Headmaster's Office and Onwards
The line of little men dancing across the paper, with its attendant portkey, was more of a relief than Lily had expected. And not just because, when she got out her old copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and decoded it, it read ‘Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.” Really, it had just been that the waiting for something unknown was getting to her, on top of everything else.
And that there’d been even more ‘everything else’ than she’d expected. She had expected to get woken up by a crying baby at intervals of what felt like every ten minutes, and to have the time she was awake endlessly occupied by the mess of diapers, drool, baby oil, burp goo, and bath drippings. She’d expected at least some of the constant soreness, although she hadn’t realized that she’d have to stop wearing earrings or choose between coiling her hair around her head all the time and chopping it off.
At least Jamie had been helpful there. Or, rather, his mum had. Dorea had come through with a charm she called the Slip Knot, which stopped Harry from being able to get a grip on Lily’s hair, and even stopped her hair getting sticky when he tried. It also meant she couldn’t do anything with it but let it hang loose, but she didn’t mind that and Jamie loved it, so that was all right.
She’d expected at least some of all those things, but she hadn’t really been prepared for them. It was good to have Alice and Ravi to complain about it all with, but they had sane husbands who had sane friends. They didn’t understand why it was impossible for her to kick said friends out when they were firmly ensconced in her living room, teasing Pete about his imaginary girlfriend and preventing her from taking a nap. Or why it was impossible for her to go upstairs and leave them to it. They didn’t understand why she couldn’t use Sirius as a babysitter when he was so good with Harry and could not be pried away from him with a crowbar.
And Sirius was good with the baby under strict supervision, Lily would be the first to say. They were adorable, and she had half a photo album already. It was just that she didn’t trust a Sirius left in charge not to suddenly decide it would be a marvelous and perfectly reasonable idea to transfigure a bitty helmet and biker jacket for Harry and take him flying off to Hogsmeade to play with the Giant Squid.
Which, actually, she wouldn’t have a problem with as long as Sirius didn’t take Harry by himself, and left a note and portkey. Which he wouldn’t. So she couldn’t. And she felt horrible about asking Remus. She knew he’d never let her pay him for it, but unlike Sirius, he really needed to be paid for time he spent on other people. And Peter just didn’t have the time. He wasn’t much with babies anyway.
More responsible than the others, but he didn’t want to like they did, and Lily didn’t want to leave Harry alone at this age with someone who thought he was a chore. He was a perfect little weathervane about things like that. Lily had read about all sorts of mums and pet-owners who thought their darlings were good judges of character. After growing up with Sev and Tuney, though, she thought it was more likely that simple, undeveloped minds could detect who felt good about them.
She was frankly ecstatic, knowing that Sev and Jamie would both completely disagree with her about that for completely different reasons and she could have it out with bothof them! In the meantime, though, she wasn’t asking a Harry-favor of a friend who didn’t firmly feel that, in letting him play with the baby, she’d be doing him one.
Which left her unable to be really alone when she wanted to work. She’d thought that once Jamie stopped hovering—or, rather, had someone littler to hover over—she’d have time to build up a portfolio. But while James had work to do, he didn’t have an office to do it at.
More, there was still this awful sense of a fight hanging in the air. Not a play-fight for the joy of it, or a random-topic joust to get out of changing diapers: one neither of them knew how to start or finish. It almost felt like fifth year had been with Sev, when they’d both run out of arguments and knew neither of them would or could budge. When agreeing to disagree hadn’t been enough anymore, had stopped being possible. When she’d known a choice was coming, Only, there wasn’t any choice to make now, just this looming oppression. They’d already found out that agreeing to disagree didn’t work very well, not better than the fighting, and polite fictions didn’t work at all, in the long run, and what was left?
This was a flaw in her husband, but he was brave and kind and funny and strong and loyal and loving and he always meant well. Even when he was a bit dim and moderately misguided and several metric tons of stubborn, it was because he fundamentally wanted good things and was actively striking out for them in the best way that occurred to his helmet-headed man-brain at the time. Being cruel to people he’d decided were Bad Hats was the worst of him, and even that was because wanting the best for the world, because he believed in justice and hadn’t thought hard enough yet about what it was for. And it wasn’t the whole of him.
