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The potion bubbling in the cauldron was as clear as water from the tap, but far more potent than anyone would guess just by looking at it. A few drops, and even the best liar would be spilling their deepest secrets.
Lily had become something of an expert on brewing difficult potions, lately. Not just Veritaserum, of course; she had brewed Polyjuice for the Order several times, not to mention more healing potions than she could count.
This one, though, was new for her.
“Is it ready yet?” Sirius asked, leaning against the kitchen counter beside her.
She squinted into the brew and shook her head.
“A bit longer. A few more days.”
“It’s already been more than a month,” he pointed out.
“Weren’t you paying attention in Potions class?” she asked sharply, glancing up from the cauldron. “One lunar cycle is full moon to full moon. It won’t be ready until -”
“I know what a lunar cycle is,” he said.
Lily was surprised by the harshness of his voice and the look on his face, suddenly twisted into a grimace.
“Well, then you know you’ll need to be patient,” she said.
“Lily, if Petunia had shown up on your doorstep telling you she wants to help defeat Voldemort…”
“Petunia’s a Muggle,” said Lily, rolling her eyes. “She doesn’t even know who Voldemort is.”
“No, it’s just…” Sirius hesitated. “She’s your sister, yeah?”
Lily turned her attention back to the cauldron, nodding silently. Soon, the potion would be ready, and then Sirius could stop pestering her.
Until then, though…
“Do you think your brother’s telling the truth?” she asked, glancing at him with a raised eyebrow.
Sirius shrugged, still lingering too close for comfort, peering over her shoulder into the cauldron. As if he didn’t trust her to know what she was doing with it, she thought with a scowl, though she knew that wasn’t true. After all, he wouldn’t have insisted that she personally brew it if he didn’t have faith in her abilities.
“Step back,” she told him. “I don’t want your hair falling into it, or anything else that might make me have to start over.”
With a sigh, he did as she had asked, still watching her closely.
“So?” she asked, glancing up at him. “What do you think? Is he really trying to change sides, or is this some kind of trap?”
“I don’t bloody know,” said Sirius, scowling. “That’s why we need the potion, isn’t it?”
“Do you hope he’s telling the truth?”
He hesitated, his mouth slightly open, his brow furrowing. After a moment of silence, she smiled at him.
“Yeah. I get it.”
“Do you?”
“It’s like you said, isn’t it?” she asked. “If Petunia showed up and wanted to make amends, it wouldn’t be some dramatic thing that could change the whole course of the war. But I know I’d have mixed feelings. And if Severus were to show up claiming he’d changed sides, well, in some ways that would be even harder. You’ve been handed the equivalent of both at once, and I can’t imagine that’s easy.”
Sirius hesitated for a moment before shaking his head. “It’s not.”
“Yeah, I figured.” Lily reached out to touch his arm. “If you ever want to talk, I’m happy to listen, okay?”
He nodded.
“But for right now, let me focus on the potion,” she added. “And please stop asking every single bloody day if it’s ready. I’ll tell you when it’s ready. I promise, okay?”
He rolled his eyes, but grumbled a few words of agreement. She figured that was about the best she was likely to get from him.
Regulus, it turned out, was not lying about having turned on Voldemort, or about the locket he had brought with him when he showed up, dripping wet and half-dead, on his brother’s doorstep. At least, not if Lily had gotten it right with the truth serum.
“It’s a good thing,” Sirius said, stopping by her apartment again a few days later. “I mean, it’s good for the Order, because now we know - well, I can’t tell you, but something important. And I suppose it’s good for Reg, because with the Order’s protection, he might actually survive.”
Lily nodded, figuring Sirius would get to the point when he was good and ready. He hadn’t shown up out of the blue that day just to tell her what she had already heard from Dumbledore. There had to be a reason.
“I’m glad he didn’t die. And I’m glad we don’t have to send him to Azkaban.”
“Yeah. I can imagine.”
“But I just don’t get it,” he said. “Because when we were kids, it was - he could’ve taken my side whenever he wanted, and - and it’s good for the Order, but I don’t know if I can just -”
“You don’t have to,” Lily said softly. “You’ve done all you needed to do. Nobody’s going to make you forgive him if you’re not ready for that. And you don’t have to ever be ready.”
