Chapter Text
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
— F Scott Fitzgerald
~*~
July, 1991
There’s still a bizarre ambiance to Diagon Alley even now, even over half a decade removed from the end of the war. A precarious stillness that never stood when Lily was still a young girl shopping for her Hogwarts supplies. She thinks it’s something in the way the majority of witches and wizards move— still so stilted and careful— Something in how their glances go askance when they spot someone slipping into Knockturn, or maybe it’s simply the distinct lack of boisterous shouting coming from kids from every corner. Whatever it is, the change makes her feel uneasy, as if this hard fought peace is something tentative— unstable. But that’s a ridiculous notion.
Voldemort is gone, had been blown to smithereens with the last of his God forsaken horcrux contraptions. Regulus Black had risked his life bringing them that intel— how they were linked to the slither of a soul that the monster had remaining within him— And Dumbledore had laid down his own just to be finished with the whole affair. Neither of those truths even coming close to skimming the countless lives lost and families destroyed by the casualties the war had brought onto the Wizarding world. But it’s over now, it’s time to begin rebuilding something new and permanent.
Lily thinks that these people need to stop living in fear, they need to start living whole lives again. And then she abruptly wonders if she’s even doing as much, but thankfully doesn’t have much time to ponder it, is soon distracted by the feel of James leaning over her shoulder, and sneaking a quick peck to the crown of her head, like he couldn’t help it.
“So what’s next on the list m’lady,” he asks in that infuriatingly irresistible way of his, all cheeky charm and a grin that could rival the sun. Lily can’t even tempt down her own smile before leaning forwards to kiss him softly on the corner of the mouth— only pulling away when Harry groans at them to stop.
“Really, ’s too early for this,” he grouses exasperatedly, rolling his eyes at them and shifting foot to foot, like he wants to bolt as soon as possible.
James in turn clenches his fist against his chest and locks his arm around a laughing Harry’s neck. “Oy, ridiculed by my only son! My own flesh and blood. The fruit of my loins. The—“
“That’s enough James,” Lily stops him before he gets on one of his rolls— her nose wrinkled indelicately and silently thankful that Sirius wouldn’t be arriving until later this evening or else they’d probably never escape the center block of Diagon Alley, to busy with the pair of them performing a ridiculous rendition of betrayal to the Nth degree, a show that would probably make Shakespeare himself weep with envy. “Now c’mon, we’ve still got to collect a thousand things.”
“Mum, Neville and Ron are round here somewhere, can’t I just quickly catch up with’m?” Harry asks with a batting to his big green eyes— Lily’s eyes. And God how dare he know precisely how to finesse his way into getting what he wants, more like James by the minute, she swears it.
“Love, we’re shopping for your school supplies. Don’t you reckon it’s apt that you’re actually here with us, instead of skiving off to have fun.”
“Well Lily-Pad love, Harry’s only really got to be here for his wand appointment, and that’s not till three.” James pipes in cheerfully, which makes Lily toss a reproachful gaze his way, mouthing trader at him over Harry’s head.
“And I promise to be at Ollivanders at least a quarter till!” Harry quickly pipes in, looking hopeful as ever. “We just wanted to go check out the new brooms at Quidditch supplies! Ron’s brother Charlie says that the new comet is just absolutely brill!”
Lily sighs, long suffering, as she casts her glower back to James. “Do you hear your son Potter! Would rather ogle some new brooms instead of making sure the cauldron we buy will be fit for him for the next seven years of his life.”
“I know,” James nods sagely. “We’ve raised ourselves a good bloke.”
“Would it physically hurt you to be sensible?”
“He’s got his priorities straight Lily!”
“Mum please.”