Not like spite and small-mindedness and insecurities had taken Tuney over and away from her, like she’d thought that more grandiose, more dangerous form of them taken Sev. She was hardly going to leave Jamie over it, especially not with Harry to think about. She’d seen first-hand how crippling and painful it could be for a boy not to have a father who could look after him properly, who adored him; she’d never take that away from her baby just because of a fight they were having about how to deal with another grown-up who could more than look after himself and was thoroughly porcupine-proud about doing so, thankyousoverymuch.
Besides, she realized with amusement, Sev would probably be annoyed with her just for removing what ability she had to keep an eye on James, never mind what he’d have to say about subjecting a little boy to the strains of a separated household out of mere moral wibblishness.
Only, she couldn’t think what else to do. Doing nothing was driving her mad, but it felt too important to approach carelessly or badly, even if she could have worked out how to start.
It was probably because of this unspoken strain that Jamie was able to peel himself away from counting Harry’s toes fifty times a day at all to remember she existed and write absolutely the worst poetry to shout at her in an exhilarated manner whether or not they were alone. As it was, there was just so much needy, cuddly, attention-grabbing from both her boys that the idea of ever getting anything done had become laughable. It was very sweet for how loud it generally was, and she wouldn’t have traded it for anything but having the fight comfortably settled and over with, but really they were both very distracting.
She wasn’t sure how well her portfolio-building would have gone anyway, though. Maybe it was bleedover from the fight she wasn’t having with James, but for almost the first time in her life, she just couldn’t figure out what she wanted to say.
Which was Sev’s fault. Because she did know what she wanted to say, actually, which was that police, whatever they were called, were supposed to be there to protect people. Not to harass them for no good reason. It was just that every time she picked up her quill, she could hear him sardonically thanking her for deigning to acknowledge that there was no good reason.
Thereby serving to remind her that there was one. She knew there was one. There were dangerous people out there, preying on the helpless, voiceless outskirts of wizarding society. She knew the Aurors were only harassing everyone who caught their collective eye for lack of any better ideas about how to work out who was doing it. She wasn’t under public pressure to Do Something about her insoluble problem, but they were. And she didn’t have any better ideas about theirs than they did, or than she did about her own. So what could she say?
If she’d had access to a safe and sane babysitter, she could have at least gone out and done a restaurant review or something. If she’d had access to a reliable one, one she could have left Harry with all day, she could have gone to a Wizengamot session and done a write-up. She’d have been good at that, after watching Dad in court so many times, and it would have been nice to go over it with him. But since neither Alice nor Ravi had offered, she had to think they felt as overwhelmed as she did and any readier to host play-dates than she was.
So when Severus’s code came, it was an enormous relief to have something else to think about. She told James she was going to take Harry for a quick check-in with the midwives, who were still at Hogwarts, and promised she’d tell Dumbledore if she decided to take Harry for a walk after or something.
And then she did exactly that. To her pleasure and further relief, Dumbledore was actually expecting her! Her old Headmaster met her with a beaming smile under a hat that made her think of gooseberry fool, and clasped her hand warmly. “Ah, the lovely Mrs. Potter! And little Harry!”
Harry stared at Dumbledore. Lily didn’t blame him; she’d stared the first time she’d seen a beard that could have swallowed a pumpkin, too. Dumbledore’s was better-kempt than Hagrid’s, but then again, it was considerably shinier.
Then Harry’s gaze veered off to look at possibly a bird, so maybe Lily was reading too much in again.
Dumbledore patted him like a man who quite liked babies in theory but had never gotten to know one in person or got over feeling awkward around them. Harry, who was used to being boisterously manhandled, gave him a sort of what are you and how am I meant to interpret being cautiously batted at, Mummy, I think this might be a strange person look, which was so Sev-like on her baby’s little squishy face with Jamie’s bold, quirky eyebrows exaggerating it that Lily had to work very hard not to burst out laughing in front of the old man.