He looked at her for a moment, like he was trying to figure her out.
“Your sister,” he said softly. “Do you think you’ll ever…”
He let his voice trail off, as if he wasn’t sure what exactly he wanted to ask. Lily smiled sadly.
“I don’t know. She’s the one who doesn’t want anything to do with me. If she changed her mind about that… I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.”
He nodded, a look of understanding in his eyes that none of their friends - all only children or with happy, uncomplicated sibling relationships - could have managed.
With the potion brewed and the whole issue settled, there was no need for Sirius to keep coming over to Lily’s little apartment in London. But he did so anyway, a couple of times a week, to help her with her work or simply make small talk.
It was surprisingly welcome. Lily had never thought of herself as especially close to Sirius, but he was an intelligent man with whom she could easily find things to talk about, and she enjoyed his company.
Sometimes, she told him about her Healer training and the advanced charms and potions she was learning about. Sometimes, he would talk about his work as a Curse Breaker and how satisfying he found it to untangle the thick webs of Dark spells that surrounded so many historical artifacts.
Sometimes, they read through the latest edition of the Prophet together and confided in each other about their worries, their fears. The headlines were never good ones these days.
Sometimes, they sat with cups of tea and reminisced about the past, about their childhoods. She noticed that he tended to linger on his school years, saying very little about his life before Hogwarts unless it was to scowl and insult his family. Not that she could blame him, given what she knew of them.
Lily, on the other hand, had plenty of good memories of her childhood. It was at Hogwarts that things had fallen apart. Before that, when she and Petunia had still treated each other like sisters, when she and Severus had still been best friends…
“You know, I never understood why you spent so much time with him,” Sirius said.
Lily took a sip of her tea and raised her eyebrows at him, asking a silent question in a sharp tone that she needed only her eyes to convey.
“You’re brilliant,” he said. “Talented, clever, good-looking…”
She felt her face flush.
“Good-looking?”
“Oh, don’t act like nobody’s ever told you that before,” he said. “Yes, good-looking. And a nice person on top of all that. You could’ve been friends with anyone you wanted, and you chose him?”
A part of Lily wanted to tell him it was none of his business, but the wound left behind by their broken friendship had long since healed to an invisible scar, and it was easier to talk about now. Shrugging her shoulders, she took another sip of tea before she answered.
“We grew up in the same town,” she said. “He’s the one who first told me I was a witch. You might not believe it now, because you never saw that side of him, but he was really a very sweet boy when we were little.”
She could tell that Sirius didn’t believe it, judging by the skeptical look he was giving her.
“He fancied you, you know.”
Lily snorted. Something about the way that he said it made the whole thing amusing, as if he thought that she was somehow oblivious.
“Oh, I’m well aware.”
“Did you ever…?”
“No.” Her voice was decisive, leaving no room to question whether she was serious or not. “No, it was never like that for me. And he saw, eventually, that it could never be, even before our friendship had ended.”
“Oh?” Sirius quirked an eyebrow. “Do tell.”
“In fifth year. Before… well, you know. There’s a potion we brewed together. To find out if… well, he said he wanted to know, and I figured - I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be him, but…”
Sirius groaned, rolling his eyes as she spoke.
“Tell me you didn’t brew Amor Fatis Animae with Severus Snape of all people.”
Lily’s face grew warm as she nodded.
“To test if you’re soulmates?”
“Like I said, I didn’t actually expect it to work,” said Lily.
“But you tried. With Snape .”
He sneered the name as if it was something repulsive, and she squared her shoulders, unable to resist feeling defensive even all these years later. What business was it of his if she had once considered whether a childhood friendship was destined to be something more?
“And with James in seventh year, yeah. Didn’t work out then, either.” She paused. “Have you ever tried?”
He shook his head.
“Never?” she asked, suddenly burning with curiosity. “I know you’ve been on dates and such. Doesn’t every young couple want to know if they’re destined for each other?”
He hesitated, an odd look in his eyes. When he finally spoke, his voice was steady and soft, but she could practically feel the emotion behind his words.
