Fic: In the end, these choices cast long shadows [HP, PG-13]
Author: dargai
Title: In the end, these choices cast long shadows
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Severus, Lily, James
A/N: Yeah, this is the first MWPP fic I've managed to *finish*! Yay, me.
Summary: Lily sees changes where she least expects it. And some avenues are sealed forever.
~~
Blue sparks fly at her and Lily rocks back sharply. She doesn't miss the anger in Potter's eyes and she exults in his clumsy wand-work. He's flying blind because he doesn't want to hurt her, but she has no such compunction. Lily's going to fight, Lily's going to war, Lily's going to win. She doesn't think the name 'Severus Snape' when she knocks Potter on his back.
Boys are clumsy, with hard, shrill needs, and she doesn't have the desire to give in to them. They are a yes or no breed, friends or enemies, black or white. Inside the bodies she watches out of the corner of her eyes are smaller people who feel thin and unfinished. Lily's got the world buoying her up, got righteous anger and right and wrong. She's determination and hard work and loyalty. She's the daughter of an RAF pilot who survived the Blitz and a Wren who knew hunger intimately in the bones and starvation of the war years. Lily will wait to be matched; she hasn't the time for games.
Sev grabs her hand at the end of a corridor, pulls her, tight and fast, behind a curtain and looks at her. She has been waiting for this all summer, has banked her anger and hoped he would try again. She waits for the apology, heart stuttering, mind blinking between rage and longing. Secrets and thoughts are thick molasses in her mouth; they press against her tongue and throat and she feels an unconscionable urge to spit. Sev would know how to take them and contain them. He has almost always soothed her before.
He does not apologise and her heart steps back behind stone walls. He reasons, but she is not listening anymore. She is speaking, long and heart-felt. His face crumples against the barbed words 'traitor' and 'half-breed too' and 'murderer,' but he can only respond with 'power' and 'safety' and 'ideals' in spots of venom that sizzle against the tidal wave she unleashes. He invites her over the line, just once, offers to inoculate her against the terrible atrocities the Death Eaters will commit. He has Potter's look, arrogant and chin tilted, forcing her to cruelty just to be heard.
"Our worlds were never meant to mix," he snarls at her and she itches to brush his hair behind his ear, to tell him that he will grow into his face, his eyes, his nose; not to hide behind the blackness, not to shift watching eyes with grease and lank hair.
"Then why are you trying so hard?" she asks, tangling fingers in her robes instead.
"Because I love you," Sev says and then is silent.
Lily bites back tears and the catch in her throat. "Won't you just come to resent me, like your father resents your mum?" she says. "He doesn't know how to love, Sev, and if you stay with Avery and Mulciber, you won't... You can be better."
"Then tell me you love me," Sev demands. "Give me a reason."
Everything stops.
She can't say it because it's not true yet, not the way he means it. She can't understand why he won't just let her be, let her work her way to him slowly. She doesn't understand his greed.
Lily breaks the spell with the truth, warm and callous. "I can't love a Death Eater," she replies, clearly. Her skin burns at the look on his face, sweat gathering at the nape of her neck and under the heavy, woollen fibres of her sleeves.
Sev's voice is thick and soft when he speaks again. All he says is, "Lily..." and he reaches a hand out to her.
Lily has heard possession, arrogance, desire and want, but she has never heard such yearning in a voice. How can he balance it with that murderous ideology, the sharp loathing for Muggles?
His fingertips are soft twitches against her cheekbone, curling up and around her ear. "Lily," he says, while his fingers splay around her skill, rub against her hair and her foolish thoughts.
She wants many things at this second. But she doesn't want to be the only thing standing between his hate and her defenceless home. She needs him to be better than that.
Lily pulls away sharply and sets her jaw tight. "No," she says firmly, because she is her parents' daughter and she remembers their light-hearted horror stories, does not want to grow up in the shadow of death and fire, but she will if she has to. Her eyes darken and narrow. "You don't know anything about love," she says, soft and low. "You can't love me and hate everything I am. I won't watch you destroy my world and do nothing. You need to be better than that."
As it ends, that day he hates his father more than he loves her, and so they choose their paths.
"Evans," Potter says as she climbs through the portrait hole, wrung-out and near tears.
She flicks her wand up at him, ready to flay and curse, just waiting for a target.