Oblivious, Dumbledore smiled, “I’m so glad you felt able to answer Severus’s invitation, Lily. It does my heart good to see you getting along again, I must say.”
She blinked, and re-adjusted her grip on Harry. “Well, he said it’d be important if he called. Er, it will be safe to bring the baby, will it? He said it would be safe, but he meant for me. I suppose I could have left Harry with James, but I’m afraid I might come home to find him transfigured into a bunny rabbit.”
Dumbledore chuckled as though that had been a joke, and reached out to stroke Harry’s head. He got yawned at, comfortably, and smiled down. “Quite safe, Lily, quite safe. I’m afraid, however, that I must impose upon you.”
“How’s that, sir?”
“You see, I’m not attending, myself, so I find myself in the unenviable position of asking a young lady to play owl for me. Would you be so good as to deliver a package to Severus?”
“Oh, that’s no problem, Professor,” she assured him. “As long as I don’t need hands free to carry it…”
“No, no, I have it shrunken and prepared for you,” he assured her. “Make sure to tell him not to unshrink it until it is where it ought to stay, if you would.”
“Of course, sir.”
He passed her a what felt like a wooden box, wrapped in brown paper. “And one more thing, Lily. One of our newly-appointed prefects has also been invited to the meeting—young Miss Blakeney. May I name you her chaperone for the afternoon? Severus is quite correct that it should all be perfectly safe, but I believe Mrs. Blakeney’s mind would be more at ease if she were assured that a Hogwarts alumna in whom I had perfect confidence was looking after her daughter.”
Lily hesitated, torn between the half of her that badly needed to ask what house Blakeney was in and the half that was ashamed to let that to be her first question. Even if the girl was as bad as Mulciber about muggleborns and, presumably, their children, she’d know Dumbledore expected Lily back. And Sev would be there—soon, with any luck. It was safe to remember more strongly that they weren’t all like that than that some were.
“You need not be concerned that Miss Blakeney will be a trial,” Dumbledore rescued her. “She’s a very kind and well-behaved young lady, although I would not suggest injuring yourself while in her presence. Her Head of House informs me that she can’t decide whether her crowning ambition is to run St. Mungo’s or cure the common cold.”
“Er—” Lily began.
“Pepperup,” Dumbledore forestalled her with the weary air of someone who’d had this conversation at least eighty times before from both ends of it, probably at least once with Sev from the wrong end, “is, as I’m sure you’re well aware, not precisely a cure.”
“…Right,” she decided to have no further part in whoever was being crazy about whatever now. “Sure, Professor, I’ll take her, but can’t you tell me what it’s about?”
“Oh, no,” he smiled, twinkling away like anything. “I’m sure I haven’t the least idea.”
The girl who stepped out of Dumbledore’s floo, an older woman’s voice calling sternly after her to remember that ‘no descendant of Margaret and the Pimple had ever shown a hint of stage fright yet,’ (whatever that meant) did seem to be quite nice. Since it was August and she wasn’t in her school robes yet, unfortunately, Lily still wasn’t having any luck working out what House she was in. She would have put her money on Hufflepuff, except that Sev was involved. Blakeney’s quietness could have meant anything, but it looked to Lily like actual shyness.
Between that and wanting to be a doctor, Lily was inclined to think Ravenclaw. She supposed Slughorn might have gotten Sev to tutor a much younger Ravenclaw who was especially gifted at potions, if Sev had really annoyed him or asked for something really huge. And the girl being there might not have much to do with Sev after all. Sev might have just been the one to ask her because Dumbledore had told him to, she supposed. Testing how well they were getting on. Maybe if she’d said no to him, Dumbledore would have asked her himself.
What Dumbledore asked Blakeney was whether she was excited for the challenges of the coming term. He used the word ‘excited,’ but the sympathetic twinkle in his eye meant that Lily wasn’t too surprised when the girl gave a contained sort of squirm and confessed, “I was a bit nervous, Professor, but then I got an owl from La—erm, one of our old prefects, and now I feel better.”
“Your friend gave you good advice?” Dumbledore asked kindly.
