Chapter Text
Intro
She’s a bad fairy, the thing is. Lucinda gives her the gift and it’s shocking and everyone knows it is, like how last week she gave a child down the road the ability to light fires just because. Half the house was gone within a week.
Tonks has a fit on her behalf.
“It’s stinking rotten!” she curses out Lucinda, bellowing rage and glaring, pink hair sticking up in all directions. “It’s a bloody awful thing to have to do what you’re told! Take it back!”
“I have a no–returns policy,” Lucinda points out. She’s holding Lily with one hand and fingering a brown curl with the other, smiling in a way that is thin-lipped and baleful. “If you’re going to be ungrateful, I could always turn her into a squirrel, instead.”
Her Mum steps in. “No,” she says, “obedience is a lovely gift.”
“Rubbish,” Tonks mutters.
“Besides,” Lucinda says, cooing at Lily, “you should thank me.”
“Fat chance of that,” Tonks tells her.
“I’ve just given you,” Lucinda tells them, ignoring Tonks, holding Lily aloft, gazing at her, “the perfect child.”
Lily, giggling, pisses all over her. Tonks laughs so hard she falls backward into the cot.
It doesn’t stop her, though—nothing ever really does. She barely knows she has it, the curse, does things for people without them asking, most of time. Her Mum doesn’t tell her that she has it and Tonks isn’t allowed to and her Dad doesn’t even know.
She meets Mary without meaning to; she draws well in free–time and Lily has always thought so, is ready to tell her when she catches Bellatrix Lestrange, her lot of black hair and mean face, picking on her in the yard.
“Why don’t you go back to where you came from?” she’s asking. Mary’s trying to ignore her until Bellatrix shoves her.
“Nobody wants you here,” she snarls, standing over her.
Lily comes up, gets in Bellatrix’s face. “I do.”
“Bite me,” Bellatrix pouts, and Lily does, hard.
She finds out at her birthday party, when Tonks speaks out of turn, once, and never again. Once is all it takes.
“Stuff your face,” she tells Lily, sitting in front of her birthday cake, and Lily, without really knowing why, shovels enough cake into her mouth to make herself gag.
Everyone thinks it’s hilarious, though, until Lily starts crying, but by that time her Mum has told her to stop, and Tonks is holding a fistful of forks, ashen-faced by the kitchen door.
Later, after everyone’s gone home, she’s sitting on the couch. Her Mum’s taking a flannel to her face and Tonks is chewing her nails.
“I sort of knew something was the matter with me,” Lily says, out of turn.
“No,” Tonks snaps at her, “nothing’s the matter with you. If I hadn’t—”
“You could take it back, couldn’t you?” Lily asks her, earnestly, and the smile Tonks gives her is so, so sad, it makes her sad, too.
“Doesn’t work that way, sweetheart.”
“Besides,” her Mum says, pinching Lily’s nose with the cloth, “Lucinda threatened to turn you into a squirrel if we ever asked her again.”
“I could try,” Lily says, looking at her hands.
No-one says anything to this, and they sit there, Tonks in a state of despair, Lily’s Mum holding the wet flannel, and Lily, thinking about how to fix things. How to make herself better.
“S’not fair,” she says, sniffing, dragging a hand across her nose.
“I know,” Tonks tells her, coming over, finally, her and Lily’s Mum gathering her up into their arms, stroking her hair, a three-way hug. “It’s not fair at all.”
She gets good at finding ways around things. The best way to not have to do something, she finds, is to not hear the command, which is why she spends so much time out of the house, in a tree, upside down from a branch, or somewhere in the woods. Her Mum, or Tonks, or Dad has to scream if they want her.
Sometimes she wishes the gift worked in reverse. She wishes that hard, wishes she could stop her mother from dying. It doesn’t work.
Tonks and her Dad pull her into the dark room, windows open, curtains billowing because her Mum has had a fever for her whole life, it seems, sweating and crying onto the lacy pillows.
Even as she lies there, dying, her Dad out of the room, she tells Lily not to tell anyone, ever, no matter what. It locks her in, she’s got no choice. Now it’s only her, Tonks and the dying Mother.
“I don’t want anyone using it against you,” her Mum tells her, hand against Lily’s cheek, whose knees feel rashy as they dig into the carpet.
What would people do if they knew? Lily thinks, kneeling there. Could she stop them, some way?
She thinks about turning to Tonks, asking her to tell her to stop her Mum from dying, because then she’d have to find a way, there’d have to be one, she wouldn’t be able to stop until she found one.
“You’re stronger than it,” her Mum says, “it’s just a spell.”
Lily nods. Her Mum is a smart woman, she knows this. Maybe that’s why she’s dying. Can you die from being too right?
Mums are supposed to die when you’re good and old and ready, when you’ve got kids of your own to look at you and be shocked by their Mum crying, the wrongness of it. Instead her Mum dies before any of this can happen and she can’t stop it.
