care to become a data point in my own research, and in any case, we have trespassers.”
“Guests,” Lily corrected him.
“No one let you in,” Spike reminded her, “as Evan has laid out. Or invited you, et cetera ad infinitum. You are not guests. I can’t understand at all why we haven’t kicked you to the curb.”
She stuck out her tongue at him. He eye-crinkled. Evan sulked. This being useless, Evan reconsidered sulking, and bit him again instead. Spike sighed, and shifted them around on the sofa so that now it was Ev curled up on his shoulder. This being deeply satisfactory, Evan nuzzled in and sleepily watched Potter’s brain explode from under half-closed lids.
“Exactly what are you going to claim to have been ‘hearing all year?’” Spike demanded, returning to his indignation because you could only ever distract him from that sort of thing briefly. “We were extremely discreet.”
Lily’s eyes rolled so hard Evan thought they might fall out and bounce on the carpet like grapes. “Oh, Sev,” she said affectionately, in the tone women always used when they meant only men are this stupid. “You were friends with Lucy Wilkes.”
“…Oh,” Spike said, looking disgusted.
“Ah,” Ev agreed sheepishly.
“What?” Potter demanded, his voice ringing with helpless confusion.
Lily heaved an enormous sigh—which, predictably, riveted Potter’s eyes to her milk-swollen bust. “Jamie, half the reason the girls were inclined to agree with you about Sev being a bad sort was because they thought he was a two-timer going behind my back with a complete slag. Er, no offense, Ros—Evan?”
“There jolly well is,” he sat up in indignation of his own. “My Spike is not a two-timer! He wouldn’t go snog Chang or anybody no matter how many times I told him he should! How can you say you were his friend if you don’t even know him that well? —Spike, you’re not allowed to give yourself a concussion, we’ve been through this.”
Severus made an aargh noise of humiliated frustration. Evan petted him soothingly, even though this wasn’t likely to help much. Because, really, at this point, nothing was likely to help much, so at least he could remind Spike he wasn’t alone.
“But if you knew he was with Rosier,” Potter asked Lily, still too confused to be flying towards the direction of the anger-place, although he had that tone that meant he might head that way once he sorted himself out and came out of shock, “why didn’t you tell me?”
He didn’t have to explain that he wouldn’t have cared half so much about Severus if he hadn’t thought Severus was after ‘his’ girl (who, at that point, would rather have slapped him than given him the time of day, and Evan was really rather disappointed in her. He’d never liked her much himself, but she was making Spike’s character judgment look floppy). Everyone who’d ever been to Hogwarts knew that. People who’d been to Hogwarts in 1781 knew that. Maybe even dead people who weren’t portraits or ghosts did.
Lily didn’t quite roll her eyes at him, but the look she gave him was quite as speaking. “Jaime, you were already unutterably horrible to my best friend. I wasn’t going to tell you he was gay.”
“I’m not gay,” said Severus, affronted.
“You can be a bit cheerful sometimes,” offered Evan, at the same time as Potter stared and said, “He never smiles.”
Severus gave Potter a flat look and said, “That’s not what that means,” and told Evan, “I explained ‘queer’ to you after my first Quidditch game.”
“Mmm,” Evan agreed, and snuggled him again.
“Er, Sev,” Lily said kindly, in a pointing-out-the-obvious tone.
“Neither of us is gay,” Severus said definitely. “He was very nearly indiscriminate before we were exclusive. I’m monogamous.”
“Er, so am I,” Lily, said, “but—”
“No, you’re monogamous by choice,” Severus corrected her. “Making a wedding promise is meaningful to the two of you, because you find people outside your pair-bond attractive and could, if you chose, act on those findings. You have promised each other that you will subordinate your ids, which are normally human and therefore instinctively polyamorous, to the exclusivity our culture has declared appropriate when people feel for each other what you presumably do, sick-making though it is in your case.”
