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“Would you want to take a walk with me this evening?” Pandora wrote to Lily in the two-way notebook they’d charmed together. After spending three years working up the courage to confess her feelings to the Gryffindor girl, Pandora could still scarcely believe she could ask her something like that now. Writing to Lily during Pandora’s History of Magic lecture was a bonus—it looked like she was taking notes.
Lily, however, had a free period at that time, and she was slower to respond, probably because she was revising. On the one hand, their getting together during the spring meant they had the loveliest backdrop for memories together—lengthening days and blossoming flowers, but it also was exam term, which meant that Lily was afflicted with a need to revise at all waking hours as well as many of the hours that she shouldn’t have been awake.
“I’d love to, but the potions exam tomorrow has a monopoly on my time :(” came Lily’s reply. Pandora was disappointed though not particularly surprised.
Sometimes it still felt like Pandora’s feeling were unrequited. Dorcas said it was just the result of years of feeling like a social pariah; Marlene said Lily’s returned Pandora’s feelings. And it was hard to deny the memories they had together, the tender kisses by the lake and the way Lily opened up to her about everything—about how things had gone south with Snape, about how much she missed her family, about how her sister resented her for being a witch. It was hard to deny how Lily looked back at her, meeting her gaze that others backed off from; Pandora had been told she looked at people too intensely, and Merlin knew she looked at Lily more intensely than at anyone.
But still, it felt like Pandora was the one to make all their plans, the same way she had been the one to make all the plans with the other girls in Ravenclaw before she had learned that when she wasn’t with them, they were always together. She wasn't keeping the group together; she was instead the only one who needed to ask to be a part of it. Slowly, she had backed off from them and spent fourth year mostly friendless before befriending Dorcas the previous year. Lily seemed kind to her, but then the other girls in Ravenclaw had seemed kind to her, she’d thought.
It just turned out that they didn’t want her around.
And everyone knew someone like Lily should never be with someone like her. Lily bright and popular and normal in a way Pandora would never be—not normal meaning ordinary; Pandora would never think of Lily thus—but normal in that she was socially acceptable; she understood people; she didn’t speak too much or too little. She’d dated quidditch players before and she was going to be Head Girl next year; everyone knew it, and everyone liked her. Pandora, on the other hand, had one real friend, and she thought that she was less important to Dorcas than Dorcas was to her. Dorcas played quidditch and had friends in every house. She could get by without Pandora’s fun facts about potions in a way that Pandora couldn’t get by without her.
“Too bad :(“ Pandora replied.
Hopefully it wasn’t too much. Really, she would have wanted to ask Dorcas if that sounded too needy, but she was in charms class and Dorcas had told her that she needed to get comfortable talking to Lily without her there to mediate everything she said. “Lily likes you for you, not for me,” Dorcas had told her.
But Pandora always had the nagging suspicion that no one really liked her for herself.
Still, Lily replied quickly this time, after only a few seconds. “It really is. I promise it won’t be like this next week after exams are over.”
“Sixth year exams don’t even count for anything,” Pandora reminded her.
And that probably had been the wrong thing to say, hadn’t it? It felt like the sort of thing her mother would have chastised her for saying to someone. “Dora, that’s rude. How would you feel if someone said that to you?” had possibly been the most common thing her mother had said to her as a child. But when she thought about the things she said, if someone had said them to her, she wouldn’t have thought anything of them. They were just facts.
“I know. I just feel like I don’t understand sleeping potions at all.” Lily wrote. “I feel like I have a higher threshold for how much I have to understand something to feel like I understand it at all than most people do. I don’t really know how to change my idea of what the bare minimum is, because I feel like I’m doing that.”
“We could study together? You could see if you could explain them to me? Because I think you could explain it well, even if you don't think you understand it.” Now Pandora knew she was really pushing it too far; Lily would think she was annoying and needy.
“I wish,” Lily replied.
And Pandora wanted to ask why not? But she didn’t want to sound like a petulant child. Spend time with me, be with me.
But then Lily wrote again. “I can’t concentrate when I’m with you. Not on potions, not on anything other than that I want to be close to you. It’s embarrassing. But I can’t see you much until exams are over. Let’s take a walk this Saturday, ok? Sybil says the weather will be nice, and she’s right at least 30% of the time. Mid-morning or midafternoon, take your pick. I’ll be revising 7-noon and 1-7, but I’ll take an hour out of either of the sessions. Marlene says I’ll die keeping up this schedule without breaks. And then next week, after Wednesday, I’m yours. Three whole weeks with you with classes over, as much time as you’re willing to be with me.”
It was like Lily had read Pandora's mind and then sent her a message to say she was wrong to worry. Pandora felt her eyes welling up with tears. Thankfully the previous weeks Horace Ollivander had started crying from boredom in this class; maybe no one would think she was any weirder than they already thought.
“I can’t wait,” Pandora said. “Let’s do afternoon on Saturday. It’ll be warmer.”
“It’s a date xx,” Lily replied, and Pandora’s heart swelled. Little by little, she was feeling more secure in this relationship, and perhaps little by little, she could encourage Lily to be a bit more balanced about revising.