Part 1
(10 years later)
“Kiddo.” Tonks opens the door without knocking, she doesn’t mind. “Your father wants you.”
“One sec,” she says, finishing the laces on her boots. This is something she likes about Tonks; she never asks her to do anything. It’s like second nature; whenever someone tells Tonks to do something she grumbles and huffs about, scowling.
She would never tell her to do anything; hasn’t since the cake incident. She wonders if her Mum made her promise. Promises, she’s found, don’t work with people the same way they do with her.
She gets downstairs.
“You’re married,” she says. It’s a flatline, it’s not a question. Her father’s just told her this, she doesn’t know why she’s repeating it. Maybe because it sounds stupid. Maybe because she wants it to be happening to someone else.
“She has money, love,” her Dad tells her. “It was either get married, or sell the house. You’ll love the Dame, and her daughter. She’ll make a wonderful mother.”
She looks at him, hard.
“A mother-like figure,” he amends.
He’s saying a lot of words and she wants to believe him. She wants to believe him anything. She wants a lot of things. She wants to not stick her head in a water trough because someone tells her to, which she has done. She wants her mother to not be dead so she doesn’t have to get a new one.
She comes out smiling with Tonks, it’s all she can do. These people have done nothing to her, she doesn’t want to make them think they have.
“This must be Lily.” It’s a woman with a snippy voice and a strange face, ignoring Tonks completely, which makes Lily bristle.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Lily tells her instead.
“Yes,” the woman says. It’s odd. “The house,” she starts, turning back to look at her father, “looks delightful.”
There’s a girl behind the woman, kind of sour-faced. Lily tries to be warm, squeezes Tonks’s arm before going to greet her.
“Hello,” she says, “I’m Lily. Welcome to Frell.”
“Petunia,” the girl sniffs.
Right, Lily thinks, turning back to look at Tonks, who shrugs. Right.
There are a bunch of posters in the room joining hers, suddenly, a likeness of the Prince. She’s not sure why they’re there.
“So…" Lily starts, “You like the Prince, then?”
“I’m a part of his fanclub,” Petunia says. Lily’s not sure if she’s joking. “He’s so… normal.”
“Sure,” Lily says, “sure, but… you do know that he and his uncle are responsible for the segregation of the kingdom?”
“I know,” Petunia says, like it’s a good thing. “Do you have any more closet space?” she wants to know, suddenly.
“Oh, do you need a bit more room?”
“Yes,” Petunia says.
“I’ll show you,” Lily adds, takes her to her room.
“It’s so quaint,” Petunia tells her. Lily notices she has a habit of talking about bad things like they are good, good like they are bad.
“Thank you,” Lily tells her. Petunia cuts her a look, like she’s angry that she’s being so polite.
Lily starts clearing out a drawer. Petunia comes over, sniffs, and says, “I’ll need more room than that.”
“Alright, sure,” Lily says, “here,” and opens the door to her closet.
Petunia gives cursory glances, shoves aside a bunch of skirts. A few of Lily’s favourites tumble off their hangers, and she starts forward with an, “Excuse me,” before Petunia whirls and tells her to move back.
It’s the first time she’s told her to do something and it’s very unpleasant, but Lily immediately catches it—she hasn’t said how far, for how long, where she has to stand, just that she has to move back, and so she does.
“What’s that?” Petunia asks, pointing to a necklace on Lily’s dresser.
It’s just a necklace, really—her Mum gave it to her.
“My mother’s necklace,” Lily tells her.
“It’s pretty,” Petunia says. She moves forward to grab it.
“Oi,” Lily says, stopping her.
“It can be your welcome gift to me,” Petunia says, holding it up.
“I rather think the extra closet space covers it,” Lily tells her. “Give that back, please.”
“Excuse me?”
“Give it back.”
Petunia purses her lips, like she’s caught onto something nasty, says, “It’s not nice to snatch.”
Lily, squaring up, tells her, “Neither is taking someone’s possessions without asking.”
“Fine,” Petunia says, putting it down on the dresser, “Keep it. It’s ugly anyway,” she tells her, and walks out.
Her Dad leaves. Not for long and not far away but he leaves, and she doesn’t want him to.
He sells watches and it’s a stupid job but he’s nice, he’s so nice and he’s only doing it for her, really, but still, she doesn’t want him to go. She doesn’t know what will happen if he does.
She hugs him goodbye before he heads out the door of the cottage.
“I’ll miss you,” she says, “and I love you, and come back soon.”
He pats her on the head, like she’s five. She wants to be. “I’ll miss you and love you too, and I will.”
She can hear Petunia and the Dame laughing upstairs and it’s hollow. This house will be hollow, she realises, without her Father and two extra empty people inside it.
