Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
A/N: Happy (latelatelate) birthday, Ellie! You are a beautiful writer and a lovely friend.

This is part one of a three part fic. I couldn't decide between Lily/Lysander and Lucy/Lysander, so you get both (also Lysander/Happiness. That's part three). I hope you like it! (Nervously crosses fingers.)

you are redeemable
Part One: Lily Luna

Lily likes Lysander because he was there the first time she performed accidental magic. James had stolen her stuffed dragon and he refused to give it back. She'd stormed to her room and threw herself on the floor, shouting and kicking and crying. Lysander had followed her and he stood in the doorway, staring at the screaming bluster of rage on the rug and not saying anything. He saw when the stuffed dragon came flying upstairs and fell on Lily's face, and he saw a very shocked James following it, holding his reddened hands in front of him and swearing that the dragon had come alive, just for an instant, to blast hot air at his fingers.

Lily had looked quite pleased with herself, sitting cross-legged on the ground and clutching her dragon with one hand while scrubbing tears from her cheeks with the other. Lysander had been terrified. He had followed the still-baffled James down to the family room and had left by Floo with his mother hours later, and after that he always invited James to his house.

Lily likes Lysander because he hasn't spoken to her in ten years, since she was seven and set a stuffed dragon on her brother.

She realises that this attitude is unusual, possibly even bordering on insane. But there are so many people in her world—friends and family and reporters and professors and stalkers and acquaintances and nobodies—and Lysander is the only one who seems completely indifferent to her existence. He may even be ignorant of it; he doesn't look up when she grabs Hugo from the Ravenclaw table in the morning, never seems to notice when she stalks down the corridors to detentions with Professor Temple trailing behind her, never cares who she's dating or who she's shunning or whether it's true that she's a lesbian (it isn't, by the way). She once accidentally turned his bag into a rabbit in double Transfiguration and he didn't even notice until it hopped onto his lap. And so it's strange that he is one of her favourite people, but it also isn't, because she is Lily Potter, she is a Slytherin, she likes sprouts and sour sweets and hates tea. She is contradictory, so of course she likes Lysander best of all.

At the end of sixth year, when she's forced to select NEWT courses (because apparently not taking any is not acceptable), she sits beside Hugo at the Ravenclaw table and asks him what he's planning on taking, but really she's listening to Lysander and his mate Cole compare schedules on Hugo's other side. She pretends to scribble down Hugo's classes, but really she's writing Lysander's. She doesn't qualify for some of the classes he's enrolled in—Care of Magical Creatures and Charms, among others—but she can take Transfiguration with him. And so she does.

Nothing feels different at the start of seventh year. The Hogwarts Express steams into King's Cross the way it always has, students launch themselves at each other in the corridor, the coffee tastes the same, the dormitories look ordinary and ancient.

The first day of classes, Lily sits at the Slytherin table, turning her bacon over and examining a line of fat down its centre.

"What's up, Potter?" Bee asks, nudging Lily in the side with one sharp elbow.

"Nothing, Zabini." Lily bites into her bacon and makes a face, dropping her fork on the plate and pushing back from the table. "Bacon's still gross."

Bee rolls her eyes. "You're the only one who thinks so. Where're you off to?"

"Transfiguration."

"You're eager." She glances at the watch dangling from a gold chain around her neck. "Classes don't start for another half hour."

"I have to stop back at the dormitory first."

"Right." Bee takes a bite of toast and asks, "Have you seen Ris around?"

Lily walks backwards, calling, "She might be with Hugo," before she gets out the door.

Lily doesn't go back to Slytherin, though. She heads up the main staircase and up two more flights, skipping trick steps and reaching the Transfiguration classroom before anyone else. She doesn't bother to light the lamps, choosing a seat near the front in the dim early morning light through the west-facing windows.

Lysander is the next one to arrive, as she's expected. He doesn't even look at her, sitting two rows down and pulling out blank sheets of parchment and an eagle feather quill. They sit there in silence; Lily hyperaware of the way Lysander's brown hair falls over his forehead, Lysander unaware of the quick repetitive burst of Lily's heart beneath her school shirt.

Hugo arrives next, glancing at the empty chair next to Lysander and the empty chair beside Lily before falling into the one nearest his cousin. "Hey, Lil. Did you do the reading over the summer?"

Lily shakes her head. She doesn't want to speak and break their silence, but then Lysander says, "Good morning," to Cole, and the connection severs.

"No," she says to Hugo. "I didn't." He doesn't look surprised.

Lily is the first one in the classroom every day. A few weeks into the school year she notices that Lysander has begun coming earlier and earlier; at first it's just a minute, but the time between her arrival and his lessens, until one day she opens the door and he's already sitting in his chair, his hands folded on the desk in front of him. He doesn't look up at her, but his lips lift in a smirk. She decides she'll let him win this one—from then on, she's the second one to class.

She first hears the rumour in late November. It is by far the most absurd thing to ever come out of the mouths of Hogwarts students. It isn't about the boy they all swear they saw her snogging last weekend or the amount of alcohol she consumed during the last Slytherin party or even that her brother Albus will be coming to Hogwarts to lecture her so girls, loosen your buttons. They are saying that she's an animagus.

