Lily Potter

He didn’t believe his ears for a moment; surely it must be wishful thinking, stress actually bringing his own fantasies to life. But no. No. He looked up from his cauldron, and through the haze drifting from the surface of his cauldron, caught sight of almond eyes and dark red hair.

Lily.

How cool she seemed, how untroubled. But of course she was composed. She wasn’t the one who had to be ashamed; she wasn’t the one who still had to apologise.

He had practised an appropriate reaction for this exact situation, practised and practised like a skilled actor rehearsing his lines, because he was Severus Snape and he was utterly incapable of any degree of authenticity. Even when it came to her. Even though she was one of only two people he had ever felt at ease enough around not to feel as though he had to pretend.

But of course, those days were over now.

When he spoke, his voice was almost casual. Almost. To anybody who didn’t know him well, he would have sounded perfectly at ease. He could only hope that, in the years since their falling out, she had forgotten how to catch him in a lie. “Mrs Potter – what a lovely surprise.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he was replaying them in his head. Had his inflection been correct? Had he, perhaps, hit her surname a bit too hard, with evident bitterness? Had he –

He cut himself off, forcing himself back into the present. It had been fine; and anyway, even if it hadn’t, there was no changing what he had said now.

It was pointless to deny that she had disturbed him; his cauldron, visibly full of a still-bubbling concoction, was right there in the middle of the room. If only he’d had the sense to lock his door, he could have avoided this awkwardness.

Still, he waved her concern away. “I was in the process of finishing up this Sleeping Draught, but no matter. It’ll keep.”

It wouldn’t, but he hoped that she didn’t remember enough about the potion’s properties to realise that. It didn’t matter; it was a simple potion with readily available ingredients, and he would remake it as soon as she left.

It's both. I'm allowed to care about both, Lily reminded herself, although lately it had been a matter of managing to care about anything all, never mind who.

Besides, on a much pettier level, it made her sound old. She didn't think anyone else called her that apart from in official letters.

"If you're sure..." She shrugged, peering into the cauldron to examine his meticulous work. Some faint sliver of information about the Sleeping Draught crossed her mind, but she ignored it. Severus either knew what he was doing better than she did (very likely), or he was being overly polite about her arriving unannounced. It wasn't worth making a fuss if the latter was true. 

Leaning against a bench, delicately ensuring that she didn't knock over any vials or jars, Lily got straight to the point. Surely there wasn't any other way to proceed. She was normally open and warm in conversation, but smalltalk would be awkward for both of them in this case. 

The little smile that appeared on Lily’s lips was enough, so much so that she almost hefted the redhead up into her arms and spun her around while shouting, ‘ha, I knew it was still in there Lils’. She resisted, an act that was becoming more prudent these days no matter how much she hated it. Marlene had never been one to back down or to exercise restraint, but this was a new time and a new war and they all had to be careful. 

Hearing Lily talk about James was slightly somber. She had been friends with James almost since birth and it was hard to be between the married couple, friends with both but unable to truly help either one of them. Marlene knew that Lily needed her most and so all she could do was continue to try and put on her own smile, perhaps a bit more convincing than Lily’s own. 

"S’a good thing you are sticking around here, we need all the help we can get with supply runs. Merlin knows half of the people that go picking shit up are dunderheads." Marlene smirked, picking out random edible bits of food here and there and tossing them into Lily’s basket. 

“‘Course I am, love. I’m alive ain’t I? I’ve got an hefty amount of whiskey at my beck and call and the best damn friends by my side. Plus I haven’t shoved my wand or knife down any Necrophiliacs yet, so that has to count for something.” Necrophiliacs being the term Marlene often used for Death Eaters as of lately. 