She stays up with Tonks most of the night, the two of them eventually sleeping in her room together, curling up on the bed like cats.
The next day, at school, they’re in the middle of a structured debate.
“Elves, giants, ogres and humans used to exist in harmony,” Lily says, on the podium, long skirt swishing around her ankles as she walks. Petunia, next to her, scowls. “Until King Fleamont was killed—allegedly—by an ogre, which Ser Tom saw as an opportunity to exile all non-human creatures to the forest. He kept their land for himself.”
Mary, grinning, winks at her from her desk in the back, chin in the cup of her palm. Lily moves to the side, Petunia stepping up instead.
“What my opponent fails to communicate,” she starts, “is that Ser Tom has done a brilliant job.”
Lily actually laughs, she can’t help it. Petunia glares at her.
“He’s driven the ogres out, and given giants and elves work as labourers and entertainers. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have today’s thriving economy and free enterprise system."
There are sounds of assent and dissent and Mary goes red, boots slipping off the desk in front of her.
Lily, turning to Petunia, snaps, “It’s only thriving and free because they’re enslaved. If that’s the way Ser Tom sees fit to run a country, I don’t hold out much hope for his nephew, either.”
Petunia turns to her. “That shows how much you know. James Potter will be the greatest king ever.”
Lily hears people agree with Petunia. Her ears get hot, which is what happens when she’s furious. She can’t help that the next thing she says is, “I wonder if you’ve based your opinion on the Prince’s politics or how fuckable you think he is.”
Mary falls out of her desk. Their professor is about to call Lily off—and rightly so, she can barely believe what she’s just said, when Petunia hisses to her:
“Just admit that you’re biased and uneducated and that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She chokes. She doesn’t have to say it now. She can say it later, as quietly as she wants.
“If neither of you are going to obey debating protocol,” their professor is saying, “then I’ll have to call it a draw.” She dismisses them.
She’s lying in bed that night when she whispers to herself, quietly, “I’m biased and uneducated and I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
In the next room, lying awake, Petunia hears her.
He’s got his legs up on the bench, as per, one arm stretched languidly behind his head. He’s a body of water. He’s bored.
“Uncle,” he says, and Tom looks at him, cheeks and dark eyes, “do I really have to go this mall opening?”
Tom’s lips draw back—it’s not really a smile—and sighs. Nagini’s curled around his staff. He hates that bloody snake.
“As heir to the throne,” Tom starts, “it’s your royal obligation, James. You are a public figure, after all.”
“Yeah,” James grins, swinging his legs down, sitting up, “but you’re the one in charge.”
“Only for a little while longer,” his uncle tells him. “Your coronation is next week.” He doesn’t need to be reminded. King. He’s going to be a fucking king and it’s nuts.
“You need,” Tom continues, “to be out there with the people, James. Shaking hands, kissing babies, so the people can learn to trust us.”
“What’s not to trust?” James laughs.
“Nothing,” Tom tells him. “But, while you have been away at school, the ogres have become impossible, and the giants have become more and more treacherous.”
“Giants’ve always been peaceful,” James says, doubtful.
“The ogres were peaceful, too,” Tom says, sitting back, face drawn. “Before they ripped your father to shreds.” James’s breath sticks in his throat, a bit like blood.
“And I promised your father,” Tom tells him, sitting forward now, “should anything happen to him, that I would take care of you and the kingdom. And I’ve kept my promise, as should you, to your people.”
James nods. He knows, he knows, he knows.
“Now, let’s put on a smile,” Tom says, and James chuckles into his thumb, wiping the corner of his mouth, “and remember,” Tom says, like a touch, “image is everything.”
There’s a lot of screaming before Ser Tom gets up on the podium, girls here to see the Prince. Petunia’s there, friends of hers too.
Tom tells them it’s wonderful to be here, a charming town—he’s slimy, Lily thinks, would make an awful king, doesn’t know if his nephew will be much better.
The second he mentions Prince James everyone goes beserk, a collective scream. Lily rolls her eyes, Mary’s cheek on her shoulder.
“And now,” Tom says, those unearthly eyes, the stillness of it unnerving, barely smiling but barely not; Lily hates him, she decides, “it is my great pleasure to welcome my nephew, Prince James.”
It’s like a riot, a bombing, like someone’s dead or is dying. A girl faints. James comes out, and Lily doesn’t see the appeal. He’s tall but annoying and gloating and tall. She glares.
“He’s hot,” Mary remarks.
“He’s not,” Lily says, brandishing her banner, standing up on the lip of a statue in the back of the crowd, and she starts to scream, too, but differently.
“Say no to ogrecide!” she yells, Mary hopping up beside her, hoisting her own banner up.
“Stop the giant land grab!” Mary screams. This goes on, both girls hollering at him. They figure he’s the only they can get through to. They think it’d be lost on Tom.
From near the front, Petunia whirls.