Lily rolled her eyes tolerantly at him.
Ignoring her, he finished, “It’s different.”
“Also different,” Evan said cheerfully, squeezing him. “I wasn’t ‘indiscriminate,’ Spike, Mum wanted me to be examining the field. It was all discrimination. Process of elimination, don’t you know. It’s not my fault I’d finished sizing ‘em up while they were still working out how to convince me they were captivating and mysterious and not after my vaults or what-have-you.”
“Yes, it is,” Spike contradicted him with a warm eye-smile, leaning in.
“Anyway, I was nice to them,” he said comfortably. “We’re all still friends-ish.”
“What are you all talking about?” Potter broke in, utterly frustrated. The baby was starting to look fretful, too. Severus gave it a pointed look, and Potter scowled, but started to bounce it.
“Well,” Evan said, still comfortably, “the first time I kissed Severus—”
“Punched,” Severus murmured dryly.
“He explained about how muggles are absolutely up-the-wall mental about—”
“Oh, it’s no worse than wizards and blood purity,” Spike said irritably. “I told you, everyone has to have someone to be mental about.”
“Who are you mental about?” he asked curiously.
“Idiots,” Spike answered promptly.
Evan gave him tragedy eyes. “Spike, you can’t do that to me when we have gue—trespassers,” he complained, because he didn’t want to get thumped in front of Lily for pressing him down and snogging him.
“Muggles don’t have a way for men to turn into women and have babies, James,” Lily explained. “Or for a woman to turn into a man and give her wife a baby. They have to have woman-man couples, if anyone’s going to get born out of them, and they’ve got to thinking that that’s what being together is for, mostly. They get very, very upset if women are together or men are.”
“Er, adopting?” James suggested sarcastically.
Lily blinked. “I didn’t know wizards did that.”
“It’s less common when it involves babies,” Severus told her, and she looked confused. “If it looks like a name will die out or a master-craftsman or business owner or land owner will die without issue, adopting a promising young friend or apprentice or distant relative is, as it were, the done thing.”
“Mum will be so glad you understand,” Evan said sleepily.
“Quite,” Severus theoretically-agreed, giving him a dirty look (he could tell by the tone, and the way Spike’s chin angled with the near corner of his mouth tucked quellingly and reproachfully down in Ev’s hair) before turning back to Potter. “Regardless of wizarding custom, it’s a mindset they’ve got into, and they’re mired eyes-deep in it. Actually, blood-purity is more comparable to a different problem they have. This is more like the wizarding dislike for the Dark Arts. In fact, quite like it. Given what you were saying about me already, if Lily, raised muggle as she was, had told you that, it would have spoken dreadful lengths about her character, I should think.”
“Thank you,” agreed Lily primly.
“Not at all,” he inclined his head, courteous.
“You know,” Potter said stormily, “for someone who was just pretending to be above blood purity…”
“Oh, rubbish,” Severus snapped. “As if there’s only one sort of muggle. Lily’s parents—sorry, Lils, you know I adore your parents, but they can be a bit, er, rigid. Petty’s the most sanctimonius prick under the sun, and she comes by it honestly.”
“You mean prig.”
“No, I don’t.”
She crossed her arms at him again. “As if your da’s any better!”
Severus got an odd look. Slowly, he said, “You never knew him when he had self-respect and a job. I think… I never knew it before, but I think… I think it’s more that he’s been afraid of how people do—you know; the nail that stands up is hammered down and all that. I think it’s more he feels that on the raw than that he cares so much himself; that’s why he’s tried so hard to… well.”
Lily frowned questioningly at him.
Wonderingly, Severus answered her, “I saw him just recently, Lils, and it was the most amazing thing. I know when someone’s doing a threat-assessment that turns up a positive, and he kept doing them and getting them and then relaxing. And then he cared less about the next thing I said that would usually have made him—would have upset him. It… it was really as if… as if he didn’t mind all the things that used to send him through the roof, as long anyone who did mind wouldn’t—” He glanced and Potter and visibly censored the word dare. “Wouldn’t try anything.”
