Chapter Text
Once upon a time in one of Hogwarts' dormrooms, two seventh year Gryffindors were very good friends.
"Well, what do you think?" Mary asks, shutting her eyeshadow palet closed.
"You look beautiful," Lily responds truthfully, effortlessly, because Mary is a vision - always is - her plumb figure accentuated by her red dress, and her afro freed from the buns she usually wears.
And there's something hidden in Lily's words, something sealed away by a years old friendship, unrecognisable, because it's normal for girls to compliment each other, no matter the potential weight behind the compliment.
You look beautiful - words that Lily hears in her head far more often than she'd dare admit to anyone, especially to Mary Macdonalds. Her friend doesn't know and can never know the significance to her statement, or else the friendship that Lily cherishes so dearly will go up in smoke. Oh, it'd be a mess.
"Roger is going to lose his mind," Lily adds because she likes to torture herself, apparently.
Roger can die for all she cares; sometimes, during the shameful moments when her irrational rage spikes most, she even hopes he does. But Mary doesn't.
Clearly not, because here she is, dressed up for him on a Friday evening.
Lily would love to be sour and grumpy about the whole situation and ignore Mary, because it's a special kind of torture having to advice her about an outfit she'll wear for someone else. But Mary rarely asks for advice, usually confident in her looks without needing any reassurance at all, and apparently she isn't, today. And she deserves all the confidence she has - which is generally quite a bit - and more, so Lily tries to boost it. It's the least she can do.
So here she is, helping her friend get ready as she watches from where she's sitting on the foot of her own bed.
"Really," she starts with a smile that should offer a good attempt at concealing her inner torment, "you look good. Lovely. Ready for a date." And, overtaken by a sudden protectiveness, she adds, "He better make it worth the effort. He better like what he sees, and he better give you all the compliments he can think of."
Mary purses her lips, quiet for a moment. She turns to the mirror to observe her work, smoothing out her dress as she says, "I don't really care what Roger thinks."
Lily goes to assure her, because ofcourse she does, "No, you're right, you shouldn't care what he thinks, or anyone for that matter. What really matters is what you think. That you feel confident about the way you look. You should be able to do with your body whatever you want." She waves a hand through the air, saying, "But you know all that."
Shamefully, Lily thinks about how she herself wouldn't mind if Mary liked the way she looked - her long, red hair or the way she looks in the green dresses she likes to wear to match with the colour of her eyes. She likes the way she looks, she does, but it wouldn't hurt if Mary did, too.
It's embarrassing, her desire to appeal to Mary. It's pathetic, but existent nonetheless.
"I mean, think of Pandora," Lily continues. "I would've never thought anyone could look pretty with their eyebrows shaved off, but she rocks it so confidently that it just works. It suits her."
Mary glances at her through the mirror. "I do care what some people think, you know," she says, and the way she speaks, quiet and hesitant is so un-Mary that Lily immediately grows wary. Mary is confident and she always should be. It's only fair, with the way she looks, with all the beautiful ways and manners in which she talks and thinks.
"Oh," Lily replies, equally quiet. "Well, I suppose some things can't be helped even if we wish they could."
"Hm," Mary simply hums in response.
From the foot of her bed, Lily watches her friend rummage through her nightstand in an unfamiliar silence. Eventually Mary mumbles something about how the earrings she was wearing weren't long enough. They never really seem to be long enough, not to Mary.
Moments later Mary has straightened up, and she's leaning her head to one side and then the other as she moves to put in a pair of giant golden hoops.
She's moving her hair to the side for better acces, hypnotising Lily with the movement. It really shouldn't look this good, but it does, and Lily can't help but sink into a trance as she watches. Mary looks like a magazine cover - she could be a model if it wasn't for her height. She also, unfortunately, looks exactly like the images Lily sees in her dreams.
All Lily can do is watch.
Until Mary catches her staring.
Lily barely has time to spot the surprise and confusion flickering through Mary's eyes, because she's caught in a flurry of movement in a desperate attempt to look busy. She's scrambling for a book - anything. Her hands find a misplaced book amongst her bedsheets and latch onto the thing. Whatever it is, it'll have to do, because she's embarrassed to her core and in dire need to busy herself with something that isn't seeing Mary Macdonalds' reaction to Lily staring at her.
It's a book on dark magic, not exactly a light read, or anything she'd read in her free time, but it'll work as an excuse to not have to look at Mary anymore for the rest of the evening. Hopefully.
She's unlucky, because Mary calls for her attention, apparently, cruelly, not leaving Lily alone with her embarrassment. Mary asks, "What about my necklace?"
Hesitantly, Lily looks back up at her dorm mate. There's something unreadable in Mary's gaze when she meets it with her own.
And oh, fuck, Lily's cheeks must be somewhere between a tomato and a cherry red by now.
"What about your necklace?" she asks weakly.
She's trying not to look anywhere inappropriate, but one of Mary's hands raises to tug on the golden string around her neck.
"You like it?" Mary asks.
The chain dips low, and Lily's eyes a little hopelessly go wandering.
"Yes," she says, trying desperately to keep a hold of her wits.
"It matches with the earrings, right?"
What is Mary doing to Lily?
Lily nods, trying, really trying. "Yes, it does."
She'd like to go back to her book now and forget about her pathetic existence, but Mary continues, "Good, I was worried for a second. And I know I can always rely on you to be honest, Red."
Lily isn't honest, though, not fully, not to Mary, because there's this one thing... The one Mary can never know about.
Mary does a spin in front of the mirror before asking, "And the dress? It's not too short, is it?"
Oh Merlin, how is Lily supposed to answer that question?