She marches up to her, rips the banner from her hands. “Lily,” she hisses. “What are you doing?”
“What?” Lily asks.
“You’re embarrassing me,” Petunia tells her.
“How could anyone possibly know I’m with you?” Lily demands. “What does my protesting real issues that affect people outside of this mall have to do with you?”
Petunia doesn’t budge. “Go home,” she tells Lily. “Now,” she adds, when Lily doesn’t.
She knows, is Lily’s first thought, but that’s stupid, how could she know?
In any case, she has to go, legs already moving, hopping off the edge of the statue.
“Lil,” Mary intones, and Lily looks at her, apologetic, and tells her, “Sorry.”
She’s not there to witness a torrent of girls storm the platform, get past the guards and almost flatten James, whose Uncle grabs him roughly by his shoulder and tells him to run, get back to the carriage.
He doesn’t go to the carriage. Not really. Not at all.
He goes way past that.
He takes the road out of town, crashes down the path and right into her, and she doesn’t really know what’s happening.
She’s there, she’s walking, and it’s bizarre. He barrels into her, she screams, he drags her down behind a stone wall, and she thinks, am I being hurt? Is this not supposed to happen? Because there’s a tall man, hand wrapped around her mouth and another hand around her waist and she’s on his lap and he’s warm, and he holds her there, tight against his chest, and she sees the girls run past, and once they’re out of earshot, she punches him in the crotch, hard.
“What the fuck was that for?” he screeches, on the ground, in pain.
“You grabbed me,” she says, stumbling to her feet. She wipes her mouth, like she can still feel his hand there, his hands everywhere.
And then she gets a good look and him, and she thinks, I just punched the Prince in the dick. Oh my God, I just punched the Prince in the dick.
“Your Highness,” she tries.
“Please,” he says, recovering, laughing, standing up and up, “call me—“ he looks at her, and it scares her in a way that him grabbing her didn’t, “Call me James.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“Sorry about that,” he says, all charm, leaning on the stone wall, “occupational hazard.”
She rolls her eyes, scowls.
“Please,” he starts forward, “allow me—“
“I don’t need your chivalry, thanks,” she says, backing away from him. “And I have absolutely no intention of curtseying, either, so you can forget that.”
And then she starts off down the road.
She expects him to leave her alone, really doesn’t expect him to follow her, but then she can hear him, footsteps, tall enough to block out the bloody sun.
“You can curtsey or not,” he says, dipping to grin at her, and she scowls, “it’s your choice. There’s not much I can do about it.”
She starts to walk faster.
“Of course,” he says, casually, “I could have you beheaded, but that seems a tad extreme.”
“Listen, Your Highness,” she says, not stopping, can’t stop, if she does he’s won, “why don’t you do what your people usually do: steal my land and destroy my livelihood.” She hears him stop walking, takes that as a good sign. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—“
“Wait a second,” he growls, all of a sudden something’s come and gone like the sun behind a cloud, and he’s telling her, clearly, to stop, and she does, because she has to, but she thinks that even if she didn’t, his voice would stop her.
She waits for a second, then goes.
“Oi!” he yells at her. She tries to ignore him. She’s never wanted to walk away from anyone as much as she wants to walk away from him in this moment. She’d waste so much on this moment.
“Come back here,” he tells her, angrily. She does as she’s told. The thought rises then, unbidden; he’ll make a good king. That’s a good voice. As soon as it’s there, she’s furious with herself. Go away, she thinks.
She marches up to him and plants herself there, glaring. “What?” she snaps.
He softens, then, seems to like looking at her face, he seems impressed and this annoys her. Stop looking at me, she wants to say.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
It’s too rudimentary, too decorous. She was expecting reprimands, demands, something else. Not this. Not politeness.
It seems harmless, to tell him. “Lily.”
“Of?” he prompts.
“Frell.”
“Well, Lily,” he says, leaning on one leg, she doesn’t like this leaning business, kings are meant to stand up straight. “You’re the first girl I’ve ever met that hasn’t swooned at the sight of me.”
She laughs, coming out of her in a burst; the absolute absurdity of him, she can’t believe it. His cheeks go pink. “I reckon, then,” she says, “that I’ve done you some good.”
And then she walks away.
But he comes after her. Of course he does. That’s more in line with her idea of him, wheedling, childish.
“Look, I’ve never stolen anyone’s land or livelihood,” he insists, has to let her know this one thing, apparently. She groans, turns to him. God, he got here quickly. He’s already next to her.
“I want peace in the kingdom as much as anyone,” he continues.
“So,” she says, “does that mean you have no plan once you take the crown?”
This seems to baffle him, like he hasn’t thought that far.
“Um,” he says. God, she thinks. “Well—of course, but obviously I couldn’t reveal it to a subject.”