“That sounds very sweet,” Lily said disapprovingly. “You’re not going to say he just worried, Sev.”
“No, I’m going to say he was just a drunken bastard,” Severus said, flat. “But there’s a reason they call it ‘the demon drink.’ People aren’t themselves—or, rather, when we are in mastery of ourselves, we can be who we want to be, rather than the worst that’s in us.”
“On which subject,” Potter accused, “you are up to your eyeballs in the Dark Arts. It’s no good pretending you aren’t. You always were.”
“How the hell would you know?” asked Severus courteously. “You’re too much of a prig—good word, Lily, ta—to even dip far enough in to be sure of what they are.”
Potter adjusted the baby in his arms as if, had his arms been free, he would have been making some more aggressive gesture. It really had been a clever move of Lily’s, Evan had to grudgingly allow. After all, Potter was hardly going to give up his baby up when he was in a place that made him so uncomfortable. Not even to his wife, since he patently didn’t trust her judgment around Spike. “Sirius knows a dark wizard when he sees one,” he said belligerently. “You’re not going to say he doesn’t, just because he’s too good a man to practice.”
“Oh, dear god,” Spike droned. “Evan, let me up, I shall be ill.”
“I’ll fetch you a basin,” Evan said sleepily, itching his nose on Spike’s convenient shoulder-bone. “’Mcomfortable.”
He felt Spike giving the top of his head the helpless what am I going to do with you look to which the only and obvious answer was cuddle me more, and smiled drowsily and snugged his arm. Severus sighed.
“Rosier, you have to know he is,” Potter appealed. “I, er, gather you may not care, but…”
Taking his turn to sigh, Ev dragged himself reluctantly semi-upright. “Potter,” he asked sensibly, “what would you think I was offering you if I offered you pudding?”
“…Pudding?” Potter tried warily.
“Yes, but specifically.”
“I don’t know,” he protested, and looked at Severus.
“Don’t look at me,” Severus said mildly. “If it contains sugar, butter, honey, or fruits that can be easily separated from their seeds, he’ll probably eat it.”
Evan only barely stopped himself saying Which doesn’t explain you, King of Tarts, and was quite proud of himself. “Well, then,” he asked Potter, “what would you think I was offering you if I said, not pudding, but a bowl of pudding?”
“Custardy stuff?” Potter was still appropriately wary.
“There you are,” Ev said comfortably, and settled back onto Spike’s shoulder. He was only comfortable briefly, though, because after a moment it started to shake as Spike started trying not to laugh at him.
“What?” demanded Potter irritably.
“He means that when you say ‘the dark arts,’” Severus translated in a somewhat strangled tone, “you mean what muggles call black magic. Curses and unforgiveables and so on. Which are a subset of the dark arts, as puddings are of… pudding. Or, that is, not quite a subset—rather, there’s a quite large area of overlap between the two categories, so they’re often confused. And, of course, sharing a name doesn’t help.”
“What’s the other kind, then?” asked Lily, looking lost.
Spike slid her one of his bright, sly-eyed looks. “Well, any magic done without formalities or structure or any medium but will, really. Flying off a swing and floating down, for instance, if it wasn’t a levitating spell. Even what would count as a simple hair-dying charm when done with a wand, or accidental magic if only unconsciously caused, would be considered to count as dark arts if the witch really and consciously meant to do it, and did just what she’d envisioned, using nothing but her natural magic guided by intent.”
Lily blushed, and protested, “I was being nice, Sev, it came out sort of green and she wouldn’t come out of the bathroom.”