“Oh, fine Harry.” She relents, always knowing that she would do as much, but just wanted to keep him around her for that bit longer. When she was a girl— coming here for the first time— being enveloped into this world of magic and madness and magnificence with her parents who only ever thought witchcraft belonged between the leather bindings of a children’s tail—Lily had been ecstatic, and amazed and so thoroughly blown away. But she supposes that it would’ve never been that same sense of wonderment for Harry, who’s been here at Diagon Alley roughly a thousand times by now, considering that his mother is a top healer at St Mongos and his father’s actively working with the newly elected Minister of Magic to repair the shambles that the war had left over. “But I swear Haz, if you aren’t there at Ollivanders on the dot, you’ll be cleaning the dishes by hand for the rest of the week. Understood.”
Brows hiked, and frown set in a grave sort of seriousness, Harry solemnly swears to be right on time. The son of a marauder through and through.
Before he can dash away, Lily presses a kiss to his cheek, and James ruffles his hair before passing over a few extra galleons, “Just incase your eye catches on something you’d like.”
“What if he takes a wrong turn,” Lily asks James, refusing to look away from the increasingly disappearing dot in the distance that is her son, hands clasped so tight on the list she had written up earlier that morning that her knuckles turn white.
“Oh look at you,” James laughs, snaking his still well built arms around her waste and pulling Lily close enough so that their foreheads touch. He’s grinning down gleefully at her, and the mid summer sun makes his dark brown skin glow healthily and his hair is as unkempt and tousled as the first day she met him, and Merlin— Lily loves him so much that it sometimes feels like her chest can crack right open with it. “Keep on worrying and you’ll get premature wrinkles love.”
“Says the man with three gray hairs,” she counters, smile gone smug, and tension beginning to seep from her shoulders, a trick he’s always had on her.
“Oy! ’S not my fault that Sirius pulled out the first one he saw just to tease! Everyone knows that three more grows in it’s place! ‘s common knowledge, innit?”
“I reckon it is, and I reckon that’s why Sirius had pulled it out in the first place,” Lily chuckles at his increasingly peeved off expression, getting redder by the second.
“The berk! Let’s stand him up tonight? Make’m knock till his knuckles go bruised.”
“Wicked, wicked man.” Lily leers before going on her tiptoes to snog him properly, without any groaning preteens in the background. And it feels something close to perfect.
.-
deciding that splitting up the responsibilities would be the smartest route so that they could be home in time for Sirius’s arrival, she and James had split the list in half and branched off on opposite ends of the town, planning to meet up at the Leaky Cauldron for a late lunch before Harry’s wand appointment.
Unsurprisingly, the idea had quickly transformed to a bit of a competition between the pair of them, and Lily's practically preening as she collects Harry’s preordered robes from Madam Malkin’s, only a little over an hour later. All she has to do now is pick up a few sweets for tonight and prepare her taunts for when James finally trudges over to meet her— inevitably looking disheveled and exhausted and carrying a hundred other bags with things none of them actually need.
More than a bit smug feeling, Lily strolls leisurely towards Flourish And Blotts, reasons that a quick perusal around the newest arrivals wouldn’t hurt much, just the cherry on her victory sundae.
She meanders towards the furthest wall towards the left, where they’ve recently premiered a new section comprised of Muggle fiction— a quiet resilience after the dust had cleared, and one that Lily has come to adore.
As she walks in she nods towards the young witch ringing up a customer towards the front, and smiles at an elderly wizard she had helped recover from Dragon-Pocks earlier that spring, finally reaching the imposing line of shelves, and running a reverent hand across the classics she had adored as a young girl, but before she can pick up an addition of Sense and Sensibility that’s caught her eye, she suddenly has to holt— swearing to every deity she’s ever known that her hand tingles when she accidentally sweeps it across a copy of Great Expectations, and it’s like she’s been thrust into two decades in the past.
.-
September 1st, 1971
You’re eleven years old and your hands are shaking and heart is thudding an uneven staccato against your chest, and all you can think— all you’ve been able to think for the past seven months— ever since that glorious owl had dropped off that glorious letter you keep tucked away in a journal you hide beneath your mattress— is that this is real.