“I wouldn’t want to risk it on a relationship I wasn’t sure about. Only if I really thought I’d found the one.”
“You’d know after you drank the potion, though,” Lily said. “You’d be able to be sure.”
To her surprise, Sirius shook his head.
“No,” he said. “If I wasn’t sure and we tried some spell or potion that said we were soulmates, then I’d always wonder if I was just doing what the magic said to. I’d only want to know if I thought I might really be in love. Even then, it doesn’t really…” he hesitated, frowning. “Being soulmates is no guarantee of a happy ending.”
“No, I suppose not,” Lily agreed. “Still, I’d want to know if I found mine.”
Silence fell over them for a moment before Sirius let out a dark chuckle and grimaced.
“It’s funny,” he said. “My parents don’t care about soulmates, either. For different reasons, of course. They think what matters is blood status, of all things, and that you shouldn’t find out because they’re probably - well, you know. They probably don’t come from one of the few acceptable families.”
He rolled his eyes, and Lily let out a giggle.
“I guess you might expect I’d be trying to find my soulmate in every single person they’d disapprove of,” he said. “But I don’t want it to be someone random who I’m then just stuck with. Does that make any sense?”
“It does, yeah,” Lily nodded. “I’m not really trying to find mine anymore, either. Maybe, when the war is over, when it’s safe to trust people again… but for right now, I don’t think I’d even go on a date with someone I wasn’t sure I could trust, let alone do some ritual to find out if we might be soulmates. Because what if the wrong person found a way to fake it, you know? To get me to trust them?”
Sirius nodded.
“Yeah. I get it.”
She smiled and took another sip of her tea.
As a Healer-in-training, Lily didn’t find herself going into combat too often. She had learned how to duel, like all members of the Order, but she was more valuable after the fighting was over. With her bandages and bottles of healing potions, she could bind up injuries, set broken bones, replenish lost blood, reverse nasty hexes - but only if she, herself, was not bleeding out among the injured.
It had been a particularly nasty battle that day, and while those that were in danger of actually dying went to Saint Mungo’s, the rest went to Order headquarters, where Lily rushed to meet them, summoned by Sirius’s familiar dog patronus.
She searched for Benjy Fenwick, who was an actual fully-qualified Healer and not just a trainee, but he was nowhere to be found. At the hospital, probably, healing the ones who had been rushed there with life-threatening injuries.
Lily took a deep breath. She could do this. She had to.
Her hands shook, but she fought to steady them as she rubbed Essence of Dittany into an open wound on Gideon Prewett’s shoulder, as she set the bone of Marlene McKinnon’s broken leg, and as she measured out a dose of Blood Replenishing Potion for Remus, who had been hit in the chest with a nasty cutting curse.
“How can I help?” Sirius asked her.
She glanced up at him, taking in the cut on his cheek and the torn leg of his trousers.
“You can sit down and wait,” she said. “You’re injured, too.”
“Just a few scrapes and bruises.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Lily firmly. “In any case, you’re not a Healer. You’d only get in the way.”
He looked like he wanted to object, but she cut him off before he could do more than open his mouth.
“Sit. Be patient. I’ll get to you when I get to you, as you’re obviously not in any immediate danger.”
To her surprise, he listened. And when she finally did get to him, he kept the grumbling to a minimum, allowing her to disinfect his scrapes and rub a potion into his bruises to help them heal. His skin was smooth and soft under her touch, and though it was nothing she hadn’t done for half a dozen others, it felt strangely intimate.
“What happened?” she asked, trying to distract herself. “With the battle, I mean?”
He shrugged.
“They attacked Diagon Alley. Don’t know which shop they were targeting, or if maybe it was a person, or… anyway. We showed up, we tried to hold them off, give people time to escape.”
Lily tried not to feel envy. There was no reason for it. And yet she sometimes felt as if she could never really do as much for the war effort as her friends and allies, waiting behind the scenes as she did, emerging only when the battle was over.
“It’s lucky you could get here so soon,” he said. “Safer than Saint Mungo’s, unless there’s no choice. The Death Eaters can’t get in here.”