All he does is put his hands up and back up a pace. His eyes are curious and sharp. "I wanted to say 'Well done' about Defence today," he says lightly, "but I see I shouldn't've have bothered."
He is much better than his performance in class today. She knows because she has seen him in the corridors and has eased Sev's humiliation at being bested more times than she wants to remember.
So she asks. "What were you playing at today? You weren't even trying."
One hand moves under his glasses to rub his eyes. "I was tired," he says, re-settling them on his long nose, and Lily can see the truth in the grey shadows lining his eyes.
She is still off-balance from Sev, off-balance from making choices that are bigger and more mature than she is.
Outside the moon is waning slightly and Lily is suddenly bone-tired.
"Leave me alone, Potter," she says and walks towards the girl's staircase.
--
By the next year she knows Dumbledore has made his choice when she and Potter stand before the Great Hall, badges winking in the candlelight.
Lily has grown into her red hair, grown into her resolve, grown steel around her spine and disdain for emotions she has no use for.
She can see the stone-faced Slytherins who eat through the polite applause at the announcement of the new Heads, watches the new first-years at the Slytherin table glance around with worried little faces, unused to their House's opposition to everything. She thinks if she could have had those young faces in Gryffindor, it would be the first blow to Voldemort.
Potter turns to her and tells her to lead, that he will follow at the end of the train and collect the stragglers. Halfway through the castle, Lily realises that he has broken them into their natural roles, and feels a strange sense of satisfaction.
They learn the steps to their new dance quite quickly. Potter backs away from challenging her publicly, does not provoke her, and she finds herself bewildered by his competence and his mood swings - the way he can be laughing with her one second and then cut at her with slights and his own perceptive twists on truth.
He comes to her one day and says he is going to ban splitting up on patrols. Next to Lily, Mary McDonald raises an eyebrow and her hand. "Permission to speak, O esteemed Heads," she says, grinning at James and Lily. "But you're going to have some very unhappy Prefects. It takes forever to get around Hogwarts."
"I know," Potter says impatiently, "I've already thought of how to get around that."
It's Lily's turn to raise an eyebrow because the Head Boy has had more detentions than half the school put together. "You don't say," she replies mildly. "Something legal no doubt?"
He puts a sheet of parchment in her hands and leaves without a word.
"Well." Mary looks at his retreating back. "Potter's getting a mite touchy in his old age. Something we said?"
"Potter has uncontrollable emotions," Lily says, eyes scanning the list of spells in Potter's cramped handwriting. "I'm sure Black will make him feel better."
Mary's startled laughter is the best thing she's heard all night.
The next day she catches Potter outside Greenhouse Four and waves the parchment in his face. "When did you come up with this?"
He shrugs and shifts the pot in his arms. "Last week, I guess."
Lily's fascinated by a smudge of dirt on his cheek. It shades the bone, softens the lines of his angular face. He looks ridiculous in an apron, carrying a plant almost as big as he is. The smile is automatic though her words are careful. "Why didn't you talk to me about this before?"
Potter grunts. "Evans, you want to talk about this now? Can't it wait till dinner?"
"No." She follows him inside, watches him strain to put the pot down without dropping it, and finds her eyes tracing the lines of his back and shoulders. He is thinner than the boys she has been with, and more acerbic.
"What?"
Lily shakes herself out of her daze as Potter's gloves swing back and forth in front of her face.
He looks impatient. "What is it, Evans?"
She licks her lips and eyes him curiously. They haven't spoken of Fifth Year or of his humiliating attempts to catch her interest. She looks for want or yearning in his face, and finds that he has lowered his eyes, run grimy fingers through his hair. She wonders now if his mood swings were born of that embarrassment.
"Why are you doing Herbology?" she says, and it is the first real thing she has ever asked of him. She genuinely wants to know, wants to know if he will tell her, feels the molasses-sweet tingle of intrigue escape onto her tongue.
"Now you want to talk about my NEWTs?" Potter rolls his eyes and turns back to the pot, slips the gloves on, and begins loosening the soil around the roots.
"I'm curious," she says mildly. The table next to him is bare so she perches on it, swings her legs a little and watches his eyelashes drift shut. "We've never really talked."
He goes back to digging without looking up at her. "No, Evans, we haven't."
"Are you just going to do that all evening?"
"No." For the first time his lips curve a little. "At some point I'm going to wash up and get some dinner. You?"