Subject. That makes her laugh again. He’s insufferable. “That’s what I thought, you’re all the bloody same. You care more about your fanclub and your next jousting tournament.”
“Well, I—I mean, they’re alright, but your... obvious, um, disdain for me’s a bit more refreshing.”
“Obvious?” she says, a bit cute and coy, the way he’d probably like her. “I was trying so hard to hide it.”
She walks off again, unencumbered, if he tells her to do anything else she will hit him, she doesn’t care that he’s a royal.
“Hang on,” she says, right there in the middle of the road. Purse, purse. “Where’s my purse?” She whirls, another thing to blame on him, another thing that’s his fault, “It’s back there—“
He seems to want to make her happy, like there’s something to make up for. Chivalrous git, she thinks, are all princes this way? “Stay there until I get back,” he tells her, “I’ll get it.”
That doesn’t give her much room to work. Technically, she has to stay there, and the bit about him getting back is particularly difficult to get out of.
She tries to move, can’t. She should’ve seen this coming, should’ve run from him if that’s what it took.
The green oaks snap above her. If you cut them open, she thinks, they’d been green all the way through.
She hears the gravel up ahead crunch and thinks, Great, he’s back, but when she turns to look she doesn’t see Prince, but a carriage, coming full-tilt, in a gap between the trees.
Fuck, she thinks, oh, fuck. She can’t move.
“Stop!” she yells, waves her arms. “Stop! Stop!”
It’s a tight bend where she’s standing, she takes this road often enough to know. The driver won’t see her until she’s thrown under the wheels. She jumps, screaming. She doesn’t particularly want to die here.
He can’t hear her, the driver, with the hoofbeats and the wheels crunching. He can’t hear her.
Not caring how pitiful it makes her sound, how scared, she screams for the Prince.
“James!” she shrieks, loud as she can. It makes her want to die a little bit, admitting she needs him, but she doesn’t actually want to die, not here, not right now. “ James! Help!”
But then he’s running, he’s running straight for her and she can see him coming, and she thinks that until I get back means here, right here, he has to be right here with her and she knows that now. He collapses into her, and then she’s on her back on the grassy knoll beside the road, pinned beneath him, and he’s saying, “Oh my God, oh my God,” over and over again into her hair, and she thinks, fuck, he didn’t even think, he came straight for me.
He presses up off of her for a second, the carriage long gone now, a cloud of dust in its absence. She’s completely stunned, rattled and he can see it. He’s kind of angry, kind of shocked, too, hovering above her, looking at her and saying, “Are you mental? Why didn’t you move?”
“I—I would’ve, if—”
But that seems to be enough for him, like he wasn’t really expecting an answer, because all of a sudden he collapses back against her again, whispers, “You’re crazy.”
It’s arresting enough that she lies there for a second, pleasurably crushed under the weight of him, before she pushes him off her. God, he’s heavy, she thinks, and she gets up.
“Well,” she says, desperate for something to say, because he shifts until he’s completely on his back, lying back in the grass, chin tilted up and looking at her like they’ve just done something.
Her insides flush like a flash rain when he does that. She can’t look at him seriously, has to glare, instead, just for something to do.
“If it weren’t for your apparent fascination with knocking me to the ground…” she starts, brushing off her skirt. Her lungs are a vacuum. “That’s the second bloody time today.”
He shifts up onto his elbows, smirking at her from the grass. “Well,” he says, grinning fully, “I’ll be a bit more careful the next time I’m saving you.”
She hates so many of the things he just said, the prick. “Next time?” she says, incredulous, pausing in her quest to vanquish her skirt of any grass fronds or dandelion seeds. “What on Earth makes you think we’re going to see each other again?”
He looks kind of hurt, as if he had this planned. “Won’t we?” he says.
“No,” she insists, bluntly. Does she want to see him again? “No,” she says again.
“Jesus, Frell,” he says, getting to his feet. God, he’s tall.
She presses her hands to her face for a moment, long but not long enough. Maybe if she fell asleep right now she’d wake up somewhere nicer. She wouldn’t hear her step-sister calling her name like it’s something difficult to say.
But she does. “Lily!” Petunia calls.
She opens her eyes, and she’s exactly where she was before, on a grassy hill, in front of a tall boy.
James is frowning at her, she realises, deeply concerned. He seems to have moved closer to her, too, like he was about to reach out and touch her, if she hadn’t opened her eyes. Like he would’ve kept looking and looking at her, if she hadn’t opened her eyes.
“Come here, now,” Petunia says, not quite enough to give any sort of game away, but enough to make Lily wonder, a bit.
She turns away from James, walks over to Petunia, who gives her a cruel, shrewd look and says, “Shouldn’t you be at home cleaning the fireplace?”
She can feel him looking at her, James, like there’s something to be said for all of this, like what her step-sister has just said makes it as though she’s lied to him.