“Well,” Spike said in his pragmatic voice, “overlap and a shared term doesn’t actually make the categories synonymous. Mind-magics are dark arts, and they’re dangerous but not looked down on when called by that name; certainly not illegal. There have been centuries where incanting was regarded as a dark art, although it’s currently categorized as a subcategory of both arithmancy and charms. The only reason there is overlap is because most spells work better when you mean them, and when you mean a spell to cause damage, when it’s fueled by rage or whatnot, that makes a curse more powerful. If you go into the history of it, the Unforgiveable pain curse has at times been used by healers with beneficent intent to shut down pain in nerves that were behaving badly and couldn’t be affected otherwise, or to awaken deadened nerves.
“The books will tell you, if you’re not too prunes-and-prisms to find out about the world you’re living in,” he added with a scathing look at Potter, “that if you cast it without really wanting to hurt your target badly, you won’t hurt your target, and certainly not badly. Ergo, that spell in particular is deeply affected by intent, which makes it dark arts in that it’s less confined by the structure of the form of wand-motion and spell-word than fueled by the will, and becomes black magic only when it’s meant to be. And many curses are supposed to be like that, to some degree: they’re more powerful when cast by more powerful witches and wizards, and more powerful when cast by witches and wizards who hate more powerfully.”
“…Dumbledore should’ve hired you the first time,” Evan complained mournfully.
“But so many more people are experienced in Defense Against the Dark Arts than are any good at potions,” Spike pointed out in his reluctant Being Fair Dammit tone.
“And there’s already one teacher at Hogwarts who puts all his students to sleep every class,” Potter said, sort of half-cross and half-brightly. “Sorry, you did say you were just going to be helping old Sluggy out, right?”
“That’s the idea,” Severus shrugged, sidestepping relatively neatly. “There’s no use pretending he won’t dump as much work on me as he can get away with, though. More time for keeping up with his ‘old chums.’ By which I do partially mean old chums, but also in part mean new fruit baskets. He has, however, loathe though I am to admit it,” he told Evan thoughtfully, “at least in conjunction with Professor Flitwick, at least a tenth of a point.”
“Ta,” Potter drawled, toasting him with a dummy before poking it experimentally at the baby’s mouth. The baby was happy enough to take it, and began sucking contentedly. Potter looked like he’d caught the snitch, and beamed at Evans.
Ev would have liked to roll his eyes over the blatant showing off, but he couldn’t pretend he didn’t understand Potter’s pride over making his much better half’s life easier. It was actually a good sign, just maybe, that Potter was feeling unsure enough of himself with said wife to want to flaunt such a minor success that had so little to do with his own skill. The kid hadn’t even looked to Ev as if it was about to get fussy, although he would have been the first to admit that, between the four of them, he had the least experience with babies and would have been the last to catch on.
“No he doesn’t,” he said indignantly, because Potter being a bit silly and a bit more human than that wasn’t going to distract him from Potter driving Ev’s Spike to insult himself. He only didn’t add I think you’re captivating because it was too obvious to say out loud.
Sliding him a you’ve got not only it but half the continent completely up your jumper look of the softish variety, Spike hummed dubiously and sank into calculation. Happy calculation, judging from the corner of his mouth. Ev couldn’t wait to see what came out of it.
It was absolutely typical of Evans (in Ev’s opinion) to ruin everything for everyone by clearing her throat pointedly and looking even more pointedly at the kitchen. Typical too for her to be revoltingly and horribly successful: Severus deflated.
Evan was really, really trying to follow Spike’s lead and be all carefree and everything for them. Usually, this wasn’t a difficult line for him to take; it was usually Spike who couldn’t come anywhere near managing it, and didn’t bother trying. On this occasion, though, Ev felt his fact twitch by reflex into a little smile that he knew would have looked daydreamy and pleasant if he hadn’t also felt his eyes narrowing into cold flint.
He fixed it almost at once, but unfortunately, she’d seen him before he did, and saw him fixing it. Ugh. And he couldn’t beat his head into Spike’s shoulder, not just because even Gryffs wouldn’t be able to ignore that but because he’d just told Spike no concussions and Spike would call Hypocrisy, and wouldn’t let him live it down for weeks.
