Chapter Text
Lily slammed her Arithmancy book closed with a heavy thud, startling Remus. She sighed, the weight of the homework pressure already weighing on her. This was her sixth year at Hogwarts, which meant next year would be NEWTs. It was only December but her and Remus were spending almost every night in the library together, studying. Sometimes they managed to drag their friends there with them but most of them didn’t seem to have grasped the importance of revising early yet.
“You okay?” Remus said, looking up from his Care of Magical Creatures textbook. Lily sighed again.
“Yeah, maybe we should call it a night? The library closes in half an hour anyway.” She glanced at her watch; 11:30. Technically the library closed at 9pm – when curfew was – but Lily and Remus were prefects and beloved by Madam Pince, the librarian, so they were allowed to stay until midnight, when the library had to be locked.
Remus yawned and stretched his arms above his head, tugging his shirt, exposing a long silver scar going diagonally through his belly button. Lily averted her eyes, knowing Remus didn’t like to feel like he was being stared at or on display.
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m exhausted anyway. Fancy stopping by the kitchens with me?” Remus smirked at her. Lily rolled her eyes but was smiling fondly.
“I thought you just said you were exhausted?”
“Exhausted, hungry, same thing, right?”
Lily laughed. “You and your stomach. Okay, come on then, to the kitchens.”
Remus punched the air, like an excited little boy. Lily laughed again and began packing up her books into her bag. This evening she had been focusing on Arithmancy and Potions, so there was no chance of her bag breaking due to too many heavy books. It had taken her six years to learn not to drag all her books around everywhere.
They headed out of the library, saying goodbye to Madam Pince as they left, and made their way down to the kitchens. The kitchens had been the first secret place Lily had discovered way back in her first year. Her and Severus had had another fight about their houses – he was angry with her for being sorted into Gryffindor, even though she told him countless times that she couldn’t help where she got sorted – so she had spent a lot of her time wandering around the castle, exploring. Ever since, she had always loved the kitchens. The house elves – who terrified her at first, being muggle-born – were always kind to her and she found it comforting.
The pair pushed down the large green door handle, after tickling the pear of course, and stepped through into the large room. They were immediately bombarded by the small creatures. They were all eyes and smiles, and straight away were pushing platters of food into their hands.
“Hey guys, great to see you too!” Remus said, also a regular in the kitchens.
“Hello, Remus and Lily!” They chorused back to them. They had eventually got them to drop the ‘Master’ and ‘Miss’ in favour of just using their first names.
“We were wondering if we could get some cauldron cakes?” Remus asked, with that charming smile of his.
“Of course, of course. Remus and Lily may have anything they ask for!” The nearest elf exclaimed. Lily had been told all of their names but as there were so many of them, she couldn’t remember them all. A minute later, a large platter of cauldron cakes was thrust into Remus’s hands. The two thanked them profusely and, after being handed a plate of brownies as well, made their way back to the common room.
They clambered through the portrait hole, revealing a large room, decorated in reds and golds. There were armchairs dotted about all over, along with desks and chairs. There was a large fireplace with a big hearth rug in front of it. The first years were usually relegated to the rug, while the sixth years claimed the collection of sofas and armchairs surrounding the fire. Being so late, the rug was free from eleven-year-olds, while the sofas were crammed with lanky teenagers.
The other sixth years smiled widely upon seeing Remus and Lily. Once they saw what they were carrying, they started cheering.
“Our saviours!” James cried, dramatically.
“Mum and Dad bought food for us!” Sirius said. That was a running joke in the group, with Lily and Remus being the ‘responsible’ ones. James and Sirius shoved Peter over on the couch to make room for Remus. Once he had sat down, all three of them pounced on the plate of cakes. Marlene made room for Lily on one of the armchairs and she sat down.
“How was old Pincey? Did she ask after me?” Sirius asked, jokingly. Pince had always hated Sirius because he usually preferred making noise and distracting others when in the library, instead of actually studying.
“Oh yeah, she said ‘if that Sirius Black ever steps foot in here again, I’ll curse his bollocks off’.” Remus said, causing giggles from the rest of them.
“Yeah, that sounds like the old bat.” Mary said, from her position on the floor, her back up against the armchair. Marlene was braiding her hair.
“Don’t be mean.” Lily said, “You only hate her because Pince kicked you out when you were making out with Thomas Abbot behind the shelves.”
“It’s not my fault she hates love.” Mary said, while James and Sirius were making kissing noises at each other.
“Didn’t you guys break up after two weeks?” Peter asked.
“Okay, so it wasn’t true love.” Everyone started laughing.
