ACT II

"Oof, you twat!" James groans as Padfoot's massive paws land directly in the middle of his solar plexus, a heavy an abrupt weight on the muscle there, forcing the wind out of him. Padfoot does that awful, laughing bark that he always manages when in dog form – a contrast to the barking laugh he manages when upright and terrorising the population.

"No dogs on the bed!" Remus says, grabbing Padfoot by the scruff of his neck, and the dog lets out a whine of complaint as he's thrown bodily off of James' bed, but it's Sirius who hits the floor.

"Remus," he complains, fisting one hand in the skirt of Remus' robe, looking up at him plaintively. "Poor Padfoot is cold on the floor."

"Poor Padfoot should sit closer to the fire, then," Remus says, mockingly patting Sirius' head, "so long as he doesn't get any dog hair on the bed."

Sirius falls back, his shoulders hitting the wood plank of the floor with a miserable thudding sound, and James laughs at the drama of it, the way Sirius' long hair fans out on the floor beneath him.

"As if the House Elves would care," Sirius says. "As if they'd notice."

"They do notice," Remus replies, not looking up from his essay on moonsilver, which he's writing with a Muggle pen on a hovering clipboard – according to him, it helps him concentrate, to pace while he writes. James thinks he looks ridiculous, although it is funny to see Remus' increasingly lanky legs twitch under the table in exams, and envision him walking around the room amongst the invigilators.

"It's how they found out about Debbie Winer's Yorkshire terrier, in Hufflepuff," James says. "You remember last year, she managed to smuggle the thing in her Quidditch kit, fit perfectly in the quaffle compartment. The House Elves noticed the hair on her bed spread, and knew it wasn't from a cat."

"What about Wormtail? He sheds fur, you don't chuck him off the bed."

"I'm not the only rat in the castle," Peter says idly, sitting as he is in the window, looking out over the fields. His essay is already finished, because he'd had one of his little anxiety panics the night before and stayed up all night pouring himself over it – both times James had gotten up in the night, once when he'd kicked his pillow out of bed, once to piss, Peter had still been sat up and shaking in his place, staring concentratedly, completely focusedly, on the pages spread on his bed. He's wrapped in his duvet, now, not quite dozing with his head against cool glass of the dorm window. "There's thousands of us, you know."

Sirius sits up, looking ill. "What?"

Peter glances at him. "Didn't you know? Sirius, the pest control wards in the dormitories and common spaces are great for insects, but as far as small mammals go, they really don't know the difference between rat and cat. To let one through, you have to let through the other."

There's something comforting about the lilt of Peter's voice, the easy rumble of his accent – it seems like just yesterday he couldn't get through more than two words without twenty seconds' worth of stuttering, and James feels himself almost smile at the thought of how much progress he's made, since first year – how much progress they've all made, although, admittedly, none of them started quite as low as Peter.

"Are you joking?" Sirius demands, voice rising. "Is he joking? Are there rats in the fucking tower?"

"You can hear them scratching sometimes at night," Remus says.

"Hundreds of them in this tower alone, I'd bet. There's a nest right beneath us, in the eaves of the common room," Peter agrees sagely.

James adds, "You can see them rush by, sometimes, you know. They run over your feet when you're sleeping."

Sirius has turned a pale and sickly colour, his mouth open, and although he doesn't look quite as pallid as Peter, who always looks bad after a night like the last one and is naturally very pale, he looks pretty damned bad. "A nest? A nest of ra— of real rats? I read the fucking books you were reading about rats, Peter, they piss everywhere, they piss—"

It's Remus that breaks first, turning his head and choking out laughter into his hand, and that makes Peter begin his little chortle, clapping his hands together. James laughs, watching Sirius look wildly between them, his eyes wide.

"You're such a fucking airhead, Sirius," Peter says.

"How can you possibly think that in thousands of years, no one's developed a pest control ward for rats?" Remus asks, wheezing.

"You really thought they couldn't tell the difference between a rat and a—"

James sees the tipping point in Sirius' expression before Peter does, but he isn't fast enough to intercept him before Sirius lunges for him, shoving him up against the glass of the window with his hands fisted in the front of Peter's robes, shaking him while Peter tries to punch him in the chest.

"Sirius," James says loudly. "Sirius."

"Oh, why bother saying anything?" Remus mutters, striding forward. "He doesn't hear a thing once he's angry."

Remus slaps Sirius hard upside the head, and it's enough for Peter to shove him back on the floor, although when he tries to knee Sirius in the belly he misses and hits his thigh instead. It's amazing, how easy it is for Remus to rip them apart from one another – Remus is easily the strongest out of the four of them, and not for the first time, James has the vague wonder as to whether it's a holdover from being a werewolf, or if the rest of them are just unlucky. Remus is muscular, but in a lean and lanky way – Sirius has got a beater's muscle, he should be stronger, but Remus manages to just grab him like it's easy every time.