Lily nodded, feeling grateful for the reminder of just how important her role was, even if it didn’t involve throwing hexes at the Death Eaters.
The thing about being the best potioneer in the Order was that everyone wanted you to brew potions for them. And as far as Lily was concerned, some of those were of significantly higher priority than others.
Blood-replenishing potions? Sure. Always important to have on hand after a battle with the Death Eaters.
Polyjuice? Of course. Not everyone was lucky enough to have James Potter’s invisibility cloak, after all.
Veritaserum? Not always as useful as it sounded, given how strictly its use was regulated. You couldn’t just slip it into Lucius Malfoy’s morning tea and get him to confess his crimes in public unless you wanted to end up in Azkaban along with him. But she was more than happy to brew it when she could be convinced it was worthwhile.
As for the Amor Fatis Animae potion? There was nothing in the world that could convince Lily it wasn’t a total waste of time.
“Oh, Lily, please!” Peter Pettigrew was saying to her. “It’s true love, I can feel it.”
Lily glanced at him. His big, watery eyes were pleading with her, but she shook her head.
“You said that last time, too,” she pointed out. “You’ve said that about every girl you’ve dated.”
“But I was wrong last time,” he said, slouching back against the cushions of her sofa like a petulant child. “What I feel now -”
“Will probably pass just as quickly,” said Lily. “Look, I’m swamped with work and Order stuff. If you want a potion to tell you if it’s meant to be, learn to brew it yourself. Or at least wait until I’ve got some free time, because right now, I have none.”
She felt a bit guilty at the crestfallen look on his face, but not enough to change her mind. First aid supplies came before frivolities.
The tide of the war was turning, it was impossible to deny that. For the first time, Lily was starting to think they might actually win.
Three arrests last week, one of them old Mr. Nott, such a seemingly upstanding member of society that no one would ever have dared to voice any suspicions they might have. But the Order had known exactly where to look for cold, hard proof. His mugshot glared up from the front page of the Prophet , and there was nothing his fellow upper-class pure-bloods could do about it, except tremble in fear that they might be next.
“How the bloody hell did they find out?” Lily overheard one of her fellow Healer trainees whisper to another. “That hidden room in his house with all the Dark artifacts…”
“I hear all the old families have one.”
“Yes, but how did the Aurors find it? Must’ve been well hidden, you know.”
Lily smiled and walked past with an armful of bandages. There was no need to tell them that she knew exactly what had happened. But she stopped by Sirius’s flat in London that day after work, a copy of the newspaper in her hand.
“I see your brother really is on our side now,” she said, a sly smile on her lips.
He glanced at the headline, then at her, faintly shrugging his shoulders, a slight smile creeping across his face.
“I suppose so. I wouldn’t trust a word he said, though, without your truth potions. So thank you.”
“Any other news?” she asked. “From the Order, I mean.”
He hesitated a moment. Then, he grinned at her, the look in his eyes turning mischievous.
“You didn’t hear this from me,” he said, “but there’s a prophecy. About the Longbottoms’ son.”
Lily frowned.
“They don’t have a son.”
“Alice is expecting. At the end of July. What I heard is, their baby will be the one to end this war.”
He was saying it like it was good news, but Lily couldn’t help feeling horrified. She stared at him with wide eyes, unable to believe what she was hearing.
“We’re pinning all our hopes on a kid who’s not even born yet?”
His smile faltered, but Lily wasn’t done.
“It’ll be years before this kid is old enough to take on You-Know-Who. Decades, even. We’re supposed to wait that long, and let countless people die in the meantime, just because a prophecy said so?”
But that wasn’t the worst of it. As his words repeated in her head, Lily felt her heart racing. She could barely breathe. She must be misunderstanding something, because it simply couldn’t be that -
“We’re supposed to put this on a child?” she demanded. “To expect a child to do what none of us have been able to? What sort of a life is that for the poor kid?”
He looked at her, baffled. A horrible thought occurred to her: if she’d said yes to James, if they’d gotten married and tried to start a family…
“We can’t rely on the next generation to save us,” she said. “ We’ve got to deal with him, and we’ve got to do it now, not in twenty years.”