She goes with, "It's whatever you feel comfortable in, Mary, you know that."
"I do know that," Mary responds. "But I was wondering what you would like." She meets Lily's eyes. "Would you like it to be shorter?"
And Lily takes an unusual, absurdly long time responding, because for a long moment her brain is filled with fog and visions of dark, smooth legs - legs often dressed in knee high socks or even patterned tights.
"I mean- I think- I don't know."
There's the urge to look at Mary's legs, but she can't - she shouldn't -
"Look," Mary says, and Lily does. "You can barely see anything. I could wear something shorter, something that's at least 'til about here."
And she slides her skirt up just the slightest bit. It's barely anything, the newly revealed skin, but it's enough to thoroughly fluster Lily.
Ridiculously, Lily feels seduced. Oh, she's awful. Awful awful awful, because Mary is asking for advice, and in the mean time Lily is having nothing nearing appropriate running through her mind.
"Both work. Do whatever you think you'd like. As long as you don't do it for Sean, all is well."
And she pointedly latches her gaze onto the book resting in her lap, mentally begging the cursed thing to rescue her from this conversation. It's best to finish the conversation up before it goes haywire, before Lily digs herself into a hole she can't climb her way out of.
Lily doesn't look at Mary when the girl responds, "I won't do it for him, promise."
"Good."
There's a silence settling between the two girls that Lily could almost interpret as tense. It shouldn't be - Mary is easygoing and would move on with her life if she sensed Lily' discomfort. There's no reason for her to wonder about the origins of Lily's awkwardness unless she suspected something odd. She would go about her business, unless there was something she was after.
"Lily," Mary calls for Lily's attention, sounding resigned.
Lily looks up at her, and finds her with an expression that she can't place.
Mary is approaching now, and she continues, "I told you there are people who's opinions do matter to me." She pauses, coming to a stop right in front of Lily, too close for Lily's mind to work properly. Looking down, Mary asks, "Don't you want to know who those people are?"
"I don't think it's my place to know that," Lily says carefully, mostly because she doesn't want to know whatever boy it is Mary fancies this time around. It's always someone, and Lily is always forced to hear about him. After all, she can't very well explain why she doesn't want to hear about him.
Steadily holding eyecontact, Mary responds, "What if it is?"
And Lily doesn't think she's actually breathing. What is Mary hinting at? Does she mean...? She can't mean...
"In that case you should tell me."
Mary is scanning Lily's face. Almost casually, she says, "Well, one of the people who's opinions I value is you."
Lily's mouth forms a perfect "o", and she's unable to form words for a few seconds, honoured and ridiculously confused at what this means, at what's happening. "Oh? Well, of course I always think you look good," she says when she has found her voice.
"You do?"
"Yes," Lily responds, not wanting Mary to be insecure, especially when she has no reason to be.
"Always?"
"Yes."
Mary is scanning Lily's face, looking for - something. "You mean that, don't you?"
"Yes, ofcourse I do. I think you look beautiful. You are. And whoever else it is who's opinion you value does too, I'm sure."
"Lily," Mary says slowly, her eyes turning soft. "I don't care about anyone else's opinion."
And that's when Lily's world is flipped upside down. And the new world she finds herself in consists of only sunshines and rainbows and Mary.
Mary, who is waiting patiently for her to process and respond. "You know why, right? You know what that means, don't you?" she asks.
And fuck, Lily has waited forever for this moment, without thinking it would ever actually take place.
She's smiling, she realises. It's a stunned smile, and it's way too broad for Lily to be able to do any kissing, but she pulls Mary in anyway. She puts her smile to the other girl's lips. After all, to a confession like Mary's, what better response is there than a kiss?
Mary kisses her back, and this shatters all sense of reality that Lily previously had, because Mary is kissing her.
They're smiling and kissing, giddy with the feeling of wanting and being wanted.
Mary finds her way to Lily's side, sitting next to her on the edge of the bed as she delivers Lily the best kiss she's ever experienced.
It's the best, simply because it's with Mary, but also because it's beautiful in the way it's coated in pure delight, and because it comes with laughs and smiles and clinging hands that translate to butterflies in Lily's stomach and stars behind her eyelids.
It's a kiss filled with surprised joy. A kiss between two people who have lived this moment a million times inside their dreams - at least, Lily has - but didn't expect it to ever come to life.
And breathing is an unfortunate necessity, Lily realises a minute or so later when she's resting her forehead against Mary's as they catch their breaths.
There's a comfortable silence resting between the two girls, and it brings Lily a moment to wrap her head around what just happened and what all this means.
"What about- what about-" Lily can't finish her question, because she doesn't want to, fearing the answer.
Mary already knows what she was trying to say, somehow, impossibly, perhaps having read her mind. "The hell with Roger," she says steadfast, with a tone that leaves no room for insecurities to foster in Lily's mind.
And Lily grins. "Oh, I've been waiting to hear that."
Mary laughs, and the sound of it is warming. She laughs, and she's beautiful. "I've been waiting to say it."
"You have?" Lily asks, pulling her head away, eyes wide. If only she had known earlier. Oh, if only.
"I have. You're a little impossible to read, Red. I've been trying to figure out whether you feel the same way for months."
"Oh."
Again, Mary appears to read Lily's mind, because she says, "Don't worry, we'll make up for the lost time."
When Lily's eyes automatically snap to Mary's lips, there's a laugh escaping them. Mary adds, "I already warned Marlene to keep from the dorm for an hour or so."
Lily shakes her head at Mary, amazed. "You tosser, always a step ahead."
And then she puts her lips to Mary's, because apparantly they only have an hour, which is not nearly enough time, so she decides they're definitely not wasting any by talking.