Lily raises an eyebrow. "Funny," she says and sighs. "Look, Potter, we've had our differences in the past-"
"No," Potter interrupts as he stands up, dirt trickling through his fingers.
His face is tight and red. Lily's reminded of apoplexy and newborn babies, wordless crying and anger.
"Evans, don't even bloody pretend, all right? We're not friends. Leave it."
She thinks back to that long-go Defence class and wonders how it is that Potter's got her on her back with just words. She's winded, and then confused by her own reaction.
"I know," she replies slowly. "But we work well together. You've...changed. Why can't we be friends now?"
The red is dying down on Potter's face and his hands relax at his side. It takes a half-minute of ignoring each others' eyes and wondering whether leaving now would be too awkward, but he finally says, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
"What is this anyway?" Lily stretches out a foot to nudge at the rim of the pot. She hasn't seen the point in Herbology in a long time. She knows exactly what she's going to be and she knows the Department will leap on her application; with the coming war, the Aurors won't turn any available candidate away.
"Umbrella Flowers," Potter says and looks up at her. "They need to be replanted."
He's sweating lightly, and his hair curls a bit at his temples. He doesn't look arrogant anymore. He looks the way she once saw him - a bit swotty, slight, and not very athletic. That was before she realised Potter was something of a Quidditch star and Transfiguration prodigy, though at least Potter has none of Black's good looks.
Perhaps that made her want him to be better. Herbology is such an unexpected choice for him. Lily likes it.
"Why do you want to be friends?" Potter asks.
"Why are you doing a Herbology NEWT?" she replies and grins at him.
He laughs and the tension bleeds out of them both.
"Why do you always assume the worst of me?" he says, but the smile stays on his face and in his eyes.
Lily takes a deep breath through her amusement and matches him. "Why do you always assume I'm trying to belittle you?"
"Perhaps because you usually do," he points out and then adds quickly. "Not that I'm sure I didn't deserve it often."
"Perhaps because I can never tell why you do the things you do," Lily says. Honesty is brittle on her lips, and she is thrilled and terrified that one wrong word, one frown, one laceration across this tentative peace could scare them both away, permanently. "You confuse me," she admits. "Always have. I don't like some of the things you say and you are arrogant, but..."
Potter shakes his head at her. "Oh, Evans, Evans," he says, moving around the plant. He stops in front of her. "Your compliments are so...quaint."
Lily's greatest strength has been her resolve, but it feels light now, whisper-thin and injudicious, like a weather-wane. "Do you really not want to be friends?" she asks, not even knowing what answer she's hoping for.
Potter seems to know though because he shakes his head. "I- Of course we can be friends."
She reaches out to the smudge on his cheek. "Friends then," she says, brushing the dark patch with her thumb, and she drops her hand as soon as she sees his eyes drop to her lips.
It's hot in the greenhouses and Lily's feeling a little light-headed. She hadn't come here for a labyrinthine conversation. She'd just wanted one or two answers, got three or four that she hadn't anticipated.
Potter retreats behind the pot again and doesn't look at her, but the tips of his ears are red and his eyes are gleaming behind his glasses. He looks single-mindedly focused on the plant, the way he looks in Quidditch matches.
"I made up the list last week," Potter says. "The lads and I thought it might be a good idea. It's not a prank."
His voice is slightly wary and it dawns on Lily that two years ago she should have worried, but not anymore. She's ready to accept that Potter has grown up, but that she's holding evidence of the fact that they've all grown up is disconcerting. "All of you worked on this?"
He seems to enjoy her surprise. "All of us," he repeats. "What? Surprised we know the spells or surprised we bothered to help?"
Lily shakes her head. He has always been able to push her buttons, though in the quiet of the greenhouse, watching his gentle movements, she is lulled by the smell of fresh earth and sweetness. "Not surprised you lot know the spells" is her compromise.
Potter's not paying attention. The soil is in piles around the rim of the pot, and Potter's fingers are digging slightly in the centre cavity. "It's the right thing to do," he says distractedly. "Castle's safer than outside, but it's still full of Slytherins..."
Lily bites back the automatic retort, notices how the stem and leaves wiggle furiously against the movement of his hands. Thin tendrils branch off from a woody, brown centre stem. They brush his chest and twist upwards towards his face; Potter ducks just in time. The pit of her stomach grows warm.
He leans to the side, gripping the tips in one hand and holding the base in the other. "Come on," he says heavily, under his breath, "easy does it."
