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It’s clear enough that someone has it out for her.
She’s not sure who, and she’s not sure why, but it’s the only explanation that makes any sense anymore. Perhaps she was someone particularly cruel in a previous life. Perhaps her guardian angel has decided to holiday in Peru for the past three days. Or perhaps Fate was just petty.
Lily had managed to survive freshers week in the company of her newly acquainted flat mates, and had just about got used to the idea of sharing a kitchen with ten people. She had drunkenly – and soberly – bonded with Mary, Alice, Dorcas, and Marlene especially; getting lost on an adventure to find the local Lidl did nothing but cement their budding friendship. More than anything she was relieved that she had managed to fall on her feet after all the difficulties of the previous summer, and applying late for student halls.
Her first week of classes, it seemed, did not want to follow in the footsteps of the previous one. She had acquired a sore throat that, although not full-blown freshers flu like the Prewett Twins, had carried over into the first couple of class days, despite her drinking boatloads of hot Vimto. Her old rucksack that she had been filling with books since year 9 had made another suicide attempt just as she was running late to one of her classes, and she had spent the night stitching up a large tear in the fabric.
Lily is well aware that a Law degree requires mountains of reading, and is already dreading adding the cost of a decent rucksack to her already depressing looking bank account if she wants to avoid further bag collapsing mishaps in future.
She had spent an hour and a half Skyping her family on Tuesday night for the first proper chat since she moved away, and somehow Petunia still managed to make fifty three minutes of the call about her wedding plans, while still managing to throw in some smug, “I told you so” moments concerning Lily’s former childhood friend.
The urge to murder one’s sister is an old acquaintance, but Lily managed to get through without even thinking about burying her during the next Gardening Society meeting on Sunday.
Much.
It is now Wednesday, and after a grueling day of lectures, plus a two-hour introductory meeting for the Debate Society, all Lily wants is to curl up in her duvet with a small paddling pool’s worth of tea, and hope that Dorcas hasn’t eaten all of the nice biscuits.
Instead, Lily finds herself stranded, staring out at the colossal downpour that is drenching the outside world, guaranteed to soak her to the skin and possibly bring her down with something akin to the illness that left Jane Bennet bedridden at Netherfield.
Lily is certainly not a Jane. Nothing against Jane, although Jane Bennet is the only person she’s known to bear the name and be a decent human being, but Lily is a Lizzie through and through, and she will not be riding any horses through this deluge tonight or any other night.
Her only other option is to wait it out in a doorway. This is made even more irritating by the fact that in an effort to preserve her geriatric rucksack, she left any and all books not pertaining to today’s lessons at home, and has no light reading to keep her occupied while she waits for a break in the rain.
It’s clear enough that someone has it out for her.
There is suddenly a crash from the stairs above her, which jolts her out of her well-founded sulk, followed by a series of banging, laughing, and the occasional sharp squeaking noise. The perpetrators of this ruckus quickly come into view, as two boys come pelting down the stairs at breakneck speed. The one with shoulder length, black hair is in the lead; right up until the second jumps from the seventh step to the ground, spins on his heel and shouts “HA!”
“You can’t say you won racing down the stairs if you miss out half of them!” retorts the first.
“I went down the stairs, I just hovered over a few on my way down. It’s not like I slid down the bannister. That would be cause for complaint, of course. But this was a perfectly acceptable method to any panel of judges.”
“Only if you bribed them. A foot on every stair, that’s the rules.”
“That was never specified! You’d never get that stipulation to hold up in court, Sirius.”
“Excuse me,” says Sirius, suddenly turning to Lily as if she’s always been part of the conversation, “Did you see what just happened?”
“I heard it before I saw it.” She replies. Sirius nods, satisfied, then points dramatically at his friend.
“Did he cheat?”
“Pads, you can’t go around harassing poor, unsuspecting women over your failures, hardly the done thing. I’m so sorry about him, we should have waited till we got to the park to let him off the leash.”
“Was the rule a foot on each stair set out in writing, undersigned by both parties? Or even verbally agreed upon, preferably with a witness?”
“It wasn’t verbally agreed upon even without a witness.” The second answered, eyes shining with poorly concealed mirth.
“Then I’m afraid your friend is correct; the rule would never hold up if brought up in court.” Lily replies smoothly. Sirius scowls, as his friend bursts out laughing.
“Who made you his barrister?” he asks indignantly.
“Can’t be his official barrister until I’ve actually graduated, can I?” She quips. Sirius groans dramatically.