The girl blinked grey eyes that were softer and darker and more really grey than Lily was used to seeing lately. Usually she saw grey eyes that seemed improbably silvery to her, or that seemed to change colors in a way that was just a bit purer and more intense than the way hazel muggle eyes changed in different kinds of light, just enough to catch her muggle-raised attention.
Sometimes it unnerved her a little, even though her own eyes might have been (if she was honest with herself enough to admit that Tuney might, in a yes-okay-Sev-petty and maybe even twisted sort of way, be right), a bit more of a cat-in-the-dark color than green-eyed humans were supposed—than green-eyed humans usually were. She didn’t think they were more green than the Tartan’s, although Professor Slughorn’s were a more normal unripe-gooseberry shade, the sort of opaque color that Sev had said, when forced to read magazines he had no natural interest in, was only called green in politeness.
Lily supposed you might say the same about Blakeney’s eyes. They weren’t a by-default-color, exactly, more a color one couldn’t quite name. Like Sev’s, although in his case it was more a case of being a color one couldn’t quite believe. Sev’s were such a dark brown she’d never been a hundred percent sure they weren’t a genuine, authentic, color-wheel black, however odd that would have been outside of Asia. Sometimes she’d caught herself thinking they might be blue under those stupid lashes when he got really angry or the light caught him a certain way.
Blakeneys’ were a bit like that, where it was hard to say what the color was. Where you couldn’t tell with Sev because he rarely opened his eyes all the way and the color was so shiny it was actually quite hard to see color past any contrasting glint of light in them, though, with Blakeney it was a fuzzy distinction. Pressed hard to name the color, Lily would have said dark, soft dust in a dim room, or really bad city evening smoke.
Unlike Lily’s, though, Blakeney’s eyes wouldn’t have made a muggle blink, except maybe in admiration in a few years. And while her hair was done in a feathery style that made it rather pretty, Lily knew the color was what Petunia would have called mousey. It was a horrid word for a girl who was pretty in an unassuming sort of way, whose face would have made a person think ‘heart-shaped’ if her hair had been really any other color. But that particular shade… the only other word for it was ‘dun,’ which was scarcely better.
“—Gave me good news,” the girl was saying, in a polite I am sorry to have to correct my elders sort of voice. It wasn’t exactly timid, not the voice of someone who was nervous, but it did very much pull Lily’s mind back to Tuney’s voice in her head saying, with a little sniff that was somewhere between scorn and satisfaction, mousey.
“No doubt you’ll be glad of the chance to express your appreciation before the school year begins,” Dumbledore suggested.
Lily felt rather sorry for him. The words were stuffy, but he wasn’t being ponderous or anything. Lily thought he looked like he was trying to be kind to someone he suspected he couldn’t begin to understand. It was the look of someone trying hard with someone they had no idea how to talk to. She’d never seen him like that, never.
Admittedly, she hadn’t watched him try to have one-on-one conversations with a lot of students who weren’t either chattering enthusiastically back at him, or… well, Sev. But Sev being either hard and cold or bitterly snarly didn’t seem to throw Dumbledore like this quiet little girl who smiled politely at him—a smile that was just a bit confused, and seemed to wonder why he had gone over all awkward when she was just standing there—and dutifully agreed, “Yes, sir, very glad.”
Dumbledore smiled a grandfatherly smile that was 100% pure resigned sigh, if Lily was any judge, and gave Lily a there you have it sort of shrug before introducing them.
“I remember Miss Evans, Professor,” Blakeney—Peregrine—told him. It wasn’t that she went pointed, exactly, but there was a solidity, maybe a weight to her voice that hadn’t been in it before. “But I’m sure you wouldn’t know me, Miss.”
“I’m afraid not,” Lily told her. “I expect you’ve grown a lot since I would have recognized you, anyway.” She smiled and held out her hand. “It’s Mrs. Potter now, but you can call me Lily.”
Blakeney hesitated a moment, and then, to Lily’s amusement, gave her what she might have called a Remus-shake: firm, but only for a moment, and then the little hand quickly slipped away. “Everyone calls me Cleo,” she offered.