A moment of silence, and then Sirius nodded.
“Alright. Yeah. So what do you want to do?”
She sighed, the reality of the situation sinking in. What even could they do?
“I don’t know. But there’s got to be something.”
From then on, he was at her apartment three or four times a week. The two of them sat together for many long hours, planning out how, exactly, they were to take on the most powerful Dark Wizard of their generation.
“There’s got to be a way,” Lily insisted. “If an infant can do it, so can we. He’s got to have a weakness.”
Sirius nodded very solemnly.
“He does, and I think I know what it is.”
“What?” Lily glanced at him in astonishment. “What do you mean?”
Wrapping his fingers around his cup of tea, he lifted it to his lips and took a long, slow sip before replying.
“Horcruxes.”
Lily stared at him blankly. The word meant nothing to her.
“Something Regulus found out about. That’s why he changed his mind. They’re… very taboo, even in the circles my family moves in.”
“I still don’t understand,” said Lily. “What even are they?”
Taking a deep breath, he explained. She listened in horror as he described a gruesome ritual: murder, used to fracture the soul and split off a piece, encasing it in an object.
“Who would even want to live forever like that?” she demanded.
“Well, Voldemort, it would seem,” said Sirius. “Dumbledore has the one Reg found, but there might be more. At least, Dumbledore thinks there are more.”
“So, if we could find them all, he’d be vulnerable,” Lily surmised.
“Yeah.” Sirius nodded. “But that’s easier said than done.”
Still, they had a chance. That was enough. It would have to be.
Lily didn’t realize just how much time she was spending with Sirius until, one day in early springtime, Mary Macdonald commented on it. As the two women went shopping together in Muggle London, trying on shoes in the latest styles, Mary smiled at Lily with a knowing look in her eyes.
“So what’s going on with you and Sirius?” she asked wryly.
“Nothing,” Lily said. “Order business.”
Judging by the look on Mary’s face, she didn’t believe that at all. But what would she know? Mary had never been in the Order - a decision Lily respected, but one that meant she didn’t really know much about that part of Lily’s life.
“I’m just saying, you’ve been blushing since I said his name,” said Mary.
Had she? Lily hadn’t realized.
“Come on. It’s okay if you like him.”
Of course, it would be, Lily thought, but that didn’t mean she did. Did she? As Mary spoke, she found herself second-guessing herself.
“We’re friends,” she said. “That’s all.”
“Right.” Mary smirked at her. “If you say so.”
It had never occurred to Lily that she might have feelings for Sirius. Sure, most of the girls in their year had thought he was good-looking, but it was one thing to recognize someone’s attractiveness, and another thing entirely to harbor romantic feelings for them. For Lily, the latter had never crossed her mind. Not where Sirius Black was concerned.
But once Mary had planted the idea, Lily couldn’t seem to get rid of it. When she saw him next - seated beside her at the kitchen table, debating over whether Voldemort would have entrusted a Horcrux to the Malfoys - she couldn’t help but watch him, examining her own feelings like a scientist peering through a microscope.
He was indeed handsome, that much was clear. The lines of his face were bold and sharp. His eyes were a lovely shade of gray, and his hair was dark and glossy. His smile brought a smile to her lips in return.
She thought of reaching out to touch his hand and felt her face flush.
Okay, so maybe she did indeed have feelings for Sirius Black.
Impulsively, she did reach out, placing her hand on his. Her heart raced as he turned to look at her, and she found herself feeling suddenly timid.
“I think you’re probably right,” she said. “It’s at least a good possibility. One we should look into.”
He nodded, looking confused.
“Sirius, I… would you like to go somewhere tonight?” she asked. “Not for the Order. Just… someplace in the Muggle world. We could get drinks, and dance, and… I don’t know, just take a break from all this, for a few hours.”
He looked at her for a moment as if trying to figure out what she was saying. Then, with a look of regret in his eyes, he shook his head.
“I’ve got a job for the Order, and then work in the morning.”
“Oh. Okay.” Lily felt her heart sink.
“But maybe on Friday night…”
Her eyes lit up, and she smiled.