“Of course you’re a law student!” He announces, as if her choice of career has personally wounded him. His friend, on the other hand, is grinning at her like she’s his co- conspirator. It’s not an unwelcome feeling, and Lily finds herself smiling back as she gets a good look at him. He’s handsome, with dark messy hair and warm hazel eyes.
“Padfoot, I hate to stop the pontificating over life’s injustice before it starts, but we’re going to need to text Moony and Pete, tell them we’ll be late back.” He says, glancing out of the window behind her. Sirius turns, eying his friend shrewdly.
“Why?” he asks, more than a little suspicious. The handsome one points out the window.
“Do you want to be struck down by whatever got Jane Bennet bedridden at Netherfield? Because I love you, but I’m not waiting on you if you do get it, you’re the most insufferable prat when you’re ill.”
“More than you?”
“I won’t dignify that with a response.” Says the handsome one, sniffing haughtily.
“I’m not standing around waiting.” says Sirius defiantly.
“You’re not walking home in that, are you?” asks Lily incredulously.
“It suits the aesthetic.” He replies loftily, before sauntering straight out into the rain.
“Pillock.” Says the handsome one, watching him go with a wry grin.
“What does he mean ‘It suits the aesthetic’?” Asks Lily.
“It means he’s going to walk through this all the way back to Gryff only to lounge soggily, probably in my nice fluffy blanket, while reading more depressing Russian literature.” The boy replies.
“That’s just uncalled for.”
“Isn’t it just? I love that blanket; I can walk around in it like a fur cape and pretend I’m a Stark.” Lily snorts.
“You are not a Stark.”
“I could be! How would you know?”
“I’ve known of your existence for approximately seven minutes, and I know you are not a Stark. No self-respecting miserable northern Lord would race down the stairs with that much unbridled joie de vivre.”
“I mean, nobody in Westeros has any ‘joie de vivre’, they’re all just feel a bit down, all the time.”
“A bit down?”
“You’ve never felt like burning down a church, or maybe just a capital city or two when you’ve been a bit down?” he asks.
“Funnily enough, I reserve such actions for days where I’m feeling slightly stronger emotions than ‘just a bit down’.” Lily replies sardonically.
“That’s because you’re such a Sansa.”
“Not that I don’t love that comparison, but please tell me how you came to this conclusion?”
“I promise I’m not just making a red-haired comparison. That would be superficial, and therefore beneath me.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“You just seem the sort of calm, collected person who could out scheme Littlefinger and become Queen of the North.”
“Maybe I should be the one with the fluffy blanket.”
“You can pry it from my cold dead hands!” he declares, with no lack of dramatic flair. Lily laughs.
“Perhaps, but I could take the far simpler route and just sue you for it.”
“On what grounds?”
“I’ll start looking.” He laughs. It’s a very nice laugh, the sort that has you itching to join in. So she does.
“So you’re in Gryff too?” asks Lily. They’re both sat on the floor, legs splayed out before them, leaning against the glass windows. The Rain continues. They have decided The Rain should be capitalized. It’s that sort of event.
‘They’ being her and James. They’ve so far swapped names, and courses (He’s studying Business and Management with a year in Industry) and they have complained about The Rain. Then they debated what could be considered the Nice Biscuits, (Lily is a lover of the chocolate hobnob, but James is of the opinion that to truly be considered the Nice Biscuits they must come in a decorative box or tin,) which in turn led to a discussion about brands of tea (both agree that Yorkshire tea is sacrilegious and why is an entire county subjecting them to drinking treacle falsely branded as tea?). Either The Rain has somehow started coming down even heavier in the last half an hour they’ve been sat here, or the sky is doing what it traditionally does at night. Lily decides against checking the time.
“Yeah, floor ten; the penthouse.” James replies, with added jazz hands. She scoffs.
“Please tell me you did not just call your student accommodation a penthouse.”
“But it’s the tallest flat! Gryff is the only building to have ten floors, even Ravenclaw only has seven, even though it has fourteen flats to our ten. What else could we call it? A Sky Parlour?”
“Perhaps a loft conversion?”
“Sirius would never agree to it. Or he would but would use it as an excuse to subject us all to philosophy discussions and readings of Anna Karenina. A watchtower?”
“So military. An Astronomy Tower?”
“That’s so specific.”
“Specificity is key in my line of work.”
“But why specifically an Astronomy Tower?”
“Sirius would be too busy looking for his namesake to spout philosophy quotes at you?”
“Maybe for half an hour, but then he’d probably try to fill the flat with steampunk telescopes or something.”
“Really stupidly big ones.”
“Not even checking if they’d fit before he bought them.”
“Throwing out everyone’s beds to accommodate them.”