Lily could feel the pressure she felt so strongly just half an hour ago leaving her body as she was sat, laughing with her friends. The group stayed in the common room until the plates of baked goods emptied, and everybody was yawning. It wasn’t until 1am when they started filtering to bed. Lily was the last to go. She thought she was alone as she stared into the flames of the fire. They were enchanted to automatically go out when the last person left the common room. Lily found the flames engrossing, as they danced around each other, licking the wood it burned from.
“You’re not going up to bed?”
Lily jumped at the voice and spun her head around. It was Marlene. Her short blond hair was scraped into a tiny ponytail, but after the day, strands were hanging loose. She was wearing checkered trousers and an old Gryffindor Quidditch jumper that Lily knew belonged to her oldest brother.
“Yeah, I’m heading up now.” She gave Marlene a small smile. She stood up, gathered her bag and headed for the stairs. She was halted by Marlene’s arm.
“Are you okay?” She asked. “You were kind of quiet this evening.” Lily sighed and sat back down. She had always found it easy to talk to Marlene; she was such a good listener.
“I saw Severus this morning.” She confessed. Marlene sat down opposite her.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Lily looked down at her hands. She was absentmindedly picking the skin around her nails. A bad habit since childhood.
“He didn’t say sorry – I guess he’s given up trying to be friends again. I’m glad in a way, I don’t want to be friends with the person he’s become, but I do miss the person he used to be.”
Last year, after one of their O.W.L exams, James and Sirius had been tormenting Severus. Lily had gone over to intervene but Severus had called her a mudblood. She hadn’t been able to forgive him. She tried – God knows she tried – but every time she had thought about going back to the friendship she used to have, she could just hear his sneering voice. Mudblood.
Marlene placed a comforting hand on her knee. “I’m sorry he said what he said, but I can’t say I’m all that sorry you’re no longer friends. Is that mean?”
Lily chuckled slightly, “No, I guess he was always horrible to you guys.”
“Yeah, but you’ll always have us, Lil. You’re stuck with us for life.”
Lily lifted her head to meet Marlene’s eye. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
They stood and walked up the stairs to their room. Marlene’s bed was closest to the door. She said goodnight to Lily, climbed into bed and drew her curtains. Lily was still wearing her clothes from the day so she grabbed her pyjamas from the bed and headed into the bathroom. She shut the door as quietly as she could, so as not to disturb the others. She stood in front of the mirror and looked at herself. There were rings forming under her eyes; she really needed to catch up on sleep. She had always had trouble with that though. When she was younger, before Hogwarts, she would listen to her father’s record player to help her sleep, but sharing a room with three other girls prevented that. Her sleep schedule was often abandoned in favour of studying, anyway.
She got ready for bed and brushed her teeth. She debated having a shower, but it was nearing 2am and she didn’t want to wake anyone with the noise, so she just climbed into bed and picked up the book on her bedside table. She always read for pleasure at night, and she was currently reading The Catcher in the Rye but was struggling to relate to the main character so abandoned the book about half an hour later and closed her eyes.
***
Lily awoke first the next day. She could hear the small snores and even breaths coming from her roommates. She decided to get dressed and head down to the common room for some early morning studying before breakfast. To her surprise, Sirius was also there. He was sat on the windowsill, blowing smoke through the open window. Lily bought over one of the blankets from the sofa. She crawled onto the windowsill opposite Sirius, so their feet were touching, and threw the blanket over both of them.
“You’re up early.” Lily said. Sirius pulled the blanket up over his knees.
“Couldn’t sleep.” He said, simply. “You?”
Lily held up her Charms textbook in response.
“Ahh. The grind never stops I see.” He held out his pack of cigarettes, but Lily shook her head. She didn’t smoke, never had, never will, but Sirius always offered anyway. They sat in companionable silence for a while, Lily reading, Sirius smoking. Suddenly, Sirius swivelled his head to look at her.
“You have a sister, right?” He asked, out of the blue.
“Yeah, Petunia, why?.”
“I hope you don’t mind, but I heard you have a difficult relationship with your sister?”
Lily was taken aback slightly – that was not what she had expected him to say. “Yes, she hates that I’m a witch. She thinks it’s unnatural.”
Sirius didn’t try to comfort her, he just nodded. Lily waited for him to continue.
“I haven’t seen my brother since last summer.” He said, simply, but there was a strain behind his eyes. Sirius had run away from home over the summer and moved in with the Potters. Lily didn’t know why exactly, but she knew he’d had a difficult home life. “But I think he hates me too.”
Lily took his hand. “I’m sure he doesn’t hate you.”
“He knows that if he gets the Dark Mark, I’ll never talk to him again.” Sirius said.