“Because you look like Cleopatra?” Lily offered back with a smile.
Blakeney blinked again, and her face settled into a bemused look that said Lily could have looked a long time for a sweeter (and, just possibly, funnier) way to be more completely wrong and never found one. “Coins of her have more nose than I do, Miss.”
“Oh, coins,” Lily said weakly, and asked Dumbledore, “Am I thinking of Theda Bara or Elizabeth Taylor?”
“I’m sure the answer would mean more from your mutual friend,” Dumbledore said gracefully. If he hadn’t been so old, Lily would have called it an I am not touching this one with a fifty-foot barge-pole, why didn’t I think to have a woman my own age in this room with me face. “Who, I’m sure, is awaiting your arrival impatiently.”
They let themselves be courteously ushered the two or three steps back to his fireplace. When he lit it, Lily clutched Harry, who must have dozed off at one point, and exclaimed in alarm, “Professor, what’s wrong with your floo powder?”
“My dear Lily, there’s no need for concern,” Dumbledore assured her soothingly, with a rather more human twinkle. It was laughing at her a bit, but only as between friends. That was all right, as long as he was sure it was safe for the baby. “This is an international floo call, and as it must pass through national border-wards, the formula and, naturally, the color of flame it produces—”
“HALLLOOOOA OUT THERE,” someone who was definitely not Sev, but was definitely male and familiar, called out through the flames. “If you keep this open much longer, the innkeeper’s going to charge for the extra powder. Which I wouldn’t mind except that someone’s bound to tell my highly-strung bronze-niffler, and then I’ll really be in trouble.”
“Lance!” Blakeney squealed happily, and jumped into the fire before Lily could even register the difference excitement made in her.
Lily looked at Dumbledore, who was gazing after the girl, bemused. “Such impetuosity,” he remarked, smiling. “A precious thing in these troubling times, especially where one wouldn’t think to find it. I’m glad she’ll have you looking after her, my dear Lily.”
Through her own sigh (Sev might have had a point back at school; the man could be completely unfair), Lily thought she heard a gagging sort of noise from the other end of the fire, and the man’s voice saying something in a tone that was failing miserably to reprimand instead of chuckle. “You’re sure it’s safe for the baby, Professor?” she asked sharply.
“I’m fine over here, Miss,” Blakeney called through, her voice nearly sedate again.
“If inconvenient,” the man called gaily, “come all the same.”
She blinked at first, but that couldn’t have been anything but a reassurance. “Oh, all right,” she acquiesced crossly, and fixed her old Headmaster with a stern look. “You know where that is? If I scream,” she whispered, readjusting the sleeping baby for a firmer grip, “you’ll come through?”
He smiled reassuringly, and swiftly wrote in the air with his wand, If you don’t say Tickle The Dragon. “At once,” he assured her aloud.
She sighed again, covered Harry’s eyes in case he opened them in the middle of the sparks and spinning confusion, and stepped through.
The room on the other side was, as the man had suggested, clearly the common room of an inn, and the man was Rosier, whatever Blakeney had called him. He had an arm around the girl’s shoulder, and was looking as if a less amiable person would have been annoyed. “I should make you pay for the extra floo powder, Evans, as a fee for dithering.”
“Well, I can tell someone’s been rubbing off on you,” she replied drolly, and then wished she hadn’t. Turning hastily to the fire, she called, “Tickle the dragon!”
“Have a wonderful afternoon, children,” Dumbledore called fondly through, “and go with my best of wishes.” The flames brightened from their spectral green to a cheerful and homely orange, which was a good deal brighter.
“Oh, I’m sure Sev called me out mysteriously after three weeks’ warning in order to give me a wonderful afternoon,” she grumbled. “That’s exactly like him.”
Roseir’s mouth quirked. Making a floatily expressive gesture with twiddly fingers, he drawled, “Shouldn’t you trust such a sage old elderstatesman of your… your who’s-it-what?”
She scowled at him, and pointed out, “I came.”
“And you’re all over ash,” he shook his head, coming up to unhook a clothes-brush from the side of the fireplace and hand it to her. “I’ll take the sprog while you tidy up, if you like?”