“It suits the aesthetic.” Says James, with a scarily accurate impression of Sirius that has Lily cackling. A very unattractive quality of hers, as she’s been informed more than once, but she can’t help it. This past half an hour has been so much nicer than any biscuit-fueled duvet sulks. They bounce off each other so easily, regardless of whether they agree or disagree.
“Maybe it could be an Aviary?” He continues.
“Being high up isn’t a requirement for an Aviary, try again.”
“True, but Sirius insists there is one seagull who perches on his windowsill every morning to watch him get dressed.”
“Really?”
“I know; I never knew this region was home to the rare breed of pervy seagull.”
“I’m pretty sure most seagulls are pervy.”
“Even so, I would never have expected Sirius to be their type.”
“I know what you mean. Seagulls just don’t strike you as the sort of bird to be interested in pasty Byron knockoff types.” James snorts.
“I think you need to meet my mum, she’d love you, if only because you’re possibly the only other woman on the planet who could outwit Sirius.”
“Oh, you knew each other before Uni then?”
“Yeah, been mates since we were tiny. He lives with me and my family, has done for a couple of years now. There’s four of us all here; we weren’t stupid,” He explains quickly, before she can get the wrong idea, “we didn’t just all go to the same university because we’re mates. Hogwarts was good for all the courses we wanted, so we all put it as our top choice. Pete was really worried he wasn’t going to get in, but he just underestimates himself.”
“That’s really sweet, actually. Not that Pete underestimates himself, obviously, I’m sure he’s got no reason to, but that you’re all together.”
“Thanks,” he says, ruffling a hand through his already unkempt hair, “What about you? Do you know anyone here? From back home, I mean.”
Lily thinks about Snape. About the discussions that turned to arguments that turned to all out rows over their last year of college. About how she brushed those rows and what she, deep down, knew they meant under the carpet. About how she was secretly a little disappointed when he showed her his Hogwarts acceptance letter to match her’s. About how she agreed to rent a student house with him out of misplaced loyalty, forgoing the bonding opportunities that came with a year in student halls. About how it all came crashing down when she saw his red raw new tattoo, and the connotations and beliefs and people attached to it.
She thinks about their final battle, how she screamed at him for being so hateful, so ignorant, so bigoted; how he screamed back about betrayal and loyalty, and in the end love. How she had sobbed with her dad, the son of a polish immigrant, over the years of excuses she’d made for her friend to avoid confrontation that happened anyway. About how even now she was scared to see him around campus, and even more scared of seeming afraid.
“No.” She says simply, and changes the subject.
“Do you think they’ll deliver pizza here?” Asks James. They’ve taken to sitting either side of the door, propped up against the windows as they wait for The Rain to die down. It’s getting really, truly late, but this is the first time they’ve even come close to acknowledging the fact. Alice has already messaged asking where she is.
“I already used this week’s takeaway allowance on Safia’s last night.” She sighs longingly. “It was very necessary, but I really do fancy pizza now. Which is most definitely your fault, you know.”
“Is it?”
“You brought it up.”
“A thousand apologies, truly.” He says, tone dripping with amused sarcasm. She sniffs haughtily in response, but her grin gives the game away. “Which one is Safia’s?”
“The gorgeous dessert place in the middle of town. I drowned in chocolate fondue for two with Marlene last night. Well worth it and well-earned.”
“You can get fondue delivered?” he asks incredulously.
“And crepes, and sundaes. Mary got a Black Forest Gateaux Knickerbocker Glory – try saying that five times fast – and honestly I wouldn’t have been overly surprised if it had eaten her instead.”
“Why did nobody tell me of this magical place before?” he demands. Lily laughs.
“Well, if I had known you existed last night, you would have been invited. Really, it’s entirely your fault for not introducing yourself earlier.”
“Ah, that would have been impossible. It’s forbidden for my people to introduce ourselves to strangers, unless we’re caught in a storm.”
“Your people being?”
“The Society of People Against Steampunk Telescopes, of course.” Lily crows with laughter, dropping her phone on the floor by her leg. “You shouldn’t laugh,” he continues, “it’s a very serious problem.”
“I can imagine. The heavy lifting alone.”
“Unimaginably stressful, you’ve no idea.” Lily’s phone pings with another message from Alice and she sighs, laughter fading into the ether.
“I think it’s time to bite the bullet and head home, because The Rain has outwaited us.”
“Damn The Rain.” He says softly, “We’ll best you next time.”
“Yeah,” she holds back the wistful sigh that threatens to reveal too much of her, “next time.”
“So no pizza. What’s your backup?” he asks.
“I’m probably going to throw some soup in the microwave. Not literally throw it, that would be messy and counterproductive. Might have to nick some bread off Mary; if I eat mine I’ll have no toast for breakfast.”