Thank Merlin Marlene hadn't commented on Lily's very badly hidden discomfort at discussing James. She didn't want to talk about that. Lily watched the selection of food Marlene was throwing into her basket, occasionally having to move the basket around to catch it to avoid it missing and falling to the floor. There was a packet of chocolate biscuits (probably stale), a can of red beans, and even a bag of fresh apples (where the hell had someone found that?). She hadn't seen a piece of fresh fruit in weeks.

One of the apples was quickly in Lily's hand, after the girl guiltily remembered that she hadn't even had breakfast.

When he thought about it, this current tactic of distracting himself in an attempt to distract Lily reeked of cowardice. James felt an immediate twinge of shame within his ribcage. He might have graduated from Hogwarts years ago, but bravery couldn’t just be abandoned and forgotten whenever he felt it was easy. James sighed again.

Propping himself up on his elbows, he watched idly as Lily brushed her hair and willed himself to speak. “I was going to ask you how the man in the moon cut his hair, but obviously you don’t care.” He cringed. Maybe that came out a bit wrong. “I meant,” he tried again, after a pause. “I meant you seem more preoccupied about other things. And not just as if something terrible happened in Hogsmeade with the people were you helping.” It was pretty impressive, he thought, that he could be so eloquent during all the moments in which it was completely unnecessary but never in the moments in which it was. From their previous attempts at conversation, James had gathered that either something ruinous and awful happened every day to Lily enough to shock her into silence, or something was deeply wrong somewhere between her and himself.

"I just want to know why, I s’pose. It’s kind of hard living with someone who acts like a Walker— no, fuck." The instant the words left his mouth, James wanted to stuff them back in. Why did he say things like that? Was it because of some primal instinct to self-inflict as much emotional hardship as possible to compensate for a lack of childhood trauma?

It was not until James compared her to one of the infected that Lily showed any kind of reaction to questions. She winced, recoiling from such a plain analogy. In all her confusion and avoidance, it was like a bucket of ice water to the face to be confronted with such a blunt way of describing her behaviour. He had been as hasty to take it back as he had to say it, but that didn't make him any less correct. A thought occured to her that maybe the inferi didn't only spread their curse with bites. Maybe the panic and horror they spread was alone enough to turn someone into one of their slaves. Maybe that was what was happening to her.

The grimy mirror in front of her showed James with his head bowed, staring regretfully at the floor instead of at her. Lily bit her lip to stop herself from speaking before she thought and slowly placed the hairbrush back onto the dresser, noticing for the first time that her hand was trembling slightly. She withdrew it quickly and held it with her other one, trying to make them still by wringing them together on her lap. Finally, she turned to him - not completely, just so that she was side on and he was in the corner of her view. It was pathetic that she couldn't look at him fully. She paused there for a moment, the silence after his monologue becoming more than awkward, before she replied. 

Lily was definitely in need of a classic Marlene pick me up. 

"Oh, just sticking around here mostly. Fixing wards, helping out with healing. The usual. I think James has been out a few times - you know, out out - " Lily didn't like calling it 'zombie-hunting', it was all too flippant, "but I, er...haven't gone with him for a while." 

James lived in a place of fundamental misunderstanding; it was made of truths he let himself believe and lies he told himself to fill the gaps between his truths. When he learned how to fly, he would make himself believe that he wasn’t actually flying 50 metres above the grass pitch, that if he just stretched his toes a bit more he could touch the dirt. How else could he become a Quidditch captain afraid of heights? In hindsight, James realised that most of the war had involved him in a self-deception of some sort. The Secret Keeper, the Inferi. And now Lily.

It had been all right when he was still in the business of convincing himself that he and Lily were still okay. Now James could feel his illusions crumbling under his feet, painfully aware of every motion that Lily made and every time he blinked he was afraid she’d turn into a completely different person. He wanted to scream. He wanted to punch something really fucking hard and stomp his feet and yell at the top of his lungs until Lily told him what he was doing wrong and why nothing was the same, why he felt like he’d walked into his house after someone had shifted all the furniture very slightly to the right and why he kept bumping into everything.