An animagus. As in slithery green scaly serpent-y thing. Because of course, it could never be a bunny for Lily Luna Potter. The whole school knows she's a little bit devilish.

Lily laughs the first time Ris approaches her about it.

"So you're not?" she asks. "Pinkie swear?"

Lily links her pinkie with Ris's. "I swear. I'm not. Where the fuck did they get that idea?"

"It's just because you haven't been causing as much trouble this year. They all think you must be hiding something."

"Do you think I am?"

"Well, Hugo and I were just talking about it yesterday. I mean, you have to admit you've gotten a bit...boring...lately. And don't take that the wrong way," Lily's lower lip sticks out in a pout and her eyes fall sharp on Ris's, "it's true. You didn't even come to our party last weekend. What were you, asleep?"

"I was, actually."

"See, that's just weird." Ris takes Lily by the arm and begins leading her down the corridor, towards Potions. "That isn't you. You're always in the middle of things. This year the only time I'm guaranteed to see you is at lunch. Not even breakfast, because you're always getting up so early." Her nails dig into Lily's wrist. "Wait. You don't have a boyfriend, do you? An actual boyfriend? One with exclusive snogging rights?"

"Of course I don't." Lily shakes her head. "Is it so strange to think that I might be tired of being, you know, in the middle?"

"Yes." They reach the classroom and Ris pushes Lily inside ahead of her. "You love it, Lil, don't even lie. There's a party tonight. You'll be there, right?"

She sighs. "Yeah, I guess I'll be there."

"Good. Maybe blokes'll stop researching how to become animagi to attract your attention."

Lily rolls her eyes. "They're such idiots."

"Honestly, I'm just lucky that Hugo's related to you. That's the only way for anyone to get any action at this place. Date someone who is morally forbidden to lust after you."

Lily's nails are making half-moon marks on her skin. "I'm not that special."

Ris glances at her friend's hands. "It doesn't matter, Lily. I was just teasing."

"Right," Lily mutters, but she doesn't believe her. Ris doesn't tease. The professor snaps her wand against the board and they stop talking.

Lily wishes that she could take back all the insanity she used to love.

This identity, it doesn't fit her anymore. She feels like someone who shrunk inside a costume, so the arms are too long and the skirt pools on the floor, so the seams scratch at her skin in strange places.

She goes to the party that night, and to many other other ones in the following months, and she feels uncomfortable and out of place, but no one notices. Bee and Ris still twist around her, and she moves, too, she supposes, but it's all blurry. Not from alcohol or from snogging or from touching, but because Lily is distanced. Heavy beats shake the common room floor, but her mind is flipping through spells she needs to know for her Transfiguration exams, she's thinking about Auror examinations and NEWTS. She's not there, in that room, not really.

She only feels present when she's sitting in silence two desks away from Lysander. She can now breathe at the same rate as him, so every exhale-inhale-exhale is a practised and rhythmic duet. Lily hasn't missed a day yet. Lysander has, though. In January, he comes in late to Transfiguration three times. Late to the actual class, not just late by Lily's standards. But he doesn't miss a day in February, and Lily stops worrying about him.

And then in April he says, "Hello," when she sits down in her chair.

She doesn't respond. She doesn't want to, but she also doesn't think that she's capable. Her vocal chords freeze when he speaks; her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth and her fingers lay flat on the desk. She doesn't look at him. He doesn't say anything else.

He isn't there early before their next class, or the one after that, or the one after that, and by early May she's stopped arriving to class before the bell. In fact, she wanders in ten or twenty minutes late, most days, earning her a stern glare from the professor but nothing harsher. No detentions, even though she's practically begging for one.

It is lonely, she realises, to have no place where she actually feels. Being there, in the classroom—sure, it was dreary. It was a classroom in a castle, with stone walls and wavy, thick-paned windows, and a blackboard that looked grey with years of chalk dust and a man sitting two seats away who sometimes sighed out into the silence like he hated it, but he was still there. And Lily didn't care that it was dreary, then, because she noticed all that, and she noticed more than that—she was aware, and present, and now that she doesn't have that anymore, she misses it.

She knows she can fix it. She tries to speak to him, sometimes, but nothing comes out. And then, on the last day of their NEWTS, he passes Lily in the entrance hall. "Good luck, Potter," he mutters.

And she's too shocked to respond. Her voice may as well be broken, as far as Lysander's concerned. And she hates that.

Nights pass with agonising slowness after they complete their exams; Lily wants to get out of Hogwarts, she aches for a world without dormitories and set mealtimes and these same faces.

Their last night, Hugo crashes the year-end Slytherin party, and the four of them—Lily, Ris, Hugo, and Bee—sit in a circle in the corner, playing a half-hearted game of Truth or Dare.

"It's so strange," Bee keeps muttering.

"It is," Ris keeps agreeing.

"We were first years yesterday," Hugo keeps exclaiming, with increased emphasis on the final word the more he drinks.