"It's one thing when a Slytherin puts us in the hospital wing," Remus says, "but I hate how Madame Pomfrey looks at us when we put one another in there. Stop it."

"He was—"

"He was taking the piss, Sirius," Remus says, dropping Sirius onto James' bed, and James has to be quick to keep his bottle of ink from being overturned. "We all were. It's funny that you're so completely ignorant about everything we call common sense. Sorry to break it to you."

Peter really does look green now, and when Remus lets go of the scruff of his neck, he scurries rapidly out of the room. James is glad the bathroom isn't close enough for them to hear him retching.

"You know how off-kilter he is after anxiety attacks," Remus mutters, giving Sirius a dirty look. "He'll be vomiting half the morning."

"Maybe if I made him sick more often, he'd lose some weight," Sirius retorts, and it's venomous enough that James winces, putting his hand on Sirius' shoulder. Remus lets out a sound of disgust, striding out of the room, and it's only then that Sirius falters, looking to James for direction.

"Too far," James says, and Sirius sets his jaw, but gives a stout nod of his head, digging his fingernails into the fabric of his robes. He does feel bad, usually, when he loses his temper with one of them – normally, he and Peter are constantly raising each other's hackles, but it's normally just that, snarled words at one another, play a bit rougher than is quite comfortable, but nothing quite like this. He knows why Peter is amped up – Sirius… "That letter, last night. From your uncle?"

Sirius nods, his jaw shifting slightly, and James can see the muscles twitch in his face. "He says that, um, that being as he has never been so lucky as to be afforded a wife, and as no bastards seem to be forthcoming, he has made the decision to make me the sole inheritor in his will."

James furrows his brow slightly, putting his essay aside, and he leans forward to look at Sirius' face. He'd been serious when the letter had come last night, going to bed early and drawing his curtains, but he does that all the time – Sirius is fussy about his space, likes the confined nature of his bed with the curtains drawn – but James hadn't gotten the particulars of it.

He's met Alphard, once or twice – a severe-looking, thin man as short as Sirius is, with grey eyes and barely any hair, prone to wearing audacious patterns, paisleys and houndstooths. The rumours about the man abound. James had never felt that he intended anything… weird, though, and nothing untoward – Alphard dotes on Sirius, marvels at his Muggle clothing in quiet undertones about how "strangely ingenious those wonderfully uncivilized beasts are".

His view of Muggles is not exactly progressive, but – and there aren't many Slytherin Purebloods James would say this of – he does mean well.

"And that's a bad thing?" James asks.

"One doesn't bring up one's will," Sirius says softly, "if one doesn't expect for it to soon be of keen interest."

James swallows, taking that in, tapping his fingers against his knees. "I assume you don't think he's sick."

"The man's the picture of perfect health."

"Well, you'd have to be," James says. "His bed's never empty – you need stamina for that sort of thing."

"I'm trying to tell you my uncle thinks he's going to be killed, James."

"I'm trying to make you feel better. It's not working?"

"It is a bit."

"Well, there you go."

Sirius exhales, almost laughing, and James rubs his shoulder, squeezes it under his palm. "Am I really an airhead?" Sirius asks, in an undertone.

"Yeah, sometimes," James says. "But not that much more than I am. I mean…" He lowers his voice slightly, glancing to the corridor, because he knows Remus and Peter both will get upset if they hear him saying this, Remus especially, "You know, Sirius, the reason we don't know cleaning spells or pest wards is because we're not the sort of people that need to. I wouldn't have the slightest idea what spell to use to wash a plate any more than you do – why would I? We've staff."

Remus dips his head into the room, and says, "You know he hasn't taken his Calming Draught?"

"What do you mean?" James asks. "He was up the whole night."

"Yeah, he ran out," Remus says, and James can see the irritation in his face, the irritation he always shows when Peter runs out of his potion and doesn't take it, or when he or Sirius avoid taking their prescriptions for rashes or injuries of the period – James can't even count how many lectures he's heard from Remus about how if he could take a potion to deal with his problems, he'd never forget, let alone specifically put it off. "Didn't realize until it was past one in the morning. He looks like he's about to fucking drop dead, I have to take him to the infirmary."

"It's that Griffin that does this to him," Sirius mutters. "That's who his essay is for – he's scared shitless of him."

"I couldn't give a monkey's who's done this to him," Remus snaps, pulling on his robe. "If he'd take his bloody potion he wouldn't be so neurotic."