Lily smiles at Petunia, then, in a way that isn’t entirely true.
Her step-sister leans forward, and hisses, under her breath, “Stop flirting with him.”
Startlingly, for a second, she feels a tug in her lower gut, like there was something to be stopped, like there was something going on there, which there isn’t.
“Go back to the mall,” Petunia tells her. “Now.”
She tries to swallow it back, like she’s been doing all her life, trying to stop things from happening to her. But she has to. She has to, she can feel her feet moving, and she goes and hates it, hates her sister and hates James, standing behind and saying, “Lily,” as if he expects her to come back, which she won’t, not unless he asks her to.
Does she even want to stay? The thought makes her walk a little faster.
As she goes she can hear Petunia, cozying up, or making her best effort to when she’s a cold person, the coldest person Lily has ever met, in fact, talking to James about how her life used to be before she came here.
Lily crosses the river. She stood here moments ago, telling a boy off when her whole life it’s been her who’s given orders. She hears James tell her step-sister, “Tell Lily I’ll be in touch,” before he walks away.
It leaves Petunia a bit shocked, and Lily a bit glader for it, just enough for her to see a half-smile brimming on her own face in the water below. Enough to have to admit that she was smiling and stop it.
“Where were you?” Mary asks, biting into an apple.
Lily screws up her lips. She’d rather not tell unless she’s told to.
“Come on,” Mary says, and that’s enough of a command, because Lily crosses her legs at the ankles and says, “I met the Prince.”
Mary chokes on her piece of apple. “You met the Prince?”
“Yes,” she says, “and I don’t want to talk about it. He was a prick and Petunia was there.”
“You’ve been running around a lot after Petunia, recently,” Mary quips.
“No, I haven’t,” Lily rebuffs.
“Yes, you have.”
“I haven’t.”
“You have.”
“I haven’t.”
“God, give it up, Lily.”
“Fine,” she says, “I have.”
They jump off the wall, Mary walking and eating, Lily not eating but walking, until Mary says, “Are you feeling alright?”
“How d’you mean?” Lily asks, rounding a corner and seeing Petunia browsing at a nearby gift shop, doubling back the moment she does.
“That’s what I mean,” Mary says, coming back to tug her on.
“Lily,” she hears her step-sister say. “Come here, now.” Her heart sickens.
“I’ll be right back,” she says, to Mary, it’s all she can say.
She walks up to her sister. “Yes?” she says, not liking the look on her face, the way she’s smiling.
“I need you to do something for me,” Petunia tells her. She nods, impassive, at a jar of honey. “Take that, for me. Right now.”
She feels her hand reach out and grab it.
“And that one,” Petunia tells her, at a bushel of dried thyme. Lily does.
“And that.” A bar of rose soap.
“Are you going to pay for all this?” Lily asks, holding them for a second. How do you define taking something? She puts them back.
Petunia notices, shakes her head, like it’s all a joke, and then says, “No, take them again, put them in your bag, walk away, and don’t come back,” she says. “Now.”
“I don’t want to,” she says, even as her hands are reaching, greedy childs’ hands, she has. They don’t belong to her, her hands or the things on the table.
“Stop,” Petunia says, and Lily thinks, OK, it’s OK, until Petunia points to a pair of glass slippers, expensive and entirely too nice for anyone. She tells her to pick them up and take them.
“Please,” Lily says, forestalling her hands on the eaves of the cabinet, shaking with the force of the thing she’s about to do. “Don’t make me do this.”
“Take them,” Petunia says, “now.”
Lily does. She takes them and shoves them in her bag and they clink as she does so, beautiful opaque flimsy things she will never walk in.
And a guard sees. Petunia sees the guard seeing and tells Lily to run, like she wasn’t going to, which she wasn’t, she was going to put the slippers back or go inside the shop. She could still do that. But then Petunia says the word run in conjunction with the word away and she has no choice.
She goes, wherever away is, trying not to stop, sometimes a vendor will tell her to and so she must, stops and tries something before turning away. She could drop the slippers, she guesses.
She runs through the market, sick of herself, cheeks pink from the exertion, because she’s a thief now, she reminds herself, a thief who runs. She keeps on running until a guard tells her to stop, which she does, halting in the middle of the square.
She doesn’t move, not even as he slaps a pair of handcuffs around her wrists.
The step-mother is not happy.
“A felon,” she chokes out, as Lily sits on the couch, poorly, a truly awful girl with her hands in her lap. “I could die from embarrassment.”
“Can I get that in writing?” Tonks asks. Lily barely conceals a smile. This is all so stupid to her.
“You are a disgrace,” the step-mother tells her. Lily looks up at her, actually a little hurt by this. What a thing to say. She could never seriously imagine looking at someone and telling them that they’re a disgrace, but her stepmother just did it to her, so.