“That is a terrible state of affairs. Where would you be – where would any of us be – without toast?”
“Where indeed? Also Lidl had an offer on their duel chocolate spread and I am in heaven.”
“You will have to tell Remus where the Lidl here is, he’s been tearing his hair out over his budgeting spreadsheet, shopping at the local Sainsbury’s.”
“Oh, it’s one of those where once you know where you’re going it’s so easy, but the first time finding it google maps is more hindrance than help.”
“Yeah, he wasn’t best pleased on Saturday. I think I have a counteroffer to the soup, by the way.” He says, rather quickly.
“What’s that?” She asks.
“If you fancy it, you could come back to mine, and I’ll buy the pizza.” He says. Lily smiles, even as she shakes her head.
“That’s lovely, really, but I can’t let you pay.”
“Of course you can.”
“No, that’s not fair.”
“It is, if I come to you next week, and you get the next one.” He replies, not quite meeting her eye for the first time that night. “That is, if you fancy it.”
Lily does fancy it. Fancies it a lot actually. But not, as she’s beginning to notice, as much as she fancies him.
“So once I eat with you, and you eat with me, it would be done? Terms completed on both sides?” she asks, shaking her legs out as she stands. His brow furrows just a little.
“I guess? I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want, I just thought–”
“See, that to me sound like we’re not getting the most out of this arrangement.” She muses, offering him a hand up. He takes it. “We could leave it there, I suppose. A one-off deal, repayment, and then done. Or we could use this to our advantage, and make it a weekly pact.” His eyes flick up to meet hers like a lightening crack, and he smiles hesitantly.
“Not a bad thought.” He replies. They haven’t let go of each other’s hand.
“No, it’s not, is it?” She smiles. She’s being so daring; more than she thinks she’s ever been before. It feels good, she can almost taste the excitement of it. “I reckon I definitely fancy the sound of that, if I’m being completely honest.”
“If I’m being completely honest, I’ve fancied asking you out all evening.”
“If I’m being completely honest, I’ve just fancied you all evening.”
“Glad we’re so honest.”
“What trustworthy people we must be.” His hand is warm in hers.
“Pizza? I know I’m asking again, but thought I’d double check. It’s not a date this time, because my mates will be there, and you’re more than welcome to invite yours, and I’d like a first date with you to be just a bit less crowded, but for now pizza?”
“For now, Pizza.” She agrees. He grins, and squeezes her hand before letting go to grab his bag from the floor. She picks up her own, pulling the straps tighter on her shoulders.
James opens the door out into The Rain with one hand, and offers the other to her with a smirk. She takes his hand in hers and they run, gasping at the cold that hits them with the wet.
Pounding though the torrential rain, soaked to the bone and gasping for breath between their laughter, Lily breathes better than she has in months. Maybe years.
They get back to Gryffindor Tower, formerly known as simple Gryffindor House, drenching the floor with each squelching step. Their hands don’t untangle until he has to rummage through his sodden bag for his key. They find Sirius has indeed curled up in the fluffy blanket, and James introduces her to his other friends, Remus and Pete; one kind and scholarly, and forbidden by the others to do anything taxing on his heart; the other shy but sweet, and passionate when he spoke about his photography course, roping Lily into a conversation that she found surprisingly interesting when he explained it.
The rest of Lily’s girls come up in the lift from floor six. Sirius and James both go to collect the pizzas for everyone that they have payed for between them. It’s not been said but Lily reckons this deal of theirs will soon become a deal between the lot of them. She’ll have to find other opportunities to spend time with James, just the two of them. What a shame.
Later in the night, when Remus and Peter have gone to bed and the other girls head home, Lily stays ‘just a little longer’, and ends up talking with James and Sirius into the early hours of the morning. She finds out about Sirius’ family, and why he’s lived with James since he was sixteen. They find out about Petunia, and the reasons for the well-earned Safia’s, and Snape. They realise that he’s tagged in a lot of Sirius’ cousin’s Facebook photos with her, which is horrible, but not the only common ground they discover.
She wakes up the next morning having accidentally fallen asleep in James’ bed, with the fluffy blanket draped over them both, and reckons she’s somehow proven herself up to snuff. James’ arm is snug around her waist, and his chest is warm against her back. Lily’s had boyfriends before, and they’re both fully clothed, but this somehow feels far more intimate than anything else she’s experienced.
It’s a hopeful thing they’re waking up to on Thursday. Perhaps her luck was turning. Perhaps her Guardian Angel had finished exploring Peru. Perhaps nobody had it out for her in the first place.
Perhaps The Rain just had plans.