"You just told me off for being—"

"Shut up, Sirius," Remus growls at him. "I'll take my hypocrisy from you later."

"No, I'll take him up," Sirius says, reaching out and putting his hand on Remus' shoulder, making Remus freeze. "I need to apologise anyway, and— no offence, Moony, but you make it worse when you get angry about it. He just doesn't want to bother any of us, that's all."

Remus thins his lips, but then he nods, and James watches the way they hug one another, how tightly Sirius hugs Remus back when Remus' lanky arms wrap around him. James remembers the first time he hugged Sirius, back in first year – at the time, he'd pulled away laughing, said, "God, Sirius, anyone'd think no one had ever hugged you before," and faltered at the look on Sirius' face.

Sirius is well-practised, now – hugs like a bear.

"We'll take your bags down to breakfast with us," Remus murmurs, and Sirius nods his head, moving down the hall. "You finished that essay?"

"Not really," James murmurs. "I've been a bit distracted. It's for Defence, it's not 'til late afternoon."

"You have the Map?"

James nods, passing it over, and he watches as Remus opens up the map, folding it out and then folding it in again, looking down at the map. They've added quite a lot to it, this year so far, but James doesn't know if it'll ever be finished – they're always adding bits on and taking bits off, arguing over whether it should be a legacy project, or just for them.

"Looking for someone?" James asks.

"Snape. He's in the Slytherin common room now, but I couldn't see him at all last night. We really need to map the dungeons better."

"Last you said," James says quietly, measuring his tone with as much care as he can, not looking up from where he carefully blots his essay pages and sets them into his satchel, "you agreed with Lily. That we should let up on Snape a bit. Changed your mind, have you?"

"I actually said we should let up on him in front of crowds," Remus murmurs, turning the map over and unfolding a flap. "It's not good for our reputation, ganging up on one person."

"Everyone knows Snape's a font of dark magic," James says. "Four on one with anyone else, sure, that'd be bad, but with Snape… You look worried."

"I don't like not knowing where he is," Remus murmurs, tapping his fingernail against the parchment. "He's…" Remus trails off, twisting his lips, and then he shakes his head, flattening the map and putting it away again. "He's dangerous. I know we hold our own against him, but when he gets the jump on us, he uses it."

"Doesn't normally bother you," James points out as he stands to his feet. "Bad dreams?"

Remus glances at him, looking uncertain, but then he relents, gives a nod of his head. "Strong moonlight that's all. Always makes me itch."

"We had the curtains closed."

Remus shakes his head, rubbing at his eye. "It hits me anyway. Come on, let's go down to breakfast."

It's… Strange, that Remus is a werewolf. They'd figured it out by a few months into their second year, and in the immediate aftermath, there'd been tension. James remembers how uncertain he'd felt – he'd never been frightened, not like Peter had been, but he had certainly been cautious.

He and Sirius had fought a lot that year. It's almost difficult to think about, these days – he'd trust Sirius with his life a thousand times over, but for the first half of second year, he and Sirius had barely talked to each other – Remus and Sirius had gone about together, and James had been stuck with Peter. He loves Peter, of course, but… just Peter? That had been hard.

They'd become closer as a result, though. They'd all become closer, by the end of that year – and now they're all friends, and none of them are frightened of werewolves, not in the least, least of all frightened of Remus.

But it's strange.

Nights with a lot of moonlight make Remus snappish and uncomfortable – on the days where the moon is high in the sky, even when not full, he scratches his skin as though he's about to burst out in a rash; toward that time of the month, his sense of hearing, his sense of smell, are more keen; he's strong, and James is sure he's stronger than he should be.

It's not just that, though.

"Joints aching?" James asks.

"No more than usual," Remus says.

"But they are."

"Of course they are," Remus mutters. "They do."

"Remus," James murmurs, more gently, and he puts his hand up on Remus' shoulder, squeezes – Remus hisses, but then relaxes, because the pressure does help, James knows.

He loves Remus. He does, of course he does – not like he loves Sirius, but James doesn't think there's anyone in the world he loves like he loves Sirius. The two of them can anticipate each other in a way no one else can, and it feels sometimes like they're two halves of a whole, and Remus, Peter, they're brilliant, but not quite the same. With Peter, it's just the fact that he's too eager to please, sometimes, that he tries so hard – with Remus, it's that there's always the strange feeling that they're not quite seeing as much of him as he's seeing of them. It's hard to judge him, at times, hard to make out what exactly makes him tick.