“There isn’t that much,” she protested, but handed Harry over without too much reluctance.
“That’s what you think,” Rosier—Evan retorted with a sleepily amused smile. “The floo’s flue’s backed up something awful. It’ll be all down your back, you watch.”
She craned around behind her and exclaimed in annoyance. She hadn’t worn anything extra-fancy, since Sev’s note hadn’t told her what to be prepared for. It was just a denim skirt and peasant blouse—practical for almost anything in this weather, including the cleaning-the-bathroom she’d been doing to avoid her writing desk, though quite a contrast to the long robes and frocks the four or five other people in the inn were wearing, mostly black and all looking grubby with wear rather than grime, like Sev’s had at school. Only, there was some quite nice embroidery around the collar of the blouse, and she’d thrown on a fringed waistcoat Sirius had left in the closet, because it had pockets and a loop onto which she should attach her strappy red wand-sheath.
And the waistcoat was suede, and she didn’t know any cleaning spells for suede. He was going to be horrible about it.
Only it turned out that Evan knew cleaning spells for suede. “Severus doesn’t like having elves tidying up,” he explained long-sufferingly when she couldn’t help showing her surprise. “He’d do everything himself if I let him—you know.”
She nodded, rolling her eyes. She knew, all right.
“But he’s utter rubbish at laundry and furniture and all that,” he shook his head again. He’d bound his hair back more or less like your average pureblood wizard, except that most of them would have used Sleek-eezy. She might have supposed he’d let it go for his vacation, except that he always let it wave all over the place. In her experience, men picked a five-minute morning grooming routine and stuck with it, except for Sirius and when they decided to grow lamentable facial hair. “I mean, they’re clean when he’s done with them, but you don’t entirely feel you’ve got the upholstery you started with.”
“Oh, I know what you mean!” she exclaimed, grinning. There’d never been anyone it was remotely safe to gossip to about Severus like she would any other friend, except her mum. And Mum had always started frowning and looking worried, and then come back later from Sev’s house fuming about that ungrateful Mrs. Snape’s nasty vinegar tongue. “He used to try to do the laundry with rocks.”
Evan and Blakeney did exactly the same sort of pause, where their eyes flicked to meet and then slid quizzically and dubiously to Lily.
“He’d lay it out on a rock and just rub the soap over it,” she elaborated. “Sometimes he’d thrash it with a tree branch. To loosen the dirt, he said, although I’d have thought it’d pack it in harder, myself. He said that was how the Founders probably did it.”
The pause lingered, and then Blakeney asked, “Didn’t the Founders have wands?”
“Definitely wands, almost certainly servants, and most likely house elves,” Evan replied. “This is what we call ‘a misguided effort to convince oneself that one’s History homework contains buried nuggets of practical interest.’”
Blakeney looked at him.
“Buried nuggets of interesting practice?”
“Maybe he just felt like hitting something,” she decided.
“It was easier on the clothes than the rune-magic he tried before he decided soap counted as a potion,” Lily informed them. What it had been was an attempt to save face about not even having an electric wringer, let alone a washing machine, and ashamed of being afraid of what the washing board could do to his hands, and not being able to afford soap that wouldn’t also ruin his hands. She wouldn’t have said so, though, even if she hadn’t suspected Evan knew it.
“Oh, the one that turns thread into wool except for eating cotton instead if you use it at the new moon?” Evan asked, with the wince of experience.
“That and the one that made them stand up like someone was wearing them and go down to the pump and wash themselves until they had holes in,” she agreed while Blakeney hid a silent giggly face behind her hands.
“I never heard about that one,” Evan said with an odd expression. “Wouldn’t have thought he’d try out something like that during the summer.”
Which, Lily thought, meant that his odd expression meant he’d wanted to say in front of the muggles. It had been Sunday during church hours and reasonably safe, but she couldn’t blame Evan for thinking that one proved Sev insane.
Except, “It wasn’t supposed to do anything like that,” she explained, and tried flashing Blakeney a mischievous look. “I learned a lot of new words that day.”