She doesn’t believe she is a disgrace, necessarily, but she feels herself cringe away from the words. She thinks about being somewhere else. With her Father. With her Mother.
“Maybe,” Tonks says, leaning on the back of the couch, cheek resting on her fist, squashing her face, “she was put up to it.”
Petunia sniffs from where she stands beside the hall table, an ugly painting of a less-ugly vase of flowers behind her. Her step-mother feigns confusion.
“Nymphadora is right, Mother,” Petunia says, moving to stand behind Lily. Tonks makes a face. “I was there. It wasn’t Lily’s fault. She was forced to do it.”
What is she doing? Lily tries to figure it out in her head, rubbing at her wrists.
“So, Lily,” her step-mother asks, “who put you up to it?”
Then Petunia, who’s meant to be her sister, leans in and whispers in Lily’s ear, “Tell her that it was Mary. Don’t take it back, or make it sound like you’re joking. Do it now.”
Lily knows, irrevocably, then, knows that she knows. She has never felt less free than she does in this moment, and the handcuffs were taken off her less than an hour ago.
“It was Mary,” she chokes out, could cry. Petunia knowing is the worst thing that could’ve happened. She hates this, hates all of it.
Tonks is looking at them both funny, brow furrowed on her pink face.
“Mary,” her step-mother repeats dully. “I might have guessed it.” She turns to Lily, and says, “You’re not to see her again,” like she’s five years old.
“Sorry?” Lily asks. Since when do things like these happen? Since when do things like these happen to her?
There’s a knock at the door, Mary’s voice saying, “Lily, what’s going on? Have you really been arrested, or is Alice fucking with me?”
Tonks bangs her head against a wall.
Her step-mother looks furious. “How dare she come here now?” There’s a pause, a horrible one. Then she says, “Answer the door, and tell her that you never want to see her again.”
Unbidden, Lily’s feet start to move.
“And,” Petunia says, eyes like slate, hard, “tell her you could never be friends with a gypsy. Now.”
It’s like an allergic reaction, a lump in her throat. She feels lightheaded, nauseous.
She feels herself backs up into Tonks, who grabs her hand.
“I can’t,” she says, as she knows, dreadfully, that she can. “ Please ,” she implores. She would get on her knees if she had to. She wants, desperately, not to be this person.
“Don’t argue,” the stepmother says, “just do it.”
Lily feels her wrench her hand from Tonks’s, the kind of involuntary jerking that accompanies the having to, the must.
She opens the door, finds Mary on the threshold, leaning against the frame.
“Well?” Mary says, chewing off a piece of nail. “What’s happened?”
She doesn’t say anything, something she can’t do for much longer. Her mouth is open, the words in the back of her throat like a cough.
“I don’t want anything to do with you anymore,” she says, meaning it but not meaning it. Awful.
“What?” Mary laughs, incredulous. This hurts so much.
It’s like some kind of culling, standing there and watching Mary realise she’s being serious.
She isn’t, but Mary can’t know that because Petunia said so, and the complexities of this, the politics, why Petunia is doing this to her, that Lucinda ever tried to pass this curse off as a gift—she wants to scream.
“Lily,” Mary says, still doubtful.
The next bit, like a horrible speech in the middle of class, the kind of nightmare where she’s not wearing any clothes.
“God, Lily, what’s going on?”
That’s me, that’s me, I’m doing this to her. Her nose wrinkles. She doesn’t need to force the cry out, it’s just there. She can’t imagine what this looks like, how it doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.
Mary, suddenly very serious, looks at her, hard. “What kind of shitty joke is this?”
“Not a joke,” Lily bursts out, crying.
“What’s going on?”
“I could never—I could never be friends with a gypsy.”
Mary looks at her funny. “Alright.”
“I—“ She can’t apologise, she can’t take it back, Petunia said not to.
“You know what? Whatever,” Mary says, hands up like it’s an arrest, and it kind of is, Lily’s just put a stop to everything, their whole friendship. “I’m going home. Come see me when you’re acting normal again.”
Lily sobs. Of course only a good friend, Mary, would leave things open for her. But she doesn’t know if she can ever revisit this, if she’ll ever be allowed to. Can Petunia really just do that? Wreck her whole life, uproot her friends like weeds, just by saying a few words?
She keeps crying as she goes back inside, closes the door. This, she thinks, is the worst kind of nightmare. The worst kind of life.
She sits upstairs, Tonks quiet on the bed beside her.
“I’ve done—I’ve done terrible things before,” Lily says, a hand on her wet, red cheek, and it’s true, she has. She’s stolen, she’s hit a boy before because Mary told her to. She’s broken windows, thrown fits, made herself ill. She’s never killed anyone, but she’s sure it’s coming. “But this—this is the worst thing it’s ever made me do.”
Tonks says little, another bad thing. The anger came earlier, but when Lily cries, Tonks is quiet. That’s just how things work.