It's when he stands up, still holding the plant firmly, that Lily realises Umbrella Flowers grow upside-down. The brown stem is the tap root and below the death grip that Potter's right hand has on its base, a large red pod is uncurling. Even from where she is, Lily knows it will be soft as skin and firm to the touch; the petals look silky-smooth.
"Evans, give us a hand here," he says, cradling the baby Flower against his chest. "Some wanker's sitting on the table I need for the re-potting."
"Potter!" Lily's saved from saying much more because his hand slips and a root lashes out at his face.
"Merlin's pants," Potter grinds out, crushing the tips in one hand and holding the root tight in the other. "Get my bloody glasses off the floor. Please."
This is not how Lily pictured her afternoon, in the greenhouse with Potter, helping him with a Herbology project, but it's what she does.
He blinks owlishly when she steps away and his eyes go soft and unfocused, but his movements are sure and precise. He lays the Umbrella Flower flat on the table and pins it down before he turns his face back to Lily.
"Can you put them back on for me?"
It's a polite request, nothing in it to make her skin burn. She hooks the earpieces first, trying not to catch them in his ears or miss entirely. Potter is docile and has his eyes closed. Then he opens them and he is kissing distance, with shining hazel eyes and his hands around a flower.
"Thanks." He nods at the parchment Lily's holding. "I take it you're in favour since you're not bringing the castle down on my head."
Lily steps back, a frown beginning. There are some questions she can't ask yet, but she'll hold him to this friendship and see if he really has changed as much as she thinks.
"We can announce it to the Prefects on Wednesday."
"Brilliant."
Lily stays a few seconds longer. Potter pulls a pot of thick paste towards him and coats the roots liberally, before sprinkling earth on them.
"Where do you re-pot them?" Lily asks, looking around.
"On the ceiling," he says and smiles bright at her look of wonder. "Simple levitation charm till they get high enough to feel the roof." The smile turns a bit wicked, widens into a grin. "Or," Potter says, "we could do it the proper way on broomsticks. Dirty you up a bit, Evans."
"Mad. Absolutely bonkers," Lily says as she walks towards the door. She leans against the frame. "You are going to tell me why you're taking Herbology," she warns him.
Title: In the end, these choices cast long shadows
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Severus, Lily, James
A/N: Yeah, this is the first MWPP fic I've managed to *finish*! Yay, me.
Summary: Lily sees changes where she least expects it. And some avenues are sealed forever.
~~
Blue sparks fly at her and Lily rocks back sharply. She doesn't miss the anger in Potter's eyes and she exults in his clumsy wand-work. He's flying blind because he doesn't want to hurt her, but she has no such compunction. Lily's going to fight, Lily's going to war, Lily's going to win. She doesn't think the name 'Severus Snape' when she knocks Potter on his back.
Boys are clumsy, with hard, shrill needs, and she doesn't have the desire to give in to them. They are a yes or no breed, friends or enemies, black or white. Inside the bodies she watches out of the corner of her eyes are smaller people who feel thin and unfinished. Lily's got the world buoying her up, got righteous anger and right and wrong. She's determination and hard work and loyalty. She's the daughter of an RAF pilot who survived the Blitz and a Wren who knew hunger intimately in the bones and starvation of the war years. Lily will wait to be matched; she hasn't the time for games.
Sev grabs her hand at the end of a corridor, pulls her, tight and fast, behind a curtain and looks at her. She has been waiting for this all summer, has banked her anger and hoped he would try again. She waits for the apology, heart stuttering, mind blinking between rage and longing. Secrets and thoughts are thick molasses in her mouth; they press against her tongue and throat and she feels an unconscionable urge to spit. Sev would know how to take them and contain them. He has almost always soothed her before.
He does not apologise and her heart steps back behind stone walls. He reasons, but she is not listening anymore. She is speaking, long and heart-felt. His face crumples against the barbed words 'traitor' and 'half-breed too' and 'murderer,' but he can only respond with 'power' and 'safety' and 'ideals' in spots of venom that sizzle against the tidal wave she unleashes. He invites her over the line, just once, offers to inoculate her against the terrible atrocities the Death Eaters will commit. He has Potter's look, arrogant and chin tilted, forcing her to cruelty just to be heard.