“I’m sorry.” She said. She wasn’t quite sure what to do; she’d never seen him like before. “In that case, I’ll guess we’ll have to be each others siblings instead.”
Sirius smiled at her, a small tentative smile.
“Morning all.” James said, cheerfully. Lily had always wondered where he got his energy in the morning. Remus just grunted, definitely not matching James’s energy. They waited until the other girls joined them, then headed down for breakfast. They sat in their usual places at the Gryffindor table. Out of purely habit, Lily glanced over at the Slytherin table. She could see Severus sat with his usual gang, including a burly, mean guy called Mulciber, who Lily had given detention to many times for bullying younger students.
Lily sighed and looked back to her empty plate. She started filling it with porridge and fruit, when the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She felt like she was being watched. She looked up again to the Slytherin table, thinking it was Sev, but he was still chatting to the boy next to him. Lily started scanning the other tables. Her gaze fell on the Ravenclaw table. She was looking into the eyes of a sixth year girl with wavy blonde hair. The girl smiled at her. Lily returned it but dropped her gaze. She was wracking her brain for the girl’s name. They had definitely had classes together at some point, but they hadn’t interacted much. It was something like Panther. Lily laughed at herself, that was a stupid name, it can’t be that. Before she could speculate more, Remus accidentally jostled her arm, nudging her back to the present.
Charms was their first class of the day. It was a subject most of the sixth year Gryffindors took. The lesson was interesting, engrossing Lily as she took notes of everything Professor Flitwick was saying.
The day passed quickly and before she knew it, Lily was headed back to the hall for lunch. She had come from Arithmancy, which she shared only with Remus. They had stayed back after the class to ask their Professor something so were the last to arrive for lunch. Lily could tell something was happening before they’d even reached the hall. The sounds carried down the corridor. Sounds of laughter, not happy laughter though. It was jeering. Lily and Remus looked at each other and hurried quickly into the hall.
Lily stopped short when she could see what was happening. Severus was standing behind the Slytherin table, covered in chocolate pudding. The dessert kept appearing over his head from nowhere and splatting onto him. He was moving all over the place trying to dodge it, but it followed him wherever he went, always sprouting directly over his head.
Everyone was pointing and laughing at him, even most of the Slytherins. Lily looked over at Remus. They both knew who was behind it.
“Did you know?” She asked him.
“No, no, I swear I didn’t know.” He said, putting his hands up. She believed him. She stormed over to the Gryffindor table, where the laughter was the loudest.
“Potter, Black! Stop it. I know it’s you two idiots doing this.” Her voice was getting shrill as she was getting worked up. The pair either didn’t hear her – although that seemed unlikely – or were ignoring her. Instead, Sirius stood up, and Lily could see his wand pointed at Sev, and shouted.
“Next time, treat our friend better!”
Lily plunged forward and knocked the wand out of his hand. The chocolate puddings immediately stopped falling and Severus saw his chance. He sprinted out of the hall, leaving the laughter in his wake.
“What is wrong with you two?” Lily shouted at them. They protested.
“We thought you weren’t friends with him anymore. Anyway, he’s a prick.” James said.
“Yeah, if he was kind in the first place, we never would have done it.” Sirius added. They put on their best innocent faces, but Lily was too angry to notice.
“God, you too are insufferable!” She shouted. The two looked down at their hands as though they were ashamed, but Lily knew them better than that. “Why can’t you just leave him alone? I can take care of myself.”
She spun on her heels and marched out of the hall, after Severus. She caught up to him just as he was descending the stairs to the dungeons. He was still covered in the pudding.
“Hey, Severus, stop.” Lily panted. He reluctantly stopped and turned to face her. “Scourgify.” The pudding vanished from Severus’s face and robes. Severus grunted in response. Lily took it to mean thanks, even though he never actually said it.
“I’m sorry about them. I told them to stop it. Are you okay?” Lily stumbled.
“I’m fine. Just leave me alone.” He turned to continue back down the stairs, after giving her a mean glare.
Lily let him go. She didn’t know why she had bothered. She should’ve learned her lesson by now – Severus didn’t want to be friends with her anymore. Fine, that was fine. She didn’t want to be friends with a blood purist anyway.
She had missed lunch by now so headed for her next class; Ancient Runes, which, thankfully, she had without any of her friends. She just wanted to be alone right now and was grateful for the class to provide adequate distractions.
Just as the Professor started to talk, and Lily started to write, the door burst open.
“Sorry, Professor!” The person said. It was the girl who had been looking at her at breakfast. Lily watched her move to the front of the classroom. She was graceful, moving with elegance. To Lily’s surprise, she sat down in the free seat next to her and held her hand out for Lily to shake.
“Hi. I’m Pandora.”