Lily isn't saying anything, but they don't notice. She's also not drinking. When Ris falls in a pile of half-giggles and half-sobs onto Hugo's lap, Lily pushes herself to her feet and winds her way through the common room, out to the dark corridor and up four flights of stairs. She answers the riddle and climbs into the dim light of Ravenclaw.

She follows the familiar path to Hugo's dormitory and pushes the door open, her illuminated wand falling on three sleeping forms before she sees Lysander's dark hair against his pillow. She hesitates, then mutters, "Nox," and crosses the room.

She prods him with her index finger, touching him right where his collarbone runs into his shoulder. He rolls over onto his side. She pokes him again, this time pressing against one of the bumps in his spine. He mumbles into his pillow.

Then Lily climbs carefully onto the space beside him and leans down so her lips hover centimetres from his ear. "Lysander," she whispers. "Lysander, wake up."

His eyes open, glistening in the moonlight falling through the window. He freezes. "Wh-who is it?"

"Lily, you idiot." Lily tugs the curtains around his bed closed and casts a Silencing charm around them before saying, "Lumos," once more and moving to sit cross legged at the foot of Lysander's bed.

"Lily?" He sits up, holding his sheet to his chin with one hand and rubbing his eyes with the other. "Merlin. Fucking Merlin. What are you doing here? Why are you talking to me? Is everything okay?"

"I always liked you." Lily tells him. She pulls her knees to her chest and leans her chin on them. "You have always been my favourite."

"For the record, it is not okay to wake me up at," he squints at his watch, "fucking one in the morning. Especially if you're drunk."

She doesn't flinch. "I'm really sober. I promise." She holds out her pinkie. He stares at her like she's crazy. "It's called a pinkie swear, Lysander."

"I know what it's called. I'm also not about to enter into any sort of contract with you, childish or otherwise."

Lily rolls her eyes. "It's very mature. But fine, if that's the way you want it." She lowers her hand.

"What are you doing here, Lily?"

"I was telling you," Lily points out. "I have always liked you best. Mostly because you've always ignored me, but then this year I started think I might like you because of you."

He lets the sheets fall as he pinches the bridge of his nose. Lily thinks she ought to get on with the talking so they can move on to the not talking. "You realise that makes no sense," he says.

"It makes perfect sense. You put up with my insanity this year—even encouraged it, sort of—and that means that you see more than most people do, which means that you are deeper than I ever thought you were, which means that I want to get to know you."

"You had plenty of opportunities over the last seven years. Especially over the last seven months. So why the fuck are you here now?"

"I've been fighting against self-destructive tendencies for the last seven months. I've finally won." But that's a lie, she knows. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Merlin." Lysander runs his hand through his hair. "You come here, at one in the morning. You get into bed with me and wake me up and start talking nonsense and now you're asking permission?"

"I'll take that as a yes." Lily bites her lip. "Why?"

He laughs, harsh and quick. "Why what?"

"Why didn't you used to pay attention to me? Why did you come to Transfiguration early every day for me? Why," she breathes, "why did you decide to speak when you did?"

He closes his eyes. "Of all the questions...okay. One, because when I was little I was afraid of what you'd done to James, with your dragon. When I was older, partially because it was habit, and partially because...well...you've gotten enough attention from everyone else. You certainly didn't need me paying any attention to you."

"And?" Lily prompts.

"Because I was curious, I guess. Because you coming to class early didn't fit in with what I thought about you. And I finally talked because I was sick to death of all the stupid silence. Do I get a question now?"

Lily nods.

"Why didn't you answer me?"

"I told you," Lily points at her chest, "self-destructive tendencies."

"You're insane." Lysander shakes his head.

"I probably am." She looks at him. "Now that I'm here, can I stay?"

He just stares at her for a long moment, his eyes darting from hers to her lips to her hands where they're clasped around her knees.

"Just to sleep," he finally says. He lies back and Lily crawls towards him.

He doesn't touch her, but after their breaths fall to their usual practised pattern, Lily moves to rest her red hair on his shoulder. His arm goes around her waist, and then they are touching, and Lysander mutters, "Fuck it," into her neck, and all of her baggage is weightless.

She kisses him awake when dim dawn light edges through the cracks in his bed curtains.

"Hey," he says, reaching up to push some red hair behind her ears.

"Hi," she kisses him one last time, and then sits up, pulling her t-shirt over her head.

"Where're you going?" he asks, looking at her with something like panic in his eyes.

"I need to pack."

"And then?"

"Do me a favour." She slides down from his bed, standing so that the curtains fall against her back. "Don't talk to me today."

"Lily, what...? I will talk to you. I want to talk to you. What are you doing?"

She shakes her head. "Don't. Tomorrow, we'll talk tomorrow."

"Then what was the point?" he asks, but he doesn't expect an answer. She's already gone.

Lily walks from Ravenclaw to Slytherin, knowing this is the last time she'll follow this path as a student. It's a strangely liberating feeling.

But she'll miss Lysander.

Tomorrow, she'll be a new person with an Auror career and an empty flat. Tomorrow, she won't miss him.

Lily promises herself—tomorrow will feel different.