"Our worlds were never meant to mix," he snarls at her and she itches to brush his hair behind his ear, to tell him that he will grow into his face, his eyes, his nose; not to hide behind the blackness, not to shift watching eyes with grease and lank hair.
"Then why are you trying so hard?" she asks, tangling fingers in her robes instead.
"Because I love you," Sev says and then is silent.
Lily bites back tears and the catch in her throat. "Won't you just come to resent me, like your father resents your mum?" she says. "He doesn't know how to love, Sev, and if you stay with Avery and Mulciber, you won't... You can be better."
"Then tell me you love me," Sev demands. "Give me a reason."
Everything stops.
She can't say it because it's not true yet, not the way he means it. She can't understand why he won't just let her be, let her work her way to him slowly. She doesn't understand his greed.
Lily breaks the spell with the truth, warm and callous. "I can't love a Death Eater," she replies, clearly. Her skin burns at the look on his face, sweat gathering at the nape of her neck and under the heavy, woollen fibres of her sleeves.
Sev's voice is thick and soft when he speaks again. All he says is, "Lily..." and he reaches a hand out to her.
Lily has heard possession, arrogance, desire and want, but she has never heard such yearning in a voice. How can he balance it with that murderous ideology, the sharp loathing for Muggles?
His fingertips are soft twitches against her cheekbone, curling up and around her ear. "Lily," he says, while his fingers splay around her skill, rub against her hair and her foolish thoughts.
She wants many things at this second. But she doesn't want to be the only thing standing between his hate and her defenceless home. She needs him to be better than that.
Lily pulls away sharply and sets her jaw tight. "No," she says firmly, because she is her parents' daughter and she remembers their light-hearted horror stories, does not want to grow up in the shadow of death and fire, but she will if she has to. Her eyes darken and narrow. "You don't know anything about love," she says, soft and low. "You can't love me and hate everything I am. I won't watch you destroy my world and do nothing. You need to be better than that."
As it ends, that day he hates his father more than he loves her, and so they choose their paths.
"Evans," Potter says as she climbs through the portrait hole, wrung-out and near tears.
She flicks her wand up at him, ready to flay and curse, just waiting for a target.
All he does is put his hands up and back up a pace. His eyes are curious and sharp. "I wanted to say 'Well done' about Defence today," he says lightly, "but I see I shouldn't've have bothered."
He is much better than his performance in class today. She knows because she has seen him in the corridors and has eased Sev's humiliation at being bested more times than she wants to remember.
So she asks. "What were you playing at today? You weren't even trying."
One hand moves under his glasses to rub his eyes. "I was tired," he says, re-settling them on his long nose, and Lily can see the truth in the grey shadows lining his eyes.
She is still off-balance from Sev, off-balance from making choices that are bigger and more mature than she is.
Outside the moon is waning slightly and Lily is suddenly bone-tired.
"Leave me alone, Potter," she says and walks towards the girl's staircase.
--
By the next year she knows Dumbledore has made his choice when she and Potter stand before the Great Hall, badges winking in the candlelight.
Lily has grown into her red hair, grown into her resolve, grown steel around her spine and disdain for emotions she has no use for.
She can see the stone-faced Slytherins who eat through the polite applause at the announcement of the new Heads, watches the new first-years at the Slytherin table glance around with worried little faces, unused to their House's opposition to everything. She thinks if she could have had those young faces in Gryffindor, it would be the first blow to Voldemort.
Potter turns to her and tells her to lead, that he will follow at the end of the train and collect the stragglers. Halfway through the castle, Lily realises that he has broken them into their natural roles, and feels a strange sense of satisfaction.
They learn the steps to their new dance quite quickly. Potter backs away from challenging her publicly, does not provoke her, and she finds herself bewildered by his competence and his mood swings - the way he can be laughing with her one second and then cut at her with slights and his own perceptive twists on truth.
He comes to her one day and says he is going to ban splitting up on patrols. Next to Lily, Mary McDonald raises an eyebrow and her hand. "Permission to speak, O esteemed Heads," she says, grinning at James and Lily. "But you're going to have some very unhappy Prefects. It takes forever to get around Hogwarts."
"I know," Potter says impatiently, "I've already thought of how to get around that."
It's Lily's turn to raise an eyebrow because the Head Boy has had more detentions than half the school put together. "You don't say," she replies mildly. "Something legal no doubt?"
He puts a sheet of parchment in her hands and leaves without a word.