“Well, let’s see what new things we can learn today,” Evan said cheerfully, sliding away from the counter he’d been leaning on with an air of standing up. “Drink before we’re off, Ev—Lily? They don’t have pumpkin juice,” he apologized to Blakeney, “but Spike’s going to be very unpleasant when his radish juice supply is cut off, I think, and there’s always elderflower cordial.”
“I’ll try the radish,” the girl said bravely. Lily got the distinct impression she would have gone for the cordial if Evan hadn’t said that bit about Sev.
“I’d like to try that, too,” Lily smiled.
“Nope,” Evan said blithely, and walked over to where the barkeep was washing a glass by hand and pretending not to stare at them. Carefully, he said, “Edna rappasock—”
“Repichka sok,” the man corrected him, as though he felt he ought to be used to Evan murdering his language but wasn’t yet.
“Right, that,” Evan nodded. “And edna smoky nova, and edna dull lever.”
“Dyuleva?” the man asked skeptically.
“You know what I mean,” Evan said, looking nearly vexed enough to make Lily blink. “A quince and a fig rakia.” When he came back, he grumbled, “Spike says everyone appreciates it if you make the effort and don’t rely on translation charms, but I think he’s having me on.”
Lily smiled at him, not unsympathetically, and dropped her hard-earned Hogwarts accent entirely. “Maybe he’s just got better at accents than you,” she suggested in pure mile-a-minute Liverpudlian.
“Oh, not you, too,” Evan moaned, and made as if to toss back his drink before reconsidering it. He stopped himself, though, took a breath, cleared his expression, and drank the yellow stuff like a wine taster, as if he had a duty to appreciate it to its fullest.
It did seem to make him happy, in a gentle sort of way. Lily tried hers, too, and decided she must have been given the fig stuff. It tasted sticky-sweetly heavy enough to be fig, but she thought she’d wait until she was out of the server’s eye before summoning herself some water. Blakeney looked even less pleased with the radish juice, but she didn’t so much look disgusted as like someone who was fondly saying to herself of COURSE Sev likes this, the idiot.
Evan’s mouth twitched a little at Blakeney’s expression, too, and he held out his arm for her with a kind-rescuer look. “Shall we, then, ladies, onward?”
“I don’t even know where we are,” Lily complained, pulling Harry a little farther up her shoulder. Siri must have really exhausted him this morning for him to have slept through the floo, poor pet. It wasn’t too very surprising, though. She was afraid Tigger might never recover. And she’d be lording the fact that none of them had thought to put a sticking charm on the doggy-saddle over all the boys forever.
Including Remus. She was completely sure that he’d thought of it and would have spoken up if she hadn’t, but since he’d let her James-and-Siriuswrangle all by himself, he could take the consequences.
“It doesn’t matter where we are now,” Evan said, offering her his other elbow. “It matters where we’re go—er?”
One of the local women, grooves cut disapprovingly into her face, had eased herself up and hobbled over to them on a stick. She looked Lily up and down, and barked something in what might have been Russian.
Evan looked helpless, and told Lily, “Mrs. Groenwald wants to know if you intend to wander about where no one knows you without both hands to defend your baby.”
“It was longer than that,” Lily noted, a little suspiciously.
His helpless look turned hapless, and he admitted, “She also called me useless and said Cleo looked made out of milk.”
Blakeney, some growing part of Lily was less than surprised to see, looked secretly pleased.
Speaking directly to the woman, Lily said, “I didn’t mean to, only I didn’t know I was coming.”
Evan told the woman, “She says she was ambushed by the invitation and must do her best.”
The woman made a ptah noise, and tapped a napkin with her wand. It jumped up and grew into a strangely shaped garment which wriggled down over Lily’s head. When she examined it, she found it had a perfectly Harry-sized pocket. With an exclamation of delight, she availed herself of it, even though being mum-handled about made Harry start to stir in his sleep.
She looked up to try to thank the woman, but her benefactress was already stumping away, muttering disgustedly to herself. Refusing to be dashed, Lily pulled out one of her own handkerchiefs and transfigured it into the most beautiful silk flower arrangement that meant gratitude that she could come up with on the spur of the moment.