She can’t see any world in which Mary takes her at face value. She will know that something else is happening but the fact that Lily can’t tell her what it is will be the chopping-block moment, not the fact that she called her a gypsy and made it sound she planned it.
It’s taken a lot from her, the curse. Now that she has nothing holding her back—no Mother, no Father, no Mary—she sits up on the bed.
“I’m leaving,” she says. “I have to find Lucinda. I have to get her to take it back.”
Tonks, without any prompting, nodding furiously, says, “I know. Come with me.”
In the hall, next to the good cupboard where the doilies and smart crockery hide, containing her Mother’s china, the one that’s always locked, Tonks says, “This’ll help you find her.”
She procures a key from behind her ear, takes a few goes before it slots into the lock. She cracks open the bottom cupboard, shoves her head in, until her whole body somehow—almost—disappears. She has a way of doing that, Tonks. Things don’t work like they should.
“I should’ve—fuck—I should’ve told you about this years ago, but I— buggering shit!” She emerges, smiling—pink hair, all dust and cobwebs—holding a book to her chest. “But I was a bit embarrassed.”
Lily, cross-legged on the carpet, the house quiet but for the two of them in the hallway, says, “Embarrassed? How?” That’s unlike her.
“Y’know how clumsy I am…” Tonks murmurs, shifting the book slightly.
Lily screws her lips up.
“Anyway, this,” Tonks says, brightly, “is my boyfriend!”
She turns the tome around, and, on the front of the book, in an oval mirror, is a face. Light brown hair, curling at the tips, and Lily can’t see his face, because he’s holding it in his hands.
“Good God, Nymphadora,” he says.
“Oi,” Tonks turns the book back around, “just because I tripped and accidentally made you into a book, doesn’t mean you get to call me by my first name.”
“It does a bit,” the man in the book says.
“Worse things to be turned into,” Lily says, helpfully.
“That’s what I said!” Tonks adds, turning the book back around. “You love books so much, it’s helpful that I made you into one.”
“Or,” man-in-the-book says, but he’s smiling, now, Lily realises, pink lips curled up, light brown eyes, happy eyes, “you could’ve just, y’know, not turned me into a book.”
“No pleasing some people,” Tonks says, but she’s smiling, too.
“I’m Remus,” he says.
“Lily,” she tells him. The grinning is infectious. A happy man in a book, a bad fairy and a sad girl on the floor in the quiet part of the house.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Remus says. “Nice to meet anyone, if I’m honest. You’re the first new face I’ve seen in 20 years.”
“But you love my face,” Tonks says, turning her nose into a pig snout.
“I’ve never seen anything like this—like you—before,” Lily says, reaching out to touch the bindings.
“Nobody has,” Tonks says, snout to nose, cheeks pinking. “I don’t want them to. I don’t know what they’d do if they did.”
“Safer to stick me in the back of the cupboard next to the nice china,” Remus says.
“I told you, it was an accident,” Tonks says, propping Remus, who huffs, between the two of them. “I came into the room one day, sneezed and tripped on the umbrella stand, and next thing you know, he’s a bloody book! A handsome book, but still a book.”
“Trust me,” Remus tells Lily, “I would’ve left her ages ago, except that I kind of love her. A bit. And the no-legs situation.”
“Aw,” Tonks says, “I love you, too, dickweed.”
“So?” Lily says, anxious to move things along. For a second, she thinks about a prince on the side of the road who pushes her out of the way of moving vehicles.
“I want you to take him with you,” Tonks says, passing Remus to Lily. “Open him.”
“Fucking hell,” she hears Remus mutter.
Lily does; maps and texts and illustrations, so many things she hasn’t seen, didn’t know. “What is all this?”
Tonks, confidently, says, “He knows everything.”
“Not everything,” Remus debates.
“Looks like everything,” Lily says.
“I’d be a lot thicker if I did.”
“Do you reckon he’d know anything about Lucinda?” Lily asks Tonks.
“Um, yeah, I reckon he knows stuff about Lucinda.” She reaches out, takes Remus from Lily. “Watch this.”
She says to Remus, “Show me Lucinda,” then opens him.
“Holy moly,” Lily whispers.
“Ta-fucking-da,” Remus says. She’s there on the page, shopping at a market.
“That’s brilliant,” Lily says, studying the moving image, “but which market is she at? Do you know?”
“Ah,” Tonks says, “that’s the catch. He can’t tell you where somebody is, only show you pictures.”
“Fair play,” Lily says. “Everything is—bigger, somehow. Is that a wedding registry?”
Tonks smacks herself on the forehead. “Giantville!” she says, triumphant. “She’s going to a wedding in Giantville.” As she says so, a giant strolls across the moving picture.
“Remus, I think we’re going to Giantville,” Lily says.
“Brilliant,” Remus says, as Tonks hands him back to Lily.