"Well." Mary looks at his retreating back. "Potter's getting a mite touchy in his old age. Something we said?"
"Potter has uncontrollable emotions," Lily says, eyes scanning the list of spells in Potter's cramped handwriting. "I'm sure Black will make him feel better."
Mary's startled laughter is the best thing she's heard all night.
The next day she catches Potter outside Greenhouse Four and waves the parchment in his face. "When did you come up with this?"
He shrugs and shifts the pot in his arms. "Last week, I guess."
Lily's fascinated by a smudge of dirt on his cheek. It shades the bone, softens the lines of his angular face. He looks ridiculous in an apron, carrying a plant almost as big as he is. The smile is automatic though her words are careful. "Why didn't you talk to me about this before?"
Potter grunts. "Evans, you want to talk about this now? Can't it wait till dinner?"
"No." She follows him inside, watches him strain to put the pot down without dropping it, and finds her eyes tracing the lines of his back and shoulders. He is thinner than the boys she has been with, and more acerbic.
"What?"
Lily shakes herself out of her daze as Potter's gloves swing back and forth in front of her face.
He looks impatient. "What is it, Evans?"
She licks her lips and eyes him curiously. They haven't spoken of Fifth Year or of his humiliating attempts to catch her interest. She looks for want or yearning in his face, and finds that he has lowered his eyes, run grimy fingers through his hair. She wonders now if his mood swings were born of that embarrassment.
"Why are you doing Herbology?" she says, and it is the first real thing she has ever asked of him. She genuinely wants to know, wants to know if he will tell her, feels the molasses-sweet tingle of intrigue escape onto her tongue.
"Now you want to talk about my NEWTs?" Potter rolls his eyes and turns back to the pot, slips the gloves on, and begins loosening the soil around the roots.
"I'm curious," she says mildly. The table next to him is bare so she perches on it, swings her legs a little and watches his eyelashes drift shut. "We've never really talked."
He goes back to digging without looking up at her. "No, Evans, we haven't."
"Are you just going to do that all evening?"
"No." For the first time his lips curve a little. "At some point I'm going to wash up and get some dinner. You?"
Lily raises an eyebrow. "Funny," she says and sighs. "Look, Potter, we've had our differences in the past-"
"No," Potter interrupts as he stands up, dirt trickling through his fingers.
His face is tight and red. Lily's reminded of apoplexy and newborn babies, wordless crying and anger.
"Evans, don't even bloody pretend, all right? We're not friends. Leave it."
She thinks back to that long-go Defence class and wonders how it is that Potter's got her on her back with just words. She's winded, and then confused by her own reaction.
"I know," she replies slowly. "But we work well together. You've...changed. Why can't we be friends now?"
The red is dying down on Potter's face and his hands relax at his side. It takes a half-minute of ignoring each others' eyes and wondering whether leaving now would be too awkward, but he finally says, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
"What is this anyway?" Lily stretches out a foot to nudge at the rim of the pot. She hasn't seen the point in Herbology in a long time. She knows exactly what she's going to be and she knows the Department will leap on her application; with the coming war, the Aurors won't turn any available candidate away.
"Umbrella Flowers," Potter says and looks up at her. "They need to be replanted."
He's sweating lightly, and his hair curls a bit at his temples. He doesn't look arrogant anymore. He looks the way she once saw him - a bit swotty, slight, and not very athletic. That was before she realised Potter was something of a Quidditch star and Transfiguration prodigy, though at least Potter has none of Black's good looks.
Perhaps that made her want him to be better. Herbology is such an unexpected choice for him. Lily likes it.
"Why do you want to be friends?" Potter asks.
"Why are you doing a Herbology NEWT?" she replies and grins at him.
He laughs and the tension bleeds out of them both.
"Why do you always assume the worst of me?" he says, but the smile stays on his face and in his eyes.
Lily takes a deep breath through her amusement and matches him. "Why do you always assume I'm trying to belittle you?"
"Perhaps because you usually do," he points out and then adds quickly. "Not that I'm sure I didn't deserve it often."
"Perhaps because I can never tell why you do the things you do," Lily says. Honesty is brittle on her lips, and she is thrilled and terrified that one wrong word, one frown, one laceration across this tentative peace could scare them both away, permanently. "You confuse me," she admits. "Always have. I don't like some of the things you say and you are arrogant, but..."