“Peach blossoms and hydrangeas?” Blakeney asked hesitantly.
“Don’t sound so unsure around Spike or he’ll have you revising your herbology till the end of time,” Evan advised drolly. “Very pretty, Lily. Someone will see she gets it, won’t they?”
One or two of the locals grunted without looking up.
With what am I doing here eyebrows, Evan smiled that helpless smile again and ushered them out. She barely had a chance to take in rustic roofs and muddy cobblestones before he’d apparated them all away.
It was only Lily who exclaimed out loud (again. Sev would have been giving her one of his you’re embarrassing yourself expressions by now), but Blakeney’s eyes widened in pleasure, too.
They were standing under a great roof of stone, but it wasn’t like being in a cave. There were enormous holes in that ceiling, worn smooth by time, with carpets of green, growing things dripping down towards the ground. And the ground itself had a stream running through it, with trees springing up from the sides, and more lush carpets of flowering, mossy beds where the sunshine fell under the great skylights.
Unlike Blakeney, Lily was only just able to be polite enough to wait long enough to hear Evan say, “Welcome to Devetashka Cave.”
Then she, too, had toed off her shoes and flown to one of those lush flowerbeds, irresistibly drawn by the gorgeous throbbing green against the grey rock of the cave wall, the hot summery scent of live flowers and growing plants mingling with the cool metallic-ozone smell of damp stone.
It wasn’t a combination she’d ever quite gotten before—the closest was probably sitting by the Black Lake during summer terms at Hogwarts, but that was all bound up with sweaty boys and the paper smells of her textbooks, and the fishy smells of the lake. This was pure and purely elemental, everything but fire.
Eventually, arms almost as full of flowers as they were of miraculously still-asleep baby, she grinned at Blakeney. She almost got an actual smile back. She would have called it a full-out grin if it had been Sev, and thought she might as well now, probably.
Looking up behind Lily, Blakeney turned a bit shamefaced. Lily twisted to see Evan, standing patiently with a benevolently amused look (the git) and a big, broad basket that looked woven out of some sort of bark. “Got all you need?” he asked, but not as if he was trying to prompt them to say yes.
“Oh, I suppose,” Lily agreed anyway, pushing herself up. There were all sorts of beautiful flowers left, but none of them was calling to her in the same way, and it wouldn’t be right to denude the place just because she felt like bringing home a bouquet. Evan held out the basket, and she and Blakeney both dropped their greedily gathered treasures in.
Then Blakeney gasped, and lunged at an unpretentious little flower with five blazing scarlet petals coming into a dark ring before a pure white heart, with lolly-like stamens ending in pollen of a true gold. “Lance!” she breathed, holding it up.
When Evan smiled, something relaxed and warmed in his face, making Lily realize for the first time how tense his shoulders had been all the time. “Of course you can bring your House with you. Give it here, Cleo." He drew something onto the single sprig with his wand, and it grew into a thickly-blooming coronet. He settled it onto her hair as if you placed fire onto ashes.
“Do I get one?” Lily smiled.
He tilted his head at her, with an expression she couldn’t quite pin down, somewhere between friendliness, curiosity, and calculation. Just like a Slytherin. “Do you?”
She’d thought the flowerbed was done calling to her, but she looked down again anyway. To her surprise, except for one sad, droopy little white flower with three petals like deflated balloons, all the flowers were gone! “I suppose not,” she blinked.
Evan smiled, irritatingly mysterious. “Pluck me your snowdrop, Lily. What’s better to wear than hope, when you don’t know what you’re walking into?”
“What are we walking into?” she demanded, but he just held out his hand. She sighed, and gave in.
What they were walking into, it turned out, was one of the great pools of light under one of the great glassless windows into the sky. And also, apparently, a wizardspace area, or at least a plot of ground under some sort of ward or secrecy charm: the moment Lily stepped into the sun, she saw all sorts of strange things she would have sworn hadn’t been in the cave with them, and they were no longer alone.