Calculation on her looked completely different than on a Slytherin. She actually allowed herself to look like she was thinking very hard and it was hard work. It was extremely strange. He had no idea what she was thinking, but he could see it on her face every time she had a new thought, and considered it, and discarded it as bad. He half expected her to put a knuckle to her mouth and say Hmm like a complete caricature, or curl up like The Thinker, but she didn’t go that far.
Going farther than anyone remotely sane would ever have dreamed of, she finally said, “Jamie, you help Sev pack; I think Evan and I need to talk.”
Evan wasn’t even ashamed that he was one of the everybody who choked.
“Well,” she said reasonably to Severus, who was probably only not already yelling because he’d actually choked on his tongue or something and was coughing very hard and trying to get his breath back while Ev helpfully whacked him on the back, “you’re obviously not going to get anywhere unless you have somebody to fight with about how they’re doing it wrong.”
Although Severus was only prevented from forming his high-for-him-pitched noise into actual words because he was still coughing, Evan paused in his whacking, and subsided thoughtfully into rubbing. Severus turned to him, a tongue-tied mask of outrage.
“I am not helping him pack!” Potter protested, aghast. “I don’t think he should be anywhere near little kids! Because he shouldn’t!”
Evan would really have liked to think things over some more, but he could see phrases like nasty piece of work and got the wool pulled over your eyes looming over the horizon. And he could see that Severus could, too, and it was all about to turn terrible, when they’d just got to the point of being able to sit in a room without anyone covering anyone else in itching powder or dungbombs.
So, he thought, he’d better be the fer-de-lance. He preferred to arrange his life so he didn’t have to be, but, well, sometimes there was nothing to do but strike from the direction they weren’t expecting.
Therefore, he smiled affably at Potter, and commiserated, “That’s all right, old man. We all have to help out when it’s family, but no one’s expected to like his brother-in-law.”
They all froze, and turned to him like creepy dolls with rusted necks. He shrugged sympathetically at Potter.
Lily didn’t (thank Merlin) giggle again, but at the word ‘brother-in-law’ her face lit up and something in her relaxed, as if he’d settled something for her that she hadn’t known was nagging at her. Then Potter, angry and confused (and quite possibly in reflexive denial), said, “You’re just my second cousin or something,” at the same time that Spike, eyes hot and rapt and gleaming and very likely really all pupil, leaned in and purred, “Lance, you can’t do that to me when we have trespassers.”
Promptly, he turned to the intruders and said, “Never mind. Go away, please.”
Potter made a highly predictable retching noise and Lily (Evan sighed) giggled. But everything was at least a little bit all right again, at least for five minutes, because Severus smirked, and told Potter, to the man’s further bewilderment, “I make Evan write all my abstracts. There’s nothing like fundamental laziness to teach a man to get to the heart of any issue as efficiently as humanly possible. Apparently.”
Potter peered dubiously at Evan, who smiled at him sleepily and wondered if there was any way to reschedule the upcoming horror, or at least to get Spike to make tea for it.
It took until he was halfway through a squabble with Spike about whether or not cushioning and featherlight charms ought to be, or, indeed, could be combined before Potter’s brain’s protective what-have-you bowed and broke and allowed him to know what Evan had meant, Ev found out later.
Fortunately, but not happily, he himself was off in the sitting room at the time, being made to feel, while not as small and horrible as Lily probably thought, appallingly and very worryingly ignorant and stupid about the only important thing there was. He wouldn’t have minded her being partly right so much if she hadn't been more right than he was, working with only a tiny sliver of the information he had. And he did have it, too.
His only consolation was the possibility that all the rest of it, the wealth of their lives together and the weight of everything hanging over them now, had gotten in the way of what a girl who’d really only known Spike as a kid had spotted in five seconds flat.