There's only so many painkillers that Remus can take without nullifying their effects entirely. He's described the pain before, to Sirius, James, and Peter, especially on nights where the three of them get drunk – it's a bone-deep, nasty ache, like growing pains that linger, because that's what it is, really, growing pains.

They'd felt, James is pretty sure, something pretty similar while they were all studying for their Animagus transformations – but it doesn't linger for them, like it does for Remus. They're not gonna be in pain their whole lives, like Remus.

It makes him ache, to think about it. Not just thinking about Remus, thinking about the pain he's in, about the pain he will be in, but about all the werewolves in the world, however many there are He'd never thought about it, when he was a kid, but these days, it's the kind of thing he thinks about more and more, when it comes up in the newspapers – the Daily Prophet, just yesterday, had mentioned that there were fears of werewolves across Britain being drawn to You-Know-Who's side, and James had ended up thinking for ages about why they'd do it, what pain they might be in – thinking about what would make Remus do that.

"You're pensive this morning," Remus says.

"Am I?"

"Quiet."

"Well," James says. "The rest of you are all in bad moods. Suppose I'm just keeping my guard up, in case one of you rips me to shreds."

Remus huffs out a laugh, leaning heavily on the bannister as they make their way down the staircases – as lanky as he is, he has to fold himself down to do it. "Mind out," he murmurs, and James follows his gaze to Mr Evans, who's walking up the stairs toward them, and meets them on one of the landings.

Glancing between them from behind his square glasses, he frowns, suspicion showing on his face. "Where are Pettigrew and Black?"

"Sirius had to take Peter up to the hospital wing, Mr Evans," Remus says.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," Evans says, and the thing is, he actually, really does sound genuine. James wishes he could make sense of the man. "He alright?"

"Just needs his medicine, sir," James says. "You're not going to breakfast?"

"I have a meeting with the headmaster this morning," Evans replies, and steps past them. He's good on the stairs at Hogwarts – for being here only since September, or whenever teachers start, he moves on them like he's known them for years, like he knows exactly what pattern they move in, and he never gets caught by the trick stairs midway up some of the flights.

"Do you think he knows?" Remus asks. "About me?"

He's not looking at James, but up the stairs toward Evans, and James, in all honesty, thinks that he does. Evans knows all kinds of things he shouldn't, really, all kinds of things, and the way he'd talked to Sirius before, about making sure they had time to do something…

"I don't think it matters," James says. "He's a weird bloke, but I don't think he'd say anything to anyone. He's in Dumbledore's camp, I'm sure. He's on our side. Has to be."

Remus presses his lips together, nods his head, but James can see that he's still bothered by it, see the anxiety writ in the tension of his shoulders, the stiffness of his neck. He wonders, sometimes, what it will be like for them once they're out of Hogwarts – he likes the idea of them helping Remus out at the full moons, but they don't do that over the summer, do they?

When they move downstairs, it's still early, and the breakfast table has scattered people sitting at it. For breakfast and lunch, eating times are normally staggered in a way they aren't at dinner time, and people don't take the house divisions quite as seriously – when James glances around the room, he sees different coloured robe piping and crests at every table, spots of blue and bronze scattered in with green and silver, yellow and black mixed in amongst red and cold.

Lily Evans is sitting at the Ravenclaw table, talking with a boy called Brocklehurst, who's on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. It irritates James, on some level, because Brocklehurst is grinning at her, leaning across the table toward her, their hands almost touching, and he wants to intervene, somehow, but he knows that it'll just piss Lily off with him, and they've been on kind of good terms lately.

Remus doesn't eat much, picking at the flaking flesh of a single kipper and a few lardons of bacon, but James knows from past experience that asking why he isn't eating much will only make Remus irritable with him – when Sirius comes down from the infirmary, he'll get Remus to eat more, better than James could himself.

"Here he is," Remus murmurs, and James follows his gaze to Snape as he steps over the threshold of the Great Hall. He's speaking with a pair of underclassmen, two third year twins James can't remember the names of. They're all but clinging to his skirts, one of them on his either side, and Snape looks uncomfortable and irritated with it, finally stopping to turn and speak to them properly. "Legion of adoring fans, obviously," he says slowly.

When Sirius and Peter come into the Entrance Hall, visible through the open doors, James can see immediately that Sirius is in a good mood – he's hopping on light feet around Peter, who looks annoyed, but in the playful way he looks annoyed when Sirius is being audaciously exuberant.

James knows what's going to happen at a glance, and he lets himself smile, grabbing Remus' arm and nodding for him to look. They exchange a glance, a quick pass of understanding between them, and then James pulls a flashbang out of his bag, "accidentally" dropping it on one of the hot plates and setting it off. As the flashbang whistles and squeals, throwing out sparks, Flitwick and Delaney, the only two members of staff at breakfast, are distracted—

James keeps an eye on Sirius even as they rush through the purple smoke and the sparks.

