Chapter Text
There was a time Lily Evans could have counted on one hand the number of nights she’d lied awake thinking about her best friend. A time those thoughts were purely worrisome — wondering why Mary was upset, or how Lily could fix it. There was a time Lily Evans could say she’d never kissed anyone, much less a girl, and had no plans to change that. There was a time Lily could sit next to Mary MacDonald without feeling as though there was a constant hum of electricity jumping between them.
In short, there was a Before, and there was an After.
It had been the last day of term, June of year five. Lily stayed up late packing, Marlene and Mary had gone to bed. Or so she’d thought. Around midnight, Mary emerged from behind her curtains and said, “I can’t sleep.”
“Is everything okay?” Lily had asked in return, keeping her voice low so she wouldn’t wake Marlene.
Mary shook her head, curls bouncing with the motion. Usually she wore a bonnet to bed, so Lily had assumed she’d not actually tried to sleep. It wasn’t until later that she questioned if Mary had planned it out.
“Can we go on a walk?”
Lily had scrunched her brows in confusion. “It’s after curfew. Where would we even go?”
“I know a place,” Mary answered wryly, hopping off her mattress. “Will you come?”
And, really, how could Lily say no?
They’d ended up on the Astronomy Tower, sitting on the ledge, nothing but a railing to keep them from falling. Mary dropped her head to Lily’s shoulder, and Lily rested her own on top of Mary’s. They hadn’t done anything like this before. Sure, they’d hugged, cuddled sometimes, as girls do. But not like this. Not where no one could see them. And it felt different. A nice different.
“Do you ever feel like…” Mary had wondered aloud, wringing her hands in her lap. “… like maybe we don’t really belong here?”
“All the time,” Lily had admitted.
“Yeah?”
“It’s hard to… fit in, I think,” she’d continued. “Especially when everyone else has been brought up with all this, and we’ve only just started.”
“Sometimes I feel like, no matter how hard I work for it, I’ll never be on the same level as the others. The purebloods, I mean.”
“Yeah,” Lily had choked out a laugh. “Black and Potter show up to exams like it’s a multiplication table and not a practical transfiguration application.”
Mary had giggled at that. “Let’s be honest, they’d fail a multiplication table though.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
They’d talked for hours up there… about everything. About the stars, and the crescent moon, and the people that slept far beneath them. They shared things with each other neither of them had spoken out loud before. Lily told Mary how insignificant she felt in the world. Mary revealed how affected she’d truly been by other students’ comments about her race, blood status, and romantic history. She put on a brave face, but Lily had seen the cracks splitting open her mask for weeks. Mary being honest with her had been a huge step. The first step, maybe.
As the sky started to lighten around them, Mary had said: “I think you’re the only person who really sees me, Lily.” And Lily, who had already been suffering under the enormous weight of the words she hadn’t said to Mary, felt a pain deep in her chest, as though someone had reached in and squeezed her heart.
“Not all of you,” Lily had whispered, half hoping Mary wouldn’t even hear.
“What do you mean?” Mary had asked anyway.
Lily shrugged, threading her fingers through each other in her lap. “There’s a wall, I think. A barrier you’ve put up, to block people from seeing something. To block me from seeing.”
Mary had looked at her, then, eyes wide and dark and gorgeous. Everything about Mary was gorgeous. Her hair, her smile, her voice. The way she smirked when she got her way, the way she yawned when she woke up, the way she laughed with her entire body.
“What would you do if I took it down?” Mary had asked quizzically, a slight tilt to her head.
It was Lily’s turn to shrug, then. “I would look. And I would see. And I would love you anyway.”
It was those words that changed everything.
In a blink, Mary’s walls dropped. Lily stared into her best friend’s eyes and truly saw for the first time. Saw the brokenness, and the hurt, and the feelings of unworthiness. Saw the fight she put up every day just to act normal. Saw the yearning. For her.
And the next thing Lily knew, her lips were pressed to Mary’s with an urgency that demanded attention. Mary kissed her back just as passionately, sliding her fingers into Lily’s hair, tugging her closer. Lily grabbed for her waist, tried to climb into her lap — though the railing got in the way of that, and she’d settled for scooting closer. They’d snogged for a millennia, an eternity, their souls intertwining in the space between. Lily had never experienced anything that felt so right, so real.
And then the sun had come up, dawn breaking over the peaks of the distant mountains, and it was the most breathtaking, wonderful, magnificent moment of Lily’s life.
But then Mary had pulled away, ending the kiss with a peck to Lily’s brow, then pressing their foreheads together.
“Write to me,” Mary had commanded.
“I will,” Lily swore.
And she had. But Mary hadn’t written back. To any of them. And when they returned to Hogwarts in the fall, Mary had a boyfriend, and acted as though that night on the Astronomy tower had never even happened.