You think it when your mum and da kiss you on each cheek and your older sister only waves halfheartedly before you quite literally walk through nine and three quarters. You think it when you see the dozens, if not hundreds of other families speckled around the station, huddled to say their own farewells. It’s all you can think when the grand and imposing train finally swoops in, promising to take you to a school full of glittering possibilities that you never believed existed until the boy down the street told you as much, told you that you were something greater than meets the eye. And even tho you’re a girl with too red hair and too large dimples and come from a family as painfully ordinary as any of the rest on your block, you in fact are not. You’re a witch, someone magical and powerful and real.
You, Lily Marie Evans, are something real.
The train is full of kids of all different ages, a majority of them dressed in black robes and colored ties that you can’t discern a pattern about. And it makes something beneath your skin buzz, equal parts amazed and terrified and a bit excited too.
“’S representing the four houses,” Severus tells you, before you could even realize he’s saddled up to your side. He’s always spotted you first, and sometimes you feel bad how easy it is for your gaze to glance over him, but not now. Now you’re far too busy devouring every detail you can— from the couple snogging in a tucked away corner— one yellow tie and the other green, but both clad in a badge with a P on it’s face— All the way to the group of younger kids throwing peculiarly colored beans at each other, laughing raucously all the while.
Truthfully, you feel a bit worried, a bit plane in your cut off jeans and yellow tank top, are thankful that at least your mum had the foresight to plait your long red hair back into something manageable instead of it’s ordinarily unruly curls.
“C’mon,” Severus tugs on your arm and he finds an empty cart just for the pair of you, just how he’s always preferred it, and a familiarity your a bit thankful for— an eye in the storm of newness that you’re being plunged into all at once.
He’s telling you more about the houses that each student is apparently divided up into, and it isn’t long before you get in a spat with the pair of prats that apparently found it apt to poke fun at Severus for no reason at all, and you’re so furious that even in a world like this one there are gits who think that just because they have money and are popular that they could be mean to kids not as fortunate. So you storm off in a great huff, the way you’ve seen your mother do when your da would make a joke she didn’t like.
You end up in a nearly empty cart, with only one other boy inhabiting it, his legs crossed and face plunged into a battered copy of Great Expectations, a book you’ve seen your mum read and keep on her bedside. And you don’t mean it when the words, “So you’re like me then?” spill out your lips, but your glad all the same because it makes him look up at you just when Severus plunges into your back, always trying to keep up— as if you would easily forget about him if he wasn’t constantly by your side.
This boy has hair the color of honey and impossibly large eyes that are a darker shade of green from your own. He looks like the bookish sort, cute and a bit shy, though the facade is belied by the scar running from the bottom of his left ear to across his jaw. A tell to a mischievous streak you reckon.
“Pardon?” he asks in a flat sort of way, and you’ve never met someone your age who could sound so detached, and it makes you wanna poke at him a bit, see the playful side he seems to keep hidden.
“You’re like me,” you repeat a bit more steadfastly, pointing to his jumper and then your own outfit as in explanation.
“I suppose,” he shrugs, passive, before returning to the novel, and you hear Severus telling you that there might be another department further down, but you just shake him off, and plop down besides this peculiar boy, demanding for him to spare you the attention you’re asking for so painstakingly.
“Well aren’t you excited? Or curious even?”
“Not particularly,” he says without even looking your way, and that’s just the final straw, you tug the book out his hands and tell him very clearly that he’s being a right arse.
“Not nice language,” he snorts and you finally see his eyes beginning to brighten, and it feels like you’ve won.
“Well not nice manners on your end— Oh, what’s your name.”
He smiles and you know right then that you’ll be friends with this peculiar boy for a very long time to come. “Remus.”
“Like the Roman bloke who dies,” Severus sneers from behind you, and it takes all you have not to kick at him to shut his trap.
“Preaching to the choir mate, but my mum liked it enough.”
“Strange mum,” this time you don’t hold back the kick, and Severus glares down at you as if you’ve committed some great grievance, and the honey haired boy— Remus— only laughs.
“She is, but that’s what makes her wonderful.”
And yes, you think Remus will be a great friend indeed.