Sirius claps eyes on Snape, then looks past him, to the two third years: the boys are facing away from the Entrance Hall, looking up at Snape as he talks, making small, fussy movements with his weird, bony hands, gesturing as he talks. Sirius, grinning widely, lunges, grabs the two boys by their messy, blond hair and knocks their heads together.

The smaller of the boys cries out, falls down, and the other one stumbles on his feet, falling back against the table: Snape lunges for Sirius.

ϟ ~ CHASING GHOSTS ~ ϟ

She isn't falling behind in Potions.

It isn't that – Lily is very good at Potions, and she's still getting Os in all of her essays, it's just that sometimes, in her actual potions, Professor Slughorn says she's only really earning Es. She works from the notes that Slughorn puts on the board, and she brews perfectly when the instructions are clear: it's only when they ask you to intuit things that she struggles.

She doesn't see what the point of it is. Potions is—

It's a perfectly respectable topic of study. She knows this, she believes this – she even likes brewing, finds a sort of meditative sense of relaxation in sitting with the instructions in front of her, being able to work through them. It's even more relaxing than cooking is, really, because it's so predictable… Until it isn't.

Second year N.E.W.T. brewing is full of things like this, and while the first year isn't profligate with expectations of intuition, there are enough vague instructions to drive her ballistic.

Stir to the proper consistency.

Simmer until ready.

Add daisy roots as needed.

She doesn't think it would bother her quite so much if she didn't find that instinct came so readily to her in virtually everything else she studies – when it comes to casting charms, she can do things blind, can just feel for them. Maybe she isn't as good in transfiguration, but she can do it a bit there, too, can feel the line that she's trying to cross over, but how are you meant to do that with potions? There's no magical field, no catch you can sense in the spell work, it's just—

It's not fair.

And she hates how it makes her think of Severus. He's brilliant at Potions in the way she's brilliant at Charms, and it isn't that she's stupid, it isn't that she doesn't have a flair for Potions herself – Slughorn has said himself that she has an intuitive understanding of how ingredients interact with one another, even when introduced to unfamiliar ones. That feels easy, the same way you can imagine the way two tastes will complement one another – it doesn't come as easily to her as it always has to Severus, but it is something.

But whenever she falls short, she thinks of him.

She thinks of long hours with Severus over a cauldron, throwing an idea back and forth between one another, watching him build on a vague comment until he had a whole new creation in front of him. And Severus would always listen when she had an idea stuck in her head, would sit in his ramrod straight way and listen as she talked, would ask just the right questions to keep her on track, was useful. She supposes it's selfish of her, to think of someone in terms of how useful they were, but—

Well. She can be as selfish as she likes, these days, when it comes to Severus. She deserves it.

She'd always enjoyed that time together, until the past few months. It had felt… uninhibited, somehow. She could say what she liked to Severus, and know that he wouldn't tell anybody, even if it was sort of horrible, even if it was self-absorbed, or nasty. She could bounce ideas off him, creative ideas, and even if there were some things he didn't understand, some things he didn't get, he never had a go, not like some people would.

He never said she had ideas above her station, or that she was too much of a smart-arse, or that she was boring, or too loud, or… or anything.

He just called her a Mudblood in front of dozens of people, and hung around with people that wanted her dead.

"Lily?" calls a voice on the other side of her curtains, and Lily turns over in bed, sitting up and tugging them open, looking into the expectant face of Millie Johannsen. All the other girls had already left the dormitory, and Millie is already dressed, her bag over her shoulder. "You're normally up before the rest of us, I just wanted to ask if you were alright? You said you didn't feel well last night, do you want me to get you a Pepper-Up Potion, or…?"

"No," Lily mumbles, sitting up and rubbing at her eye as she pushes aside her blanket, leaving her in her pyjamas, the cream silk set from Marks and Spencers her mother had bought her in the summer. "No, I'm fine, Millie, thank you. I'll, um, I'll be up in a minute."

Millie nods, but she doesn't linger to ask any more questions, or to press Lily to say something different – they don't really have that sort of friendship, Lily supposes. She doesn't have that sort of relationship with anyone at Hogwarts anymore.

She gets dressed very quickly – her essays she'd finished last night, and she always had her bookbag packed for the next morning before she went to bed, so it's nothing to run a comb through her hair as she rapidly descends the stairs to the breakfast table.