“Alright,” she said, grinning. “Friday, then. It’s a date.”
The words slipped out without a thought, and she felt her face flush as she realized what she had said. She glanced nervously at him, and he smiled wider, as if he hadn’t been sure until that very moment if that was really what she was proposing.
The rest of the week crept by at a snail’s pace, and Lily found herself wishing she could fast forward, skipping over the next few days of Healer training and grocery shopping, cleaning her apartment and taking out the trash, just to get to Friday night.
She planned her outfit carefully. A spring green dress that Mary assured her matched her eyes perfectly. Her favorite high heels, enchanted to soften the strain on her feet. Coral lipstick, eyes framed by eyeshadow and mascara, and a pair of earrings that weren’t real diamonds but looked like they could have been.
As she stood in front of the floor-length mirror in her bedroom, she almost didn’t recognize herself. There had not been much reason to dress up like this since she left school, and it was a far cry from the school uniform she had spent most her teenage years in.
The woman in the mirror was beautiful, but that came as no surprise. Lily knew she had clear skin, a symmetrical face, glossy hair, and green eyes that sparkled when she laughed. She wasn’t too modest to acknowledge she looked good, even in the plain witch’s robes that she wore to Healer training or the Muggle jeans she spent her free time in.
But the woman in the mirror didn’t look like she’d just spent her day splattered in blood at the hospital, after staying up late to patch up the survivors of a battle the night before.
The woman in the mirror looked like she had not a care in the world except staying balanced on those heels and preventing her mascara from smearing.
Lily envied her.
It was silly, because Lily was her. She was looking at her own reflection. And yet, she was looking at -
Oh.
She was looking at who she might have been, Lily realized, if the Hogwarts letter hadn’t come. If she’d only ever been a Muggle. If she’d never heard the name Voldemort - but, also, if she’d never brewed a potion or cast a spell.
She wondered, not for the first time, if she would have been willing to give up the magic, if it meant never knowing this sort of danger. This sort of fear.
There wasn’t time to think about that, though. She had a date to go on - a date at a Muggle bar, because it was safer there than in Diagon Alley or any of the other hidden places that made up the Wizarding World.
She took one last look at her reflection and winked at the girl in the mirror, slipping her wand into her handbag before she turned to leave.
Lily found Sirius at the bar, wearing a leather jacket and combat boots. His eyes lit up when he saw her approach, and she felt a giddy sensation, almost unable to believe that he was waiting there for her and not some other lucky girl.
“You made it.”
“I did.”
She perched on the stool beside him and ordered a cocktail before turning to smile at him.
“How was your week?”
“Good. There’s a cursed ring I’ve been working on, and I think I’ve almost got it figured out.”
Lily smiled, leaning forward a bit as she listened.
“What’s the deal with it?”
“Slowly kills whoever wears it. Not right away. It’ll look like you got sick. Belonged to one of Mrs. Zabini’s husbands, if you can believe that, and his sister’s absolutely convinced it was the widow herself who cursed it.”
“And you think you’ve found a way to break the curse?” Lily asked.
Sirius snorted and shook his head.
“I could’ve broken the curse weeks ago. The tricky part is figuring out when the curse was cast. And if I’ve got it right, it was decades ago. Probably not cast by Mrs. Zabini at all, though whether she knew it was cursed when she gave it to him is another story entirely.”
Lily wondered for a moment what it would be like to work as a Curse Breaker. She had the marks needed for it in Arithmancy and Defense Against the Dark Arts, but it wasn’t a career path she had ever given serious consideration to. Her skill with potions and charms, alongside her desire to make herself useful in the war, had made Healing the obvious choice.
“How was your week?” he asked, and she told him.
She told him about her shifts at the hospital, tending to injuries ranging from broken bones to nasty curse wounds.
She told him about the battle the previous night and the half a dozen injured Order members who had apparated into her living room just after midnight.
She told him about her upcoming exams that she hadn’t yet had time to study for.
“Sounds stressful,” he commented.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But at the same time, worth it. Don’t you think?”
He nodded.
“Of course.”
She thought again of the question she had pondered earlier.
“Would you trade it all to be normal, if you could?” she asked.