Potter shakes his head at her. "Oh, Evans, Evans," he says, moving around the plant. He stops in front of her. "Your compliments are so...quaint."
Lily's greatest strength has been her resolve, but it feels light now, whisper-thin and injudicious, like a weather-wane. "Do you really not want to be friends?" she asks, not even knowing what answer she's hoping for.
Potter seems to know though because he shakes his head. "I- Of course we can be friends."
She reaches out to the smudge on his cheek. "Friends then," she says, brushing the dark patch with her thumb, and she drops her hand as soon as she sees his eyes drop to her lips.
It's hot in the greenhouses and Lily's feeling a little light-headed. She hadn't come here for a labyrinthine conversation. She'd just wanted one or two answers, got three or four that she hadn't anticipated.
Potter retreats behind the pot again and doesn't look at her, but the tips of his ears are red and his eyes are gleaming behind his glasses. He looks single-mindedly focused on the plant, the way he looks in Quidditch matches.
"I made up the list last week," Potter says. "The lads and I thought it might be a good idea. It's not a prank."
His voice is slightly wary and it dawns on Lily that two years ago she should have worried, but not anymore. She's ready to accept that Potter has grown up, but that she's holding evidence of the fact that they've all grown up is disconcerting. "All of you worked on this?"
He seems to enjoy her surprise. "All of us," he repeats. "What? Surprised we know the spells or surprised we bothered to help?"
Lily shakes her head. He has always been able to push her buttons, though in the quiet of the greenhouse, watching his gentle movements, she is lulled by the smell of fresh earth and sweetness. "Not surprised you lot know the spells" is her compromise.
Potter's not paying attention. The soil is in piles around the rim of the pot, and Potter's fingers are digging slightly in the centre cavity. "It's the right thing to do," he says distractedly. "Castle's safer than outside, but it's still full of Slytherins..."
Lily bites back the automatic retort, notices how the stem and leaves wiggle furiously against the movement of his hands. Thin tendrils branch off from a woody, brown centre stem. They brush his chest and twist upwards towards his face; Potter ducks just in time. The pit of her stomach grows warm.
He leans to the side, gripping the tips in one hand and holding the base in the other. "Come on," he says heavily, under his breath, "easy does it."
It's when he stands up, still holding the plant firmly, that Lily realises Umbrella Flowers grow upside-down. The brown stem is the tap root and below the death grip that Potter's right hand has on its base, a large red pod is uncurling. Even from where she is, Lily knows it will be soft as skin and firm to the touch; the petals look silky-smooth.
"Evans, give us a hand here," he says, cradling the baby Flower against his chest. "Some wanker's sitting on the table I need for the re-potting."
"Potter!" Lily's saved from saying much more because his hand slips and a root lashes out at his face.
"Merlin's pants," Potter grinds out, crushing the tips in one hand and holding the root tight in the other. "Get my bloody glasses off the floor. Please."
This is not how Lily pictured her afternoon, in the greenhouse with Potter, helping him with a Herbology project, but it's what she does.
He blinks owlishly when she steps away and his eyes go soft and unfocused, but his movements are sure and precise. He lays the Umbrella Flower flat on the table and pins it down before he turns his face back to Lily.
"Can you put them back on for me?"
It's a polite request, nothing in it to make her skin burn. She hooks the earpieces first, trying not to catch them in his ears or miss entirely. Potter is docile and has his eyes closed. Then he opens them and he is kissing distance, with shining hazel eyes and his hands around a flower.
"Thanks." He nods at the parchment Lily's holding. "I take it you're in favour since you're not bringing the castle down on my head."
Lily steps back, a frown beginning. There are some questions she can't ask yet, but she'll hold him to this friendship and see if he really has changed as much as she thinks.
"We can announce it to the Prefects on Wednesday."
"Brilliant."
Lily stays a few seconds longer. Potter pulls a pot of thick paste towards him and coats the roots liberally, before sprinkling earth on them.
"Where do you re-pot them?" Lily asks, looking around.
"On the ceiling," he says and smiles bright at her look of wonder. "Simple levitation charm till they get high enough to feel the roof." The smile turns a bit wicked, widens into a grin. "Or," Potter says, "we could do it the proper way on broomsticks. Dirty you up a bit, Evans."
"Mad. Absolutely bonkers," Lily says as she walks towards the door. She leans against the frame. "You are going to tell me why you're taking Herbology," she warns him.