This morning, sitting with the girls in her year doesn't really strike her as ideal – she knows that they'll ask her questions, and all of them except Sarah Hallwell are in Professor Flitwick's choir, and even if they don't ask a dozen questions about whether she was ill last night and whether she's feeling better now, they'll try to get her to come along to the choir, or even just practise, and it's unbearable sitting in the middle of that at breakfast.

"Hi, Aidan," Lily says brightly, and Aidan Brocklehurst beams at her.

"Good morning," he says, and she doesn't miss the way he looks at her – it's a subtle glance, to Aidan's credit, but he does look her up and down – as she moves to sit down with him at the Ravenclaw table, beginning to pick at a plate of mixed fruit. "You looking forward to Charms later?"

"I always do," Lily says primly, and Aidan laughs, leaning back on his elbow, his chin on his hand. "No Quidditch practice today?"

"Not today, no. We're doing all-day drills on Saturday."

"Ouch," Lily says, with faux-sympathy, pouting her lips, and Aidan grins at her.

"Gryffindors look ready to give us a run for our money this here – I've never seen anybody handle a Bludger like your Black does. He's lethal on the pitch."

"And you're surprised? Sirius Black is more arm than anything else – except perhaps hair."

It makes Aidan choke on his pumpkin juice, smacking his hand against the table, and when he reaches for the jug to refill his glass, he offers it to her, but Lily shakes her head. She's never been able to get herself adjusted to the taste of pumpkin – the whole wizarding community seems obsessed with the taste of the stuff, and she can't abide it.

There's a sudden loud noise from behind them, and Lily turns her head to see a sudden whoosh of sparks and smoke coming from the other table, and moves in one swift movement to cast a Bubblehead Charm on herself, quickly acting to deploy the same for Aidan, and then the crowd of third and second years sitting beside them, who are already coughing. The smoke isn't too thick – it's a bright purple, made to catch the moonlight, and it's not the worst thing in the world, it's just meant to be outside, not in the breakfast hall.

Across the room, before the smoke spreads further, she sees Severus fighting with Sirius Black, the both of them going toe-to-toe, but the smoke is coming from the other direction—

"James Potter!" she hears Flitwick snap behind her, as he and Professor Delaney dissipate the smoke. "Do you think the Great Hall is an appropriate venue for a fireworks display?"

"I'm sorry, Professor," James says, coughing into his elbow, spattered as he is with smut, "I was trying to find my ink bottle, and I dropped it on the hot plate. It went off before I could grab it again!"

James is good at lying. It helps that he's coughing instead of laughing, but Lily can see Severus and Sirius breaking apart, Sirius with a split lip, Severus with a snarl on his face. They really can't resist the urge to jump at Severus when they can, and last year, she would have called out the flashbang for what it was, a distraction, but…

She doesn't really want to have Severus spit at her for trying to protect him, and she doesn't want to deal with Sirius, either, but as Sirius runs up to the Gryffindor table, she can see Severus awkwardly hovering with two younger boys.

Walking down the middle of the room, she looks at them – they're the Lukas twins, Harold and Eric. They're twins, Lily knows, because she always notices twins at the Sorting, but they don't look like they usually do, smiling in the corridors: Eric is in tears, blood on the side of his temple, and he's holding his broken glasses in his hands; Harold is shaking, the heel of his hand held to one eye.

"Why did he do that?" Eric is sobbing.

"Stop crying," Severus says. "Give me your glasses."

"I can't see—"

"Best that you let me repair them, then, isn't it?" Severus retorts, in that strange new accent of his, talking just like Lucius Malfoy. Lily almost misses, for a moment, his old voice, the strange lilt of the Irish bits hitting rough against the sharp cut of the Northern ones. "Stop crying. You look weak."

"He just knocked our heads together, I'm bleeding—"

"It's happened now," Severus says crisply, without sympathy. "No need to cry about it. Chin up."

Eric obeys, and Lily watches the way that Severus brings his wand to the cut on the side of his head, healing it before he reaches for his glasses, repairing them. Eric is sniffling, visibly trying to hold himself back from crying more, and Lily sees the tension in his face before he reaches into his breast pocket and hands the boy a handkerchief.

"Harold, come here," Severus says.

"I'm not bleeding," Harold says.

"I didn't ask if you were bleeding," Severus says, his voice sharp and impatient. "I told you to come here."

Harold steps forward, his head angled toward the floor, and Severus grabs him by the jaw, forcing his head up. Harold hisses, but he doesn't pull away as Severus leans to look at his eye, examining the quickly reddening flesh.

"Open your eyes."

"They are open—"

"Do you want me to force you to open them, Harold?"

Harold tries to open his eyes wider, and cries out in pain, but Severus doesn't even flinch at the sound of it, even with Harold's hands wrapped around his wrist.