He stared at her as if she had spontaneously grown a second head.
“What?”
“If you could give it all up, the danger and the magic, and just live a Muggle life…”
“Lily Evans, I hope that’s not your way of asking me to run off with you,” said Sirius, looking at her warily.
“What?” Lily felt her face flush. “No, that’s not what I meant. Just… I don’t know. A thought experiment.”
“I could’ve stayed out of the war if I wanted,” said Sirius. “Nobody’s coming after pure-bloods, no matter who wins.”
A heavy silence settled over them before he spoke again.
“But fighting is the right thing to do.”
Lily nodded. “Yes. Of course it is.”
“That’s not what you meant, though, is it?” he asked, a thoughtful look in his eyes. “It all goes together for you, doesn’t it? The danger and the magic.”
Lily gave a little shrug and took a sip of her drink.
“I suppose it does. You were born into this world. I wasn’t.”
“You were,” he said fiercely. “You belong as much as anybody.”
She could feel the tension in his body as he spoke and could see in his eyes that he believed fervently in what he had said.
“You know what I mean, though,” she said. “I didn’t grow up here like you did.”
He nodded, his shoulders relaxing as the tension faded.
“Yeah. I know. But I don’t think you’d have turned out like Petunia, even if you didn’t have magic.”
She stared at him in astonishment.
“How did you…?”
“Because I’ve been asking myself that for years,” he said. “Whether I’d have ended up like Regulus, if I’d been in Slytherin. I know it’s not the same, but…”
“You’d never have been in Slytherin,” said Lily firmly.
“And you’d never have been a Muggle,” he countered.
“Point taken.” Lily nodded. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who wonders, at least. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’d have been like him, no matter what. You’re one of a kind. In a good way.”
He grinned at her and raised his glass.
“Here’s to not being anything like our siblings, then.”
“I’ll drink to that,” she said, lifting her own glass and tapping the edge of it against his.
When their drinks had run dry, they had lost their self-consciousness just enough to make their way out onto the dance floor, hand-in-hand. A song Lily vaguely recognized was playing.
She spun in his arms, savoring his warmth and the touch of his hands. As the music swept over them, she laughed, feeling carefree in a way that she hadn’t felt for years now. He laughed, too, and the look in his eyes told her he felt the same sense of relief that she did, as if all their troubles were suddenly held at bay just by a catchy tune and the touch of each other’s hands.
As the music came to a close, Lily found that she didn’t want to let go. Squeezing in closer, she clung to him.
“Kiss me?” she said softly.
She felt his lips on hers a moment later. They tasted like whiskey.
“Can I ask you something?” he asked.
“You just did,” said Lily, unable to resist letting a smirk creep across her face, laughter gleaming in her eyes.
“Would you brew the potion for us?” he asked. “The - the soulmate potion.”
“Amor Fatis Animae?”
“That’s the one,” he said with a grin.
Her eyes widened, and she stared at him in silence for a moment.
“Are you sure?” she finally managed to ask. “I thought you didn’t want to know.”
He nodded.
“I don’t think I’d doubt it, if the potion said it was you,” he said. “And you’re one of the best potioneers I’ve ever known. I trust you to do it right.”
“Yeah.” She paused for a moment, just looking at him. “I trust you, too. Third time’s the charm, you think?”
He grinned at her, apparently not deterred at all by the mention of her past failures to find her soulmate. Well, he had never been one to back down from a challenge, had he?
“Another dance?” she asked.
He smiled at her and nodded as a new song began.
Dragon’s blood, for strength and passion.
Rose thorns and petals, for a love that would endure both good times and great hardship.
Knotgrass, for the binding of one soul to another.
Tea leaves, to represent fate.
The ingredients fell, one by one, into the cauldron, and Lily stirred it carefully, then glanced up, a suddenly shy smile on her lips.
“Now I need a strand of your hair,” she said, holding out her hand to Sirius.
“Seriously?”
“That’s how it works,” she said. “One strand of hair from each of us, then I stir it seven times and let it simmer for an hour. After that, we both drink it, and…”
She hesitated.
“And what?” he asked.