Still, some dark corner of her heart, tucked away but there nonetheless, was angry at James for not trying to coax her out of herself. There was something about being so close to someone as Lily was (or had been) to James that made you think that they could tell you everything about yourself that you didn't know. People had such a high opinion of their loved ones' insight. Like how children thought that their mothers knew the answer to every question in the universe. Lily half thought that if only she and James could talk about whatever was happening to her that he'd tell her exactly how to fix it. What if he can't do that, though, she thought. What if he just thinks I'm mad, or weak, or stupid. The were married, for Merlin's sake, and she was still terrified that James wouldn't like her if he saw her as she really was - if he saw the shadowy parts of her that she didn't show to anyone. 

It consisted of himself, Apparating (dangerous, as he’d been told every day) to somewhere north of Devonshire and individually removing body parts from every infected one he could find, recording the length of time it took for each one to stop moving. And he recorded the times, so he could say it was all done in the name of research. He sighed. It was probably time to get out; Lily would probably be home soon and greeting her in slightly bloody bathwater with bits of dead stuff at the bottom likely would not make her feel any better.

He clambered, unsteady, out of the tub and dried himself off with a towel. With only one (1) total collision between his head and the medicine cabinet, he managed to dress himself in fresh trousers and a shirt before heading upstairs to their bed. James didn’t know why he bothered; he was just going to sit on the bed until Lily came home, and maybe they would stare at each other and carry on stilted conversation. Life no longer walked along its suggested path, preferring rather to stall and sputter and refuse to carry on as normal.

"Oh, um." She started, realising that he'd asked her something. "Yeah, I was just helping with some new people in Hogsmeade. It was..." She searched for a better word, but couldn't find one and settled with the understated. "...bad."

She shrugged, moving away from him to the dresser without even noticing that he'd still been reaching out a hand to her. Don't worry about it. How did he do it? It seemed to Lily that James could still go out on missions without batting an eyelid, while she was falling deeper and deeper into a hole of fear and anger. She couldn't not worry if she tried, and she was ashamed to admit that there wasn't much that she tried very hard at anymore. 

Lily:

It’s a shame that the cover story for your neighbours involves a girls’ school, now you can’t tell them all about your favourite Hogwarts boy (me). But oh! I forgot to ask. How has your summer been? I assume you’ve just been lounging around every day staring at the curtains because your life is dreadfully uneventful without me in it.

Flatterer, I’m blushing. Lily Evans does not think I am the scum of the earth. Here, we can make a deal. I’m very good at Quidditch, so I’ll handle that section of the student body. You can deal with the rest. Like you said, I can lead my team to the cup, I’ll just do that for the whole school.

Fuck.

The whole school! I’m in charge of the whole school. Hold on, let me have a moment.

This is some nefarious plot to reform me or something, right, Dumbledore can’t be serious. Aren’t Head Boys and Head Girls supposed to set an example for other prefects? I know I’m brilliant and everything, but I doubt Dumbledore’s vision for the student body is to have four hundred James Potters running around being smug. How do you do it? Being a prefect, I mean. The pressure must kill you.

P.S. I’m choosing to ignore whatever you said Quidditch and big red balls and snitches, I don’t want to have heart palpitations.

James,

My summer has been completely and blissfully James Potter free, thank you very much. Although to be perfectly honest even you would have been better than having to sit through no less than fourteen family dinners with my sister's fiance. How was yours? I do hope that your house is still in one piece after all the stress of having you living in it again.

Well, it always helps to have a good partner when you're a prefect. Remus was a brilliant help. I was really nervous when I first began and it was a huge relief to have someone I worked well with. And...

Hang on. Potter, are you nervous? About being Head Boy, that is. I didn't think that there was anything that you didn't believe you would be instantly brilliant at, but I think we may have just found it. Has God's gift to mankind finally met his match? You do sound very unsure about all the responsiblity it entails.