"It's not bleeding," Severus says. "That's good. Close your eyes, now, all the way."

He isn't gentle about asking. Severus isn't really gentle about anything interpersonal – his hands are gentle, Lily knows, because Severus has always had very careful hands, and even when he's holding Harold by the chin, she knows he isn't squeezing tightly or pressing on the skin. She'd not even been that surprised, when Severus had first said he wanted to be a Healer, because he genuinely is good at healing. It's just that his bedside manner is… not great.

Severus reaches into one of the pockets of his new, tailored robes, with their custom robe fronts, plucking out a small, silver tin and daubing some of the contents on Harold's eye. Harold cries out, tries to lean back, but Severus keeps a grip on the back of his neck.

"It'll heal the bruising before the skin can swell further," he says sharply. "Do you want for a black eye?"

"No," Harold mumbles, in a small voice, and Severus returns to carefully putting more of the cream on his face, around Harold's eye. Leaning back, Severus keeps a very close watch on Harold's bruise, and Lily watches as the swelling goes down, cleaning up a bit. It's still a tiny bit swollen and red, but it's barely even noticeable. "Can I go sit down?"

"Not just yet," Severus says. "I need to run a few more checks on each of you. Black is very strong, he knocked your heads together very hard. Sit down." Pushing the twins to sit down, facing outward, on the nearest part of the Ravenclaw bench, and when he turns, he sees Lily, then raises his chin.

He says nothing, watching her, and she waits for him to say something, even to insult her, but he doesn't. Instead, he steps toward the boys, and she watches as she performs some complicated diagnostic charms – he must have learned those this year or at the end of last year with Madame Pomfrey, because she would have asked for him to teach her before now, if she'd seen him do those before.

She sits back down at the table, pretending not to pay attention, but she keeps watching, keeps listening, even as Flitwick leaves Delaney with James and Remus on the other side of the room, coming toward them.

"Snape," he says. "What happened to Messrs Lukas?"

"We—"

"Harold stumbled into his brother, Professor," Severus says immediately, talking over Eric. "Quite a nasty knock to each of their heads – I'm merely running some simple diagnostics."

"Don't trust Madame Pomfrey, Mr Snape?"

Severus draws himself to his full height – it isn't very tall, but it's obviously taller than Flitwick, and he glowers. Once upon a time, Lily laughed when people were intimidated by Severus, but increasingly, she does see it – she sees it in the scowl of his mouth and the shift of his jaw, the way his eyes look really, truly dark when he stares someone down.

"I have been trained by Madame Pomfrey, Professor," Severus says, voice full of venom. "But by all means, if you believe her training to be insufficient—"

"Calm down, Snape," Flitwick says. "Lukas, Lukas, are you hurt?"

"No, sir."

"No, Professor."

"Good," Flitwick says, and walks straight past.

Severus returns to his diagnostics, and when he's done, he sits back on his heels, looking up at both Lukases. He does look like a bat like this, crouched with his elbows on his knees.

"Why couldn't we tell him?" Harold demands.

"Black will retaliate if you try to report him," Severus says softly. "This was japery, horseplay, from his perspective. Do your best to step out of his way in future. Clear?"

"Thank you," Eric says, holding out the now tear-stained, snot-covered handkerchief, and Severus wrinkles his nose, giving a minute shake of his head and gesturing for Eric to keep it in his own hand. "S'that true? That Madame Pomfrey's training you?"

"None of your business," Severus says, pushing himself to his feet. "You've made enough queries of me this morning – go, sit down. Eat something." It's an order, crisply delivered, but it is obeyed, and Severus looks once more at Lily, meeting her gaze, and then he walks away, back to the Slytherin table.

He sits at the far end of the table, as close to the hourglasses as possible, and doesn't glance over at Lily again.

Flitwick comes back into the room, McGonagall in tow, and as she walks past, probably to talk to James, he stops beside Lily, looking at her. There's a sympathy in the look on his face, and she fiddles with the hem of her skirt, not looking away from him.

"Mr Snape hasn't been bothering you this morning, I hope," he says softly.

There's a twisted discomfort in her belly – it's strange, that she hadn't felt anything at all, when she was watching Severus work, but now that Flitwick is looking at her like this, like there's something worth pitying about it, that she feels… weird. Strange. There's still the sense of a rope bridge recently cut between her and Severus. She wonders if it will always feel like that.

"I was worried about the Lukas boys," Lily says. "But he was just looking after them."

"Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, Ms Evans," Flitwick murmurs, and Lily looks down at her knees, wondering how many days she spent in the aftermath of the incident, sobbing in Flitwick's classroom, or just sitting at one of the desks as he did paperwork, her head in her hands, not wanting to be on her own, not wanting to be around any of the other students.