“I don’t really know,” she said. “I mean, everything I’ve ever read about it has said, if you’re soulmates, you’ll know right away. If you’re not, it doesn’t have any effect. Some people say it also tastes sweet if you’re mostly compatible and bitter if you’re definitely not, but that’s debatable, and - well, in any case, I’ve only seen it work once, and they both said they couldn’t explain how they knew, but they were absolutely sure.”
“Huh.” Sirius raised an eyebrow. “You’d think it could just change color or something.”
“Hey, I didn’t invent it,” Lily said. “But I have successfully brewed it about a dozen times, so if you’ll just give me one of your hairs -”
“Yes, yes, alright,” he grumbled, reaching towards his head and plucking one between two fingers.
It landed on her palm, thin and dark. She stared at it for a moment before placing one of her own red hairs beside it and dropping them both into the bubbling cauldron.
“There,” she said. “Now we wait.”
It felt so natural, somehow, to sit beside him on the couch, with his arm around her shoulders, while they waited. They didn’t even have to talk. It was enough to simply be in each other’s presence.
She felt herself starting to doze off when the sharp sound of her alarm rang through the room, jerking her awake. She jolted to her feet.
It was time.
He followed her into the kitchen, watching as she turned down the flame beneath the cauldron, set two glasses on the counter, and poured out a ladle full of potion into each of them.
“We wait five or ten more minutes for it to cool,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be a particular temperature. But some people are absolute idiots and let their impatience get the better of them, so -”
He nodded, a smirk on his lips.
“I can be patient.”
“You’d better,” she said. “Because if you burn your tongue just to find out three minutes sooner -”
He started laughing, and after a moment she was laughing, too. She wasn’t sure exactly what was funny, but she knew that the sound of his laughter made her heart feel lighter than it had in a very long time.
“I hope it’s you,” she admitted. “I really hope so.”
“Yeah.” He reached out to take her hand. “I hope so, too.”
She held out a glass to him and gave him a nervous smile, clutching her own in her other hand. What lay within still felt warm, but it was a soft warmth, like a cup of hot tea. It wouldn’t scald their tongues anymore.
“This is it, then,” she said.
For a moment, she wished she could take it back. Not brew the potion. Because what if they drank it and nothing happened? The thought of watching him drift away, both of them disappointed but knowing better than to argue with fate, felt like a knife through her heart.
“We’ll see,” he said. “I’ve never cared much for tradition, you know. If it doesn’t work, screw it.”
She stared at him with wide eyes.
“You mean that?”
“I do,” he said. “I want to know. But we don’t need anybody’s approval, not even your potion’s.”
She nodded, raising her glass and clinking the edge of it against his. Then she lifted it to her lips, watching as he did the same.
She had tasted this brew twice before, and for a moment, she felt her heart sink at the familiar flavor, so similar to the last time she had tried it.
Then she looked into his eyes, and she knew.
It was difficult to explain exactly what she knew or how she knew it. It wasn’t that the potion tasted any different than it had a moment before. It wasn’t that she could hear his thoughts or feel his emotions. It wasn’t as if there was some voice in her head telling her, yes, he’s the one for you.
She just knew, without knowing how she knew, that if she spent the rest of her life next to this man, she would only grow to love him more each day.
She knew that they had been made to be together. On a deep and profound level, they completed each other in ways that they had only just begun to discover.
They gazed at each other. Just one glance at his lovely gray eyes was enough to know that he knew, too. That he felt the same certainty she did.
“It’s you,” she said softly. “It’s always been you.”
He leaned forward and kissed her. Their glasses clanked as they set them down on the nearby counter, his arms wrapping around her.
It wasn’t Lily’s first kiss, or even her first with Sirius, but it was nothing like the times she’d been kissed before. It wasn’t just that he was an especially good kisser, although he was. Every fiber of her being was telling her this moment was meant to be, and the kiss only made that feeling stronger.
She belonged in his arms. Forever.
Maybe that feeling would fade, in time. The effects of the potion would wear off. Kisses would just be kisses. She would look at him and see only a handsome face with beautiful gray eyes.
But she would remember this feeling forevermore.