Slughorn and Flitwick really did kind of babysit her, the last few days before the end of term last year. She remembered how many times she'd poured out to Flitwick how worried she was about seeing Severus around town, but it had never been a concern, in the end. Plenty of people had bought ingredients from him in Mr Mulpepper's shop over the summer – he'd been staying with Lucius Malfoy.

"Why don't you walk with me up to my office?" Flitwick asks. "I have a book you might like." When she hesitates, the old man adds, with a rueful smile, "Oh, I know you don't want to join the choir's practice, Evans. You're in no danger."

Lily laughs, despite herself, some of the lingering nausea in her belly shifting a bit, and she gets to her feet, shouldering her bag and walking with him, out into the Entrance Hall. She's comfortable with Flitwick – she gets him, she thinks, and vice versa.

"Horace says you're anxious about your potions performance," Flitwick says.

"He said that?" Lily asks, feeling suddenly panicky. "I'm not falling behind, I'm not, I'm really trying to—"

"Ms Evans," Flitwick says, placatingly, and he looks up at her with a small smile on his face, the expression rueful. "He's not worried about your performance. He's baffled by how anxious you are. You're a skilled potioneer, you always have been."

"I used to get Os for all my brews," Lily says shortly.

"You get an E for one potion, and suddenly, the sky is falling?"

Lily crosses her arms tightly over her chest, trying to ignore the nameless anxiety she feels, the desperate desire that suddenly ramps up her need to do better. "I know how it looks, you know," she says shortly. "For me to have done well in Potions my whole life, and now, now that Severus and I aren't friends anymore, to suddenly do badly."

"Ms Evans, I know you hold yourself to a high standard," Flitwick says, "but Es are not doing badly. You do remember the E stands for Exceeds Expectations?"

"But it still seems like this whole time, I was only as good at potions as I was because of my friendship with someone else."

Flitwick closes the door to his classroom behind them as they step inside, and then says, "You know, Mr Snape's performance in Charms has fallen significantly."

Lily looks down at him, unable to hide the surprise on her face. She feels shame, abruptly, a hot and unpleasant sinking sensation – shame, but it grapples with a sort of delight, a schadenfreude, that Severus should have the same trouble she's having.

"Oh," she says. As Flitwick climbs up the towers of books he has around the stage at the front of his classroom, that let him get to different levels – easier, he says, than conjuring stairs – she watches him, stepping up toward the front of the room, leaning back against one of the desks. "Do you think he'd be a good Healer? Severus?"

"Poppy seems to think he'd be a good mediwizard," Flitwick says, rummaging through one of the drawers of his desk. "That or a medicinal potions brewer. That balm he put on Mr Lukas' eye – Poppy's mentioned it. He brews it himself, his own recipe. She says it does wonders."

Lily swallows. She feels uncomfortable, now, like she's useless, inadequate, somehow.

"Didn't make you feel better, did it?"

"No," Lily murmurs. Flitwick's told her before, that she shouldn't ask too much about Severus, that it will only upset her more in the long-term – and he's right, she supposes, he is right. She hates that he is.

"Hm," Flitwick says. It's his way of saying, "I told you so."

There's a knock on the window, and Flitwick glances toward it, flicking his wand so that it opens up. The owl, to her surprise, doesn't fly toward Flitwick, but instead toward her, and when it perches on the desk beside her and puts out her desk, she frowns at it, gently taking the envelope, and she looks it over. It's a neat, copperplate hand on the front of the envelope, not one she recognises, and there's a Ministry of Magic seal on the envelope – she opens it with a nail, pulling out the letter inside and opening it.

As she stares down at the parchment page, she feels the blood drain out of her face, and her voice is choked to her own ears when she says, "Professor, Professor—"

Flitwick is at her side in a moment, taking the paper and staring at it, and then he taps her calf – he'd tap her shoulder if he could reach – and brings her over to the fireplace, taking a pouch of Floo powder out of his pocket.

"You're not yet of age, so I'll go with you," Flitwick says. "Give me a moment to send a memo, and then we'll be off."

"Severus should— If it's Cokeworth, Severus' mother might be hurt," Lily says, and Flitwick sets his jaw, but then he nods his head, scribbling down quickly on a piece of parchment. Her heart is pounding in her chest, her hands twitching at her side, and when they finally Floo out, she can't even be relieved, not until they're in the Muggle Care wing, and she's holding onto her mother's hand, her other arm thrown around her father's neck.

Everything fades into the background, from there. Nothing matters except them.